Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (52 page)

‘In that case, I can help you a little. Gwawl has captured him.’

Grathach looked worried. ‘There is bad, that is. Late he’ll be for the wedding, too, I wouldn’t wonder.’

‘What wedding?’

‘His wedding, of course. He’s getting married on the thirtieth day after Luggnasad.’

‘He didn’t tell me.’

‘I don’t suppose anybody told him, either. It’s only just been arranged. Enough trouble we had finding her, too.’

I felt that it would be too confusing to inquire further. I merely said:

‘Well, if you want him to be any use at the nuptial feast, or after it, you had better help me. We want him back.’

‘If we could wait a week,’ volunteered Duach, ‘I could ride back to the Summer Country and raise a party from old Caw. It’s his niece Pryderi’s marrying.’

‘We might have to fight Romans as well,’ pointed out Nerthach.

‘There’ll be no fighting.’ I was firm about it. I went over and led Lhygod out. ‘This is one of Gwawl’s party. We’ve got capital.’

‘Now, we can soon find out where Pryderi is,’ said Grathach. ‘There’s always the old red-hot poker up the backside to make a man talk.’ I was gratified to notice that Lhygod went a pale green colour and made choking noises. I insisted:

‘No torture. Just a straight clean death. Now, is there anywhere around here that is fairly easy to see and good for a public hanging, because I think that will be the best.’

‘Oh, yes. The mound of Arberth.’

‘How long will it take us to walk there?’

‘Why walk? We have horses.’

And so they had. We four rode, but Lhygod, hands and feet tied, we threw over the horse’s back like a sack. We went west and north, till we met the road, and then we kept west over the flank of a chalk hill, past a line of barrows that marked the path of the Green Road, the Ridgway. And then, coming down from the Ridgway, down around the shoulder of the hill, we saw in front of us a great mound, an enormous barrow hundreds of feet high. It was more like one of the Pyramids of Egypt than anything else, and like them it had been built of great lumps of chalk, carefully cut and squared. But that had been long ago, and now the blocks had been weathered and rounded and the cracks between them filled in with dust and mud, and green moss and even grass now grew on what had once been white and shining walls. There was a path that led up to the top of the mound, but now one could only with difficulty see that it had once been a spiral staircase to a flat platform.

‘Is it a burial mound?’ I asked Grathach.

‘Who knows?’ he answered. ‘It has many names, and most people call it the Hill of the Sun, or the Hill of Sul, who is our Goddess of the Sun. But what we used to use it for, and have done since time immemorial, was something quite ordinary. It used to be the Hill of Judgement of the kings of the Isle of the Mighty, and on top the High Kings of all the island, for we had High Kings once, would sit to give judgements in all manner of
cases, their crowns on their heads and their Druids sitting at their feet to guide them in the law. But it is also called the Hill in Arberth, for Arberth is this land, and Arberth is the name of the village that lies to the north.’

‘It will do me very nicely,’ I told them, making my voice sound as off-handedly evil as I could for Lhygod’s benefit. ‘First we will take this wretch up to the top, and then I want you to go to the village and find me three beams, strong enough to bear the weight of a … lad, and a hammer, and nails.’

This they did, and Grathach, who only looked stupid, remembered the spade I had not mentioned, and also brought a chair for me to sit on.

‘What shall we do?’ he asked me in a loud voice, so that all the passers-by on the road, and all the people of the village of Arberth who had come out to watch, could hear. And I answered him in the same way:

‘Build me a gallows. Build it high and build it strong, that it may stand here for a hundred years to show what happens to those who steal Mannanan’s property. Dig holes into the hill, and set the uprights well into the soil. Nail the crossbar firmly so that it will not give, and throw the rope over. Then we will set the noose about this young rat’s neck and pull … pull … pull … slowly and watch him kick. But do not work too fast, because it would be a pity if there might be anyone who would have too little time to see the justice of Mannanan.’

It was still only the middle of the morning. I looked about me as Nerthach and Duach took turns with the spade to sink the holes. To the east of us wound the Roman Road, and to the west of us, and in both directions it disappeared into the forest. To the north I could see the village of Arberth, and it was surrounded, I could see, by a circle of stones of the men of old, and another line of stones ran away to the east. But to the south, crossing me from left to right, I could see the line of the Green Road.

It was when the lads had finished sinking the holes and we were about to put up the first post that I heard scuffling on the path, and the grunting and blowing of a man out of condition, almost drowning Lhygod’s sobs which grew louder as the holes were dug deeper. Then round the corner of the path the face of
a man appeared and spiralled up to the top of the mound. He was a big, stocky man, very thick built indeed, with linen tunic and fine wool trousers, boots of Spanish leather, and a Gold chain around his neck. He looked the part of a merchant. He looked at the poles, and he looked at Lhygod, and he asked:

‘Why sir, what are you doing here? Why are you putting up these timbers on this mound?’

‘Simple enough it is,’ I replied. ‘Last night, I was walking hither and thither among my oatstacks, and necessary it was, because the mice have been at them lately. But of course when I came they all ran, and all I was able to catch was this one little mouse.’ For that is the meaning of Lhygod, which I took to be some kind of a pet name. ‘Therefore, I am going to hang this mouse by the neck till it be dead, for a warning to all the big rats of the Isle of the Mighty, and indeed of the Isle of the Blessed also, that I will have mercy on neither great nor small till what has been taken from me is returned.’

‘Oh, but come now,’ and his voice was smooth and silky as if he were trying to sell me something no sane man would take as a gift. ‘Surely vengeance like this is beneath a great lord like yourself. The death of so little a mouse will not help you. I have always wanted a little mouse to play with, as a pet. Come, sir, sell it to me for five pieces of Gold … or should I offer ten? It is only a whim of mine … Oh, yes, I can pay, I can pay, I am a trader of some repute in these parts.’

‘I will ask you something.’ Never, I thought, fight an enemy on his own ground. ‘If I take five Gold pieces, new minted and not yet clipped, and I buy a hundred amphorae of Gaulish wine, and I sell them for two hundred two-horse denarii, and with that I buy one thousand cheeses and I sell those for forty thousand copper sesterces, then have I made a profit or a loss?’

‘Now, if you will repeat that slowly,’ he stammered, ‘and let me send for my abacus and my tablets and let me inquire the price of cheese and how many sesterces there are in a sestertia—’

‘Any merchant carries all these things at his fingers’ ends, and would have answered me in a moment,’ I said sternly. ‘No merchant you.’

And Nerthach and Duach took him by the shoulders and the
ankles and rolled him down the sides of the mound, and he scrambled up on to the road and ran as fast as he could towards the wood from which he had come.

Then the lads got the cross-beam up on to the gallows, and they made a great deal of fuss about it, banging away with the nails fit to wake the dead in the long grave mound I could see, and at every bang Lhygod sobbed the more. But when they had finished, a head appeared over the edge of the mound as a man strode up the spiral path as easily as if it were the level ground. He was dressed as an officer of an Auxiliary Regiment of Cavalry, in the German fashion, with his shirt tucked into his trousers and his trouser legs tapered to his boots. His breastplate was polished, and his helmet shone, with a yellow plume set crosswise. I wondered idly what regiment he thought he was in. Before I could ask him, he began to ask me, in a Latin thickened with an accent that might have been that of Friesia or Pannonia:

‘Now, sir!! What are you doing here? Do you not know that the administration of justice in this country is the task of Caesar’s officers? Are you indeed preparing to carry out a hanging? Hand your prisoner over to me at once!’

I shifted my position in my chair so that the handle of my sword came before his eyes, and I answered him mildly enough:

‘I am merely ridding my land of vermin. Last night I was taking the air in the rickyard, hoping to catch the mice that have been eating up all my grain. But they saw me coming and ran away, and I was only able to catch this little one. Therefore I am setting up this high gallows, and here I will hang this mouse, as a warning to all the big rats within the Empire and outside it that I will have mercy neither on great nor small till what they have stolen is returned to me.’

‘A mouse, is it?’ he mused, twirling his moustache between finger and thumb, and I felt pity for a man whose chin had been so recently scraped clean. ‘Now, if, as I see, you have a large performing mouse, I would be glad to buy it as a regimental mascot. Expense is no object. I will reclaim it from the regimental funds. Will you take twenty Gold pieces … forty …?’

‘All right, German cavalryman,’ I answered him. ‘Tell me this – is the World Tree an oak, or an ash, or an elm?’

He looked at me a moment in confusion.

‘Why,’ he stammered at last, ‘the most sacred tree of all must be an oak tree.’

‘You are no German Cavalryman,’ I told him, and Grathach and Duach took him by the shoulders and the ankles, and rolled him down the slope, and pelted him with lumps of chalk as he ran back into the woods from which he had come.

It was now half-way through the afternoon. The men from the Confines of Hell threw the end of the rope over the cross-bar, and began to make a noose, trying it on Lhygod’s neck for size and remaking it several times because it was too large, or too small, or not tidy enough. And while they were laughing over this, the head of a man appeared as he walked slowly up the spiral path. And this was not a merchant nor a soldier, but a Druid. His clean-shaven face peered out from his white headcloth, and his white tunic brushed the ground before his feet. On his breast was a shrivelled leaf, which might have been mistletoe, and on his head was a wreath of oak-leaves, the ends of the twigs fresh broken and oozing sap, and the acorns, since it was mid-August, still unripe and green-cased. He came to me and he said:

‘What are you doing here, my son? If you wish to offer sacrifice, it is not for you to carry it out, and there is no law in this isle that allows you to hang an offering to the Gods. Let me have this man, so that at Beltain I may shut him in a basket and burn him alive.’

‘Why, this is no man,’ I told him, ‘but a little mouse. I was taking my ease last night in the rickyard, where the mice have been troublesome, but when they heard me coming they fled, all except this one, which I caught. And I propose to hang it from this high gallows, so that all this vermin, of this world and the world that is to come and the world of the Dead, shall know that I will have mercy on neither great nor small till all that I have lost is returned to me.’

‘Then if it is a mouse, my son,’ said the Druid, and I was full of admiration for a man who could talk thus so soon after his moustaches had been scraped from his upper lip, ‘I would indeed like to possess it, because it is foretold that when I die I shall be transmigrated into a mouse, and so it would be unworthy of me
to allow anyone to kill what may, in time, become my own wife. Therefore, let me buy it from you as an act of piety, and though I have no money of my own, yet I am entrusted with certain funds to be disbursed in charity, and therefore I could offer you for this mouse sixty pieces of silver … of Gold … eight pieces of Gold …’

‘Druid!’ I spoke to him without reverence. ‘Tell me this. What is white and black, of the sky and not of the sky, of the earth and not of the earth?’

He looked puzzled. Then he said, ‘I must have some time to consult my sacred books.’

‘You are no Druid,’ I told him, and Nerthach and Duach were ready to roll him down the slope again, but I merely said to them:

‘
Pull
!’

With relish they began to take in the slack of the rope, but as the rope tightened Gwawl shouted in his proper voice:

‘Stop it! Stop!’

We looked at him., He had thrown off the Druid’s robe, which was only a bed sheet he had stolen from the inn the night before, and he stood there in his black and white shirt, but clean-shaven now.

‘What is there I can give you for this mouse? Name anything you want, even to the half of my Kingdom.’

‘First,’ I said, ‘tell me who is this mouse.’

‘This is my wife,’ said Gwawl, ‘new married, and this was the only way I thought she could travel safely from her own Iceni across a land full of desperate men like yourself, and at the same time have my two men keep an eye on you. And treat her carefully, I beg of you, because she has just found out that she is pregnant.’

‘Then if you want her back,’ I told him, ‘you will have to pay for her, and sorry I would be to have to hang her, for I like her as well as any woman I ever met who did not speak a word to me.’

‘Yes, yes,’ gasped Gwawl, sweating with worry. ‘I will exchange her for Rhiannon.’

‘And besides Rhiannon?’

‘Yes, then – you may have Taliesin too.’

‘And besides Taliesin?’

‘No, no: you cannot ask me to give up my real prize, my ancient enemy.’

Grathach gave a playful tug at the rope, and the mouse stood on tiptoe, gurgling.

‘All right, then. I will send back Pryderi also.’

‘And besides Pryderi?’

‘What? Will you give me no profit at all from this night?’

‘None at all. Let us have back also Hueil and his four men, or their weight in Gold if they are dead, and our horses and all our baggage unrobbed and untouched.’

‘All that I will do, only let me have my little mousey back.’