The Crimson Chalice

by Victor Canning

  “And this—this stinking piece of hide?”

  “It’s a long way to Aquae Sulis. Those fancy sandles of yours could need new soles in a week. Now—let’s get packed up and moving. And, Lady Tia, leave the rest of the cake and cheese near the top of your bundle. We shall need them before the night is out.”

  Marching, Baradoc watched the moon and the stars in their slow swings, and shaped his course, but even in pitch darkness the magic compass in his mind would have served him, though less finely. Once or twice he heard an owl call, and now and again came the harsh screech of a hunting night jar. The forest was alive with Nature’s hunters, whose skills were more precise than any man’s. Now and again either Lerg or Aesc would come from the darkness to his side for a few seconds and then disappear to their posts once more. Toward morning, with daylight like a grey wash of cobwebs through the eastern trees, he sent Cuna out to the right flank. Of all the dogs he and his old master had bred for export abroad, there had been none to touch Lerg or Aesc. They had been kept jealously for the household. Cuna would learn the wordless signs in time. Of all animals, the gods had gifted dogs with a magical kinship with man, but only to some men the gift of the words and signs that held them coupled in understanding and loyalty.

  2. The Black Raven

  It was almost midmorning before Tia woke. There was a fresh westerly wind blowing and the sky was full of low, rolling grey clouds. She sat up and looked around her. She had only the vaguest memory of the last stretches of their march and the moment when Baradoc had halted and said they would make camp. She had been conscious of his stirring around in the moonlight and shadows, unloading their bundles and spreading covers on the ground, of herself dropping on them and finally of his throwing the blanket across her.

  She stretched her arms, yawned and rubbed the last of sleep from her eyes. The camp had been made on a high bluff which rose clear of the forest, in a small ravine whose sides were a jumble of broken stones. Behind her the rock face rose sheer and smooth like a fortress wall. The sound of running water reached her ears. Away to the left a thin stream dripped down a moss-covered cleft of the rocks and was gathered into a small gravelly pool, from which it seeped away down the hillside in a marshy slope bordered by primroses and blue-starred periwinkle growths. There was no sign of Baradoc or the dogs, but Bran sat on a spur of rock above her, beak-combing his flight feathers and scratching himself about the head as he made his morning toilet. Tia smiled to herself and decided to follow his example. Her tiredness was gone but she felt dirty and tousled.

  She went to the pool, stripped off her tunic and took off her sandals. Wearing only her short woollen drawers, she splashed and washed her face, the top half of her body and then her legs. There was a blister on her right foot where the sandal had rubbed her during the march. She wiped herself with a corner of her bundle cover and dressed, and shivered a little until her clothes began to bring back warmth to her body.

  Then, seeing close up against the rock face the contents of the bundles that Baradoc had opened up, she picked up the dirty old seaman’s shirt and the filthy pair of long hose. There was no sign of the fishing spear. Baradoc, she guessed, was away with the dogs hunting for the pot. At the thought of food, she felt her belly empty and hunger bring saliva to her mouth, and she knew that she had never been so hungry before.

  She took the shirt and the hose to the shallow scoop of pool, threw them in and then began to tramp and knead them underneath her bare feet. The water flowed away muddy.

  Above her Bran turned his head away. He had seen many women pounding and beating away like this before. His eyes followed the dark-crested, rolling spread of the forest top away to the south. Distantly there was a glimpse of a thin arc of the sea, iron grey and still, and away to the west a sudden fall in the trees to a narrow edging of marsh and grasslands biting up into the forest. Through this valley coiled and looped a wide, slow-moving river.

  Moving slowly up the river, a good five miles away, was something else which Bran had seen before, a long ship, the oar blades dipping and flashing rhythmically. The saffron-coloured sail had been half struck and loosely furled. Bran watched the swing of the rowers’ backs and arms, saw three men standing in the raised stern and a solitary man perched high in the prow who now and again swung a weighted sounding line overboard to read the depth of the river. As the long ship moved into a broader reach of the river, the stern steering oar was put hard over and the ship swung slowly round in a half-circle to the left bank. Oars flashed with waterruns as they were lifted and shipped, and from stern and bow men jumped ashore with mooring ropes. As the ship was made fast a party of men moved out from the forest that fringed the river meadow and made for the ship. There were ten or twelve of them, helmeted and armed with swords and spears, and with them came four pack horses laden down with loads slung across their backs. That, too, Bran had seen before. Had he been free he might have launched himself on his broad wings and swung down valley, quartering against the crosswind, and taken a closer look, for anything that moved excited his curiosity. But the freedom was denied him because he had been given the word to mark his place by Baradoc before he had left with the dogs and the fishing spear.

  Below him Tia wrung out the shirt and the hose and spread them over the steep rock face, weighing them down with stones. Looking at the roughly woven hose, she made a wry face. Before she got used to them they would probably chafe and rub her legs raw. Still, Baradoc was right. For her own safety she had to turn from a well-bred young lady to a ragged country youth—but, thank the gods, only until they got to Aquae Sulis. She stood for a moment, thinking of her uncle’s beautifully furnished and decorated villa, and the soft silk-and-cotton-covered beds with their mattresses of swan and duck down. Then she put the thought from her and, taking her dagger, went back to the pool, which had now cleared. Leaning over it, she began to saw and hack at her fair hair. The wind took strands of it away like floating cobwebs and some fell into the water, drifting away on the slow current. Once as she worked, the dagger slipped and the sharp edge nicked the side of her thumb. Without thinking she used her father’s favourite curse word and sucked at the wound. Then she grinned to herself. Why should she not curse and condemn the bloody knife and the bloody times to the darkness of bloody Hades? They were a man’s words and she was now a man—albeit a very good-looking one.

  Tia was sitting with her back to the rocks, pulling threads loose from a piece of cloth and drawing them through the lump of beeswax which she had warmed in her hands. One moment she was alone, frowning over her work—and then there was Cuna at her feet, Lerg by the pool and Aesc on a rock ledge above him, with Baradoc at his side. The suddenness and silence of their appearance startled her, making her heart thump quickly. But almost immediately she realized how glad she was to see them all.

  Baradoc said something softly to Bran, and then jumped down to the poolside and came across to Tia. Bran lifted himself from his perch, beat upward in a slow spiral toward the grey sky, which was now showing an occasional break, in the clouds, and then drifted away southward. He was free now to do his own foraging. There would be something to be picked up down by the river where the crewmen of the long ship were now busy setting up a shore camp. Such men ate until they were full and then tossed their leavings over their shoulders to make easy prizes for any ready scavenger.

  From his shoulder Baradoc dropped the hind leg of a young deer to the short grass. Then, from the inside of his shirt, he pulled out a handful of different fungi.

  Squatting on his hunkers, he took out his dagger and began to skin the leg; looking at Tia for a moment with a smile and saying. “Fill the cauldron with water, Lady Tia, and then search around for dry grass, dry twigs and some of that crumbly dry moss from the rocks.” He paused and nooded at the clothes she had washed. “I see you have been busy. Turn your head.”

  Tia slowly turned her head so that he could see her cropped hair. She said with a note of sarcasm in her voice, “I hope it meets with the gre
at Baradoc’s approval.”

  “Aie! but’tis a pity to see such a fine flow of golden locks go. Still, a few weeks in Aquae Sulis will see them back and you’ll be able to look in your mirror and admire yourself again.”

  Rising to get the cauldron, Tia said, “You are in a good and teasing humour.”

  “Why not? The hunt was quick and easy. The dogs have already eaten and I brought only what we might need for a while.”

  “How did you catch it?”

  “One day soon when your wind and legs are stronger I might show you. Now fill the cauldron and tip the toadstools into it.”

  “Are they good to eat?”

  Baradoc sighed. “Would I have brought them else?”

  Tia filled the cauldron and did as she was bid, by which time Baradoc had skinned the meat and cut off four fair-sized portions. Then he gathered the little heap of kindling and tinder moss together that Tia had gathered and carried them to a dry flat stone at the foot of the rock face. As he arranged them he said, without looking at her, “Bring me the spear and the flint and your mantle.”

  It was no order. He just said it as though it were the most natural thing in the world to order her around without thought of resentment from her. So, she told herself, if she wanted to get to Aquae Sulis it must be.

  He took the spear and jammed the two prongs into the ground at the edge of the stone, easing the dry grass and moss close to it. Then taking up the flint, he said, “Drape the mantle over me and hold the edges so that no wind comes in.” At last when her arms were aching from holding the tented mantle around Baradoc she heard him blowing gently without stopping. Then a thin trickle of fine blue smoke seeped through the edges of the mantle. Baradoc lifted away his covering and put aside the spear. On the flat stone little tongues of flame were working through the dried grass and twigs.

  Baradoc, face covered in sweat, said, “Now build it. But remember only dry wood. We want no heavy smoke from damp stuff. What little there is this wind will whip away from the top of the bluff. The fire and the cooking is all yours.”

  “All mine?”

  “Why not?” Baradoc was genuinely surprised. “Did you think you would ride the whole way to Aquae Sulis lolling on a litter and not a hand to lift for any comfort or food?”

  “But I’ve never cooked in the open. In fact I—” She broke off.

  Baradoc grunted. “In fact, you’ve never cooked at all. Well, a late start is better than none. I’ve brought you the meat and the flavouring and made the fire. Would you sit by and see me do woman’s work?”

  “And what are you going to do?”

  He held out his blood-stained and dirt-streaked hands, and said brusquely, “Take a bath, of course. It’s a habit my master beat into me. When that’s done, I’ll grind a new point to the needle, and wax some more threads—so that you won’t be left idle after we’ve eaten.”

  Tia looked at him in silence for a moment or two, and then said evenly, “What you say is fair, though not gently said. But”—her voice began to rise—“don’t think, Son-of-a-Chief Baradoc, that I can’t do as well as any tribe woman with greasy hair and dirty face. I will do all you ask of me, but speak me fair—or I will set Lerg at your throat.”

  Baradoc stared at her round-eyed with surprise. Then he burst out laughing and said, “I am sorry. I was wrong to give you offense. Now, please, do as I ask. And also”—a twinkle came into his dark eyes—“since I don’t want to offend you again keep your eyes from the bathhouse. I haven’t washed for three days and I’m going to strip.”

  He strode away toward the pool, and Tia turned back to the fire and her duties. As she worked she heard the splashing of me pool water and his cheerful low whistling as he washed himself. There were times when she liked him, and times when she could kick him for his cocksureness. Still, whatever he was, she needed him to get to Aquae Sulis.

  Two hours later they ate. When they had finished, Baradoc cut the rest of the raw deer flesh into flat strips. He laid them on the hot cooking stone, put another flat stone on top of them and then raked the hot embers over the stones and covered these with slabs of turf cut with his dagger. By the time they were ready to move off at night the meat would be cooked dry and easily carried as emergency rations. Then Tia began to mend the shirt and hose with the waxed threads while Baradoc with a piece of grit stone—on which he had re-pointed the needle—burnished and honed the tangs of the spear to put an edge and point on them.

  As they worked, in answer to a question from Tia, he explained that in normal times they could have walked the distance to Aquae Sulis easily in four or five days. But now that journey would take longer because they must pick their route to avoid large towns and settlements and the old Roman-built main roads. He said, “The only people on these high roads will be armed parties, able to look after themselves, and not always to be trusted to give a true greeting to a couple of strangers.” As she sewed, his spearhead finished, he drew in the loose gravel for her a map of the southern and western parts of Britain, marking in roughly the towns, rivers and forests and the areas of bare downs. He showed her where they were now—to the west of Anderida, a quarter of the way toward the next coastal town of Noviomagus. He stabbed the gravel with a stick, reciting the names of the towns like a litany … Portus Adurni, Clausentium, Venta, Sorviodunum and Lindinis. Tia smiled to herself for, though she recognized most of the names, she knew that quietly Baradoc was showing off his knowledge.

  She asked, “And where is your country?”

  Baradoc’s stick swung far to the west, and he said, “Down here, beyond Isca, beyond the Tamarus River, on the north coast two days’march from the Point of Hercules, in the valley of the great rocks. Away farther, right at the end of the land, is Antivestaeum, where the sea stretches away to the edge of the world.” As he finished speaking Baradoc reached for the unwashed cauldron and ran two fingers round the inner rim to collect the grease gathered there. Without looking at her, he reached for Tia’s blistered foot and spread some of the grease over the red, chafed skin. Then he tore a piece from one of their collection of rags, bound it around her foot and tied it in place with a couple of waxed threads. This done, he looked up at her and smiled, saying, “In the days of the legions a man would get a beating and lose a week’s pay for neglecting his feet.” He stood up, holding the cauldron, and began to move away.

  Tia asked, “Where are you going?”

  “To scour the cauldron for you.”

  “Woman’s work?” Tia grinned, pulled a thread tight and bit off the end.

  “I see no woman around here—only a crop-headed Roman lad, sewing up a rip in the backside of his long hose.”

  Tia watched him kneel at the pool and begin to scour the cauldron with sand and pebbles. There were two Baradocs. She preferred the gentle, thoughtful one. But she knew that at this moment it was the other Baradoc she needed more, for he was the only one who could take her safely to Aquae Sulis.

  Baradoc brought back the pot and said, “I leave Aesc and Cuna with you. There is something I saw early this morning which interests me.”

  He turned away and began to climb up to the top of the bluff and was soon lost to view. Although he spoke no word nor seemed to make any sign, Lerg went with him. The other dogs remained, stretched out beyond the fire. A dark shadow swept across the ground and Tia looked up to see Bran come to roost on one of the high rock points.

  At the side of the river stood a lone alder tree, its lower branches still festooned with the jetsam and flotsam of the past winter’s floods. Baradoc was wedged in the fork of the trunk close to the top, where he commanded a clear view of the river downstream. Below him the banks were broadly fringed with reeds that gradually gave way to the new growth of this year’s meadow grasses. Lerg sat at the foot of the tree. The air was full of birdsong. Out of the corner of his eye Baradoc caught the high crescent-shaped silhouette of a falcon poised for the stoop and kill. But his real interest lay downstream, a quarter of a mile away.

&nb
sp; There, moored against the same bank as the alder tree, was a long boat. The saffron sail had been lowered and was now stretched the length of the middeck over its own boom to make a tented canopy. There was some large black design painted on the sail, but because of its folds Baradoc could not make out what it was. He had seen long boats before and he knew it would be some device to give recognition of its sea-warrior master to others of his kind.

  It was no Saxon ship. It was the long keel of a far-North sea raider, of a race that sought no foreign soil to hold, no land to conquer. These men looked only to plunder and slaves and to the easing of the deep salt itch in their blood, which was only stilled as the seas rolled under their keels and the winds of all seasons filled their great emblazoned sails of finely dressed skin.

  On the bank two hide shelters had been set up and the smoke of cooking fires rose into the air. Men were carrying supplies and loot aboard and other men worked around the fires. When the work was done the feasting would begin. Somewhere along the coast or in the leagues of forest that rose beyond the water meadows, he knew, there would be ruined huts and homesteads, burning barns and byres, and the fly-clouded corpses of men, women and children.

  That morning, returning from his hunting, he had seen one of their raiding parties moving down the river path, and with them they had been leading four sturdy ponies carrying their bundled loot. The loot meant nothing to him. But the ponies had made his eyes glisten with desire. With one or, better still, two of them, he and Tia could make faster time to Aquae Sulis and—when he had delivered her to her uncle—a pony would bring him home that much quicker. Home he longed for now with a longing which was a great thirst in him.