The Crimson Chalice

by Victor Canning

  “It is our tribal bird,” said Baradoc; “and it is the bird of our sea cliffs. We call them choughs, but there is a secret tribal name which I cannot speak to you. It means ‘the red crow of enduring.’ To kill one is punished by death, for as long as the choughs lives so will our people.”

  Tia said, “What is in the bag, Father?”

  Asimus picked up the doeskin bag. “It is the gift I have promised you. It is the little cup or chalice which stood at the foot of the Cross, holding the vinegar. It is made of silver, now old and battered, and it has been lost and found many times, and by some is still much sought after. The good John Chrysostom gave it to me on his deathbed. It is said that, warmed in the hands of a man or woman who is marked for great and noble duties, someone whose name will live forever, to be praised by all true and just people, the inside of the chalice though now unmarked will slowly begin to glow with the crimson stains of our Lord’s blood.”

  “Have you seen that happen?” asked Baradoc.

  “No. Nor have I tried it myself for I know my own worth. But it is my gift to you both, for that was the command I received from the good John in my dream.”

  “You mean you dreamt about us … all those years ago?” Tia’s brows furrowed with a frown.

  “So it would seem.” Asimus smiled, knowing her skepticism. “My master’s voice said that I would be in a wild place, in a country far to the north, and in a moment of great peril to myself there would come two people to save me. One would be a youth bearing the sign of the red crow and the other would be a fair-haired maiden dressed as a youth who wore as a fastener on her torn tunic a silver brooch bearing a design of clasped hands.”

  “You really dreamt that?” asked Tia. “Before we were born?”

  “If the good father says he did then he did,” said Baradoc sharply.

  “But,” insisted Tia, “what’s the good of giving it to both of us? We part at Aquae Sulis. To whom does it belong then?”

  Asimus smiled and shrugged his shoulders and then handed the doeskin bag to her. “I do not know. You will find some way to settle that. I obey only the dream, and now tell you the last words of my master. The gift being made, the bag must not be opened before me, and the dream being told must not be told again until one comes to hold it and the inside glows crimson with the ghost of the Savior’s blood.”

  “Does that mean it won’t glow for either of us?” asked Baradoc.

  Tia laughed. “Poor Baradoc—did you want to be marked for great and noble duties, your name to be praised forever?”

  Baradoc said stiffly, “For the work I have to do I need no magic chalice. One needs only—”

  “Spare us!” cried Tia. “Father, by now you should know that he goes back to his tribe to be an important man, to do great things. And so I hope it will be—but I wish he wouldn’t talk about it so much.”

  Baradoc stood up. He was getting used to Tia’s flattening remarks now, and could see, too, that they were often deserved. Though what could a man do if that were his nature and destiny? Then, with a warning look to Tia not to interrupt him, he said to Asimus, “Father, we thank you for your gifts and for your words. How the gift will be settled between us at Aquae Sulis I do not know. The gods will decide. But this I say for both of us, it will be cherished and protected until the right hands come to warm it to crimson life.”

  The morning of their departure from the clearing a soft drizzle was falling, the slow swathes of fine rain swaying before a mild southerly breeze. From his hut Asimus watched them go, taking the narrow path around the northern edge of the rocky bluff and soon disappearing into the massed trees of the far-reaching forest. Both of them carried bundles over their shoulders, the heavy sword thumping at Baradoc’s side, his bow tied on top of his bundle and in his hand the fish spear. Tia carried the light spear, and the cowl of her mantle was hooded over her fair hair against the rain. Asimus smiled to himself as he watched her ungainly walk. The soles of her light sandals had worn and Baradoc had repaired them with pieces of hide, stitched on with sinews taken from the dead bear. Cuna stayed at her heels, the two other dogs went ahead and, for a fleeting moment, Asimus saw Bran the raven, with the southerly breeze under his tail, swing high into the rain and disappear over the far crest of the trees.

  Asimus turned away and went into his shrine to pray for them and for a safe journey to Aquae Sulis. As he knelt to the ground and bowed his head he saw at once that there was a new offering on the stone table. It was the arrow that had killed the bear, the head and part of the shaft brown with dried blood. Tied in a small bow just above the feather flights was a piece of bright braiding which he knew Tia must have cut from the loose end of the belt that she wore about the waist of her tunic. He closed his eyes and began to pray.

  The soft drizzle lasted until nightfall. Tia and Baradoc marched through it, and their clothes and bundles grew heavier with the weight of water soaking onto them with each hour that passed. A quiet misery took Tia as she plodded along. But it was a misery she could carry with the same fortitude as she carried her bundle because with each step she told herself that she came nearer to her uncle. But marching was at first awkward because she had not become used to the weight of her new-soled sandals. Now and again she would trip and sometimes cursed aloud only to hear Baradoc give a soft chuckle from up ahead. At midday they ate cold meat and hard corn cake, washed down with barley mead that Baradoc carried in a small leather skin slung at his belt—a present from one of the young men who had visited the clearing.

  Through the afternoon the country began to change a little. At times the forest broke away into bare heathland over the high tops and the path was overhung with tall bracken growths and drooping new-flowered switches of broom. Here and there were patches of long-stemmed foxgloves, the lower buds on their towering stalks already in bloom. Late in the afternoon they came to a main road. It was banked up on a small causeway. As they came up onto the road Baradoc stopped and Tia halted behind him. A bowshot to the left a man and a woman stood on the high agger crown of the road. In one arm the woman carried a child wrapped in a blanket and with her free hand held the halter of a small pony. Below the shoulder of the road, in the broad scoop ditch from which the material for the road had originally been taken, was a small two-wheeled cart lying on its side. Thinly through the drizzle came the cry of the child that the woman held.

  Baradoc said, “Stay here.”

  Tia dropped her bundle and sat on it, and watched Baradoc move down the worn surface of the road. It was, she knew, for she had seen many in her life, one of the old military roads. But it was many years since anyone had bothered to repair it. With Baradoc went Lerg. Aesc and Cuna sat at her feet and she fondled the stiff wet fur of Cuna’s nape. She watched Baradoc go up to the couple and begin to talk to them. After a while he turned and beckoned to her. Tia plodded down the road, splashing through the puddles in its broken surface. No legions, she thought ruefully, would ever swing down this road again, the eagles carried high, the studded shoes of the legionaries thudding out their heavy rhythm.

  The woman was young, wrapped in a russet-coloured gown, its skirt edges torn and muddy. Rain shone on her dark long hair and her face was drawn and thin and she held the child to her right breast, suckling it. The man was much older with a rough skin surcoat belted over a green tunic, his legs and feet bare. In the belt about his surcoat was thrust a small axe. He held his left forearm with his large work-engrained right hand, his face twisted with pain. But as Tia came up and Baradoc said something to him in his own language the man laughed briefly, and there was a flash of pleasure in his dark eyes.

  Baradoc said to Tia, “They are from Calleva on their way to Durnovaria. He is a fuller but there is no work for him in Calleva and he goes back to his people with his wife and child.”

  “What happened?”

  “He slept as he drove and the cart went off the road. His left arm is broken. Even with his wife he can’t one-handed get the cart back on the road. They are good
people—but maybe a little stupid to take the risk of travelling the old road.” He smiled. “It is all right. They do not speak your language.”

  Tia said, “You and I can get the cart back, can’t we?”

  “Easily.”

  They went down into the ditch and cleared the cart of the few goods still in it, and then between them they righted it. With Tia pushing from behind and Baradoc setting himself against the crossbar of the yoke pole, which was designed for two horses or oxen, they ran it up onto the road. While they did all this the man and the woman stood on the road and watched them as though they were rooted to the ground by some numbness of spirit which froze their bodies.

  As Baradoc took the pony and yoked it to one side of the pole, he said, “I think they both still live in a nightmare. They say Calleva has been half burned. They fled at night. They have a son of six but lost him before they left. If they ever reach Durnovaria it will be only at the gods’wish.” He patted the lean flank of the pony and then dropped down into the ditch and began to hand up the couple’s belongings, to Tia, who put them in the cart. As she did this Tia, eyeing the two who watched them, suddenly felt angry with them for their helplessness. She felt like shouting at them to wake and stir themselves, from their apathy … but then the feeling went. She saw a town burning, flames arching over the night sky, people screaming and shouting, panic reaching through the streets and houses and, somewhere, a small boy lost and frightened, crying for his parents.

  Before the two drove off, Baradoc made a rough arm sling from a strip of cloth for the man. He made a remark in his own tongue and the man smiled and laughed again and now Tia realized that it was truly the laugh of the simpleminded. The man said something and then the woman laughed.

  As they drove away Tia asked, “Why do they laugh?”

  Baradoc shrugged his shoulders. “Because they have gone beyond tears and weeping.”

  “Was his arm truly broken?”

  “It felt like it. But it will heal with time and Nodons’help.”

  “Nodons’?”

  “Yes, Nodons’. He is our god of healing, the god with the silver hand.”

  “Did they say who burned Calleva? Oh … it was such a nice place.”

  “They don’t know—but not the Saxons. There are plenty of loose-footed tribal bands in the country who would be greedy to loot such a town simply out of old hates against your people and the legions that made it. I think maybe they could have been people from Cymru, from beyond the Sabrina River—kinsmen of my own people who would do better to keep their spears and swords sharp for the real enemy. One day—”

  “Oh, no.” Tia laughed. “Not that again, Baradoc. This is no day to stand in the rain dreaming and speech-making.”

  For a moment Baradoc frowned, then he smiled and said, “You’re right. Let’s content ourselves with the day that is.”

  As they left the road, however, he was thinking to himself that one day these old roads would serve again for the marching of armies, but for armies from the west and the north. The men who had built them had long gone, but they were good men, true soldiers who knew discipline and purpose. Men with such qualities were needed again, but next time they would carry no imperial eagles; they would come under the banner of Badb, the goddess of war, and with the blessing of the great father Dis.

  6. The Circle Of The Gods

  Midway through the next morning they left the forest and moved into a country of heath and smooth downland, some of the slopes cut with the long rectangles of fields and cultivation. A number of the fields were being worked and from the hollows of shallow valleys there rose here and there the smoke from the hearths of homesteads and villages. But although the land seemed at peace here Baradoc kept always to the high ground. Behind the face of peace there was no telling what might be hidden. Even honest folk could give a hasty, hostile greeting to strangers. To pass through or near such places these days travellers had to stand and call from a distance, to show themselves and then wait while the men gathered and came to question them. There were many who travelled these days who carried a hunting horn to blow when they came down the road to a settlement or move out from a forest fringe above a valley farm or village and, the horn sounded, stood and waited to know whether their way would be barred or opened.

  Topping the smooth crest of a down they saw the land falling away below them to a river valley. Alders and willows fringed the river and the grass grew long and lush in a ribbon of pastures along its banks, and nowhere was there sign of human beings or their work.

  The rain had stopped now and from the clearing sky the sun’s warmth beat down against their damp clothes. Seeing the river below and the sheltering groves of trees that marked it here and there, Tia thought longingly of stripping her wet garments off and plunging into the water to clean herself. Never in her life had she felt so damp, dirty and stiff. But she said nothing to Baradoc. He was the master and he would decide.

  As he moved down the slope a few paces ahead of her he stopped suddenly and waited for her to catch up with him. He dropped his bundle and put a hand on her arm.

  “Listen.” He stood looking up the narrowing valley.

  Tia looked in the same direction. At first she could hear nothing unusual.

  “I can’t hear anything.”

  “You will soon. Look at the birds.” Baradoc pointed up the valley. Clear in his ears was a faint rustling noise overlaid with a thin half-squeaking, half-grunting, almost complaining sound. A couple of bowshots up the valley the air was slowly filling with the movement of birds, circling and wheeling low over the ground and gradually edging their way down the valley.

  Tia said, “I can hear it now. Like a lot of tiny puppies whimpering in their sleep. And what are all those birds?”

  “They follow the army of the little furred ones. Have you never seen the march of the shrews and mice and voles before?”

  “No.”

  “Suddenly they all move. Nobody knows why. Perhaps the seasons have been good to them, the litters have increased and then, one day, there are so many of them they begin to move, looking for more living room, more food. As they move all the hunting birds follow them, the birds of day and the birds of night. Look, see them!”

  He pointed up the valley and picked out for her the birds that wheeled and hovered and stooped and dropped into the tall grasses. Tawny, brown and barn owls swept low on silent wings. Kestrels hovered and drifted along the line of the march, sparrow hawks, merlins and hobbies cut and dashed through the air, and above them hung a ragged cloud of kites, ravens, crows and peregrines, and all of them in their own fashion dropped from the air to plunder and ravage the advancing army.

  And now Tia could see the vanguard of that army and hear clearly its noise as the small brown and grey bodies rustled and squeaked and chattered through the grasses. It passed them on a wide front a few paces below them and stretching down almost to the river edge: voles, mice, shrews, all leaping and scuttering forward, calling and complaining in tiny voices that, melded together, grew into a low surging of sound like the slow roll of a wave over fine gravel. Like a wave itself the brown-and-grey mass flooded over the ground, twisting and breaking and overleaping itself, moving always onward; and as it went it left the tall grasses broken and flattened and filled the air with a sharp, pungent smell.

  Together Baradoc and Tia stood on the high slope and watched the living flood pass, and with them stood the three dogs, set back on their haunches, quivering, their eyes on the moving mass. No sound came from them, except from Cuna, who, his body trembling with excitement at the sight of an occasional rat that fled by, whimpered as he longed for the chase. Of Bran, the lone one, there was no sign but Tia could guess that he was with the other birds and would stay with them until he tired of the sport. As though Baradoc had read her thoughts, she heard him say, “The gods have linked all dogs with man. But the fish that swims and the bird that flies choose always their own paths.” He nodded at the last stragglers of the passing horde
, and went on, “They move like a people driven from their own worked-out land by hunger. So move the Saxons seeking new tilling and cattle grounds—and there is none to stop them among our peoples until the day of the new leader comes … until the day when that god-gifted man arises and turns sword in hand to face the east and its fury. May Dagda, the lord of perfect knowledge, send that day soon and Tentates, the god of war, strengthen every sword arm.”

  Tia smiled to herself as he spoke. At that moment she knew that he was oblivious of her. He spoke seeing himself as the leader. She was well used now to these sudden heroic moods which carried him away. She said quietly, “That day will come. But at the moment it is this day that has to be lived. I want to get these wet clothes off. I want to swim and clean myself in that river—and then I want to eat cooked food and not hardtack cold meat.”

  Baradoc turned and grinned at her. “As the good Asimas said—Lady Tia, the practical one. All right, so you shall. We’ll catch some fish and, maybe, I can find a clutch of duck’s eggs in the reeds.”