From behind him Cadrus called sharply to the man who guarded the servants outside the reception room. Prodding them with the butt of his spear the man moved them down into the courtyard and across to Cadrus. They halted before him, the old steward and his plump wife, who worked the kitchen, the strong middle-aged man who kept the bathhouse and stoked the hypocaust for water and house heating, and a younger man who did general work about the villa and kept the small stable of two horses which drew the old man’s four-wheeled carriage when he drove to Aquae Sulis or went to visit friends.
Cadrus raised a hand and beckoned Baradoc to him. He nodded at the group and said, “I take the two younger men. They are full of years and work. The old man and the woman could not be worth the food they would eat. They can stay.”
Baradoc turned to the servants and told them Cadrus’s decision. At once the steward and his wife moved quickly to join Truvius and Tia. Of the two men the elder stood passive, but for an instant the head of the other turned, sweeping round the courtyard, and he half moved as though to escape. The movement was halted by the sharp hiss of a flighted arrow loosed by one of the men near Cadrus. The arrow bit deeply into the ground at the man’s feet, the long shaft vibrating savagely. From the men on guard around the courtyard and from the others who had now come from the building rose a roar of laughter. Only Cadrus was silent. He watched as his men, needing no signal from him, roped the hands of the servants behind their backs and then fastened heavy leather collars about their necks, each one joined to the other by a long length of strong, plaited-hide rope. Cadrus watched all this done and not until they were led away through the archway toward the river did he turn to Baradoc.
He said, “What is the girl’s name?”
“Gratia.”
“You speak grudgingly. Tell her to go gather a warm cloak and strong sandals and any woman’s things she needs. Tell her that in obedience she can walk free and unshackled but if she kicks like a young heifer and would escape from the path then she will be roped to the others for she now belongs to Cadrus.”
There was no surprise in Baradoc. He had now long known in his heart that this moment was coming, had faced the dilemma and had known only one answer to make to it, an answer with the strength of tribal custom behind it, an answer with which all of his own race would keep faith, but an answer which Cadrus, his eyes trapped now by Tia’s grace, might sweep aside with a single sharp word to bring a flight of arrows to destroy him. Tia’s beauty shining in his eyes had blinded him.
Baradoc said coldly, “She cannot go with you. She is betrothed to me. Not even Cadrus of the Golden Goose can take the future wife of a man of the tribe of the Enduring Crow as a slave. The gods would mark your tribe forever with shame for the crime. She is promised to me, she stays with me.”
Without hurry, no movement of muscle in his face to betray emotion, his eyes steady, Cadrus raised his sword and held it out point forward so that the sharply honed tip just touched Baradoc’s breast. He said evenly, “Your tongue is swift in the battle of words and cunning. You are distantly of my blood and we share the same gods. If the feud fire had been lit between our tribes I would kill your father, slaughter your house and burn your huts, and there would be no shame for you would do the same to mine. There is no feud, and you speak fair that I cannot take for slave a woman who has promised herself to you.” His hard face creased with a quick smile, and there was a touch of mockery in his voice as he went on, “But it is in my mind that you speak falsely for her sake. I would know from her without any word from you whether you speak the truth. From this moment you stay dumb as the slow worm. And, if she denies you, then I kill you as I would slaughter a young bull for the sacrifice!”
Without taking his eyes off Baradoc, the sword point always against the loose fall of his tunic, he called to one of his men, “Fetch me Machen here, for I need one who speaks the bastard tongue.”
From the outer side of the archway he was answered at once by a slow, lilting voice, touched with the edge of lazy laughter. “Who sends for Machen when Machen is here fresh from mead sleep?”
A tall, thin middle-aged man, his face grizzled with long copper-coloured stubble, dressed in a rough habit of brown, its ragged skirts swinging as he walked, the loose cowl hanging down his back, came through the arch and stood alongside Cadrus.
With hardly a glance at Machen, Cadrus, sword never moving, pointed with his free hand to Tia and said, “Tell the girl to come here. I would take her as slave, but this young bull denies me the right, saying that she is betrothed to him. She understands not our tongue but you will ask her the questions I give you in her own bastard language. If she denies the young bull, then he dies.”
“She knows you want her as slave?”
“No. They sit there knowing nothing—the ancient eagle of the legions and the sleek young falcon—and their world spins dying under them as yours spins when the mead takes you. You know their language and the gods have given you an ear for the music of song and the music of truth. If you tell me she says that he speaks the truth she can be no slave. If you hear the false note of a lie then she becomes my slave and this one dies.”
Baradoc felt the point of the sword prick him briefly as Cadrus finished speaking, and from the corner of his eyes he saw Machen move across the yard to Tia and Truvius.
Tia watched the man as he came to her. He moved slowly but easily and there was the ghost of a smile about his lips. Beside her sat Truvius, his hand in hers, mumbling to himself, staring straight ahead, his eyes blinking slowly with the fixed rhythm which marked his periods of withdrawal.
In her own tongue Machen said gently, “Leave the old man and come with me. Speak no word to your young tribesman friend.”
Tia rose. Of all that had gone on between Baradoc and Cadrus she had caught only a few of the words she had come to know of their language. They gave her no grasp of the trouble between them, except that her own instinct and her knowledge of the ways of tribal raiders told her that there was some argument about slaves and herself. She went with Machen across the yard and up to Cadrus. He looked at her boldly, his gaze moving over her from head to foot, and she saw his mouth tighten, his shoulders tauten as he drew sharp breath and a sudden glitter fired his eyes. From her deep woman’s instinct she knew at once that in some way she was a prize that Baradoc had disputed with him.
She stood at the foot of the semicircular steps rising to the archway and Machen stood with her, translating for her the questions that Cadrus made in their own language, and all the time Cadrus spoke and then Machen translated, Cadrus kept his eyes on her.
Machen asked her, “Cadrus would know how you met this young man.”
“In the forest of Anderida after my brother and sister were killed and making my way to Aquae Sulis.…” There was a nervousness in her which she held down; but not entirely could she keep its note from her voice as she described how she had cut Baradoc down and they had then journeyed together.
“For how long have you travelled?”
“A month or more.”
“Cadrus and our people have made this raid for weapons, treasure and slaves. He takes two of your good men and also he would take you.” Machen paused, expecting some quick response or outburst from her. Women spoke or cried out before thought or common sense could govern emotion. This young woman said nothing. Her forehead slowly creased and her mouth tightened into a thin line. When she said nothing, he went on, “This man of the tribe of the Enduring Crow disputes his right by tribal law. He says that you are betrothed to him. If this is so then you cannot be made slave. Speak truly—are you promised one to the other and one by the other?”
With the question Tia, although she could not see him fully from where she stood and there was no sound or movement from him, knew the full reading of Baradoc’s mind. It came to her now as it came from him to Lerg and the others, not words, not direct sense, but wholly in a magic that by its force turned the body and the brain to paths of understanding.
; She said firmly, “It has been a secret between us which I was to tell my uncle this night. Yes, we are betrothed.”
Machen turned to Cadrus and said, “She says he speaks the truth. They are promised to one another.”
Without emotion Cadrus asked, “Does she speak the truth, my machen? Tell me and swear it by your faith, by the gods of the sacred oak groves, by the white purity of the tree-suckling mistletoe, and may your soul shrivel and there be no afterlife for you if you swear me false.”
Machen without hesitation said, “I swear that she speaks the truth which is in her.” But to himself, because the mead was still warm in him and there was a respect in him for the girl’s bold and quick-witted response, he had no fear of imperilling his soul and his life hereafter. There were truths that grew between people which they could not know themselves until some sharp moment of destiny brought them to light.
Cadrus, his face suddenly softening to a smile, shrugged his shoulders and said, “Oh, Machen of the mead-breathing mouth, may the gods rack you if you lie because of her gorse-bloom hair and pretty forget-me-not eyes.”
“I speak not falsely. There is no truth that lies so deep that my ferret mind cannot unwarren it.”
Cadrus said, “Ask her if she knows what it is to marry a tribesman. She comes of high Roman blood. She knows only one way of life. This—” He waved his hand around the yard. “It is in me that she had deceived you, good Machen.”
Machen turned to Tia and said, “Cadrus doubts you. Aye, he even doubts the truth in me. Answer now his question.” He put to her the demand that Cadrus had made.
Tia, confidence growing in her, speaking as though some outside power and intelligence answered for her, replied, “I would marry him because I love him and he loves me. I would go to his people and their hard life because this country which my uncle and my father and all their kin before them helped to create now falls apart in misery.”
She stood watching Machen and Cadrus as they spoke together, no more than an odd word of their talk having any meaning for her, and she kept her eyes from Baradoc, who stood wooden-faced with Cadrus’s sword still at his breast. Then as Machen turned to her to speak again, she saw Cadrus lower the sword and slide it into the leather-and-wood scabbard that hung from his belt.
Machen, now smiling openly at her, said, “Cadrus, whose heart can be softened by a woman’s ready wit as mine by good mead, salutes you. He accepts my word that you speak with a frank and true tongue. Now do as I say and he wishes. Go to the treasure which we take with us”—he nodded toward the piled weapons and household loot which lay heaped on the top of the broad archway step—“and choose any one thing you value and bring it back here to me. Go now.”
Tia walked across to the piled loot and looked down at it. What of all she possessed was of great value to her? What of all the life she had until now was dear to her? Her family were all gone except Truvius and his days were few. These hillmen would go and the house would echo like a shell as she moved about it and the day would come when she would be alone in it. Baradoc would have gone to the west, and the lie she was living at the moment would have gained her only an empty freedom. Tears misted her eyes and almost without knowing it she bent and picked up the silver chalice and walked back to Machen. She gave it to him and he passed it to Cadrus.
Cadrus stepped up to her. He raised the chalice, touched his brow with it and then handed it to Tia. “Tell her,” he said to Machen.
Machen, the dying sun threading his beard with copper glints, looked Tia deep in the eyes and said, “There is a long skein of kinship between the Ocelos people of the mountain and the people of the Enduring Crow. Before the wedding kinsmen bring gifts. This is Cadrus’s gift to you. If times were different we should stay and make feast after the marriage. Now we stay only to make the gift and to join the ceremony. I am a priest whose power and authority no tribe, not even in the far north or the west, not even over the sea with the Scotti or beyond the first of all the great walls with the Picts, can question. Take now the hand of this man and go both of you to your uncle, and stand before him for his blessing so that I may join the hand of husband to wife.” Then with a quick flicker of laughter in his eyes, he added, “This must be so because the good but still-doubting Cadrus to know truth to be true would see it sanctified in deed.”
Cadrus turned to Baradoc and, his eyes now friendly, said, “Go now—take your Roman filly, but think not that she will be easily schooled.”
Without a word Baradoc moved to Tia. And Tia, with a nervous shiver as though her body moved in the spell of a vivid dream, turned and took his hand. They went across the courtyard toward Truvius and the tribesmen with lowered bows and rested weapons watched them. Long evening shadows striped the paving and flower beds. The aviary birds took the last of the paling light on their enamelled wings, and the sound of the worker bees about the shrubs by the running springwater of the well made a heady droning. They walked, neither looking at the other, and behind them came the three dogs and from the end of the red-tiled roof Bran, his sable plumage lacquered with the sun’s last glow, sat still and graven like a carved corbel. They stood before Truvius, who sat, his head sunk on his chest in sleep, his old vine staff resting across his knees. Tia reached out a hand and touched him. Slowly he raised his head and blinked the weight of sleep from them, then smiled and said, “What has happened? What is it, my Tia?”
Tia, her hand in Baradoc’s said, “We come to you, my dear uncle Truvius, for your blessing.”
8. The Flood Riders
Tia woke just before first light. As she lay in the darkness she heard Cuna whine gently from the foot of her bed. She spoke quietly to him and he was silent. About her the ravaged house was still. She saw the eyes of Cadrus on her as she had faced him. There was good and bad in the man. Her body shook with a spasm of remembered fear as she thought of the life which would have been hers had she had to follow him as a slave. Baradoc had saved her from that, but she could not guess at what cost to himself, to his pride and his deep sense of tribal customs. True, Machen—who for some hidden reasons of his own had taken her part—had guided and shielded her as she stood before Cadrus, and then had carried out the simple pledging ceremony in the courtyard, joining her hand with Baradoc’s after Truvius had given them his blessing. Dear Uncle Truvius … sometimes she wondered whether there were not, as well as his true lapses into senility, also times when he pretended them either to cloak his own helplessness or from a deep wisdom which compensated for the vigour and mastery of his old days. And Baradoc? By his quick thinking he had saved her, had stood by her while Machen joined them, his face giving no sign of any emotion he felt. Strange Baradoc … with his burning dream of the future. As he took her hand, he would have been already rejecting the picture of himself leading a Roman woman into the homecoming gathering of his people … their wild and noisy greetings turning to silence as they eyed her. Well, he need have no worry. He had saved her from slavery. She would not nor could not make any claim on him. When he got back to his people he could say that she had refused to follow him, refused to be a wife, and one of his own holy men could with a few words break the tie that bound them.
Cuna whined again, louder. In the silence that followed Tia heard two sounds, the brief protesting cark of Bran from somewhere in the courtyard and the sharp note of metal momentarily striking against stone. Cuna whined again, a low muted note, and swiftly there was an understanding clear and vividly all-embracing in Tia. Baradoc was going. Sword or fish spear had swung against the stone parapet of the courtyard well as Bran, from the ironwork canopy over it, his favourite nighttime roost, had hopped to his shoulder; and Cuna had whined because … poor Cuna, who had been pledged to her, sensed that the others moved away and longed to go with them.
Tia got out of bed, wrapped a cloak about her shoulders and went barefooted from her room into the open corridor. Part of the yard lay washed in moonlight as pale as the underside of a willow leaf and the chestnut’s shadow was dark as a thun
dercloud over the archway that led to the river. Baradoc, Bran on his shoulder, the two dogs at his side, dressed now in his rough clothes, the old sword at his side, his travelling bundle slung over his shoulder from the head of the fish spear, stood in the tree shadow at the foot of the archway steps.
She walked down the corridor, past the aviary where the bright birds were now, as they roosted, dark, strange-shaped fruit on the shrubs and twisting creepers, and out onto the uncovered terrace by the archway. Baradoc heard her, and was still as she came up to him. They stood in the tree shadow and their faces were stiff masks as though they wore them like the theater players of some high drama.
Tia said quietly, “So you go?”
“Yes.” Baradoc’s voice was thick as if some inner anger half strangled it.
“At night and without farewell?”
“Because of what has been and the way it has been, yes. I come from a different world. There is no place in it for you even if we truly loved one another.”
“You would be ashamed to bring a Roman before your people as a wife?”
Baradoc was long in answering. Then he said, “Be content, Lady Tia. What was done was to save you from Cadrus. Not to gain you for myself. When I reach my people the priest will set all aside.”
“You do not answer my question.”
“No, I would have no shame before them. Our paths no longer lie together. I take the ford across the river and the mining road west to the hills.”
“Then you shall take Cuna with you. I give him back.”
Baradoc hesitated briefly and then, with a small shrug, he said, “If you so wish.”
With an abruptness that surprised Tia, he turned sharply and moved through the archway, his bundle swaying on the spear, the dogs at his heels. When he was gone from her sight she went back into her room and lay in the darkness, seeing him moving through the night, the dogs around him, and Bran on his shoulder. What had been done had been done to save her from Cadrus. There was nothing more between them. He had his world and she had hers. …
The Crimson Chalice Page 13
