The Circle of the Gods

by Victor Canning

  Arturo said, “What does he say?”

  Marcos smiled. “That we are fatherless, and you shall be our father. That we now seek a home and a new life and the bond of comradeship, and that he is ready to serve you. But he says also, and so do I, that we serve only one god, while you serve many. We are Christos men and must remain so.”

  Arturo answered, looking directly at Timo, “In my camp all men shall be free to serve their gods, be they one or many. We swear but one oath. That of comradeship. He who breaks it shall himself be broken.”

  So Marcos and Timo joined Arturo and Durstan. They slept that night in the open, close to the warmth of the slow-dying embers which were all that remained of the hut. But Arturo lay awake for a long while before sleep came to him. Today was the beginning, but he was wise enough to know that the passage of a dream into reality would be a long, slow birth. Before men could be drilled and shaped into a fighting force they must eat to live and not all the hunting skills of a band of comrades could feed them. Both Timo and Marcos were good husbandmen and with time their fighting skills could be sharpened. But it was for now as sowers and reapers of crops that he needed them most; and before any ground could be turned or cattle herded a place had to be found where they could dwell securely. From talking to Marcos he knew that only the No-man’s-land around the source waters of the Tamesis far south and east of Corinium and Glevum, where Count Ambrosius’s mandate did not yet fully run nor the slow upriver creep of small Saxon bands yet reached, offered hope of some haven which would give them, and, with the help of the gods, others to come, shelter and time to grow into an ever-increasing company.

  At his side Anga growled softly, catching the scent of the marauding foxes about the bodies of the dead Saxons on the hillslope. From the thorn trees a little owl shrieked suddenly and, for a moment, the noises echoed the dying scream of the Saxon he had killed. Everything about this day, he thought as sleep began to take him, had been touched by the gods.

  Two days later, having crossed the weed-grown, slowly breaking-up Londinium—Calleva—Corinium road close to Durocornovium, they found a ford over one of the tributaries of the Tamesis. Some miles to the north of the ford they discovered an old abandoned Roman villa. It lay at the head of a small valley, screened by a new growth of trees and bushes. Its large courtyard was surrounded on the west side by the ruins of the steward’s office, the kitchens and the latrines. Linking this on the north side to the east wing were the weed- and bush-covered remains of the foundations of the hot and cold bathhouses. Only the east wing with the old reception room and a series of private rooms fronted by a covered corridor remained partly roofed. Here from time to time travellers or temporary settlers had made a home. Much of the villa had been pillaged for building stone and roofing tiles and all the wooden and iron piping long since taken.

  At the side of the courtyard a spring—the source of the stream that ran away down the valley—broke from the steep hillside to cascade into and overflow from a circular basin of marble. This was backed by a pillared and arched shrine holding the figures of three nymphs.

  Riding into the courtyard, followed by his companions, Arturo drew up and looked around him. The villa was hidden from the lower valley to the south by screening trees and from the north by forest land which came right up to the back of the old bathhouses. As he sat on his horse, his eyes going over the litter of shattered red tiles, the rubble of broken masonry, the air full of the sound of the springwater flowing from the marble basin, he saw not the ruin before him, but the villa as it must once have been, and the thought came to him that this was the kind of dwelling place which his mother’s people had once known. All over the country lay such ruins, shabby, broken and despoiled reminders of the now-faded and shrunken Roman Empire. Well, empires flourished and died, but empires could spring again from their own ruins. Surely it was for this that the gods had directed his steps this way? Here was a refuge and a beginning, here was a place and a moment opened to him as a challenge from the gods. Bracing his body proudly as he sensed the truth and significance of this moment, he looked for the sign which he surely knew the gods must make him.

  And the sign came. The black stallion he sat suddenly moved restlessly under him, curvetted, and called for all his strength to hold it. The horse threw up its head and neighed, setting the echoes beating back from the surrounding trees. From the trees beyond the ruined line of bathhouses came an answering whinny and out into the sunlight, stepping proudly, her head turned toward them, came a white mare, neck arched and mane flowing as she broke into a gallop across the tree front and then, with another whinny, disappeared into the forest.

  Calming his restless mount, Arturo turned to his followers and said, “This is our place, for the goddess Epona has marked it with her sign. There is water for all our needs, wood in the forest for our fires, sun-facing ground in the valley to break for our crops and”—he smiled—“a roof over our heads from the simple task of picking up these fallen tiles.”

  So the Villa of the Three Nymphs became their home. Although it was growing late in the season they broke the ground on the south-facing slope with Marcos and Timo’s simple plough and sowed the little that remained of their barley seed. They all worked through the lengthening days from morn till night, retiling and refurbishing the east wing into living quarters and a secure stable for their mounts. At night they stood guard duty in turn, but for two months none disturbed them. Arturo and Durstan set up a small shrine to Epona at the end of the pillared corridor and welcomed with grace the homage Marcos and Timo made to their own god when they carved the Greek letters Chi Rho above a niche outside the door of their room and kept the niche adorned through the seasons with wild flowers. And their gods seemed to favour them for the crop lines showed quickly and they were lucky enough, or god-graced enough, to round up four sturdy winter lambs and a milch cow which they found straying in the forest. A hen they had brought with them, squired by a great black cock, sat a clutch of twelve eggs and brought off eight chicks. There was pasture in the valley for their hobbled horses and the rich promise of hay which would see the beast through the coming winter. In Marcos and Timo they found two men of skills which they envied. Marcos made a turf-covered charcoal-burning stack in the forest and a pair of deerskin bellows to fuel and work a small forge, where with heavy hammer he repaired broken ploughshares and hoes and grubbing picks and mattocks. In the rubble of building material he found an old sharpening stone so that their weapons and the Saxon seax knives and scramasax swords they had brought with them never lacked a bright keen edge. Timo, too, had his skills for he made hunting bows and knew the right wood to shape fire-hardened throwing spears and he was a true herdsman, maybe because his dumbness reached out and gentled the dumb animals in his care. His hands, too, with which he spoke—and whose language Arturo and Durstan began slowly to read—had a deftness with which he shaped fishhooks from bones to take trout from the broadening valley stream and horsehair lines not only for fishing but to fashion bird nets, which they hung like a fine, faint mist between trees to take pigeons and doves and wild geese and ducks in the marsh at the far end of the valley. So, as the days passed, they moved from short to good commons and from poorly to well-lodged, and their beasts and poultry thrived, and the milch cow proved to be in calf and, dropping at high summer, brought milk for all and a store of cheeses to set against the coming of winter.

  All this time they lived without going far from the villa. They had their own small world to make before there could be any far venturing beyond it—though there were times when the itch of impatience took Arturo like a fever and he longed for the blood stir of a more manly work than careful husbandry. When these moods came on him he would go through the forest to its limits and sit overlooking open country and the dim shape of the hills that lay to the northwest, knowing that there lay Corinium and Glevum and men and horses and weapons without which the design of his life which the gods were slowly patterning could never be completed. Though it was hard for
one of his nature, he schooled himself to patience, telling himself that these days were being set for him by the gods to temper the iron of his ambition.

  Then, on a day when autumn was whitening the forest glades with the fronding curls of willow herb seeding, Arturo came into the courtyard in the early morning as his companions readied themselves for the day’s work. He was dressed in rough cross-gartered trews, wore open shabby sandals on his feet, a long belted tunic which had belonged to one of the dead Saxons, a dagger in the belt, and a short cloak caught at the throat with a rough circular brooch which Timo had found in the ruins and repaired. Over his shoulder he carried a small store of provisions in a knotted cloth.

  Marking his dress and provisions sack, Durstan said, “So the time has come?”

  “Yes. Last night the gods spoke to me in a dream.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Go north to where the hills fall away into the great valley of the Sabrina. There one waits for you.”

  Durstan would have smiled broadly but he deemed it wise, sensing Arturo’s stiff mood, to keep his face unmoved.

  “You take your horse?”

  “No. Nor Anga.”

  Marcos said, “There is a price on your head and men may recognize you.”

  “No. I ride no horse. I dress like a peasant. Who is to recognize Arturo, son of Baradoc of the tribe of the Enduring Crow and a troop leader in Prince Gerontius’s cavalry?”

  Timo stirred and, looking at Arturo, moved his long, thin hands in a brief flutter of finger play.

  Arturo, his mood changing suddenly, laughed and said, “Good comrade Timo, if by ill fate I am killed then that is the will of the gods and this place will be yours for the grace of a prayer for my soul. But that time is not for now. The gods in my dream held up before my eyes a red banner on which was blazoned a white horse and the white horse carried a rider, fully armed and capped with a war helmet, and the face of the man was my own face. Would they have shown me this if I am to die in the near future?”

  Marcos said, “There is no doubt in my mind that your gods have spoken so and shown you this sign. But you go into bad country. So I tell you this. If he still lives my father’s brother, Paulus, who is a carpenter, is settled in Corinium. He lives near the east gate. If you should need help or shelter go to him. You will not be turned from his door.”

  Arturo nodded. “This I will remember.” He bent and fondled the ears of Anga, who stood at his feet, then gave the hound a word of command. Anga hesitated and then moved from him and went to Durstan. With a farewell movement of his hand Arturo turned and made for the forest boundary beyond the west wing of the villa. As Arturo disappeared into the trees Durstan, with a shrug of his shoulders, turned and followed the others, who were already moving to their work.

  When he caught up with them Marcos said, “I have nothing but honour and gratitude to Arturo—but do you believe the gods truly speak to him and show him their signs?”

  “Does your god never give you a sign?”

  “Yes, but it is nothing that the eye can see. When I pray I feel him move in my heart and thoughts, and I feel his strength comforting my weakness.”

  “From each god his own way of revelation. And for each man his own way of marking the shadow which his god casts.”

  For a moment or two Marcos was silent. Then he said, “A white horse on a red banner. White and red, those are the true colours of Christos.” He nodded to the villa. “It would look well flying from the rooftop yonder.”

  “But better carried before a well-armed host.”

  Arturo travelled for five days without haste, and each day he moved into more settled country where men worked their fields and tended their herds in peace. Seeing him come, armed only with a dagger and poorly dressed, they gave him welcome and food and shelter for the night. None asked him from whence he came or where he was going for if a man made no move to explain himself then all knew that he remained silent out of good reason.

  He passed through the deep-valleyed country well south-west of Corinium and on the morning of the fifth day came out of a thick wood that covered a valley ridge to find before him a great fall in the land. The ridge side plunged steeply away from him, dropping almost sheer in places to a wide plain far below. Through the clear air of the autumn day a vast panorama was spread before him and he saw it as though from the eyes of an idling falcon borne up on a steady air current. Beyond the plain ran the broad, snaking ribbon of the Sabrina River in full tide, the sun taking the silver of its waters with a keenness which hurt the eyes. Far to the northeast it ran until it was lost in the encroaching folds of the long ridge line on which he stood. To the southwest it broadened slowly and was swallowed by the sun sparkle from the waters of the sea into which it ran. Beyond it, purple and mist-hazed, rose the hills and mountains of Cymru and Demetae. Far away up the river on his right hand, hidden from his sight, the Sabrina waters came down through Glevum. For the first time, he became aware of the vastness of his land, and the immensity moved him. All this, and more and more to the north and the east, was Britain… a country torn and divided by the quarrelling of the tribes of his own kind, harried by Scotti and Pictish raiders, and threatened by the slow, barbarian march of the Saxon warriors and settlers from the east.

  He sat down and began to munch on one of the wild apples he had gathered in the wood, melding their sharpness with goat’s cheese and flat bread which he had brought from a homesteader with one of the silver coins from his still remaining store of Prince Gerontius’s money. As he ate he was slowly seized with a dullness of mind and lack of spirit, rare for him, and which he would never have confessed to any man. For the truth was that now he was here he knew that he had come, not at the bidding of the gods, but because of the tedium which had grown with him week by week at the Villa of the Three Nymphs. Homesteading gave him no joy, no fullfillment. He had dreamt of the white horse on the red banner. But such a dream could easily have arisen from his longing for warlike action. The truth, sharp in him now, was that he had gone awandering for his own pleasure and relief.

  With a sudden spate of self-disgust he threw his apple core out into space and heard the sharp click of bursting seedpods as it fell into a broom bush. As he reached for another apple, a long shadow fell across the grass at his side. He looked round to see a short, strongly built man, dark-eyed and with long black hair, who wore a rough, long brown robe girdled with a thin belt of plaited leather thongs, and who carried a well-seasoned ash stave.

  The man smiled at him and said, “Greetings. ’ Tis a long time since we last saw one another.”

  Frowning slightly, Arturo said, “We know one another?”

  The man sat down, placed his stave across his knees and reached out for one of Arturo’s apples. “I know you. I knew you from the time of your birth until I last saw you as a bare-bottomed infant splashing in the sand at my feet on the day I left your mother and your people. My name is Merlin.”

  “Merlin? Ah, yes, of course… My mother often spoke of you. You are the—” Arturo broke off for fear of offending the man.

  “I am the ageless, the wandering one. Or so men say. But then it is seldom that I agree with what men say. And what do you do, brooding here like an eagle on its eyrie?”

  Arturo hesitated for a moment or two. He had heard many tales of this man. But mostly he knew that it was said that Merlin spoke like a brother to the gods.

  He said bluntly, “I was outlawed with a companion by the Prince of Dumnonia with whose cavalry I served. I have been hiding for many weeks in a small homestead with my companions—but my feet began to itch for better occupation than following the plough and my eyes to smart for sight of new country. To the others I lied that the gods had told me to come here where I should meet a man who waited for me.”

  “And what will you say when you return to them?”

  Arturo smiled. “No doubt I shall lie again, though what the lie will be must rest unknown until the moment comes.”

  Merlin
laughed. “At least your frankness should please the gods. You could say, of course, that you had met me.” He reached out, broke a piece from Arturo’s cheese round, put it in his mouth and mumbled as he chewed, “And that I had a message from the gods for you—which I have not, of course. Our meeting is pure happen-chance. I am on my way to Glevum from Aquae Sulis and often take this way along the ridge. So you are young Arturo who sent message to the Prince Gerontius and the Count Ambrosius that one day they would sue for your return?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “The message was given in full council by your father. Many heard it and the tongues of man wag faster than any woman’s when a Prince is so defied that he hurls a full wine cup from him in anger at the words. The discomfort of the great is ever a delight to the small. From Dumnonian Isca to Deva and Lindum the story runs … aye, and to Saxon Canta warra and the island of Tanatus to make the barbarians roar with laughter over their rude mead. My young captain Arturo, the country knows you and”—he stood up and brushed cheese crumbs from his robe—“now for any who pledges beyond his performance call it an Arto promise—”

  “Then the gods damn them!” Arturo was quick on his feet, his face stiff with anger. “They shall see the truth of it one day.”

  Merlin shrugged his shoulders. “Such a truth would not be unwelcome to many. Now cool the fire of your anger. There is a foolishness about your boast that warms me, and for this I give you my own message—for sadly”—his mouth moved to a mock mournful twist—“I am out of grace with the gods this long time and they favour me with little of their dispositions. You know the Roman tongue?”

  “At my mother’s knee and by the hammering of old Leric’s fist between my shoulder blades.”

  “Then know you suffer not alone from acedia. There are many such in the growing army of Count Ambrosius, and none more bored than in the Sabrina cavalry wing which he has stationed near Corinium. Many there grow stale with drills and maneuvers and might be tempted from their barracks and the taverns of Corinium with an Arto promise—even, if at first, the promise showed no more warlike gain than petty raiding against the Saxons down the Tamesis. But remember this, speak not your heart to any man until you have proved him.”