The Circle of the Gods

by Victor Canning

  Knowing now the ways of her coming and going, he waited three nights running for the break of dawn, lying above a narrow forest track, stretched out on a stout overhanging oak branch, a rope halter thrust inside his tunic, and Anga hidden at his command in a thicket a little way-ahead of the oak at the track side. For two dawns the mare kept away from the track, but on the third as the sun lipped the eastern sky and the birds began to sing, the mare came down the track, trotting gently and tossing her noble head so that her mane was wide-flung like a floating web. When she was almost under his branch Arturo spoke his will silently to Anga with the art which belonged to all men of the tribe of the Enduring Crow.

  Anga came out of the thicket and stood in the trackway. The mare shied a little and halted. Then, seeing that she faced no bear or wolf, she moved forward and stamped her right foreleg on the ground. At this moment Arturo rolled from his branch, twisted his body and dropped squarely onto her back. As she began to rear with fear and surprise under him, he jerked the halter from his tunic, slipped it over her head and held its loop in either hand as he clamped his legs and thighs iron-hard to her sides.

  From that moment Arturo was translated into a world that held only himself and the wild movement of the white mare. There was no thought in him except to master the white mare, and no art in him except the savage skill of muscled purpose which inhabited legs and knees and thighs and hands to make him one with the racing, plunging, rearing animal beneath him. Neighing with anger and panic, the mare, blind to open track or glade, raced through the forest. Thorn and branch ripped at Arturo’s hands and face, and the blood from his cuts dripped and ran from him to stain the white hide of the mare.

  Time and place lost their meaning. He lived in a world of savage motion as the mare sought to unseat him. She came out of the forest, bursting through a great bank of gorse thicket like a wind devil to set the new bloom scattered high in a golden drift. She thundered down a valley side and, as though with deliberate malice and intent, raced with long neck outstretched under the low branches of an old yew to sweep him from her so that Arturo, laid low across her back, his face pressed close into the sweet horse smell of her wild mane, felt the slash of scaly branches rip and tear the cloth of his tunic. They went, man and horse like one beast, through copse and pasture, hooves throwing sand clouds high across wild heathland, and the mare’s angry neighing filling the bright morning air. He knew the great gathering and surge of her muscle as she jumped brake and stream and when she reared and plunged and swung round on her hind legs the world spun before him in a mist of green and blue chaos. Then, as no sign came of let or stop to the mare’s wild panic and anger, there slowly crept over Arturo the black humiliation of knowing that his strength could never outmatch hers. His body was bruised and battered and his hands and thighs grew weaker. He found fresh anger and determination to fight his growing weakness, but only for a while. Silently within himself he cried out to the gods to be with him, but all that rested with him as the mare raced plunging and kicking beneath him was now the certain knowledge that she would master him. The gods were with her and not with him.

  The moment of defeat came when the mare, galloping wildly through a forest clearing which held a sedge-ringed pool, suddenly from full pace, her hooves scoring great marks in the soft ground, pulled up to a violent halt such as Arturo had never known horse to make before. His body slid forward with its own momentum, but before he could fall the mare reared suddenly to full height and, as her forelegs pawed and threshed The air, twisted herself in violent pirouette and flung Arturo from her.

  He lay on the ground close to the pool’s edge, face and hands bloodied and cut, his clothes ripped, and he was lost to the world. The old hound, Anga, long left behind, came loping into the clearing and sat near him, panting with exhaustion, his great tongue lapping free over his jaws, and whined when Arturo made no move. Time passed and the moorfowl which had taken cover in the new sedge growth came out onto the waters of the pool. Anga moved closer to Arturo, sniffed at his face, and then settled beside him and snapped at a fly which teased his muzzle. The sun climbed higher, clearing the treetops, and a shaft of light began to warm Arturo’s face. He groaned and moved.

  Slowly he sat up and, seeing the pool, crawled toward it on all fours and like a dog lowered his head and lapped at the water. With the easing of his thirst memory came back to him. He sat back on the grass and, resting his aching head in his hands, knew that he was truly forsaken of the gods. They had seen his pride and arrogance and had set him to a task that would break and humble him. For a moment or two he was near to weeping but before his manliness could be breached a new pride suddenly flared in him, starting him to anger and the fire of bitter challenge. This country, his country, torn and parcelled by warring tribes and ravaging Picts and Scotti, knowing no true leader or destiny except the greed and self-seeking of petty princelings like Gerontius, Ambrosius and the discredited, aging Vortigern, was at the mercy of the growing strength and arrogance of the Saxon Hengist. Gods or no gods, from this moment he was dedicated to the cause and the great matter of Britain and would follow it and master it and all his country’s enemies so that as the name of the great warring Caesar could never die from men’s minds, nor should his. Forsake him the gods might, but there was that in him that forced him to scorn their desertion.

  He pulled himself to his feet and turned away from the pool, but as he raised his eyes across the glade, he saw that which was a humble and wild joy in him and a never-to-be-forgotten sign. The gods had tried and tested him, humbled him in misery, but from that misery they had sparked a fire to kindle in him the life flame of his destiny. Never again would he deny them, for clear against the bright green of new forest leaf stood their sign of favour. Cropping peacefully at the lush spring grass was the white mare, her brier- and thorn-raked hide flecked with her own and his blood, the halter hanging slack from her lowered neck, and the long white tail switching across her quarters to break the tease and bite of worrying flies.

  Sure of himself, Arturo walked slowly across to her, and the mare stopped cropping, raised her head and looked at him from her dark-pooled eyes and showed no sign of fear or flight. He stood by her, put out a hand and stroked her muzzle, and she took his touch with a gentle blowing of breath through her nostrils. He spoke to her gently then and called her white one, called her queen of all horses, breathed and crooned the low love talk of a horse master and ran his hand along the proud line of her neck and promised her cherishing and honour for all the days of her life.

  He took her halter and led the white one back through the forest paths to the villa. He could have mounted and ridden her but would not on this day for he knew her pride was like his own. They came together down the slope to the Villa of the Three Nymphs. And when his people and his comrades came running and hurrying to gather about him, the mare stood quietly and without fear.

  He said to the crowd about him, “She is the White One, the Shining One, and wherever we ride against the enemies of this country she shall be known and seen as the White Horse of Arto and all the shields that follow shall be marked with her emblem and all our scarf and helmet colours shall be the white of her shining hide and the crimson of her blood and mine, which dapple it now.”

  Then, from the crowd, he called a small boy who had come with one of the visiting families and he handed the loose halter end to him and said proudly, “Lead her to the stables and remember always that after Arturo you were the first to have her gentle obedience.”

  The boy led the White One away and she followed without let, stepping like a queen along the lane which the crowd fell back to make for her passage. As she went Arturo turned away from his people and walked across the yard to the ruined steps which led up to the colonnaded open way which ran across the face of the west wing of the villa where Daria stood, the morning breeze flicking free the tendrils of her dark hair and moulding the soft wool of her blue gown about her tall, full body.

  He took her right hand and s
aid humbly, “You know what is in my heart, and I know what is in yours. Although I have mastered the White One, to you I say I would take you for wife and between us for all our days there shall only be cherishing.”

  Daria was silent for a while. Then, raising a hand and brushing her dark hair from her face, she said, smiling, “You do me honour, my lord Arturo, in the asking. Aie … I will gladly and lovingly be wife for you. But though we shall lie in the long grass and listen to the golden birds sing and drink the new wine, those times will be few and far-spaced for I know that there will be often the loneliness of longing for you when the White One takes you away. And now”—she smiled broadly, mocking and teasing him with her eyes—“you must do grace to my father and go ask him for leave to make me your bride. I doubt that he will refuse you, but should he, then make him a gift of a jar of beer and ask again when he has drunk it.”

  Inbar of the tribe of the Enduring Crow had been well drilled by the captain of the guard on how he should behave before Count Ambrosius. Stiffly drawn up to his full height, he stood before the low wooden table at which the Count sat on a folding stool and waited for the man to raise his head to mark his awareness of his presence. All he could see at the moment was a bald head with fluffy wings of greying hair over the ears, bowed low over a sheet of new parchment covered with writing. On a bed against the far wall of the room lay an old but well-polished cuirass, a red cloak, and a horsehair-plumed bronze helmet as old as the cuirass. Count Ambrosius, all knew, kept to the old Roman ways and ordered his army so. The word from some was that he was a fool who lived in a dream, but there were many more who knew the real truth of the commander. It was that truth of the man which Inbar was hoping to use for his own advantage now. Aie … and many a long week it had taken him to get this audience.

  After a while, and Inbar, whose judgment of men was shrewd, gauged the waiting imposed on him to be deliberate, the Count pushed the parchment to one side and raised his head. As their eyes met, Inbar lifted his right hand in a military salute but said nothing, remembering the words of the guard officer who had been one of the last he had bribed to get this interview. A pair of shrewd, narrow-lidded, pale-blue eyes fixed themselves steadily on him and a bare arm was raised to jerk the folds of a white toga to comfort about the thin shoulders. A small, hard man, thought Inbar, with no comfort in him for others and need for none himself … a shadow Roman, dreaming of the past, but a weasel of a man, swift and deadly. And on that he was placing his hopes.

  “Name yourself and your business.” The voice was low but gritty like the rub of sandstone on sandstone.

  Inbar said, “I am Inbar of the tribe of the Enduring Crow, cousin to Baradoc its chief, and uncle to Arturo, the son of Baradoc.”

  At the mention of Arturo’s name Ambrosius’s lips thinned and from his hands, which he held locked together as his elbows rested on the table, came the crack of his knuckles as his fingers tightened. He said, “I have heard of you from Prince Gerontius and know you to be a dead man for shaming the wife of Baradoc.”

  “Shame there was none, my lord, for the woman would have been willing and I would have made her my wife. Dead I should be, but am not for the gods were on my side when I took the long run and the death drop. Out of their bounty I hit the water cleanly feet-first, sank deep and then swam underwater to the cover of the cliff foot, where that night my wife came—”

  “Yes, yes, the gods were with you, but spare me the rest and come quickly to your matter with me.”

  “Arturo has taken men and horses from you, my lord, and his company grows.”

  “You tell me what I already know, man. Come to your point.”

  “I would kill Arturo for you.”

  Ambrosius raised his head and the cold blue eyes widened in surprise. With an impatient wave of his hand he said, “What need to come to me and waste my time? Any man is free to kill Arturo for he is outlawed, and then the blood price will be paid.”

  “So it would seem, my lord. But beyond the seeming is now the truth that there is not a man in this land who would kill Arturo for a blood price that he could not live long to enjoy. The blood price must be claimed openly before you or the noble Prince Gerontius and proof given of the deed. Such openness would mark a man for life, but that life would be short for there are those among his companions who would make it so.”

  Count Ambrosius was silent for a while, the thin fingers of one hand fidgeting with the neck yoke of his toga. Then quietly he said, “It is true that must be the manner of the paying of the blood price. It is true, too, that I would have him dead. At the moment he is a gadfly but others begin to gather with him. So, what is in the mind of Inbar of the Enduring Crow?”

  “Much, my lord, which I would wish to rest secretly between us. Alone, unmarked, and unknown to any, I will kill Arturo for you. As return I ask little. First I would have a small command in your army for I am tired of wandering like a lone wolf. After that, and I can be patient over the years, I ask that when his father, Baradoc, dies you should through your friendship with Prince Gerontius have me named as chief of the tribe of the Enduring Crow.”

  “Baradoc’s death would not clear the road for you. He has another son by the Roman woman Gratia he married, and could have others.”

  “No, my lord. From my own wife, who still lives with the tribe, I know that the woman Tia is now barren since the birth of a fourth child, a girl-child.”

  Ambroisus gave a thin smile. “And it is to your wife—since you are forbidden to go west of Isca—that you would look for the end of the second son … a wasting disease, a destroying fever? So, so, and if needs be—for barrenness is no more a certainty in a woman than her affections—she would see that no future man-child lived long?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Count Ambrosius lowered his head on one hand and with the other fingered the edges of the parchment on the table. Arturo and his companions were an annoyance to him. He was a young man of spirit and wild dreams and loud boasts with thirty or forty men at the most (but his men and his horses). For a moment or two he was on the point of dismissing Inbar. He had greater worries on his mind than Arturo. Vortigern, sunk in senile debauchery in Demetae, had sent no levies this spring and Prince Gerontius had cut his levy heavily. The great sickness over the eastern lands was passing, though slowly; and wily Hengist, who had once fought as a Roman auxiliary, was fast-drawing fresh men from across the northern sea and would soon begin to move, for no Saxon warrior sat content in camp for long. Against all this, while he sat here, lacking men still to make his move, waiting on promises, Arturo surely was a single gadfly. Then the thought quickened in him that the great Caesars and conquerors were ever at the mercy of time and chance. The sting of a single gadfly could make a mount rear or stumble and a noble captain fall to his death.

  Raising his head, he said curtly, “Let it be as you promise, and it shall be as you wish.”

  “I thank you, my lord.”

  As Inbar went out through the anteroom the captain of the guard said, “How was the old lizard?”

  Inbar smiled and said, “In the mood for taking flies.” He reached into his belt pouch and handed the man a worn and clipped silver piece of the reign of the Emperor Gratian which had been in the baggage of a trader he had murdered for loot on the Salinae—Glevum road, coming south. So, too, would he serve young Arturo, striking suddenly and without warning.

  During the handful of weeks which led up to the feast of Beltine, which was on the first day of the month dedicated by the Romans to Maia, their goddess of growth and fertility, Arturo lived in two worlds. There was the world of his love for Daria and hers for him, and the world of the passion in him to set out on his first campaign—though he knew in his heart that with the forces at his command it would be no more than a demonstration of audacity to make his name widely known and bring more men to his side.

  In the world of men and horses he passed most of his time, and this without chiding from Daria, for she knew the temper of the man
she was marrying and secretly approved it. But he rode most afternoons with her on a hide saddle before him and old Anga trotting at the heels of the White One. They went to a withy bower on the far fringe of the water meadow below the forest which the companions had made for them. There they lay in the long grass and drank, not new wine, but the fresh stream water and listened truly to the golden birds sing, for the hawthorn thickets on the forest edge were full of yellowhammers in full song. It was there that they talked and caressed one another and between the long sweetness of kisses learned those things which make the sturdy frame and sheltering roof to house the heart and strength of true love.

  One afternoon Pasco the priest came to them and, sitting down on the old grass-covered anthill, spoke to them of marriage.

  He said to Arturo, “The Lady Daria has told you that she is of the Christian faith?”

  Arturo nodded. “Yes, but not long since.”

  Daria said, “Why should I talk of something which, in good time, Pasco could talk of far better than I?”

  Pasco said, “It is logic—of a womanly kind. Which means, contrary to most people’s thinking, that it is wise. So, my lord Arturo, you know that I cannot marry a follower and worshipper of Christos to one who worships all the heathen gods?”

  Arturo nodded, unconcerned. “Yes. I know that, but it seems to me that you threaten to close a gate against a young ram when he is already within the pen. I worship my country’s gods and those of my race. Are not your Christos and his great father gods like other gods?”