Cadogan entered the room in time to see Vintrex extend one hand and rest it on his steward’s head; a fatherly gesture Cadogan could not recall having experienced in his lifetime. “You are forgiven, Esoros. Now tell me, where are my servants? Aside from yourself I’ve seen none since I arrived.”
“Since the raid—you know about the raid, my lord?”
“I do; my son mentioned it in his own clumsy way. What has that to do with our servants?”
“Since the raid I have been unable to replace the servants we lost. The housekeeper and one of the porters were killed outright, and the remainder ran off. Two of the youngest girls eventually came back, I think they were afraid to be outside the city walls for long. But the others have melted away.”
“The problem’s not unique to this house,” Cadogan interjected. “More than half the slaves in Viroconium have fled the city. They prefer to take their chances with the tribes in the hills.”
“But they are our property,” Vintrex insisted. “They cannot run away, it is unthinkable.”
“I’m afraid we have to think about it now, Father. Perhaps when things get better…”
“Just when is that supposed to be?”
“I don’t know; I hoped you would. If you personally asked the emperor for help…”
The old man’s shoulders sagged. “I never got that far, neither to the old emperor or the new.”
Cadogan recalled his father’s first words. “Who succeeded Honorius?” he inquired.
“The new emperor is a puling child they are calling Valentinian the Third. His qualifications are superb; his father was master of the horse under Honorius, who died childless. It seems there are no limits to which a horseman may not aspire these days,” Vintrex added sarcastically.
Cadogan was determined to get off the subject of horses. “Did you reach Rome?”
“I made every effort, but our eastern ports are in Saxon hands now. In Londinium I was warned against making any attempt to deal with those savages, so I wasted a number of days traveling along the coast trying to find a Briton in possession of a boat that could carry me across the Oceanus Britannicus. I intended to arrange for overland transport in Gaul to take me on to Rome.” His voice faded again.
“Esoros, bring wine at once,” Cadogan ordered.
“I would, Lord Cadogan, but we have no more of the good—”
“At once!”
The steward returned with a sour beverage that the house of Vintrex would not have offered to a beggar in former times. The old man made a face, but he gulped it down.
Cadogan and his father had never been close; Vintrex was always too involved with his public life to show interest in his children, who knew him as an austere, aloof figure. So Cadogan was surprised at the depth of his concern for Vintrex. In his father’s physical disintegration he glimpsed his own mortality.
“You should rest for a while, Father,” he suggested. “We can talk about this later.”
“I am perfectly capable of talking now!” Vintrex snapped. “What was I saying? Oh, yes—looking for a boat. In Durovernum I encountered a freedman who said he had a dugout canoe—a canoe, of all things!—which he claimed was capable of crossing the Fretum Gallicum. I had to offer him an extravagant sum to take me to Gaul, but you know me, I am not one to give up.”
Both Esoros and Cadogan nodded in agreement.
“I left my driver and chariot in Durovernum with instructions to wait until I returned, no matter how long it took, and accompanied the boat owner to a private harborage at the edge of the sea. The man had a mast and sail for his canoe, but no covered accommodation to shelter a passenger. We set out on a most unpleasant morning, with a cold mist coming down. To my surprise we moved quickly at first. I began to think my plan had a fair chance of success.
“Soon a larger boat loomed out of the mist; somewhat like a great timber canoe, only broader. There was no sail. The boat was propelled entirely by oars manned by helmeted warriors. Their captain, as I assume he was, began shouting instructions to my fisherman in some coarse Germanic language. My fisherman not only understood the heathen tongue but was eager to comply. He seized me and bound me with rope, then helped transfer me to the Saxon warship, for that is what it was. The last I saw of the wretch he was laughing up at me from his canoe. With my money in his purse,” Vintrex added bitterly.
“My dear lord!” cried Esoros, clasping his hands together.
“Fortunately I am not a total fool,” Vintrex continued. “I still had a substantial sum concealed about my person, in places where I did not expect to be searched. When I discovered that the ship’s captain knew a few words of Latin, I set out to impress him with my connections in the empire. As proof I showed him five gold double denarii minted in Rome. I do not know if he was aware of their value, but they gleamed persuasively. He handed them to another man who looked as if he might be his brother. This second man asked if I had any more. That was all I needed. I assured them that I would take them to a veritable fortune in gold if they would release me on the Gaulish shore.
“While this was going on we continued to move up the strait until in time we reached the open sea. There the weather was dreadful. Which worked to my advantage, in a way,” Vintrex added with a glint in his bloodshot eyes.
He was actually enjoying this. The ordeal he had undergone was terrible, but in the telling it acquired a glamour he had not perceived at the time. His audience of two was hanging on his every word. “Is there any more of that wine?” he inquired.
Cadogan looked at Esoros, who shook his head.
“Beer, then,” said Vintrex. “But be sure it’s from the first brewing, when there’s still strength to it. I am not a child to drink weak beer.”
He kept them waiting while he consumed two large tankards of barley beer, then resumed his narrative. “The rolling and pitching of the Saxon boat made me violently ill. I vomited so copiously their captain feared I might die without taking him to my gold, so he promised to release me. It had the desired effect; I began to rally. I assumed he would take me east as I had requested, and braced myself for an unendurably long journey on rough seas.
“The journey seemed long and certainly beyond enduring, but when we made landfall I discovered we were in the territory of the Iceni! I tried to explain to the leader of the warriors that my gold was in Gaul, not Britannia, but the man’s Latin was too limited and my knowledge of Germanic dialects was nonexistent.”
Cadogan asked curiously, “Did you really have any gold in Gaul?”
“Of course not, that was only a ruse. I intended to escape as soon as we reached land and make my way to Rome.”
“You thought you could escape from a boatload of Saxons?”
“I always do what I set out to do,” Vintrex said coldly. “However in this case I did not get the chance. They were so angry to be thwarted of the gold they anticipated that they beat me half to death. After stealing everything I had—including my Tyrian purple magistrate’s robe, which I would have worn for an audience with the emperor—they left me lying facedown on a muddy beach. When I finally came to myself, I crawled some distance inland and collapsed again. Several of the Iceni found me and took me to their village. When I was strong enough I returned to Durovernum on foot because I could not afford to hire any transportation.” He gestured toward his feet, which Cadogan had not noticed before. Instead of Roman sandals or soft leather boots, his father’s feet were bound in strips of dirty, bloodstained cloth. “Blisters,” Vintrex said succinctly.
“I don’t want to sound mercenary, Father, but what happened to that substantial amount of money you had on you?”
“I have no idea. Perhaps the Saxons found it while I lay insensate on the beach. Perhaps the Iceni took it while supposedly caring for me. At any odds, it is gone.”
“At least you had your chariot and driver waiting for you in Durovernum.”
The old man gave a harsh laugh. “You would think so, would you not? But they had disappeared, too—pr
obably as soon as I was out of sight. No one in Durovernum admitted any knowledge of them. My own charioteer! And he had been with me for years.”
“Then who brought you home, Father?”
“An avaricious scoundrel who made me promise to pay him an exorbitant sum as soon as we reached Viroconium. Which reminds me: Go out to him, Esoros, and see that he is paid. You know where my strongbox is.”
“I know where it was,” the steward replied bleakly.
“You mean it’s gone!”
“The raiders took it.”
Vintrex seemed to shrink inside his clothes.
“You may recall that I have money, Father,” Cadogan said. “Until things improve it will be at your disposal.”
If he expected his father to thank him for the offer he was disappointed. Vintrex was in no mood to be grateful for anything. “Who can say when things will improve? The highway between Londinium and Viroconium was thronged with refugees heading west. Men begged me to carry their household goods in my cart; mothers pleaded with me to take their infants. Where the highway cut through the forest they crowded into the center of the road, as if the pavement itself could protect them. Some of them were as bony as the Romans; they must have been starving for weeks. It was like being surrounded by ghosts. When at last I saw the walls of Viroconium my relief was enormous. Then I walked into my house and found my reflecting pool filled with rubbish.” The old man’s voice crackled with anger. “How could you do that to me, Esoros?”
If the steward was taken aback by his master’s attack he did not show it. “Those things came from your wife’s chambers, my lord.”
At the mention of his dead wife, Vintrex briefly closed his eyes. When he opened them again he said in a more reasonable tone, “You should have burned them, Esoros, not left an unpleasant situation for me to deal with. Surely you know when to act on your own initiative.”
Before Esoros could respond, Vintrex drew a sharp intake of breath. “What in Christ’s holy name,” he demanded, leveling a bony forefinger at the apparition entering the room, “is that?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Pelemos was fully aware.
His wakening had happened gradually, and against his will. Perhaps the process began when he sat on the pony and put his foot on the ground; on Mother Earth. It gathered momentum when they neared the mountains, and the sharp air lanced through his nostrils and into his numbed brain. It was completed on the night he told the story.
The following day he realized the trees marching up the slopes were not trees he knew. Fern and bracken were of unfamiliar colors. Soaring peaks in the distance astonished his eyes. He was in a different place, one that Ithill had never occupied. How strange to feel the lack of her presence!
Pelemos did not listen to the exchange between Dinas and Meradoc and therefore was unaware of the mention of murder. Yet he was aware that the atmosphere had changed, though his concentration was on the scenery. Swathes of peaty moorland were broken by rocky outcroppings. Abrupt cliffs thrust upward like swords through the thin topsoil. Great boulders were scattered at random, indifferent spectators to an ancient cataclysm.
Indifferent could be good.
“Cymru,” he said aloud.
Dinas turned in the saddle to look at him. “What did you say, Pelemos?”
“Cymru is a beautiful name. Like music.”
“It is,” Dinas agreed.
“The kingdom of Rheged. And the peaks of Eryri.”
“That’s right. You know where you are.”
“I do now,” said Pelemos.
Every step was taking him farther away from pain.
Sometime in the future he would be able to think of Ithill again, of Ithill and the girls, because they were safe in the distance. Later still he would be able to look forward to them and not backward at them. He knew this though he did not know how he knew it.
The mountains, unlike the God he once had believed in, were here and now. He had a visceral sense of their immense weight. Their great age. He could almost worship their overwhelming presence. “I like the mountains,” he remarked aloud.
Dinas turned to look at him again. “And the people?”
“I like the people too.”
Dinas smiled, though his eyes were sad. “A Roman called Cato once described the Cymri as ‘devoted to warfare and witty conversation.’”
They rode on and on. Up and up.
By the close of day the land was engulfed in purple shadows. One last flare of gold and crimson from the west, then darkness. Dinas drew rein. “Night in these mountains can be as black as the inside of a cow,” he warned his companions. “Stay close to me now, we only have a short distance to go.” He led the way beneath an overhanging shelf of rock, then onto a narrow ridge that climbed toward the sky.
A million stars blazed over them.
Pelemos caught his breath.
Dinas laughed. “Some people worship the stars as gods, or the eyes of gods,” he said. “Others claim the stars are precious jewels hanging in the sky.”
“What do you think they are?” Meradoc asked.
Dinas laughed again. “I think they are just stars.”
The dark horse halted of his own accord in front of an earth-and-stone cabin tucked into the shoulder of a mountain. Dinas felt a pulse begin to pound at the base of his throat. It always happened, no matter how many times they met. Saba was a gliding walk, a laughing voice, wide-set gray eyes and a formidable jaw. She was all of that and none of it.
He gave one of his assortment of whistles—two low notes, followed by a trill. Moments later a door opened slightly and a wedge of firelight lanced through the darkness.
“It’s me, Saba,” Dinas called. “I’ve brought a couple of friends.”
The door was flung wide and a woman stood there. Seen in silhouette with her back to the light, she was almost as tall as a man. Two dogs stood beside her, one on either hand. They did not wave their tails until she said, “You are well come as always, Dinas. You and your friends.” Her voice was almost as low as a man’s, but sweeter. “Put your horses in the lambing shed—you know where it is—then come inside and have a meal. There’s mutton and barley in the pot.”
“Saba always has mutton and barley in the pot,” Dinas assured the other two as he motioned them inside.
After the darkness, the firelit cabin seemed wonderfully bright. Saba’s mountain home was not as large as Cadogan’s fort in the forest. It had only one door and two small windows closed with heavy wooden shutters. The thick walls were made of uncut stones fitted so tightly together that they required no chinking, creating a cavelike atmosphere of security.
Looking around, Meradoc recognized the work of a craftsman.
Skillfully plaited rush matting had been affixed to the underside of the steep slate roof to add a thick layer of insulation. At one end of the room was a stone hearth with an iron crane forged in a curvilinear Celtic design. The fire that blazed on the hearth was made fragrant by pine knots. A snug wooden bedbox carved with Celtic symbols filled an adjoining alcove. A matching table and stools were at one side of the hearth; a large loom stood on the other side, utilizing the light from the fire. On the loom was a half-finished woolen blanket containing all the colors of the rainbow.
The dogs, a shaggy pair of black-and-white sheepdogs, stationed themselves at the woman’s feet and watched the newcomers with bright eyes.
Meradoc said shyly, “You have a good home here.”
“It keeps the wind off,” Saba replied. Glancing at Dinas, she said, “I’m not used to compliments on my housekeeping.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Did you ever hear me complain?”
Saba laughed. Meradoc liked the way she laughed, tossing her hair back and exposing her full white throat.
Pelemos, to his surprise, liked her too. The first moment he heard her voice he had felt something stir in him that he had thought was dead. He was not ready to respond sexually to another woman; would not be ready in a long time, if
ever, but it was reassuring to discover that he could feel again.
He was alive again.
When Saba gestured to him to seat himself, he drew a stool closer to the fire and sat basking in the heat. Only then did he realize how cold he had been since they entered the mountains. How cold he had been since Ithill died. How cold …
From the iron cauldron suspended on the crane, Saba scooped up steaming portions of meat, root vegetables and grain, which she served to the hungry men with black bread and cups of sweet, pure water. At first there was no sound in the room but the crackle of the fire on the hearth and three sets of jaws chewing eagerly. Soon, however, Dinas and Saba began the conversation of people who knew each other well.
“You’re thinner than when I saw you last,” she told him.
“And you are plumper.”
“Sheep’s butter,” she replied, quietly pleased by his offhand compliment. “In the small pot there on the table; put it on your bread.”
“No olive oil?”
“Not here.”
“Didn’t I bring you some once?”
“You did, but I threw it out … no, I tell a lie. First I rubbed it on my skin, but I didn’t like the smell. That’s when I threw it out.”
“Waste of my good money,” Dinas remarked. He drained his cup and mopped his bowl with a hunk of bread, then held both out to her for a refill. Said casually, “I thought we might stop here for a while, Saba. We’ll do our share of the work. I’ll hunt deer and wild goats and Meradoc will set snares, he’s become quite good at it. As for Pelemos, he was a farmer, so he’ll be a great help to you in lambing season.”
Saba’s jaw dropped. Lambs were not born until the end of winter, celebrated by the Celtic festival of Imbolc.
If her expression betrayed her surprise, her response was gracious. As she handed the refilled bowl and cup to Dinas she said, “You’re welcome to stay as long as you like, all of you. I’d like to have company in the season of long nights. Pelemos, Meradoc, give me your bowls too. I’m sure you can eat more. Dinas devours everything in the larder when he comes to me, though until now he’s never stayed for longer than half a moon.”
After Rome Page 12
