After Rome

by Morgan Llywelyn

  “Don’t talk like that, Father.”

  “Ah, but that’s how I think. Since I have nothing left to look forward to but death, I am becoming a philosopher.”

  The remark was the last thing Cadogan expected of his father. His surprise showed on his face.

  Quartilla, who had been watching them from across the hall, abandoned her self-imposed task and drifted over to eavesdrop.

  “When I was a boy,” Vintrex continued, “I was taught that the Greeks became philosophers when the Romans supplanted them as a military power. My tutor said the life of the mind is the last retreat of a defeated warrior.” He tapped on his forehead with his fingertips.

  “You mustn’t think of yourself as defeated,” his son protested.

  “I know exactly what I am, Cadogan. Self-knowledge is the Philosopher’s Stone. Even as a lad I knew I could never settle for a mundane existence like my father’s. You may not know this—I am sure I never told you—but he spent his adult life as the underpaid scribe of several minor officials in a shabby little office. My father’s first duty every morning was to empty any night soil left from the evening before. I was disgusted by the way he was treated and even more disgusted by the way he accepted it.

  “It was my ambition to become a highly respected priest and eventually a bishop. But there was a problem. As the oldest son I was expected to do my duty by my parents and provide them with comfort in their old age. In addition, I had a younger brother who would need help to get a start in life. The stipend Rome provided for priests was small indeed; anything more than a bare subsistence depended on local donations. Viroconium was prosperous in those days, but wealthy people are much less inclined to give away their money. A bishop would be better supported but it would be years before I could hope for a bishopric, and in the meantime my parents would grow old in poverty. I could not bare the shame.

  “In the way that such things happen, a chance encounter in the public baths opened up another road for me. I was introduced to one of the Roman administrators, who was in the city to prepare for the next regional census. I did my best to make a good impression on him, and before he returned to Londinium he offered me employment. Within a year I was supervising the census in Viroconium.”

  An image leaped unbidden into Cadogan’s mind. His father as a handsome youth in the company of an older and dissolute Roman … he struggled to push the image aside.

  “After five years,” Vintrex was saying, “I was appointed assistant to the chief magistrate. I studied every aspect of the law and made the right political connections, so that when he died I was given his office. Of course there were some problems along the way. Like your mother.”

  Although he was aware that Quartilla was listening avidly, Cadogan could not help asking, “What about my mother?”

  Vintrex did not want to answer that question; was sorry he had even mentioned Domitia. But he no longer seemed able to control his tongue. Perhaps his secrets had become too heavy to carry. “In her youth,” he said slowly, dragging the words out of the caverns of memory, “your mother was a beautiful woman who attracted favorable attention in some high places. Unfortunately her antecedents were … shall we say … a trifle common. Too Celtic, if you take my meaning. Her most prominent admirer could not marry her himself, but after showering her with gifts and seeing that she was well educated, he arranged a suitable marriage for her.”

  Cadogan drew a sharp breath. “To you, Father?”

  Vintrex would not meet his eyes. “To me. Yes.”

  “And that boy who wanted to become a bishop; what happened to him?”

  The old man’s voice dropped to a near whisper. “He built a house and had a family. And when his hair was turning gray he fell in love for the first time in his life.”

  Cadogan could fill in the rest. “Fell in love with his brother’s wife.”

  “Yes.”

  Enraptured by the romance of it all, Quartilla clasped her hands together and cried, “I knew it!”

  Vintrex rounded on his son. “What’s that infernal woman talking about? Did you tell her my private business?”

  Before Cadogan could defend himself his father’s face turned an alarming shade of purple. Vintrex gasped, shuddered, and fell full length on the floor of the hall.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Spring would not reach the peaks of Eryri for many weeks, but Dinas knew when it began in the midlands. Knew by the angle of the light; knew by the singing in his bones. The old restlessness took hold of him again. No matter how warm the cabin, no matter how tender the arms of Saba, only action could satisfy him.

  Pelemos was fully occupied with the sheep. Long before lambing began he had learned how to wash the wool, boiling the fleeces from the previous winter in a great cauldron until the thick grease floated to the surface and could be ladled away. Saba strained some of this and used it to protect her face and hands from the cold. She had shown Pelemos how to separate the clean strands of fiber again and again until they became almost as light as down, ready to be woven into the softest woolen fabric. She had even taught him the language of the weaver, with an unfamiliar name for every tool and method.

  Meradoc kept almost as busy with the horses, though their care was less demanding. He brushed the stallion and the two little mares every day with a tool he made himself, using stiff straw and brambles with the sharp points filed down. He painted their hooves with some of Saba’s wool grease to keep them from splitting, and rubbed a little more around their eyes to protect them from the wind. He taught the ponies to pick up their feet on command, one at a time, and to pluck bits of bread from between his lips. He did not attempt to teach the stallion any tricks. That, he thought, would be undignified.

  Even during the worst of the winter Dinas had ridden the dark horse every day to keep him fit. He had leaped and plunged in the deep snow and would have unseated a lesser rider, but Dinas merely laughed and urged him on. He also encouraged Meradoc and Pelemos to ride their ponies daily so they would not grow soft. The only way the ponies could get through the deep drifts was to follow in the trail the dark horse broke for them. Seeing the little procession making its way along the mountainside, Saba had smiled to herself. At a distance they might almost be a father with his family.

  After the restlessness seized him, Dinas rode alone. He set out in the icy pink dawn and did not return until the sky was Tyrian purple and laced with stars. During lambing season, when Pelemos really proved his worth and Meradoc became a welcome assistant, Dinas was somewhere else. Somewhere inside his head, living his dream, shaping and reshaping it until it was more real than reality to him.

  Not King Dinas; I’ve decided I don’t want a crown. Julius Caesar wanted to be a king, or an emperor, or some other fancy title, and look what it got him. Stabbed a score of times by his supposed friends and left to welter in his own blood. Titles are dangerous. Stars and mountains have no titles, they just are. Stars. Mountains. Infinitely powerful and instantly recognizable.

  I shall simply be Dinas. That name will stand for everything I am. Names are more important than titles anyway.

  My horse has grown such a massive winter coat that Saba calls him “the bear.”

  The bear. Arthfael in the Cymric tongue, Ursus in the Latin. The Great Bear in the night sky is Ursus Major. That would be a splendid name for a horse if I were going to name my horse. Which I’m not.

  Some things must never be changed.

  Returning earlier than usual from one of his solitary rides, Dinas made an announcement. “We’ve taken advantage of your hospitality long enough, Saba. We’re going to leave in the morning.”

  Meradoc and Pelemos reacted with mixed feelings. The prospect of resuming the adventure was exciting; the prospect of leaving the cabin was painful. Over the winter both men had come to consider the place almost as their home, and Dinas and Saba as their family. In Meradoc’s case it was a dream come true. For Pelemos it filled a gap he had thought could not be filled.

  Saba ha
d known their departure was inevitable, but still it was a blow. She could accept Dinas leaving—if she was honest with herself, and she was, the sporadic nature of their love was one of its attractions—but Pelemos and Meradoc had become her friends. In the solitude she thought she wanted, she had undervalued the human need for friends.

  “Do you have to take them both, Dinas?” She was breaking the unwritten agreement about questions but she could not help it.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Want to keep one of them as a pet?” he said teasingly.

  She laughed to keep the mood light. “To replace my dogs? I think not, the dogs would never understand. But having help has made a great difference this winter; I never realized how hard I was working until other hands eased the load. With one or two men I could…”

  “Or two?” he queried.

  “I could buy more sheep and harvest more wool.” Her voice warmed with enthusiasm. “The women from the villages below could share in the weaving, Dinas. Life is harder for them than for the men, and it would be a help if they had blankets to sell.”

  “You could build a kingdom of your own up here in the high pastures,” Dinas said with a smile. “I never thought of you as being so generous.”

  “I’ve been generous to you,” she replied tartly.

  The unexpected display of ambition on the part of a woman had caught Dinas off guard. He attempted to look contrite. “You’ve been more than generous, and I’m grateful.”

  “We all are,” Meradoc chimed in.

  “If she needs one of us to stay,” said Pelemos, “it should be me. My poor skills would be no use in ambushing ships, but farming is—”

  “Is out of the question,” Dinas interrupted. “I need you, Pelemos; I need both of you.”

  “It was just a thought,” Saba said coolly.

  Dinas smiled again to conceal his confusion. Was her indifference real, or feigned? He had no idea. His relationship with Saba had lasted so long because she never demanded his understanding. She allowed him to come to any conclusion he liked.

  He had chosen to think she was very much like himself.

  Saba caught and held his eyes. Dinas infuriated her with his smiling lazy mockery. She thought he was doing it deliberately to hurt her. Or—and this was worse—perhaps he didn’t know the effect it had on her. Or care.

  Suddenly she was very tired. Let him go, then. Let them all go.

  * * *

  She stood in the doorway of the cabin and watched them ride away. For the first time he could remember, she did not wave farewell to Dinas when he turned in the saddle and looked back. She simply closed the door.

  “I could still stay with her,” Pelemos offered. “I would not mind.”

  Dinas said sharply, “She didn’t want you, she wanted me.”

  “Then you stay with her,” suggested Meradoc.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Dinas tightened his legs on the dark horse and galloped away. They had to push the ponies to their utmost to keep up with him.

  The pass of Llanberris proved more challenging than anything they had yet encountered. The peaks looming above were gaunt, primeval, shrouded with an icy mist too bitter to breathe. The wind moaned around crags and buttresses formed in the dawn of time. Boulders as large as cottages loomed out of blowing snow, then as suddenly disappeared.

  Light played tricks on the eyes.

  Near the foot of the pass the riders were confronted by snowdrifts as high as the stallion’s withers. They had to retrace their steps until they found another way down. No trail was safe; none was level. The slopes were littered with ubiquitous scree that could slide unexpectedly under a horse’s hooves and send animal and rider plunging to their doom.

  Wolves could be heard howling in the distance, though it was hard to believe anything could survive in such a landscape.

  While they sheltered in the lee of a cliff to catch their breath, Meradoc said, “Does anyone live up here at all?”

  “More than you would expect,” Dinas told him. “They’ve been grazing their sheep in the high pastures for centuries—or quarrying slate, like Saba’s people. It’s a hard life but it’s what they know. The old ones would never leave, but in the tail of winter we may find some youngsters willing to talk about it.”

  “Talking is one thing,” Pelemos remarked. “Changing your life is another. I never knew anyone who willingly changed his life.”

  “I did,” said Meradoc. “And so did you.”

  “I’m not sure I did. In fact I’m not sure how I came to be here at all.”

  “Perhaps you’re under an enchantment,” Dinas remarked.

  Pelemos swept his eyes over the scene around them. The eternal mountains, the ephemeral mist. Anything might come riding out from behind a boulder with a blast of silver trumpets and a rainbow of ancient banners.

  “Perhaps I am,” he said.

  As they made their way down from the pass they caught glimpses of bleak, lonely farmhouses tucked into isolated valleys; they encountered tiny communities of slate miners working in nearby quarries; they could not help seeing the abandoned dwellings of those who had failed to make any living from the infertile soil. Dinas never lost his way, but rode with calm assurance. When they saw anyone he always stopped for a talk, which inevitably became a drink of something that burned the throat, and a night’s sleep under a roof.

  Dinas had an unerring instinct for finding those whose spirits were not permanently rooted in their native soil. He could talk to them in a language they understood. By the time they reached the foothills he had recruited eight young men with fire in their bellies and hunger in their eyes. Dafydd, Cynan, Hywel, Cadel, Bleddyn, Iolo, Docco and Tostig—whom the others called “Otter” because he had short arms and legs but an extremely long torso.

  * * *

  Before they set off on their first morning as a company, Dinas appointed Meradoc captain of the horse. “Everything to do with the horses, except for my own, is your responsibility. As an officer, you will ride just behind me. And one other thing—keep an eye on my saddlebags. Don’t let anyone touch them. If they aren’t with me they must be with you, understand?”

  By now Meradoc knew what Dinas had in those bags, down to the last gold coin and fishhook. And leather bundle. Knew and did not judge. He had thrown in his lot with Dinas and the dark horse and that was that. “I understand,” he said.

  Dinas told the recruits, “You are infantry now but that’s only temporary. What we need is cavalry. Every one of you who stays with me and proves his loyalty will be given two good horses. In the meantime, follow Pelemos. His pony walks at a pace you can keep up with. Don’t come near my stallion though, he doesn’t like other people.”

  Dinas made sure the dark horse pranced and rolled his eyes in a way guaranteed to ensure respect.

  The first thing a leader must have is the respect of his men.

  In the first flush of excitement the little band did not question where Dinas was leading them, but when they made camp a husky former stonecutter called Tostig asked him, “Why are we going east? You said our stronghold would be on the western coast.”

  “We aren’t setting up a permanent base right away,” Dinas replied, “because I want to get the horses first. That’s why I’m going to the territory of the Cornovii; they breed the best animals. While we’re there I plan to add a cousin of mine to our number, and also visit Viroconium about a personal matter.”

  “What personal matter?”

  Meradoc shook his head at Tostig. “Dinas doesn’t like to be questioned.”

  “Why? What’s he trying to hide?”

  Dinas kept his face impassive and pretended he had not heard.

  Leading may not be as easy as I thought. But I can do this.

  He envisioned himself at the head of a well-equipped private army, arriving unannounced at Cadogan’s fort and creating such an impression his cousin would beg to join them. With Cadogan as one of his officers he could approach Vintrex and demand justice for his mot
her. If justice had not already been done. Which he doubted; there was very little justice left in Britannia. But with an army at his back he would have a better chance.

  At night when they sat around a campfire with their bellies full, belching and farting and talking about women, Pelemos told stories.

  His tales were about a place called Albion that no one believed in anymore, during a time no one remembered. Later some would claim he never repeated a story, but he did. He could tell the same one over and over, changing names and small details, and make it fresh and new every time. Pelemos could go from comedy to tragedy with a subtle change of voice, and be equally convincing. He might put stress on a certain incident one time and hardly mention it the next.

  There were some constants. Meradoc discovered the stories always included six recurring characters. He began secretly putting names to them: Warrior, Priest, Druid, Warrior Woman, Friend, and Bard. They might be of either gender, with the exception of Warrior and Warrior Woman, but they were always recognizable. If one paid close attention.

  Dinas also listened closely, displaying an attentiveness that was out of character with his restless nature. He began to long for the wild, free Albion the Romans had destroyed. A partly fictional Albion in which memory and imagination competed for primacy, shaping and reshaping a history that never was.

  Dinas was aware of this. But he chose to believe anyway.

  One day Meradoc asked him, “Where does Pelemos get the tales he tells?”

  “Storytellers are inspired, I suppose.”

  “Inspired by what?”

  Dinas gave an uncomfortable laugh. “You ask too many questions, little man.” Then he changed the subject.