my lord, I must tell you what is in my mind.”

  And he tightened his coral-studded rein and sat looking at her in surprise. At first she could not speak, he looked so fine a sight, his light hair bound back with an Irish gold fillet, his great heavy red woollen cloak swinging down from shoulder-pins of jet, and the light-blue linen tunic she had embroidered herself for him, with the Otter in silver thread, writhing against a flaming sun in gold.

  “What is on your mind?” he asked, perhaps a little frightened. She smiled at him. “The same thing that troubles you, husband,” she said. “The Badger.”

  At first he made a movement of impatience, and was about to whip up his horse. But she held up her hand. “Never fear,” she said. I know the worm that bites daily deeper into your heart. I know that the life you stagger through now is a shallow’ stream to you, without meaning or any river-mouth to reach. I know that he is still your lord, and that though Mathwlch helped you to a kingdom, you would always feel in your heart that you had stolen it from him — even though he were a dead man.” Gwyndoc’s eyes begged her to be silent, but she was determined now to go on. “Gwyndoc,” she said, “there is only one way for you to clear your mind of this thing. Go back to the Badger again and see if the gods are still with you.”

  Then he looked at her with wide eyes and almost gasped, “But what if they should be with - Morag, or Beddyr?”

  She smiled resignedly and twitched the edge of her green riding-coat. Then we shall at least know one way or the other - and no longer shall I have a half-man to live with.”

  He raised his hand as though he might strike her, but then the movement became a salute and he swung his great horse round, turning from her so abruptly that he did not even have time to notice the tears that had gathered in her eyes.

  And when she looked up again, his red cloak was flying behind him in the wind and his long silver spurs were beating hard against the flanks of his black horse. So she turned and followed the hunt, and when they asked her, said that Gwyndoc had suddenly remembered an old oath that he must keep the following day and was forced to ride hard to keep it.

  As he rode, Gwyndoc turned over in his mind many things that had happened, to ease the journey and so get Ygeme’s last words out of his memory. The present did not look well for the Belgae; each year new and evil tidings had come in of one great people or another that had gone over to Rome - Brigantia, under Cartismandua, that went without saying now; but there were also the fickle Iceni of the eastern seaboard, with their king, Prasatagus, tumbling over himself to enjoy the arid favours of Rome; and even the king at Chichester, Cogidubnus, who should have known better, but who now had taken the names Tiberius Claudius, and was styled by Rome herself as “rex et legatus Augusti in Britannia”. What a mouthful — and what did it all mean? Why, that you became the snuffling lapdog of that imbecile Claudius, in return for which he, or his man Plautius (the same thing, only Plautius was stricter), allowed you out of his sublime grace to keep a third of what was yours by right anyway.

  And they were always pushing on with their roads. That was the devilish thing. They were relentless, these soft Italians! No one had suspected they could be as hard as that, as tough as they were. Now their roads were creeping up through the country, from Londinium to Lindum, and across from Londinium to Viroconium — only a stone’s throw, as it were, from Madoc’s kingdom itself. And down to Gloucester, and, oh, everywhere almost! Soon there would be no sanctuary from them….

  And Gwyndoc pulled himself up with a jerk that he should be thinking of sanctuary at till; he, whose dream it had always been to die in battle, with the arrows sticking proudly from his chest and the mark of his axe on ten men lying about him! Then, as he set his horse, hour after hour, at the rough slopes, or trotted, head low, under the overhanging boughs, he began to feel very tired, and blown, and chafed. And it suddenly came to him that he was getting older.

  He had never thought of this before; life in Madoc’s house was soft and uninterrupted, it let the years flow by without trying to hold them back; in it one grew a little older and softer every day without knowing it.

  Gwyndoc looked down at his white and jewelled hands. They seemed like a girl’s, he thought. He turned them over and looked at his palms. Soft and unmarked. And almost in sorrow, he remembered when his hands were red-raw from the chariot reins and calloused with the axe’s shaft. And he regretted those days, as a girl must regret her unwrinkled throat in the days before she was a woman….

  As the sun went down, the air became chilly, and he wrapped the great cloak about him and lay down under a bush at the edge of the wooded country to sleep, if he could.

  By dawn he was up and off again, up the scree slopes, hungry now, and almost wondering why he should be riding southwards at all. Shortly after sunrise he half-frightened a shepherd-boy out of his wits when he hammered on the rough oak door of a wattle hut and demanded food and drink. And that night he slept in a flea-ridden bed belonging to an old goldsmith, only an hour’s ride from Caradoc’s country. That night sleep flowed round the edges of his room, but was a long time in overwhelming him. As he got nearer the end of his journey, the more foolhardy it began to seem, and now he began to blame Ygeme for forcing his pride to undertake this ride. He was not even properly armed. True, he had a short axe and a hunting-knife and a small bow capable of bringing down a fallow-deer, but what was that against the javelins of the King’s guards?

  He woke unrefreshed, and ate lightly before he mounted his tired horse again. Well away from the hut, he bowed down and said a prayer to all the gods he could call to mind, and flung his bravest ring into a cleft in the rocks as an offering to whichever god might wish to help him now. Then, only slightly reassured, he went on his way.

  And towards noon, as he was riding precariously along a narrow pathway, high above the valley, with an almost sheer drop below him, he heard the sudden call of the hunting-horn and saw, with something almost like horror, the Badger’s hunting standard towering above the low scrub trees below him. Perhaps a hundred yards down the slope from where he rode was another path, obscured by stunted trees and thick bushes; and now he saw that this foliage half-hid a hunting-party, riding in single file and going in the same direction as he was himself. The sweat stood cold on his brow as he thought how, had he galloped down a little further before finding a path for himself, he might have ridden in on them without warning!

  Then the leader came into view. It was not Caradoc! Gwyn-doc’s heart pounded like a hammer at his breast, until he saw that the first young horseman, a boy he didn’t recognise, was leading the second with a long thong. And the second was the Badger — but such a Badger as Gwyndoc would scarcely have recognised had he now worn the tartan. The King had lost much of his hair, and what he had had greyed so that he looked like an old man. His face was heavily lined and his back bowed. He sat, a gaunt, humped figure on his pony, his legs dangling in apathy at the creature’s sides, his hands hanging down, almost in hopelessness.

  Gwyndoc remembered that last chariot charge again, with the Badger standing up above the fray like the war-god himself, splendid, fearless, immortal. And now this. How long ago was it? Six years only — just a summer’s afternoon, but leading now to a long and bitter winter’s night it seemed.

  The next horsemen to emerge from the trees were no less moving. Beddyr was leading his brother’s pony, gently, almost lovingly, and Morag sat still, staring ahead vacantly, silent. Gwyndoc saw now that the brothers were dressed poorly, like wandering singing-men, not princes. Even their horses were thin and ill-kept, like the beasts of men who had lost interest in life and saw no purpose in keeping clean any longer since the worm was waiting for all flesh, be it clean or foul.

  Now Gwyndoc knew that he could not go to them as he was. The strange thought came to him that they might even have forgotten how to speak the tongue he knew and had shared with them once.

  And as they slowly passed below him, a perverse thought came over his mind that now they were in his power! Even with his little deer bow he could pick off, say, Morag — and Beddyr! A small shaft, well-planted, could leave the way clear to a new friendship with Caradoc. A Caradoc who had lost all his fight — and wanted a friend, perhaps? But was that the sort of friend that Gwyndoc wanted now? The Badger, his youth and god-like perfection gone, his spirit shrunk to the bare essentials of existence among stone-harassed savages? Was that any longer a dream to be followed? To be the friend of such a man? And, in any case, to think of shooting Morag, blind Morag, was somehow almost indecent,… Morag and the hot-blooded brother of his who now moved as gently about his charge as a woman with her first baby.

  And as Gwyndoc watched the straggling party emerge and wind along the narrow path, the servants and slaves following at a respectful distance, he began to feel bigger than all of them; the pattern of his life suddenly unfolded itself on a grander scale than it had done before; he felt almost mean and small at having even thought of punishing them — and at the same time laughed at himself for feeling so mean and small, when now, he saw, if he chose right, he might well come to be greater than any of them. For an instant he almost stood up in the stirrups and shouted for all to hear, “Behold, Badger, here is Gwyndoc, the lord who dared displease you, the lord you taunted and tormented, the lord who shall be your lord before the tale is told!”

  As the drunken blood swept through his head, he might well have done this. But suddenly, from nowhere, a partridge scurried out of the bush and mounted, heavy-winged, up the slope. And Morag, blind Morag, swung round in his saddle, the shaft on the string, and by hearing alone drew his bow and shot.

  It happened almost before Gwyndoc had time to take it in. The bird fell, transfixed, near to his feet, still fluttering. He stared at it, aghast. Had Morag wished to pick him off, he could have done so, it seemed.

  And then a slave began to scramble up the slope towards the bird. And Beddyr was slapping his brother on the back and calling him the prince of archers, and Morag was smiling his strange, black, blank, hunched smile — deep as a burial-pit, as hard as the rock he rode upon. Gwyndoc knew then that his pity was wasted. But more than that, he sensed that he was in danger now more than ever — for now his new confidence had made him careless. Quietly he backed his horse; then, covering his tartan breeches with his long cloak, so that he might be unrecognised, he turned his horse, as soon as he could, and galloped back up the slope and over the hill, not once looking back to see whether the slave had noticed him.

  For a second or two it seemed to him that the voices below him had become loud and menacing. Then, realising that he had the start of them, he slackened down and began the long ride home.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Two days of hard going brought Gwyndoc back to Hall i’ the Forest, tired and hungry and needing sleep almost more than anything, but now clear in his mind, the old cramping dream and delusion of loyalty mostly gone.

  When he had handed over his spent horse to a servant, he strode stiffly into the bower, hoping to find Ygeme alone, so that he could tell her what he had seen and how he felt about Caradoc now. But the bower seemed to be full of folk! Ygeme was sitting by the fire playing with Bryn and suckling little Caradoc, while at her side sat beautiful Gylfa, rocking her latest little red-haired son and smiling through the firelight with her green cat’s eyes at Gwyndoc. And by the wall sat Mathwlch, at last back from his long journey to Ireland after gold lunulae, in the middle of some fearfully long story about an Irish witch who had a competition with a druid. And intently listening to him, though more than half-tipsy, Madoc, his best tunic on, and his hair beautifully bound in alternate strands of gold and silver. And, lolling on the long pearwood side-table, a young Roman officer, unhelmeted and wearing his armed tunic wide open at the neck, for all the world as though he had nothing to fear!

  As Gwyndoc stalked in, flinging his cloak into a comer, Madoc rose and the Roman bowed stiffly. He turned out to be the second-in-command from Ostorius’ garrison at Viroconium. He had looked in early that afternoon and had stayed to eat meat with the Celts and drink some of Gylfa’s best elderberry wine. They had nothing like it in Rome, he said, and Ygeme, who seemed to like him, had smiled perhaps a little ironically; but he went on to say that they neglected the good natural things there, and seemed to go for the artificial, the overcultivated — in vines as in all else. And that bit of humility seemed to put things right again with the Celts.

  But as Gaius, the Roman, looked at his host, Madoc, he was less and less sure why these folk were called “barbarians”. Why, the man wore enough gold on his arms and about his neck to buy out a couple of averagely wealthy citizens! And who in Rome these days could have afforded to wear that fine silk tunic and those silver-latcheted, soft-hide boots? And who would even dare to walk in public in that coral-bossed belt of Spanish leather? A man would need an armed escort to stroll round the Forum with such treasure on his back! And yet these “barbarians” seemed to take it as a matter of course that no one would knock them down and strip them naked on the highway! As Gaius took his leave and rode back towards his camp, he began to revise his own ideas about barbarians and citizens! But, of course, he had only been in the island a few weeks…. He thought of the blue woad caste marks on Madoc’s forehead — but then, their own African auxiliaries delighted in slashing their chests to form raised scars as tribal decorations — and that was nothing to some of the things the Egyptians did for the same purpose! Surely woad was a more sensible idea, altogether, barbarian or not!

  When they had seen him safe through the stockade, the three men walked back to the bower and sat once more near the great fire.

  “Why did the Roman come here?” asked Gwyndoc, at last. The other two looked at him carefully, as though wondering whether they might with safety tell him the truth. Then Madoc said, “At first it seemed like a social visit. Then he teased us and said he had come to requisition Hall i’ the Forest for the general and his staff.”

  “Tell him the rest, Madoc,” said Mathwlch. “He can bear it now, I know.”

  Madoc looked doubtful, then said, “Caradoc has been causing trouble in the south. Night raids, and so on. The legion at Gloucester has given him enough rope, since they know what he suffered in losing his kingdom. It seems they are reasonable down there. But now they are getting tired of it. They say they can’t afford to lose good trained soldiers purposelessly, like that. They are going to teach him a lesson.” Then he stopped and waited. Gwyndoc looked up from the fire and said, smiling, “Yes, Madoc, go on.”

  And Madoc said, “That young Roman who was here knows more than we thought. He knows that you are the king-elect of the Belgae — should anything happen to the Badger. He knows that the Badger is aware that he has gone too far at last and intends to come here with his most trusted warriors, Belgae and Silures, to keep out of the way, and later to persuade us to go in with him on a last throw.”

  Gwyndoc looked keenly into Madoc’s eyes. “What is your answer to that?” he said. Madoc fidgeted with his rings and looked into the fire. “These Romans seem a reasonable people,” he said, “if a bit simple and crude, perhaps. They do not ask me to join them against the Badger. They say they know that is not right and proper, when one of us has sworn the oath under the oak. But they suggest that we do not join Caradoc actively either; that we merely go about our own business and leave those concerned to settle their own quarrel. They do not ask for our allegiance.”

  “Do you trust them?” said Gwyndoc, at last.

  Madoc smiled cynically. “I do not trust anyone,” he said, “not even my own she-cat over there, with her children! But I like her none the less for that!” Gylfa bowed ironically. He went on, “And there is much that I like about Rome, although I don’t necessarily trust the Romans. For instance, I would like . the boys to be educated there and to have a better chance in the western world than I could give them under the old tribal dispensation. As Romans, the whole world would be theirs for the asking. As Ordovices, they have little chance of seeing anything or having anything.”

  Mathwlch began to protest that they would always have Ireland to draw on, and there was a lot of gold-stuff there. But Madoc cut him short and said, “Our trouble in the past, Gwyndoc, has been that we have too often sacrificed the broader interests for reasons of tribal or even religious custom. That is a thing of the past. We axe living on the doorstep of the new times now. And it is up to us to move with those times.”

  “It needs much getting used to,” said Gwyndoc. “What have the Romans offered you to keep out of this affair?”

  “Nothing,” said Madoc. “They have merely stated that if I go on without interfering, I shall be allowed to continue in my own way, among my own people, in my own hall.”

  “And if you join Caradoc?” said Gwyndoc. Madoc shrugged his shoulders. “Then they will treat me as they treat Caradoc,” he said. After a pause he said, “You see, they are not offering me anything that isn’t mine. They are not bribing me, Gwyndoc. They know my allegiance to the Badger is too great to be bought with a bribe.”

  In the firelight a smile seemed to flicker over Ygeme’s face — and as she looked across the room, she saw that Gylfa was smiling too. For a while there was silence, then Gwyndoc said slowly, and almost hesitatingly. “When they have broken the Badger, what then? Who shall lead the Belgae?”

  Mathwlch reached over and patted his arm. “Never fear, Otter,” he said, “the Romans know a good man when they see one, even if the Belgae don’t. Gaius promised on his solemn oath, before you came, that should Caradoc persist in his stupidity and, as is inevitable, be defeated, they will establish you as chief in his place.”

  Gwyndoc’s smile was a little better. “And you, Mathwlch?” he asked. Mathwlch looked at him steadily. “I am to be your successor,” he said. Gwyndoc shrugged towards his children. “What of them?” he said.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28