Patrick (29 page)

D
ESPITE
M
ASTER
H
ERACLES'
oft-repeated assurances of a swift journey home, three months later I was still aboard the ship with him. The summer was fading into autumn golds and browns, and still we plied the coasts, trading in every seaside settlement we came upon and many inland, too, each stop taking a day, or two, or more—days that chafed me raw with frustration. Reasoning, pleading, complaining availed nothing; Heracles blithely refused to hear my complaints. God knows I made so many my teeth hurt. All my efforts met with the same knowing smile and the words: “Soon my friend, very, very soon. Like the wind, we go.”

I slowly came to realize that I had wildly underestimated the value of my services to the ship's master. It was not just my knowledge of the Irish language—a perpetual battle for the Latin speakers—but that I understood the Irish people. I knew how to present the trade goods in the best possible way to attract ready buyers. For example, the lords liked wine—or they did as soon as they tried it—but most considered it much too expensive for a mere drink. But when I told them I knew in truth that the high king of Rome drank only wine and drank it every day, they were amazed and duly impressed. Eager to show themselves the equals to any Roman king, they had to drink it, too, and cheerfully bought whatever we could carry.

Another time Heracles labored mightily against steady
and stubborn resistance from a tight-fisted pack of southern noblemen. He showed his best wares—the bright-patterned cloth, the sweet wine, the gleaming steel knives, and all the rest—to little interest and no sales whatsoever. “It is hopeless,” he said, wiping his hands on his shirt. “They are not for buying today.”

He bade me wish the Irish lords farewell and tell them we would come again next year when, perhaps, we might have something they desired. But as the crewmen began packing up the goods, I noticed one of the Irishmen eyeing the basket containing a number of small glass jars of the kind useful for storing unguents and aromatic oils. We sold a few of them now and then, but mostly Heracles used them to sweeten a bargain, throwing in a handful to help persuade a waverer.

I moved to the man's side and, taking up one of the little jars, told him, “These are made in Rome. I will make you a good price. A fine gift for your wife or daughter. How many would you like?”

He took the jar and held it between his thumb and finger, turning it this way and that in the light, and then dropped it to the ground and stepped on it. The glass surrendered with a brittle crunch, and he removed his foot to reveal a pile of shiny fragments. The fellow laughed, thinking, I suppose, that anything so fragile could not be of significant value.

He made to turn away but hesitated, looking once more at the heap of glass jars. I followed his gaze and realized it was not the jars he desired, it was the basket: a large pottery bowl topped by a wicker ring onto which was sewn a coarse-woven cloth band. Very useful aboard a ship, these were, as they could be securely fastened by way of a drawstring to keep the contents intact even on the roughest seas.

“Ah!” I said, seizing the vessel at once. “You like the basket.”

He nodded. “How much?”

“It saddens me to tell you,” I replied with a sigh, “but this basket is not for sale. It is too valuable on the ship, you see. I cannot sell it.”

He nodded and pointed again to the container. “How much?”

“It is impossible,” I replied, clutching the basket and half turning my back to him. “We have only so many of these to carry our wares, and when they are gone, we cannot get any more until we return to Rome.”

Tell an Irishman that he cannot have a thing and that is the very thing he craves more than all the world.

“How much?” he said, unmoved.

“My master would have my head nailed to the mast if I sold his baskets,” I pleaded. “I could never do it. Where would we keep the jars?”

Adamant now, the chieftain folded his arms across his chest. “Come, let us bargain,” he said. “Name a price.”

Taking a glass jar from the heap, I held it up and declared, “These are worth nothing compared to the basket.” Throwing the jar to the ground, I smashed it beneath my heel. “See?” I made to turn away again, saying, “Maybe if the basket were empty…but no.”

“I will buy them,” he declared, taking my hint. “Then you will give me the basket, too.”

I frowned, as if deeply troubled by this suggestion. “I would have to ask my master,” I said at last.

“Ask him now.”

I turned to Heracles, who was by this time watching the transaction with interest. “What does he want?” he asked me in Latin.

“The basket.”

“Give it to him,” sighed Heracles, “and let's be gone from this miserly tribe.”

Returning to the chieftain, I announced, “My master says that if you bought all the jars, he would give you the basket to carry them home.”

“Then I will buy them all,” proclaimed the nobleman proudly.

We quickly fixed a price, and it was done. I took his gold and carefully tied up the strings at the top, whereupon the
chieftain snatched the basket from my hands and bore it away like a trophy of war—much to Heracles' amusement and gratification.

Such was my service to my master in payment for my passage and, his collusion in my escape. And while I strove to be fair to one and all—I had no heart to cheat the local lords—the amount of gold and goods that changed hands with my assistance increased steadily from the moment I climbed over the rail.

The ship itself was built for trade—spacious rather than fast—and Master Heracles was a cautious sailor. He picked his way along the coast with care, never in a hurry and always with one eye on the weather. At first hint of a storm, he made for the nearest cove to wait until it was safe to move on. “This is my ship,” he told me once, “and my ship is my life. I cannot afford to lose it, for I will never get another one.”

The reason for this, I learned eventually, was that although the ship belonged to Heracles, the cargo did not. The trade stuffs had been purchased with money given to him by merchants in the south of Gaul. These merchant traders were awaiting his return and expecting a fair increase in their investment.

Day after day we sailed unmolested along the coast while the cargo dwindled and the sea chests filled to overflowing—and still we did not turn and sail for Britain.

I suffered Heracles' cheerful lies and even found their unvarying repetition somewhat reassuring, but I woke one day as the sun tinted the sky with a low autumn light and knew that Heracles had no intention of letting me go until the gales of winter brought the trading season to a close—and even then he might contrive to keep me with him somehow. This knowledge produced such a heavy despondency in me that I did not bother getting out of bed but lay there in my dark misery mourning, yet again, my stupidity and lack of wisdom.

When I did not appear on deck, the master sent one of the
crewmen to see if I had taken ill. “The master is asking for you, Irish.”

“Tell the good master that he can go merrily to hell.”

“Are you sick, Irish?”

“No,” I replied. “I am finished.”

He did not know what to say to that, so he stood there for a moment, thinking. “Do you want something to eat?” he said at last.

When I made no reply, he left—only to return a short while later with a bowl of pea soup and some brown bread. He approached quietly, and laid the wooden bowl on my stomach. “It will make you feel better to eat something.”

“Thank you,” I replied. “But I told you, I am not sick.” Lifting the bowl in my hand, I flung it across the hold, splattering porridge everywhere. “Now, go away and leave me in peace.”

He went without a word, and I had just closed my eyes when the master himself appeared. “Are you sick, my friend?”

“I am not sick, and I am not your friend.”

“Of course you are my friend.” He laughed, trying to cheer me out of my gloom. He came and sat down on a box nearby, smoothing the front of his mantle with his hands. “Do you think I am staying in business this long without knowing who is my friend and who is my enemy? Come, get up, let us go and make some money.”

“No,” I told him. “I am finished.”

“What is this ‘finished'?” he said, chuckling to himself.

“You are my very good luck indeed.”

“Good luck for you,” I agreed, “bad luck for myself. Since I am never to see Britain again, I might as well stay here.”

“Is
this
what is troubling you?” he cried happily. “You will see Britain again. I declare it. Very, very soon now we are crossing the narrow sea. I will see you safely among people who will help you find your friend.”

“So you say. But it never happens. Always there is one
more stop to make, one more settlement to visit, more goods to trade. It will go on and on without end, I know that. But it will go on without me. I am finished.”

“Ptah!” he scolded amiably. “You expect me to turn away when we are making such excellent trade? This is madness.” He clucked his tongue as if he had caught me uttering an obvious falsehood. “Listen, I tell you what I will do—”

“That is the very trouble, Heracles: You tell me anything that comes into your head, knowing full well you will never do it.”

He pretended umbrage at my harsh estimate of his integrity. “I am a man of honor, my friend, as you very well know. I have given you my word.”

“Your word, like your honor, is worth whatever you can get for it in the marketplace,” I told him. “You sell it every day to anyone fool enough to buy. You know it, and I know it. Why pretend otherwise?”

He looked at me sadly for a moment. “Will you not come up and help me?”

“No. I am finished. Next time we make landfall, I will say farewell.”

“But you will never get to Britain if you leave the ship,” he pointed out.

I turned my face and looked him in the eye. “I will never get to Britain so long as I remain with
you
,” I answered. “In truth I could have swum there and back six times by now.”

“You cannot leave,” he said, growing mildly irritated. “We made a bargain, you and I.”

“And I have honored my half of the bargain—more than half! Yet you refuse to honor yours. So be it. I am done with you.”

He sighed loudly. “Well, then.”

I said no more, and after a while he left. Next day we made landfall at a small settlement on the southern coast. The master sent some men to fetch me, as I knew he would. This time they did not ask me to come with them; they simply picked me up and carried me onto the deck.

“Ah, there you are,” Heracles said, smiling broadly.

“Tell them to put me down.”

He nodded to his men, and they set me on my feet.

“I am a man of honor—” he began.

“So you say.”

“Now I will show you.” With that, he produced a small, flat object and held it before my face.

“A file?” I said, recognizing the tool at last. “But it is much too small.”

“It is the only one we have,” Heracles replied. “Yet, it will serve.” He made a spinning motion with his hand. “Turn around.”

I did as he commanded, and he took hold of the back of my slave collar. He drew the edge of the file over the hard iron a few times and then proclaimed, “There! It is begun.”

He took my shoulders and spun me around to face him once more. “Hear me, my friend, and believe me when I tell you that each day I will cut away a little more until the day comes to depart. When we finish we will raise the sail and make for Britain, and on that day, I will remove your collar.” He smiled his oily, ingratiating smile. “One week more, my friend, is all I ask.”

“Very well,” I agreed, feeling foolish and abused. “One week more.”

“Maybe two.”

“Heracles, no,” I groaned.

“If the trade is good, we would be fools to leave before we finish. Not so?”

Against all experience and better judgment, I gave in and let him have his way. For two more weeks I oversaw the exchange of goods and gold in the weedy wilderness settlements in the far south of the island. And every day, true to his word, Heracles would take out his tiny file and scrape a little more off the deepening notch at the back of my collar—a symbolic act only, I considered, but it showed that he had not forgotten.

At the end of the second week, with the clouds lowering
in the west, dark with rain, Heracles hoisted himself over the rail and, with the wind in his beard, declared, “My friends! We have done well this year. But it is time to go home.” Grinning wide, he turned to me. “With the permission of my Irish friend, we will set sail at once.”

And we did set sail. But not for Britain.

Without the bulk of the trade goods for ballast, the vessel rode too high in the water and was easy prey for unpredictable autumn blasts and blows. We sailed along the coast until we came to a rocky bay where we could take on stones to fill the hold and help lend some stability to the craft. We spent a whole day hefting rocks into the hold, secured them well, and prepared to depart the next morning.

The wind gusted smartly out of the north as we set off. Heracles chose an easterly course, hoping to bring us shortly to the western coast of Britain. The wind rose steadily, however, and, try as he might, the master could not hold the ship on course. We were pushed farther and farther south, and for two days were out of sight of land. When we finally glimpsed the coast again, it was the southwestern peninsula of Dumnonia, a wilderness of ragged hills and dense, low brush.

Far south of our intended destination, Heracles offered me a choice. “My friend, it is for you to decide. As you see, the weather has turned against us. I cannot be blamed for that. You know I would prefer it otherwise.” He stretched out a hand toward the dark, rough hills before us. “There is Britain. If you like, I will make landfall and you can go your way. But hear me, Irish—and I hope you heed me well—if you wish, I will take you to Gaul with me. You can winter in my house and return with us in the spring when we come again to trade.” He grinned expansively. “Well, what do you say? Come with me and live like a king all winter, or go now and face peril and danger and wild animals.”