The Circle of the Gods (19 page)

They watched the three boats move downstream and slide from the light of the leaping flames into the murky curtain of night. Then they searched the houses and grain pits for all they could bundle and carry. They took plunder of bronze and silver armbands, and brooches and torques. They stripped the dead of their weapons but touched none of their clothes for the Saxon men with no love of cleanliness stank like polecats. Then in darkness they made their way upriver. They swam their steeds across it at dawn, laden like peddlers and baggagemen.

At midday they rode up the slope of a wide valley through which ran a narrow tributary of the Tamesis. Just below the crest a poor stockade of thorns and loosely piled turves enclosed a group of huts. Seeing them coming, the villagers ran to the ridge crest and there halted to watch them.

Arturo, his men following, rode into the stockade and there unloaded the stores and plunder which they had taken from the Saxons. As they did so an old man came limping from one of the huts and approached Arturo.

Greeting him, Arturo said, “You come without fear, unlike the rest of your kind. Look at us. Do we seem like Saxon robbers to you?”

The man shook his head. “No, my lord. But know that had I the full use of my old legs I would have run, too. It is not only by the Saxon kind that we are plundered and robbed and killed. In these parts are men of our own race who do the same.”

“The times are changing. Know now that all the valleys of the river from here to the high wolds are the domain of Captain Arturo, who now speaks to you. These last days we have taken war to the Saxons and this is our booty”—he nodded at the corn sacks and baskets and the piled Saxon plunder and weapons—“which we now give to you and your people. In return we ask for nothing that you cannot find a willingness in your hearts to give. We are to be found at the Villa of the Three Nymphs.”

Without waiting for the old man to reply, Arturo wheeled his horse and led his companions from the village. Riding at his side, Gelliga said, “No forced levies, no pressed labour—they will think us witless, my captain. We should at least have taken a pannier of seed corn.”

Arturo shook his head. “No. We are not Saxon robbers, or some thieving band of cutthroats who have forgotten their own race. The gods will touch their hearts with the finger of faith to rouse them to new hope and true generosity.”

Whether indeed the gods did this or, more likely, the villagers acted from a policy of caution scantily endowed with goodwill, the upshot was that four days later a pony-drawn cart on wooden runners came up the snow-covered valley to the villa, attended by two youths whose curiosity showed clearly through their faces. In the cart were two earthenware pots full of flour, a basket of flat bread cakes, two skins of beer and half a deer carcass.

After Arturo had thanked them the two youths stood awkwardly by the cart without making move to leave the villa yard. Seeing their hesitation to go, Arturo said, “You would eat and drink before you leave?”

One of the youths shook his head and then answered hesitantly, “No, my lord.… We are to say that pony and cart are yours and … and we go with it. To stay here and serve you.”

For a moment Arturo said nothing but he knew that in the most wretched of men there was always one heart spot that the gods could touch. For slaves he had no use since forced labour was the seeding ground of treachery. But a willing man was without price. Now, smiling at the two, he said, “You look alike.”

“We are brothers, my lord. We will stay and work for you … and—” the taller of the two, who was speaking, hesitated and then smiled. “And perhaps one day you will arm and horse us to fight against the sea people.”

“For which we are impatient, my lord,” said the other with a sudden grimness, “for the Saxons killed our father and carried away our sister.”

His face forced to severity to hide the sudden joy in him, Arturo said commandingly, “So be it. Work hard and drill hard and the day will come.”

From then on through the slowly lengthening days until the first primroses began to push pale buds from their green leaf rosettes and the rooks in the leafless trees began to bicker and fight over their winter-ruined nesting sites and the trout rested thin with spawning in the valley stream, Arturo and his companions carried war against the river Saxons.

They struck in short fierce raids mostly by night. When they attacked a Saxon village by day it was always just as the light was going and the men were settling to their eating and drinking and the cooking fires flamed high and made the flinging of firebrands onto the hut roofs easy.

Of his own men Arturo lost two. Lacto of Calcaria in the country of the Parisi was killed by the thrust of a scramasax into his groin, and Tarius of the Brigantes, the oldest of the companions, had his horse hamstrung, to be stabbed to death as, earthbound, he tried to fight off his enemy. But against these losses there came fresh cavalrymen to join them; for innocent-looking, moon-faced Lancelo returned secretly to his family home in Corinium and there recruited willing men from the Sabrina wing and brought them through the high wolds and forests to the villa.

Since the death of a comrade was to Arturo like the death of a brother, he sought all ways to protect them. He took from the Saxon war booty the small round shields which were easier to handle than the large, cumbersome shields that Ambrosius's men were drilled to use. The Saxons facing mounted men came in fast and ducked the lance to make a great stabbing thrust at the rider's groin; but the small buckler could be quickly dropped to turn away the upward jab and leave the comrade free to ride the man down. Later too, the lances were discarded. In a set battle charge they would have their use, but in quick night-raiding they were more nuisance than they were worth. Sword and small round shield were enough.

In two months Arturo had cleared five miles of the upper river valley and the closely adjoining lands. Tribute came now willingly from the British villages and farms that knew a peace and safety long absent. In far Glevum Count Ambrosius had heard of Arturo's exploits and for a while had considered sending two troops of cavalry against him, but had discarded the idea since he feared the men might desert and join Arturo and their comrades who had already gone to his side. At the moment Arturo was no more to him than the bite of a flea in his sleeping blanket. When the fine weather returned, he promised himself, he would move against him. Now was not the moment to risk the ridicule of an open desertion of a troop of cavalry to the outlawed son of the Chief of the tribe of the Enduring Crow. Already enough of his men had gone over to Arturo to make him quick with anger when his name was mentioned.

As spring broke over the land Arturo could look with pride at the force he commanded at Villa of the Three Nymphs. He had enough men for a full troop of horse and, beyond fighting men, there were another dozen who worked and serviced the villa and the warriors. The villa itself was fast being repaired and warmed again to human life. The stables had been extended for the horses and a smithy set up for the repair of tools and arms. A wandering Christian monk called Pasco—who would give no details of his life, though he spoke their tongue with the heavy brogue of a Scotti—had settled with them unasked and finally welcomed because of his skill with wounds and ills and his reluctance to preach or proselytize.

Among the comrades there were occasional small quarrels but none so troubling that they went beyond the usual barrack-life jealousies and mead- or beer-stirred sudden resentments at imagined slights. One bond held them all firmly together, their love and admiration for Arturo. Smile though they might, and joke amongst themselves at their captain, there was none who would deny that Arturo's sure knowledge of being god-touched and god-directed was as real to him as the sword he carried and the horse he rode. Unmarked by them, legend was slowly growing about him and the full truth behind his own words escaped even Gelliga when at night in the long eating hall, full of food and flushed with drink, he would sing:

“The knife has gone into the food
And the good wine fills the horn
In Arturo's hall …
Here is food for your hound
And corn for your horse
In Arturo's hall …
But none there shall enter unless he be
Swift with a sword and comrade to all.”

But with the passing of the evening and the drink Gelliga's and the other comrades'moods would change and then he sang of the yearning that not even battle and the chance of death waiting at the opening door of each day could smother:

Take my true greeting to the girl of thick tresses
The sweetheart I lay with in the glen of green willows.

…

It was of this sentiment that Pasco, the priest, spoke to Arturo one morning when the first burst of true lark song rang brittle from above the pastures, and the woods were awake with the fret of the calls of the returning chiffchaffs.

He said, “You dream a dream, my son, for this country which I, too, hold dear in my heart. But that dream must be made real by men of human clay. Your comrades are cloistered here without the full and fulfilling submission to God's love alone which men of my kind know. Already now when the people around send tribute there are women who find reason to walk with the carts. As foxes fight over vixens in the spring and the gentle doves grow fierce in courtship, so stirs the same passion in the hearts of men.” He smiled, rubbed the tip of his nose, his eyes quizzical, and went on, “The gods you worship may have made you in a different mould from your comrades—though I doubt it. You order things well here. Now you must order this, not as Count Ambrosius does with loose camp followers at Corinium, nor as your own Prince Gerontius with the stews of Isca. You are the captain of a brotherhood—but not a brotherhood of monks.”

Acknowledging the wisdom of Pasco's words, Arturo talked the matter over with Durstan and Gelliga. Each week now two or three men filtered through the valleys and woods to the villa from Ambrosius's forces. Some brought horse and weapons, and some came on foot with naught but a dagger in their belts. But with these reinforcements, all of them well-trained, there were now more men than mounts. So Arturo announced to his comrades that some of those who come from far lands could return to their people to visit sweethearts and wives. They would be chosen by the drawing of lots so that the main force of the brotherhood was not depleted beyond the number of horses they owned. For those whose homes lay around the eastward side of the Sabrina basin permission was given for their womenfolk to visit the villa for limited periods. Quarters would be set up in the west wing of the villa, but at the first sign of discord or quarrelling then all the women would be banished.

Over all these concessions Arturo laid one adamant condition. All men would be back by the feast of Beltine, which was the first day of the month of Damara, the goddess of fertility and growth. At the end of this month—though Arturo kept this secret between himself and his two closest comrades, Durstan and Gelliga—he meant to move from the villa, for this was a time when he guessed that Count Ambrosius might be tempted to strike at him. But more to his concern, it was also the time when he meant to make his own move which would send his name echoing widely over the country and bring even more men to his side.

Among those who were unlucky in the first drawing of lots was Lancelo. But one of the comrades, who had neither wife nor sweetheart, nor immediate wish for either, set his lot up for bid and Lancelo gained it in exchange for a pair of old but serviceable bronze greaves taken as plunder in a Saxon raid.

Seven days later Lancelo rode out of the forest and into the countyard of the villa. There were only two men in the courtyard at that moment, for the rest were either at their work or exercising and drilling their mounts in the lower valley pasture. One of the men was Arturo, who sat in the sunlight on the edge of the fountain of the nymphs with old, grey-muzzled Anga at his feet.

Lancelo rode up to him and dismounted. He saluted Arturo and said, his face grave, “I bring no sweetheart or wife, my captain. Sweetheart I had, but on my second night in Corinium she betrayed me to Count Ambrosius's men. But one of the Sabrina men, an old friend, sent me warning in time so that we were able to escape.”

“We?”

“My family, my captain. Had I left them they would have been butchered by the troopers in their anger at my escape. I ask your permission for them to stay here until such time as they can move on to a fresh place of safety.”

“Where are they now?”

“They wait in the wood for a signal from me.”

“Then make it, good Lancelo.”

Lancelo's face beamed with pleasure. He put two fingers to his mouth and blew a piercing whistle. A few moments later an elderly man rode out of the wood on a small pony. He was small, bareheaded, and almost bald and wrapped in a great square cloak of sewn furs. Across the withers of his mount hung two bulky, awkward packs of stained and patched cloth. At his side on another pony rode a woman wearing a cloak and cowl of red wool, and her mount carried two slung panniers of plaited withy branches.

They rode up to Arturo and as they halted the woman pushed the folds of her cowl free of her face and a pair of clear blue eyes regarded Arturo solemnly. In that instant Arturo knew with a certainty that this moment was god-touched. At three different times in his life he had looked into those eyes, and now, this time, he knew that here was no capricious play of time and chance but the deliberate hands of the gods as they moved their pieces on the playing board of his destiny. Although he would have returned the smile he kept his face calm and turned to the man.

He said, “I did not know that the father of Lancelo was Ansold the armourer and smith, for here we ask nothing of a man's past or family so long as he brings loyalty and a ready sword. But you, good Ansold, are more than welcome.
Aie
… and would be even without your hammers and tongs.” He nodded to one of the packs, from which protruded the handle of a long pair of forging grips.