"I like to think so. One tries to hold to the civilized values of one's prime. You knew I studied there as a young man, before I was privileged to enter your father's service? Those years, ah, yes, those were the great years, but as one grows older, perhaps one tends to look back too much, too much."
I said something civil about this being of advantage to an historian, and asked if he would honour me with a reading from his work. I had noticed the lighted lamp standing on a stone table by the cypresses, and the rolls lying handily beside it.
"Would you really care to hear it?" He moved that way readily. "Some parts of it, I am sure, would interest you enormously. And it is a part that you can help me to add to, I believe. As it chances, I have it here with me, this roll, yes, this is the one... Shall we sit? The stone is dry, and the evening tolerably mild. I think we shall come to no harm out here by the roses —"
The section he chose to read was his account of the events after Ambrosius returned to Greater Britain; he had been close to my father for most of that time, while I had been involved elsewhere. After he had finished reading he put his questions, and I was able to supply details of the final battle with Hengist at Kaerconan and the subsequent siege of York, and the work of settlement and rebuilding that came after. I filled in for him, too, the campaign that Uther had waged against Gilloman in Ireland. I had gone with Uther while Ambrosius stayed in Winchester; Blaise had been with him there, and it was to Blaise that I had owed the account of my father's death while I was overseas.
He told me about it again. "I can still see it, that great bedchamber at Winchester, with the doctors, and the nobles standing there, and your father lying against the pillows, near to death, but sensible, and talking to you as if you were there in the room. I was beside him, ready to write down anything that was needed, and more than once I glanced down to the foot of the King's bed, half thinking to see you there. And all the while you were voyaging back from the Irish wars, bringing the great stone to lay on his grave."
He fell to nodding then, as old men do, as if he would go back for ever to the stories of times gone by. I brought him back to the present. "And how far have you gone with your account of the times?"
"Oh, I try to set down all that passes. But now that I am out of the center of affairs, and have to depend on the talk from the town, or on anyone who calls to see me, it is hard to know how much I miss. I have correspondents, but sometimes they are lax, yes, the young men are not what they were... It's a great chance that brings you here, Merlin, a great day for me. You will stay? As long as you wish, dear boy; you'll have seen that we live simply, but it's a good life, and there is still so much to talk about, so much... And you must see my vines. Yes, a fine white grape, that ripens to a marvellous sweetness if the year is a good one. Figs do well here, and peaches, and I have even had some success with a pomegranate tree from Italy."
"I can't stay this time, I'm afraid." I spoke with genuine regret. "I have to go north in the morning. But if I may, I'll come back before long — and with plenty to tell you, too, I promise you! There are great things afoot now, and you will be doing men a service if you will put them down. Meantime, if I can, would you like me to send letters from time to time? I hope to be back at Arthur's side before winter, and it will keep you in touch."
His delight was patent. We talked for a little longer, then, as the night-flying insects began to crowd to the lamp, we carried it indoors, and parted for the night.
My bedchamber window looked out over the terrace where we had been sitting. For a long time before I lay down to sleep I leaned my elbows on the sill, looking out and breathing the night scents that came in wave after wave on the breeze. The thrush had stopped singing, and now the soft hush of falling water filled the night. A new moon lay on its back, and stars were out. Here, away from lights and sounds of town or village, the night was deep, the black sky stretching, fathomless, away among the spheres, to some unimaginable world where gods walked, and suns and moons showered down like petals falling. Some power there is that draws men's eyes and hearts up and outward, beyond the heavy clay that fastens them to earth. Music can take them, and the moon's light, and, I suppose, love, though I had not known it then, except in worship.
The tears were there again, and I let them fall. I knew now what cloud it was that had lain over my horizon ever since that chance meeting on the moorland road. How, I did not know, but the boy Ninian — so young and quiet, and with a grace in look and motion that gave the lie to the ugly slave-burn on his arm — he had had about him the mark of a coming death. This, once seeing, any man might have wept for, but I was weeping, too, for myself; for Merlin the enchanter, who saw, and could do nothing; who walked his own lonely heights where it seemed that none would ever come near to him. In the boy's still face and listening eyes, that night on the moor when the birds had called, I had caught a glimpse of what might have been. For the first time, since those days long ago when I had sat at Galapas' feet to learn the arts of magic, I had seen someone who might have learned worthily from me. Not as others had wanted to learn, for power or excitement, or for the prosecution of some enmity or private greed; but because he had seen, darkly with a child's eyes, how the gods move with the winds and speak with the sea and sleep in the gentle herbs; and how God himself is the sum of all that is on the face of the lovely earth. Magic is the door through which mortal man may sometimes step, to find the gates in the hollow hills, and let himself through into the halls of that other world. I could, but for that shining edge of doom, have opened those gates for him, and, when I needed it no longer, have left him the key.
And now he was dead. I had known it, I think, after I had spoken in the market-place. My sharp, unthinking protest had been made for no reason that I knew; the knowledge came later. And always, when I spoke like that, men did unquestioningly as I bade them. So at least the boy had had his cakes, and the day's sunshine.
I turned away from the thin, brightening moon, and lay down.
* * *
"At least he had the cakes, and the day's sunshine." Beltane the goldsmith told us about it as we shared supper at the town's tavern the next evening. He was unusually silent, for him, and seemed stunned, clinging to our company as, in spite of his sharp tongue, he must have clung to the boy's.
"But — drowned." Ulfin said it on a disbelieving note, but I caught a glance from him that told me he had begun to put events together and understand them. "How did it happen?"
"That evening, at supper-time, he brought me back here and packed the things away. It had been a good day, and the take was heavy; we were sure of eating well. He had worked hard, and so when he saw some boys off down to bathe in the river, he asked if he might join them. He was a great one for washing himself... and it had been a hot day, and people's feet kick up a lot of dust, and dung besides, in the market-places. I let him go. The next thing was the boys came back, running, with the story. He must have trodden into a hole, and slipped out of his depth. It's a bad river, they tell me — How was I to know that? How could I know? When we came over yesterday the ford seemed so shallow, and so safe —"
"The body?" asked Ulfin, after a pause when he could see that I was not going to speak.
"Gone. Gone downstream, the boys said, like a log on the flood. He came up half a league down-river, but none of them could come near him, and then he vanished. It's a bad death, a puppy's death. He should be found, and buried like a man."
Ulfin said something kind, and after a while the little man's lamentations ran out, and the supper came, and he made shift to eat and drink, and was the better for it.
Next morning the sun shone again, and we went north, the three of us together, and four days later reached the country of the Votadini, which is called in the British tongue Manau Guotodin.
11
SOME TEN DAYS LATER, WITH due stops for trading, we reached Lot's city of Dunpeldyr. It was late afternoon of a cloudy day, and it was raining. We were lucky enough to find suitable lodgings in a taver
n near the south gate.
The town was little more than a close huddle of houses and shops near the foot of a great crag on which the castle was built. In times past the crag had contained the whole stronghold, but now the houses crowd, haphazard, between cliffs and river, and on the slopes of the crag itself, right up to the castle wall. The river (another Tyne) curves round the roots of the cliff, then runs in a wide meander across a mile or so of flat land to its sandy estuary. Along its banks the houses cluster, and boats are pulled up on the shingle. There are two bridges, a heavy wooden one set on stone piers, that holds the road to the main castle gate above; and another narrow span of planking which leads to a steep path serving the side gate of the castle. There had been no road-building here; the place had grown without plan, and certainly without beauty or amenity. The town is a mean one, of mud-brick houses with turfed roofs, and steep alleys which in stormy weather become torrents of foul water. The river, so fair only a short distance away, is here full of weed and debris. Between the crag and the river to the east is the market-place, where on the morrow Beltane would set out his wares.
One thing I knew I must do without delay. If, ironically enough, Beltane were to be my eyes inside the castle, neither Ulfin nor I must be seen to go about with him; so, dependent as he was on a servant, someone must be found to replace the drowned boy. Beltane had made no move to do this himself on our journey north, and now was only too grateful when I offered to do it for him.
A short way out of the town gates I had noticed a quarry; not much of a place, but still working. Next morning, carefully anonymous in a shabby cloak of rusty brown, I went there and sought out the quarry-master, a big, genial-looking ruffian who was strolling around among the half-derelict workings, and the equally derelict workmen, like a lord taking the summer air in his country demesne.
He looked me up and down with a fine air of disdain. "Able-bodied servants come expensive, my good sir." I could see him assessing me as he spoke, and coming up with a poor enough answer. "Nor have I one to spare. One gets all the riffraff in a place like this... prisoners, criminals, the lot. No one who'd ever be a decent house slave, or be trusted on a farm, or with any kind of skilled job. And muscle comes expensive. You'd best wait for the fair. All sorts come then, hiring themselves and their families, or selling themselves or their brats for food — though, come to that, you'd have to wait for winter and sharp weather to get the cheap market."
"I don't wish to wait. I can pay. I am travelling, and I need a man or a boy. He need have no skills, except to keep himself clean, and be faithful to his master, and have enough strength to travel even in winter, when the roads are foul."
As I spoke his manner grew more civil, and the assessment moved up a notch or two. "Travel? So, what is your business?"
I saw no reason to tell him that the servant was not for myself. "I am a doctor."
My answer had the effect it has nine times out of ten. He started eagerly to tell me of all his various ailments, of which, since he was more than forty years old, he had a full supply.
"Well," I said, when he had finished, "I can help you, I think, but it had better be mutual. If you have a likely hand you can let me have as a servant — and he should be cheap enough, since it's just the riffraff you get here — then perhaps we can do a deal? One more thing. As you will understand, in my trade there are secrets to be kept. I want no blabbermouth; he must be sparing of speech."
At that the rogue stared, then slapped his thigh and laughed, as if at the greatest joke in the world. He turned his head and bellowed a name. "Casso! Come here! Quickly, you oaf! Here's luck for you, lad, and a new master, and a fine new life adventuring!"
A lanky youth detached himself from a gang which was labouring on stone-breaking under an overhang that looked to me to be ready to collapse. He straightened slowly, and stared, before dropping his pick-helve and starting toward us.
"I'll spare you this one, Master Doctor," said the quarry-master genially. "He's everything you ask for." And he went off into fits of mirth once more.
The youth came up and stood, arms hanging, eyes on the ground. At a guess, he was about eighteen or nineteen. He looked strong enough — he would have to be, to survive that life for more than six months — but stupid to the point of idiocy.
"Casso?" I said. He looked up, and I saw that he was merely exhausted. In a life without hope or pleasure there was little point in spending energy on thought.
His master was laughing again. "It's no use talking to him. Anything you want to know you'll have to ask me, or look for yourself." He seized the lad's wrist and held up the arm. "See? Strong as a mule, and sound in wind and limb. And discreet enough, even for you. Discreet as hell, is our Casso. He's dumb."
The youth noticed the handling no more than would a mule, but at the last sentence he met my eyes again, briefly. I had been wrong. There was thought there, and with it hope; I saw the hope die.
"But not deaf with it, I gather?" I said. "What caused it, do you know?"
"You might say his own silly tongue." He started his great laugh again, caught my look, and cleared his throat instead. "You'll make no cure here, Master Doctor, his tongue's out. I never got the rights of it, but he used to be in service down in Bremenium, and the way I heard it, he opened his mouth too wide once too often. Not one to have patience with insolence, isn't the lord Aguisel... Ah, well, but he's learned his lesson. I got him with a job lot of labour after the town bridges were repaired. He's given me no trouble. And for all I know it was house service he was in before, so you'll be getting a bargain with a fine, young — Hey there!"
While we had been talking his eye had gone, from time to time, to the gang at work on the stone. Now he started over that way, with some shouted abuse at the "idle scum" who had seized the chance to work more slowly.
I looked thoughtfully at Casso. I had caught the look in his face, and the quick, involuntary shake of the head at the quarry-master's mention of "insolence." "You were in Aguisel's household?" I asked him.
A nod.
"I see." I thought I did, indeed. Aguisel was a man of evil reputation, a jackal to Lot's wolf, who laired in the hilltop remains of Bremenium fortress to the south. Things happened there which a decent man could only guess at. I had heard rumours of this trick of using dumb or blinded slaves.
"Am I right in thinking that you saw what you could not be allowed to report on?"
Another nod. This time his eyes remained fixed on me. It must have been long enough since anyone had tried even this sort of limited communication.
"I thought as much. I have heard stories, myself, of my lord Aguisel. Can you read or write, Casso?"
A shake of the head.
"Be thankful," I said dryly. "If you could, then by this time you would be dead."
The quarry-master had got his gang working again to his satisfaction. He was on his way back to us. I thought quickly.
The youth's dumbness might be no disadvantage to Beltane, who was more than able to do his own talking; but I had been working on the assumption that the new slave must act as his master's eyes while we were in Dunpeldyr. Now I saw that there was no need of this: whatever transpired in Lot's stronghold, Beltane was quite able to report on it himself. His sight was not strong, but his hearing was, and he could tell us what was said; what the place looked like would hardly matter. When we left Dunpeldyr, if the goldsmith needed a different servant, no doubt we could find one. But now time pressed, and here I could certainly purchase discretion, even if enforced, and, I thought, the loyalty that went with gratitude.
"Well?" asked the quarry-master.
I said: "Anyone who has survived service in Bremenium is certainly strong enough for anything I might require. Very well. I'll take him."
"Splendid, splendid!" The fellow waxed loud in his praise of my judgement and Casso's various excellences, so much so that I began to wonder if the slaves were in fact his own to dispose of, or if he was seeing a way to fill his own purse, and would perha
ps report the youth's death to his employers. When he began to haggle about price, I sent Casso to collect whatever possessions he had, with instructions to wait for me on the road. I have never seen why, because a man is your captive, or a purchase, he should be stripped of an elementary self-respect. Even a horse or a hound works the better for retaining a pride in itself.
After he had gone I turned back to the quarry-master. "Now we agreed, if you remember, that I would pay some part of the price in medicines. You will find me at the tavern by the south gate. If you come tonight, or send someone to ask for Master Emrys, I will have the medicines ready for you, and leave them to be picked up. And now, about the rest of the price..."
In the end we were agreed, and, followed by my new purchase, I made my way back to the tavern.
Casso's face fell when he heard that he was not to serve me, but to go with Beltane; but by the time the evening was through, with the warmth and good food and the lively company that crowded into the tavern, he looked like a plant that, dying in darkness, has been plunged suddenly into sunlit water. Beltane was outspokenly grateful to me, and embarked almost straight away on a long and happy exposition of his craft for Casso's sake. The latter could hardly have found a place in which his mutilation would have mattered less. I suspected that, as the evening wore through, Beltane began to find it a positive advantage to have a dumb servant. Ninian had hardly spoken at all, but neither had he listened. Casso drank it all in, fingering the pieces with his callused hands, his brain waking from the numbness of hopeless exhaustion, and expanding into pleasure as one watched.
The tavern was too small — and we were ostensibly too poor — to have a private chamber, but at the end of the hall, away from the fire, there was a deep alcove with a table and twin settles where we could be private enough. No one took much notice of us, and we stayed in our corner all evening, listening to the gossip that came into the tavern. Facts there were none, but there were plenty of rumours, the most important being that Arthur had fought and won two more engagements, and that the Saxons had accepted terms. The High King was to be in Linnuis for some time longer, but Lot, it was said, could be expected home any day now.