After Rome (16 page)

“Then who brought you home, Father?”

“An avaricious scoundrel who made me promise to pay him an exorbitant sum as soon as we reached Viroconium. Which reminds me: Go out to him, Esoros, and see that he is paid. You know where my strongbox is.”

“I know where it was,” the steward replied bleakly.

“You mean it's gone!”

“The raiders took it.”

Vintrex seemed to shrink inside his clothes.

“You may recall that I have money, Father,” Cadogan said. “Until things improve it will be at your disposal.”

If he expected his father to thank him for the offer he was disappointed. Vintrex was in no mood to be grateful for anything. “Who can say when things will improve? The highway between Londinium and Viroconium was thronged with refugees heading west. Men begged me to carry their household goods in my cart; mothers pleaded with me to take their infants. Where the highway cut through the forest they crowded into the center of the road, as if the pavement itself could protect them. Some of them were as bony as the Romans; they must have been starving for weeks. It was like being surrounded by ghosts. When at last I saw the walls of Viroconium my relief was enormous. Then I walked into my house and found my reflecting pool filled with rubbish.” The old man's voice crackled with anger. “How could you do that to me, Esoros?”

If the steward was taken aback by his master's attack he did not show it. “Those things came from your wife's chambers, my lord.”

At the mention of his dead wife, Vintrex briefly closed his eyes. When he opened them again he said in a more reasonable tone, “You should have burned them, Esoros, not left an unpleasant situation for me to deal with. Surely you know when to act on your own initiative.”

Before Esoros could respond, Vintrex drew a sharp intake of breath. “What in Christ's holy name,” he demanded, leveling a bony forefinger at the apparition entering the room, “is
that
?”

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Pelemos was fully aware.

His wakening had happened gradually, and against his will. Perhaps the process began when he sat on the pony and put his foot on the ground; on Mother Earth. It gathered momentum when they neared the mountains, and the sharp air lanced through his nostrils and into his numbed brain. It was completed on the night he told the story.

The following day he realized the trees marching up the slopes were not trees he knew. Fern and bracken were of unfamiliar colors. Soaring peaks in the distance astonished his eyes. He was in a different place, one that Ithill had never occupied. How strange to feel the
lack
of her presence!

Pelemos did not listen to the exchange between Dinas and Meradoc and therefore was unaware of the mention of murder. Yet he was aware that the atmosphere had changed, though his concentration was on the scenery. Swathes of peaty moorland were broken by rocky outcroppings. Abrupt cliffs thrust upward like swords through the thin topsoil. Great boulders were scattered at random, indifferent spectators to an ancient cataclysm.

Indifferent could be good.

“Cymru,” he said aloud.

Dinas turned in the saddle to look at him. “What did you say, Pelemos?”

“Cymru is a beautiful name. Like music.”

“It is,” Dinas agreed.

“The kingdom of Rheged. And the peaks of Eryri.”

“That's right. You know where you are.”

“I do now,” said Pelemos.

Every step was taking him farther away from pain.

Sometime in the future he would be able to think of Ithill again, of Ithill and the girls, because they were safe in the distance. Later still he would be able to look forward to them and not backward at them. He knew this though he did not know how he knew it.

The mountains, unlike the God he once had believed in, were here and now. He had a visceral sense of their immense weight. Their great age. He could almost worship their overwhelming presence. “I like the mountains,” he remarked aloud.

Dinas turned to look at him again. “And the people?”

“I like the people too.”

Dinas smiled, though his eyes were sad. “A Roman called Cato once described the Cymri as ‘devoted to warfare and witty conversation.'”

They rode on and on. Up and up.

By the close of day the land was engulfed in purple shadows. One last flare of gold and crimson from the west, then darkness. Dinas drew rein. “Night in these mountains can be as black as the inside of a cow,” he warned his companions. “Stay close to me now, we only have a short distance to go.” He led the way beneath an overhanging shelf of rock, then onto a narrow ridge that climbed toward the sky.

A million stars blazed over them.

Pelemos caught his breath.

Dinas laughed. “Some people worship the stars as gods, or the eyes of gods,” he said. “Others claim the stars are precious jewels hanging in the sky.”

“What do you think they are?” Meradoc asked.

Dinas laughed again. “I think they are just stars.”

The dark horse halted of his own accord in front of an earth-and-stone cabin tucked into the shoulder of a mountain. Dinas felt a pulse begin to pound at the base of his throat. It always happened, no matter how many times they met. Saba was a gliding walk, a laughing voice, wide-set gray eyes and a formidable jaw. She was all of that and none of it.

He gave one of his assortment of whistles—two low notes, followed by a trill. Moments later a door opened slightly and a wedge of firelight lanced through the darkness.

“It's me, Saba,” Dinas called. “I've brought a couple of friends.”

The door was flung wide and a woman stood there. Seen in silhouette with her back to the light, she was almost as tall as a man. Two dogs stood beside her, one on either hand. They did not wave their tails until she said, “You are well come as always, Dinas. You and your friends.” Her voice was almost as low as a man's, but sweeter. “Put your horses in the lambing shed—you know where it is—then come inside and have a meal. There's mutton and barley in the pot.”

“Saba always has mutton and barley in the pot,” Dinas assured the other two as he motioned them inside.

After the darkness, the firelit cabin seemed wonderfully bright. Saba's mountain home was not as large as Cadogan's fort in the forest. It had only one door and two small windows closed with heavy wooden shutters. The thick walls were made of uncut stones fitted so tightly together that they required no chinking, creating a cavelike atmosphere of security.

Looking around, Meradoc recognized the work of a craftsman.

Skillfully plaited rush matting had been affixed to the underside of the steep slate roof to add a thick layer of insulation. At one end of the room was a stone hearth with an iron crane forged in a curvilinear Celtic design. The fire that blazed on the hearth was made fragrant by pine knots. A snug wooden bedbox carved with Celtic symbols filled an adjoining alcove. A matching table and stools were at one side of the hearth; a large loom stood on the other side, utilizing the light from the fire. On the loom was a half-finished woolen blanket containing all the colors of the rainbow.

The dogs, a shaggy pair of black-and-white sheepdogs, stationed themselves at the woman's feet and watched the newcomers with bright eyes.

Meradoc said shyly, “You have a good home here.”

“It keeps the wind off,” Saba replied. Glancing at Dinas, she said, “I'm not used to compliments on my housekeeping.”

He raised one eyebrow. “Did you ever hear me complain?”

Saba laughed. Meradoc liked the way she laughed, tossing her hair back and exposing her full white throat.

Pelemos, to his surprise, liked her too. The first moment he heard her voice he had felt something stir in him that he had thought was dead. He was not ready to respond sexually to another woman; would not be ready in a long time, if ever, but it was reassuring to discover that he could feel again.

He was alive again.

When Saba gestured to him to seat himself, he drew a stool closer to the fire and sat basking in the heat. Only then did he realize how cold he had been since they entered the mountains. How cold he had been since Ithill died. How cold …

From the iron cauldron suspended on the crane, Saba scooped up steaming portions of meat, root vegetables and grain, which she served to the hungry men with black bread and cups of sweet, pure water. At first there was no sound in the room but the crackle of the fire on the hearth and three sets of jaws chewing eagerly. Soon, however, Dinas and Saba began the conversation of people who knew each other well.

“You're thinner than when I saw you last,” she told him.

“And you are plumper.”

“Sheep's butter,” she replied, quietly pleased by his offhand compliment. “In the small pot there on the table; put it on your bread.”

“No olive oil?”

“Not here.”

“Didn't I bring you some once?”

“You did, but I threw it out … no, I tell a lie. First I rubbed it on my skin, but I didn't like the smell. That's when I threw it out.”

“Waste of my good money,” Dinas remarked. He drained his cup and mopped his bowl with a hunk of bread, then held both out to her for a refill. Said casually, “I thought we might stop here for a while, Saba. We'll do our share of the work. I'll hunt deer and wild goats and Meradoc will set snares, he's become quite good at it. As for Pelemos, he was a farmer, so he'll be a great help to you in lambing season.”

Saba's jaw dropped. Lambs were not born until the end of winter, celebrated by the Celtic festival of Imbolc.

If her expression betrayed her surprise, her response was gracious. As she handed the refilled bowl and cup to Dinas she said, “You're welcome to stay as long as you like, all of you. I'd like to have company in the season of long nights. Pelemos, Meradoc, give me your bowls too. I'm sure you can eat more. Dinas devours everything in the larder when he comes to me, though until now he's never stayed for longer than half a moon.”

“Half a moon?” Meradoc queried.

Dinas said, “About half a month in the Roman calendar. Time here is still measured in the old way.”

“Like the animals and plants that sustain us,” Saba elaborated, “we live according to the sun and moon. A year has two seasons decided by the sun: winter and summer. The moon divides those seasons into sections for shearing and for weaving, for planting and for harvesting, for work and for rest. Because those things never change we need no calendars.”

“Some things change,” Dinas remarked.

“Apparently they do, or you wouldn't be wanting to spend the winter with me.”

“I have to think through a problem, and this is a good place for it.”

“I've never heard you admit you have any problems.”

“Things change,” he repeated.

Her eyes searched his face, flicked a glance at the other two men and returned to Dinas. “I think I have enough fodder put by for your horses; ponies don't eat much anyway.” She seemed to accept without complaint his disruption of her life.

Meradoc leaned over and whispered to Pelemos, “Are they married? Or what?”

Pelemos squinted at the couple in the firelight. “What, I'd say. But it's none of our business.”

When the three men could eat no more, the bowls were wiped clean and the fire banked while Meradoc went out to the shed to make certain the horses were bedded down for the night. He broke the ice in the stone cistern and refilled their water buckets. He rubbed down the stallion and the ponies as well, paying particular attention to each animal's itchy places. The dark horse loved to be scratched behind his ears.

Upon his return to the cabin Saba directed him and Pelemos to a sleeping loft opposite the fireplace. It was accessed by means of a wooden ladder. Meradoc scrambled up first. The loft was surprisingly roomy; he could stand upright below the ridge of the roof. The goat shed in Deva where he usually slept was not nearly as dry, nor as pleasant. It had smelled of goat and other, less pleasant things.

The sleeping loft smelled of the armloads of clean straw thickly piled on the floor. Meradoc took a deep breath. And smiled.

As Pelemos started—with some trepidation—to follow Meradoc up the ladder, Dinas told him, “There's enough blankets up there to keep an army warm. If you want any more, just sing out. Saba comes from a long line of slaters, but she supports herself with her sheep and there's nothing she can't make out of wool. She even wove my saddlebags for me. This woman does all the shearing and washes the fleeces and spins the wool herself. Cross her at your peril, friends; she could break you over her knee.”

Saba laughed.

Pelemos paused halfway up the ladder. Hoping to hear her laugh again.

While the other two made themselves comfortable in the loft and settled down for the night, Dinas and Saba took seats by the fire. They placed their stools in the way they always placed them; close enough for their knees to touch. The two dogs stretched out on the hearth beside them.

Meradoc tried not to overhear their conversation but sound carried upward.

He heard Dinas say, “When I leave this time I'll be taking my treasure with me, Saba.”

“And here was me,” she teased, “thinking you'd made the journey just to see my dimples.”

“That too. But dimples won't buy horses and weapons.”

Thick lashes curtained her eyes. Her thoughts hid behind those curtains, peeping out. “Your friends don't look like warriors to me.”

“They aren't. But the fifty men I'm going to recruit will be.”

“Fifty men,” she said calmly. “As many as that. Quite a crowd for a man who boasts of being a lone wolf.”

“I'll need at least that many if I hope to get my share.”

Responding to a change in the tone of his voice, one of the dogs stood up and laid a shaggy head on his thigh. Dinas absentmindedly fondled the silky ears.