The Circle of the Gods (7 page)

The next morning Arturo set about gathering the things he wanted to make good his escape and since he did not stray from the settlement area little notice was taken of him. Not once did he go down to the beach or beyond the settlement bounds for the next week. He loafed about the cave, watching and talking to the women baking bread and grinding corn. He spent time each day to sit and talk to Bada, who, apart from being the horn blower, was a skilled bowmaker. Arturo took delight in the man's adroitness in shaping and fashioning the layers of wood to make bows, and learning from him how to tell by look, feel and hand-tensing the best lengths of gut and sinew for use in finely plaiting drawstrings. Since autumn would soon pass into winter, and selected cattle and swine were now being taken to the slaughter pen for killing and curing against the hard days to come, he would sit atop the fence of the killing pen and watch and talk with the tribesmen working at the skinning and quartering of beasts. He was polite, ever cheerful with everyone and willing always to humour Inbar and to serve him. But though this, he knew, pleased Inbar, he noticed that always someone, man or boy, and different every day, watched him.

Only at night, as he lay on his bed, did his face show his real thoughts, stubborn thoughts that matched the stubborn lines of his face and which made him clench his teeth and grind them slowly. But when everyone else in the hall was asleep, he would sit up quietly and, by the dim light of the red glow of the turf and peat fire, he would draw from inside the straw-stuffed palliasse of his bed the things he had quietly filched during his loafing days. He needed little light to work by for his preparations were simple.

By the near end of October when the new moon was passing to its first quarter, Arturo had everything ready. He only needed Inbar to sit after Mawga, himself and the servants had retired to bed, as he did sometimes, warming himself at the night-piled fire and drinking a last beaker of mead or wine before retiring.

When the right moment came he was favoured by the weather and the tides. As though, he thought as he lay abed, fully dressed and with his needs for escape concealed under his tunic, the gods were on his side.

Through his partly open bed-curtains he watched Inbar sitting on a stool by the peat fire, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and a great beaker of mead cradled in his hands as he warmed it. The thought had been in his mind during his planning that he could kill the man, but he had decided against it. Inbar could have engineered some accident to kill him and there would have been no trouble. But if he killed Inbar without honour like some assassin, then the blood-mark would have been put on his name by the Prince of Dumnonia and no man in the west would have given him aid or shelter. No matter, he thought, as he watched Inbar raise the beaker and drink, the time for an honourable killing of Inbar would come. This was no moment to use the knife which he carried bound to his right leg under his long trews.

Inbar coughed and hiccoughed as he swallowed his drink and his body swayed a little as he was lulled between part sleep and part intoxication. Arturo slipped from his bed platform and with no attempt to quieten his movements walked toward the fire.

Inbar heard him and half turned. In a good mood from warmth and drink, he smiled and said, “What, not abed and fully dressed, my Arturo?”

“I was cold and couldn't sleep, my lord.”

Inbar said nothing for a moment or two, but the smile stayed on his lips. He held out the beaker and Arturo took it and drank a little of the mead and then handed the beaker back.

“It puts warmth in the gut,” said Inbar.

“And dreams in the head,” said Arturo, thinking that if the opportunity he needed did not come then he would try again some other night and there would, because of this night, be no suspicion in Inbar.

Inbar belched gently and said, “And what dreams does my Arturo dream?”

Humouring him, Arturo answered, “That the days between me and manhood were gone.”

“And if they were?”

“Then, my lord, I would ask you leave to take my arms and go east to fight against the Saxons now that the troubles have started again.”

“How do you know that?”

“From every peddler and packman who passes. Ambrosius and Vortigem are in arms again.”

“More likely against one another than against the long-keel men.” Eyeing him for a moment in silence, Inbar gave a sudden laugh. “And which would you serve? Vortigern, who to save his life once married the harlot daughter of Hengist? Or Ambrosius, who, like his father once, dreams of wearing an emperor's purple?”

“Ambrosius is of our race. I would serve him and, by serving well, do honour to the people of the Enduring Crow.”

Mellowed by the mead, Inbar handed him the beaker and said, “Here, cool your hot blood with this and wish not your young years away so readily.”

“Nay, my lord. I have had enough.”

Inbar nodded his head and withdrew the beaker. “And so have I. Enough so that my bladder calls for relief.” He rose slowly and, putting his hand on Arturo's shoulder, said, “Go to bed, and dream not of fighting.”

“Aye, my lord.”

As Arturo began to walk to his bed Inbar moved to the main door and drew from his belt pouch the long key of the heavy wooden lock. He unlocked the door and went out. The night air swept in and sent the grey fire ashes swirling. The door swung almost closed behind him. As it did so Arturo turned quickly and went to the fire. He picked up the stout length of oak plank which lay there for prodding the turves and ran to stand against the wall so that the inswinging door would hide him.

Outside he heard the sound of Inbar relieving himself, and from the far end of the hall came the light sound of Mawga snoring. Without harming Inbar he could have slipped out and run for liberty, but Inbar would have raised the alarm and every man, boy and dog in the settlement would have been soon hunting after him. Such a shift would have served him nothing.

Holding the oak post two-handed, Arturo waited. He heard Inbar belch outside and then the shuffle of his feet as he turned to enter. As the door swung open slowly Arturo raised the oak plank, stepped forward to clear the swinging door and crashed the long post down onto the man's skull.

Inbar collapsed to the ground and lay still, and the door swung back to be held by his prone body, which sprawled across the threshold. Arturo, moving now without excitement or clumsy haste, bent over Inbar and pulled him free from the threshold and then took the key from the lock. He went out and locked the door from the outside and began to run toward the scrub and bracken growths that grew up the side of the valley. When he reached the first of the bracken he sent the key flying deep into the now dying growths.

Reaching the crest of the valley side, keeping well below the skyline to avoid being seen by any of the settlement patrols, he dropped his pace to a steady trot, heading always east and on a parallel line to the cliffs. He had long discarded the temptation of striking inland and making a bid overland for Isca. His best chance of escape was by a route which none would dream that he would risk.

He moved steadily along the line of a wide gully that ran parallel with the sea on his left. There was light from the stars and the thin slip of the new crescent moon. After a time the gully sloped upward and was lost in a maze of rocks and broken ground not far from the cliffs'edges and here Arturo followed a narrow path which took him out along a headland which he knew well. When he reached its point he climbed down its face, disturbing the roosting seabirds, until he firmly stood on a flat rock at its foot. Some way below him the rock foot disappeared into deep water, the sea heaving and swinging as the tide, which some time before had been at full ebb, was now setting in flood eastward along the coast. Under the light of the stars and the moon Arturo could see the dark line of current streaming away from the headland out to sea. It was a current which the men of the settlement used in their fishing for one could work the tides to go west or east on the ebb and return on the flood. Arturo knew that many, many miles away to the east the current swung inshore again and would carry a man with it if he humoured it. To fight it was to ask for an early drowning, and to ride with it for the long swing out and back called for the strength and endurance of more than most men since the body weakened fast with just the effort of keeping afloat.

But, as Arturo had realized when his bursting of the bladders of sea wrack had set him thinking of escape, that which a man could not achieve by strength he might well, with some risk, bring to fruit by artifice.

He sat down and began to work fast. From beneath his tunic he pulled out three pigs'bladders stolen from the slaughtering pens and, blowing them up, trapped the gut ends with thin but strong lengths of old Bada's bowstring sinews, leaving small loops in the thonging through which he ran a long length of thickly braided gut to fasten the three bladders together so that he could slip them over his head and secure them under his armpits to keep him afloat without any effort on his part. Inside his tunic he had, wrapped in a large piece of pig bladder, two flat rounds of hard bread and a slice of smoked neat's flesh. The tidal current would eventually bear him safely to shore but, although the sea lacked yet its biting winter cold, it could sap strength and the body's warmth. Against this the blood's fire must be stoked with food. As for thirst … well, that must be endured if there were not juice enough in a handful of small crab apples which he carried with the other food in the blouse of his belted tunic.

His preparations complete, the bladders securely about him, he went to the rock edge, waited awhile to judge the surge of the slowly heaving seas, and then jumped as a great swell rose below him, keeping his arms stiff at his sides to hold from slipping the braided thonging that joined the bladders. He landed backside first and as he went under felt the fierce tug of the thonging cut into his armpits as the bladders dragged above him. Then he surfaced, riding high and comfortably, and the current took him and bore him away from the cliff point seaward, swinging him gently up and down in its long-paced swell.

One night late, long after Ricat's guests had departed. Arturo came to Tia. She had dozed off to light sleep when she awoke to hear voices in the courtyard. One of the voices was Ricat's but the other meant nothing to her, dulled with sleep still. Then came the sound of footsteps on the outside stairs, a knock on her door, and Ricat's voice called, “Mistress Tia, you have a visitor.”

Throwing a cloak over her shoulders, Tia went to the door and opened it. Silhouetted against the star-strippled sky stood Ricat and Arturo.

“Arturo!”

Tia reached out her hands for him and Ricat with a chuckle pushed the boy forward and said, “When you have finished with him, send him down. There is food and drink enough on the table board still.” He turned away and clattered down the steps.

Tia drew Arturo into the room and embraced him. Even in her joy she smiled briefly to herself, for he stood within the embrace patiently like a well-schooled pony and his lips only briefly and shyly touched her cheek.

Their greeting over, she stood back from him, fetched a pinewood taper spill and from her bed light set the wall-sconce lamps to flame. Turning back to him, she asked, “You are well?”

“Yes, my mother.”

“Thank the gods for that.”

“
Aie
… they helped somewhat. But we must not forget the pigs.” He said it solemnly, but the lamplights marked a familiar and brief ironic smile.

“Pigs?”

“Forget them, Mother. I am safe and sound and have been well fed these last five days since I came ashore.” Then, with a touch of maturity and command, he reached forward, took her arm and led her to the bed. “Sit down, my mother, and I will tell you all.”

Tia sat down on the bed and Arturo straddled himself across a stool and began to tell his story. As she listened Tia had it borne into her that despite his lack of years, not yet in his twelfth year, he was fast outstripping boyhood. Close about him hung the shadow of the man to be, fairly set up, holding himself with quiet pride and sureness. Aye, she thought, maybe too sure, too proudful. His rough tunic and loose trews were torn and dirty and about his waist he carried a tightly buckled leather belt in which, without benefit of scabbard, he wore a short double-edged sword, its cutting edges keenly honed.

Without hurry he told her the story of his escape and again, despite her joy in his presence, she hid a smile now and then as he fell victim to garnishing truth with fancy.

“… So I was cradled by the tide and carried safely far up the coast beyond the Point of Hercules. As I went I ate crab apples and neat's meat and the mermaids sang to me to while the night away and with the rising of the sun the pearl-bellied dolphins made a ring about me and amused me by their sports.”

Coming ashore on the estuary sands close to the mouth of the Two Rivers, he had gone inland, walking the high divide between the rivers southward toward Isca, and had found no lack of food or friendship.

“Most gave me food gladly for I told them that I had been taken for slave in a Scotti raid and had seized my chance to jump overboard to escape in bad weather. At other times, if I could not eat by charity, I filled my belly by theft, mostly by taking eggs from the hen roosts and sometimes a hen for roasting over the embers of a friendly charcoal burner's fire. And one night, as I sat by a river pool, a dog otter came up from the dark waters, carrying a salmon. It killed the fish with a bite across the neck, feasted but briefly and left the rest for me. The taste of raw salmon curd and its red-berried spawning seed is in my mouth still.”

“And the sword you carry—which here you must not wear for none of your age may openly bear arms?”

Enjoying himself and genuinely glad to have arrived, for, in truth, his travels had been far less than comfortable, Arturo grinned and was momentarily all boy, the shadow of manhood gone from him. He asked, “Would you have the truth or some comforting fable, my gentle mother?”