Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (51 page)

‘In all the world is like and unlike, like married to unlike, equal and opposite, completing and complementing. East there is and West, dawning there is and sunset. North is there, and South, heat is there and cold. Being is there and extinction, life and death, seeing and unseeing, seen and unseen. Those who are vowed to the truth must walk in the midst of lies, and the Sacred One of the Sun must call on the Gods Below.

‘So Rhiannon and Mannanan, equal and equal, opposite and opposite, hear you me. To you Mannanan of the House of Lear, who may no longer call on the Unconquered Sun because so long ago you did the will of the Unconquered Sun, to you I give Rhiannon, Queen of Those Below, to keep to the ages of ages, to serve you and to serve, through life to death and beyond death.

‘Rhiannon, Princess of the North, Lady of those that are gone, I give you Mannanan, Photinus the Greek, man of many names and many lives, last Lord of the Amber Road. He who is no man’s slave shall be your slave for ever.’

He stood up, and out of his oak-leaf wreath there rose a wren, ticking loudly. Three times it flew around the room and then fluttered out into the open air. It was the only bird I ever saw that took no notice of Rhiannon. It flew away. I did not know it then, but it was at sunset on that very day that my son was born and Phryne died.

Ours was the first case of the evening, but to my surprise it was not the last, and indeed it was the only summary hearing, the only dispute that belonged to a court of first instance. There came up to stand before Taliesin a long series of pairs of men, each with a dispute to settle, one already judged by a village gathering, and appealed from there to a nobleman or a prince, and now referred at the last to a Druid for final solution. It was clear, too, that Taliesin had been warned of each case long before and was ready with his judgement, with all its references to times of old and the decisions of kings long gone. And it was intriguing to hear how each pair of adversaries, especially where the case concerned land, made their arrangements to have the case heard in a Roman
court, so that the decision could be ratified and made safe against any desire of the Government to overthrow it, and so presented that only one Roman verdict would be possible and that the same as Taliesin’s. Indeed, I wondered, who rules this land?

Fifteen of these cases there were. Fifteen times the Druid fulfilled his function, which is nothing to do, I found with sacrifices and rites as Caesar imagined, but is a business of preserving the laws, which in a society where no man can write or read is a more difficult matter than you may imagine.

And then at the end, after the fifteenth case, and I can guess how it happened, since I have done the same myself, there was suddenly a red glow from the brazier in the centre of the inn, and the whole room was filled with a cloud of choking smoke. When it cleared, of course, there was no Druid but a dirty-faced man in ragged brown clothes was sitting at my side.

And then the feasting began. All the local people were trying to nerve themselves to go out and home in the dark, and that of course uses up a great deal of cider. And Rhiannon came and sat down opposite me, as if nothing had happened at all – her retainers found themselves somewhere else to sit and drink – and everything was quite ordinary, except that a crowd of Britons in a corner were singing a cauldron song, the first time I had heard such a thing:

and they all thumped their drinking cups on the tables, bang-bang-bang-bang:

I leaned across and I said to Rhiannon who sat opposite me, as Taliesin had now moved to be next to her and opposite to Pryderi:

‘Now, I am your master, and you must leave your journey to Sulis or wherever else it has struck your fancy to go, and come with me wherever
I
wish.’

‘Indeed,’ she answered, not angrily, but half laughing, and
there is little I like less than being laughed at. ‘It is you that must go wherever your mistress tells you, and follow
me
you must if it is your mistress I am.’

Taliesin, now recovered from his Awen and as stupid as the rest of us, opened his mouth to speak, but I felt Pryderi kick him under the table as he said:

‘A cock there is to every hen, and a bull to every cow, and a dog to every cat. Fight they will and must till one has the dominion, and evenly matched this pair are for cleverness and wit and for mischief and for stubbornness, and it is patiently I am waiting to see which it is will take the other along.’

‘And there is true it is what you are saying,’ Taliesin agreed, now all innocence of face and voice. ‘But interesting and informative and inspiring it would be to hear where she
is
going.’

The crowd in the corner were still singing:

Some kind of riddle, I thought. In the middle of this nonsense I felt a little more intelligent approach to the problem would be helpful, so:

‘And to where might you be going, Lady, if I may be so bold to ask?’

‘Boldness is it now?’ and her blue eyes flashed, and her cheeks glowed with pure enjoyment of a quarrel, because she was one of those people, and there are men as well as women, who enjoy nothing more in life than a dispute with an opponent fairly matched, and I am not saying that I am not one of them. ‘And how far is it you are meaning your boldness to go? There are limits, and I hope you know them, to your impudence in the face of your mistress.’

‘My boldness will go as far as I like with my own,’ I replied, ‘but your boldness itself goes too far. Wherever you may be going, or think you may be going, it is leaving it you will be and coming down with me into the Summer Country.’

‘And where else is it thinking you are that I am going? I am bound to the Summer Country for the winter, and it is there I will go whether you come with me or not.’

And for some reason Taliesin leaned back on his stool with a look of relief on his face, and nearly overbalanced, and we very nearly deafened with the singing behind us and the banging of pots and fists and even of feet on the tables.

‘
Yes
,’ she hammered bang-bang-bang back at me. ‘I will go there if I please.’

If
she pleased, indeed. I glared at her. The party was nearly over, there was no one left in the inn room except the few who would be staying for the night. I felt I had drunk too much, and I decided, while the others arranged who was going to sleep in which booth, I would go out and dispose of some of the cider. It was so hot inside that I pulled my sealskin cloak around me, and in doing that of course my sword fell out of the pack, and I was slightly drunk so that it seemed less trouble to pick it up and take it out with me. I felt better out in the open air, and I tried to recover myself and understand precisely what was happening, and though it had all seemed quite clear and, indeed, welcome in the fury of the opening of the trial, when the mob were gathered round me and behind Rhiannon, with axes and cudgels and all kinds of intricate agricultural implements like gelding shears and branding irons, I failed to see now how the situation had changed in any way, for though I had found the Lady – my thoughts rambled on and on. I breathed deeply and groped my way round the inn and into the rickyard.

Everything had now grown quiet. I wondered if the other three had noticed that I had gone. I leaned against the stack of oats, and considered improving the taste of their bread for them.
When I had finished, I stood still again. I listened. I could hear someone moving. Now, that was strange. There were men moving about, a lot of them. And they were taking care to be quiet. That was the strange thing. If they had been about normal business, as might just possibly happen around a farm or an inn, then they would be moderately careful to be quiet, but only so far as to escape things thrown at them by sleepers awoken out of turn. But these men were trying to be quiet as the grave, hoping to wake no one. I clutched the sword hilt under my cloak.

Well, there’s a thing, I thought. If I shout I don’t know what will happen, and it’s up to no good they are. So I pulled up my hood about my face and stood closer to the stack and listened to the feet squelching in the mud.

Then all of a sudden, people started shouting, lots of people, men and women, and I began to feel glad I had something behind me, and of the way I was standing in the angle between two stacks, to shield my blind eye too. While all the shouting went on round the inn I heard someone coming, very quietly, around the side of the stack. I sensed him rather, just smelt him and heard the half-breathing, and when he came round the corner, backwards as if he were watching something I caught him across the side of the head with my sword, still in its scabbard – I didn’t want to do any damage we couldn’t repair just in case it was a friend. Down, of course, he went, and I knew that he wouldn’t move for a little time, at least. But after that there was a sound of shouting and running my way, so I pulled a mass of oat sheaves down over the pair of us. I’d had time to look at his face in the glow from something that had been set afire, a stable or something, and I knew him now all right. It was the lad I had seen in the successive inns, the one who was travelling with the two middle-aged men.

I lay there where I was safe and listened to the rumpus. I could hear Rhiannon screaming, but it was anger in that voice, not pain or even fear – she could look after herself and certainly nobody was doing anything drastic there. Pryderi was holding forth in a fine flow of language, and then his voice died away in an unmistakable grunting as someone gagged him. And then, quite near, there was a voice I knew.

‘What? Do you mean to say you haven’t found him?’

‘No. He isn’t in the inn, or in any of the huts.’

‘Flaming Greek! You never can rely on them,’ said Gwawl. I would have recognised that voice even through a gag, and that was how I wanted to hear it. The other voice, too – it was one of the middle-aged men who had been with the lad. Gwawl went on:

‘Have you seen Lhygod?’

‘No, not since you came. Must have gone ahead. Shall we look for Mannanan? If we set the place afire we’ll smoke him out.’

‘No. It will attract too much attention, and it won’t be any good if he’s gone off into the woods already. But if we take these three away he’s bound to come looking for them. We can leave a few men in the inn till dawn, though, in case he comes back. Right. Off we go.’

I lay still till I heard the sound of horses. The lad was beginning to stir. I felt that, as Gwawl said, the woods would be safer for me. I took some of the straw ropes from the oat sheaves and bound Lhygod’s arms, and with a shorter length I gagged him. Then I woke him up by rubbing his face in a puddle and pulled him after me, leading him by the neck like a horse. We plunged into the darkness of the forest.

We walked through the dripping woods in the dark. I heard the shambling rush of the frightened badger, and the hoot of the owl. Once there was a heavier noise, and I knew the bear was near. The wolves, at this time, might come by ones or twos, but, I remarked loudly, I would be all right because I could leave them Lhygod to eat. I was satisfied to hear him add a muffled terrified grunting to the slight noises of the night.

Where was I going? I had not the slightest idea. I was making, roughly west. I knew that it would do me no good to ask help from the local farmers, who were all Belgi. Pryderi’s people lay farther west, I knew that much, how far I had never asked, but not far, to judge from odd remarks he had passed about the ability of Taliesin’s brown horse to stand up to the journey. It might be only a day or two.

The grey dawn came on us slowly, through the rainclouds, and it was at about the moment when one can tell a white thread from a black one at arm’s length that we came into a clearing. In it was a hut, like the one where Pryderi had found the bow – had earlier hidden the bow, he or someone like him. I wondered if there might be something useful here. I quickly tied my prisoner to a tree and went forward. I peered cautiously round the leather curtain that closed the door of the hut. There was the sound of snoring. I drew my sword, and with one swift slash cut away the door. Then I shouted:

‘Come on out.’

There was a moment of confusion. Then there crawled from the hut, blinking in the daylight, such as it was, three men. I looked them up and down as they stood in some kind of line. They looked miserable and half-starved, but that was nothing: on each of them, one on his belt, one around his neck, one
peeping out of his sleeve, I saw the welcome sight of yellow and black.

‘I am a friend of Pryderi,’ I said, risking being mistaken in that light about the colours.

‘Then let us have a good look at you,’ said one of them. ‘Because it is a rare and strange being you are in these parts.’

‘And who are you, and what are you doing here?’ I asked them.

‘We are Duach—’

‘And Nerthach—’

‘And Grathach.’

‘We are the Sons of the Hard Dawn.’

‘We are the men who come from the confines of Hell.’

‘And we are lost.’

I looked at them. Three big savage-looking men like that, and lost.

‘Where then are you trying to go?’ I asked.

‘To say we are lost,’ Grathach explained, ‘is a figure of speech. We know where we are, but we do not know where we ought to be. For it is meeting Pryderi we should be today, but where he is now we do not know. So as we are his men and all our life revolves around him, it is lost we are till we find him.’