Читать книгу The Great Captains - Henry Treece - Страница 15

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They had been walking for ten days, now, towards the west, meeting few men, avoiding such meetings when they could. Ambrosius slept well, like a young child, smiling in his dreams. Yet by day it was apparent that his strength was failing. He tired easily and often forgot why they were making the long journey across unfriendly country. Then Medrodus would try to tell him what their purpose was, speaking to him slowly and gently and holding his hand to emphasise certain points.

“We go to the western territories,” he would say, as though to a backward child. “We go to raise men who will drive out the Saxon from Britain and let us live again as we did under Rome.”

And Ambrosius would nod and smile and repeat his words. Yet sometimes, suddenly and without warning, the old man would sit up with a jerk, dragging his hand away, to ask why Medrodus should treat him like a fool. Then he would get to his feet and go off walking again, as though he were young and virile once more. Yet he would tire before long and then Medrodus would smile and wrap him up, away from the night wind, under a hedge or in a convenient ditch.

Medrodus himself had changed since that night in the ruined city. Now he felt his mind divided in a way he had not known before. Previously his only concern had been whether or not Ambrosius would honour his word and create him Count of Britain, once they had come to their journey’s end among the tribes of the west. But now the situation was more complicated. Now the argument was carried a grim stage further. Suppose Ambrosius did make him Count, then what was he to do—press back the invader in the name of the Holy Cross, and gain death; or set up the old heathendom that Britain had known and followed before the Romans came, and gain vast wealth on earth, and everlasting torment when at the end he had to die? Such was his dilemma that at times, as he turned from side to side in the damp night watches, hearing the owls hooting about him and the field mice scuttering past him in the dark, he groaned aloud and wished to God that the problem had never been offered him to solve. Sometimes, when he was driven almost to despair, he thought of getting up from the ditch and running away, somewhere, he knew not where, to live as a hunter or a fisherman, beside some quiet stream.... Yet as dawn broke and healing sleep came to his eyes again, he forgot these things, and when the sun rose was ready once again to march with Ambrosius with the sun at his back.

Their journey was uneventful now. Once indeed they came to a stinking wooden village, where only old men and women sat propped against the palisade, chewing roots or pieces of tree-bark, the famine and despair grinning from their withered faces. All the young ones had left, they said; now there was only death for them. The two travellers passed on, breathing hard to keep the plague from their nostrils.

Once they met a crazed old woman picking sticks in a sunken lane, dropping as many as she gathered. She cackled at them and said, “Uther Pendragon lies at Lis Pengwern! Find him, Ambrosius! Find Uther Pendragon.” Ambrosius, who was astounded at the old hag’s knowledge of his identity, gave her a handful of small coins, which she dropped straightway, and could not find again.

Yet her words had so impressed the Count that he said, “That is an omen, Medrodus. We must go first to Uther Guletic, in Lis Pengwern. He is a good man, I have heard say, and will know where we should go next if we are to raise the tribes.”

Medrodus said, “For God’s sake, Ambrosius, let us go wherever you please, as long as we get there while I still have my reason! This journey has put twenty years on my life. I am anxious to end it soon, whatever may happen.”

Ambrosius smiled and said, “You need to cultivate more patience yet, my friend. Remember the great Legions. They walked up and down upon the earth for hundreds of years to gain their glory.”

Medrodus said bitterly, “And where are they now! Heaps of refuse underneath the soil, while the Saxon and the Jute, who have never even made a road in their history, laugh at our fortresses and throw their carrion into our wells!”

Ambrosius did not answer, but set his thin lips and clutched the sword tightly to him.

Late that evening they came upon the first of the great hills of the west. As they approached it, Medrodus stopped with a gasp and pointed up to its summit. In the last rays of the setting sun, a horseman stood, his hair and cloak blown back from him by the night breeze, the blood-red light from behind him picking out the helmet on his head and the long lance in his hand. He seemed to be watching for them, like a bird of prey, Medrodus thought. Then, as suddenly as he had appeared, he went behind the hill.

When the two travellers reached the summit, he was nowhere to be seen. They descended the hill and entered a wood.

Breaking through the wood at last, they came to a long and rocky slope which led down to a river valley, beyond which the great hills of the west rose gradually, to reach their heights some miles away on the horizon, a dim purple grey in the mists of the morning.

Below them, where the rock-strewn surface of the land gave place to the more lush water meadows, a man was ploughing.

Medrodus stared at the clumsy wooden implement and then at the beasts that drew it. They were bulls, black and heavy in the chest, their long savage horns probing out before them as they moved snorting along the furrow.

“By Jupiter,” he said, “but a man who ploughs with bulls must be worth joking with!”

Ambrosius was weary now almost to the point of falling. The weeks of rough country and of little food were more than his old body could tolerate. He said, “Joke with a man who uses cows, my friend, but walk clear of one who can make a bull walk straight.”

Medrodus smiled at him and then put his hands to his mouth and called out, “Ho, there! The gods draw near. Fall to your knees, ploughman, lest you offend them!”

Ambrosius clucked with displeasure, but Medrodus was too full of his own jesting self-importance to notice that.

The ploughman halted and turned his head up towards them. Then he spat on the ground and shook the heavy thong reins. The black bulls began to move on again. Medrodus saw this and drew in his breath with annoyance. He began to run towards the man, the rage thumping in his temples.

“Stop, you clown!” he called. “Stop when the Count of Britain comes towards you.”

The ploughman stopped once more and stood still to wait for Medrodus. He was tall and barrel-chested; so heavily developed were the muscles of his shoulders that he looked at first sight almost hunchbacked. His broad face glistened in the sunlight with sweat, which he wiped away from time to time with the back of a large and calloused hand. His sandy hair was chopped off at the nape of the neck, in the old barbarian style, but hung in two small plaits, one from each temple, almost hiding the heavy gold rings which dangled from his ears.

In spite of the man’s rough horsehide jerkin and crudely banded woollen trousers, Medrodus sensed that among his own folk he must be a man of some substance. The embossed bronze gorget, the coral-studded arm-rings, and the ivory haft of the knife that hung from the leathern lace across his breast all contributed to this impression.

“Ploughmen are rich in the west,” sneered Medrodus.

The man’s face showed no emotion, no recognition. It was as impassive as a roughhewn block of sandstone—and roughhewn it was indeed, for below the unblinking pale blue eyes, the cheekbones were raised by thick horizontal ridges, the result of some ritual surgery, into which blue dyes had been rubbed, giving the broad face an inexpressibly savage look. Medrodus felt a slight shudder pass down his neck as he looked back into this face.

By now Ambrosius had stumbled up to them. He gave the old greeting sign and said, “Hail, friend. We come in peace. Have you a welcome for us?”

The man did not move, and for a moment even allowed the runnels of sweat to stream down his red face unchecked. Medrodus noted the cruelty of expression which the broad mouth held, turned down at the corners in a fixed smile. His hot temper would allow him to keep silent no longer.

“When a Roman asks, even the dogs must bark an answer!” he said, his voice bold, his legs shaking with the strain of this strange interview.

The man’s mouth curled ever so slightly. Then he shrugged his heavy shoulders and turned again to the plough stilts. He shook the reins slightly, as though to warn the waiting creatures that they must begin their work again.

Medrodus was beside him in a stride, his own hand upon the reins, the muscles of his sallow face working with frustrated anger. Yet before he could put into words the hurt pride that was in his heart, the ploughman had turned with surprising swiftness, had taken him roughly by the hair on the crown of his head, and with one easy movement had flung him sprawling among the furrows.

Bewildered by the man’s animal speed and strength, Medrodus lay where he fell, his eyes wide with sudden fear, snarling but speechless.

Ambrosius stumbled forward, squinting hard so as to see, his hands stretched out helplessly.

“Peace be with you, friend,” he said. “Know that we are harmless folk, come from afar to speak with Uther Pendragon.”

The ploughman turned and gazed at the old man. Then he spoke, but as one unaccustomed to frequent conversation. His voice sounded almost foreign to their ears. It was not the voice of a man who habitually spoke Latin, or even any Roman dialect of Celtic that they knew.

“Uther Guletic! Uther Guletic!” he said, shaking his great red head. “When he speaks the birds fall from the sky and timid men make a mess in their breeches! Ah, Uther Guletic!”

He nodded a time or two, wiped the sweat from under his chin, then turned from them as though they had ceased to exist.

The bulls strained at their harness and began to pull. Medrodus raised himself slowly and stood staring after him.

“If I had a bow,” he snarled. “Oh, that would bring you down to my level, my friend!”

Ambrosius said, “These folk are sensitive. They are not to be hectored. We Romans had long years learning how to deal with them.”

Medrodus turned on him, nettled. “I am a Roman, too,” he said angrily.

The old man’s lips drew back in a straight line but he did not speak. Just then the ploughman halted at the end of his furrow, and turning back to them, called, “Uther Guletic! Uther Guletic! Over there, and take a pair of clean breeches!” He began to laugh, and waved his hand broadly towards a low hill beyond the river. He then turned back to his plough and bent over the share, his shoulders heaving with laughter.

Medrodus swore in anger, but Ambrosius checked him. “A man who would rule a people must first learn to rule his own tongue,” he said coldly.

Medrodus came back at him hotly. “We shall see, Ambrosius,” he said. “There are many ways of doing these things.”

“But only one right way,” said the Count of Britain, “and that you will learn, if these western men let you live long enough to learn anything.”

The young man’s lips curled back in anger. “I shall live, never fear, Master, while there is the muscle in my arm to drive a knife.”

Ambrosius smiled, as though he were thinking of other things. “I have known many men who said something like that,” he said, “yet the worm has crawled in the mouths of them all by now.”

Medrodus struck himself hard on the thigh, unable to contain his rage.

“Do not distress yourself,” he said. “I am marked for other things than the worm.”

At the river bank they found a raft pulled up among the stones. They crossed the narrow stream on it, Medrodus pushing with the long pole, and muttering a curse with every movement. Some of the curses were spoken against the western men, some against the Saxon, and some against an enemy unnamed. As the young man muttered, he looked towards the blind Ambrosius, who sat with his back towards him, fondling the great sword on his thin knees.