Читать книгу The Great Captains - Henry Treece - Страница 17

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The resinous smoke hung at head-height in the hall, blown back from the chimney hole in the tiles by a contrary wind. Here and there the torches flared up and died again, coaxed by slaves. In the night, on the hills above the ruined villa, wolves howled to each other in the moonlight.

A harper plucked at his strings in a dark corner and sang a yearning ballad of his own country, for he was a slave, captured in war. Uther’s folk had put out his eyes so that he might sing the sweeter. Now he saw only the things he dreamed about, and his dreams were so much sweeter than the reality had ever been. He sang of his country as though it had been a place of golden apple trees and everlasting sunlight; though in fact it had been a thousand acres of stoney outcrop, on which the rain fell all the summer and the seas beat all the winter.

Medrodus lolled back, tipsy with mead, for the Guletic had kept his word, and the woman who tended Medrodus would not bring him wine.

Ambrosius, seated at the head of the table with the Guletic, drummed on the oak boards with his thin fingers, drinking little and eating only bread. He was old, anyway, and needed little food; besides, in two weeks, travelling across Britain, he had had so little to eat that his stomach had shrunk and he was not hungry now.

Uther Guletic did not notice that. He was jesting with a broken-nosed warrior on his right, and drinking horn for horn with any man who dared challenge him.

Medrodus was bored. Ambrosius had not spoken to him the whole evening. The young man was too hurt to make any overtures. So they were silent. Outside, another wolf pack had scented the first and were loping over the harsh scree to find meat.

A juggler stood in the firelight, throwing up a dozen coloured balls. The men at the tables hooted at him. He shrugged his shoulders and then juggled with a dozen sharp knives. They made little circles in the torchlight as they seemed to pass in a whirl about his white hands. Yet the men thought little of his skill.

Medrodus thought that there was one who could show them something to applaud, if only he might be there at that moment. He recalled the grinning skulls beneath the forum. These savages would marvel at that! Then Medrodus recalled that Merddin was the priest of such men as these, and he was silent, even within his mind, again.

A girl came into the firelight and danced in a wide, swaying circle. At first she smiled, the fixed smile of the professional dancer, for she had been reared in the theatres of Byzantium; she had come to Britain, hearing that the savages there did not know the value of good gold. In the dark corner, the harpist still longed for his land of golden apple trees. As the dancer passed round the hall, men leaned over their tables and tore her clothes from her. She danced on, naked. Her face still held the fixed smile of the theatres.

Then one young man, anxious to impress his fellows, flung the remains of his wine over her as she passed him. She turned and gave him a smile, for she was a brave creature. Now every man flung his wine over her body, so that she swung glittering through the firelight. Men began to regret their wine, to find her smile poor recompense. At last an elderly chieftain from Gwent put out his razor-keen hunting-knife as she passed in the fury of her dance.

She stopped suddenly, a long thin streak of red round her flank. The tables rocked with laughter. This was entertainment. The girl took the laughter as a challenge and continued her dance. Now as she passed each table, her body was cut; yet her courage made her dance. Medrodus leaned forward now, his boredom forgotten. His eyes were wide open and his lips apart. He took his knife from its sheath and thought what an example he would give! Yes, one to make men respect him. He leaned over the table, even though her eyes begged his tolerance in the torchlight.

Then, just as his arm went out to make the stroke, Uther Guletic spoke, and his voice sounded, as though he spoke in the ear of Medrodus, to him alone.

“I have always led warriors, not cowards! You swine have rooted up a delicate flower that is worth more than any one of you.”

There was silence in the hall now, and the dancer stopped swirling. She looked at Uther Pendragon with gratitude in her dark eyes. He ignored her and spoke on. “Look you, my little friends, since the talk is of knives, and this dancer has not even clothes to protect her body—since the challenge is that and no other, which of you warriors will jump into the firelight, bare of your shirt, and take a knife to this little girl?”

In the silence the wolves could be heard, giving battle among the grey stones. The harper had fallen asleep, his fingers crooked about the strings. Now summer and gold apples would never come. Only winter and the harsh salt surf on the rocks were there.

Medrodus was leaning over the table, his knife out, when Uther announced his challenge. All men looked towards him and he shuddered that such a test should be given him that night.

Now men began to laugh about the hall, and one of them threw the girl a long slim skinning-knife, which she caught, with a smile. Medrodus tried to speak, to assert his dignity, as was befitting a man who expected soon to be called to command over these tribesmen. But they did not know his ambitions. They saw only a rather foolish-looking young man, half drunk with mead, leaning on a table.

“The warriors ask for you, young sir,” said Uther Guletic, smiling over his wine-horn. As for Ambrosius, he was now withdrawn into his blind world of pearl-grey, and did not know what was afoot.

Medrodus looked from side to side, the thought coming to his mind that never in history could a man have been so cheated by fate of his rightful dues. For who would follow into battle a man who had fought with a naked girl at a feast?

Now the men at the tables in the firelight began to beat the oaken boards with their knives and chant, “Let him fight! Let him fight! Let him fight!” Until the words sounded like some horrible sentence of doom to the weary Roman.

Medrodus was almost at the point of begging Ambrosius to help him when a voice behind him whispered, “Well, friend? Perhaps you understand my warning now?” The fair-haired young man leaned against Medrodus, as he passed, to whisper these words.

Now there was such a noise in the hall that all men laughed in the expectation of blood. At this point, Medrodus, sensing that he was alone and must make his way without help from any source, human or divine, leaped over the table, his knife in his hand.

Suddenly there was silence again in the ruined corridor. The noises of the night came down through the chimney-hole once more. The dancer, who had laughed before, hardly understanding what was going on, expecting at any moment that the whole thing would turn out to be a jest, now shrank back towards a table. She was pushed forward to meet the advancing Medrodus, whose knife was held before him, stiffly, as he usually attacked.

Yet, when he was within a yard of her, and when some of the young men about the tables were rising to kill him should he succeed in killing her, Medrodus halted. He, too, understood the terror that stared from the girl’s wide eyes. It was in his own heart at that moment. So he stopped and bowed to her, and held out his knife to her, hilt foremost, and then what few coins he had, in the other hand.

“Lady, you have slain me,” he said, smiling uncertainly. The girl looked at him for a moment and then, with the quickness of the alleys in which she was reared, saw his meaning. She stepped towards him, and as she took the money from his hand, stabbed at him with her long knife. She had intended the thrust to be as much a pantomime as his performance was, but the knife was long.

Medrodus gave a short gasp, and then smiled on, his hand clasped over his stomach. The men nearest to him saw the thin trickle of blood that came between his fingers as he smiled.

Then the girl turned and was gone into the shadows, to another part of the villa. And the warriors sat down again, calling aloud for wine.

Medrodus went to his seat, alone and forgotten by the men who had watched him so carefully but a minute before. Now he knew that although he had chosen the right answer in this last affair, he could never lead these folk into battle with the Saxon.