Читать книгу The Man on the White Horse - Warwick Deeping - Страница 10

Table of Contents

Near the fifth milestone from Calleva on the road to Vindomis Geraint met a tribune riding at the head of three squadrons of Spanish horse. The tribune, sword-arm raised, halted his men and, putting his beast across the road, barred the way.

"Who are you that go armed?"

He was a high and mighty gentleman with a polished chin and waxed mustachios, his body armour very bright, his red cavalry cloak fastened at the throat with a gold chain. And Geraint smiled at him, that quiet, inward smile.

"We go armed, sir, because the roads are not safe."

"Ha," said the cavalryman, "say you so? You look like a man who should know the law. Your name?"

But, for the moment, Geraint gave no name. He pulled out his sword with the dried smears of blood on it and held it so that the sunlight shone upon the blade. This fellow on the high horse was altogether too lofty.

"My witness, tribune. You see—the blood."

"I would have you explain it, sir."

Geraint put up his sword.

"You ride with ninety troopers, tribune—I with a wagon and ten men. Had you been on the Calleva-Pontes road this morning, you could have used your troopers. We had to fight, yes—Roman soldiers turned cut-throats. What would you have us do?"

The tribune twirled a moustache.

"This is serious, sir."

Geraint looked grim.

"Serious—I should say so. And you for one, my friend, should know how serious matters are.—My name is Geraint of the White Tower."

The tribune became polite.

"That name passes, my lord.—I grant you the news is—not pleasant. The Cymri are restless."

"Yet you ride east."

"There is trouble in the north. Isca can deal with the Cymri. We go north—I turn left at Calleva. Pass, my lord."

He drew his horse out of the way, and Geraint gave him a parting message.

"The gates may be shut against you, tribune."

"No gates are shut against me, sir."

"Then good luck to you."

Geraint sat his horse and watched the cavalry go by, dark little men on wiry chargers—but the fellows looked sullen and their horses were in poor condition. "Too much garrison work," thought Geraint, "too much wine-shop and women. And our friend the tribune is too waxed and polished. The savage world is a hairy world and does not cry: 'Pardon—by your leave.'" He touched the white horse with his heels and rode on.

Rolling country and a spacious sky, blue distances and dim mysterious hills, country that Geraint loved. So had the first Gerontius loved it, who, coming to Britain as a prefect in the days of the Antonines, had stayed to found a family and an estate. The road descended to a brook and a stone bridge, and beyond the bridge stood the eastern boundary stone of the lords of the White Tower. Geraint saluted it. From the bridge for fifteen miles the land was his, downland and beech woods, forest, meadows, streams, red deer and fallow, boars, wild cattle, birds.

The highroad cut the edge of the forest of Spinæ and struck open country, and from it a by-road turned south where a shrine to Sylvanus stood in the midst of a thicket of flowering thorns. Horses and wagon went up a hill. Here were beech woods, magnificent and still, dome on dome and brilliant in the slanting sunlight. From the ridge the ground fell away into a deep green valley, and, letting the wagon go on, Geraint pulled his horse on to the grass and sat at gaze. The hound remained with him.

Looking down into the valley, he saw all that was his—this green and beautiful spot begotten of three hundred years of peace. He saw the red roofs and white walls of the great house, the pillars of the ambulatory, the gate-house with its gilded wind-vane, the courtyard and garden. Behind it rose the thatched roofs of stables, barns, mews, kennels. The great orchard was still in flower within its wattle fences. Below it sloped the vineyard, vines all a-row. Beyond the orchard were more thorn trees, and below the vineyard the grove in which stood an altar to Sylvanus. High beech woods shut in the valley, and in the lap of it lay the Great Pool with its island and white tower.

Geraint looked down at the water and the island. Lilies and water-flags grew there, and the island was a smother of fruit-blossom. The white tower rose strong and straight from its green and white cushion. The evening sunlight made it brilliant and played upon the still water. The black barge lay at the mooring stage, and as Geraint gazed, he smiled.

Three hundred years of peace. The white tower on the island had become a whimsy of Gerontius the Prefect. In those days the Roman peace had been less sure, and the tower of the first Geraint had given a name to the valley. Geraint of Turris Alba. Its glazed windows glimmered high up above the water and the fruit-blossom. For three hundred years or so it had waited for war and for violent things when war was not. But—now? Savages in the west, in the north, and in the east, wild men running to loot the richness of the great peace. Wolves, blood, fire, outrage, and death, an Empire whose knees shook, an army that sulked and deserted.

Geraint rode on after the wagon with the dog beside him, past the house of Mabon, his villicus, and the cottages of his hinds. Could he make soldiers of ploughmen and cowherds and labourers? Would they stand steady and close with locked shields and stab with the short sword? He rode on past Caradoc's smithy to the great gate.