Читать книгу The Man on the White Horse - Warwick Deeping - Страница 14

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Caradoc was in his smithy beating out a sword-blade on the anvil when Malgo rode down the hill on his horse. Malgo came to the White Tower twice a week to fence with Geraint, for Malgo, ex-centurion of the First Cohort of the Second Legion, had been a famous player with the sword. A little, lean, quiet man with quick eyes and a grey head, he had bought with his gratuity and his savings a small estate at Vicus Flavus, a village between Turris Alba and Vindomis.

Malgo, hearing the cry of the steel between hammer and anvil, turned his horse towards the smithy. Through the doorway he could see the glow of the furnace and Caradoc's thick, hairy legs. Malgo knew when steel was being hammered and when the blade was neither sickle nor scythe.

Caradoc, stripped to the waist, was girt with nothing but a leather apron. The muscles showed in his back. One hand held the pincers while the other wielded the hammer. A big crock full of water stood beside the anvil. The clangour of Caradoc's blows filled the smithy, and he did not hear the padding of Malgo's horse.

The centurion watched him, smiling in his eyes. He waited until a pause came before he spoke.

"Who gave you the licence to forge swords?"

Caradoc swung his head like a boar's. He laughed; he showed his teeth.

"None of your little perfumed gentlemen who sit in chairs. We do what needs be. One might say," and he plunged the blade into the water-pot, "that you will be back in harness, Malgo, or I'm no prophet."

This was a long speech for Caradoc. He ran a thumb along the edge of the blade.

"My lord was asking for you."

"I am here."

"We want your village smith. Can he do anything but hammer nails?"

Malgo reached out for the sword-blade.

"Give it here.—Our fellow was an armourer in the Sixth. Yes, not bad, Caradoc. A little heavy."

"Not for my fist."

"Oh, it's to be yours, is it? Stabbing's better than slashing, let me tell you. Look over the top of your shield and jab a man's throat. I could show you."

Caradoc rolled his big head.

"You'll be showing us, brother, or, again, I'm no prophet. Hallo, here's my lord coming. You should have seen him spitting pigs on the Pontes road the other morning."

Malgo passed the sword-blade back to the smith and turned his horse. Geraint, with a boar-spear in his hand, and the hound beside him, was coming over the grass to the smithy. Malgo rode down to meet him; swung out of the saddle, stood straight, and saluted.

Geraint and the old soldier looked into each other's eyes. There was more than goodwill between them, more than the game of leather coats and wooden swords.

"I wanted you, Malgo."

"It is our day, sir."

"In other ways than that."

Geraint called a groom who was standing in the gateway of the stable court—"Take the captain's horse." He went with Malgo through the main gate into the forecourt and garden and clapped his hands for the house-servants. Wine was brought to them, and when Malgo had drunk, Geraint looked at the windows and laid a hand on the centurion's shoulder.

"What I have to say is not for the ears of servants."

Nor was it for the ears of Placida. With the boar-spear under his arm, and the dog still at his side, he went down with Malgo to the grove below the vineyard which held the altar of Sylvanus. The altar stood in a little glade, and at full noon in summer the sunlight fell upon it, but at this hour it was in the shade. A semi-circular stone seat had been built above and behind the altar, and from this seat the pool, the island, the White Tower, and the hollow of the valley were visible.

Geraint paused in front of the altar. Upon its face someone had daubed the Chi-Rho in red paint, and the name of the woodland god had been cut away with a chisel. Placida's orders. In the hollow of the focus lay a little bronze fish, not as an offering, but as a triumphant symbol. Geraint said nothing. His Unknown God was still veiled and secret in spite of the officious meddling of a woman.

He sat down on the seat with Malgo beside him, and the hound lay at his feet. He looked long and steadily at the valley with its island and pool and tower.

"Well, what news, Malgo?"

The centurion, leaning forward, elbows on knees, saw all that Geraint saw.

"Trouble in the north."

He began to tell Geraint all that he had been able to learn from Victorinus, the optio at Vindomis. The station at Vindomis held three men and a boy, twenty sets of arms, and little else. The Second Legion at Isca was a thousand men below its fighting strength, and in poor fettle. Its Legate might be called an old lady. The Cymri were restless. At Deva the Twentieth Legion, Victoria Victrix, was not much stronger than the Second and was training a thousand young recruits. Moreover, the Second had two cohorts at Rhutupiæ, reinforcing the sailors and marines. The auxiliaries who held the Great Wall were—contrary to all tradition—considered to be more reliable than the legions.

Malgo did not like the look of the weather.

"Discipline is not what it was. They tell me that officers are afraid to use their sticks."

"You used your vine-staff, Malgo?"

"Sometimes it was more persuasive than my sword, sir—especially when men faltered."

"Did you have deserters in your day?"

"A few, but not by the score."

If Malgo had things to tell Geraint, Geraint had things to tell Malgo. What of Calleva, its Bishop, and its mob? There were the Saxons on the sea, and what was far more serious, the Saxon settlement in the forest country, on the south coast between Regnum and Anderida. Certainly Rome had taken to herself barbarians, and she had made them Romans, but a Saxon was not a Gaul or a Spaniard or a Rhinelander. He was a savage. And that fool mob at Calleva was talking of turning cobblers into kings and of transforming the old territory of the Attrebates into a sort of toy republic with Balthasar as its president.

"The curia full of noisy fools, Malgo. They are forgetting how to keep their streets clean. They leave the gates unguarded. They crowd in the Forum and talk. When the gods wish to destroy—"

He traced a line on the turf with the point of his boar-spear.

"Let that be the Wall. Let us suppose that the men from the north have broken through, and that the frontier cohorts are either cut up or pinned in their forts. They send up the legions from Isca and Deva and Rhutupiæ."

He drove his spear into the turf to mark Isca and Deva and the Kentish station.

"You see, as well as I do, how the map would shape. All the troops gone north, the west unguarded, nothing but the ships between us and the sea-wolves. The whole south defenceless, its forests full of broken men. Supposing the Cymri were to rush in, and the Saxons to land the crews of a dozen ships. What have we to count on?"

And Malgo answered: "Nothing."

Geraint was silent for a while.

"You know, and I know, Malgo, what that would mean. Fire, outrage, plunder, farms and country houses going up in flames. Cattle driven off or killed. Women—Yes, Calleva and other cities might be saved by their walls, and yet—I doubt it. The whole south overrun, burnt out, raped, looted."

He pointed with his spear.

"That white tower—how many years is it since the first Gerontius built it?—and now it is smothered up in fruit trees. This place is good to me, Malgo—this green valley and the fields and the woods—and my home. I love it. And shall I sit still and wait for the thing to happen? Are you going to sit still in your farm-house, with your wife and your three girls—?"

He lowered his spear and looked at the old soldier; Malgo's lips were thin and his nose pinched at the nostrils.

"I shall fight, Malgo—to keep death and worse out of this valley. And you—?"

Malgo nodded.

"I am with you, lord."

"Malgo, you shall help me to make soldiers as well as swords. If the Emperor cannot help us—"

"Will the Emperor quarrel with us for saving what is ours? I could raise fifteen men in the village, and six of them are old soldiers."

"And I a score or so. We should need harness, arms."

Malgo laughed grimly.

"Soldiers are not made in a month, my lord—but there is good stuff here. As for arms and harness, we can borrow twenty sets from Vindomis."

Geraint smiled at him.

"What will Victorinus say, if we plunder his armoury?"

"Make Victorinus a tribune, my lord. We old dogs still have our harness. But what are fifty men? We should cast our net wider."

Geraint stood up.

"There are the Aquilas at Fontes, Gawaine of the Black Valley. We might get another fifty men with them."

Malgo looked even more grim.

"Just one cohort—of country bumpkins—begging your pardon, sir."

Said Geraint: "Country bumpkins might fight, Malgo, rather than see their women—And if they run, you and I shall be left—to the wolves."