Читать книгу The Man on the White Horse - Warwick Deeping - Страница 6

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Her seat in the wagon was a wine-cask covered with a horse-cloth. There was other merchandise in the wagon covered with dry fern, bars and pigs of iron from a furnace in the forest country beyond the White Hills. Geraint rode beside the wagon. A man walked beside the team; the rest slogged along behind it, spears over shoulders. Caradoc, the smith, a bow-legged, oak butt of a man, had rude things to say of the world's affairs. As a smith he was feeling self-important.

"How does the law run, my lads? The Emperor, God bless him, is neither here nor there. No man shall carry arms—no, not so much as a bodkin—unless he be a soldier. I ask you—when soldiers turn cut-throats, should we good citizens get our throats cut without waiting for the sea-wolves or the Welsh?"

A tall yeoman spat.

"Ploughshares into swords, O smith."

Caradoc jerked a thumb at the wagon.

"The stuff's there, my John. Our lord has a long head. My forge will be busy. A man who can hammer a sword—"

A little black-eyed fellow who was the clown of the party drew the back of a hand across his mouth.

"Our lord comforts outraged virtue. Puella yesterday, today a ..." and he laughed.

The smith swung a hand and clouted him.

"Be silent, and you a Christian! That was devil's work. I have girls of my own."

It was Caradoc who set the pace, and he shortened his step until the company of marching men were some thirty yards behind the wagon. For my Lord Geraint and the girl were talking, and if Caradoc loved any man, he loved his lord. Should a man be merciful, should he be able to say nay—not only to others, but to himself? And did not Geraint love things that were good, men with straight eyes, hounds, horses, a boar-spear that would not break, the trees of the forest, wine and wheat? The chattering crowd in Calleva might call him Stoic, but they were twitterers, gabblers, men who hung about the market-place and chattered; shopkeepers, clerks, fellows who sweated in the public baths. When Death came riding his black horse, these little people might run to kiss the feet of the man on the white one.

Geraint, close to the front near wheel of the wagon, looked straight ahead down that Roman road. He did not glance at the girl, but she, out of the cloudings of her hair, had begun to glance at him. A dark-eyed bird in a burning bush, a bruised bird, crouching a little. Life had let her out of a cage and then let loose wildness upon her. She still trembled; she still clasped her breasts. If she shuddered over the shame of it as no wanton shudders, but like a clean creature compounded more of dreams than of clay, she looked at the man who had saved her and was mute. "Unclean" was the cry of her heart—"Christ—Lord—I am unclean."

Should a man understand these things? My Lord Geraint had a wife of his own, one Placida, a cold convention of a woman whose face was like her name. Placida! And here in this wagon was iron for swords, for, now that Rome was breaking, the Golden Age was a whirl of dying leaves. The barbarians were at the Wall, and on the sea, and the little dark men were watching from their mountains a world of scented fools and bishops, eunuchs and women who had got religion. Roman legionaries turning footpads, whole centuries deserting, the roads unsafe, country houses shut up and barred at night against—fear of the night. For nearly three hundred years Britain had known peace. Rome had kept the frontiers, and Rome was failing.

He looked at the girl. Loot? She, like the cities, was golden loot, a beautiful thing to be torn from its pedestal, a casket of jewels to be rifled. What would she be in this wild new world—no more than a little flame burning for a moment? So she had friends at Calleva, Calleva with its great flint walls. Calleva might need those walls.

He had given her silence, but behind the plodding horses her silence was wearing thin. It began to burn her instead of to assuage. Her hands grew restless. She tried to put up her barbaric hair, rolling it into two ropes, but since she had nothing with which to master it, the cloud came loose—What did it matter? So thought the man.—But these friends of hers?—He questioned her.

She seemed glad now of the chance to talk. She told him that she was an orphan. Her father had been an imperial official at Verulam, an assessor; when she had been left alone in the world her uncle had given her a home in London; yes, she had lived over a goldsmith's shop in the Via Augusta—off the Forum. The goldsmith, good man, had gone out to a burial in a March wind, and the wind had blown him to God. She crossed herself. Might his soul be where it should be. As for the Calleva folk, they were good people, silver-refiners; one of the women had been the goldsmith's wife. Their names? Did not my lord know the name of Vetorix? Geraint knew it, but did not say what else he knew.

She ceased to trouble with her hair. She let it stream behind her shoulders over her apple-green tunic. Her hands lay in her lap—beautiful hands, yet strong. She looked at him less like a scared creature who had been saved from the claws of a hawk. Her glances went more levelly at him from under her straight, low forehead.

No, she was no mere suppliant, a poor creature who would be suffered in someone's house and be put to weave and spin and keep the pet dog free from fleas. With a kind of quaint innocence she spoke of herself as an heiress. When the lawyers had finished with their parchments, she would have money—oh yes, quite a little fortune.—What would she do? She looked serious—serious as night. Dream dreams, attend Mass, grow flowers, pity the poor? But her world was so much like a window in which the glass had been shattered. She looked out of it and sought to see the same familiar, friendly things.

Again she shuddered a little and was mute.

Meanwhile the country had become more gentle. They saw cows grazing, and a husbandman harrowing his young wheat. Two children stood by the roadside with handfuls of bluebells. They came to a broad valley white with thorn trees in blossom, and beyond the thorns were oaks all in golden leaf. The grass was full of buttercups. Two laughing girls with baskets on their shoulders showed to them linen fresh from a brook. The girls looked at the man on the white horse, but Geraint was thinking of other things, and their giggles and glances were left for his men. And suddenly, crowning a low plateau, Calleva broke the brim of the sky.

Geraint pointed.

"Calleva."

They could see the city wall, and the two black arches of the east gate, and the watch-tower on the wall above the amphitheatre. The high, oblique roof of the basilica caught the sunlight on its chequer of stone shingles, and near it the gilded statue of the city's Genius stretched out a little golden and benedictory arm. Windows glimmered. There were the red roofs of the hospitium and the baths. Some of the richer houses showed their upper storeys, plaster work coloured red and blue, yellow and cream. Here and there a green tree spired up.

Guinevra looked at the city. It was very beautiful; it had a mystery. The little statue on the column seemed to stretch out a welcoming hand. She sat very still, gazing.

Her lips moved.

"Does my lord lodge in Calleva?"

He smiled at her rapt face.

"No—I pass through. But not before I have given you to friends."

Her face fell a little.

"Does my lord go far?"

"Fifteen miles on the road to Sarum."

"And what is the name of my lord's house?"

"They call it Turris Alba."