Legacy: Arthurian Saga (140 page)

And now he was dead. I had known it, I
think, after I had spoken in the market-place. My sharp, unthinking
protest had been made for no reason that I knew; the knowledge came
later. And always, when I spoke like that, men did unquestioningly
as I bade them. So at least the boy had had his cakes, and the
day's sunshine.

I turned away from the thin,
brightening moon, and lay down.

"At least he had the cakes, and the
day's sunshine." Beltane the goldsmith told us about it as we
shared supper at the town's tavern the next evening. He was
unusually silent, for him, and seemed stunned, clinging to our
company as, in spite of his sharp tongue, he must have clung to the
boy's.

"But -- drowned." Ulfin said it on a
disbelieving note, but I caught a glance from him that told me he
had begun to put events together and understand them. "How did it
happen?"

"That evening, at supper-time, he
brought me back here and packed the things away. It had been a good
day, and the take was heavy; we were sure of eating well. He had
worked hard, and so when he saw some boys off down to bathe in the
river, he asked if he might join them. He was a great one for
washing himself...and it had been a hot day, and people's feet kick
up a lot of dust, and dung besides, in the market-places. I let him
go. The next thing was the boys came back, running, with the story.
He must have trodden into a hole, and slipped out of his depth.
It's a bad river, they tell me -- How was I to know that? How could
I know? When we came over yesterday the ford seemed so shallow, and
so safe --"

"The body?" asked Ulfin, after a pause
when he could see that I was not going to speak.

"Gone. Gone downstream, the boys said,
like a log on the flood. He came up half a league down-river, but
none of them could come near him, and then he vanished. It's a bad
death, a puppy's death. He should be found, and buried like a
man."

Ulfin said something kind, and after a
while the little man's lamentations ran out, and the supper came,
and he made shift to eat and drink, and was the better for
it.

Next morning the sun shone again, and
we went north, the three of us together, and four days later
reached the country of the Votadini, which is called in the British
tongue Manau Guotodin.

11

Some ten days later, with due stops
for trading, we reached Lot's city of Dunpeldyr. It was late
afternoon of a cloudy day, and it was raining. We were lucky enough
to find suitable lodgings in a tavern near the south
gate.

The town was little more than a close
huddle of houses and shops near the foot of a great crag on which
the castle was built. In times past the crag had contained the
whole stronghold, but now the houses crowd, haphazard, between
cliffs and river, and on the slopes of the crag itself, right up to
the castle wall. The river (another Tyne ) curves round the roots
of the cliff, then runs in a wide meander across a mile or so of
flat land to its sandy estuary. Along its banks the houses cluster,
and boats are pulled up on the shingle. There are two bridges, a
heavy wooden one set on stone piers, that holds the road to the
main castle gate above; and another narrow span of planking which
leads to a steep path serving the side gate of the castle. There
had been no road-building here; the place had grown without plan,
and certainly without beauty or amenity. The town is a mean one, of
mud-brick houses with turfed roofs, and steep alleys which in
stormy weather become torrents of foul water. The river, so fair
only a short distance away, is here full of weed and debris.
Between the crag and the river to the east is the market-place,
where on the morrow Beltane would set out his wares.

One thing I knew I must do without
delay. If, ironically enough, Beltane were to be my eyes inside the
castle, neither Ulfin nor I must be seen to go about with him; so,
dependent as he was on a servant, someone must be found to replace
the drowned boy. Beltane had made no move to do this himself on our
journey north, and now was only too grateful when I offered to do
it for him.

A short way out of the town gates I
had noticed a quarry; not much of a place, but still working. Next
morning, carefully anonymous in a shabby cloak of rusty brown, I
went there and sought out the quarry-master, a big, genial-looking
ruffian who was strolling around among the half-derelict workings,
and the equally derelict workmen, like a lord taking the summer air
in his country demesne.

He looked me up and down with a fine
air of disdain. "Able-bodied servants come expensive, my good sir."
I could see him assessing me as he spoke, and coming up with a poor
enough answer. "Nor have I one to spare. One gets all the riffraff
in a place like this...prisoners, criminals, the lot. No one who'd
ever be a decent house slave, or be trusted on a farm, or with any
kind of skilled job. And muscle comes expensive. You'd best wait
for the fair. All sorts come then, hiring themselves and their
families, or selling themselves or their brats for food -- though,
come to that, you'd have to wait for winter and sharp weather to
get the cheap market."

"I don't wish to wait. I can pay. I am
traveling, and I need a man or a boy. He need have no skills,
except to keep himself clean, and be faithful to his master, and
have enough strength to travel even in winter, when the roads are
foul."

As I spoke his manner grew more civil,
and the assessment moved up a notch or two. "Travel? So, what is
your business?"

I saw no reason to tell him that the
servant was not for myself. "I am a doctor."

My answer had the effect it has nine
times out of ten. He started eagerly to tell me of all his various
ailments, of which, since he was more than forty years old, he had
a full supply.

"Well," I said, when he had finished,
"I can help you, I think, but it had better be mutual. If you have
a likely hand you can let me have as a servant -- and he should be
cheap enough, since it's just the riffraff you get here -- then
perhaps we can do a deal? One more thing. As you will understand,
in my trade there are secrets to be kept. I want no blabbermouth;
he must be sparing of speech."

At that the rogue stared, then slapped
his thigh and laughed, as if at the greatest joke in the world. He
turned his head and bellowed a name. "Casso! Come here! Quickly,
you oaf! Here's luck for you, lad, and a new master, and a fine new
life adventuring!"

A lanky youth detached himself from a
gang which was laboring on stone-breaking under an overhang that
looked to me to be ready to collapse. He straightened slowly, and
stared, before dropping his pick-helve and starting toward
us.

"I'll spare you this one, Master
Doctor," said the quarry-master genially. "He's everything you ask
for." And he went off into fits of mirth once more.

The youth came up and stood, arms
hanging, eyes on the ground. At a guess, he was about eighteen or
nineteen. He looked strong enough -- he would have to be, to
survive that life for more than six months -- but stupid to the
point of idiocy.

"Casso?" I said. He looked up, and I
saw that he was merely exhausted. In a life without hope or
pleasure there was little point in spending energy on
thought.

His master was laughing again. "It's
no use talking to him. Anything you want to know you'll have to ask
me, or look for yourself." He seized the lad's wrist and held up
the arm. "See? Strong as a mule, and sound in wind and limb. And
discreet enough, even for you. Discreet as hell, is our Casso. He's
dumb."

The youth noticed the handling no more
than would a mule, but at the last sentence he met my eyes again,
briefly. I had been wrong. There was thought there, and with it
hope; I saw the hope die.

"But not deaf with it, I gather?" I
said. "What caused it, do you know?"

"You might say his own silly tongue."
He started his great laugh again, caught my look, and cleared his
throat instead. "You'll make no cure here, Master Doctor, his
tongue's out. I never got the rights of it, but he used to be in
service down in Bremenium, and the way I heard it, he opened his
mouth too wide once too often. Not one to have patience with
insolence, isn't the lord Aguisel...Ah, well, but he's learned his
lesson. I got him with a job lot of labor after the town bridges
were repaired. He's given me no trouble. And for all I know it was
house service he was in before, so you'll be getting a bargain with
a fine, young -- Hey there!"

While we had been talking his eye had
gone, from time to time, to the gang at work on the stone. Now he
started over that way, with some shouted abuse at the "idle scum"
who had seized the chance to work more slowly.

I looked thoughtfully at Casso. I had
caught the look in his face, and the quick, involuntary shake of
the head at the quarry-master's mention of "insolence."

"You were in Aguisel's household?" I
asked him.

A nod.

"I see." I thought I did, indeed.
Aguisel was a man of evil reputation, a jackal to Lot's wolf, who
laired in the hilltop remains of Bremenium fortress to the south.
Things happened there which a decent man could only guess at. I had
heard rumors of this trick of using dumb or blinded
slaves.

"Am I right in thinking that you saw
what you could not be allowed to report on?"

Another nod. This time his eyes
remained fixed on me. It must have been long enough since anyone
had tried even this sort of limited communication.

"I thought as much. I have heard
stories, myself, of my lord Aguisel. Can you read or write,
Casso?"

A shake of the head.

"Be thankful," I said dryly. "If you
could, then by this time you would be dead."

The quarry-master had got his gang
working again to his satisfaction. He was on his way back to us. I
thought quickly.

The youth's dumbness might be no
disadvantage to Beltane, who was more than able to do his own
talking; but I had been working on the assumption that the new
slave must act as his master's eyes while we were in Dunpeldyr. Now
I saw that there was no need of this: whatever transpired in Lot's
stronghold, Beltane was quite able to report on it himself. His
sight was not strong, but his hearing was, and he could tell us
what was said; what the place looked like would hardly matter. When
we left Dunpeldyr, if the goldsmith needed a different servant, no
doubt we could find one. But now time pressed, and here I could
certainly purchase discretion, even if enforced, and, I thought,
the loyalty that went with gratitude.

"Well?" asked the
quarry-master.

I said: "Anyone who has survived
service in Bremenium is certainly strong enough for anything I
might require. Very well. I'll take him."

"Splendid, splendid!" The fellow waxed
loud in his praise of my judgment and Casso's various excellences,
so much so that I began to wonder if the slaves were in fact his
own to dispose of, or if he was seeing a way to fill his own purse,
and would perhaps report the youth's death to his employers. When
he began to haggle about price, I sent Casso to collect whatever
possessions he had, with instructions to wait for me on the road. I
have never seen why, because a man is your captive, or a purchase,
he should be stripped of an elementary self-respect. Even a horse
or a hound works the better for retaining a pride in
itself.

After he had gone I turned back to the
quarry-master. "Now we agreed, if you remember, that I would pay
some part of the price in medicines. You will find me at the tavern
by the south gate. If you come tonight, or send someone to ask for
Master Emrys, I will have the medicines ready for you, and leave
them to be picked up. And now, about the rest of the
price..."

In the end we were agreed, and,
followed by my new purchase, I made my way back to the
tavern.

Casso's face fell when he heard that
he was not to serve me, but to go with Beltane; but by the time the
evening was through, with the warmth and good food and the lively
company that crowded into the tavern, he looked like a plant that,
dying in darkness, has been plunged suddenly into sunlit water.
Beltane was outspokenly grateful to me, and embarked almost
straight away on a long and happy exposition of his craft for
Casso's sake. The latter could hardly have found a place in which
his mutilation would have mattered less. I suspected that, as the
evening wore through, Beltane began to find it a positive advantage
to have a dumb servant. Ninian had hardly spoken at all, but
neither had he listened. Casso drank it all in, fingering the
pieces with his callused hands, his brain waking from the numbness
of hopeless exhaustion, and expanding into pleasure as one
watched.

The tavern was too small -- and we
were ostensibly too poor -- to have a private chamber, but at the
end of the hall, away from the fire, there was a deep alcove with a
table and twin settles where we could be private enough. No one
took much notice of us, and we stayed in our corner all evening,
listening to the gossip that came into the tavern. Facts there were
none, but there were plenty of rumors, the most important being
that Arthur had fought and won two more engagements, and that the
Saxons had accepted terms. The High King was to be in Linnuis for
some time longer, but Lot, it was said, could be expected home any
day now.