‘A runaway slave by the looks of him, sir,’ said the man who carried the lantern.
‘Aye, poor wretch,’ said the other, in a clear-cut and unmistakably Roman voice. ‘And he has been on the run over long, it seems.’
Beric dragged himself to his knees, but could rise no further, and crouched there, glaring up at them with terrified appeal. ‘Not back to the galleys!’ he begged thickly. ‘Not—not back to the galleys!’
The second man stooped quickly and caught him as he began to sway. He looked up wildly into a dark, lean face that seemed vaguely familiar, and began to babble thickly and frantically: ‘I’ll go away—I’ll—oh, don’t give me up—not to the galleys!’ And then, feeling himself being laid back against the man’s knee, twisted over with a yelp of pain.
There was an instant’s complete silence, and then he felt himself eased gently over on to his face. Great God Mithras!’ said the Roman voice above him. ‘Look at his back!—oh, look at this, Servius; he’s been scourged.’
‘Happen that is why he’s on the run,’ said the man with the lantern.
Beric began to babble again: ‘Don’t send me back. I’ve never done you any harm! Don’t—don’t——’ Everything seemed slipping away from him, and he fought to hold the world together for yet one moment. ‘Not back to the galleys!’
A hand came down on his shoulder, well out beyond the havoc of the scourge, the firm pressure of it seeming for a moment to steady the world again; and the Roman voice was in his ears, speaking very clearly and insistingly as though to reach him from a long distance and make him understand. ‘Listen; there is nothing to be afraid of. You are not going back to the galleys.’
And then the darkness broke over him in a great slow wave.
Beric was chained to his oar again, with Jason rowing beside him, and the seas racing mountains high along the Alcestis’s dipping gunwale, and he cried out to the Hortator, ‘We must lay the oars in! Some of us will be killed—killed—killed!’ And then it was Jason crying above the storm: ‘Life is none so sweet on the rowing-benches,’ and beginning to cough; and his coughing going farther and farther away. And Beric was left chained to his bench and calling wildly after him: ‘Jason! Jason!’
Over and over again it happened. And yet in between whiles he would be dimly aware of some place that was not the Alcestis’s rowing-deck, and of people near him who were not his fellow galley slaves nor yet Porcus the Overseer; and even the taste of warm milk. But always the Alcestis would draw him back again; out into dark waters.
‘Some of us will be killed—killed—killed!’
‘Life is none so sweet on the rowing-benches.’
And then the last time of all, as he struggled against his chains, calling frantically after his lost oar-mate, suddenly Jason was beside him again, saying: ‘Look! we thought that they were iron, but all the while they were only made of rushes.’ And Beric looked down and saw that his shackles were made of plaited green rushes, and snapped them with a finger. And as he did so, the Alcestis changed, dwindling into a little boat like those he had seen on the ornamental lake in the gardens of Lucullus at Rome. A mere cockle-shell, painted with mallard colours, green and purple on her wing-coverts. Then Jason stepped ashore and turned, holding out a hand to Beric, and they went together up a sandy path with the shadows of olive trees lying blue upon it. They walked a long way up the path, while all the time the pain and terror and heartbreak fell farther and farther away behind Beric, until they came to the heart of the island. The shadows of the olive trees gathered there, and lay like a pool; and a heron that had been standing one-legged on the edge of the pool swept into the air, circling upward on swift and powerful wings; but as he watched, Beric saw that it was not a heron after all, but a whole skein of wild geese flying overhead. ‘There is your fresco,’ he said to Jason; and Jason said: ‘Did I not tell you they grew thickest here where the olive trees fall back behind the house?’ And, looking down, Beric saw that all around their feet the ground was scarlet with anemones growing like points of flame in the silvery grass. He turned full to his friend, laughing for the gladness that rose in him. ‘It was a good dream,’ he said, ‘a good dream … .’
For an instant he saw Jason’s face very clearly by the crystal light of the dream, with the faint, twisted smile on it, and then it began to change into another face, as the dreamlight dulled and thickened into tawny lamplight. In a sudden panic he cried out as he had so often done before: ‘Jason! Jason!’
And a voice said gently: ‘It is well with Jason. Lie still now.’
The face above him was growing clearer every moment: a dark, hard face with the brand of Mithras between the brows, out of which eyes that were the cold grey of wintry northern seas looked down at him with an odd intensity.
Staring up into that dark face, Beric burst out desperately: ‘I never turned robber! I only ran away because he said he would sell me into the salt-mines! You heard him—you were there——’
‘So it is you,’ said the Maker of Roads and Drainer of Marshes; and then, as Beric struggled to get to his elbow, bent and pressed him back: ‘Yes, I was there; I heard him. Lie still now.’
Beric shook his head weakly, gasping for breath. ‘I only chanced on the farm that evening; and Rhodope took me in and—she was kind to me. And then the robbers came, and the soldiers after them, and the rest got clear, but—I didn’t.’
‘All this you shall tell me at another time,’ Justinius said. ‘Not now. Now it is the time for sleep.’
But Beric was beyond the reach of the reassurance in his tone, knowing only that he was helpless in the power of a Roman officer; and he thrust out his hands in blind, terrified entreaty. ‘Your soldiers are down yonder—I saw them. You’ll not—you’ll not——’
His hands were caught in a hard, quiet grip. ‘What is your name?’
Somehow the very ordinariness of the question reached him through his fear, steadying him a little. He gulped, ‘Beric.’
‘Then listen, Beric; the soldiers down yonder have nothing to do with you, nor you with them. Stop being afraid; there is nothing to be afraid of.’ Justinius’s voice was deep, without being either gruff or hearty, a quiet voice, and something in it, and in his hands, began to take effect on Beric, as the right voice and hands will do on a frightened horse, so that after a moment he ceased to shudder and his panic quieted. The flicker of a smile crept into the eyes that held his so unwaveringly.
‘Try to trust me.’
For a moment longer Beric lay rigid, gazing up with strained, questioning eyes into the face above him; then he let go his caught breath in a long, shaken sigh, and relaxed. He trusted Justinius; suddenly he was content to let his life lie in Justinius’s hands.
XV
THE BUILDER OF ROADS AND DRAINER OF MARSHES
THE next time Beric awoke, it was full daylight, and he found that he was lying on his side with a warm rug over him. The door of the lime-washed cell in which he lay stood open to the outer air, and morning sunlight slanted across the foot of the cot, making the blue and green and crimson chequer of the rug glow with a jewel brilliance. The shadow of a flying bird darted across the sunlight on the floor and he could hear a distant contented clucking of hens. It was wonderful to lie quiet. In a little, moving cautiously, he found that he could even lie on his back, and the discovery pleased him quite absurdly.
Then padding footsteps sounded outside, and the sunlight was blotted out, and there was a woman standing in the doorway. A huge woman clad in a tunic of shrieking saffron, with long swinging pendants of silver filigree in her ears.
In an instant Beric had caught himself together and was crouching against the wall at the back of his cot, wary and menacing as a wild thing cornered, as he glared at her under his brows. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded hoarsely.
‘I am Cordaella. I keep house for the Commander,’ said the woman in a soft, throaty voice like a wood-pigeon’s.
‘Where is the man who drains marshes?’
&nb
sp; ‘The Commander is down with his wall.’ The woman came to the side of the cot, billowing all over as she moved, and Beric saw that she carried a bowl and a little brown loaf.
Instantly he was ravenously hungry, but he pressed away from the food distrustfully, his eyes flying back to her face. ‘When is he coming back?’
‘Maybe this evening, maybe not. He has his quarters down at the base camp, and once the spring gales are over and the working season starts, often we do not see him for many days together. He will come sometime—between tides.’
‘He was here last night,’ said Beric defiantly, because he was suddenly afraid that last night had been only part of his dream.
‘He has been here every night since he and my man found you,’ said the woman soothingly. ‘We were afraid, that first night, that you were gone too far to come back. But you came back, and now you are better—so much better. All that you need now is to sleep and to eat, and presently you will be strong again.’ She leaned towards him a little, coaxingly, holding out the bowl. ‘See, I have brought you some broth —good broth. Drink it before it grows cold.’
Beric still pressed back against the wall, frowning into her face as she bent towards him. It was a kind face, broad and soft-eyed and gentle. Suddenly he yielded, and stretched out his hands for the bowl, with an eager croak.
The broth was good, as she had said, warm and strong and infinitely comforting; and he gulped it down greedily to the last drop, and then, with a long sigh, thrust the bowl back on her, and held out his hand for the loaf.
‘Eat it slowly, now,’ she said as she gave it to him, ‘for it is the first solid food that you have had for a long while past.’
Beric knew that; knew it better than she could do. The loaf was new and sweet, and he sank his teeth into it and tore off about half and swallowed it at a gulp, heedless of her soft protests; then crammed the rest into his mouth as though he were afraid that she might try to take it back again, and demanded, ‘Give me more.’
She shook her head, setting the silver ear-rings swinging. ‘No more now. You have had enough for the first time. This evening you shall have more, and perhaps an egg. Would you like an egg?’
Beric said sullenly: ‘I am hungry now.’
‘Aye, poor child, poor child, I do not doubt it. Let you lie down now, and sleep, and soon it will be evening.’ She set the bowl down on a stool, and began to straighten the rug, which he had dragged into a tangle. ‘Tch, tch. See what a bird’s nest you have made of the blanket … . Is it that your wrist is hurting you?’
‘My wrist?’ Beric looked down, puzzled, and saw for the first time that his left wrist was bandaged with strips of linen, over the place where the shackle-gall had become a sore. The sight seemed to him so surprising that it drove all thought of hunger out of his mind. He stared at it wonderingly. ‘Did you do that?’
‘No. It is the Commander’s work,’ Cordaella said, and repeated her question: ‘Is it hurting you?’
He shook his head. ‘It burns a little, no more.’
‘Then I will leave it alone until this evening. If the Commander does not come by nightfall, I will salve it again then.’
‘You’re kind,’ Beric mumbled, looking up at her as one making a discovery. ‘Are you his slave?’
‘Neither his nor any man’s. I am a free woman, and the wife of a Roman citizen,’ she told him with quiet pride. ‘My man served under the Commander, years ago; and when the Commander came back to Britain to make grazing land from the Marsh yonder, he took my man back into his service. Now you have talked enough, and it is time that you slept again. Do you lie down.’
There was no appeal against her—one might as well appeal against a mountain—but Beric found that he did not want to appeal against her. He lay down obediently, and she tucked the rug round his shoulders as though he had been a small child; and taking up the bowl, departed with a surging, billowy motion that was reassuring in itself.
After she was gone, he lay for a little while blinking at the sunlight across the doorway. His tired mind accepted quite naturally the fact that he was once again in Britain; that somehow he had blundered into sanctuary. He untucked the rug again, and put up his left arm for another look at the bandage on his wrist. The Centurion Justinius had done that. The Centurion Justinius had come up from his wall to do that for him, a galley slave. Some of the lovely quiet of his dream, the quiet at the heart of Jason’s island, returned to him again, and almost at once he was asleep.
For two days and two nights Beric did nothing but sleep and eat, while the life flowed back into him like wine into a cup. And then on the third day, wearing a tunic of Servius’s, he crawled out like an old man into the spring sunlight, and sat on the low step of the terrace. The sun seemed caught in the sheltered angle between the main house-place and the sleeping-wing, and the stones were faintly warm, despite the little wind that stirred the feathery branches of the tamarisk.
But the light which seemed to flow in quiet waves over the lime-washed walls and the low roofs with their powdering of yellow stonecrop was the clear, water-cool light that belongs to marsh country. From where he sat, an open bay of the hillside dropped gently away, forming a sheltered pasture among the low-growing woodland, and at the lower end, where the blossom-bearded thorn trees curved together again, a little red mare was grazing, with her foal beside her. His gaze rested on her for a long time, then slipped out over the thorn trees to the Marsh beyond. Somehow he had expected the Marsh to be always covered in mist; but to-day it lay clear, spreading away and away, green and grey and tawny, shot through with the silver gleam of water, to the distant shining line of the sea. Away to the right, beyond the farthest fall of the woods, his questing gaze found a grey line snaking out across the sodden flatness, that he knew must be the Wall—the Rhee Wall, they called it. Presently, between tides, the Drainer of Marshes would come up from his Wall again.
Some while later Servius, crossing the terrace with an armful of hay, halted beside him. Both Servius and Cordaella had accepted the coming among them of a fugitive galley slave as something perfectly natural, for whatever Justinius did was right in the eyes of his small badger-grey henchman, while to Cordaella, no sort of stray could ever come amiss. ‘Is it the mare, or the Marsh?’ asked Servius.
Beric, whose wits had been wandering vaguely along that grey thread of wall, looked up with a start, flinching away an instant as though expecting a blow. ‘Both,’ he said, recovering himself. ‘That is a fine foal she has. Is he part Arab?’
‘He is. Antares, the Commander’s black, sired him, and he is of the strain of the Kailhan, whose descent is unbroken from the stables of Soliman, the King of the Jews. The mare is from the Icenian runs. You’ll not find a better cross than that for a chariot pony.’ Servius’s eyes were crinkled with proud affection as he looked at the small, long-legged creature. He glanced down at Beric. ‘You know something of horses, it seems.’
‘Yes,’ Beric said. ‘I know something of horses.’
For a moment he thought Servius was going to ask questions, and he added quickly, with a nod towards the quietly grazing mare: ‘Is she the only one?’
‘The only one as yet. But there’ll be others presently, when we have the long pasture cleared of scrub and back in good heart. This must have been a good farm before it was let run to ruin, and it can be a good farm again. We’ll have half a dozen brood mares on our pastures in a few years’ time.’ Servius shifted the load of hay a little, and took a step towards the edge of the terrace, then checked, glancing back, and asked with a rather gruff friendliness, ‘Coming?’
Beric shook his head, and after a moment the other shrugged, and continued on his way.
Beric sat where he was on the terrace steps, watching the stocky, badger-grey figure plodding down the meadow to the low hay-rack: heard him whistle, and saw the mare lift her head and then come delicately towards him. He was lost in a sudden desolation that had come upon him at the other man’s words. Until that moment he had loo
ked no farther ahead than the Commander’s next coming; now, Servius had let the future in—the future in which the long pasture would be back in good heart, and other mares would graze there with their foals beside them, and there would be no place for him. No belonging place, here, or anywhere … . The desolation passed like a sudden chill wind, as swiftly as it had come, but it took with it his sense of sanctuary; and still he did not go down to join Servius and the little red mare.
Justinius did not return that night, nor had he come home the next, when, after the evening meal, Beric went into the long living-room, carrying logs for the fire. Whether or no the master of the house was at home, there was always a low fire burning there, British fashion, on a raised hearth in the centre of the room. It was the Hearth Fire, the living heart of the house. Beric dumped his load, and knelt down beside the hearth to tend it. The flames sprang up as he thrust the half-burned logs together, and the long, bare room warmed out of the shadows; Justinius’s big writing-table, his cross-legged camp chair, the carved citron-wood scroll-chest by the door, taking shape and substance as the firelight touched them.
Beric sat back on his heels, staring down into the small flames raying marigold-wise from under an apple log. The door of the kitchen-place stood open, and beyond it he could hear Cordaella scouring pots and singing to herself softly and tunelessly the while. Hearth fire and a woman singing to herself while she scoured pots, they were part of a long-forgotten world that he had once belonged to. But that was before the Alcestis, long before the Alcestis, and he did not belong to that world now.
Cordaella ceased her singing, and he reached for another log, then checked with his hand out, as very faintly he caught the beat of horse-hooves on the track from the camp. Outside on the terrace there would be nothing to hear as yet, he knew, but this long room had a trick of catching sounds. All day long it was murmurous with the voices of the Marsh, as a shell that sings with the sea in it when you hold it to your ear. Many riders might come and go along that track beyond the thorn curve of the wind break, he knew, for Servius had told him that it linked the base camp with the big road a few miles inland; but somehow he never doubted that it was Justinius. He settled the log on the fire with infinite care, then sprang up, his vague, unhappy sense of being outcast for the moment quite forgotten.