Out of the ruin, one thing stood up unchanged: that the Eagle was still to be found and brought back, lest one day it became a menace to the Frontier. There was something comforting about that. A faith still to be kept.
Next morning when the early meal had been eaten, and the fire quenched and scattered, Marcus stood beside his mare, looking away north-west, along the line of Guern’s pointing finger. The light wind whipped his face, and his morning shadow ran away downhill as though eager to be off before him, and he heard the wild, sweet calling of the green plover that seemed to be the voice of the great loneliness.
‘Yonder where the vale opens,’ Guern was saying. ‘You will know the ford by the leaning pine that grows beside it. You must cross there, and follow the right bank, or you will find yourself at the last with the whole broad Firth of Cluta between you and Caledonia. Two days’ march, three at the most, will bring you to the old northern line.’
‘And then?’ Marcus said, not turning his narrowed gaze from the blue hazed distance.
‘I can tell you only this: that the men who carried the Eagle north were of the tribe of the Epidaii, whose territory is the deep firths and the mountains of the west coast, running from the Cluta.’
‘Can you hazard any guess as to where in this territory their holy place may be?’
‘None. It may be that if you find the Royal Dun, you will find the Holy Place not far off; but the Epidaii is divided into many clans, so I have heard, and the Royal Clan may not be the guardians of the Holy Place and the holy things of the tribe.’
‘You mean—it might be some quite small and unimportant clan?’
‘Not unimportant; it would be as powerful as the Royal Clan, maybe more so. But small, yes. There is no more help that I can give you.’
They were silent a moment until there sounded behind them the faint jink of a bridle-bit, as Esca brought up the other mare. Then Guern said hurriedly, ‘Do not follow that trail; it leads into the mouth of death.’
‘I must take my chance of that,’ Marcus said. He turned his head. ‘And you, Esca?’
‘I go where you go,’ said Esca, busy with a buckle.
‘Why?’ Guern demanded. ‘Now that you know the truth? They will not re-form the Legion. Why should you go on? Why?’
‘There is still the Eagle to be brought back,’ Marcus said.
Another silence, and then Guern said almost humbly, ‘You have said nothing about all this that I have told you; no more than if it had been a story told to while away an idle evening.’
‘What should I say?’
The other laughed, shortly and harshly. ‘Mithras knows! But my belly would be the lighter if you said it.’
‘Last night I felt too sick in my own belly to care over much for yours,’ Marcus said wearily. ‘That is passed now, but if I cursed the Hispana with every foul Tiber-side word that I could lay my tongue to, it would not serve my father, nor sweeten the stink of the Legion’s name.’ He looked for the first time at the man beside him. ‘As for you, I have never been hunted, and the Lord of the Legions forbid that I should be your judge.’
The other said defiantly, ‘Why did you come? I was happy with my woman; she is a good woman to me. I am a great man in my tribe, though an outdweller. Often I forget—almost—that I was not born into my tribe, until once again Trinomontium draws me back for a little while. And now I shall be ashamed to my dying day, because I let you go north on this trail alone.’
‘No need that you should carry a new shame,’ Marcus said. ‘This is a trail that three can follow better than four, and two better than three. Go back to your tribe, Guern. Thank you for your salt and your shelter, and for answering my questions.’
He turned away to mount his horse, and a few moments later was heading down the stream-side with Esca close behind.
XIV
THE FEAST OF NEW SPEARS
ON an evening more than a month later, Marcus and Esca reined in to breathe their tired horses, on the crest of a steep ridge above the Western Ocean. It was an evening coloured like a dove’s breast; a little wind feathered the shining water, and far out on the dreaming brightness many scattered islands seemed to float lightly as sleeping sea-birds. In the safe harbourage inshore, a few trading-vessels lay at anchor, the blue sails that had brought them from Hibernia furled as though they, too, were asleep. And to the north, brooding over the whole scene, rose Cruachan, sombre, cloaked in shadows, crested with mist; Cruachan, the shield-boss of the world.
Mountain and islands and shining sea were all grown familiar to Marcus. For a month now he had seldom been out of sight of one or other of them, as he came and went among the mist-haunted glens where the Epidaii had their hunting grounds. It had been a heartbreaking month. So often, since he crossed the northern line, it had seemed to him that he was at last on the trail of what he sought, and always he had been wrong. There were so many holy places along the coast. Wherever the Ancient People, the little Dark People, had left their long barrows, there the Epidaii, coming after, had made a holy place at which to worship their gods; and the Ancient People had left so many barrows. Yet nowhere could Marcus hear any whisper of the lost Eagle. These people did not speak of their gods, nor of the things which had to do with their gods. And suddenly, this evening, looking out over the shining sea, Marcus was heart-sick and not far from giving up hope.
He was roused from his bleak mood by Esca’s voice beside him. ‘Look, we have companions on the road.’ And following the direction of his friend’s back-pointing thumb, he turned to look down the deer-path by which they had come, and saw a party of hunters climbing towards them. He wheeled Vipsania, and sat waiting for them to come up. Five men in all, two of them carrying the slung carcass of a black boar; and the usual pack of wolfish hounds cantering among them. How different they were from the men of Valentia: darker and more slightly built. Maybe that was because the blood of the Dark People ran more strongly in them than in the lowland tribes; less outwardly fierce than the lowlanders too, but in the long run, Marcus thought, more dangerous.
‘The hunting has been good.’ He saluted them as they came up at a jog-trot.
‘The hunting has been good,’ agreed the leader, a young man with the twisted gold torc of a chieftain round his neck. He looked inquiringly at Marcus, forbidden by courtesy to ask his business, but clearly wondering what this stranger, who was not one of the traders from the bluesailed ships, was doing in his territory.
Almost without thinking, Marcus asked him the question which had become a habit with much asking. ‘Are there any in your dun who have the eye sickness?’
The man’s look grew half eager, half suspicious. ‘Is it that you can cure the eye sickness?’
‘Can I cure the eye sickness?—I am Demetrius of Alexandria. The Demetrius of Alexandria,’ said Marcus, who had long since learned the value of advertisement. ‘Speak my name south of the Cluta, speak it in the Royal Dun itself, and men will tell you that I am indeed a healer of all sickness of the eye.’
‘There are several that I know of in the dun, who have the eye sickness,’ said the man. ‘None of your trade ever came this way before. You will heal them?’
‘How should I know, even I, until I see them?’ Marcus turned his mare into the way. ‘You are for the dun now? Let us go on together.’
And on they went, Marcus with the Chieftain loping at his horse’s shoulder, then Esca and the rest of the hunting party with the slung boar in their midst and the hounds weaving to and fro among them. For a while they followed the ridge, then turned inland, and came looping down through thin birch-woods towards a great loch that lay, pearl-pale with evening, among the hills. Marcus and Esca knew that loch—they had touched its further shores more than once. The Loch of Many Islets it was called, from the little islands scattered in it, some of them steep and rocky, or low and willow-fringed where the herons nested.
It was twilight when they reached the dun on its hill shoulder above the still waters of the loch; the soft mulberr
y twilight of the west coast, through which the firelit doorways of the living-huts bloomed like yellow crocus flowers dimly veined with red. The cluster of huts that made up the rath of the Chieftain was at the head of the dun, in a sharp curve of the turf ramparts, and they turned aside to it, while the other hunters, after arranging for the sharing of the boar, scattered to their own houses.
At the sound of their arrival, a lad who Marcus took to be the Chieftain’s brother ducked out from the firelit doorway and came running to meet them. ‘How went the hunting, Dergdian?’
‘The hunting was good,’ said the Chieftain, ‘for see, besides a fine boar, I have brought home a healer of sore eyes; also his spear-bearer. Look to their horses, Liathan.’ He turned quickly to Marcus, who was rubbing his thigh. ‘You are saddle-stiff ? You have ridden over-far today?’
‘No,’ said Marcus. ‘It is an old hurt which still cramps me sometimes.’
He followed his host into the great living-hut, ducking his head under the low lintel. Inside it was very hot, and the usual blue peat-reek caught at his throat. Two or three hounds lay among the warm fern. A little, wizened woman, evidently a slave, bent over the raised hearth, stirring the evening stew in a bronze cauldron, and did not look up at their coming in; but a gaunt old man who sat beyond the fire peered at them through the eddying peat-smoke with bright, masterful eyes. That was in the first instant; then the curtain of beautifully worked deerskins over the entrance to the women’s place was drawn aside, and a girl appeared on the threshold; a tall girl, dark even for a woman of the Epidaii, in a straight green gown, clasped at the shoulder with a disc of red-gold as broad and massive as a shield-boss. She had been spinning, it seemed, for she still carried spindle and distaff.
‘I heard your voice,’ she said. ‘Supper is ready and waiting.’
‘Let it wait a while longer, Fionhula my heart,’ said Dergdian the Chieftain. ‘I have brought home a healer of sore eyes; therefore do you bring out to him the little cub.’
The woman’s long dark eyes moved quickly, with a kind of startled hope in them, to Marcus’s face, then back to the Chieftain’s. She turned without a word, letting the curtain fall behind her, and a few moments later she was back, holding a little boy of about two in her arms. A brown pleasant infant, dressed in the usual coral bead, but as the light fell on his face, Marcus saw that his eyes were so swollen and red and crusted that they would scarcely open.
‘Here is one for your healing,’ said the Chieftain.
‘Yours?’ Marcus asked.
‘Mine.’
‘He will be blind,’ said the old man by the fire. ‘All along, I have said that he will be blind, and I am never wrong.’
Marcus ignored him. ‘Give the little cub to me,’ he commanded. ‘I will not hurt him.’ He took the little boy from his mother with a quick reassuring smile, and slipped down awkwardly on to his sound knee beside the fire. The child whimpered, turning away from the fire; evidently the light hurt him. Not blind already, then. That was something. Very gently, he turned the little boy’s face back to the firelight. ‘There, cubling, it is but for a moment. Let me look. What is this you have been putting in the child’s eyes?’
‘Toad’s fat,’ said the old man. ‘With my own hands I salved them, though it is women’s work, for my grandson’s wife is a fool.’
‘Have you found it do any good?’
The old man shrugged his gaunt shoulders. ‘Maybe not,’ he said grudgingly.
‘Then why use it?’
‘It is the custom. Always our womenfolk put toad’s fat on such places; but my grandson’s wife—’ The old man spat juicily to express his opinion of his grandson’s wife. ‘But all along, I have said the child will be blind,’ he added, in the satisfied tone of a true prophet.
Marcus heard the girl behind him catch her breath in agonized protest, and felt his own temper flash up in him, but he had the sense to know that if he made an enemy of the old devil he might as well give up any hope of saving the child’s sight. So he said peaceably enough, ‘We will see. Toad’s fat is doubtless good for sore eyes, but since it has failed, this time, I shall try my own salves; and it may be that they will do better.’ And before the old man could get in another word he turned to Fionhula. ‘Bring me warm water and linen rags,’ he said, ‘and light a lamp. I must have light to work by, not this flickering fire-glow. Esca, do you bring in my medicine box.’
And there and then, while the mother held the sick child in her lap, he set to work, bathing, salving, bandaging, by the light of the lamp which the slave woman deserted the stew to hold for him.
Marcus and Esca remained many days in the dun of Dergdian. Always before, Marcus had merely started the good work, left a lump of salve and instructions how to use it, and moved on. But this time it was different. The child’s eyes were worse than any that he had had to tend before, and there was grandfather and his toad fat to be reckoned with. This time he would have to stay. Well, he might as soon stay here as in any other place, since he was as likely, or as unlikely, to be near finding the Eagle here as anywhere else.
So he stayed, and a weary stay it seemed. The days went very slowly, for he had long empty stretches of time on his hands, and after the first sharp battle for the little cub’s sight had been won, and it was only a question of waiting, they seemed to crawl more slowly still.
Most of the time he sat in the hut-place doorway, watching the womenfolk at work, or grinding sticks of dried salves for the small leaden pots that needed replenishing, while Esca went off with the hunters, or joined the herdsmen in the steep cattle-runs. In the evening he talked with the men round the fire; exchanged travellers’ tales with the dark Hibernian traders who came and went through the dun (for there was a constant trade in goldwork and weapons, slaves and hunting dogs, between Hibernia and Caledonia); listening patiently to old Tradui, the Chieftain’s maternal grandfather, telling interminable stories of seal hunts when he and the world were young and men and seals stronger and fiercer than they were now.
But all the while, listen as they might, neither he nor Esca heard anything to suggest that the place and the thing they were looking for was nearby. Once or twice, during those days, Marcus glimpsed a black-cloaked figure passing through the dun, remote from the warm and crowded humanity of the tribe and seeming to brood over it as Cruachan brooded over the land. But Druids were everywhere, up here beyond the reach of Rome, just as holy places were everywhere. They did not live among the people, but withdrawn into themselves, in the misty fastnesses of the mountains, in the hidden glens, and among the forests of birch and hazel. Their influence lay heavy on the duns and villages, but no one spoke of them, any more than they spoke of their gods and the prowling ghosts of their forefathers. Neither did anyone ever speak of a captured Eagle. But still Marcus waited, until he knew that the little cub’s sight was safe.
And then one evening, returning with Esca from a plunge in the deep water below the dun, he found the Chieftain squatting in his hut-place doorway with his hunting dogs around him, lovingly burnishing a heavy war-spear with a collar of eagles’ feathers. Marcus folded up beside him and watched, vividly remembering another war-spear whose collar had been the blue-grey feathers of a heron. Esca stood leaning one shoulder against the rowan-wood doorpost, watching also.
Presently the Chieftain looked up and caught their gaze. ‘It is for the Feast of New Spears,’ he said. ‘For the warrior dancing that comes after.’
‘The Feast of New Spears,’ Marcus echoed. ‘That is when your boys become men, is it not? I have heard of such a feast, but never seen it.’
‘You will see in three nights from now; on the Night of the Horned Moon,’ Dergdian said, and returned to his burnishing. ‘It is a great feast. From all over the tribe, the boys come, and their fathers with them. If it were the King’s son, still he must come to us, when it is time for him to receive his weapons.’
‘Why?’ Marcus asked, and then hoped that he had not sounded too eager.
&n
bsp; ‘We are the keepers of the Holy Place, we, the Seal People,’ said Dergdian, turning the spear on his knee. ‘We are the guardians of the Life of the Tribe.’
After a long pause, Marcus said casually, ‘So. And it is allowed to anyone to witness this mystery of the New Spears?’
‘Not the mystery, no; that is between the New Spears and the Horned One, and none save the priest-kind may see and live; but the ceremonies of the forecourt, they are for any who choose to be there. They are not hidden, save from the women’s side.’
‘Then with your leave I shall most assuredly choose to be there. We Greeks—we are born asking questions,’ Marcus said.
Next day began a bustle of preparation that reminded Marcus of his own Etruscan village on the eve of Saturnalia; and by evening the first inflow of the New Spears had begun; boys and their fathers from the farthest fringes of the tribal lands, riding fine small ponies, wearing their brightest clothes, and many of them with their hounds cantering along beside. Odd, he thought, watching them, odd that people so poor in many ways, hunters and herdsmen who do not till the soil, and live in mud hovels in acute discomfort, should enrich the bridles of their superbly bred ponies with silver and bronze and studs of coral, and clasp their cloaks with buckler-brooches of red Hibernian gold. There was an in-swarming of another kind too, of merchants and fortune-tellers, harpers and horse-dealers, who encamped with the tribe on the level shores of the loch until the whole stretch below the dun was dark with them. It was all warm and gay and human, a market crowd on a large scale, and nowhere any sign of the strangeness that Marcus had expected.
But there was to be strangeness enough before the Feast of New Spears was over.
It began on the second evening, when suddenly the boys who were to receive their weapons were no longer there. Marcus did not see them go; but suddenly they were gone, and behind them the dun was desolate. The men daubed their foreheads with mud; the women gathered together, wailing and rocking in ritual grief. From within the dun and from the encampment below the ramparts the wailing rose as the night drew on, and at the evening meal a place was left empty and a drinking-horn filled and left untouched for every boy who had gone, as for the ghosts of dead warriors at the feast of Samhain; and the women made the death chant through the long hours of darkness.