Nicanor - Teller of Tales Part 40

"How could I see?" said Wardo. "I stood, and she kneeled before me. And little did I care whether she wept or swooned, when the grays were plunging like to tear my arms from my body, and it was all I could do to keep upon two wheels. There went my lord ahead, and here pounded I after, and alongside rode my lord Marius, watching his wife and itching to be back and have it out with those reavers. I saw it in his eye. Eh, that was a wild night. We made the Bibracte road, and doubled back eastward, and so rode for Londinium. But at the second miliarium from Bibracte the grays gave out. So my lord Marius took my lady upon his saddle, and they all went on, bidding me follow as soon as might be. But by the grace of the G.o.ds, I was too late. When I reached the port, my lord and his people had set sail for Gaul. Well, then, if thou wilt not come with us, when things be settled, and a man may know better what to look for, I shall come and seek thee, and we will have a talk over old days together, and spill a drop or so to Bacchus. Until then, comrade o'

mine, farewell."

They grasped hands, and Sada smiled a farewell at Nicanor. The two went on, then, and left him standing there, and he watched them pa.s.s away into the glinting light and shade until Sada's crimson mantle was lost in the green gloom of trees. He took his slow way back toward Thorney, musing as he walked.

"This day mine eyes have looked on life and death, and all that death mourns and life clamors is Love, Love, and again Love. Strange that something all men must love, who cannot live for themselves alone, no matter how they try."

He came down from his dreams at the stepping-stones of the marsh-ford, to find himself all but overrunning a child who stood upon the bank and wept because he feared to cross--a small atom of a man, with little tunic torn and puckered face of woe. At sight of Nicanor he ran, and flung himself against his legs, with the sure confidence of babyhood in all the new, strange world, and clamored to be taken home.

Nicanor stooped to him with a laugh, recognizing him as the son of one Julius the Tungrian, a field-hand belonging to the farmer Medor, whose estate lay between the hills a half-mile from Thorney.

"How now, manling? Why these tears at thy first venture into the world?

How didst stray so far from mother's skirts? Dost wish to go home?"

"Ay, home!" wept young Julius. "Thou wilt take me home!"

"Come, then," said Nicanor, and swung him to his shoulder, and turned back from the ford to the road again.

It came upon him then that this was the first time that ever he had held a child in his arms. Always before had children run from him, learning, like their elders, to shun him: now he knew why. The softness of the round little body thrilled him oddly; the touch of the clinging hands, the baby weight upon his shoulder, called into life emotions such as he had never thought to know. A child, a little living child, her child and his.... The thought stirred him suddenly to his soul; and with the thought a fresh bit of the Scroll of Life unrolled before his eyes,--that Scroll which slowly he was learning how to read. His heart caught another phase of the old experience of the world, the high pride and joy of fatherhood. Again, as once before, he got a flash of new, strange light into the hearts and minds of all the world of men, as with the parting of a veil; found a new chord under his hand to be struck into pulsing life. All unaware that on a day his lady had said, "His son could I love, and be proud that he was mine," he marvelled at himself and at his feeling, and still more at the little one that had such power to wake it.

He reached the farm of Medor, and stopped at the cabin of Julius, whom he knew, which stood at the edge of the estate. Through the open doorway he could see, in the obscurity of the one poor room within, a woman's figure, bending to rub her man's back, bruised and raw from the harness of the plough, with ointment of herbs--a nightly proceeding regular as the evening meal. When she had done, he would take his turn in rubbing her; since it was not enough for women to be the bearers of children, but also they must be hewers of wood and drawers of water as well. She rose to straighten herself from her task, and saw the tall figure coming doorward, with the little one crowing upon his shoulder. At her exclamation, Julius, rugged and mossed as a st.u.r.dy hemlock, came to the threshold to look over her shoulder, stripped to the waist, his neck and arms shining with the grease.

"Here is thy son, O Kalia!" said Nicanor, halting. "He was by Thorney, weeping because the world was not large enough for his adventure."

The mother received her son with tender welcome, but he held his arms out to Nicanor, whimpering to be taken back.

"He runs away to play with boys while I am in the field, the wicked one!" she said.

Julius looked down at her and at his boy with proud eyes. When he was drunk he would beat his wife, but she loved him because he loved their child. Nicanor looked at the three.

"He is worth having," he said, very soberly, nor thought that his words might sound strange to them. He smiled at the boy, and left them, with the mother's thanks following him.

And Julius, watching him across the field toward the road, said:

"Mark you how the boy hath taken to him? Dost remember, before he went away from Thorney, how children ran from him, and even folk feared him and his gall-tipped tongue?"

"I remember," Kalia answered. "Even I have punished the child by saying, 'The black man Nicanor will get thee if thou stop not thy crying,' until for very fear he ceased. Never have I seen one so changed as he.

Juncina, the fish-wife, with whom I spoke but yesterday on Thorney, saith that each day he goeth to lame Gallus, the blacksmith's son, who is dying of a fever, and telleth him tales until the little one sleeps.

And when folk give him money for his tales, he will take it, though he never asketh it, and of it he will give half to those three old men whom each day he tendeth. It is not so long since he hath been back on Thorney, yet even so all men wonder at the change in him. Verily, I think that he must be in love."

"That is ever all you women think of!" Julius grumbled. "Were you to have your way of it, it would be love that worketh all the miracles, cureth all the illnesses, taketh the place of all the G.o.ds. Now come and rub; I am sore in every joint and sinew."

Nicanor went home in a brown study, seeing never Kalia's broad, homely face, untidy wisps of hair, brown bosom covered by her coa.r.s.e gray kerchief, but that face, young and fair and tender, which in his dreams had become mingled with that Other Woman's face with holy eyes, who was the Virgin Mother of all love. When he thought of this one, it was to think of the other, no longer woman merely, but idealized and uplifted into all that he could imagine of purity, a something too fine for earth. In place of humble Kalia, he pictured that fair patrician face as his soul's eyes saw it, glorified with the mother-love upon it, brooding over a round little head in the hollow of her breast. Holy G.o.ds, the maddening, sweet mockery of it! He shook himself as one who throws off a weight upon him, and turned in at the house of Nicodemus, whistling, with aching throat and sombre eyes of pain.

It was later than he had thought, and the evening meal was over. This troubled him not at all, for in that house he was sovereign lord, and knew his power. Myleia and her ursine spouse served him quite as though they had been his slaves. A roasted pigeon hot from the coals, beans cooked in oil with garlic, a cake of barley-bread baked in the ashes, honey, and a pitcher of wine--no lord could have fared better than their idol.

Nicodemus carried an empty platter to Myleia in the kitchen, showing it to her with immense pride.

"He hath eaten all!" he rumbled in a rasping whisper. "The first time these three weeks. Come! that is doing better. We'll have him around yet, my girl--this spoiled baby of ours."

"Who spoileth him?" she retorted, pinching his ear gently. "Thou art worse over him than a mother whose babe hath cut its first tooth. Thou art foolish in thine old age, my great ugly bear."

"Soul of my heart, a man must find something to be foolish over!" he declared, vastly pleased. "And it is high time I left off being foolish over thee. Eh, sweeting, what sayest thou?"

He ruffled her hair with his great hand. Nicanor looked in upon them from the threshold.

"At it again, thou old lion and his mate? Thou also!" he said, and smiled at them. "I go down to the ford--there be a party of men riding over the hill. Wilt come, Nico?"

The two went forth into the evening, leaving Myleia to watch them with fond eyes of pride from the low doorway.

Along the street people had begun to gather, with more of curiosity to see what might be seen than of apprehension. Woodmen with bundles of f.a.gots on their shoulders, fishermen with strings of fish, itinerant wine-sellers rattling strings of horn cups, with skins of cheap red wine, vendors of the black sticky sweetmeats made of the blood of beeves mixed with rice and honey,--all these ceased to cry custom for their evening trade in interest at the arrival of the strangers. It was long since such a crowd had descended upon Thorney; trade might be improving.

Women, ragged, with more ragged children clinging to their skirts, came from the fisher-huts upon the beach to gaze across the marsh.

And across the ford, on the crest of the long gentle rise of hill over which the straight road ran, came riding a troop of hors.e.m.e.n, carelessly, without order, in a tangle of waving spears and gleaming helmets. No merchants or townsfolk were these; and a tingle went through the crowd at the sight of weapons. Those were days when none knew what to expect from hour to hour. The on-comers cantered down the hill and into the waters of the marsh-ford; and it could be seen that they were for the most part fair-skinned, and every man bore a round buckler of bullock's hide upon his arm. At once a whisper flew from end to end of Thorney:

"These be Saxons!"

The name had become a word with which to conjure. The crowd upon the beach increased. Nicanor and Nicodemus stood in the forefront of it and watched.

The leaders of the party--an old man with white drifting beard and hot blue eyes, and a young one, with tanned face and brown, curling hair--rode out upon the shingle with stern faces set straight ahead.

Those behind them were more free and easy as to bearing; a man leaned from his saddle to scoop up water in his hand; there was joking in low tones, and deep-throated laughter. As they drew nearer to the people, waiting silent, it could be seen that they had with them a prisoner in their midst, bound upon his horse and wounded; and at sight of him a murmur fluttered through the crowd. For he went in the dress of a Roman n.o.ble, torn and stained with blood, his head sunk forward on his breast, his right arm in a sling--a pitiful object, were there those to pity.

With the crowd Nicanor and Nicodemus followed the Saxons as they rode along the main street. Questions flew from mouth to mouth:

"Who is this lord, their prisoner? Whither take they him? How did they capture him? For what come they here?" But to these no man could give an answer.

VIII

Thereafter Fate, the grim, smiling G.o.ddess, took into her own hand the shuttle of Destiny and sent it flying fast rough the warp and woof of Life. For when they came to the river's brink, the tide was in, and the waters of Tamesis, too deep to ford with safety since the moon was full, swirled past them in their swift rush from the sea.

The Saxons halted on the beach, dismounting, while the leaders conferred, and the prisoner drooped pallid in their midst; and the men of Thorney seized upon their chance for trade. An hundred mouths to feed was a boon not to be despised in those lean days. There sprang up a horde of wine-sellers, men with poultry, with produce, and with meats.

The two leaders rode away to seek an inn, each attended by a servant. A fire was kindled on the beach, where in other days so many fires had blazed; for a brief while Thorney took on a semblance of its former thriving self. Mingled with the sounds of trade and barter there was heard the dry, thin rattle of a sistrum from a temple of Isis where priests and worshippers were gathered for hidden rites; the voices of men singing, the neighing of horses.

Here, on the river side of Thorney, the beach was wider than upon the marsh side. The houses grouped themselves in black, irregular ma.s.ses behind this beach; and to the west, a short distance from the water's edge, rose the low stone wall which bounded the land of the Christian church. Fishermen's huts were crowded at the foot of this wall; and along the sand were strewn rotting spars and timbers, and there were boats drawn out of reach of the tide. Old houses, wrecked by fire and time, leaned their tottering walls above the alleys at strange angles, settling slowly into the ruin of age. The round moon hung stately, low in the eastern sky, drowning in radiance the garish glare of flames; houses stood out sharp-cut against its light, and strange shadows flung across the crooked cobbled streets. A broad path of silver glinted on the inky waters of the river. The smell of fish and tar rose strong above all other scents.

The Saxons, hungry and weary from their march, ate hugely and drank deep. Horns of mead and beer were drained and filled; white wine was as good as red. They talked with the men of Thorney, in strange Latin, with much gesticulation and interpolation of Saxon words. Among the many figures on the beach, black in the mingled light of moon and flame, was ceaseless motion, kaleidoscopic and bewildering. Thorney woke to a l.u.s.ty gayety, born of deep drinking; of recklessness, even, such as she had known rarely since the old days of the legions. Laughter became louder; quarrels, short and fierce, arose as hot blood mounted with the fumes of wine. Into the air there crept a tension, the intangible effluvium of excitement which precedes the arousing of the crowd. Quite suddenly the spirits of people were raised to fever pitch; the boisterous vigor of the Saxons was infectious.

Nicanor soon lost sight of Nicodemus. He stood among the people, regarding the scene with eyes of detachment. As always in a crowd, an odd sense of impersonality possessed him, of aloofness; in it he was forgetful of his own presence, of his own corporeality; became as a Mind seeking out its own. Here and there he was recalled by a man's greeting; here and there also a woman spoke. Everywhere he was hailed cheerily, as one comrade by another. Jests were pa.s.sed to him, for which he gave as good as he got. There was that in their intercourse with him which proved him one of themselves, an intimate sharer in their pleasures, their sorrows, their lives. Yet he was the man who not so many years before had in this place been baited as men bait a bear--the surlier, the better sport.

A red-lipped flower-girl, on the way home from her day's business in Londinium with her basket of remaining blossoms, was pressed against his shoulder in the outer edge of the crowd that watched the Saxons feed, as boys gather to see the wild beasts of the arena tear their meat. She turned, saw him, and laughed with gay raillery.

"Couldst even thou, O Silver-tongued, make of these great guzzling cattle a tale?"

He looked at her with quick artist joy in the vivid color and effect of her,--red lips, cheeks as brilliant as her roses, black eyes, midnight hair in which a crimson flower was tangled. In her laughing glance, her care-free joyous innocence, he caught a hint, gone as swiftly as it come, of that Other who held his soul. Now he understood the heart and inmost meaning of it; it was the all-compelling Womanhood, the sacred spark, guarded and precious, which set men's hearts aflame; and for him, henceforth, because of that one, it made all women sacred. He answered her, banter for banter.

"What would the world be without cattle, O Flower-maiden? And why not a tale? There is a tale in all things, if one but look to find it--in every bud and leaf and flower--in these Saxons--in thee, little sister to the rose!"

"That is pretty," she cried, dimpling. "Here is a bloom in payment; once it was as fragrant as thy words. May they never lose sweetness like a flower which fadeth!"