Hill of Bones (3 page)

‘Like a fish. Come on now, just open up your pouch and hand whatever’s inside it to me. I’ll take it in exchange for a safe landing. A blind bargain on my side, can’t say fairer than that.’

‘It is a keepsake from my mother,’ said Geraint.

This was a lie too, more or less, but one the boatman seemed eager to accept.

‘Then she’d be pleased if you handed it over to save yourself from death by water.’

‘She is dead now, my mother,’ said Geraint, his eyes growing moist as he said the words but still seeing the outline of Caradoc, standing rigid on the bank. From his posture, Geraint’s brother knew something was wrong.

‘I don’t care what she is,’ said the boatman, tiring of his chat. ‘Give me what you’re carrying or you’ll be dead alongside her.’

‘Here you are then,’ said Geraint, angry now. He made to open the leather pouch. Instead he seized the rabbit by the hind legs and swung it straight at Brennus’s face. It connected with a satisfying thwack. The dead cony was no club but the shock of the blow was enough to surprise and distract the boatman, who jerked back and put up his hands to protect himself. Geraint rose to his feet, the boat swaying wildly beneath him, and before he should lose his balance altogether he pressed down against the side of the shallow craft and made to leap into a clump of feathery reeds, one of several outcrops not so far from the bank. He felt something holding him and realised that Brennus had made a grab at the region of his waist. There was a tearing sound and Geraint toppled rather than jumped into the water.

His body sank through the reeds into the murk. His mouth filled with choking water and his feet flailed for the bottom. Through his mind flashed the image he’d glimpsed on the villa floor, the sea with the strange beasts that lived there, and he wondered whether his final moments had come. He could not swim, that was no lie. Then his feet came to rest on something that was neither hard nor soft, perhaps a submerged clump of vegetation, and it gave him enough purchase to push himself above the surface of the water. Gasping for air, he scrabbled about among the reeds, pulling himself forward, kicking out with his legs and feeling his wool clothes growing heavier by the second.

He touched bottom but, far from giving him support, the mud of the river-bed grabbed at his boots as if it wanted to tear them from his feet. His head was above the surface but he could not keep upright. Something struck him in the face and he heard shouting. At first he thought it was the boatman, but then he recognised his brother. He was calling out, ‘Take hold! Take hold!’ Caradoc was too far off to reach Geraint but he had tossed out the boatman’s rope to which was still fastened the stick the dog had used. Geraint grabbed it and, half by dint of his own struggling, half by being tugged in on the rope, found himself drawn up onto the bank, the last few feet in his brother’s hands.

He lay on his front, a landed fish, water pouring from his hair, his eyes, his garments. The black shape of Cynric panted above him while his brother stood off a distance to allow him to recover. Geraint sat up. He wiped his eyes and looked out across the Abona. He glanced at the bank on either side of him. He half expected to see the treacherous boatman emerging from the river, dripping wet and vengeful. It was only then that he realised, in the struggle, the pouch had been torn away from his belt. It was lost, presumably at the bottom of the river. Or in the watery grasp of the boatman.

He felt more angry than he could remember feeling in his life. He would have attacked the boatman with his bare hands if he had appeared onshore. But of Brennus there was no sign, not an arm or head visible in the twilight above the swirling current. Then he caught sight of the man’s upturned boat, like a giant’s hat in midstream. Boats float. But he prayed that Brennus had gone to the bottom.

‘What in God’s name was going on out there?’ said Caradoc. He sounded more irritated than relieved.

‘He tried to rob me,’ said Geraint. ‘He said the coin you’d promised him wasn’t enough. He thought I was carrying something of value.’

Caradoc looked curiously at his brother. He made to say something but stopped himself. Geraint stood up. His clothes clung to him. The anger had gone and now he was cold and shivery.

‘At least you have saved yourself a silver coin.’ The bitterness of losing his pouch and its contents was like a bad taste in Geraint’s mouth. He said nothing of the loss to his brother.

‘And I have got the man’s rope,’ said Caradoc, rolling it up into a coil.

‘We should use it to hang him with if we find him again.’

‘I see there’s some spark in you after all, brother. Save it for the Saxons. Come on.’

They tramped across the fields to the nearest encampment, marked by fires and makeshift shelters. They struck lucky almost straight away. Caradoc did not give the name of their village or steading – a place-name that few were likely to know or remember among the occupants of so many villages that had flocked to Aquae Sulis – but he spoke instead of a very tall man with reddish hair by the name of Aelric. The second person to whom he mentioned Aelric indicated a dilapidated farm building in the twilight next to a cluster of willows. Approaching, Geraint and Caradoc saw a cluster of men sprawled about a fire by the entrance. Hobbled horses champed the grass close by. Redheaded Aelric seemed surprised to see them but grudgingly welcomed the young brothers to the circle. Geraint was ribbed about his wet clothes but allowed to get close to the fire.

It was only later, after the food and drink and the talk, that Geraint, now lying at a little distance from the cooking fire, finally began to think of what he had lost or had been snatched from him. The pouch that hung from his belt and the precious object that he had been carrying for three days on his journey from the south. Although he had been guarding it for longer than that.

II

It was on his third and last visit to the old woman that Geraint was presented with the gift. She lived inside one of the hollowed-out mounds that dotted a flat area of ground not far from the village. The field, with its tussocky hummocks, was a place that the villagers avoided because it was believed to hold the dead. Not their dead, the recent ones, but the dead of long ago. At least, that was what was suggested by the things that had been discovered (and allowed to remain undisturbed) within the hummocks: the remains of skeletons and scraps of old leather and potsherds; even knives and axe-heads fashioned from stone.

There must have been some powerful magic preventing the villagers from using these places for shelter or storage, since they were dry and warm in winter, as well as cool in summer. Perhaps it was not only the partial skeletons but the presence of the woman that frightened people. She had flowing white hair and a face through which the bones showed as if she was more than half-way towards joining her underground companions for ever. She was so tall that, when she stood, she had to stoop within the quite generous confines of the burial chambers. At first, Geraint had not realised she was blind. There was a little light by the outer parts of the old woman’s lair because during the day she was in the habit of sitting near the entrance, which was made out of two stone uprights and a crosspiece. Geraint thought she sat there because she wanted to see who was coming, before he realised that there was no sight in her large, glazed eyes. And then he understood that she did not need to see in order to know who was coming. She had, after all, greeted him by name on his first visit.

Geraint was not frightened. He did not see why he should be frightened. Unlike the other villagers – unlike his brother, Caradoc, for example – he did not question why the woman – she had no name, she was simply the
woman
– should not live there in the place of the dead, by herself. If she really was alone. Once or twice during their conversations, Geraint had caught the tremor and sound of movement further back in the chamber, not some animal but human, he thought. Who it was he never discovered.

But the woman already knew much about Geraint. Knew that his mother was ill and must shortly die, knew that his father had been killed in a skirmish with the Saxons when Geraint was little, knew that he regarded his only surviving brother with a mixture of respect and love and resentment. Above all, she knew of his waking dreams, of those moments when something seemed to slide between him and the reality surrounding him. When he first began to experience these, around the time of his father’s death, Geraint had been truly frightened. He told no one and suffered in silence.

In one vision he saw two men tussling on the bank of a nearby river. One fell in, or was pushed, and the other stumbled after him. He recognised the two men. Geraint was actually within sight of the river but by the time he plucked up the courage to go closer, they had disappeared. The death by drowning – which occurred a few days later – was accounted an accident but Geraint had seen in his vision the way in which Deri’s opponent, who desired Deri’s wife, had held his rival’s head underwater. Perhaps he did not intend to get rid of Deri but had taken the opportunity as it arose. The man who held the other underwater was redheaded Aelric, the head of the village. Later Geraint heard Aelric describe to the other villagers how he had been several fields away when Deri drowned, and this seemed to allay any suspicions they might have. Geraint said nothing to contradict him but, afterwards, he was more wary and frightened of Aelric than ever.

On another occasion during the winter Geraint dreamed several times of a sunless summer of cloud and constant rain, and how the village went hungry when the crops failed. Sure enough, it happened and the village sent petitioners to Cadwys for help.

When, on his second visit to the burial ground, he started to tell the woman who lived there of these things – and he had never mentioned them to anyone before – she merely nodded and grasped his arm with her claw-like hand. She reassured Geraint, telling him he was possessed by a gift, not a curse. All men and women could see with their eyes, she said, save those few unfortunates like herself who lacked sight. And everyone, even the blind, was able to see backwards in time thanks to the gift of memory. A few, a lucky few, had the ability also to see
forwards
in time.

‘What can I do with it, this gift?’ said Geraint. ‘I should have warned Deri that his neighbour was going to kill him.’

‘You would not have been believed.’

‘I could have told the others that the crops would fail.’

‘You would not have been believed.’

‘So what use is it?’

‘Everything has a place,’ she said, ‘but not everything has a use.’

The third time he visited the burial place the woman told Geraint that he would soon be leaving the village where he had been born; he and most of the other able-bodied men. Geraint was pleased to be thought a man. It put him on the same level as his brother, Caradoc. A great crisis was coming, the woman said. They would be summoned away to face it. Geraint knew nothing of this but accepted the truth of her words without question. He wanted to ask if he and the others would ever return but he was afraid of the answer. The woman sensed his mood and said that it was a time of danger but also of hope. Geraint would experience grief but gladness as well. There is no victory without tears, she said.

‘Will Caradoc go too?’

‘He will accompany you,’ she said.

She had a gift for him. He was to take it on his journey when the call came. She reached into a bag that lay at her side and extracted a small object. He was surprised to see that it was a knife, but small, almost ornamental, rather than practical. She held it in the palm of one hand and ran the fingers of the other across the surface of the hilt before passing it to Geraint. The blade glinted with a metallic blue threat but the hilt was finely worked. It was made from some off-white substance that Geraint did not recognise, like stone but with a smooth, living feel to it that stone did not possess. The hilt depicted an animal that Geraint also didn’t recognise. The beast stood on its hind legs with its forelegs wrapped around the trunk of a tree. Its upright posture was disturbing, neither man-like nor animal.

‘What is the beast on the hilt?’

‘A bear.’

‘I have never seen one.’

‘Are you sure of that?’

Geraint did not answer. Instead he said, ‘What am I to do with it?’

‘Keep it with you, safe. Take it with you when you are called away. You will know what to do with it when the time comes.’

And Geraint had to be content with that. A few weeks afterwards the call came. Arthur was summoning his countrymen to confront the Saxon hordes at a place several days’ travel from the village, near the old Roman town of Aquae Sulis. Caradoc explained what was happening. It all might have been rumour but he told his younger brother as if it were fact (which it was, more or less). Caradoc said that for many months Arthur, using pedlars and paid informants as well as reputable travelling merchants, had caused a story to be spread among the Saxon enemy. The story was that the Picts, the people of the far north, were preparing to march south as soon as the winter retreated. Arthur had made a great show of sending some of his men north, apparently to face the Pictish threat and leaving the southlands undefended. But the British army had halted near the mouth of the Sabrina, far from their supposed destination. The Saxons, deceived, saw their chance to swing round and cut the country in two, like a woodman cleaving an upturned log at a single stroke. They massed to march west and south towards the river Abona, ignorant of the existence of the army lying hidden at their heels.

When Arthur received news of the Saxon preparation to march, he made the general call to arms. It was the final crisis, as predicted by the woman in the burial ground. If the Saxons were not dealt with now, they would surely overrun the whole land.

Caradoc and Geraint might have left with the other men of the village although they had not got the explicit permission of Aelric to go. But, as it happened, they had to delay their departure by a couple of days since their mother, so long dying during the spring and early summer, was now at the very point of extinction. They departed on the morning following her death, each young man sunk in his thoughts and letting the breeze dry the occasional tear. Hence it was that they eventually arrived near Aquae Sulis, accompanied by the dog Cynric, but behind the rest of their neighbours.