Free The Circle of the Gods by Victor Canning Page B

Romanorum , stationed as far back as the time of Trajan in Cymru at Brecon Gaer, and the Cohors I Nerviorum , mounted by Gallic auxiliaries, had often escaped; or badly guarded mares had been covered by the wild hill-pony to the high-blooded eastern mounts which many a young tribunus or praefectus had brought to Britain on his first cavalry command. The bloodlines were a maze which no man’s memory could now thread.
    Arturo was content with his work and his station. He was content, too, for the first time with the comradeship he found with the youths of his own age who also worked for the Prince. Like himself they had been hand-picked for one quality or another, though there was one trait—apart from their skill with horses—that they all shared and which often brought them a flogging or a week’s stay in a cell on bread and water. They knew no fear so could not resist a challenge which might put their courage or ribald sense of humour in question.
    For Leric—a lapsed Druid priest with tentative leanings toward Christianity, who had escaped from Gaul and been given sanctuary within the bounds of Isca by the Prince—Arturo had an odd mixture of high regard, occasional contempt and, rare for him, pity. Leric was far more learned than Galpan in the Druidical mysteries, far more widely travelled and educated in the Roman and Greek tongues, but he was plagued by doubts still over the religion he had abandoned and, too, over the one he lacked the courage yet to embrace fully. To escape this dilemma he often sought comfort in drink. From him Arturo learned more fully his mother’s tongue and adequate Greek to cope with the exercises that Leric set him. But of far more interest to Arturo were the lessons in the history of his own country which Leric gave him: a history going back far beyond King Cunobelinus and the great Queen Boudicca, and the days when the Emperor Claudius invaded Britain or the first Saxon shore fort was built on the island of Tanatus.
    As for Tia, she was well content with Arturo’s progress and paid not overmuch attention to his occasional lapses into bad behaviour because on the whole he worked hard and his company was a joy to her. On the day he was fourteen and the swallows and house martins had returned she gave him a hound puppy which had many of the markings and much of the build and stance of old Lerg.
    To her surprise, although he thanked her and showed pleasure as he stood in her room cradling the puppy to his chest, she could tell from the brightness of his eyes and a restlessness in him that his mind was far from presents. It was evening and still light and he had just come from his lessons with Leric.
    He said, “Put on your cloak, my mother, and come with me. Aie … I know well ’tis my birthday, but it is also a day of other importance. And ask no questions, for I give no answers.”
    They left the house and walked down the hill to the river and then took the road southward. A little outside the town the land rose. At the top of the rise stood an old oak, its branches blasted long ago by lightning. Arturo stopped at the foot of the hill, and said, “Go to the tree. There is one there who would speak to you.” His face which he was holding solemn broke suddenly into an impish grin. Then, without another word, he turned and left her, making his way back to the town.
    It was then that Tia knew the truth as surely as though it had been announced with a fanfare of trumpets and a proclamation by the Prince himself. She hurried forward through the growing twilight, her heart beating rapidly, her lips and mouth drying with excitement.
    A wiry pack pony was tethered to a bole sapling of the oak and a man stood by it. He was tall, with a lean, strong body, wearing a short-trimmed, tawny-red beard, his clothes dusty from travel, his belt carrying a scabbarded short sword and a dagger. For a moment or two he watched her coming. Then, the impatience in him