The Crimson Chalice by Victor Canning Page B

light of the small length of tallow candle which Baradoc had found in the fisherman’s hut. Lying in the darkness, Tia now and again heard the old man moan, and from time to time he talked to himself briefly in some language she could not understand. The dogs slept outside. Once in the night she woke to hear the far-off howl of a wolf. In the silence that followed there came the restless padding of one of the dogs circling the clearing. There was no fear in her. The hut around her seemed a fortress. Baradoc guarded the door and the dogs stood sentinel. She drifted into sleep again.
    She woke to the sound of the cock crowing in the hen run. First light came weakly through the open door. She got up and ran her hands through her hair. The old man slept, and his breathing seemed easier. Baradoc’s bed was empty.
    She went out and saw that only Cuna remained in the cleating. He trotted behind her as she went to the spring and washed herself. The fire, she noticed, had been banked with new kindling. The wood was dry and burned low and bright with little smoke. She collected eggs from the run, filled the little cauldron with water and set it by the fire to have warmer water to dress the old man’s wounds. Some of the herb plasters on his chest had cracked and fallen away in the night. Baradoc would have to renew them and would need the eggs. She would also hard-boil some for themselves. In the hut she tidied their beds and then began to take stock of the place for the first time with real attention.
    It was poorly furnished but clean. A hazel-twig broom for brushing the floor stood inside the door. On a shelf rested the few simple items of the shrine keeper’s crockery and earthenware. There was also a big bronze skillet pan. In one of the earthenware jars’she found three round goats’cheeses. Another robe like the one the keeper wore hung from a peg at the end of the bed, but it was much cleaner and the edges were trimmed with the white fur of winter hares. The grinding quern stood on the floor in a corner. Looking at it, she was taken back to the great kitchen of her brother’s villa. For a moment a pang of grief touched her, but she pushed it away.
    She stood in front of the bed and looked down at the shrine keeper. Outside, the forest was stirring with birdcalls. Blackbird and thrush she could pick out but none of the others. Baradoc, she guessed, would know them all. The sunlight, strengthening, flooded through the door and lit up the painting over the bed. She had seen many such portraits and mosaics in the houses of some of the friends of her brother. The young face with the shining halo had a tranquil yet slightly sad expression. Although none of her family had adopted the new Christian faith, she had sat often through the talk of her brother with others when they had discussed religion and had been without real interest. In fact, it seemed to her now, she had sat or walked or idled through many times, great stretches of her life, without interest in anything except herself and her pleasures.
    The old man stirred and she saw that his eyes were open. For a moment the shadow of a smile touched his lips. With a slow movement he raised a hand. She took it gently in hers and felt his grasp tighten.
    He said hoarsely, “You are?”
    â€œGratia.”
    â€œAnd the other?”
    â€œBaradoc.”
    â€œIn my memory their sounds are even joined … like the links of a golden chain.…” His voice faded and his eyes closed. Tia lowered his hand and turned away.
    When Baradoc came back he brought with him, slung over his shoulders, a young roebuck which Aesc had hunted downwind into the reach of Lerg, who had caught and pulled it down, holding it until his master had come, to kill it with a spear thrust to the heart. In his tunic front he had a store of fungi and roots which he had gathered on the way back. As he gralloched and skinned the deer, he nodded at the fungi and roots and