‘Do not step aboard this ship,’ he said quietly. ‘Raise the corvus again, go back, and sail on.’
Lucius stepped up beside him, his hand on the pommel of his sword, but Gamaliel ignored him.
The captain gave a roar of laughter, but already there was a strange uncertainty in his eyes. ‘You’re in no position to give orders, old man. Now step out of the way or I’ll have you beheaded over the gunwale and your greybeard old head jammed on our bowsprit for decoration.’
His men laughed, too. But their hearty laughter was drowned by the roar of Gamaliel’s voice, of such a volume that the laughter thinned out and died. Holding his staff out before him, the old man bellowed, ‘ Then you are bound for Hell! ’
The captain reeled back, enraged both by the old man’s words and, even more, by the unsettling, indefinable aura of power that emanated from him. It should have been the easiest thing in the world simply to step up and lop the old fool’s head off with a single swing of his axe. And yet, and yet… he knew that he could not do it, and his heart burnt with rage at this unaccustomed feeling of powerless-ness.
He shouted back, hearing even as he did so the weakness and irresolution of his voice compared to the bewildering storm-blast of the old man’s roar.
‘Vex me not with your talk of Christian punishments, old man. I would not so much as wipe my arse with the teachings of the Christians and their yellow-livered morality of slaves.’
With that the Saxon began to advance, and something terrible happened. Gamaliel also advanced, taking a step towards him; and Lucius, close behind the old man, heard his footfall on the narrow planking. But it was not the light, tremulous footfall of an old man. It was more ominous than that, and far, far heavier than it should have been. The gangplank shivered under its weight.
Lucius craned to look at Gamaliel, but only for a fraction of a second before he had to glance away again. Something in the old man had changed, which the soldier could barely comprehend and hardly wanted to. His blood ran cold. Even on the sea-air, he thought he could smell the odour of rank, carnivorous breath. Below the ship, the tall shadow of Gamaliel was cast across the water, broken and rippling on the waves. To Lucius’ horrified eyes, it looked less like the outline of a man than that of a monstrous, rearing bear…
He stumbled back from the hulking, brooding shape that blocked the corvus, and his gaze fell on the Saxons opposite. He had never seen such expressions of blind fear, as they faced whatever it was that looked out at them from underneath the shadowy cowl of what had been Gamaliel. Their limbs rigid with terror, they started falling back, knocking into each other in their haste to retreat. Lucius, still unable to look directly at the massive shape before him, saw its shadow on the surface of the sea shrink back to resemble Gamaliel’s again, and he heard his voice once more, strong and calm.
‘Now, tell me: what of the Celtic slaves that were taken from the coast of Dumnonia in the summer? Whither were they bound?’
The Saxon warlord was babbling with terror, forcing his way back onto his ship between his desperate men.
‘To Colonia Agrippina! All that batch went to Colonia Agrippina. You still get good prices on the Rhine.’ Then he turned back to his men and with a panic-stricken cry ordered them to raise the corvus and lower the sail. He gave no hint of direction, but there was no need. His men understood. Anywhere, anywhere away from this haunted and unholy vessel.
Without another word the Saxon sea-wolves winched back the corvus, pushed off from the side of the merchant ship, and set their course nor’easterly with full sail. Not a man aboard dared look back. And at no point later that day, or in any of the days to come, did any of the Saxons dare to mention the subject of the weird old man again. For their hearts chilled within them at the memory of him, and the eyes of their minds were filled with images of terror.
The Gwydda Ariana sailed east for the many mouths and sandbanks of the Rhine. Towards evening the last of the fogbanks finally lifted and the wind picked up again from the south-west, and they made good speed.
Lucius sat in the prow of the boat, pretending to whet his sword-blade, but his strokes were listless and ineffectual. Gamaliel sat near him. After a while, seeing the terrible weight upon the young man’s shoulders, he said quietly to him, ‘In the world you shall have much tribulation. But be comforted: I have overcome the world.’
Lucius stared at him wordlessly.
‘She is well,’ said Gamaliel softly. ‘She and the child will be well.’
Lucius started. ‘How did you know what I was thinking about?’
‘I wasn’t born yesterday,’ Gamaliel smiled. ‘Besides, if I had a wife such as yours, I’d be thinking about her all the time, too.’
‘Were you ever married, Gamaliel?’
‘Well, there was a young Athenian girl once… but her father disapproved of me. I was working as a nocturnal water-carrier at the time, studying philosophy by day at the Lyceum. Not the sort of husband he had in mind for his beloved daughter.’
Lucius smiled vaguely. Here was his old, absent-minded friend Gamaliel again. And yet, and yet…
At last he dared to ask, ‘Gamaliel, what happened back there with the Saxon pirates?’
He knew he’d not get a straight answer, of course. And he didn’t.
‘Ah,’ said Gamaliel. ‘These powers pass through me, but they are not my powers. They only pass through me, like the wind through the leaves.’
‘Stop riddling. Whose powers?’
‘The one thousand and one names of the autumn wind in the leaves,’ said Gamaliel. ‘Now stop pretending to sharpen that sword and go to bed. We’ll be at the mouth of the Rhine by sunrise tomorrow.’
The Gwydda Ariana set them down at a damp wooden trading station on the marshy banks of the Rhine delta, and soon after that they found a river-boat to take them south.
They sailed upriver, through the great trading-city of Lugdunum Batavorum, and into Colonia Agrippina. There they questioned every slave-dealer they could find, and their hearts sank at the news. Many of the Celtic slaves from this summer’s raiding season had been bought by Frankish warriors newly enriched from their raids into Belgica and Gaul. But some of the Franks had been waylaid in their turn by warbands marauding in from the east. By eastern horsemen, on shaggy little steppe ponies…
Gamaliel sat all night gazing into the fire, while Lucius slept fitfully, restless with despair.
At dawn, the old man raised his head and said, ‘We go east.’
They sailed on up the great Rhine river, through the grim frontier cities of Vangiones and Argentoratum, and on south. At last they disembarked upon the eastern shore, and crossed through the Alemanni’s wild country, which they called the Black Forest. Many were the dangers they faced and the hardships they endured there, among the dark pines and in the sullen, smoky villages. But they set their faces grimly and went on, and came at last to the banks of the Danube, where they took ship again for the east: a river-barge taking Moselle wine down to Sirmium and the road to Epidaurus. At every encounter they questioned closely those they met, and most thought them mad to be trying to find a single slave somewhere in, or even beyond, the greatest empire known to man. But occasionally, just occasionally, they caught glimpses, heard echoes, and their hearts told them to press on.
‘We should never abandon hope,’ said Gamaliel.
‘Even though hope has long since abandoned us?’ said Lucius sourly.
Gamaliel looked at him with a flash of anger in his eyes, and Lucius bowed his head, a little ashamed. Gamaliel often repeated the words of Christ, that despair was the greatest sin of all; but he had no need to repeat them now. Lucius remembered those strange and startling words, and said no more about abandoning hope.