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By Root 3752 0

She turned to look at him – but instead of smiling now, he saw with dismay that her eyes looked sad and she seemed to be urging her horse away from him, so that try as he might, the distance between them was growing greater with every pace. Again she looked back. This time her eyes were sunken and her skin was white as though she were on the point of death. It seemed to him that he must do something; he wanted to help her, to comfort her, but still she was drawing further away from him. Suddenly she vanished. He was standing alone on the empty plateau. He looked about him, wondering what had become of her. But there was no sign. And then the strange figure appeared, wearing a paenulla, with the hood drawn over its head; it was striding towards him rapidly across the empty ground. With relief he realised that it was Tosutigus. He called to the chief in welcome; but the figure did not answer. It drew closer. Only when it reached him did the figure remove its hood.

The chief’s familiar face was white with anger. His eyes were blazing. He began to raise one arm to point in accusation, but as he did so his face was transformed into a skull, whose jaws were slowly opening and closing. As he watched in surprise, Porteus saw the skull begin to grow. Within moments it filled half the sky. Its jaws were open, moving closer. He saw that they were going to devour him. And once again he was gripped by the sense of horror he had experienced before. As the jaws closed over him, he woke shaking.

If his dream frightened him, it was as nothing to the terror he saw in the face of the girl as he started into consciousness. She was sitting up, her arms wrapped around her knees, her eyes staring straight ahead. She was trembling.

“What is it?” he demanded.

“Nothing,” she replied, her voice strangely flat. “A dream.”

He tried to comfort her; putting his arm around her shoulders, but still she continued to tremble.

“What did you dream?” he asked.

But she only shook her head sadly and would not tell him.

And so it continued, night after night. Porteus could find nothing wrong with the food, nothing for which he could blame the cook. But each night the terrible dreams came, and each night, it seemed to him, they grew worse. Sometimes he was attacked by snakes, at other times he was being drowned; once Tosutigus had cut off his head to use it as a drinking bowl; and on each occasion Maeve was there, with her sad eyes, moving steadily away from him.

After seven nights, Porteus found that he was almost unable to sleep; but the effect on the girl was worse. Her eyes became haggard; she would sit in a corner and moan; and by the fourth night she begged him not to lie with her. He did not know what to do.

It was the girl who finally brought matters to a head.

“You must sell me,” she said simply.

“Why?”

“The dreams. Jahveh is angry because I have broken the law: it is a great sin to lie with a man who is already married. It breaks the law of Moses. And amongst my people it is a greater sin still to lie with a married man who is not a Jew, for it brings anger upon them.” And she broke down and wept bitterly.

Was it guilt that was causing his own nightmares too?

“I do not want to lose you,” he told her. “The nightmares will pass. Trust me.” But she shook her head and repeated: “I have sinned. Send me away or I shall not know any peace.”

For three days he hesitated. He was selfish. If she stayed, he told her, in time he would manumit her and she could become a free woman again. “Perhaps,” he suggested cleverly, “you will then be able to return to Judaea.” But the girl was past aid; she was no longer eating, and by the third day her condition had become so mournful, her weeping both day and night so pitiable, and her pleas to him so desperate that finally, in a fit of exasperation, he shouted:

“Very well, you shall be sold as a slave, if that is what your God demands! But your God is cruel.”

She shook her small head sadly once more and murmured: “He is just.”

The next day watched by Porteus with tears in his eyes, Numex led the girl down