Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [188]
“If I choose the girl Flavia as my bride,” he promised, “she shall come here to be married by the priests and acknowledge Nodens as her god.”
It was a plesasant visit. That evening he spent long hours talking with the temple priests and found them to be learned and scholarly men who reminded him of the pagan professor of his youth. In their peaceful and civilised presence, he found his faith in the pagan calling was renewed.
He was glad. He had not liked to admit even to himself his recent dissatisfaction with his chosen religion. He had gone through the taurobolium again the year before, this time alone, and had emerged disappointed. The mystical experience, the sense of purification, had eluded him: he had been conscious only of the sticky blood and the occasional coughing of Tarquinus above, who now seemed old and rather disreputable. In the quiet precincts of the shrine however, everything seemed different, and on the second day, as he prayed before the smoking altar, feeling the sun on his back, smelling the scented wood that the priests laid on the fire and hearing the gentle murmur of their chants, he felt a sense of peace that he had not known for many months. The shrine of Nodens was a place of healing, and he felt bathed in its benign influence.
A whole further day passed. Once again he slept at the shrine, and then the next morning, refreshed, he made his way slowly back to the ferry.
The estate of Flavia’s family lay south, a day’s ride away, near the old lead mines in the Mendip hills whose ore had so often passed in former centuries along the road through Sorviodunum. It was rich, rolling country; his spirits were high, and almost forgetting the cowherd’s niece he told himself: perhaps, after all, I shall like her.
It was late afternoon and he was only an hour’s ride away from the estate when he came upon the small port. The sun had still some way to sink, but the air was beginning to grow chilly; on a sudden impulse he decided to halt there for the night and complete his journey the next morning.
If she’s a possible bride, I may as well arrive there fresh, he decided, and thought no more about it.
The little port consisted of half a dozen store houses, a small jetty and a cluster of buildings including a mansio for travellers to stay and change their horses. It was surrounded by a recently erected wooden stockade, the previous one having been burned down a few years earlier by a party of Irish raiders. Several small coracles of skin stretched over a wooden framework were moored by the jetty; but there was also a stout wooden vessel with a single mast, which was obviously ready to put out to sea.
He saw that his horses were stabled at the mansio, and the innkeeper ushered him into a long room with a fire at each end, where the evening meal was soon to be served.
His companions were half a dozen sailors and an older, weather-beaten man with a mass of reddish hair who, he learned, was master of the stout ship he had seen. It was the master who presided at the long table down the centre of the room which he now approached, and where he was quickly made welcome.
Soon they were served a huge bowl of stew, accompanied by pitchers of ale. The company chatted happily and the master mariner, at frequent intervals, made his opinions clear in a bluff way that the other sailors immediately agreed with.
After a little time, however, he began to take notice of one other traveller at the table. He sat alone at the far end, eating quietly, and seemed to be oblivious of the rest of the company. He wore a birrhus – the heavy cloak of brown wool for which the island had become famous – and a hood over his head. Petrus at first paid this man little attention, but in the middle of the meal, seeing his gaze shift towards him, the master mariner nudged him and said in a lower voice:
“See that fellow over there? Well, he’ll be dead in a month.” And he gave a decisive nod, and passed the back of his hand across his throat. “They’ll slit him from ear to ear.”
Petrus stared