The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [59]
"Am I right in thinking that you saw what you could not be allowed to report on?"
Another nod. This time his eyes remained fixed on me. It must have been long enough since anyone had tried even this sort of limited communication.
"I thought as much. I have heard stories, myself, of my lord Aguisel. Can you read or write, Casso?"
A shake of the head.
"Be thankful," I said dryly. "If you could, then by this time you would be dead."
The quarry-master had got his gang working again to his satisfaction. He was on his way back to us. I thought quickly.
The youth's dumbness might be no disadvantage to Beltane, who was more than able to do his own talking; but I had been working on the assumption that the new slave must act as his master's eyes while we were in Dunpeldyr. Now I saw that there was no need of this: whatever transpired in Lot's stronghold, Beltane was quite able to report on it himself. His sight was not strong, but his hearing was, and he could tell us what was said; what the place looked like would hardly matter. When we left Dunpeldyr, if the goldsmith needed a different servant, no doubt we could find one. But now time pressed, and here I could certainly purchase discretion, even if enforced, and, I thought, the loyalty that went with gratitude.
"Well?" asked the quarry-master.
I said: "Anyone who has survived service in Bremenium is certainly strong enough for anything I might require. Very well. I'll take him."
"Splendid, splendid!" The fellow waxed loud in his praise of my judgement and Casso's various excellences, so much so that I began to wonder if the slaves were in fact his own to dispose of, or if he was seeing a way to fill his own purse, and would perhaps report the youth's death to his employers. When he began to haggle about price, I sent Casso to collect whatever possessions he had, with instructions to wait for me on the road. I have never seen why, because a man is your captive, or a purchase, he should be stripped of an elementary self-respect. Even a horse or a hound works the better for retaining a pride in itself.
After he had gone I turned back to the quarry-master. "Now we agreed, if you remember, that I would pay some part of the price in medicines. You will find me at the tavern by the south gate. If you come tonight, or send someone to ask for Master Emrys, I will have the medicines ready for you, and leave them to be picked up. And now, about the rest of the price..."
In the end we were agreed, and, followed by my new purchase, I made my way back to the tavern.
Casso's face fell when he heard that he was not to serve me, but to go with Beltane; but by the time the evening was through, with the warmth and good food and the lively company that crowded into the tavern, he looked like a plant that, dying in darkness, has been plunged suddenly into sunlit water. Beltane was outspokenly grateful to me, and embarked almost straight away on a long and happy exposition of his craft for Casso's sake. The latter could hardly have found a place in which his mutilation would have mattered less. I suspected that, as the evening wore through, Beltane began to find it a positive advantage to have a dumb servant. Ninian had hardly spoken at all, but neither had he listened. Casso drank it all in, fingering the pieces with his callused hands, his brain waking from the numbness of hopeless exhaustion, and expanding into pleasure as one watched.
The tavern was too small -- and we were ostensibly too poor -- to have a private chamber, but at the end of the hall, away from the fire, there was a deep alcove with a table and twin settles where we could be private enough. No one took much notice of us, and we stayed in our corner all evening, listening to the gossip that came into the tavern. Facts there were none, but there were plenty of rumours, the most important being that Arthur had fought and won two