The Shining Company Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  1 The Brown Boy

  2 The Archangel Dagger

  3 The White Hart

  4 The Prince’s Hunting

  5 The Summons

  6 The Golden King and the Three Hundred

  7 The Gathering Feast

  8 The Swordsmith

  9 Ordeal by Wakefulness

  10 The Night of the Running Wolves

  11 The Champion’s Portion

  12 Epona’s Leap

  13 The Rider from the South

  14 The Road to Catraeth

  15 Night Attack

  16 Waiting for Elmet

  17 The Last Day

  18 The Shining Company

  19 The Road Back

  20 Ghosts

  21 The Flower of an Emperor’s Bodyguard

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Also by Rosemary Sutcliff

  Copyright

  About The Book

  ‘I saw riders with black eyesockets in glimmering mail where their faces should have been, grey wolfskins catching a bloom of light from the mist and the moon; a shining company indeed, not quite mortal-seeming.’ Many years after King Arthur defeated the Saxons, the tribes of Britain are again threatened by invaders. Prosper and his loyal bondsman, Conn, answer the call of King Mynydogg to join a highly skilled army – the Shining Company. Led by the gallant Prince Gorthyrn, the company embark on a perilous but glorious campaign. An epic tale of battles and bravery from the acclaimed historical storyteller, Rosemary Sutcliff.

  A Dedication

  ‘This is the Gododdin, Aneirin sang it.’

  So spoke forth Aneirin, Chief of Bards to the King of Dyn Eidin, when he made his great song of the men who went to Catraeth. But of course he sang only of the Three Hundred, the Companions with gold torques about their necks, not of the shieldbearers who rode at their heels. Yet we also were young, with the hearts high and the life sweet within us, and our homes left behind.

  1

  The Brown Boy

  I am - I was - Prosper, second son to Gerontius, lord of three cantrefs between Nant Ffrancon and the sea, of a half-ruined villa that must have been a palace in its day, of a hundred spears and many horses. My father had little caring for me, keeping what heart’s- warmth he had for Owain my elder brother. Old Nurse said that was because I was long-boned and tawny-fair like my mother who died in giving me life, whereas Owain was dark and thick-set like himself and most of the people in the valley. But truth to tell, I did not feel much lack. I had the other boys of the kindred to laugh and fight with; I had Luned, only a few months older than me, and I had Conn.

  It was my twelfth name-day when my father gave me Conn for a body servant.

  I was with Tydeus my tutor in the schoolroom, trying to read Herodotus’ account of the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae, when one of the house servants came to call me to the study. A bar of watery sunlight from the window slanted across the unrolled parchment on the table, throwing up the two lines of poetry that seemed to stand clear from the rest.

  Tell them in Sparta, you who read,

  That we obeyed their orders and are dead.

  I did not think much about it at the time, as I got up and went hopefully to answer my father’s summons.

  But I remember now …

  A few moments later I was standing just within the study doorway, staring at the newcomer; a boy of about my own age, brown of skin and hair and eyes, who stood and stared back at me without lowering his head. I was angry and disappointed, for I had hoped for one of Gwen’s pups. She had had five, and my father could easily have spared one from the hunting pack. Also I knew that the boy was not a true gift. He would remain my father’s property like all the other bondfolk about the place; and I was only being given the use of him, because now that I was twelve I could not, as my father had just pointed out, expect Old Nurse to go on seeing that I had clean tunics and the like. But that was not all: my father would have made a shrewd merchant if he had not been born to the chieftaincy, and prided himself on his eye for good stock and his ability to pick out a bargain where other men saw only damaged goods. And the boy in front of me was most assuredly damaged goods, standing crooked with his left knee swathed to the size of a pudding in filthy rags.

  ‘It is an old hurt too long neglected; but it will mend,’ said my father. ‘He is your responsibility now. Take him down to the monastery for Brother Pebwyr to see it.’

  It was the first fine day after a week of spring storms, and I could think of better things to do with it than trail my new and unwanted body servant down to the holy brother for tending, when Old Nurse could have seen to it just as well. But my father’s eye was on me; and when he gave an order, whether it was to his son or the least among his bondfolk, he was used to being obeyed.

  ‘Yes, my father,’ I said, and to the boy, ‘Come, you.’ And swung on my heel and headed for the outer court and the track down the valley. And as I went, I heard the new servant’s feet padding behind me, the steps uneven because of his knee.

  The sound followed me, proud and uncomplaining as a hound at my heels, through the clustered living-places of the kindred and down-stream past the mill among its alder trees and the smithy where Loban, my father’s smith, was at work on an axehead, and in through the monastery orchard where the brown-robed brothers were busy among the bee skeps under the apple trees, to the gate of the monastery itself. I was well used to the huddle of farm buildings and thatched sleeping bothies about the small wattle church, and usually I would have stopped for a word with Brother Iorwin who was lime-washing the granary wall, or to scratch the back of the Prior’s breeding sow who lay in a sunny patch surrounded by eleven contented piglets. But that day I had no thought but to get what I had come for over and done with as quickly as might be; and I headed straight through, without pausing, for the bothy on the far side, where Brother Pebwyr the Infirmarer brewed his evil-smelling salves and potions and doctored the hurts and sicknesses of all the people of the valley.

  He was there now, boiling something over a small bright charcoal fire at the end of the crowded and brown-shadowed workplace. Whatever it was it must have been at a critical stage, for he did not even look up as we came in through the low doorway, only jerked his head towards the bench just inside.

  I flung myself down on it, groaning inwardly for my wasted name-day, and would have left my new body servant standing, but the thought came to me that it might not be a good idea, not on that knee. It might not help the healing: and the sooner it healed the sooner he would cease being a nuisance and begin to be of some use. ‘Sit,’ I said, and jerked a thumb at the other end of the bench.

  He sat, sticking his left leg awkwardly out in front of him, and stared through the doorway to where the first swallows were darting and swooping in the sunshine.

  The brew in the pot came to the boil and Brother Pebwyr threw in broad-leaved herbs from the pile beside him. There was a hiss like fiery serpents, and another smell was added to the heady reek of spices and simples that already filled the place, and the pot went off the boil. Brother Pebwyr brought it up again three times, very slowly, then drew it to the side of the fire. ‘It can see to itself for a while, now,’ he said, and looked up for the first time.

  ‘God’s greeting to you, my son, and who is this that you bring with you?’

  ‘My new servant,’ I told him. ‘My father handed him over to me this morning. But he has some kind of hurt on his knee, and so I bring him to you.’

  The Infirmarer nodded. ‘So, then let us be looking what is to be done.’

  He ca
me out from his crowding shadows and squatted down beside the boy and began to loosen the knot of the clumsy bandages. He was a snub-faced little man with not much more shape to him than an egg, but he had the kind of hands that should belong to a harper, and he used them just as surely as he loosed the stained and stiffened rags. ‘What name do they call you by?’ he asked, seeming to have forgotten me entirely.

  ‘Conn,’ said the brown boy, sounding as though his mouth were dry.

  And I looked round at him, somehow surprised. I had been so taken up with disappointment at being given a body servant when I wanted a hound pup, that I had never even thought about him having a name, let alone thought to ask it.

  Brother Pebwyr said, ‘Then, Conn, sit very still, and I will hurt you as little as may be,’ and he began to ease back the makeshift bandage.

  I had got up so as not to be in his way, but I stood watching, somehow not able to look away, and I saw the crusts and the angry hole and the surrounding pale puffiness of an old abscess that had maybe started to heal and then broken down again, and my belly cringed a little.

  ‘How did this come about?’ Brother Pebwyr asked.

  ‘A mule kicked me.’ The dryness and the careful levelness were still in Conn’s voice.

  ‘So - and how long ago?’

  ‘Two months - maybe three.’

  ‘That is too long, but now we will start the mending.’ The little man got up, rubbing his own knees - like a lot of the older brethren he had pains in them when there was rain about - too much kneeling, I suppose - and hobbled away into the shadows beyond the brazier and began to gather up things that lurked there. In a while he came back with fresh bandage linen and water from the big crock in the corner, and squatting down again began to bathe the place. When the bathing was over, he poured in a few drops of yellowish liquid from a small sinister looking flask. Conn drew in his breath through shut teeth but made no other sound. And Brother Pebwyr spread thick dark salve on a pad of linen and bound it over the old hurt.

  ‘There,’ he said by and by, gathering up the tools of his craft. ‘All’s over for one day.’

  ‘Am I to send him back tomorrow?’ I asked. At least the boy knew the way now, and could bring himself down.

  But the Infirmarer shook his head. ‘I have other ills to tend. Give him over to the Old Nurse tomorrow, she has as much skill as I in the healing of wounds. Bring him to me once, when the healing is complete, and so all will be well in Christ’s name.’

  A short while later, with Conn again padding houndwise behind me, I was heading back through the monks’ orchard, on to the old chariot tract that led homeward up the valley. It is strange how it lies clear in my mind even now, every detail of that day. The great head of Yr Widdfa away beyond the lesser hills that closed the valley, rising into the drifting spring sky, still wearing its mane of last winter’s snow; the alders above the mill already hazed with thin first leaf, and my father’s mares in the in-pastures beginning to show the weight of their unborn foals, and I remember too tipping back my head and seeing the broad out-thrust shoulder of the high moors that seemed almost to close the valley, and the blunt turf hummocks of old defences against the sky, where the long-past chieftains of my line had had their stronghold before ever the Legions came and they moved down out of the clouds to the comfort of the valley floor and built themselves our great villa-house in the Roman style.

  The old track led up between the thatched house-places of the kindred straight to the timber gate that was broad enough to let in piled grain carts and driven cattle at tribute time, and the gate stood open as always in time of peace. But I turned aside into our own orchard, heading for the rear of the house. For at this time of day, and now that the weather had cleared, Old Nurse would have brought out her sewing or whatever tasks were to hand, to sit on the colonnade steps in the sunshine, where she could keep her eye on all that passed in the outer court.

  Old Nurse was so old that her memories went back far enough to join with men whose own memories touched the time when the Legions had scarcely left Britain, and she had spoken in her youth with men who had spoken with Arthur Pendragon, him that among his own hills was still called Artos the Bear. At least, that was Old Nurse’s story. She was almost as good a storyteller as my father’s harper. But she was as curious as a squirrel, and though I knew that I would have to tell her every detail of Conn and his injured knee and Brother Pebwyr’s leeching of it, tomorrow, I was in no mood for it just now. So I made for the little postern gate behind the bath house, meaning to take a short cut across the herb garden to my own sleeping quarters, and so found myself having to tell most of it to Luned instead.

  Luned, my kinswoman, had been brought up under our roof since her parents had died of the fever that comes sometimes in the spring after a mild wet winter, and neither of us could remember a time when we had not been together, so that it was almost as though we were brother and sister. She was squatting on her heels where the wood-violets grew thick under the thorn hedge, searching among the heart-shaped leaves when we came in through the postern. I whistled, and she looked round and saw us, then got to her feet and came running, thrusting the dark wings of hair back from her face as she came.

  ‘There is fresh salmon out of the weir for supper,’ she said. At winter’s end after the months of dried and salted stuff that made good hearing, but her eyes were going over my shoulder. ‘That is the new servant? Old Nurse was telling me -’

  ‘Old Nurse talks too much!’ I said.

  ‘Why? It is not a secret, is it? Everybody knows that Uncle has bought a boy from the traders to be your body servant.’ She looked him up and down with interest - it was not every day that one saw a new face, even a servant’s face, in the valley - and her gaze found Brother Pebwyr’s bandage. ‘He has a hurt knee.’

  ‘He was kicked on it by a mule three months ago, and the place hasn’t healed properly. That’s why Father got him cheap.’

  ‘Poor boy,’ she said, and her voice softened. We had been talking about him as though he were a horse or an arm-ring, as though he were not there at all, but now she spoke to him direct, ‘Have you a name, boy?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘Conn. They used to call me Conn.’

  ‘That’s not a name of our people. Where are you from?’

  ‘From Eriu, before the man-traders came.’ He spoke steadily, but his voice had a raw edge to it, and I turned to look at him. That was two things I had learned about my new body servant, and neither of them I had found out for myself. For a moment that gave me an odd twinge of something uncomfortable, shame, I suppose, but it was gone again almost, though not quite, before I was aware of it.

  Luned changed the subject in the quick glancing way she had, like a minnow in shallow water. ‘I hoped there would be violets after the rain, but I can’t find any.’

  And Conn answered her, ‘There will be violets soon, now that the fine weather has come, little mistress.’ It was the first time I had heard him speak, except in answer to a question.

  The three of us went on towards the inner court together, walking like hunters in single file - for the path between the rosemary bushes was too narrow for two to walk abreast - with Luned in the middle and Conn walking stiff-legged in his new tight bandage, bringing up the rear.

  The next morning I took Conn in search of Old Nurse. Probably he could have found her on his own, by that time, but I knew Old Nurse. If you wanted her to do anything for you, it was best to go yourself and ask, with courtesy and humility. We found her at last in one of the storerooms, checking the cloth of the last year’s clip and scolding one of the maids for a fault that she had found in the weaving. I explained all things to her, and she abandoned the wool and the weeping maid and, grumbling under her breath about never being able to finish one job before the next needed doing, she led us off to the little room, close to the herb garden, where she kept her own remedies and dealt with all the ills of the household that were not bad
enough for Brother Pebwyr.

  She clucked like a hen at sight of Conn’s knee when she had the bandages off, and set to work on it with her sleeves thrust up. The old abscess looked much as it had yesterday, though it was certainly not in quite such a mess. My stomach cringed again, and I would have taken myself off and left them to it. But something held me there. She was not rough, but she was in a hurry, and her hands had not the calm sureness of Brother Pebwyr’s, also she seemed in an unaccountably ill temper, and I had an odd feeling that to leave my servant alone in her hands would be too much like abandoning him. So, grudgingly, I remained standing by and watching the work go forward.

  ‘Well, don’t be standing there like a salmon with the gapes,’ she said at last, knotting off the fresh bandage, when all was done. ‘Take him away until tomorrow, I’ve enough work waiting to be done: too much for a body that’s head aches as sore as mine does.’ And she sneezed and rubbed her nose with the back of her hand.

  On the green edge of daylight next morning, I woke to find Conn, come up from the old slaves’ quarters where he slept, standing in the doorway waiting for me to open my eyes.

  ‘The old nurse said I am to bring you the clean tunic that she washed for you,’ he said, when he saw that I was awake.

  I flung back the warm sheepskin rugs and struggled up, yawning. The morning still had a chill to it, and I grabbed the tunic he held out to me and pulled on the warm folds of saffron wool, and demanded my belt. He looked about him in the light of the sinking night-lamp and picked up the broad strap with its bronze buckle from where it lay on the clothes chest. As he turned with it, the skirt of his tunic swung out, and I glimpsed the paleness of bandage linen under it.

  ‘Did she seem to be in a sweeter temper this morning?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘I’d not be knowing, master. She’s taken to her bed with the head cold that was brewing yesterday. One of the women gave me your tunic and the message.’

  And that left the problem of who was going to dress Conn’s knee. Not that there was any problem really: plenty of other servants could do it. Only - Conn was a stranger. The bondfolk of the villa were not overwelcoming to strangers and newcomers … I could send him back to Brother Pebwyr, of course, but that seemed somehow a poor-spirited thing to do. I hankered after the Infirmarer’s good opinion, I suppose, and had a feeling, without knowing quite why, that if I did that, he would think the less of me. Maybe it would not matter leaving it for one day? Or, of course, I could do it myself. I had helped Cu my father’s hound-master doctor a sick or injured hound before now: there had been the time last year when Gelert, who was young and foolish, had got his flank laid open by a boar’s tusk, and Cu and I had saved him when everybody else was saying that a knife across his throat was the most sensible thing. But that had been different; a hound I knew and loved, a new clean wound … At the thought of the pulpy mass under Conn’s knee my belly still turned a little - and anyhow I had other and better things to do with the first days of spring. Conn was still standing in front of me, holding out my belt. I took it from him and put it on. ‘Go back and get the things she used yesterday from Old Nurse.’