Nicanor - Teller of Tales | Page 9

But when he met a fat
and perfumed man, riding upon a milk-white mule, with servants
before and behind him, and beasts of burden bearing hampers,--then
Nicanor could not understand. He bowed before the fat man deeply,
thinking him the great Lord Governor himself; and men by the roadside
laughed and mocked him. So that he fought them, and came out of his
second conflict very valiantly, with a closed eye and a lip badly cut.
And so, in the fulness of time, he came to the last day of his journey.

It was a gray day, touched with the smoky breath of Autumn, with all
the country veiled in softest haze. It was very early morning, and few
people were upon the road, although since the first light of dawn men
had been working in field and forest. From a farmhouse off the road
came the crowing of a cock and the creak of a cumbrous handmill
hidden in a thick copse near by. Nicanor, sitting by the roadside where
he had slept, ate the food remaining overnight in his wallet, and rolled
his sheepskin cloak into a bundle for his shoulders. Behind him, from
the road, came a man's voice, suddenly, singing a rollicking
drinking-song. The singer brought up beside Nicanor, a black-haired
man in a soiled leather jerkin and cap of shining brass, with a matted
beard and narrow eyes, and a great leaf-shaped sword swinging at his
thigh. This one hailed him heartily, in a loud voice.
"Good youth, canst tell me where I am?"
"Why, yes," said Nicanor, proud to display his knowledge of the
locality. "This be the street a Saxon man at Ad Fines named to me
Eormen--"
"Ad Fines? Thirty miles from Londinium? Now I could have sworn
that yesternight I was in Tripontium, thrice thirty miles from there. I
was there yesterday--or maybe that time a week ago. 'Tis a small failing
of mine to go where I do not mean to go, and know not how I get there,
when the wine is in me. But this way will do, and now I am so far upon
it, I may as well go farther."
He sat down beside Nicanor.
"Dost know of any lord would have a fine stout serving-man?" he said
with a wheedle. "One who can carve, be it swine or human, skilled with
sword or sling, who can drive a chariot, pair or single-span?"
"Not I," Nicanor answered. "I be a stranger in these parts."
"Bound for Londinium?" asked the black-haired man.
"Nay, for the Christian church of Saint Peter's, on Thorney which is

called the Isle of Brambles," said Nicanor, without guile.
"Why, then, I'll go there too," the stranger said amiably. "For I am most
devilishly lost, driven from town and camp, the first time sober in a
week; and money I must gain, or starve. Eh, Bacchus! the women--the
women!" He sighed, shaking his black head dolefully.
"What concern had they with it?" Nicanor wished to know. "Did they
turn thee out from camp and town?"
"Ay, boy, turned me out and turned me inside out," said the
black-haired man, and grinned. "Never a little copper ass have I left
upon me. See, now, our paths lie in the same direction, since my path is
any path. Shall we go together? For I swear I'll not get lost again.
Behold me, Valerius, sometime of the Ninth Legion at Ratæ, now, by
the grace of God, of no legion at all. I have my tablet of discharge from
service; a follower of fortune you see me, with my sword as long as the
purse of him who hires it."
Nicanor, half shy, half pleased with his new acquaintance, told in turn
his name and station.
"Thou and I will be good friends," the soldier said. "I love a lad of
spirit, such as thou. I'll fight for thee and thou shalt steal for me. 'Tis a
fair division of labor. Hear you how my tongue waggeth? For a week it
hath been sleeping off the wine, and now that it be sober again, it
runneth by itself. Come, friend, art ready?"
On the way Valerius talked irrepressibly, with many strange oaths and
ejaculations, mixing his religions impartially. He told weird tales of life
in camps and teeming cities, so that Nicanor's blood tingled, and he
longed to go also and do these things of which he heard. The tales of
Valerius did not always hang together, but Nicanor cared not at all for
that. By and by Valerius took to asking questions, his tongue in his
cheek at some of Nicanor's replies. In half an hour he had learned the
boy's life, deeds, and ambitions, and had extracted a promise that
Nicanor would get the worthy Tobias