The Belt of Gold Read Online Free PDF Page A

overnight guests, and this night there were few travellers. Hagen and his brother and the girl Theophano hired a room all to themselves.
    It would have mattered little to Rogerius and Theophano if they had been surrounded by strangers. They saw only each other. Somehow over the afternoon’s ride their wordless companionship had ripened to a precipitous lust. From the moment he lifted her down from his horse, Rogerius touched her, his arm protectively around her shoulders, his head inclined toward her. Hand in hand, the two stood smiling like idiots while Hagen paid for their room, and, in the room, they leaned together, their gazes locked, almost breathless, until Hagen said something only half-worded and went out and left them alone.
    It made him angry. He liked women; he loved his brother; but he had been riding all day long and wanted to get his weight off his feet and rest. Now he had to wander off through the inn looking for something to do, while his brother and this Greek slut bounced the bed around. In a sour mood, he went down to the common room and bought a jug of wine.
    The common room was filling up with people—travellers and local folk—drinking, calling for food and for their friends. Alone, lonely, Hagen took the jug and went out behind the inn, off through the sharp-smelling pine trees, down through rocks and beds of fallen needles to the shore.
    The wind was blasting in over the water. The sun was going down. Out across the black water, whitecaps danced and leapt as thick as stars in the sky of a clear night. Hagen sat down on a rock and pulled out the cork from his wine and took a long full drink of the wine.
    Tomorrow they would take the ferry to Constantinople. That meant they were halfway home, because from Constantinople they could take a boat to Italy, and Italy was in the hands of the Franks. By Christmas they would be back at the Braasefeldt.
    He drank more of the wine, remembering the great hall that his grandfather had built, with the skulls of bear and deer nailed to the rafters, the hearth of massive stones, the smell of meat roasting. The sound of Frankish voices. To hear his own tongue again! To taste beer again, real beer and not the thin insipid stuff these Easterners brewed. To eat the bread of home again—
    He had plans, for when he reached home again. In alien lands, among strangers night after night, he had talked to Rogerius about Braasefeldt. They would build dikes all along the river, raise a mill, drain the marshes for farmland. No more robbery, no more feuds, no more going around looking for trouble and looking out for it, too, hands ever at their sword hilts, drawing at shadows. If he had not learned to pray as well as Rogerius, he had at least learned not to sin.
    The wine tasted bitter but it relaxed him. It fed his lonely melancholy. Looking back, he saw now that he had wasted his youth in drunken brawls and getting revenge on his enemies. Avenging his father’s murder had been necessary, although Reynard had been so bad a man it was inevitable that somebody would slay him; but most of the other feuds and quarrels Hagen had pursued with such single-minded devotion had been only excuses for frivolous crimes. Now he was ready for a quiet, honest life, ordering his serfs, protecting his borders, fighting the wars of his king. Marrying. Raising a brood of little boys with white hair and hot tempers, and little girls, too, to marry off into other families, to make alliances against his enemies. He was tired of being an outlaw. He wanted respect, connections, and honor.
    The sun was gone. The light was bleeding from the sky. Already the sea was dark as the waters of Hell. He got up and walked unsteadily along the rocky shore, kicking stones into the water. The waves surged up and broke over the teeth of the rocks and spread their sloppy suds out and drew back, rattling and banging the cobbles of the beach. There in the west, pure and bright, the evening star shone