Pears Run to the Western Shore

'Surprising, poignant, elemental' novel from award-winning author
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-80075-298-6
Verlag: Swift Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 208 Seiten

'A beautiful love story with an incredible sense of place' - The Times 'Compact and engrossing . . . a pleasure of a novel' - Daily Mail Britain, AD 72. Quintus, a slave long exiled from his people, has travelled to far-flung places under the command of a powerful Roman. Though a citizen of nowhere, he is a man of reason, fluent in many languages. Olwen, a volatile warrior, is rooted in her native land. Given away by her father as part of a peace treaty, Olwen flees during the night, taking Quintus with her. Hunted by an army, the two make their way across the country, living off the land, heading for the western shore . . . 'Pears is a master at making you see again landscapes that have long vanished . . . He has an unusual gift for creating characters you want to spend time with - Guardian

Tim Pears is a Lannan Prize-winning author and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His books include In the Place of Fallen Leaves (winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Ruth Hadden Memorial Award), In A Land of Plenty (made into a ten-part BBC series), Landed (shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, winner of the MJA Open Book Awards), and The West Country Trilogy.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Pears, Tim

Leseproben

3

Olwen trotted beside the Miwl. Quintus followed. The narrow watercourse had carved a deep tapering gorge for its passage. A damp and gloomy canyon. Trees rose thin and frail for light, their trunks all wrapped around with ivy. Olwen paused to rest.

‘When did you form this plan?’ Quintus asked her.

‘What plan?’

‘For us to flee together. You and me.’

She shook her head. ‘Until I saw your master I had prepared myself for his dominion over me. I set my life aside, for the good of my tribe. But then I met him and could not bear it.’ Olwen paused, lowered her head, then raised it once more. ‘I had no plan,’ she told Quintus. ‘I resolved to leave the Roman camp and make my way home. Then I saw you sleeping in the open, and woke you.’

He said, ‘You act as you wish to, in the moment.’

Olwen shrugged. ‘I am the daughter of Cunicatus,’ she said. ‘Chief of the Dilovi.’

Who gave you to his enemy, Quintus thought. But he said nothing.

They crossed the little river over a wooden bridge and climbed through a bwlch or pass. Cow parsley and yellow buttercups grew in profusion by the path. Heading south, they recrossed the Miwl further upstream, where it was narrow and easy to splash through. It had etched an almost circular loop, as if to lasso a wooded knoll with water. The land sloped up from the valley through an oak wood.

‘Come,’ Olwen said, and veered off the path.

He followed her through scrub and a deep thicket of dogwood into a small glade, and there, hanging from the branches of a thorn tree, were disparate, unusual items to be found in a secluded stretch of woodland. A sword in a coppery scabbard. A goatskin flask. A bow, and a quiver of arrows. A pouch in which was flint, a lump of iron sulphide and tinder. Nettle rope. A woollen blanket.

Quintus said, ‘I thought that you had no plan. That you were prepared to be the wife of your father’s enemy.’

‘This,’ she said, opening her arms to take in the items around them. ‘This was more like a funeral. A burial of weapons. Farewell to who I was.’

Her iron sword was short, elegant, with a finely wrought handle.

‘I had heard of the great iron swords of your people,’ Quintus said. ‘Such as your father’s.’

‘I can barely lift my father’s sword,’ Olwen said. ‘How would I wield it in battle? I could not. This one was forged for me.’

Olwen carried her weapons, Quintus the provisions, and thus equipped they walked on.

‘Back at the ford,’ Quintus said, ‘you wiped your blood on your cloak and left it there for them to find.’

‘Yes,’ Olwen said.

‘Why?’

‘So they will think you took me by force, and harmed me.’

He looked askance at her. She did not return his gaze, though she surely knew it was upon her. ‘I thought so. I suppose I am in even more trouble than I would have been.’

‘Even as we speak, a squad of Roman soldiers pursue us. I hope that if they think you took me, they will underestimate us.’

Quintus shook his head. ‘How can you say such a thing?’

‘Forgive me,’ Olwen replied. ‘But you are an interpreter. You are clearly not a warrior.’

They climbed through a deep zawn or crevice with steep wooded sides. The path beside the trickle of water at the bottom of the dingle was overgrown with brambles here and there, and they had constantly to lift their legs and tread them down. Their shins and calves were scratched and cut. They emerged in the open and had taken a few steps when Olwen slowed her pace and said, ‘We are being watched.’

Quintus stopped and began to crouch.

Olwen touched his arm. ‘Look you,’ she said, gesturing off to one side.

A beast, a cat of some kind, sat on a rock higher up the slope, where it had been sunning itself until being disturbed by these noisy bipeds. Its fur was brown, almost red, with darker spots across its body. It had a beard of lightly coloured fur sprouting from its jaw, and the same within its large upright ears. Each ear had a black tuft of hair growing from it. It sat on its back paws and rump, utterly still, observing them with placid brown eyes. There emanated from it neither fear nor aggression. More a dispassionate study.

‘A lynx,’ Olwen whispered.

Then, as if receiving an abrupt request to be elsewhere, the lynx shifted. It did not move like an animal composed of a skeleton with joints to be articulated, bones to be levered. The cat’s flesh flowed into motion, and then all its paws were on the ground and it padded away and vanished into the shadows of juniper trees. Quintus turned to Olwen and saw that she had bowed her head towards the departing creature and was muttering what sounded like a prayer.

Olwen barely registered the rain clouds in the sky, yet all of a sudden sweeping ribbons of soft warm water brushed over them. The rainwater swayed to and fro, as if some giant peasant strolled across the heath dipping his maul into his sack, casting not seed but raindrops, this way and that. Then he moved on. The light rain had barely impinged upon their clothing and done little more than stain the landscape, toning all its colours slightly darker.

A pair of black birds, with black beaks, flew high overhead. They came lower, kronking loudly as if in greeting. For a while they accompanied the two youths, performing acrobatics in the air, playing with each other, perhaps putting on a display for the human audience, or possibly mocking their earthbound status.

Olwen told Quintus that of all the birds she knew, ravens seemed to be the ones who enjoyed themselves the most.

Approaching the Ceri ridge, climbing through pasture grass littered with dandelions, buttercups, white clover, Olwen stopped abruptly. Assuming she had seen something, Quintus drew level with her and looked around. He turned to her. Her mouth was closed and she breathed through her nose, deeply. She closed her eyes: with long inhalations, she processed the air in her nostrils. Then he smelled it too. Meat cooking.

They walked towards the aroma. A pale wisp of smoke rose in the blue sky, and soon they found three youths roasting a spit of mutton. Two boys, one girl. Beyond them was a flock of thirty or forty sheep, grazing on the upland grass. The first boy to see them approach jumped up, grabbing his crook. The second boy turned and saw them, and whistled. The girl stood.

Olwen neither paused nor waved to the shepherds but carried on walking towards them at the same steady pace. Quintus followed her lead. The dog had not been far away and came promptly. He was a muscly creature. The hackles on his back rose and he growled at the newcomers, barring their way.

Now Olwen stopped. ‘Call your dog off,’ she said.

None of them moved. The dog snarled, baring his teeth.

‘I have no wish to have to silence it myself,’ Olwen said.

The boy who had whistled for the guard dog did not respond, but the girl said, ‘Do it,’ and he stirred from his sullen inertia and walked towards the dog, talking to it, ordering it to cease its prickly welcome. He grasped its leather collar and said, ‘Come,’ and yanked it off to one side.

Olwen and Quintus walked on to the fire. The boy there stood gaping.

‘Do you need your stick to turn the meat?’ Olwen asked him.

The boy looked down at the staff in his hand. He appeared surprised to find it there, and dropped it.

Olwen laid down her bow, unbuckled her scabbard and sat cross-legged on the ground. Quintus remained standing, waiting until these two sat as well and the other boy had tied up his guard dog and returned. Olwen patted the turf beside her, glancing up at him. Warily, he joined her.

The meat cooked in the flames of the small fire on wooden skewers resting in V-shaped notches of sticks pushed into the earth. Fat from the meat dripped onto the flames, making them sizzle. Saliva manifested itself in Quintus’s mouth.

‘Please,’ the girl said. ‘Help yourself.’

‘We do not wish to take your food,’ Olwen told her.

‘We have more,’ the boy assured her. ‘We have plenty.’

They took a skewer each and nibbled the hot meat, then as it cooled chewed delicious mouthfuls. The shepherds themselves did not eat but sat watching their transient guests, joined now by the other boy. Quintus could see the dog some yards away, roped to a tree, already snoozing. The meat was crackly on its outside, tender within. He sucked all he could from the bones.

Between the girl and the boy in charge of the dog was a pile of nettles. The boy put on a pair of leather gloves and stripped the leaves. The girl slit the denuded stalks with a small knife and extracted their interior matter. She passed the outer bark to the first boy, who plaited the strips into an ever-enlarging ball of string. This boy addressed Olwen. ‘Is he a Roman?’

As if she was of like mind, about to utter that selfsame question, the girl said, ‘Because he wears a Roman tunic, and sandals, but his skin is so dark.’

The boy frowned. ‘His hair is so curly.’

The second boy said, ‘They all have dark skin.’

‘Not as dark as his,’ the girl said. ‘Nor so handsome.’

They spoke of Quintus as if he were a mute who could not hear them. Or more likely they assumed he could not understand what they said.

‘Have you seen Romans?’ Olwen asked them.

The girl nodded. ‘They buy our sheep.’

‘And drink our barley...