Wessex Tales: "The Face in the Floor" (Story 10) Read online

  Chapter 3

  In time the whole expanse was tiled with glorious designs of plaited borders, floral scrolls, evangelists (three by Coxucratis; one, less accomplished, by Otiacus), hunting hounds, fleeing deer and the Tree of Life, which presided near the eastern wall. The central roundel stood ready with three concentric plaited borders—but no Christ. Try as he might, Beletus could not envision the Christus, even though he had a model painted on a drinking cup. In sheer frustration he gave the roundel a fourth border, a wave design that took up space inside the rest, shrinking the gap where the face would stare from the floor. The job should have been done days since, the team packed and gone. But still they lingered, costing time and money while the master’s mood grew as black as thunder. What should he look like, this face in the floor? The genius had deserted the master of the tiny tesserae.

  One night, feeling drained and tired, Beletus threw his cover off, groped for his sandals and took himself out to the courtyard. The moon, not far from full, stood high in the west, as bright as Diana’s shield in a clear night sky. To his right, two little lamps served as night-lights in the corridor fronting the villa, their pinpricks of flame as pale as glow-worms set against the beacon of the moon.

  Though imposing, the villa was a conventional corridor-house with a wing at either end. The main long block, housing the principal rooms, ran north to south and faced due west. It overlooked the valley of the River Stour, half a mile away. Symmetrical wings about a third as long as the house jutted forward from the ends of the main block. In this standard arrangement each room let onto an external corridor that started in one wing, ran the length of the front, and ended in the wing opposite. The roof of the house swept down in a single line extending over the corridor, protecting the passage from sun and rain. The corridor had no outer wall. Sturdy timber columns supported the edge of the roof.

  Beletus shared a room with Coxucratis at the end of the south wing. Thus the master was well placed to step into the courtyard, where he walked a few paces and turned to look back at the house. The long, low bulk shone bright in the light of the moon. Only the corridor loomed dark in shadow, like a scowl in the moon-washed front.

  The master turned away. Between the house and the river the forest had been cut long since and, where humans left off, beavers had seen to the rest. Half a mile away, moonlight glinted from the surface of the Stour.

  Drawn to the slash of light on water, Beletus followed the trail to the river through a confusion of huts, cart hovels, and the litter of a hundred working souls. For almost an hour by the moon he sat on the dew-wet bank in search of inspiration. He would have tarried longer, but a line of encroaching black cloud threatened to cover the moon. The master retraced the track up the hill, weary and none the wiser.

  When he reached the villa the moon was still shining free of the cloud. Beletus stopped in the courtyard to catch his breath, taking in the bright bulk of the house and the dark line of the corridor, shaded beneath its overhang of roof.

  That was when the night-light blinked. There could be no doubt. The light had blinked. The small oil lamp burned on a shoulder-high shelf twenty feet to the right of the main portico, near the chamber of the tessellated floor. For a heartbeat or two the flame disappeared. Then it winked on again. Hair was rising on his neck even before Beletus hit upon the explanation: a figure had walked between him and the light. For the moment he saw nothing; whatever had passed was lost in the darkened corridor. Then a bright pale glow appeared in the portico, where a man stood still in the spotlight of the moon.

  Every follicle in the master’s flesh was now a-creep. He could have turned right and retreated to his room at the end of the southern wing, but the thought never entered his head. Beletus stood rigid with fear while the moon-lit being hitched up its hem, walked slowly down the central steps and came directly towards him.

  A rabbit in fear of a snake regains its senses, just too late. The moon-lit being was two arm-lengths off when Beletus took charge of his wits. By then the other was staring him in the face.

  The stranger was half a head shorter than the artisan, formally clad in a full-length pallium, with his hair brushed forward and cut on the forehead in conventional style. Even though his eyes were held by the stranger’s moon-lit face, Beletus took those details in. The man’s features were pale and puffy, like those of a body several days drowned. But the eyes, though ringed with tiredness, were dark, deep set, and firm. The nose, too long for a Briton’s, pointed the way to a tight-drawn, narrow mouth. And though the face was fleshy, moonlight picked out cheekbones such as traders from the Northland have, or men from southern Gaul.

  For an instant, fear kept Beletus rooted to the spot, then something akin to awe. It was as if the stranger knew when the fear passed off, for he chose that moment to ask, in Latin:

  “Where are you going?”

  Unaccountably, Beletus replied, “To work, Master.”

  The stranger managed a thin, brief smile. Then, like a giant, nocturnal eyelid, the dark line of cloud closed off the moon, dropping the night into black. Beletus felt a chill as the stranger walked past, leaving him in the darkened courtyard, alone.