Chapter I

'Alboin! Alboin!'

There was no answer. There was no one in the play-room.

'Alboin!' Oswin Errol stood at the door and called into the small high garden at the back of his house. At length a young voice answered, sounding distant and like the answer of someone asleep or just awakened.

'Yes?'

'Where are you?'

'Here!'

'Where is "here"?' ^

'Here: up on the wall, father.'

Oswin sprang down the steps from the door into the garden, and walked along the flower-bordered path. It led after a turn to a low stone wall, screened from the house by a hedge. Beyond the stone wall there was a brief space of turf, and men a cliff-edge, beyond which outstretched, and now shimmering in a calm evening, the western sea. Upon the wall Oswin found his son, a boy about twelve years old, lying gazing out to sea with his chin in his hands.

'So there you are!' he said. 'You take a deal of calling. Didn't you hear теГ

'Not before the time when I answered,' said Alboin.

'Well, you must be deaf or dreaming,' said his father. 'Dreaming, it looks like. It is getting very near bed-time; so, if you want any story tonight, we shall have to begin at once.'

'I am sorry, father, but I was thinking.'

'What about?'

'Oh, lots of things mixed up: the sea, and the world, and Alboin.'

]Alboin?'

'Yes. I wondered why Alboin. Why am I called Alboin? They often ask me "Why Alboin?" at school, and they call me All-bone. But I am not, am I?'

'You look rather bony, boy; but you are not all bone, I am glad to say. I am afraid I called you Alboin, and that is why you are called it I am sorry: I never meant it to be a nuisance to you.'

'But it is a real name, isn't it?' said Alboin eagerly. 'I mean, it means something, and men have been called it? It isn't just invented?'

'Of course not. It is just as real and just as good as Oswin; and it belongs to the same family, you might say. But no one ever bothered me about Oswin. Though I often used to get called Oswald by mistake. I remember how it used to annoy me, though I can't think why. I was rather particular about my name.'

They remained talking on the wall overlooking the sea; and did not go back into the garden, or the house, until bed-time. Their talk, as often happened, drifted into story-telling; and Oswin told his son the tale of Alboin son of Audoin, the Lom­bard king; and of the great battle of the Lombards and the Gepids, remembered as terrible even in the grim sixth century; and of the kings Thurisind and Cunimund, and of Rosamunda. Not a good story for near bed-time,' he said, ending suddenly with AJboin's drinking from the jewelled skull of Cunimund.

I don't like that Alboin much,' said the boy. 'I like the Gepids better, and King Thurisind. I wish they had won. Why didn't you call me Thurisind or Thurismod?'

'Well, really mother had meant to call you Rosamund, only you turned up a boy. And she didn't live to help me choose another name, you know. So I took one out of that story, because it seemed to fit. I mean, the name doesn't belong only to mat story, it is much older. Would you rather have been called Elf-friend? For that's what the name means.'

'No-o,' said Alboin doubtfully. 'I like names to mean some­thing, but not to say something.'

'Well, I might have called you idfwine, of course; that is the Old English form of it. I might have called you that, not only after iElfwine of Italy, but after all the Elf-friends of old; after jElfwine, King Alfred's grandson, who fell in the great victory in 937, and ЛШНмпе who fell in the famous defeat at Maldon, and many other Englishmen and northerners in the long line of Elf-friends. But I gave you a latinized form. I mink that is best The old days of the North are gone beyond recall, except in so far as they have been worked into the shape of things as we know it, into Christendom. So I took Alboin; for it is not Latin and not Northern, and that is the way of most names in the West, and also, of the men mat bear them. I might have chosen Albinus, for that is what they sometimes turned the name into; and it wouldn't have reminded your friends of bones. But it is too Latin, and means something in Latin. And you are not white or fair, boy, but dark. So Alboin you are. And that is all mere is to it, except bed' And they went in.

Bui Alboin looked out of his window before getting into bed; and he could see the sea beyond the edge of the cliff. It was a late sunset, for it was summer. The sun sank slowly to die sea, and dipped red beyond the horizon. The light and colour faded quickly from the water a chilly wind came up out of the West, and over the sunset-rim great dark clouds sailed up, stretching huge wings southward and northward, threat­ening the land.

They look like the eagles of the Lord of the West coming upon Numenor,' Alboin said aloud, and be wondered why. Though it did not seem very strange to him. In those days he often made up names. Looking on a familiar hill, he would see it suddenly standing in some other time and story: 'the green shoulders isf Amon-ereb,' he would say. The waves are loud upon the shores of Beleriand,' he said one day, when storm was piling water at the foot of the cliff below the house.

Some of these names were really made up, to please himself with their sound (or so he thought); but others seemed 'real', as if they had not been spoken first by him. So it was with Numenor. 'I like that,' he said to himself. 'I could think of a long story about the land of Numenor.'

But as he lay in bed, he found that the story would not be thought. And soon he forgot the name; and other thoughts crowded in, partly due to his father's words, and partly to his own day-dreams before.

'Dark Alboin,' he thought. 'I wonder if there is any Latin in me. Not much, I think. I love the western shores, and the real sea—it is quite different from the Mediterranean, even in stories. I wish there was no other side to it. There were darkhaired people who were not Latins. Are the Portuguese Latins? What is Latin? I wonder what kind of people lived in Portugal and Spain and Ireland and Britain in old days, very old days, before ' the Romans, or the Carthaginians. Before anybody else. I wonder what the man thought who was the first to see the western sea.' '

Then he fell asleep, and dreamed. But when he woke the dream slipped beyond recall, and left no tale or picture behind, only the feeling that these had brought: the sort of feeling Alboin connected with long strange names. And he got up. And summer slipped by, and he went to school and went on learning Latin.

Also he learned Greek. And later, when he was about fif­teen, he began to learn other languages, especially those of the North: Old English, Norse, Welsh, Irish. This was not much encouraged—even by his father, who was an historian. Latin and Greek, it seemed to be thought, were enough for anybody; and quite old-fashioned enough, when there were so many suc­cessful modern languages (spoken by millions of people); not to mention maths and all the sciences.

But Alboin liked the flavour of the older northern languages, quite as much as he liked some of the things written in them. He got to know a bit about linguistic history, of course; he found that you rather had it thrust on you anyway by the grammar-writers of 'unclassical' languages. Not that he objected: sound-changes were a hobby of bis, at the age when other boys were learning about the insides of motor-cars. But, although he had some idea of what were supposed to be the relationships of European languages, it did not seem to him quite all the story. The languages he liked had a definite flavour—and to some extent a similar flavour which they shared. It seemed, too, in some way.related to the atmosphere of the legends and myths told in the languages.

One day, when Alboin was nearly eighteen, he was sitting in the study with his father. It was autumn, and the end of summer holidays spent mostly in the open. Fires were coming back. It was the time in all the year when book-lore is most attractive (to those who really like it at all). They were talking 'lan­guage' . For Errol encouraged his boy to talk about anything he was interested in; although secretly he had been wondering for some time whether Northern languages and legends were not taking up more time and energy man their practical value in a hard world justified. 'But I had better know what is going on, as far as any father can,'.he thought. 'He'll.go on anyway, if he really has a bent—and it had better not be bent inwards.'

Alboin was trying to explain his feeling about 'language-atmosphere'. 'You get echoes coming through, you know,' he said, 'in odd words here and there—often very common words in their own language, but quite unexplained by the etymolo­gists; and in the. general shape and sound of all the words, somehow; as if something was peeping through from deep under the surface.'

'Of course, I am not a philologist,' said his father; 'but I never could see that there was much evidence in favour of ascribing language-changes to a substratum. Though I suppose underlying ingredients do have an influence, though it is not easy to define, on the final mixture in the case of peoples taken
as a whole, different national talents and temperaments, and that sort of thing. But races, and cultures, are different from languages.'

'Yes,' said Alboin; 'but very mixed up, all three together. And after all, language goes back by a continuous tradition into the past, just as much as the other two. I often think that if you knew the living faces of any man's ancestors, a long way back, you might find some queer things. You might find that

 

he got his nose quite clearly from, say, his mother's great­grandfather; and yet mat something about his nose, its expres­sion or its set or whatever you like to call it, really came dov from much further back, from, say, his father's great-grei great-grandfather or greater. Anyway I like to go back—and not with race only, or culture only, or language; but with three. I wish I could go back with the three that are mixed in i father, just the plain Errols, with a little house in Cornwall in: the summer. I wonder what one would see.'

'It depends how far you went back,' said the elder Errol. you went back beyond the Ice-ages, I imagine .you would fi nothing in these parts; or at' any rate a pretty beastly uncomely race, and a tooth-and-nail culture, and a disgus" language with no echoes for you, unless those of food-noises/

'Would you?' said Alboin.'I wonder.'

'Anyway you can't go back,' said his father, 'except within the limits prescribed to us mortals. Yoacan go back in a sense by honest study, long and patient work. You had better go for archaeology as well as philology: they ought to go we enough together, though they aren't joined very often.'

'Good idea,' said Alboin. 'But you remember, long ago, yo said I was not all-bone. Well, I want some mythology, as well.. I want myths, not only bones and stones.'

'Well, you can have 'em! Take the whole lot on!' said his father laughing. 'But in the meanwhile you have a smaller job on hand. Your Latin needs improving (or so I am told), for school purposes. And scholarships are useful in lots of ways,; especially for folk like you and me who go in for antiquated" subjects. Your first shot is this winter, remember.'

'I wish Latin prose was not so important,' said Alboin. TamT, really much better at verses.'

'Don't go putting any bits of your Eressean, or Elf-latin, or whatever you call it, into your verses at Oxford. It might scan, but it wouldn't pass.'

'Of course not!' said the boy, blushing. The matter was too private, even for private jokes. 'And don't go blabbing about" Eressean outside the partnership,' he begged; 'or I shall wish I had kept it quiet/

'Well, you did pretty well. I don't suppose I should ever' have heard about it, if you hadn't left your note-books in my*

study. Even so I don't know much about it But, my dear lad, I shouldn't dream of blabbing, even if I did. Only don't waste too much time on it. I am afraid I am anxious about that scholarship], not only from the highest motives. Cash is not too abundant'

'Oh, I haven't done anything of that sort for a long while, at least hardly anything,' said Alboin. 'It isn't getting on too well, then?' 'Not lately. Too much else to do, I suppose. But I got a lot of jolly new words a few days ago: I am sure lomelinde means nightingale, for instance, and certainly Home is night (though not darkness). The verb is very sketchy still. But—' He hesi­tated. Reticence (and uneasy conscience) were at war with his habit of what he called 'partnership with the pater', and his desire to unbosom the secret anyway. 'But the real difficulty is that another language is coming through, as well It seems to be related but quite different much more—more Northern. Alda was a tree (a word I got a long time ago); in the new lan­guage it is galadh, and от. The Sun and Moon seem to have similar names in both: Anar and Ы1 beside Anor and Ithil. I like the first one, then the other, in different moods. Beleri-andic is really very" attractive; but it complicates things.'

'Good Lord!' said his father, 'this is serious! I will respect unsolicited secrets. But do have a conscience as well as a heart and—moods. Or get a Latin and Greek mood!'

'I do. I have had one for a week, and I have got it now; a Latin one luckily, and Virgil in particular. So here we part' He got up. 'I am going to do a bit of reading. I'll look in when I think you ought to go to bed.' He closed the door on his father's snort.

As a matter of fact Errol did not really like the parting shot. The affection in it warmed and saddened him. A late marriage had left him now on the brink of retirement from a school­master's small pay to his smaller pension, just when Alboin was coming of University age. And he was also (he had begun. to feel, and mis year to admit in his heart) a tired man. He had never been a strong man. He would have liked to accompany Alboin a great deal further on the road, as a younger father probably would have done; but he did not somehow think he would be going very far. 'Damn it' he said to himself, 'a boy of that age ought not to be thinking such things, wo whether his father is getting enough rest. Where's my book

Alboin in the old play-room, turned into junior stu looked out into the dark. He did not for a long time turn books. 'I wish life was not so short,' he thought. 'Langua take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to! about And the pater, he is looking tired. I want him for y~ If he lived to be a hundred I should be only about as old as is now, and I should still want him. But he won't. I wish could stop getting old. The pater could go on working 'write mat book he used to talk about, about Cornwall; and could go on talking. He always plays up, even if he does agree or understand. Bother Eressean. I wish he hadn't: tioned it I am sure I shall dream tonight; and it is so exci The Latin-mood will go. He is very decent about it, ev though he thinks I am making it all up. If I were, I would! it to please him. But it comes, and I simply can't let it slip w' it does. Now there is Beleriandic.'

Away west the moon rode in ragged clouds. The sea mered palely out of the gloom, wide, flat going on to the < of the world. 'Confound you, dreams!' said Alboin. 'Lay and let me do a little patient work at least until December, scholarship would brace the pater.'