by Jack Whyte
"What in the name of...?" He saw me then with the club and his face flared in anger. "What have you done, boy?" His voice was terrible and I quailed before the fury that had sprung into his eyes.
"Quiet, Picus!" My uncle's voice was impatient. "The boy has done no harm. This was my doing. Now, just be quiet and watch, and learn. Learn about the chair saddles of the Frankish horsemen that we dismissed as useless. The boy is on a horse, enemies all around him. The vase on the floor is the head of an enemy grasping his foot. Show him, Cay."
Knowing somehow that this was a very important moment, although still having no idea of how or why, I drew myself together, collected my energies and then swung the club once around my head, tensed my legs, pulled hard on my reins, lifted myself to my full height, my backside clear of the seat and smashed the vase into a thousand pieces, splashing water clear across the room to splatter against the walls. As the sounds of the falling fragments died away, I looked at my father. His jaw had fallen open and his eyes were stunned and I still did not know what was happening here.
"Well, Picus?" My uncle's voice held a smiling note of pride.
"Do it again," my father rasped. We did it again, and by this time I was really enjoying the sensation I was causing. The entire Armoury was a littered shambles.
After the third vase, my father groped his way to a chair and sat, never taking his eyes from me. My uncle spoke again. "A twelve-year-old boy, Picus! Think what that thing could do for a mounted man."
"His whole body," my father said, his voice hushed as my uncle's had been earlier. "Used his whole body! All his force and strength. From the back of a horse! Standing up, braced, on the back of a horse!"
"Exactly, Picus! And we dismissed it. I have had this thing—this.. .seat—here in this room for fourteen years and I never saw it!"
Listening to them, I was still half afraid and totally mystified. Something momentous had happened, but what it was remained unknown to me.
"It's the leg braces," my uncle said. "They are exactly the right length for his feet to reach comfortably, now. They never were before—he literally grew into them. And every man's legs are a different length."
My father continued from there, his voice a deep rumble as though he were talking to himself. "Adjust each man's equipment to suit his own leg length...and we have a squadron of riders who can stand up and smite from a horse's back! A new cavalry force like nothing that has ever been seen before!"
"The Franks have seen it, Picus. This is theirs."
My father barked his sharp, unique laugh, "Aye, Varrus, but the Franks have no long swords like ours. And no discipline, no training. This could make us invincible."
"It will make us invincible, Picus. But, once again, it will mean teaching everyone to ride in a new and different way."
"So?" My father's tone of voice said that was a mere technicality. "The Franks can do it. It can't be all that difficult. How fast can you make these things? What are they called, anyway?"
My uncle shrugged his shoulders. "Saddles, I suppose. There's no other word for them in any tongue I know of. To make them? I don't know. I threw the large ones out."
I cleared my throat and spoke out. "I know where they are." Both men looked at me.
"Where?" asked Uncle Varrus.
"Uther and I use them as chairs in our secret place."
"Good," said my uncle. "Bring them back here. We'll take them apart and see exactly how they are put together and then we'll make our own."
The servant who had been sent for wine had returned and now stood staring in stupefaction at the condition of the room. My uncle finally noticed him and rounded on him. "What are you gaping at? Have you never seen water spilt before? Bring young master Caius's chair there and follow us, and then come back here and clean this place up." Cay, you come with us to the stables. Let's see how it feels for you to sit on your chair on your pony's back."
I was the first person in Camulod to ride a horse with what eventually came to be known as a saddle with stirrups. Uther was mad with jealousy at first, but I taught him first how to relax and master this strange new chair and before the first man in Camulod knew how to ride in one, we two were experts, and it fell to us to be instructors general.
I have already mentioned my belief that' the number three has a mystical power. I spoke of deaths occurring in threes, but the potency of the triune conjunction is not confined to death alone; the triad appears to hold equal prominence in the grouping of the signal events of life. The great dramatists all wrote in the belief that a tripartite relationship between people is the essential element of heroic human conflict. Confined between two people, conflict, no matter how violent, is the mere pettiness of rivals; it requires the interaction of a third person to expand the conflict into tragedy. In retrospect it is now clear to me that my own life, and the fate of our Colony, was influenced at that time by a triad of events, which, combined, changed the lives of all of us forever. The discovery of the secret of the saddle and the adoption of the bracings we called stirrups was the first of these; my discovery of the Sword, the second.
The third fateful event was very different in nature from the two that went before it. Camulod had a visitor from the land in the far south-west, that place our people call Cornwall because it sticks out far into the sea like a great cornua, or horn. Emrys, the king of the people there, called himself Duke of Cornwall, after the old Roman title of Dux, or Leader. He had heard tales of Camulod and had come north to gauge the truth of them for himself. He was a loudmouthed, far from amiable man who did nothing to endear himself to Uncle Varrus, and he had a hulking, loudmouthed, even less amiable son called Lot, Gulrhys Lot, who did still less to endear himself to me or to Uther. Our relationship was based on hatred almost at first sight.
Lot was two years our senior and big for his age, and from the moment when Uncle Varrus told us to look after him, he set out to let us know who was the master and who the servants among us three. We led him from the Council Hall out into the courtyard where, mindful of my uncle's strict laws of hospitality, I offered to show him around the fort. He ignored me and stopped, wide legged, clenched fists on his hips, and looked around at everything with a wide sneer upon his face.
"Fort?" he said. "You call this hole a fort? It's like the kennels we use at home to keep our dogs in." I looked at Uther and said nothing. My cousin had a look upon his face that I had come to know very well, and it always announced trouble.
"You keep your dogs in a place like this?" he asked, his voice filled with what sounded like wonderment, "your dogs?"
"Aye. We do."
Uther nodded his head deeply then, as though accepting the straightforward explanation of a concern. "Then that explains the stink that hangs about you. You've given up your quarters to the dogs. Laudable, Lot, but stupid. You obviously inhabit the sty now, with your swine."
Lot was not to be provoked into immediate action, however. He smiled an evil smile and moved forward onto the balls of his feet. "What would you know about healthy swine, you little shit? Pigs are too clean for the likes of a gutter-dropped pile of Roman dung like you to know. I hear tell that your mother was a Roman whore who sold herself to beggars before she really disgraced herself by stooping even lower, to your father Uric."
I was appalled. I had never in my life heard a more extreme insult. Uther went white. "Whoreson," he said in a calm voice. "You are dead. You'll never grow a beard. Stay here and don't move. Cay, don't let him sneak away." He began to back away and then he turned and ran towards Uncle Varrus's house.
"Where are you going, dungheap? To tell your grandfather?" Lot yelled after him.
"Just you stay there!" Uther yelled back, and disappeared round the corner of a building.
"Well," sniggered Lot, turning his eye on me. "He threatens death and then he runs away. Are all your men so brave?"
I looked at him with loathing, almost unable to speak. "He'll be back," was all I was able to say at first, and then I added, "and when he
comes, you are the one who had better run. Uther will kill you."
"Kill me? Truly? Stone dead? I'm terrified. Perhaps I'd better leave now."
I longed to wipe the sneer off his face but I knew that if I moved towards him he would give me the beating of my life.
"You don't like me, do you, small boy? I can see it in your pasty Roman face."
"No," I said, shaking my head in agreement with him, "I don't like you. Not at all."
"But why not? We've just met. We could be good friends. You could hold my pizzle for me when I pee, and if you were really nice, I'd even let you wipe me."
I could not believe what I was hearing. Uther and I used language that would earn us both a whipping if Uncle Varrus were ever to hear us, but neither of us ever was as foul-mouthed as this uncouth outsider. Looking back on it now, I can see that it was his way of thinking that offended me even then, not his choice of words.
He took a swift step towards me and I drew back involuntarily as he snarled, "Wipe that look off your face, pretty boy, before I wipe your face off your skull!"
I don't know what I might have done then had not Uther come-back around the corner at that very moment, clutching a bundle to his chest. I didn't know what that bundle contained, although I suspected the worst, and my stomach turned over. He walked right up to Lot and looked him in the eye.
"All right, Mouth, come with me." He turned and walked into the nearest building, which I knew was empty, for it was unfinished and the thatch not yet in place. Lot swaggered in after him and I followed, casting my eyes right and left in the hope of seeing someone I could appeal to, but there was no one there. By the time I got inside, Uther had already unwrapped the bundle, exposing two of Uncle Varrus's short, lethal swords. He took one and kicked the other to Lot's feet. "I hope you know how to use that, you foul turd. It's the only thing that might be able to keep you alive." As he said this, he swung his sword in a short, hissing arc. My mouth was dry. I knew Uther and I knew he meant every word he said. There was death in the very look of him. Both he and I were trained in the use of swords, well trained, and he was more than capable of killing. I stepped between them.
"No, Uther! This is bad. Fight him, with your fists. I'll help you, if you need help, but don't do this. Uncle will flog us both."
Uther looked at me as if I were mad. "Have you looked at the whoreson? At the size of him? He'd cripple both of us. Besides, you heard what he said. Stand aside, Cay."
In the event, I had no choice, although I did not stand aside. I felt Lot's weight slamming between my shoulders and I was catapulted towards Uther as I heard the whistling hiss of a hard-swung sword blade close to my head. I landed sprawling on my hands and knees and my head hit hard against the wall, stunning me for a time so that my vision darkened. When it began to return, it was accompanied by a loud roaring in my ears, inside my head, as well as by a ringing, external sound as blade clashed loudly on blade. I looked up incredulously, my head still swirling with dizziness, to see them circling each other in the crouching stance of fighters. Lot looked twice as big as Uther and he obviously knew the feeling of a sword in his hand. As I stared at them, before I had time to move, they swung again, and again the clang of meeting blades shattered the silence.
They went at it hard and furiously, their swords striking sparks from each other. Lot pressed forward, using his weight and height to force Uther backwards, and then there was a scramble and a deep grunt and I saw Lot's sword edge embedded in Uther's thigh. Still kneeling where I had fallen, dizzy and wide-eyed, I saw the blood begin to well and my gorge rose into my throat as they both stood there, frozen, until Uther hissed and lunged, stabbing his blade into Lot's breast.
"Sweet Christ in Heaven! What's going on in here?" I heard the roar and saw my father's huge shape blocking the doorway and I saw Lot sway and start to fall, and then everything went black.
Unfortunately, I was unable to remain unconscious for long enough to evade my father's wrath, or that of Uncle Varrus. It made no difference to either of them that I was not personally involved in the real fighting; as far as they were concerned, I was a party to it and had not tried to stop it. I had, in fact, but I knew that I had not tried hard enough, so there was no point in protesting innocence. Uther and Lot were both carried off to receive medical attention and I was hauled in to face my father, Lot's father Duke Emrys and Uncle Varrus. They sat side by side at my uncle's long writing table and I had to stand facing them on the other side. About an hour had elapsed since the time of the fight, an hour in which I had been confined to my room under guard, I suppose because they feared I might try to run away. Aunt Luceiia had been forbidden to approach me beforehand. I was escorted into the room like a military prisoner going to a court martial. All three men sat there and glowered at me, the Duke Emrys the most malevolent of all.
My father still looked furious, but was now in control of his fury—more visibly, tenaciously in control than I had ever seen him. I had the feeling that he might come leaping across the table at me at any time. Uncle Varrus looked more troubled and hurt than angry. He gazed at me with great solemnity and it was he who spoke.
"Caius Britannicus, a great wrong has been done here this day and you have been part of it. Two boys lie injured and bleeding, gravely hurt, perhaps close to death. You are the only one who can throw light on this. The laws of hospitality have been violated in my home. Those laws are sacrosanct, as you well know. The Duke of Cornwall here, under my roof, is guarded by those laws while he is here. So is his son who came here with him. And now his son lies wounded, stabbed by my own grandson like a Saxon savage. You had better tell us why this has happened, bearing in mind that the penalty for such flagrant outrage should be death."
This long speech, delivered to me in such unnatural tones by Uncle Varrus frightened me to the point of sickness. My stomach heaved up into my throat and I had to swallow hard to keep from vomiting. I still remember the appalling feeling of inadequacy that overwhelmed me. I could not speak, although my mouth moved.
My father spoke into my silence. "Hear me, boy, and hear me well. We want the truth behind this outrage." His voice was more of a growl than anything else, hampered as it was by his wounded throat, but I had been around him long enough by then to hear the words beneath the guttural effects clearly as he continued. "No excuses. No interpretations. And no lies! Tell us exactly what happened: what was said and done, and by whom to whom." My flesh crawled. How could I repeat the words I had heard to these ears?
That was when Duke Emrys spoke for the first time, and his words were ill timed for his purposes, because the jeering, sneering tones of his harsh voice dispelled my terror and my doubts like a douche of cold water. "We'll get no truth from this whelp! See the terror on his face. My son lies dying and you ask to hear the truth from one of the two who killed him?"
He had barely stopped talking when I answered him, my own voice loud and angry, which surprised even me. "I am no liar! I will tell you what happened." I looked at Uncle Varrus, appealing to him alone, and my great anger lent me an eloquence beyond my years. "You have trained me to recall words exactly, Uncle Varrus, whether they be written or spoken. The Druids have trained me also, the same way. Lot provoked this fight. Uther was bound to kill him for the things he said. I should have killed him, too, had I been Uther, but I am not."
It was my father who responded to my outburst, and his tone was far less angry than it had been before. "Tell us what happened, boy," he said. I collected my thoughts and started at the beginning, relating the events and the conversation word for word as it had happened. I missed nothing, left out no insult, added nothing.
When I had done, there was silence for a while until my father spoke again. 'This was bad work."
Duke Emrys agreed with him. "Aye, General, foul work indeed. Murder done on a boy for spouting boy's words. Foul work indeed."
"There has been no murder done, Emrys." This was my uncle, who had finally found his normal voice. 'The boys are both alive, no
thanks to themselves, and thank your gods that they are boys, for had those words been spoken between men then death would have been the end, beyond a shade of doubt."
"Pah! You make too much of words!" Emrys's voice was rich with disgust.
My father had risen and walked away from the table, but now he swung round and approached the Cornwall duke, and when he spoke his voice was menacing, the more so for the care he took to speak quietly and clearly through his injured throat. "Look you here, Duke of Cornwall. This boy is my son. Young Uther is my nephew. Uther's mother, the victim of your disgraceful son's foul slander, was Publius Varrus's daughter. My wife was sister to young Uther's father. I do not know your son, but I know he is no fit company for any son of mine. If he were here, instead of lying bleeding for his foul-mouthed sins, I would take my boot to his ill-mannered arse. Now, the laws of hospitality be damned! If you desire to defend your uncouth brat's honour as Uther did his mother's, I will be glad to step outside the walls with you. I have listened to your sneers and insults long enough. I find you boorish, bullying, envious and not in the least amiable. Our doctors will soon heal your sewer- tongued son. When they have done so, I'll show you the gates myself. You are not welcome here, neither you nor your son. Is that clearly spoken? Do you understand me? Do you doubt my words?"
Through all of this, Duke Emrys sat purple-faced, gaping at my father. In the silence that followed, I watched him as I would an insect. I knew without doubt that he would not accept my father's challenge, but I wondered what he would do. My eyes never left his. I saw him fight to hide fear and then struggle to draw what dignity he had to aid him. Finally he turned to my uncle and tried to speak disdainfully. "I thought you were the master here. Is this a sample of your mastery? Allowing your guests to be maltreated at your board?"