by Jack Whyte
"Beautiful room." Lucanus was looking around him admiringly.
"Aye," I grunted, "but it has known better times. Where is my aunt?"
"I've no idea," he answered with a shrug, and moved to the table that held wine and green glass cups. He picked up the silver ewer beaded with moisture and began to pour as he spoke. "She may be resting. It took me more than an hour to find you. Never occurred to me that you might be here in the house. Here." He handed me a cup of wine. "I am not making free with the Lady's hospitality. She bade me pour you a drink if she were not here when we arrived."
"Thank you." I sipped, and then gulped the ice-cold wins thirstily. "God, that's good!" I whispered, feeling the delicious pain of iciness in my throat. I waited until it passed, and then took another sip before adding, "I had no idea you were an intimate of my aunt, Lucanus."
"I'm not," he answered, smiling, "but we spoke at length today."
"On procedural matters."
His answering look to that was as sardonic as my tone had been. "Yes."
"Which particular procedures were you discussing?"
It was his turn to drink before answering. At length he put down his cup and looked straight at me. "Your father's burial."
Pain flared in me anew. I had not seen my father since I had tried to lift him back onto his bed. I cleared my throat; trying to swallow the lump there and control my voice, but I was unable to return Lucanus's direct look. "Where is he now?"
"Here in the house. I have bathed and changed him, and he is laid out in dignity in Publius Varrus's bedchamber."
"How? He was rigid. I tried to move him, but couldn't."
Lucanus nodded. "No longer. The rigor has worn off. I was able to cover and conceal his wounds. He looks.. .asleep, no more."
I gulped and nodded. "Thank you for that."
"No need, Commander. He was my Legate and my friend."
"Thank you, anyway. My thanks, as his son."
Lucanus inclined his head. "It was my pleasure, painful as it was. More wine." It was not a question, and I held out my cup for him to fill it. Watching him as he did so, it occurred to me that there was far more to this senior physician than I had ever been aware of. He reinforced that conclusion immediately, straightening up and asking me, "How had you thought to dispose of his remains?"
"Dispose of...?" I blinked, shaking my head. "I...I hadn't..." I hadn't thought of it at all, was what I started to say, but I changed the words as they sprang to my tongue, "I hadn't really seen any need to dwell on it. He will be buried beside his father and Publius Varrus. Here in the fort."
"Naturally, and very properly, Commander, but may I make a suggestion? With all due respect?"
"You would have something different?"
"In a measure, yes. Not completely different, but signally different."
I drew a deep breath, feeling a resurgence of the impatience I had felt earlier. "You are talking in riddles, and I am talking about my father's funeral. Make sense, Lucanus."
"I will, if you will hear me."
"I'm listening,"
"We are burying men by the thousands, down on the plain."
"So? What does that have to do with the Legate Picus Britannicus?"
"Nothing, and everything." He moved to the fire and stirred the logs with the toe of his boot. "Every man being buried down there died, directly or indirectly, because Picus Britannicus was in command of this fortress, is that not so?"
"In a manner of speaking, of course. What of it?" I was sitting erect now, wondering where this conversation was headed.
"Then is it not fitting that the manner of Picus's passing, the occasion of his death and the events surrounding it, should be markedly different from those thousands of others?"
"For a certainty! But they will lie in mass graves. He will lie here in the fortress."
He pursed his lips and moved from the fire to sit on a high-backed couch, across from me, sitting well back and raising his arm to rest his cup against the arm before responding. "Then let his ashes lie here in the fortress, Caius! Beside his father and his uncle."
"What?" I heard the amazement in my own tone, but his voice drove on over my objections before I could form them.
"Cremate him as a Legate. Burn his body, Commander! In a grand conflagration. In the style of the old Legions, who honoured their dead Legates with the purifying flames of Mithras." I subsided into my chair now, slouched, as he leaned forward and continued, "I know burial is the Christian way, Commander, but the people—our people!— need a symbol, a rallying point. What is one more burial among all these thousands, no matter where it takes place? Our army has been battered and savaged, and our home almost burned to the ground, but we survive!" He paused and then swigged savagely at his wine before going on, "The people of this Colony are stunned. There's hardly a soul left alive who has not lost someone in this carnage. Everyone is devastated, and life holds little meaning right now. The soul seems to have gone out of all of us, including you. Titus and Flavius are now the senior officers of the garrison, next to you and Uther, when he is here. Both of them are excellent men. You know that and I know it. But they are lost, Caius, lost without your father, who has been their father, too, in a very real sense for more than twenty years."
"I hear what you are saying, Lucanus, and I understand what moves you, but this cannot be! We are Christians, as you said, and the Church teaches us that men must be buried whole, to rise again on the Day of Judgment."
"Balls! We are soldiers, Caius Britannicus, and we still pray to Mithras—who is still the god of soldiers—when we march into battle. The gentle Christ had little time for soldiers."
"But—"
He cut me off. "No buts, Commander. You were there when your father dealt with those noxious priests! Have you forgotten the logic he brought to bear on them? Have you forgotten all we were taught that led to that confrontation?
"We believe—and for our beliefs we are labelled Pelagians and not Christians—that God created man in his own image with the divine spark that makes man godly in and of himself! That spark is his immortal soul... Immortal!.. .It cannot be destroyed. It cannot be defaced, or broken, or rent apart. It is a man's soul that will stand before God at Judgment time. The body falls to dust, and so do the bones that shape it." He broke off, eyeing me strangely. "Or do you think all that has changed? Do you believe Bishop Alaric lies in the ground intact, as on the day he died? Or your grandfather? Or Publius Varrus? Need we dig them up to see?" He shook his head, denying me the comfort of that thought. "Eight years, perhaps ten. That's as long as a human body lasts, once it's been buried. After that, there's nothing but loose bones for animals to dig up. There is no wholeness, or wholesomeness, after death. That is medical—and natural—fact, and the churchmen cannot change it by merely issuing edicts."
I was gazing at him now, wide-eyed. "What kind of physician are you, Lucanus?"
His head jerked at the unexpectedness of my question, but it did not distract him from his path. "Physician? What kind of physician am I?" He paused, as though considering his answer, and then continued with a gentle, slightly bitter smile. "I am not a physician at all. A physician deals in herbs and potions; in the diagnosis of sickness and the distillation of cures; in the cure of ulcers and lesions and the application of leeches." He placed his cup gently on the table and then looked up at me from his half-bent position, that small smile still in place. "What I really am, Caius Britannicus, is a surgeon, a healer of bodies broken internally and externally." Now he straightened and I heard the pride in his voice. "And I am one of the best in the world, because I am a product of the Medical Corps of the Roman Army. Physicians, even the best of them, work mostly on faith, bolstered by observation of the ailments that beset even the healthiest of people. Surgeons, on the other hand, operate securely in the faith that they have learned through study of the human body and the bones and organs that sustain it. The Army Medical Corps, composed almost wholly of surgeons, is the only corps that has grown in
stature and ability as the Legions declined. It has carried medicine, and the repair of broken human bodies, to a level never known on this earth until now.
"As a surgeon, I soldiered with your father on his last four campaigns, he with his sword, and I with my caduceus, my bandages, my splints and my knives and surgeon's tools. I staunched the blood and gave the wounded opium to kill their pain. I cut off limbs, set fractured bones, sewed up cuts and cauterized veins and arteries, and I saved lives almost as quickly and effectively as my companions took them. I am a sworn enemy of death in all its forms, and I will not sit still and countenance the death I see threatening all that I love today."
He had risen again and was pacing the room, gesticulating with both hands, yet not spilling a drop of wine. He swung back to face me, his back to the fire. "I have a hospital full of wounded and dying men, and I have more bodies than I have room for. I have a staff of five young trainees and two competent surgeons who are working even now, as we speak, up to their buttocks in blood and guts and pain. And we have no opium. Have had none for years. But what I really fear, Commander, the thing that turns my guts to water, is the aftermath of this struggle we have just come through. Camulod was almost destroyed! Its Commander was killed in his bed! When the pain of each person's individual, personal losses wears off, tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or next year, all that's going to be left, unless we do something about it, is hopelessness. Disillusionment. And that damnable state, Commander, is a bigger killer than war. Disillusionment kills ideas, and it kills ideals."
He had finished, for the time being, and a silence hung and stretched between us. I stared into the fire and thought about all he had said.
"So," I resumed eventually, keeping my voice reasonable, "you would have me burn my father, not bury him. What then? What purpose would be served?"
Lucanus was ready for the question. He spoke without hesitation and I knew he had been waiting for me to ask precisely that. "A sacrificial one. An honourable one. We would create a martyr, light a fire to the memory of Caius Picus Britannicus that would stiffen the sinews and the resolution of everyone who watched. And everyone would watch. A funeral pyre is a memorable tribute to greatness, Commander, as well as a call to vengeance."
"It would be blasphemous."
"Balls, Commander! To permit, or even to encourage by inaction, the demoralization of these colonists and the eventual destruction of all that Picus and your grandfather and the others that have gone before have worked for—that would be blasphemous. That would call down the wrath of heaven on all our heads."
I recognized the conviction in his tone and knew I had been wrong, and my decision was made in that instant. I stood up, smiling as though he had soothed away all my pains, which to a degree he had.
"You seem remarkably fond of balls, Lucanus."
"Not unduly." His smile matched my own. "I've seen enough of them and removed too many of them to be overly impressed by them. But they do connote a certain urgency."
"They do indeed." I offered him my hand and we shook as friends. "Lucanus," I said, "I have misjudged you, and disliked you without cause. I regret that deeply."
He grinned at me. "Forget it, Commander. You knew me as a stern and disapproving physician, and even I found me unimpressive in that guise. It's only as a surgeon that I shine."
"Then shine, Surgeon, from now on." I stopped, remembering. "But where's my aunt?"
"Oh, she'll come when I send for her. In truth, she chose not to be present for this meeting."
"Good, then go you to her now and make your report. I'll go and talk to Titus, Flavius and Popilius and get them started on the arrangements for the funeral. When do you think would be the best time to do it?"
He frowned, deep in thought. "The day after tomorrow probably, just before sunset, for the funeral pyre. Then the following afternoon for the interment of his ashes. That .should be long enough for the embers to cool, I think. Everyone in the Colony should attend both services, and you should give much thought to who will speak, and what they will say."
I nodded and turned to leave, but his next question stopped me in mid step. "By the way, how is the girl, Cassandra? Have you checked on her safety since your return?"
I turned slowly to face him. "No, I have not, so I can't answer your question."
"It was not my question; it was your aunt's. She thinks, and I agree, that you will not be able to rest easy until you have settled that." He spoke in the quiet, confident tones of his profession. "Make your arrangements with the others, and then go to her. You need not be back until noon tomorrow. I will cover for you, as your physician."
Amazed, and humbled in some strange way, I nodded my thanks and left him smiling there, not even wondering if he knew where I was going.
I went directly to the room where my father lay on the great bed of Publius Varrus. Lucanus had spoken the truth and I stood in wonder at the evidence of his skills. My father, whom I had last seen strained in the agony of violent death, now seemed to be sleeping peacefully, reclining in full armour, helmeted, and draped in his great black cloak as though snatching a quick nap before setting off on a campaign. He was pale, but there was no trace of blood to be seen on him, and the chinstrap of his ceremonial helmet covered the gash in his throat. My own throat filled with hurt and pride and my eyes blurred with tears that spilled over and down my face. Caius Picus Britannicus was at rest, and nobly so, and I left him there.
XXVI
If there is a more unpleasant or unforgettable taste than copper in this world, I have never experienced it. Once, when I was a very small boy, I held a copper coin in my hand for a long time on a hot summer's day. My hand grew moist and sticky with sweat and that small copper coin, a humble as, seemed permanently stuck to my skin. I can remember Uncle Varrus shouting at me to stand back and stay clear of the cart he was driving that day, and as the great, noisy vehicle passed me, its solid wooden wheels dwarfing and deafening me, a sawn log fell from the back of it and rolled a little way towards me. I remember thinking that I was strong enough to carry that log to where my uncle had been stacking them all day long, but I needed two hands free to lift it and so I popped the warm, sweaty coin into my mouth. I am sure it was the shock of that violent, outrageous taste that stamped the details of that incident into my young mind for ever.
I think of that every time I grow deeply, stirringly afraid, for there is something about gut-churning fear that generates an illusion of that bitter taste. The same taste filled my mouth that evening as I approached the little valley in the hills. I had ridden my horse hard, all tiredness forgotten, since leaving the fort on my usual roundabout route. Now, as I neared the end of my journey, the shapeless fears that I had refused to acknowledge for the past several days got the better of me and I knew abject terror. What would I do if Cassandra were not there when I arrived? What would I do if she were there, but had been found and harmed, perhaps even killed? I almost killed my poor horse, flogging it mercilessly over the last three miles, but then at the start of the steep, narrow entrance to the valley, I had to dismount and walk, leading the unfortunate animal by the reins.
The first thing that struck me as I entered the bottom of the valley was the utter stillness of the place, and my heart swelled with an unbearable fear that disappeared in a wave of relief and joy as Cassandra came dashing from die bushes, her face ablaze with welcome. I had been gone from her for five days, and in the isolation of her silent world she could have had no conception of what I had been doing or what had been occurring within miles of her, for which I thanked God. Nevertheless, from the welcome she gave me, an observer would have thought she had not seen me in months.
Neither the fire in her hut nor the one in the clearing had been lit since I had taught her the lesson of the smoke, so I lit the interior fire now, as the late afternoon shadows changed to evening shades, and set out to gather more firewood while there was still enough light to find it by, thinking to myself that I was lucky to have arrived no later
than I had, and that the daylight hours here in Avalon were very short.
That thought led me back to Cassandra's welcome and to an uncomfortable consideration of the means Cassandra must use to pass the time she spent alone between my visits. And that in turn gave rise to a series of questions that troubled me increasingly as I wandered far from the clearing in search of wood to burn. How did she spend her time? Living in a world of total silence as she did, how could she amuse herself? What did she do all day alone? And all night, on those long, dark evenings? Sunny days and fine evenings were one thing, I thought, but cold, stormy, dank and cloudy times must be quite another. Even this search for wood, I realized, would be a killing task on a wet, miserable day. In the past, fuel had always been plentiful here. No one had ever stayed in the valley long enough to consume the firewood that lay readily to hand. Now, however, with two fires burning night and day, every day, fuel was becoming hard to find. It had to be sought out, further and further from the clearing, and then carried, or dragged, back through the underbrush. And in my absence, Cassandra must do it by herself.
We made love in the firelight that night until I fell into an exhausted sleep from which I awoke twice with the image of my father's corpse in my mind.
It was late in the morning when I left to return to Camulod for the funeral rites, and the parting was more difficult for me than it had ever been before. My heart ached to leave her alone there by the little lake, and anxiety over my newly awakened recognition of her solitude plagued me all the way home. I knew the day would come soon when, one way or another, despite my own fears, I must bring her back to civilization and the company of others.
I found Titus and Flavius talking together in my father's day-room, Titus seated behind the desk, on my father's stool, and Flavius perched on one of the other chairs as they reviewed the arrangements they had made. Everything was well in hand, they told me. News of the funeral service had been circulated to everyone, and the event was scheduled for the third hour of the afternoon, which left me two hours, during which I had nothing to do but change into my ceremonial uniform and try to empty my mind of my concern over Cassandra while I prepared for the occasion, an unprecedented event for Camulod.