by Jack Whyte
Luceiia shook her head.
"I thought so. So there is nothing to be done about that, at the present time. We can do nothing until someone complains. Nothing at all. On the matter of beating and terrorizing his family, however, he could respond that he disciplines them. How am I to react to that?" Cay was frowning, a deep line of thought creasing the space between his eyebrows. "I believe in discipline, and I believe that discipline has to be harsh if it is to have any effect. How am I, what right have I, to tell any man how to govern his own household? Could I have told Domitius Titens to discipline his wife? Or to look to her chastity? By what right, other than that of an officious and interfering neighbour? He would have drawn his blade on me, and who would have blamed him? His domestic life was none of my concern; it could never have been any of my business, simply because it was his and his alone. You know the laws governing adultery. He could have whipped the flesh from her bones with complete impunity and no man would have thought the worse of him ... As it was, he went berserk and slaughtered his entire household."
"Someone should have stopped him, Cay." "Luceiia, that is absurd. Someone would have stopped him, had anyone known what he was going to do. As it is, no one could possibly have known, not even the man himself, until the deed had begun, by which time he had lost his reason."
Luceiia nodded her head decisively. "That is exactly the point I wished to make. There will always be the unknown, which will transcend all the laws and all the rules. But there will also be signs and indicators pointing towards the unknown, Caius. Warnings, if only we can identify them. We must be attuned to them, somehow. We must — we have to be on guard against that which is not normal, and know what to do to stop it before things go too far. There must be rules, Caius, and there must be people, people like you and Publius, whose duty it is to enforce those rules and to make informed decisions as to when and how and by whom those rules are being broken."
"That is ..." Cay's voice tailed away for a beat, and then resumed, "That is not fit work for men, Luceiia."
"Nonsense! Of course it is!" Luceiia's voice was scornful. "Not only that, it is work for extraordinary men, men who are above being influenced by pettiness. And it is necessary work, brother. But why shouldn't it be women's work, too? Extraordinary women?"
Both of us stared at her, but it was I who asked her, "What do you mean?"
She stared at me, wide-eyed. "What do you think I mean? Admit women to your Council and let them share the duties of the guardians of the law. You will find, I think, that they will be more conscientious and more judicious about reporting the kinds of things that concern all of us, and they will not be swayed by many of the concerns that influence men."
"And what are those?" I was smiling, amused by the novelty of the idea she had suggested. The look she threw back at me was scornful.
"Come, husband, you and I have talked about this often. The things that matter — really matter — to women are a world apart from those that matter to men. Our two systems of values are totally different. Men are concerned with conquest and commerce. Women are concerned with other things: family harmony, thrift, domestic strength and the raising of children to be whole, strong, healthy adults. If you agree these things have value, then you must see that the input of women to the governing of this Colony must have a purely beneficial effect."
"Sister," Cay's voice was respectful, "I think we would have difficulty selling that concept to our colonists, but you have ended this discussion on a wondrous note. Let's talk of other things, for now, and think long and hard on what you have just said. I believe you may have taken us far along the road to a solution to our problem. I don't know many better judges of character than you, and I would back your judgment against any man's. If we had three or four women like you, we would be in very capable hands."
"Brother," said my wife, "I can introduce you to ten tomorrow, and will be happy to do it..." The inflection of her voice as she stopped clearly indicated that there was a "but" attached and still unspoken.
"Good. I want you to do so. I look forward to it, in fact." Cay's frown broke into a great grin. "But while you are gathering your delegates, could you perhaps give some thought to how we might convince the councillors of the worthiness of your idea?"
"Of course I will." She smiled her own, determined little smile. "Leave that to me. I'll find a way, perhaps not by tomorrow, but I will find one." Luceiia drained her cup and turned it upside-down as a signal to me. I got up and poured more wine for all of us from the jar, which was now sadly depleted. As I did so she continued.
"But I had not finished what I was saying earlier. I want you to listen to what I have to say about the carpenter." Cay's brow quirked into a scowl but she ignored it and continued speaking, her voice implacable. "This is an evil man, and I know both of you would prefer not to think about him, but I believe you have to consider him as a special case." She held up a hand to forestall any interruption. "Please, let me finish. He has a small son who sometimes plays with Veronica and the other children." She looked intently from one to the other of us, fastening her gaze finally on her brother, knowing that he was the one she had to convince. "Caius, children will play together, no matter what we tell them to do to the contrary. And because they play together, they learn together. That is the way of childhood and of nature. And they learn the bad as well as the good." She stopped again and her face was pale with restrained emotion. "I love my children, Caius, and I love children." Her emphasis was clear and unequivocal. "Childhood, God knows, is short. I want my children to enjoy it as much as they can; they will have all of the rest of their lives to see the squalor and injustice of the world they have to live in. But it infuriates me when I see my daughter Veronica weeping and distressed and terrified by what has happened to her little friend, who has had his limbs bruised and broken by the drunken brute who fathered him. My daughter has no need to see such things, and neither do any of the other children. Nor do they need to see the mother and sisters of one of their friends brutalized and beaten by a ravening beast." Luceiia paused again and looked from Caius to me and then back to her brother. "I am not telling you what to do, but surely you can see that some kind of example has to be made of this man. There must be some way of forcing him to behave differently."
"What?" Cay's voice was low and sombre. "What would you suggest? How can we do anything about it? What right do we have?"
"What right?" Luceiia's voice was withering in its wintriness. "Whose rights are we talking about here, Cay? Who is right in this case? Don't his children have any rights? Doesn't his wife?"
"That's beside the point, Luceiia," her brother interrupted her. "I am saying that Publius and I cannot take it upon ourselves to discipline another man for the way he treats his family. We have no right to do that."
"Then what right do you have? Is he not one of your tenants?"
"No, he is not. He is a colonist and he contributes his work to the Colony. He's also a free man."
"Then tell me, what would your recourse have been if he were one of your legionaries and behaved this way?"
Cay's response was instantaneous. "I would have had him flogged."
"Then flog him now, Caius, or you risk seeing others following his example."
"Nonsense! You are making too much of this, Luceiia."
At that point I intervened, seeing the wrath that was building in both of them. I suggested that we think upon what Luceiia had said and consider our options in the light of the seriousness of her charges. I also suggested that I would make a point of visiting the carpenter in question and having a talk with him. Both of them seemed satisfied with this, and we went on to talk of other things until the fire finally burned down without anyone making a move to replenish it and we all went to bed. The last thing Luceiia said to me before we slept was that she was glad I was going to speak to the fellow.
VI
Although I had fully intended to talk to Lignus the carpenter the next day, as I had promised Luceiia, I had forg
otten in the enthusiasm of our discussion that I had also promised to ride into Aquae Sulis with Victorex, one of the colonists from Terra's villa. He was bound for the market there, hoping to buy a stud horse he had heard would be for sale, and I had volunteered to accompany him. It was a long and tedious journey to make alone, and I had business there that I had been putting off for some time.
We travelled in a fast, light cart, pulled by two horses, and had a pleasant journey together, talking of horses all the way, since Victorex seemed to have no other interests. When we arrived, however, Victorex discovered to his great disappointment that his hoped-for stallion was nowhere to be found. Unwilling to waste his journey completely, he went to make more inquiries and discovered that its sale had been postponed simply because its owner could not make the journey into town for that market day. Freshly determined to succeed, Victorex set out to find the owner's villa and make a private purchase, leaving me to make my own way back to the Colony in the cart. He would ride back on his new stallion, he said. I spent the night with him in Aquae and set out for home the following morning as soon as the sun rose above the horizon.
The journey back took the whole of the day. The weather was beautiful and I made excellent time on the road, but I was still almost seven miles from the Colony as darkness fell, forcing me to reduce my speed. I usually prefer to camp out rather than attempt to travel at night, but this night was mild and the sky was cloudless and moonlit and I was on my home ground, so I decided to keep going. I stayed on the main road south for another three miles and kept up a good pace to the point where the road came closest to the Colony. There I struck out overland, much more slowly, but travelling as the crow flies rather than taking the longer, more circuitous route offered by the track from the highway to the villa.
The only sounds I heard for the next hour were the squeaking of the cart's springs and axle and the muffled thud of my horses' hooves as I threaded my way between clumps and thickets, managing to find solid, grassy passage. When I saw the moon's reflection shining from the waters of the Dragon's Pool, I knew I was home, and my head was full of pleasant thoughts of hot bath water and hotter food when I heard an unearthly, wailing cry from the bulrushes that fringed the water. My blood froze like a child's who has heard too many stories of ghosts and monstrous apparitions, and the fine hairs on the back of my neck stirred with horror. I have never been a superstitious man, but there have been occasions in my life when I might have been converted, and this was one of them. The night that had been so clear and brightly lit by the moon a moment since was suddenly dark and filled with menace.
Even tonight, as I write these words long miles and years from the sight of it, I know the Dragon's Pool is still deep and dark, bordered by sedge and reeds and scrubby willows, its surface probably concealed by a curtain of mist. Tales told around the fires on dark, wintry nights still speak of ancient slaughters and chaos and the souls of drowned and murdered people dragging themselves from the deep waters in the darkness there to bewail their lost lives on earth.
My heart told my doubting mind that I had indeed heard such a sound. My horses had heard it, too, and that appalled me; they stopped in their tracks and one of them whickered softly, and their ears twitched around as they sought to locate the source of the strange noise. I sat motionless, willing my heart to slow down and behave normally, telling myself I was far too old to be frightened by noises in the night, however strange they might be. But it came again, and this time, even as my heart leaped in fear, I recognized the sound as being natural and human: a woman's voice, or a child's. My fear died, and yet I hesitated to call out, unwilling to break the silence, waiting for the sound to be repeated again.
It came again, and broke the tension that held me. I saw only the mist upon the water and the sedge, but I had heard clearly enough to know that the voice had come from close to the water's edge. I stood up and looked, but I could see only that the fog hung thickly enough over the lake and its shoreline to obscure my vision, so before going anywhere I moved to the back of my wagon and took out my tinder-box and the deep clay pot of oil-soaked rags bound tightly around dry sticks I carried for making torches or fires. Within minutes I had ignited some dried moss and blown it into flame, into which I dipped the edge of the oily cloth wrapped around one of the torches. Only then did I move away from the cart, holding the flaring light above my head as I approached the waterside. The full moon at my back threw my shadow grotesquely ahead of me as I walked. There was no noise now, except for the flaring of the burning torch. I called out, "Who's there? Where are you?" and heard nothing. No sound at all. I moved closer to the water, cautiously, beginning to think again that I might have given in to folly, since any human in distress would have responded to the approach of help. But there was nothing. With mounting uneasiness, I transferred the torch to my left hand and drew my sword, taking some satisfaction in the slithering sound it made scraping from its sheath.
I called out several more times, standing still each time and listening for a response that did not come, and at length my feet sank into the mud by the water's edge and I could go no further. The reeds surrounded me in a tall, dense sea reaching higher than my waist. If there was any living soul ahead of me, he or she must be afloat and so beyond my help. I turned around and saw my horses and cart where I had left them, and I began to make my way back. My shadow lay behind me now, and I had not walked six paces when I saw something I had missed on my way in. There was a trail through the reeds where someone, or something, had dragged itself along, moving from my left to my right. In the clear moonlight I could see quite clearly now where the path of my own entry crossed over the broken and flattened reeds. I swallowed a mouthful of gummy saliva, flexed my fingers around the hilt of my sword and followed the path to my right for a few paces. Then, appalled, I saw the light of my torch reflected in a gleaming eye and I dropped into a fighting crouch, sweeping my sword up in a hissing arc and bringing my torch in a flickering, roaring swing down and around in front of me at the same time. What I saw in that instant stunned me and I hung there, suspended, gaping at the spectacle of a small, naked and incredibly dirty and blood-stained child, a boy, whose single, staring eye was filled with terror and the certainty of death.
In a moment I was on my knees beside him, trying to sheathe my sword and jam the base of my torch firmly into the mud at the same time. The boy shrank from me, a terrified moaning emerging from his mangled mouth as he tried to escape, digging his right heel uselessly into the slick mud, pushing himself frantically backward to hide again in the rushes. I grasped at his leg to hold him and instantly identified the splintered, bloody end of a broken thigh-bone against my fingers. His entire body jerked in agony, his breath exploding in a solid grunt of pain, and he fell back, unconscious.
I snatched up my torch again and held it by him, looking intently at what the light now disclosed. The boy could have been no more than seven or eight years old and had been brutalized, savagely beaten to the point where he should have been dead. Shaken by that realization, I bent to his tiny body and listened for a heartbeat, but all I could hear was the flickering of the flames of my torch. I felt for a pulse and found one, faint but steady, beneath the point of his jaw. But the child was cold, chilled and naked. Cursing aloud, I got up and made my way as quickly as I could to the cart, where I unpacked my new cloak and then led the horses back down to the edge of the reeds. I wrapped the still-unconscious child in the cloak, doubling the length of it up from his feet, and then I threw my torch out into the waters of the lake and carried him to the cart, where I emptied the long tool box, dumping its contents on the ground, and then lined the bottom of it thickly with all the clothes I had. He was a very small bundle and fitted perfectly into the box. I climbed up onto the driver's seat and headed for home again, moving as quickly as I could without jarring the box or its occupant any more than I had to.
It took me an hour to complete the journey. I ran into the house, carrying the boy and shouting at the top of my v
oice for assistance. The family had just finished dining and the servants had entered to clear away the debris from the dining room, which was still brightly lit by a roaring log fire and dozens of lamps and candles. I placed my pathetic burden directly on the table, sweeping whatever was there into a shambles on the floor and unwrapping the folds of the cloak in which I had swathed him. Only then, in the brightly lit triclinium, did I really see how badly used the child had been. He was coated from head to foot in thick, slimy mud mixed with his own blood. His left leg had been broken in two places that I could see, and his right arm was twisted out of alignment. A large flap of skin and flesh had been ripped on his left breast and his little ribs were plainly visible in the wound. His mouth had been smashed; his teeth had punctured his lips and his lower lip had been torn almost in half. His scalp was deeply lacerated and dried blood had scabbed in his hair.
Luceiia took one brief look at me on my arrival, waited only to see that what I was carrying was human, small and injured, and immediately disappeared in the direction of our living quarters, calling out orders as she went to summon our medical staff and to fetch hot water and clean cloths and towels. The servants bustled to carry out her commands as Caius approached the table and looked and was speechless, as shocked as I have ever seen him. His face went pale and he clutched at the table for support as he gazed down at the boy, and then he turned and walked from the room, and I knew that he was going to vomit up his outrage. I had no time myself for outrage or for anger then; there was too much to do if we were to save the life of the child, who was now in a deep comatose state. Only later, when there was nothing more to do but wait, did I begin to seethe with fury.
Our physician, Cletus, had ministered to battle-damaged men for years. He bathed the boy carefully and thoroughly with mild soap and hot water before dusting the wounds and fractured limbs with healing herbs and setting and splinting the shattered bones. The child, deeply unconscious, showed no signs of pain throughout this procedure. Cletus then shaved the child's head, using my skystone knife, the sharpest blade in the Colony, to reveal the lacerations on the small scalp and to allow him to wash and clean the head wounds thoroughly. After that, he gently cleaned the broken mouth and fastened the torn, flapping lower lip with two tiny knots of twine, sewing the pieces together as delicately as a woman. Only then did he turn his attention to the wound in the boy's side, stretching the ragged flap of skin back into place and stitching it, too, firmly, with pieces of thick thread. All of that done, Cletus then swathed the patient in clean bandages and placed him in a cot in his own quarters, where he could maintain vigil over him for the remainder of the night.