by Jack Whyte
I awoke in pitch-darkness, with no idea of where I was; I knew I was abed, but that was all. I could hear people singing drunkenly, off in the distance, and my memory came back to me slowly. I was in our tent, outside the walls of the new fort. I reached out slowly for Luceiia, but she was not there, and that left me wondering what hour of the night it was. I struggled upright to a sitting position and immediately wished I hadn't done so; my head felt as though all the smiths of Vulcan's forge were pounding inside it.
I was groaning unashamedly, in a fine stew of self-pity, by the time I got to the opening of the tent, and there I stopped, stung by the cool night air into realizing that I was wearing nothing more than my tunic. I wondered who had taken off my armour and my clothes. And then I wondered how.
Going back to the pile of furs that was my bed, I fumbled about in the darkness and finally found the cedar chest that contained my clothes. Luceiia had insisted I bring my sheepskin tunic, knowing that the nights would still be cool up here on the hill. It took a minute or two of ill-natured groping and fumbling in the dark before I located the heavy sheepskin, but then I pulled it over my head and went back to the entrance of the tent, throwing the leather flaps wide to admit the moonlight. The improvement was great and immediate. I then found my sandals and took down a woollen cloak from a peg on the tent pole before going outside to sit on the ground and lace up my sandals, realizing that even the light from the crescent moon was painful to my eyes. I was not happy; in fact, I could not remember ever having felt quite so awful as the result of what were supposed to be pleasurable activities. The ground felt cold against my backside, too, so I struggled back to my feet, groaning again, and re-entered the tent to pull a couple of skins from the sleeping pile. There was a tree of some kind no more than a few paces from the front of my tent. I threw the skins down at its base and seated myself carefully upon them with my back to the trunk, my cloak wrapped tightly around my shoulders as I breathed very deeply, gulping great draughts of the cool night air and squeezing my eyes tight shut.
A dog began to howl quite close by and my mind cringed at the sound. I swore if the cur came any closer I would find it and choke it to profound, permanent silence. And then I heard footsteps approaching me, and someone began to sing in a loud, drunken voice, to be joined immediately by his equally drunken companions. I scrambled to my feet and fled into the night, clutching the fur I had been sitting on.
I must have walked a good half-mile along the hillside, paralleling the walls that loomed above me, tilting my body upward against the steep slope that fell away downhill on my right. I could still hear an occasional shout of laughter from late revellers within the walls, but I was soon far enough away from the level tent area to leave all noise there completely behind and my head was thankful.
Eventually I found myself another tree to lean on and sat down, bracing myself slightly against the fall of the slope with my heels, resting my elbows on my upraised knees and pressing the heels of my palms against my pounding temples. I felt as sick and miserable as I had when, as a green recruit, I had first drunk too much of our thin, sour legionaries' wine.
I have no idea how long I sat there. It might have been an hour — perhaps more, perhaps less — but I eventually dozed off and scared myself back to wakefulness when my head slipped from the crutch of my hands. I blinked and growled and muttered and peered around me at the darkness on all sides. In front of me, low on the horizon, the moon was almost gone from sight. I was chilled to the bone, but I felt decidedly better than I had earlier. I cursed, knowing that my bad knee was going to cause me agonies when I tried to stand up, and hugged my cloak closer, seeking warmth that wasn't there. I had been sitting too long. Grimly, I pulled myself to my feet, gritting my teeth against the fierce pain now in my knee. It felt as though all the bones in the joint were brazed together, but I forced myself to walk, limping outrageously, staggering and at one point almost crawling, supporting my weight on one hand against the hillside where the slope was particularly steep.
After a few minutes of movement, as the exercise restored the flow of circulation, the pain began to lessen and I began to make better progress, although the going was still much harder than it had been on the way there because the slope of the hill was now against my bad leg. It was no use berating myself for not having thought of that earlier, for then I had been too sick to think or even care. I simply bit down on my teeth the harder and took advantage of every tree I came to, stopping to lean against each one and rest my aching leg.
I was perhaps half-way back to my tent when I paused to rest against a large tree and my bladder let me know that it was under pressure. Fumbling at the binding of my breech-clout, I was noticing the silence now from the walls above me when an unearthly moan seemed to issue from the ground at my feet and the hairs on my neck and arms stirred in horror. I am not a superstitious man, but that sound, on a bare, empty, dark hillside, turned my guts to water. I froze, my bladder forgotten, my ears straining in the absolute stillness that followed the shocking sound. Nothing stirred, anywhere, and then it came again, a long-drawn, sighing moan, less loud this time and much, much less unearthly. This time I recognized it as coming from a human throat, and I also placed the direction of its source. There was a dip in the ground in front of me, down to my left. Whoever had made that noise was down there in the hollow. I was highly aware of feeling much better now that I had found relief and identified both sound and location. I moved out from my tree slowly, approaching the lip of the hollow with great caution, and there I stopped, feeling my flesh crawl again.
There was no one there. No one at all. It was an empty, grassy bowl, inky dark and empty. And then I saw a pale flash and realized what I was looking at: two people lying hidden, covered and totally concealed by a dark blanket. The darkness of the night had blended it into invisibility until one leg had come briefly into view before being withdrawn again. And then I heard whispering and the man laughed, and my stomach turned over.
The dark blanket was a black cloak, the cloak of Picus Britannicus, for it was he who had laughed, and I had no need to guess who the other person under that cloak with him might be. I backed away from there with a feeling akin to panic in my breast. What would they think if they found me there, spying on them like this? And then my heel caught on a tussock and I overbalanced, unable to catch myself on my bad leg, and I fell heavily on my backside. It seemed to me that I came down with the noise of a landslide, loud enough to wake the dead, but the two people below me were too caught up in being alive to hear me.
I got to my feet again slowly and with caution and hobbled away, hearing the noises of their coupling growing louder and more passionate behind me until the distance I gained was great enough to permit them their privacy. Sweet Christ on His Cross! This could be a pretty mess, I thought, if Picus handled it wrongly. I had no idea what I should do, or how I might proceed in order to make the seriousness of his conduct clear to Picus. Enid was Ullic's sister, and one of his favourite people. An insult to her might be unforgivable; that would not surprise me at all. Though it was as little Ullic's affair as it was mine, that meant little. I suspected that he might be more than simply angry.
And yet there was nothing wrong or unnatural about the attraction or the natural lust that Enid and Picus had sparked in each other, nor was there anything unusual in their gratification of their feelings. So why was I feeling so apprehensive? I did not know, but my mind kept feeding me images of their two bodies grappling with each other, uncovered by the cloak. I visualized Enid's face twisting with the pleasure of what she was feeling and then suddenly it was I, not Picus, who was above her. The realization of what I was thinking brought me up short, and only then did I perceive the reason for my state of mind. It was caused by envy! I was jealous!
I stopped again, this time by an outcrop of rock, and tried to take stock of this new discovery. It was a novel one, for I could not remember ever having dedicated a thought to any other woman, apart from Cylla Titens, since
I had wedded Luceiia. Not a serious thought, at any rate. I had remarked the occasional voluptuous breast or swelling hip from time to time, but only in passing. And now, all of a sudden, I was jealous? From somewhere, I found the strength to laugh at myself and recognize both the humour and the truth of the situation. This beautiful, ripe woman had simply reminded me of my lost young-manhood. That is why no one else had noticed their mutual attraction; it was so normal, so natural, that it had gone unremarked. Only I had seen it because, without my knowing it, I had been looking for it and resenting it.
All at once, I felt much better. My aching head had been forgotten, and now my aching leg stopped hurting as if by magic and my swollen bladder reasserted itself. I relieved it and made my way back to my tent, where I found my wife asleep and a lamp burning to light my way to bed. I put out the lamp and climbed in beside Luceiia, snuggling close to her welcoming warmth and hardly even sparing another thought for Picus and Enid and their coupling before I fell asleep.
XXVIII
Picus looked fresh as a daisy the next day.
We were all astir at dawn, and the smells of cooking and wood-smoke were everywhere. Bishop Alaric unveiled the altar-stone to open admiration and celebrated his mass, calling the benediction of God and His heavenly saints upon this place new-built upon an ancient site.
Ullic, his family and his Druids were there in attendance, the latter watching with grave, impassive interest, and when the mass was over Alaric allowed everyone to examine the stone before placing it for safe-keeping in the beautiful case that had been made for it. I had not known what to expect, never having seen an altar-stone up close before, and I was frank in my admiration of the care and workmanship that had been lavished upon it.
It was a solid block of marble, three-fourths as long as it was wide, and it was about as wide as my shoulders. In thickness it was about a handsbreadth deep, slightly more than the width of a sword blade, and the two shorter sides were carved to look like the hempen cables used to secure naval vessels to the shore. The top surface had been scrolled with a border of Celtic design, and in its centre was the ChiRho symbol of the Christians. Directly above this symbol, a rectangular hole had been chiselled into the stone to allow a cross to be slotted into place, and below the Chi Rho was a single rectangle, grooved into the smoothness of the marble.
"What does this signify?" I asked Alaric, pointing at the rectangle.
"It signifies nothing, Publius. It is the lid of a hollow chamber which contains a precious relic from the land of Christ; a finger-bone of blessed John the Evangelist."
That silenced me.
"It is a beautifully worked gift, Alaric," said Caius. "We will make good use of it."
"I know you will, my friend." Alaric picked the stone up as though it were made of air and fitted it into its wooden case. "One thing only would I ask of you: the stone is portable, but your Colony is now permanent. It would be good and most pleasing to our Master the Christ if, some day when there is the time and the opportunity, your people could construct a permanent home to house the stone. A house that would be God's house only."
"You mean an ecclesia?"
"An ecclesia. In Germany, in Gaul and in Italia itself there are many ecclesia being built today. Permanent houses of prayer. I would die happy if I knew one would be built here, some day."
"Then rest easy, old friend." Caius smiled. "I promise you there will be a house here for God."
One of the Druids, who had been standing back observing us, asked then, "What is the significance of this stone?"
The old bishop looked at him with a smile.
"It has the same significance as those your people erected in bygone days. It is to the glory of God. It is sanctified — blessed — and contains, as I have said, a relic of a wise and holy man. When this stone is taken into a room for prayerful use, that room itself is blessed by the stone's presence, and any table upon which the stone is set becomes an altar sanctified to commemorate the Body and the Blood of the Christ, both given in sacrifice to free mankind from sin."
The Druid frowned slightly but made no further comment, and Alaric closed the wooden case, hiding the stone from profane eyes, after which he and Father Phonos carried it between them to the small enclosure at the far side of the Council Hall that had been specially built to hold the stone.
Later that day, after the midday meal, we met as we had planned and rode together down to the villa — myself, Caius, Picus, Ullic, Uric and Equus. Picus and I were ready first, and as we sat waiting for the others to join us, he tweaked my nose verbally about my having drunk too much the day before, telling me that I'd missed the most interesting part of the day. I smiled to myself as I imagined what his expression would be were I to tell him of what I had seen and heard in the night on the hillside. Of course, I said nothing, and the others soon joined us so that he left off his teasing.
When we arrived at the villa I led them past the house and directly to the forge itself, a move that occasioned some comment, since we had been talking on the way down from the fort about cracking a jug of wine as soon as we arrived. The inside of the forge was dark and the fires were all out. We threw open the doors at the front and back of the forge and opened the window-shutters, letting in enough of the bright spring sun to lighten all but the darkest corners.
Picus perched himself on the edge of a bench, first taking care to clean the dust from it. Ullic leaned against a pillar, oblivious to dirt, smacking his lips and clearing what was obviously supposed to be a parched throat, with much spluttering and dumb show. Young Uric stood quietly beside his father, saying nothing. He had barely spoken six words since leaving the fort, this being his first outing as a man among men. He had taken unmerciful teasing all the way down here from all of us, myself included, and had not been a bridegroom long enough to develop the confidence that was needed to cope with such banter without embarrassment. And that, naturally, provided more fuel for the fires on which we roasted him.
I seated myself on one of our three-legged stools and nodded to Equus, who walked to a chest at the back of the forge and produced a long, cloth-wrapped bundle.
"Equus has something to show you," I said.
He brought the bundle back, dropped it with a clank onto the floor and unwrapped four long swords, one matched pair and two others. Wordlessly, he passed them around, giving Picus one with a long blade that was slightly curved, with a flared end just behind its point. Ullic took the other singleton, and Caius and Uric each held one of the pair of long, tapering, straight-bladed swords with the heavy, leaden pommels and long, two-handed grips.
"We've all been looking for a new kind of weapon to suit the needs of our horsemen," I began. "The standard sword we've always used is too short, now that we're up on big horses. These are some of the results we've come up with. Picus? What do you think?"
Picus was holding up the sword he had been given in his two hands, his right gripping the hilt and his left supporting the flat blade as he ran his eyes along the sweep of its length, which gleamed dully in the dim light. He removed his left hand from the blade and swung the sword tentatively, testing it gently and grimacing slightly with satisfaction before standing up from his bench and stepping forward to give himself room to swing the sword in earnest, stabbing it downward to touch the floor, point first, while his elbow was still bent.
"I like this, Uncle!" He flipped it up into the air and caught it just below the hilt, examining the hilt itself and the pommel counterweight. "How did you make this? What is it? Lead?"
"For now, yes," I told him. "Lead over iron."
"How did you get the weight right?"
"Strung lead discs over the iron tang like beads and then heated them." This was Equus who spoke.
"Will it remain solid?" Picus gripped the hilt purposefully, flexing his fingers and splaying them to wrap tightly around the grip.
"Aye, it'll stay solid," Equus continued. "It is solid."
Picus returned now to his inspection of the blade,
extending his left hand and laying the pointed tip on the upturned palm.
"Why the flair above the point?" he asked next. "It looks familiar, but I know I've never seen it before."
"Yes you have, Picus," I told him. "Africa, and Asia Minor. The desert peoples there use similar blades, curved, with a slightly flared tip to add impetus to the swing."
"Of course, that's it! But this is different again — this blade is not so deeply curved."
"No, nor so deeply flared, for that matter. Remember, Picus, our men are mounted. We are attempting to create something here that will stab like a spear yet chop like an axe, something that can be used effectively without being swung too hard."
He nodded towards the sword I was holding. "That one is different. Why?"
I shrugged. "They are all different. The one Ullic has is much broader in the blade close to the tip than yours is. That one we have already rejected as being too heavy, too unwieldy. Try it."
Picus exchanged swords with Ullic and one swing of the new sword was enough to show him that I was right.
"I agree. Too heavy. Clumsy. The first one's far superior."
"Yes, but also no. It's better, but it's far too light in construction. It will bend in battle. It is the prettiest, the most aesthetically pleasing, but it is the least practical of all the prototypes we have tested." I held up the one I was holding. "This is the winner. The best we have come up with to date." I threw it to him hilt first and he dropped the one he was holding to catch the one in the air. He caught it, arm extended, and held it there at arm's length, his eye sweeping from the boss out to its distant point. Long seconds he held it there, unmoving, and then, as though its point were anchored at the centre of a circle, he began to walk around it, watching the light change on the blade as he made the turn. Then he flexed his elbow, bringing the weapon close up to his face until the iron touched his cheek before tilting his head back to look up at the point held vertically above him. This done, he took a slow step forward on his left foot and swung the sword, feeling its weight and balance at every point on its arc.