by Jack Whyte
"We are binding ourselves closely, my friend."
"What do you mean?"
"Your sister. Now she is my niece, since my wife is aunt to her new husband. Any child of theirs will be great-niece or -nephew to me. And your son is now my son, and his son will be our grandson, yours and mine."
"True, Publius." Ullic laid his great paw on my shoulder. "Their blood will not be to blame should they not prosper. I only hope Picus comes back soon to plant his crop."
"You jest, of course! He is a Britannicus, Ullic! They are not noted for standing idly by and getting nothing done. He planted it last night." Or the night before, I thought with a smile.
XXIX
The priest, Andros, sat across from me, shaking his head sadly. "I am sorry, Publius," he said, "but that is my only suggestion. I see no other way to do what you want."
I was still stunned. We had been over this problem time and time again, for months now, and we kept coming back to this one, inescapable point. There seemed to be no way to go around it. I had asked Andros to help me with the design of a cross hilt for the new sword. I wanted to pour the hilt, using a mould, so that it would be one solid piece, and he understood my needs perfectly. Now he was asking me to accept and acknowledge his needs and my own hitherto unrecognized requirements before we could make the thing work. I had made a basic error in the design of my new sword, a very basic error, considering what I now wanted to do with it. I looked down again at his drawings. They were very simple: three small sketches side by side.
The first sketch showed what I had given him; the second showed what I should have given him; and the third showed how the second must be adapted to serve as a skeleton for the moulded hilt. I squeezed my temples between the heels of my hands.
"Damnation, Andros! This means I have to start all over again, from the beginning, every step of the way!"
He nodded, his honest face untroubled. "Yes, if you want to do this correctly. Is it that important? The cross-hilt, I mean?"
I thought about the plans I had been making for this new sword, the hands that would some day wield it. I nodded, resignedly. "Yes, Andros, it's that important. But it's going to take months, all over again."
He smiled. "Well, you have them. Now that the wedding is over, you have time on your hands. The fort is completed. So is the Council Hall. The road is built, and your big stables up on the hilltop, inside the walls, are all but completed, too. You have plenty of time, Publius." I glared at him, balefully, but he continued, unperturbed. "Besides, you have already done it once. It will be easier the second time, and if you pray to God for help, He may even make it turn out better this time."
"It was perfect this time!"
Andros shook his head gently, a sad little smile of human understanding on his lips. "No it wasn't, Publius. That is why you now have to do it again."
I gritted my teeth in the face of his naive honesty. "Thank you, Andros. You can go now."
As soon as he had gone, I crossed to my work-bench and unwrapped the long bundle that lay there. It gleamed at me, liquid silver in the gloom of the smithy. It had a shine, to be sure. Shine and to spare. It was the finest blade I had ever made. But it was wrong, flawed, and the fault was mine; it had nothing to do with the skystone metal. I took it in my hands, looked one last, long look into its mirrored surface, and then I thrust it into the fire, deep into the glowing coals, and reached for the bellows. Now I had to untemper it, melt it again to a shapeless mass of metal and recreate it with a triple tang.
The smithy was deserted, save for myself. Equus and the other smiths worked up in the new smithy in the fort most of the time now, and the villa proper was strangely silent nowadays. The staff of servants was being removed little by little to tend to the new quarters up above as they were built. The villa would remain in use, but only as spare quarters. The new living accommodations for the family up in the fort were less spacious, and less gracious, but they were luxurious enough and would grow more comfortable with use. They were far safer, too, now that the fort itself was impregnable, with walls that were twenty-five feet high in places, rising vertically from the steep hillside.
I moved back to the work-bench again and found a scrap of papyrus and a stick of charcoal. I knew I would have few distractions in my second struggle with the sky-stone metal, so I set myself to thinking of the difference the triple tang would make to the weight, proportions and temper of the blade. I would not again deprive Caius of a portion of his goddess; I would make do with the piece of her I had already, and that thought led me to a consideration of my own women at home in the fort on the hill.
Veronica's departure with her new husband had not been as cruel a deprivation as I had expected, mainly due to the fact that her place in the household had been taken immediately by Enid, who would live with us while Picus was away campaigning. Luceiia had defined the situation succinctly, as usual, telling me that I had lost a daughter but gained a niece. I smiled as I thought of the two of them together. Luceiia had gained more of a friend than a niece. I supposed that the main reason for Enid's closeness to Luceiia was that they were two of a kind, both cut from the same cloth. Each of them was stubborn, wilful, intelligent, implacable and yet almost paradoxically serene, self-sufficient and dignified. And each was a beauty in her own right. I was surprised to find myself whistling tunelessly as I waited for the sword blade to grow red-hot.
In the weeks and months that followed, I worked diligently, almost religiously, at my forge, discovering to my pleasure and surprise that Andros was right, the task was much easier the second time, and I had come to know better the properties of the metal I was working with. The second blade emerged from its shapeless mass as a longer, more slender and altogether finer entity than its predecessor, so that by the time I set out to refine it and temper it and create its cutting edges, I found myself in the grip of an intense, almost mystical excitement, a sense of awe that inspired me to conceal my work from everyone, including even Equus, until I had completed it. Only then, when I was convinced I could not improve upon what my hands and mind had wrought, did I call him into the forge and show him the long, cloth-wrapped shape lying on the bench. He looked from me to it and then back to me again, and his big face broke into a slow, ungrudging smile that held no trace of rancour over the long time I had kept this piece of work from his sight.
"So, you finally finished it. Am I allowed to look now?"
I nodded and he unwrapped the blade. For a long time he simply stood there, staring down at it with his back to me, saying nothing. I waited. Eventually he brought his hands abstractedly to his buttocks, wiping his fingertips clean on the material of his breeches before fumbling a cloth out of his apron pocket and using it to pick up the blade, protecting it from finger-marks. When he turned to me at last, holding the blade reverently in his hands, there were tears in his eyes. He shook his head savagely, trying to clear his vision, and uttered half a laugh.
"Varrus!" he said. "It's a Varrus blade." He shook his head again. "I'm weeping, thinking of your grandfather. He would have wept to see this, too. I think there has..." His voice choked up and he had to clear his throat. When he spoke again, he was making a determined effort to sound strong. "There has never, ever, been anything like this made in iron by a man before, Publius. This is perfection."
I had to swallow hard to overcome the emotions that his tone brought out in me. I fought to sound casual. "No, Equus. Not perfection. Not yet. I still have to hilt it."
He shook his head, dismissing any possible difficulty. "Oh, you'll hilt it. That's what the triple tang's for, isn't it? You're going to pour it like the dagger's hilt?"
I nodded. "Aye, in a cruciform. That way, no blade will skip across the boss. The outside tangs will be twisted at right angles, and I'll pour the mould around them."
He shook his head again, his eyes still fixed on the blade. "God, Publius, this is superb." There was real awe in his voice, matching the awe I had felt in helping the blade emerge from the raw metal.
"It's longer than the first one, and narrower, by a good inch." He turned it sideways. "Thicker in section, too. And look at this." He was fingering the reinforcing spine that ran centrally the length of the blade between two thumb-wide channels. "God! Look at this thing!" He raised his eyes eventually and looked at me. "Have you designed the hilt yet?"
"Aye, I have the drawings here, and the finished mould. I couldn't have done it without Andros. He's a true artist. Come and see."
I led him to the back of the smithy and lit two lamps by the light of which I showed him the open halves of the finished mould and how the triple tang would fit inside it. He asked me how long it would take me to finish the hilt and complete the sword, and I looked at him and shook my head and told him that it would take as long as it had to take. We had just blown out the lamps and were on our way out of the smithy when Ullic's big shape blocked the light from the doorway.
"Roman," he yelled. "Are you in there?" We were within two paces of him almost, but he was sun-blinded.
"I'm here, Ullic," I answered him. "What brings you back so soon?"
"News, my old friend!" He stepped inside the door and grasped me by the shoulders. "We are to be grandfathers, you and I! Veronica is with child! Didn't I tell you we Pendragons are potent sires?"
"Hah!" I flung my arms around him. "Fertile mares, too, you Celtic lout! We are to be uncles, too! Your sister Enid has the same affliction."
I felt him rear back from me and saw his eyes light up. "Enid? Already? By the great sun god! When is she due?"
I laughed. "By the new year. Picus wasted no seed."
"Nor did Uric, by God! The two of them will whelp together. This demands celebration, Varrus!"
We celebrated, and within the week Picus came home on a flying visit and we celebrated again. The women watched our drunken antics and smiled knowingly among themselves.
Picus remained with us for only one day. He had no real right to be here at all, he told us, but had seized an opportunity to come one last time before all Hades was loosed on the land. Things were going rapidly downhill in every direction. His spies reported major trouble brewing in the north again, behind the Wall, and he doubted that the northern garrisons could any longer withstand an all-out attack from the strength that threatened them. The Picts, he believed, had amassed an enormous army reinforced with Scots from Hibernia and the wild men from the Germanic lands across the water to the east. These were not Saxons, he told us, but a different race altogether, bigger and more savage than the Saxons. I had heard of these Northmen, as they called themselves. I said nothing, and his father asked him about his cavalry. How was Seneca doing?
Picus thought for a few moments, and when he replied, his answer was not encouraging. His cavalry was virtually useless, he said, because of the Wall itself. We had known that from previous reports. All his people could do was ride east or west in front of it. Theodosius had walled up the gateways after the Invasion back in '67, so Picus's cavalry could not use their strategic advantages against an enemy who could not be reached. The Wall, built to defend Britain from the Picts, was now defending the Picts from Roman cavalry. But Seneca, he said, was still doing a noble job up there, which would have been more surprising had Picus himself not recently sent Seneca some of his own finest officers to keep the sullen legate on his toes. Their presence, and their unimpeachable loyalty to Picus, were effective and ongoing safeguards against either sloth, guile or treachery on the part of Claudius Seneca — safeguards that Seneca bore with scant grace and less liking, although he put up with them nevertheless, lacking any alternative. Seneca, therefore, was continuing to soldier and making the best of it, now and again showing those surprising flashes of leadership and genuine military ability that were forced to the surface, Picus had no doubt, by the rigid confines of the life he was forced to live. In spite of that, however, Picus still watched him carefully and constantly. Seneca's hatred of the Britannicus family was pathological, and vigilance, Picus knew instinctively, could never be relaxed where he was involved. I listened to all of this without comment, thanking my private gods that Seneca was well out of my life, and thinking that he, too, must now be showing the ravaging effect of passing years.
The following day, when the time of Picus's departure came, I could see that he was reluctant to leave his bride, and I sympathized with him. He dallied with her, procrastinating until the time he had set himself for leaving was past and gone, and when he did come to say farewell to Caius, Ullic and myself, he made us promise to look after her for him when her time came.
His father slapped him hard on the shoulder. "Come, Legate! That's seven months away. We'll see you long before then."
Picus was sombre. "I hope so, Father, but I doubt it. I have a bad feeling in my guts about this one. The raids are heavy already, all along the eastern and southern coasts, as if the troubles in the north were not enough. All the signs and auguries are ominous. I'll be writing to Enid often." He smiled a small, embarrassed smile. "She made me promise. I'll keep you up-to-date on what's developing. If anything threatens you here in the west, I'll do my best to make sure that you know as soon as I do." He saluted us and spun on his heel.
As he rode away, Enid stood once more on the walls between Caius and me, her eyes following his every move until the distant forest swallowed him up. She was a beautiful and healthy woman in her early thirties, and all her attributes were enhanced as her belly grew with the child she bore.
But the months passed in unbroken train and Picus did not return to soothe his bride, although he maintained a steady stream of news to her, and so to all of us. From these dispatches we learned of the final fall of the great Wall of Hadrian. The garrisons that had manned it were withdrawn to Arboricum, and all the lands between there and the north were left abandoned. We learned also of a great invading force hammering inland from the Saxon Shore, and of the desperate countermeasures being taken to push them back into the sea again. And then the news stopped coming.
We had become accustomed to receiving dispatches every week, and then came a week when none arrived. It was followed by another, and by the third week, we were all alarmed. Three more weeks passed, and one of Alaric's priests brought us the news that Picus was alive but had been sorely wounded, struck down in battle by an arrow that had pierced his face, entering his open mouth and striking sideways through his head to emerge behind his right ear. No one knew whether he would survive, but according to the priest, he had been lodged in a villa to the north of Lindum, with the family of one Marcus Aurelius Ambrosianus, a Roman magistrate. He was receiving the finest medical attention, and his fate was in the hands of God.
Enid wanted to go to him immediately and was restrained only with difficulty. Logic had little effect on her, but we finally made her see that her journey would be a wasted one, and possibly highly dangerous to the child she carried. The priest who brought us the news had been long on the road, and by now anything could have happened. Picus might be already dead and buried, a terrible thought but one that had to be voiced, since the report was that his wound was grievous. Or he could have been moved. He might even have recovered enough to go back to duty, at least administratively. On top of all of this, the world outside our own small Colony was too chaotic with marauding armies for us to permit a woman, especially a pregnant woman, to go riding off by herself, even with a well-armed escort.
Alone with my thoughts, I tried to visualize the wound he must have taken, and I did not like the thought of it. I even took an arrow in my mouth and prodded the back of my throat with it. Not pleasant! When I tried to imagine the effect of a hard-shot arrow finding the same soft spot, my mind rebelled. I determined to find a way to protect a horseman's face from such a shot, which must have been angled upwards from beneath.
Some time later, we received information that Picus had indeed survived, but the story was such that we could only wonder at it. Again, the news was brought to us by a visiting priest. Marcus Aurelius Ambrosianus, Picus's host, had apparently lo
st his senses and attacked the Legate one night while he lay sleeping. Picus, whose face was swathed in bandages, had not known his attacker and had strangled the man to death before help arrived. There was no question of premeditated murder, or of anything else except a mindless tragedy. The attacker's sword was bloody where he had stabbed the sleeping Picus in the side, and when the guards arrived they had found Picus, still wrapped in his tangled bedclothes, with his hands locked in a death-grip round the dead man's throat. It was impossible that Picus could have known who his attacker was. The room had been in darkness and Picus himself was blinded by the bandages that swathed his head. Here was a mystery that would remain unsolved, at least until Picus himself came back to explain it to us. We hoped that would be soon, for it was apparent to all of us that the nature of his wounds must be serious enough to preclude, temporarily at least, his further fighting.
In spite of all our hopes and prayers, however, Picus had not yet returned when Enid was brought to childbed and delivered of a healthy, bawling, leather-lunged brat of a boy at the fourth hour of the morning of the second day of January.
Only three nights before, Caius, Enid, Luceiia and I had sat around the fire discussing the impending births of our grandchildren. There was no news of Veronica from Ullic's kingdom, but no news was good news.
"What will you call him, if he is a boy?" Caius had asked Enid.
She smiled into the fire. "Picus and I talked about that. He will be Picus Caius Britannicus."
"Another Caius Britannicus. Why?"
She turned to squint up at him, for he sat above her, perched on the arm of her couch. "Why? To honour you, of course. Does that displease you? Or surprise you?"
He smiled and caressed her high-piled hair. "No, my dear, of course not. But you could please me more by changing it."
Enid hitched around in her seat to face him completely. "Changing it? The child's name? To what?"
He shook his head slightly. "I have no idea, child, but think of this place and what we have done here. This place is British. Its people are, too. We are a new breed here. It seems to me that the full name you would give your child is too Roman — too old-fashioned — for this time and place." He stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. "Your son will have the blood of Celtic kings in his veins, Enid. Kings of Britain. So give him a British name, one of your own." He grinned broadly. "But none of your Celtic jaw-breakers. Make it a simple name, one that men will hear and know and remember. A name for this land. That would please me greatly."