by Jack Whyte
The dancing bear was the biggest I had ever seen, but when I managed to approach close to it I was very disappointed. The poor thing was half starved and sickly, its skin broken and ulcerous from rubbing constantly against the bars of its tiny cage, and its coat dirty, matted and awful-smelling. I felt outrage for the helpless, obviously brutalized creature, and fury at the hulking, half-witted giant who was apparently its owner. I immediately went looking for my two friends, determined to enlist their help in freeing the animal that night after everyone had gone to sleep. I had seen them just a short time before, heading towards the stall where the pie-maker was finding it hard to keep up with the demand for his goods, and I set off towards them, cutting directly across the middle of the tree-dotted meadow where the festivities had been set up. And there, in the middle of the field on that hot, dusty afternoon, I came face to face with my future dreams.
I had just swung smartly around the bole of a good-sized tree, taking the shortest route to the pie stall, when my eye was attracted by a bright blueness that I saw to be a dress, worn by a tall girl of about my own age. She had long, straight black hair, an achingly beautiful smoothness of sun-browned face and skin, high cheekbones, a bright-red mouth and wide blue eyes that seemed to leap from her countenance. I saw her, all of her, in one flashing glance and stopped dead in my tracks, as completely stunned as though I had been hit with a heavy club. She was breath-taking. I had never seen anything so beautiful, anywhere. She was with three other girls, all shorter than herself, and they were all laughing at something one of them had just said. I knew the others were there — I could see them moving and hear their laughter — but I was aware of them only as shapes. The girl in blue held my eyes and my attention completely.
All four girls became aware of my attention at exactly the same moment, it seemed. They broke off their conversation abruptly and four pairs of eyes devoured every detail of my awkward, mid-step fascination, from the soles of my feet to the top of my head. Then, in that singular way that is unique to adolescent girls, they instinctively swung inwards, towards a common centre, giggling and chattering, convinced that somehow, by turning their backs on me and huddling together, they had disappeared.
The tall girl, however, distanced herself from her friends by simply raising her head and gazing directly at me. There was no smile on her face, no discernible expression in her eyes. She simply looked at me, and I at her, and somehow, across the ten paces that lay between us, I felt the warmth of her active, excited interest. My heartbeat sped up and my breath swelled and grew tight in my chest. I knew that I had somehow magically filled her universe as she had overwhelmed my own. Her eyes seemed to grow bigger and bigger as I gazed at her; they devoured me, filling my consciousness to the point where everything else faded away, and all I wanted to do was reach out and stroke the smoothness of her cheek. And then her friends were shouting and moving, pulling at her, urging her away. I had ceased to interest them and, miraculously, they had been unaware of what had happened between me and their beautiful friend. She went with them — unwillingly, it was clear to me — turning her head as she walked to keep me in her sight. Bereft of all memory of what I had been doing before, my own friends and the bear completely forgotten, I moved to follow her. She smiled and turned back to her companions, confident that I would not go far away.
I followed faithfully until the moment came — and I have no idea how it came or what led up to it — when we stood together, all others gone, the two of us alone, stranded in wonderful isolation among a throng of people who had no impact on us or our lives. I looked at her, speechless, and she at me. She smiled a perfect, pearl-toothed smile that made my chest constrict. I know we spoke, though I can recall no words, and then we walked together away from the festivities, away from the crowd, away from the eyes of people.
She was tall. She was lovely. She was mine. Neither of us doubted that, and there was no need to talk of it. There was no strain between us, no shyness, no false awkwardness. We touched each other gently, faces, ears and hair, with the awestruck, quivering fingers of reverent discovery. I touched a questing knuckle softly to the swelling, smiling fullness of her lips, and they parted, kissing my finger chastely. I felt the pliant slimness of her waist beneath my hand and almost caught my breath in panic as her face came close, close up to mine, and our mouths kissed. She was in my arms, filling my arms, enclosing me in her own, and I was overwhelmed by the closeness and the fullness and the softness and the clean, sweet-smelling scent of her, and we devoured each other with kisses, avidly, wildly, in the innocent need and fury and wonder of first love.
She told me to call her Cassie, short for Cassiopeiia, the constellation that rose in the evening sky shortly before we realized how late it had grown. She knew my name was Publius. I never learned her full name, nor she mine. By the time we rejoined the festivities, they had turned out to look for her and a stern father took her jealously in charge and out of my sight.
I had to return home to Colchester the following day and I never saw her again. But I never forgot her, either. She told me that her father was a soldier, a legate, and she herself an army brat, living the army life, moving from camp to camp and country to country with her father’s command. Through all my travels with the legions I watched for her — and for her father — each time we visited a new town or garrison, but without a family name, I could not even begin to look systematically. And so she had faded, gradually, into my memories. I watched for her in. each new town, even then, after fifteen years. And now that Britannicus had stirred up my recollections of her, I embraced them and used them to cushion me against the brute pain that even Mitros’ gentle ministrations could cause my mangled flesh.
That particular day, and the discussion we had in the course of it, seems, in my recollection, to have been a turning point. During the next few weeks, we both began to recover more strongly, although Britannicus mended much faster than I did. A day came when he was able to leave the room and walk about outside while I still lay on my back. Within the month that followed that, he was exercising strenuously, getting into shape for his return to duty. Perversely, as he grew fitter, I grew more and more depressed. And then, one day, he was gone.
He visited me the morning he left and wished me Godspeed in my recovery, promising that if he ever passed by way of Colchester, he would find my smithy and visit me. We clasped hands and parted as friends.
I had been returned to regulation sick bay by this time, tended by the regular medics, and I suppose I was feeling sorry for myself. The fact that Britannicus had gone, however, made me face up to my problems. I could either languish and die in bed, or I could set myself to making the best I could of a crippled leg. I set out to beat my handicap, and I won.
Most of the physicians and surgeons who had examined my injuries — and there had been many over the months since I had been wounded — were of the professional opinion that I would never walk upright again. I was determined to prove them wrong, and I was intensely grateful that there were others, equally qualified, who did not share their opinions. One of the most scathing of these was Comius Attribatus, a brilliant surgeon of mixed Roman and Celtic blood who was also a grey-bearded veteran of thirty years in the army medical corps. There was nothing Comius had not seen in the way of wounds over three decades, he told me, and he swore that he had known men with wounds far worse than mine who had forced their bodies to conform to their will and learned to walk again, when reason and logic said they should have been cripples forever. I devoured his words, never able to hear enough of such stories, choosing to believe him because I wanted to more than anything else in the world. Under his close supervision I set out to retrain my cut and wasted muscles.
It was agonizing, lonely and frustrating work, and my progress was very, very slow. But I soon began to make visible progress, and even the most sceptical watchers came to believe I would win, and to lend their support to my efforts. I sweated off every trace of fat on my body, and gradually, shaking and quiver
ing with sustained effort, I replaced it all with healthy, corded layers of muscle. My left leg had been shattered, of course, the muscles torn and poorly reconstructed, in spite of the excellent work of the physicians, and that was something I had to accept as a limitation. But after six months of exercise and effort, the leg worked. I could walk on it. It was a limping walk, hesitant at times, but it was real.
Eight months after the return of Caius Britannicus to duty, in the dead of winter, I arrived home in Colchester, looking as good as ever on horseback, but limping like a lame duck when I tried to walk.
BOOK TWO
Colchester
VI
My grandfather’s smithy — now my smithy — was empty when I arrived. There were no fastenings on the doors, which hung limp and weary-looking in their frames. I inspected the premises and found nothing — no anvils, no tools — nothing. The forge itself lay cold, its grill thick with rust. Around the walls, dilapidated wooden shelves hung limp and empty, sagging wearily under a heavy coating of dust. The place hadn’t been used in years, it seemed, although it had been my understanding that one of my mother’s brothers had taken it over after my grandfather’s death, just to keep it safe for my return. I closed the doors and made my way to my grandfather’s house, where I found a family of cousins in residence.
To say that they were surprised to see me would be an understatement. To say that they were glad to see me would be an outright lie. They had thought me safely dead in the invasion, as were my uncle and his wife. Now here I was on the doorstep, alive and reasonably healthy, expecting to take possession of my house, which meant that they were dispossessed. Thinking back on it now, I might have been disposed to let them stay had they shown me any sign of welcome on my arrival, but they lacked even the civility to hide their disappointment at my survival; they seemed to go out of their way to antagonize me. I admit, however, that with the pain in my leg, the disappointment of finding the smithy abandoned and the long journey I had made, I was not difficult to anger.
Anyway, they moved out. Quickly. And I was home. The house was filthy, but I had good memories of the place. It was fairly spacious, in the Roman townhouse style, and I decided to hire a couple of servants the next day to clean it up and maintain both it and me in return for their keep.
I presented myself the next morning at the home of the local magistrate and quickly established my identity and my bona fide rights to the property left me by my Grandfather Varrus. I had taken the precaution of having Britannicus write a letter on my behalf in his official capacity as commander of the legion. Then, my identity and character legally established, I went back to the deserted smithy, to find it occupied now by three urchins, who were playing in the darkness inside the building. They fled at my approach, looking back over their shoulders at the limping deformity who had frightened them.
Deserted and abandoned as it was, I fancied that the walls of the place still held traces of the smells that had made it a magical place to me as a small boy. The sooty, smoky odour still lingered in the stones, and I leaned close to the wall behind the forge and sniffed deeply, recapturing scenes and images of my long-ago childhood. The very back of the smithy was floored with massive stone flags. One of them was a door, and beneath it was a room dug out of the earth. Within that room, whose existence was, I believed, known only to myself and my grandfather, were stored the treasures that he wanted me to have after his death. Deep in my soul, I was afraid that the secret room might have been discovered while the place lay abandoned.
I crossed slowly to the fire-pit of the forge. Only a few cinders lay forlorn on the bottom, fragments of the last embers of a fire that had once melted a skystone.
“Who’s in there?”
The voice came from the doorway. I turned and saw the shape of a big man silhouetted against the bright light. Even without seeing any features, I recognized him and felt my heart lighten within me.
“I said, who’s there? Who are you?”
I answered his question with one of my own. “Whose smithy is this?”
“What’s that to you?” He took a step into the shop.
“I am curious. Whose smithy is this? Or was this? Is it for sale?”
“No. It’s not for sale. It belongs to the family of Quintus Varrus.”
“And where is the family of Quintus Varrus?”
I could see him now. My grandfather had always called him Equus, because he was strong as a horse. He had been a good friend to me as a child.
“Who wants to know?”
“I do, obviously.”
“And just who in Hades are you?” He was starting to get angry.
“My name is Publius. Publius Varrus. Hello, Equus.”
“Publius!” He was across the floor in one leap and had me lifted high in the air, into the light where he could see my face to be sure it was really me.
“Publius, by Minerva, it really is you! Where have you come from? When did you get here?”
I was laughing at his gladness. “Put me down, Equus, put me down. I’m not a child any longer. Think of my dignity — the dignity of Rome. I’m an officer in the imperial legions!”
“I piss on the dignity of Rome!” He stopped spinning me around. “But you are right. You have grown up. So I will put you down, and preserve your dignity and my own back. Publius! How are you? Are you well? Are you here to stay?” And on and on he went with a list of questions until I had to put my hand to his mouth to stop him.
“Enough, Equus, enough! I am here, I am well, although crippled by a barbarian axe, and I will be staying, at least until I can find out what happened to the smithy.”
“Crippled? What happened? Show me!” His face was full of concern now.
“There’s nothing to show. I stopped an axe with the wrong part of me. It nicked my leg, but I can still walk.”
“Show me.” He was frowning. I showed him.
“That’s nothing! So you limp a little! You had me worried, then.” He took my shoulders in his hands and grinned with delight into my eyes, almost devouring me with the welcome in his gaze. “By the combined crotches of the Vestal Virgins, you look wonderful, Publius! You’re the double of your grandfather when I first met him, though he was a lot older than you before his hair turned grey. You’re still not thirty, and your head is as silvered as an old fox! What have you been doing, boy? Where have you been since I last saw you? Minerva’s nipples! Do you realize it’s been eleven years?”
By this time we were outside in the bright sunshine. I looked back into the interior of the building. “How long has the place been shut up, Equus?”
He looked me in the eye. “About two years.”
“Why?”
“Why not? The whoring Saxons were everywhere and your uncle was dead. I didn’t see any point in leaving such a tempting target for looters, so I shut it down.”
“You shut it down?”
“Who else?”
“And what happened to all the tools and equipment?”
“I removed them. Hid them. I didn’t know if you’d be coming back, but I decided to give you five more years. If you hadn’t returned by then, I’d have dug the stuff up and used it myself. I didn’t think you’d mind, since you’d be dead.”
In spite of the sudden lurch in my stomach, I felt a smile forming on my face.
“You’d have dug them up? You mean you buried them? Iron tools? In the ground?”
Now it was his turn to smile. “Publius, when they call me Horse, they’re referring to my muscles, not to my resemblance to the rear end of the animal. I hid them. Underground. In your grandfather’s secret vault.”
“Under the floor?” I was incredulous.
He nodded his head, still grinning. “Under the floor. I couldn’t think of any better place. Could you? I knew that if anything happened to me, and you came back, you would look down there sooner or later. And I knew that nobody else knew the room was there.”
“How did you know it was there? Did my grandfather tell
you?”
“Tell me? I helped him dig it out in the first place. We had to do it at night so no one else would ever guess it was there. When I decided to hide everything, I just packed all your grandfather’s treasures more carefully and piled everything else in front of them. If you want to get down there now, we’ll have to unload everything from the door inward, because the place is crammed full of stuff.” He was almost hopping with excitement. “It’s all there, every bit of it. If you’re really here to stay, we can haul it all out tomorrow and be in business within the week. Come! See for yourself.”
He lumbered over to the back of the smithy and crouched, fingers feeling for a hidden groove in the floor, scraping the dirt out of the crack, and then he heaved mightily and straightened his legs. The concealed stone door swung upwards easily on its counterbalanced hinges. I crossed to him and looked down. The hole in the floor was full of tools, anvils and assorted paraphernalia — the entire contents of a smithy. I grinned my delight.
“Equus, you’re a genius and an honest friend!” I punched him on the shoulder. “Now, where’s the nearest tavern? We have a double occasion to celebrate — my homecoming, and your partnership in the smithy!”
His face clouded in puzzlement. “Partnership? Was that what you said? How can that be? I have no money, Publius. I can’t afford to buy half a smithy.”
“Who said anything about buying? You’ve earned it, by keeping this safe for me. Haven’t you heard the story of the faithful steward? Let’s go drink some wine, Partner!”
We got gloriously, happily drunk together that night, and the next day we started unpacking the cellar. It was all there, everything we needed. By the afternoon of the third day, the fire was ablaze in the forge again and my spirits were soaring with the sparks from the red-hot iron under my hammer. The smell of the smoke set memories running and jostling in my head like boys released from their tutor, and I rediscovered the almost sexual tension that had once been commonplace in my life as I shaped living metal and made it bend to my will and my skill. The feel of tongs in my hand brought back knacks, mannerisms and old habits that had lain unused and forgotten for years, and the love and lore of my grandfather’s craft brought his presence and his voice back into my head.