by Jack Whyte
“Beware black iron!” he had told me, and it had seemed a pointless warning until the first time I picked up a piece of ordinary-looking metal lying beside the forge and discovered, painfully, that the redness had just left it. Recalling that day so long ago, I inhaled deeply, savouring the charcoal, the metal-flavoured smoke, enjoying the familiar, acrid bitterness of it, the stinging in the eyes and the pleasurable grittiness between my teeth.
I began by making nails, aware of the need to do something about the sad shelves that lined the room. The wood was dried and warped and split around the original nails, many of which were completely consumed by rust. I was struggling and grunting, biting my tongue between my lips as I concentrated on holding two angled pieces of wood together so that I could clamp them when I heard footsteps behind me. Assuming it to be Equus, who had gone to buy lamp oil, I did not even look around.
“Here,” I grunted. “Hold this while I get this cross-piece in place.”
A pair of hands materialized beside me, doing as I had bidden, but they did not belong to Equus. Surprised, I started to straighten up, but the stranger had already taken the strain of the load and nodded for me to go ahead. I acknowledged him with a half-smile of thanks, pulled the cross wedge into position and nailed it solidly with two big spikes.
“There!” I said. “That ought to do it, for a while, anyway.” I straightened up and held out my hand to my helper, who gripped it. “My thanks,” I said. “I didn’t see who you were, or I would not have put you to work. I thought you were my partner, Equus. I’m Publius Varrus.”
He smiled briefly and nodded. “They call me Cuno. Short for Cunobelin. I’m married to Phoebe, Equus’ sister.”
“Phoebe’s husband? Then you are a king indeed. Cunobelin was a king, wasn’t he?”
“Aye, long ago. Or so they say.” His eyes were moving around the smithy, taking everything in. “So you’re the grandson. Equus told us you were back and that you’d opened up the old place again.”
He did not look back at me, so I took the opportunity to examine him. He was of medium height, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, wearing a leather apron over work clothes, rough tunic and cross-wound leggings. His hair and beard were thick and blond — unusual in this part of the country — and filled with sawdust and tiny, tightly curled wood shavings. His clothes were thick with sawdust, too, and he had a way of blinking his close-set eyes rapidly, as though to keep them clear of flying wood chips.
“Did you know my grandfather?”
“No. I only came here about two years ago. That’s when I married Phoebe. This place was closed down by then.”
“What are you? A sawyer?”
He laughed, briefly baring his long, narrow, brown teeth. He was not a comely man, and he seemed to have difficulty meeting my eyes.
“No! Not by anybody’s gauge. I’m a wheelwright. A wheelwright and a wagon-builder.” That explained the small wood shavings; they were from turning spokes.
“A wheelwright, eh? You must be a good one. Judging by the shavings in your hair, you have work.”
“Aye.” The smile remained on his face. “I’m good. I have to be. Square wheels are hard to sell.”
“I would think they are.” In spite of wanting to accept this man as Equus’ brother-in-law, I found myself instinctively disliking him, and I felt vaguely guilty, since he had offered me no harm. I have always been a believer in first impressions, and he impressed me as being untrustworthy, for some reason. I tried to dismiss the feeling, attributing it to the ill cast of his features, which were not his fault, and made a determined effort to be friendly.
“Look here, you are our first visitor, and I was thinking just before you arrived about a pot of ale. Will you have one?”
His eyes stopped roving the smithy and came back to me. “That’s a fair offer. I will.”
“Good.” I poured two flagons from Equus’ pitcher and we toasted each other silently before taking a good pull at the yeasty brew. I wiped some foam from the tip of my nose.
“Welcome to our smithy. Is there something I can do for you, or did you just wander in here by accident?”
“No, I came in on purpose, to say hello and see what you are doing.”
I indicated the forge. “Not much, as you can see.”
“Aye, but you have not had much time.” He crossed to the forge and picked up some of the new nails that lay there in a pile. “You made these?”
“I did.”
“You intend to make more?”
“I do.” I was smiling, wondering where he was headed.
“Where will you store them?”
Now I was intrigued. “Store them? I’ll sell them. No intention of storing them.”
“No. Of course. What will you sell them for? Money?”
“What else? Isn’t that normal?”
He flashed me his brown-toothed, rabbity grin again, tossing the nails he held into the air and catching them in one big hand. “I was thinking I might take some of them off your hands. But not for money.”
It was my turn to smile, though I felt my eyes grow narrow. “For what, then?”
“For the good I’d be doing you, relieving you of the need to store them on these shelves.” He was moving again, one hand stretched out to grip the edge of the nearest shelf. He tugged, and the old, dry wood creaked noisily and dangerously.
“Hey, careful! They’re not that strong.”
“So I see.” He turned back and almost looked me in the eye, but his gaze slid away again, back to his flagon, just before contact was established. “I have a bargain for you,” he said. “I have an order for six heavy draft wagons. For the army.” The grin again. “The army still pays with money, but only on delivery.”
I found myself smiling back at him. “So? What’s your bargain?”
“Nails, and metal parts. I need good ones, and I need them fast. My supplier died a month ago, kicked by a horse he was shoeing. His two sons couldn’t make a horseshoe between them. You fill my needs, on trust, and I’ll rebuild all of your woodwork in here. Then, when the army pays me, I’ll settle any difference with you, in cash.”
I didn’t even quibble. He was married to the sister of my partner. We spat on our hands and slapped palms to seal the bargain, and I had my first customer.
Equus himself walked in a few moments later and seemed surprised to see Cuno there. We made small talk for a while, and I was gratified to see that even Equus was not too fond of his brother by marriage. There was no overt hostility between the two, but Equus’ distaste for Cuno was obvious. I mentioned the bargain I had struck with Cuno, and Equus merely nodded, neither approving the bargain nor condemning it.
Later, when Cuno had gone, I asked Equus about him and learned that he had drifted into town a few years earlier and worked for several months with the old wheelwright whose business he now owned. The old man had died without heirs, and Cuno had assumed the position of wheelwright to the town, marrying Phoebe shortly after that. He was good at what he did, Equus told me, but he drank too much and had beaten Phoebe cruelly on several occasions. Equus had posted warning, he said, of what would happen next time his sister appeared with a bruise on her fair skin. It was then that he told me directly that he could bring himself neither to like nor to trust Cuno. I asked him immediately if I had made a foolish bargain with the man, but Equus assured me that the bargain would be met and honoured. Money was scarce, he explained. Only the army dealt in cash. Equus believed that once Cuno had spoken to his neighbours about our arrangement, we would find more barter offers coming our way.
He was correct. The word spread quickly. Within the week we had a guarantee of a month’s supply of fresh bread in return for four long-handled oven shovels; the bellows-maker down the street provided new bellows in return for short-shafted nails; and several local farmers had promised fresh produce and grain in return for iron tools. Business grew brisk, and within a surprisingly short time we found ourselves having to think and talk about hiring help
ers.
In the interim, until such time as we could find suitably skilled workers and apprentices, Equus brought his sister Phoebe to help us out in the day-to-day running of things. She cooked for us at first, and devised a method of keeping inventory of our bartered goods, recording the goods and the services we tendered in exchange. Then, as she became familiar with our work and our requirements, she began to take a more active role as an intermediary between us and our growing network of customers. In a matter of mere months, she had made herself indispensable.
When Cuno had first mentioned Phoebe’s name, I had not been able to recall her face. I knew instantly who she was, of course. I remembered, too, that I had liked her.
She was much younger than Equus — close to my own age, in fact, and even slightly younger — and she and I had shared much of our growing up. I remembered that she had always been able to make me laugh as a boy, no matter how black my mood. I also recalled quite clearly that, while not unpleasant to look at by any means, she was no great beauty. The casual association we shared in those days had been based on liking and a mutual, once-in-a-while need for companionship, not sexual attraction under any guise.
Nevertheless, it was heart-warming and gratifying to see the pleasure on her face as she greeted me on the first morning she appeared at the smithy, and I recognized her instantly. Phoebe had grown up well and turned into a handsome, red-haired woman with bold, appraising eyes, rounded, firm limbs and high, full breasts, and she had retained the sense of fun that had always distinguished her from the other urchins who had been her friends.
She astonished me one evening, as we were preparing to close up the smithy and go home. Equus was out somewhere, meeting with a customer, and I had just removed my apron and was washing off the day’s accumulation of dust and grime. Phoebe had been stacking some small wooden boxes of nails on a shelf at the back of the smithy, and I had almost forgotten I was not alone. Her voice startled me.
“Did you ever find her, Master Varrus?”
I had begun to dry my face and I spoke through the towel. “What? Find who?” I put the towel down. “What are you talking about, Phoebe? Find who?”
“Her, your lost love, Cassie. Cassiopeiia. That was her name, wasn’t it?”
I felt my jaw drop. “Good God, Phoebe, how did you know about that?”
She turned to face me, her own eyebrows arched in surprise.
“How? You told me, Master Varrus, you told me all about her. Don’t you remember?”
“I told you? No, Phoebe, I don’t remember. When did I tell you?”
“When you came back, that time you went to Verulamium. You were away all summer long that year, and it was the first time you had ever been away. And then when you came back, you’d changed. You’d fallen in love. You’d met her at a wedding feast and lost her the same night. Don’t you remember?”
Her voice had changed subtly, slipping back, almost imperceptibly, into the voice of the Phoebe I remembered, accented with the slow, steady, comfortable stolidity of the local Celts. I did remember, now that she had brought it back to me with her gently slurred words, but I was amazed that she should, and I told her so.
“Well,” she said, “It wasn’t so much that I remembered as that I was reminded, if you know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t know what you mean. Tell me.”
“Well, it’s right here.” She nodded towards the wall in front of her. “Right here where you wrote it, don’t you remember? You taught me to read it and it was all I could read for years and years.”
I stepped forward, my ears deaf to what she was actually saying, and stared in amazement at what she was looking at. Two letters, a P and a C intertwined, were incised on the plaster surface of the wall, their edges faded and smoothed but still legible, even after almost a decade and a half of exposure to smoke and soot. Now I could remember carving them in the plaster, watched by Phoebe, and telling her of my undying love for the beautiful girl in blue with the long, black hair. I could not believe, however, how completely I had forgotten doing so. I reached out and touched the letters, tracing them with the tip of one finger as I felt a hard, unaccustomed swelling in my throat for the boy I had been, and the hopes and dreams and fancies that had prompted me to carve a tribute to a girl who I knew only as Cassie. In truth, I didn’t even know that Cassie was really her name. We had been flirting with each other, having fun, teasing each other with never a thought for reality and the lives we had to live with others.
Phoebe was watching me closely.
“No, Phoebe,” I said, sighing, “I never did find her. I looked for her every place I went, but I never saw her again. It’s funny how I forgot doing this, though, carving her name here, and telling you about her. I forgot the reality.”
Phoebe sniffed and turned away, bustling over to where she had left her shawl and her bag. “You’ll find her again, you wait and see.”
I laughed aloud. “Phoebe,” I scolded, “listen to yourself! It’s been almost fifteen whole years! She is most definitely married long since and mother to a brood of brats. Her beauty, great as it was, will have faded long ago…” But even as I laughed, my voice died away.
“And? What would you do, Master Varrus, if you turned around one day, tomorrow maybe, and found her looking at you, faded and fifteen years older, surrounded by her children? What would you do?”
I was silent, visualizing the tall, blue-draped girl Cassie, trying in vain to add fifteen years and the effects of them to what I remembered. Phoebe’s voice drew me back to where I was.
“Master Varrus?”
“Phoebe, my dear, I wish you would call me Publius. You and I have been friends for too long for any other nonsense.”
She smiled and bowed her head, “Thank you, but I feel more comfortable with Master Varrus. You will find somebody else, you know. It’s in you, the love. What you felt for that girl was far too strong to be allowed to rot or go to waste, you mark my words. And I should be home by this time. Cuno likes to have his meals on time. Good night, Master Varrus.”
After she had gone, I sat by the banked, slowly smoking forge for a long time, thinking about my life and the changes I wished I could make in it. One of those changes, by itself alone, would be an absolute necessity if ever I were to meet the girl in blue again, or any other like her I had not achieved conscious erection since being wounded. Paradoxically, I had had regular nocturnal emissions, so I knew my body was still working, somehow, but lust was alien to me in my waking hours.
I rose, eventually, and made my way back to my house.
It became clear to me very rapidly that Equus and Cuno had both been correct when they told me that only the army dealt in cash in these parts, and so I set my mind to laying my hands on some of it. That I was able to do it quickly was due more to luck than to planning. A name overheard in a tavern where I sat one day with Equus after closing the smithy led to my presenting myself at the entrance to the local military headquarters at the start of my second month in Colchester, in the first week of March. The two young soldiers on duty at the gate looked at me with the mute, almost insolent indifference that their kind reserve for civilians, even when those civilians are obviously veterans. I stood firm, gazing back at them without rancour, waiting for one of them to address me. I was not dressed in the manner of a smith, but neither was there anything about me to mark me as an officer or as a man of noble standing.
“Well? What do you want? This is a military camp. If you have business here, state it and be done. If not, move on.”
Almost word for word what I had expected. Now I spoke, letting them hear the iron in my voice.
“Pontius Aulus Plautus. Your primus pilus.”
They glanced at each other warily, wondering if they had been over surly to one who spoke their senior centurion’s name with such authority. The one who had addressed me spoke again, his voice less abrasive, more conciliatory, more uncertain.
“What about him?”
“Tell him there
is a stranger at the gate who wonders if he still flavours mutton stew with camel dung.”
There had been three of us, junior centurions together in North Africa, and one very unpleasant tribune who had suffered long and painfully from chronic stomach upsets. Only the three of us ever knew why. The hint of a good story got them, as I knew it would. One of the soldiers spun on his heel, his eyes wide with mystification, and disappeared through the Judas gate.
Minutes passed. The remaining sentry did not look my way again but stood spear-straight, his eyes focused on infinity. Then came the sound of hobnails on cobblestones, the Judas gate opened again, and a vision in polished leather and burnished bronze stepped through and looked at me from deep-set, heavy-browed eyes, his frowning face a mask of displeasure.
“Publius Varrus.” The voice was as I remembered it— deep, low-pitched, gravelly and capable of inspiring fear in officers as well as raw recruits. “You gutter-dropped son of an Alexandrian whore! I thought you were dead.”
“No, Plautus, just avoiding you, as always.”
He crossed the space between us in two strides and threw his right arm round my neck, starting to pull me down into a headlock, and then he remembered who and where he was and he turned the move into an embrace, holding me tightly to his breast, wordlessly, as seconds drew out into minutes. The clean, well-remembered scent of him took me back years to more carefree, if not happier, times. Finally we released each other and he held me at arm’s length to look at me, letting me see the tears that had spilled from his fierce eyes.