The Skystone

by Jack Whyte

  Plautus returned eventually, taking his time, and sat down. His cup was still full, and he looked into it as he picked it up. “These boys are armed.”

  “Aye,” I said. “And we are not. How long have we been soldiers?”

  “Long enough to know better than to get caught like this. But we might still get away with it.”

  “I doubt it.” I glanced towards the silent mansio behind us. The door was closed. “Have you noticed that no one has come out to greet these people?”

  “Aye, I’ve noticed. Did they bother you while I was gone?”

  “No. They’ve been ignoring me.”

  “Good, let’s hope it stays that way. Just keep your temper in check.” As he said this, my eyes were drawn across the yard to where the big, blond young man was climbing into the other chariot.

  “Here comes the other one,” I said.

  “That’s all right. I expected it.” He didn’t look over. Instead he said, “Didn’t you recognize him? Claudius Caesarius Seneca. Does it mean anything to you, apart from the fact that you know his brothers?”

  I stared at him in amazement. “You mean that’s the youngest brother, the wastrel?”

  “That’s the one. A real beauty. The pride of the family. How far is it from here to Londinium? Should we make it by tomorrow night?”

  I almost began to wonder if he was losing his mind, but then I realized that our tormentor was close enough to hear what we were saying. I nodded. “If we can make good time from here we should be able to do it easily.” I fell silent as we waited for the repeat performance. The reins landed between us again. The young lout stood looking down at us silently, his hand resting prominently on his sword hilt, and then he turned and left. When he was gone I continued. “Of course. Quinctilius Nesca was the brother-in-law that Primus tried to have appointed Quartermaster. The Commander put a stop to his plans. But the landlord said these were Nesca’s nephews.”

  “Two of them may be, but that young whoreson is a Seneca, not a Nesca. And he’s the worst of the lot. Mad as a drunk Egyptian priest and ungovernable, even to his brothers.” Plautus’ lower lip was pushed up over his upper one, a sign I knew well as an indicator of deep and rapid thought. “Believe me, Publius, I’ve heard about this swine. He’s worse than Nero and Caligula combined, and he’s the richest son of a whore in the whole Seneca family. In the whole Empire, for that matter. The face of a god, the personality of a pit viper and a lust to be famed as the most degenerate swine in history.”

  “Come on, you exaggerate. He can’t be that bad. He’s no more than twenty.”

  “Twenty-five if he’s a day, and he’s worse than I say.” He looked over at the young man. “Yes, that’s the boy.” He stood up. “I’ll be back. Get ready to leave. When I come back I’ll have our horses and I’ll have an arrow nocked. Can you guess who I’ll be aiming at? They won’t take chances against a drawn bow, but don’t waste time. Be ready to get up on the table and onto your horse. I’ve already unhitched the one chariot and scattered the horses. I’ll do the same with this one. Just stay relaxed and hope they keep on ignoring you. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  Once again he collected the reins and led the horses around the corner of the building as I sat staring in awe and fascination at the leader of the group across from me. Claudius Caesarius Seneca, the youngest son of the House that hated my best friend, descended of the noblest bloodlines and the wealthiest families of Rome.

  I remembered Britannicus saying that he had inherited the fabulous wealth of his aged father. Under the terms of the old man’s will, he was the sole heir. His brothers were already wealthy in their own right, and there had been no dispute over the terms. The Commander had gone on to say that the truly wealthy, those few people whose wealth defies credence, have their own laws and are untroubled by the laws of ordinary men.

  I suddenly became aware that all six of them were now staring at me, and my stomach tightened. One of them, one of the two without a sword, came towards me, swinging his hips outrageously, parodying a woman’s walk. He stopped, his hand on his hip, and leered at me. The wretch had catamite written all over him, and I stared in disgust at his carmined lips and cheeks and lustrous eyes, shaded with kohl. But I had to admit, Plautus was right. With breasts, this boy would have been irresistible.

  He half turned and wiggled his fingers at his companions, and they all began walking towards me. I sat immobile, watching them approach, feeling an unusual and irrational fear writhing in my guts. And then, abruptly, I was angry again. Who were these Senecas that I should be in fear of even the youngest of them? These youths represented naked power, or one of them did, but what was that power really worth, here in the quiet heart of rural Britain? They did not know me, and had I not known their leader’s name and his family’s reputation, I would have faced them down alone. Four young louts and a couple of effeminate neuters!

  Five of them stopped about five paces from me and stood watching with curiously apprehensive sneers as their leader approached me. He stopped right in front of me and looked me directly in the eye for the first time, I saw again the hostile, strange emptiness behind the bright blueness of the eyes, in a face that was now all too familiar.

  “Move. We want this table.” He reached out slowly, picked up Plautus’ cup and, in a strangely formal gesture, extended his arm stiffly to one side and dropped the vessel to smash on the ground. I did not move. He reached for the jug of wine. I reached for it too.

  “Don’t be foolish!” The warning was a feral snarl.

  I dropped my hand and let him repeat the performance with the half-full jug, and then with my cup and the empty bowl that had held our plums. I still did not move, wondering what was taking Plautus so long.

  Seneca sighed. “I told you to move, old man.”

  He could not have chosen a worse phrase. All the resentment I had been feeling throughout the day seethed up and spilled over at the disdain in that “old man”. I had the palms of my hands flat on the table and was halfway to my feet in wrath when his hand closed over the end of the cloth-wrapped cross that lay in front of me. Thinking of what the cross was meant for, fury washed over me that this animal should even think of touching it. I smashed my hand down on the cloth-covered shape, slamming it from his fingers back to the table top. Once he had felt the weight and shape of it, however, he took it for a weapon, and things began to happen very fast.

  I heard the lightning slither of his sword whipping from its sheath, and the expression on his face told me I had little time. I launched myself backwards, kicking my stool away while managing to remain on my feet, and as I did so I heard the hiss of his sword point as it slashed through the air where my head had been. He came after me, around the table, and I kept going backwards, holding the cloth-wrapped cross in my right hand. Another slash, backhanded, brought his arm high for the killing stroke, and as it came slicing down I blocked it instinctively with Alaric’s cross. The force of the blow almost knocked the cross from my hand, and I saw his eyes widen in shocked surprise. He had expected the clang of iron, not that solid clunk! And he had expected his sword to spring free! Instead, its tempered edge had struck deeply into the arm of the silver cross and lodged there. He was confused just long enough for me to realize what had happened, and to react ahead of him. Knowing what he did not, I threw myself at him, twisting around so that my right shoulder hit him solidly on the breastbone as I rammed my right arm straight out, away from him, twisting my strong smith’s wrist to hold his clamped blade and jerk the sword hilt from his grasp. He went staggering as I took the hilt of his sword in my left hand and worked the blade free from its silver trap.

  His friends had not had time to react, but now they came surging towards me, the three who had swords unsheathing them. Then Plautus shouted, “Hold!” and an arrow zipped in front of me and smacked into the shoulder of one of them, knocking him sideways off his feet. All eyes swung to Plautus, who sat on his horse less than six paces away, a fresh arrow already in place
and the feathers of a full quiver peeking above his shoulder.

  “I think we need no more bloodshed. Throw away the swords, boys. Far away. You! The pretty one! Pick up your friend’s sword and throw it over there, too.” He looked at me and nodded towards my horse. “Mount up. No names, no recriminations. Let’s go.”

  I knew he was warning me, but I was too far gone in anger to pay any heed.

  “No,” I said, snarling. “Not yet. This dog meat called me an old man. I want to taste his tripes.”

  “Forget it. Let it lie. Mount up.”

  I ignored him, fixing my eyes on our tormentor. Let him show me his power now. I stepped sideways to the table and put down the sword and the cross side by side, and then I stepped away.

  “There it is, buck,” I said. “The only thing between you and your sword is an old man. Now, either pick it up and use it, or give me the belt and scabbard and I’ll leave you to swim in your friends’ vomit.”

  He glared at me and spat into my face, making me close my eyes reflexively as he leaped for me, his fingers spread like talons to rake my eyes. He really did think me an old man! I jumped a step backwards, seizing his right hand in my left, lacing our fingers and using my smith’s strength again to jerk him forward and down, off balance. As he sprawled towards me, I took my full weight on my bad leg and smashed my right knee forward into his beautiful, depraved, young madman’s face, and felt his nose give way. I released his hand quickly and stepped to the side, placing myself again between him and the table.

  I snatched a quick glance at Plautus. He sat motionless, his eyes on the others, his bow half drawn. My antagonist was in no hurry to rise. He knelt on all fours, head down, blood and saliva drooling from his broken face.

  “Finished already?” I taunted, and he raised his head slowly to stare at me with more malevolence than I had ever seen on a human face. I could have felled him again at any time as he got slowly to his feet, but I waited.

  “Come on, Deus! Kill the old swine!” This, hissed by one of his friends, was the first utterance any of them had made. Deus! I thought again. Short for Claudius? If this buck is a god, he’s a god from Hades.

  He came at me again, more cautiously, and I felt the effect of those muscles of his. He was obviously used to fighting with cestes, the armoured gloves of the gladiators, for he used his bare fists like hammers. I took one solid blow on the shoulder that would have beheaded me had his aim been better. As it was, I went reeling, and he was on me like a wildcat, intent on ripping off any part of me he could lay hold of. He was well trained, but so was I, and in a far rougher school than any he had attended. I set out then, methodically, to thrash him badly enough to mar his beauty forever, and I succeeded. I cannot recall another occasion when my anger exceeded the rage I felt that day. At one point, when he stood swaying and helpless on his feet, his tunic covered with blood and sputum, his face a broken, bloody mess, I knew that I was overdoing it, but I was in the grip of some elemental fury. I heard Plautus shout to me to leave him, that he had had enough, but again I ignored him and measured out one last, sledgehammer blow. All my resentment, my anger, my fears and my disgust went into that blow, and the man went down as though I had used a real iron maul — and I was still angry. I took his sword from the table and flicked the edge with my thumb. It was very sharp. I used it to cut away his tunic from neck to hem, and then the fine woollen shorts he wore beneath it, so that he sprawled naked, and then, God forgive me, I carved a great “V” on his hairless chest.

  “You’ll remember meeting me, you whore’s spawn,” I muttered. “Be thankful I didn’t cut off your dick and stick it in your mouth.” I rounded on the others, who were all white-faced. “Well? Will you remember me? And leave old men in peace in future?” They flinched away from me, and suddenly I felt sick. I spat at their feet and left them, taking the still-wrapped cross and mounting my horse to follow Plautus away from the place. The doors of the mansio remained shut. Nobody sought to hinder our departure.

  We rode in silence for more than half an hour, and for most of that time I shook as though palsied. And then the reaction set in, and I dismounted and was violently sick. When I had finished retching I still felt miserable, but with a different kind of sickness. I felt unclean, soiled inside.

  Plautus waited, still mounted, until I was done. I led my horse to a convenient stump and got back onto its back, nodding to him to lead on. Again we rode in silence, and when he kicked his mount to a gallop, I followed without asking why.

  A long time later we came to a stream, and Plautus dismounted and drank from it. I sat and watched him with-out really seeing what he was doing until I became aware of the foul taste in my own mouth. I slid to the ground and bent my head to the running water, rinsing my mouth and gargling and spitting until my mouth tasted clean again. I felt that, inside, I would never again be clean. I straightened up and stared out into the stream, which was quite wide. The sun still felt warm on my shoulders, but the strength was gone from its heat. I walked slowly out into the water until it rose to my knees and then I sank down into it, letting its coldness chill me.

  As I rose to come out again, I saw that Plautus was sitting watching me, his back against a tree. His eyes never left mine as I walked to the bank and stood looking down at him.

  “Feel like talking about it?”

  I shook my head. He shrugged. “I think we should camp here tonight. Anyone looking for us isn’t likely to come this way.”

  I looked around. “Where are we?”

  “You’re asking me? We’re lost, that’s where we are. Couldn’t keep going south. That’s where the uncle’s villa is, remember? Anyway, he heard us saying we were headed south. So I turned east as soon as we were out of sight of the place. We headed east for over an hour and then I turned north. That’s where we are now. Anybody looking for us would have to know where we were going. Since we don’t know, they can’t either. There should be fish in that big pool down there. I’ll see if they’re willing to eat hooks.”

  He got up and left, and I lay down, enjoying the cold clamminess of my soaked clothing. Minutes later, it seemed, I awoke, chilled to the bone, and stripped and rubbed myself down with my cloak. Plautus was still fishing. By the time he returned, carrying four fair-sized fish, I had a fire going and we spitted the fish and cooked them. I was hungrier than I had any right to be, and the fish were good. We ate in silence. Finally, lying comfortably in a hollow in the bank, I felt I could talk about it.

  “How did you know who he was?”

  “I didn’t, at first.” Plautus’ answer was immediate, as though we had been talking about it all along. “It only came to me when somebody called him Deus. Unusual name for a living man. I’d only heard it once before, when somebody was talking about him. Then I remembered that the same person had said that he was related to Quinctilius Nesca. I remember thinking at the time that was appropriate. Have you ever met Nesca?”

  “No, I’ve never even seen the man.”

  “Well, that’s your good fortune. He’s a nasty package. Lives in Constantinople at the Court most of the time, but he has estates outside Rome, one estate here, obviously, and an island in the Aegean where he’s supposed to have nothing but pederasts and catamites. No women anywhere. The word is that he likes to eat human flesh. Babies, broiled whole and flavoured with spice and cinnamon.”

  “Ach!” I shuddered. “That’s obscene! How can you even give ear to such rubbish?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Wouldn’t surprise me if it’s absolutely true, every word of it. Wouldn’t surprise me at all. I told you, he’s a nasty man.”

  “How do you know him?”

  “I don’t. My brother did. He worked for him before he died.”

  “And this Deus is his nephew?”

  “No, not a nephew, but related in some way. Perhaps a cousin.”

  “But the man at the mansio said that two of that gang were Nesca’s nephews.”

  “So? Must have been two of the others. That
probably explains why the whoreson’s here in Britain. Visiting the family.”

  “Family?” I shuddered again. “A family suggests home and hearth to me. Values. Worthiness.”

  “Oh, they have values. They’re just different to other people’s. One of their ancestors, I forget his name, was actually removed from the governorship of a province for cruelty. Not unprecedented, I suppose, except that it was Caligula who recalled him. Caligula! Can you believe that? How bad must he have been?”

  “Do you think they’ll search for us?”

  “The Senecas? You tell me. You carved your initial on one of them, the family favourite, with his own sword! Of course they’ll be looking for us. But they won’t know where to start. He can have no idea who we are. since no names were mentioned. Were they? Did you give them your name while I was away?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, then. How can he find us? He’d never think of looking for me in a centurions’ mess, and I doubt if he visits too many smithies. He knows you by your hair and beard. Shave them off for a month or two. Go bald and barefaced. You’ll probably look years younger if you do. Remember, he thinks you’re an old man.”

  “What about you, Plautus? What made him take after you?”

  Plautus spat into the fire. “Who knows? I told you, he’s mad. It’s one of his well-known attributes. He just likes to kill people. Let’s get some sleep and be on our way before dawn. We’re still a long way from Verulamium.”

  “Verulamium!” I felt uncomfortable. “Do you think we should still go there?”

  “Why not? That’s where we’re headed for.”

  “Only to deliver the cross, and it’s ruined. I think we should head home to Colchester.”

  He looked at me speculatively. “Are you sure?”

  I thought about it. “Yes. I’m sure. I think you’re right. He and his people will be looking for us, and if he’s as wealthy as you say he is, he can afford to hire a lot of people. I want to shave off my hair and beard.”