The Skystone

by Jack Whyte

  “Caius, my darling brother, is an idealist. Of course he approves of a marriage between us! He thinks of you as some kind of paragon, and so he decided years ago that I could not do better for myself than to become your wife. The fact that I might choose to have a say in the matter did not occur to him. I love him very much, but he believes that he can apply his undoubted tactical brilliance everywhere as effectively as he can on the battlefield. He just does not know that there are circumstances and conditions under which it simply does not work. I would not have allowed him to arrange your life any more than I will allow him to arrange my own. Before we met, a few short days ago, you had no idea that I was alive. You have lived, how long? Thirty-seven years? Thirty-seven years without me. You could have lived another thirty-seven the same way, and just as happily.

  “I have had two marriages arranged for me. concerning which I was not consulted. It was no one’s fault that neither of them was happy, but enough is enough. I have told you before, when we first met, that I have done my duty as a faithful daughter. Two of my husbands have died. Do I need another? I had asked myself that and decided that the answer was no. I needed no man, I swore, to help me to exist and be myself.” She paused. “But then I met you and discovered that the idea of being a wife again appeals to me very greatly. And I saw, being a woman, the effect I had on you when you met me. I know I will make you a good wife, and I know I will make you happy, because you, Publius Varrus, are the man the Fates, the gods and the gentle Jesus have decreed to be my lord and master. Does that shock you?”

  It did, but I lied. “No. But it surprises me. You talk a lot.”

  “Only when I have something to say. Now kiss me again.”

  It was some time before we began to talk again. Eventually, unwilling to quit her arms but in need of cool air, I sat up and rested my elbows on my knees. The darkness in the room was complete.

  “We let the fire go out,” I said. “Now they’ll have to light it again.”

  “That’s nothing.” she whispered from beside me. “They’ll bring a brand from another fire. Publius?”

  “Yes?”

  “Have I shamed myself? Do you think me brazen and too forward?”

  I reached out and laid my hand on her breast. “That would not be possible. Luceiia.”

  “Then why are you so quiet? Have you no wish to marry? Because if you have not —”

  “Hush, Luceiia, and let me talk for a while. You’ve given me much to think about, and you have made me slightly mad with joy, but now you must give me time to say what is in my mind, and before I do that I must order my thoughts. Will you allow me time to do that?”

  “Yes, Publius.”

  For a time, there was a silence, during which I found myself listening for her breathing. Finally, I lay back against the rolled skin we were using as a pillow and gathered her to me so that she lay again with her head on my breast, her face in the hollow of my shoulder. As I spoke, my fingers combed her long, black hair.

  “Luceiia,” I said, “I can only think what my mind moves me to think. I have never been in love. I don’t know what love is. I have never had the time or the urge to try to discover what it is. I have known few women carnally, and most of those were paid. And I have never met anyone like you before. Your beauty frightened me when I first saw you, because I thought that you must see me as no more than a cripple. I know now that was unworthy. But your mind, Luceiia! Your independence, the way you express yourself, the way you smile and laugh and move, the colour of your eyes, the shape of your mouth — these are all new to me, and they excite me: You are in my mind constantly, every waking moment, and also while I sleep, it seems…

  “I had no thought of sleeping beside you tonight. It happened by accident because I was so tired. God knows I never hoped to possess your body. But now I have, and it is the most wondrous thing that I have ever known. I feel like a virgin boy again. No other woman has ever known what I have given you of myself this night. You have had my soul, and you possess it still, and that possession will never cease to be. I am yours, body and soul, from this time forward, no matter what may befall us.

  “Now, if this is love — and I think it might be — then I have discovered it at last. I can look at you here, in this darkness, and see every feature of your face and every nuance of your smile, and I can say I love you and know that it is true. And if, as you have said, you would be glad to be my wife, to share my life and bear my children and make a home for me to call my own and yours, then no man could be happier and still be alive. For it seems to me that such happiness is only found in the Heaven that the priests speak of.”

  I stopped and drew a deep breath, weighing my next words carefully before committing them to speech.

  “There is but one thing I fear. Your brother, Caius. He has meant more to me than any other man since the death of my grandfather. I would never have dared to hope that he would bless a marriage between me and his sister. Tonight you tell me that he hoped for it, and I believe you in spite of myself, and I am glad. But, my love, I tell you truly after tonight I will forfeit his friendship willingly— not happily, but willingly — should he refuse to allow us to wed. I will forsake my friend to keep you. I love you. I can say no more than that.”

  I was feeling more than a little surprised and pleased by my own eloquence, and the warmth of her treatment of me during the next few long and glorious minutes convinced me that I had managed to say exactly the right things.

  Some time later, I opened my eyes to see the brightness of dawn at the window. Luceiia was already astir, and I was alone in the small room we had shared. I leaped from the bed and pulled on my clothes, my thoughts racing as I tried to separate dreams from reality. I was lacing up my sandals when she came back into the room. I immediately stopped what I was doing and stood up, my eyes straining to read the expression on her face in the dim half-light.

  She came straight to where I stood and placed herself in front of me, her hands on her hips. She was tall enough to look me straight in the eye, and I was relieved to see that she had a smile on her face.

  “Well, Publius Varrus, now that the day is here, do I still have the right to think of you as husband?”

  I reached and pulled her to me. “Aye, my love, my beloved,” I said. “As long as I have the breath and the life to call you wife.”

  Our kiss was brief, however. She disengaged herself and smoothed her gown over her hips.

  “So be it. You will not regret this, my love. But there are things to arrange. We must return to the villa, and I shall begin to prepare for our wedding. You, in the meantime, will serve us both best if you spend your time digging for your skystone. That way, neither of us will distract the other from what has to be done. I will write to Caius today and send the missive by military courier tomorrow.” She stopped abruptly, as though in mid thought, and then came back to me, taking my hands in hers and raising her mouth to mine.

  “I almost forget to tell you,” she whispered. “Last night was heaven on earth, and I love you. And there are no fleas in my bed at home, you’ll see.”

  BOOK FOUR

  The Dragon’s Nest

  XXI

  In the month that followed, Luceiia busied herself with preparations for our nuptials. For my part, I kept my word and stayed out of her way by digging for skystones. Greatly to my disappointment, I unearthed seven stones — I presumed them to be skystones — the largest of which was little bigger than the skull of a new-born babe. My knowledge of smelting, scant though it was, nevertheless made me certain that, even were I to succeed in smelting these, I would get little metal for my trouble.

  The truly disheartening aspect of all of this was that I had been at pains to excavate the largest “nests” first. If these finds were the biggest skystones in the valley, then all my dreams and effort had been for nought. And yet, I thought, there was something I was missing. My grandfather’s skystone had made enough noise in falling to awaken only one man. I had never seen the stone itself,
but I knew that it had been big enough to yield several pounds, at least, of raw metal. None of the stones I had unearthed would run to as much as one pound of metal. The mystifying thing was that their descent had been witnessed — both seen and heard — by hundreds of people, over a range of many miles. Something, therefore, was missing from my calculations. There had to be more and bigger skystones buried here somewhere; I must be looking in the wrong place, perhaps even in the wrong valley.

  Discouraged and frustrated, I decided to leave my digging for a while and make a try at smelting the stones I had found. I would have to build a smelting furnace — a kiln — somewhere on the grounds of the villa, so I broke camp and headed for what I now thought of as my home. Luceiia would be expecting me today, anyway. I had been away for five days and was beginning to run low on provisions. In spite of my pleasurable anticipation of seeing her, however, my frame of mind was not a happy one as I set out on my return journey.

  It was now the middle of January, and although the winter had been reasonably mild, there was now a real threat of snow in the wind. I reined my horse in at the very crest of the hill and turned around for one last look back into my valley of dragons. It was barren and hostile, cold and inhospitable. The signs of my puny excavations were invisible from this height, and the surface of the lake at the far end of the valley looked like a bed of rough slate beneath the angry sky. I pulled my cloak tighter about me and determined not to return for at least three months. By that time, I hoped, spring might have made the place look more welcoming.

  By the time I reached the villa I was in a foul frame of mind. The threatened snow was falling as sleet and it had caught me on the road, eight miles from home. I was chilled and I was hungry, but I had enough sense to go directly to the bath house before seeking out Luceiia. Hot water and hotter steam would improve my disposition.

  I had not finished bathing when I was interrupted by Luceiia’s personal retainer, a Greek called Diomede, carrying fresh clothing for me. He welcomed me home and informed me that the Lady Luceiia was entertaining guests, and that dinner would be served in half an hour. In the meantime, would I please go, as soon as I was ready, to the anteroom, where the guests were having a cup of wine? I thanked him and, cutting short my wallowing in the pool, dressed quickly in what I saw to be some of the best of the fine clothes that Luceiia’s tailors had been making for me over the past month. In a short time, scrubbed and cool and quite resplendent in my new and stylish clothes, I hurried through the colonnades from the bath house to the main building, curious about who these guests might be. There were three of them, all young, all handsome and all soldiers. They were dressed in what had become fashionable as “undress uniform,” decorative tunics cunningly fashioned to resemble armour. I felt an irrational wave of jealous resentment that they should be here, with Luceiia, when I might be still away in the hills but for a bout of frustration. I swallowed the feeling, however, recognizing it as petty, and schooled my features into a smile as I went first to greet and kiss Luceiia, favouring them only with a pleasant, impersonal nod in passing.

  Luceiia was radiant in the light of what seemed to be a thousand of the household’s finest beeswax tapers. I had never seen her so lovely, and I told her so, but her eyes were sparkling with a joy that I could see was not due solely to my presence. She squeezed my arm strongly with an inexplicable excitement as she introduced me to her guests, all of whom were from the garrison to the south at Portus Adurni, now called Portchester. I greeted each of them personally, welcoming them to the Villa Britannicus, and then accepted a cup of wine from Diomede before turning back to face them, Luceiia still close by my side.

  “So, gentlemen, your health! May I ask what brings you here?”

  “I do. Publius.” The voice, from directly behind me, made me turn so quickly that I spilled my wine, and there was Caius Britannicus, arms spread wide to embrace me, striding in from the doorway, his face split into a giant grin. He threw his arms around me and lifted me completely off my feet, swinging me around in a complete circle before releasing me and stepping back to look at me.

  “By the gods, Varrus, you look good. And clean! No sign of Vulcan in this fellow! My sister tells me there has been no ousting you since you heard about our local skystones.”

  Still speechless and floundering for words, I looked from him to Luceiia, whose grin was as great as her brother’s. She stepped forward and took us both into her embrace.

  “Forgive me, my dear,” she said through her smiles. “Caius arrived yesterday, escorted by these three officers. He wanted to ride in search of you and your valley as soon as he heard you were here, but I refused to allow him. I knew you would be home today or tomorrow, and I wanted to surprise you and to see the look on your face when you met. So I swore everyone to secrecy until I could bring you face to face. Was that cruel of me?”

  Finally I found my voice. “No, it was not cruel. But I suppose it was feminine, and therefore obscure. Anyway, it was successful. I am… surprised…astounded, in fact.” I smiled at Caius. “Welcome home, Proconsul. How was Africa?”

  “Hot, smelly, fly-ridden and pestilential. Little changed since you and I last knew it. But I left the Proconsulship there in the hands of my successor. I am now plain Caius Britannicus, farmer and man of few pursuits.”

  “Aye.” I grinned. “And Proconsul of Numidia, Senator of Rome, General of the Legions and Magistrate. None of those titles can be relinquished.”

  “No, my friend, but they are only titles, and I have had enough of them for one lifetime. Plain Caius Britannicus will do from now on.” He put his arm around my shoulder and turned to the others. “Gentlemen, we will go in to dinner now, but first a toast. To Publius Varrus, my finest friend, to whom I owe my life several times over, and to the marriage that is soon to be celebrated between him and my beloved sister.”

  Luceiia took my hand as the others drank to our future, and when they had done, Diomede stepped forward to usher everyone into the triclinium. Caius, however, held us both back, a hand on each of our arms, until the others had passed into the dining room. Then he swung me around gently and spoke in a soft voice, looking me straight in the eye.

  “Luceiia tells me you doubt my approval of this marriage?” He sighed and shook his head in mock-regret. “Publius Varrus, you amaze me, but I wish there were more like you. Once and for all, hear me on this. I could think of no better match for either of you. You are both of pure Roman blood and you are my two favourite people in the whole world. I love both of you equally. Together, as a pair, you will be formidable and provide me with a tribe of remarkable nieces and nephews whom it will be my duty and pleasure to spoil outrageously. You have my full and unqualified blessing and I give it gladly, knowing that this will make us brothers in fact as well as in spirit.”

  My throat choked up completely and I embraced him in silence, as a brother, for the first time.

  As we approached the dining table, I noticed, that there were seven places set for only six diners. I made no comment, but Caius noticed it, too.

  “Where is Picus?” he asked, just as a tall, handsome boy of about sixteen walked into the room. “Ah, there you are. You’re late.”

  The boy nodded, coming forward. “I know. Forgive me, Father, Aunt Luceiia, gentlemen.” His eyes met mine and held them as he came straight towards me and bowed.

  “Publius,” his father said, “this is my son Picus. Picus, my friend Publius Varrus. You have heard me talking about him for years, and finally it’s time to meet him. He is soon to be your uncle.”

  “I know.” The lad’s smile was open and confident with a quiet, pleasing self-assurance. I offered him my arm as an equal and as he gripped it he asked, “May I call you Uncle Varrus?”

  “Uncle Varrus.” I nodded, keeping my eyes on his. “It sounds well. So be it.”

  Dinner was a celebration of many things; the conversation was prolific and frequently hilarious. I noticed, however, that Caius refused to talk about his time in Africa. H
e spoke freely of his visits to Rome and to the Imperial Court in Constantinople, and his caustic wit had us all laughing many times. But not a word of his residence in Numidia.

  The meal passed quickly, and in the course of it I learned that the three young officers were to return to their garrison immediately; they would be leaving at first light. Picus would be travelling with them as far as they were going, and from there he would journey on to Londinium, where he was to begin his military service, as his father had and I had, in the ranks. Starting as a common soldier, he would be expected to win the rank of centurion on his own merits. After that, he would begin officer’s training.

  As soon as I heard this, I excused myself from the table and sent Diomede to my rooms to fetch a package. He brought it to me casually, as I had instructed him to, and I left it lying by my feet until the correct moment.

  When that moment came, I cleared my throat, wanting to say what I had to say simply and exactly, the way my friend Alaric would have said it.

  “Picus,” I began, “I have some words for you, as my newest nephew.” That drew a general laugh and relieved me of the little embarrassment I felt. Picus was looking at me expectantly from across the table. “You join the legions soon. Tomorrow, in fact, if leaving home for the purpose qualifies as entry. I have a gift for you, and you will honour me if you accept it.”

  The boy’s eyes widened as he wondered what could be coming. I reached beneath the table and produced the package Diomede had brought me, unwrapping it as I continued speaking.

  “Before your father left for Africa, he asked me to make this sword for him. It wasn’t ready by the time he left, for I had no idea that he was going until it was too late. And now he swears he will soldier no more. Anyway, I made this for General Britannicus, and it is a fine weapon, I think. The hilt is made in one piece, by a new technique I’ve been experimenting with. Now that the General has no further need of a sword, I can think of no more appropriate place for it than hanging by the side of his son.” I drew it from its bronze-covered sheath. “The designs on the scabbard and hilt are Celtic — the art of the people of Britain — as appropriate to a Britannicus as his name. The iron of the blade was mined, smelted and wrought here in Britain. Believe me, Picus, you may wear it and use it with confidence. It will serve you equally well in battle and in dress uniform.” I sheathed the weapon and handed it to him.