by Jack Whyte
I jerked my arm back hard, wrenching my blade from his chest, and watched as he fell, first to his knees and then forward onto his face. I stood there above him for a long time, looking down. He did not jerk or squirm, and he still breathed, but I knew I had my vengeance. I raised my arm again to strike off his head, and suddenly found I had no wish to strike one more blow. I opened my hand and let my sword fall to the grass, and then I looked around me at the slaughter-ground. The soldiers would be there soon. I brought the scroll from the table, rolled it up loosely and stuck it between his right arm and his chest, feeling as I did so the flaccid deadness of his muscles.
I wiped my hand on my tunic, turned on my heel and walked away to where we had left our horses, leaving the clearing with its carnage behind me forever.
XXXIII
In due time, I confessed my sin and was shriven by Bishop Alaric, but I never did tell Caius or Luceiia what I had done. Not that I had any shame of my actions, but I had no pride in them either, and I decided that no purpose was to be gained by spreading the knowledge among those I loved. It would be sufficient that their lives were the safer for my removal of Seneca. The how and the when of his treachery and his demise would be known soon enough. The catalyst that brought about his death had no need to be named.
The good Bishop went on his way eventually, and life in our Colony resumed its normal pace. We continued to be isolated from the rest of Britain, to a very great degree, and I did not find it too surprising that the news of Seneca’s quietus should fail to reach us. His family, I surmised, would have gone to great lengths to conceal his perfidy from the eyes of the people. In the meantime, our crops continued to improve from year to year, and Ullic aided us greatly by decreeing that each of his people who came to visit should bring a stone to raise upon our walls. This made a major difference to the pace of our building activities, for there was much traffic between his land and ours. Soon our masons were working mounted on scaffolding, so high were our walls, and the old hill fort inside the citadel had become a permanent camp, housing our growing army in stout log buildings.
Our governing Council had seen some changes, too. All of its members now lived in the Colony and met together once a month. None of them was selected for his timidity, so we had some stormy sessions, but by and large our lives went on peacefully.
On one of my first visits to Ullic’s kingdom in the mountains, he and I discussed strategy in the event of Saxon raids. His men would guard the entry from the river, and he would keep outposts overlooking the main road from the north. We, for our part, would police the approaches from the east, south and south-west. Anyone threatening from the west itself would have to cross his lands. I was content.
And marriages had been celebrated between his Celts and our Britannic Romans. Only a few, but they happened. Life was good to us.
On a rainy evening in March, in the eighth year of my stay in the Colony, I sent my daughter Victoria to bring Caius to the smithy. She was his favourite, his first-born niece. As a child, unable to pronounce his name, she had called him “Uncle Cay”. Quintus Varo had been calling him Cay for years, but now, given new currency by the love of a child, the name stuck, and he had been called Cay by the family ever since.
He came into the smithy with his hand resting on her seven-year-old head as they walked together. I was waiting for him, Luceiia by my side, standing at my workbench. I stepped to greet him and surprised him mightily by throwing my arms around him in a hug and swinging him off his feet.
His eyebrows were arched high when I put him down, and he threw his sister an eloquent look of long-suffering tolerance. “Thank you for that, Publius,” he said with dignity when I’d put him down. “Now, will you explain this summons? And this greeting? Victoria tells me you had something ’portant for me.” He smiled indulgently as he repeated his niece’s pronunciation.
“Of course, Caius,” I said. “You shall have an explanation. Let me see, now.” I pretended to think about it. “Luceiia, why did I ask Cay to come here?” She said nothing, and merely looked at me indulgently. I snapped my fingers. “Aha! I remember. Cay, I want you to meet someone.”
He looked around. The smithy was empty, save for the three of us. My daughter had gone.
“To meet someone. I see. And where is this someone?”
“Here.”
He spoke gently to me, humouring me as he would a madman. “Publius, my friend, we are alone in here, you and Luceiia and I.”
“Not so, Cay,” I said, smiling. “There is another here.”
“Really?” This was a languid drawl. “Where? Where is he?”
“He’s a she, Cay. A female. A lady.”
“A lady. Well, in that case, where is she?”
“Over there,” I nodded towards the back of the smithy.
“Where? I see no one.”
“Then approach! She is there, Cay.”
He started to protest, and then he saw her. He looked back at both of us, smiling uncertainly.
“Go on,” I urged him. “Move closer!”
Mystified, he did so, staring in perplexity.
“She” was a statue, a female figure, two feet high, large-breasted, ample-bellied, abundantly buttocked and faceless. A rough-sculpted, iron woman standing on a plinth of solid metal that rippled from her footless legs in a puddle.
“Who is she, Varrus? What is she?” There was wonder in his voice, for he had never seen the like of this.
“Coventina is her name, Cay. She’s Celtic,” I told him. “The Celtic goddess of water. She is a water nymph, and her spirit has lived for centuries in every body of water in this country. She’s the reason all these Celts throw coins and offerings into pools. I call her the Lady of the Lake.”
“The Lady of the Lake.” And then he saw it and swung towards me. “Of the lake! You mean…?”
“Aye, Caius. I mean!” I could no longer control the great grin that spread across my face. “She’s made of iron from the skystone. I smelted it last month.”
His eyes grew wide. “Last month? And you said nothing? All this time? How could you? And you, Luceiia, how could you let this go by?”
Luceiia shook her head, looking at me. “Do not blame me, Brother. I knew nothing of this until now. My secretive husband sent for me only a short time before he sent for you. Until that time he had said nothing, not even a hint.”
I smiled and shrugged, saying nothing again.
Caius looked mildly confused, then. “But why a statue, Publius?”
“Why not?”
He looked again at the Lady. She was crudely made, but still, she had a certain beauty.
“Indeed, why not?” he said. I joined him, gripping his shoulder as we looked at her together.
“What else could I do with her, Cay?” I asked him. “I didn’t want to end up with a simple ingot, after all. Seven years of effort deserves more of a symbol than a metal ingot. And yet I have no urgent need to use the metal. Some day I will. Some day I shall find the perfect use for it, but until then I thought to leave her in your care. I promised you that if you left me to my own time, you should have iron from those stones. So, until I find a better use for her, she’s yours.”
He ran his hand over her, feeling her substance. “The Lady of the Lake! Why doesn’t she shine, Publius?”
“She will, Cay,” I assured him. “She will. The lustre is there in the raw metal. She will shine bright, some day, when I have found the perfect use for her.”
“What does this mean, Varrus?” His voice was hushed.
“What does it mean?” I sucked in a great breath and touched the head of the statue, caressing its cold, solid hardness. “I don’t know what it means, Cay. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, apart from the fact that my theory was right. Then again, it means that in spite of what your mind tells you is impossible, stones full of iron do fall from the sky.” I was rubbing the ball of my thumb against the smooth surface of the Lady’s face, and I felt the smile on my own face as I added, “
It means, my friend, that God still has some secret wonders that He chooses to hide from men.”
“Aye, that it does,” he whispered. He reached to pick her up.
“Careful, Cay,” I warned him. “She’s heavier than you think. Here, let me help you.”
Between us, with Luceiia leading the way, we picked her up and carried her with difficulty across the yard and into the house. We placed her in his cubiculum, on a table by the window.
“I’ll be back in a minute.” I left him alone with her and returned shortly, carrying the skystone dagger. I placed it on the metal plinth on which she stood.
“There!” I said. “Like unto like! Let them feed on each other.”
“And now, Publius?” Caius’ voice was soft. “Will you make swords from your Lady of the Lake?”
“Swords?” I answered, shaking my head slightly. “No, I think not, Caius. Not swords. But perhaps one sword. I believe this lady may have one great sword in her.”
Scanning, formatting and basic
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