Alaric grimaced as he lifted another log and dropped it carefully onto the rebuilt stack. Mysteries bothered him. He was sure it was something in his blood that drove him to uncover the rhymes and reasons of man. This trait he shared with his cousin. Merlin understood what drove men to do the things they did and could anticipate what a man might do. That was what helped make Merlin so powerful. His ability to see the future was a unique gift but only one of many talents that gave Merlin the inaccurate title of sorcerer.
Alaric had no desire to see the future but knowing what drove a man helped him shape his troop into a smooth fighting force, one of the best in the army. He needed to use that hard-won skill to solve the mystery of the clearing—and solve it before his distraction cost him a crushed foot, or worse.
They finished tying the bundle of logs together and Rhys checked the horses’ harnesses again. Then Griffin moved the horses on with a soft click of his tongue. They dug in their hooves and the bundle of logs was slowly dragged closer to the villa. Alaric followed behind, watching for potential snags.
His distraction had not been alleviated by hard work, either. For three days Diana had not issued her usual list of duties, so beyond the routine of beacon duty, Alaric and his men had remained idle. For three days, Alaric had not seen Diana at all, so this morning he’d taken matters into his own hands.
* * * * *
Diana wondered if she would ever be warm again. She had not ventured outside for three days. Despite the new wood supplies keeping the furnaces roaring, she still found the library cold. The idea of stepping out and feeling the breath of snow was abhorrent.
But even while she shivered inside the blanket wrapped around her, Diana knew the cold was not the real reason she could not force herself outside. The real reason hovered on the edges of her mind. She let it linger there, not willing to face it. Even as she turned from it, an image insinuated itself into her mind—Alaric standing before her, his hand a whisper’s distance from her face. She saw again the puzzled shadow in his eyes. He was out there. That was why she would not risk going outside this room.
Diana considered the unpalatable truth. She was afraid to face him. She was afraid he had seen inside her and knew she had wanted his touch.
His touch.
Away from the protective spell of the clearing, the idea of a man touching her swept a wave of nausea over Diana and left her racked with cold shivers.
The red cloud threatened, as it had dozens of times these last few days. Diana clutched the edge of the desk and gritted her teeth, waiting for the cloud to either take her or pass. It was like a sickness, attacking her in the same way the nausea did whenever she thought of how she had wanted Alaric to touch her.
She touched the beads of sweat at her temples and wiped them away distastefully. Her body was strumming with conflicting waves of hot and cold. The room seemed suddenly too confined. She pushed herself off the high stool and almost staggered over to the door. She pulled it open a hand’s width and stood in front, feeling the cold air rush in to join the hot.
The library was tucked away in the north-west corner of the house and because of the angle she could see through the gateway to the fields that lay beyond. Her view also took in the discarded pile of timber and metal that was once the massive gates to the villa. There were men picking through the remains.
She saw one pick up one of the heavy hinges. The hinges were unique in this area. Verus had told Diana once that they had been cast and formed by the great smith Welland himself. The soldier put the hinge aside, next to another two.
Beyond the men, Diana saw Griffin at the head of two plodding horses and behind him, Rhys shepherding a large bundle of tree trunks. They were heading for the villa. She straightened up quickly and her head thumped in reaction. She pushed the door aside and stared out, unable to believe her guess could possibly be right.
They were rebuilding the gates.
Diana whirled around and picked up her cloak and threw it on. She hurried out and shut the door behind her, managing to slam her fingers in it. Shaking the injured fingers, she strode across the verandah and onto the courtyard, heading for the gateway. She could feel her anger pushing her along, pumping her arms and legs and was pleased. He would not see past her fury, so she could deal with this infraction immediately without fear he would see the truth beneath.
She marched up to the men sorting through the timber. “Where is he?” she demanded.
They looked at each other uneasily, then back at her. Their expressions were wary.
Diana realized her hands were on her hips and left them there. “Where is your captain?” she demanded again, her voice louder.
Behind the soldiers, the pair of horses hauling the logs came to a gentle stop, Griffin at their head. Alaric stepped around them—he had been hidden by the angle of their approach. “There is a problem, my lady?” he asked politely.
His inquiring tone, his courteous attitude, set fire to mental kindling. Diana’s anger wanted to want to engulf her whole. Barely maintaining an even tone, she responded, “Yes. If you will step over here?” She gave him no time to answer. Instead, she turned on one heel and walked over to the wall on the other side of the gate, away from the men. She knew she was striding heavily for every step jarred the length of her legs but was helpless to prevent it and frankly did not want to.
She could hear him following her and when she reached the wall and turned around to face him, she crossed her arms and waited for him to catch up.
He did not wait for her to speak, however. He began speaking before he halted, his voice low. “My lady, if you are about to tell me that you don’t want the gates repaired then I would advise you to save yourself the effort.” His eyes were narrowed, his face stiff. The force behind his words gave each of them the weight and impact of lead. He was furious. “You could have spoken at any time during these three days past but you chose not to. You have forfeited any right to protest.”
Her surprise dissipated much of her anger. Why was he angry? Because he is right. She brushed aside the mental voice. “I have no right to protest? When I have repeatedly stated that there are more important tasks than rebuilding a pair of gates? Is the absence of a mere three days’ worth of repetition enough to cause you to forget?”
“There is meat aplenty and wood has been collected. We have increased supplies as much as we can right now. It’s time to concentrate on the defense of this place. Firewood does not stave off Saxons.”
“What Saxon would bother with us? We have nothing for them here.”
“They will not see that. This is a big villa and the fields have been tended.”
“Your preoccupation with defense is understandable but misplaced—”
“Damn it! My lady, you know what the Saxon are like from hard experience, so why do you fight me on this?”
Diana’s breathing was ragged and quick. She could feel the heavy thumping of her heart. She couldn’t reveal that she fought to keep control of the estate in her hands.
“What did they do here?” he asked, his tone more reasonable.
The cloud. The red cloud was coming. Diana let her mouth open a little, sucking in greedy gasps of air, trying to fight the cloud off. Not here! Please not here in front of him! She knew she ought to put a hand against the wall to keep herself steady but didn’t dare for it would tell Alaric far too much.
The threat passed and Diana could focus on the present moment. She blinked and refocused on Alaric’s face. Had he seen? He was watching her and the faint puzzled expression was back in his eyes.
Diana swallowed. “We had gates. It did not stop the Saxons.” Her voice was even, for which she was grateful and the low tone Alaric might mistake as controlled fury.
“The gates I will build will be but the beginning.” He waved toward the thick roughly dressed trees that his men were laying out on the ground next to each other. “They will be ugly but they will be more than adequate.”
“Why are you doing this? Building
up the fortifications of this estate isn’t part of our agreement. It isn’t necessary.”
“Why is adequate defense not necessary?”
“This is not one of your hill forts, warrior. No matter what you do, a Saxon horde would eventually find its way in.”
He waved a hand impatiently. “Yes but any fortifications we make will slow them down. That may make the crucial difference between surviving and perishing. You have to slow them down long enough.”
“Long enough for what?”
He looked surprised. “For help to arrive.”
“Help?” Her spontaneous twinge of laughter emerged as a twisted, dry exhalation of disbelief. “Who will help us here?”
He lifted up his hand, indicating something behind her head. The beacon on the hill. “Arthur,” he said simply.
Always it was Arthur. “Your Arthur may well rush from his warm quarters to save a city but you cannot tell me that he would heed the cry of a single estate.”
“You are free to believe what you will, my lady. I know the truth.”
“Is that why you do this? Because Arthur would come at your call?”
“Or yours.”
Diana shook her head. “No, I don’t believe you.”
She waited for his customary shrug. She had grown used to his indifference. But he did not shrug. For a long moment he stared over her shoulder, his gaze distant. The absence of a reaction sent a shiver of worry over her. She had spoken ill of Arthur. Had she pushed over some invisible line of tolerance? Was he girding himself for retribution?
Finally his gaze settled upon her face once more. He crossed his arms, the big muscles bunching into hard mounds. It was easy to imagine those hands wielding weapons with deadly force. For a fraction of a heartbeat, Diana recalled the tableau in the forest—Alaric facing the charging boar, arms up high, the axe poised to strike. The total concentration on his face.
“Let me tell you a story,” Alaric said, his voice mellow.
Diana blinked. “A story?”
“About a woman—a Celtic woman, called Ygraine.”
“Ygraine?” She tasted the name.
“You don’t like the name? I can change it.”
“It’s a fine name.”
“Ygraine lived in a cot near a village just outside a great Roman town—”
“Which one?” Diana asked. “Not Eboracum, surely?”
Alaric frowned a little, then said shortly, “Luguvallium. It’s to the north, by the Wall—”
“I know where Luguvallium is,” Diana said.
He paused to gather his thoughts. “Ygraine was alone for much of the time for her husband travelled far away. She was not lonely, for she made friends of many of the people that lived nearby. Soon she had a child. She looked forward to presenting her husband with his new son and in the meantime she cared for her child. She was content.” His gaze slid away from her, as he focused on telling the story.
“One day the Saxons came. Thousands of them poured over the wall from the north and word of their coming rolled like a wave in front of them. The woman gathered up her son and a few belongings. She had no horse, so she carried the child toward Luguvallium, intending to shelter behind the walls of the town. Midway there she heard cries and the clamor of fighting. She knew she would not reach Luguvallium, so she turned off the road and made her way to a villa nearby.”
He was not telling the story to her, now. He was relating it for himself. Diana could tell by his farseeing inward gaze that he had almost forgotten she was there.
“She reached the villa gates just as the sun set and hammered on the door, calling for help. The household hid behind their walls, for by now the ground itself trembled with the coming of the Saxons and the air was thick with their war cries. They were destroying everything in their path and the stink of their razing fires and the blood they spilled carried in the wind before them.” His voice was thick with loathing. He was somehow reliving the tale. Had he been there? Diana watched his hands curl up into tight fists and the knuckles whiten as he spoke.
“Ygraine called for help. They came and held up a light to her. She asked for shelter for her and the babe, for just one night. But they saw she was not Roman, like them.” He paused. When he spoke again, his voice was deep and shadowed by damnation. “They turned her away.”
Diana drew in a sharp breath, shocked. “But—”
“They turned her away,” he continued, “and told her that the Saxons would not move farther that night—that she should skirt around their camp and go on to Luguvallium. So Ygraine tried to work her way past the Saxons but she was untried and afraid. She must have walked into a sentry, or a small wing of scouts, for they caught her.” His voice broke and he paused again.
Diana could feel her own body tight with sick tension and her breath was coming in short pants. This was no story. This was truth. Alaric’s truth.
“They caught her. They used her. Then they left her body lying on the ground next to the bawling child and moved on. The child could only have lasted a day at the most without help and there was a frost that night…” He closed his eyes and turned his head away in private grief.
His wife. Ygraine must have been his wife. Diana swallowed on a throat gone dry. Why had he told her such a dreadful tale? Why had he shared it with her?
“For too long Britain has been an island of groups of little people.” Alaric brought his gaze back to her and his voice had a snap in it. “Britons, Celts, Romans. The Saxon Shore. For generations we have squabbled over land, customs, gods, waterways, market places, grain, and forest rights. We’ve argued over whose island this is. But we have all lived here for centuries. Your family originally came from Rome but it has been here since Constantine, two hundred years ago. You’re as much a native of Britain as I am, as is every Roman family here today. But we continue to fight amongst ourselves and while we are busy fighting the Saxons will walk in and take this land away from us.”
Why had she not seen this before? It made sense, this way.
“That is why I fight for Arthur,” Alaric said, his voice low and intense. “He wants Romans to stand with Celts and Celts with Britons and slave and master to stand together, all against the Saxons, to beat them from our shores, for if we do not, we will all be lost.” The snap, the drive, suddenly drained from him. “Just as Ygraine was lost,” he added, his voice quiet. “For Arthur intends that no man shall return home to the bodies of his wife and child, as I—as Ygraine’s husband did.”
It was true. It had been his wife.
Into the silence came the heavy clatter of logs against logs, low talking, the odd laugh or curse. The industrious thud of a hammer hitting solid timber bounced off the wall behind Diana in a flat short echo. Women’s chatter floated over the wall from near the bathhouse. Children called to each other from among the oak tree’s branches. All good sounds of home.
All will be lost.
Alaric was watching her. His temple throbbed and his breath was still fast from the telling of his tale.
“’Tis small wonder you hate Romans so much.” She was surprised to hear her voice emerge as a whisper. “How is it that you fight for a man who orders you to work among us?”
“Because all people—Celts, Romans, whatever tribe you care to name—we have only ever focused on the past. We have fought to regain land that was lost, or pride that was hurt, or family that were wronged. Arthur—he fights for the future, for something that lies ahead of us.”
“A dream.”
“Yes, a dream, but Arthur will make it happen. I know that as surely as I know the hilt of my sword. It is because he looks to the future and makes me look there too, that means I don’t have to look back on the past.”
“You’re speaking of hope.”
He considered it. “You’re right,” he repeated and for a moment Diana thought it was admiration coloring his tone, before dismissing the suspicion as ridiculous. But he was smiling. It was a joyful, happy smile.
Diana found her
self smiling a little too. It occurred to her almost as a surprise that it would be very easy to like this man. “So, despite hating Romans, you build gates and strengthen defenses for a Roman family because facing toward the future means you won’t see the past.”
A bleak expression crossed his face, like a cloud eclipsing the sun. A small crease formed between his brows. “Yes, that is why I build gates,” he said but his voice was distant, as if his mind was busy dealing with another problem.
“If you insist on doing this, then I will not prevent you,” Diana said and it occurred to her that even if she wanted to, there was nothing she could do to prevent him from doing what he liked. Quickly, before Alaric could point out that fact aloud, she added, “But I do not have the faith in your Arthur that you do.”
“You think Rome will come to your rescue?”
“No,” she admitted reluctantly. “I don’t think the legions will ever return. Rome has its own problems. We’re on our own.”
“Not if we all work together.”
“Romans and Celts? It is a nice story but I cannot see it coming to pass. I know Romans who would not give your Arthur the time of day. The Bishop of Eboracum, for instance.”
Alaric threw his head back and laughed. It was unexpected and Diana watched Alaric, puzzled. Finally he ceased laughing but a smile lingered. “You might be right.”
Diana turned to face the wall of the villa. “Do you intend to dig a pit?” she asked.
“A pit?”
“For defense. A long pit, deeper than a man and lined with sharpened poles, buried point upward and covered with leaves…isn’t that the old way of doing it?”
A puzzled frown replaced his amusement. “Where did you learn about that?”
She shrugged. “The old man in Eboracum of whom I told you. He has a long memory.”
“Long indeed. It has been many years since Celts used those defenses. Certainly not in my lifetime. They’ve followed the Roman way of building walls of stone.”
Diana by the Moon Page 9