Even if some unforeseen problem arose, with Alaric at her side and working with her, she knew that she could face and overcome anything.
It never occurred to her that Alaric would not always be by her side.
Chapter Twenty
Late March 471
When he reached the end of the row, Alaric straightened and eyed the uneven parade of seedlings and sighed deeply. It was enough, he decided, to celebrate that the row was planted at all.
He felt a tap on his leg and looked around. Minna was standing at the end of the next row, looking proud. Alaric stepped over to gauge the straightness of her row. Not a seedling was out of line by so much as a finger width. He laughed. “Maybe it’s something that is bred into you, Minna. That would explain why your roads are so straight.”
She looked puzzled and indicated her row again.
Alaric touched her shoulder reassuringly. “It is well done,” he told her.
Minna smiled radiantly and picked up her basket and headed toward the barrow that stood at the edge of the field to get more seedlings.
Alaric looked toward his next empty row and scowled.
“Captain!”
Gratefully, Alaric turned to see who hailed him. Griffin walked along the rows toward him, his long legs striding out. He nodded toward Alaric’s just finished row when he reached the end and smiled. “You do better with soldiers.”
“What do you want?” Alaric demanded, with mock anger.
Griffin’s smile broadened. “Remind yourself that there is only another day of planting left.”
“Two. Diana will want the field by the stream planted too.”
Griffin groaned. “No…surely she has enough?”
Alaric shook his head. He knew without questioning her that Diana intended every flat piece of earth that would bear seed to be planted. This spring sowing and the summer harvest that followed was the critical point of the year. If the harvest was good, they would be past the worst of the food shortage and they would be able to lay down a good reserve for the next winter. But if the harvest was poor…
Alaric shuddered. It didn’t bear thinking about. Without reserves to fall back on and already weakened from over a year of famine, a poor summer harvest would ensure that many of the people on the estate would perish—the weaker ones, the frail, older women. Children.
He glanced at Minna, already busy with the next row. No. It didn’t bear thinking about. “Two days at least,” he told Griffin.
Griffin, perhaps catching a glimpse of Alaric’s thoughts from his face, nodded solemnly.
“So, what was it you wanted?”
Griffin frowned. “I’d come to say that we’ve finished the back fields but my guess is wrong, it seems.”
“What guess?” It was Diana’s voice.
Griffin stepped aside, to allow Diana to join the conversation. She was carrying the head of a hoe and looked sweaty, hot and frustrated. Alaric tried to suppress a grin. Dressed in the tunic and trews, with dirt on her hands and smeared on her face, she looked more like a child on the verge of a tantrum than Minna ever had.
Despite the dirt and scowl, Alaric was still able to trace the subtle signs of her figure, following curves he had come to know well and to see the determined angle of her chin and the small line that appeared on her forehead whenever she was angry or when she was at the peak of enjoyment when they were together at night.
“Griffin had assumed that the back fields would be the last planted,” Alaric told her, answering her question.
Diana scowled. “Not at all! There is still the field by the stream and I was thinking too, that while this good weather holds we should turn over the virgin ground behind the orchard wall where the ground only slopes a little. We could get another half-acre in there.”
Alaric laughed aloud at the dismay on Griffin’s face. “I tried to warn you, did I not?”
“Aye, you did indeed,” Griffin said sourly. “Another half-acre it is, then, and the field by the stream.” He touched his hand to his brow, a subtle salute to Diana. “My lady.”
“A moment of your time, first, Griffin.” She hefted the hoe in her hands. “The earth around the grape vines has not been turned for two years…it is like chipping at stone. The hoes break under our hands. Is there some way of strengthening them so that we can break the earth instead?”
She handed Griffin the hoe and he straightened from his subdued slouch, considering the intriguing problem. This was something for which he had a gift—it was he who Diana turned to for engineering feats. “It is a petty problem, my lady,” he assured her. “I will tend to it now, if you like.”
“Please,” Diana said gratefully.
Griffin turned to go but was halted by a cry.
“Rider approaches!” The shouted herald was distant, from the fields by the old Roman road.
Griffin narrowed his farseeing eyes. His face lit up with joy. “Pendragon colors!” he shouted and began to run toward the lone horseman riding along the dusty villa track.
The colors were seen and recognized by others, for men dropped tools and began leaping rows, heading for the road and the horseman, over a dozen of them streaming toward the villa walls.
Alaric looked at Diana, where she stood with her hands on her hips, watching the spectacle. “Shall we find out what news the messenger brings?”
Diana frowned. “Yes,” she agreed, her voice distant. She began walking toward the villa.
The men reached the horseman well before Alaric did and crowded around the man as he dismounted. Then the whole group, plus the trailing, curious women, turned and headed back to meet Alaric and Diana in the middle of the fields, the messenger among them.
As they drew closer, Alaric recognized the gangly young man as one of Gawain’s restless troop. Enoch, of Strathclyde, to the north of the Wall. It made sense for Arthur to send such a man—or rather, it would have been Merlin’s gift for calculating the strengths and weaknesses of a man that had led to Enoch’s selection—for Enoch would know the area around Eboracum well enough to find his way and he was known to Alaric.
Enoch saluted Alaric, grinning. “You’ve led me a merry chase, sir. Two days sniffing around that cursed stone city looking for a trace of you before I ran into the old tiler.”
“The Bishop knows where I am.”
“He does, does he? Then he’s a lying Christian, for he swore he’d never laid eyes on another Celtic bastard besides myself, before he sent me from his sight.”
“I see,” Alaric said evenly.
“I gather there’s no love lost there, then.” Enoch grinned. “Never liked the man, myself. Too Roman for my tastes and you know what they say about Roman tastes…” He trailed off, suddenly realizing where he was and actually seeing the people who stood silently around him listening carefully to his every word. Enoch turned redder than the tiles on the villa roof.
Alaric spared him further embarrassment. “You have a message for me?”
Enoch took a deep breath and nodded energetically, burrowing into the pouch at his waist. “Both a verbal message and this, sir,” and he handed Alaric a sealed letter.
“The verbal message?”
“Here, sir?” Enoch asked, glancing around at the gathering of women, children and soldiers-turned-farmers. He seemed confused.
“Here is as good as anywhere else.”
Enoch pulled himself together with visible effort and came to a shambling attention. “The branch has gone out, sir. You’re wanted back with the main host. You’re to leave at once. You and all your men.”
Griffin let out a yell of sheer exuberance and it seemed that every man there broke out into simultaneous cheers and inane babbling. For a moment pandemonium reigned and Enoch stood with a large grin on his face, happy to be the bearer of such well-received news.
Alaric felt as if he’d been kicked by a warhorse. For a moment even the happy noises around him faded and swelled, as he struggled to cope with the news. Time to leave. Time to leave others be
hind. Again. He tried to get his chest to work, to draw in breath, while even his sight began to fade.
“Alaric?” Diana’s voice. Soft. Gentle. The way he loved it best, from those times they had together, when she dropped all pretense and came to him unguarded.
Diana.
He forced himself to breathe, so that he could focus on her, see her. She was by his side, concerned. Then Rhys was there, with a smile wider than Alaric had seen for months. “Back to war! Tomorrow we leave, yes?”
Alaric tried to form words but could not. It was beyond him. He looked at Diana—
I will go and leave her here, defenseless, alone?
—at her white, still face and her eyes, wide with alarm.
Say something!
Drawing on a depth of will he didn’t know he possessed, Alaric made himself smile at Rhys. “Yes, tomorrow we return.”
He pushed himself into a walk, one step at a time, away from the merry throng. He had no reason to partake in their joy.
* * * * *
Around the hour of the evening meal, Alaric returned to their bedchamber. Diana heard the door shut from her seat in the library and put aside the sheet of her father’s perfectly formed and almost illegible handwriting that she had been pretending to read and went through to the middle room.
Alaric was washing his face in the bowl of water standing on the shelf by the bed. He looked up as she entered and Diana’s step faltered a little, for he wore the shadows of an old man.
The fear that had been riding on her shoulder all afternoon reached around to grab at her throat. But she spoke with perfectly calm tones, for she had been practicing them all afternoon too. “You’re just in time for supper. It will be a happy meal tonight.”
It was as if he had not heard her. He dried his face with a cloth and put it aside. Then he took her hand.
“Come with me.”
“Where?”
“I would like to walk.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
Diana thought of the supper that was about to be served. She knew she would not be able to eat a mouthful of it. She rather doubted anyone would notice that the chair at the head of the table was empty. Not tonight.
“I will come with you.”
* * * * *
At first Diana thought Alaric was leading her to the spring that was the source of the stream that ran past the villa but he branched off from the main path to follow a narrower one that Diana hadn’t seen there before.
The trail led a winding route up the side of the hill. They were following the path that each pair of watchmen used to travel to and from the beacon at the top of the hill. The climb at the top was sharp and hard but at the very crest, steps had been carved into the hillside and they stepped up onto the flat top of the hill together.
Almost immediately, one of Alaric’s men appeared, sword in hand, wearing a helmet and shield. “Sir.” He glanced at Diana and she saw puzzlement in the glance but he was well trained and did not voice or otherwise show it.
Alaric nodded acknowledgment. “Give me your sword and shield and both of you can go.”
“Sir?” Puzzled now.
“You heard me. You’re relieved.”
“Yes sir!” The man held out his sword, hilt first and then his shield as Alaric took them. Then he whistled a sharp, piercing shrill and a second armed man appeared from among the long grass on the hill. Both men turned and climbed down the steps.
Alaric took Diana’s hand once more and walked across the long grass to the middle of the tor. The crest of the hill was many paces wide. Sitting approximately in the middle was a tall pile of timber. It reached the height of six or seven men and was almost as wide at the base as it was high. Draped over it were old sails. The mixture of wax and sheep fat rubbed into the cloth made the sails virtually waterproof and well able to shield the timber beneath from all but the worst weather.
Diana turned and looked across the broad, shallow valley that lay at the foot of the hill. Across the other side, over acres of forest and a little cultivated land, was another hill, similar to this one. It too, had a pair of soldiers upon it and a tall beacon pyre. And beyond that would be another hill, just the same.
She looked back at the beacon she stood next to. It must have taken many days to build it. This was the beacon Alaric had married her to preserve.
Alaric walked right up to the pile, laid down the shield and sword and rested his hand against the fabric cover.
“When I was sixteen I swore an oath of allegiance to a boy no older than I, who on that day had fought his first battle, rallied every petty king and leader in Britain to his side and turned certain defeat to victory. I was young and it was my first battle, too, but I have never once since that time ever regretted that allegiance, or the oath I took that day.”
Until now. Diana almost spoke the words aloud but bit her lip, instead and tried to dam back the panic inside her. She knew she must hear and understand all that Alaric said here, for later she would need whatever crumbs of comfort she could find in his words.
Alaric reached inside his tunic and pulled out the letter from Arthur. It was crumpled, now and cracked from having been laid flat. Alaric offered it to her.
Diana took it and opened it.
Kinsman—
Diana frowned. Then different facts connected up. Merlin and Alaric were cousins. Merlin and Arthur were first cousins. So there was a connection there. Enough to justify the salutation. She continued to read the letter.
I have had information from Brittany about our old foes. Winter has been brutal, it seems. Both starvation and Hengest’s brother, Octa, have stirred the Saxons to all-out, total war.
“There are reports of hundreds of ships preparing to sail. This may be the first stage in our final victory—the victory we have dreamed of these last twelve years.
“Come at once. I need you here.
--Arturos
Diana lowered the letter and let it roll up again. “You cannot think of not answering his summons.”
“Yet all I seem to be able to recall is his warning. All-out, total war. Hundreds of ships.” Alaric turned to face her. “There will be thousands of Saxons pouring into Britain from every safe landing they can find. They will spread over the country like a plague.”
“That makes Arthur’s summons irresistible.”
“You don’t understand. When I leave tomorrow, every man in the villa rides with me. You will be totally defenseless.”
Then she did understand. “It’s not as though I’ve never been in that position before,” she said gently.
“But now it’s different.”
“Why? Because I am your wife?”
Alaric looked startled and Diana knew she had touched the truth. Lowering her voice, she said, “I am not Ygraine. I have a villa to shelter behind—a villa with extra defenses that you built.”
“Those defenses will not withstand a full, determined attack—not for long. This is a country villa, not Tintagel!”
“I can take care of everyone left here. I’ve done it before.”
“That is exactly what I don’t want you to do.” Alaric once more rested his hand against the beacon pyre. “If trouble comes, I want you to call for me. Send word and I will come.”
“Send word?” She looked at the hand that rested on the pyre. “You mean, light the beacon?”
“Yes.”
“But…that is to call Arthur—to give him warning of a Saxon incursion in the north.”
“They are one and the same. Where Arthur goes, so do I. If trouble finds you, it will be Saxons at the root of it.”
Diana shook her head. “If I am to truly control the estate, I cannot call for help at the first need. I must provide for them. I must be the one who shelters them. I will not call to your Arthur for help.”
Alaric caught her shoulders in his hands and Diana believed he would shake her for emphasis but he merely held her tightly.
“He is not only my Arthur
. He fights for all Britain and that includes you too. I know you’ve never believed that of Arthur, or trusted that his intentions are good. But it doesn’t matter what you believe, for he knows, as do I, that the only way Britain will survive the next few years is if we all help each other. We have to stand together.”
Diana stared at him. She was touched by wonder, for Alaric’s features had changed from the familiar to some strange, driven creature. Haunted.
It was then she realized with extraordinary clarity that she loved him, with a fierce passion that matched his own. It was a love unlike anything else she had ever heard of or experienced. It was, quite simply, everything she was. It transformed her.
“Promise me you will send word if there is trouble. Promise me,” Alaric demanded and this time he did shake her a little.
With the new clarity of her vision came inevitable knowledge. Alaric needed her promise to be able to leave. Arthur and Britain was his sworn allegiance and it was that loyalty that made him the man that she loved, but he was torn in two by the dilemma of leaving her behind.
She had to release him.
“I promise,” she whispered, for her voice would carry no more power. The words wrenched at her.
Alaric closed his eyes and sighed, then gathered her up against him. Diana listened to the frantic thud of his heart and saw again the deep relief she had glimpsed in his eyes. For that reaction, she was glad she had given him her word. Yet her word allowed him to leave. Perhaps he would be like Verus and never come home again.
* * * * *
There was a mist. The dawn light filtered through weakly and from the colonnade Alaric could not see the villa gates. The mist clung to everything, soaking it with damp fingers.
The entire household was there to see them off. The murmuring of their voices was subdued, sodden from the mist.
A few paces away, Rhys stood by Octavia, who was weeping quietly and continuously. He looked less than happy. Alaric was well acquainted with that bad humor. He had been companion to it since Enoch had made his announcement.
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