by Jack Whyte
“None of you is used to, or prepared for, what I will demand of you within these next few days—” I threw up my hand to cut short the mutterings of protest as they began. “And I know, too, that your military training has been long and thorough.” That sounded better to them and they shrugged, appeased and slightly mollified, preening themselves and flexing their muscles gently. “But you are trained as horsemen. Mounted warriors. Knights, if you will. Not infantry. Not foot soldiers. And foot soldiers is what you are become, here and now, today and tomorrow, and you will find the effort overwhelming. And so I wish to make it clear immediately that if any one of you—anyone at all—finds the effort too much for him within the next few days, he must say so, and we will leave him safe, with a companion, to await our eventual return. There will be no disgrace attached to that. Some efforts are too much for men not trained in the discipline required, no matter their proficiency in other things. We all have limitations, and none of you has been faced with this hardship before. You may find, any one among you, that your limitations lie in this … and if so, you must make that clear to me. Do you understand me?” There came a rumbled chorus of assent, and I nodded again. “Good, so be it. Now we must move quickly and quietly—not in silence, but it would be best to make no noise that might be heard from afar. We have no friends in this land. Bear that in mind until we are safe afloat again, and let’s be on our way.”
We moved on immediately, having established among ourselves that the march would be endured by all without complaint of any kind, no matter how grave the nuisance of blistered feet or the pain of cramped and aching muscles.
We camped that night in a quiet woodland glade between two low hills, having seen not a sign of human habitation since we left the settlement at Glastonbury, and sometime before dawn a gentle, steady rain began to fall. We rose up in the predawn darkness and broke our fast as we moved on, huddled against the weather and chewing on roasted grain and chopped dried fruit and nuts from our ration scrips. Sometime after noon the rain dried up, although the clouds grew ever more threatening and sullen, and toward midafternoon I began to recognize landmarks: hill formations and a single grove of enormous trees, sheltered among the hills, that was achingly familiar. I stopped there, signaling a halt, and as my escort spread themselves out to rest, vainly trying to find dry spots beneath the towering trees, I sat on my garron, gazing northeastward toward the mist-shrouded brow of one particular hill that, had it not been there, would have permitted me to see beyond it one of the dearest sights of my young manhood. I was glad the hill was there, however, for I had no desire to see beyond it and I felt not the slightest temptation to approach closer to it.
From its crest, I knew, I would have been able to look out across a stretch of forested plain to another distant, solitary hill that stood like a sentinel among the rich lands surrounding it, its crest crowned by a strong-walled fortification that had once housed the first true High King of all Britain, Arthur Pendragon, with all his family and friends, his armed might, and his great and lofty and ultimately impossible ideals. I had no doubt it would be inhabited still, but it was no longer Camulod, and I had no wish to know who ruled there now. I climbed down from my horse and ate and rested with my young men, and then I marshaled them again and struck onward, south by east on the last leg of my journey, just as the clouds above us pressed even lower and the rain began to fall in earnest.
For three more hours we made our way through trackless, sodden countryside, our wax-smeared, woolen foul-weather cloaks rendered almost useless by the hissing, incessant downpour and the sheer volume of water that cascaded upon us from every tree and bush and blade of grass we touched in passing. I rode following the contours of the land, half blinded by the downpour, remembering clearly that once there had been pathways here; little used now, they had disappeared in all but a few barren or sheltered places. I pressed on in silence, saying nothing because there was nothing I could have said to comfort my hapless companions, who must have been grieving, no doubt, for the open, sunny June skies of their homeland far to the south, beyond the seas.
And then we arrived at the point I had been seeking, a point invisible to everyone but me. I slid down from my mount’s back, mindful of the steep and treacherously muddy slopes that lay ahead, and guided the garron carefully down the narrow, winding path that led beneath the crown of trees that obscured all evidence of the small, hidden valley below. Clovis and his friends followed me, muttering quietly among themselves and treading with great caution as they wondered where we were going and why I had brought them to this desolate and forsaken place. They fell silent, however, as I led them out of the dark tunnel of the descent into the open, grass-floored glade that lay beside the tiny lake at the bottom of the hill. A small building of gray stone at the far end of the glade betrayed no signs that anyone lived there, although its roof appeared to be intact and the door looked to be solid and tight-shut. I told my companions to wait where they were, handed the reins of my horse to Clovis, and walked alone toward the small house.
I have no idea how long I stood in the semidarkness of the single small room within the four stone walls, but it was long enough for my son to grow concerned and come looking for me. The sound of his voice calling me brought me back to awareness, but even so I made no response until he pulled the door open and stood there, peering in at me.
“Father? Are you well?”
I sighed then, I remember, surprised by the effort it required, and turned to gaze at him, hovering there on the threshold, unsure whether he should enter. Looking out at him from the dimness of the interior, it seemed to me that he shone with a peculiar brilliance, his sodden cape glittering strangely in the pale light cast by the watery late-afternoon sun that had emerged from a break in the clouds. Two of his friends stood a few paces behind him, still closely wrapped in their foul-weather cloaks, watching tensely.
“I’m well enough,” I answered and told him to come inside, alone, and close the door. As he obeyed, I said the first thing that had come into my mind, and my tone was chill, even to my own ears. “Pharus and Lars, behind you—they were still wrapped in their cloaks when you opened the door. And you, your hands are empty.”
He stood blinking at me in the dimness, too surprised by my words even to look about him. I gave him no time to respond. “I thought I had trained you better than that. Why did you come to the door?”
His lips moved several times before he could frame his words. “I … You had been in here a long time. I thought—”
“No, Clovis, you did not think. You came because you were concerned for me. Concerned that something might have befallen me. And what if something had? What if I had surprised an enemy in here and had been killed? You opened that door with no blade in your hand. That could have been the death of you, too. And Pharus and Lars might have died before they could even throw back their cloaks, let alone draw their swords. That kind of carelessness invites death.”
He stared at me for long moments, biting his lower lip gently, then nodded. “You’re right, Father.”
“I know I am. Now look about you, now that you are here. This is what we came to find.”
His guileless face registered renewed surprise, and I watched his eyes scan the tiny room, noting how they passed across the dusty bed and then wavered before snapping back to what he thought he had seen. I heard the sibilant hiss as he sucked in a shocked, sharp breath that stuck in his throat.
The figure on the cot, beneath the rumpled, dust-coated bedding of animal skins, had been dead for a long time. There was no way to tell how long, but all signs of putrefaction had long since dried up and withered into dust, leaving only a skeleton partially covered with scraps of dried skin. The vault of the rib cage was barely discernible beneath the coverings, and the hair that had once adorned the skull had fallen free and now lay scattered in wispy clumps like silken, ash white cobwebs. Clovis swallowed hard and licked his lips, vainly trying to moisten them, then looked sideways at me.
“Did you expect … this?”
I answered him without removing my gaze from the bald dome of the partly covered skull. “I had hoped otherwise, but I feel no surprise. He was an old man even when I last saw him, and that was nigh on twenty-five years ago. Had he lived until now, he would have been more than eighty years old.” I stepped toward the bed, avoiding the two large bundles that lay between it and me, and knelt on one knee, bending forward to remove the bearskin that covered the lower part of the skull, and as I lifted it to bare the smooth, almost toothless jaws, my mind supplied a memory of the face that had once covered these grinning bones. “Farewell, old friend,” I whispered, and covered his head completely. “We will bury you decently now.”
“Who was he, Father?”
I looked up at my youngest son, noting his hushed voice and seeing the curiosity and wonder in his wide eyes, and then I pushed myself to my feet and looked back again at the lumpy shapes of the bones beneath the bed skins.
“A friend, Clovis, and more than that, trusted above all others save one, yet trusted equally with that one. A dear and priceless friend, although his very name struck terror into other people’s souls. The man who fleshed these bones was a hero in the truest sense, greater than any hero you have ever dreamed of. Larger than life itself and more marvelous than any tale could tell of him.”
I stooped again and tucked the dusty coverings more securely around the ethereal form on the bed. “In addition to that, he was the sole man in Britain who had perhaps more integrity and honor than the King himself; a champion, born of the noblest blood of ancient Rome … as well as a teacher and a mentor greater than any I have ever known, including the blessed Germanus.” Again I straightened up, my eyes still fixed on the body’s outline. “Above all else, however, first and last, he was my friend, although he forced me to abandon all my friends and thereby saved my life. This is Merlyn, Clovis.”
I heard a strangled, gurgling gasp. My son’s face was now filled with fear and horror. “He was a leper!”
I fought to swallow my sudden, unreasonable anger. It was I myself who had told Clovis of the leprosy, but I had no control over the fear the very mention of the dread disease could generate. I willed myself to smile, disparaging his fear without demeaning him. “At least you didn’t say he was a sorcerer. Most people did, and many thought he was both: leper and sorcerer, cursed by Heaven.” The lad stood motionless, gazing at me wide-eyed, and I stepped closer to him, placing one arm about his shoulders and sweeping the other toward the bed. “He has been dead for years, Clovis, you can see that, so any threat of leprosy that ever was is long since gone. And he was never a sorcerer, despite what silly people say. You have nothing to fear from Merlyn, nor would you have were he alive and sitting here today, so take that awestruck look off your face. We have work to do here.”
My son swallowed and made an effort to empty his face of fear. “What kind of work, Father?”
“A burial, for one thing. And we have to make a litter to carry those.” I gestured to the two large bundles lying between us and the bed. “If you look, I think you’ll find they are for me.”
He blinked, frowning, then bent over to peer at the bundles before stretching out one hand to tug a small oblong package free from the leather strips that bound the larger. He held it up to his eyes, squinting in the gloom of the tiny room as his lips formed the letters of the single word written on it.
“Hastatus? What does that mean?”
“It means I’m right. That was his name for me. It means spearman in the old Roman tongue.”
“No, that’s lancearius.”
“Aye, it is now, but a lancearius is a spear thrower and he’s a cavalryman, throwing from horseback. The old word was hastatus, and the hastatus was an infantryman. He held on to his spear. Had he thrown it, he would have left himself weaponless.”
Clearly mystified, Clovis frowned and held the package out to me. I took it, hefting it in my hand and gauging the weight of it as being equal to four, perhaps six sheets of parchment.
“Spearman,” he repeated, as though testing the sound of the word.
“Aye, Spearman. Sometimes he shortened it to Spear—Hasta.”
“I thought the old word for a spear was pilum.”
I glanced at him again and smiled slightly, surprised to hear that he had even heard of the weapon. “It was, but the pilum was a different kind of spear from the hasta, heavy and cumbersome with a long, thin iron neck—a rod that made up half the length of the thing. It was too heavy to throw far, a defensive weapon, designed to be thrust into an enemy’s shield. The pilum would bite deep and then the iron rod would bend and the weight of the thing would drag the man’s shield down, making it useless. The hasta, on the other hand, was a fighting spear, designed to be held by its wielder. Nowadays the lancearius uses a light throwing spear, a javelin. I used to be very good at throwing them myself, and that’s how I got the name. It’s a long story and someday I’ll tell you about it.
“In the meantime I want to read this, and I would like to be alone while I do it, so take those tools from the corner there, if you would, and set your friends to digging a grave by the lakeside … . Hold you, I have not finished.” He had nodded, accepting my instructions as I spoke them, and had immediately begun to turn away to collect the tools, but now he stopped and turned back to look at me again. “Pardon me, Father,” he said, “I thought you had dismissed me.”
“Not quite. I told you to dig a grave by the side of the lake, but I have a particular spot in mind, so listen carefully. As you walk out of here, look down and to your left, toward the water. You will see a small knoll there, about halfway toward the water’s edge and safely above the high-water mark. It’s not a large knoll and it has nothing to distinguish it, apart from its isolation, but it is already a grave, so be sure you keep your people’s minds on their task, lest they profane a sacred spot unknowingly.” My son was frowning now, not blackly but in curiosity.
“Who is buried there, Father? May I ask?”
“You may. The grave holds the remains of Merlyn’s wife and his unborn son, brutally and mysteriously killed here more than sixty years ago by unknown assailants. Merlyn never completely recovered from their loss, and after Arthur’s death he spent the remainder of his life here in this valley, close to their resting place. It is our task now to reunite him with them, finally. You need not dig the grave so deep as to disturb the bones already there. The small bulk of Merlyn’s bones will not require much burying, but the fact that they are there, in the same soil, may bring the old man pleasure where he is today. So at least we can hope.” Clovis nodded.
“I will see to it myself.”
“Good, so be it. But be sure to make no mention of whom we bury there.” I raised a pointing finger to him and lowered my voice. “I mean that, Clovis. I need you to be discreet in this. No mention of Merlyn’s name. Say only that we found a dead man here, long dead—no hint of who he is or might have been.” He nodded, and I inclined my head, accepting his agreement. “Good. We’ll lay him down above this little lake of his and pray for him, then let him rest in solitude and dignity. But if any one of our companions should even guess at who lies here, word will get out, inevitably, and my old friend’s rest might be disturbed at some future time by idle fortune seekers … although God knows there’s little in the way of fortune to be found in this place. Go now, and when you’ve found the best spot you can find, come back and tell me before you start them digging.”
He looked at me for a moment longer and then collected an old, rusted mattock and a spade from where they had sat unused for years, festooned with cobwebs.
When I was alone again I looked about me one more time, scanning the small room’s few contents and furnishings. Merlyn’s life here had been spartan. Two ancient cloaks hung from pegs behind the door, and the only other item in the place, apart from bed, table, and a single chair, was a battered wooden chest, a footlocker, at the end of the bed. I opened it and found it held nothing
more than a few folded old garments. I lowered the lid gently and then sat on it while I slid my thumb along the flap that edged the letter that bore my name, hearing the dried wax of its seal crack and fall to the floor. There were five sheets inside, written in the wavering scrawl of an old man’s hand. I held them up to catch the light from the small window and I began to read.
Hasta:
Greetings, dear friend. I hope you will read these words someday and think on me with kindness.
I have lost track of time. Strange now, for me even to think of that after so many years. When I was young, time was the most important and demanding element in life. But then things changed when the world and all I knew in it fell into Chaos. Since then I have been alone, and time has no significance to one in perpetual solitude. The days pass unremarked and become months, then years, and one thinks more of seasons than of days. New snow, or green buds, mark the passage of the years, and one year is much like another. Only now, when the need to think of time has returned to me with thoughts of you, do I realize that I have no knowledge of where or when I am, or of how long I have been in this same, empty place. When last I thought of it, I had been here, pursuing my task, for a decade and a half. But I lost track of such things soon after that, when I fell ill of a fevered wound dealt me by a visiting bear. I spent I know not how long a time after that in some nether world, from which I returned eventually, alive but weak and confused. Since then, I have not bothered to attempt to mark the passage of time.