The Lance Thrower cc-8

by Jack Whyte

  “I found a set of pulley blocks in the toolbox with the ax.” He looked from one to the other of us, but when neither of us showed any reaction he continued. “There’s no poles, but we have an ax and we’re surrounded by trees, and we’ve lots and lots of rope.”

  “So?” Tristan was clearly not understanding what Bors was telling him, and neither was I. “What are you talking about, Bors?”

  He blinked at us both in astonishment, and then he grew suddenly confident. “We can build a hoist, like the ones the sailors used to load the feed for our horses when we left Gaul. It only needs four stout poles, a few ropes, and a set of pulleys, and we have all of those. Once it’s assembled, we need simply strap Master Perceval to a board and hoist him up directly to the cart, straight up the face of the cliff.”

  I remembered seeing the device he was describing, swinging heavy sacks from the wharf and delivering them safely to the ship’s deck, but I had paid it no great amount of attention and now my memory of its workings was clouded, to say the least.

  “Straight up the face of the cliff. Can you build such a device, Bors?”

  He looked at me wide-eyed. “Aye, sir, I can.”

  “Where did you learn to do such a thing?”

  His face went blank with astonishment. “Nowhere, Master Clothar. I simply watched what the mariners did, and paid attention to the way the device worked. It was very simple. And then I remembered having seen a similar thing, but much larger, on my father’s farm when I was a boy. One of the workers there, a foreman, taught me about pulleys and tackle and the way they work. He showed me how a single man can lift many times his own weight simply by using ropes threaded through pulleys.”

  “And so you now believe you can build such a device and use it to haul Perceval to safety up there on the clifftop?”

  “Aye, sir, I do.”

  “And the first step toward doing it is what? Cutting down four trees?”

  “Four, aye, Master.”

  I looked at him one last time, setting my chin and pursing my lips before I spoke. “You are absolutely sure you can do this?”

  I saw the determination in his eyes. “Aye, Master, I’m sure.”

  “Well, then, let’s go and select our trees.”

  Twenty-four hours after that—having found our trees and felled them, then dragged them close to the top of the cliff, cut them to size, and harnessed them together to form a tripod and a hoisting arm—Tristan and I had learned how to thread a rope through a set of pulley blocks and how to set up a simple gin pole hoist.

  Perceval had regained consciousness about the time we set off to hunt for suitable trees, and he had been suffering unimaginable pain ever since, so that lines newly stamped into his face appeared to have been etched there years earlier. We fed him rich, blood-thickened venison broth spiced with wild garlic and onions that grew in profusion close by where we were camped at the cliff base, but he had little appetite, too badly in need of rest to care about eating and in too much pain to be capable of resting. By the time we had erected the hoist, however, he had lapsed into unconsciousness, and although that would make our task of raising him easier, it also worried us deeply. We strapped him securely to a stretcher made of wrist-thick sapling stems and raised him quickly, straight up the cliff as Bors had promised. Once we had him safely there, we transferred him to the bed of the cart, which we had loaded with dried bracken from the sheltered bottom of the cliff to cushion him as much as possible.

  By that time, however, it was growing dark, and after a hurried discussion, weighing the pros and contras of attempting to travel through unknown woodland in the dark of night, we decided we had no other choice but to remain where we were for another night and set off for Verulamium early in the morning. So we lit a cooking fire and set about cooking more of Tristan’s venison, which we ate with the last of the bread we had brought with us.

  We retired early that night, looking to be astir and ready to move off before dawn broke, but I for one could find no rest, fretting over the health of our helpless friend. Bishop Enos had some wonderful healers and physicians among his priests, I knew, and I would not be satisfied until Perceval was safely delivered into their hands.

  We arrived back in Verulamium before noon the next day, having been absent for five days, and we were traveling very slowly, painfully aware of the agonized sounds coming from the rear of the cart at every bump in the surface of the ground. Once within the town, however, it was the work of mere moments to deliver Perceval to the building that Bishop Enos had dedicated to permanent use as a hospital. There, a tall and gaunt old priest called Marcus, who had once served as a military surgeon with the legions in Africa before the invasion of the Vandals in 429, took Perceval off our hands and promised he would have the finest care anyone could have. Father Marcus stripped off the splints Tristan had applied and examined the work that we had done to repair the leg, and was lavish with his praise for Tristan. We were grateful to be able to leave our friend and brother in his care.

  I made my way directly to Bishop Enos’s quarters to inform him of what had happened to Perceval, only to find that the Lady Demea was there, deep in conversation with the bishop. I slipped away without either of them having seen me and went outside, where I found young Maia sitting on a concrete water conduit, her long shadow stretched out before her, her slender feet bare in the gutter by the side of the road. She was completely unaware of my presence as I walked up behind her.

  “Maia,” I said, “I’m not angry at you, so there’s no need to run away from me.”

  She jumped to her feet as I spoke and spun around to face me, her face flushing hotly, and after a few moments when she was plainly searching for words, she said, “I’m not afraid and I’m not running anywhere.”

  “Good, I am glad to hear that, because I need to talk with you. I would like you to come by the basilica tomorrow when I am practicing with my spears and show me how you threw that one. I am not at all upset about that, I promise you. In fact the opposite is true. So will you do that? Will you come tomorrow?”

  “I can’t. I won’t be here.”

  “What do you mean? You won’t come to the basilica?”

  She shrugged, her face regaining its normal color. “No, I mean I won’t be here in Verulamium tomorrow. We are leaving for home in the morning, returning to Chester.”

  “You are? That’s very sudden, isn’t it? Why?”

  She shrugged her shoulders, the movement emphasizing how thin and insubstantial she appeared to be, and yet I knew she was as strong and lithe as a whip, despite the impression she conveyed of being like a young deer or a newborn foal, all eyes and long, unsteady legs. “Because the King and Queen’s prayers have been answered,” she replied. She spoke without inflection, and nothing in her demeanor indicated that she might hold any opinion of any kind on what she was reporting, but there was something impossibly subtle about her words that made me look at her more closely, wondering if there was really cynicism in her speech. She paid me no attention, however, and was already continuing. “Saint Alban has interceded in Heaven on their behalf and Queen Demea is now with child and so we must go home now. That is why I am here. I’m waiting for the Queen. She is talking with Bishop Enos.”

  I continued to stare at her for the space of a few more heartbeats, then told myself not to be so silly. The child was only twelve, after all. That was a marriageable age, certainly, but only for rare unions between young girls and very old men whose mortality was questionable. It was no indicator of either womanhood or intellect.

  “I see,” I said, nodding slowly. “Has she been there long, with the bishop?”

  “No, not long. Why?”

  “Oh, no reason. I’m sorry you are leaving so soon. I shall miss you.”

  “I’m not. I can’t wait to go home.”

  “I don’t suppose you would care to show me how you threw that spear right now, would you?”

  She cocked her head and looked at me strangely, her elfin face with i
ts enormous piercing blue eyes unreadable. “Now? But you have no spears.”

  “True, but they’re nearby. I can have them here in moments. What say you, would you like to try for that target again?”

  Her eyes sparkled, and as she straightened her back I noticed again how tall she was, unusually tall for a girl her age, and thin as a sapling tree. She smiled, very slightly, white teeth gleaming briefly behind wide red lips. “I don’t know if there’s enough time.”

  “Of course there is. There’s always time for what we love to do. Stay here until you see me cross the street over there, then follow me into the basilica. It won’t take long for you to show me how you throw.”

  I had been right the first time I saw her. She threw naturally and without thought, uncoiling into the cast reflexively and following through perfectly and simply because she had that kind of grace in her normal range of motion. She threw three spears, and two of them hit their targets. I was full of praise and I could see she was delighted with her own prowess. But she never lost sight of the fact that she ought to be sitting outside the bishop’s house, waiting for the Lady Demea, and so I thanked her for her demonstration and allowed her to go on her way. She flashed me a dazzling smile and darted away like a deer toward the door, where she hesitated and looked back at me, lingering.

  “What? Say it.”

  “Where did you learn to throw spears like that?”

  I shrugged and grinned at her. “Like what?” I was being facetious, but she took me seriously.

  “Like magic, the way you do, with the cord wrapped around the shaft. I’ve never seen that here.”

  “No, you wouldn’t, not in Britain. I learned to do it in Gaul, across the sea.”

  “I’ve never seen anyone who throws better than you. I have never seen spears like those, either.”

  “That’s because there are none. These spears have no equal.”

  “I shall call you Hastatus,” she said then, sounding very grown up and sure of herself. “It means a spearman. Do you mind having a new name?”

  “No,” I said, smiling again. “Not at all. Not if it is bestowed by someone as skilled and gracious as you are, Lady Maia.”

  A flicker of something that might have been annoyance crossed her face, and I thought I had offended her with my levity, but then she nodded. “So be it, then. You shall be my Hastatus. And I’m glad you don’t like Cynthia. I don’t either, but most people simply can’t see beyond her face.” She flicked a hand in farewell and was gone, leaving me somewhat astonished by her last words and even more so by her unexpected percipience. I had been sure that no one suspected my dislike of her sister, Cynthia, because I had gone to great lengths to conceal it, for reasons that I could not define even to myself. And yet this Maia, a mere child, had seen through all my dissembling and had clearly identified my dislike of her sibling. That, in itself, was surprising enough, but upon further thought I began to perceive for myself that young Maia was much wiser than I would ever have suspected, and mature far beyond her years. At an age when most girls were besotted with outward appearances of beauty and attractiveness, this child was astute enough to know, to her own satisfaction, that physical, facial beauty is a mere façade, an external coating, and one that few people ever try to see through or beyond. I found myself smiling in admiration and wonderment as I followed her out of the building, hoping to speak with her again, but she had long since vanished.

  In the morning we turned out to bid farewell to Symmachus and his party, and I was surprisingly reluctant to see them go. Cynthia, I noticed, had apparently changed her mind about me, for she did not address a single word to me, and she left for home without deigning to glance in my direction. Maia the Brat sat beside her, and although she did not smile upon me either, she at least rewarded me with a tiny, private flip of the hand as her carriage pulled away.

  Tristan nudged me as the wagons left and nodded toward Bors, who stood forlorn, gazing hopelessly after his disappearing love.

  “Look at him, poor fellow. I remember how that feels, to watch your first love ride away forever. But he’ll get over it quickly. We all do.” He looked back at the retreating wagons. “That’s quite the young lady. I don’t think I have ever seen anything quite like her.”

  I managed to find a smile to mask my disagreement. “Cynthia? She’s unique, I’ll grant you, but I think I may not die of grief if I never see her again.”

  He grunted, a single, muffled bark of amusement and agreement. “I believe you there, but I wasn’t talking about the beautiful Cynthia. It was her sister I meant.”

  “Who, Maia the Brat?” I laughed aloud. “She is a delight, I’ll not begrudge her that. And she’s quick, and clever, and has a mind of her own. But she’s just a child, for all that, a little girl.”

  “A little girl … aye, right. You come back and tell me that in three or four years, if we ever run into her again. I guarantee she’ll be the loveliest creature you’ll ever have seen. She’ll bewitch you, just as her sister bewitched Bors.”

  I laughed again. “Not me, Tristan. I’m unbewitchable.”

  “She doesn’t think so now, not that one, believe me. She likes you very much, and not in the way you obviously expect of a twelve-year-old.”

  “Maia? Come on, man, I’ve barely spoken to the child, and when I did we talked of throwing spears.”

  He shrugged elaborately and held up his hands. “Your pardon then, forget I mentioned it, but I know more about that young woman than you do.”

  I looked at him in surprise. “You do? How can you?”

  He grinned at me and danced away, his arms raised defensively as though he expected me to pummel him with my fists. “I ask questions, and I listen to the answers, and so I learn much more than those who never ask and far, far more than those who ask but never listen.” Knowing he was baiting me, I refused to rise to his goad, but he kept going anyway. “The young woman has a mind of her own … but she has secrets, too. And she would rather be a boy, at this stage in her life, so she trains with weapons when she is at home in Chester, where all her people love her. And her name is not Maia, although she wouldn’t tell you that.”

  Suddenly I found that I had lost patience with his bantering. “Don’t play the fool, Tristan, of course her name is Maia. I had it directly from her mother.”

  He sobered instantly, looking at me eye to eye, the smile on his face fading as swiftly as the humor left his tone. “Stepmother, Clothar. Demea is her stepmother. The child was born on the first day of May—hence the name, Maia. And Demea and Symmachus met and fell in love in the month of May when the child was three, and they were wed the following May. But only after that did Symmachus start calling the child Maia, to please his new wife and to ingratiate her to the child. Little Maia’s name had been the same as her real mother’s prior to that, and the Lady Demea preferred not to be reminded of that name or to have her husband reminded of it. The child’s real name is Gwinnifer. Mind you, she seldom uses it, save among friends.”

  Gwinnifer. I had never heard the name before but it resonated, somehow, in my breast. I swung around on my heel to look after the cavalcade, but they had long since passed out of view, and the road lay empty.

  IX

  MERLYN

  TELL ME ABOUT THE DREAM you had … when Germanus spoke to you.”

  I sat gaping at my questioner, wondering how he could have known of such a thing, and he smiled and waved a hand toward a table to his right, where papers and parchments were strewn in apparent chaos.

  “Enos sent me a letter telling me about it and alerting me that you were on your way here. He had no way of knowing which of you would find me first—you, personally, or one of his priests—but he sent the letter anyway, anticipating that one of his people might reach me and warn me of your coming. So, when was this dream?”

  I shrugged and leaned back into my chair. “I cannot say, with any certainty, Master Merlyn. It was at the end of the winter. Most of the snow had vanished, and Bishop Enos ha
d finally been able to go out into the countryside, about his work. The earliest bloom of flowers had come and gone again … it was the end of March, perhaps early in April.”

  I was sitting comfortably, in a folding, curule-style armchair that had a leather seat and back, and the man across from me, in an identical chair, almost smiled, the right side of his mouth twitching upward. “Do you mean to say that you had lost track of time?”

  “Completely. It sounds ludicrous, I know, but it is true, nonetheless. We were very bored in Verulamium and it was a long, harsh winter. We would have left much sooner than we did, purely for the sake of moving, had it not been for Perceval’s injury. We were held down by that, waiting for his leg to heal.”

  “It did heal, though, and remarkably well.”

  “Aye, considering the damage he did to it. He walks now with only the slightest limp, and that will soon be gone. He grows stronger every day. But it was fortunate that his brother Tristan was there with us and knew what needed to be done.”

  “Aye, it was indeed. Now tell me about this dream of yours, if you will.”

  I shrugged again. “It was a dream, what more can I say? I dreamt it.”

  “But it had a salutary effect upon you, did it not? Greater than any dream you had ever known. You told Enos that it was the most realistic dream you had ever had, and that it had forced you to change your plans. It sent you off to look for me, did it not?”

  “Aye, all of that is true.”

  “And why was that? What made it so different? You will forgive my insistence, I hope, but the matter is important to me.”

  I sucked in a deep breath and sat straighter, stifling my impatience with this man whom I had met less than an hour earlier, after pursuing him three times across the width of Britain.

  We had arrived back at the gates of Camulod without giving anyone warning of our arrival, but our presence had been noticed even before we reached the outer perimeter of the territories ruled by the colony, and as we approached the castellum, it was to discover that we were expected. Merlyn Britannicus, I was told then, had convened a gathering of Camulod’s senior strategists earlier that day and would be unable to join us until the meeting was completed with its agenda satisfied. Fortunately, the guard commander told me the assembly had been in session since shortly after dawn, and no one expected them to take more than another hour to conclude their business. In the meantime, we were taken to the bathhouse, where we cleansed ourselves of the accumulated dirt of ten days on the road, and then to the refectory, where we stuffed ourselves on freshly prepared food far richer than any rations we could ever carry in our packs.