by Jack Whyte
Lucanus spoke into the silence.
"You may light the lamps, Mordechai. This is Caius Merlyn Britannicus, my Commander. You have nothing to fear from him."
When he had finished speaking, the silence returned, and then the sharp sound of a flint striking metal made me jump, so close was it beside me. Recoiling instinctively, I turned quickly to my right and saw sparks falling, and then a tiny glimmer of light that grew into a small, bright flame. A thin wax taper dipped into the flame and caught, and then its unseen bearer moved away from me, cupping the flame in one protective hand and receding in silhouette against its flickering brightness, lighting a series of lamps down the length of the room, which emerged gradually into view. As the brightness grew and my eyes adjusted, I stared in amazement. The place, for all its Spartan bareness, was meticulously clean and neat. The floor of hard-packed earth was swept bare of dust and dirt, and strewn down the central aisle with fresh, carefully aligned, new-dried rushes. The beds along each wall were uniform; plain, unvarnished, hand-planed wood frames furnished with thin mattresses, and on each mattress sat or lay a human form, most of them swathed in long, voluminous drapery that covered their limbs and faces as well as their bodies. The air I breathed smelled clean. There was a smell, to be sure, and it hinted of sickness, but there was nothing about it of rot or filth, of carrion or contagion.
I became aware of Lucanus watching me. When I looked at him, he motioned me forward, towards the bed by which he stood. As I approached, the occupant of the bed stood up and looked at me. He was a big man, clean shaven and massive of chest and shoulder and wrapped in a single robe that hung, toga-like, to his ankles. His hair was thick and flaxen fair, hanging in ringlets to his shoulders, and his hands were thrust into the folds of his garment.
"Merlyn, this is my friend Mordechai Emancipatus," Luke said. "Mordechai, I present to you Caius Merlyn Britannicus."
I nodded to the big man, who returned my nod in silence.
"Mordechai, as I have told you, is supreme commander here, much as you are in Camulod," Luke went on. "He is a physician, as you already know, trained with me in Alexandria. He is also the breadwinner here because he is the strongest and, to this time, the least afflicted."
Afflicted! There had been no mention of affliction when Luke and I had talked of this before. I gazed at the man Mordechai in consternation. I could see no sign of sickness about him. I found my tongue at last.
"You are a leper?" I asked him, realizing the futility and stupidity of my question as it left my lips. He nodded solemnly.
"Show him your hand," said Luke.
Mordechai withdrew his left hand from the folds of his robe and stretched it towards me. I could see nothing wrong with it. Lucanus reached out and picked up the nearest lamp, bringing it to where its light showed the hand clearly. In the brightness of the lamp, the skin looked . . . scaly was the only word that occurred to me. Luke moved the light closer and I saw the discoloration of dry, painful-looking lesions, red in the centre fading to a dead whiteness at the edges, between the knuckles and on the joints of the fingers. The light moved again, throwing its brightness now on Mordechai's face. Again, the skin looked, upon close observation, somehow dry and flaky, although no flakes were apparent. The man's face reminded me somehow, and I shied away from the thought, of some kind of animal, familiar and yet strange.
"Note the leonine swelling of the features." Lucanus was speaking in his dry, professional voice and his words jarred me. The animal I had been visualizing was a lion. "A classic symptom of this illness. The whiteness and swelling of the skin around the brows and forehead, and the thickening of the nasal bridge and nostrils characterize and emphasize this leonine appearance. Note also that his eyebrows are quite white, not yellow like his hair. How long have you been afflicted, Mordechai?"
Mordechai shrugged his massive shoulders. "Eight years now."
"And before that? How long had you been tending lepers?"
"Since finishing my last tour with the legions, in Gaul. More than twenty years."
"You are now what? Fifty?"
"Forty-eight, I believe."
"Hmm, that's right, you were several years younger than I, the youngest student of us all, in fact. You look good, my friend, in spite of everything."
A smile flickered briefly on the big man's face. "Not many lepers are told that."
"Undo your robe."
The hair on Mordechai's chest was thick and darker than the hair on his head, but it was patterned with white patches, some small, some large, all roughly circular in appearance. Lucanus pointed these out to me, continuing to speak in his clipped, didactic physician's voice. "The whiteness of the hair over the emerging lesions is another unmistakable symptom, but the disease is notorious for not being uniform in its emergence to view. Sometimes the lesions themselves are white, and frequently scabrous, but they may just as easily be red and pus-filled, easily mistaken for common boils in the early stages of the sickness. As you have heard, Mordechai has had this scourge for eight years but shows remarkably few serious blemishes and is hardly debilitated at all, thank God. I have seen others, and I know you have too, Mordechai, who have degenerated to the point of digital decomposition in far less time than that." He broke off and glanced at me. "You understand digital decomposition? The finger joints and toe joints atrophy and fall away."
I nodded, fascinated, unable to tear my eyes away from Mordechai's piebald chest hair, but from the corner of my eye I saw Lucanus straighten up and look around the huge room.
"Eighteen of you," he murmured. "How many in extremis?"
"Seven," came Mordechai's response.
"How are you treating them? What medicines do you have?"
"Medicines?" Mordechai's bitterness was all the more apparent because he expressed it in a laugh. "I have water, Luke, and home-made soap, cloth bandages and gentleness. What more could I have? Whence would it come?"
Lucanus flicked a glance at me and I cleared my throat nervously. "What about light?" I asked, thinking of the cases of fine wax candles I was transporting to Donuil's father. "Is it always this dark in here?"
Mordechai looked at me kindly, his mouth twisting into a smile. "Most of the time," he answered. "With this sickness, the absence of revealing light is frequently a benison. I am the only one of our community you have seen. Some are not as comely as I am. I am still almost whole, look." He now extended his right hand, and it was sound and pink, unblemished. I coughed again, feeling painfully awkward.
"It was simply . . ." I ran out of words, then began again. "I asked only because I have a box—a large box—of fine wax candles among my possessions. They are a luxury to me, but it occurred to me they might be a blessing to your people here. I would be glad to leave them with you if they could be of use to you."
He inclined his head with great dignity. "Thank you, Master Merlyn. They would be more than useful."
"Good. They are with the rest of your supplies in the wagon. We will unload them directly."
"Wagon?" Mordechai glanced from me to Luke and back to me again. "You bring supplies for us?"
I felt my face grow red. "Lucanus brings them. They are his gift to you, apart from the candles. I merely brought Lucanus." As the two began speaking, the one offering and the other declining gratitude, I looked around the long room again. Its occupants were silent still, most of them gazing at the three of us standing in the middle of the floor, but they were no longer isolated shapes. They sat in small groups of three and four, close to each other, touching and sharing warmth and comfort and strength. I glanced at Luke again and found him watching me.
"Luke, a word with you please, outside."
He excused himself to Mordechai, as did I, and we went out again into the grey daylight, feeling the fresh, cool air snap into our lungs with our first breath. I saw Donuil straighten up in relief as we emerged, but my thoughts were with Lucanus.
"The candles are not in the wagon, Luke. They're on one of the pack- horses, back at the c
amp. It had occurred to me that Donuil and I might unload the wagon, but that's a task that might better wait until tomorrow, when Mordechai will have had time to think about where to store everything. In the meantime, I'll leave Donuil here with you to help you with anything you might need, while I fetch the candles."
It was almost sunset by the time I returned with the box of candles, and I found Donuil sitting his horse exactly where I had left him hours earlier. There was no sign, however, of the wagon and its team of horses. Donuil told me he had stabled the horses and the wagon in a shed at the side of the longhouse. He also told me how Mordechai's eyes had filled with tears when he saw the profusion of what we had brought for his people. The two physicians had been working ever since I left, he added, cleansing the sick and changing dressings, and as we spoke they emerged from the longhouse, stripped themselves to the waist and began washing vigorously in hot water that was white and pungent from the astringent chemicals Lucanus had added to the pot. Surprisingly, I found an air almost of gaiety pervading the small community now, fostered by the sudden wealth that had come their way.
Long after darkfall, Donuil and I made our way back to our encampment, having bidden farewell to Lucanus and his friend Mordechai. I had achieved, I felt with some pride, a modicum of understanding of the fate of these people smitten by the most dreaded illness in the world. I had spoken with most of them in the course of the evening, and had found them to be very much like other people. But neither Donuil nor I had been able to bring ourselves to share their meal as Lucanus had, and some time in the middle of the night I sprang into wakefulness, shuddering in horror at the sight of my own leprous, fleshless face in some dream mirror.
X
Donuil was astir before any of us the following morning, up and out hunting. He brought back a brace of hares and a handful of wild garlic for that night's pot. I had gone to relieve myself and then to wash in a nearby brook as I did every morning on awakening, and he returned to camp at the same time I did, the hares hanging casually from his left hand and the garlic clutched in his right. I noticed them and nodded to him in passing before the significance of what I had seen struck home to me, but then I spun on my heel and called to him.
"You've been hunting, out of camp." He nodded, smiling faintly, and I continued, hardening my voice. "You know better than that! That was foolhardy. You know the rules."
"Aye, Commander." He was still smiling slightly, his response accompanied by a nod. "But I knew what I was about and I was careful. There's no one out there; neither friend nor foe."
I breathed deeply to keep my flaring anger under restraint. "Don't do anything like that again in hostile territory, ever, without my specific permission," I snapped. "I know you think these people who have been following us might be your friends, but you yourself admitted you don't know if it's them or not. You could be lying out there now, gutted like one of those animals you're holding."
His smiled widened, infuriating me. "I hardly think so, Commander."
"Oh, really, you hardly think so? Trooper, I don't give a damn what you think! It's what I think that's important here. It's not your place to think under these circumstances." Only now did his eyes widen with the realisation of the depth of my anger. "As far as your father's people are concerned you are still a hostage to my goodwill, and they have no cause to trust me. You are already late in returning home. Had there been enemies out there, you might have been killed, slaughtered like the fool you appear to be, perhaps after a heroic fight in which you satisfied your stupid Celtic honour, but where would that have left me? I'll tell you where! It would have left me looking like a liar in your father's and your brother Connor's eyes, a self-serving, lying coward with no hope of rescuing the child they are holding against your safe return. Your corpse, and all my tears, would have been useless in gaining his release."
He looked stunned, crestfallen, recognising and accepting the truth of that. His big head dipped in a chastened bow. "You're right, Commander. I didn't think about that."
"Of course you didn't think, you idiot! That's why I'm angry. I said it's not your place to think, but it is, Donuil. It is! I cannot afford to have you or anyone else, but most particularly you, operating thoughtlessly now. There is too much at stake here to permit such foolishness."
Donuil nodded contritely. "It was irresponsible of me, I can see that. It won't happen again."
"Good. Please make sure it doesn't." He nodded again and turned away, showing no evidence of being upset by my displeasure, then turned back.
"May I say something, Commander?"
"Of course you may. What is it?"
He pursed his lips, then inhaled deeply through his nostrils. "We're getting very close to Glevum. Have you thought any more about what you're going to do if there are no ships there? We have thirty beasts for transport: a spare for each fighting man, the matched pair for my father, and six pack-
horses."
He was right. It would be virtually impossible to find a vessel, any vessel, large enough to transport our men, let alone all, or even half of our livestock. My own father, more than thirty years earlier, had been forced to leave behind more than six hundred head of prime stock in Britain—stock that now formed the breeding herds of Camulod—because of the overpowering and insuperable logistical difficulty of transporting livestock by sea upon short notice.
His words, unexpected as they were, made me realize that, until this moment, I had been drifting along, blithely convinced, utterly without reason other than some inner prompting, that everything would work out and we would cross to Eire without difficulty. The enormity of my hubris, and this sudden reminder of it, brought me to my senses. I expelled a gusty, deep- chested breath. "Well, we may have to make adjustments. We were aware of that before leaving Camulod. If everything goes against us and there are no boats big enough to take us all, the others will have to return to Camulod with the horses. If necessary, you and I will cross the sea alone."
"We should take Rufio with us. He's a good man in a tight corner."
"Aye, perhaps. Very well, the three of us."
"And our horses."
"What?"
He spread his hands, palms upward. "We have to cross by boat, and we had intended to find one big enough to carry thirteen of us, counting the boys, and thirty horses. We might still be able to find one that big, something from beyond Britain, unloading cargo."
"Consigned to whom?" The irony on my face made him shrug, conceding my point.
"You're right, it's probably impossible. But we should be able to find one, even a fishing boat from along the coast, that can transport three men, instead of thirteen and perhaps three horses where the other eleven men would have been."
"We'll see. Call the men together."
When they were all assembled, looking at me in curiosity, I cleared my throat and reminded them that, on the face of it, it was highly improbable we would find a vessel capable of transporting all our horses. If that were the case, I said, only three of us, Donuil, Rufio and I, would embark for Eire with, or without, our personal mounts. Thereafter, the remainder of the party would return to Camulod.
These men had all been personally chosen by me. They were not only excellent soldiers, but comrades-in-arms of long standing, and that gave them a certain freedom in responding to what I had said. Two of them, Quintus and Dedalus, were veterans who had ridden with me on the earliest patrols I shared with Uther in our boyhood. Now Dedalus looked at me through a frown.
"You'd really go without us? I don't like that, Merlyn. It's too damn dangerous for only three of you, heading into a land filled with Outlanders. Donuil there's one of them, and we all trust him, but even he makes no secret of the fact he can't speak on behalf of any other than his own people, and not all of them, either. Why can't we all go with you, and leave the horses here with the boys? We can fight as well on foot as from horseback."
I smiled at him. "None of us can go at all if we can't find a boat, Ded. I'm wagering on finding one
. If I do, as many of us will go as is feasible. The others will remain behind. I merely wanted you all to know my mind."
There was a deal of muttering and mumbling, but no one could alter the truth of what faced us. Everything depended upon what we would find in Glevum.
The former port town of Glevum, which we reached early the following morning, was an abandoned ruin, devastated by war and time. I had expected that. I knew it had been ravaged by Lot's second army several years earlier, the army, originally bound southward for Camulod via Aquae Sulis, that had caused me to ride into the fight that cost me my memory. On that occasion the army had changed direction and, leaderless, had ravaged both Aquae and Glevum before disbanding. I had also seen the effects of time and the lack of civic government and maintenance on other towns, such as Noviomagus and Londinium itself. Glevum, I decided, had been at far greater risk than all of these during the past two decades since, as an open river estuary port, it had no protection from sea-borne raiders. I had spent the intervening day railing at myself for my own idiocy in even presuming to find sea transportation of any kind available, and my men were all aware of my frame of mind. With all of this taken into consideration, we approached the place very cautiously, yet prepared, by the time we arrived, to find it completely deserted.
I was surprised and excited, therefore, to discover that not only was there a ship at the wharf, but that it was enormous, a massive bireme with a towering mast and huge spars that would support a vast expanse of sail. We saw it first from a distance above the town, on a low hill, and at first I saw only the mass of the huge vessel itself, and the two vertical banks of long sweeps that stood along its side against the wharflike palisades. There appeared to be hundreds of men involved in the feverish activity that was going on about it, with people scurrying everywhere like angry insects whose colony had been disturbed. Then I noticed that much of the activity seemed to be concentrated either at the rear of the vessel or on the section of the wharf directly beyond it and hidden by the bulk of the ship. I swallowed my impatience and forced myself to analyze as much as I could see before committing myself or any of my people to going closer.