by Jack Whyte
I considered that. "Yes, I could. I know how he made it. I'm sure I could make another."
Britannicus lay silent, thinking. He might have wanted to say more, but Mitros came in to change our dressings and he made us both take the sleeping potions that he believed were the secret behind letting the body heal itself. We slept.
The following morning, I awoke to the sounds of grunting and movement, to find Britannicus being hoisted into a sitting position by two soldiers whom Mitros had drafted for the duty. They made him reasonably comfortable, eventually, in spite of his cursing, which died away when the physician pointed out that this was part of the curing process. When they had all gone and left us alone again, I asked him if he was in much pain. He looked at me without responding for a few moments, then eased his leg slightly sideways with both hands and shook his head.
"No, " he said, "doesn't hurt nearly as much as it used to. How about you?"
I smiled at him. "I feel no pain at all, as long as I don't try to move.
'Course, when I fall asleep, my body seems to want to move on its own. Then there's pain. I tend to wake up suddenly, very often."
He was watching me closely, frowning slightly. "Well, " he growled, "at least you're beginning to look a little better. Those purple bags have gone from beneath your eyes and your face has started to fill out again." He cleared his throat, his frown deepening, then added, "Mitros tells me you should soon be functional again."
It was my turn to frown. "Functional? What, you mean I'll be able to walk again?"
"No, of course not. We know you'll be able to do that. You might have a limp, but you'll walk perfectly well.
No, I meant... functional — physically, sexually." He seemed embarrassed.
"Oh, that, " I said, as a vision flared in my mind of the discomfort an erection would cause. "God, I prefer not even to think of that at this point."
He was looking at me strangely, and I felt myself flush under his gaze.
"What is it, General? What's the matter?"
He shook his head dismissively. "Nothing,. nothing at all." He paused, and then continued. "You're an abstemious kind of a character, aren't you?"
"General?"
"Abstemious, fastidious. You're not much of a man for the womanizing life, are you?"
"I suppose not, " I said, surprised and caught off guard by this unexpected departure from our normal style of talking. I added as an afterthought; "No less than any other normal man, though, if no more so. No, I don't think so."
He shook his head again, an unusual, almost musing expression on his face. "I've watched you, you know, over the past few years, and I've been pleased by your temperance. It's one of the primary elements that make up exceptional soldiers. "He saw by the expression on my face that I was uncomfortable with his line of reasoning, and added reassuringly, "Oh, you are normal enough, God knows. It's simply that there's nothing excessive about you, in the vicious sense. You do everything in moderation, it seems to me, nothing to excess. You don't drink too much, you don't whore too much, you don't fight or even argue without reason. You are a fine example to your men."
"Gods, General, " I said, "you make me sound too sweet to be wholesome."
"Ha! Far from it, but I apologize nevertheless. “He was quiet for several moments, and I had closed my eyes again, wondering when the orderly would arrive with the hot water for my morning ablutions, when he spoke again. "Varrus, have you ever been in love?"
My whole body stiffened in the bed as I wondered what had come over him to provoke such unaccustomed intimacy. Britannicus never indulged in this kind of idle curiosity about anyone or anything. "Never, sir, " I replied, hearing the awkwardness in my own voice.
"Never, Varrus? You have never been in love? Not once in your entire life?"
I thought about that, keeping my eyes closed, and as several errant memories chased each other through my mind, I felt a smile pulling at my mouth in spite of my earlier discomfort.
"Well, sir, " I said eventually, "I have known a few young women girls would really be more accurate, who set my heart a-pattering and my senses reeling from time to time in various places."
"Aha!" His voice sounded pleased. "And is there anyone in particular who still has power over you?"
My smile was easier now as I grew more at ease with our topic. "No, " I answered. "Not today, not really. No one holds that power over me, and I could be sad about that, if I thought for long about it."
"Ah, Varrus my friend, then you are unfortunate. There is nothing greater than the love of a good woman. It can sustain a man throughout any troubles, for any length of time."
The silence grew and stretched until I broke it. "Aye ... I've heard that said before, by several people."
" It's true." Britannicus's voice grew warmer and more enthusiastic as he honoured me with his confidence.
"Do you know, I can remember the day I first met Heraclita? I was about thirteen..." He broke off, then amended what he had said, "Well, I actually only saw her that first time, I didn't meet her. We didn't really meet for about another two years, but I had never forgotten her since that first time. You'll meet her some day, Varrus, and you'll see what I mean. She was — she still is — the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. I knew, even at that age, that my life would be built around her. We lived in different cities, so it was fortunate that our families were close friends. After that first meeting, however, our parents decided we would wed when we had grown, and we both approved. We became friends, I marched off to the legions, and years later we became lovers. But I had been in love with her since that first day I saw her, playing with a pet rabbit among the frosted sedge at the edge of a frozen pond, with her breath steaming in the cold air and her pink cheeks making her blue eyes seem even brighter than they were. And now we have been married for what?" He did a mental addition against the back of his closed eyelids and answered his own question. "Fifteen years. We were wed on my twenty-third birthday. She was twenty." His voice died away for a spell, his thoughts led inward by his words.
"My only regret about being what I am, " he resumed eventually, "is that I have so little time to spend with my wife. I do my soldiering alone, and she stays at home and keeps my private world in order for me. She could come with me, but camp life is no kind of existence for a soldier's wife, and the family of a senior officer can have much grief, particularly if the husband and father is strict with his command. But love, Varrus, the love of a good woman is of matchless value." He turned his face towards me and shook his head in mild perplexity. "I really find it difficult to believe what you say, that you have never been in love."
"Believe it. General, " I told him, smiling as I said the words. "I'm sure if I had been, I would remember."
The images in my mind right then were distracting and, for some strange reason I never really resolved, were causing me to feel some kind of guilt — perhaps because I felt I was, somehow, deceiving him. I was thinking of saying so, after which the conversation might have gone anywhere, but the medical orderly came in at that moment with the hot water for our morning ablutions, and the entire process of changing dressings resulted in a change of mood, which led in turn to our losing the desire to pursue what we had been discussing. Nevertheless, throughout the entire washing, cleansing, draining and changing of my dressings, I entertained and distracted myself by recalling the girl whose presence had been brought back into my mind by the way Britannicus spoke, the girl who had bewitched me the summer I joined the legions, when I was only fifteen. She was my spectral love, my special inspiration. I carried the memory of her with me, the physical, magical excitement of her, wherever I went in the service of the Empire, and the remembered sight of her face, the supple slimness of her waist, the deep, flashing blueness of her eyes and redness of her warm, sweet mouth, had nursed me to sleep many a cold night on campaign.
It was a wondrous time, that last summer of my boyhood, a time that would remain with me forever-more. I know now, or I strongly suspe
ct, that my grandfather took special pains on my behalf that year, knowing that I would soon be gone into manhood and soldiery. He had a friend, a wealthy customer and patron, who lived in a superb villa close to Verulamium, and this friend invited my grandfather and me to spend the summer with him. We accepted, and I went to paradise for eight long, golden weeks. The villa itself was magnificent, but it was nothing compared to the lands! The summer fields were heavy, lush with ripening greenness, and the air was filled with the scent of the grasses, mixed with the dryness of sun-hot dust, the smells of dung and flowers. My ears were teased by the buzzing of flies and insects, the song of birds and the rustling of long grasses as they brushed against my legs. I made new friends there, a Roman boy my own age called Mario whose father was an overseer on the farm, and a younger boy called Noris, the son of the Celtic thatcher who had roofed all of the houses and buildings for miles around. Among the three of us, we hadn't a care in the world.
And then one day, less than a week before my grandfather and I were to return to Colchester, we heard about a festival to be held at the next villa to the east. The son of the villa's owner had recently been married to a girl who lived far to the south-west. The wedding had been in the bride's home, and now the son was bringing his new wife home. Everyone was invited to the celebration. There would be musicians, players, a dancing bear, games, and food and drink for everyone.
The dancing bear was the biggest I had ever seen, but when I managed to approach close to it I was very disappointed. The poor thing was half starved and sickly, its skin broken and ulcerous from rubbing constantly against the bars of its tiny cage, and its coat dirty, matted and awful-smelling. I felt outrage for the helpless, obviously brutalized creature, and fury at the hulking, half-witted giant who was apparently its owner. I immediately went looking for my two friends, determined to enlist their help in freeing the animal that night after everyone had gone to sleep. I had seen them just a short time before, heading towards the stall where the pie-maker was finding it hard to keep up with the demand for his goods, and I set off towards them, cutting directly across the middle of the tree-dotted meadow where the festivities had been set up. And there, in the middle of the field on that hot, dusty afternoon, I came face to face with my future dreams.
I had just swung smartly around the bole of a good-sized tree, taking the shortest route to the pie stall, when my eye was attracted by a bright blueness that I saw to be a dress, worn by a tall girl of about my own age. She had long, straight black hair, an achingly beautiful smoothness of sun-browned face and skin, high cheekbones, a bright-red mouth and wide blue eyes that seemed to leap from her countenance. I saw her, all of her, in one flashing glance and stopped dead in my tracks, as completely stunned as though I had been hit with a heavy club. She was breath-taking. I had never seen anything so beautiful, anywhere. She was with three other girls, all shorter than herself, and they were all laughing at something one of them had just said. I knew the others were there — I could see them moving and hear their laughter — but I was aware of them only as shapes. The girl in blue held my eyes and my attention completely. All four girls became aware of my attention at exactly the same moment, it seemed. They broke off their conversation abruptly and four pairs of eyes devoured every detail of my awkward, mid-step fascination, from the soles of my feet to the top of my head. Then, in that singular way that is unique to adolescent girls, they instinctively swung inwards, towards a common centre, giggling and chattering, convinced that somehow, by turning their backs on me and huddling together, they had disappeared.
The tall girl, however, distanced herself from her friends by simply raising her head and gazing directly at me. There was no smile on her face, no discernible expression in her eyes. She simply looked at me, and I at her, and somehow, across the ten paces that lay between us, I felt the warmth of her active, excited interest. My heartbeat sped up and my breath swelled and grew tight in my chest. I knew that I had somehow magically filled her universe as she had overwhelmed my own. Her eyes seemed to grow bigger and bigger as I gazed at her; they devoured me, filling my consciousness to the point where everything else faded away, and all I wanted to do was reach out and stroke the smoothness of her cheek. And then her friends were shouting and moving, pulling at her, urging her away. I had ceased to interest them and, miraculously, they had been unaware of what had happened between me and their beautiful friend. She went with them — unwillingly, it was clear to me — turning her head as she walked to keep me in her sight. Bereft of all memory of what I had been doing before, my own friends and the bear completely forgotten, I moved to follow her. She smiled and turned back to her companions, confident that I would not go far away.
I followed faithfully until the moment came — and I have no idea how it came or what led up to it — when we stood together, all others gone, the two of us alone, stranded in wonderful isolation among a throng of people who had no impact on us or our lives. I looked at her, speechless, and she at me. She smiled a perfect, pearl-toothed smile that made my chest constrict. I know we spoke, though I can recall no words, and then we walked together away from the festivities, away from the crowd, away from the eyes of people.
She was tall. She was lovely. She was mine. Neither of us doubted that, and there was no need to talk of it. There was no strain between us, no shyness, no false awkwardness. We touched each other gently, faces, ears and hair, with the awestruck, quivering fingers of reverent discovery. I touched a questing knuckle softly to the swelling, smiling fullness of her lips, and they parted, kissing my finger chastely. I felt the pliant slimness of her waist beneath my hand and almost caught my breath in panic as her face came close, close up to mine, and our mouths kissed. She was in my arms, filling my arms, enclosing me in her own, and I was overwhelmed by the closeness and the fullness and the softness and the clean, sweet-smelling scent of her, and we devoured each other with kisses, avidly, wildly, in the innocent need and fury and wonder of first love. She told me to call her Cassie, short for Cassiopeiia, the constellation that rose in the evening sky shortly before we realized how late it had grown. She knew my name was Publius. I never learned her full name, nor she mine. By the time we rejoined the festivities, they had turned out to look for her and a stern father took her jealously in charge and out of my sight.
I had to return home to Colchester the following day and I never saw her again. But I never forgot her, either. She told me that her father was a soldier, a legate, and she herself an army brat, living the army life, moving from camp to camp and country to country with her father's command. Through all my travels with the legions I watched for her — and for her father — each time we visited a new town or garrison, but without a family name, I could not even begin to look systematically. And so she had faded, gradually, into my memories. I watched for her in. each new town, even then, after fifteen years. And now that Britannicus had stirred up my recollections of her, I embraced them and used them to cushion me against the brute pain that even Mitros's gentle ministrations could cause my mangled flesh.
That particular day, and the discussion we had in the course of it, seems, in my recollection, to have been a turning point. During the next few weeks, we both began to recover more strongly, although Britannicus mended much faster than I did. A day came when he was able to leave the room and walk about outside while I still lay on my back. Within the month that followed that, he was exercising strenuously, getting into shape for his return to duty. Perversely, as he grew fitter, I grew more and more depressed. And then, one day, he was gone.
He visited me the morning he left and wished me Godspeed in my recovery, promising that if he ever passed by way of Colchester, he would find my smithy and visit me. We clasped hands and parted as friends. I had been returned to regulation sick bay by this time, tended by the regular medics, and I suppose I was feeling sorry for myself. The fact that Britannicus had gone, however, made me face up to my problems. I could either languish and die in bed, or I could set myself to making the
best I could of a crippled leg. I set out to beat my handicap, and I won. Most of the physicians and surgeons who had examined my injuries — and there had been many over the months since I had been wounded — were of the professional opinion that I would never walk upright again. I was determined to prove them wrong, and I was intensely grateful that there were others, equally qualified, who did not share their opinions. One of the most scathing of these was Comius Attribatus, a brilliant surgeon of mixed Roman and Celtic blood who was also a grey-bearded veteran of thirty years in the army medical corps. There was nothing Comius had not seen in the way of wounds over three decades, he told me, and he swore that he had known men with wounds far worse than mine who had forced their bodies to conform to their will and learned to walk again, when reason and logic said they should have been cripples forever. I devoured his words, never able to hear enough of such stories, choosing to believe him because I wanted to more than anything else in the world. Under his close supervision I set out to retrain my cut and wasted muscles. It was agonizing, lonely and frustrating work, and my progress was very, very slow. But I soon began to make visible progress, and even the most sceptical watchers came to believe I would win, and to lend their support to my efforts. I sweated off every trace of fat on my body, and gradually, shaking and quivering with sustained effort, I replaced it all with healthy, corded layers of muscle. My left leg had been shattered, of course, the muscles torn and poorly reconstructed, in spite of the excellent work of the physicians, and that was something I had to accept as a limitation. But after six months of exercise and effort, the leg worked. I could walk on it. It was a limping walk, hesitant at times, but it was real Eight months after the return of Caius Britannicus to duty, in the dead of winter, I arrived home in Colchester, looking as good as ever on horseback, but limping like a lame duck when I tried to walk.
BOOK TWO - Colchester