The Skystone cc-1

by Jack Whyte

  Nevertheless, it was heart-warming and gratifying to see the pleasure on her face as she greeted me on the first morning she appeared at the smithy, and I recognized her instantly. Phoebe had grown up well and turned into a handsome, red-haired woman with bold, appraising eyes, rounded, firm limbs and high, full breasts, and she had retained the sense of fun that had always distinguished her from the other urchins who had been her friends.

  She astonished me one evening, as we were preparing to close up the smithy and go home. Equus was out somewhere, meeting with a customer, and I had just removed my apron and was washing off the day's accumulation of dust and grime. Phoebe had been stacking some small wooden boxes of nails on a shelf at the back of the smithy, and I had almost forgotten I was not alone. Her voice startled me.

  "Did you ever find her, Master Varrus?"

  I had begun to dry my face and I spoke through the towel. "What? Find who?" I put the towel down. "What are you talking about, Phoebe? Find who?"

  "Her, your lost love, Cassie. Cassiopeiia. That was her name, wasn't it?" I felt my jaw drop. "Good God, Phoebe, how did you know about that?" She turned to face me, her own eyebrows arched in surprise.

  "How? You told me, Master Varrus, you told me all about her. Don't you remember?"

  "I told you? No, Phoebe, I don't remember. When did I tell you?"

  "When you came back, that time you went to Verulamium. You were away all summer long that year, and it was the first time you had ever been away. And then when you came back, you'd changed. You'd fallen in love. You'd met her at a wedding feast and lost her the same night. Don't you remember?"

  Her voice had changed subtly, slipping back, almost imperceptibly, into the voice of the Phoebe I remembered, accented with the slow, steady, comfortable stolidity of the local Celts. I did remember, now that she had brought it back to me with her gently slurred words, but I was amazed that she should, and I told her so.

  "Well, " she said, "t'wasn't so much that I remembered as that I was reminded, if you know what I mean."

  "No, I don't know what you mean. Tell me."

  "Well, it's right here." She nodded towards the wall in front of her.

  "Right here where you wrote it, don't you remember? You taught me to read it and it was all I could read for years and years."

  I stepped forward, my ears deaf to what she was actually saying, and stared in amazement at what she was looking at. Two letters, a P and a C intertwined, were incised on the plaster surface of the wall, their edges faded and smoothed but still legible, even after almost a decade and a half of exposure to smoke and soot. Now I could remember carving them in the plaster, watched by Phoebe, and telling her of my undying love for the beautiful girl in blue with the long, black hair. I could not believe, however, how completely I had forgotten doing so. I reached out and touched the letters, tracing them with the tip of one finger as I felt a hard, unaccustomed swelling in my throat for the boy I had been, and the hopes and dreams and fancies that had prompted me to carve a tribute to a girl who I knew only as Cassie. In truth, I didn't even know that Cassie was really her name. We had been flirting with each other, having fun, teasing each other with never a thought for reality and the lives we had to live with others.

  Phoebe was watching me closely.

  "No, Phoebe, " I said, sighing, "I never did find her. I looked for her every place I went, but I never saw her again. It's funny how I forgot doing this, though, carving her name here, and telling you about her. I forgot the reality."

  Phoebe sniffed and turned away, bustling over to where she had left her shawl and her bag. "You'll find her again, you wait and see."

  I laughed aloud. "Phoebe, " I scolded, "listen to yourself! It's been almost fifteen whole years! She is most definitely married long since and mother to a brood of brats. Her beauty, great as it was, will have faded long ago...

  " But even as I laughed, my voice died away.

  "And? What would you do, Master Varrus, if you turned around one day, tomorrow maybe, and found her looking at you, faded and fifteen years older, surrounded by her children? What would you do?" I was silent, visualizing the tall, blue-draped girl Cassie, trying in vain to add fifteen years and the effects of them to what I remembered. Phoebe's voice drew me back to where I was.

  "Master Varrus?"

  "Phoebe, my dear, I wish you would call me Publius. You and I have been friends for too long for any other nonsense."

  She smiled and bowed her head, "Thank you, but I feel more comfortable with Master Varrus. You will find somebody else, you know. It's in you, the love. What you felt for that girl was far too strong to be allowed to rot or go to waste, you mark my words. And I should be home by this time. Cuno likes to have his meals on time. Good night, Master Varrus."

  After she had gone, I sat by the banked, slowly smoking forge for a long time, thinking about my life and the changes I wished I could make in it. One of those changes, by itself alone, would be an absolute necessity if ever I were to meet the girl in blue again, or any other like her I had not achieved conscious erection since being wounded. Paradoxically, I had had regular nocturnal emissions, so I knew my body was still working, somehow, but lust was alien to me in my waking hours.

  I rose, eventually, and made my way back to my house.

  It became clear to me very rapidly that Equus and Cuno had both been correct when they told me that only the army dealt in cash in these parts, and so I set my mind to laying my hands on some of it. That I was able to do it quickly was due more to luck than to planning. A name overheard in a tavern where I sat one day with Equus after closing the smithy led to my presenting myself at the entrance to the local military headquarters at the start of my second month in Colchester, in the first week of March. The two young soldiers on duty at the gate looked at me with the mute, almost insolent indifference that their kind reserve for civilians, even when those civilians are obviously veterans. I stood firm, gazing back at them without rancour, waiting for one of them to address me. I was not dressed in the manner of a smith, but neither was there anything about me to mark me as an officer or as a man of noble standing.

  "Well? What do you want? This is a military camp. If you have business here, state it and be done. If not, move on."

  Almost word for word what I had expected. Now I spoke, letting them hear the iron in my voice.

  "Pontius Aulus Plautus. Your primus pilus." They glanced at each other warily, wondering if they had been over surly to one who spoke their senior centurion's name with such authority. The one who had addressed me spoke again, his voice less abrasive, more conciliatory, more uncertain.

  "What about him?"

  "Tell him there is a stranger at the gate who wonders if he still flavours mutton stew with camel dung."

  There had been three of us, junior centurions together in North Africa, and one very unpleasant tribune who had suffered long and painfully from chronic stomach upsets. Only the three of us ever knew why. The hint of a good story got them, as I knew it would. One of the soldiers spun on his heel, his eyes wide with mystification, and disappeared through the Judas gate.

  Minutes passed. The remaining sentry did not look my way again but stood spear-straight, his eyes focused on infinity. Then came the sound of hobnails on cobblestones, the Judas gate opened again, and a vision in polished leather and burnished bronze stepped through and looked at me from deep-set, heavy-browed eyes, his frowning face a mask of displeasure.

  "Publius Varrus." The voice was as I remembered it— deep, low-pitched, gravelly and capable of inspiring fear in officers as well as raw recruits. "You gutter-dropped son of an Alexandrian whore! I thought you were dead."

  "No, Plautus, just avoiding you, as always."

  He crossed the space between us in two strides and threw his right arm round my neck, starting to pull me down into a headlock, and then he remembered who and where he was and he turned the move into an embrace, holding me tightly to his breast, wordlessly, as seconds drew out into minutes. The clea
n, well-remembered scent of him took me back years to more carefree, if not happier, times. Finally we released each other and he held me at arm's length to look at me, letting me see the tears that had spilled from his fierce eyes.

  "I did think you were dead, you know, " he muttered, and then he hawked and spat and spun around to face the staring sentries, his arm across my shoulders.

  "Look at this man, you two. Mark him well! He is responsible for all your grievances. This is Gaius Publius Varrus, the kind of whoreson soldier puling little turds like you will never be. This man has hauled my arse out of more tight spots and saved my worthless life more times than I can count. Next time you find yourselves cursing me, curse him instead, for without him I wouldn't be here to plague your worthless souls. And if you stay in this army long enough, you might, some day, find a friend as good as him. You might, I say, but I doubt it."

  That day stretched into a long, drunken night.

  The following afternoon found me seated in the office of Antonius Cicero, a direct descendant of the golden orator, and legate commanding the military district of which Colchester was the hub. I knew him of old, tod, for I had served under him in Africa and with him, after my promotion, in North Britain. He was a close friend of Britannicus’s and newly appointed to this command by Theodosius. With us in the room were Trifax, the garrison armourer, and Lucius Lucullus, the paymaster, both of whom I had known and liked in pre-invasion days. Plautus was there, too, standing stiff against the wall, uncomfortable in the informal company of staff officers. It was gratifying to be so well remembered and so obviously welcome in their company, and I was relaxed as I spoke to them, telling them what I was doing now.

  Cicero waited until I had finished and then spoke. "So you are here in Colchester, operating as a smith?" I heard the edge of incredulity in his voice, in spite of his well-bred attempt to disguise it.

  "Aye, Legate, that is correct."

  "Amazing. What do you do, exactly?"

  I looked at each of them and then stood up. "Let me show you." I unbuckled the belt from my waist and laid it, with the short-sword and dagger it held, on his table. "A sample of my work." They all leaned forward as Cicero drew the sword and examined it closely.

  "You made this?"

  "Aye, and the dagger and scabbards. It's a matched set."

  "Yes, I can see that." His voice tailed away, then, "These are very fine, very fine." He was at a loss for words, unsure of my purpose, and he feared he might offend me. I waited as he passed the sword to Trifax, the armourer, and the dagger to Lucullus. "Let me understand this, Varrus. Are you offering these for sale?"

  I grinned at him. "I am. These, and as many others as I can get orders for. That is my business."

  Poor Cicero was out of his aristocratic depth. He looked at Trifax.

  "What do you think, Trifax?"

  Trifax was as blunt as a rusty dagger. "Don't have to think, General. This sword is flawless. If I could get my own people to turn these out, I'd be a happy man. But I can't. I'll buy as many of these as I can requisition. Lucullus?"

  The paymaster shrugged his patrician shoulders. "I only pay the money. I'll take your word on the quality, although for once I can see it for myself.

  " He looked at me. "Quality taken for granted, Publius, what about quantity? Can you produce enough of these to justify the paperwork?"

  "If you want a hundred a day, starting tomorrow, no, I can't. If, on the other hand, your expectations are reasonable and your settlement of accounts prompt, I'll keep you supplied with weapons of that quality."

  "Be specific. As you are set up now, how many of these could you turn out in a week?"

  "Right now, two a day. Within a month, eight a day. I can expand to meet your needs with no loss in quality if, as I say, you pay me promptly. Expansion costs money."

  He nodded. "We pay promptly. What about the smiths' guild? You have their approval?"

  "For what? I belong to no guild."

  "Oh! I see. That could be awkward."

  I frowned. "How? I don't see what you mean."

  He cleared his throat. "The law, Publius. We are required by law to deal only with civil suppliers who are in good standing with their guilds."

  "Horse turds for that!" I stood up, sudden anger welling in my throat.

  "You must excuse me, gentlemen. I seem to have been wasting your time. I belong to no guild, as I have said. Nor did my grandfather. I didn't need the approval of the smiths' guild to lay my balls on the line for the Empire and I'll be damned if I'll ask their approval to earn my bread."

  "Sit down, Publius." Cicero's voice was bland. He spoke directly to his paymaster. "Are you serious? You mean we cannot buy Varrus's swords because he does not belong to some ridiculous civilian tradesmen's organization?"

  Lucullus cleared his throat again. "That is the law, General."

  "How do we get around it?"

  "We cannot, General."

  "And horse turds for that, too!" The profanity sounded strange, uttered in Cicero's cultured tones. "I want Varrus's swords for my men. Are you telling me I cannot have them?"

  Poor Lucullus was looking very uncomfortable. "No, General, not I. All such contracts have to be arranged through the office of the Procurator."

  "Ahh! The office of the Procurator. I begin to see. No doubt the Procurator's 'department' gains a commission on the services involved?" A short pause, then, "Yes, General."

  "How much?"

  "Ten to fifteen percent, depending on the size of the contract."

  "Blatant theft." Cicero turned to me. "Publius, if our excellent Lucullus here can find a way around this nonsense, legally of course, would you be prepared to surrender the required per centum 'tax' to the Procurator?" I was smiling now. "Of course, General. I'd be happy to." Particularly since we had not yet negotiated my price, which I had just raised by 20 percent.

  "Excellent! Lucullus, can that be arranged?"

  Lucullus was no fool; he looked at me and smiled a tiny smile. "I'm sure it can, General."

  "Wonderful. By the way, Lucullus, that reminds me. When must we submit our budget to the Procurator?"

  "Next month, General." His expression tacitly added, "As you well know."

  "Well, Publius Varrus, it's good to know we will be well armed and well supplied in future. A jug of wine would be appropriate now, I believe."

  My feet hardly touched the ground on the way home that night, and within the month we had an iron-bound contract to supply arms to the local garrison.

  VII

  It was on Midsummer's Day that I finally allowed myself to open my grandfather's treasures and gloat over them. I had waited, month after impatient month, until I felt that I had earned myself the reward of spending time to examine these wonders that were now legally and rightfully mine.

  From the way I have been speaking of treasures, anyone reading this will probably have imagined a hoard of coins and jewels. That is not quite correct. My grandfather had been an armourer — a master sword-maker and also an earnest historian and student of weapons and weaponry. During his early years with the legions, he had picked up several assorted examples of the armourer's craft and the metalsmith's art that had caused him excitement and given him great pleasure. In later years, while he served as armourer to the various legions stationed in Britain, he had encouraged legionaries to pick up other examples for him. The end result of forty years of this was a collection of antique and esoteric weapons the like of which existed nowhere else that I knew of. These were my grandfather's treasures, each individually wrapped in protective cloth and many stored in cases that he had made specifically to house them. Every piece was accompanied by a scroll outlining the history of the item as far as it was known by the old man. Where the history of the piece was obscure, he consulted all available sources and made some very shrewd guesses.

  Some of the shapes I remembered from boyhood, and I felt like a boy again as I opened them one by one. There was one particular piece that chilled me to my
bones with awe. It was a face-protector of dull, black iron, shaped to fit the forehead and muzzle of a horse, with flared eye-protectors. It had been crudely decorated with a drawing of a mounted man charging with a long, heavy spear balanced over his shoulder, and beneath the drawing, the Greek word meaning "companions." The lover of history in me had to swallow hard as I looked at this piece of armour, because I knew it had protected one of the horses of the Companions, the hand-picked friends of the King, who had ridden into battle at the side of Philip of Macedon and later with his son the great Alexander, fully seven hundred years before I had been born. The Companions! How often had I dreamed of them as a boy, imagining myself winning glory under the greatest military commander of ancient times.

  To keep company with the faceplate, there was the badly rusted remnant of a sarissa, the sixteen-foot-long spear carried by the Macedonian cavalry. It had a long cross-piece attached below the blade, presumably to stop the entire spear from going through the body of whoever was skewered, and to give the rider at least a chance of pulling it out again as he galloped past his victim. My grandfather had really studied this weapon in his youth. Like the one in the drawing on the horse's faceplate, the sarissa was carried point down, the shaft over the rider's shoulder, and was used with a downward thrust. It was originally left in the body of the first victim, and the rest of the fighting was done with swords. The victorious cavalry — Alexander's cavalry were always victorious — would return later to collect their sarissas from the bodies of the men they had slain in their charge. The cross-piece, added later, meant they then had a chance of retaining the spear for a second victim. In a large, long case that I remembered well, there was a collection of original Roman pila, the fighting spears of the ancient legions. Seven feet long, the shaft of these original spears was of wood for half its length, the other half being a metal rod with a wicked head. Embedded in an enemy.