The Burning Stone

by Jack Whyte

  “Thinking about what?”

  “About you. If you set out after us from the moment we left the marketplace, what took you so long to catch up to us? I am very glad you arrived when you did, more grateful than I can say, so please don’t think otherwise, but I am curious.” Her tone sharpened noticeably. “And why do you wear that silly hood?”

  In response, he sat up straighter and pulled his legs in, then raised both hands to push the hood back from his head, letting it fall down over his shoulders, and the breath caught in her chest.

  * * *

  —

  The first word that came to her as she saw him smiling at her, his wide mouth filled with bright white, even teeth, was beautiful; the man was beautiful, and much younger than she had imagined, with startling dark blue eyes that gleamed at her from a face framed with rich, blond, curling hair and deeply tanned by the kind of sunshine seldom seen in Britain. She was vaguely aware that she was gawking.

  “To cover my head,” he was saying, apparently oblivious to the effect the sight of his face had had on her. “That’s what hoods are for. And it took me some time to catch you because you left me so far behind at the start. By the time I made my way through the stalls to follow you, you had disappeared. Fortunately, I was in time to see the last of the men running after you, the fat one, so I followed him. But you must have been moving really fast.” He shrugged. “I chased the fat fellow as quickly as I could. But I can’t run, though I have learned to walk more quickly than most men.”

  She frowned at him. “What do you mean, you can’t run?” She stopped, suddenly afraid that she might have offended him, but his eyes crinkled with amusement and his teeth flashed again.

  “If you were Roman you would know exactly why,” he said. “But of course you’re not Roman. Obviously, because we’re using it right now, you speak Britannic street Latin sufficiently well to deal with the locals, and even with the Romans. But your natural tongue is Eirish. Is that what you call it, or should I say Erse?”

  She nodded, her gaze narrow and intent, but apparently he didn’t care that she had not confirmed a pronunciation because he continued. “You are Hibernian by birth and upbringing, I know, so you can’t be expected to know what I’m talking about, but in the Roman tongue—as it is spoken in Rome, I mean—my family name, Varrus, would tell you why I can’t run.”

  She was still frowning at him, shaking her head. “Explain it to me, then.”

  “In Roman society,” he said quietly, “the name Varrus is what we call a cognomen, or a nickname. It used to be spelled with one ‘r,’ not two, and no one remembers how or why it was changed, but someone once told me it had something to do with wanting to dissociate ourselves from an ancestor called Publius Quinctilius Varus, who was disgraced when he lost an entire army of four legions—that was a consular army, more than twenty-five thousand men—in Germania. Whether that is true or not, I neither know nor care.” He paused, looking at her good-humouredly. “You’d be surprised how many ancient and now honourable Roman names started out as nicknames describing some family characteristic. Caesar means hairy in Latin, did you know that?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, it does. Strabo, another famous family name, means cock-eyed, and Balbus means stutterer. And the fact is that Varrus, whichever way it’s spelled, means knock-kneed. You see, in our family the males are sometimes cursed with malformed legs. It’s not often a major impediment, but it’s sufficiently common to have won the family the name. Most Varrus men, if they’re affected by the family curse, are no more than mildly handicapped. Knock knees are common among us, but otherwise we are mainly unremarkable.” He hesitated. “I’m one of the more irregular ones. My right leg was twisted when I was born—twisted in my mother’s womb, not after I emerged—and as a result, I was never able to run like others. It’s a thing I’ve learned to live with, but it kept me out of the armies.”

  “You sound as though you resent that.”

  “I do,” he said mildly. “I have always resented it. Bitterly. The Varri have always been a military family, and my ancestors have served with distinction in the legions since the days of the first emperor. The one and only thing I always wanted to do, more than anything else, was to follow in the family tradition and join the legions when I was sixteen. But I had this.” He sat back on his chair and thrust his right leg out in front of him again, and this time, even though the limb was covered by the thick black robe he wore, she could see that it was splayed unnaturally to one side, and her heart swelled up with emotion for his misfortune.

  He noticed her look. “I hope you don’t think I’m feeling sorry for myself, because really I’m not. I’ve lived with this all my life and I accepted it years ago. But it still has the ability to catch me off guard whenever I see someone take notice of it.”

  She sensed that he would be offended if he knew how deeply the sight of his twisted limb had affected her, and so she changed the topic.

  “You’re not a Christian priest, are you?”

  He barked a laugh of pure delight. “A priest? Me? Absolutely not. How could you even think such a thing, and me with blood on my hands?”

  “Then why do you clothe yourself like that? Does it please you to be taken for a priest?”

  He sobered slightly, shaking his head. “No, it does not. But until you said that, I had no idea that anyone might think it. I dress this way so that I might be overlooked. I suppose I have always thought of Christian priests as being unimposing and generally anonymous, and now that you mention it, that has obviously influenced the way I’ve opted to dress and behave. The real truth is that I wear these clothes to hide my limp, and I wear the cowl to hide my hair.”

  “Why would you want to hide your hair? It’s beautiful.”

  He smiled. “That’s much more a woman’s word than a man’s. I can’t think of a single man I know who would ever consider his own hair beautiful. But if you mean it to signify that my hair is distinctively different from most men’s, I would agree with you. But the hair’s not so important, now that I’m no longer in Italy. Fair hair is not uncommon here, as well you know. It’s disguising the limp that is my main concern nowadays.”

  “Why should your limp concern you? It’s hardly even noticeable—well, I didn’t notice it. And limps are everywhere.”

  “I don’t need to hide my limp, Lydia Mcuil. It’s me I need to hide, and this leg, and the limp that goes with it, is too distinctive—too noticeable. It would identify me very quickly to anyone seeking me.”

  “But who would be seeking you? You said the patrols won’t bother looking for us.”

  “Nor will they, I promise you.”

  “Then I’m thoroughly confused. Who else would be looking for you?”

  “I don’t know.” He saw her look of exasperation and held up both hands quickly, his grin widening. “Truthfully, I’m not trying to be difficult. I really don’t know. In fact,” he added, speaking slowly and with great exaggeration, “I am not even sure anyone is looking for me. It might be all in my imagination.” His grin vanished and his voice went flat. “But until I know beyond dispute that no one is looking for me, I need to conceal who I am.”

  Lydia tilted her head to one side, considering the man in front of her. “Why?” she asked after a short silence. “Why would you even think such a thing, let alone say it out loud? Have you any idea how ridiculous it sounds? Some people might think you mad for saying a thing like that. Or think you were trying to make yourself sound important and mysterious.”

  He sat watching her, nothing more than a suggestion of wry amusement on his face. “Is that what you think?” he asked eventually. “That I’m trying to make myself seem important?”

  In spite of her annoyance, she found it easy to smile at him. “No. But you make that need for secrecy sound very ominous.”

  “Not ominous,” he said quietly. “That is not the word for what I’m talking about. Ominous means threatening, but at the same time it offers at leas
t a glimmer of hope. The intent of an omen is to warn of something to come, something that might yet be avoided, and that’s not what I’m talking about at all.” He paused—for dramatic effect, was her first thought—but then he continued, keeping his eyes fixed on her. “Two years ago—two years and three months ago, to be precise—with no warning and for no discernible reason, on a day when my uncle Marius and I were away from home, our entire family was killed when our ancestral home in Dalmatia burned down around them. No one survived. Every person present, family, guests, and servants, died in the flames and was burned beyond recognition. I lost my paternal grandparents, my father and mother and three widowed aunts, my older sister and four brothers, and two cousins. Fourteen dead…murdered, it became clear afterwards.”

  “Murdered?” Her face had drained of colour and her voice was almost inaudible. “Why? Who would—?”

  He shrugged his broad shoulders. “No one has ever discovered why, and no one has ever admitted any knowledge or suspicion of who might have been behind the assassinations. But by the following day no one was in any doubt that someone, somewhere, had ordered a massacre. I should have been there, too, among the slain. And with the help of my uncle Marius, I have been in hiding ever since, trusting no one.”

  “God have mercy on us all.” She blessed herself with the sign of the cross. “Fourteen people?”

  “Fourteen Varruses. Sixteen other corpses were found in the shell of the villa—servants and retainers. So thirty people died that night.”

  For a long time Lydia sat frowning, gazing into nowhere, but then she sat straighter and squared her shoulders. “Two years and three months ago, you say?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “No matter. But it is long enough to have blunted the first sharp edges of your pain, for the which, thanks be to God.” She hesitated. “It’s no wonder you trust no one.”

  That earned her another flashing grin, the more captivating because it was so unexpected where she had expected pain and outrage. “I trust you,” he said.

  She smiled back at him, unable to prevent herself. “And why would you do that, Master Varrus?”

  “Why would I not? A man should be able to trust his wife, should he not?”

  “His—?” When she spoke again, her tone had hardened. “That is a foolish thing to say.”

  “How is it foolish?” He was sublimely untouched by her frost-edged comment. “It’s the truth. I intend to make you my wife and to keep you well fed, well housed, and content with your life from the moment you agree. I may dress like a pauper, but I assure you I am capable of supporting a wife.” He flashed his wide, white-toothed grin again. “But we don’t need to talk about it here and now. I’ll speak to your father when the time is right.”

  “And what makes you think my father would even bother to acknowledge you?” She had wanted to keep her voice icy, but her question lacked the edge she had tried to give it.

  “Because you are his only daughter and I saved your life. And he will have no doubt that my wish to have you as my wife is genuine, because I will offer him an ample bride price.” He hesitated. “You do have that custom in Hibernia, do you not?”

  She was flabbergasted and flustered by his audacity and irreverence, though the stirrings in her breast told her she was far from being displeased by them, but she did not know how to respond to such a frontal assault from a man she had known for barely a single hour. And so she changed the subject.

  She forced herself to frown. “You used the word ‘assassination’ speaking of your family…”

  “Go on, lovely Lydia Mcuil,” he said, not quite teasingly. “What is it you want to say?”

  She nibbled at her lower lip for a moment, frowning and pretending to be displeased with what he had called her, but then she said, “It’s clear your family must have been wealthy, to have a villa and so many servants, but I’ve always thought only important and powerful people were assassinated. Isn’t that true?”

  “Normally, yes,” he said quietly. “Otherwise it’s simple murder. Dead people are left strewn around in both cases, but assassinated people normally have more elaborate funerals.”

  She stared at him, thinking he was being flippant, but she realized his comment had sprung from some inner well of resigned fatalism. He gazed back at her and she grew flustered, blurting out a question that sounded banal even as the words left her mouth.

  “So your family was not normal, in that sense?”

  “Hah!” he barked, sounding almost amused. “My family? Normal? My grandfather and my father would have had you thrown into a prison cell for even voicing that thought. And my grandmother Alexia Seneca would have had you chained there naked for her guards to use. And that should tell you how far removed from your idea of normal my family is—or was.”

  “Alexia Seneca? You mean the Roman banking family? Those Senecas?”

  He nodded. “Those Senecas.”

  “Your grandmother is a Seneca?” Her eyes had grown round with wonder, for even in Eire the wealth of the Seneca family had been legendary.

  “She was,” he said quietly, “though it gives me no pleasure to admit it. Her father was among the richest of the clan in his day. Owned more than half of Rome, they used to say, and three-quarters of the people in it. And my grandmother considered all of them to be beneath her, even the most ancient and powerful patrician clans.

  “Children are supposed to love their grandmothers, I know, but from the moment I grew old enough to form my own judgments I detested Alexia—still do, even though she’s been dead these two years. She was a nasty, self-absorbed, and cynically evil woman. Evil is an attribute that very few people can truly merit, you know, but my grandmother earned every vestige of the designation. She was a wholehearted, dyed-in-the-wool sow, though to say that maligns those simple brutes. My grandfather Titanius, who for many years had the misfortune of being wed to her, was a close friend of the emperor Diocletian for most of his life, because he and the emperor grew up together in the same small town in Dalmatia, across the Adriatic Sea from Italy. When Diocletian was emperor he loved to claim that he was the son of a simple scribe. In fact, his father was chief scribe to my great-grandsire, Gaius Varrus—Grandfather Titanius’s father.”

  “Your grandfather must have been a remarkable man,” Lydia said quietly.

  His right cheek twitched in what might have been the beginnings of a rueful smile. “I never really knew him as a man. He was my grandfather, a presence in my life, but not an influence. I doubt he ever said more than a hundred words to me in fifteen years. But according to what I have heard, he was remarkable in his youth, and he survived the reign of Diocletian and outlived the man himself. A generation later, my own father, until his death, was an intimate and trusted friend of Constantine, representing the Emperor’s interests in long, involved dealings with the leaders of the Christians in Rome.”

  “Dear God in Heaven,” she whispered, awed in spite of herself. “So who could have wanted to kill both of them?”

  He grinned. “Practically anyone who ever met them, I’ve been told, but as I grow older I increasingly suspect that that might have been less than true.” He shook his head slowly. “Who can tell, though, really? I’ve racked my brains for years now, trying to arrive at some understanding of what my grandfather or my father might have done—either one of them or both together—to draw down the fate that befell them and everyone around them. All I can say with certainty is that they were both men of power with powerful connections. And yet at the end of everything, all their power was useless in protecting them or their loved ones.” His eyes sharpened suddenly. “You haven’t touched your drink,” he said, eyeing her tankard. “Do you not like it? Can I bring you something else?”

  “No, no,” she protested. “I’ve been listening too closely, that is all. My drink is fine. See?” She raised her cup and drank deeply, emptying the cup and setting it back down on the table, then covering a polite belch with her hand.

  “I know now,
” he continued, “though I never thought about it while they were alive, that both Grandfather Titanius and my father had no shortage of powerful enemies, because each of them was headstrong and powerful in his own right, and power such as they had and exercised breeds both rivals and enemies. But even today I could not begin to guess where to start looking for their killers. Before it happened, my life—thanks to my physical deformity—had been such that no one ever planned for me to follow in the footsteps of either one of them. Unfit from birth to join the legions, I was consequently deemed unfit for anything else, and so I learned nothing of politics and I have never experienced the intrigue of the imperial court. My father had four other sons, all grown men by the time I was born and more suited for their plans, so when I was a child no one really cared what I did, so be it I stayed out of everyone’s way and found my own ways to amuse myself.” He shrugged, his lips turning downwards in self-deprecation. “They provided me with tutors, and my mother saw that I learned the things a boy of my station ought to learn, but there was little more to my family life than that. And now that they’re all dead, except for my uncle Marius, I’m merely continuing to do what I did before. I keep myself out of sight and unremarkable, and hope to be spared to live my own life.”

  When Lydia spoke again, her voice was quiet. “So how did you…?” She paused, then collected her thoughts and began again. “What did you do when you discovered what had happened, that everyone had been murdered? How did you even know what to do?”

  “I didn’t,” Varrus said, and she took note of the quiet acceptance and the lack of bitterness in his voice. “I knew nothing about it until I reached home again, three days after it all happened, and by then everything that had to be done had already been done. My uncle Marius was on furlough and had arrived for a visit the morning after the massacre, and as the sole surviving member of the family—or so everyone thought—he had had to see to all the funeral arrangements. He was standing in front of the ruins of the villa when I showed up. Like everyone else, he thought I had died in the fire as well, and as soon as he saw me he knew my life would be in danger if the killers discovered I had survived. So he hurried me away into hiding in Italy before anyone could recognize me, and he kept me hidden in his home in Capua, near the Bay of Naples, for the next year and a half. You know the Bay of Naples? No, I suppose you wouldn’t, but it’s an intensely beautiful area. It was there I learned how to survive in what had become a new and hostile world.”