The Burning Stone

by Jack Whyte

  “Easy? It must have been hugely difficult.”

  “No, we wrote it in Latin, simply writing down the sounds as they were spoken. When we read it aloud, it was their language, but no one who did not know it would ever have guessed that.” He nodded towards the letter in his hand. “No one but Marius wrote that letter, and no one but I, in all the world, would ever understand it.”

  “You said it was a simple language, spoken by simple people. What happened when you wanted to write a word that didn’t exist in their language?”

  Varrus handed him the letter. “Find me a word in there that you can understand.”

  Ajax scanned an entire page and then a second one before he said, “I can’t.”

  “I know. And yet they are all there, straight, sophisticated Latin words like ‘moribund.’ It’s a simple trick. When we had to use a Latin word, we simply transposed letters. We would write the word out, then write it out again, but this time using the preceding letter, with the sole exception of the very first letter of the alphabet, which we wrote as the Greek kappa. So to translate this, I will need sufficient time and some paper to write on.”

  “How much time?” Ajax had already risen to his feet.

  Varrus fanned the pages. “Six pages…An hour?”

  “Do it, then,” Ajax said. “I’ll bring you some paper and a pen and some ink, and then I’ll come back in an hour.”

  An hour, per se, was an indeterminate amount of time, an approximation, but when Ajax returned to his cubiculum, Varrus was reading his letter, smiling to himself. He waited for Ajax to sit down, and then began to read.

  Hail, Nephew!

  I trust this will find you alive and well wherever you are. I have no way of knowing where that might be, but I know it must be far removed from our old spying spot in the sideboard in Salona. The world has greatly changed since both of us used that haven to lurk at anchor, years apart, on the edges of our family’s adult world.

  I am now an admiral, and I hope that will make you smile, remembering how the men of our clan looked down their patrician noses at the navy. I even have an imperial rank and title: Vice-Admiral Marius Sulpicius Varrus, Sub-Prefect of the Ravenna Fleet, the second most senior imperial fleet, based in the port of Classis.

  Unfortunately, great though the honour is, and it truly is close to being the highest rank in our navy, I now command a praesidium in the city and spend my days behind a desk, my nostrils clogged with the acrid smell of ink as I attempt to keep our navy afloat in the face of determined undermining of everything we try to achieve. But that is my misfortune, not yours.

  If all went well, this should have reached you through your friend’s brother Dylan, to whom I wrote in Londinium. Rhys had spoken of him not long before you and I last parted company, and noting that this Dylan had achieved a reputation for integrity, I persuaded Rhys to provide me with information on how I might find his brother, should a need arise.

  That, in turn, should ensure that if you are reading this, you must be completely confused by now, because I gave specific instructions to Dylan on what to put in the letter I asked him to write to you, the sole purpose of which was to mislead anyone seeking to pry. I know that original letter will be delivered to the quaestorium in Londinium, because I am sending it by military courier, but I have no control over what happens beyond that delivery. We are still Varruses, you and I, and I know beyond doubt that I am being closely watched, though I do not know by whom.

  So, to business. I am under constant watch, but I am truly convinced that I am not in any present danger of being killed. Whoever the people were who murdered our family, they seem content to believe I have no interest in pursuing or exposing them, and that is partly true, since I do not know where I might even begin to look, or whom I might trust in any aspect of my concerns, and the very act of inquiring, by itself, would condemn me. I received a letter two years ago, soon after I assumed this posting. It was from an unknown source. It congratulated me on attaining my new rank and said bluntly that I would not be molested were I to continue to attend to my duties and make no effort to investigate the tragic accident that befell my family. The letter disappeared from my personal quarters soon after I received it, so I know there are those close to me whose task it is to watch me. Apart from that single incident, though, I have been left alone.

  Forgive the digression. I hope you are safe-hidden by now, secure in a new life. Pass my good wishes to Rhys Twohands, if you will.

  As for his brother Dylan’s letter, you may disregard that completely. If you received it, then you are reading this, and I swear to you that had I known how tedious it would prove to be to write a lengthy epistle using this method, I would never have worked so hard with you to create it.

  The chest of which I wrote to Dylan, containing his brother’s personal effects, will never arrive, for it never existed. I referred to it in my letter solely to provide me with a reason for contacting him in the first place, should anyone prove curious, and to alert you to the fact that I am now in contact with him, assuming that, through his brother, he will know how and where to find you.

  You will, however, receive a chest one of these days. It is coming to you under the auspices of the imperial navy, accompanied by a naval military escort. What point in holding admiral’s rank and failing to exploit its privileges? I have used mine ruthlessly and shamelessly in this endeavour. When it arrives in Londinium, the chest will be delivered to a prominent and highly regarded lawyer who is in my debt, and upon receiving it, the lawyer will inform Dylan, who will arrange to forward it to you. The chest is wooden, bound with hammer-welded iron straps, then wrapped in heavy sackcloth and coated with several layers of size to seal it tight, with a final covering of clear, heavy wax. It comes without keys, for reasons that should be self-evident. To open it, you will have to destroy it, but it was made to be destroyed. You will not harm its contents in breaking it apart, and with your natural eye for the correct way of doing things, I suspect you will have no problems opening it.

  The contents belong to you alone. I have no need of them. Use them well and live long and peacefully.

  Marius

  For long moments, the two men sat in silence, and it was Ajax, unsurprisingly, who broke it. “So. You’re to be rich.”

  “I think not,” Varrus said. “The chest might never come. There is a vast distance between Ravenna and Londinium by land, and the route would be dangerous in places. By now that chest could be lying lost and shattered somewhere high in the Alps, or stolen by pirates, or intercepted by the people watching Marius. Any of a thousand things could have happened to it. And even if it does arrive someday, we have no means of knowing what’s inside it.”

  “Think about that,” Ajax demurred. “A big chest like the one he describes, shipped all the way from Italy under military escort. It must be worth more than you and I would ever see in a lifetime.” He stopped, frowning. “Why are you smiling?”

  “I’ve just remembered. Earlier you spoke of trust and said we could now trust each other. You had no idea how quickly that would be put to the test, did you?”

  “No. Did you? And do you trust me with this?”

  “The secret of my wealth? Of course I do. And in return for your silence I’ll share it with you. I must warn you, though, all the wealthy estates have long since gone, the monies for their sales vanished into the coffers of the bankers. Those that were left were plainly unworthy of the effort that would have been required to steal them…No, whatever is in that box, it’s more than money and probably far less valuable. Nevertheless, I’ll share it with you gladly.”

  “No, you will not. I’ll have no part of that. I wouldn’t know what to do with even a little wealth, other than to get drunk and waste my life. But in truth, though, if this thing comes, what will you do with it?”

  “I don’t know…Keep it hidden, I suppose, whatever it turns out to be, and hope to find a decent use for it someday.”

  “You could buy an estate, live like a s
enator.”

  Varrus shook his head, but he was grinning again. “No, not with the kind of money likely to be there. But I might buy a smithy of my own. That would be good to have.”

  “And you could marry that young woman from Londinium. That would be good to have.”

  “Aye,” Varrus said. “It surely would.”

  TWENTY

  A full month later, on the first really warm, sunny day of the new spring, Lydia Mcuil found herself pacing back and forth in a mood that she herself would have called a snit had she been watching anyone else doing it. But of course she was not watching. She was venting her frustration, striding up and down the length of the stables that flanked Liam’s smithy, carrying forkfuls of new fodder to the cribs fronting the stalls of the eight horses quartered there, working with far more energy and pent-up tension than the task required. She was waiting for Quintus Varrus to arrive, nervously aware that he had no idea she was there waiting for him. It was less than an hour after noon, and if he were coming, she knew, he would be arriving soon; but he was already late, delayed, no doubt, at the armoury by one imaginary crisis or another, and she was growing increasingly afraid that he might not come at all. He worked every morning in the armoury, she knew, and his pattern had been to finish there at noon and then return to the smithy to work with Liam in the afternoon. But he had not come the day before, Liam said, nor the one before that.

  Lydia had listened in mild disbelief as Liam told her how well Shamus had adapted to his new life, how he was now working steadily and showing signs of taking pride in the work he was doing. And so there was less need for Quintus to be around in the afternoons, he said, since between them, Liam and Shamus were easily capable of running the smithy.

  Liam told Lydia that Quintus Varrus and the giant smith Demetrius Hanno would work far into the night in the forges, sometimes neglecting even to eat until, stupefied with the heat of the furnaces and the efforts of plying iron hammers and glowing metal, they would fall into cots in the armoury and sleep like dead men for seven or eight hours before rising and throwing themselves into their work again.

  It was only once every two weeks, during the two- to three-day periods when the main smelting furnace was burning and there was little to do other than tend to the firing, that Varrus would take time to come home to the smithy to change and launder his clothing. He had told Liam on his last visit, three days earlier, that they were preparing to load the ovens again the following day, and so Liam had assured her that he would return today, at noon.

  Lydia and her father had arrived the night before, after a long, difficult haul with three wagons from Londinium in poor weather. She had intended to send Quintus word that she was here, confident that he would be more than happy to know it, but something in the way Liam talked about the passion with which Varrus had thrown himself into whatever it was he and the giant were working on had made her reluctant to disturb him. So, hesitant in spite of all logic to impose herself on him, she had decided to wait in patience, bolstered by Liam’s assurance that Quintus would come home that day.

  She heard a loud clatter outside the open door and turned quickly to see what had caused it, but was disappointed to see her brother, wrestling with a heavy, moss-coated old barrel, manhandling it noisily to bring it directly beneath the new downspout he had installed the day before. She felt a swelling surge of irritation at him, and realized at once that she was being unreasonable. Shamus did not even know she was there watching him, and her bad temper would have no effect on whether or not Quintus came back to the smithy today.

  Biting down on her impatience, she stood quietly and watched Shamus as he finished hauling the water barrel into place and then adjusted the downspout, positioning it precisely where he wanted it to be. When he was done, he stood back from it, drying the palms of his damp hands on his hips, then wiped some moisture off his forehead with the back of his wrist, and she recognized the unhurried satisfaction on his face that came with finishing a job well done. It seemed to her then that her vision shifted somehow—she almost experienced the change physically—and she saw her brother through fresh eyes, eyes that now held no trace of the impatient scowl that would have darkened her face automatically when he lived at home, when the ill feelings he had harboured for their father had poisoned the air.

  At dinner the night before, she had been dreading a renewal of the sullen hostility that had existed between her brother and her father, and she had prepared herself mentally to ignore it and to concentrate on keeping the first shared meal of their visit pleasant and enjoyable. Yet Shamus was clearly no longer the sullen boy who had slouched away from Londuin with Quintus Varrus that rainy morning nearly a year earlier. He had grown up, in the space of mere months, and while he and Dominic were ill at ease with each other initially, there had been no overt signs of lingering hostility on either of their parts, and she had watched a gradual but discernible thaw taking place between them as the meal progressed.

  She had been painfully aware of Quintus’s absence, though, despite her best intentions, and had surprised herself with the depth of her unexpectedly bitter anger that they should be in the same town at the same time and not be with each other, and that the fault was hers alone, because she had been unwilling to let him know of her arrival. She was wishing, too, that he could be there with her to share her amazement at the transformation of her prickly-tempered brother, because she needed someone to reassure her that she was not imagining the lessening of tensions at the table. But she had received that reassurance nonetheless. Surprised at hearing a note of jocularity in a brief exchange between Shamus and their father, she had looked up and found her uncle Liam watching her from beneath slightly raised eyebrows, and when she widened her eyes at him, mutely questioning what she had heard, he had given her a long, knowing wink.

  She watched Shamus stoop to pick up a fallen pickaxe from the ground near his feet and rest the shaft on his shoulder as he slowly scanned the surrounding yard, checking to see that all was as it should. Then he started to walk towards the stables.

  “Lydia? Is that you?” He had stopped on the threshold, peering into the dark shadows. “What are you doing in there?”

  “I’m feeding the horses. I’ll be done in a moment.”

  He came inside slowly, and then stood there, watching her as she piled hay into the crib in front of the last of the stalls.

  “We never see more than two horses at a time in here,” he said quietly, setting the pickaxe down by the side of the door. “Except when you and Father come up from Londuin, and then we hire a stableboy. And yet here you are doing his work for him. Why?”

  She leaned her hay fork against the front of a stall and pushed a strand of hair away from her eyes. “Because I needed to do something,” she said. “I was tired of being bored.” She looked at him in the doorway. “You seem very happy here in Camulodunum. Is that because of Uncle Liam’s happy outlook on life, or is there some other reason I don’t know about?”

  He looked at her shrewdly, tipping his head slightly to one side. “Now why would you ask me that, dear sister?”

  She picked up her fork again and moved to a pile of clean straw in a corner beside the door. “Because I’ve seen you smile more times since we arrived yesterday than I did in all the years before you came here, and I’m curious about why that should be so. Does Quintus Varrus have anything to do with it?”

  “Quintus? No, not at all. Why would you think that?”

  She shrugged in the act of scooping up a forkful of straw. “Because he is the only thing I can think of that might account for such a great change in you—he’s the only new element in the picture. It can’t be Uncle Liam. You’ve been around him forever and it never made you light-hearted before.” She hesitated, gazing at the straw. “You haven’t fallen in love with someone, have you?”

  The moment she saw the shock on his face she knew she was right. “Dia!” she said, covering her mouth with her hand. “You have! You’ve met a girl! Who is she? Tell m
e, tell me.”

  He flapped his hands at her, urging her to lower her voice, while he glowered around him, his face filled with utter panic, and she began to giggle, even though she knew it was not the wisest thing to do.

  “Don’t laugh at me,” he hissed, glaring at her.

  “I’m not, Shamus,” she gasped, trying to compose herself. “I’m not. I swear I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing because I’m giddy with gladness for you.” She reached out impulsively and grasped him by the wrist, pulling him with her as she moved to perch on the outer edge of one of the forage cribs, where two of the draft animals were munching softly behind her. He allowed himself to be pulled to stand beside her, his expression sullen.

  “Don’t be angry with me, Shamus,” she said. “I’m really truly glad for you. But why are you so upset? Does no one know about it?”

  “Of course no one knows about it.” He sounded anything but carefree. “How could anyone know about it? I scarcely know the girl myself. I’ve hardly even spoken with her. Met her three weeks ago and didn’t say a word to her until ten days ago.”

  Lydia looked at him in genuine astonishment. “Why on earth not?”

  “Because I couldn’t. Never had the chance. So I just stood and looked at her, for days.”