by Whyte, Jack
"As things turned out, Lot wasn't there and never did appear, and one thing led to another and I couldn't get back that night—held in a so-called planning session all night long. A dog-fight was what it was, more than anything else. With Lot away, everyone wanted to be a general, even though most of them couldn't find a latrine if they were standing in it. Later that evening, when I finally realized how things were going to be, I sent some of my people back to find yours and lead them on through, but by the time they reached the spot where we had left them, your people were all gone. No sign of them at all. My own men thought nothing more of it, and I didn't hear of it until the following day. Didn't know what to do then. I asked some questions but found no answers, and I didn't want to be too specific. I heard nothing about any disturbance or fighting or disagreements over wagons, and so I let it go. But I've often wondered what happened to them, how they got away."
I was smiling by this time, feeling much relieved. "Why don't you ask Lucanus how he did it? He's here, on the galley." I nodded towards where Lucanus stood on the foredeck, watching us. When he saw the astonishment on Derek's face, Luke smiled and nodded a greeting.
"Well I'm damned," Derek muttered. "And there's that other one, too, the one who rode with you. The big Scot."
"That is my brother Donuil," Connor said.
"Is it, by all the gods?" Derek turned back to us, his eyes moving from me to Connor and back to me. "Why are you here, Merlyn the Dreamer? What do you want from me?"
"Nothing that may not be within your power to grant or to withhold," I responded, smiling and shrugging my shoulders. "Food and lodgings, for the night at least, for me and mine, and perhaps sanctuary."
"Sanctuary?" He frowned as he repeated the alien sounds. "I don't know that word."
"It means shelter, respite."
"Respite from what? Or from whom?" He glowered now at Connor, his face clouded with suspicion. "There will be no trouble here. You know Liam, Condran's admiral, is here?"
Connor nodded. "Coincidence," he said. "Nothing to do with anything. Liam has never seen or heard of Merlyn, and is no part of his cares. The rules apply, as always."
"Hmm." Apparently mollified, Derek looked back at me. "So? Respite from whom?"
I shrugged. "It is a long story—not long in the telling, but complex. I would be happy to tell it to you."
"Hmmph." He looked away again, towards the galley. "You have women with you, and children. How many?"
"Twelve, counting myself, aboard the galley."
"Aboard the galley ... And elsewhere?"
I indicated the two escort galleys that held their place outside the harbour. "Six more, split between the other vessels."
"Why do they stand off like that, Mac Athol? Afeared of the Sons of Condran?"
Connor smiled and shrugged his great shoulders. "Not since they learned to stand on two legs. Simple courtesy, my friend. We had no knowledge of the enemy's presence until we arrived, but it makes no difference here. They merely wait to be invited to enter. Three galleys at one time might have seemed too much like an invasion."
Aye, well, signal them in They are yours, and therefore welcome. Feargus, is it?"
"Aye, and Logan."
Derek spoke again to me. "The hospitality, for a night at least, presents no difficulty. It would have been extended anyway. Further, I'll not commit. But your story should be interesting." He paused. "Tell me, do you still dream?"
"From time to time," I answered, smiling. "I dreamed of you less than four weeks ago. That is why we are here."
He sighed deeply. "I was afraid you would say something like that."
"I saw you wearing Uther's armour," I said. "Do you still have it?"
"I do." His voice was level.
"When did you last wear it?"
"Not since I returned home, after we last met. I had my belly filled with war, and I thank the gods I've not had to take a sword in my hand since then. Why do you ask?"
"Is it in good condition?"
"Aye, perfect. I could strap it on again today if the need arose. Is that likely?"
My smile widened to a grin and I shook my head. "No, but I might like to buy it back from you some day, were you willing to sell it."
He gazed at me for some time, sucking on the inside of one cheek, before he responded. When he did, his voice was thoughtful. "Someday, you say? And how far off might that day be? I warn you, it could make a difference to my decision and to my price." He glanced back towards the galley and then nodded to me. "Bring your people ashore and come you with me. One of my men will conduct them to a place where they can rest and clean themselves. We have a Roman bathhouse here, if they would like to use it."
"You mean a working bathhouse?"
"You think I'd offer you a broken one?" The big man was glaring at me from beneath lowered brows, but I saw the glint of humour in his eyes. "Should I be thinking now you are surprised to find we might be clean, or clever enough to maintain a furnace, even though its Roman owners are long gone?"
"No, by all the old gods," I demurred, straight-faced. "Such thoughts would never have occurred to me."
"Hmm. Well, bring your people off."
I beckoned to my party on the galley and they gathered together immediately, moving towards the landing planks, already prepared to disembark. Connor cupped his hands and called to Tearlach, bidding him summon Feargus and Logan inshore. As men began moving about, preparing the signal to the waiting galleys, the first of my group, Dedalus and Lucanus, stepped onto the wharf together and made their way to us, followed by the others.
"Lucanus," I greeted him. "Derek remembers you from the road to Aquae."
"As I do him," Luke answered, smiling slightly. "You look well, Derek, little changed in twelve years. Who would have thought you and I would ever meet again?"
"Not I, but you are welcome here, Physician. Merlyn tells me you brought all your people home, that time, even without my help." His eyes moved from Lucanus to Dedalus. "Derek of Ravenglass," he said, nodding.
"Dedalus," the other answered, nodding in return. "I am a friend of Merlyn's."
"Aye, from Camulod. I can see that. You're no physician."
Ded's mouth quirked into a half-smile. "No, I'm a centurion, but not from Rome."
The others had joined us by that time and I introduced each of them, including the boys, to the king, their host at least for the night, and told them that arrangements would be made for all of us. Derek had been joined by a man whom he introduced to us as Blundyl before instructing him on the housing and distribution of our group. When he had finished, Derek took me by the arm.
"Come. You and me. Blundyl will see to the others for now. I want to talk to you."
He walked away immediately and I followed him, exchanging expressionless looks with Lucanus and Shelagh as I went. We walked the full length of the wharf, apparently ignored by all, except that I was conscious of a curiosity in many of the people, who took pains to show no awareness of our passing.
Once through the portals in the central gate-tower of the western wall, I found myself in a Roman fort the like of which I had never before seen. It was a standard cohortal fort, built to house and maintain a garrison of five to six hundred men. I had been in several similar places over the years, all of which had been in varying stages of ruin and decay. Most of them had been abandoned and deserted many years before the start of the legions' withdrawals from Britain, during my father's boyhood. Compelled by harsh economies, thanks to a total lack of reinforcements from beyond their shores, the central garrisons of the province were being remanned and reinforced at the expense of lesser, more outlying forts. Such had not been the case, though, with Glannaventa, as this fort had been called. A garrison had occupied this place right up until the final days of the withdrawals, during my own boyhood, and because of the importance of the natural harbour, the place .had been reoccupied by the local folk the moment the legionary garrison abandoned it. It was like stepping backwards into the time wh
en, in forts like this all over Britain, the life of the country was maintained and closely governed in good order.
All of the barracks buildings that had housed the garrison were still in use and still in good repair, their log walls tightly mortared and their tiled roofs free of moss, betraying no sign of rot or sagging. A number of new doors in the long walls indicated that they were occupied today by families, rather than by military squads. These buildings, six of them, each constructed to accommodate close to a hundred men plus their centurions, were laid out laterally in two blocks of three. Behind each block, looking very similar to the barracks buildings but serving another purpose altogether, were two more long, low buildings, dedicated to the service of the troops and housing smithies, tanneries and a variety of other manufactories. One block of four of these buildings lay on each side of the wide central road that joined the main gate behind us to the east gate in the opposite wall more than three hundred paces distant, and the eight of them completely filled the front half of the fort, the Praetentura, the section that lay closest to the main source of enemy attack. In the case of Glannaventa, that source had been the western sea.
Now, as we walked swiftly along the straight, wide avenue towards the stone-built central buildings that had once housed the garrison's administrative centre, I stared about me avidly, curious to learn all that I could about the life Derek's people lived here in this ordered place. Derek himself was striding ahead of me, immersed in his own thoughts. As he drew abreast of the end of the last barracks block, I lengthened my stride to catch up to him.
"I'm impressed," I said. "You modified the barracks into family units."
He looked at me and then beyond me to the building on my right. "Aye," he growled. "That was a nuisance at first, until it became clear we had to do it properly. At first it was a haphazard thing, people doing what they wanted to do, whether they were capable or not. Then others started carping because some people had more space than they had, and that was true, but it seemed there was nothing to be done by then. And then one fool ripped out a wall and brought down an entire building—killed four people. That's when I decided something had to change, and the changes had to be according to a plan."
He stopped, abruptly, and turned to look back the way we had come. "That one there," he said, indicating the second building on our right. "That's the one that collapsed. Never know it now, would you?" He did not wait for an answer. "After that, I put every builder in the place to work, systematically. Some of them, most of them in fact, had worked for the Romans, so they knew what was required and how to do what needed to be done. We gutted the interiors, divided them equally with new walls, cut doors in the outside walls and turned each building into housing units for twelve families. No more problems after that."
"All the units are the same size? What about the centurions' quarters, on the ends here? They look larger."
"They are. What of that?"
I shrugged. "You said you had no problems. How did people decide who lived where?"
He spat into the road. 'They didn't. I decided, and no one argued. I'm king here." He turned on his heel and began to walk again. "Most of the people who live in these buildings are our best artisans and their families. Their workshops are here, too, in these last two buildings, courtesy of Roman efficiency—smithy and foundry, cobblery, barrel-maker's cooperage, carpenter's yard, pottery and tilemaker, stonemason's yard. All in one location, everything the garrison needed. Clever whoresons, the Romans. I could see no point in not using these places for ourselves."
We had now arrived at the central rectangular space containing the three main buildings of this and every other Roman military installation: the commandant's house, the headquarters building, and the central granaries and storage warehouses known as the Horrea. These stone buildings sat apart from all others, isolated by the main lateral roadway, the Via Principalis, which crossed in front of them, and the second-largest street, the Via Quintana, at the rear. Since time immemorial, these two lateral streets had divided the interior of every Roman military camp, regardless of size, into the front half, the Praetentura, and the rear half, the Retentura. "That where I live." Derek pointed his thumb towards the massive commandant's house.
'The Praetorium? You live there?"
"It is my house."
"Aye, I suppose it is. You are the king."
I examined the Praetorium as we approached it, but could see little to indicate that it was a king's house now rather than a Roman commander's. High walls surrounded it, pierced by one large, central double portal, the doors of which stood open but were cloaked in shadow. I could see no guards anywhere and reflected that this king must have no need of such.
We cut diagonally across the main road in front of the king's house and he led me into the building flanking it, the former Principia, or garrison headquarters block. This had changed greatly since the legions left. It had been built originally around an open quadrangle containing a fountain, with the main entrance facing the cross-street. The principal part of the building, at the rear, occupied more than a third of the total area of the block and had once housed the garrison's most precious properties: the regimental chapel where the standards, colours and battle honours were stored, the regimental .paymaster's vaults and the personnel records office of the regimental clerk. This part of the headquarters block also contained the tribunal briefing room, where the officer commanding, down through the centuries, traditionally received his staff at formal meetings, addressing the assembly from the rostrum of the tribunal at the far right of the long room.
The building's open quadrangle had once been the off- duty domain of the garrison's officers. Wide, colonnaded walkways on both sides and on either side of the main entrance gave access to a series of lesser offices around the building's exterior. Sometime within the past three decades, after the departure of the Romans, the open space of the quadrangle had been roofed, leaving only a large rectangular hole in the centre to vent the smoke from the enormous firepit that had replaced the obligatory ornamental fountain in the open yard. Great beams of hand- hewn oak now spanned the space, supporting a second framework, less massive, that reared above them to hold a peaked and gabled roof of heavy thatch, open around the overhanging eaves to permit the passage of air among the rafters. This roof was intricately built, evidently engineered and erected by a master carpenter, but I thought it a pity that it should shut out much of the light along with most of the bad weather. Gazing up at it, it struck me as the local equivalent of King Athol's Great Hall in Eire.
All of this I saw as I strode at Derek's heels, for he made no attempt to play the guide for me. Matching him step for step, I followed him as he swung right, up to the colonnaded walk, and proceeded to the first door on his left. The bottom half of this door was closed, a hinged flap on its back raised to form a broad counter behind which stood a man evidently on duty of some kind. As Derek spoke with him, exchanging muttered greetings, I edged forward curiously to peer into the dim room at his back. It was a spartan place, bare of furnishings, with high, deep shelves lining every wall.
"Weapons," Derek grunted. I stared at him blankly. "Your weapons, take them off. They stay here until you leave."
"What, all of them? Am I to go unarmed among strangers?"
"Aye, along with everyone else, so you won't be lonely. That's the law in Ravenglass—no weapons. This room is for your people. Condran's crowd left theirs in a room on the other side. If someone else arrives while you are here, there's place for their things, too."
I had already loosened my swordbelt, catching it up and wrapping the loose ends around the scabbards of my long sword and my dagger. "How long has that law been in place?"
"Ever since this port was opened up to passing ships after the Romans left. It saves a lot of strife and bloodshed."
"I'm sure it does, but don't you find enforcing it to be a little ... hazardous?"
His teeth flashed in a tiny, swift grin. "No, not at all. You don't want to comply, you
leave, assisted or otherwise, and you don't come back. "
I could only shake my head as I passed my bundled weapons over the counter to the custodian. "Different, " I muttered.
"Healthy, " the king responded. "Come on, then. "
He led me once more through the courtyard to the main entrance, where he turned sharply and made his way between the walls bordering his own house on our left and the headquarters building on our right. We emerged on the other cross-street, the old Via Quintana, which we crossed to continue moving towards the eastern gate now visible ahead of us. In this portion of the fort, too, most of the buildings had been converted into living quarters, although I could smell fresh-baked bread and other delicious aromas which spoke of the enterprises being pursued here. I noticed another stone building, close by the rear wall.
"Is that a hospital over there?"
"It was, but there's no need of it now, and no surgeons to use it. it's more living quarters. "
"What about the stables? What happened to them?"
"Outside the walls, now. We needed the living space. "
We were close to the rear wall now, and I looked up to the empty parapet walk between the turrets. "You don't post guards up there?"
"Against what? My people are farmers. They have their fields to tend, beyond the walls, and the only threat to us would come from the sea. " He nodded towards the distant mountain peaks that reared up inland. "We have the Fells, there, at our back, and only one road through them, impassable in winter and easily held, if need be, in the summer.
We have no need of guards. I told you, I have not had a sword in my hand since I came home, seven years ago."
"Seven? It was eight years ago we parted, and you were homeward bound then."
"Aye, I was, and it took me the better part of a year to walk from there to here. I lost my horse soon after you and I parted company."
We passed through the double gates in the eastern tower, and I stopped dead in my tracks.