by J A Cummings
Arthur drew fresh water from the well and took it into the kitchen, delivering it to Mairwen, the cook. She accepted the offering, the first of his daily chores, and continued with her breakfast preparations. Sir Ector came in and sat down at the table behind her with a cup of weak ale. He beckoned to his foster son.
“Come here, boy.” The youth obeyed, and the old knight sniffed. “You smell like a horse.”
Arthur knew better than to lie. “I was riding Avona.”
Sir Ector nodded and took a sip. “I see. Riding so early?”
“Kay will want to practice, so I wanted to ride before he did.”
“So now Kay will get to practice on a weary horse?” The man raised an eyebrow and smirked.
Arthur shifted uncomfortably. “I... hadn’t thought of that. It wasn’t my intention.”
“Of course not.”
With a clatter, Kay came into the room, going promptly to the sideboard to rummage for crumbs. Mairwen slapped his hand but gave him a crust from last night's bread, smeared with fresh butter. The youth shoved it into his mouth and joined his family at the table.
“Morning,” he said, barely understandable around his food.
“Good morning,” Sir Ector replied. “Arthur, run up to my room and fetch the casket, will you?” Both boys looked at one another askance. Their father always kept a close watch on his coin, which was all the casket held. If he was calling for money, something important was going on. “Go on, boy! I gave you an order!”
Arthur scampered up the stairs and into his foster father’s room. The hearth was cold, but it still smelled of last night’s smoke, and the chamber as a whole was cozy despite the winter air outside. Sir Ector’s bed was a disarray of crumpled furs and skins, under which his favorite linen sheets were laid, a little thin from years of use. Beside the bed, the nightstand stood, bearing only the wash basin and a little hand towel. The casket was usually hidden in the wall behind it. Arthur knelt and pushed the nightstand aside, its wooden legs scraping across the stone floor as it reluctantly moved. The boy’s fingers pressed into the mortar lines around a particular stone, and it popped free after much effort, making him fall back onto his haunches with a grunt. He shimmied three more stones out of the wall and peered into the opening beyond.
Three scrolls were tied and sealed with wax, but he knew well what they were. One contained his foster father’s letters patent, granting him acknowledgement as a noble and vassal of the King. Another was the deed to the very castle where they lived, the tiny but quite serviceable Caer Gai. The third, well, Arthur wasn’t entirely certain what the third might be, but he supposed it was a genealogy of some sort, or possibly baptismal records, since Sir Ector was one of the Britons who had accepted the Roman faith. Beneath these scrolls was the casket, a wooden chest inlaid with polished pieces of abalone shell, held closed with a padlock whose key was always around Sir Ector’s neck. He pulled the casket and very nearly fell again, so heavy was the burden.
“Oof!” He shoved at the box, barely able to move it. “Kay!”
He could hear a grumble at the bottom of the stairs, then his foster brother made his resentful way up into the lord’s chambers. “What do you want, you filthy bastard?” he demanded.
Arthur was accustomed to Kay’s little names of affection and no longer reacted to them. “It’s too heavy. I can’t lift it.”
Kay shrugged. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“Father wants it. Please help me carry it to him.”
“My father asked you to bring it to him, churl. He did not require it of me. Find a way, or admit your failure.”
He turned and started to go back down the stairs, and Arthur said quickly, “If you don’t help me, I’ll tell him that you stole the treacle.”
Kay whirled on him. “You wouldn’t dare, you nasty shit!”
“Wouldn’t I?”
The older boy came closer to loom over him, his face twisted with anger. Arthur looked up, determined and stubborn, not giving an inch. Kay wanted to wallop him, but they both knew that Arthur would strike him back, and harder, so he hesitated. The face-off would have lasted longer, but Sir Ector bellowed from the kitchen, “Boys!”
“You’re lucky that I love my father, you rotten guttersnipe,” the older boy complained, helping at last to wrestle the heavy chest out of the wall.
Together, they managed to cart the thing all the way down to the table, where they placed it with some difficulty. The task done, they stood and huffed, red-faced, while Sir Ector took his time retrieving the leather tie around his neck that held the key.
“Took you long enough,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard their whole exchange.
“It’s very heavy,” Arthur said.
“This I know.”
“Kay helped quite graciously.”
Sir Ector raised his great dark eyebrow. “Arthur, that’s a lie. Don’t let me catch you at such mischief again, even if it’s done to try to put your brother in a better light. Kay is no better than he is.”
“Thank you, Father,” the older boy said. “I think.”
“Go up and get the treacle out of your scriptorium,” the knight commanded. His shame-faced boy immediately ran off to obey.
Arthur hovered near and watched as Sir Ector turned the casket with his one good hand. He helped hold the padlock while the knight fumbled with the key, and once it sprang open, he helpfully pulled the tongue of it out of the latch. The lid opened with a creak on hinges rusty from disuse, and then he saw a glow of gold that made him catch his breath.
“Are you a dragon, sir? So much pelf!”
Sir Ector chuckled. “No, Arthur. No dragons here, and as family treasures go, this is not so much.” He looked up as Kay returned his stolen sweets to Mairwen, who cracked his knuckles with her wooden spoon.
“That’s for thievery!” she fumed.
The knight smiled. “Hit him once more, for good measure.”
“Father!”
“And one for Arthur, for helping to conceal the crime.”
The cook delivered her sharp blows to them both, Kay trying to avoid it, Arthur accepting the punishment as only fair. He held out his hand manfully, and Mairwen, charmed by him as always, struck perhaps less firmly than she should have. Sir Ector noted the discrepancy but let it pass. He pulled out coins into neat little piles, counting the money silently in his head. Kay watched closely, keeping his own count, and Arthur could not help but do the same. When the coins had all been disgorged onto the table, their father said to them, “There. How much do we have here?”
Kay answered quickly, for he had a mind for such things. “Fifty Roman Denarii, eighty Trinovantes gold staters, and sixty silver Atrebates minims.”
“Just so, my son, just so.”
“Why are there no Dumnonian coins, or Silurian?” Arthur asked.
“Our tribes have never minted coins,” Sir Ector explained. “We never needed to. Let others do that work, eh? We’ll just accept the money that they make.”
“You’re Dumnonian,” Kay mocked the boy. “Dumnonian by-blow of some sheep herder.”
“And we are Deceangi,” their father nodded. “What of it? We all are Britons.”
He pressed a little lever in the bottom of the casket, and a false bottom shifted aside. He pulled it free and showed the boys the thin layer of sparkling gems and pearls that lay beneath, nestled in the folds of cloth of gold. Arthur looked at the shining stuff and whistled through his teeth.
“No wonder it was such a chore to carry!” he exclaimed.
Sir Ector ruffled the boy’s hair, smiling. Kay leaned over and looked into the chest, too, then straightened with a frown.
“Why are you counting out the money, father?”
“Well,” the knight said, “I think we need another warhorse. I’ve decided that Arthur should start his training early.”
Arthur stared in delighted surprise, struck speechless by his good fortune. The older boy reacted as if someone had slapped
him. “But -!”
“But what, Kay?”
“He’s just a child!”
Arthur scowled, recovering his wits. “So are you.”
“Neither of you are grown men yet. You both will serve as squires, but not before I’ve taught you some of what you need to know. To do that, you both need to have a horse of your own, if only to keep from running poor Avona to his death.” He went to the cupboard and scrounged through the shelves, finally coming up with a small cloth bag holding honeycomb. He dumped the sweet stuff out and came back to the table to fill the bag with coins.
“The money will get sticky,” Kay objected.
“So it shall.” He finished filling the bag, taking all of the coins from the chest. “Now… we’re going to Viroconium.”
Viroconium Cornoviorum was a grand name, to be sure, but Arthur thought it suited the place well. As the little family approached the market town, traveling by cart down the old Roman road, they emerged from the wood and into a wide meadow dominated by the stony walls and tall columns of the city. A dozen other carts from all directions converged into the single street that led through the main gates, the most massive the boy had ever seen.
Sir Ector pointed to the inscribed stone embedded in the gate and said, “Which of you boys can read that to me?”
Kay, eager to show his brains, immediately began. “To Imperatur Caesar Trajanus Hadrianus Augustus, the son of the divine Trajanus Parthicus, the grandson of the divine Nerva, Chief Priest...holding trib... holding...”
“Holding tribunician power for fourteen times, consul three times, Father of the Fatherland, the Civitas of the Cornovii.” Arthur sat back, well pleased with himself. Kay punched him in the arm.
“Exactly so,” Sir Ector praised. “And what do you think those words mean, all strung together like that?”
They were silent for a moment, then Arthur said, “The city is dedicated to the emperor.”
“And why would a city be dedicated to an emperor?”
“To thank him for his kindness?”
Kay made a sour face. “To convince him to be kind.”
“Most likely both, although I'll wager there's more of the second than the first.” He gestured with his withered left hand. “All around this city, and all through Britain, there are the remains of what used to be Roman forts. Back when I was a boy, there were still centurions here, holding the city safe from attack.”
“Attacks from whom, Father?” Arthur asked.
“From us.”
They passed a duo of bored-looking soldiers wearing Roman breastplates over their leather tunics, spears in hand. Sir Ector saluted them, and they nodded back, waving the cart through the opening in the wall and into the city proper.
They followed the slowly-moving line of humanity into the forum, where the columns still stood tall, though the administrative duties they now sheltered were somewhat less exalted. The boys looked around them, excited by the new faces and new smells. Four large buildings, all made of stone, stood around the open square, their doors hung with brilliantly dyed canopies. The babble of a hundred voices filled the air around them.
Kay shook his head. “Wonderful. Why are there so many people here?”
Sir Ector smiled. “Commerce, my boy. Commerce brings these people here every day, bringing things to sell, and others bring their gold to buy what's carted in. That building there is the macellum, and in warmer weather that's where we'd find the best leeks and radishes that grow in all of Britannia, along with honey and treacle – I think there's a boy here about that cares for treacle, no?” Kay blushed, and his father chuckled. “Every kind of fruit, every kind of provender – that's what brings people here to the city.”
“But it's winter,” the younger boy pointed out. “None of those things are being harvested yet. They aren't even growing.”
“Ah, but there's winter wheat, and nuts, and smoked meats. Those things are here. So is hay, and boiled wool cloth, and livestock. And that is why we’ve come to Viroconium.”
He guided the cart toward the tallest of the four buildings, its massive gates almost as imposing as those in the city walls. It was the bathhouse of the civitas, and a far grander affair than they had ever seen before. A groom stepped forward to take the reins, and Sir Ector tossed them to him along with a coin.
“We'll be staying at the house of Sir Bedivere,” he told the servant, who bowed. “Take the bags there, and return here with the cart when you're through.”
The knight alit, followed by his sons, and then the groom jumped up into the carter's seat and clucked the tired horse back into action. Kay frowned. “You don't even know that person, Father. Why did you give him our cart?”
“He's taking our baggage to our host, and then he will return.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that's how he makes his wages.” He put his good arm around Kay's growing shoulders. “Come on, now. We can't meet our old friend all covered in road dust.”
Their father guided them into the therma, watching the confusion on their faces. They had spent their lives bathing in the river, or in water warmed by the fires of the simple bathhouse at Caer Gai; he had never had occasion to take them to the sumptuous bath here in the kingdom's capital. Back in his youth, he had spent many hours here in Viroconium in general and in the baths in particular. There was a time when he had become jaded and unimpressed by the luxuries of the town. Now he was amused, watching his sons’ wide eyes as they tried to take in everything.
They reached the atrium first, where a score of naked young military men was being put through their paces by a shouting man in a thick red robe. The soldiers wielded spears as they moved, stabbing, parrying and spinning, huffing with the effort of their exercise. Arthur's jaw fell open and he stared at them, watching the precise martial dance and the fine-tuned muscles of the men. His blue eyes widened even more the longer he watched, and Sir Ector chuckled, putting a fingertip to the child's chin and nudging his mouth closed.
“This way,” he said.
He led them into a vestibule, where he paid more serving men to take their clothes away for washing. Kay complained about the cold while they stripped him, but Arthur let it happen, his eyes still large as serving plates. Sir Ector allowed it, too, and when they were naked, he led them toward three waiting doors.
“Frigidarium,” he said, pointing to the right, then to the center. “Tepidarium, for after the frigidarium. And farthest over, and last in order, is the caldarium. On the other side of the caldarium is, well, another place that you're too young to bother with just yet.”
“What other place?” Kay asked, shivering.
“The sudatorium, but I tell you, you're too young yet. Once you're knights, you can go in there. Not yet.” He put his hands on his boys' shoulders, his right hand gripping Kay gently, his ruined left just resting on Arthur's skin. “Now, what we do, and what those lads out there in the palaestra were doing, is we exercise and work up a bit of a sweat. Then into the frigidarium we go for a plunge, then out in the tepidarium to warm up. Last, we go to the caldarium, where the water is hot, and we will sweat again. There will be people there with oils and strigils, and all of the dirt and sweat on our skins will be scraped away. Then we'll go back into the tepidarium and have a swim until our clothes are clean and dry.”
“I don't want some ruddy stranger scraping my skin,” Kay complained.
“When you're older, you'll pay someone for the privilege, you mark my words. This is what it means to be civilized, son. Think of it as a gift from Rome.”
Arthur turned and watched the men again, the way their bodies glistened in the cold late winter sunlight as they moved. Their muscles, hard and sculpted by a lifetime of fighting, slid and moved beneath their glowing skin. They moved as one body, united in motion and in the angles of their spears, dancers in bellicose choreography. It was the most beautiful sight he'd ever seen. His foster father was talking again, but he could not concentrate on the sound. His heart was pou
nding too loudly in his ears.
“Arthur!”
Sir Ector's voice broke through the fog, and he turned quickly.
“I'm sorry, Father. You were saying?”
“I was saying, take up those weights there, and let's do some work.”
They went to a bench by the side wall, where a series of lead weights, each one shaped like a large fishing sinker, waited in an orderly line. Sir Ector, completely comfortable in his scarred nudity, took up a heavy weight in his right hand and pointed at smaller versions on the bench.
“There, Kay, take those two, one in each hand, and Arthur, the ones beside it. Swing them overhead like this...”
He led them through their paces, their shoulders and chests and backs limbering after the long ride from Caer Gai. Kay was willing for once, but his form was poor. Arthur did his best to follow his foster father's instructions. He found himself getting out of breath, and his lips parted so he could suck in more air. They had done calisthenics at home, and their father taught them exercises so they could grow and be fit, but this was harder work than he had encountered before. He liked it and the way it felt within his body.
As they exercised, a thin-haired man in a white robe sat down on one of the benches lining the wall behind Sir Ector. He watched the boys, his eyes gleaming in his flushed face, his hands hidden inside the fabric that draped his body. Something about the look made Arthur feel ashamed, and he moved so that his foster father was between him and the onlooker.
They moved from swinging with their arms to holding heavier weights and squatting with them, exercising their thighs and buttocks and their backs. They worked until their muscles shook. Sir Ector directed their efforts, and when they were almost finished, he glanced over his shoulder at the man who was watching so happily. Finally, he nodded.
“Sweating, boys?”
“Yes, Father,” Kay answered.
“Good. Put down the weights.” He turned to the man, the heavy weight still in his right hand, no longer dangling but held now like an extra fist. “I think you've seen enough. These are my sons, not boys for sale.”
