[A Dream of Eagles 01] - The Skystone

by Jack Whyte (ebook by Undead)

  "Why?" I asked him, immediately defensive. "You wouldn't be thinking of depriving me of his services, would you? I find his drawings very helpful in my work."

  He smiled at me. "No, Varrus, I would not, so you may relax. I need his parchment and his papyrus, not his pen. I have a feeling that time might lie heavily on my hands now that I am no longer on active duty, and I have often thought of writing down my own theories on military tactics. It has been a dream of mine for years, but no more than a dream, due mainly to the fact that the materials for writing in bulk are not readily at hand, and I have never had either the patience or the time one needs to assemble spindle books. But this talent Andros has could give me access to a source of parchment and to a simple means of binding sheets together to protect them against loss and damage."

  I demurred, I believe, for the first time ever in my personal dealings with him.

  "Why, Caius? I mean, why write military memoirs? To emulate Caesar? To leave Rome the benefit of your experience? Why would you not write of your villa here, and of your life in Britain?"

  He threw me a glance of pure surprise, thinking I was belittling him. His answer was slow and measured.

  "I would write a history of my military service to the Empire because I am a soldier. It is what I know best. It has been my life. Do you find that surprising or distasteful?"

  I shook my head. "No. Not at all. But it seems to me it could be a waste of time, if what you have been hinting at is true and the Empire is about to fall."

  His frown was impatient. "Come, Publius! Time spent constructively cannot be wasted. I would be writing for the benefit of those who follow me. Someone is sure to. no matter how bad things are."

  "Oh," I said. "Well, that makes a difference."

  "But?"

  "What do you mean, 'But?'" I asked innocently.

  "You have a reservation." His tone was cool. "I can hear it in your voice."

  I held up a disclaiming hand. "No, Caius, you are mistaken. I think you should write. But you should write for Britain. For your son Picus, and for my sons, too. You will be their uncle. It would be good for them to know their antecedents were more than just names."

  He smiled, mollified. "That is an amusing but worthwhile thought, Publius. Very well then, I shall write for future citizens of Britain. You are a facile persuader."

  I grinned at him. "You needed no persuasion. Would you not like to return home to Rome again, now that you have the time?"

  His face underwent a transformation from humour to disgust. "No, I would not. The place is a cesspool!"

  I was enjoying myself, for I had finally made the realization I have spoken of.

  "A cesspool?" I said. "Rome?"

  He looked at me warily, sensing that he was being teased. "Publius, you are baiting me. Why? You have never been this way before."

  I laughed, "No, Caius, I have not. I've been in awe of you, I suppose. But now that we are to be brothers, I feel less reluctant to discuss things openly with you."

  "What kind of things?"

  "Things like this — your self-delusion."

  "My what?" His voice was bristling with affront.

  "Your self-delusion. You talk of your Romanism, but you are really no more Roman than Meric. Your loyalty is to this place, this land, these people you call the Pendragon. This is your home, Caius. The very thought of going to Rome is repugnant to you. You've just admitted it."

  "Perhaps I have." His brow was creased now in perplexity. "Perhaps I have. But that in no way alters my obligations to the Empire."

  I threw down the book I had been holding. "What obligations, Caius? You have fulfilled them all and done it honestly and openly and with good will, in spite of all your reservations. But you pay only lip-service to what you have done. You haven't yet accepted that your debts are all paid in full."

  His face cleared. "That's true, isn't it? I have. That is the truth, Publius. I have fulfilled each and every one of my obligations to the Empire."

  "Yes, Caius," I said emphatically. "You have. Now take the time to consider your obligations to yourself. Write down your life's story, by all means, but write for your own people, your family, not for the sybarites in Rome."

  He snapped his fingers. "That reminds me! I have a letter I meant to tell you about. It arrived earlier today, by courier. It seems your friend in Rome has fallen foul of Theodosius."

  I frowned. "What friend in Rome? I have none."

  "Quite. I was being facetious. I meant young Seneca."

  "Seneca?" He nodded. "I thought he was in Constantinople. When did he move to Rome, and how has he offended Theodosius? And how did you find out?"

  He shook his head, smiling. "I have my sources. You forget, I made some inquiries. This one has been answered already through a fortunate combination of military emissaries to and from Rome. Its source is an old friend whom I have known for years. He has little good to say of Caesarius Claudius Seneca. Apparently the man's excesses are become so bad, even for a Seneca, that they offend the nostrils of Theodosius. Our Emperor is abstemious and really quite a devout Christian, for all that his ambition led him to the throne."

  I dismissed that as irrelevant. "So did Constantine's. What happened between Seneca and Theodosius?"

  Caius shook his head. "No one really knows, it seems, but Seneca was close to Valentinian, and that would not endear him to Theodosius in any way." He was interrupted by the clamour of a flurry of crows that came swooping down over the rooftop, haggling viciously over some morsel of carrion that one of them clutched in its beak. We watched them until they swirled away, neither of us making any effort to compete with their raucous uproar.

  "In any event," he continued eventually, "the Emperor handed down an ultimatum that I find interesting. He made it known that Seneca, and several others like him, were doing little for the common good. How did he phrase it? 'They are depriving the Empire of the benefits of their station, experience and breeding. ' That was it. The upshot of it was that Seneca should undertake a period of public service, under implicit threat of forfeiture of all his worldly goods. I thought it quite ingenious."

  "How? What do you mean, 'ingenious'?"

  His eyebrow went up. "Think about it. Seneca could refuse an imperial edict only under penalty of forfeiture of all his wealth. The alternative — acceptance — also puts his wealth at the Emperor's disposal for all intents and purposes. You may be sure Theodosius will find a post for Seneca that will make optimum use of his financial capabilities, and that Seneca will bestir himself to enlarge his wealth while in the imperial service. But no matter what Seneca does — short of absolute, treasonous theft on a vast scale — Theodosius will benefit by it and from it. Rest assured that the Empire will be keeping a very close and meticulous watch on its richest citizen and servant."

  "And Seneca accepted that?"

  "How could he do otherwise? He has not the heart to live as a pauper, and were he to attempt it, my friend in Rome swears he would not survive the first day."

  I whistled in wonder as the implications of what I had been told began to hit home to me. "Then he will be at the Emperor's bidding for a while. I wonder how he will come out of it?"

  Caius cleared his throat in disgust. "Probably very well. He is still a Seneca. But he will be under some restraint. Theodosius will watch him closely, as I said, but I have no doubt that Caesarius Claudius Seneca will contrive somehow to continue to enlarge his fortune."

  He was to be proven prophetic within the month.

  Shortly after our conversation, Caius invited Andros's two brothers to come live at the villa in return for their parchment-making services. They accepted his invitation and began making parchment specially for us, and Caius began to write. He did not find it easy at first. He had the discipline to marshal his time but not, as he soon discovered, his thoughts. There were too many things that he wanted to write about, and he quickly found that the greatest danger lay in writing too much about too little. Eventually, however, he fell into
a way of writing about whatever caught his interest at that particular time. And eventually, too, it became a habit to discuss his ideas with me.

  He wrote down his thoughts and theories on life in general, and on the life and past times of Britain. We talked of the kings of Rome, and of how Rome had foresworn such men. We talked of the Republic that was born, and had lived in glory until the advent of the Caesars — Julius and his cousin Octavius, who became Caesar Augustus.

  From that moment on, for all intents and purposes, the kings had returned. They called themselves emperors, but they were kings, with all the powers of despots. And they had killed Rome.

  We talked also, at great length, of Britain and her future, for Caius honestly believed in God's great plans for this green land. On most of these occasions, Luceiia was with us, and her contributions to our discussions were insightful and refreshing. During those long winter nights I learned fully to appreciate the keen intellect that underlay her beauty.

  She astonished me most particularly one night by proposing the thought that Rome had starved to death, and she went on to support her thesis. The mother country, she pointed out, is largely infertile. It could never produce enough food for its citizens, so they turned to conquer fertile lands. And, of course, the fertile lands they conquered were never rich enough to feed their own people and Rome, too, and so it went on, to embrace the whole world.

  Britain, my love believes, will never starve. The soil is rich and fruitful. As the people grow, she says, they will clear the forests and till the soil. I believe she is correct in this, for the people here are strong. The local Celts are a noble people — industrious for the most part, proud, certainly quick to anger but equally quick to forgive — and great lovers of music and the arts. The quality she finds most admirable among them, however, and I agree with her in this, is their mutual respect. The Celtic wife and mother is no chattel. She fights as well as her man, making the Celtic family a unit to be dealt with respectfully. No domestic decisions are made without her advice and concurrence. She has dignity and pride of place, as did the Republican women of Rome, and she is skilled, like the Roman matrons of old, in the arts of weaving, pottery and the rearing of children to respect all that a child should respect. When Luceiia talked of all of this the first time, I earned myself a savage clout on the head by remarking with a smile that four hundred years of Roman occupation had bred much Romanism into these Celts.

  Those were idyllic days, but they were soon to be marred by a development that seemed at first to contain no hint or threat of disruption.

  Caius received a missive from Antonius Cicero, welcoming him back to Britain and advising him of three things, the first of which was my own official death. I had been found in a ditch far to the south of Verulamium, my identity established only by a lozenge of silver with my name on it that was found in my scrip. The second piece of news was that my house had reverted to the State and would be occupied by the new Procurator, Claudius Seneca, who had been appointed to fill the post left vacant by the retirement of the incumbent. He was expected to arrive in Colchester at any time, contingent upon weather conditions in the seas between Britain and Gaul!

  That was an ironic twist that had its effect on all of us! But it was followed by another even stranger, at least to me. Equus, as my beneficiary, had taken all of my belongings into his own possession, and, apparently disheartened by my disappearance and death, he had closed down the smithy, loaded everything onto a couple of wagons and left Colchester to establish himself in some other town. I was mystified by this. Where would he have gone? He knew I was not dead. Could he be coming here? To return my belongings? If so, why wouldn't Tonius have said so?

  Caius put my mind at rest on that one, chiding me for being too literal in my interpretations. Of course, he said, Equus would be headed this way. But the letter from Tonius was quasi-official, carried by a military courier and therefore subject to censorship. How could Tonius make any reference, no matter how oblique, to my continued survival if there was the slightest consideration of the letter being exposed to scrutiny? Tonius, he insisted, was intelligent enough and experienced enough to know that Caius would put his own interpretation on the letter and draw his own conclusions. In the meantime, he had apprised us that I was now considered dead and therefore no longer pursuable. Furthermore, he had informed us, in plainest and yet unimpeachable terms, that my enemy was back in Britain in a position of power, and my friend was on his way to join us with my worldly goods.

  Reassured, and suddenly relieved of a great mental weight, I realized just how great my debt was to Antonius Cicero. Caius agreed with me.

  "What was the name he gave you after he abducted you to save your worthless skin?" The expression on his face was inscrutable.

  I had to think for a few seconds before the name came back to me. "Gratens. Publius Gratens. Why do you ask?"

  "Oh, it just occurred to me that Tonius might want to take some time off — a furlough — to attend the nuptials of his old friend Publius Gratens, since he knows the bride, and he and I have been friends for a long time."

  Luceiia leaped to her feet and kissed him. "Caius, my beloved brother, I know you are a great soldier but there are times when you show streaks of absolute brilliance. I would love to see Tonius again, wouldn't you, Publius?"

  I was as enthusiastic as she was. "Aye, I would." I grinned. "I still owe him a bad headache. It would be appropriate to cause it with bridal wine." I had another idea. "Particularly if he had the abominably poor taste to bring Plautus with him as part of his escort."

  But Caius was quick to throw water on that notion.

  "No! If he comes, he has to come alone. No escort. No one here will be calling you Publius Gratens, remember, and Publius Varrus is dead. No one who is not a good friend can even be allowed to suspect otherwise. Too dangerous. And Tonius will know that. I shall write to him tonight and send a man into Aquae Sulis to the garrison commander tomorrow, with a request to have it forwarded immediately."

  Of course he was correct, as usual, but I felt a keen sense of disappointment that Plautus would not be able to celebrate my reconstituted virility and my good taste in choosing a wife.

  Tonius's response took exactly ten days to arrive, causing Caius to wonder what the reason was for the obviously intensified stream of communications between garrisons. Messages sent through normal military channels would go from Aquae Sulis to Londinium and thence to the outlying garrisons. The speed of this return had to mean that priority messages were being sent directly between military district headquarters. Even before he opened the letter, he had decided to go himself to visit the garrison at Aquae Sulis, to find out personally what was in the wind.

  The letter from Tonius was longer and less formal than the previous one and anticipated, at least in part, our concerns. He would be delighted to visit us in May, partly to renew his delightful acquaintance with the bride-to-be, partly to see his two old friends, Caius Britannicus and Publius Gratens, but chiefly to share in the joining of two such fine and noble families, the progeny of which union could only be a benefit to the Empire. He was long overdue for an extended furlough, he pointed out, since, being himself without family, he seldom had reason or desire to absent himself from his posting and his charges. This, however, would be a joyous celebration, and he would be happy to request a whole month of leave to be able to participate in it properly.

  He had taken the liberty to inform Caius's good friend Bishop Alaric of Verulamium of the wedding, since Alaric had been in Colchester when Caius's letter arrived, and Alaric had immediately decided to attend the wedding on his own invitation. The two hoped to be able to travel west together, but this would be entirely dependent on Tonius's ability to find a suitable replacement for his primus pilus, one Pontius Aulus Plautus, who had been appointed, to the pride and despair of Tonius himself, primus pilus to the Household Troop officers' training school in Londinium. A great honour for Plautus but a great inconvenience for Antonius Cicero. Plautus h
ad already left Colchester to use up his accumulated furlough time of three months before taking up his new posting, and in the meantime, no one had been seconded to Colchester to replace him in what was a crucial and highly responsible position.

  In closing, Cicero mentioned that the new Procurator had arrived and was installed in poor Varrus's erstwhile home. Tonius had met him officially, but had had no particular dealings with him prior to the time of writing. Tonius looked forward to seeing all of us again, and hoped that we would be able to find some time to talk together at length amid the press of the many dear friends who were bound to be descending on the Villa Britannicus for the nuptials.

  Less than two weeks later, on the Ides of March, while I was working in my smithy and having no success with my design for a smelting furnace, a long and bedraggled procession of wagons arrived at our door. They'd travslled through the foulest spell of weather in what had already been a particularly nasty winter. There were three large draft wagons and three slightly smaller ones, each pulled by a pair of horses, and the sight of their occupants delighted me and touched me.

  Equus was driving the lead wagon, and he had brought his whole family with him. Plautus held the reins of the second wagon, and at first I did not recognize him, out of uniform, muffled in a cloak and heavily bearded as he was. The third wagon was driven by the son of my own major-domo from Colchester, and his father and mother were in one of the other wagons. I was amazed and flattered and quite touched at this display of loyalty, even though they were, all of them, very quick to point out that they had come only for the wedding festivities and would be moving on afterwards. To where? None of them could say.

  It took only moments, when we finally got around to talking about their future plans, to convince them that all of them had a place and a future here on the Villa Britannicus, since Luceiia and I would be setting up a household of our own after we were married and would have need of servants. Also, I was sadly in need of Equus's professional help in designing a smelting furnace for my skystones. They were not difficult to convince, and I knew that all of them had been hoping that we would be able to invite them to. stay. When they were assured of this, the reunion became a celebration.