The Skystone

by Jack Whyte

  Our horses grazed contentedly nearby for more than an hour while we dallied in the rich warmth of the sun, and then she suddenly sat up and reached for her clothes.

  “I am lost, husband,” she said. “How far are we from the valley?”

  I remained where I was, supine and spread-eagled, and pointed with my thumb over my head in the direction of the crest of the hill above us.

  “Just on the other side of the summit, there,” I told her. “About a half hour ride to the top, and we’ll be looking down into it.”

  She leaned across to kiss my chest and then caught hold of my flaccid maleness, pulling it gently but firmly upwards as if it were a handle by which she could lift me.

  “Well then,” she said, “up off your lazy rump and let’s go and look at it.”

  I started to rise and then lay back, staring into the sky.

  “Look, up there, right above us.”

  Sitting as she was, she could not see anything, so I pulled her back down beside me and we lay side by side for minutes, watching two tiny crosses floating in the sky a mile and more above us.

  “What are they, Publius? Dragons?” I could hear the smile in her voice.

  “No,” I said, “those are eagles. A mating pair.”

  “A mating pair? You mean they are mating now?”

  “Hardly, my love. I meant that they are male and female.”

  “How do you know that? And how do you know they are eagles? They could be hawks.”

  “No, too high up. And look at the wing span, even from here.” I reached out and took her hand where it lay beside me. “Those are eagles. They’re probably watching us watching them.”

  “You mean they can see us from that height?”

  “Probably better than we can see them. The eagle’s eye is the keenest in the world.”

  She squeezed my fingers. “Do you think they are in love?”

  “Probably. Eagle love. They mate for life.”

  She leaned up on one elbow, looking down at me. “Really? I didn’t know that.”

  I squinted at her. “Come now, I thought you knew everything!”

  “No.” She lowered her head to my chest. “Not everything. Just the things I need to know and the things I want to know.” She paused for a while, then asked, “Where do you think their nest might be?”

  I lowered a hand to caress her hair. “I don’t know, but it must be around here somewhere. This is the hatching season. They must have chicks. Wherever it is, it’s somewhere high up. Probably on one of the hilltops, on a cliff face. They nest in the same place every year, too, you know.”

  “The same mate and the same nesting place for life? They sound almost human.”

  I still had not taken my eyes from the two solitary shapes wheeling above us. “Don’t malign them, Luceiia. Some humans, very few, attain the dignity and honour, you might almost say the purity, of eagles. Very, very few.”

  “What do you mean, Publius?” Her voice was very quiet.

  “I mean that only eagles can be eagles, my love, and eagles can only be eagles. They are unique. They never demean or disgrace themselves. Their purity is absolute because they are incapable of voluntary imperfection.”

  She kissed me. “Just like you, you mean?”

  I returned her kiss. “No, Luceiia, not like me at all. I’m far too human.”

  “Then, husband, if you are too human, no man can ever hope to be an eagle.”

  I sat up and reached for my own clothes. “That’s not true, my love,” I said. “Have you ever looked closely at your brother?”

  She lay still and blinked her eyes in silence.

  The great birds were still circling above us when we crossed the summit of the hill and looked down into the Valley of the Dragons. I showed her where we had unearthed the skystones we had found, and then I pointed out the circle segment in the lake side. As I started to lead the way along the crest of the hill towards the lake, she spoke again.

  “It seems strange to realize that those massive stones at the bottom there are broken pieces of mountain.” She stared at the cliff opposite. “Could that be where the eagles have their nest?”

  I turned and looked across the valley to the great rock face. “Very probably. It’s sheer enough, and inaccessible.”

  She rode in silence as we approached the lake, and soon we reined in our horses right above it, looking down into its depths, it was a genuine lake, much larger than a normal mountain tarn. This close, all sign of the circle segment we had seen from the distance had vanished. The bright sky and the sun above gave the surface a much friendlier aspect than some I had seen, and I was pleased that she was seeing it at its most appealing.

  “Well,” I asked her, “what do you think? Have I wasted your time dragging you out here and making you spend the night in a leather tent?”

  “No.” Her voice was subdued. “It’s very large, Publius. Much larger than I remember. How deep is it?”

  I angled my mount closer and placed a hand on her shoulder, feeling the strength of her.

  “I don’t really know. No way of telling. But it’s deep. My estimate would be about a hundred feet or so at its deepest, judging from the slope of the valley floor, but I could be short by half as much again or even more.”

  “A hundred and fifty feet? And you intend to drain it? How? Where will you drain it to? Where will it all go?”

  “Come, I’ll show you.” I led her for another half mile around to the western rim of the lake where she could see for herself the steep fall of the land down into the neighbouring valley. “Can you see what happened here? The impact of the falling stones threw up this rim across the end of the valley, building up the natural dam that was here already and strengthening it. You can see how new the fall is here, on this side. See it?” She nodded and I went on. “The lake here is like wine in a bowl. All we have to do is crack the side of the bowl, down there, by digging a hole into it, and the wine will spill down into the valley below, there, and then down into the next one, and so on until it reaches the plain and flows into the streams and rivers.”

  “That will be dangerous, Publius, won’t it?”

  “How?”

  “Digging that hole into the side of the bowl, as you call it. It will be dangerous. What if you dig too far?”

  “No.” I shook my head disparagingly. “It’s simple engineering, Luceiia. There’s nothing to it.”

  She was staring at me keenly. “Perhaps not, for an engineer. You are not an engineer.”

  “So? What of it? Engineers can be bought, my love.”

  “Where?”

  I shrugged. “Anywhere.”

  “Where?” Her voice was edged with determination.

  “Many places.”

  “Where?”

  “Ye gods! I don’t know! I haven’t even started searching yet, Luceiia.”

  “Where will you start?”

  I shrugged again, suddenly uncomfortable with this inquisition. It seemed she was determined to be difficult. I was wrong, however, as her next words showed.

  “This is very important to you, Publius, so it is also very important to me, but I will not have you grubbing and digging around down there on your own, so think! If you had to find an engineer, urgently, for anything, where would you start looking?”

  I gaped at her, feeling the surprise on my face. “The army.”

  “Exactly. The army. Surely you and Caius have enough friends and influence between you to arrange to borrow a decent engineer? What about Tonius Cicero? Could he not arrange something?”

  For the space of a few seconds I was filled with elation, but then my spirits slumped again. She was watching my face closely and noticed it.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “And everything. It is a fine idea, but it would not work. Caius would never condone the use of imperial troops for a private operation like this, and when I think of it, I wouldn’t, either.”

  “Why not, if it benefits the army, to
o? I heard Tonius myself, during the wedding feast, saying that his people are always trying to find something to do to give their men experience in different areas. It seems to me that this operation would make an exciting training project — a tactical exercise in the physical removal of large volumes of water.”

  I couldn’t get close enough to her to kiss her, but she came to me. “My love,” I told her, “you are your brother’s sister!”

  “No, I am the wife of Publius Varrus.”

  I hugged her to me with one arm and looked above to the silent birds wheeling overhead.

  The eagles were still there when I returned exactly one month later and sat in the same spot with a small group of serving officers, a special team assembled from Glevum, Venta Belgarum and the great gold mines of Dolocauthi in the mountains of Cambria. Each of these men was a professional in the manipulation of water, and Verecundius Secundus, the senior among them, was directly responsible for drainage and water flow at Dolocauthi itself, where two great open-channel aqueducts, one of them seven miles long, delivered three million gallons of water a day to wash the crushed, gold-bearing ore. Secundus had the responsibility of maintaining the great wooden water wheels that drained all of the overflow of this water from the open-cast workings and the underground galleries of the mine, some of which went down more than a hundred feet.

  The group sat silent for a spell, each man gazing around him, noting the fall of the land below, the steepness of the gradients and the angle of the retaining wall of the dam-like structure on which we sat. “Well, Secundus? How does it look to you?”

  “Cicero was right.” He did not look at me, his eyes still busy gauging and estimating. “An interesting exercise. Straightforward enough, but a degree of difficulty that’ll keep our trainees on their toes.” He glanced at me, and then at Rufus Seculus, his colleague from Venta. “I like it. I think we should do it. Rufus?”

  Rufus Seculus grunted. “Aye. As you say, though, there are problems. It’s not going to be an overnight job. This is going to take a lot of planning. Hit that hillside the wrong way and you could wash a lot of men away when that juice squirts out. Especially since we’ll be using trainees and not experienced sappers. What’s your opinion, Rasmus?”

  Erasmus Lecio was the third member of the group, a grey-haired veteran of many wars. He had been listening to their exchange with his lips pursed and a frown of concentration on his face. Now he spat a glob of phlegm and spoke.

  “I think if we tackle this without at least a major contingent of veterans we should all face a court martial. It’s a good training project — I’ve got no objections on that ground — but it could be nastier than a sharp-toothed whore. I’d hate to have to rely on green sappers all the way in this one. You’re right, Seculus. This dam is new, from the looks of it, and it wasn’t built by Romans. No telling what kind of mess is underneath us, or how unstable it is. Every shovelful that comes out of the sap down there could be the critical one that’s holding the whole whoreson lake in check. I wouldn’t want to be the one responsible for it if some green trainee who doesn’t know his rectum from his throat makes a mistake and empties the whole sewer at the wrong time. Let’s do it, by all means, but let’s be sure we know what we’re doing, every step of the way.”

  Seculus turned back to me. “What did you say you wanted this drained for?”

  I grinned. “There’s a stone buried in the mud at the bottom of it. I want it.”

  “I thought that’s what you said. A stone. In the mud. Did you throw it in yourself?”

  “No.” I grinned. “It fell in.”

  “I see. And now you want to get it out. Is it a big stone?”

  “I think so.”

  “You think so.”

  I could see by his face he thought I had lost my wits, but he was not going to insult me openly to my face by saying so.

  “Have you any notion of how much mud there is at the bottom of a lake, Master Varrus?”

  I nodded, still smiling. “Quite a lot, I should imagine.”

  “It doesn’t dismay you?” I shook my head, and his eyes narrowed as he asked, “What are you really after?”

  “I told you. A stone. A big stone in the mud at the bottom. Look, Seculus, I know you don’t believe me, but it’s the truth, and if I told you any more you would really think me sick in the head. I think the stone is really there, and it is valuable to me, and only to me. At least, I think it is valuable. It may not be. But I have to find it first, before I’ll know.” Their expressions were wondrous to behold and I laughed aloud. “I swear I’m speaking truth. Come, let’s go back down to the villa. By the time we get there it’ll be almost dark. Over dinner tonight, I promise you, Caius Britannicus will tell you the whole story. In the meantime, even if you do not believe it, and even if the stone is not there, your trainee engineers will have gained the experience of draining a lake and no harm, will have been done, except to my dreams.”

  They accepted this, and later they accepted Britannicus’ story of my quest for the stones from heaven, and because they were who they were, they asked intelligent questions that I tried to answer as well as I could. Thereafter, they went about their tasks of planning and organization as if it were the most natural and the most urgent thing in the world that the millions of gallons of water and mud between me and my skystone should be removed with the utmost possible haste.

  The three military men returned with an army of engineers and sappers before the end of the following month, and within days of their arrival a military camp was well established in the valley and the work was under way. It proceeded with all necessary caution for, as Erasmus Lecio had pointed out on that first inspection, there was no way of determining how thick the dam was on the lakeward side, or how far the waters had penetrated the rubble of the dam itself. It was dangerous work every foot of the way, but it was not until mid July that the first seepage occurred. From then on, it was merely a matter of time — a little more cautious digging, and then the wait for the water of the lake to find its own way out.

  In the small hours of a summer morning, the sappers were awakened by a roar and a rumble, and for the next week the lake poured itself down the hillside, emptying like the broken bowl it resembled.

  There can be few things or places less attractive than the newly exposed bottom of a suddenly drained lake — mud and stench and noxious vapour steaming under a hot sun. There was nothing to do but leave it and hope that the sun would dry it quickly.

  August came and went, and the sun blazed into September. Strong autumn winds sprang up to help, and I watched, waiting and fretting in a fever of frustration and impatience. October remained dry and clear, and finally, driven to distraction by the waiting, I decided that the time had come.

  I had made careful drawings before the lake was breached and had calculated to within ten paces where my treasure had to lie. All summer long, as soon as the mud had become firm enough to bear a man, I had men digging ditches, channelling residual water away from the centre, so that by late autumn the lake bed was a maze of drainage ditches, some of them wide and deep.

  I had also kept a team of men and horses busy building mountains of fuel on the lakeside — bushes, dried grass and thistle, dead wood, even whole trees. Now I began to burn it in a monstrous pyre above the spot where I hoped and believed the skystone lay. We burned for two days and then left the ashes to cool, and when we scraped them away, the clay beneath them was baked. We tackled the baked clay then with mattock, pickaxe and spade until we found moisture again. Then we repeated the whole process. It was tiring, hard and dirty work, but the day came, towards the year’s end, when a workman’s pickaxe struck rock, and a shout of triumph told me we had found what we were looking for. The skystone was there. My guess had been correct. The size of it, however, left me breathless. Caius, I thought, would never believe this.

  XXVIII

  With the perspective of time, I am tempted to say that I chose the wrong day to bring my skystone home in triump
h, but that would be neither true nor accurate.

  My homecoming with the skystone was a triumph for me and, in a strange way, for Gaius. By vindicating myself in the finding of the stone, I had also vindicated his faith in my strange obsession. He had wanted me to find a skystone for years; it meant a lot to him. Only occasionally did his fine mind balk at the impossibility of everything involved in the quest. The day I found the stone and brought it back to the villa should have been a day for rejoicing all day long. But it was not to be. The arrival of the skystone at the villa was an event whose light was soon eclipsed by other happenings. That particular day was a day of days for all of us, although our human frailties precluded us from identifying the directions in which we were being steered.

  We had had a fruitful and excellent year on the villa, which we had already started to call the Colony. Our crops had prospered, and we had more land under the plough than ever before. Quintus Varo, our neighbour to the north, had worked his fields with ours, as had Terra and Firma, who had bought two villas to the east and south of us. In all, we now held a block of nine contiguous villa farms, forming a solid rhomboid tract of arable land some twelve miles long by five miles deep at its widest, and we were confident of adding to those holdings in the coming year.

  There were at least three villas that Caius knew of to the south and west, and several more in the north and east, whose owners lived outside of Britain: one on the Emperor’s island of Capri, one outside Rome itself and one in southern Gaul. These we knew we could have — by default, if things progressed too quickly. They were maintained and farmed by trusted staff of the finest quality — people of the type our plans called for.

  Throughout the summer and the autumn months, we had also had a steady trickle of newcomers to the villas — craftsmen and artisans, all with families, selected by various members of our newly formed Council.

  The first of these to arrive was a family from Verulamium. The father and his two adult sons were tanners; the mother, daughter and the wives of the two sons were highly skilled workers in leather. Caius welcomed them with open arms. They were followed within the month by a family of coopers, sent by Tonius Cicero from Londinium. Domus, the father of the clan, was also a skilled carpenter, and his son Andronicus shared all his father’s talents.