Camulod Chronicles Book 4 - The Saxon Shore

by Whyte, Jack

  Even now, from the distance of decades and destinies, I have difficulty in writing of that time and that awful night, for foremost in that dreadful dream had been the rotting face of my beloved Aunt Luceiia. Luceiia Britannicus Varrus died on the last night of the Great Storm, as it came to be known. She was unaffected by either cold or hunger. She died only because it was her allotted time, and she died as she had lived, with tranquillity and dignity, slipping away peacefully in her sleep to join her husband Publius Varrus who, I had no doubt, stood waiting for her with her brother Caius, each of them leaning forward, stretching out a hand to help her from this sad world to their much brighter one. I was there, sitting by her bedside at the time, accompanied by Ambrose, Lucanus, Ludmilla and Shelagh, whom the old woman had grown to love as quickly as she had my wife Cassandra, my Deirdre of the Violet Eyes. One other had been present, a man called Enos, the last in the long progression of itinerant bishops who had been ever welcome in my great-aunt's home. Enos, who had arrived some days before the storm, had perforce remained for its duration. He had been praying constantly beside her bed for three entire days, unweakened in his vigil by any need for rest, it seemed to me—although perhaps he slept when I was absent—and consecrating bread and wine each day for her consumption in total certainty of her salvation. Ever a pragmatist, Auntie had known it was her time and was prepared. She had said all her farewells the previous day, and Lucanus had warned us that we should not expect her to survive another night. We sat grouped around her, watching her closely, and so gentle was her passing that none of us saw her final breath. There came a moment when I looked at Ambrose, questioning, and Lucanus stooped to touch her, and she had already gone.

  The only tragic element in her departure lay in the timing of it; dead of peaceful and natural causes, she must now await burial with all the others killed by the storm. The knowledge of that haunted me, robbing me of sleep with visions of her high-cheeked, lovely face and fragile form stacked among others, stiff and frozen in an open-sided storage house, exposed to the icy wind. Our minds do strange things to us. I knew well she was not stacked like a piece of wood but lay alone and apart, where I myself had carried her, wrapped in a heavy shroud made from her own best bedspread and then swaddled in the dense-furred skins of bears, but the image persisted.

  And then, sitting there before my tiny fire and staring into it, my mind took me among the flames, showing me things I had not known, and things I had forgotten lay therein: I saw once more the blue and white, lambent ferocity at the heart of the pyre that had consumed my father, searing my eyes and melting his flesh to ashes in the confines of his iron coffin; I saw the glowing, ill-shaped white-hot blade that would become Excalibur, as Publius Varrus pulled it from the red- and blue- and yellow-blazing charcoal of his forge; and I saw the blazing piles of fuel—bushes, trees and grass—that he had used years earlier to dry the muddy bed of a fresh-drained mountain lake, baking its viscous wetness into clay that he could break with pick and mattock until he reached mud again and then repeating the entire process until he found and could exhume his Skystone. And my heart began to pound as I discerned the meaning of such memories: Heat! Strong enough to melt flesh and bone; to smelt raw iron out of stone; to dry the liquid mud that lay beneath a lake. Heat, therefore, strong enough to melt the ice beneath it.

  The following morning, I outlined my thoughts to Ambrose, who agreed that what I proposed might well be feasible. Our soldiers had already cleared broad pathways to the trees by then, felling and cutting to supply our fuel needs, then sledding the logs back to the base of the hill, where they were raised to the summit by an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys. This refuelling was a massive operation, involving the creation of common stockpiles on the plain beneath for the use of our other Colonists—we had learned that lesson quickly.

  Now, with the adoption of the burial scheme, this drive took on a new intensity. A great, rectangular space was selected on the plain below, beside the military camp, and designated as the burial ground. It lay beside the older common grave of the Camulodian soldiers killed in repulsing Lot's first, treacherous attack long years before. Once designated, the space then had to be cleared of snow, a task that took two days and involved every soldier not assigned to other duty. An advance party had to dig its way forward from the camp's north gate to the closest point on the margin of the selected area, gauging their progress by signals from the engineers by the gates at the top of the fortress hill. As that party made the initial penetration, others advanced behind it, widening the access, shovelling the displaced snow into skid-mounted wagons, which shipped it back to where it could be piled out of the way in dirty mountains that could be left to melt in their own time.

  Once arrived at the perimeter of the burial area, the advance party doubled in strength and then branched right and left, beginning the arduous process of clearing the borders of the rectangle, directed all the while by signals from the hilltop. Eventually, that task complete, they turned inward towards the centre, and as the working clearance grew, the number of workers increased in proportion, so that by the morning of the second day the work was running smoothly on all four sides and the project progressed with ever- increasing speed. The snow was uniformly almost shoulder high across the space selected, and dense-packed by the cold, incessant winds, so that it broke beneath the shovels like dry clay and, although heavy, was simple to handle.

  As soon as the perimeter was wide enough to permit easy access, the skidded wagons served a double purpose, hauling snow outward to the dispersal points and bringing back fuel for the burning, spreading it thickly on the now-bare, hard soil of the northern end of the burial ground.

  It had not escaped Ambrose that all this wood we gathered would be green and difficult to burn, and he proposed a solution that I thought again betrayed his brilliance. We had as many animal carcasses as human. Ambrose proposed stripping them of all fat and rendering that to liquid, which would then be poured upon the wood and itself used as fuel. The remaining meat, inedible because the animals had died and lain intact, was kept aside to be burned or buried later, after the main tasks were completed. The stench it would create were we to attempt, as one man had suggested, to burn it in the melting of the ground, would be unbearable to those on the hill above. In consequence, another large operation was simultaneously under way at the southern end of the site, where massive iron cauldrons, commandeered from the quartermasters, were suspended over fires to render down the fat of oxen and sheep, swine, goats and even horses. As each cauldron was filled, it was lowered with great care from the tripod that supported it and carried on a yoke between two men to where another team directed the disposal of the fat, taking care that none should be wasted and no part of the fuel should be untreated.

  The fires at the north end of the area were lit the second night, long after nightfall, and by dawn, our men were out there, digging down through the warm ashes into the softened ground until the earth grew hard again beneath their picks.

  The work was killing, but the task was completed as expected, and our dead were eventually interred with dignity and much solemnity, in the presence of the assembled populace of Camulod. It had taken ten long days to complete the task, and by the end of them everyone, and every animal in Camulod, stank from the omnipresent, cloying smoke. The bath houses on the hill and in the Villa Britannicus to the north of the burial ground operated throughout each night and day, and the furnaces and hypocausts never grew cool. And while all of this had been going on, a minor version of the same events occurred within the fort itself, where Luceiia Britannicus Varrus was laid to rest beside her husband and her brother, in new-turned earth that had been warmed to welcome her.

  The cold abated finally, the temperature rising from the depths it had sustained for so long to the point at which it now seemed relatively warm, yet the cold was bitter still. The snow endured, too, although we had a period of three entire weeks without a fresh snowfall. And then the temperature soared, and the sound of running
water was heard everywhere, and people wept for joy. For six sweet days it lasted, before the running water turned again to ice overnight and another storm swept in and held for four more days. This time there was to be no respite. And so it went on, with intermittent storms but always bitter cold, through January and into February.

  By the time spring did arrive that year, early in March, people had begun to fear it might never appear at all. But come it did, and the snow and ice vanished gradually, and the grass grew beneath and new life appeared with shoots and buds and promise of green brightness. We were to discover, later, that a new phenomenon had touched our lands: large groves of trees, healthy the previous year, had died during that winter, killed, it would seem, by the appalling cold. Julia, the wife of Hector, our farmer Council member, had a pretty way of growing flowers outside her home, planting them each year in earthen pots, an oddity she had learned in her girlhood from an old nurse who had been raised in Greece. Hector and she had noticed that these flowers would die some years, if they were blighted early in their pots by a late frost, and he later attributed the same fate to the dead groves of trees, speculating that they might have suffered from the brief thaw that had come partway through the winter; that their roots might have stirred to life too soon and then been killed by the returning cold. It seemed reasonable to me at the time. I would never forget the ferocity of that searing cold.

  In the earliest days of the final thaw, the aged Legate Titus, a dear-held fixture in my life since my seventh year, fell on a patch of ice and broke his pelvis. Lucanus did all in his power to assuage his pain, but the old man died within days of the accident. Within the month, his lifelong friend and companion, the Legate Flavius, who had sat steadfast by his friend's bedside throughout his final, painful days, had joined him in death, for no apparent reason other than that he had lost all will to live longer without his familiar. With him passed my last intimate contact with those who had known my own father, Picus Britannicus. I mourned both of them deeply.

  If anything worthwhile emerged from that winter, it was the fulfillment of Ambrose's wish for unity among our men. Confined within the fort and equally within the outposts at the borders of our lands, the men of Camulod forgot the schism that had split them into jealous factions. Cavalry could not function amid snow that reached higher than the bellies of their horses, and so all the men of Camulod once more became mere soldiers, bunking together in cramped quarters, sharing the soldier's hardships and boredom, the sameness and the tedium. Yet there was a difference among their ranks: the foot-soldiers worked with the horses now, tending and feeding them; they learned the ways of horses, and they drilled with cavalry weapons, learning to sit on saddles and to ride with stirrups, to control a mount, even though they were confined to those small areas that had been cleared of surface snow.

  Ambrose and I watched closely as the healing magic of propinquity and shared hardship welded our men together, and soon, one evening long before the final thaw arrived, we were discussing tactics and the order of our march to Cambria and Glevum. The winter must end soon, and we would be prepared. Our strikes on Glevum and on Cambria must come as quickly as the snows permitted us to move. Ambrose believed the harshness of the winter would aid us with Cambria, since the higher altitudes would remain snowbound long after we were free of snow. Glevum was a different matter, he believed, built as it was beside the river estuary, where fresh winds from the sea would have cut down the snow. What if the bireme had returned before our arrival, he wondered. Then we might face a force of five hundred or more men, fortified by the ruined town. What should we do then? Only the knowledge that the Berbers came from warmer climes made me feel sanguine. I felt sure that they would rather sit elsewhere and await the spring than voluntarily expose themselves to Britain's winter weather.

  Lucanus had sat listening to us talk for some time, but had said nothing, and this unwonted silence finally made me aware that he was in the grip of some despondency. I interrupted Ambrose in mid-speech and asked Lucanus what was wrong, but he demurred, shaking his head and mumbling something that I did not hear. Ambrose, aware now, too, that something was ailing Luke, sat silent. Finally Luke admitted that he had been preoccupied with thoughts of Mordechai Emancipatus and his colony. If, as he suspected, the winter had been as savage there as we had known it, he feared greatly for their safety and welfare. As soon as he had named them, I myself became concerned, and feeling guilty that I had not thought of them before, I promised to visit Mordechai in passing, taking another wagonload of supplies to help them mend the ravages of the winter months. My promise allowed Lucanus to feel better, but I could see he would not be at ease until I had fulfilled it and brought back word that all was well with the lepers.

  I had difficulty that winter, deep within myself, in dealing with the deaths of three companions, my great-aunt and the two Legates, yet somehow, for reasons I could not explain, I could weep for none of them. Winter had ended by the time old Flavius died, but there was still winter in my soul. Each night, in Auntie's family room, which now was mine alone since Ambrose would not hear of sharing it, I met for hours with Ambrose, Ludmilla, Shelagh and her father Liam. Lucanus was more times present than absent at these sessions, which followed no pattern but evolved steadily into what became my new family life. Less frequently we might be joined by others, among them Dedalus, Philip, Benedict and Rufio, and Hector and his wife Julia, who had formed close friendships with Ludmilla and Shelagh. To my great surprise one evening, I discovered that these two had decided, for some reason unquestioned by anyone, against calling their child Lucanus and had named him Bedwyr. On hearing that I turned to Luke, surprised, but he had frowned, shaking his head for me to hold my tongue, and I made my mind up to ask him another time what had led to this reversal.

  I got my chance one day when we spent the afternoon together in one of the smithies, incidentally the warmest places in the fortress, where I had taken a whim to work on my own at fashioning a spearhead of the kind Donuil and I had talked about in Eire. We had been speaking of celibacy, with no great ease on either side, continuing a conversation begun and abandoned days before, when we had been interrupted. Laying aside my hammer, and thrusting the rough spearhead among the coals to heat again, I unburdened myself and told Lucanus of my lust for Shelagh, and of its resolution. Now that Shelagh and I had discussed it openly, I told him, exposing it for what it was, mere natural attraction and no cause for shame, the sullen burn of it had left me, but the knowledge of my knowledge, if he could follow the direction of my thoughts, was there, a constant, never wavering distraction. It made my earlier talk of celibacy, I told him, mere talk. Shelagh had now become a constant in my life, beneath my eyes, within my reach each day, and although I no longer felt the driving guilt and lustful yearnings I had had before, the fact remained that I admired her greatly and would take her to wife tomorrow if, God forbid, Donuil were to come to harm in Eire. How could I become truly celibate, living in such a condition, with mind and body in constant turmoil?

  When I had finished speaking, Luke sighed and swung away from me, clasping his hands behind his back, and I felt my gut spasm in misgiving, thinking I had offended him. He remained that way for long moments, holding himself stiffly erect, then slumped and turned to face me. My eyes sought his as he turned, but there was no anger in his expression. Instead, there was something I could not identify. He unclasped his hands from behind his back and examined the palms minutely, peering at them closely, and when he spoke his words held no significance for me, seeming to have no bearing upon anything that I had said.

  "Caius, why do you think Hector named his son Bedwyr?"

  I blinked at him, bereft of a response to such a non sequitur. He smiled, a wan, sad smile, lowering his hands. "I have a reason for asking."

  I shook my head. "I have no idea. I know Julia wished to name the child for you. Hector, evidently, had other notions and preferred Bedwyr. But what has that to do with Shelagh?"

  "Nothing, yet perhaps everyth
ing. The child is Bedwyr because that is the name chosen for him by his mother. I suggested it to her."

  "Very well, I accept that. Ludmilla told me at the time that you had seemed unwilling to have the child named in your honour. But was Julia not offended? Was she not hurt by your rejection? It appears rather cruel to me, hearing of it thus."

  "Aye." Luke nodded. "At first she was, but I explained my reasons, and she accepted them with great courtesy. And then she asked me to propose another name. Bedwyr was in my mind, I know not why. I said it, she accepted it, and so the child was named."

  I felt my own confusion upon my face. "But what has that to do with me and Shelagh?"

  "Nothing, Caius, but it has everything to do with your condition . . ." He waited, smiling more naturally now, waiting for my reaction. When he saw that my confusion had merely increased, he spoke again. "The child's mother, Julia, is the only woman in more than thirty years who has come close to making me regret my celibacy. Her mere existence disturbs me deeply. I lust for her, asleep and awake, and I am an old man." My mouth fell open but he spoke on, now giving me no opportunity to respond. "The mere sight or recollection of her fills me with terror and with thoughts and sensations I would have sworn were dead within me. Aware of that, the prospect of having a child of hers named after me would have been unbearable, a living reminder of my weakness. So you see, Caius, you are not unique, and no one, ever, is impervious to lust."