by Jack Whyte
"It is an experiment," he said finally. "Ever since arriving here, I've been aware that we have a need to combine our tactics, allowing us to gain the best advantage from both our forces, infantry and cavalry." He paused, looking a question at me. "Were you—Are you aware we have a serious rivalry between the two, Cay?"
I shrugged. "We have always had rivalry, ever since the day Britannicus and Varrus decided to mount our men on horses. Rivalry is good; it keeps people mettlesome."
"Aye, but it can be damaging, too. I said we had a serious rivalry, not mere competition."
"How so? What d'you mean?"
"I mean it's bad, Brother. I began watching closely as soon as you had left for Eire, and I did not like what I saw. Your cavalry are elite troops; none better anywhere that I have seen, but that undoubted excellence has bred a sullenness among the other troops. Remember, I am an infantry commander by training. I know what I am talking about. Anyway, I began asking questions, and I would not accept any expedient or placatory answers. I spoke to the senior officers in both divisions, and to the rank and file as well, and what I found convinced me that we must make some effort, expeditiously, to heal the rift that has sprung into being over the past few years since Lot first marched against Camulod. And so I have been working closely with our infantry commanders, developing strategies that will enable us to draw full measure of the potential of our infantry in fighting with our cavalry in future. The doubling of strength in the guard posts is the first step towards that. Not because I want more strength there. I want more men there, living together in harmony, getting to know each other, and working together on developing the plans I've put in place."
"Hmm. And is it working?"
"Too soon to tell, but it seems to be."
"Tell me about this rivalry. You say it's only recent, since the start of the war against Lot? If that's so, then I would not have been aware of it. I've spent too much time being someone else since then."
Ambrose began his account, but we were too close by then to Camulod's gates and the waiting throng of welcomers that choked them. We agreed to talk again, later that night, and he abandoned me to the well-wishers. It took me more than an hour to win free of them and then to remove my armour, wash quickly and change into fresh clothing before going to collect the child from Turga. That done, I made my way directly to Aunt Luceiia's rooms, for I knew she was waiting there, curbing her impatience, to welcome me and her great-grandson. And as though he knew that this was a momentous occasion, the six-month-old child who was Arthur Pendragon rode easily in the bend of my elbow, wide-eyed, alert and staring at his new home with great, golden eyes.
I had been preparing myself for some time, ever since hearing from Ambrose that my great-aunt had been confined to bed by illness, to be appalled by the changes in her. She was a very old woman, having long outlived all of her own contemporaries, and genuinely merited the word "ancient" in the eyes of everyone else around her, and her advanced age had brought her to that stage of life where the smallest irregularity of health could wreak startling changes on her appearance. She stood up quickly as I entered the room bearing my small ward and moved immediately towards us, her eyes fixed upon my burden to the exclusion of all else so that I was able to scrutinize her as she approached. I could see no sign of illness. Her skin, as pale and delicate as fine papyrus, seemed to shine with health, although it may have been the simple radiance of her anticipation, and her great blue eyes, faded but still remarkable, sparkled in the late afternoon light from the unshuttered window she had ordered added only recently to the long rear wall in the family room, admitting welcome light from the small atrium beyond. She had a brief smile of welcome for me, open and heartfelt but nonetheless distracted in the urgency of greeting her great-grandson.
"Careful, Auntie, he's heavy," I said as she reached for him. She ignored me and plucked the boy from my arms as though he were a feather, carrying him directly into the light from her new window, where she held him aloft, peering into his tiny face. The child returned her scrutiny with complete equanimity, his eyes wide and calm, so that she gave a surprisingly girlish little crow of delight and pressed him quickly and lovingly to her bosom before holding him away from her again to continue her examination.
"Hello, young man," she said to him, for all the world as though only she and he existed. "Aren't you the wonder I never hoped nor thought to see? Arthur Britannicus Varrus, bearing the likeness of your ancestors as though to show the entire world who you are and whence you sprang." Now she turned her head and spoke to me, inviting me to join their tiny circle. "The eyes are pure Caius Britannicus—I never saw Cay's equal in eye colour until now—and the golden hair is a family heritage my brother used to blame on a too-loved northern slave of former days. You and your father have made it commonplace within the family nowadays, but it was once rare. But look at this fellow! Look at the strength of him, the shoulders and the depth of chest! How old is he? Six months? He has the body of Publius already, and could be the strongest smith in Britain. You could, couldn't you, were you not destined for other, greater things?" Responding to her tone, the infant smiled at her and she hugged him again, kissing his baby cheek.
I was beginning to feel stirrings of concern for her, because all of this time she had been standing, holding the child away from her easily, despite the fact that what I had said was true: the child was heavy, a solid lump of bone and sturdy muscle that could remind even my arms of what they bore. Now, however, she moved to a couch and sat down, holding the child seated on her lap, and the eyes she turned to me glowed with happiness.
"Thank you, Cay, for bringing this wonder home to me before I die. He is the future—the future of this Colony of ours and of this land. Look at him! That certitude is stamped into the essence of him. He is my entire life story, the history of all my loves made into one small boy." She fell silent again for a while, gentling the child at first when he began to squirm impatiently, and finally bending to allow him to slip down to the floor by her feet, where he lay kicking and waving his sturdy little arms, his eyes roving all around this strange, large room, registering the play of light and sparkle upon furnishing and ornament and ignoring the two people who watched him.
When she spoke again, her words had a musing, self-absorbed intimacy. "I can see all of them there, when he moves in certain ways: Publius Varrus in the very way he breathes and clenches his fists; my brother Cay in his eyes; even Ullic Pendragon and his own father Uther in his bearing, though how a child can have a 'bearing' kicking on his back is beyond me . . . it's there, nevertheless." She paused, then glanced at me. "His hair has a red tinge to it I have never seen before. Even as babes, your own hair and your father's were more yellow, more fair than this."
"His mother had red hair," I told her.
"Ah! Then that would explain it. It may change as he grows, to red or to pure gold like yours, or it may not. Only time will tell. Was he born with red hair, or did the change come afterwards?"
I shook my head. "I don't know, Auntie. It was that colour when I found him, but by then he was three months old. Is that long enough for a child's hair colouring to change?"
"Sometimes, but it is unimportant. Did you know the mother? What was her name? Ygert?"
"Ygraine. No. When I found her she was already dying. Lot's wife. And young Donuil's sister. And my wife's too."
Aunt Luceiia shook her head, smiling gently. "It's strange, stranger than anything I have ever known through all the years I've lived, the influence that this unknown, alien clan from another land has brought to bear on you, Nephew. Does it not amaze you?"
I had to nod in agreement, for the same thought had often occurred to me and been the subject of long mental deliberation in my quiet times. I disliked and distrusted coincidence, and had been taught by my own father that coincidence per se did not exist. The relationship between Donuil, Ygraine, Connor and myself was explainable, involving the politics of kingship and territorial alliances more than anything else. Having
captured Donuil legitimately in a war waged by his family, and having befriended him thereafter, it did not seem strange to me in any way that I should later meet the members of his family who were involved in all the varying activities of warfare and alliances. The one coincidence that defeated me, that I could not explain, was meeting Donuil's sister, my dead wife, long months before I went to war and captured Donuil. The probabilities against two such unrelated encounters assuming the significance they had, defied credence. And yet it had occurred, and my life had been utterly changed beyond redress. My aunt was sitting still, watching me closely.
"Aye," I admitted, finally. "It does seem strange."
"Cod's will always seems strange to simple people."
"Cod's will?" I smiled as I looked at her. "Come, Auntie," I twitted her, seeking to ease my own sudden pain. "You think God's will extends to making sure that I would meet my wife and go through the joy and suffering I did before—and after—I lost her?"
I was well aware of my Aunt Luceiia's lifelong dedication of herself and all she did to the Christian Cod and His Church here in Britain. I considered myself a Christian, I believed in the existence of God, but my religious conviction was a private thing, and I seldom thought of God or of His Son, the Christ, as contemporary personalities. More Roman in such things than anything else, I felt, deep within myself, that God—as in "the gods"—had more important things to do than worry over individual people and the details of their abject little lives. Aunt Luceiia, however, refused to be teased. Ignoring the child at her feet for the time being, she composed herself, hands folded in her lap, and looked me straight in the eye.
"You are being flippant, Nephew, and I will not dignify your levity with discussion. But think of this: Had something not guided your feet to where you found her, on that patrol with Uther, none of the things that happened after would have come to pass the way they did. All of them might have happened, certainly, but they would not have been interconnected so intimately. Donuil would have remained a trusted hostage, perhaps even a friend. And you would not have pursued Uther so angrily nor so jealously—" She interrupted herself, responding to the sudden expression of shock I felt registering itself upon my face at her knowledge of what I had thought to be a secret known only to myself. "Oh, yes, I know the truth of all of that and what you thought and did. And while I am aware of the kindness with which you sought to shield me from your conviction of 'the truth,' I am neither blind nor feeble-minded . . . Most of all, however, I find myself accepting that had you not believed you had cause to suspect Uther in the death of your beloved wife, you would not have pursued him into Cornwall and my great- grandson would have perished. Instead, here he is, kicking at my feet. Your suspicion of Uther thus prevented the destruction of the great Dream you described to me but recently, the Dream of my brother and my husband Publius, personified in this child and his apparent Destiny. Without your doubts and beliefs, all of it would have gone unrealized. Will you make fun of that?"
By the time Aunt Luceiia had finished speaking I had mastered myself. I had also lost any urge to treat her observation with levity. Chastened, I realized that what she had said was the simple truth and that my own convictions regarding coincidence involved a contradiction in terms. Belief in Christianity, or any acknowledgment of a supernatural order of existence, entailed a willingness to accept that coincidence, or any series of synchronous yet apparently illogical events arranged in rational sequence, somehow related to the supernatural will. I drew a deep breath.
"No, Auntie, and you make me feel ashamed. I will never commit that error again, I promise."
She smiled and relented, waving her hand to dismiss the topic. "No need to feel shame, Nephew. You must merely keep an open mind in future. Remember your uncle Varrus. All of his learning told him no stone could fall from an open sky without first being hurled up into it from earth. Had he chosen to accept that, he would never have found the Skystone that he sought, and that wondrous sword Excalibur would never have existed." She paused, allowing her words to sink home in me. "Keep your mind ever open, Cay. Accept no other's dictum as the final word on anything you think to question. Now, get you off and bathe and steam and shave, and leave me with my grandson here. Who is his nurse, by the way?"
I told her about Turga, and then spent a full half hour telling her of the baby's other family in Eire, and of his other grandfather, Athol, King of Scots. Finally I told her of Liam Twistback and his daughter Shelagh and the absence of Donuil. She listened to most of this in silence, asking only a few questions, and then suggested that both Shelagh and Turga should move into her own household as guests, the one to await the return of her husband- to-be, the other to guarantee her hostess constant access to the child. I smiled again and again as I listened, and then kissed her fondly before leaving to find Ambrose, with whom I had much to discuss.
XX
I discovered that Ambrose was out on the hilltop lands behind the fortress walls, conducting target practice with some of our younger foot-soldiers whom he had decided to train as bowmen. Intrigued, I started to make my way directly to the spot, but then I recalled my aunt's instructions and paused, considering them. I had washed and changed out of my travel clothes before going to her, ridding myself of the uppermost layer of human and horse sweat, but I was still far from being either clean or refreshed. I knew that a visit to the bath house would revivify me. A quick glance at the sky showed me some hours of daylight yet remained, and so I beckoned to a passing soldier and sent him to Ambrose with a message that I was bathing and would join him, bringing my own bow, within the hour. That done, I headed for the sanctuary of the baths as quickly as I could, and regaled myself in the luxury of the hot pools leading to the sudarium, or steam room, where I surrendered myself willingly to the ministrations of the two masseurs then on duty.
Later, refreshed and feeling new born, and clutching Uncle Varrus's great bow and a quiver of arrows, I made my way to where Ambrose had set up his new target range at the rear of the fort, beyond the postern gate that had given access to my father's assassins years earlier. In those days, the rock- strewn, grassy hilltop had lain empty, but I knew that the space was now put to full use, with buildings, horse pens and roofed stables filling most of the area. Ambrose, apparently, had commandeered the last clear, level stretch of terrain for his current use, and I heard the laughing shouts and jeers of the participants as I approached. I had no idea what to expect when I arrived, but what I found amazed me.
There must have been close to thirty men there, all of them clustered at the end of the range opposite a row of four clearly marked, black-and-white ringed targets, each one spread over what I later discovered to be bound bales of densely packed straw. Ambrose stood to one side, watching the proceedings with his back to me as I approached, and most of the milling throng over which he presided I identified immediately as young recruits and trainee soldiers. Several other faces among these, however, distinguished by the un- trimmed beards and hair that framed them, leapt out at me; older faces these, well known but unexpected in this place and at this time. As I walked towards them, still unnoticed, two more young men stepped forward to the rough line gouged in the earth that marked the aiming point, their heads bent and all their attention concentrated upon the long, tapered Pendragon bows each of them held with the awkwardness of learners. The sight of the bows shocked me even more than had my recognition of the several faces I had last seen in Uther's company, and checked my advance. This sudden stop attracted the attention of one thick-set, bearded Celt, who turned his head towards me and then earned my gratitude by breaking into a smiling roar of recognition, so that suddenly I became the centre of attraction, surrounded by the enthusiasm of old, back-slapping companions whose existence I had all but forgotten.
There was Huw Strongarm, direct descendant of Publius Varrus's old friend Cymric, the Pendragon bowyer who had made the first long yew bow stave, and with him was his son, another Cymric, whom I had last seen as a stripling lad. Behind Huw lo
omed the enormous bulk of Powys, the largest and strongest man I had ever met, who could lift a struggling heifer in his arms unaided. Other names flashed back to me, unthought of in years, as their owners greeted me: Owain of the Caves; the trio Menester, Gwern and Guidog who, I had learned long since, had been born within four days of each other and had done everything together since childhood. Cador the Fisherman was there, as was Medrod, who had been one of Uther's most trusted retainers, and Elfred Egghead, who had lost all his hair, including lashes and brows, almost before attaining manhood. These nine I knew immediately. Five others stood with them whose names I did not know, although I recognized them all by sight. By the time their boisterous greetings had died down and I was able to look beyond the circle of them, I saw Ambrose standing watching me, a slight smile on his lips, and grouped beside him were his trainees, almost a score of them, some clutching Celtic bows, and all of them staring at me with expressions varying from slack-jawed awe to something approaching reverent admiration. Several heads swung back and forth from me to my brother, remarking and cataloguing our amazing resemblance to each other. None of these young men was known to me, and that realization made me more aware than anything else until that time of how far I had drifted, all unawares and for a multiplicity of reasons, from the daily life, activities and people of the Colony that was supposed to be my home.
I raised my clenched fist to my breast, saluting Ambrose, and he returned the greeting gravely, though his eyes were dancing, but when I would have moved to meet him I found myself confronted by Huw Strongarm with a challenge to test my Varrus bow—that was what he called it—against his homegrown pride. Though his tone was one of friendly raillery, I knew at once that this was not a challenge I could easily refuse, for the growl of approbation that sprang from the throats of his fellows was unanimous, and so I shrugged and accepted. Two men ran immediately to spread new targets over the existing ones, which were already pierced and tattered, although I noticed, even from this distance, that the central rings of all four targets were almost unmarred. They were plain enough targets, made from raw cloth stretched over square frames of woven reeds like the circular Saxon shields carried by Ambrose's men on their arrival. Black rings, concentric circles, had been drawn on the plain cloth, each circle growing smaller by a handspan until the smallest, itself a handspan wide. They were set up a hundred measured paces from the firing line, which Huw and I approached together.
