The Burning Stone

by Jack Whyte

  “You screamed. You screamed when you saw them. We all heard you. So speak up. We know you’re not mute.” He laughed at his own wit, and she gazed at him with loathing, conscious of the crowd of slack-mouthed onlookers who had gathered to gawk at the spectacle. Knowing somehow that the worst thing she could do now was to show fear, she drew herself up to her full height and put all the contempt and disdain she could muster into her voice.

  “They are not thieves. And they are not troublemakers.”

  He sneered at her. “Oh! Then I must beg your forgiveness for having made an error. Here I was, policing the common marketplace with my patrol party as is my appointed duty, and when I saw these four half-naked, armed, and angry men burst into the forum area and start running, clearly bent on mischief of one kind or another, I assumed, evidently wrongly, that they were a threat to the common good. So I arrested them. And you now wish me to release them.” He nodded to himself. “Well, I’ll be glad to do so…as soon as you tell me who they are, how you know who they are, and why you screamed when my men took them.”

  “They are my brothers and they came looking for me.”

  He said nothing for a space of heartbeats, the sneer fixed, then nodded again. “I see. Your brothers, coming to look for you. Well now I must ask you, why? Were you in some kind of danger?” He waited, and when she failed to answer him, he continued. “D’you take me for a fool, woman? Why would four grown men come running through a public marketplace looking for their equally grown sister? Or is the truth that you are really their whore, and they your pimps? That must be it. They put you here to work for them, right? Else how would they have known where to find you?”

  The fifth man she had seen running with her brothers must have summoned them. She knew that had to be true, for otherwise there was no sensible explanation for her brothers to be looking for her. He must have seen her running through the marketplace from the four men now lying dead in the goat pen. He had run to find her brothers, certainly, in hopes of saving her. But the other man, the Roman, Quintus Varrus, had run to find her. He had run after her and he had killed four men to save her life, and if she said anything at all about that to this bullying lout of a soldier she knew she would be condemning a young man who had done nothing worthy of punishment. Worse than that—and the sudden awareness of this settled upon her like a crushing weight—she would be denouncing a man already running in fear of his life from unknown and powerful enemies who might be hiding anywhere in plain sight.

  And so she stood mute while Nerva gaped at her in mock astonishment, as though he could not believe she was making him wait for her response. She stared back at him, expecting him at any moment to order his men to seize her.

  But then she saw his expression change as his focus shifted to something behind her. A tiny frown appeared between his eyebrows, a sudden flicker of alarm, perhaps confusion, in his eyes. And then a cold, disdainful voice spoke from directly at her back.

  “Decanus,” it said, addressing him by his rank. “Are you blind as well as stupid?”

  Nerva’s mouth opened as though to speak, but the reaction was one of shock rather than outrage, and the unknown voice pressed on, flat and hard-edged and uncompromising.

  “Yes, you heard me correctly. I called you stupid and you are probably too stupid to know why.” The voice paused, as though waiting for an answer, and then continued in a tone of command that left no room for hesitation or doubt. “State your name and rank.”

  “Nerva,” the bully said, swallowing with visible difficulty. “Decanus, Fourth Garrison Cohort.”

  “Well, Decanus Nerva, look closely at this woman you have insulted, and then call her a whore again if you dare. Look at her! Does she resemble any of the drabs you see in the pigsties you frequent? This woman has both a respectable name and a station, neither of which is any concern of yours but both of which you have maligned. And her brothers came running here because I summoned them to assist me in matters that are equally of no concern to you.”

  The speaker paused, as though to allow the venom in his words to register completely, and then he ended the confrontation flatly and with authority. “Do yourself a service while yet you can, Decanus Nerva, and oblige me by taking yourself and your associates out of my sight.”

  Lydia found herself transfixed by the look that had come over Nerva’s face, for even as he glared at the man behind her she could see he plainly knew he was faced with something beyond his capacity as a squad commander, and yet he was stubborn enough to show his resentment of the situation, and angry enough to be defiant.

  Stupid is the right word, she thought. The fool is too stupid to see anything he has no wish to see, and lacks the wit to know when to be quiet and walk away.

  She had no doubt that the man who now stood behind her was the stranger she had seen with her brothers. She was frowning fiercely as she tried to recall what she had noted of him before he vanished, but there was no face in her mind.

  Nerva, though, was looking directly at the fellow as though he might spit at him. His eyes flickered sideways, checking to see that his own men were watching and would assist him if needed, and then he spoke out.

  “I don’t know who you are, citizen, for all your noble clothes, your Roman looks, and fancy talk, but I know who I am and I do not have to suffer this kind of abuse from you. I am a squad commander of the City Guard of Londinium going about my lawful duties, maintaining public order as required of me, and no one other than my own superior can exercise authority over me when I am on duty. And that means I can arrest you, if I think fit, and haul you in to face the man I answer to.”

  “And who is that man?” The voice at Lydia’s back was implacable. “What is his name?”

  Nerva’s right eyebrow twitched up a little, but he answered without hesitating. “Reno Cocles, pilus prior, Third Cohort—”

  “Legio VI Victrix,” the man behind Lydia concluded in the same flat voice. “And who is his superior nowadays—the legion’s legate, I mean?”

  “You should know that, friend, since you know so much else, so don’t you try to bully me. What’s your name?”

  For a moment she thought the unknown man might not answer, but then he said, “My name would mean nothing to you now, were I to say it aloud. But it will in future, I promise you. This might mean something, though, without a name being spoken. But I caution you to be wary of what you say next.”

  The speaker had moved closer to her, his voice coming from right behind her head, but as she started to turn to look at him, she felt fingertips against her shoulder, pushing firmly to stop her from turning. Then his other arm came into view from her right side, holding out an embossed cylindrical container of highly polished boiled bull’s hide. Lydia barely noticed the cylinder, though, because the sight of the arm holding it out had shown her that she was wrong. This was not the man she had seen with her brothers. That man had been dressed in a plain brown tunic, unadorned and ordinary. The arm from behind her was clad in a toga-like garment of sumptuous white wool, lined with a thin, delicately woven border of imperial purple, and the mere sight of it had reminded her, not at all incongruously, of Quintus Varrus’s claim that he was being sought by powerful men. Few men wore anything resembling a toga nowadays, and fewer still wore the imperial purple, especially in Britain. No wonder, she thought, that Nerva had hesitated to assert himself at first.

  The decanus, in the meantime, had reached out tentatively to take the proffered cylinder, touching it hesitantly as though he feared it might turn into a writhing serpent and bite him. When its owner relinquished it, Nerva stood holding it, hefting it foolishly at arm’s length and obviously not knowing what to do with it.

  “Open it,” the voice said, and Nerva obeyed. The tube was less than a foot long and about the width of his palm. He removed the cap on one end and fished inside with his finger before upending the thing to allow a tightly bound scroll to slide out into his waiting hand. He held out the leather case to Tullus, who took it from him, t
hen slid a slender ivory binding ring along the scroll until it came off and dropped into his palm as the scroll sprang open. As he grasped the document more securely, spreading it with both hands and holding it high to peer at it, Lydia looked past him and saw perplexed frowns on the faces of those craning to see what it was. But then, because of the way Nerva was holding the scroll up in front of him, between her and the bright sun, she saw a flash of colour and looked at the document itself, seeing the reverse of a garish design on the translucent vellum sheet. With a sense of wonder approaching awe, she recognized what it was, for she had seen its like drawn on her father’s work table by a visiting bishop the previous year: a cross surmounted by a Greek X, with the Greek letter R—which looked like a Roman P—superimposed upon it. Together, the two symbols—pronounced, she was told, as chi and rho—formed the first two letters of the name christos, or saviour.

  It was obvious, though, that Nerva had never seen such a thing before and had no idea what he was looking at. He peered at it for long moments, clearly suspecting, from its elaborate appearance, that it must have some kind of importance. Eventually his lips curled into the semblance of a sneer and he released one end of the scroll, allowing it to snap back into its cylindrical shape.

  “Very pretty,” he drawled, affecting disdain. “Does it mean something?”

  “Read it.”

  Nerva’s eyebrow twitched. “It is a picture. There are no words.”

  “There are words. Potent words. Look again, along the bottom, beside the seal. One line of words.”

  Nerva looked at the scroll again, knitting his brows, clearly unable to read what was there.

  “It says,” the man at her back said softly but distinctly, “‘This man acts in my name.’ And it bears the initials C. A.” The voice paused for a count of three heartbeats. “C. A. Does that mean anything to you?”

  When Nerva eventually shook his head, frowning, the man behind her sighed. “C. A., written like that, Decanus, is the signature of the Emperor himself. Constantinus Augustus. Do you understand now why you should have said nothing, or do you have a particular wish to be thrown into prison today, to die for interference in matters that are none of your concern?”

  The colour drained from Nerva’s face but then, belatedly, he stood to attention with his eyes fixed on a point somewhere above his interrogator’s head. He swallowed hard, then started to say something.

  “No!” Lydia jumped, the voice was so close to her ear. “As I said, you are both blind and stupid. You have said more than enough here to condemn you for causing a public spectacle over imperial affairs. Take me to your commanding legate, now.”

  Lydia almost felt pity for the wretch. He was staring in panic now, his eyes darting around as though looking for salvation of any kind. He finally gathered his wits and straightened up to his full height, attempting to pull the remnants of his shredded self-respect about him.

  “No need for that, Senator,” he rasped, his voice barely audible. “I can see I made a mistake. I’ll leave you to go about your business.” He snapped to attention, clicking his heels and bringing his clenched right fist to his left breast in a salute. Lydia waited for the other man to respond, but no answer materialized, and she saw a tiny tic of fear flicker between the corporal’s brows.

  “You made several mistakes,” the man behind her finally said, his voice clipped and hard-edged. “And that was another one. I have no need of your permission to go about my business here. Now get you gone about your own duties, and be thankful if you end this day with your rank intact. Your name is? Tell me again.”

  “Nerva, Senator.”

  “Be on your way, then, Decanus Nerva. But before you go, release those men and have your people break up this crowd and send them about their business. Quickly now.”

  The decanus managed to keep his face utterly expressionless as he stepped forward and held out the cylinder for the man behind Lydia to take. Then he slapped his open palm against his cuirass and spun on his heel, rattling out orders to the men in his squad, who had been standing open-mouthed like the crowd around them. They immediately started liberating their four prisoners and dispersing the onlookers,. Lydia thought the probability was high that no one there, soldier or gawker, had understood one whit of what had just happened.

  Nor, she realized, had she. She was very much aware of the man yet standing at her back, a man whom she had never seen and did not know, but who had nonetheless emerged from nowhere to exert enormous influence upon her life within a matter of moments. All her instincts were warning her that she might be in danger, but even as she had that thought, she recognized the inanity of it. To the best of her knowledge, she had never set eyes upon this man. How then, she reasoned, could she possibly be a danger to, or in danger from, someone utterly unknown to her?

  But then, Quintus Varrus had been in very clear and deadly danger from someone completely unknown to him, someone whose identity he could not even begin to guess, someone who had slaughtered his entire family for no known reason. And to escape the threat of death by unknown hands, Varrus had fled from his homeland to start life over in the farthest place from there he could imagine. And so, she realized, she might well be in danger from the unknown presence at her back, and she felt a chill when she wondered whether, whoever he was, he had seen her earlier with Quintus Varrus.

  In a kind of daze, she was aware that her brothers were collecting themselves and making themselves presentable, looking decidedly sheepish. She watched Callum rise to his feet, grinning shamefacedly at her and chafing his wrists where the leather bindings had dug deep. And as he started to move towards her she hardened her resolve and turned swiftly to face the man at her back.

  * * *

  —

  Her unknown rescuer had stepped away and was watching her, and when her eyes met his, she froze.

  His upper lip quirked upwards on one side. “I thought you might react like that. That’s why I stopped you from turning around earlier. That decanus, idiot though he was, might have been most interested in your reaction to the sight of me.”

  In the months and years that were to follow, Lydia would try vainly to remember what went through her mind in the few moments before she regained the use of her tongue and her powers of reasoning, but she would never be able to recapture the sensation of having her perceptions turned upside down, forcing her to reassess everything she had believed she knew about the young Roman called Quintus Varrus. For of course it had been he who stood behind her and faced down the bully, Nerva. Nothing in the haughty demeanour of the unseen man at her back was even faintly similar to the self-effacing, laughing-eyed young man with whom she had been bantering moments before.

  Three times she attempted to speak, and three times she was unable to articulate a sound. She stood gaping at him, her eyes moving up and down the length of him. Where she had formerly seen a starkly clad young man in a coarse, black, homespun scapular, she now saw a shining symbol of imperial Rome, draped from shoulder to ankles in a snowy-white woollen robe reminiscent of the classical toga of the pre-imperial Roman republic and even bordered with purple needlework resembling the toga praetexta, the toga of the ancient Senate. His long golden hair, which had been tousled and untidy earlier, was now carefully combed to frame his high forehead and deeply tanned face.

  “Your brothers are wondering what’s wrong, Mcuil,” he said gently. “You should talk to them.”

  “How—? Where did—?”

  “I’ll explain everything later, but there is no great mystery, I swear to you. But first, talk to your brothers.”

  Some remote part of her mind registered that he was telling her to do the right thing, and she willed herself to turn and face them. As she did so, he spoke to them himself.

  “Good day to you all. My name is Varrus, Quintus Varrus, and I am a friend of your sister’s.” He cocked his head, eyeing Lydia again, and added, “At least, I hope she considers me a friend.”

  “Why don’t we know you, then?”
It was the eldest of the four, Aidan, who asked the question, his voice suspicious but not quite truculent, and Lydia was grateful, for she knew how easily truculence could come to him.

  He turned his head to look at his sister. “You were being chased, we were told. Someone frightened you in the marketplace and you ran away, and he followed you. Is this him?”

  “No! This man saved me.”

  “Saved you from who?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t know any of them.”

  “Them? There was more than one?”

  “Aye,” she said. “There were four of them.”

  “Four of them? Then where are they?” Aidan’s frown was thunderous now, and all four brothers glowered around them, as though expecting to find the guilty parties cowering in plain sight.

  “They’re not here, Aidan,” she said, her raised voice demanding his attention. “They chased me, yes, but they’re not here now. Master Varrus—saved me from them.” She had been on the point of saying “killed them,” but she managed to stop herself.

  Aidan caught the hesitation and peered at her intently. He turned again to Varrus, speaking sideways to Lydia but watching the other man’s face. “And how did he do that, I wonder, and him with not even a knife to wave at them? Did he run through the city streets wearing that too-clean robe?”

  “No, I did not,” Varrus said quietly, but the tone of his voice, the authority it contained, silenced Aidan Mcuil as though he had been shouted at. “I have changed my clothes since then. Your sister is safe and unharmed, as you see. And the men who frightened her will bother her no more.”

  Declan began to speak, but Aidan stopped him with a sidewise chop of one hand, pursing his lips and narrowing his eyes to slits. “And how might I be expected to know that’s true,” he asked in a voice even quieter than Varrus’s. “Am I supposed to take your word for it? A Roman’s word?”

  Lydia wanted to tell Aidan to be quiet, wanted to warn him not to insult the man he was challenging, but before she could speak Varrus laughed, shaking his head as though in appreciation of some jest. “No,” he said. “I would not ask you to do anything so foolish. But you could ask your sister if it’s true. She saw me kill them.”