The Burning Stone

by Jack Whyte

  The two men on the cart’s bench had seen him earlier in the day and now eyed him with a noncommittal curiosity. The three wives might have guessed at who he was, but if they did they showed no sign of it. They averted their eyes decorously after their first quick glances at him and moved quickly to keep the inquisitive children away from him.

  Aidan Mcuil swung down and nodded to him warily, taking note of the change in his clothing, the elaborate, snowy-white wool having been replaced with stark, unadorned, black worsted cloth. “Master Varrus,” he said quietly, nodding in greeting. “Are you waiting for someone?”

  Declan had climbed down from the other side of the bench and now came around to stand behind his brother, nodding but saying nothing to the Roman, who shook his head and smiled.

  “No,” he said. “Your father is inside, working, and I didn’t want to distract him, so I came outside to sit in the sun. And I nodded off.”

  “And there’s no one else here?”

  “Shamus is doing something in the workroom, and Callum went with your sister to find me some new clothes, an hour or two ago. They haven’t come back yet. Let me help you unload the wagon.”

  Declan spoke then, suddenly smiling widely. “Nothing to unload,” he said. “Went out loaded, came back empty—’cept for the women and little ones and their berries.” He turned and walked to the lead horse, taking it by the bridle. “Come on, then,” he said to the animal. “Let’s get you out of that harness.” He led the team away in a tight turn, and the three men soon had both horses uncoupled and rubbed down, groomed, and fed.

  The brothers then took Varrus with them into the main family room in the house and chased the children out of the way while they poured themselves, and him, a mug of ale. They had obviously decided that he was trustworthy, and within the next short while he was introduced to Declan’s wife Nella, Aidan’s wife Mhairidh, and Regan, who was married to Callum. All three greeted him with warmth and genuine smiles, making him welcome, and before he became too tongue-tied in the face of so much attention, he was saved by the arrival of Lydia and Callum, both of them laden with armloads of packages. Since none of the others had been there when Dominic sent the pair out to find clothes for Varrus, the sight of their purchases triggered a storm of speculation on where the two had been and what they were carrying.

  It was then that Dominic entered through the door from the smithy, followed by Shamus, who was drying his hands on a clean piece of towelling. The big smith stopped short on the threshold, looked around him with mock surprise, then called for silence in his great voice. Everyone hushed obediently, and he cocked one eyebrow at his guest.

  “You thought the place was quiet when first you came, did you not, Master Varrus? Don’t you wish now it could be as it was earlier? And these ones here are all grown up.” He glanced around the room. “Where are the babbies?”

  “They’re in the other room, Da, where they always are at this time of day,” said one of the women—Mhairidh, Varrus thought. “We saw Lydia and Callum come home with all that clothing, and we were wondering why, and what it was for.”

  “I’ll tell you—as soon as I have something in my hand that’s drinkable,” Dominic Mcuil said.

  Aidan quickly handed his father a mug of ale, and after a long pull at it Dominic wiped some foam off his upper lip with the back of his hand and swept straight into the story of everything that had happened that afternoon, and what he had decided to do in the face of the difficulties arising from the incident with the Roman decanus. He made no mention of his suggestion to Varrus regarding the smithy in Camulodunum, instead explaining why their guest needed to be differently dressed than he had been, and how important it was that none of them should say a word to anyone outside the house about his presence there. His family listened, glancing at Varrus from time to time, and when he had finished they nodded obediently and without demur.

  Any hopes Varrus might have had of speaking with Lydia were quickly dashed when she approached him directly, smiling and leaning in close to him as though to whisper something confidential into his ear. He bent to meet her, feeling his heart rate increase as the sweet smell of her enveloped him, but all she said was, “Dinner for twenty. It doesn’t cook itself, and tonight it’s my turn, with Nella.” She pulled her head back, grinning at him. “I’m at the wee table, too, tonight, so we might not be able to talk until later.”

  She reached out and squeezed his hand briefly, and he watched her move away in the direction of the kitchen, enjoying the pressures the mere sight of her retreating back excited in him and wondering, too, what she had meant by the “wee” table. As she disappeared through the door, closely followed by Nella, he turned reluctantly to the other men, meaning to ask for enlightenment, but he was immediately gripped by what Callum was saying to Aidan.

  “You saw him this afternoon?” he interrupted. “When? And who was he with?”

  Both brothers faced him squarely, though neither one gave any sign of being troubled by the interruption, and Callum said, “He wasn’t with anyone. And I suppose that’s why I noticed him. You don’t often see soldiers in that area, and even less often do you see one on his own. And even so, all I really saw at first was that little vertical crest on his helmet, his decanus’s insignia, and so I took a closer look, and it was him, Nerva.”

  “And where was this? Which part of the market?”

  “The west quadrant, where all the clothes and fabrics are on sale. Lyddie and I were there searching for clothes for you, remember? He wasn’t difficult to spot. It’s all women down there, except for the stallholders. There’s hardly ever any kind of trouble in that quadrant.”

  “Which is why you seldom see soldiers there, is that what you mean?”

  “Aye.”

  “So what was he doing?”

  Callum made a wry face. “He wasn’t doing anything, really—just walking about with a face like thunder, as though he might be looking for someone and there would be trouble if he found him.”

  “And do you think he was? Looking for someone, I mean?”

  Callum shrugged. “How was I to tell? Short of walking up to him and asking him.”

  “Did he see you?”

  Callum shook his head. “I saw him look my way once, but he looked straight through me without a flicker of recognition. I kept watching him and even followed him for a few paces, to be sure he had gone, because Lyddie was in one of the enclosed stalls and if she had come out he would have been sure to see her.” He saw the question in Varrus’s eyes and shook his head. “No, I didn’t tell her I’d seen him. ’Twould only have upset her needlessly. Whatever he was there for, whatever he was looking for, it seemed to me he hadn’t found it yet and he didn’t know where to look next. It crossed my mind, though, that he might have been hoping to run into you.”

  That made Varrus blink. “In the women’s market?”

  “Why not?” Callum nodded his head downwards, towards the Roman’s feet. “From what he saw of you, that white Roman robe you were wearing, it wouldn’t be too far a stretch to imagine you visiting there. Not much chance of finding the kind of clothes you were wearing in the leatherworkers’ or the cobblers’ streets or the used garment bins, for that matter.” He hitched one shoulder in a shrug.

  “That’s fair,” Varrus said. “Did you see him again after that?”

  “No. Not a glimpse of him. He had moved on by the time we were done there.”

  “I’m empty,” Aidan said, looking down into his cup. “Thirsty work, this listening.”

  They moved over to the ale cask by the wall, where Dominic joined them, and from then on they spoke of many things, waiting for their evening meal to be ready.

  By the time they were ready to sit down and eat, Varrus no longer had any questions about the wee table. Dinner was a communal event in the Mcuil household, and the adults sat together at the main table while the children sat at the wee table, which was in fact only slightly smaller, supervised each night by a pair of adults—excep
t for Dominic, who as paterfamilias was exempt. The duty that night had fallen to Lydia and Shamus.

  The conversation at the adults’ table was lively, most of it centred inevitably upon the various family units and the miniature dramas being enacted daily. And Varrus delighted in watching and unabashedly admiring the ease and skill with which Lydia handled her young charges, charming and entertaining them with smiles and laughter and sly humour, making them love her while she worked effortlessly on defusing emergent conflicts and dissolving juvenile jealousies and resentments. He watched her indulgently, loving everything about the way she looked, the way she spoke, the way she behaved.

  The sole discordant moment came without warning when Shamus took exception to something his father had said or done and turned in an instant from being affable and relaxed to explosive anger. Varrus had seen or heard nothing that might have provoked the young man, but it quickly became clear, from the expressions on their faces and the rolling of their eyes, that the others around the table were used to such outbursts and had long since learned to ignore them completely. The adults continued to banter and the children continued to laugh and Shamus’s interruption was quickly forgotten.

  Eventually someone—Varrus could not have said who it was—began to clear away the debris of the meal unobtrusively and return the main room to its normal condition. The women and older children removed the remaining food and dishes, and Declan and Callum broke the wee table into its separate parts while Aidan and the two eldest boys returned the chairs to their places around the walls. As the guest, Varrus remained seated along with his host while all this was happening, and Dominic leaned over to tell him that he would now go, in person, and send his daughter back to talk with Quintus Varrus. And on that note, he wished the young man well in his venture, then rose and left him alone at the table.

  After he had been sitting there alone for quite some time, he detected a stir of movement and looked up to see Lydia standing hipshot in the doorway, leaning against one side of the door’s frame and watching him with an inscrutable look on her face.

  “Oh, there you are,” he said, starting to rise to his feet.

  She approached the table now, frowning slightly and waving him back into his seat, barely even meeting his eye as her own eyes swept around the room. Puzzled, and perched awkwardly on the edge of his chair, neither standing nor sitting, Varrus, too, looked around as though he might be able to identify whatever she was looking for. But her gaze settled on nothing, and she turned to look back at him with that same small frown still between her eyes.

  She grew very still, and he sank back into his seat.

  “What is going on here?” she asked.

  Her voice was quiet, but it sounded constrained, so instead of answering, Varrus looked around the room again, searching for whatever might have upset or confused her. But there was nothing to see, and so he looked back at her.

  “What d’you mean? There’s nothing going on.”

  “Oh, but there is. There’s something going on. I can almost smell it.”

  “There is nothing going on, Lydia,” he said, in a more measured tone, “whatever ‘going on’ means. What can you smell?”

  She peered more intently at him then, almost leaning towards him, her mouth pouting and her enormous eyes narrowed. “You told him, didn’t you?”

  “Told who what?” He asked the question blank-faced, but he knew what she meant and he said the words solely because he had no others with which to respond at that moment.

  “You told my father you wish to wed me.”

  “Oh…Yes, I did.”

  “You did.” And then a note of disbelief came into her voice. “You did? You really told him? Why would you do that?”

  “I told you I was going to.”

  “I know you did, but I didn’t believe you. I thought you were flirting with me, flattering me. I thought that was the way those things are done in Rome.”

  “Why would you think such a thing? I’m not from Rome and I never said I was. So how would I know what Romans do in these things? I don’t know how people anywhere do that kind of thing. All I know is that I, Quintus Varrus, have never done that before and I don’t even know if there’s a way you’re supposed to do it. But I meant every word of what I said. And I told you openly, at the first chance I had.”

  “Openly, yes. But not sincerely, surely? That would be madness…Insanity, Quintus Varrus. An hour or two before you spoke those words this morning, you did not even know me.”

  “Not true. I knew exactly who you were and had been looking at you hungrily for a week. I simply had not met you until this morning.”

  “Oh, please! There’s barely a word of truth in that and you know it. We were thrown together by accident—a happy accident, for which I give thanks to God, but an accident nonetheless. Had you not been looking at me at that moment when I started to run away, you would have seen nothing at all and we would not be here. Before that, all you had done was to ask some questions about a girl who caught your eye in passing. Be reasonable, Quintus Varrus. You knew my name and you knew a little bit about my family—that they were smiths—which you found appealing for your own reasons. But you knew nothing about me, nothing about Lydia Mcuil, about who she is and what she likes and dislikes or what she loves and hates. And as for being hungry when you look at me, you will go hungry for a long time if you allow your tongue to outrun your good manners the way it seems to want to.” She stopped and inhaled sharply. “I can’t believe you talked to my father about that, after barely having met me.”

  “By then I had already killed men to save your life.”

  She took a half step back from him, looking him straight in the eye. “That is true,” she said calmly. “You had. But to speak to my father about marrying me…To even mention such a thing at all, let alone discuss it with him…I can scarce believe the sheer foolishness of that.”

  “What foolishness?” he snapped back, stung. “There was nothing foolish about anything I said or did!” He stopped, knowing he could ill afford to grow angry, then exhaled deeply and willed his shoulders to slump down before he continued, softly. “It was frightening, though. I’ll admit that. I was afraid of how he might react, and so I almost said nothing, but once he had invited me to stay under his roof, and had explained the dangers facing me out there from people I don’t know and have no wish to meet, I could not accept his hospitality without telling him about us.”

  “Tell him what about us, Master Varrus?”

  He could see from her creased forehead that she was exasperated but not yet really angry, though he suspected that might change quickly unless he could placate her.

  “This ‘us’ you speak of does not exist,” she continued. “How could it?” Her voice was clipped, which made her sound unsure and aggressive in a way that was new to him, and her face looked set and cold. “Us, the way you say it, makes you and me sound like a pair—two people who have known each other for a long time and who have decided to share each other’s lives. And that is not even close to being believable. You know that. You are not a stupid man. So what were you hoping to achieve here?”

  He rose to his feet and stood looking down at her, his own face now marked by a deep-graven frown, and he started to raise his hands as though to emphasize what he would say next, but then he simply stood there, motionless, looking at her and saying nothing at all for a long time before his brow cleared and he shook his head ruefully. He shrugged his wide shoulders and spread his hands, looking sheepish.

  “You are right,” he said finally. “I was hoping. But not anymore. I was hoping to fulfill a wish…a dream would probably be more accurate, though it sounds more foolish. But that’s what I was hoping to achieve. A vision that has been real to me since I first saw you in the market with your friend Camilla, a week ago. I saw you that day and my life changed completely. I know—” He held up a palm to silence any protest she might make. “I know how foolish that sounds to you, but it’s the truth. My life changed.
Completely. Because my awareness of you—that you were alive, here in the same town with me, and that I had seen you almost within my reach—affected everything I did from then on.

  “It changed the way I thought and behaved, and even the way I saw other people. Before I set eyes on you, other people—all other people—were a threat to me. I had no way of knowing who might or might not recognize me and sell my secret to someone who might want me dead. I had no close friends to turn to or to confide in.”

  His jaw twitched in what might have been the stillborn start of a smile. “From the moment I lost sight of you that first day, though, all the people there in that marketplace became possible sources of information about you, and I spoke to everyone, asking if they knew you, who you were and where you lived. In that way, I learned your name and I learned about your family being smiths, and then I found out that you came to the market, or to some part of it, at least once each week. And in trying to find out about you, without realizing it, I completely lost my fear of strangers. All the threats to my own safety that I had believed or imagined faded to nothingness once I accepted the need to find out as much as I could about you.”

  He saw her draw a breath, preparing to speak, but he forestalled her again. “No, if it please you, permit me to finish. I have a little more to add, and then I’ll say no more.”