The Burning Stone

by Jack Whyte

  She paused, head high, but merely nodded.

  “I found out what I could about you, and I watched for you. Not because I ever really hoped or intended to meet you. I had no reason ever to suppose that you might notice me. I was content to look—and to pine achingly. And then, this morning, I saw you startle and turn to run away. You moved too quickly when you should not have, and because of that I saw the man who went after you. And the rest you know…And yes, it was fortunate that I noticed. But I have a need to confess to you, to purge myself of this, so bear with me.”

  He lowered his head, then turned on his heel and moved to stand behind his solid, high-backed chair, where he gripped the decorative acorn tops of the wooden uprights tightly. He was aware that he was using the chair as a shield, a barrier between himself and her, and he wondered if she sensed that too. He thought perhaps she did, because she neither moved nor spoke, leaving him to continue at his own pace.

  He spoke, but it must have come out as little more than a mumble, because the next thing Lydia said was, “I can’t hear you.”

  “Ah.” He looked down again, at the backs of his hands clutching the chair, and spoke in a slightly louder voice. “I said I could not believe what I was thinking, or that I was saying it to you.”

  Another silence ensued until she prompted him. “You might have thought anything, but you said nothing. What were you thinking about? Is that what you need to confess?”

  “Aye, it is.” He raised his head and looked her square in the eye. “I gave chase, and followed you up the hill, trying to keep up with the man pursuing you. And all the way up there, fighting against the fear that I might be too late, I tried to imagine what would happen if I caught up to you. But all that time I was thinking only of saving you, protecting you, shielding your beauty and your innocence from the kind of filth that man would subject you to. I was thinking of you as an ethereal, unworldly beauty, some kind of impossible goddess, not a flesh-and-blood woman.

  “And then I saw that the man chasing you was not alone. There were others, one of them a fat-bellied one who was even slower than I was. And I grew angrier than I have ever been, I think. Four slovenly pigs chasing one lone woman. So when I caught up with you I had no thought of offering them anything but what I dealt them. I knew what would happen if they had their way, and it was me against them. But I had surprise on my side, and I was fortunate.”

  He looked at her, and his eyes moved downwards to her skirts. “It was after the killing, when I looked down and saw what they had done to your clothing, exposing your nakedness, that I saw you as a living, breathing woman. And it was like being kicked into awareness. I saw your thighs, how soft they were, so smooth and vulnerable, and I tried to cover you up.”

  “You did cover me up,” she said, her voice betraying no emotion.

  “I did, but too late. The damage was done. I can still see what I saw then, and when I looked away, back into your face, I saw the size and the colour of your eyes and the shape and softness of your mouth, and the thought came to me that I would die happy if only I could take you back to safety and kiss your lips just once. We walked away and spoke afterwards as though we were old friends and nothing unusual had taken place between us. And then your brothers came running and I seemed to lose control of everything, including my memories of how you looked, so close to me and so beautiful. But I had told you by then that I wanted you to be my wife, and I meant it. And that vision of you has been in my mind all day, despite my efforts not to see it.”

  He took his hands off the acorn chair knobs and ground his palms together, inhaling deeply. “It’s plain to me now, though, that I was deluding myself. And you are correct. I should have held my tongue. But when I spoke to your father I yet believed you would come to accept me. That’s why I did it. I knew he would soon detect the desire I have for you, and I wanted to make him aware of my regard for you before I slept beneath his roof.” He drew another deep breath before bowing to her from the waist. “I hope you will not think too badly of me. I’ll be gone tomorrow.”

  She stared back at him expressionlessly without speaking for what seemed to him a long time, then quirked her lips. “And he did not object,” she said.

  “No, he did not.”

  “He did not tell you to leave his house…my father. Nor did he make any mention of this to any member of the family at dinner. I would have expected that, at least, had I known—that he would at least mock you a little, for your youth and inexperience if for nothing else. But he came to me in the kitchens instead and told me to come and talk to you.” She watched Varrus closely as he took in each word she uttered. “It needed to be seen to now, he said.”

  Listening to her speak, it seemed to him that her voice, the very tone of it, sounded different, and it was a difference in attitude rather than anything else. Her brilliant and spontaneous self-assertiveness was somehow less sharp-edged now, eclipsed, he thought, by a diffidence that had not been present earlier, and the result was the merest suggestion of uncertainty in the cadence and delivery of what she said.

  He leaned slightly forward to look directly into her eyes, drinking in his last view of the width and shape of them, the brilliant, blue-tinged clarity of the whites and the magnificent beauty of her green, gold-flecked irises. Expecting her to turn away and leave, he remained motionless, simply staring back at her and waiting for whatever she might say or do next.

  Eventually she moved to the nearest chair and lowered herself into it, her eyes, still narrow and speculative, fixed upon his. “What did he say? What did he say to you when you asked him if he would consider your offer to marry me? Was he angry? Did he call you a fool?”

  “No, not at all. He said that would be up to you, and that he had decided long ago that his opinion would be inconsequential in the matter of your choosing a husband. Very much like your mother, I think he said. The choice would be yours, to accept or to refuse. But there is little point in speaking of that now, is there? As I said, I’ll be gone soon enough.”

  He told her then about her father’s plan to send him to Camulodunum, for his own safety and to help her uncle Liam in the smithy there. Shamus would go with him, he explained, to put some helpful distance between father and son.

  He fell silent then, and Lydia sat staring at him with the same frustrating, unreadable expression she had shown before.

  There came a tap at the door and Dominic Mcuil pushed his head in. “Am I intruding?”

  “Of course you are, Da,” his daughter said. “But it’s your house. Come in, come in. I want to tell you something.”

  The smith stepped forward almost timidly, Varrus thought, and looked from one to the other of them with his eyebrows raised. “Is everything as it should be?” he asked. “Do you two need more time?”

  Lydia rose quickly to her feet, her voice tight and crisp again. “No, Da,” she said. “We need no more time. Come here and look at this man.”

  “What about him?”

  She continued speaking to her father but she never took her eyes off Quintus Varrus’s face. “Look at him, closely. He is…unusual. We both know that to be true. But I have decided that I like him anyway, despite not knowing him well. I’m not saying I will be his wife. But neither am I saying I won’t have him. If he and I can take the time to come to know each other, and if he is truly the man I think he might be, then I think we might be well together, the two of us.” She spoke directly then to Varrus. “Well, Master Varrus, have you anything to say to that?”

  Stunned, Varrus could only smile, tentatively, at first, but then he turned to her father. “I’m well content with that, Master Mcuil, and I thank you for the opportunity to speak my mind and make my case.” His smile widened. “And as for you, my lady Lydia, I will bend my entire mind and heart towards making you believe I am the sole man with whom you could wish to spend your life. How often will you be able to come and visit us?”

  Her father intervened before Lydia could respond, and left her smiling a tiny, secretiv
e smile. “You keep your end of the bargain up there in Liam’s smithy, Master Roman, and I’ll see to it that you meet each other often enough in future—with suitable supervision, of course—for the two of you to be able to decide whether you wish to share your lives or not. It’s less than three days’ travel in good weather, and we usually get up and down at least once every few months.”

  He paused, grinning at some passing thought. “Tomorrow we can put you to work helping Callum and Shamus with a shipment of farm tools that he’s readying for market. Callum told me they found you some suitable work clothes and some other gear.”

  “The hair,” Lydia said. “We’ll have to change that, too. It’s like a golden fire on his head, drawing attention to him. So we’ll cut most of it off and darken the rest of it.”

  “Darken it?” Her father sounded mystified. “How will you do that?”

  She tossed her head, scorning the question. “As easily as you make a shoe for a horse,” she said, speaking to Dominic but looking at Varrus, her head to one side, her eyes calculating. “Women do it all the time. How we do it is not important.” She tapped Varrus on the shoulder. “You already have the dark complexion, so between one hour and the next, tomorrow, we’ll change the look of you completely. Between that and the new clothes we bought, the men hunting you will have to look very carefully to recognize you.”

  “Other than my limp.”

  “Ach, that’s nothing. They’ll be looking for long golden hair and different kinds of clothing. You’ll pass all but the closest examination.”

  Her father spoke up then. “Just the same, though, for all our sakes, you should be away from here and on the road the day after tomorrow, before the initial search for you turns up nothing and your hunters grow more determined. And if that fellow Nerva has any intellect at all, he will ask around the market and come here looking for you. So you had best be clear of this town by Saturday, for the odds are high that by Sunday you’ll be too late.”

  He was interrupted by a sudden clamour of young voices in the kitchen at his back, and he cocked his head for a moment, listening.

  “Bedtime,” he said. “You had better go and help the others, Lydia. They’ll be wondering where you are, so bid Master Varrus a good night and then get about your duties.”

  He nodded to Varrus, then turned and went out of the room, closing the door behind him and leaving them alone together.

  “Sit down, Master Varrus, and tell me what you think of that.”

  He sat down slowly, barely even aware of what he was doing, and simply gazed at her, searching for the words to say that he thought her the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and to swear to her that he would spend his entire life, from that day forward, seeking only to make her happy. But she gave him no time to speak. She stepped close quickly, reaching out to take him by the chin, then stooped towards him. For a brief moment, she hovered so close that he felt her breath on his skin and saw nothing but her mouth, the width and softness of it, a flash of white teeth behind her perfect lips, and then she kissed him, slowly, exploring him.

  Then she straightened up again and stood looking at him.

  “That was…pleasant,” she said. “Sleep well, Quintus Varrus. Tomorrow we will coat you in new colours.”

  ELEVEN

  The sun’s day, the first of the new week, had started well, the sun itself shining from a brilliant blue sky that was streaked in places with skeins of high, teased-out, insubstantial cloud, and Quintus Varrus felt sublimely happy: happy to be alive, happy to be in love, happy with the prospects that lay ahead of him, and happy to have succeeded in getting out of Londinium the previous day without being detected.

  Now, a day and a half later and almost thirty miles farther north, he was lounging comfortably under a huge old elm tree that marked the end of a long, straggling line of hawthorns along the edge of a broad, slow-flowing stream. They had been walking for more than seven hours by then, pulling their cart doggedly by the shoulder straps attached to the wide central T-bar, paying no attention to the few travellers who passed them in either direction on the wide, paved road, and when the huge, solitary tree came into view as they breasted a slight rise, it had seemed to beckon them to the bright green sward of the riverbank. They had decided to camp there for the night and had quit the road gratefully. Now Varrus lay at ease beside a small fire in a much-used stone-lined pit, watching Shamus Mcuil wading silently and slowly through knee-deep water, his head bent, intently focused upon catching fish for their evening meal.

  Their departure from Londinium had gone smoothly, though the day had been rainy and blustery. Dominic had been right about the need to leave quickly and exercise caution, for at the northeastern gate, the city guards were out in force, and a quartet of garrison officers in crested helmets had been vigilant, making sure that everyone passing through the gates was checked. One had glanced directly at Varrus and Shamus, but he paid them no more attention. Two drab, rain-drenched farm workers pulling a cart through the downpour on their way to wherever they were going plainly held no interest for him. A mile after that, safely outside the walls, they had passed by the city’s easternmost gate, from which another main road led directly northeastward towards Camulodunum, a hundred miles away. There, too, guards had been stopping everyone on the way out, studying faces, examining every cart and wagon, and checking cargoes and passengers under the narrow-eyed scrutiny of another quartet of officers.

  After five more hours on the road, they had found the burnt-out shell of a cottage and rested for half an hour, huddled together under the sagging remnants of a roof in one corner of the ruin while they each ate a handful of road rations—chopped dried fruit with roasted grain and nuts—from the bags they carried at their waists and washed it down with water from their goatskins. They’d dozed against the sheltering walls, content to be out of the worst of the weather for a time, and then set out again, heading doggedly through the pouring rain for five more hours. They spent the night in a tent in a sheltered spot in a grove of enormous beech trees close to the road. Sometime during the night the rain stopped, and they were back on the road by dawn, having exchanged their wet clothes for dry. As the new day, the sun’s day, opened bright and clear, they’d broken their fast as they walked, chewing the sweet mixture from their ration bags and feeling increasingly better as the air about them brightened and grew warm.

  A cry and loud splashes interrupted Varrus’s reverie, and he looked up to see Shamus leaping about in the water, trying to keep his balance while grappling with a magnificent, brilliantly coloured fish. The creature was clearly determined to escape from its tormentor, but just when Varrus thought it would succeed, Shamus managed to grasp it firmly for long enough to heave it high and far, sending it flying to land on the grass near Varrus’s feet. Moments later, he had followed it to the bank, picked it up, and threaded a length of strong twine through its gills. He looped the twine securely over a stake that he had sunk into the ground by the waterside earlier, and lowered the captive fish back into the river.

  “There,” he said, unaware of Varrus’s admiration. “That’ll hold him fresh. He can keep himself alive until we’ve caught some company for him.”

  “Company? You mean there are more like that?”

  “Hundreds more.” The Eirishman spoke with the authority of experience. “This is perfect trout water. They’re not all as big as this fellow, but there’s enough his size to feed us well this night.”

  “What kind of fish is it?”

  “Did ye not hear me? It’s a trout.”

  “A trout? I see. And is trout good to eat?”

  Shamus raised his eyebrows. “Is it—? Have ye never tasted trout? It’s the best fish in the world, so it is. Wait till ye taste it. We have salt in the cart, do we not, and butter?”

  “Aye, I think so,” Varrus said, trying to recall what Lydia had said about the basket she had packed for them. “Salt, I know. And there’s a covered clay pot. I think Lydia said it was fresh butter.” />
  “Good, then dig them out, and some bread, while I catch us a couple more o’ them fellows. You’re not going to believe how good fish can taste.”

  As Shamus waded back out into the stream, Varrus made his way to the cart, where he untied the lashings at the tailgate and leaned in to pull out the basket of provisions. It was a large, rectangular basket made from woven willow twigs, cumbersome rather than heavy, its lid hinged with leather at the back and secured at the front with thick, buckled straps. Varrus hoisted it chest high and carried it back to the fire. Most of the things inside were meticulously wrapped in cloths of varying weights and thickness, and the remainder were in clay pots of various sizes. One of the larger pots, he knew, contained fresh salted butter, made by Callum Mcuil’s wife, Regan, the day before they left. A tiny pot, covered tightly with a piece of fine cloth and tied around the neck with a slip knot, contained a generous amount of precious and expensive salt, painstakingly garnered from evaporated sea water out on the coast.

  He set both of those pots carefully on the open lid without unwrapping them, then stood up and drew the gladius from the sheath at his right side. He held it out in front of him and turned towards the closest of the hawthorn trees on the far side of the big elm.

  “Two ways to go from here,” he called out in a voice loud enough to carry clearly but not enough to intimidate. “You can step out and declare yourself openly, or you and I can talk face to face with swords. Your choice, but make it quick.”

  He heard a curse from behind him as Shamus realized what he was hearing, and immediately after that came the sounds of splashing as the younger man started to make his way towards land, but Varrus held up his left hand to stay him.

  For long moments nothing more happened, and Varrus was just beginning to wonder what his next move should be when he saw a stir of movement in the hawthorn grove and a man stepped into view, his arms extended at his sides to show he held no weapons.