The Burning Stone

by Jack Whyte

  “She would be at home, where she wants to be.”

  “No, my love, she would not. She would be in the place she has always thought of as home, but she would be stuck there, unable to come back if things go wrong. Everyone she knew over there is probably dead, or they’ve moved away like her. And the folk who are there might take everything she has, leaving her with nothing. She would be completely alone and unsupported.” He shook his head and squeezed her breast, as though to emphasize something only he could see. “No, we simply cannot let her go off on her own like that.” He paused then, and waited until he saw the whites of her eyes looking up at him in the dim light. “What we could do easily, though, might be a wonderful idea for all of us, if you agree with the notion.”

  “I agree with it already, if you believe in it. Tell me.”

  “Well, what if we were to furnish Shanna with a farm of her own to live on here? A small farm that she could work herself, with a little help from time to time. We could buy one very close to town and set her up in comfort, and she could keep us provided with fresh eggs and butter, milk, and even bread once she started raising crops. And if it were close enough, she could even pasture our horses for us, leaving us with more space for our children, when they come. Do you think that might appeal to her?”

  He had been watching her eyes growing excited in the firelight as he spoke, and now she smiled at him, radiantly. “I think it might suit her perfectly, my love. I know it appeals to me. I’ll talk to her about it in the morning and I won’t take no for an answer.”

  * * *

  —

  The following morning, Varrus found Shamus in the forge, working the bellows half-heartedly.

  “You’re looking chirpy for a man about to lose his freedom,” Shamus growled. “Not goin’ up to the fort today?”

  “No, not today. Tomorrow I’m being married. Today I’m being lazy, contemplating my good fortune. What about you?”

  “I have no good fortune.”

  “That’s what your sister tells me. But you could have, I believe, if you cared to work for some.”

  “Work?” Shamus threw him a jaundiced look. “You mean here, if I face up to a life of slavery working at your forge?”

  “Nup. I was talking about coming to grips with this matter of the Cornish girl you claim to care so much about. Lydia says you’re not having much success there. Why do you sneak away with her at every opportunity, hiding and sidling and eyeing her shiftily all the time as though she was something to be drooled over? Why do you follow her around like a prowling animal? Why don’t you step up and act like a man? Talk to her father and be open with her brothers about what you want to do for their sister?”

  “Because I can’t!” Shamus shouted. “I can’t! They would laugh at me, and then they’d beat me half to death and throw me into the street. I have nothing! Nothing worthwhile to offer, and no prospects of ever having anything. It needs no brilliant mind to see me for what I am.”

  “What if you could be a barrel maker?”

  “But I’m not a barrel maker,” he snapped, “and I never will be.”

  “Why not? What are you lacking?”

  The look Shamus turned on him then was one of pure disbelief. “Can you hear yourself, man? What am I lacking? Well, let me see. There’s about fifteen years of learning the craft that I should have had before now. That’s lacking. Then there’s a suitable place to work from, with the right equipment—and the means to buy or even rent it. Then, just to make things better, there’s the necessary cash to open up the doors and start making barrels, and to pay employees, because though you might never have thought about it, Quintus Varrus, it’s not easy to build a barrel by yourself. You need extra hands.”

  He stopped suddenly, and straightened up slowly to his full height. “Why are you taunting me like this, Quintus? Did I make you angry?”

  Varrus spun away, and kept turning, completing a full revolution and then raising a finger in the air. “I have a proposition for you, Shamus. You might find it interesting. We each have a problem, but we can help each other out if we work together. You need something in order to approach Eylin’s family with any hope of success. I can provide you with that. And I need to keep working at the armouries, learning new elements of my own craft. You can help me do that. But we will both need two full years to do it. Wait, let me finish.

  “There’s a cooperage in the fort, run by a man called Mamercus. He’s from Sicilia and he knows his craft. He’s willing to take you under his wing for two years and teach you the basics of that craft. Sufficient to allow you to buy your own cooperage afterwards and operate it knowledgeably. You wouldn’t be a cooper, not at first, but you would be an owner, able to run a business employing people who were fully trained and capable.”

  Shamus was wide-eyed, and for a moment Varrus saw hope dawning in his eyes, but then the young smith’s face fell.

  “I believe you could do that, Quintus—with the Sicilian fellow, I mean—and I thank you for that. But I could never raise the money for that last part. It would cost too much.”

  “Then I’ll buy a cooperage and you can run it. We’ll be partners.” He saw the disbelief in the other man’s eyes and spoke again, quickly. “Do you remember the box that came for me, just before Liam died?”

  Shamus nodded. “I heard about it.”

  “It contained money, Shamus. Money from the sale of some of my grandfather’s estates.”

  “Isn’t that grand.” It was a statement, not a question, but there was no malice in the younger man’s voice. “Are you rich now, then?”

  “I have enough for what I spoke about. I meant every word I said to you, Shamus. We can do this together.”

  Shamus stood staring at him. “What is it you think we can do?”

  “You spend two years learning the barrel-making craft, and I’ll buy us a barrel-making manufactory and stock it with everything you’ll need. We’ll hire master coopers to work in it and train apprentices, and you will run it, and we’ll share the profits as partners.”

  Shamus stared back at him, the slightest frown ticking between his brows. “So,” he said, “that would take care of one side of the partnership, but you said we would be helping each other. What do you want of me, then?”

  “I want you—no, I need you—to keep doing what you’ve been doing here. Run the smithy in the mornings while I’m at the armouries, and then you’ll go to the cooperage in the afternoons, just as I go to the armouries each morning. If you’ll do that for two years, we will both benefit, and you will be able to hold your head up when you approach Eylin’s family. You will have money to show them, as well as a business and a future. She will have you, will she not?”

  “Aye.” Shamus was very subdued. “She would have me now, with nothing.” He narrowed his eyes to slits. “You would do this, for me? Why?”

  “Why not? I told you, I need your help. Besides, I’m marrying your sister. We’ll be brothers come tomorrow. Who better to have as a partner than a brother?”

  “What about my da?”

  “What about him? He’ll dance at your wedding. So, are we agreed?”

  Shamus nodded, a single, decisive bob of the head, already looking like a different man.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Varrus had one brilliant, all-effacing memory of his wedding that persisted for the remainder of his life. It was of the moment when he turned around, prompted by a sudden upsurge of noise at his back, and saw Lydia Mcuil enter the main room of the house, where all the guests—they had ended up with seventeen—had assembled to witness the ceremony. She was dressed in a magnificent shimmering robe of translucent yellow fabric that draped her to her feet in rippling, scalloped waves of shifting shades of yellow and gold. She was surely the most breathtaking woman ever to be seen in the town of Camulodunum since its founding in the days of the long-dead emperor Claudius. Varrus grinned like an idiot boy.

  She came to him with a radiant smile, and from that point on he lost all coheren
t memory of the day, though he was aware, from time to time, of significant moments in the course of the wedding ceremony itself. For example, after holding up their joined hands and tying them together with a bright blue ribbon, Lydia held him tightly while others among the guests came forward and added ribbons of their own, joining the pair of them unmistakably in a gesture that needed no translation.

  And he remembered one other event that occurred that day. After Lydia had withdrawn for a short time with the women, Varrus and Ajax drifted over to the smithy while talking idly on some trivial matter. As Varrus passed through the door, the anomalous little object that Liam had called Ler’s Skull caught his eye, lodged in front of the smithy door to hold it open. Without interrupting what his companion was saying, Varrus crouched down smoothly and scooped the thing up, marvelling again at the unexpectedness of its weight. He turned to Natius Ajax.

  “Here,” he said, and when Natius reached out for the thing, Varrus dropped it into his palm, smiling as the weight of it forced the armourer to lurch forward and snatch at it with both hands before it could fall.

  “What d’you make of that?” he asked. “Heavy little thing, is it not?”

  “I’ll grant you that,” the armourer said, holding it up closer to examine it. “It’s dense. What is it?”

  “Liam called it Ler’s Skull—see that domed bit, and those two holes that could be eye sockets? Ler is one of the old Erse gods, the kind they sometimes call the wee folk. As for what it’s made of, I don’t know. I think it’s metal mixed with stone, but it’s not any kind of ore that I’ve ever seen. And it’s harder than anything I’ve ever known, too. Liam told me he tried to smelt it several times, but failed every time.”

  “Hmm. Where did it come from, did he say?”

  “Said some fisherman dredged it up in his nets, but he couldn’t say where, or even what sea it came from.”

  Ajax was holding the thing right up to his eyes, peering at it from less than a foot away. “Strange,” he murmured. “It almost looks as though it might have started to melt at one time.”

  “That’s what Liam thought, too. But that’s not possible, is it?”

  “That depends on how you define possible. I would never wager on the difference.” He was still peering down, but his eyes had drifted away now, gazing off into the distance. “That’s strange, though…Twice now, in a matter of weeks.”

  Varrus cocked his head. “What are you talking about?”

  The armourer shook his head dismissively. “Nothing, really. A coincidence, that’s all.” He set the strange stone back in place. “I had another one of these things brought to me less than a month ago—a bit bigger than that one, but with the same kind of glazed effect on part of its surface. Strange-looking thing, but I wasn’t too impressed. The fellow who brought it to me was a madman. Said it fell from the sky and was hot when he first found it.”

  “Hot? From the sky?”

  “I know. That’s what I thought, too. But that’s what he claimed. Said he and his wife had been awakened one night by an unholy noise—a screaming whistle followed by a mighty crash that left them huddled awake all night long, too afraid to get out of bed and look to see what had happened. Next day though, when they went outside, they found their oak tree smashed to burning splinters and half buried in a great hole in the ground that was still smoking. Said it took him three days to grow brave enough to approach the place, even after the fire was out. As I said, a madman. I took the thing off his hands, as a curiosity, and gave him a few sesterces for it because the finish on it intrigued me. Thought I might try smelting it in the new furnace one of these days.”

  “We might try to smelt this one at the same time.”

  “Good idea, why not?”

  They left it there, but for the remainder of the day Varrus found his thoughts returning to their conversation at odd times and always with discomfort, and he found it disquieting that he could not identify why that should trouble him.

  Towards the middle of the afternoon, when the fine wine Dominic had lavishly provided was being freely consumed and the womenfolk were engaged in the kitchens preparing the nuptial meal, Demetrius Hanno beckoned him aside.

  “Where do you…you hide things here when you need to?”

  Varrus stiffened, thinking immediately of his newly hidden hoard of golden coins. But then he relaxed again, admonishing himself with a silent smile, for it was plain that Hanno had already consumed a few draughts of wine, and from the bleary way his eyes were flitting from side to side, evidently attempting to assess every conceivable hiding place in the room, it was clear that whatever was troubling the big smith had nothing to do with money.

  “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, Demetrius,” he said. “What do you need?”

  “Need a hiding place,” the giant said. “Ajax and I—” He paused solemnly and hiccuped. “We have a gift for Lydia, Ajax and me. But can’t bring it in yet, so we have to hide it for a while.”

  “Then that’s easy. Where is it?”

  “At the fort. But I have a boy wait…waiting to go an’ fetch it.”

  “Send him to get it now, then, and we’ll hide it in the stables. May I ask what it is?”

  “’S a mirror,” Hanno said, then weaved away in the direction of the outer yard.

  When he judged that enough time had passed, Varrus rounded up Ajax to witness the arrival of his gift, and the pair of them strolled out into the yard to join Hanno and wait with him by the smithy gates. The afternoon shadows had already lengthened sufficiently to throw the area into darkness, and so they moved on, through the gates and out into the street. There they saw two young men coming into view in the distance, manhandling an ungainly, shrouded burden between them.

  “Here they come now,” Varrus said. “That thing looks bulky. No wonder you need a hiding place for it.”

  As he said the words, he heard heavy footsteps at their back, and then someone behind them cleared his throat, bringing all three men swinging around. Ajax and Hanno immediately drew themselves up into a militarily erect and respectful stance, staring straight ahead. Varrus thought the man’s face familiar, though he could not quite place it at first, and in the next instant he saw that it must be the new garrison legate, Britannicus, because the trio of men behind him were all in full dress uniform, adding emphasis to the unmilitary but aristocratic clothing the man himself wore.

  “Centurion Ajax, is it not?” Britannicus’s voice was deep and rich, precise yet friendly, and his eyes seemed to Varrus to contain a hint of amusement as he looked at the armourer and then beyond him to where Hanno stood straight as a spear. “I don’t know you, though, do I?”

  Hanno appeared to answer without moving his mouth. “Demetrius Hanno, Legate. I work in the armouries, as a smith.”

  Britannicus recognized him with a courteous dip of his head and then turned to look at Varrus, scanning him from head to toe and taking in the white richness of the Roman robe.

  “A beautiful day, sir,” he said cordially, extending a hand. “Too fine to spend cooped up inside. My name is Britannicus, newly appointed legate of the garrison.” He paused, and his eyes narrowed. “Did we not see each other the day I arrived? There was a funeral procession, I remember. Were you not at the head of the mourners?”

  Varrus nodded. “I was, sir. We were burying a friend, the local smith, Liam Mcuil.”

  The legate’s eyes returned to Varrus’s sumptuous white robe. “You are dressed differently today, though—more celebrant than mourner, I think.”

  “That is true, sir. I am newly wed today.”

  “Aha!” The legate’s face broke into a wide smile. “Then you have my best wishes for this day and for your future. May I ask your name?”

  Ajax and Hanno had not moved a muscle since they first caught sight of the legate and snapped to attention, but now Ajax’s eyes widened as he saw the trap threatening his friend. Before Ajax could speak, though, Varrus relieved him of the need.

  “My name i
s Varrus, Commander. Quintus Varrus.”

  “Well then, Magister Varrus, I will bid you good day and leave you to get on with your celebrations. Centurion, you may continue.” He nodded cordially again to Varrus and Hanno, and moved away unhurriedly, followed by his three subordinates, all of whom had been staring at Varrus with varying degrees of curiosity.

  Ajax let out his breath in a long hiss.

  “Well, that was interesting,” Varrus said, watching the quartet walk away. “I never expected to meet him in the town streets.”

  “Limping Vulcan,” Ajax said. “That almost scared me sober…But you now have some idea of the kind of man he is. Nothing pretentious or demeaning in him, no matter who he’s talking to.” He barked a sudden laugh. “He must have wondered, though. You hardly look like the kind of citizen they might expect to find in the cobbled streets of a provincial town. Interesting that he didn’t react to your name, though. It’s common enough as a name, I suppose, but I would have expected more of a reaction from one of our brotherhood to hearing it used here. Unless, of course, he already knew you were here…Over here, lads.” He beckoned to the two young porters and then led them into the stables, where Varrus showed them where he wanted them to lay their burden. Varrus thanked them both and insisted on giving each of them a few double denarii—coins that could be readily exchanged in a wine shop or taverns—and when they had left he turned back to Ajax.

  “So, when will you present her with the mirror?”

  “At dinner. There are other people here who have brought gifts. So when everyone has finished eating, and before the tables are cleared.”

  “So be it,” Varrus said. “Give me a nod when you think the time is right, and I’ll give a little speech, giving you time to bring it in.”