The Burning Stone

by Jack Whyte

  “In his own way, Marcus Varrus was as admirable as his father had been. Like Titanius, he helped his Emperor subdue a massive threat to the empire—perhaps the most dangerous and revolutionary threat it had ever encountered—converting it to a force that will eventually embrace and enhance all of Rome. That is an admirable legacy to have inherited. I envy you.”

  Varrus grunted, deep in his chest. “So be it,” he said. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  When he returned, he was carrying a long tube of thick, highly polished bull’s hide. “Here,” he said, tossing it to Cato. “I hope it’s as helpful as you think it might be.”

  Slowly, almost reverentially, Cato undid the fastenings on one end of the device and slid the tightly rolled scroll of the labarum out into his cupped hand. He set the tube aside then, and with great caution compressed the scroll in his hand and slid the ivory retaining ring off the end, placing it beside the carrying tube. Then, moving with excruciating slowness, he removed the protective linen sleeve and gently unrolled the parchment itself. It was magnificent, the colours vibrant and rich, the execution of the imperial crest impeccable. He held it out at arm’s length, simply staring at it for a long time, then brought it closer to his eyes and read the one-line inscription aloud.

  “This man acts in my name. Constantinus Augustus.” He shivered involuntarily and looked at Varrus. “You are giving it to me, really?”

  “It’s yours. What will you do now?”

  Cato looked back down at the scroll in his hand, his eyes returning to the single line of script along the bottom, and then, carefully, he released the tension, allowing the cylinder to close itself again for as far as it could. He tightened it with both hands before sliding it back into its linen envelope and securing it with the ivory ring.

  “I’m going to show it to a fat slug,” he said.

  “When?”

  “At the first opportunity I have.” Cato’s voice was distant. He straightened his shoulders and reached for the leather carrying case. “But I don’t think I will dine with you tonight, Quintus. Too much to do, and too little time to do it. What hour of day is it?” He crossed to the door and looked outside. “It’s barely mid-afternoon. There’s six or seven hours of daylight left. I can be halfway to Londinium by this time tomorrow.”

  “Is that where you expect to find Vassos Seneca?”

  “I’ve no idea where I’ll find him, but Londinium’s the place I’ll start. The answers to where he’s to be found are all there. All I have to do is ask the right questions, then pay attention to what people tell me. I do know, though, that I will find the whoreson, and when I do, the Ring will finally crumble.”

  “Then I still don’t understand something. You would do that anyway, even had I destroyed the labarum as you thought I might have. So why do you need it now? You said you need it to enable you to get close to Seneca, but it doesn’t sound to me as though you do. So why do you need it?…What are you smiling at?”

  “At your short memory, my friend,” Cato said. “Godlike powers, we said, in talking of this thing, remember? He who possesses the labarum possesses godly powers. And that’s what I need it for. I want to stand over that obscene slug as he lies dying, holding up a parchment in my hand that says to all the world that I have done this with the full knowledge and the complete support of the Emperor of Rome. And after that, having avenged my friends, my brotherhood, my family—and yours—I want to walk away, my passage uncontested, my health unthreatened, and my vengeance-wearied bones alive and well.”

  He stepped forward suddenly, unexpectedly, and embraced Varrus closely, holding him tightly for a space of heartbeats before stepping back. “Thank you, my friend,” he said. “Benigne, for your hospitality, your loyalty, and your friendship. I know not if we’ll ever meet again, but you will travel with me in my heart from this day on. Be happy, give my best wishes to your wife, and live a long and satisfying life. And say goodbye to those army idiots for me. Farewell.”

  And suddenly he was gone, and Varrus was staring at the door that had not quite swung shut behind him. There should have been much more to say, he thought, and yet he felt, somehow, complete. He sighed, then collected the empty jug and the two cups they had used, and made his way back through the rear of the smithy and into the house.

  EPILOGUE

  A.D. 322

  “That be a fine-looking barrel, but be there summat wrong wi’ it?”

  The rich, broad-vowelled voice came from behind him, and Varrus smiled, knowing who was there. “No, Master Yarrow, there’s nothing wrong with it. It is an excellent barrel, sound and well made. Why would you think otherwise?”

  The man called Yarrow, who was barrel-shaped himself, his massive belly swathed in a heavy leather apron that was crested with brick dust and dried mortar, shook his head. “I dunno,” he said. “But ever’ mornin’, when I gets ’ere, I sees you standin’ starin’ at it like you was waitin’ for it to split apart.”

  Varrus laughed aloud, realizing he had not even known he had formed a new habit. “No, but it is a very special barrel. You’ll notice it sits up high off the ground, on the frame that was made for it. That allows me to check its bottom, every day, for signs of leakage. It has been there for a full year and I now believe it will never leak.” He saw the uncomprehending look in the workman’s eyes and laughed again. “My wife’s brother made it, Master Yarrow. The first one ever to be made in his new manufactory, last year. I still have difficulty in believing it’s a reality, but after a year of waiting, I have no choice left but to believe it is. How is my oven progressing?”

  “Oh, we’ve no s’prises there. ’Er’ll be done on time, well afore winter.”

  “Excellent. Then walk with me and show me what you have achieved till now.”

  The oven site was at the rear of the smithy, taking up most of a large enclosure Varrus had bought several months earlier to house it. The location had been ideal, abutting his property, the premises formerly owned by a furniture maker and sold after his death, and because of the merchant’s need to keep his stocked wood dry and well aired, the buildings on the property were all solidly built and well ventilated. It had taken no more than three days to demolish part of the high wall between the two yards and install a strong, securely mounted connecting gate. The oven being built in the yard there now was modelled closely on the one Ajax had built years earlier for the armouries, but it was larger in all respects: wider, stronger, and six feet taller, creating a much longer chimney for the molten metal to fall down through the ashes of the furnace fuel to the collection tray in the base.

  Hanno, Ajax, and Varrus himself, were all convinced after extensive study that, setting aside the truth that none of them remotely understood how it was achieved, one of the key elements in their production of harder, more malleable steel involved the distance that the melting ore fell between the smelting platform at the top of the furnace and the collection pan at the base. Varrus believed that the large amount of wood and charcoal ashes in the falling zone—the name he gave to the long chimney in the oven’s interior—contributed somehow to the mutation of the molten ore, but he had no basis for that, other than intuition, and Ajax and Hanno merely clucked their tongues and looked at each other pityingly whenever he mentioned it.

  Now Varrus walked quietly behind the master builder, as the man explained what was being done in the construction and showed him how the concrete elements of the furnace walls reinforced and enhanced the firebrick-lined interior of the kiln, enabling greater pressure to be built up in the bellows chamber in order to raise the temperature in the combustion chamber. It was all highly technical, but Varrus knew enough about ovens and kilns by then to be able to make sense of most of what he was told, and he nodded in satisfaction when he had seen everything, clapping the builder on the shoulder and leaving him and his men to their work. He made his way directly back into the yard behind the smithy proper then, where he smiled at the sound of a voice and braced himself as the small, sturdy b
oy ran directly at him, head lowered.

  “Dada!” Thirty pounds of compact, bustling, three-year-old muscle hit him at knee level, his weakest point, and tried, almost successfully, to bowl him over, but he whooped and swooped, bracing his malformed leg with the ease of long years of practice as he caught the child’s solid little body beneath the shoulders and whipped him up into the air, tossing and spinning him to catch him at the top of his flight and bring him down to sit on his shoulder, where he anchored him by clutching both chubby ankles in one hand, then let him fall again, secure in his father’s firm grasp, to hang upside down less than a foot above the ground, shrieking and gurgling with delight. Grinning widely at Lydia, who was approaching him from the house, he bent his arm and lifted the boy higher, then swung him to where he could catch his upper body with his other hand, and held him out horizontally towards his mother.

  “Is this yours, woman?”

  Unimpressed, she approached until she was close enough to reach up and pull his head down to where she could kiss him, and he made no move to lower the boy to the ground until their kiss was finished. He set the child down then, holding him against his knee with a hand on his shoulder while he looked his wife up and down, missing no detail of her dress or appearance.

  “You look very elegant, my lady. Are you going out?”

  She batted her long lashes at him. “I am,” she purred. “Can you guess who I am going to meet?”

  “I could name half the men in Colcaster, my love, but I would likely be wrong, so surprise me. Who are you going to meet?”

  “Eylin, of course. Who else is there?”

  Eylin was finally with child and suffering daily because of it, and Lydia, who had carried young Marcus to term three years earlier without a single day of sickness or distress, found it hard to imagine what her brother’s wife was going through.

  Now Varrus cocked his head and squinted at her, looking into her eyes curiously as he stirred his fingers in his son’s long, soft hair. “Are you feeling well?”

  “Of course I am,” she said. “Why would you ask me that?”

  He half-shrugged. “Merely curious.” He dropped his eyes to his son’s head. “Are you taking this fellow with you?”

  “I think so. You have things to do this morning.”

  “I do indeed. I have nails to make. That must be the most boring chore a smith can have, other than making bronze rings for armoured shirts.” He sighed, looking sorry for himself. “Nail-making is a task sadly lacking in variety, my love.” He grinned, the quick, mischievous flash of eyes and teeth that she loved. “But at least it stops people from wondering where we find enough money to feed ourselves. So that’s what I’ll be doing while you console poor Eylin. Give me a kiss now and stop distracting me.”

  He kissed her lingeringly, then crouched and turned his son towards him, holding him by the shoulders. “And you, young Varrus. Look after your mother while she’s away from home. Guard her well, out there in the savage world, and bring her home safely to me. Will you do that?”

  The boy nodded, wide-eyed, his adoration of his father shining on his face as he gazed up at him.

  “Wonderful! Be off, then, the pair of you!” He watched them cross the yard and disappear, and then he went inside the smithy.

  Equus, now a hulking, good-natured, and quick-witted young giant close to sixteen, had the furnace prepared perfectly and all the nail-making materials laid out to hand. They chatted amiably for a few moments, more like father and son than master and apprentice, and then, by mutual consent, they buckled down to the tedious task of cutting and shaping nails from thinly hammered sheets of metal, and quickly became lost in the repetitive monotony of endless duplication.

  Sometime towards the middle of the day Varrus called a halt and they went into the body of the house to eat the lunch that Lydia had left for them in the scullery—two finger-thick slices of cold roasted pork from a young shoat that Varrus had taken in payment for a job of work, sprinkled with salt and laid between slabs of freshly baked bread, washed down with wine that was heavily diluted by cold water from the house’s deep well. And as they were finishing, preparing to go back to work, Ajax walked in.

  Surprised and happy to see his friend, who had been off on military business in Londinium for almost an entire month, Varrus immediately offered him a cup of wine, but Ajax waved the offer aside as young Equus let himself out discreetly, leaving the two men alone together.

  “I’m on my way to meet with Damian Marcellus. I’m late as it is, but I wanted to tell you I ran into Leon and the Twins down there in Londuin, and they’ll be back here soon—probably within the month—because Britannicus asked for them to be posted back to his command. So that’s good news and I thought you might be glad to hear it. I know I was.”

  “I am. Benigne, for telling me. I’ve missed all you people recently. The town seems empty without your ugly faces darkening every corner. But when did you start calling Londinium Londuin?”

  “While I was there this time. That’s what everyone’s calling it now.”

  “Hmm. I wonder how the high command will warm to that. And what about Cato? Any word of him?”

  Ajax’s face fell and he shook his head, mute. No one had heard a word from or about Cato since he had left, four years earlier. They had put out the word among their many contacts and acquaintances to keep eyes and ears open for any mention of a Marcus Licinius Cato, or a Rufus Cato or even a Rufus, but the silence had been profound. They had tried to cheer themselves up by reflecting that no news is usually good news and that ill news travels fast, but the total lack of information surrounding Cato’s disappearance had upset them all more than any of them would ever admit, and over the course of the progressing months and years they had gradually stopped talking about him altogether.

  “Idiot probably got himself killed,” Ajax blurted suddenly. “Whole damned world is full of worthless fools, and he was one of the few worthwhile ones. But he got himself killed anyway, no doubt trying to do something stupid and noble—honourable. Shit!” He straightened up to his full height, blinking eyes that had suddenly teared over, and Varrus felt something move deep within himself. “Shit!” he barked again. “I have to go.”

  “Hang on,” Varrus said. “I’ll come out with you. I’m finished here.” He set his cup aside, by the stone kitchen sink, then walked back into the smithy side by side with Ajax, who stopped by the forge and looked all around him.

  “This place is really yours now, isn’t it? Can’t see a single trace of old Liam left in here. It’s all Quintus Varrus, which is as it should be. I’ll see you later, when I’m done with Marcellus.” He started to turn away, then stopped and reached into the scrip hanging from his belt. “I nearly forgot. I bought you a gift in Londuin.” He flicked his hand and Varrus had to move quickly to catch the flying object thrown at him. He held it up, looking at it quizzically. It was a narrow, heavy, hexagonal steel cylinder the width of his ring finger, with one end tapered to a narrow point. It looked almost like a chisel, but was too small to be a useful tool.

  “What is it?”

  “What does it look like? It’s a stamp. Here.” He reached down and unsheathed the Hispanic sword hanging by his left side. “I knew you didn’t own one yet, and my damn blade’s unfinished, so you can fix it now.”

  He laid the blade flat on the anvil, and as soon as he saw the sword bared, Varrus recognized it for one of his own. Only then did he realize what Ajax had given him. He raised the cylinder again, bringing it close to his eyes this time, and looked at the tapered point, seeing the tooled “V” on the end of it. “V” for Varrus, the mark he would stamp from that time on into every blade he made. He felt his throat close up, and would have been at a loss for words had Ajax not growled, “Come on, Quintus, I told you I’m late. Stamp your mark on the damned blade and let me get out of here.” And Quintus Varrus, vainly trying to blink away the tears that flooded his eyes, bent over his anvil and with great precision, placing the tool in the e
xact centre of the blade directly below the boss of the hilt, stamped his first “V” into a blade he had made with his own hands.

  “Benigne,” Ajax said. “This one has a place on my wall. I’ll come back later, once I’m free.” He started to turn away and stopped yet again. “What’s that?” he asked.

  Varrus knew what he had seen and picked it up, holding it out to Ajax. “Another old sword, the latest from Dominic,” he said. “It came in the last shipment of ingots while you were away. It’s Cretan, I think. That’s what it’s supposed to be anyway, according to the fellow Dominic bought it from.”

  It was a sword, of sorts, with a heavy, leaf-styled blade that was obviously ancient, and a long tang that showed no signs of ever having anchored a hilt.

  “Ugly old thing, isn’t it?” Ajax said, peering closely at its rust-pitted blade. “Not pretty enough to hang on my wall, anyway.” His mouth flickered in the beginnings of a smile and he laid the old sword down gently. “You must be getting quite a collection by now, with that collection of Liam’s you bought and all the old junk Dom sends you, and the other stuff you buy yourself.”

  “I am,” Varrus said. “When you come back I’ll show you the notes I keep on every item as I acquire it, some detailed, others sketchy and mostly guesswork. But you’d better run. Tribunes don’t enjoy being kept waiting.”