by Whyte, Jack
He was a strange man, Symmachus, and for reasons of his own he never liked me and never acknowledged me as the leader of my small group. Instead, he addressed himself to Perceval, as the eldest of our group, at all times, thereby steadfastly refusing me the legitimacy of place that would have been accorded by his addressing me in person. Tristan in particular was highly offended by Symmachus's attitude towards me, but I went out of my way to make light of the situation because I knew what it was about me that the king resented most of all.
Symmachus was accompanied by his wife and two daughters. The wife, a lady called Demea, was still young and exceptionally beautiful, a radiant, laughing creature with bright yellow hair and wondrous green eyes. All the men in the town were at least half in love with her, and the recognition of that truth afforded the king much amusement and enjoyment. After all, he was a strong and well set up man in the prime of life, and his young wife was most obviously besotted with him. And indeed, as we had quickly discovered, his wife's love for Symmachus was the reason he was here in Verulamium, so many miles from home. They had been married now for eight years and were without children of their own, the two daughters being the progeny of Symmachus's first marriage.
The Lady Demea, a devout Christian, had heard about the miracles attributed to Saint Alban, all of them centered around his shrine in Verulamium, and had prevailed upon her doting husband to bring her here, where she could beg the saint in person to intercede for her in Heaven and bless her with a pregnancy. That Demea was fully confident her prayers would be answered was evident to anyone with eyes to see, and the manner in which she and her husband conducted themselves made it plain that they were giving Heaven every opportunity to bless their endeavors. Thus, it was evidently not his beautiful young wife who was the cause of Symmachus's distemper.
It was his daughters, I believed—or one of them, the elder of the two—who cost him sleepless nights and justified, in his mind at least, his continuing disapproval of me. The daughter's name was Cynthia—again a Roman name, or perhaps even Hellenic—but she was obviously not, by her very coloring, the daughter of Demea. Cynthia's real mother, a black-haired, blue-eyed woman from the far northern lands beyond Hadrian's great wall, had died years earlier, giving birth to her second daughter when Cynthia was only four years old. Cynthia was now almost sixteen, breathtakingly lovely and desirable and making no slightest attempt to conceal her attraction to me.
It made no difference to Symmachus that I went to great pains to distance myself from his daughter and avoid her company. He saw nothing of that. In truth, while I acknowledged Cynthia's great physical and facial beauty, I experienced no attraction to her beyond the first few days of knowing her, and she herself had given me the reason to feel the way I did.
Young Bors had fallen in love with her from the moment he set eyes on her, and he was utterly incapable of hiding his infatuation. I know how true that is because I was there when he saw her for the first time and I almost laughed aloud at the spectacular transformation that came over him: his eyes went wide and then almost glazed over and his mouth fell agape and it seemed to me that he forgot how to move. He simply stood there, gazing at her slack jawed and open mouthed, incapable of speech or movement.
Of course, Cynthia saw it immediately. Unfortunately, however, her recognition of his stunned submission to her beauty brought out her worst attributes. Where I took pains immediately to dissemble and conceal my delight in my young servant's reaction to her beauty, Cynthia proceeded from the first to exploit it ruthlessly, treating Bors shamefully and using him imperiously and cruelly, keeping him dancing attendance on her and accepting his every adoring look as no more than her due while she deliberately spurned him, belittling him and insulting him.
Her behaviour, uncalled for and excessive as it was, upset me deeply because it impressed me as being quite natural and unfeigned. I found it repellent that she should be so quick to cause my young associate pain, for no reason other than his natural attraction to her beauty. Bors was my servant, and although I strove to keep our relationship as one of master to apprentice, I had found him to be a willing worker and a conscientious student, as well as a naturally friendly and enthusiastic soul—his truculence and sullen behaviour had vanished within hours of our setting foot upon the road to Britain. He had done absolutely nothing to earn Cynthia's displeasure, but she poured wrath and disdain about his head in equal and unstinting measure, treating him far less kindly than most people treat animals, and I soon found myself harboring a deep feeling of dislike for her that I was never able to disguise completely.
Cynthia, of course, believing entirely in her own allure and fascination, was never able to bring herself to believe that I could be genuinely immune to her attractions, so that the more I attempted to avoid her and discourage her, the more determined she became to enslave me with her charms and to bend me to her will. Unfortunately, thanks to my education and my many talks with Bishop Germanus concerning women and the rules governing a decent man's behaviour towards them, I was never quite able to bring myself to tell her how deeply she had taught me to dislike her, or how her treatment of Bors repulsed me. That would have been too cruel, by my own assessment at that time, although it occurred to me not long afterwards that had she been male and my own age I would have thrashed her soundly for her hectoring cruelty and ordered her to stay well clear of me until she had learned how to control the baseness of her nature.
This, then, was the reason for the tension between the two of us all the time, and that was what her father reacted to with such hostility. His reading of the situation was wrong, of course, but I could hardly come right out and add insult to his imagined injuries by telling him that I found his firstborn daughter ill natured, morally unattractive and generally unpleasant and that I would far rather spend time with her quieter, far less aggressive and offensive twelve-year-old sister, whom she called the Brat.
And so Symmachus distrusted me because he felt I lusted for his daughter, and I resigned myself to being spoken to through Perceval at every turn.
Symmachus was a warrior, however, and he had heard tales of Camulod, and he wanted to know if it was feasible that Merlyn Britannicus and Camulod might consider an alliance with himself and his people in Deva. His question caused a long, uncomfortable silence because none of us was qualified to answer it with anything resembling authority, although I felt that the distance between the two locations alone—almost two hundred miles—would render impossible the kind of arrangement that the king was thinking of. I said as much, and although he seemed to accept the logic of my explanation after examining it for a short time, I could tell that Symmachus was not too happy with me for having stated the obvious and created difficulties for whatever it was he had been considering. Once again, however, I kept silent, venturing no more opinions and showing no more signs of curiosity.
Symmachus and his party had been on the point of leaving for home when the weather broke in mid-December, effectively stranding them in Verulamium for several more months, and so it was that we came to know him to the extent that we did. Although I found him less than comfortable to be around, I had no such difficulties with his companions, who were in fact his family's bodyguard. I came to know several of them very well, and my friends and I spent many pleasant hours with them among the woods, learning to hunt as they did in deep snow. They, in their turn, were fascinated with the spears given to me by Tiberias Cato. The Cambrians had never seen their like, but were unimpressed by the information that no one else had, either. They were quite convinced that somewhere along the edges of one of their northern mountain lakes they would soon find reeds long enough and strong enough to dry and shape into light, strong, durable spear shafts like mine. I made no effort to convince them otherwise, for they simply would not have believed that people had already scoured the reaches of the Empire looking for such things.
They were particularly fascinated by the technique I used to throw the weapons, and by the accuracy I managed to achieve
, although they pretended to be overly concerned about the amount of time I spent practicing. They were correct in that. I did spend inordinately large amounts of time practicing that winter, but there was little else to do most of the time. When the weather was too cold and the snow too deep to do much outside, I converted the largest hall in the basilica into a practice arena, piling all the cots and tables and benches up against one long wall and throwing my spears from one end of the vast hall to the other. The distance was slightly less than forty paces, which was ample room for practicing throwing with accuracy, and I had ranged a series of tables and benches of differing heights across one end of the room so that I could make my way from one side to the other, jumping or stepping from one level to another and throwing from any of them as I went. At the far end, I had mounted a series of five boards to serve as targets, each of them painted with pitch in approximately the size and shape of a man. My watchers were amazed that I could announce my targets from any throwing height, specifying the area I would hit—head, chest, thigh and the like—and then hit accurately from thirty to forty paces distant eight times out of any ten. That, to them, was magical. To me, it was the result of incessant hours of brutal, unrelenting work.
As time passed the weather eventually grew more pleasant, and as the worst of the snow began to melt and disappear, I was able to move outside to practice on horseback. Everyone else did the same, of course, happy to be able to ride out again after having spent such a long time immured by the heavy snow. The others rode abroad, however. I was more than content to ride by myself most of the time, exercising constantly in the courtyard that Enos had originally allocated to the cavalry mounts from Camulod. It was not a large space, but it was suitable for my needs, offering me sufficient room to wheel and weave and to accustom myself again to the rhythm and disciplines of casting a spear with accuracy from the back of a moving horse. Again, watching me at work, my new companions from Cambria, who rode small, sturdy mountain ponies and were not at all familiar with large horses, merely shook their heads and looked at each other in rueful recognition of my interminable folly. All of them, at some time over the winter, had taken their turn at trying to throw my spears, and some had tried much harder than others. None of them, however, had had the slightest success in mastering even the basic elements of the throw.
The only person I ever knew who showed a natural skill with my throwing spears from the very outset was, astonishingly, Cynthia's younger sister. The child would often come to watch me as I practiced, and so unobtrusive was she that I quickly grew accustomed to her presence and eventually lost all awareness of it. She never spoke to me and never interrupted me in any way, but simply sat watching me out of wide, bright blue eyes beneath the thick, black fringe of hair that framed her forehead. Her cheekbones were magnificent, high and slanted, and combined with her long, slender neck they gave her a swan-like, regal look. I had only ever seen her smile on two occasions, neither of them inspired by me, and in consequence I always thought of her as a solemn, humorless child who took little pleasure in anything, although I was quite aware that there was precious little in her twelve-year-old life to give her pleasure. There were few children of her own age in Verulamium but even so she was forbidden to mingle with them. She spent her entire life surrounded by her elders, and her sole sources of enjoyment were the things they deemed enjoyable.
One morning towards the end of that long winter, when I had chosen to work indoors, Bishop Enos summoned me while I was in the middle of my practicing, and when I returned from speaking to him I found the tall, almost painfully thin child standing alone in the hall, hefting one of my spears speculatively in her right hand and eyeing the target closest to her, which I estimated at a glance to be somewhere in the region of twenty paces from where she stood. I had stopped short in the doorway and she was unaware of my presence, and I remained silent, waiting to see what she would do next.
Then I realized she already held the weapon in the throwing grip, the thong wrapped around her fist. She whipped up her arm, glided forward effortlessly and fluidly onto the ball of her left foot and executed what appeared to me to be a perfect cast. The weapon hurtled out of her grasp, the tip of its tail spinning only slightly out of true, and shot towards the target, where it passed so close to the edge of the board that its whirling tail clipped the wood. Knocked off its true flight then, the spear clattered to the ground and slid across the floor to come to rest against the great fireplace. I muttered an involuntary exclamation of amazement.
At the sound, the girl spun to face me, her hands flying up to her mouth and her eyes flaring wide in panic. And then, before I could do anything to stop her or reassure her, she fled, throwing the great doors open and dashing out into the courtyard. I ran after her, calling to her to wait, but she paid me no attention and only ran the harder until she vanished from view around the corner of one of the outer buildings.
Annoyed and more than slightly exasperated, I returned to the long hall and picked up the spear. I was interested in my memory of how the child had thrown the thing. Admittedly the weapon was extremely light, and the probability was high that only by a fluke had she managed to combine the angle of her throw with the speed and pressure necessary to whip the spear forward with anything resembling accuracy, but nonetheless it had been an astonishing performance. None of the grown men who had attempted to throw these weapons over the previous months had even come close to doing what the Brat had done at first attempt.
In the ten days that followed I never once set eyes on her again. No doubt afraid that I must be enraged at her, she took the greatest of pains to stay well beyond the reach of my displeasure. Early in that period, I had thought of asking her father where I might find her, but, remembering that Symmachus had shown almost as much apparently ingrained disapproval of the child as he had of me, I thought better of it and sought out his wife, Demea, instead.
Demea greeted me courteously when I approached her that evening before dinner, making my way through the throng of her admirers and waiting patiently until she found the time to turn to me. The child, being a child, was not among the diners. She ate all her meals in the kitchens with the junior servants and the children of the serving staff, which was the custom. Children seldom ate with the adults at the main meal of the day, and most particularly so when the evening gathering was large and could become unruly and boisterous. Gaining a seat at the household table was one of the distinguishing rites of passage from childhood to adult status for people of both sexes.
Demea turned to me eventually with a gracious smile and asked after my health, plainly wondering what could have brought me to seek her out on this occasion, since in the normal way of things I would have contented myself to acknowledge her from a distance with a courteous nod of greeting and a pleasant smile. I cleared my throat uncertainly, suddenly uncomfortable and almost embarrassed by the remembrance of what this woman's husband believed to be my motivation concerning his elder daughter. Demea cocked her head slightly, waiting for me to speak, a vaguely uncertain smile hovering about her lips. I cleared my throat again, then begged her pardon for imposing upon her in this way and asked her what her younger daughter's name was.
The lady's face almost froze in puzzlement, mixed with the slightest hint of consternation, and it was plain to see that she had expected me to say something about her other daughter, Cynthia. Fortunately, that realization alone permitted me to overcome my own uncertainty and speak more easily. Managing to smile without a hint of strain, I told her that I had encountered the child a few days earlier and had realized only after she left to go on her way that I had forgotten her name, if I had ever known it at all.
Her eyes were wide and troubled. "Is it important that you should remember the name of a child so young, Master Clothar?"
I grinned at her then, suddenly enjoying this situation. "No, Lady Demea, I doubt that anyone could think such a thing important. I merely found it unfortunate because, after I had seen the child and passed her by, I sud
denly remembered being ten years old myself, and I recalled clearly how convinced I had been of my own importance in this world. It was a short-lived feeling, because almost as soon as it had occurred to me, I was crushed to discover that a close friend of my father's, whom I had known most of my life, had absolutely no idea of who I was or what my name was."
Demea sat blinking at me, a tiny, vertical frown between her brows, and I found myself growing aware that, beautiful as she might be, Symmachus's young wife was not a creature of great intellect.
"I was greatly hurt by that," I told her, saving her the pain of wondering what I had meant. "So hurt, in fact, that I promised myself I would never hurt any child that cruelly when I became a man. And until now, I never have . . . although I fear I may have caused your daughter to suffer exactly as I did myself, and that has made me bold enough to come and ask for your assistance."
The lady's face blossomed suddenly into a wide smile as understanding dawned upon her.
"Her name is Maia. She was born in the month of May, and although she is not my own daughter, her father and I first met in the month of May."
I bowed deeply, thanking the lady for the information, then excused myself and made my way to my own table, planning how I would seek out young Maia the following day and settle our imagined differences. I wanted to see how she would handle a spear on a second attempt.
8
The next day, the weather changed again for the better, and I decided to ride out hunting with Perceval and Tristan. Young Bors would carry our tents and hunting paraphernalia in the body of a light high-wheeled, single-axle cart drawn by two horses. There was still a deal of snow on the ground in many places, and the combined strength of the animals together with the high, narrow wheels of the cart would allow us to take the vehicle almost anywhere we wished to go.
