That night after the conference about Connlyn marked my first return to regular duties after my homecoming, and it remains in my memory after all these years because it was the night my second-best cuirass disintegrated while I was putting it on.
Armor wears out. It is not a thing that people who never wear it think about, but it happens, and it happens quite frequently. Faced with such a statement, those same people who never wear armor might think that the reason for the failure is the abuse the equipment undergoes in battle, but that is not true. Armor is worn constantly, but it is seldom subjected to battle conditions. Three fights, three fully armored, hand-to-hand encounters with a hostile enemy in the course of a single year, would be unusual enough to be greatly remarkable, but even then the damaging results of blows from weaponry would be minimal, since the material, when all is said and done, is armor, expressly designed to absorb and deflect blows.
The truth is that most of the deterioration that affects it and every other part of a soldier’s equipment, be he foot soldier or cavalry trooper, is caused by weather. Rain, snow, frost, humid air and mildew are all notoriously destructive of iron and leather.
I had just delivered a suit of mail the previous day to the smiths, to be melted down because its very fabric was choked with so much rust that, despite all young Bors’s efforts to keep it clean, it had simply become unwearable. I could not blame Bors, for it was not his fault. He could burnish the exterior of the links for hours a day, but the damage was all done by the accumulation of rust between the tiny individual pieces, where no cleaning tool could penetrate. A new suit of mail would be ready for me the following day, after being adjusted to fit me as closely as was possible, and in the meantime I felt safe enough. There was no need for a mail coat on garrison duty in Camulod itself.
Now, a mere twenty-four hours after surrendering my rusted mail to the smiths, I lost my leather cuirass, too, at least until it could be mended. One of the straps at my waist broke just as I pulled it to its tightest point to insert the tang of the buckle, and the piece tore off right at the edge of the breastplate, leaving a too-short stub I could do nothing with and a yawning, unsightly gap at my side that I could not disguise, no matter how I tried to cinch my belt about my waist.
Cursing, and rebuffing Bors’s wordless offer of assistance, I tugged at the buckled straps and finally threw the whole cuirass down to clatter on the floor at his feet. He stood watching me, his expression noncommittal, and it crossed my mind that he was growing more clever every day, because there had been a time, not too long before, when he would have tried to assume the blame for the failure, which would have earned him the rough edge of my tongue for his folly. Tonight he simply stood and waited for me to make a decision. He knew the importance of what had happened. I had another cuirass, but it was old and battered, its leather torso scarred and scratched beneath its lustrous polish by too many years of hard, everyday use. Normally I would have asked for it immediately, but tonight was different.
My men had been at liberty for the past four days. At sunrise, they would muster again for duty for the first time since coming home. There would be sore heads and queasy stomachs among them after the previous night’s carousal, the last of their liberty, but they would be on full parade, drawn up for my inspection on the first morning of their new tour of duty. They did not yet know where they would spend the winter, although they knew it would be close to home, possibly in Camulod itself but more likely in one of the outlying garrison towns. They were well aware, too, that their duties over the next few months would be easy compared to the unrelenting tension of being constantly moving on campaign, far from home and assistance should such a need arise. They would learn their fate at dawn, after I had completed my formal legate’s inspection, and they would be uncomfortably aware, from past experience, that the examination they were facing would be meticulous and merciless.
That dawn inspection was the reason for my reluctance to wear my old, battered campaign armor. Each and every member of my army group would be sparkling with glinting metal and polished leather in the dawn light, having spent hours throughout the previous four days in preparing their gear and equipment for the scrutiny I would subject them to in that parade, for they knew that woe lay in wait for any man found guilty of the tiniest omission or neglect in his preparations for legate’s inspection. The slightest speck of rust or mildew found anywhere on a soldier’s gear or on a trooper’s saddlery would condemn the miscreant to a week in the cells, and hard labor on the ever-growing curtain walls would be the lot of anyone found guilty of more serious transgressions. Knowing that, and visualizing the efforts they had made, I could not bring myself to inspect them wearing my own old campaign armor. They might think nothing of that, too afraid of my disapproval to take note of what I myself was wearing, but I felt I could not betray my own standards.
The solution, of course, reposed behind me, still enclosed in its portable traveling case: the magnificent suit of imperial ceremonial armor that Germanus had passed on to me, which he had worn as commander-in-chief in Gaul, during his ten-year campaign against the rebel Burgundians. With its burnished leather cuirass and kirtle of armored straps, all intricately sculpted and embossed, and sumptuous with studs and bosses of pure gold, and its great, high crested helmet and matching armlets and greaves of polished bronze inlaid with gold, the costume was magnificent, but I only ever wore it when I was abroad, representing Arthur and the dignitas of Camulod to kings and other men of power in Britain. I was enormously reluctant to wear it in Camulod, for even the King had nothing that remotely compared to it in splendor. Arthur himself found that amusing, I knew, for he cared nothing about such things, but that knowledge did nothing to decrease my reluctance to flaunt my outrageously ornate finery among my own.
On this occasion, however, I knew I had no choice, and mere moments later I was standing motionless, my arms outstretched at my side as Bors cinched the underarm buckles tight and then tugged at my tunic until he was satisfied that the garment was evenly kilted above my knees. As he knelt to place and fasten the heavy greaves over my sandaled, knee-high boots, I stifled a surge of impatience. I knew that he could adjust the bronze leg shields more easily and comfortably than I could now, simply because I was already wearing my cuirass and could not have bent from the waist to fasten the ankle straps without great difficulty. He finished quickly and unfolded the thick, richly embroidered cloak that went with the uniform, then fastened it about my shoulders. He stepped back and surveyed me from top to bottom before nodding in approval.
“You’re ready,” he said.
I had only ever seen myself once dressed in this suit, and at the time I had been too small to wear it properly, still several years away from developing the frame that supported it today. Even so, its opulence had taken my breath away. It fitted me to perfection today, but there was no mirror of polished silver in Camulod large enough to show me my reflection the way the massive, flawless surface of the man-high mirror on the wall in Germanus’s home had shown it to me. It occurred to me, as I remembered that mirror, that it was the single most impressive artifact I had ever seen, even more magnificent in its splendid purity than the armor it had reflected that night. Some ancient silversmith must have worked for many months, if not years, to attain that impeccable surface of polished metal, for it was as flawless in its perfection as the motionless surface of a woodland pool on a calm evening.
I grunted, realizing I was woolgathering, and saw Bors looking at me. “You’d better go and get yourself armed now, too. I’ll be here when you are ready.” He nodded and left the room, and I walked to the small window and peered out into the predawn sky as I focused myself upon what I had to do. My horse would be ready for me when I went out, but other than using it to ride down the winding road to the parade ground at the bottom of the hill, I would have no need for it in the course of my inspection. The infantry detachment and the Pendragon bowmen would all be afoot, and the cavalry troopers would, too, on this occasion, standing by their mounts to allow me to examine them as thoroughly as I might wish.
The Pendragon bowmen were scouts, rather than regular soldiers, and they were Cambrians, not Camulodians, so they were not subjected to the same degree of scrutiny as the regular troops, but they were none the less my responsibility and in my charge, and so I exerted a certain discipline over them, to which they responded without demur. Soldiers or not, their weapons depended upon the care lavished upon them, and as a bowman myself—although my Gallic bow was a far cry from being as powerful as their Pendragon longbows—I knew what to look for in inspecting them. I would not merely examine their bow staves; I would examine arrows picked at random from their quivers, testing them for straightness and smooth fletching, and I would test the condition not only of their strung bows but of the extra bow strings they carried in their scrips, unfolding some at random and running my thumbnail along their length to test for fraying and for too much dryness.
I bent forward into the window opening, listening intently, and could hear the sounds of my troopers passing by my quarters on their way to the parade ground. They were on the opposite side of the building, so I could hear no voices and there were no sounds of shuffling infantry feet, but the clinking of hundreds of ironshod hooves on stone was unmistakable and carried clearly on the still, predawn air. Too soon, then, I thought, for me to be outside. My presence among them before they had time to make their way down and assemble in their formations would unsettle them.
Resigning myself to waiting until Bors came to fetch me, I took off my cloak and made myself comfortable, leaning against the sill of the window and watching the slowly paling eastern sky as I allowed my thoughts to drift back to the strange conversation I had had with Arthur two days earlier about love and the responsibilities it engendered and entailed. It was something I had never thought about until I heard him put it into words, but listening to him speak, I had realized that he was absolutely correct and had captured my complete agreement—in everything, that is, except the matter of love between men and women. That was terra incognita to me.
Thinking back on what he had said about how God had created one woman, one true mate for every man, and how having found and lost his, he had no further interest in meeting another, I shook my head in troubled disbelief. How could he be so sure that the girl Morag, whom he had known for less than a month, when he himself was but a boy, had been the one God had intended for him? And then I had the truly disturbing thought that he might have been mistaken, might have misinterpreted his great loss and his solitary grief over the tragic death of the young woman. He had lain with her, he said, and she had been his first and only love.
I had no doubt of his sincerity in what he said, but there was doubt within me now, none the less, and it was the first doubt I had ever felt about my King. That perturbed me deeply, for until that moment my faith in Arthur, in his leadership, his abilities, his vision and his wisdom had been absolute. I had never known him to be wrong in anything. The King was far from being an ordinary man, in any sense, but he was less than himself in this, it seemed to me now, since even I, virgin that I was, had heard it said time and again by men whom I respected and admired that there is first love, which a man never forgets, and then there is true adult love, a different creature altogether.
At that point, standing there by my window, I knew that Arthur must be wrong, that he would love again. As Riothamus, High King of All Britain, he would be forced to wed someone, someday. He had admitted as much to me, confessing that he would have to yield to the wishes of others at one stage or another. But that admission had troubled me when I heard it, for it seemed to fly in the face of everything else he had said. How could he marry in conscience, I had wanted to ask him, without accepting full responsibility for the woman he would wed? For surely it seemed to me that any woman marrying a king—and especially such a king as Arthur—would want children of the union. How, then, I had asked, could Arthur deny her that, withholding the love to which she was entitled as his wife and queen?
And of course the answer came to me now, armed as I was with my new and blinding insight. He would live up to his responsibilities and he would not deny his wife a family, for although one of the main reasons for such a marriage might be purely the political union of his new wife’s part of the country with Camulod when it was important enough and all other measures had failed, the primary and paramount reason for such a union must be the breeding of progeny—an heir to the kingdom. It would be an absolute duty that he owed to the people, assuring them of continuity in what he had achieved for them—an end to the anarchy that had prevailed in Britain since the Romans left. And Arthur Pendragon would always place his duty above all else, including his personal preference. That sudden conviction reinforced my certainty that, no matter what the King believed at present, he would someday come to love another woman.
I was beginning to feel extremely foolish, standing there by the window in my military finery, prepared to inspect an entire army group of two thousand men, yet reduced to grappling with the mysteries of love and procreation like a boy not yet old enough to achieve erection. I was acutely aware, more so than I had ever been, that I had never experienced any kind of deep feelings for a woman, with the sole exception of my mother’s sister, my aunt Vivienne, whom I had revered as my mother. Yet such feelings hardly qualified as the kind of love Arthur had been speaking of.
Why then, I asked myself now, need I fret over what Arthur had told me? Arthur appeared to have everything worked out in his mind, and he would not allow himself to be rushed in whatever he decided to do. I steadfastly refused to allow myself to reflect on what he had also worked out wrongly in his mind concerning the girl Morag, concentrating instead on what he had done right. He had avoided giving offense to any of the six kings who had come offering him their daughters, handling the difficult task of refusing all of them with great skill, and word of that refusal, and the stated reasons underlying it, would spread out and give him some time in which to breathe—and plan—before the next such circumstance arose. And it would also give him time, I thought smugly, to meet his destined mate and find love again.
A discreet cough behind me broke my train of thought. Bors was back.
“The men are assembled, Seur Clothar.”
I was astonished now at the silence outside, for I had not noticed the sounds of my troopers’ passage dwindle away and I had no notion of how long I had been standing there. I swung about quickly and snatched up my cloak and helmet from where I had laid them, throwing the heavy, folded garment over my arm and cradling the helmet against my cuirass before following Bors wordlessly out into the courtyard, where I found Tristan already mounted and waiting for me, accompanied by Ghilly and Bedwyr in full armor.
“I’m surprised to see you two here,” I said to the latter pair. “Have you nothing better to do?”
“Better than watching a gilded Gaul inspect an army of Britons? What would that be?” Bedwyr sat grinning down at me, mightily pleased with his own wit.
I handed my helmet to Bors, swung my cloak over my shoulders, then took the helmet back and settled it onto my head while Bors saw to the cloak’s fastenings. When he stepped back, I looked back to the others. “Very well, my friends, if you care to waste your morning on such doings, I’ll be glad to instruct you both on the niceties of command inspections.” I pulled myself up into the saddle and took a moment to settle myself comfortably, spreading my cloak to best effect and adjusting my long sword so that it hung easily, slanted between my shoulder blades so that its tip lay against my mount’s right hip and the long, two-handed hilt projected above my left shoulder for an easy draw. When I was satisfied that all was as it should be, I closed the flaps of my helmet and put spurs to my mount, and the others fell in behind me. It was first light, and the eastern sky was brightening rapidly with the promise of a fine early-winter day.
I always loved the hollow sound of hooves in the early morning on the cobblestones between the gateway towers, and this morning was no exception. I was at peace with the world, happy over my newfound insight into Arthur’s future prospects and more than content to have my closest friends flanking me as we rode out through the gates to inspect my men, drawn up in flawless formation far below. I was aware that above our heads, on the tops of the guard towers, the lookouts were gazing down at us and in all probability taking careful note of my finery.
My enjoyment, however, barely survived our egress from the gates, because as soon as we were out in the open, Ghilly stood up in his stirrups and pointed away to our left.
“What in the name of God is that?”
As I turned to look I heard Tristan answer, “Fire!”
Flames were leaping in the dawn shadows, and I knew at once it might well be the Villa Britannicus, the family home of Caius Britannicus, the founder of Camulod. Shouts were coming from all directions now, and from the parapets above came the clamoring of a general alarum as a guard beat an iron bar against the sides of a hanging iron triangle. I swung immediately to Tristan.
“It may not be the villa but it’s close to it, and whatever it is, we need to put it out. Quickly, Tristan, get down as fast as you can to the bottom and bring the entire group at the double. They can’t see anything yet from where they are. Keep them in formation, but waste no time … this could be anything. It might be an attack, it might not. But take no chances. Go! We’ll meet you at the villa.”
As Tristan galloped off down the steep road, I turned to the others. “We’ll be quicker if we cut down the hillside, straight to the villa, but it might be a rougher ride than we bargain for, in this light. Are you with me?”
All three of them, Ghilleadh, Bedwyr and Bors, had set spurs to their mounts before the words were out of my mouth.
It was a dangerous ride, as I had predicted, but the light was increasing steadily by then, making it progressively easier to pick our route as we descended, and the leaping flames in the distance grew brighter and higher every time I dared to raise my eyes from the ground ahead to look at them. By the time we reached level ground, about halfway to where we were going, there was no doubt in any of our minds that it was the Villa Britannicus that was burning. It could not be anything else, for there were no other buildings out there. I was praying as I rode that the fire might be confined to one or other of the outbuildings and that the villa itself might be safe, and I knew my companions were hoping the same, for the four of us were riding knee to knee, standing in our stirrups and leaning forward over our horses’ ears to coax the maximum speed out of them.
We met the first fugitives when we were less than a quarter of a mile from the main gates of the farm, a scattered trio of servants, running madly in the direction of the fort to raise the alarum, and even as I saw the blood that covered the face of the leading runner I heard his voice raised, shouting the one word I would have least expected to hear: Saxons!
Saxons in Camulod? The question had barely formed in my mind before I heard Ghilly’s bellowing response.
“How many?”
He had already aimed his horse directly at the running man and had shouted the question at the top of his voice, to make himself heard over the thunder of our hooves, and I swung my own horse in that direction, straining to hear the man’s response. But instead of answering, the fellow threw up his arms protectively and sank down in terror, dropping to his knees at the sight of two armed horsemen bearing down upon him and surely believing he was about to die. We both reined in our mounts at the same time and came to a trampling halt, one on either side of him, and Ghilleadh leaned down from the saddle, grasped him by the shoulder and pulled the unfortunate wretch to his feet, not ungently, where he stood blinking up at us through the smears of blood that covered his face, his eyes flicking from one of us to the other and his elbows still held defensively in the air. He was very young and very afraid. I spoke to him before Ghilly could.
“Put your arms down, lad, we’re not going to hurt you, but we need you to tell us how many men are in there. How many Saxons?”
His mouth moved, but nothing came out at first, and then he found his voice. “I don’t know, my lord, but there’s a lot of them. They’re everywhere, but mostly inside the house by now. They killed all the guards when they first attacked.”
“How long ago was that?” Ghilly’s voice was harsh; the guards had been his men.
The fellow blinked again. “Not long ago, my lord. Just before first light. They came out of the dark, with arrows first, I think. All the dead guards had arrows in them.”
Bedwyr and Bors had joined us now, and the other two running men had stopped to listen, breathless and panting heavily.
Bedwyr spoke up. “How did you escape?”
“I just ran, my lord. Didn’t stop to think about it. I was in the kitchens when I heard the shouting and the noise of fighting at the front, and then I smelt smoke and I jumped out the window and ran out the back gates. And then I thought I’d better run to Camulod and raise the alarum.”
“How were you wounded?”
He blinked up at me in confusion. “Wounded? I’m not wounded.”
“There’s blood all over your face.”
He wiped his palm across his brow, then stared in awe at his reddened hand. “I don’t know. I fell, I remember. Against a wall, by the gates.”
The four of us exchanged glances. There was clearly nothing more to be learned from this one, but I tried once again, looking at the other two men and including all of them in my next question.
“We still don’t know what we are facing here, so think hard, all of you. How many Saxons did you see? Have you any clear idea?”
“Aye, lord,” said one of the others. “I know my numbers, some of them, anyway. I counted four score of them before I left my hiding place and ran. But I could have been wrong. There might have been more, might not. They were running about all over the place, so it were hard to count. But there’s too many of them there for just the four of you.”
I nodded. “There’s help on the way. Now get you to Camulod, and when you meet my troopers, tell them we are under attack and need them here. Go now.”
They ran off, together now, and I turned to Ghilleadh. “Four score of them?”
He shrugged. “Could be more,” he said, aping the speech of the other man, “might be less. But they won’t be expecting horsemen. Let’s make a start. We’re fully armored.”
I swung my horse around and looked back the way we had come, but there were only the three running men in sight. It was almost full daylight now. I unhooked my cavalry spatha from its place by my saddle horn and tossed it to Bors, who had no blade, and then I drew my long sword.
“There’s only room for two abreast through the gates. You and me in front, Ghilly. Bedwyr and Bors behind. Form up on me as soon as we’re inside, and come where I lead, four abreast and knee to knee. Ghilly on my right, then Bors, then you, Bedwyr. And be prepared for anything. We won’t have time to debate our course once we’re inside, so I’ll pick the biggest target I see as soon as we’re through and we’ll hit them hard. Let’s go.”
We were inside the gates within moments, riding at full gallop, and I remember being aware that my three companions were in their assigned places. Then I saw a press of alien bodies surrounding a two-wheeled farm cart, throwing booty from the villa into its high box, and I wheeled directly towards them, standing upright in my stirrups and wishing I had a shield as I aimed my sword blade like a spear at the nearest man.
They did not see us coming until we were right on top of them, and by then it was too late for any of them to react. Our charging horses scattered them like chaff as we thundered along the side of the cart from rear to front, and I caught one fellow, who had been standing gaping at us from the top of the piled booty, with a full swing, feeling my blade bite deep as I swept by him. By that time, however, our line of four had been split by the press of bodies, and I was alone. I saw an entire line of men, most of them carrying plunder, stretching from the cart all the way back into the main house, and I turned my horse towards them, mounting the rise of seven steps that led from ground level to the garden level above. Even as I turned, however, I was aware of burdens being cast aside and weapons being drawn, and the long line coalesced into knots of determined men brandishing weapons and crouching in preparation to meet me and whoever else came with me.
After that there was chaos. I have no memory of dismounting, although it was futile to remain horsed in such a fight, when the horse could not help its rider in any way, hemmed in and trapped in a narrow space. I remember being back to back and shoulder to shoulder with Ghilleadh, swinging my sword with savage enjoyment of the knowledge that my back was protected and no one could come near me from the front because my blade was longer and sharper than any of theirs. And then Ghilly was suddenly gone, the pressure of his back no longer there against my own, and I heard the ringing clatter of his blade as it fell on the stone slabs of the pathway.
I swung around immediately and there he was, on all fours, fighting to stand up, but blood was dripping viscously to the ground from somewhere beneath his helmet. I jumped to him and straddled his back with my legs, sweeping one bending fool away with my blade and then chopping backhanded to sever the arm of another. I could still hear swords ringing, so I knew at least one of my companions was still alive and fighting, but I dared not take the time to look about and locate the sounds. Something hit me hard across the back and I stumbled clear of Ghilly as I swung around and killed the upstart who had tried to take me from behind. And then Ghilly was on his feet again, his own sword in his hand, and for a moment there was no one facing us.
“Over there,” he cried. “Bedwyr.”
I looked where he was pointing and saw Bedwyr and Bors hard set in the far corner of the atrium, surrounded by a large number of men who were hampering themselves by being too many and too close to one another. Ghilly and I hit them from behind and carved our way through the mass, climbing over corpses until we were side by side with our friends, facing a much reduced number of enemies, few of whom seemed eager to come against the four of us combined.
Our relief was short lived, however, for our attack from the rear had merely weeded out the press, leaving those who remained with more room in which to fight. The first to move against us was the biggest man there, a wild-eyed giant with a gigantic broad-headed axe. He swung the thing aloft with a roar and leapt towards us, aiming, I believe, at Bedwyr, but before he could come close enough to chop at anyone, young Bors flew at him and drove his long spatha into the fellow’s exposed armpit, then fell away to his right, twisting and pulling two-handed at his blade like a lever so that the giant screamed in agony and fell forward at my feet, gurgling and spitting blood. I finished him off with a hard chop to the exposed back of his neck just as the entire crew of them surged forward again. I took one blow to the head that came close to knocking me senseless, and I reeled uselessly for what felt like a long time, but suddenly there was a broad back in front of me as Ghilleadh returned the service I had extended to him a short while earlier.
And then our friends arrived, Arthur himself bounding through the main gates at their head, mounted on the enormous chestnut horse he called Colossus, and in what seemed like the blink of an eye the entire courtyard was jammed with mounted men and the Saxons were in full flight, most of them running back into the main house in the hope of escaping from the rear. I was still reeling, leaning on my sword as I regained my breath, and I saw Arthur dismounted and dashing in pursuit of them, wearing only the lightest of leather cuirasses and brandishing Excalibur. But he was alone, with no one behind him in support. I shouted a warning to Ghilly and began to run after Arthur, only to find him crouching a few paces inside the entrance of the atrium, his back to the decorative fountain in the center as he waved Excalibur’s long, shimmering blade in front of him, daring the three men who faced him to come against him.
My arrival startled the three and they began to run, but Arthur leapt towards the one nearest him and cut him down, turning his back in the process towards the second man, who changed direction in mid-step and swung a heavy hand axe at Arthur’s back. I was not quite fast enough in my scramble to intercept him and did not have time or room to swing or stab, so all I could do was throw myself forward, hitting him with my shoulder as he swung and knocking him off balance, deflecting his blow so that only the flat of his blade hit the King’s shoulder and glanced off. I spun quickly, regaining my balance before the axe man did, and dispatched him with a single overhand blow that almost clove him in two. Arthur, however, had been struck down by the force of the axe blow and was kneeling slumped, his head hanging, clutching his right shoulder with his left hand as he groped clumsily with the nerveless fingers of his right in search of the hilt of Excalibur, which was lying on the ground in front of him.
I heard a scuffling behind me and spun again to see a bowman no more than six paces from me, taking aim at the King’s undefended back. Too far away to reach him in time to save Arthur, I leapt backwards, frantically trying to find and shield the King behind me, and as I did so I saw the raider loose his arrow. I remember nothing else.
The next time I set eyes upon the splendid cuirass that saved my life that day, I experienced mixed reactions. I gave thanks, first of all for the random chance of the broken strap that had led to my donning it in the first place, for had I not been wearing it I would most certainly have died. No other armor could have withstood the full force of a war arrow loosed from so close a range. I owed my life, I knew, to the plaited, resilient weave of thin blued-metal straps layered beneath that burnished, ornately molded leather exterior.
I gave thanks, too, for the skill and pride and excellence of the unknown master craftsman who had fashioned the thing, long decades earlier in some unknown corner of the Roman world, for the arrow had struck cleanly in the center of the chest and rebounded, its viciously barbed head destroyed by the force of the impact.
Ghilleadh and Bedwyr and Tristan brought the missile to the sick bay to show me, as soon as the medics pronounced me well enough to receive visitors, because they were amazed by the damage the war head had sustained—it was smashed and twisted beyond recognition—but they were even more astonished that my magnificent cuirass appeared to be undamaged.
My entire body was a mass of pain, my ribs so sore and bruised that I could breathe deeply only if I gritted my teeth, but I sent Bors to bring the cuirass for me to examine, and I was as surprised as my friends were when I saw that what they had said was true, for I had been sure that I would never be able to wear the armor again after such an impact. The underlying structure of the cuirass appeared to be intact, without a dent or any other signs of warp or distortion. Only the exterior gave any hint of what had happened to it, for there was a fresh, ragged-edged gouge now on the gleaming leather surface, to match the older scar from decades earlier when the cuirass had saved the life of Germanus under similar circumstances. The new gouge, however, was deeper than the old, for it had split the leather, and the dark gleam of the underlying metal weave was exposed. Thinking back to when I had heard the story of the first scar, I remembered my skepticism about the details of the force involved in that incident, but now I knew there had been no exaggeration. The cuirass was almost magical in its resilience and strength.
Afterwards, when my friends had withdrawn to their duties and I was alone again with time to think, I experienced regret and a strong sense of nostalgia, remembering my old mentor’s affection for the armor he had given me and for his own expressed regret over the dulled and much-polished scar that was the only blemish on the entire costume. It had saved his life, he told me then, and as such, the old scar was a badge of honor, a wound received in combat, but he would have been happy to find some way of repairing and concealing the damage done to the leather. And then he had asked me to be careful with it, and to avoid putting any more scars on it, and I had solemnly pledged to do so.
He had been smiling when he extracted my promise, however, and I had known with complete certainty that, given a choice between saving my life at the cost of the armor or saving the armor at the cost of my life, the latter option would never have occurred to the old man. Now I consoled myself with imagining the pleasure Germanus would have taken in knowing that his gift had, in fact, saved my life beyond dispute.
That brought me to consider the fight itself, and the truths underlying it, truths I had not yet heard or guessed at, since less than a day had elapsed since the morning raid, and no one yet understood much of anything about it. I realized immediately, however, that this could have been a catastrophic encounter, despite the relatively small enemy numbers involved, because it had taken us by surprise and Arthur himself had been placed in a very real jeopardy that would rarely have been equaled by a formal battle situation. The surprise element alone would cause major repercussions immediately, for it exposed a glaring deficiency in our security, and that made me feel compassion for Ghilleadh, since the army group responsible for the undetected penetration by the hostiles was his. That the deficiency had gone undetected for years before the attack meant nothing in this instance, for the responsibility as legate in command was Ghilly’s alone. The Saxons had reached Camulod, and, irrespective of the type of loophole they had found to penetrate our defenses, that was simply neither acceptable nor defensible.
Nor did it matter that the “Saxons” were not Saxons at all. They were enemies and they had penetrated the heart of our territories. I knew, because Tristan had told me, that they were Danes, from the eastern coastal territories we called the Saxon Shores. But how they reached Camulod and what had brought them there was still unknown. We had taken seventeen prisoners, however, and Tristan had told me they were being questioned. I knew they would be deprived of sleep and food or water, but they would suffer no physical torment at the hands of anyone in Camulod, and sooner or later, driven by their very humanity, their need for comfort and an end of confinement, they would tell us what we needed to know. They had no reason not to tell us. They were raiders, marauders bent on spoils and plunder, not soldiers bound by discipline or loyalty to any but themselves, so they could protect their own skins without fear of betraying any grand scheme.
The prisoners held out in silence for three days, by which time I was on my feet again, and then they lowered their defenses and spoke openly and readily. It turned out that the reason for their three-day silence had been loyalty to their own, the companions they had left behind at the coast to guard their boats. The arrangement had been that, were they not back within seven days of having left, their companions were to stand off to sea and wait for three days more, then sail home with the word of their deaths.
The tale they told when once they began to speak was a tragic but sadly laughable one, a farcical affair of futility and frustration. They had left their home base early in the spring, with a small fleet of four galleys containing a hundred and a half men, intent upon rounding south Britain, Cornwall and Cambria and raiding across the sea into Eire, for it was commonly known in their eastern lands that a twenty-mile-wide belt of uninhabited and therefore worthless territory stretched the length and breadth of the coastline of Britain, created as the result of decades of fierce and incessant raiding from the sea by their own kind.
Upon their arrival in southern Eire, however, they had fallen subject to a rain of troubles. One of their galleys had been lost at sea, mere days after making landfall, when it was swallowed up in a dense sea fog off one of the coastal islands and then swept onto a hidden ridge of rocks along the shore. They had lost more than half the ship’s complement in that episode. Less than a month after that, having abandoned their initial landing place because it generated nothing in the way of plunder or rewards, they sailed southwest-wards for two days and landed again, only to be surprised immediately by a large war party of local clansmen who were on their way to raid a neighboring clan and stumbled across the Danish raiders. In that encounter, too, they had sustained heavy casualties.
Their next affliction had been a plague of some kind, a pestilence that decimated them, with one in every three men falling sick of a virulent, pustulous fever and one in three of the stricken dying within days of falling sick while the others lingered in excruciating pain for weeks. By the time the wretches had recovered from that, the summer was over and the autumn already showing signs of degenerating rapidly into winter, so they had embarked once again in their three remaining ships, all three seriously undermanned by that time, and put to sea just in time to be caught in the first of the winter storms that ravage the seas around Britain every year. There, in that chaos of winds and waves, one of their ships had rammed another full in the side and sunk it. They had counted themselves fortunate in losing only three men, for the two vessels had remained locked together long enough for the crew of the stricken ship to clamber to safety aboard the other.
Two days after that, they had limped ashore on the marshy fenlands to the north and west of Camulod, near to the great tor of Glastonbury, but far enough removed from it to have no idea that the tor was inhabited, albeit only by a colony of anchorites. There, in desperation, they had left a small holding crew of twenty men to guard their two remaining galleys while the rest of the force, fewer than three score as opposed to the originally reported four, proceeded to strike far inland, in the hope of finding a town or a village and being able to salvage something in the way of plunder to make up for the disasters they had undergone. They had found nothing for three days, but had avoided being found themselves, more through blind chance than good judgment, it transpired, and just as they were about to turn homeward in defeat, they had found the well-tended outlying fields of our colony, and had soon discovered the Villa Britannicus itself.
Their blundering misadventures immediately became legend among our soldiers, for our men could not understand how any fighting group of any kind, or of even rudimentary competence, could venture to attack a wealthy target like the Villa Britannicus without first taking elementary precautions and making an effort to discover how safe or how dangerous it might be. That the Danes’ spies failed to notice that all the guards at the villa were under strict discipline, wore uniform armor and were equipped with superb weaponry seemed beyond belief to our troopers, and that their scouts could spy out the land without noticing a garrisoned fortress with upwards of two thousand men less than a mile away was nothing short of ludicrous.
That was, however, exactly what had occurred, and there had been nothing sinister or premeditated in the way they had been able to make their way into our heartland. They described their journey inland to us, for at least they had been wise enough to take note of the directions they must follow to win back to their ships, and a large scouting party of my own troopers was dispatched immediately to seal the route. It offered little solace to Ghilleadh, however, to know that by merest chance and in the face of incalculable odds, these witless dolts had managed—flawlessly yet in complete ignorance—to thread a needle no one had known was there.
Our sole consolation after the debacle was the knowledge that the weakness in our safety net had been identified. Never again would we be taken by surprise from that direction. Arthur refused Ghilleadh’s claim of responsibility for what had occurred and exonerated him completely, pointing out in the Council gathering of knights that followed the event that no matter who had been legate in charge of the home army on that tour of duty, the result would have been the same. No one had known the flaw in our defenses was there, and thus no one could have anticipated what occurred. And as it was, he pointed out, we had been fortunate even in our misfortune, for my group had been assembled for that morning’s inspection and was able to respond immediately to the alarum. We had sustained no major casualties other than the guards who were slaughtered in the predawn attack. Only a few had been injured: four troopers slightly wounded in the skirmish and eight of the villa’s servants beaten by the looters in attempts to make them betray where the most valuable goods were kept.
Apart from all of that, however, the summation was that the enemy had been routed quickly, the damage to the villa had been only slight and confined mainly to the farm and storage buildings within the compound, and nothing of any value had been taken or destroyed.
The only contentious matter remaining was that of the seventeen prisoners and what to do with them. We could not simply set them free to return to their home on the Saxon Shores, for they had no way of getting there now, except by traveling on foot across the breadth of the country, plundering and killing to support themselves the entire way, and, once arrived home among their own again, they would be likely to return against us, seeking vengeance. Nor could we easily keep them as prisoners in Camulod, for our system had not been designed to accommodate prisoners on any large scale. And seventeen hostile and potentially lethal aliens was a large scale. We had detention cells, but they had been built to house the occasional criminal or malcontent and were capable of containing a maximum of ten men, if they were all crammed in together, so they were useless in our present contingency. And of course the solution of simply killing all of them out of hand was beyond consideration, although several voices were raised in favor of that solution.
Arthur deferred judgment on the matter, dividing the seventeen captives for the time being among the outlying garrison posts and guard posts, each of which was equipped with a cell in which a prisoner or two could be temporarily lodged under guard.
None of us could have guessed then that the situation would be resolved swiftly and efficiently in the following month by the arrival in Camulod of an old friend and ally of both Merlyn and Arthur, the Scots admiral called Connor Mac Athol, who was brother to the adjutant of Camulod, Donuil Mac Athol, and who would take all seventeen prisoners to serve on his galleys.
The episode of the raid on the villa was consigned to the past, its lessons learned and acted upon, and the only recurrent reference made to it thereafter was by our garrison soldiers and troopers, who would never be able to bring themselves to believe that any military force could be as hapless and stupid as our invaders had been.
“Do you remember our visit to Chester last year?”
Arthur was riding slightly ahead of me and had paused to wait for me as I attended to a loose binding on the shaft of one of my throwing lances, where the tightly coiled thong of the leather hand grip had begun to unravel. I decided the repair would take more time than I had then and replaced the defective weapon in the hanging scabbard behind my saddle.
“That was two years ago, Arthur, closer to three,” I answered. “The time we found the silver spurs.”
“Was it that long ago? I suppose it was, now that I think of it. Anyway, as you say, we found the spurs, but you may also remember that we did not find the man we went to visit. What was his name? The king there, your friend from Saint Alban’s Shrine.”
“Symmachus. He was no friend of mine. He couldn’t stand the sight of me, in fact. Thought I had designs on his witless, self-engrossed daughter. Disgusting woman, too much like her father for my tastes.”
“Ah! That’s right. What was her name?”
“Cynthia, a completely spoiled brat. She treated poor young Bors like dirt, just for being smitten with her. Used him like a slave and couldn’t make him miserable enough to please herself, although she never tired of trying. I ended up detesting her mainly for that.”
“Was she comely?”
I shrugged and kneed my horse forward. “Comely? No, she was beautiful. That was her problem—too beautiful for her own good and too stupid to know that surface beauty is worthless if there’s no substance inside to back it up. I was glad to see her finally ride away with her priggish father. Young Bors recovered soon after that …
“I liked her stepmother, though, the king’s wife. Demea was her name, and she was pleasant and harmless—and young, too. Symmachus was besotted with her, and for good reason, I thought. She was the only one of the brood whose company was even bearable, except for the younger daughter, Maia, but she was just a girl child who was trying very hard to be a boy.”
I reached behind me and selected another lance, and held it out to him. “Here, try this one. See the stump there, ahead of us, the one with the sapling growing up out of it? Ride past it on the left, at about twenty paces, and let’s see how close you can come to the sapling.”
He broke away from me immediately, wheeling his horse around and to the back, kicking it into a canter as he went and taking it in a wide circle around the open space surrounding us, increasing his speed steadily and raising himself in his stirrups until he was almost standing, reins held loosely in his left hand, his right outstretched, balancing the long, tapering, needle-pointed javelin I had given him. Then, when he reached the farthest point of his looping turn, he swung his mount inward and galloped straight towards the rotted tree stump with the parasite sapling growing from its moldering corpse. As he charged past me his eyes were slitted in concentration, and I watched his arm draw back, his body angling into the cast, and then the smooth arc of the throw as he launched the weapon. It missed the sapling, but barely, and it was the best cast he had made all morning. He reined his horse in, rode over and collected the thrown javelin, then came back towards me, smiling.
“Getting better.”
“Aye,” I said, nodding in assent, “that was a good one, no denying that. Had that sapling been a man, he would be dead or badly injured now. Out of the fight, certainly. You’re getting better. But you’re getting older, too, and you’re doing that faster than you’re getting better.”
His only response was to whip off one of his gloves and throw it at me. It was a gesture normally perceived as a deadly insult and a challenge, but I caught the glove, laughing, just before it hit me and flung it directly back at him. He caught it easily.
“Why can’t you do it like that?” I said. “You threw the glove perfectly. What’s so different about throwing the spear? It’s not much heavier. That’s the lightest weapon you’ll ever throw, other than a knife, and you’re deadly accurate with one of those.”
We had set out that morning to visit the farm master Dougald, who had been injured in the Danish raid the week before, but it was a pleasant, almost balmy day and we were in no great hurry, so we had spent hours practicing casting the javelin from a charging horse along the way. Arthur was fascinated with my lightweight javelin and its use, but the truth was that I was still the only one in Camulod who could use the weapon easily and skillfully. Arthur was the closest to me in performance only because of his obstinacy—he had spent countless hours in dogged practice and his efforts were bearing fruit—but he would never be better than adequate and he knew it. That I could laugh openly at his determined attempts spoke highly of our easy friendship, but I would never have thought of doing so when anyone else was around. Now he sniffed disdainfully.
“I am not sure I really want to learn such an outlandish, Gaulish method of fighting after all. It occurred to me as I threw that time that, even in the casting, I was preparing to swing aside and flee. That is hardly the proper conduct for a king, or for any of his knights … or so it seems to me now.”
I laughed outright. “Absolutely not, Seur King. Far better to go charging straight ahead and die gloriously when your throw goes astray and your target chops you down. That takes real dedication to the ideals of bravery.”
He looked at me evenly, his face expressionless. “You know, Seur Frank, you have absolutely no notion of the proper deference to a king. This would be a good time to scrape and bow and toady, in the hope that I might forgive your unforgivable insolence and allow you to continue living.”
“Aye, it might, Seur King, but then again it might not. Apologies are tiresome and weakening and you would think me sick were I to change from the way I am. Are we to sit here arguing all day?”
He looked about him and then tossed me my javelin. “Perhaps not. It might rain. Come on, then. It must be less than a mile from here to the Villa Varo.”
We rode on, now beginning to penetrate the fertile lands of the villa, with its extensive fields that had been under cultivation for longer than anyone could remember. Quintus Varo, the owner of the estate at the time of Caius Britannicus’s first notions of creating a defensible enclave here, had been a close friend of the family Britannicus, related to them by marriage, and although his own family had since died out—there were no Varos left alive anywhere in Camulod—the villa and its lands had been an integral part of the colony since its beginnings and was now the agricultural center of Camulod, with all farm planning and implementation organized and coordinated from the villa itself.
“So, Master Pendragon,” I asked as I caught up to him, riding knee to knee beside him. “What prompted you to bring up Symmachus back there?”
“Merlyn thinks he is important, and so I have to think seriously about him. I’ve never met the man, but you have. Would you trust him?”
I knew that he was not asking lightly but was looking for my real evaluation of the northern king, and that forced me to be judicious. I took so long mulling over my opinions, however, that he turned in his saddle to look at me. I shrugged and spread my hands, letting my reins fall slack.
“That is a complex question, Arthur, and in truth my answer would have to depend on what it was I was trusting him to do. To look to his own interests, definitely. To keep his own counsel and guard his own back, surely. To alienate and try to intimidate everyone who comes in contact with him, absolutely. To be disdainful, unfriendly and aloof at all times, beyond a doubt. In all of those things I would trust him without reservation and beyond any possibility of uncertainty. But none of those is likely to inspire you, is it? So I must look at what I think you really mean. Would I trust him to be a staunch ally?”
The King gazed at me, waiting patiently.
“Well, as far as a simple alliance goes, I might be tempted to, providing I was sure he knew the alliance would be to his advantage above and beyond everyone else’s. But staunch? I think not, because the strength of his conviction would rely upon his perception—and there’s that word again—his perception of how strongly that same advantage weighed in his favor. As soon as that changed, his intent and commitment would change with it.
“But your question was more pointed, wasn’t it, more specific? Would I trust him? Would I trust him implicitly to be true and steadfast in backing me up and supporting my plans and strategies for building a Britain united under me were I Arthur Pendragon?” I shook my head. “No, Arthur. I would not. Because that kind of trust, the kind of trust you are looking for and will be bound to rely upon, depends entirely upon honesty—honest, open friendship and respect, and mutual confidence, good faith and goodwill. I don’t believe Symmachus deals in such things. I don’t think he has the capacity for friendship, or even for plain dealings. He is arrogant to the point of utter folly. His eyes are ever focused upon his own interests and he has no time or patience, and even less willingness, to consider the needs or the design of any other than himself.”
The King shook his head, his mouth twisted into a wry smile beneath his close-cropped beard. “You know, my friend, my only wish for you is that along with showing me proper deference and respect as your High King, you might some day learn to say what you really think, instead of beating the bushes endlessly with vague insinuations. So, you dislike the man.”
“Dislike him? That is neither here nor there. I said I would not trust him. And that is what you asked me.”
“It is. It is indeed.”
“So why the sudden concern with Symmachus? He is a local king, no more than that.”
“He controls Deva. That is why. Merlyn distrusts him, too, as deeply and instinctively as you do, but whereas you would appear to discount him, Merlyn sees him as a menace and a danger. That fortress of his was built to hold six thousand men, and it has grown since first it was built. If Symmachus wanted to, he could fill it up with enough men to cause us great heartache. And therefore Merlyn thinks I should pay court to him.”
“By the Christ! Not to wed his daughter, surely? She would drive you to despair within a year, Arthur.”
“No, not at all. No weddings are involved. I would do it merely to make myself and Camulod appear amiable to him.”
“Useless. A waste of time. You’ve already done that more than once, and he has shown no response. Even after you went out of your way to meet him that time, going knocking on his gates, he made no acknowledgment of your visit.”
“True, but—” A terrifying sound erupted from the other side of the rise we were about to crest. “Shit! What in God’s holy name was that?”
I was already spurring my horse towards the soul-chilling sounds, knowing exactly what they were and hoping, in spite of my sudden fear, that the cause would not be as bad as it sounded. But as I crested the rise I knew immediately that it was worse. At the bottom of the hill, against a background of the buildings of the sprawling villa, I saw three people being confronted by a very angry bear that had already downed another of their party. All three were standing stock-still in terror, and the bear was taller than any of them, erect on its hind legs and swinging its extended arms at them, although they were at least fifteen paces from it at that time. But fifteen paces, to a charging bear, is no distance at all. The beast would cover it in the blink of an eye, and I was still two hundred paces from being able to intervene.
“Shit!” the King roared again from behind me. “That’s Dougald. Fly, Lance, fly!”
I dropped my reins across my horse’s neck, giving him his head, and he responded as trained, breaking immediately into a run that within a few paces was a full, free gallop. I steered and controlled him with my legs alone, adjusting without thought to his movements and using both hands to prepare a throwing lance from the quiver at my back. The first one I pulled out was, of course, the damaged one I had been working on and I threw it down to stick in the ground, hoping that Arthur would collect it in passing. I pulled out another, trying not to think of what would happen if my horse set one foot wrongly in this downhill plunge, and set about coiling the throwing thong around the shaft. That is not the easiest of tasks on a fast-moving horse, but for that reason alone I had practiced doing it a thousand times and more, and now, when I needed to do it swiftly and cleanly, all that training proved itself.
I was on level ground already and had covered more than half the distance between me and the bear and it had still not lowered itself to charge. I took up the reins again in my left hand, gently, still allowing them to hang loose lest my horse misinterpret the signal and break stride, and I stood up in my stirrups, extending my arm backwards for the throw as I counted the bounding leaps that were devouring the distance between me and my target. The bear was large, but the distance separating us was still too great for any hope of accuracy and I knew I would have only one chance. If my throw went wide of the mark, the animal would not even be aware of it, and whatever was destined to happen might occur before I could prepare another. And still, as my count reached twenty, nothing had changed. The scene before me was as motionless as a setting of statuary.
But then one of the men saw me coming and his nerve broke. He shouted aloud and turned to run, and in the blinking of an eye the bear was down on all fours and charging after him.
In less than twenty paces the enraged animal overtook him and smashed him to the ground, where he flopped and rolled like a child’s rag toy. The bear sped past him and stopped, reared up again with another bowel-loosening roar and spun back, and at that moment the fellow’s two remaining companions began to run, too, one of them straight towards me and the other away from me.
The sight of two fleeing figures appeared to confuse the bear, because in the act of launching itself at the man on the ground, it reared up again, its head swinging from one side to the other as it attempted to decide which of the two fleeing creatures deserved to be chased down first. Then, perhaps because it saw my movements, too, it charged after the woman running towards me and screaming for help. But now the beast presented me with the worst of targets, its thick skull, held low in the need for speed, protecting it from a chest shot.
Cursing, I swung my horse out and away, hoping the woman would not veer to follow me. More than thirty paces yet separated me from the brute when I saw the best shot I was likely to be offered and threw instinctively.
I knew as soon as I released it that the cast was good, and better than good. The lance leapt forward like an arrow from a full-drawn bow and flew true, and I thundered past the lumbering animal, amazed at its single-minded swiftness and appalled at how close it was to pulling the woman down. But just as it seemed the woman must die, the lance struck home, its two-foot-long needle-pointed head penetrating cleanly between a pair of ribs.
The bear’s reaction might, at any other time, have been comical to see, but I was to realize that only long afterwards. As I reined my horse in hard, bringing it to a quivering, snorting, stiff-legged halt, the woman fell headlong, and at the same moment the bear spread its front paws and skidded to a stop, its rear end sliding on the grass. And then it sprang erect and twisted violently sideways, snapping its teeth in rage and straining to reach the missile that had pierced its side. But it failed, and it continued to spin, ever more slowly, until it fell over on its back, its legs kicking spasmodically and a froth of bright blood erupting from its mouth. It was dead within moments of being hit, and so close was it to the quarry it had been pursuing that its blood was splashed all over the woman’s skirts and bare legs.
Before I could begin to move again, Arthur reined his own horse in beside me, breathing hard as though it had been he and not his mount that had done all the running. “By the sweet Christ, Lance, that was a throw! You must have pierced both heart and lungs. Now I know why you laugh at my efforts. Is the woman dead?”
I shook my head. “No, I think not, unless she died of fright. The bear never touched her.”
“But look at the blood!”
“It’s the bear’s.”
“Well thank God for that. Check her for injuries while I see to Dougald and the other fellow.”
Knowing that the crisis was over, I finally took the time to heave a deep, rich breath and looked about me, clenching my fists against the reaction that I knew would soon have me trembling, and forcing myself to concentrate on what was happening around me. People were running towards us from the villa now that the danger had passed, and somewhere among them, I presumed, was the surviving fellow who had fled. Arthur was riding towards the man who had been already on the ground when we first saw them. In his right hand he held my discarded lance. I took another deep breath and swung myself down to look to the woman.
I had not even known she was a woman until she screamed and I noticed her running with raised skirts. I knelt beside her, feeling for the pulse at her throat. I found it immediately, strong and regular, and I knew there was nothing greatly wrong with her, but I found myself unwilling to remove my fingers from her neck. It seemed softer and warmer than anything I had ever felt before. She was young, perhaps twenty, perhaps slightly older—I was no judge of women’s ages. And she was comely, her closed eyelids almost translucent in their whiteness, the brows above them a deep reddish brown to match the red sheen in her disordered hair, and her skin young and supple, with no trace of lines or wrinkles. A good, very pleasant face, with a wide red mouth and full lips that I felt sure must laugh easily. And still I held my fingers to her throat, feeling the warmth and the beating of her pulse.
She opened her eyes suddenly, looking directly up at me, and then tensed, as if preparing to scramble away. But then she lay still, staring at me. I began to take my hand away, but she reached up quickly and seized my wrist, and brought my spread fingers back into contact with her neck.
“You killed her.”
The accusation startled me. “Her? Who is she?”
“The bear.”
“Oh, the bear. Yes, the bear is dead.”
“Where are her cubs?”
I shook my head. “I saw no cubs, Lady, only the bear.”
“Two cubs. We frightened them, came upon them suddenly, and they called for her. The mother came running, and my father—” She started up, spinning in place and looking about wildly. “Where is my father? Is he dead?”
“Hush, Lady, I can see him. The King is with him. They are picking him up to take him inside and the King is talking to him, so he is alive.”
She had become still again and looked at me from beneath arched eyebrows. “The King? The King is here? Then who are you?”
“My name is Clothar, Lady. I serve the King.”
“Clothar? The knight, the one they call the Frank?” She seemed flustered, almost afraid, and I smiled at her.
“Aye, and sometimes the Lancer, depending upon who is speaking. But that is who I am, Lady.”
Now her eyes flared, angrily, I thought. “I am no Lady, my lord Knight. My name is Elaine.”
“That was my mother’s name. Elaine of what, my lady?”
“Elaine of what?” She laughed, although what emerged was more like a snort of exasperation. “Elaine of here, my lord Knight. Elaine of this villa, this farm. Now help me rise. I must see to my father.” She stopped in the act of reaching for my hand, her head straining, her nostrils twitching. “What is that smell?”
I smiled again, and pointed to the dead monster at her back. “It’s the bear, my lady.” She turned to look and then suddenly gasped and started in a great leap, throwing herself towards me until she crashed into me, knocking me off balance so that we both fell sprawling and I ended up with my hand beneath her skirts, the back of my fingers against the soft fleshy heat of her thigh. I snatched my hand away and scrambled to my feet, feeling the heat flaming in my face, but she appeared not to have noticed, keeping her gaze fastened on the dead animal behind her as I helped her up from the ground. Only then did she turn to look at me, her eyes wide with fear.
“Was she that close to me when you killed her?”
I could only shrug, still embarrassed about touching her bare thigh, and I said the first thing that came into my head. “It hasn’t moved since.”
She blinked at me, then looked down. “Your hand is bleeding.”
I jerked my hand—the guilty hand—up and looked at it, feeling my face flaming again. “It’s not my blood, Lady. It’s the bear’s. It’s all over you, too.”
She hoisted her skirts sufficiently to allow her to see that what I had said was true, and then she shuddered and looked into my eyes, her expression unreadable, before turning away. The small crowd that had gathered was now moving back towards the villa gates, and among them they carried two stretcher biers. I saw Arthur standing by our horses, watching me. So did she.
“The King is waiting for you,” she said. “Will you bring him inside?”
“Aye, I will, if he will come.”
“Then come you, too. And—”
“And, Lady?”
“I have not yet thanked you, for my life.”
I managed to find a smile. “To see you alive and well is thanks enough, my lady.”
“Aye, well … Perhaps.” One corner of her mouth twitched upwards in what might have been the beginnings of a smile, but then she turned away again, and spoke to me over her shoulder. “I must see to my father. Come inside and … wait for me, if you will.”
I was still watching her retreating back when Arthur pulled his mount to a halt beside me, leading my own horse. “A fetching lass, our Elaine, eh, Lance? You’ll come to no harm from having saved her from a ravening beast, unless she turns you into one yourself.”
“Who is she?”
“Dougald’s daughter, although she’s not his daughter. He and his wife, Martha, adopted her when she was still suckling. Martha wet-nursed her when her own mother died, and the child never left them. Now she is Dougald’s entire life, since Martha died five years ago. We’ll go inside for a while, see if there’s anything to be done for Dougald.”
The woman had passed out of sight beyond the villa gates, and I looked at Arthur now for the first time since he had joined me. “What mean you, to be done for him? You expect him to die?”
The King laughed. “Dougald? Not this year. He’s badly cut up, covered in blood, and his face has been mauled, but it would take more than a swat from an angry bear to kill that old boar. No, I simply meant that he will have the best of care, and most probably with no need of help from us. But I want to be sure of that before we leave him, because he is a jewel beyond price, the best farming mind in all of Camulod, and perhaps in all of Britain. Besides, I’m thirsty, and I could eat something, and I can see you’re thirsting, too, although not for beer. Mount up. Let’s go inside while I try to phrase exactly what I intend to say about that throw of yours when we return to Camulod. Gwin and Ghilleadh and the others will think me a liar when I tell them. Here.” He handed me the lance with the unraveled grip and I turned to look at the other one, now firmly clamped in the dead bear’s flesh.
“I have to get this one out first. Shouldn’t take long. I’ll join you when it’s done.”
In fact it took me a long time to free the lance, and Arthur had vanished into the villa by the time I finally managed to wrest it from the dead beast. In the end, with the help of a couple of brawny farmhands and after much pulling and pushing, trying to release the pressure of the dead flesh around the shaft, I had to tie a rope around the butt end and use the weight of my horse to drag the weapon out of the wound. I was grateful to retrieve it and carried it to a nearby brook to scrub as much of the blood from it as I could. I had too few of them to sacrifice any and they were irreplaceable.
The Villa Varo had settled down by the time I eventually arrived there. The injured men were already installed in separate rooms, their wounds being tended by the farming community’s resident physician, and there was little for Arthur and me to do but wait for whatever information was to come from the two sickrooms. Someone had brought us beer to drink in the meantime, and Arthur spoke with several of Dougald’s closest subordinates while I stood close by the door to the atrium, listening to what was being said behind me, but watching and waiting for the woman Elaine to reappear.
The bear, I heard them tell Arthur, had become a familiar sight close to the villa buildings in the past few years, foraging for food and scraps. She had been little more than a cub herself when she first appeared, and until today she had shown no signs of aggression.
I heard Arthur call out to a young man, about my own age, whom I had noticed earlier, standing alone and pale faced in one corner of the room where we had gathered, and ask him to tell us what had happened. He turned out to be Dougald’s son, Luke, half-brother to Elaine, and he had been the third man, the one who had escaped the bear’s attack.
According to Luke, no one had had any thought of bears today as Dougald led his three companions away from the bustling villa to where he could speak his mind without being overheard. One of the trio, a man called Jonas, was the headman of a village half a day’s march beyond the borders of the colony, and he had been paying court to Elaine for some time. He had come that morning to make an offer of marriage to Dougald, and it was to negotiate and finalize that offer that Dougald had led him away outside the villa gates. Elaine and Luke, who had no voice in the negotiations, had followed along simply because Elaine herself approved of Jonas and his offer and none of the participants anticipated any difficulty in arriving at a settlement. In walking and talking, however, Dougald had led them right to where the bear’s cubs were playing unseen in a copse of trees, inadvertently cutting the cubs off from their dam and frightening them into crying for her.
Barely aware of what they had done, Dougald and the others had been caught in the open when the sow came charging through the bushes that had concealed her. Before any one of the four humans could even move, she had been among them, and Dougald, the person closest to her cubs, had been the first to attract her rage. The others had stood frozen, utterly drained by terror and incapable of moving either to help Dougald or to flee.
Jonas had been the first to run, as the sight and sound of my approach broke the spell that had held them. The bear had struck him down savagely, but had not mauled the man beyond that point, thanks to my intervention. How badly Jonas had been hurt by that single ferocious, mutilating blow now remained to be established. He was alive, Luke told us, but that was all he could say.
My first reaction to hearing this tale was anger, but it would take me hours of thought before I realized that it was jealous anger. The primary thought in my mind at the time was that this stranger, this outsider Jonas, had come into Camulod from beyond its borders and endangered some of our residents. That I was thinking of only one of those residents was a mere detail that I did not allow myself to recognize. Perhaps because the events had taken place so soon after the unprecedented Saxon raid of the week before, I immediately stepped into the center of the room and demanded to know how any outsider could have such easy and casual access to our most important farm.
The question earned me strange looks and wide-eyed stares. Jonas was an outsider in name only, I was told. His village was prosperous, well run and, thanks to its proximity to our borders, virtually a part of Camulod itself. Our troopers visited and policed the place irregularly, making sure that no problems ever arose there. The village housed the finest weavers, carpenters and leather workers in the region, their products highly valued within Camulod and essential to the supply and maintenance of farm equipment, and as a result its craftsmen and artisans were free to come and go between their home and Camulod whenever they so wished.
As I listened, learning more than I had sought to know, I was aware of Arthur watching me from where he sat, and I felt my ears burning with the knowledge that, were I to look, he would be wearing that private little grin that I had long since come to recognize as a signal of his seeing things that others had missed. I knew that beyond a doubt, but I did not look at him, because the confusion in my own breast was telling me that I myself did not know what it was that he was seeing in me this time. Instead, I merely nodded in acceptance of what I had been told, and then stood silent, my chin sunk on my chest, until the physician came in to deliver his report to the King at first hand.
Both men would live, he told us. Dougald had been knocked unconscious by the bear’s attack, and that had probably saved his life, since the bear had clawed him only twice before abandoning his inert body. One of those two blows, however, had gouged out the old man’s right eye and broken his nose. Grave injuries but not life threatening, so long as they remained free of infection. Jonas had sustained only one blow, but the power behind that had been massive. His shoulder had been dislocated and his upper arm bone badly broken, and the physician suspected that several of his ribs had been broken, too. Jonas, it seemed, would not be moving at all for a long time, but when that time eventually elapsed, he would probably be returned to full health, little the worse for his unfortunate encounter.
I had not even noticed the woman Elaine come into the room, but suddenly she was standing by my side, slightly behind me, listening as the physician ended his report. I actually smelled her presence before I saw her, and the unexpected awareness of her nearness brought the hot blood rushing again to my face and ears. But before I could suffer any discomfort over my blushes, Arthur was speaking to her, asking her about her father. We had just heard a full report on that from the physician, but Arthur wanted to hear the daughter voice her own opinion.
“He has lost an eye and his face will be badly scarred. But Strabo here has sewn the wounds tightly shut, so they should heal cleanly. Half blind as he will be, my father will still be able to function as he did before. Had he lost an arm or a hand … well, a one-armed farmer is a man half dead. So …” She drew herself erect and pursed her full, red lips. “We will make the best of it and think ourselves fortunate it was not worse.”
“And what of Jonas, your betrothed?” Arthur hesitated. “He is your betrothed, is he not? Or had that still to be decided when the bear attacked?”
Elaine shook her head, glancing at me briefly, her eyes expressionless. “No, it was arranged. We are betrothed. The marriage bargain is settled, the bride price agreed upon. We will be wed when Jonas is himself again.” She frowned. “But that will take some time. Jonas is badly hurt—not like to die, as you know, but crippled, none the less, for the time being and likely for months to come.”
“Aye,” Arthur said gently. “But those months will pass, Elaine, and when they are gone, you’ll scarce remember they occurred, believe me.”
“I believe you, my lord.” She turned her head from Arthur to look at me then. “And you, my lord Clothar. I have not yet had the time to thank you for your aid, nor have I now, except to take the time to say that I am grateful. Will you not return when there is time, to allow us to express our gratitude?”
She seemed completely unaware and unconcerned that there were others there listening to her words, but then she caught herself and turned back to Arthur. “Forgive me, my lord King. The knight is in your service. I had no right to—”
“If anyone has such a right, Elaine, you have.” Arthur was smiling at her. “I will need to be kept informed of your father’s progress, and since I have no other whom I trust as fully as this man here, it seems only reasonable that he should be my messenger. What say you, Seur Clothar? Will you serve me in this?”
I could only nod, incapable of taking my eyes from the tiny pulse throbbing in the woman’s neck. “Yes, Magister,” I said, managing to sound calm despite the rapid fluttering in my breast. My reward was another glance from Elaine’s unreadable eyes and the hint of a smile at the corner of her wide, red lips. The King turned away and led the conversation in another direction, and as he did so the woman Elaine inclined her head very slightly towards me and moved away, back to her duties, and my eyes were filled with the way the stuff of her gown clung to her swaying hips and buttocks.