The Eagles' Brood

X

As I entered Camulod the following morning I met Titus crossing the main courtyard, looking tired and uncharacteristically irritable. He wasted no time in telling me that my father had returned from patrol just after dawn and had been looking for me, and there was a tone in his voice that fell just short of censure. I thanked him and made no comment on his unusual demeanour, having a shrewd idea of the reason for it. I stabled my horse and went looking for my father immediately, finding him, as I knew I would, working on some records in his day office. He glanced up at me as I entered and nodded towards a chair. I sat down and waited for him to finish what he was doing.

He finally finished a document, sealed it and took it to the door, where he gave it to the guard and told him to have it delivered to the Legate Titus.

"Titus?" I asked him. "Couldn't you just tell him what you want?"

He closed the door carefully before answering me. "Some things must be written.. .have to be, for the sake of order...and for future reference." Having said this, he crossed slowly back to his table and seated himself. "Now. Please, in as few words as possible...what in Hades has been going on here in my absence?" He was speaking very slowly, forcing himself to articulate his words clearly, fighting the tendency to slur forced upon him by his damaged throat.

"What have you heard?"

"Nothing I could believe. Rumours...murder and witchcraft. Titus was...unwontedly silent. Told me to my face I should wait for you. I have waited. I am waiting.''

I began at the beginning and told him the whole story of finding the girl in the first place and bringing her back to Camulod, and then of the assault and of her disappearance. I_: did not lie to him. I merely made no mention of the scene in the games room or of the real abduction from the infirmary.

When I had finished he sat looking at me for a long time. "Fine," he said finally, rasping the word. "That's what the common soldier knows. Now...What really happened? Where is Uther? How did the girl vanish...from the infirmary? Why -" He stopped and cleared his throat, then continued very carefully. "Why all this concern...in the first place.. .over a mute foundling who gets herself into trouble? There's.. .There is more to this tale than you are.. .telling."

I sighed and began again, telling him this time what really happened and leaving out no detail. As I spoke, he got up, and began to pace the tiny room, gnawing on the inside of his lower lip. When I had finished my tale this time his comments and questions were terse and to the point.

"You have the girl in your valley?"

"Yes. It's the only safe place I know of."

"Safe from Uther, you mean."

"Yes."

"You're convinced he did this." It was not a question. I said nothing. "Why?" Again I said nothing. "Why are you so prepared to believe that Uther.. .your blood cousin...your best friend...whom you have known literally all your life, could do...these things you describe? I want an answer, Caius."

I shrugged helplessly. "What choice do I have, Father? I don't want to believe it, but all the evidence points to Uther. There isn't even another suspicious-looking person in the place!"

"Have you verified that?"

"What? That there are no other suspects? Of course I have, Father. Everyone who was on duty that night, everyone who was awake or astir or abroad at all has been questioned thoroughly and his story checked. There is no person other than Uther whose movements and activities cannot be accounted for."

"Where is Uther?"

"You tell me, Father. Where is he? Why has he disappeared now? Earlier or later would have been acceptable, but he left minutes after the girl and he has not been seen or heard from since."

"What is this girl to you?"

"To me?" I was surprised. "Nothing. Nothing at all. I have had no dealings with her, other than to have her removed from Lucanus's quarters that night."

"Is she pretty? Attractive?"

"What does that have to do with anything? Attractive? No, she is not attractive. She is plain, thin, unappealing. Singularly unattractive, as a matter of fact."

"You are angry with her. Why?"

"What?" I thought about it and realized that I was angry at the girl. "I don't know why I'm angry at her. It's not her fault, really. I resent her because if she hadn't been where she was, when she was—at any point—none of this would have happened."

"Perhaps, perhaps not." He was silent for a moment, and I wondered what he had meant by that. Then he crossed to the table he had been writing at and picked up a knife that lay there. He balanced it in his hand and then threw it hard at the closed door, where it stood thrumming in the solid wood. He went to it, pulled it out and examined the point, all the while evidently thinking deeply. Finally he turned back to me. "Here," he said, lobbing the knife to me, hilt first. "I brought this back for you. It's balanced for throwing... cleverly. One complete turnover every twenty paces, if you loft it correctly." He was silent as I examined the knife closely, and then he asked, "Have you ever heard of giving anyone the benefit of the doubt?"

"You mean Uther?" I looked him straight in the eye. "I've already done that by getting rid of the four women. I've also done it by keeping my suspicions to myself, except in the case of Titus. He had to know if I was to have his help. My problem with the benefit of the doubt, Father, my only problem, is defining the doubt. I'm not sure I have any."

"Of course you have. If you had none, you would not be so upset."

I nodded, accepting the truth. "You're right. Of course I have. But my doubts are all emotional. The evidence I have to consider is not. The hard facts destroy all room for doubt."

"What hard facts? You have none." He left me gaping at that while he sat down again at his table. "The only facts you have are these." He raised one finger for each of the points as he made them. "The girl was assaulted. You moved thereafter to protect her. Those are the only facts. Explanations of what happened between the girl's quitting the room and being found next morning are guesses...pure conjecture. You have no facts there."

"But the evidence—"

"What evidence? None of that, either, except the girl's injuries. Nothing to indicate who, when or why."

"Yes I have! Uther -"

"Uther..." He cleared his throat again, his frustration with his own voice more apparent than I had seen it in a long time. "Uther left shortly after the girl. That's all you know. Everything else you feel.. .or believe.. .is based upon your own interpretation of the circumstances."

I dropped my eyes to the knife in my hand and flung it hard at die door. It hit flat and rebounded almost to my feet and I sat staring down at it unseeingly.

When my father spoke again, his voice was gentle. "As I said, you have to loft it correctly. A matter of balance, Cay. Everything else is, too. Admit it. All you have to point towards Uther is your own interpretation of the circumstances that surrounded this event. It was an awful event...not condoning it in any way, shape or form. The perpetrator will be punished. If it was Uther, he will find noleniency in me. But you are a long way from proving complicity, let alone guilt, in my eyes. Your interpretation is no more than that...not provable fact. You can only prove that Uther left the room after the girl left, and by your own admission he did not seem to be in pursuit of her."

I picked up the knife and weighed it in my hand, giving -myself time to digest what he had said, fighting against an urge to scream to him that he had not been there, had not seen what I had seen. As frustration welled up in me I threw the knife again at the door, this time hammering the point into the wood a good half-inch. I went then and worked the point free, making myself calm down before I faced my father again.

"Very well, Father. I admit the truth of what you say. I have only my own interpretation of what I saw and heard. So? Help me, then! How would you interpret the evidence as you see it?"

"In a total absence of witnesses, I would not." He saw my retort taking shape and forestalled it with a raised hand. 'Total, I said, Caius, total! We have a witness. We can prove the truth. The girl will know. She may not know, perhaps, who attacked her...if it wasn't Uther...but she will know whether or not it was Uther!" I stood there with my back to the door, feeling the tension roiling in my stomach.

"You did the right thing, Caius, in removing her." A long pause. "As a matter of fact, you seem to have done all the right things. You did well." He nodded towards the chair I had been sitting in. "Sit down. I want to tell you a story. Might prove the point I am trying to make." He got up again and went to tell the guard outside his door that he did not wish to be interrupted, then he came back and seated himself at the table where he pressed the heels of his hands together and examined his open palms minutely. He sat that way for a few moments and then pursed his lips and looked at me quizzically, a crease that was not quite a frown between his brows. I sat unmoving, waiting for him to begin, and when he did, there was something new in his voice. I cannot explain what it was, and at the time I was almost unaware of it, except that I found myself hanging on his every word, having lost all awareness of his speaking difficulties.

"Caius...?" he began. His voice tailed away uncertainly, then he cleared his throat abruptly and grinned at me. 'The story I'm going to tell you may shock you...but only because it happened to me and I am your father. Had it happened to another man, you might be able to accept his version of it without comment or judgment, although I doubt you would. I know that if I were to hear it...my instinct would be to disbelieve. But I am your father, and it did happen to me. I want you to have no doubt of that. It happened."

I wondered what was coming, but he did not keep me waiting. "I took this wound in the throat the year you were born. Did you know that?" I nodded, and he went on, "I almost died from it... I should have. It was a bad one. I can remember that, as a boy, you were afraid of me, frightened by my voice. I used to see it in your eyes... Over the course of the years, however, you have grown accustomed to the sound of it until now you hardly notice its strangeness. Am I correct?" Again I nodded and he smiled a small, thin smile. "Then again, perhaps I am simply speaking better as I grow older, I don't really know and have no way of judging. But for the first three years after I took that arrow in the mouth, Cay, I did not speak a word. I wrote... every thing. And I developed hand signals so that eventually my officers and men could understand and obey any order instantly. But that's beside the point. What I am getting at is this: During my convalescence from that wound, I strangled a man to death with my bare hands. He tried to kill me, was trying to kill me when I finished him." I shifted in my chair. I had read a reference to this in my uncle's books, but I knew nothing of the story.

"I was wounded in a skirmish with the northern Picts who had come down over the Wall when it fell for the last time that year. They had penetrated further south than we had expected and we ran into them sooner than we had thought to. One of them put an arrow into my mouth. It was open at the time. I was shouting orders... Anyway, that was the end of the fight as far as I was concerned, and it should have been the end of me, too. Titus took over from me and broke them and sent them back to the north licking some deep wounds. We were in north Britain, as I've said, close to the town of Lindum...between there and Danum, as a matter of fact. No one expected me to live, but I surprised them all and they finally left me at the villa of one Marcus Aurelius Ambrosianus, a noble Roman of ancient family who had retired from public life in Rome itself to live in his villa here in Britain. He was an old and noble man in the way that few of his compatriots were noble in those days."

He broke his narrative at that point to rise and open a small chest, from which he withdrew a flask of mead and two horn cups. "It's early," he said, "but talking this much makes my throat dry and sore." He poured for both of us and handed one cup to me before sitting down again and sipping at his mead, holding it in his mouth and allowing it to trickle slowly down his throat. "That's good," he murmured, taking another sip. "Well, as you know, our own lineage is not petty. Ambrosianus made me welcome in his house and had his people aid my own in caring for me. I knew nothing of his kindness, for I was at death's door and lay that way for more than a month. They fed me on liquids, through tubes of animal intestine that our sawbones inserted in my throat by way of my nostrils. Everyone looked on me as a living miracle. I should have died immediately. I survived. I should have died later, of starvation, since I could not eat. I survived again, thanks only to that mad physician! And do you know I can't even remember his name today?"

"Did you lose much weight? You must have."

"Aye, I did, of course, but not as much as you might think. He kept feeding me almost constantly—strong broths, milk and honey, even ale! I was no Hercules by the time I finally started eating slops of mushed bread in hot milk, but neither was I skeletal. Anyway, my story... One night, in the middle of the night, I awoke, or half awoke, to find that there was someone in the room with me. I saw a shape in the dimness at the bottom of my cot and I saw a sword being swung at me. I rolled somehow, I don't know where I found the strength or the speed, and the blade only caught me in the side. My attacker fell on me and I grabbed him by the throat and began to choke him with all the strength I had. The effort brought on pain the like of which I had never felt, but I hung on to him and squeezed until I could bear no more and fainted.

"A short time later, I was told, someone looked into my room to check on me as they did every night, twice a night, and found me with my hands locked around the neck of my host, Marcus Aurelius Ambrosianus."

I felt my chest tighten in horror. "Ambrosianus? But why? He was an old man, you said!"

"He was sixty-nine, and feeble."

"But why would he do such a thing?"

"Good question, and one that everyone was asking, including me."

"Had he gone mad? Insane? Just like that?"

My father shrugged, his face expressionless. "You tell me. That's what the verdict was. I had never met the man, not while I was conscious at any rate. I had been a guest in his house for more than three months and in all that time I had not stirred from my bed. He had dropped in to visit me a few times during the first month of my stay with him, but I was always asleep or unconscious and so he stopped coming.

"The previous day, it seems, he had been seen sharpening his sword. And he had been behaving strangely, avoiding his family and his servants and hiding in his rooms for several days before that. There was never any question of my innocence in the affair, you understand. When they found me I was still all tangled up in my bedclothes and bleeding from the slash in my side. They found a lamp burning on the floor of the passageway around the corner from my room, and the scabbard of his sword where he had left it in his own room... The evidence was conclusive. He had lost his sanity and plotted my death far enough in advance to have taken his sword from where it hung in his day-room, making sure the edge was sharp enough to kill with. Then he had waited until the middle of the night, unsheathed the sword, left the scabbard on his bed and crept to my room, leaving his lamp behind him in the corridor so that its light would not awaken me, and so that he could make his way back quickly to his own room after killing me."

I felt stunned. "But it makes no sense, Father? Why you?"

"It made no sense to anyone, Cay, but insanity has its own sense. I was congratulated on my reflexes, ill as I was, and the whole matter was hushed up. I began to regain my strength very quickly after that and was out of bed within fifteen days. Fifteen days after that I was back on duty. Garrison duty, of course. I was still too weak to ride and I could not talk."

"Why didn't they retire you?"

"They tried. I wouldn't let them. Remember, I had no superiors. I was Stilicho's deputy in Britain, and Stilicho was Regent of the Empire. By the time they complained to him it was too late. We were recalled to fight against Alaric and his Visigoths and they needed every available man, even mute officers."

I was nonplussed and dissatisfied with the conclusiveness of his tale. And I was disappointed. If there were any parallel with our present situation, it had escaped me. "That's quite a story, Father, but what has it to do with Uther's case?"

He smiled at me, a slow, humourless smile. "Nothing, on the surface, Caius. Everything underneath. We were talking of evidence and of circumstances. In Uther's case the circumstances point to his guilt. If it were not for the circumstances that sent him out of that room with a motive to hurt the girl, there would be no question of suspecting his involvement in such filth."

"So?" I said, tentatively. "That's a big circumstance."

"Aye. It is. So be it. Marcus Ambrosianus made the attempt on my life and died for it. He was convicted post mortem of insanity because the circumstances surrounding his actions dictated that he had to be insane. I had done him no wrong. But consider this, if you will. How can I put this?" He plucked at his lower lip, then continued. "I had been in his house for more than three months. He was an old man. He had a beautiful young daughter of perhaps thirteen, fourteen, no more. I had heard my physicians speak of her in wonder. Apparently her hair was so white it appeared to be silver. They told me she was a real beauty, the type : that men fight over. Now, you have to understand that,, although I was badly wounded, I was not out of action in J other respects. My wound was to my mouth and neck. The rest of my body was functioning normally by the end of a month. I wasn't much older then than you are now. You understand me?"

I nodded. "Did you ever see the girl?"

"No, but she had been in my room, and I had heard her voice. She came with her servants on a couple of occasions. Anyway, I had been having dreams...recurrent dreams. Always the same, and always very...pleasant. I slept very heavily every night, but one night I dreamed that I awoke to find myself being, well, ridden's the best word to describe it, I suppose, by a woman. I couldn't see her through my', bandages and I couldn't move. She took me to completion and was gone, without a sound. I slept again and when I woke, I remembered and checked myself to see if it had really happened, but there was no sign of anything having occurred. It had been pleasant, extremely so, as I said, "but it was a normal enough dream, and I dismissed it... Several nights later it happened again, and again there was no sign of anything having taken place; in fact, this second time, I wasn't sure if I had had the dream or not. It happened again about a week later, mid in case you are beginning to think I am wasting your time, let me reassure you that I am not. Thereafter, it happened every night for a week and then every second night for another week. On some of these occasions I was barely aware of the dream, on others it was quite vivid. And on one particular night, when my bandages had been removed, there was a moon and I saw my dream mistress."

"His daughter!"

"No, and I was quite disappointed, because I had convinced myself she was the dream mistress. But this was a stranger. A true dream-woman. I had never seen her before. I didn't see her clearly, but I saw enough to know that I did not know her. She was merely a woman in a dream."

"And the dream never changed?"

"Never. I would struggle awake to find myself sheathed in her. I never remembered going to sleep again."

"Did you tell anyone?"

He smiled at me ironically. "What? That I was having erotic dreams?"

"So? What happened?"

A brief headshake, then, "Nothing. The dreams stopped, and I forgot them. About a week or so later, my host attacked me."

I blinked at him, frowning. "You never dreamed that dream again?"

"Never. From the night of the attack, I started sleeping more lightly, as you might imagine. I heard every sound in that house. My strength started to come back to me more and more quickly and, as I've told you, I was out of there in a matter of weeks."

"What happened to the daughter?"

"She left, after the funeral, to live with relatives in Danum. I never saw her again."

"So what is the point of the story? How did the old man find out you were dreaming of his daughter? Was it witchcraft?"

He snorted. "Aye, it was, of a kind. He never did find put I dreamed of his daughter. He never knew I dreamed." My father sucked in a great breath through his nostrils. "There is, however, a sequel to the tale. Many months later, shortly before I left Lindum to return to Londinium prior to setting sail for Italia, I saw a woman who resembled my dream- woman so much that it astounded me. We were in a crowded market-place and I saw her over the heads of the crowd between us. I tried to reach her but could not. I then tried to follow her, at least, but I lost her among the throngs of people in the street, so I went back to the market and found the merchant at whose stall she had been buying trinkets. I wrote him a note, asking him who she was." He looked me in the eye. "The fellow couldn't read. And I could not speak. I had to find someone who could do both. It turned out she was the young widow of Marcus Ambrosianus. She was pregnant."

I felt the small hairs on my arms and at the back of my neck prickle in horror and it must have showed on my face, for he barked his short, abrupt laugh. "That shakes you, eh? It shook me, too, at the time. That woman was black with the guilt of murder and I was the instrument she used, and yet the circumstances did not include her at all. The old man may have been mad with grief and wounded pride, but he was no more insane than I was.

"I told you they fed me with tubes. I had been drugged, through my food, every night and used like a stud bull, but Ambrosianus could not have known that... Somehow, he found out that his wife was amusing herself with me, and under the circumstances he had no other option than to believe that I was her willing partner." He paused for a moment, looking at me keenly before continuing in a clipped, emphatic voice. "You must understand I am not denying that I might have been perfectly willing, had I had any say in the matter, but the old man interpreted the evidence of his own senses and concluded that I was putting horns on him in his own house while enjoying his hospitality.

Had I been him, I might have handled it a little differently, but the whoreson in that bed would have been dead!" He leaned over the table and took the knife from my hand. "How would you have interpreted the 'hard facts' had you been him, Caius?"

I was chagrined, my voice reduced to a whisper by the enormity of what I was only now realizing and appreciating. "I see what you mean, Father."

"I hope so. And don't lose sight of the fact that I said I might have been her willing partner, given the chance. The point is I didn't have the chance—or the choice. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, in the final analysis I was not guilty of the sin for which he condemned me."

I dropped my face into my hands and combed my fingers across my scalp, heaving a deep breath. "So where does that leave us with Uther?"

The voice that answered me was gentler than I had ever known it. "Waiting to see how the girl reacts when she is well again and you confront him with her."

"And if he is guilty?"

"Then he pays the price."

"And?"

My father tossed back the remnants of his mead and stood up, reaching for his helmet, and indicating that our conversation was over. "And nothing, Caius. You know as well as I do, the price for violation of a woman in my command is death."