The Eagles' Brood

XIV

In the event, we were no more than one day behind my father in reaching Camulod. I took Prince Donuil to meet his surviving men immediately upon leaving my father, and the joy with which they greeted the young man was worth beholding. He explained to them the terms under which he had bought their lives and extracted a pledge from all of them to honour his commitment. There was little argument.

The next day we reached the coast where they had beached their fleet. Seven hundred Scotii, as it turned out, escorted by my four hundred mounted men. Donuil himself went forward to speak to the guards he had left behind and I allowed him to do so without an escort. He was gone for more than an hour and returned with a grizzled veteran almost as big as he himself. When they came in sight of us they stopped and I rode out to meet them. The big man with Donuil was the first to speak.

"My nephew here has told me of the terms he has reached with you, Merlyn Britannicus, and I have no choice but to abide by his terms and yours." He stopped and I waited for him to continue, which he did after clearing his throat and spitting. "Understand that had we known we were facing Romans, we would have behaved very differently!"

I could not let him get away with that, for his bearing implied that by behaving differently they could have beaten us. "What does that mean? You lost more than a thousand men. You marched into an alien land without sending out scouts. You are lucky to be still alive, and luckier still to be sailing home with your weapons and your honour intact."

The big man flushed. "I know that. I had no thought of demeaning you. What I meant was that we were marching to join King Lot. By his tale your people are nought but a nest of bandits who threaten die existence of his kingdom. He told us that you are a rabble."

I grunted. "Well, if rabble we are, we are a well-disciplined rabble."

"Aye, and a strangely honourable one. I am Fergus, brother to King Athol and uncle to Donuil. My nephew has told me of your behaviour and of your treatment of him. I will take back your conditions to my brother Athol, and I am here to swear my solemn pledge that you will hear no more of us for five years from this date." I nodded my head, accepting his pledge, and he went on, "At that time, five years from now, we will return to this spot to claim our prince. If he is well and alive, we will take him and leave."

"He will be."

"He had better be, noble Roman! Take good care of him, for if he is not here on the due date, you will have war with every man on our island, and not all your Roman wiles will win that war for you."

I looked him straight in the eye. "I hear you. If your prince abides by his sworn word he will come to no ill at my hands, nor at the hands of any of my people."

The big man did not take his eyes away from mine. "Make you sure that he takes no ill at the hand of any, be he friend or enemy."

I allowed a smile to soften my next words. "Will you threaten me forever, or shall we take our leave of each other now?"

He nodded. "So be it. He is in your hands."

Donuil still had not spoken, but now he turned to his uncle and embraced him, and we withdrew to watch from a hillside as they embarked and put to sea, each boat towing an empty one behind it. When they had shrunk to the size of toys on the horizon, I turned to look at my young prisoner. He stood erect, straight as a spear, his eyes fixed on the distant fleet, his face giving not the slightest indication of what thoughts were going through his head. I felt for him, imagining what my own feelings would have been had our situations been reversed.

"Prince Donuil," I said. "It is time. We must return to Camulod. You may ride behind one of my men."

He looked at me with empty, emotionless eyes. "I will walk."

"So be it." I gave the signal to my waiting troops and we began the long journey home.

He walked every step of the way, his pace tireless and unflagging, at the left side of my horse. On one occasion, when we were crossing boggy ground, I told him to take hold of my stirrup, but he merely looked at me and kept his hands by his sides. We did not speak further. When we stopped to camp on the first and second nights, he accepted food wordlessly and then lay down to sleep in the spot I indicated to him, mid I had no doubt that he slept soundly, for we had been pushing our horses at a hard walk, which meant brutal speed for a man on foot.

As soon as we reached Camulod, I handed over my prisoner into the keeping of a centurion with orders that he be confined, unchained, in one of the cells that we kept for our own petty offenders, and there I left him for twenty-four hours, giving him time to consider close confinement while I looked after the affairs that had accumulated during my absence.

Uther had not returned from his foray against Lot, although he had sent back the legates Titus and Flavius with two hundred of the four hundred men they commanded. Frustrated by their failure to find Lot on our lands, Titus told me, Uther had decided to pursue him all the way back to Cornwall if he had to, but could not justify depriving Camulod of three of its senior commanders for a task he felt could be handled effectively by one. He had taken half of their troops in addition to his own and had penetrated the south-western peninsula with a force of five hundred, since which time no word had been heard of him. My father was worried. On his return, after speaking to the two legates, he had called an immediate meeting of the Council to discuss all that had happened since our departure, and to assess the state of readiness of the fort and of the colonists themselves. By the time I arrived with my cavalry, he had everything in order. He was in the midst of redeploying his infantry, who had had twenty-four hours' rest and were ready for anything, and I was happy to discover that there was almost nothing for me to do. The few minor duties that fell to me were quickly taken care of, and I was free to make my way to my hidden valley and Cassandra. I left word with my father and rode out of the fort just as the shadows began to stretch out in the late afternoon.

Despite the lateness of the hour, the sun was still hot and I sweated freely as I rode, the beads springing from my forehead beneath the headband of my helmet and running down to burn the corners of my eyes while others bedevilled me with the tickling of their progress down the valleys of my back and chest under my heavy armour. I found nothing strange, however, in riding to a lovers' tryst fully armed and armoured, and had the thought occurred to me then, I would have been hard pressed to recall a time when I went anywhere, even within Camulod itself, without my heavy and ungainly impedimenta. My armour, from helmet to boots, was as customary to me as my skin, so that I was aware of it—and uncomfortable—only when I removed any part of it.

Evening was approaching as my horse emerged from the narrow path through the bushes into the tranquillity of Avalon. I saw Cassandra immediately, standing with her back to me, staring into the waters of the pool at her feet. Some instinct must have warned her that she was being watched, for she turned and saw me there. Even in the gathering dusk I saw the pleasure in her eyes at the sight of me. She came running across the short, green turf towards me, her teeth gleaming in a smile of welcome, and I sat there on my horse and watched her approach, feeling my own cheeks bunching in a smile. She stopped right in front of me and her hands bade me welcome, and invited me to step down from my saddle.

As soon as my feet were on the ground she took me by the hand and began tugging me in the direction of the hut. I let her pull me and led my horse behind us, dropping the reins as we approached the door so that he began to graze immediately.

The room was filled with flowers. Vases and bowls of blossoms bedecked every available surface and the scent of them hung sweet and heavy in the air. A small fire burned brightly in the fireplace, but the room was free of smoke, and I was grateful once again to my uncle for teaching me die secret of building a flue. She stopped me in the middle of the floor and took hold of both my hands, holding me at arm's length and running her eyes over me from head to foot. I did the same to her and wondered again how I could ever have thought her ugly. Then her hands were undoing the fastening of my helmet and removing it from my head. When she had laid it on the table, she undid my new cloak, running her fingers admiringly over the great silver bear embroidered on it before she folded it and placed it beside the helmet. Next, she took off my swordbelt and armoured kirtle of leather, so that I wore only my knee-length tunic. She had never done this before, and I stood there like an ox, grinning with pleasure and making no move to help her as she ministered to me.

When she had stripped me completely of my armour she grinned at me, poked me in the stomach, skipped nimbly to the door, and ran outside. Smiling, and wondering what she was about, I followed her slowly, only to find that she had already run more than half-way to the entrance of the path down which I had so recently arrived. Evidently, I was supposed to follow her. I drew a deep breath and took off in pursuit, thinking to overtake her easily, but by the time I began to experience my first shortness of breath, less than half-way up the steep, narrow path, it had begun to dawn on me that this young woman had no intention of being lightly overtaken; not only did she remain out of sight ahead of me, but I could hear no sound of her progress. I accepted the challenge, lengthened my stride and began conscientiously to control my breathing, sensing that victory in this chase might not come quickly.

I was breathing hard, almost gasping for breath, by the time I reached the summit of the path and broke into the clear ground at the top of the hill. Cassandra was waiting, grinning merrily, a hundred paces from me at the opposite end of the rolling hilltop. As soon as she knew that I had seen her, she turned and disappeared downhill again. I stifled the urge to curse, paused for the space of several heartbeats to catch my breath again, and followed her.

In the course of the hour that followed, I received a humbling lesson in physical fitness and self-sufficiency, and came within reach of her no more than twice, each time only because she allowed me to. On the first of these, when I had paused again for breath, wondering where she had gone, she dropped onto my shoulders from a tree above me, her weight knocking me off my feet and down a grassy bank. Her arms hugged me tightly to her as we rolled together and my nostrils were filled with the warm scent of her, hair and sweat and wild blossoms, all mixed with the sharp tang of crushed grass and dry, pungent, crumbling earth. We came to rest at the bottom of the slope, me lying flat on my back with the wind knocked out of me, and she sitting astride my chest, grinning down at me, her smooth, firm, bare thigh beneath my hand. Before I could move to collect myself or utter a sound, she chuckled softly in her throat, ruffled my hair and was up and away again, and I realized that she had not even been breathing hard! A short time later, she dived from beneath a bush and wrapped her arms around my knees, bringing me crashing to the ground again, but this time she did not even pause to savour her victory or feast on my discomfiture before dashing away again.

At that point, in a last, desperate attempt to safeguard the few pitiful shreds of dignity I could muster, I abandoned the chase and began to retrace my steps, willing myself to runsmoothly back towards the valley and, within moments, it seemed, she was running easily by my side, her eyes fixed on the path ahead. Accepting the futility of any attempt to reason, or even communicate with her on my terms, I ran on without looking at her, but during the gentle journey back to the hut, I was conscious of the weariness and frustration and anger draining steadily from my body, so that I arrived at our journey's end rejuvenated and only pleasantly tired. She stopped by the edge of the lake and looked up at me, her eyes shining and her skin rosy and slick with perspiration. She turned aside and ran into the lake, struggling against the pull of the water at her knees until it was deep enough for her to throw herself full length and swim. I was mere moments behind her, and the water felt wonderful.

Later, when we had emerged shivering and run into the hut, she produced two blankets for us, then took my hands and pulled me to the wooden chair beside the fire, tugging and pushing at me until I sat down. Then she knelt, swathed in her blanket, and began poking and prodding at the fire, stirring up the flames until they blazed and adding dry, thick logs. That done, she lit a taper from the fire and used it to light three oil lamps, and all the while I was content to sit and shiver and watch her, drinking in her every movement, catching glimpses of the way the single, wet tunic she wore clung to the lines of her body beneath the blanket, and itching to take her around the waist and kiss her marvel of a mouth with its wide, full lips.

In the face of her now obvious delight in my presence, the only things that restrained me from laying hands on her were the warning of Daffyd and the memory of what had been done to her. Although her body was healed, those wounds were still too fresh in her mind. I contented myself with looking at her, wondering if the tumultuous feelings I was undergoing were merely unrequited lust, stirred and aggravated by the exercise she had put me through earlier, or the magic that I had heard men talk of as love. I had thought myself familiar with both, for I had lusted for years and had love for many people—mainly men, with Luceiia a notable exception. What I now felt in mind and body, however, bore little resemblance to my love for my great-aunt.

The heat from the fire soon dried us off, and as the dusk deepened outside, the combined light of the lamps and the fire grew stronger, casting dancing shadows on the walls of the hut. It was a simple, crude building in the light of day, but now, in this darkening evening, it took on a warmth and air of comfort that were soothing, almost magical.

As soon as the lamps were burning clearly, Cassandra laid aside the blanket that had covered her and went to move the pile of my outer clothes and armour from the table into a corner. It made an awkward burden, and I started to stand up to help her, but she saw the move and shook her head, frowning and waving her hand to make me stay where I was, so I relaxed again and continued watching her.

Once the table was clear, she went to a row of boxes on a shelf and produced bread, cheese, apples and wine, laying them out on the table before me. I felt saliva spurt under my tongue and realized I had eaten nothing since dawn. She herself ate little, but she watched me closely as I wolfed down my food, her eyes moving from my plate to my mouth with every bite I took. I offered to share my food with her, but she smiled and shook her head, content, apparently, to watch me eat. Eventually, I had had enough and pushed my plate away. She refilled my wine cup, then cleared away the remaining bread and cheese, returning it to the storage bins on the shelf. It was dark outside now. The firelight had faded again.

"Listen," I said, as a nightingale began to sing outside.

She paid no attention, either to my words or to the bird's song, and I was once again smitten with a stark reminder of all the beauty of the world that was lost to her. I had known that she was deaf, and had accepted it, but it had not struck me until that moment that she could never enjoy the song of a bird. I felt a great lump in my throat and my eyes blurred, and then she was standing before me, her eyes wide with alarm and concern at the sight of my tears. I shook my head violently and started to wipe them away with my wrist, but she stopped me and wiped my cheeks dry with her own soft fingertips. I could see the question in her face, Why are you weeping, Caius Merlyn?

I forced back the pain and tried to smile at her. It was not difficult. What I did find difficult, however, was to reconcile the difference I perceived between the boyish hoyden who had outrun and humiliated me that afternoon and the demure and gentle person who was now so evidently content to share her home and fire with me. She took me by the hand again and led me to the chair by the fire, and this time, when I was seated, she sat at my feet, holding the fingers of my right hand in her own and resting her cheek against the back of my hand as she stared into the fire. I could feel the softness of her face against my hand with every nerve end in my body, and I dared to move the tip of one finger minutely, entranced with the smoothness of her skin. Tiny though the movement was, she turned and smiled up at me, squeezing my hand and ending the freedom of that finger.

I have no idea how long we sat thus, silent and motionless, but eventually the heat of the fire made me drowsy and I startled both of us by awakening with a jerk as my neck muscles relaxed and allowed my head to drop forward. I blinked myself wide awake and with great reluctance rose to go, hating the. thought of leaving to ride back to Camulod alone.

She watched me intently as I rose, and crossed to the corner where my armour lay, and then she got up and came to me, holding out her hands to help me with my harness. I was in the act of strapping my armoured kirtle around my waist, and she took the buckle in one hand and the end of the strap in the other, frowning gently up at me. I grinned at her and sucked in my waist, and she pulled tight on both ends of the belt, but without making any effort to feed the end through the buckle. Instead, she shook her head, a questioning look on her face. I assumed that she was asking me if I had to go so soon, and I pantomimed tiredness and the need to sleep, pointing to the door and, by association, towards Camulod. In answer, she turned her head towards the pile of furs that was her bed, her hands still pulling the straps of my kirtle tight. But I knew that I could not sleep there. I wasn't that strong. I shook my head and smiled again, and she let go of the belted kirtle so that it fell at my feet. There was a determined look about her that surprised me. I watched her as she returned quickly to the fireplace and threw some fresh wood onto the embers. This done, she came back to where I stood, stooped to retrieve my belt and then straightened up to look directly at me. Deliberately, as though defying me to stop her, she threw the skirt of armoured straps back into the corner and took me firmly by both hands, drawing me, not altogether unwillingly, towards her bed, where she tugged at me until I sat down.

As soon as I was down, she put one hand on my chest and pushed me back onto the furs and began to undo the thongs of my sandals. I relaxed and let her do it, enjoying myself immensely and fighting hard to keep the pleasure of looking at her and enjoying her ministrations separate from the sexual anticipation that was urging me to seize her and bear her down with me into the intimacy of the soft furs. The former was permissible; the latter was simply not.

Her head was bowed as she concentrated on untying the knot that held my left sandal in place and I propped myself up on my elbows, the better to enjoy the sight of her beauty in the leaping firelight; I decided that on my next journey I would bring her something richer and softer to wear than the plain cloth tunic she wore now. The knot came loose and she pulled the sandal off, leaving me free to wiggle my toes, and as I did so she laughed aloud. The sound shocked me, for it was the first time I had heard it, and I was astonished to realize that she laughed like any ordinary woman, in a gurgle of clear, liquid notes of great purity and beauty.

"Cassandra!" I said, but of course she paid no attention. I touched her on the head and she looked at me in inquiry, the laugh still radiant on her face. "You laughed!" She saw my lips move and tilted her head to one side like a puppy dog and again I was smitten with pain at the impossibility of communicating with her. The smile lingered on her face and I made myself smile back at her as I shook my head to indicate that it was not important. She reached for my hands again and tugged me to a kneeling position. I offered no resistance, allowing myself to be positioned as she wanted. When she had me kneeling upright, she made a strange gesture which had me completely at a loss. She read the incomprehension in my face and repeated the gesture, crossing her arms in front of her and drawing her hands up her sides, and I realized that she was telling me to remove my tunic. All at once I was overcome with embarrassment. I shook my head firmly. This time, her tiny headshake and slightly puzzled frown said Why not? as clearly as though she had spoken the words aloud. I could only shrug helplessly. Very deliberately, she tilted her head again, this time to the other side, and scanned my face intently, then she rose to her feet and slowly drew her own shift over her head, not taking her eyes from mine for a second in die process. I stared in wonder at her beauty. She had gained weight and lost all signs of her injuries since the time when I had gazed in horror at the damage that had been done to her. Then, her lacerated body had seemed thin and undernourished; now, it seemed as though I was looking at a different woman. Her breasts, though not large, were full and rounded, her belly smooth and flat and unblemished. She stood with her feet slightly apart and only a blind man would have been unaware of the thick profusion of hair between her firm, round thighs. I knew my mouth had fallen open, rapt as I was in the splendour of the sight before me. And then she stooped, quick as a wink, seized the top fur of the pile and was underneath it almost before I saw her move, pulling it up to her chin so that only her perfect face with its huge eyes and mouth remained exposed to my gaze, and still I did not move, though the blood was hammering in my ears.

Slowly, lying on her back, her gaze fixed on mine, she raised the covering in a plain request for me to join her. Eventually I moved to do so, reaching for the edge of the covering, but she dropped it immediately and shook her head and pointed her chin explicitly at my tunic. I removed it, feeling strange—not foolish, but unsure of myself, for I could hear Daffyd's exhortations against doing anything that might hurt her either physically or in her mind. I moved again to join her, now wearing nothing but my breech clout, and again she stopped me with an upraised palm and three distinct, pointing jabs of her finger. I nodded my understanding and rose to extinguish the lamps, after which I returned to find her holding up the covering to allow me to climb in beside her.

The furs smelled of wild lavender and roses and I wondered how she had managed to achieve that effect as I lowered myself cautiously to rest beside her. We had soft bedclothes at home in Camulod, but still used skins on campaign. My own campaign bed skins still smelled feral after years of use. I could see her face quite clearly in the flickering firelight, although my face must have been in shadow to her. As I came to rest facing her, lying on my left side, she moved slightly towards me and I felt the warmth of the soft underside of her thigh against my bent knee. I held my breath, not daring to believe that this was actually happening. I lay there unmoving, drinking in the beauty of her, my knee, our sole point of contact, feeling as though it was being burned with exquisite fire. We lay like that for long moments until my breathing steadied and my smile became less like a rictus, and then I felt her thigh withdraw from my knee and knew bitter disappointment until I realized what she was doing. She pulled herself up on her right elbow above me and undid the fastening of her hair with her left hand, allowing it to fall in a loose cascade across her face. The action exposed her breasts to my view from a distance of less than a handspan and I gazed at the tension of the firm skin and the pointed pinkness of her tiny nippies. She reached her free hand towards me and traced the outline of my cheek in a feather-like caress. I felt a lump of pure tenderness swell in my throat. Goose-flesh broke out all over my body as her fingertips dropped from my chin to my neck and moved down almost weightlessly to trace the length of my breastbone. She saw my hissed intake of breath and felt the involuntary stiffening of my whole body, for she smiled again and increased the pressure of her index finger by a hair's weight, continuing her movement until her fingertip rested gently in my navel. My stomach was as tight as a drum as her hand retraced its delicious journey until her palm and fingers gently cupped my right shoulder and pushed until I was lying flat on my back. I closed my eyes and felt a shudder pass through my body with the pressure of her breast against my chest and the soft, moist, unbelievable warmth of her glorious mouth covering my own, and I realized that all of the kisses I had ever experienced had been waiting for this.

I am an old man, now, recalling this night across the abyss of fifty years and more, but the memory of that kiss still stirs the hairs on my arms and causes nightingales to sing in my memory. In all of his writings, save for those in which he dealt with his friend Equus's sister Phoebe and with Scilla Titens and a few intimate recollections of his marriage, Publius Varrus kept his private thoughts of his women to himself, as did my grandfather Caius. My father spoke to me of love and lust on a few occasions, straightforwardly as a soldier will, but I, for my part, spoke to no man of love. I was regarded as a celibate, which indeed I became. But I have known a love that transformed my life and shaped the man I was to become, and I feel no constraint in writing of that love today. The awakening of it that night, when I was reborn into a world of brilliant colours and amazing textures, changed my life and reshaped the foundations of my manhood.

It was the most wondrous night of my whole life, and I passed through it as one would a wonderland of purest fantasy, willing the falling sands of time to float like thistledown in summer zephyrs and struggling mightily now and again, flaring in silent rebellion, each time an errant thought of Camulod and that other, lesser life teased at the edges of my consciousness to remind of me of things undone and duties unfulfilled. The hours stretched slowly, filled with wondrous, rippling darkness and unearthly joys the like of which I had never imagined.

I avoided the hour of reckoning—of wakening—as resolutely as I could. Eventually, however, I could procrastinate no longer. Camulod and my duties were waiting and I had to go to them. Cassandra helped me to dress and walked with me, her arm around my waist, to where my horse stood grazing. I felt a stab of guilt that I had left the poor beast there all night wearing his saddle. I tightened the girth and turned to bid my love farewell, but she was gone. I looked all around me, scanning the entire valley with my eyes. She was nowhere to be seen, yet I knew she was watching me, unwilling to display the tears that this leaving must bring.

I stepped up into the saddle and walked my horse away, back into the world of men and their cares and woes.