The Saxon Shore

"Oh, then I beg your pardon, Caius Merlyn," he drawled, making no attempt to hide the mockery in his tone, and I found myself growing angrier, even though I knew I had no cause and was overreacting beyond logic.

"Fine, then," I snapped. "My pardon is extended—graciously," I added, in a gentler tone, breathing deeply, fighting for composure. "I find Ludmilla admirable, simply because of the terms in which you have spoken of her, but I have no special awareness of her as a woman."

"No special awareness. . . I see. You find her undesirable?"

"Yes!" Far too abrupt, I told myself immediately, and then began again. "No, that is untrue. I find her very . . . attractive, I suppose would be the word, were I attracted to her." Lucanus looked down at his cup, masking his face with his free hand. "Besides," I went on, "I have no allure for her. She is your student, your devotee." I straightened in my own seat now, drawing a deep breath. "What do you plan for her?"

He lowered his hand from his face and raised his goblet in my direction, a slight smile on his lips. "Plan for her? What do you mean? Or should I take that merely as it emerged? I plan, if anything, that she shall become a gifted surgeon, woman though she be. God knows, she has the gifts and the abilities to make me proud of having taught her."

" Taught her? Is that all?"

His smile seemed to grow wider. "All? What more could there be?" His pause was brief, but I sensed a change in the direction of his thoughts. "Caius, when we first met, you did not like me. You told me so in no uncertain words, do you recall?"

I did, and nodded my acknowledgment. He sniffed. "Why did you feel that way, can you remember?"

I shook my head, recalling it clearly. "I was an idiot, young and intransigent, arrogant and conceited. I thought I knew everything there was to know of men and life. It struck me that you had no sense of humour; that you were staid and pompous; humourless. Yes, that was it."

He nodded, looking into his cup. "Hmm! Quite natural, I suppose. It was a mutual thing. I found you equally distasteful, although I never told you so. And yet, as time progressed, and circumstances brought us together more and more, our antipathy changed to something vastly different. We became friends."

I grimaced, stretching the skin around my mouth and eyes, trying to shake off the wine haze. "So?" I asked. "What has that to do with Ludmilla?"

"Nothing at all, and everything. How long have we been friends now?"

I thought about that. "Five years? Six, perhaps seven."

Something in his eyes, something enigmatic, alerted me to the import of what he would say next, yet when they came his words caught me unprepared. "Seven. And how often have you known me to consort with women?"

I shrugged, puzzled. "Seldom. Never, in fact."

" That is correct." He nodded. "Now tell me, have you ever wondered about that?"

"No," I said, and then paused, frowning. "At least, not until I found you at the campsite with Ludmilla. Then I wondered."

"As well you might, and should have." He shrugged, made a tiny face, sipped his wine and then sat back against the couch. "Caius, my friend, I, as a man, have little use for women."

I felt something sag within me, some bracing, deep within my being, that had been stressed with the anticipation of bearing a different weight from that which it now felt. Luke watched me, that same enigmatic smile playing about his mouth.

"Does that dismay you, Cay?"

I merely shook my head, unable to articulate a response. His smile grew wider.

"You have loved a woman, Cay, and found happiness therein. I never have, but then, I have never sought what you sought and found. It is not in me." He voiced each of those five words separately, leaving their emphasis to fall upon my ear like five clear notes upon a harpist's lyre, then leaned forward quickly, his eyes fastened upon mine as consternation bloomed across my face. "Wait, Cay!" he said, before I could respond. "Before you say a word, or think a thought, consider this: the man from whom you have just heard those words is your close friend Lucanus."

I sat back, leaning away from him, struggling to keep the disgust that roiled inside me from showing upon my face.

"What difference does that make?"

He seemed unruffled, but I detected something, a settling, a guardedness descend about his eyes. "Difference, Cay? What difference should it make? None at all. I have not changed in any way since we began to speak of this." He drank again, unhurriedly and naturally. "I have not changed in any way since first we met, or since we became friends. I am myself. Lucanus the physician. Legionary Surgeon. Your friend. I have merely admitted that there is no intimate place for women in my life."

I could no longer sit still and face him. I rose to my feet, feeling the drunkenness falling away from me as though I had been doused with cold water. Stooping, I placed my goblet on the tabletop in front of me and then stepped away from him, my eyes sweeping around the walls of this familiar room as though seeking an anchor, a point of reference from which I could regain my lost perspective.

"How can it not make a difference, Luke?" I barely recognized my own voice. "There is a vast difference."

"In what?" I heard the challenge in his voice.

"In everything!"

"You mean in your opinion, do you not?"

"Yes, I do, since you push me to admission. It is unnatural, it seems to me, to say what you have just said. How can a man be natural, if he has no place for women in his life?"

"Unnatural? I said no intimate place, Cay, not no place."

"Place, space, need, desire, they all boil down to the same thing in terms of men and women, Luke. The need for intimacy exists in all of us. It is an inescapable part of life, one of man's primal urgencies. In normal men, it demands the closeness of a woman."

"And therefore men untouched by such demands must be unnatural. Is that what you are saying?"

"Of course it is!"

"Of course it is. Why then, you are unnatural."

The enormity of that left me speechless for a moment. I was unnatural, when he had just confessed to being homosexual? He pressed on.

"Ludmilla is a beautiful woman, by anyone's criteria. She is young, strong, lovely, healthy, intelligent, articulate and free of encumbrances, and yet you feel no attraction to her. Even worse, it seems to me, you are prepared to fight against the mere suggestion you might find her pleasing. That, my friend, is unnatural."

"Wait, wait. Wait just a moment!" In my haste to interrupt him I was almost shouting. "My feelings, or the lack of them, for Ludmilla have no bearing here."

Now he blinked at me in astonishment, and a brief silence fell between us before he continued. "Are you serious? Then tell me, please, what has?"

I shook my head hard to clear it, thinking I was missing something of importance. "Lucanus," I said. "I am becoming confused, and angry. Let me speak slowly and clearly here. Any feelings I may have for Ludmilla, or for any other woman, are not at issue when we are talking of what is natural and what is unnatural. It is your tastes that are unnatural, your lack of a place for women, which amounts—can only amount—to a love for men. That love, while not uncommon, I've been told, could never be called natural or normal!"

"Oh!" His voice was soft, almost hurt. He rose to his feet again and made his way to the wine jug, where he poured for himself before offering the jug to me. I shook my head. When he had poured, he turned back towards me, resting his buttocks against the table's edge.

"So," he said. "You scorn such relationships?"

"Between man and man? Of course I do."

"Hmm. They are unnatural, of course. Unpalatable, would you say? Unpleasant? Degrading?" I nodded, wordless. "And you could never have a friend who was. . . afflicted by such abnormality." It was not a question. I made no response. "It would repulse you?" I nodded again.

"Yes, Luke, it would. It does."

"How old are you, Caius?"

I frowned. "You know I'm thirty-one. Why?"

He smiled. "You are very old to be so young and innocent."

"Innocent?" I thought he was mocking me. "I am no innocent."

He waggled one hand from side to side. "In some ways, no; in others . . ."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

He looked me straight in the eye. "It means, my friend, that you are naive in some areas of your thinking. You have gone through life bearing these ridiculous notions within you while practising a selective blindness that is unconscionable."

I was frowning now, beginning to bluster. "What are you talking about? Are you accusing me of wishful ignorance in not suspecting you? You gave me no indications."

"Of what, Caius? Suspecting me of what? Indications of what? A lack of ability, of trustworthiness, of integrity?"

"Of deviance!"

"Ah! Deviance!" He swung away from me, averting his face and holding himself rigid in silence for long moments. Then: "Deviance. A wonderful word, Caius, so rich in meaning, so serpentine in its implications! Fell me, would you call your friend the Legate Titus deviant?"

"Of course not!"

"Quite. What about Flavius?"

"I—What . . . what are you implying?"

He turned again to face me. "Nothing, Caius. Nothing at all, I swear to you. Titus and Flavius are two of the finest men you and I have ever known. They are the best of the best, honourable, trustworthy, dependable, honest and upstanding. They are both old men now and have given their lives, all of their lives, to serving your father and his dreams and hopes and aspirations, and when he died they transferred all their loyalties to you. But have you ever seen either of them with a woman, Cay? For that matter, have you ever seen them apart for more than a few hours at a time?"

"Are you say—"

"I am saying nothing other than that, according to the strictures of your definition, Titus and Flavius are unnatural. Would you not agree?"

"No, I would not." This emerged as a whisper.

"Good. That, at least, is as it should be. Very well. Let us retrace our steps, you and I. This all began by my asking you one particular question— whether you had ever known me to consort with a woman. Now let me ask you another. Other than yourself, have you ever known me to consort with, or have personal, intimate dealings with a man, outside of my work?"

"No."

"Any man at all?" "No."

"Why do you suppose that is, Cay?"

"I don't know. Because you have no . . . friends. . . apart from me."

He nodded, acquiescing, smiling a little, wintry smile again. "Abnormal, would you say? Unnatural?"

I coughed, feeling awful. "No. Unusual, that's all. You are . . . unique in that."

"Thank you. Now I will tell you something else that might surprise you. Two things, in fact." He raised his cup and emptied it at a gulp, and then looked back to where I sat as though stricken, quivering with shame. "I have had far too much to drink today, which is the reason for this conversation's having taken place, and I have been celibate for thirty years."

"Celibate?" I had heard the word, but I had never considered it, or its true meaning, before now.

"Celibate. Sexually chaste and hence unfettered by my own lusts. Free of involvement. Free of commitment. Free of responsibility to anyone, sexually speaking, except myself. For thirty years. Longer than that, in fact." He picked up the jug again. "And now, if you will drink with me again, I'll tell you why. Are we still friends?"

I nodded, thoroughly chastened now, and held out my cup: He poured, replaced the jug, and then sat down across from me again. When he had settled himself, he grinned at me. "Celibacy," he said. "What does it mean to you?"

I shook my head, admitting my ignorance. "I'm not quite sure, apart from the lack of sexuality involved in it. Doesn't it mean unmarried?"

"It does, but the underlying meaning goes far deeper in certain contexts. In its absolute sense, celibacy entails total, voluntary abstention from any form of sexuality. What I'm going to speak of now is philosophy, Cay; my philosophy, but not of my invention, merely of my adoption. When I was studying to become a surgeon, I had many teachers, all of them brilliant men. One of them, however, was a phenomenon and a genuine magus, in the esoteric sense. You understand what I mean by that?"

"I think so. You mean he was a sorcerer."

He laughed again, delight in his voice. "A sorcerer! Well, I suppose he was, in many ways, but no, that is not what I meant. A magus is a Master, Caius, in the sense of mastery of arcane lore, of knowledge. The Magi who attended the Christ Child were not termed such without reason, but none would call them sorcerers. This magus, my teacher—his name was Philus, by the way—was a living repository of the arts and skills and all the acquired knowledge of the physician's craft down through the ages. He had a phenomenal memory, Cay, and could recall, verbatim, texts he had read in his extreme youth. Nothing Philus read or learned was ever forgotten; nothing he saw went unremembered. And he lived only to teach his knowledge to young, willing minds. He it was who taught me about celibacy, and he had been an adherent all his life. He equated celibacy with power, Cay, with potency. 'Empty your body of the urge to procreate,' he used to say, 'and you release in it the power to think, absorb and grow; the power to know and rule yourself; the greatest power available to man.' I had great difficulty with that, at first, for I was young and virile, rudely potent in that other sense. I had never known love, but lust and I were well acquainted." He paused, remembering. "I came to know Philus better, I believe, than anyone else ever had. In time, I became his disciple, and came to believe the truth of what he believed. He died when I had just begun to really learn from him, and soon after that I joined the legions. But I have never wavered from his ways. My life has been my work, and I have been content to have it thus." He grinned again. "And then you came along, with your injured little waif, Cassandra, and we became friends. I had never had a friend before, in the personal sense."

"Tell me more about celibacy and potency." My discomfort of moments earlier had vanished, and for the next hour and more, while the house grew dark and silent around us, Luke talked of his beliefs. The arcane mysteries of all mankind, he explained, were arcane simply because the mass of men were incapable of according them the concentration they demanded in order to be understood. The study, the seclusion and the academic self-absorption necessary for that understanding, he maintained, were incompatible with and mutually exclusive of the pettiness of fleshly things, the merest, yet the most disruptive of which was sexuality. To illustrate that thesis, he cited the misunderstanding we had just gone through, where he had said one thing, and I had heard another altogether and had been outraged, my narrow sensibilities offended. Only my preoccupation with the sensual, he said, could explain that.

I listened, fascinated, accepting the justice of his harsh criticism, and soon we even stopped drinking. I drank only his words thereafter, completely unaware that I was seated at my teacher's knee.

VI

I awoke. long before dawn the following day and made the fundamental error of rolling quickly from my bed as though it was a normal day. Of course, it was not. The day before, and the night that followed it, had been distinctly abnormal, and my body was polluted with poisonous wine residues. I spent much time in the steam room of the baths before the sun came up, attempting to sweat some of the toxins from my quaking frame, and had little stomach for food thereafter. I did, however, force myself to eat, and to drink great draughts of cold water, and by mid- morning I was beginning to hope, although with reservations, that I might yet survive.

The day was brisk, with a hint of coldness in the breeze that augured an early winter, and I threw myself into my work, forcing my unwilling body to deal with the necessities of the daily round within the fortress. By noon, I had inspected the Guard and the Garrison, parading the latter formally in the courtyard. I had also visited the invalid troopers in all eleven of our hastily designated, ancillary sick bays, speaking with each of them who was capable of speech. I had looked in, too, upon Popilius in the Infirmary and found him clean-shaven once again, and looking far stronger than he had been the previous day. We spoke for some moments of his return to duty, but did not discuss the form such duty might now take. I had the feeling that he had no more desire than I to deal with the extent of his physical decline at present. I left the Infirmary deep in thought about the advancing age of all our most important personnel, and conscious of a disappointment at not having seen Ludmilla.

That thought led me to a recollection of Luke's passionate defence of celibacy as a path to esoteric power—whatever that might really mean, a skeptical voice said clearly in my head—and I shook my head in wonder at the strangeness of his viewpoint, telling myself that we would have to talk again, he and I, in sobriety and at greater length, about his convictions. His pronouncements, as they came back to me now in my distempered state, sat uneasily within me, rendered alien by the harsh light of day and the pounding of a violent headache, but I clearly remembered how impressed I had been at the time by the clarity and logic he had brought to their presentation. But then I had been drunk, and writhing in shame over the unwarranted assumption I had made concerning his sexual propensities.

I had almost reached the stables before I realised where I was going, and the sudden recognition of where I was made me stop in my tracks. I had not set out to go to the stables. I had not set out to go anywhere, in fact. I had merely begun to walk, and my feet had brought me here. Hovering indecisively, I quickly reviewed my list of duties for the day. All that I had set out to do that day, in addition to my normal tasks, had been done. I turned and looked back the way I had come. The scene was peaceful and ordinary. Guards stood at their appointed posts and the people of Camulod went about their daily business, scurrying or dawdling as their natures dictated. I saw the Legate Titus walk by in the distance, accompanied by one of his junior officers whose name escaped me, and then I saw Ludmilla, disappearing around the far corner of my great-aunt's house. I stifled the instantaneous urge to follow her, and turned my eyes elsewhere. A breeze wafted the smell of the stables into my nostrils, and with it came an image of a solitary grave by a placid lake, and a sudden emptiness in my chest. I had not visited the grave of my wife and unborn child since my return from Cornwall, a full week ago and more. Suddenly I knew why I had come to the stables, and I made my way inside and directly to the stall that held Germanicus.

As soon as he was saddled, I sought out Titus and informed him I was leaving the fortress for at least the afternoon, but possibly for longer. I told him I would be within summons, in my secret place—he knew of it, but not of its location—and reminded him of how I could be found in an emergency, by sending out trumpeters to the tops of the three highest neighbouring hills.

A very short time later I approached the main gates of the fortress.

Before I could pass through the portal, however, I had to rein in my horse and swing him aside to allow passage to an enormous wagon pulled by a team of four large horses that had just come up the hill road from the plain. The vehicle was piled high with massive wooden casks, and the driver inched his team forward slowly, cursing the horses fluently and familiarly by their individual names while peering back over his shoulder to where another man stood behind him, on the edge of the first row of casks, craning his neck to make sure that the topmost barrels of the load would clear the lintel of the gateway without mishap. They did, the load passed through and the second man spun nimbly, balancing himself easily with one hand on the teamster's shoulder before he stepped down and sank to the bench beside him. The teamster was unknown to me. The second man was Peter Ironhair, and I recognized him a heartbeat before he saw me.

"Whoa! Hold up there, Torn."

The wagon creaked to a halt and Ironhair faced me, eye to eye, less than three paces separating us.

"Well," he said, his voice pleasant enough. "It's the great Merlyn Britannicus, Legate Commander of the Forces of Camulod."

I nodded to him, keeping my face blank of expression. "Ironhair. Good day to you." He stood up again, looking down at me now, his eyes fixed in an unblinking gaze of cold hostility. Refusing to be challenged to a staring contest, I swung my mount around again to ride on, but the bulk of his wagon, slewed slightly sideways, blocked the gateway. I glanced back at him.

"Your wagon is blocking the gate."

"It's a big wagon." He made no move to signal his driver to proceed. I did it for him.

"Move on, driver."

"Stay where you are, Tom."

I sucked in a deep breath, being careful to show no sign of irritation. I was in an untenable situation, faced with a potentially ugly confrontation I could not avoid other than by backing down completely and riding away. I had no fear of seeming to back down to Ironhair in his own eyes; I would have ample opportunity, even if I had to create it myself, of straightening that matter out in days to come. But already there were people, passersby, forming a crowd around us, awaiting passage, burdened with sacks and laden with bundles, and by that almost magical chemistry found even in the smallest crowd, they were aware already of the tension between us. Besides that, several of the gate guards were watching now. The point was rapidly approaching where a public dispute would be unavoidable. I decided to put as fair a face upon things as I could, and gently guided my horse completely around, taking care to jostle none of the people close to me and urging them to fall back and let the wagon pass.

I rode off for some distance, back into the courtyard, and the crowd followed me. The wagon remained where it was, Ironhair still standing at the driver's bench, his eyes on me.

"Bring your wagon forward."

His answer was flat, unequivocal and provocative. "Not until you and I have talked."

I spurred my mount forward quickly, back to where I had been. The people behind me surged forward. Before they could hear me, I threw a quiet warning to Ironhair. "You are obstructing the thoroughfare. Move it now, or I'll have the guards move it for you and confiscate your load for public mischief."

"Hah!" His shout, and the broad sweep of the arm that accompanied it, were for the benefit of the crowd now within earshot again. "You hear that, people of Camulod? The noble Legate here threatens me with forfeiture of my goods if I do not, this instant, obey his commands. He has, I think, forgotten that his powers apply only to soldiers and not to honest citizens. I have broken no law, that he should bludgeon me with threats. All I have done, am doing, is being slow to move my wagon through this gate."

"Well, hurry it up, damn you, you're keeping me from my tasks!" This issued from the burly throat of the man nearest me, a hulking giant who plainly had no sympathy with Ironhair or his cause.

His interruption took Ironhair completely by surprise. He stopped, and gaped down at the man. "What?" was all he could summon up in reply.

"I said get your damned wagon out of my way. Are you deaf, as well as stupid?"

Ironhair was open-mouthed, and the sight of his surprise took the edge off my anger, so that I found myself having to stifle a grin. Another voice on my left took up the plaint. "Come on, Ironhair, move the shit-filled wagon and let us through the gates. We haven't got all day to stand around here while you preach politics."

"Politics?" I could hear the injury in his tone. "I wasn't preaching politics. This man was threatening me for no reason!"

"Aye," said the big man, "and so what? He had reason enough. You're a fool and a blowhard. Now there's three of us threatening you. Move it!"

"It's a heavy wagon!" There was a note of panic now in his voice.

"Then we'll soon lighten it. Let's have those barrels off, lads!" The crowd surged forward suddenly, and Ironhair had to shout at the top of his lungs to make himself heard above the growls that rose now from all around him.

"All right! All right, stand back! We're moving!" He punched Tom the driver on the shoulder and Tom flicked the reins. The horses leaned into their collars, the wheels began to roll and the wagon lumbered forward. I nudged my horse aside again to give it room, smiling openly now. Ironhair kept his eyes averted as he passed me amid a chorus of jeers and taunts. As soon as the way was cleared the crowd poured through, mingling with others who had waited on the other side of the gates. The two crowds melded into one swirling mass and an unknown voice came clearly to my ears from somewhere in its midst.

"No thanks necessary, Merlyn!"

I shook my head, grinning, and found myself eye to eye and grin to grin with the young decurion commander of the gate guard. He wiped the smile from his face immediately and jerked to attention, snapping me a smart salute. I returned it formally, my own face straight again, then swung my horse around to follow Ironhair's wagon back into the fortress yard, kicking him to canter until I overtook the vehicle.

"Ironhair!"

The wagon creaked to a halt and he swung around to face me, scowling. I gave him no chance to speak.

"Keep your mouth shut and listen, because I will never repeat myself. This once I warn you. In future, I act. The title you threw at me back there was accurate. Bear in mind what it means. You may seek to confront me again, but be aware that no matter what the outcome, you cannot win. By impeding me, or attempting to belittle me publicly, in performance of my duties or otherwise, and by causing confrontations of the type you just attempted, you are endangering the established order and the peace, and therefore the well-being of this Colony. We have problems enough in Camulod, caused from beyond, without internal dissension. That's why I clipped your wings in Council yesterday. You chose to take it as a personal attack, obviously. Perhaps it was, but it came from strength, Ironhair, not from weakness."

I paused, watching him. He glowered but made no attempt to speak. I continued. "Let me add this. You are a big, strong, well-made man and you might think to seek me out and challenge me privately, man to man, some time when I am not on duty." I shrugged my shoulders. "With sufficient provocation you might possibly provoke me into fighting you. Should that happen, I will thrash you, but hear me now, Ironhair, and hear me clearly. If that does happen, no matter what the outcome may be, I swear to you by the blood of the crucified Christ that you will be banished from this Colony forever, immediately thereafter, upon my preordained decree. My rank, as Legate Commander of Camulod, never goes off duty. Do you understand me?"

He blinked, glowered and turned his back on me again, and the wagon lurched into motion. I watched its progress for several moments longer and then pulled my horse into a rearing turn and aimed him towards the gateway.

I began my downhill ride in anger, my pride offended by the man's audacity, but I quickly recalled the unforeseen support so freely made available to me from the very people he had sought to use against me. No thanks necessary, Merlyn! By the time I reached the bottom of the hill road and pointed my horse towards the route to the concealed valley in the hills that held the remains of my wife and child, I had regained my normal humour, aided greatly by the realization that, for the first time that day, my head was clear and my body felt well.

That feeling of well-being lasted for the duration of my trip to Avalon, the name I had given to my secret little vale, but the sight of the lonely grave by the waterside, and the empty hut nearby, with its hanging, broken door quickly banished my good humour. The grave was weed-grown, although I had swept it clean only five or six weeks before. I knelt beside it and cleaned it again, digging with my fingers to loosen the roots of the persistent weeds that had re-established themselves so quickly. My task complete, I prayed quietly for a while, remembering the beauty of the silent young woman who lay beneath the dirt, and trying to visualize the child she might have given me which now lay mouldering beside her.

When I eventually rose to my feet again, feeling the coldness of the damp earth drying on my knees, I approached the hut and went inside. It was as I remembered it from years before, except that the coverings on the bed had been removed at some time, exposing the woven hempen rope netting strung across the frame. The rest of the interior, including the few furnishings, lay covered in dirt and old, wind-blown leaves. Even the window, hand-made from pieces of precious, almost transparent glass, was coated with dirt. I looked from the window to the long-dead fireplace, feeling my throat swell with the pain of remembered happiness as I recalled the evenings I had spent sitting there with Cassandra, warm and content in the flickering light of the flames, knowing that the comfort and warmth of the bed behind us was ours alone. As I turned to leave, I noticed the broom in the corner by the window, and remembered making it for Cassandra. I stepped to it and took it in my hands, and looked again around the tiny room, which she had always kept so clean and full of fresh flowers, and I began idly to sweep up some of the dried leaves that lay at my feet. I had no thought of cleaning the place, but what began as a listless, almost aimless recollection of my wife's use of this simple instrument somehow became a determined assault on the years of neglect, so that in a short space of time the room was clean again, no single leaf remaining. I then used the ends of the broom to sweep some of the encrusted dirt from the window glass and ended up polishing each of the glazed sections with a rag from my saddlebag, after which I washed the rag in the lake and used both it and the broom—the latter awkwardly—to scrub and then wash the woodwork of the small table, the two chairs and the plain wooden chest at the bottom of the bed. Only when I had done that did I think to open the chest, and there, wrapped in the skin of a huge black bear, I found all of the sleeping furs we had used, and I plunged my face into them, giving way to my grief at last as I smelled the faint, familiar fragrance of the dried herbs she had used to keep them fresh and purge them of their natural, feral odours.

Much later, emptied at last of tears and self-pitying grief, I rose again and looked around me, then went out to where my horse stood cropping grass and unsaddled him, removing his bridle, too, after I rubbed him down, so that he could roam free. It took but a short time to find kindling and firewood, and as that day drew to an end I sat once more in the leaping firelight, knowing that the broken door must be mended soon if this place were to remain fit for me to live in again. When darkness had fallen completely, I piled the fire high with stout logs and undressed slowly, before climbing naked into the pile of furs that smelled so strongly of her presence and her spirit. I lay awake for hours, it seems, recalling scenes from our happy past, feeling her presence all around me in the flickering shadows thrown by the dancing flames. Somewhere outside, from time to time, a dove cooed, the sound gentle and comforting, soothing the almost pleasant ache within me.

I was awake soon after dawn broke the following morning, and then, having thrown myself naked and bed-warm into the waters of the lake and towelled myself dry by the edge of Cassandra's grave with the lining of my cloak, I decided that I was not yet ready to ride back to Camulod. I was hungry, and I felt wonderful, at peace with myself and my life for the first time since regaining my memory, so I spent an hour fishing and broke my fast on two succulent trout. I spent the remainder of the morning simply lazing around after hauling a fresh supply of firewood from the depths of the woods that occupied most of the valley. Eventually, however, I could procrastinate no longer and I took the road homeward around the middle of the afternoon. Even then, I took a longer route home than was necessary, aware of the needlessness of secrecy now that Cassandra was gone. Yet I had always been jealous of the privacy afforded me by the enchanted and enchanting little place I called Avalon, and aware of a genuine need to keep all signs of my coming and going disguised from others' eyes. My father had known the place many years before I did, and so had Publius Varrus, and although neither of them had been fanciful enough to name the valley, neither had betrayed its location to anyone else other than Aunt Luceiia. Both men had told me long before, when I was a mere boy, that I should keep the knowledge of this spot close to myself, because it would afford me sanctuary at times when I required to be alone, free of the problems of others. Now, besides myself, only five other living souls that I knew of were aware of its existence: Luceiia Britannicus, Daffyd, my Druid friend and his two apprentices Tumac and Mod, and Donuil Mac Athol, my former hostage, now my friend, whose continuing absence had now begun to worry me in spite of the fact that I knew my concern was foolish. He had been gone six weeks, but I had mentally accorded his task three months. Six more weeks, then, might well elapse before I had any real cause for concern about his welfare. On the other hand, the child Arthur could come to harm in the foreign place where he was held, in spite of the fact that it was Donuil's home, long before Donuil returned to Camulod and then travelled with me across the sea to his home in Hibernia, which he called Eire.

I rode in a dream, so lulled by my own unaccustomed peace of mind that I committed errors of carelessness for which I would have had my own troopers harshly disciplined. Almost without noticing, I reached the Cut and swung my horse into it, lost in the beauty of afternoon and the peaceful trilling of the myriad birds in the forest on either side of the path I travelled. It was only the flight of a hare that made me take note of where I was, as it leaped almost from beneath my horse's feet, startling him so that he reared and would have thrown me had I not already been leaning forward, slouched over my saddle horn. The hare went bounding ahead of me, straight as the crow flies, up the narrow incline of the Cut for a good two hundred paces before swerving suddenly to disappear among the heavy growth on my right. Startled by my own heedlessness, I began to pay more attention to my surroundings, but the day was still peaceful and I remained at ease. Soon I began to wonder, as so often before, about the origins of this anomalous stretch of unfinished road that had been called the Cut since time immemorial. It was, or had been, the beginnings of a road; there was not the slightest doubt of that. As a boy, I had dug, with Uther, and found the base layers of the Roman construction. The anomaly lay in the fact that the road had been begun but never completed. The Romans had been meticulous and painstaking in their road-building. Once they began, they always completed their constructions; except, apparently, in this one particular case.

Local legend had it that, in the earliest days of the Roman conquest of Britain launched by the Emperor Claudius but conducted by Aulus Plautius, Legio II Augusta, the Second Legion, known as the Augusta, under the command of Vespasian, who would later become Emperor, had begun to build a march route north-westward into the lands of the Durotriges, the original Celts of our region, intending to establish a fortress on the north coast of the Cornish Peninsula. The Durotriges, however, had proved to be as warlike as the Iceni in the northeast and had contested the Roman right of way hotly, harassing the expedition to such effect that the roadworks had been abandoned before they could be completed, the troops involved being required much more urgently further to the southwest. In the aftermath of a hard-won Roman victory, in which the Durotriges, in alliance with the Dumnonii of the far southwest, went down to defeat, the Augusta had settled in Isca, and no purpose had ever emerged for the abandoned road, which had thus been left unfinished. Now, four hundred years later, its path was still clearly discernible, particularly here where it ran arrow-straight for eleven miles before ending abruptly in deep forest. All it had lacked was the finishing layer of paving stones, and the solidity of its construction—it had been incised right down to bedrock along this stretch—had successfully withstood the ravages of the forest for four centuries. An occasional large tree grew out of its foundations, belying its subsurface density, but by and large the Cut retained its essential nature, a long, straight, treeless, man-made incursion into the heart of the thick forests of Britain.

The gradient I had been following was so gentle as to be almost imperceptible, but I knew that anyone approaching me from the opposite direction would be looking down on me and would be aware of me for miles before I became aware of them. I travelled less than two miles along the Cut, however, before veering off to my right and making my way downhill again into more open grassland beyond the heavy forest, about ten miles from Camulod. I could see open land ahead of me, screened by only a fringe of trees, when I found the entrails of a deer which, from the condition of the remains, I knew had been killed the previous day, and probably late in the afternoon or early evening. It took no great degree of woodcraft to tell that there had been four or five in the hunting party; no care had been taken by anyone to conceal the signs of their presence. Cautiously, I followed the signs and found an abandoned encampment less than a mile away, which I estimated had housed upwards of twenty men, several of them with horses. The ashes of the four fires I found were still warm, one of them almost hot enough to contain live embers, so whoever these people were, they had moved on only recently and were still close by. Returning to my horse, I took my helmet from where it hung on my saddle horn and fitted it snugly on my head, fastening the chin strap.

I travelled more quickly now and far more circumspectly, taking the shortest, most direct route to the Colony while seeking the most concealment I could find, intent on raising the alarm. What kind of traveller, I asked myself, leaves an encampment late in the course of a day? I had immediately dismissed any possibility that they might be my own people. This party was made up of horsemen and foot-soldiers. Their signs were clear. Our patrols were never mixed, they were either one or the other, and our foot-soldiers wore hobnailed boots. The footprints I had seen around the fires were smooth-soled, lacking the hard edges common to our footwear. I rode around and down the side of a hill to find myself trapped in an open amphitheatre surrounded by dense trees. I saw movement on my right first, a flash of yellow among the greenery, and then the unmistakable glint of light upon iron. I swung hard left, kicking my horse uphill, but before I could begin to ride that way I saw five men above me, watching me. In my first glance I saw their horned helmets and large, round Saxon shields. Wrenching my mount around I saw, too, that I had been cut off from behind, where another four Saxons, armed with axes and shields, had strung out across my escape route. Germanicus continued to turn, dancing on his hind legs, and I saw the yellow that had first appeared to me, a bright yellow tunic, worn by a huge, bearded man who now stood in the open, surrounded by a group of eight or nine others. All of them had either spears or axes, the Saxons' favourite weapon, and I cursed myself uselessly for having left Camulod without my great bow. I accepted that I was a dead man; it was only the manner of my death that had to be resolved now. And then I saw my escape route: a narrow cleft in a massive stone outcrop on the hillside some fifty paces ahead and to my left, a natural split in the rock, offering me at least the hope of a defence. I dug my spurs into my horse's flanks and charged ahead as my assailants began to run towards me from all sides.

I had never paid any great attention to this spot before, although I had ridden this way several times, so I had no knowledge of what lay ahead of me beyond the entrance to the narrow ravine I entered. Just beyond the entrance, the surface levelled out and the sides began to recede, and I gave my horse his head, beginning to hope, but the floor of the defile curved to the right and beyond the turn the crevice suddenly pinched out, leaving me facing unscalable walls of rock. I pulled up and turned to ride back to face my pursuers, drawing the long sword from where it hung from the side of my saddle, knowing that the best place to meet them was the narrow entrance to the ravine. I stopped, swung my sword, took a long, deep breath, and as I did so, I heard a voice shouting above my head.

"Surrender, Caius Merlyn! You've won me my wager and you're getting too old to be allowed out riding by yourself, anyway!"

Stunned, I raised my head and saw Donuil laughing down at me from where he perched on a ledge of rock at the top of the cliff. Beside and behind him, one hand resting on Donuil's shoulder, my brother Ambrose stood grinning, his long, golden hair shining in the sunlight, and his other arm holding a large, metal helmet adorned with an enormous pair of Saxon horns.

As I sat there, overwhelmed with incredulous relief, I felt the fear and tension drain from my body like some ethereal form of sweat, while Donuil came leaping down the face of the cliff like a mountain goat to drag me bodily from my saddle and sweep me up into a great bear hug. Still too stunned to react, I was aware of the unyielding bronze of my cuirass, which saved my ribs from being crushed by his massive arms, and of the sight of my brother, who had donned his helmet and now followed Donuil's downward route more sedately, a smile of sheer pleasure lighting his handsome face. I felt my feet leave the ground, and then I felt Donuil lose his balance so that we fell with a crash and rolled on the sparsely grassed floor of the narrow gully. Reaction set in then and I began to wrestle back, straining and wriggling to achieve a headlock on the big Erse prince who was mauling me, and feeling a brief, short-lived surge of real anger at what they had done to me. Donuil, however, was bigger and heavier than I was, and so my anger was quickly dissipated by struggling with the sheer bulk of him and eventually we both relaxed, by mutual consent, to lie staring and grinning stupidly at each other like a couple of boys.

As my breathing began to return to normal, I turned my head, still sprawled backwards on my elbows, to look up to where my half-brother, Ambrose Ambrosianus Britannicus, my father's son by another woman, stood grinning down at me. My father's son by a woman other than his wife, my mother . . . The thought caused me no concern, for I knew the amazing, seemingly incredible truth behind it. Picus Britannicus, our father, had known nothing of what transpired between him and Ambrose's mother. He had been badly wounded at the time, his throat and neck mangled by an arrow that had pierced his mouth, and he had spent months under the influence of strong opiates, bound to his bed much of the time to keep him from thrashing about and further injuring his head, which was muffled in bandages. And during that time, the young wife of his aged and noble host had used the faceless, wounded man like a stallion, in the secrecy of night, attempting to impregnate herself with his seed in order to produce an heir for her feeble but beloved husband. She had succeeded, but the consequences had been tragic for her husband and for her. My father had never seen her face or even known of her existence, and had remained in ignorance of all of this, believing for a long time that the hazy, episodic fragments he could recall were no more than erotic dreams brought on by his drugged condition and his own rude, virile strength. He had told me the tale himself, decades later, but even then he had been ignorant of having sired a son. Only after my father was dead had I encountered my half-brother, a mere six months my junior and my living likeness, in the kingdom of Vortigern, king of Northumbria.

All of these thoughts rushed through my mind in the blinking of an eye and did nothing to impair the smile that spread across my lips at the sight of Ambrose grinning down at me. He nodded, silent, and then, removing his horned helmet again, he combed his fingers through his thick hair and shook it out around his head before stepping towards me, one hand outstretched to help me rise. I took it and pulled myself to my feet where I stood watching him as he stared back into my eyes. I began to raise my arms and he met me halfway, hugging me in silence.

It was a strange experience, hugging this man, almost a total stranger and yet blood of my blood, bone of my bone, and resembling me more closely than my own reflection in the few mirrors into which I had gazed. Therein, my face was always altered by the colour, texture and sheen of the reflecting metal, be it bronze or silver. The face in front of me now, when I leaned back to arm's length to look at it, holding him by the shoulders, bore no such metallic inconsistencies. The skin was darkened by the sun, as was my own, and the hair above the broad forehead grew thick and yellow, just like mine. If anything was different between us, I thought, it must be simple size. Ambrose, like Donuil, was bigger than I; not greatly bigger, perhaps not even noticeably, but he seemed to me to bulk larger than I did, his shoulders more massive, his forearms heavier, his eyes a hair's breadth higher than my own.

"Well met, Brother," I said, and he nodded at me, holding me by the wrists and merely gazing mute and evidently pleased with what he beheld. I looked to where Donuil now stood watching us, his eyes wide with wonder as they moved from my face to Ambrose's and back, the expression on his face one of complete amazement.

"Well?" I asked him. "How great is the resemblance?"

Donuil shook his head. "It would be frightening, had I not seen it before and if I did not know the truth of it. You could be twins. You are identical. The only way to tell you apart is by your clothes."

Ambrose laughed and spoke for the first time. "We may change those tomorrow and confound you." The words seemed to reverberate strangely in my ears and I looked back at him, impulsively voicing the thought that had sprung fully formed into my mind even though I shrouded it in a jest.

"No, Brother, not Donuil, he is too easily confused at the best of times. Something to do with his great height, I think. But it might be interesting to confuse others . . . outsiders." I took the sting out of the first part of my words with a smile, and Donuil grinned again, flushing with pleasure and covering any response to the remainder of my statement with his rejoinder.

"I can see you two will join forces to belittle me because of my superior Erse blood."

"Aye," I agreed. "That, and your outlandish riding skills." Donuil had never mastered the art of riding, which made him noteworthy in Camulod. He had perched precariously on his mounts, rather than seated them, ever since the time of his first arrival, before which he had never approached a horse. Now he drew himself erect and spoke to me down the length of his nose.

"You, Caius Merlyn, have not seen me ride for years."

"Correction, Erseman." I winked at Ambrose. "I, Caius Merlyn, have never seen you ride. Wobble, perhaps; sway, certainly; teeter, frequently, but ride? Never."

A sound behind me distracted me from my baiting and I saw Ambrose look over my shoulder and nod. I turned in time to see the rear view of one of the Saxons disappearing again around the bend in the gully. The sight brought my mind back to my earlier thoughts, before the apparition of my two companions, and my smile disappeared.

"Saxons, Ambrose? Donuil? How could you bring Saxons to Camulod?"

Ambrose answered me. "They are no more Saxon than you or I, Brother. They are Lindum men, one and all, my blood guards, merely wearing the Saxon garb."

"Why?" I was not reassured.

He shrugged. "Because we travelled through the Saxon Settlements to come here. Donuil told me your needs were urgent, and that was the shortest route."

His words perplexed me. "What? I don't understand. Are you saying you came along the Saxon Shore?"

"No, at least not all the way. Donuil found me in the far north, up by the Wall. We travelled southward in one of Hengist's longboats, landed on the Saxon Shore north of Colchester, and came straight inland, directly across the country."

"Passing through the Saxon-settled lands."

"Some of them, yes."

"Hmm." I accepted that without further comment, aware of the many layers of significance the words held. "Well!" I looked from one to the other of them. "So what do you intend to do now?"

They glanced at each other, smiling uncertainly, clearly wondering what I was raving about. Again it was Donuil who answered. "What should we do? We intended to find you as quickly as possible, probably in Camulod, but you came blundering along the pathway back there in a daydream and I recognized you miles away. Now we've found you. What do you suggest we do?"

"Hmm." My mind was racing, cataloguing the possibilities and weighing the alternatives as I sought to clear my mind and see my way. "Well, we should return directly to Camulod, of course, and yet . . ." Immediate return to Camulod would create chaos, with all the introductions and explanations that would have to be gone through. I watched them watch me, waiting for me to complete my thought. "And yet," I continued, "it's in my mind, clear as mid-morning light, that taking you directly home, right at this moment, might not be the best idea that has ever occurred to me. We have much to discuss, the three of us, and it could take days, after we enter Camulod and stun everyone with the sight and existence of you, Ambrose, to find the time we need together, free of interruption, without being most discourteous to all our friends there."

"Aye," Ambrose said. "That makes sense. It's more important that we talk together than that we talk to others. What do you suggest?"

I was already looking around me, evaluating the spot in which we stood and rejecting it as a campsite. "Your camp of last night. It's less than two miles from here, and it's secluded; out of the way. Why don't we use it tonight again and ride into Camulod tomorrow morning? That should give us all the time we need."

"Good idea. Let's go."

For the remainder of that day I had the novel experience of observing a score of skin-clad, heavily armoured "Saxon" warriors as they bustled around me, setting up a camp, building cooking fires and attempting to provide privacy and comfort for their Lord and his two companions. There were deer in abundance all around us. Already two small roe had been brought in, dressed and butchered, and several men were busily involved in cooking them. From an oven of stones, prepared by some magic process unknown to and unnoticed by me, came the delicious smell of baking bread. It was still early evening, the sun yet two hours short of setting.

"What are you grinning about, Caius?" Donuil asked me at one point.

I turned to him, still smiling, shaking my head. "All of this. You travel in grand style, with everything considered and allowed for in advance, it seems. But I was thinking it's amazing how much these fellows look like Saxons . . . I'm finding it very difficult to relax with them all around me."

Donuil sniffed. "You'd be even more amazed if you could see how much some of the Saxons look like us—or like your people, at least."

"What d'you mean?"

"Just what I say. The Saxons in the Settlements are little different from your own people. Oh, they talk differently, and they dress differently, I suppose, and all the gods know they fight differently, but they farm the same way and their women don't seem even slightly alien and their children are like children everywhere."

"Farm the same way?" It was the one thing I had heard that struck me as ludicrous. "Come on, Donuil, these people are not farmers—they're marauders, seagoing savages. The only ploughing they do is with the keels of their ships on the belly of the sea. There's nothing of the farmer in their nature."

Ambrose had been standing close by, leaning against a tree as he listened to us, saying nothing. Now Donuil glanced at him, a tiny tic of annoyance between his brows, before his eyes returned to me.

"I see. And how many of these people do you know, Cay? How many have you met, or spoken with? How many have you fought, for that matter?" His voice was almost truculent and I realized, with some surprise, that in all the time I had known him, I had never seen or heard Donuil take serious issue with anything I had ever said. Now he seemed to be challenging me. I felt myself frowning, though more from perplexity than displeasure.

"Is something biting you? I've never known you to sound like this before. I've fought a few of them, as you well know. You were there, and brought me my horse and helmet, the day we rescued Bishop Germanus and his party, near Londinium. How many of them do you know?"

"None. But I've met far more of them than you have."

"And?" I noticed that Ambrose had not moved and showed no sign of intervening.

"And it occurs to me you might be wrong."

You are always so correct, Cay. . . Have you any idea how annoying that can be to others? The words came flooding back into my head instantly, remembered from the only confrontation of this kind I'd ever had with Uther. I felt a surge of irritation.

"Wrong about what, in God's name? Wrong about their strangeness? Their foreignness? They are Outlanders, Donuil. This is our land, not theirs! They have no place here."

"I'm an Outlander, Cay. Have I no place here?"

That startled me, bringing me up short like a haltered horse. "That is ridiculous! Of course you have a place here. You've earned your place here."

He gazed at me levelly, no sign of anger anywhere about him, his eyes empty of expression. "So did your forefathers, Cay."

"What?" I turned again to Ambrose, seeking his support against such obscure logic, but he was gazing at Donuil, his face unreadable.

Donuil would have said more, was on the point of blurting something out, when a sudden clang of iron upon iron jerked all our heads round in concert towards a clear space beyond the camp, where two men, one of them the giant in the bright yellow tunic I had noticed first earlier that morning, crouched facing each other over the rims of their large, round shields, the bright blades of their swords raised high. Even as I saw them, my view was obscured by the bodies of others who came between us, moving forward to surround the pair.

"Jenner and Marek," Ambrose said. "They're my two best, and worth watching, even in practice. Come."

We moved to watch the two men in their mock combat, our own mild dispute left in abeyance, but even as I watched the skill and speed of the two antagonists, abstractedly admiring their ability, I continued to think about what Donuil had been saying, aware of how closely his sentiments, if not his words, had echoed the unwelcome information I had received not long before from Lars, the owner of the public hostelry I had visited on the road south to Isca.

Now here was Donuil, my own trusted friend, implying in his turn that all was not evil in the people who had usurped our lands. I knew he and I would have to talk more about such outlandish ideas. Ambrose interrupted my thoughts.

"When in Rome, Caius," he said, and I wondered what he meant until I heard his next words. "My men now fight like Saxons, with good reason. One of the first things that impressed me about Hengist's people was the way they fight. I've heard them speak of it as the weirding way, or something like that. Whatever it means, it's very strange and very different from the way I was taught. These people have an absolute lack of fear of death. To die in battle offers the greatest state of beatitude they can attain. It seemed to me we would be well advised to learn their methods, since we will surely have need of them some day—not necessarily against Hengist's own, but certainly against their countrymen and former allies."

My attention had focused on the fight the moment he began to speak, and I was already taking note of what was truly happening here in front of me. It became obvious immediately, after the first analytical glance, why the Saxons, or Northmen, as Vortigern's own people called their mercenary warriors, favoured the heavy axe in their warfare. The weapon was awkward and cumbersome, requiring no apparent grace or skilled technique in its employment, both of these sacrificed to pure, brute strength and violence. That strength and violence were demanded, however, by the enemies against whom they fought, or, more accurately, by the shields those enemies carried. These were circular, and because of that, they appeared enormous, although they were no greater in actual extent, from top to bottom, than our rectangular shields, which covered the bearer from knee to chin. Their overall circumference, however, dictated a different style of attack from any would-be assailant, since the extent of the shielded area, laterally, eliminated the normal avenues of penetration that swordsmen, our swordsmen at least, were trained to exploit. There was simply no way to get around these things in a normal attack with a sword, and any effort to do so would expose the sword wielder's body, fatally, to the axe being swung from behind the shield.

Even as I absorbed this, one of the two contestants—it turned out to be Jenner, the giant in the yellow tunic—smashed through his opponent's guard with a mighty, overhand swipe that cut deeply into the edge of Marek's shield, and in moments I received a chilling lesson in our own military shortcomings in the face of such weaponry. The blow landed, the sword's edge bit deep into the rim of the shield, and Marek flung his shield arm up, straight out and away from his body, his own body uncoiling in a surge of strength that locked the edge of Jenner's sword tightly and pulled him forward and off balance, leaving him open and vulnerable so that the only thing he could do was to sweep his own shield across in front of him, thrusting it between himself and his opponent, but unbalancing himself even further, so that all his body weight was pushed to the right. At that point Marek froze my blood by doing something for which I was completely unprepared. He followed the direction of Jenner's crosswise impetus with his own body, turning himself inward into Jenner's imbalance, spinning completely in a wrenching twist until his back was to Jenner, then slamming his left shoulder into the shield that separated them and kicking Jenner's feet from under him with his right heel. Jenner's sword hilt was torn from his grasp and he fell heavily, to what would have been death.

The spectators broke into a chorus of cheers and jeers, but I stood gaping. Ambrose had been watching me and now he spoke again.

"They look heavy, don't they? The shields." I merely nodded, looking at him. "Well they're not," he continued. "But they are very strong. Woven wickerwork wheels, feather light but immensely strong, at least two but sometimes three of them bound together, with an unwoven, handspanwide perimeter of straight canes around the outer edges; the whole covered in a double layer of heavy, hardened hide reinforced and thickened around the rim to catch and snare a sword blade. They're light, immensely strong and virtually impregnable. Arrows, even long arrows, are trapped by the woven layers of cane wickerwork before they can pass through. Same thing happens to spears. And swords, as you have just seen, can't get around them."

"Only an axe," I said.

"Yes, only an axe can give an opponent the chance of smashing one down."

"An axe or a horse."

"True. No man on foot can stand for long against a man on a horse." He signalled one of his men to come forward and asked him to show me his shield, and for the next while we examined the thing, although only I was unfamiliar with the device. I found it completely admirable, and far lighter, much less cumbersome, than I had expected. Somehow, in the course of our discussions, the sun sped across the sky and suddenly it was almost dark, the air around us filled with the smells of newly roasted venison and fresh-baked bread.

When we had eaten and were sitting together by the fire outside our tents, I set out to bring my companions up to date on developments since Donuil and I had parted company, but I quickly found that I had far more to impart to them than I had thought to deal with. Donuil, for example, knew nothing of his sister Ygraine's death, or of her involvement with Other, and I knew that I would have to approach those topics with a degree of preparation, care and solicitude. Neither man had heard either of the death of Uther or Gulrhys Lot, and Ambrose's first interest was, naturally enough, in the nature of the emergency that had caused me to send Donuil in search of him. In order to explain that, I accepted that I would have to share the secret of Excalibur, and it seemed to me the only way to do that adequately was to tell the entire story of the great Dream of Caius Britannicus and Publius Varrus, and the Colony called Camulod they had founded between them.

I talked for hours, starting from the first meeting between my grandfather and Publius Varrus, and as I spoke, they listened without interrupting and the camp gradually grew still around us until we three were the only ones left awake, and still I talked on. I told them of the foresight of my grandfather Caius, and how Publius Varrus had adopted his vision and helped make it the world we call Camulod, and I spoke of Varrus's own dream of finding a Skystone, and of how he had succeeded, and what he had done with what he found. I talked of the prescient wisdom of these men, combined with that of Ullic Pendragon, and how they had foreseen and set in motion the birthing of an entire new race of Britons, formed of the bonding of native Celts and Romano-British citizens. And I led them along the path towards the culmination of the Dream in the birth of the child Arthur. When I completed my tale with our meeting that day, my two listeners sat silent, each lost in his own world, and I knew better than to expect either to respond immediately. I left them to their thoughts and moved to replenish the fire, which had almost died out.

Donuil was the first to speak, and by the time he did the fire was high again.

"It has been five years since I came here. I would not have believed it. . . would not have believed I could forget the end of that term." He was speaking to himself and sought no response from me, so I offered none.

"Excalibur." This was Ambrose. "No one else knows of it?"

"No one, except for my aunt. That frightened me when I came to realize the truth of it. I didn't know what to do, then. The best solution I could find seemed to be to explain it in a letter and send for you. Had you arrived and had I not returned within the year, the letter would have been given to you and you would have found the sword."

He looked at me, his face twisted in what was not quite a smile. "What if I had merely kept it for myself?"

"What of it? It would have been yours by then, to do with as you willed."

"So you had no fears of that?"

I smiled, shaking my head. "None, but now the matter is academic. We are both here, and now four of us know."

"What of the boy, Arthur?" Donuil asked. "When will we go for him?"

"As soon as possible. Within the month, if all goes well. It will take several weeks to see Ambrose welcomed and settled into place in Camulod, and then we can leave for your home." I paused, struck by a sudden thought, and looked to Ambrose. "Forgive me, Brother, I am assuming you can stay?"

He smiled. "I'm here, am I not? I can stay, at least for a time. Bear in mind, though, I had no idea of what you wanted in summoning me. Donuil's instructions were none too enlightening on that, and now I know why. He had no more knowledge of what you really wanted than had I." His voice faded and his eyes drifted towards the fire, so that when next he spoke, his tone was pensive. "I had expected to remain in Camulod for some time, but I had no expectation of hearing the kind of things you have told us tonight. So many layers within layers of responsibility and duty. I knew none of that, and I did not expect to find filial obligations surrounding me so densely. It makes me feel some guilt towards Vortigern."

"How so?"

"I'm his Captain," he answered, as though I should not have to ask. "He relies on me. Relies on me to help him govern his domains, and to expand them."

In the pause that followed, I decided not to ask of these plans for expansion, knowing that there would be a more fitting time. Ambrose, however, was already launched and spoke what was in his mind.

"Vortigern is ambitious, Caius, but not for himself alone. He is a fine, good man and a strong warrior with a formidable mind. And in a way, his motivation is the same as our grandfather's was. For years he has had to face the question, asked by all who meet him, of what he will do when the Danes he has brought in ask for more land and he has none to give them. Now he is taking steps to solve that problem before it arises."

"What kind of steps?" I was incapable of not asking.

"Expansionist steps; acquisitive steps; territorial steps. Vortigern is extending his boundaries."

"Unchallenged?"

He smiled at me. "Who is to challenge him? His people, thanks to Hengist's Northmen, are the only folk in all the northeast who have not been decimated by the invaders from north beyond the Wall and east beyond the seas. The lands are virtually uninhabited. All Vortigern has to do is hold them. The surviving people welcome him, with his Danish Northmen, as a rescuer."

"I see." I had no reason to doubt him. "And when will you return to him?"

He sucked air audibly through his front teeth. "I spoke of a year's absence. I'll go back then, but it might only be for a brief visit, to let him know what I am doing. I have no foolish thought that I am irreplaceable." He smiled. "Vortigern lacks neither champions nor captains, but he has earned of me at least my loyalty and a final, formal leave-taking." He paused, looking me in the eye. "What are you thinking, Brother? That's a pensive, angry-looking frown."

I shook my head, erasing my thoughtful scowl and returning his smile. "I don't really know, but I'm certainly not angry. I'm surprised, I suppose, that you should have made such a momentous decision so quickly, before even arriving in Camulod." My smile widened to a grin. "You may not like it there."

"Oh, I shall like it. Since you began to talk tonight, I have come to realize that it's my home, even though I've never been there. Too many echoes of recognition sounded in my breast while you were speaking, although how I could recognize things totally unknown to me is beyond me. I'm a soldier, not a mystic. It seemed to me, for all of that, listening and hearing much of your tale for the first time—and all of it in sequence for the first time—that this Camulod, founded and governed since its founding by my own immediate ancestors, my father and his father, must have some ties to offer that, having found, I should be loath to lose." I nodded, and he continued. "So, it seems to me there will be work for me, and I am born to do it. You, on the other hand, have other duties. This child in Hibernia, for one."

"Eire," grunted Donuil.

"Eire, pardon me. He is my cousin, and yours, too, and he is Donuil's nephew, as well as titular heir to the Queen of Cornwall and grandson to the High King of Donuil's Scots. That says nothing of the additional truth that he is the son of the Pendragon kings, and great-grandson to Publius Varrus and Luceiia Britannicus of Camulod. A formidable lineage."

"I felt the same when I first saw him," I said.

"It is the simple truth. So!" He clapped his hands and stood up. "Tomorrow morning we ride into Camulod and I will finally meet my great-aunt Luceiia and the Colonists who know my antecedents better than I do. A few weeks, you say, to put me in place, providing that I do not prove to be a square peg in a round hole or vice versa, and then you and Donuil can leave for Eire and the boy. Donuil, will you return?"

The question took me by surprise but not Donuil.

"To Camulod?" He yawned and stretched his huge frame. "Aye, can you doubt it? I hardly dare go home, since I am ruined. I've grown used to bathing frequently, and even to horses, and I've learned your heathen tongue and ways. I would be lost in Eire now." His big head swung towards me. "But before we sleep, Caius Britannicus, I have some other questions about the boy. May I ask them?"

"Ask away."

"Did I hear you properly? Connor has no idea the child is his nephew?"

"None. To consider that, he would have had to accept the death of your sister Ygraine. He had plainly decided not to countenance the possibility of that, so I decided to say nothing of the child's parentage, other than that I was his guardian but not his father."

"He accepted that?"

"What else could he do? He had seen with his own eyes that I was prepared to die to save the child."

"Does anyone else besides your aunt know who the child is?"

"No. I saw no point in drawing attention to the child, other than as a guarantor that I would return, bringing you. You yourself told me long ago that not all your brothers and uncles are as mild as Connor. Why place the child needlessly in danger as a potential threat to any of their plans at some future date?"

"Aye. What about Uther's people? Will you tell them?"

"No, not yet." I responded more slowly, thinking about that for the first time. "And probably for the same reason. I have Uther's ring, his signet, in my keeping for the boy. It will serve to announce his right, when the time comes, but before that time it could place him in needless danger."

"Of what, and from whom?"

"Of death, my friend, just as it might in Eire; assassination by any ambitious malcontent who might construe the child's existence as a threat to his own schemes."

Donuil squirted a stream of saliva between his teeth and into the fire with great deliberation, then wiped his lower lip with the back of his hand. "Good. I'm glad to hear you think that way. I think you're absolutely right. It's not necessary for the child to carry such a load before he needs to; he's already orphaned, and that's burden enough for any mite his age."

Ambrose had been gazing at his drawn dagger, testing its edge with his thumb. "Orphaned, perhaps, Donuil, but he is well uncled and cousined." He looked at me and smiled. "Well connected."

Donuil grunted and laughed as he stood up. "Aye, and well protected. A good night to both of you. I'm for sleep."

VII

"If Vortigren could see this, he would die of envy." Ambrose was gazing in awe at the spectacle laid out below us, where we stood on the hillside road to Camulod's main gates, looking down on the great drilling ground that stretched out below them.

"How so?" I asked, knowing what his reply would be, yet wishing to hear it spoken aloud.

"How so? You can ask me that?" He turned to look at me. "Do you not know . . . Are you aware of what you have here?"

I laughed. "Of course I am! I have cavalry, but you've seen it before, in Verulamium when we first met. So why should it amaze you now so greatly?"

He turned back to watch hundreds of our troopers manoeuvring their mounts in tightly disciplined formations, rank after rank, squadron upon squadron, responding to the brazen sounds of trumpets and the swirl of brightly coloured signal banners. He remained silent then, lost again in his thoughts, and I expected him to say no more, but he resumed after a spell as though there had been no pause in our colloquy.

"Aye, I saw it then and you are right; I should not be surprised. And yet I am, because I did not really see it before . . . I didn't see it!" His head moved in a tiny, negative gesture, directed, I was sure, at himself and his own thoughts, and he continued speaking, as if to himself, although I heard his soft words clearly. "We came to Verulamium proud of our strength, secure in our own discipline. And apart from that first meeting, when your men broke off their charge before they reached our ranks, we witnessed, and we shared in, no hostilities."

He was referring to the first time we had met, when, mistaking Vortigern's advancing party in the pre-dawn darkness for the rabble of thieves and mercenaries we had been awaiting, I had almost attacked them. Only at the last moment had I seen their disciplined formations and realized my error in time to halt my attack in mid-charge. He continued speaking.

"At the time, I recall, we thought it was the sight of our defences that had halted your charge. We were full of confidence, and had just smashed the rabble you mistook us for. The sight of your men approaching us and then breaking off their attack merely confirmed our own self-confidence, I suppose. It certainly prevented me from gauging the true mettle of your force."

"Thank God it did," I said. "Else you and I might not be here today."

"Aye, as you say. But that is beside the point."

"Which is?"

"Voluntary blindness. We became allies, but we never had to fight, so neither took the measure of the other. The confrontation with the thieves in the town that morning was over before it could begin, with no blood spilled . . . We never saw your cavalry fight, Caius, and thus, we could not know your strength; the extent of it." He interrupted himself with another gesture of his head. "I mean, I passed among your people every day. I saw the stirrups they used and I admired the size and beauty of their horses, and none of it seemed significant. I lived among them, but I never truly saw them. I never stood high above them, looking down on them like this where I could see the potential of their mass and the awesome potency of their manoeuvres. My God, Caius, look at them! They look invincible from here."

"They are invincible, fighting against the enemy they were designed to fight, boatloads of Saxons."

His eyes swung back downhill. "I can't believe I didn't see it before now, the power of them, the discipline. Do you use any infantry?"

"Some, but not much overall. Most of our men are mounted. But then, horses are expensive in time and effort—slow to breed and to mature—and some tasks are better suited to men on foot. Garrison soldiers, for example, are seldom troopers."

"Why not?" His eyes were fixed on me again.

"It's wasteful, and hard on the men; attendance to normal duties combined with responsibility for their mounts even though they are not using them."

"Do you ever use the two combined?"

"Horses and foot? Not often. Almost never, in fact. If you think about it, you'll see why. Our horses will outstrip our infantry within half a day and our territories are so large that we have need of speed to cover them adequately. We maintain several fixed garrisons, twelve of them nowadays, all small, around our perimeter. Each has a cavalry squadron attached, for local patrol activities and when the need arises, we can reinforce them quickly with additional troopers."

"So you have made no effort to train the two to fight together, in concert?"

"No, no great effort."

"Hmm." He said no more, but together we continued to watch and enjoy the spectacle below us on the plain. This was Ambrose's second day in Camulod and the first opportunity he had enjoyed simply to look around. His first day home—for home is what the place immediately became to him— had been spent mostly with his newly acquired materfamilias, his great-aunt Luceiia, although he had met and been introduced to all the notables of our Colony that night at a welcoming dinner held in the great Council Chamber that served as a refectory for grand occasions such as this arrival of an unknown heir to the name Britannicus.

This morning had been spent in introductions, too, beginning with a brief, ceremonial assembly of the Plenary Council to welcome, formally, the second son of Picus Britannicus. After that, I had taken him, accompanied by Titus, Flavius and several other senior officers, on a guided tour of the fortress, including a visit to each of the additional hospitals established for our recuperating wounded from Cornwall, and we had ended up here on the road, arrested on our progress towards the valley below and the Villa Britannicus, which was in the course of being refurbished after the damage it had sustained during Lot's attack several years earlier.

For a day and a half now I had been savouring the general reaction to the first sight of Ambrose, and the novelty had not yet begun to pall, although I was glad I had taken heed of my brother's wishes at the outset. My original impulse, inspired by Donuil's remark on seeing us together again, and fuelled further by Aunt Luceiia's stunned reaction to the sight of Ambrose standing by my side, had been to dress him for this morning's rites in my own best suit of parade armour, to enhance the astounding resemblance between us. Ambrose, however, had demurred at this, and, sensing his discomfort immediately, I had for once in my life been astute enough to diagnose the cause of it accurately and without objection. It was highly important to my newfound brother, I discerned, to present himself as himself and not as a mere duplicate of me. Now I thanked God for enabling me to see the correctness of that. The reaction of our wounded veterans alone had been wondrous to behold. To a man, they had been shocked into awed silence, staring from one to the other of us in stupefaction until one man, in every instance, had muttered some remark that broke the tension and brought forth a roar of laughter and of welcome to the Colony's newest recruit.

Spurred now by a sudden impulse, I turned to address the small group of officers who stood patiently behind us, waiting for us to proceed. "Gentlemen," I said. "I have changed my mind. Tomorrow will be soon enough to show the villa to my brother. It comes to me that he and I might spend the remainder of this day right here with far more profit. Thank you for your time and your company. We will keep you no longer from your duties."

When they had gone, I gripped Ambrose by the shoulder and we walked back together to the fort, saluting the guards at the gate who crashed to attention at our approach.

"You will become my second-in-command as soon as you are ready, Ambrose," I told him as we passed through the main portals.

He looked at me, one eyebrow raised high. "You still intend to move that quickly? Do you think that's wise?"

"I know it is necessary, but not until you are ready."

"And how will you know that?"

I grinned. "I won't. You will, and you'll tell me." I was steering him towards the centre of the main courtyard.

"But I'm not qualified to command cavalry, Caius."

"Nonsense. You are, or have been, one of Vortigern's most trusted captains, and Vortigern's neither fool nor incompetent. How many men have you commanded at one time?"

"Armies," he said. "But armies of infantry."

"How many men, in total?"

He thought for a moment. "Twenty thousand, in our last campaign in the north."

"That's almost four Roman legions. You were in sole command?"

"Overall command, yes."

"Did you win?"

"Of course I did."

"Of course you did, and thus you are qualified to command my men . . . The horses have nothing to say about it, you know. I said you must be my second-in-command. I didn't ask you to share my saddle with me. You'll have to learn to ride with stirrups and a saddle. As you do that, once you begin to grasp the advantages those bring, you'll learn quickly enough what cavalry can do. And here in Camulod, remember, your credentials come built into your appearance, your name and your family. No one will doubt your worth -; none will quibble with your authority; and your staff—my staff—will guide your steps until you wish to strike out alone. I have no doubts that will be soon."

We had reached the spot towards which I had been guiding him in more ways than one, and now I reached out my arm and stopped his progress, directing his eyes downward to the ground at his feet. He looked down curiously. The ground on which we stood was hard-packed, but three wide slabs of hand-dressed, dark blue slate were recessed, side by side, directly in front of us.

"What are these, Cay?" I could tell from his tone that he already suspected what they were.

"Your credentials," I said, feeling a roughness in my throat. "Your right to be here in Camulod, and in command in Camulod. In the centre lies your grandfather, Caius Britannicus, founder of this Colony; on his right, your great- uncle by marriage, Publius Varrus; and on his left, the ashes of your father, the Imperial Legate Picus Britannicus. This is the very heart of Camulod, Ambrose, the centre of a dream created by these three. I wanted to show it to you with no one else around."

We stood there for some time and then he sighed, a sudden, gusty sound. "Thank you for this," he said. I did not know if he was thanking me or speaking to the people in the ground.

I cleared my throat. "Come on, there's more to see." I led him now towards the Armoury, that room in the Varrus household that contained Excalibur. He had been there the previous day, late in the afternoon, but he had seen only what all people saw therein: the wealth of weaponry collected empire-wide during the lifetimes of two men, Publius Varrus and his grandfather, to whom Publius had referred as Varrus the Elder. On the occasion of that first visit, there had been too many others around for me to show him the room's hidden treasure. Now we were alone, and having barred the heavy, double doors, I opened the secret hiding-place beneath the floor with the ease of long practise and produced the polished wooden case that held the sword. Impatient now to see his reaction, I remained sitting on the floor with my feet dangling down into the hole beneath as I placed the case on the floor in front of me, springing the hidden lock and handing him the weapon wordlessly, hilt first.

For long moments, neither of us moved or spoke as he stood there staring at what he held in his hand, but then he leaned forward slowly, dipping into a fighting crouch, and began to wield the sword in slow, exaggerated motions, spinning and pivoting, rising and falling on his toes, his movements resembling some solemn, ritual dance of sacrificial awe and reverence. He began by holding the weapon in his right hand, but by the time he had completed his first, tentative series of moves, both of his fists were locked about the long, sharkskin grip and his eyes glittered with the play of light along the edges of the flashing blade that circled his head. Gradually, almost without volition, the tempo of his movements began to increase, until the air hissed audibly with the passage of the lethal, lovely, whirling silver blade.

He stopped, abruptly, his arm muscles tense, holding the sword now motionless, extended at arm's length, and then he grounded the point, reversed his grip, and held the hilt towards me.

"Magical," he whispered, his voice husky. "It should be used, not hidden beneath a dusty floor."

"It will be, Brother, when the time is right." Taking it from him, still sitting with my legs beneath the floor, I yielded to a sudden impulse and struck the blade against the boards, raising the point to the vertical immediately and pressing the cockleshell pommel to the floor to produce the bell like, resonant effect of which I had read in my uncle's books. In all the years of my guardianship of Excalibur, it was the first time I had done so, and even I was unprepared for the effect it produced. Out of nowhere, springing from the very air of the room, it seemed, an unearthly sound of crystalline, sense-searing beauty sprang into being, transfixing both of us with its power, clarity and shocking strength. Startled myself by its awesome purity and ringing loudness, I jerked my arm upward, breaking the contact between the sword and the solid floor, and the sound faded quickly, to die away completely and suddenly as I touched the blade with a pointing fingertip, feeling a sharp and eerie tingle in my hand at the contact so that I pulled my hand away again.

The silence that followed was profound until Ambrose broke it with a whispered question.

"What was that?"

I cleared my throat and smiled again, regaining my self-possession. "Excalibur, singing. I read about it in my uncle's books, but I had never heard it before now." Ambrose was gazing at the sword, an expression on his face of almost superstitious dread, and I knew my own would have mirrored it had I not known what I knew. "Apparently it has something to do with the purity of the metal," I said, for his benefit. "Some kind of vibration. According to Father Andros, the man who first did that the day the sword was made, the ancient smiths could gauge the quality of their weapons by the sounds they produced."

"What ancient smiths? I've never heard of that."

I shrugged. "No more had I, but it is obviously true. The purer the metal, the sweeter the temper, the truer and more powerful the sound produced."

"But there were sounds, Caius. That was not one simple sound, not one clear note. I heard several, high and low."

"I know, but don't expect me to explain it. As I said, I've never done that before. It shocked me as much as it did you."

"Do it again."

I did, this time with more confidence, and we listened enthralled as the mighty, ringing clarity of the song of Excalibur made the very air of the room vibrate, setting the dust motes quivering in the beams of light from the roof vents. Then came the sound of running footsteps outside, rushing towards the doors, and I stifled the sound by pressing the blade this time against my leg, feeling again the transient, tingling sting before the blade grew still. Someone thrust against the doors from the outside and I was grateful I had taken the time to bar them. Then fists pounded against the bronze-covered wood and we heard voices raised in anxious questioning. Grimacing at Ambrose, I quickly replaced the sword in its case and dropped it into its hiding- place before replacing the floorboard hurriedly. The pegs that locked the board in place projected still, but I ignored them.

"Open the door, but not too quickly." I crossed the room quickly to a small table, where I picked up one of the devices that lay there, a hollowed- out stone attached to a long, leather cord. I quickly wrapped the small loop in the end of the cord around my right index finger and then nodded to Ambrose, who swung open the doors to admit Trebonius Velus, Centurion of the Guard for that day. As Velus stepped across the threshold, looking uneasily about the room, I saw the press of armoured bodies behind him.

"Trebonius Velus, is there something wrong?"

My question stopped him in mid-step and his face betrayed his confusion as he looked from Ambrose to me and back again, blinking rapidly.

"Wrong, Commander? I don't know, but we heard something strange."

"What do you mean, strange?" I was careful to keep my voice polite and neutral.

He blinked again and shrugged. "I don't know, Commander, but it was very loud. Some kind of whistling sound. Twice, we heard it. The first time, it was brief. I was close by, checking the guards, and we all heard it but could not locate it—it was gone too quickly. But the second time, we heard it coming from here, and we came running." Clearly embarrassed, he went on, "I beg your pardon, Commander. We didn't know you were in here. No one did."

"Think no more of it, Centurion, you behaved correctly." I moved towards him, holding up the hand that held the stone. "This is what you heard, and you were right to respond the way you did. It is a weapon. Have you seen it before?"

Velus shook his head, his eyes fixed on my upraised hand with the looped cord around the first finger joint. I raised it higher, so that the craning guards at his back could see it, too. I was very aware of Ambrose's eyes on me.

"You all know, at least by report, how fond my uncle Publius Varrus was of unusual weapons," I continued, addressing myself to all of them. "Well, this is one of the strangest of them all. We have no name for it, but it was used by the barbarian hordes in the farthest reaches of the Eastern Empire. It was brought back to Britain by our own Vegetius Sulla, many years ago. It is no more than a heavy stone, as you can see, attached to a leather string. It is swung around the head and hurled; a kind of slingshot, but with two differences: first, the stone is attached to the string, and second, the stone is carved, or ground out, so that it generates a whistling sound as it is swung. Observe."

Stepping to the centre of the room where I was unobstructed, I allowed the stone to drop from my hand to dangle at the end of its cord, and then I began to swing it around my head. As it picked up momentum, it began to emit a low, warbling ululation that quickly swelled to a howling shriek that brought at least one guard's hands up to cover his ears. As I began to swing even harder, leaning into my movements to increase both speed and sound, the cord suddenly snapped, cutting the noise instantly and sending the heavy stone shooting up and across the room, fortunately to my rear, where it glanced off a roof beam and smacked violently but harmlessly into a corner pillar before clattering to the floor. No one stirred in the absolute, shocked stillness. I drew the cord through my fingers and examined the frayed end.

"This was an old cord, and therefore dangerous," I said. "But I think you all saw and heard enough."

Velus coughed and nodded. "Aye, Commander. My thanks, and pardon us. We'll leave you alone."

When they had gone, closing the doors behind them, Ambrose turned to me with a grin, one eyebrow raised. "That was quick thinking. I am impressed, but it sounded nothing like the other sound."

"We know that, Brother, but they don't. We were here and knew what we were listening to. They came running to investigate an alien sound that burst upon their ears unexpectedly. I showed them an alien weapon that produced a loud noise. The cord broke before it could achieve its highest volume. They are satisfied and will think no more about it."

He merely shook his head, still smiling admiringly. "As I said, quick thinking. There was more of Merlyn the Celt than Caius the Roman in that spontaneity. I couldn't have come up with that explanation in a hundred years." His gaze settled upon the locking pegs still projecting above the floorboards.

"Shouldn't we conceal those?"

"Absolutely." I pressed each stud with my foot until it sank level with the surface. "Well, Ambrose Britannicus, you have now seen Excalibur, and handled it, and heard it. Any comments?"

He pursed his lips and shook his head. "What could I say? I've never seen its like, but there has never been its like . . ." His hesitation was brief. "But the observation I made earlier comes back to me; it should be used. Who will use it? The boy?"

"Arthur? Perhaps. If not he . . ." I glanced around the room, then went and picked up the whistling stone from the corner, replacing it upon the table where I had found it. "I'll make a new cord for that tomorrow. Uncle Varrus was always most particular about the maintenance of even the least of his treasures." Ambrose had not moved and I felt his eyes upon me, deliberating the incompleteness of my answer to his last question. "If not he," I continued, then broke off again, looking around me still. "I'm thirsty. Let's go find a jug of wine and talk some more on this. There are aspects of your question I have never really considered. This could be as good a time as any to confront them."

A short time later, we sat in the day quarters that had been my father's office before it became mine. A small fire burned in the brazier and I had lit lamps and candles to dispel the heavy shadows of late afternoon. Even with the small windows high up on the walls to admit light, summer made little difference to the interior rooms. I had found a jug of wine and released the guard from duty outside my door, which was now firmly closed against interruption. Ambrose had made no attempt to break in upon my thoughts since leaving the Armoury. I took another sip of wine and placed the cup carefully upon the table.

"Excalibur. You said in the Armoury that there has never been anything like it, but that is not strictly true. There is, or there was, a dagger, and a sword—a short-sword—that resembled it. The sword was made by Uncle Varrus's grandfather for his only son, Publius Varrus's father, but Varrus's father died on campaign with the legions before he ever saw it. It ended up, by some circuitous route, in the hands of the Emperor Theodosius, his most prized weapon. The Sword of Theodosius, men called it. It was the first Varrus blade made from the metal of a skystone."

"From the Skystone? But how could that be? You told me Varrus found the Skystone here, close by."

"That's true, he did. But I did not say the Skystone, I said made from a skystone. The Sword of Theodosius was made from the first skystone, the one found by the old man, Uncle Varrus's grandfather, about a hundred years ago."

He was frowning. "I see, so there were two stones."

"In fact, there were many of them, all save one of which came down together one night near here, in the Mendip Hills, but that's unimportant." I pushed my high-backed chair back on its legs and put my feet up on the table. " The point I wanted to make is that the sword in question was nothing like Excalibur. I never saw it, but I have read a description of it. It lacked the silver finish, the mirror-bright purity, and it was only a short-sword. But it was made from skystone metal, mixed with ordinary iron, and it would cut other swords in half. And it was stolen from the Varrus forge and ended up being owned by Theodosius. What happened to it in the interim will never be known, but its qualities were such that its ownership succession took it steadily upward from a smith to an emperor."

"What happened to the dagger?"

"Publius Varrus owned that. He buried it with Grandfather Caius, the year you and I were born."

"So you never saw it, either."

"No, but it was flawless, with a blade like polished silver. Peerless. And now there is Excalibur. Can you doubt that men would steal and kill to own it? Uncle Varrus himself told me men would fight wars to possess it. Therefore, brother, it behooved us to make sure, from the outset, that its first owner and user is man enough to hold it and to keep it. It is a king's sword, at least, now that there are no emperors around. We must breed a king worthy of the sword."

"Uther was a king."

"Aye, but a small one. His kingship was small, I mean. There was nothing petty about Uther."

"So his son—"

"His son may be the man, some day. He has the blood of kings—not merely Uther's blood—and he has the breeding. He is Eirish Gael and Cambrian Celt and he is heir to Cornwall's Celts, through his mother. He has the blood of ancient Rome within him, too, patrician Cornelius through our own line, and equestrian Varrus. He could become High King."

"High King of Britain?" I heard amazement in my brother's voice.

"Why not?"

"Why not indeed." Now his tone changed to one of musing. "Vortigern sees himself as High King of Britain some day "

"Does he, by God? By what right?"

His lip flicked upward in a tiny smile. "By default, I suspect, and by right of conquest and possession. What other right is there?"

I had no adequate response to that and so sat quiet for some time, sipping my wine again while my mind raced to follow this new line of thought Ambrose had opened up. If Vortigern's ambitions leaned towards a High King's stature, I reasoned, then we in Camulod might well be able to make use of them to our own, similar ends.

A solid, heavy clunk, accompanied by a flash of movement brought me back from my musings. A small, tanned leather purse, bulky and evidently filled with coins, had landed on the table in front of me.

"What's this?"

"My current wealth, all of it, to purchase access to your gravid thoughts."

I smiled. "We don't use money here."

"I know, no more do we. I keep it as a talisman, a memento of a time long gone. You were thinking of Vortigern, I believe."

"Aye, I was. He will never be High King of Britain."

"Why not? He's already well along the path towards it. He controls the whole of the northeast and works with Hengist to extend his influence southward, into the Settlements."

"That will take him years."

"I agree, but he has years. He's not an old man, Cay. Five, perhaps six years older than you, that's all."

"Very well, he has years. But after those have passed he'll be no more than king of East Britain. Does he have sons?"

"Aye, two. Cuthbert and Areltane."

"Cuthbert? Areltane? What kind of names are those?"

Ambrose shrugged. "Different names; men's names. Saxon names."

"Are they impressive, these sons?"

Again the shrug, this time more pensive. "Who can tell? They are both young, but both king's sons. They have . . . concerns which other men lack . . . I believe, however, that the younger, Areltane, could be his father's heir in more than name. He is a strong young man in every way, approaching his seventeenth year."

"What about the other one, Cuthbert is it? How old is he?"

"Nearing nineteen. He is . . . less of a presence than the younger boy. Not less manly, you understand, merely less gifted; less likable, perhaps; certainly less open, less outgoing. I like him well enough, personally, but he is overshadowed by his younger brother in almost everything they do."

"Does he resent that?"

"Again, who can tell what goes on inside another man's mind? He doesn't seem to. The boys get along well together, outwardly at least."

"The other, Areltane; can he fight?"

"Aye, superbly for his age. He's a natural leader."

"Hmm. You admire Vortigern, don't you?"

"Yes, I do, and he has earned that. You admired him, too, when you met him."

"Yes, I admit I did. But High King, eh? Well, perhaps in the Eastern regions, as I said, but never in the West; not in Cambria, or Cornwall, and certainly not in Camulod, even though, as you pointed out, he still has years ahead of him. How many years, would you think, to claim and settle all of Britain to the east?"

Ambrose's face broke into a wide grin as he at last discerned the direction of my thoughts. "Long enough for a boy child to grow up. That's what you're thinking, isn't it?"

"Yes." I squeezed my chin between my palms and nodded my head slowly. "It had occurred to me that Vortigern victorious in the East would keep the pressures of invasion from that direction away from us, leaving us to guard against the South and the West alone."

Ambrose stood up, unable to contain his excitement as the picture in his mind took shape. "Of course! And the boy Arthur is the natural heir—legitimately—to South and West and North!"

"Aye," I added. "Even to Eire, which could reduce the threat from beyond the western seas."

He sat down again as suddenly as he had risen, staring at me.

"You dream wide-reaching dreams, Caius Merlyn."

"Perhaps, but I am bred to it and my dreams are not of my own greatness. We have a land to safeguard here—" I broke off as another thought occurred to me, then voiced it as a question. "Will those dreams cause you problems with your friend Vortigern?"

My question surprised him but he quickly shook his head. "No, not at all. I have already chosen, as you know, to make my life here. I will return to Vortigern and tell him that—another decision long since made. But now I can approach him as a military ally, offering him a guard upon his western flanks; our cavalry. He will be well pleased with that."

"You have no fears that he might seek, some far-off day and then merely to assist his loyal friends, to extend his domain to Camulod and the West?"

"He might," he admitted, after having thought about it for a time. "But by then he'll be too late. I know he has too much ahead of him now even to give thought to the possibility were he aware of it. By the time he does come around to it, if he ever does, his loyal friends will be too strong, too well established in their hilly lands behind their walls of horsemen, for him to consider waging war with them. In the meantime, Vortigern will pacify and unite the East, and Camulod will have those years to grow and prosper, unless something goes radically wrong."

"Aye, and something always will, but at least we have an end in sight— a target to aim for." Now it was I who stood up. "Come on, then. The first step along this path is not a step at all; I want to fork your legs across a saddle and get your feet securely into stirrups, and I want to be aboard a ship to fetch the child before the next moon fills its face."

Within the month, as I had ordained, Donuil and I were ready to set out for Eire. Ambrose was well ensconced and already ranging far and wide throughout the Colony, his feet securely anchored in his stirrups.

Donuil and I would travel light, with only nine men as escort. We would have preferred to ride alone, only the two of us, from my home to his, but everyone around us, from Aunt Luceiia to our visiting Druid friend Daffyd, had warned us of the folly of such a course. The dangers we would face lay on the road, they said, not at the end of our route, and of course they were right. A party of eleven would be small enough to make good speed, and large enough to discourage attack along the way. We picked our people carefully, for their size and fighting skills, and I was content. All nine of them were friends and companions of long standing.

Two days before we were due to leave, awaiting only Ambrose's return from his latest patrol, Lucanus came to visit me while I was in the midst of a meeting with my people, making a final inventory of our travelling needs. I was glad to see him; it had been some time since last we had talked. I apologized for being occupied and asked him if I might seek him out in turn within the hour. In far less time than that I found him in his Infirmary, in consultation with Ludmilla. He grinned at me and waved me to a high- backed chair by his table. "Sorry, my friend, my turn to be engaged, but we are almost done here. Sit, please."

I seated myself and spent the next few moments watching, and trying not to watch, Ludmilla as she leaned over the table beside Luke. She was a well-made woman, long and lithe beneath the voluminous white robe she wore. Black and white, I realized, were the colours I associated with her at all times. And blue, although she wore it too infrequently. Black hair, blue eyes, white clothing. And red, red lips, a sudden voice whispered within my ear. I felt my face flush and berated myself for such callow, boyish embarrassment, shifting around in my seat to look elsewhere. The woman flustered me and I could not understand why this should be so. I felt attracted to her, I knew that—the swell of her hips and breasts seldom eluded me for long, despite her loose-hanging clothes—but that was merely lust, and I knew I could cope with that and conquer it. The other confusion that I felt defied definition, but I was aware of it again—an anxiety amounting almost to panic.

The conference ended and Ludmilla moved to gather up the papers they had spread upon the table, and I watched her as she did so. Lucanus was frowning as he scanned a written sheet of papyrus before handing it to her to take with the others. Her load complete, Ludmilla turned and nodded kindly to me with a smile before leaving. Even after the door had safely closed behind her, the knowledge of her nearness kept my heart thudding audibly in my chest. Finally I forced myself to address Lucanus calmly. He was sitting watching me, a slight smile creasing his features.

"Well," I began. "Finally we can talk without distraction. I'm sorry I couldn't leave with you earlier."

His smile grew wider. "You are the Legate Commander. You have duties. When do you leave?"

"Day after tomorrow. Everything's in hand. What's up?"

"Nothing's 'up,' as you put it. A cup of wine?"

"Good idea. Thank you."

He poured for both of us and then resumed his seat, holding his cup at chin level and staring into it for a while before speaking. "I received a letter several days ago. Daffyd brought it."

He had a peculiar expression on his face and I wondered what was coming. Very few men now either read or wrote, since Rome had taken away her clerks along with her armies.

"A letter? That's a great event these days. From whom?"

"From an old acquaintance with whom I had lost touch for many years. It turns out he's close by and learned of my presence here by accident."

"Wonderful, Luke! You must be excited. When is he coming?"

"He is not. . . cannot. Like me, he's a physician and a surgeon, army trained, so he can't simply up and leave his charges. I, however, would like to go to him."

In the previous few weeks our wounded veterans had improved immeasurably and many had already been released to resume their duties. The others, those still confined to bed, now filled less than two of the temporary hospitals set up for them, and none of them now remained in any danger. Those who would die had died already. Lucanus was at liberty to do whatever pleased him. I could have no possible objection to his leaving, nor would I have entertained one, but I wondered why he was telling me this. There was more to come, I felt. Lucanus was not a man to seek another out—even myself, his only close friend—to make mere small talk.

"Then why don't you go immediately? I think that's an excellent idea. You've nothing to detain you here; the work's all done. Your staff can take care of any minor emergencies that might spring up. Are you worried about that? Or is there something else? I have the feeling, for no good reason, that you require something of me. Is that it? For God's sake, Luke, what could you possibly require from me you couldn't simply take as freely granted?"

He made a sound that was both a sniff and a sigh, pulling his shoulders high. "I don't want to go to see him empty-handed, Cay."

"Why should you? Take whatever you want."

"That's rather large. I want to take a wagonload of fresh supplies—food, clothing and medicines."

"A wagonload? Fine, then. See the quartermaster. I'll see him myself and advise him you're coming. But what ails your friend that he should need so much? Not that I begrudge you your gift, you understand—you could have that and ten times more as your due. I'm merely curious. Where is he located?"

"North of here. And thank you, Caius Merlyn."

"Nonsense, not another word. North, you say. By Aquae Sulis?"

"No, more to the west, by Glevum, close to the coast."

"Hmm. We're going that way, to Glevum, to take ship."

"I know you are. That's why I decided to speak. May I ride with you?"

"You have another option that you might prefer?"

He smiled again. "No, not at all."

"Then that's settled. The day after tomorrow. Does that give you enough time?" He nodded, and I went on, my curiosity fully aroused. "May I ask two questions?" He waited, his smile still in place. "What would you have done had I said no to either request?"

"Nothing. I would have stayed here. I could not make the journey on my own, especially with a loaded wagon. What's your second question?"

"Your friend the surgeon. How does it come about that he is in such dire need of basic supplies? Are there none to be had in Glevum?"

Lucanus shook his head slowly. "There may be, my friend, but not for him. His charges are all lepers." "What?"

"Lepers. I said his charges are all lepers. A large group of them."

"Lepers?" I repeated, still off balance. Lucanus took pity on me.

"Yes, my friend, that's what I said." He watched my face and then said, "Oh dear, there's that look. The look that encompasseth all misunderstandings."

I was listening now, understanding, Luke was going to a leper colony, walking into contagion. I had known there were lepers in Britain, of course, but they were creatures of whispered terrors and nightmares and I had never encountered any. My flesh crawled with horror at the mere thought of them, my mind filled with the grim stories I had heard about them and their disgusting scourge.

Lucanus's sympathetic tone cut through the unreasoning terror of my reaction. "Caius, I beg you, stop looking like that. These sorry people are no threat, and you have no need to fear the very mention of them. Speaking of them won't contaminate us. Their fear of people like us, whole human people, is far greater than our ill-founded terror of them, let me assure you. We see them as the living dead, terrifying in their implications, but they see us, and with far more reason, I fear, as the incarnation of walking death, since we would kill them all out of hand, and with no remorse, merely to rid ourselves of the sight of them." He paused to look at me more closely, and when his voice resumed it was more solemn. "It occurs to me, seeing you react, that I should have given more thought to this. You may find it in your heart, and it lies well within your power, to forbid my visit now, fearing contagion, but I would like your permission to visit them, Commander Merlyn." I stared at him, hearing his formality, until he continued, almost in a whisper, "Theirs is an awful life of suffering and dread, Caius. There might be something I can do to help them. May I go?"

I nodded, suddenly unaccountably unwilling to look him in the eye and unable to speak. I sensed him watching me closely, however, and forced myself to meet his gaze. He was smiling, a small, sad smile. "I promise you, Caius, there is nothing to fear. The foulness and contagion of leprosy are very real, but its reputed speed of contamination is grossly exaggerated. I worked among many lepers during my early years with the legions. My finest teacher, Philus of whom you've heard me speak, was a student of leprosy who had worked for more than three decades among those afflicted with the scourge. He himself had remained uncontaminated and was convinced that the disease is almost incommunicable by ordinary, commonplace means—by casual touch, in other words—although he handled all of them with care for his own safety, and always washed himself thoroughly with astringents afterward. I came to agree with him, eventually, learning from personal experience that he was most probably correct. . ." His voice died away for a moment, then resumed, "I also learned that lepers are ordinary people, just like us, Caius, but afflicted with a dreadful, bleak, incurable disease that brings death in life and banishment from all human warmth, except among their own kind—but there I have found that human, loving warmth burns brighter than anywhere else in this world."

I watched him as he spoke, then I swallowed hard and nodded again. "The supplies you spoke of—what will you require? Is there anything in particular that you need to take with you?"

He smiled again. "No, almost anything would be welcome. They will have nothing."

"I see. And your friend the physician, what is his name?"

"Mordechai. Mordechai Emancipatus. 'Mordechai the Free,' and he is well named. He is a Roman Jew, educated with me in Alexandria, and then in the legions under Theodosius."

"A Jew. Not a Christian?"

"No, an Aesculapian."

At last I could smile with him. "A brave man, by anyone's accounting. Do you know exactly where to find him?"

"No, but I know where to inquire. Mordechai mentions in his letter that they are located ten miles to the westward of a public hostelry widely known as the Red Dragon, about twenty miles south of Glevum. I'll find him."

"I am sure you will, and I'll make sure you do."

Luke and his forthcoming journey remained in my mind for the rest of that day, prompting me to think about the gifts I should be bearing to Donuil's father, the King of Scots. Luke would go bearing valuable gifts to Mordechai, a friend and colleague. Could mine to King Athol be less substantial? And yet, I asked myself, what did we possess in Camulod that could constitute a kingly gift? The answer was not long in coming. Horses, of course, the like of which were never seen in Eire! I resolved to take a stallion and a brood mare, matched as closely as could be, and I immediately felt better. I set aside the question of equipment, saddles and stirrups for the time being, deciding in my capacity as Legate Commander, as opposed to ambassador, that generosity could be carried too far when it affected safety, strategy and tactics. The gift of breeding stock, I reasoned, was munificence enough; saddlery, including stirrups, provided our cavalry with a military edge it would be irresponsible to relinquish, even to a prospective ally. But then I thought of other weaponry, and resolved to take King Athol one more gift no one could match in magnificence: a matching pair of short-sword and dagger, made by Publius Varrus, with hand-tooled belt and sheaths.

Delighted with my decisions, I summoned Donuil to share my elation, forgetting that we had already arranged to meet earlier that day to select the horses we would take with us on our journey. He listened carefully as I outlined my thoughts on our gifts—I mentioned only the breeding pair of horses, seeing no point in bringing up the potentially sensitive matter of saddlery and stirrups—and when I had done, he nodded his head sagely.

"My father will be most impressed; these are indeed gifts for a king. But they compound a problem I've been thinking about already this afternoon."

"What kind of problem?"

"Transportation, Commander. How are we going to get all these animals across the sea? Now you have added another two. Horses need room. They can't curl up in a corner and go to sleep like a man. We'll never find a ship big enough to take them all."

"Then we'll find several. We'll take enough gold to buy as many as we need."

Donuil was unimpressed. "Buy them where, Merlyn? I know Glevum's a harbour, but it has lain abandoned, or nearly so, since the Romans left. Lot's army went there after Aquae Sulis, remember? They found it just as desolate as Aquae, with nothing left to loot. There may be ships still using it, but I doubt we'll find more than one at any time."

The same thoughts had been running through my mind, but I knew, with an inner certainty I could not explain even to myself, that this was the course we should take. Even if it meant taking a blind chance on having to leave some of our party behind when we took ship, I was convinced deep inside that I was right, and I was confident that all would be well. Donuil listened as I explained all that, and then shrugged, accepting my enthusiasm and optimism.

"So be it," he commented. "You're the Legate, and I'm prepared to trust your judgment in this as in everything else." He paused, looking around him thoughtfully. It was late afternoon by then, darkening rapidly indoors, and we were in my quarters, sitting by a burning brazier and surrounded by leaping shadows.

"What is it, Donuil?"

He shook his head, then decided to proceed with what was in his mind. "Commander, do you remember all the candles you used in Verulamium, lighting up your tent at night like the noonday sun?"

"Yes, I remember them very well." They had been a gift from my friend Germanus, the Bishop of Auxerre in Gaul. "The light of learning," he had called them as a private joke between the two of us. The prelates and clerics who had gathered that year in Verulamium for the Great Debate between the Orthodox Roman bishops under Germanus and the British bishops who had followed the teachings of Pelagius had been superbly well equipped with beeswax candles and tapers of the highest quality. I had acquired half a wagonload of them for my own use when I wrote at night. Now I smiled at the memory. "Why do you ask?"

"I was wondering what happened to them all?"

"They were burned up, Donuil. That tends to happen with candles."

"All of them? You had cases and cases of the things."

"I know I did, but that was years ago. What made you think of that?"

"My father, Commander, and gifts. He's an old man, although you'd never think it to look at him from a distance, and seeing you sitting there in the dark reminded me of how he used to sit the same way, with one of his big wolfhounds' heads resting on his knee. We have no fine, bright candles in Eire, only smoky lamps, dirty old smelly tallow dips and firelight. It came to me that a gift of such things, such bright, clean light, would bedevil and gratify the old man."

"It probably would, Donuil. I would never have thought of such a thing, but it is a marvellous idea. I wonder if we could find some?"

"Nah, you're probably right. They'll all be gone, long since."

Now that he had brought the matter to my mind, however, I began to wonder what had happened to those candles. I had not used them all, I now realized, for I had been wounded on the way home and spent the next two years as someone else, without a memory. The last I remembered of them was watching them being loaded onto one of our wagons before we left Verulamium. Lucanus would know.

Another visit to Lucanus elicited the information that he had never seen the things, and that the wagons had been returned, with all their remaining contents intact, to our quartermasters. The following morning, after an hour's questioning and another hour spent searching, we uncovered ten cases of fine candles almost buried in a dingy warehouse against the north wall. I repossessed all of them, since they were mine, and four cases went immediately into our baggage as a tribute to Athol, High King of the Scots of Eire.

VIII

The morning of the day we were to leave turned out to be a momentous one for several reasons, and as a result we were obliged to postpone our departure for ten days. It began innocuously enough, when I awoke at dawn filled with a sense of well-being after a dream I could recall with perfect clarity.

Some people, I have learned, never dream of flying, of soaring above the earth like a bird. I have always had the power to fly, in my dreams, and always as an eagle. My pinions had borne me high in this grand dream, and the pleasure of it woke me with a smile upon my face. Nothing foreboding or prophetic marred my enjoyment. I had been gliding, I recalled, high above the training ground at the bottom of Camulod's hill, with the towering stone walls of the fortress on my left, and beneath me all the forces of the Colony had been marching and riding in parade, their ranks and formations bright with ceremonial colours and the metals of their harness burnished to inspection quality. A flash of light had attracted my eyes to a rostrum erected on the hill, and there stood Ludmilla, garlands of flowers in her long, black hair, her eyes and face aglow with happiness as she received and accepted the salutes and plaudits of the passing troops.

Folding my wings and curling my great pinions, I swooped down to where she stood, and as she heard the sounds of my swift passage she raised her smiling face to greet me. I threw wide my wings then, feeling the air arrest me so that I hung there, spilling the wind around me, almost stationary, and as I did she raised one hand to me, holding out my Aunt Luceiia's silver mirror. I saw myself reflected there, but as a man, not a bird, and yet as I reached to touch it, she laughed at the clatter of my talons against its surface. Startled, and panicking, I felt myself begin to fall, and the swift-beating feathers of my wing tips touched the ground before the air lifted me up again, allowing me to beat my way aloft to where I could become myself once more. And finally, feeling the thrill of freedom in my breast, I tilted myself and planed above the army, hearing their cheers as I passed overhead.

It was at that point I awoke, a smile upon my face, and for a while I lay there, breaking my lifelong custom of leaping from my bed the moment my eyes opened. I had spent much of my life avoiding my dreams, most of which were dark and frightening and, I had come to believe, prophetic. This one, I felt sure, had been very different, benevolent, and I believed I could interpret it.

I had been making myself miserable ever since my return from the southwest, I now realised, attempting to avoid my own attraction to Ludmilla, and, having made that admission freely to myself, I now examined it more closely. I was almost thirty-two years old and had lain with no woman since my wife, and my wife had been dead for more than four years! And now, unexpectedly, my mind, my thoughts, my days were filled with visions of Ludmilla. She was more than merely lovely; she was enchanting, beautiful, graceful and lithe. And she was clever; clever enough for Luke to value training her in his own arcane profession. She was accomplished in every other way, too, a valued and highly regarded member of Aunt Luceiia's household. And then I had another thought, quite startling in its novelty, yet strangely lacking any power to surprise me: she suggested, and exactly resembled, the portrait Publius Varrus had set down in words of the woman who had bewitched him when he was my age, Luceiia Britannicus herself.

"So be it," I thought then. "Today I will seek her out and talk to her and spend some time in courting her and then, when I return from Eire, we shall see what comes of it."

That decision made, I leapt out of bed, pulled on a tunic and my heavy, sandalled boots, and went for a long run, down the hill to the plain and across its dusty surface to the edge of the forest more than a mile away, where I turned right and ran around the perimeter of the training ground until I could run no more. Then, as I caught my breath before tackling the hill again, I heard a warning trumpet from the guard post at the gate above and turned to see Ambrose's patrol column approaching from the forest.

I waited for him and ran up the hill with him at the head of his troopers, my hand on his stirrup leather. The patrol had been an uneventful one, he told me, with nothing to report. We parted at the gate and I made my way directly to the bath house.

Something over an hour later, bathed, refreshed and fed, I made my way to the Infirmary, hoping Ludmilla might be there already. She was not, but Lucanus was, checking some final details with his staff before leaving them to their own devices while he was away. He dismissed them just as I arrived and turned to me with a head-to-toe look of wry appraisal.

"Well, good morning. You're looking full of vim and vigour. What's on your mind?"

"Nothing at all," I lied. "Other than our journey, of course. Are you all prepared?"

"As much as I'll ever be. When do you want to leave?"

"Before noon, although we're in no hurry other than to get away. I feel like a boy turned loose from his tutors for the summer. Is Ludmilla here?"

He was looking down at his desk, his thoughts elsewhere. "Hmm? She was a moment ago, didn't you see her?" He corrected himself immediately, his attention fixed on something on his desk. "Oh no, she's in the wards; she left before you came . . . Damnation, I told Cato to take this with him." He picked up the item, a small wooden box, then paused, his eyes widening with surprise as he looked beyond my shoulder. "Ambrose," he said. "Welcome. What brings you here for the first time? You're obviously not sick."

I had turned as soon as he began to speak, to see Ambrose looming in the doorway at my back. He looked enormous, and again I found myself thinking he must be much bigger than I, although I knew that was not so.

"Forgive me, Luke," he said, smiling. "But they told me Cay was here and I need to talk to him before he leaves." His eyes swivelled to me. "It's important, Cay, or I wouldn't trouble you, but I forgot to mention it when I first thought of it, before I went out on patrol, and I've only just remembered it again, so I thought I had better do something about it before it slips away again. May I have a moment?"

"Of course," I said. "What's—"

I was interrupted by the sound of running feet and Ludmilla dashed into the room through the rear door that led to the interior sick rooms.

"Lucanus, come quickly! It's Popilius Cirro. He can't breathe!"

"Stay here, all of you!" Lucanus was gone in a swirl of robes, leaving the three of us alone.

I spoke to Ludmilla, noting even as I digested her words the way in which she seemed to sag against the door frame, her full breasts emphasised by the way her robe was caught between her and the wall.

"What d'you mean, he can't breathe?"

"I don't know what's wrong, Commander. He simply cannot catch his breath." She had not looked at me at all in speaking. Her eyes were fixed on a spot somewhere behind me and her face was flushed a deep red; from fright, I supposed, and the effort of running.

"Who is Popilius Cirro?" I heard Ambrose ask, and I realized then how truly new he was to Camulod.

"Our Senior Centurion," I answered, my eyes still on Ludmilla. "A good friend, and primus pilus to our father for many years in the legions, under Stilicho. He is an old man now, but he was active until he took a wound in the last campaign against Lot, and then he became ill. But he's recovering, and almost fit enough for duty again; at least I thought he was." Even as I was speaking the words I had the strangest sensation that something was wrong here; something that did not concern Popilius. My stomach grew tense and I glanced over my left shoulder to see if anyone else had entered the room behind me. No one had, and I looked back at Ludmilla.

"Don't you think you should go to Lucanus, Ludmilla? He might need some assistance. I think it was us he told to remain here, not you."

She looked at me for the first time since entering the room, a hesitant smile flickering on her face. "Yes. Yes, of course, I probably should." She straightened up, preparing to leave, and then her eyes moved away from me again, back towards the point at which she had been staring all along, and finally the realisation came to me that she was staring at the point behind my right shoulder from which Ambrose's voice had come. I turned my head quickly and saw her gaze mirrored in his eyes as he stared back at her, his face entranced. Still not comprehending fully what was going on, I looked again from one to the other. They were completely unaware of my presence, let alone my scrutiny; each was aware only of the other.

"Ludmilla?" The sound of my voice broke the spell, actually startling her.

"Oh, Popilius Cirro! Excuse me." She turned and was gone, the door swinging shut behind her. I turned back to my brother to find him gazing at me, his entire face radiating awe.

"Cay," he said, his voice quiet and filled with wonder. "Who is she?"

"Her name is Ludmilla," I answered, waiting for the anger I knew must be inside me to come boiling to the surface.

"I know that, I heard you call her that, but who is she? Does she have a husband?"

Suddenly, inexplicably, instead of feeling anger or jealousy, I found myself on the point of laughing, and a part of me wondered how I could possibly find any humour here. "Not yet," was all I said.

"Ludmilla . . ." He was looking at me, but his thoughts were elsewhere.

"Aye," I said, "Ludmilla. What was it you wanted to discuss with me?" His eyes widened in surprise. "You said there was something you wanted to talk to me about."

"Oh, yes. It was a thought I had about Uther's people and their bows. Do you think we could arrange to have some of them stationed here permanently?"

"Permanently? You mean living here in Camulod? I doubt it. Why?"

"Because I would like to start training them to fight with our men, tactically. It would be easier if some of them were based here. Why do you doubt it? Wouldn't you want them here?"

"No, it's not that, not at all. I simply doubt they'd come down out of their hills, particularly now that Uther's dead. I don't even know who will rule in his place now, but it's quite possible that whoever does might wish to have no more to do with Camulod."

He frowned. "You think that's likely?"

"No, but again, I don't know. It is possible. Uther rode to war for Camulod, rather than for Cambria, although Lot moved against Cambria, too. More to the point, unfeeling though it may seem, the fact is that most of those men lost their bows along with their lives, and Uther's people have never had enough bows to be able to afford to lose any of them. It is against their law for any man to own a bow."

"What do you mean? I don't understand."

"I know you don't, but it's quite simple. The Pendragon bow, as they call it, is a new weapon. It is made from a specific wood, a wood that has never been in abundant supply, and each individual bow takes years to make. For every bow made, there are a score of men waiting to use it, so each man takes custody of one bow for a year and has the responsibility of caring for it, but he must share it with others. The Druids are growing yew saplings everywhere throughout the Pendragon lands today, but that is a new development and the trees grow but slowly. There must have been hundreds of bows lost in Uther's campaign against Lot. They will be difficult to replace, and impossible to replace quickly."

Now my brother looked quite crestfallen and I reached out to clasp his shoulder. "Look, I may be wrong. They may have more resources than I thought. In the meantime, however, they have to replace a king and recover from a war, as we do. When Donuil and I return from Eire, we will journey to Uther's land and talk to whoever rules there. The alliance of Pendragon and Camulod is advantageous to both parties. We will work at it and build upon it."

As I spoke, the rear door opened again and Lucanus came back into the room. I swung to him immediately. "How is he, Luke?"

He stepped to his table and sat down, reaching out to pick up the small box he had been so concerned about earlier. He gazed at it, as though wondering what it was, and then replaced it on the tabletop.

"Popilius Cirro is dead. Respiratory failure." His voice was flat and emotionless, but then he turned to look at me, although even as he spoke his gaze drifted away over my shoulder. "I am sorry, Commander, there was nothing I could do for him. He was in paralysis when I arrived, and I was powerless to help him. He died almost immediately, while I was trying to clear his windpipe."

"Clear his windpipe?" My voice sounded strange to me. "You mean he choked to death?"

"No," he said, shaking his head distractedly. His eyes were fixed on some infinity within his mind, and for several moments he said nothing more, then resumed in a normal tone. "No, he did not. His trachea was unobstructed. He died of some kind of internal convulsion, probably related to the pulmonary condition—the pneumonia he had been suffering from." Lucanus paused and pinched the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. "Anyway, he's gone . . . What will you do now?"

"Do? What d'you mean?"

"About leaving today. I imagine this changes things."

"Oh." I had not even thought that far ahead. "Yes, yes of course it does. I couldn't even think of leaving now. We will stay here a few more days and honour Popilius Cirro with the funeral he deserves." It was too sudden, too final, too brutal to be true. How could death come, so swift and unexpected and so final, lacking war or violent strife? And yet Popilius was dead. I could see Lucanus was as shaken as I was. "May I see him before I go?"

He rose to his feet again immediately, his face expressionless, set in lines of distant coldness that I knew to be the detachment of his professional persona. "Certainly, come with me."

The primus pilus still lay in the cot where I had seen him last, but he looked very different now. The shape beneath the coverings was still the one I remembered, but the once-familiar face was now hideously lifeless, the skin chalk white except around the blue-lipped, sunken mouth and cheeks.

"Why is his mouth blue?" I found myself whispering.

"It's a condition caused by the way he died, the respiratory failure. We call it cyanosis, because of the blue coloration it produces. Much the same result is seen in death caused by cyanide poisoning."

I glanced at him sharply. "He was poisoned?"

Lucanus shook his head, a tiny, weary smile twisting his lips. "No, not at all; I merely said the effect was the same."

Popilius's right arm lay on top of the covers and I reached out and took his hand in my own, finding it still warm as I had known it would be although already I fancied I could feel the chill of death beneath the skin. It was a large, old hand, calloused, hard and heavy. Anguish swelled in my throat, hurting so that I could not swallow.

"Old friend," I said to the recumbent form, "I will undertake your last commission." I had to stop, waiting for the end of a surge of grief that robbed me of my voice. When it had passed, I spoke again. "You built an armed camp at the bottom of our hill and held it for us in the face of Cornwall's thousands. Later, you tore it down again, but not until all danger was long past. Tomorrow, on the spot where you built the praesidium in the centre of that camp, you will be buried, alone with the glory you have earned, as befits a primus pilus, yet in a place of honour among the others who fell in that battle. Farewell, Popilius Cirro."

I turned on my heel, with a nod to Lucanus, and went to begin the arrangements for the funeral. Outside the sick ward, in Lucanus's office, Ambrose was still waiting, presumably for me but more hopefully, I guessed, for Ludmilla's return. I reached out and grasped his shoulder in passing, pulling him into step with me. "We have a funeral to arrange," I told him. "Your first, but not your last in Camulod. As well you accompany me now and find out how we do it, because sooner or later you're going to have to arrange one on your own."

As we emerged from the Infirmary and swung towards the administration block that housed my office and those of Titus and Flavius, we came face to face with Peter Ironhair. He stopped, stock-still, several paces in front of us, his face setting into a scowl as he saw me and then betraying shocked amazement as his eyes went from my face to my brother's. Unsure of what to say or how to react to the evidently unexpected sight of two of me, he drew himself to his full height. I gave him no chance to recover from his shock.

"Ironhair," I said, acknowledging him. "You've been away, obviously. You have not yet met my brother, Ambrose Britannicus. Ambrose, this is Peter Ironhair, one of our smiths and a member of our Council."

Ironhair nodded to Ambrose, a cautious, hostile gesture. For me he had nothing. No trace of a smile or sign of any courtesy marked his features. Ambrose, sensing the man's dislike, merely nodded in return, his own face blank. This unforeseen exchange dispensed with, Ironhair walked on, swerving slightly to go around us We proceeded in silence for several paces before Ambrose spoke.

"Who was that?"

I glanced at him. "I told you, Peter Ironhair, a smith and a councillor."

"I know that, but who is he? Why does he dislike us so intensely?"

I smiled half-heartedly, thinking of Popilius. "Not us, Brother, me. He thinks I did him a disservice, when all I really did was save his life."

"From whom, or what?"

"From me. He is an ambitious fool and a newcomer who cares nothing for the way things are done here. He had pretensions of a future role for himself here in the Colony that bore no resemblance to the role designed for any man in this place." I told him the story of the Farmers and the Artisans, and about the confrontation Ironhair and I had had by the main gate the following day, and he listened without interrupting until I had finished. We were at the entrance to the administration building before I reached that point and I held him there until my tale was done.

"Hmm," he said, when I had finished. "Sounds like a danger well identified. Certainly looked the part. It's a good thing you returned home when you did, in time to neutralize him. Had I arrived before that, or even later, I would not have noticed anything amiss. I have a lot to learn, Cay, before I'll be fit to deputize for you. D'you think he'll cause any more trouble?"

I thought about that for a moment and then shook my head. "No," I said. "I doubt it. He knows I'll kick him out of Camulod if he misbehaves from now on; and as you will be responsible in my place whenever I'm away, the same threat will hold good for you. Does that cause you any concern?"

He shook his head with finality. "Not in the least. . . as long as I know what I should be looking for."

I laughed. "You'll know, Brother. You'll know."

· · ·

The arrangements for the funeral were well in hand by late afternoon, and Ambrose followed them all with interest. It was an unfortunate sign of the times that such rites had been sufficiently numerous in the recent past to entail no great logistical or procedural difficulties. Popilius, however, had been highly ranked and highly regarded, so the formalities of the occasion were more elaborate than most and it was decided that an honour guard of senior centurions should attend his bier and I myself should deliver his eulogy. No priests were involved. Despite his official Christian status, Popilius had been an old soldier, bred in the old ways, and was a disciple of the ancient military cult of Mithras. We had no Mithraic priests or representatives in Camulod, so we honoured his convictions by interring him as a soldier of his soldier's god, dressed in his finest armour and weapons. The ceremony took place the following afternoon and, in spite of the relentless rain, it was attended by almost every adult in the Colony, including my aunt and her women, the only people there afforded shelter beneath a leather awning.

In the middle of my oration, while I was speaking of the Popilius I remembered from my boyhood, a face leaped out at me from among the rain swept crowd. Peter Ironhair again, the cowled hood of his cloak thrown back from his forehead, looking at me in scorn from the faceless, huddled ranks, a bitter sneer twisting his face into a mask of resentment. The sight of that sneer, the anger and rage it bespoke, almost succeeded in making me forget what I was saying, but I closed my mind to it, forcing myself to feel instead the trickling rainwater inside my harness, and brought my mind to bear again upon Popilius Cirro and what he had meant to Camulod. My own anger, however, once kindled, did not fade; it merely moved aside and waited. I knew that some day, come it soon or late, Ironhair and I were destined to meet sword to sword.

After the funeral, as soon as I had stripped out of my armour and passed it into the care of my orderly, I made my way to the bath house to find it, as I had expected, jammed with people who, like me, had stood for hours beneath the chilling rain. I had never known the place so crowded in all the years since it had first been built, and my immediate reaction was to leave again and make my way down to the Villa Britannicus, where the baths were vastly superior. But that would have meant another journey through the icy rain, and it was too far and I was too lazy, so I accepted the jostling of the close-packed mass of bodies and resigned myself to merely absorbing the heat and thawing out my bones.

I made my way in the accepted fashion through the formalized pools of graded temperatures, dawdling little in any of them and elbowing my way almost surreptitiously and with many apologies through the throng, determined to arrive at the steam room ahead of the main crush. There was no rank in the bath house; first there, first served was the rule. The man directly ahead of me in the line for the calidarium, the hottest pool before the steam room, eventually gave up in disgust and quit the line. I glanced at him as he passed me and did not recognise him, and that surprised me. I had thought I knew everyone in Camulod by this time, having worked hard at the task since regaining my memory. Puzzled, and curious, I turned around to look at him again, only to find him close behind me; too close behind me, and moving towards me inimically, pale grey eyes wide with violent intent.

Reacting instinctively, I turned my side to him and sucked in my belly, rising to my toes, throwing up my arms and bowing my middle backwards. The knife in his hand sliced a straight line across the muscles of my stomach as my right hand slashed down to close over his wrist and I pulled him forward, smashing my left elbow into his nose. Before the man on my other side could even react—his back had been pierced by the point of the assassin's knife when I jerked it forward—I had spun again, to face my attacker, driving my right knee up into his naked groin. He bent forward, clutching at himself, and as his head came down I brought my other elbow crashing against the back of his neck, the full weight of my frame behind it. He fell to his knees and remained there, restrained from falling farther by the press of bodies around us. Now the man who had been stabbed, his wound a mere scratch, was turned towards us, his eyes staring and his mouth wide with terror as he tried to reach behind his back to staunch the blood that flowed from him. My own belly was covered with fast-flowing blood. Somebody shouted an alarm, and the first flush of panic began to spread, although the danger was over. While I had never seen the baths so crowded, neither had I seen them empty so quickly. I sagged at the knees then, staring at the open edges of the cut across my abdomen.

"Damnation, I won't accept any argument on this, Titus, it was Ironhair." I was almost hissing through teeth clenched against the pain. "It had to be him; there is no other conceivable explanation. He had just returned to Camulod after an absence of days—Ambrose and I met him just inside the gate yesterday—and I heard someone say later in the day that he had brought some strangers with him. Now he and the strangers have vanished, judging by the time Ambrose has been gone; all except the one we have. Have they found out who he is yet?"

Titus was looking at me in dismay, and behind him, against the wall of the sick bay in the Infirmary, Flavius stood close by as always, his brows knit in a furrow of concern. An attempted assassination within Camulod was unheard of, and that the intended victim should be me appalled them both.

"Answer me, damn it!"

Titus shook his head. "I don't know, Caius. As far as I know, he's still unconscious. Lucanus is with him now." He set his jaw in determination and faced me squarely. "Nevertheless, at the risk of incurring your anger, I repeat that I must doubt the involvement of Ironhair in this." He held up his hand, palm towards me, to cut me off before I could respond. "I am not saying I believe the man incapable of such a thing, not at all. But I am saying that it defies credence that he could have planned the event when no one, including yourself, knew that you would go directly to the bath house after the funeral."

"But I didn't go directly to the bath house. I went back to my quarters and changed out of my armour. Had I remained there, he would have made the attempt there. As it was, he followed me to the baths. The only planning necessary was the decision to kill me today, while my mind was occupied with the funeral. The assassin is a stranger, unknown to me, but here in the safety of Camulod I would expect no threat, and even his strangeness ought not to have alerted me. I see many little-known faces around me nowadays. What saved my life, in fact the only thing that saved my life, was that I am aware of such lacunae in my knowledge of the folk here, and so turned around to try to place his face more firmly in my recollection. That's when I saw him lunge at me."

Flavius broke in here. "That's another thing I've found impossible to understand! How could anyone have got in there with a knife?"

I looked at him. "The bath house? He carried it in a towel. Do you examine all your friends while bathing to make sure they are unarmed? No one saw him armed because no one, including me, would ever have thought to look for such a thing there. Even after I had been stabbed, Flavius, no one noticed the blood until the other man screamed."

Neither man had any response to that.

I had tried to walk out of the bath house on my own, but it had been beyond me. Ambrose and Donuil had found me sprawled by the shallow tepid pool as I watched my own blood discolour the water. They had come at the run, bellowing for assistance, and soon the echoing chambers of the bath house were full of the clatter of running boots. I had pulled Ambrose down to me and whispered in his ear, sending both of them running to arrest the man called Ironhair, because I knew he had been behind this. I'd watched them go and felt my head fill with roaring emptiness, and then I lost all awareness.

Others had carried me here to the Infirmary, covered with blankets, and Luke had lost no time in coming to my assistance. Banishing everyone from the Infirmary save Ludmilla, Titus and Flavius, he had washed my wound with a painfully astringent solution that he told me would prevent sepsis of the cut. Then, when he was satisfied that the cut was clean, he had sewn it up—this almost painlessly, I was glad to discover—with seventeen small, carefully fashioned stitches, which he told me would have to remain in place for at least seven days. Only then had he gone to attend to my assailant, held under guard in a separate room. My wound had not been as serious as I had initially feared, and Lucanus's demeanour alone had reassured me as he worked. The incision was long but shallow, little more than skin deep in fact, so the muscles had not been damaged. The instinctual desperation with which I had sucked in my gut and arched my back had saved my life.

Now the door opened and Luke came into the room, looking directly at me.

"What did you hit him with, Cay?"

"My elbow, it was the hardest thing I had available But I hit him clean and well, right at the top of the spine."

"You certainly did. You killed him. Now we'll never know who he was."

I tried to sit up straighter and regretted it immediately. "But he can't be dead! He was alive earlier."

"So was Popilius. I wonder who'll be next? They say death comes in threes."

I winced at the pain in my belly. " That whoreson Peter Ironhair is number three, when I get my hands on him. What in blazes is taking Ambrose so long?"

As though in answer to my question, Donuil strode through the door.

"Donuil! Did you find him?"

He shook his head and gave a short, sharp sigh. "No, we missed him. You were right, obviously. He wasted no time. Must have had someone posted either in or just outside the bath house. As soon as he knew the attempt had failed, he was gone. The guards saw him leave by the main gate with three other men, moving quickly. That was before the news of what had happened even reached the gates. We arrived there much later. I had wasted time checking his known haunts first, the places you told us to search. Stupid of me. I should have sealed the gates immediately."

I waved that aside. "Don't blame yourself for that, my friend. By your own mouth you've just confirmed that he was gone before you could have caught him. At least you found out when he left. Did you send after him?"

"Aye. Ambrose took a full squadron of troopers, and two of his own trackers. His men are bloodhounds. They'll find them."

"Good man, I know they will." I lay back then, seeking respite from the band of fire that seared across my belly, and Luke was at my side immediately, a cup of some foul-tasting brew in his hand. I drank it unwillingly and fell into a deep sleep shortly thereafter.

Luke's soporific had been potent, because by the time I awoke night had fallen and the room in which I lay was lit by several lamps that threw a dim, yellow, comfortably warm light. I made a small movement, an attempt to change position slightly, and was rewarded with a searing blast of pain across my stomach, so that I lay still from then on and dwelt only on my thoughts. My eyes closed after a while, and I lay there dozing, not asleep but merely drifting in and out of awareness, and eventually I heard Ludmilla approach my cot, recognizing her by her quick, light footsteps. For some reason, and whence the impulse came I know not, I kept my eyes closed and feigned sleep. I felt her hand cool on my forehead, and then she moved away from the bed but remained in the room. I heard her sit down, and then the silence stretched, broken only by my own breathing. I opened my eyes after a time and looked at her without moving, but she remained unaware, staring into the light of one of the lamps, her thoughts evidently far away. She was always beautiful, as I had cause to know, but here in the lamplight she was ravishing and I allowed my thoughts to drift as I drank in the pleasure of watching her.

I realized with surprise that I felt neither rancour nor jealousy over the situation that had sprung into being between her and Ambrose. How could I have, I asked myself. What could be more natural than that this beautiful woman and my beloved brother should be attracted each to the other? But what of your dream? a small voice asked within my mind, and I smiled as the answer to that question came to me immediately, filling my chest with gladness and relief.

In the dream, Ludmilla had held up to me Aunt Luceiia's silver mirror, and I had seen myself reflected therein. But what I had seen was my mirror image—my alter ego—Ambrose my brother. I myself had been an eagle at the time, as witnessed by my talons striking the silver surface when I reached for it. Ludmilla had not shown me myself as reason for her happiness, but a semblance of me that she could love with ease, and I recalled the thrill of freedom as my beating wings bore me aloft again from the place where I had almost fallen to the ground in trying to touch her.

Now other footsteps approached the sick room and as they came, Ludmilla rose to her feet. I closed my eyes again before she could notice that I was awake, but kept them open the merest slit, so that I could see who came.

It was Ambrose, and he froze in the entrance as soon as his eyes lit upon her. They stood mute, staring at each other, each afraid to speak. Then Ambrose nodded, his face flushed with pleasure and constraint, and spoke in a low voice.

"Lady. How is he?"

Ludmilla, too, spoke softly, her voice barely more than a whisper. "He is well. Asleep. Lucanus gave him a sleeping draught against the pain."

"Is his wound bad?"

"No, merely superficial. He was fortunate. Lucanus stitched him up and he should mend completely within the week. My name is Ludmilla."

I saw him nod. "Ludmilla . . . what?"

"Sir?"

"Ludmilla what? Have you no other name?"

"Oh, I see." I could tell she was smiling. "No Roman name in the style you would recognize. I am of the house of Pendragon, cousin to Uther. Ludmilla Pendragon, then, would be my Roman appellation."

"Ludmilla Pendragon . . . I am Ambrose Britannicus, half-brother to Caius Merlyn."

"No! Had I not heard you say so I should never have guessed." I heard pure raillery in her whispered tone, and so did Ambrose, but he mistook it for scorn. I opened my eyes fully and saw him flush even deeper.

"Forgive me, Lady," he said, appalled. "Have I offended you?"

Ludmilla was instantly contrite and moved towards him quickly, hand outstretched. "No, that was cruel of me. I did not mean to tease you, but did you honestly think I could be in any doubt of who you are? The resemblance between the two of you has been the major topic of conversation in Camulod since the first moment you were seen. Shall I wake Commander Merlyn? Do you wish to speak to him?"

"No! Not yet." He smiled, now, gaining confidence. "I would much rather speak to you first, before anyone else appears. How is it that I could be here for weeks and not have seen you?"

No raillery now. Ludmilla had evidently been asking herself the same question and her voice betrayed that. "I don't know," she whispered.

"Would you not at least have come, through curiosity, to see this marvel of comparison?"

"There is no comparison, but no, I would not."

"I do not understand. No comparison?"

"Please, Commander Ambrose, be seated." Her voice was gentle and Ambrose sat down obediently, his eyes never leaving her for an instant as she moved to stand closer to him. "I have many duties," she went on, "and in these last weeks they seemed to swarm upon me. I heard all about the marvel of your resemblance to Commander Merlyn, but I know Commander Merlyn well, by sight, and I find him amiable and admirable."

"But?" Ambrose leaned forward, an elbow on one knee. "You did not speak the word, but my ears heard a 'but' in there, somewhere."

Ludmilla giggled gently, something I could not remember having heard her do before.

"Your ears are keen . . . Let me see, then. How shall I put this? I cannot, without sounding improper and immodest, but I will in spite of that . . . Commander Merlyn is a wondrous man and everything a woman looks for in a man is there in him. For me, however, there is a blindness involved. I find him amiable and admirable; as I have said, but he holds no wonder for me. Do you understand that? I feel towards him as I would towards a brother. And therefore, when the talk was all of you and how much you two were alike, I found it no great sacrifice to dedicate what time I had to my duties. They were pressing and necessary, whereas the simple meeting of another amiable brother seemed to have no urgency. Does that make sense? I simply did not know . . ."

A pause of heartbeats, during which I decided it was time I sprang awake, but before I could do anything, Ambrose asked his next question. "Did not know what, Lady?"

"How different two identicals could be."

I coughed and spoke, "Ambrose," and in an instant they were both beside me, Ludmilla taking my right hand to feel my pulse, and Ambrose seizing the other to wring it heartily. Several moments of activity went by before I could ask the question that superseded all others in my mind.

"Did you catch Ironhair?"

"No, Brother. We caught his companions, three of them, but he was not with them."

"What do you mean? Where was he, then?"

He shook his head. "We don't know. The other three swore he left them as soon as they reached the bottom of the road down from the gates. He swung off to the north, they said, leaving them to make their own way south and east to Isca and thence to the coast and Gaul."

"Where are they now, these three? Did you bring them back with you?"

"No, they are on their way to their destination."

"What?" I attempted to sit up and merely managed to drive the breath from myself in a whoosh of pain.

Ambrose waited until I had recaptured my breathing, then resumed. "They told me they did not know him well, that they had met him only days earlier, him and one other, on the way to Camulod. They themselves had come to deliver a cargo of wine, ordered by our quartermasters this time last year. Ironhair rejoined them as they were preparing to leave, during the funeral or shortly after it, and rode with them from the fort. I believed their story, and did not interfere with them any further."

"What do you mean you believed them? Why should you believe them? And why permit them to go on?"

He looked at me wide-eyed, his eyebrows high on his forehead. "I mean I believed them, Caius, nothing more than that. They had made no attempt to flee from us, or hide. When we approached them, they were prepared to fight, as anyone would be on meeting a force of strangers on the road, but once they saw who we were, they offered us no contest and were courteous and open with us. I believed them implicitly. They spoke the truth. I have met liars before, you know."

There was nothing I could say to that without sounding completely boorish. I let go my breath with a sigh. "Aye, you're right. I had no right to snap at you. I am angry Ironhair escaped, that is all."

"He will turn up again, sooner or later, Cay, and if he does, you'll have him. And even if he should never appear again, you will benefit by that; all of us will."

"Aye. What hour of night is it?"

He grinned at me. "Late. We returned some hours ago, but I met Luke and he told me you were a prisoner of Morpheus and would remain that way for hours, so I bathed and had some food."

"Good. I hope your bath was uninterrupted?"

"No one attacked me."

"Excellent." I sighed again, uncomfortable with my injuries. "Ludmilla, did Lucanus leave any more of that foul brew he fed me? I'll never get back to sleep without it."

She had moved away while Ambrose and I were speaking, but now she reappeared, holding a cup. "Yes, Commander, I have it here." She held it for me while I gagged it down, and then she and Ambrose returned to their fascination with each other. Neither of them was any more aware than I was of when I fell asleep again.

IX

We. had received no further news of Peter Ironhair by the time we eventually left Camulod nine days later. He had disappeared completely, swallowed up by the forests that stretched unbroken in every direction beyond our fields, and I was forced to come to terms with the fact that there was nothing I could do to remedy that, other than to keep searchers in the field in the increasingly forlorn hope they might stumble upon his hiding-place. I called them off after a wasted week. In the interim, however, I had mended quickly enough, although I bitterly resented the enforced idleness. Luke had estimated the healing time to the day.

I had put the time, which otherwise would have been lost, to good use, nevertheless, even though it was to be years before I saw the benefits of my days of convalescence. I had begun with impatience, thinking fretfully about the child now held in Eire, and what he would mean to my great-aunt and to all of us in Camulod in the years to come. From that point, I began to think more analytically about what the future might hold for him, and that led me to a train of thought that was completely new to me: the problems any and all children must face, growing to maturity in the bubbling broth of the Britain that was forming now and changing from day to day, sinking towards anarchy and chaos. Those problems would be particularly enhanced when the child in question was blessed, or encumbered, with the blood that flowed in young Arthur's veins. By the time my thoughts had clarified along those lines, I was in a fever of impatience to discuss the matters in my mind with someone, any one of my closest friends. But Ambrose was patrolling again, Donuil had his own duties and Lucanus was Lucanus, constantly immersed in his surgical responsibilities. I spent most of that frustrating week alone.

Lucanus came bustling into my room, finally, on the afternoon of the eighth day and removed the stitches that had bound me. It was the day before we were again scheduled to leave, and he examined my wound closely, peering at it from a handsbreadth away and poking and stretching the newly formed scar tissue with his fingers before professing himself well enough satisfied with the healing process, but warning me of the dangers of violent movement for a few weeks. Riding did not qualify as violent movement, he assured me. Fighting most certainly did.

I glanced at Donuil, who had also come to visit me and was standing by my bedside when Luke said that, but he smiled and shook his head, holding up his hands, palms towards me. "No danger of violence around me, Commander," he said, his native lilt strongly pronounced. "It's Eire we're going to, a sweet and pleasant land. Of course, we still have to get there from here, so I'll make no promises about that stretch of the journey."

"How will you dress?" Luke's question surprised me.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean will you ride armoured? You'll be but a small party, in a strange land. Armour might attract unwelcome attention."

"That's a risk we'll have to take." I looked at Donuil. "What d'you think, Donuil?"

"Of course we'll ride armoured." He sounded indignant. "We can be sure of our welcome at my father's hearth, but any attention we attract before we reach his lands could be unwelcome. Better armoured against it than not."

I spoke again to Luke. "Why would you ask that?"

He sniffed. "Because, my friend, you are still an invalid, that's why. Look at yourself. Your belly's still bare and the holes made by the stitches are still open. They'll itch, probably, as they heal. You'll have a frustrating job trying to scratch them beneath your breastplate, but that suits me well, because the worst thing you can do is scratch them."

"So be it," I said, affecting a sniff of disgust. "I shall ride armed and itching, and I shall heal without complaint."

The following morning, having taken leave of everyone including my great- aunt, who was already impatient for my return with her great-grandson, I met with my travelling companions in front of the stables. We were a small party, but a strong one. Nine trusted men, including the centurion Rufio, who had become Donuil's shadow, and two trainees to care for our extra horses, would accompany Donuil and me on our journey, and we would act as escort to our surgeon Lucanus as he rode, with his wagonload of supplies and gifts, to visit his friend and colleague Mordechai Emancipatus. Luke and I had decided that we would say nothing of his destination, other than that he rode to visit an old friend. Leprosy was an illness that no one spoke of lightly. The very mention of it brought terror leaping into the throats of ordinary folk, as I had discovered for myself.

I was surprised to find Ambrose waiting with the group, mounted on the massive chestnut gelding he had chosen for himself, and watching me with a smile as I approached. I greeted everyone and hauled myself up into my saddle, turning immediately to Lucanus who sat on the wagon bench, the reins gathered loosely in his hands. He winked at me gravely and I smiled, turning back to Ambrose.

"Good morning, Brother. I didn't expect to see you again so soon after our farewells."

He grinned. "I decided to ride with you for a few miles. It's a beautiful morning, and my horse here has not had a stretch in three days. I'll ride with you as far as the main road and then give him his head on the way back."

"Good," I said. "Let's go." I gave the signal to move out and the small crowd of onlookers who had gathered to see us off parted to let us pass. Lucanus went first with the wagon, and we fell in behind him, and I was aware of a deep feeling of well-being, released as I now was from all Camulodian responsibilities for the duration of our journey.

It seemed I was not the only one to feel that way. I chose to savour the drifting of my own thoughts, and I found that no one in our party showed any inclination to do otherwise. We rode in companionable silence for more than a mile, until the hill of Camulod behind us had been screened from us by the trees of the forest that now stretched unbroken ahead of us to the main north road. I had glanced at my brother from time to time, expecting him to be the one who broke our silence, since he was unaffected by any feelings of departure, but he rode as wrapped up in his own thoughts as the rest of us and appeared completely unaware that no one had spoken. Finally he straightened in his saddle and looked up wonderingly at the massive trees beneath which we were riding. I happened to be looking at him as he did so, and my curiosity had the better of me.

"What are you thinking, Brother?" I asked him, nudging my horse closer to his.

He looked at me and smiled, shaking his head. "Merely how peaceful it is here. We could be miles and miles from the nearest signs of habitation, and yet I know there are fields and farmsteads all around us, hidden by this wall of trees on either side."

I glanced at the forest lining the road. "Hardly a wall," I demurred, "but they stretch a good hundred paces to right and left, most of the way from here to the main road. There are spots where they run far deeper."

"Why is that, Cay? Why have these trees never been cut and the ground cleared? The fields on either side are fertile and rich and the land would have more value, surely, if it were given to crops?"

"Several reasons," I answered. "All of them attributable to the earliest of the Britannicus family to settle this land. I suppose the main reason originally was to provide a screen between the agricultural lands and the main road, and then later to maintain one between visiting dignitaries and the sight of honest labour on either side, but there's also the matter of the trees themselves. Look at them. They are all prime: elm, beech, chestnut and oak; not only decorative, but good building materials, and hence too valuable to destroy merely to clear land. When the Villa Britannicus was new, no one ever perceived that there might be a need for more farming land. This was hunting territory. That's why there's no heavy underbrush; it's all burned out regularly to leave the grazing free for deer and other animals."

"Are you serious?"

"Of course I am. Why should that surprise you? Don't you do that where you come from?"

He shook his head, a rueful grin twisting his face. "Burn out the underbrush? No, that would take forethought, and the luxury of time to hunt anything other than raiders. I suppose it might have been done, long ago, but if it was there's no memory of it. We have forests aplenty, but they grow on their own, without help from us, other than an accidental burning or two." He broke off and looked at me. "Of course, you've never been to Lindum, have you?"

"No, Verulamium marked the northern limit of my progress through Britain.

"Hmm. Well, it's very different from this area. Not nearly so. . . what's the word I'm looking for? Settled is not accurate; Lindum has been there forever. I suppose established would be a better way to put it. This area was wealthy and established long before it became Camulod. The villas and estates around here are old and magnificent. We have villas around Lindum, of course, and several of them are quite large, but nothing there, no aspect of the wealth they display, comes even close to matching the luxuries you take for granted here."

I laughed aloud. "Well, you're fortunate to live here in that case, as are the rest of us."

"I'm aware of that . . ." His voice faded, as though his thinking had changed direction, and then he resumed in an entirely new, much quieter tone. "Caius. . . I have something to ask that I would not care for others to hear. Will you ride ahead with me?"

"Of course." I kicked my horse to a canter and guided it around Luke's wagon, then kicked it again to a full gallop, closely followed by Ambrose, so that we soon outstripped our companions. For more than a mile we galloped, giving our mounts their heads until the first flush of pleasurable exercise began to pall on them and we reined in, slowing them down again to a walk.

"Well," I said, grinning. "You want to ask me about Ludmilla, so ask away, although I don't know what you expect me to say in response."

The fall of his jaw was ludicrous, and my own pleasure at his discomfort was heightened by the elation caused by my awareness that I had not, since the first moment of divination in Luke's Infirmary, experienced a single pang of envy or jealousy concerning him and Ludmilla. "You knew what I was going to ask you? How could you know? I had no idea myself I was going to ask you until the moment arrived."

"Come, Brother," I laughed. "Haven't you heard the tales about Merlyn? They say I have magical powers, and divination is the least of them." I was not at all inclined to tell him I had witnessed their first meeting, and thereafter listened shamelessly to their whisperings while I supposedly slept.

"Aye, I have heard them, hut I had thought them idle talk based on your friendship with Druids."

His answer brought my head around to face him sharply. There was a tone in his voice I had not expected. "What does that mean? You sound as though you half believe them."

He looked straight back at me. "I think I do. I mean, you have just told me something that you could not possibly know. How could you, when I did not know myself? And besides that," he added, after a long pause, "I remember the way you explained my mother's actions to me, and the truth in your voice that convinced me you were right. It was impossible for you to have known the truth of that, when the actions you described took place almost before you were born." He was half frowning, half smiling. "You said yourself, at the time, you didn't know whence your explanation came."

It was true. When first we met, I had reconstructed his mother's reasons for abandoning him in childhood, using nothing more than intuition to connect the few facts I knew to be true with the description I had gleaned of Ambrose's mother and her circumstances at the time when she had met and availed herself of our temporarily incapacitated father, in her great desire to provide her husband with a son. Neither Ambrose nor I would ever prove the accuracy of my reconstruction, but it had felt correct.

"Oh, for God's sake, Ambrose!" I snapped now. "I was guessing, that's all, guessing predicated upon some self-evident truths. And the same thing happened here! You are my brother, and a new brother, at that. I watch you closely all the time, now that you've come back into my life. It took no sorcery to see that you were smitten with Ludmilla and she with you from the first moment the two of you met. You have had eyes only for each other ever since, but do you think the rest of us have lost ours?" He was still staring at me, unconvinced, as I rushed on. "You had that solemn look about you, all at once, and wanted no one else to overhear your secret. What other secret could you have in the space of these short weeks? Ludmilla and I are almost related, through Uther, and she is one of Aunt Luceiia's treasures. Of course you would wish to ask me about her and about what you should do. That is only natural. No magic and no sorcery in guessing that. That should be apparent in what I say hereafter. For I have no idea what to tell you, or what you should do, other than to follow your instincts. Ask Ludmilla what to do! She probably knows far better than any of us, anyway. Marry the woman, but wait until Donuil and Luke and I are back in Camulod. You can do that, I hope?"

He was staring at me, only half hearing what I had said, I was sure. "Others know?" he asked, after a short silence, his voice filled with wonder.

"Only those who are not blind and care to look. Don't worry about it, man. Why should you care what anyone thinks, save you and your love? Such things happen, and it is natural."

His face broke into a smile and it was like the sun shining through a break in heavy clouds. "She may not have me," he said in a voice begging to be contradicted.

"She will have you, Brother. Of that I have not the slightest doubt. And if you label that prediction sorcery, I will lose respect for you."

"How can you be so sure?"

I had to smile at his innocence "Because I have seen her look at you, stonehead! We are not discussing unrequited love here. This is no tragic tale! The woman is as besotted with you as you are with her."

"She is? God! I thank you for that news! I will ask her tonight—today, as soon as I return." His face fell. "Aunt Luceiia will be furious."

"Ambrose, why would you even think such a thing? Luceiia will be delighted. She has not known you for more than a month, but already she thinks as much of you as she does of me. She will be delighted at the thought of such a marriage, binding the families of Pendragon and Britannicus even closer. Don't forget, her own daughter was the first of our family to marry into Pendragon blood." I cleared my throat. "Now, having done all in my power to make you feel better about the fate that awaits you, may I ask you to speak about something else before we rejoin the others?"

He looked at me, eyebrows raised. "Certainly. What?"

"This nonsense of my being magical, a sorcerer. What exactly have you heard?"

"Oh, that." He flushed, slightly embarrassed, as was I. "Well, nothing, exactly. I overheard one of the soldiers saying something about you one day, and I asked Donuil about it afterward. Donuil would tell me nothing, but when I pressed him he advised me to speak to some of the old-timers, so I approached the Legates Titus and Flavius."

"And? What did they tell you?"

"Nothing concrete. Certainly nothing to indicate that any of the whispered stories might be true. Titus told me that they had all arisen from an incident concerning the woman who became your wife, Cassandra. Something about her disappearance from a guarded room."

"I see. Did he tell you how it happened?"

"No, only that something mysterious had happened and had grown into a kind of soldiers' legend. He assured me that the magical mutterings were nonsense, but understandable in the face of soldiers' boredom and their tendency to gossip among themselves, fostered and fed by the mysterious, unsolved nature of the event."

"Hmm," I said, arriving at a momentous decision. "Tell me, Ambrose, do you ever dream?"

He grinned at me. "All the time. Nowadays I dream of Ludmilla."

"Those are daydreams. I meant, do you dream at night?"

"Of course. I understood you and I meant what I said. I dream frequently, almost every night."

I looked at him in surprise. "Do you, by God? Do your dreams frighten you?"

Now it was his turn to laugh. "Frighten me? Of course not. I usually can't remember them by the time I wake up, but they certainly don't frighten me."

"Then they don't come true?"

He reined his horse to a standstill. "What?" My horse continued walking and eventually he had to kick his to catch up with me, talking to the back of my head. "Caius, you are serious, aren't you? No, my dreams don't come true, except in the case of Ludmilla, and I'm not even sure of that. Do yours come true?"

"On occasion. That's why dreams frighten me." I did not look at him as I spoke the words and he fell into silence, riding beside me. Finally I turned to him again. "Look, Brother, I have never told anyone what I am about to tell you now, so listen quietly, please, without interrupting. It is not an easy tale to tell.

"The tale of Cassandra's disappearance is simply explained. Cassandra was never in that guarded room. It was a trick to protect her life, since I did not know whom I could trust, other than a few close friends who helped me smuggle her away from danger and conceal her. It suited my sense of humour at the time to be mysterious, but that single incident has now grown, as you say, into soldiers' legend. On other occasions, I have enjoyed good fortune, mainly in war, that might seem to be beyond the normal fortunes man is heir to. Fuel was added to the tales each time. Add that to the facts that I can read and write and have a gift for languages, and that I trained in boyhood with the Druid Celts, and I am set beyond the understanding of many who had none of these advantages. Now they whisper, and there are some who believe, that I have magical powers. It is all nonsense. And yet, I have a power that terrifies me and sets me truly apart from ordinary men and women; a cursed power of which I have never spoken to anyone. For years I fought the knowledge of it in myself, trying to make believe it was not so. But then, one day, I could no longer deny the truth of it, and now I have to live with it and with the terror of it. I have dreams, Ambrose, and all too frequently they do come true and they are seldom pleasant. I have had them all my life, despite the fact that I abhor and would happily abjure them."

I pulled my horse to a stop and so did he, and we sat staring at each other for long moments. "Well," I asked him eventually, "what have you to say to that?"

"Tell me about these dreams."

For the next hour, until we reached the Roman road and stopped to wait for the others to catch up, I told him everything I could recall of every prophetic dream that had ever harrowed me, including the deaths of Equus, Picus our father and Uther, and the apparition of Ygraine before I ever saw her. When I had finished speaking he sat silent for a long time, and then he asked me a surprising question.

"The child, Arthur. Did you dream of him?"

I thought about that for a moment. "Of him? No. But I dreamed something with him, when we lay asleep in the birney, off the Cornish coast. At least, I think I did. Not a dream, perhaps, but a fragment."

"What was it?"

"A sword, standing in a stone. That's all I can remember."

"A sword? Standing in a stone, not on one?"

"No. In it. Point down. I don't remember it well, but I do recall that."

"Was it Excalibur?"

"It may have been, but I don't really know. I think I would have recognised Excalibur. Why do you ask that?"

"Because Excalibur came from a stone. The Skystone."

"Hmm. That had not occurred to me. Now that you mention it, of course, it becomes obvious. That's probably the explanation for what I dreamed. As I said, it was strange, and only a fragmentary thing, but it was not frightening, like all the others."

He sat gazing at me with narrowed eyes, his mind obviously elsewhere, but before I could ask him what he was thinking I heard the jingle of harness back along the path and the first of our companions came into view, riding now ahead of Luke and his wagon. Ambrose flicked a glance back towards them and leaned closer to me.

"We must talk more about these dreams, Brother, but I doubt if you should fear them. I believe they occur, and I believe they are prophetic, but I cannot think of them as being omens of evil, not in you. They come to you for a purpose, and there is power in them. You must learn to use that power."

Our companions were upon us by that time and I could do no more than nod my agreement before they joined us, loud and brash and gay now with their new-won freedom. Ambrose left us there, by the side of the great road, after wishing us well on our journey and we watched him until he had disappeared, waving back over his head as he put his spurs to his big horse.

"Well, my friends, we won't get to Eire by sitting here." We swung north and left Camulod behind us.

Donuil's remark about attracting unwelcome attention became reality far sooner than any of us expected. It occurred some time in the course of our second day of travel, although we remained unaware of the fact until after we had made camp and eaten a hot meal. We had built our encampment in the southwest corner of a long-abandoned Roman route camp, in the shelter of two corner walls that looked as strong as the day they were built, centuries earlier, and we had posted two sentries. Mine was to have been the third watch, and I was on my way to sleep when Rufio, Donuil's centurion mentor, approached me casually and threw an arm around my shoulders. I knew immediately that something was wrong, because none of my men, particularly Rufio, who held me in some awe, would have dared actually to touch me in the normal way of things. There was no rule against their touching me; it was simply the way things were. Forewarned by his direct approach, I betrayed no surprise and as we walked together towards my tent he told me that we were being watched. He had seen movement in the bushes around the walls, but had no idea of how many men were out there.

Careful now to do nothing that would signal our awareness of being observed, I turned back and moved to where Donuil had already stood up from the fire. He, too, had noticed the way Rufio approached me. I briefed him quickly and then quietly, moving unconcernedly, we alerted the others and unobtrusively doubled the guard before retiring as we would have normally. Few of us had any sleep that night, lying awake and waiting for the alarm, but nothing happened.

When daylight came, we broke camp routinely and moved out, having seen no sign of anything unusual. Rufio, however, found the fresh tracks of six men in the area where he had seen the shadowed movements the previous night. We rode on, wary and alert, our weapons close to hand. All day we rode steadily, though not in haste, stopping only to relieve ourselves, and as evening approached we made camp again, this time some distance from the road, on a grassy knoll protected on three sides by a fair-sized, swift-flowing river. We ate a cold supper from our saddlebags that night, since hunting was out of the question. It would have been folly for any man to ride off alone to hunt for meat. Again, we were watched but unmolested and again Rufio found the same signs of six men come morning. This time he called me over to look at how two particular pairs of footprints identified the group, whoever they were. The first belonged either to a giant or to a man whose feet would appear grotesquely large; the second to either a child or a dwarf. Lucanus had been watching me and he called to me as I went to mount my horse after examining the tracks in the soft earth no more than twenty paces from where we had lain.

"Cay, come, ride with me for a spell."

When I had tethered my horse to the back of his wagon, I pulled my bow stave and quiver from their wrappings and clambered up onto the bench beside him. He clucked at his horses and slapped the reins, and we moved forward with a lurch.

"Same people as before?" I grunted an affirmative, my mind still upon the disparity in size between the two pairs of unusual footprints. "Well," he urged me. "What do you think? Will they attack us?"

I grunted a negative this time and busied myself with stringing my bow before answering him properly, bracing the end of the stave against the wagon's wood frame and bending the bow with my foot. Strung, the weapon was formidable. I pulled it, feeling my shoulder muscles flex and harden against the tension of the compound arc. "I doubt it," I answered him then. "We are fourteen, eleven of us armoured soldiers, and they are six. So long as we stay together we'll be safe enough. They're probably hoping we'll split up, so they can take us piecemeal." I propped the bow beside me, leaning it against the bench, within easy reach.

Lucanus was looking at me quizzically. "You don't think they know we know they're there?" His voice held mild disbelief.

"No, I don't." I selected an arrow from the quiver on the seat beside me and held it up to my eye, squinting along it. It was straight and true. "Think about it, Luke. If they suspected we were aware of them, then they would know we'd stay together, safe in our numbers. Knowing that, they wouldn't be here now. They'd have gone looking for easier prey."

"Hmm. So what d'you intend to do about them?"

"Nothing, except hope they'll give up and go away. I certainly don't intend to fight them if I don't have to. But I'm worried about you. How far are we from your friend's settlement?"

"I don't really know, but we'll know when we come to the inn called the Red Dragon. I expect we should be there by tomorrow afternoon."

"Good, but after that you have ten miles or so to ride west alone, while we keep going north. Let's hope our friends out there become impatient before then and disappear. Otherwise we'll have to escort you all the way to where you're going. Can't let you ride off alone with a wagon full of goods and six thieves waiting for you to do exactly that, can I?"

Instead of answering, he surprised me by changing the subject. "How d'you feel about Ludmilla nowadays, Caius?"

I absorbed the non sequitur and merely grinned, knowing what was coming. "Better than I have in a long time," I answered him. "Now that she is completely besotted with Ambrose, and he with her, I seldom think about her, other than as a future sister."

He blinked, hiding his surprise almost completely, and then he smiled. "I didn't think you knew."

"Come on, Luke! I'd have to be blind and a fool not to be aware of what happened the first time they saw each other. I was there, if you recall."

"Oh I recall, very well. I simply was not sure that you had seen it. . . or recognised it might be more accurate. I must say you seem to have taken it in stride." He was still smiling, a gentle, wistful little smile.

"I took it in gratitude, my friend, with profound, almost abject relief. The moment I saw what my eyes beheld between the two of them, I recognised the nature of my own discomfort over the young woman. My attraction was lust, pure and simple, alloyed with a modicum of fear and doomed by feelings of guilt."

"Hmm." He busied himself with his reins, giving himself time to think, and I used the interval to glance around us, noting our line of march and scanning the terrain on both sides of the road for signs of our unwanted escort. The countryside through which we were passing offered open, natural stretches of rolling meadow with scattered copses of tall trees. High up on our left I saw a solitary stag, his magnificent antlers sweeping along his back as he stood motionless, gazing down at us, and I stifled the immediate urge to go after him, taking comfort instead from the implicit assurance that no other humans ranged the woods between him and us. I turned to look at the other side of the road, but nothing moved there, either, that I could see. In front of me, Donuil and Rufio rode with two others, all four of them alert and watchful, their heads moving constantly. I checked over my shoulder and saw the two boys riding placidly behind us with the extra horses, and behind them our other five outriders.

"I understand the lust and, to a lesser extent, the guilt, which I believe is nonsense, but the reason for fear eludes me."

I had almost forgotten that Luke had been absorbing my last comment. Now I looked at him, grinning ruefully. "Age, Luke," I said. "I'm growing old."

"Horse turds! You're what? Thirty-two?"

"Almost. I was barely twenty-nine when we rode off to meet Germanus at Verulamium. That was three years and more ago, and I lost more than two of those years."

"Good God! It doesn't seem that long ago. Anyway, your fear of growing old is ludicrous."

"Was ludicrous," I corrected him. "It no longer applies."

"How so?"

"I mean that my fear, if fear it was, came from the threat I perceived at the time of being unable to attract a woman, because of my age. It was irrational, I can see that clearly now, but not before the scales fell from my eyes. And with that realisation came the thought that I must speak with you more carefully, and at much greater length, about the celibacy you espouse.

Since then, there hasn't been enough time to mention it to you. Now there is."

"I see. And why is it so urgent, suddenly, that you and I should speak of celibacy?"

"Because I'm curious. I want to learn more about it."

"In what sense? There's nothing obscure or arcane about it . . . all you have to do is remain sexually continent. Sexual continence constitutes celibacy. It's quite straightforward."

I felt myself bridling at his tone, reacting to the faint hostility I sensed, and I had to make an effort to keep my own voice dispassionate. "I know that, Luke," I responded, willing my face to form a rueful little smile. "But when we talked of it last time, you spoke about it as a tool to self-mastery."

"I had been drinking far too much on that occasion, as had you."

"I know that, too, but I also know the old saw about truth emerging from wine. You meant what you were saying that night and it fascinated me."

"After you had decided you could not have Ludmilla . . ."

"No! . . . well, yes, I suppose that's true . . . but there was more to it than that, Luke. You planted a seed in my mind that night, and I've been aware of it ever since. The episode with Ludmilla, a one-sided thing, I know, was . . ." I searched my mind for the correct word and settled upon a compromise. "It was a sign, I suppose, of something that has been bothering me, a feeling of . . . I think dissatisfaction's the closest I could come to describing it." I could hear my own frustration.

" 'Symptom' is the word you were looking for. Your feelings for Ludmilla were a symptom of an ailment." His face flickered in a grin and his voice became softer. "What kind of ailment is this, Merlyn? A fear of becoming impotent? That happens to all men, I'm told, with time."

"No, it's not that, Luke, that doesn't bother me at all, one way or the other, although I'm potent enough . . . My body's fit enough, and the urge is still there often enough to keep me aware of it. No, it's not that at all. It's my mind, my feelings, my sense of who I am that's troubling me."

"Hmm." He looked away from me, back to his plodding horses. "That sounds troublesome enough. Don't you know who you are, Caius Merlyn Britannicus?"

I had to laugh. "Yes, my friend, I know who I am, as well as you do, and I can see that I am not explaining myself very well, so let me try again. Bear with me for a moment."

I gathered my thoughts and tried to focus them. Finally I began again. "I still might not get this right," I said, "but it's important to me. Ludmilla, as you acknowledge, was a symptom of something. My difficulty is defining what that 'something' entails, but I know it has to do with my memories of Cassandra and the feelings I still have for her in spite of the fact that she has been dead for years. I lost the main part of those years, so to me, the loss of her is still something new and painful. Does that make sense?"

He nodded, not looking at me. "Completely."

"Good, I'm glad to hear you say that. But don't you see wherein lie my feelings of guilt?"

His concurrence emerged more slowly this time. "I do, from your perspective."

"Thank you, but since there is no one else who can influence what and how I feel inside, there can be no other relevant perspective, can there?" He did not even attempt to respond to that, so I continued. "So Cassandra—I can never really think of her as Deirdre—and my memories of her, fresh as they are, are a dominant force in how I think and behave . . . Tell me when you think I start to make no sense . . . My body has been without her for years, longer than might normally be required to forget her, I suspect, but my mind is struggling as though with a recent bereavement. And the conclusion I have reached is that I wish to remain faithful to the memory I hold of her. In my lusting for Ludmilla, I was aware of a betrayal of Cassandra." I hurried on, before he could be tempted to interrupt me. "I know, at least, a part of me knows, that is nonsensical, Luke, but it's true, nevertheless. And the fact remains that, as I am today, and with the way I feel inside, I have no desire, not the slightest, to come to know another woman. My body does, from time to time, but that is ephemeral and purely physical, and therein lies the reason for my interest, not in mere celibacy, but in the manner— the confident and assured manner—in which you spoke of celibacy as a powerful means to a particular end. You said it was an aid to concentration, to knowledge, to self-mastery and self-awareness, and to power over one's baser instincts. You were describing a power, Luke; a permanent and enduring power over one's self, leading inevitably to betterment and fulfillment. That intrigued me at the time, and since then, after long hours of thought, it has become more and more alluring. This is a knowledge I want to possess." I paused, then finished almost in a whisper. "But I suspect it's not to be achieved by simple abstinence."