The Singing Sword

VIII

Well, I thought about that spear. I thought of little else for a long time. I worked on it and worried over it day and night for months after that evening, not knowing it was to be another ten years before the discovery was made that would revolutionize our way of waging war, and even longer before we would recognize what we really had.

Victorex, the bailiff from Terra's estate, took to Caius's ideas before he had even finished outlining them, for horses were this man's life. He even looked like one. He was tall and bald except for a thick corona of stiff, straight, dun-coloured hair that encircled his head above his ears like a cropped mane. He had long, pointed ears, large, pale eyes that were slightly too close together and a face that seemed to fill up his whole head. His nose was long and flat and his big, oblong teeth seemed squeezed together at the front of his mouth. And he had no chin. A strange-looking character, altogether. The first time Equus saw him he said, "My God! And they call me Equus!"

Victorex was the perfect man to put in charge of Caius's new project, and he could not wait to get started. The first thing he did, after he had moved his belongings from Terra's villa to ours, was to examine every head of stock we had. Within a week he had divided them all up by sex, weight and colour and begun to devise complicated plans and charts for his "bloodlines," as he called them, and for his breeding stables. All told, including the horses from the other villas in the Colony, we had twenty-seven stallions, about fifty mares and a number of geldings, mules and horses too old to be useful. Victorex selected the three finest stallions and the ten biggest, strongest mares as breeding stock, to be kept at the villa. The rest he allocated to the various farms that made up the Colony. Caius had informed all of our people of his plans, and if there were any ill feelings over this relocation of stock, they went unvoiced. The word went out, too, that every expedition that left the Colony had to keep constant look-out for new stock. No plugs or swaybacks were wanted, but all horses judged to be suitable for breeding purposes were to be bought at a fair price and brought back to the Colony.

The first opportunity came on my next excursion to Noviomagus to meet with Statius, but we found no horses on that journey other than the nine pairs we bought from him, complete with wagons loaded with iron ingots. Caius had been correct, in his usual manner, about our timing on that trip. The twenty-one days of grace accorded to Lignus the carpenter expired as we were preparing to leave the Colony, and he was granted another two days in custody so that we could escort him safely off the Colony's lands. His son Simeon was recovering slowly, and there was now every reason to expect that the boy would grow healthy again, although his leg was broken and twisted beyond even Cletus's ability to repair. Lignus's burns, on the other hand, had been largely superficial and were healing quickly, except for the oil burn on his left ear, and hair had already begun to grow on the rest of his head, leaving him with a mangy, scabby look that I thought well suited to him. He still stank like a goat, too, and I ordered him forcibly washed before I would allow him to approach my train.

We were taking only two wagons with us on the outward journey, to carry the salt and provisions we intended to pick up along our route, and Lignus sat chained in the bottom of one of them as we marched away. No one came to see him off or to wish him well. We took him far beyond the boundaries of the Colony and left him, free of his chains at last, just outside the small town of Sorviodunum, where four main roads intersect.

From there onward, relieved of his company, our journey to and from Noviomagus was direct and uncomplicated, and we avoided being seen from any of the towns we passed by. We concluded our business with Statius quickly and to his immense satisfaction, and contracted to meet with him again just prior to the start of the new year. With the proof of our madness and riches, this second exorbitant payment of gold safe in his hands, Statius would have been happy to bring his next shipment of iron all the way to our Colony, but I balked at the thought of him knowing where to find us and our gold. I told him that I had to come back to Noviomagus then anyway on other business.

Five days after leaving Statius in Noviomagus, we were back on our own lands, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that my old friend Bishop Alaric had been installed as a house guest during my absence. He was the first person I saw among the small group waiting to welcome me home, standing straight, tall and white-haired beside Caius. He had brought joyous tidings with him on this visit, but no mention was made of them to me at that time. Luceiia had missed my arrival, being away from the villa on some business connected with her emerging Council of Women, but Caius assured me that she would be home presently, and I went about the business of overseeing the unloading of my wagons and the disposal of the goods they held before making my way to the bath house to wash the stains of the road from my pores.

When I entered the house again, I found Caius seated by the window in his study, poring over one of a pile of tightly rolled parchments, all sealed with wax, that lay on the table in front of him. Curious, I asked him what he was reading and he reacted with the euphoria of a man who has just found buried treasure. The parchments were all letters from his son Picus, written over a period of years and dispatched by a variety of military couriers from all parts of the Empire, in care of Plautus at the garrison in Colchester. Plautus had been transferred to Londinium since Picus left Britain, and the postmasters at Colchester had taken very little interest in forwarding letters to him. Eventually, however, a large number of letters had been delivered to Plautus in bulk, and he had duly forwarded them to Alaric, knowing they would come, in time, to Cay. Having waited years to receive them without even knowing of their existence, Cay had now determined, he told me, to wait a little longer before permitting himself the pleasure of reading them, teasing himself with the self-discipline of not yielding to his impulse to rip them open and wallow in them. Now, however, he yielded slightly, permitting himself to read one. I grinned and left him to his pleasure, knowing he would give them to me to read later.

After dinner that evening, when Luceiia and the two women who would be staying at the villa that night had retired to Luceiia's new cubiculum to discuss their Council business, Caius, Alaric and I sat alone in Cay's study, and I caught up on everything that had happened while I was away. Cay was not ready yet to discuss Picus's letters. The pleasure of them was still too new, too solitary, too precious to share, and Alaric and I understood how he felt. Neither of us pressed him, and our talk was desultory as a result.

"Philip Ascanus was here, right in the Colony," Caius said, suddenly, during a lull in the conversation. "Arrived the day after you left."

"Who?" I had heard him perfectly well, but the impact of his words was so outlandish that I had to ask him to repeat the name.

"Philip Ascanus. You remember him?"

"Remember him? Of course I remember him. How could I forget? What was he doing here?"

"He came to claim his patrimony." Caius's voice was dry as a desert wind and I was floundering for a foothold among my swirling thoughts.

"Patrimony? What patrimony? Have you spoken with him? I am amazed that he would even dare come near you, after the way you dealt with him when you last saw him. How long ago was that? My God, Cay, that's twenty years ago — more, closer to thirty."

Caius grunted. "You are growing old, my friend, and like an old man, you are starting to exaggerate.

Unfortunately, what you say is not far off the mark, but it's not quite twenty years." He paused and cleared his throat, managing to inject disgust and distaste into the sound. "The man has improved none in the interim, however — nor would he, I fear, given another ten years. He is still a charlatan and a blusterer, though more daring and more insolent than he would have presumed to be with me twenty years ago. But then, I never found him guilty of a lack of daring."

Alaric was looking from one to the other of us, curiosity stamped on his face, and I explained to him, "Philip Ascanus served with us for a short time before the Invasion, back in '67. He was a bad officer, the worst kind. A brutal bully and a homosexual torturer. Starved his men and spent the money for their rations. Caius straightened him out the only way possible — had him court-martialled, stripped of his rank and expelled from the Legion."

"I should have had him hanged," Caius drawled, his voice bitter.

"I don't understand," I said, turning back to face him. "What in the name of all the ancient gods was he doing here? What's his business?"

His eyebrow went up in surprise that I should ask the question. "What does he want? Why, his own good, of course. Apparently, he thought to be our neighbour."

I was astounded. "Are you serious? How?"

This brought a wordless grunt from Caius, who sniffed and replied, "Apparently, one of the villas to the north of here was acquired by an uncle of his, who promptly died, leaving the place to his favourite nephew."

"Good God! And now Philip Ascanus is here?"

"Was here. He didn't stay."

"Which villa? Is it one of the ones close to us?"

"Close enough," Cay said. "I thought of disputing his claim in the courts, when he told me why he was here. But then I reasoned that I was merely being petty. The uncle never took possession, formally, but he paid the purchase, nonetheless, so the villa and its lands go to his only heir."

"Philip Ascanus!"

"Philip Ascanus. Apparently he lives close to Glevum. Received the news of his uncle's death from your friend the tribune there."

"Scala?" I had met Tribune Marius Scala during one of my trips to Glevum some years earlier. He was a pleasant fellow and our friendship, though brief, had been a delightful one.

"That's the one."

"Good God." Another thought occurred to me. "How did you find out all this? Are you telling me he actually came here, knowing this was your house?"

A chilly little smile flickered across Cay's mouth and his aristocratic drawl became more pronounced. "No, not quite. He seemed quite genuinely surprised to see me here. Quite severely disconcerted, as a matter of fact. Bereft of words. Looked as though I had caught him in the act of buggery again. It would have been quite laughable except for the fact that nothing the fellow did could ever amuse me. I was the last person on earth he could ever have dreamed of seeing here, and he was most upset to find himself a supplicant on my doorstep. He thought he had come to deal with you, you see. Your friend Scala left him with the impression that this was your estate."

"With me? My estate? Why would Scala do that?" I stopped and thought about it. Scala could easily have taken the wrong impression from me; after all, I had spent less than a week in his company and there had been a lot of things going on, including some sustained drinking. I shrugged the thought off and continued. "Even so, I'm surprised Ascanus would have the gall to face me, knowing that I know what I know about him. What did he want to see me about?"

Caius shook his head, his little smile spreading wider. "I've no idea. He was probably looking for information about the area and the district. Yours was the only name he knew, and he had that from your friend Scala. But there's no question of him having the gall to face you. It would never have occurred to him that he might know you, and he would probably not have recognized you had he met you face to face. Bear in mind what you just now said, Ascanus was a bad officer, the worst kind. Such men do not recognize, or even think of, the soldiers under them as living, human beings of import. He was told to look for the villa-owner Publius Varrus. If he remembered anyone of that name at all from his past and long-forgotten army days, it would only be a lowly centurion. Centurions do not own villa estates, Publius. You forget that his time with our unit was before you won promotion in the field and before you came into your own wealth from your grandfather. Philip Ascanus would never have made the association between a common soldier of twenty years ago — a mere subaltern risen from the ranks — and a man of wealth and power today.

"Anyway," he continued, grinning, "he knows who you are now. I told him all about you and warned him that you would not be pleased to see his face again. He knows that he is not welcome on these lands and he will not return uninvited. Believe me."

I attempted to erase the frown from my forehead. "You don't mean you're prepared to accept him as a colonist, do you?"

Caius smiled again. "No, not at all. I think the possibility of that is very slight. In fact, I no longer think it is a possibility. I believe his vision of a life in the country began to dwindle the moment he found himself face to face with me, and died altogether when he learned you were here with me. The thought of propinquity to two people who know the truth about him — and who would have no compunction in condemning him — would be unbearable to the man."

"So you don't think he'll be moving to the Colony?" I was grinning now, too.

"I do not. But I do think my agents should be able to buy his villa for a reasonable price, now that he no longer has dreams for it."

I shook my head. "He'll never sell to you, Cay."

"He'll never know I'm involved. He will take the cash and forget about the place."

"Hmmm!" I mulled that one over, trying unsuccessfully to focus my mind on my twenty-year-old memories of Philip Ascanus, but I could only recall a faintly paunchy, dissolute body and a weak, pasty face with an incipient double chin and a pouty mouth. No eyes and nothing definite to fasten on, not even hair colour. I realized that Cay was correct. Ascanus would sell, and we would acquire more land.

"What's the place like, his villa?"

"Excellent. Not as large as some, but very well staffed and well run. I went and looked as soon as I found out Philip had returned to Glevum." Caius stood up. "No, stay where you are, I'm only stretching my legs," he said to Alaric, who had moved to stand up with him. Alaric subsided and Caius crossed to the big hearth, where he threw a new log on the fire before turning to look back at me.

I was frowning again. "And that was all? He gave no reason for coming here to our villa?"

"Only that he came looking for Publius Varrus, and that Scala had given him your name."

Caius left the fire and came back to sit again at the table, resting his hand on Alaric's shoulder as he passed. He moistened the tip of one finger and dipped it gently into the small pot of salt that still sat in the centre of the table, then transferred the finger to his mouth, licking the salt off absent-mindedly. He glanced over to where Alaric sat watching and listening.

"Alaric? What do you think of this conversation?" The bishop blinked his eyes slowly and thought for a few moments before he began to speak.

"Well, my friends," he said at last in his moderate, deliberate tones, "I hear strange and unexpected sounds and great bitterness coming from two people whom I love and respect. I hear you ascribing a sinfulness worthy of eternal damnation to a man whom neither of you has seen or heard of for twenty years, while both of you admit to each other, and to me as witness, that neither of you has any reason to do so, other than an old dislike. I hear no charity in you, my friends, and I hear none of the forgiveness that the Blessed Christus begged us to apply to our enemies."

Caius and I regarded each other with wry looks.

"Alaric's right, Cay," I said.

Caius heaved an enormous sigh. "I know," he replied, "I know he is." He shook his head, sighed again and rose to his feet. "And we will take his unspoken advice, and talk of other things. Another cup of wine, either of you?" As he poured he said, almost to himself, "But tomorrow, I will send word to my agents in Londinium and Glevum that I wish to buy his villa anonymously, for a fair price." He put the wine jug down firmly. "I will send one of our fastest couriers, first thing in the morning."

And so it was arranged that our Colony would increase by the size of the Ascanus estate, and the three of us spent the remainder of the evening talking pleasantly of other things.

The following morning, I set out on my monthly rounds of the Colony estates. The day passed slowly and uneventfully, one of those plodding, rural days unmarked by anything but drudgery, hard work and meticulous, painstaking efforts to maintain an inventory of crops in progress, grain supplies in hand and the multitudinous details of keeping a growing community alive and well-fed. I was homeward bound by late afternoon, and it started to rain, spattering heavy drops, as I entered the boundaries of the land belonging to the Villa Britannicus proper. Looking up at the suddenly leaden skies, I blessed Luceiia's foresight in convincing me to take along my cloak. The day had started well, but early in the forenoon dark, scattered clouds had started blowing in from the west, and I had begun to realize she had been correct the night before when she had predicted heavy rain by afternoon. Now all the rifts between the clouds had been sealed up and it looked as though this was not a shower that would blow over quickly. I was riding in a cart, since I had decided to drop off a load of new tools to several of our outlying farms, but Equus had taken the leather covering off the day before, to mend a rent in it, and it had not yet been replaced. It took me only a moment to retrieve my heavy cloak from the box on the back and I swaddled myself in it completely, pulling the cowled headpiece well over my head and slipping my hands through the vents provided for them before taking up the reins again. A cold, gusty wind began to blow the rain in sheets, but I remained sheltered beneath my cloak as both wind and rain picked up in strength, throwing themselves uselessly against the thick, tight, wind- and waterproof weave of the warm garment. For all that, the rain was icy and my bare hands were chilled and stiff from holding the reins by the time I eventually reached the gates of the villa and turned thankfully into the courtyard.

I had been driving fast, driven by the weather, and when we arrived my poor horse was coated with mud and steaming like a sudarium. The rain had stopped somewhere along the way and the clouds overhead were broken again, showing widening reaches of blue sky. I threw my reins to a groom and my wet cloak to Gallo, Caius's major-domo, and ran into the house, calling aloud for Caius. He was not there. Nor were Alaric and Luceiia. The house was empty, except for servants. Frustrated, I then made my way directly to the smithy, but Equus was gone too, on a visit to one of the other villa forges. Thoroughly deflated, I went back to the villa, where Gallo informed me, politely, now that I had time to listen, that Caius and Alaric had been collected by a wagon sent for them from the villa of our friends, the twins Terrix and Fermax, widely known as Terra and Firma. They were to be guests of the twins for dinner and an entertainment that night and would return to the villa in the morning. My wife had gone, he also informed me, with several of her women on a mission of mercy to the home of yet another neighbour whose wife was having great difficulty in birthing a child — her fourth. Even my three daughters were gone for the day, out on a visit to some friends at another villa, accompanied by their nursemaid, Annika. I asked after the boy, Simeon; had he been left alone? No, I was told, he had been moved out to the home of his mother, now that she and her daughters were comfortably settled in a new home and the boy was out of danger. Defeated, I decided to bathe and asked Gallo to organize some food for me and replenish the brazier in Cay's study.

An hour later, bathed, fed and warmly dressed again in loose, comfortable, indoor clothes, I sat down at Cay's desk by the window and gathered my patience to wait for someone to come home.

It was growing dark by the time I heard the noises that told me my children had finally arrived home from their excursion with their nurse, and I went looking for them, unusually excited by the prospect of being able to spend some time with them, without other pressures demanding my attention. Luceiia and I were regarded as peculiar by some of our friends, in that we tended to spend a great deal of time with our children, enjoying them as much as we could. But other priorities seemed to intrude more and more all the time, and time spent with the children was something that happened all too seldom nowadays. I felt my usual surge of pleasure in seeing that they were all happy to see me: Veronica, the eldest at ten, Lucilla who was bewitching at seven, and Dorathea, breathtakingly beautiful and four years old, but feverish this evening and sniffly with a cold.

We were still together when Luceiia arrived home from the birthing with the news that Margaret Lupidus, one of our newest colonists, had safely given birth to twin daughters who seemed to be identical. This was not good news. Twin sons had been revered in Rome since the birth of Romulus and Remus, but twin daughters were a burden to any family and were not looked upon with favour. Luceiia and I shared a cup of wine after the children had gone to bed and drank in commiseration for the Lupidus family, which now consisted of five living daughters from seven birthings, none of which had yielded a son. We loved our daughters dearly, but few families could afford a brood of girls as well as we could. There were times when I longed for a son, but I made it a point of honour never to mention that to Luceiia.

When our single cup was empty I rose to replenish it and told Luceiia the story of my day on the land, amusing her with the comments and observations of the farmers, who, like all farmers everywhere, tended to see life from a different viewpoint than other men, and frequently to hilarious effect. Finally I leaned over and kissed her.

"It's early enough to be sinful. Come to bed with me."

"Why? Are you tired?"

I laughed aloud at the tone of her voice. "No, but it's a cold, wet night and I want your heat."

She sniffed disdainfully. "Heat I have, and to spare, but it's a beautiful night and not cold at all."

"It's pouring!"

"Nonsense, the rain stopped hours ago. The weather is beautiful and the sky is clear. There will be a moon tonight."

I blinked at her. "It must be wet somewhere," I said.

"It will be. Come."

We stood up together and my throat was choked with lust, but propriety still made demands of me.

"What about dinner?" I asked, rasping the words.

"What about it? There's only us. Everyone else is gone. I told Gallo I would cook for us in our own chambers. What would you like for dinner?" Her voice was low and throaty, intimate.

"You."

"Well, Master," she replied, smiling, "dinner is almost ready, awaiting only a few, last-minute touches."

Soon, we lay panting on our bed like a pair of newly-weds, too impatient for each other to bother with removing our clothes. I was more than ready, and as I entered the loving warmth of my wife's body my mind was filled with the need to control my surging seed. Luceiia took me smoothly, and I lay securely lodged, fighting to empty my mind of where I was and straining to relax and make no movement. But I knew it would be to no avail; my mind and my body were united to defeat me, and I felt the pressure mounting, spurred by the sheer sensations of such hot and moist containment. And then I was saved and yet frustrated by the sound of a howling, childish wail from somewhere deep in the house. Luceiia froze immediately, her head cocked to one side, the transition from lover to mother instantaneous.

"It's Dora."

"I know," I said, willing her to ignore it. "Annika will see to her."

"No, the child's sick. She has a fever."

"She has a cold, that's all. My problem is more urgent."

She ignored me for a moment, head cocked, straining to hear, but the cry was not repeated, and at length she relaxed and returned her attention to me.

"Problem? You have a problem? What problem?" She moved her body delightfully, then. "Oh, that problem?"

I sensed her smile as she moved in the darkness beneath me.

"Well, my love, that one is easily dealt with." She reached down towards her waist and pulled her skirts higher, then seemed to flex her entire body and wrap it around me, gripping me with her thighs and grasping me by the ears as she pulled my face down and filled my mouth with her hot, thrusting tongue. I felt her belly writhe and rise to meet me, her body opening and engulfing me like the hot waters of a bath, and I exploded, losing all awareness of everything except the crashing roars of ecstasy in my head. Then, while I was still spent and gasping, I felt Luceiia move beneath me and away from me, slipping her body free from mine.

"Don't go to sleep, I want more," she whispered.

I rolled onto my side. "Where are you going?" But I knew, and she was already gone. The lover had merely abetted, not replaced, the mother.

I lay there for a long time, recapturing my senses, and then I rolled off the bed and adjusted my clothing so that I could stand comfortably before crossing to the window and opening the shutters. It was a warm, mellow, late-June night and it bore no signs of the torrential rain that had poured down for so long earlier. I hitched up my robe and threw one leg across the sill and perched there, feeling the coldness of the stone against my naked skin and listening to the sounds of the early night as I thought of the pleasures I had found in the woman I had married. My loins were empty, almost achingly drained, and I luxuriated in the joy of satisfaction, idly attempting to recall the furious sensations so recently stirred up in me by my lust. But that was fruitless, of course, since our minds and bodies are no more capable of remembering fleeting pleasure than sudden pain, and I soon became distracted by the sounds out in the night. I could hear voices, nearby, man and woman, though I could discern no words, strain as I might, before they moved off and died away and a cacophony of barking dogs sprang up to fill the night with chaos and comfort. And then, somewhere far off, a nightingale began to sing, and I sat for a long time, entranced by the beauty of the sound, lost in a land of fantasy that knew no rhyme or reason until a drunken voice broke out beneath me, startling me with its suddenness, bellowing a tuneless song that spluttered into silence and was followed by the sound of a body falling heavily, and then more silence. The nightingale began to sing again and I shifted restlessly, moving my now-cold buttocks in complaint against the harshness of the stone window-sill. I had not heard Luceiia return, but suddenly she was behind me, running her fingers through my hair and breathing gently on the soft skin at my neck. And, all at once, the passions that I had sought in vain to recall came back to me, overwhelming in their urgency. I withdrew my leg from the cool night air and returned to our bedside, my hands, my lips, my awareness filled with the reality of Luceiia, and this time, we took the time to remove our clothes before offering our nakedness to one another. Our coupling now was wondrous and filled with love and leisure, the joining of two lovers who enjoyed perfect familiarity each with the other's body. We melted together, moving in loving fidelity and reaching that peak together that leaves both partners hanging between life and death, knowing that happiness is achievable on either side of the divide.

And suddenly it was I who was raised, tensed on one elbow, my head cocked to hear again the alien sound that had jerked me back from the edge of sleep.

"Publius? What is it? What's wrong?"

"Shh! Listen! What's that noise?"

"What noise?"

I sat up, my face pointed towards the open window-shutters. "That noise! Listen!"

It came again, a man's voice, raised in a shout of panic, faint and far off, smothered by distance, but now taken up and repeated by another, nearer, and then another and several more. I leaped from the bed and ran to the window, leaning out, straining my ears, and heard the dreaded word, "Fire!"

"Fire," I said, over my shoulder to Luceiia. "They're raising the alarm. There's a fire." I could see nothing, could smell no smoke, but my guts churned in apprehension. "Quick! Light a lamp." I began scurrying to find my clothes in the darkness, dragging them on somehow and running from the room before Luceiia was able to find the tinder-box.

I emerged from the main door to find the courtyard already filled with running bodies and saw a horseman thunder into the yard and head straight for me. He saw me and leaped down from his horse's back, almost falling at my feet. I grabbed him and held him erect.

"What, man? What is it? Where's the fire?"

"The granaries," he gulped, drawing a deep breath. "The granaries, Commander, up on the hill! Four of them are in flames."

"Four of them? Damnation! Where were the guards? Are they all blind up there?"

One granary alight was a tragedy; four meant catastrophe. We would be hard-pressed to save enough food for the coming winter. I gripped him firmly by the shoulder and seized his horse's bridle in my other hand.

"I'm taking your horse. Give me a leg up, quickly."

He hoisted me up cleanly, and I fought for a second to control the animal, which resented having someone new leap onto its back so soon after shedding one rider. Finally I brought it under restraint and swung it around in the direction I wanted to go.

"Summon every man in the Colony," I yelled at the rider. "Every soldier, every colonist. Get them up to the hilltop as quickly as they can run. Who's fighting the fire?"

"Only the soldiers who were on duty up there. There's no one else nearby."

"Damn and blast! I'm going up there now. Get the others on the road as quickly as you can. Tell them it's going to be a hungry winter if they're slow." I put my heels to the horse, and as soon as we were on the pathway that rounded the south-west end of the villa I saw the baleful, smoky glare of the fire on the hilltop ahead of me.

The hours that followed are hazy in my memory, so intense was the frenzy with which we fought the blaze. It burned with an ugly, sullen fury, refusing to be mastered, its roots smouldering deep within the piled banks of dried grain. I remember clearly, however, that I found signs, early on in the struggle, that the burning piles had been soaked with oil before being set alight; around the edges of the conflagrations, there were scatterings of grain, kicked away from the flames by the first discoverers of the catastrophe, and they were glued into clumps, held together by the viscous, flammable stuff poured over them by the incendiary madman who had done this.

That knowledge, that there was a madman among us, startled me into realizing that there might well be no men at all left down at the villa, and that this madman, whoever he was, would almost certainly not be up here at the fire.

The man working beside me was Erasmus Sita, a young giant and a decurion in our colonial forces. Sita was huge and strong, a full head taller than me with a mighty breadth of shoulders. I tugged him by the arm and motioned him to step away with me, back from the noise of the fire and the smoke. He leaned close to hear what I had to say. I ordered him to select ten of the youngest, strongest soldiers he could find and take them at the double, forced-march pace, back down to the villa as quickly as he could. He was to find Luceiia and make sure that she was in no danger, and then he and his people were to remain at the villa, standing guard and at the ready for anything that might develop. I saw the puzzlement and curiosity in his eyes and I waved towards the fire.

"This was deliberate, Sita. There were four separate fires here, now threatening to grow into one big one. Somebody set this place alight on purpose. I don't know who and I don't know why, but I don't want to be caught unawares if the whoreson has other plans for tonight. So get down to the villa quickly, but take the longer route down, not the main path; that way you'll avoid the people coming up. If they see you going back, it could cause confusion. But get there quickly. You understand?" He left at a loping run and I saw him begin to pick out his men.

I remember then that I left him to it and turned my attention to organizing a bucket-chain from the unfinished cisterns in the fort, and that there were not enough men available to make it work. And I remember the arrival of the first newcomers, a trickle that grew to a flood as the flames rose higher and the wind sprang up again to whirl blazing sparks towards the four minor granaries that were still untouched by the fire.

The granaries themselves were no more than stout wooden boxes, bins pitched at the seams and raised on stilts to protect their contents from the damp earth, and covered with heavy, sloping roofs. They burned disgustingly well. I don't know when I realized we could not win, but I think the awareness came only slowly to me. Dense, awful smoke swirled everywhere, roiling obscenely upwards. It filtered everywhere through the piles of grain, ruining the food forever, even before the wooden side panels burned through, allowing the grain to gush out onto the ground. In a short time, all our vigilance was dedicated to protecting the four silos that remained.

I staggered off at one time, away from the searing heat, in search of some clear air, my insides raw and burned from inhaling the smoke-laden air close to the fire. I found a wooden saw-horse to lean against, and someone handed me a jar of water. God! I remember still how good it tasted. I drank deeply and then sat there for a while, looking at the activity going on around me. I was exhausted, but then, everyone else was, too, by that time.

Too tired to move, I stared at the men around me and wondered if it was one of them who had set the fire in the first place. I knew them all, and I had to accept the possibility, but I found it hard to believe that any of them could deliberately wreak such malicious damage. And yet someone most definitely had. Then came a crashing roar mixed with screams of agony as one of the bins collapsed in flaming ruin, sending burning bursts of sparks in every direction and catching at least one fire-fighter unaware. I plunged back into the smoke and lost track of time again.

There came a time, at last, when there was no more to be done. The fire was as close to being under control as it would ever be. There was no hope of extinguishing it completely; the scattered piles of grain would smoulder for days, unless it rained again. I delegated a crew of soldiers to police the area and guard against new outbreaks, promising them they would be relieved in four hours. In the meantime, dawn was breaking and everybody else began to go home in search of sleep. I climbed up into a wagon that was crowded with weary men, all of them crusted in soot and grime, the whiteness of their eyes and teeth startling against the blackness of their faces. My nostrils were clogged with soot and the stink of burning. I do not know who was with me in the wagon, or whose back it was I leaned against. Before the cart reached the bottom of the hill I was asleep. I think everyone else was, too.

The man I was leaning my back against woke me by leaving the cart, but I shifted my position and dozed off again immediately, and then somebody was shaking my shoulder and calling my name. I opened my eyes and looked at my tormentor. His face was black and strange-looking, and as soon as he caught my eye he gestured sideways with his head, saying nothing. Groaning, I pulled myself erect, saw that I was home and began to climb stiffly down from the cart. I reached the ground, looked up to thank the carter, and only then realized that everyone was staring over my head at something behind me. I turned, and my guts churned as I saw a body spread-eagled face down in the dim half light of dawn, at the bottom of the steps to the main doorway of the house. The door lay open, and there was no sound to be heard. My tiredness vanished instantly, but my legs were unwilling to move from where I stood staring, and I felt fear and panic washing over me.

Somehow, I took the first step, and my paralysis was gone. I began to move quickly towards the sprawled shape and, before I was halfway towards him, I knew who had set the fire. I recognized him, left him where he was and veered away, heading directly into the house. As I set my foot on the bottom step, young Sita emerged from the doorway and paused in surprise at finding me so close.

"Commander," he said, "I didn't hear you coming."

"My wife, where is she?"

His eyebrows rose. "In her chambers, Commander."

I swallowed my relief. "And my children?"

"Asleep." He nodded towards the corpse. "You saw that?"

"Aye." I walked back to the body and turned it over on its back. Lignus the carpenter would set no more fires. He had been warned he would die if he ever came back, and he had. The tragic part was that he had cheated death for long enough to be able to do what he did. Outrage, anger and deep hatred for this man and all that he had stood for swept over me, so that I had to close my eyes and take a deep breath to control myself against the urge to kick his corpse. And then I noticed that all of his blood seemed to be on his back. There were no wounds on his front. I looked up at Sita.

"Did you do this?"

He shook his head. "No, Commander, but I had the body brought here."

"Brought here from where?"

"From where he died. The cottage where his wife and daughters are lodged. He tried to get them." He grinned, a small, nervous grin. "Unsuccessfully."

My thoughts were racing. "How did you know to search there?"

"We didn't. We heard the noise as we came through the village. Women screaming and crying. I decided we had better take a look at what was happening, and there he was, dead."

"He was alone? No accomplices?"

"He was alone there, sir, no accomplices that we could find, and we've searched the entire area."

"Who killed him?"

He cleared his throat. "Your wife, Commander. The Lady Luceiia. It was all over when we arrived."

"What?" I looked down at the body again, unable to believe what I had just heard. "Luceiia did this?"

The young decurion nodded, wordless in the face of my shocked surprise. I shook my head to clear it and then remembered the men on the wagon, watching this. I turned back to them.

"Thank you, my friends," I called out. "You can go home now. It's all over." I pointed to the body on the ground. "This is Lignus, the carpenter. He set the fire and he died for it." I turned back to young Sita, looking again at Lignus's body and wondering how my gentle wife had been able to do this thing. "I must go to my wife. Is she well?"

He nodded. "Perfectly well, Commander. Completely in control. She showed no signs of falling apart, and no compunction over what she had to do."

"Hmmm." There was nothing more I could say. I moved to walk away and then remembered. "One more thing." I touched Lignus's remains with my toe. "You'd better detail someone to bury this refuse somewhere out in the fields or in the woods; can't leave it lying around here to stink. And now good night. We will talk further tomorrow — later today, I mean. Good night, Sita."

"Good night, Commander." He snapped me a perfect, punctilious salute and marched away about his business.

As soon as I had watched young Sita out of sight, I made my way indoors and went directly to our sleeping chamber, aware of the noises of women somewhere at the back of the house. Luceiia was not in our chambers. In the middle of an emergency situation, she would have fires of her own to tend to. I had to restrain myself from searching her out immediately, to find out from her what had happened and how she had come to kill, and to be able to kill, Lignus, but I knew I would be interrupting whatever important chore she was attending to at such an ungodly hour. I would find out everything I needed to know in the morning. I realized all at once that it was now light enough for me to see myself, though dimly, in Luceiia's big, polished-bronze mirror against the wall; I leaned close to the mirror's surface and peered at my reflection. I was filthy, my clothing, my skin and my hair all black, thick with soot and ashes, and my nostrils told me I stank of sour smoke. I was in no condition to get into my wife's bed, yet neither was I in any condition to go looking for hot water. I dragged a woollen blanket from a pile in the chest at the foot of our bed and set out to look for a comfortable couch to lie on.

Luceiia opened our bedchamber door as I reached it and was surprised to find me there. She came to me directly and threw her arms around me, ignoring my filthy condition and my weak attempts to save her from contamination. She spoke through her kiss. "Where were you going?"

"To find a place to collapse." I held up my blanket for her to see. "I'm in no condition to lie on anything clean. Where have you been?"

She told me that she had organized as many of the women as she could find, turning them towards the preparation of food and drink for the men returning from fighting the fire. I had to ask about Lignus, then, and what had happened down here at the villa.

Her first instinct, she said, had been to join the group heading for the hilltop, but then she had realized that if this was a major fire, there would be a need for food, bandages and medical assistance. She began assembling her own women and delegating tasks, the first of which was to split up and find all the women colonists remaining in the cottages around the villa. She had gone herself on that errand, and one of her calls was to the cottage that now housed Lignus's wife and daughters. Luceiia had been accompanied by two of her own women, and they had heard screams and sounds of struggle from a long way off. Not knowing what was wrong, they had emerged into the clearing in front of the cottage to find one of Lignus's daughters, the pregnant one, lying bleeding on the threshold of the hut, with the noise of strife coming from inside. Luceiia had pushed her way into the hut and seen Lignus in a corner with his back to her. He was struggling furiously with the other sister while the mother lay bleeding and moaning on the floor. He had thrown his sword on the floor to free his hands and was now punching brutally at the body struggling against him. Luceiia realized that he must have started the fire on the hill to give himself time and opportunity to avenge himself on the women. Without even thinking what she was doing, so great was her anger, she swept up his sword from where it lay on the floor and, holding it two-handed in front of her with the hilt against her breast, ran at him and thrust it into his back with all her weight behind it. The point had slid cleanly between his ribs and into his heart, and he had fallen dead at her feet before he had time to turn around fully to see who had killed him. Moments later, Sita and his soldiers had arrived on the run.

When she had finished talking, I stared at her for a few moments in silence, thinking that we little knew the people we loved. What she had done was completely in character and should not have surprised me at all; she was the sister of Caius Britannicus and an imperious aristocrat of the old order, accustomed to taking charge, to making decisions and to being obeyed. But she was also my wife and I loved her deeply as a woman, so I seldom considered the steel that underlay her womanish exterior.

She was gazing at me, waiting for me to speak. I kissed the end of her nose. "Good for you," I whispered. "How do you feel?"

She touched the spot I had kissed with the tip of one finger. "How should I? I am tired and hungry, but I feel as if I could carry on forever, or for as long as it takes to clean up this mess Lignus has caused." She paused and squinted at me. "If you really mean how do I feel about having killed Lignus, then the answer is that I don't. I would do it again without thinking, as I would destroy any animal threatening my family or this Colony. Lignus was not a man. He was a wild beast, mad and dangerous. What about you? How do you feel?"

"About Lignus, nothing. About the fire, anger and concern but no great urgency yet, although if we don't get a good harvest this year it's going to be a long winter. About you, I feel proud and wonderful. About sleep, I'm not capable of feeling anything. I'm on my way to find a quiet corner where the soot and grime that crusts me can do little damage, then I'm going to collapse and slip into a coma."

She thrust her face into the hollow of my neck and sniffed deeply. "You do smell rather smoky." She pushed me away and smiled up into my eyes. "I know you don't want to hear this, but you might sleep far better after being bathed and massaged. I know it seems like too much trouble at this moment, but life will be much the better for steam and perfumed oils and a brisk pummelling. Hmmm?"

I nodded my head, scrubbing at my eyes with the heels of my hands. "Very well, my love," I muttered, "you are correct, as usual. I'm going, I'm going."

I have no recollection of entering the bath house or of removing my clothes, but I do remember walking through the tepidarium, where I splashed cool water all over myself, dislodging some of the soot that covered me, and into the steam room where, for the next quarter hour or so, I luxuriated in the intense heat, feeling the dirt and the grit being washed away by the natural rivers of my own sweat. I ended up with a series of plunges into the hot and cold pools before subsiding and lying face down on the masseur's plinth, regretting his absence as I imagined how he would go to work mercilessly on my ill-used body. But he had been up at the fire too, working as hard as everyone else, and would be sound asleep somewhere. I could have sent for him — I even considered it, half-heartedly — but in the end I did not have the heart to disturb his rest, wherever he was.

I dozed off, eventually, then awoke again, plagued by the discomfort of the plinth I lay on. I felt cleaner and more presentable, but I was dead tired as I made my way towards my own chambers. Luceiia was still not abed, but our little invalid Dora, our four-year-old daughter, lay in our bed peacefully asleep, her thumb stuck deep in her tiny mouth. I bent over and touched her cheek, marvelling, as I always did, at the miraculous softness of her skin and the utterly helpless innocence of her trust. I dropped my clothing where I stood and crawled into the bed beside her, cradling her tininess in my arm before I fell asleep.