The Singing Sword

XXX

The news of my own grandson's birth arrived from Ullic's people a short time later. No Roman nonsense there; the child, a boy, had been named Uther, Uther Pendragon. Mother and child were both well and would come to visit us in the spring, as soon as the snow, heavy in the hills this year, had melted.

I was content with the news of the children, but I was far from happy with the results of my attempts to pour a hilt for the new sword. Nine times I had tried it by the beginning of spring thaw, and nine times the result had been failure. Andros and I were convinced the technique must work eventually, once we had mastered the knack of pouring the metal in the correct volume, at the right speed and at the proper temperature, but our early efforts had been ludicrous, and I had often thanked God and my stars that the metal of the sword was as hard as it was, because I had been constrained to melt nine messes of bronze and gold from the adamantine tangs, cleaning them completely after each failed attempt. It was starting to prove expensive, too, for we were never able to reclaim all of the gold from the abortive attempts, and each time we tried again I had to melt a few more coins of Grandfather's hoard.

Perhaps it was because I had so much on my mind at that time that the significance of what Luceiia was saying escaped me when she told me that the two children, Uther and Merlyn, had been born at the same time, the fourth hour of the morning of the second day of January. Later, when I thought about it, I laughed to myself at the old wives' mutterings that would give the baby boys power over each other's lives in the years to come because of the coincidence of their birth. As I have said before, I never was a superstitious man, and although I was prepared to grant the strangeness of the timing, I well knew the cause of it. Had they been born together, under the same roof, I might have given the matter some more thought, but that is useless conjecture; they were born sixty miles apart, and they were as different as day and night from the time of their birth. Caius Merlyn Britannicus and Uther Pendragon would live their separate destinies. The cousins would grow up knowing each other well, but as individuals, with but little influence each on the other. I put the matter out of my mind and concentrated upon my own immediate problems.

And so it was that dawn of the Ides of March that year found me sitting alone in the smithy, waiting for my tenth mould to be cool enough to crack open, and looking admiringly at the silver blade of the sword that projected from the great cubic mass of the mould like a tongue of liquid light. I remember wondering then if I would ever be able to hold it properly in my hand as a finished sword. I touched the mould tentatively. It was still too hot. I hissed with frustration and impatience and made my way across to the villa in search of something to break my night's fast. I had not slept at all that night, but I had little awareness of that at the time. I was too tightly wound, like an overstressed spring, to think about sleep.

I heard my great-nephew Merlyn howling as I entered the villa. His mother had made her permanent home there since his birth, living in one small section of the house and refusing to have servants wait upon her. She was a Celt, never comfortable with having other people do the work she considered to be hers by right. As she put it, she could not enjoy having other people live for her. Because she was so obviously sincere in this, we humoured her, leaving her alone to look after her section of the big house, and the servants came down from the hill on two days each week to maintain the rest of the building. We made sure, however, that someone from the household stayed with her each night. Caius and I had both been there the previous night, so I had felt no guilt about spending the entire night in the smithy.

I followed the sound of infant wails to the kitchen, where I found Enid heating food in a pan over the fire. I greeted her and picked up the boy, soothing him into silence.

"Is he hungry, Enid? Is that why he's crying?" "No, he is a pig," she smiled. "That's why he's crying." The baby was quiet now, staring up at me with great, brown eyes. She came and pinched his fat cheek gently. "A greedy little pig, aren't you? He's sucked me dry this morning, so he'll have to wait. Even a cow runs dry, you know!" This last was to her son, who ignored her. "What are you heating there? Is there enough for me?" She nodded, stirring the contents of the pan. "There's enough for all of us, but Father Cay hasn't stirred yet." She paused for a heartbeat and then asked, "How old is Caius, Publius?"

"Cay? Let's see..." I had to think about it for a few moments. "Well, he's about five years older than me, I think, so that would make him sixty-two or sixty-three, something like that. Might even be a little older. Why do you ask?"

She frowned slightly. "I don't know. He seems to me to be ageing quickly, that's all."

"Ageing quickly? You think so?" I was surprised. "I haven't noticed anything. Not recently, I mean. There was a time, back a few years ago, when I really worried about him, but he came through that, and he's been in excellent fettle ever since ... At least, I haven't noticed anything to indicate otherwise. You evidently have. What is it?"

She shook her head. "I don't know, Publius. It's nothing obvious, but it is there. He seems to tire quickly nowadays and he sleeps more than he used to."

I laughed at that, tossing the baby gently into the air and catching him before he really lifted out of my hands. "That's because this fellow here has made him a grandfather. I mean, Cay is over sixty, Enid. Most men never see that age. The few who do tend to slow down afterward, particularly if they are spending most of their time playing with babies."

"Hmmm, I suppose they do." She tilted her head to one side in a gesture I had become familiar with and accepted my opinion. "I am probably imagining things. Put tomorrow's emperor down and come and eat. I'm famished even if you are not."

Caius joined us as we were finishing our meal, and he and I chatted together for a few minutes as Enid moved around preparing food for him, and then I left again to resume my vigil at the smithy. As I was leaving the house, I met Plautus coming in to visit and so I stopped to talk with him, too. It was one of those brilliant early mornings that presage a glorious spring day. He asked me where I was going and I told him that I was about to crack the mould for the tenth time. As soon as he heard that, he wanted to come with me and watch the operation.

"Are you quite sure about that, Plautus?" My question was only half in jest. "I am not the most pleasant or courteous person when my moulds do not turn out correctly."

"What's new? You've been an unpleasant whoreson ever since I first met you."

I grinned. "Well, don't say I didn't warn you. Andros should be here any time now, so we may have to wait a few minutes for him. He has worked as hard as I have on this thing."

Half an hour later Andros had still not appeared and I decided not to wait for him. Plautus had been rooting among the shelves at the back of the smithy and I called him over. He came towards me clutching something in his hand.

"What's this?" he asked me.

I looked at the hardened roll of material he was holding and smiled. "You'll never guess what it is, Plautus, but it's the same as this." I picked up a square piece of supple, silvery material with the softness of fine leather and the paradoxical texture of fine sand and held it out to him. He took it from me, rubbed it between finger and thumb and then looked disbelievingly from it to the hard roll of stuff in his other hand.

"What is it?"

"It's shark skin. Belly skin."

He blinked at me, confusion in his eyes. "From a shark's belly, you mean? The big fish? What's it for?"

I grinned at him. "It holds the shark together, idiot!" I pointed at the sword sticking from the mould. "And it's for that. It will wrap the hilt of my new sword, so it will never slip in anyone's grasp."

"Hmmm!" That was his only comment. "I wonder what happened to Andros?"

I stood up. "I don't know, but I'm not waiting any longer. Come on, you'll have to help me. I'll tell you what to do."

It took another half hour before all the tight-twisted binding wires around the mould had been loosened, and I stood shaking with anticipation, my hands on opposed top corners of the mould, ready to crack it open. Plautus held two bottom corners.

"Well," I sighed, tensely, "we'll never know if we don't look, Plautus, so here we go!" I twisted and jerked upwards, and the mould came apart with a soft crack. Slowly, hardly daring to hope any more, I looked down in silence.

"Well?" Plautus's voice was filled with anxiety. I relaxed slightly.

"It seems to be fine on this side. I hope the other one is as good." I levered upwards on the blade and peeled the hilt audibly from its bed, turning it over as I did so. It was flawless. I slumped back onto my stool, overwhelmed with relief, my long-held breath whistling out forcibly.

"What's the matter?" Plautus was almost sick with worry. "What's wrong with it?"

I raised my hand to soothe him and spoke quietly. "Nothing is wrong with it. It looks exactly right."

Plautus let go his breath in a long rush and slumped down, too, onto a bench. "Thank God! I thought for a moment there you'd fouled it up again!"

We sat in silence for a time, staring at the hilt. It was dusty, covered with a waxy film, and tiny knobs of metal projected from it in a number of places where the molten metal had filled the air holes in the mould. These I would file off in a few minutes, once I had recaptured my breath completely. I was beginning to feel a mighty exaltation. The gold cockle-shell of the pommel was perfect, as was the junction where the second pour, the gold, had knitted to the bronze of the first pour.

"Now what, Publius?"

I smiled at him again, feeling weary and yet triumphant. "Now I clean it, polish it and add the shark-skin grip."

"How long will that take?"

I shrugged. "An hour, perhaps less, to clean it and polish it. A day to add the grip, I would guess."

"May I hold it?"

I shook my head. "No, not yet. It's not ready yet. Give me an hour to clean it, then you can hold it."

"May I watch while you clean it?"

I laughed at his little-boy eagerness, but I was pleased. "You can watch." I reached for a small file on the bench.

Less than an hour later the job was done and the effect was breath-taking. The golden cockle-shell pommel was superb, every line cleanly etched, and the Celtic scrollwork on the thick cross-guard was crystalline in its purity. I had avoided grasping the hilt in all this time, and I had not used the file on the gritty texture of the hand-grip itself. As I applied one final flourish with the polishing cloth, Plautus was fiddling with the shark-skin square.

"You know," he said, "I don't want to sound critical, but this stuff is almost as silver as the blade, and the pommel's gold. Your cross-guard is going to look dull by comparison. It's just plain bronze. Had you thought about that?"

"I've thought about it." I stood up and eased a kink out of my back. "I'm going to coat the cross-guard with silver leaf."

"With what?"

I pointed to a box close by his hand. "Sheet silver, beaten so fine that it's almost weightless and transparent. There's some in that box there."

While he was looking at the silver leaf, I released the sword from the clamps that held it and closed my fist firmly around the hilt for the first time. "Now!" I swung it into the air and my heart almost broke with joy to feel the beauty of it in my hand. All the worry, all the fears, had been for nothing. Our agonizing calculations of the weight and balance had been accurate. Now I was holding perfection!

"Excalibur," I said.

"What?"

"Excalibur. That's its name. That's what I've called the sword. That's what it is."

Plautus blinked at me. "Excalibur? I must be stupid. I've never heard it before."

"No, Plautus," I said, "you're not stupid. It's never been said before. Calibur — qalibr — is the north African desert people's word for a mould. This came out of a mould... Excalibur." I handed it to him. "Don't touch the edges, if you want to keep your fingers." Minutely graduated lines rippled like water-marks along each side of the long blade, flowing outward from the thick central spine to edges sharper than any I had ever known, reflecting the light in their patterns and showing where the metal had been folded upon itself and beaten times without number during the tempering process.

He grasped the hilt and swung the sword and his eyes grew wide. "My God! What a weapon! Excalibur." He swung again and ended up with the point towards the open door just as Andros appeared in the opening.

Andros crouched in the doorway, squinting with sun-dazzled eyes into the blackness of the smithy. "Publius? Are you in there? Picus is home."

"Picus?" I swung to Plautus in pleased surprise. "He's here? That's wonderful! Have you seen him?"

Andros had come into the forge now and he was gazing at the sword in Plautus's hand as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. "You opened it! Did it work? Is it right?"

Plautus held the sword out to him. "It's perfect," I said. "We have made a masterwork, you and Equus and I. Where is Equus, by the way? And when did Picus arrive?"

He was gazing at the hilt from a distance of about a handsbreadth, peering closely at the details of the scrollwork and the cockle-shell as he answered me. "Equus is up on the hill at the other forge. I was there with him for a while, working on some drawings he has need of." His voice was barely audible, so intent was he on examining the hilt.

"And Picus? When did he come?"

"Hmmm? Oh, Picus. Just now," he muttered. "I saw his big standard above the hedge along the lane, headed to the villa."

"You mean just now? This very minute?"

He threw me an uncharacteristically impatient glance, irritated at being distracted from his examination. "Yes, that's what I said — just now, two minutes ago. I saw him just as I turned in through the gate to come here."

"How does he look?"

He frowned slightly, still peering at the gold cockleshell. "I don't know. I didn't really see Picus, just his standard, above the hedge. I told you that."

"So you did. I'm sorry. I'm distracting you from your triumph. What do you think of it?"

"It looks good. Very good. I'm pleased. Does it work?" He reversed his grip and held the sword properly, looking around him as though searching for something to test it on. The look on his face made me apprehensive.

"Andros, have you ever swung a sword before?"

He threw me a preoccupied look. "No, I haven't. What difference does that make? I've never made a successful mould before, either." He walked quickly across to an anvil and slapped the flat of the sword against the tongue of it. The sound of the impact rang as clearly as the note of a bird. I looked at Plautus and shrugged my shoulders in bewilderment as Andros looked around again and fastened his eyes on my work-bench. He stepped determinedly to the side of the bench, whacked the sword blade against one of the legs, whipped the blade upright and pressed the end of the pommel to the table-top. The effect was magical. The whole room suddenly reverberated with a deep, musical hum that emanated from the sword itself. Plautus actually blessed himself with the sign of the cross and I raised my own hands to my ears, so intense was the sound. Gradually, over a lengthy period of time, it lessened and faded away entirely. The silence stretched and stretched.

"What was that?" I asked Andros.

He smiled his familiar, modest smile. "I don't know what it was, Publius, but I remember hearing somewhere, a long time ago, that the old smiths used to test their iron blades that way. The better the quality of the metal, the purer the sound it would produce when you did that."

"I've never heard of that," I said. "Let me try it." I did what he had done and again the vibrant, clean note filled the smithy. "That is astonishing. What do you think, Plautus?"

Plautus merely shook his head, his eyes on the sword. "Excalibur," he said. "The singing sword. I've never seen or heard of anything to match it."

I swung it, hissing, around my head. "There never has been anything to match it, that's why! Come on, let's go and show it to Caius and Picus, and to Equus. He is going to be angry to have missed its emergence from the womb."

We walked out into the sunlight, squinting against its brightness, and as I went I swung Excalibur from side to side, revelling in the apparent weightlessness of it. As we entered the lane leading to the main courtyard of the villa, I swung at a young sapling growing in the hedgerow and sheared through it completely without effort. I was wiping the sap from the blade with the hem of my tunic when I heard Plautus say, "That's peculiar!" Something in his tone alerted me even before he gripped me by the elbow, pulling me to a halt.

I looked up in some confusion. "What is? What's peculiar?"

He was standing motionless, staring towards the villa in an attitude that immediately set my nerves on edge. I hadn't seen that look in years, but I responded to it immediately.

"What's wrong?"

He nodded towards the portico. "You tell me!"

I could sense him withdrawing into his inimical, soldierly persona and I followed the direction of his look. Eight horses stood outside the main doors of the villa. Eight horses, all riderless. No guards. No one left outside. No one left waiting. All eight men had gone into the house. I felt goose-flesh stirring the small hairs on the nape of my neck at the wrongness of the sight before my eyes picked up another signal that was wholly out of place: a patch of black and white on the ground. It was Picus's great black and white standard! The one he had said was meant to be recognized from a great distance. It had been discarded casually, thrown aside on the ground as though its bearer had no further use for it. All my defensive instincts were now aroused, alarm-signals jangling. I heard Plautus say, "Shit and corruption! I haven't got a sword!"

His mind was far ahead of mine, but those words galvanized me. I rounded on him, a thousand thoughts jamming into my mind all at once.

"The smithy," I told him. "Against the left wall, where the mould was — there are two long-swords leaning there, and daggers and gladia on the table-top. I'll wait for you." He was gone almost before I had finished speaking. I dug my fingers into Andros's arm. "Andros, can you ride a horse?"

"If I have to, I can."

"You have to! Get back to the smithy and get your arse up onto my horse." I looked along the valley floor towards the bottom of the new road. Something was badly wrong, but I did not yet know what it was.

"Look, Andros," I said urgently, "something stinks here. I don't know what it is, but I want you to get up to the fort as fast as you can, by the back way, up the rear of the hill, out of sight of the plain, to the postern door. Do you hear me?"

He nodded. He had not read the same signs Plautus and I had, but he had read our reactions to them accurately. "Then what?" he asked.

"Find Tribune Bassus. Tell him I sent you, and where we are. Tell him I smell something rotten. If there are any of Picus's troops in the valley below the gates, I want them contained. In any event, I want a squadron of cavalry down here at the villa as fast as he can get them here. Have you got that?"

He nodded again. "What's happening, Publius?"

"I don't know, Andros," I said. "But something stinks. Get up there fast, and make sure nobody sees you. I don't care if you have to tie yourself to the horse, just get there as fast as you can. Will you do that?"

"I'm on my way, Publius." He was as good as his word, disappearing backwards towards the smithy just as Plautus showed up again, one of the new long-swords in one hand and a wicked-looking dagger in the other.

"Right," he said. "What's the plan?"

I stood there, hesitating for a second, staring towards the deserted portico, vainly hoping I was mistaken. "You really think there is something wrong, Plautus?"

"Horse turds, Varrus. Does shit stink? What now?"

That was enough. I sucked a deep breath. "What else? We have to go in. But carefully."

He threw me a look eloquent with unstated scorn. "You think I want to get my arse in a grinder for fun? At my age?"

Side by side, we ran across the empty space separating us from the main wall of the villa and flattened ourselves against the stone facade. We were about ten paces from the main entrance. He looked at me.

"What if they've left a guard inside the doors? We're dead. There's eight of the whoresons."

I grimaced. "Let's hope they haven't. If they'd meant to leave a guard, they would have left him outside to guard their horses, at least."

He nodded to me, formally. "You know, I've been wondering for years why Britannicus promoted you all those years ago. Now I know. You think. I suppose that's the final difference between an officer and a grunt like me." He was talking purely for effect, attempting to bring us both to the correct frame of mind, but as he said the words Enid screamed, loud and long, from inside the house. The sound made my blood curdle.

"Oh, shit!" he said. "That proves it. Now!"

Together we launched ourselves towards the entrance, diving through the open doors and separating just inside, throwing ourselves one to each side of the hallway. The place was deserted. Another scream rang out, agonized and harrowing, undistorted by distance and walls this time, from the back of the building.

Plautus waved me forward and we ran together again through the main atrium of the villa towards the living quarters at the rear, trying to make our sandals slide silently over the marble flooring of the hallways. In spite of my limp, I was slightly ahead of him as we reached the double doorway leading into the small, tessellated courtyard in front of Caius's day-room. I knew this was where they were and I waved him frantically to the side before he could charge through the doorway and betray our presence. We ended up staring at each other, holding our breath, one on each side of the open doors. He wiggled an index finger at me, indicating that I should take a peek. I inched my head forward, straining to hear and see without making myself visible, and heard an indistinct babble of sound coming from the room. The small courtyard beyond the doors where we stood seemed to be empty. I gritted my teeth and leaned out to look. It was. The doors of Caius's day-room were partially open. I bit my lip. But they were also partially closed — enough, I hoped, to cover our next move.

Plautus was watching me intently. I held up my open hand towards him, fingers extended, and mouthed, "In five!" He nodded, and I began to count, flexing my fingers with every beat. "Five — four — three — two — go!" Together, we eased ourselves around the doors in front of us and slipped sideways, each against the wall on his side, moving swiftly and silently, sidling towards the partly open doors that screened us from the people inside the room. As I came to rest with my back against the wall, my eyes fixed on Plautus's own, the voice of the speaker came clearly to my ears and I recognized it with a chill of horror. Plautus knew it too; I could tell from the way his eyebrows shot upwards. Caesarius Claudius Seneca was speaking.

"... would want me to look after his poor old father and his only son, knowing that he had been so badly wounded. I wish I could tell you how distraught I felt when I heard the news. Claudius, I said to myself, your duty is clear. You must attend to the family, the poor afflicted kin of the Legate Britannicus. He is the son of a senator, after all is said and done. Under these tragic circumstances, his family should be cared for. How will his noble father feel, I asked myself? And his beloved wife? And, I said to myself, if it should happen that the unfortunate Legate should be recalled by Heaven from this place of earthly sorrows before he has the chance to repay his debts to you, Claudius Seneca, it should be your right, your pleasure and your honour to ensure that his much-lauded first-born son, his only heir, should be absolved of all his father's debts and should earn his father's honours and his rewards from your hands. So here I am, come at all speed to remind all of you that the ways of God are great and strange."

My stomach was heaving with disgust and revulsion but I could not move, and Caius answered him. His voice sounded placid and normal, almost relaxed, although disgusted.

"I once heard Publius Varrus call you a sorry pederast, among other things, Seneca. You disgusted me then and you disgust me now, although I believe you are now degenerating even beyond description. Your voice grates on my nerves. It reeks of that unmistakable femininity that marks the true degenerate. It sickens me to know you are a senator of Rome. Let's get this over with and have done with it. I am no play-actor. You came here for me, to be revenged on me for the defeat you suffered at my hands in front of Flavius Stilicho. So be it. But let the woman and the child go free. They have not harmed you and they do not even know who you are."

"Now!" Seneca's voice was almost strident, and he was obviously speaking to his minions. "There speaks the voice of Rome! Do you hear that clarity? That ringing tone? That is the voice that made Rome great! The voice of Cicero! Of Marcus Antonius! The cultured notes that made the mob forget they hated Caesar! That is the voice of Reason! Now you must all forgive me, while I peer aside, into my heart of hearts, and find my human goodness. And when I have done so, we will stand aside and let this poor, mute, heart-broken widow and her son depart, to nurture hatred in their hearts for us!" The tone of his voice changed again, abruptly and drastically, and I realized with a chill, although I had known it from the start, that I was listening to the ravings of a madman.

"Publius Varrus! Where is he? The guest of honour at our little gathering! Publius Varrus? Here? Never! you say. But I, who know so little of the fine things of your life here in your petty Colony, know more than that. My people have told me. If the famed Publius Varrus be not there within the villa, they have said, then search for him among the ashes of his forge, where you will find him labouring, his manly brow bedewed with sweat from his honest labours!"

Seneca fell silent and I glanced at Plautus. His face was grim. He jerked his head in a negative. Not yet. We might be listening to a mad dog raving, but there were seven others in there with him who were sane. Slowly, hardly daring to move at all, I put my eye to the crack of the door.

Caius stood over to my left, his back against the table that held his books. He was being held close by two men, one of whom, the one closer to me, held a gladium pressed against his neck. Enid knelt in the middle of the floor, her back to me, her head hanging. She, too, was being held by a pair of men. On the far left of my restricted view I could just make out a part of another man standing close to the doors. He was standing at parade rest, as far as I could see, so I assumed another man to be standing across from him where I could not see.

Claudius Seneca was seated at Caius's work-table, but because Enid and her guards were between him and me I could only see one, outstretched, sandalled leg. The eighth man was the only one I could see clearly, and I knew him. I had not seen him in more than sixteen years, not since that first confrontation at the mansio, but I recognized him immediately. He was the beautiful catamite who had worn the kohl on his eyes. Now he was older and no longer beautiful, and he wore the uniform of a military tribune, but his face still wore that petulant, feminine sneer. He stood with his back against the farthest wall, facing me, his arms folded on his chest, his eyes moving ceaselessly from Caius, to Enid, to Seneca and back to Caius.

Seneca had fallen silent, and no one else felt compelled to speak. Now he gathered his legs beneath him and stood up, looking directly at me. I thought for one panic-stricken moment that he could see me there, behind the door, but he spoke to the man I had correctly assumed to be there, out of my line of sight. His voice this time sounded normal — the clipped, professional tones of a soldier.

"You, Marius, and you, Dedalus. Somewhere in the grounds here you will find a smith's forge. The occupant will be Publius Varrus. Bring him here to me." The two men began to move but his next words stopped them. "Listen to me! I do not want him alarmed, or harmed. Make sure he has no suspicions. Be pleasant to him, and courteous. Salute him, and tell him the Legate Picus has come home and that he is here in the villa with his wife and his father. Say that the Legate is still convalescent and would like to see him. I don't care what you tell him after that, but bring him here without arousing his suspicions. I want to see his face when he sees me. If you disappoint me you will answer for it. Now go."

I heard the sound of two punctilious salutes and then two men marching in step towards the half-open doors. Plautus and I tensed, prepared to be discovered then and there, but the men marched out looking neither to left nor right and kept on going. That made the odds a little better, although they would soon be back.

I heard a scuffle and another scream and spun back to the crack in the door. Seneca had moved to the crib that held the baby and Enid must have moved to try to prevent him. Now she lay whimpering face down on the floor. Seneca was looking down at her, his nostrils wrinkled in disgust.

"I would have liked a son, you know," he said to no one in particular. "But I could not defile myself by stooping to such filth as has to be to get one. Ugh!" He shuddered. "Get the evil-smelling sow away from me. Get rid of her. Shut her mouth once and for all time. Not here, you fool!" This last was a shout at one of his men who had brought up his sword. The man hesitated, wondering what he was supposed to do, as Seneca leaned over the baby's crib and appeared to be tickling the child under the chin. Seneca spoke without looking again at either Enid or her captors, using that silly tone of voice people use when making noises at babies. "We don't want her filthy, evil-smelling female blood all over the floor, do we? Take her somewhere else, and do what you have to do. Just be sure to keep her silent." He straightened and turned to face them, his voice again the crisp professional's. "You may find you want to use her." He sniffed. "If you do, be quick about it and get back here immediately afterwards. But keep her quiet and make sure that she is dead. Hold her upright!"

They hauled Enid to her feet, side-on to my gaze. Her lips were split and blood dripped from her nose. Seneca drew his sword and cut the clothes from her fastidiously while Caius struggled futilely against the men who held him. When she was naked, Seneca looked her up and down, his features twisted in disgust. Her beauty was magnificent, but it held no allure for him.

"Look at this!" Enid's breasts, heavy with suck, were oozing milk around the nipples. He prodded one of them with the point of his sword, drawing blood, and turned towards his friend who still leaned against the wall. "A cow," he said. "A great, ungainly, unhygienic cow! Ugh!" He shivered with loathing and Enid spat on him. He turned back to her and punched her brutally in the stomach, and she grunted with pain and would have collapsed had she not been held.

"Whoreson," I thought. "For that alone, you'll die." "Get the bitch out of here. She defiles my sight!" As the two men began to turn her around, I leaned backwards and looked across at Plautus, who nodded, holding up two fingers. We pressed our backs to the wall and waited. Enid was a big girl and she fought hard, in spite of the pain she was in. It took long moments for them to wrestle her to the doors. I heard Seneca say, "Close those doors behind them," and I hoped Plautus had heard it too and would wait. They came through the doors, both men giving their full strength and attention to controlling Enid, who was struggling like a demented thing. As they left the room, somebody pulled the doors closed behind them. Plautus and I both sprang at the same time and the two men died before they even knew they had been taken. They died quietly, too, but before we could lower their bodies to the floor, Enid fell heavily, and the two men who had gone to search for me came back into the atrium. There was no point in silence now. We dropped both corpses with a clatter and a voice inside the room said, "What was that?"

"See to Caius. I'll take these whoresons." Plautus had already dropped into a crouch and was moving forward. Enid lay motionless where she had fallen. I swung back towards the closed doors just as they were flung open and I slashed Excalibur sideways in a hissing sweep at the first man who came charging through. Its tip sliced through the front of his neck as though it had encountered nothing. His eyes and his mouth went wide in disbelief and his momentum kept him coming. I side-stepped onto my bad leg, following the direction of my swing, and whipped a backhanded slash at the second man in the doorway, who had not had time to recover from his surprise. Again, it was the tip, the last six inches of the blade, that caught him. He was still almost seven feet from me and had just drawn his gladium, so his arm was bent upwards in the slashing position. My blade took him on the wrist, severing his hand completely before clanging against his helmet. From behind me came a clash of blades as Plautus met the others, and I threw myself forward into the day-room, slamming my skystone dagger to the hilt beneath the handless man's still upraised arm in passing, and jerking it out again with the weight of my forward momentum.

The scene that confronted me stays stuck in my mind like a memory of a mosaic picture. Seneca still stood beside the crib, frozen in consternation, his eyes and mouth wide open in anger and surprise, his hands raised in front of him, fingers pointing towards me. Caius had launched himself across the floor in a stumbling run, either to attack Seneca or to try to save the child, I do not know which. The Catamite, as I thought of him, was leaping towards Caius on an intercepting course, a dagger in his right hand, his left reaching for Cay. As I absorbed this, the two men met and the weight of the younger man took Caius over backwards, off-balance and falling. The Catamite, however, had more strength than I would have thought. His left elbow hooked around Cay's neck and held him up until they crashed together against the wall. Before I could react the Catamite had Caius pinned firmly in front of him, his back arched against the pressure of the stranglehold, the point of the dagger pressing into Caius's neck below the ear.

I hesitated and lost the initiative. I heard the slither of Seneca's sword come hissing from its sheath and his voice filled the room: "Kill the old man! This is the one we want!" And then Caius gave me back the initiative. He brought up his knees and let his whole weight jerk his captor forward, away from the wall. As the Catamite stumbled towards me off balance, I went for him, swinging my new sword high and bringing it down like an axe across his back. It caught him across the shoulders, slicing clean through the leather cuirass that he wore, but it lodged there, caught in the toughened armour for the space of two heartbeats.

I saw a flash of whiteness and jerked the blade free, whirling towards the movement. Seneca was snatching the baby from its crib, holding it by its bunched swaddling clothes, and Enid, beautiful, naked Enid, was throwing herself on him. Their bodies came together and my insides screamed as I saw the blade in his hand strike upwards. She convulsed, her whole body seeming to hunch around the point of impact, and then he pushed her away violently and stood there wild-eyed, like a demon straight from Hades, the blood-stained blade in one hand and the screaming child, soaked with its mother's blood, in the other. Enid fell heavily on her back, her arms across her bloodied belly, her legs scissoring convulsively. Nearby, almost unnoticed by me, the Catamite began to crawl away from the huddled shape that was Caius.

"Stand away!" Seneca's eyes were glaring with that same sickening, empty intensity I remembered. "Back! Stand back or the brat dies now."

"If the baby dies now, you will take months to die, Seneca, I swear to you on his mother's blood."

"Then save him! Save the little bastard!" He hoisted the child high in the air above his head so that it dangled, red-faced and screaming. His other hand, raised high beside it, pressed the bloody blade to the child's gut.

"Save him, Varrus, you son of a raddled whore! Throw that thing down. That sword. Now. Over here, by me. Throw it!" He was screaming at the top of his voice and I was terrified that he would kill the child in spite of everything.

I had no choice. I looked at Enid's body, now grown still and odd-looking in the strangeness of death. I looked at Caius and saw blood bubbling slowly from his neck, around the hilt of the Catamite's blade. The Catamite himself was about two paces behind me, crawling painfully, scrabbling at the marble-tiled floor. I thought of all the blood and all the carnage and the misery and pain that had spilled down from that one day so many years ago, and my anger and grief overwhelmed me. My dear friend Phoebe had died for that, and now Enid, and Caius. All the innocents. I turned my back on Seneca and raised my new sword high. The skystone dagger fell at my feet as I grasped the cross-hilt in both hands and drove the point downward, like a spear, between the Catamite's shoulders and into his evil heart.

"Varrus!" The voice was an insane scream. "I gave you an order! Didn't you hear me? I gave you an order!"

I turned my head slowly, incredulous, to look at him, and at the sight of him I closed my eyes.

"That thing! That sword! I want it over here. Now!"

I gripped the hilt firmly and began to work it slowly back and forth, loosening it until I could pull it from the corpse, and then I flung it to him, beyond caring any more. The baby had to live. If I gave in to him, surely not even as demented a thing as he could kill a baby... ? The sword clanged loudly on the marble floor and slid to his feet. Still holding the infant high, he stretched with one foot and kicked it away from him, behind him.

"Now down! On your knees, you crippled pig!" I felt every one of my fifty-seven years, and I felt my spirit give way inside me. A small, surprised and clear-toned voice inside my head was saying that I had never seen so much blood in one room before. It was everywhere, and none of it was mine, and none of it was Seneca's, but it was everyone else's. Even the baby was bleeding now, where Seneca had nicked his tiny cheek with his blade. I could see Cay's blood, and Enid's blood, and the Catamite's blood, and the blood of the other men I had killed. Soon now, I knew, I would see my own blood, too, for I had lost the will to fight any more. I wanted it to be over. My eyes blurred with tears and I sobbed aloud, not caring I was beaten, for I knew he would kill the child. I fell to my knees. I had lost track of time and place and reason. I saw only blood and I wanted an end to it. And then I saw Seneca straighten up even more and step back a pace.

"Get away!" he screamed. "Back, or I kill the brat!" Bemused, I looked around me and saw Plautus framed in the doorway behind me, and my own sanity returned in a rush. I put one hand on the bloody floor and pushed myself to my feet.

Plautus still held the long-sword in his right hand. His left was clutched around the hilt of a gladium that protruded from his chest. His face was deathly pale and his eyes seemed to burn in their sunken sockets. He walked like a drunken man, one slow, staggering step at a time. There was death in his face — death for Claudius Seneca. Seneca side-stepped, moving crabwise away from him, screaming again that he would kill the child.

Plautus swayed to a halt. "Go ahead," he said, in a clear, small voice. "It's not mine. I don't care. All I care about is killing you, you stinking vomit."

I saw my skystone dagger lying on the floor at my feet; I saw Plautus take another lurching step; and then I saw Caius move, just as Plautus fell to his knees, blood gouting from his mouth.

Seneca, unbelievably, began to laugh, a high-pitched, gibbering giggle that chilled me. He took two more sideways steps away from Plautus, still holding the baby and his own blade high above his head, and then he shook them both, blade and baby, staring at Plautus, who was trying to regain his feet. At this point, Seneca's own right heel came to rest in the angle of the cross-guard of Excalibur. He glanced quickly down, saw what it was, and kicked it away from him again. It slid across the marble floor, this time to stop in front of the open eyes of Caius Britannicus.

Somehow, incredibly, Plautus staggered erect again and took another stumbling, implacable step towards Seneca. As he did so I stooped and snatched up my dagger. Seneca whimpered like a child, took another skipping step backwards and then rose to his tiptoes, stretching high in the air, his eyes darting from one to the other of us as Caius Britannicus somehow swung Excalibur from where he lay, flat on the floor. The edge of the shining blade sliced into the back of Seneca's bare knees, cutting the stretched tendons, dropping him immediately and flopping him backwards so that his shoulders hit the floor. The baby Merlyn landed on his dying grandfather. Seneca screamed like a woman, squirming frantically, trying to get up, but crippled far worse than I had ever been. The baby's screams were tiny, lost in his.

I walked across to where he lay, and it seemed to take hours for me to reach him. He scrabbled for me with clawed fingers, shrieking and spitting. I grasped the sword's hilt and pulled it free from where it was trapped in the fold of his legs, feeling it cut through more meat as I dragged it away. My face felt frozen. Caius lay behind Seneca, his screaming grandson clutched protectively in his left arm. The blood had ceased to pump from the wound in his neck. He was very still. I looked at his face, so pale, and time slowed down once more as I flexed my fingers around the hilt of the great sword. Then, ignoring the screams and sounds he was hurling at me, I raised Excalibur high above my head and swung it down with all my strength, striking Caesarius Claudius Seneca's head from his body. Plautus said, "Good man!" in a blood-choked voice, and I heard one last crash from behind me. I did not need to look to know that he had fallen on his face, onto the hilt of the sword that protruded from his chest.

Moving slowly, I crossed the room to the pile of garments that had been stripped from Enid earlier and draped them across her ravaged, nude body. Then I picked up my great-nephew and carried him out of that slaughterhouse.

The baby quieted as we walked through the warm, sunlit afternoon. I carried him in the crook of my left arm, the way his Grandfather Caius had carried him, and in my right I clutched Excalibur. Somewhere in the distance I could hear the sounds of battle, but I did not care. There was a lark singing in the sky high above me and a blackbird trilling close by. I heard my name being called and heard hoofbeats coming towards me at the gallop, but I didn't care. The forge would be quiet and safe for the baby, and it would be dark and warm. That was all I cared about.

I, too, had to find a dark, safe place, dark enough to hide me from the horrors tearing at my mind.