The Skystone

V

Theodosius, the new Military Governor, turned out to be a grandiloquent and pompous pain in the arse, with all the charm of an angry viper, but he had a viper's strength and resilience, too, and he was, above all else, successful.

He was also something of a showman — had he not been a soldier and a politician, he could have made a rich living as a lanista, producing and presenting public spectacles for the amazement of the populace. This was brought home to me when Britannicus and I were ushered into his audience room at his headquarters in Lindum. Theodosius had not yet arrived, and we had to wait for him. Our escort, a tribune and two troopers, came to attention behind us, and two more guards stood stiffly at attention facing us, flanking a large table of polished wood in the centre of the chamber. One cathedra, an armchair with a high back, stood behind the table, and four sellae, traditional backless chairs, were ranged side by side opposite it. We made no move to sit.

On the table top, its naked blade almost glowing in the filtered light of late afternoon, lay Theodosius's sword.

This weapon was famous, justly renowned for its keen, silvery, intricately scrolled blade. When he was not wearing it, Theodosius kept it unsheathed, ostentatiously on display at all times for lesser men to admire. My breath caught in my throat the moment I looked at it and recognized its magnificence, and I was hard-pressed not to comment upon it. I did not dare to speak, however. We were still de facto criminals, condemned until Theodosius should formally repeal the proscription against our names. Until then we were forbidden to speak without permission.

Theodosius entered the large chamber only moments later. He listened to our case, presented by the Tribune who accompanied us, and examined our written record briefly. He nodded, then told us he had discussed our case at length with Senator Tesca and was satisfied of our innocence. He even congratulated Britannicus on his forethought, his leadership, his example and his endurance, and ordered the destruction of all evidence of any charges laid against us.

I found myself almost as fascinated by the man as I was with his sword. I was aware of his shortcomings, but spellbound by the aura of power his presence generated. He had landed in Britain with a consular army of four legions — between fifty and sixty thousand men, counting all personnel —

just towards the end of the year 368, and had, in a matter of mere months, recreated the Pax Romana out of overwhelming chaos. He refurbished the diplomatic corps of the province, appointing a new Comes Britanniorum, or Count of Britain, to replace the incompetent Fullofaudes, the so-called Dux Britanniorum, or Duke of Britain, who had been killed in the invasion. He also appointed a new Vicarius of Britain, a civilian Roman Governor, to represent the Emperor in Londinium. Both positions were sinecures, and neither appointee made any mark during, or after, the brief period when Theodosius remained resident in Britain.

I met him personally shortly after our return and exoneration, when he summoned Britannicus, as one of the few surviving senior officers in the country who was not in disgrace, to attend a conference prior to the launching of his major campaign. The Emperor Valentinian had given Theodosius the title Comes Rei Militaris, Military Count, and as such, he was determined to make sure that everyone knew who he was. He was not a particularly pleasant individual, but he was a fine soldier and administrator, and his armies were spectacular. I suppose not everyone can be perfect. He was to be Emperor himself within ten years. As Military Count, however, Theodosius did make several significant improvements to the province's general defences. He rebuilt and strengthened a number of badly damaged forts, and he greatly improved the defences of many towns — a major undertaking that he completed in an impressively short period of time.

The towns of Britain had stone walls, backed by earthen ramps and fronted by deep, V-shaped ditches. Theodosius ordered these ditches filled, and then added exterior towers to the walls, towers constructed expressly to hold heavy artillery—catapults of varying sizes that could hurl projectiles ranging from deadly ballista bolts and javelins, to massive rocks and stones, and blazing containers of oil. That done, he dug new, deeper, U-shaped ditches, this time sited far enough away to stop an attacking force short of the town's walls, but within range of the artillery on the new towers.

His most important and immediate contribution to the welfare of the province, however, was an extensive refurbishment of Hadrian's Wall itself, including the regarrisoning of the forts and mile castles along its length.

These were sweeping changes, and they involved an intricate and convoluted redistribution of the military forces under his command. The remnants of our old cohort were split up and scattered among the new and reformed legions, and Caius Cornelius Britannicus was promoted to Legate, commanding one of these new units. He took me with him as his primus pilus, his chief centurion and second-in-command in all matters relating to the daily operations of the legion, as was his prerogative. Things were never the same after the Invasion, however. Britannicus had the reputation, but his new men didn't have the balls to be anything great, and we did not have the time to train them before going into action. And then, in the closing months of Theodosius's campaign, when we had the enemy well and truly on the run, heading north to the Wall again, we walked into that mountain trap and won ourselves a lengthy, if unwelcome, respite from war.

Mitros, personal physician to Britannicus and now, by association, to Varrus, began his daily arrangements to lengthen my life by deepening my misery. Britannicus was still asleep, and after the briefest glance at him Mitros ignored him, and me, as he went about his work. I watched him with a thin worm of fear churning in my gut. I was already accustomed to the procedure he was preparing for, but I knew I would never become inured to the pain involved, in spite of the wondrous extent of his healing powers.

Mitros poured white, crystalline powder from a phial into the pot already bubbling on his small brazier, and then removed the vessel from the coals almost immediately, pouring its contents into a shallow bowl to cool until I could drink it. The larger vessel on the big brazier contained a grey, viscous liquid that bubbled heavily, almost like the mud it resembled. Both mixtures, I knew, contained opiates that would dull my senses against the pain Mitros would shortly begin to inflict upon me. I would drink the mixture in the shallow bowl first, when it was cool enough. Even heavily flavoured as it was with fresh crushed mint, it tasted foul, but it was magical. Mitros had told me it was made from a substance rendered from the gum of poppies grown far to the east, beyond Byzantium. It conquered pain in proportion to its own potency. Each day Mitros made the mixture stronger, and each day my awareness of the pain diminished.

When the opiate had numbed me sufficiently, Mitros would undo my bandages and wash and clean the wounds that swept up into the centre of me, using hot water and astringent cleansers that I could not have tolerated without the assistance of the potion. Then, when he had finished, he would dress the wounds again, packing the inner bandages with an almost unbearably hot poultice of the foul-smelling, clay-like mixture from the big brazier. The poultice itself also held a painkiller, more powerful in its own way than the other, so that by the time the effects of the draught had worn off, the magic of the poultice had numbed my leg completely, leaving me able to sleep again until the following day.

Mitros tested the draught in the bowl with the knuckle of his little finger. It was evidently still too hot for me to drink. I swallowed a mouthful of saliva nervously, sniffed, and glanced towards Britannicus. He slept on, flat on his back, his great, hooked beak of a nose pointed to the roof of the tent. I remembered again his words to me on that first night we met, about having to decide what to do with me, and I grinned at the recollection. In the years that had elapsed since that night, Caius Britannicus had had more to concern himself with than what he would do with me. My grin grew wider, and I wondered what he might have done without me.

"Here, now we drink, and we grow well." Mitros was standing beside me, the bowl in his left hand as he reached with his right to support my head.

"Do we, by God? Well, Mitros, since we're doing it together, I've got an idea. Why don't you drink it today and I'll watch, the way you usually do?

That way, we share the pain and the pleasure."

"Not amusing. Come."

I obeyed him, quietly and meekly, in the absence of alternatives. The concoction tasted awful. I can still remember the acidic bitterness of it, decades later.

When the bowl was empty, Mitros returned my head to the pillow and wiped my brow with a damp cloth. "There, now. Soon you will be asleep."

And soon I would, but not immediately. Sleep drifted in very slowly after that draught, and sometimes it did not come at all; consciousness remained in a kind of dream state, where awareness still functioned but earthly problems like pain and discomfort disappeared completely. Mitros had returned to his braziers, and now he lifted the other pot away from the heat, using a stout, wooden handling device to distribute the weight of the heavy vessel. He carried it to the sturdy table at the foot of my bed and left it there before crossing to the door of the tent, where he signalled for two soldiers to come and remove the braziers. I watched all of this in a kind of daze, eventually realizing that everyone had left the room and that I was alone, except for Britannicus.

Cains Cornelius Britannicus was a true Cornelian, a direct descendant of the pure, patrician stock of the founding families of the Roman State. During those early days of confinement, practically strapped to his bed and unable to influence anyone to change anything, Britannicus talked, sometimes for hours and hours, about his life in Britain as a citizen, rather than as a soldier. I remember I found that surprising at first, primarily because I had known him until then only as the military Legate Britannicus, the taciturn, professional commander who normally kept his company and his opinions to himself. As time passed, however, I discovered that I barely knew him at all. Whatever intimacies he and I had shared as companions in arms had exposed only a few small facets of the man's fascinating character and personality to me. Now, as he talked and I listened, more and more of the man inside him began to emerge. A paternal ancestor — his great-great-grandfather, in fact — had won his cognomen, Britannicus, through his efforts on behalf of the province in the time of Hadrian, more than a hundred and fifty years earlier, and his whole family had come to think of Britain as home over the intervening generations, although their primary allegiance remained always to Rome. For my part, I had been born in Britain and had grown to manhood without ever being really aware of it. I never thought of it as being an important place; it was simply Britain, the place where I lived. It took a few years in Africa, followed by years of enthusiasm on the part of Britannicus, to show me what Britain really meant to me.

He talked at great length and with real affection about his family and about their home, a villa close to Aquae Sulis, the famous hot water spa in the south-west. I heard the pride in his voice when he spoke of his wife, Heraclita, whom he evidently worshipped and whose imperial Claudian blood was as ancient and noble as his own. He spoke proudly, too, of his first-born son, Picus, who, like Caius and all his forebears, would join the ranks of the legions when he reached sixteen. The boy was eight now, almost nine, so there was no rush to find a place for him in the imperial ranks. For the next five years at least, young Picus would remain at home with his younger siblings: a sister, Meleiia, who was seven years old and the favourite of her doting father, and four-year-old twin brothers Marcus and Paulus. He talked of a sister called Luceiia and a brother-in-law called Varo, who owned an estate beside the Britannicus lands in the west and who acted as caretaker cum estate manager to the family in Caius's absence. Someday, he swore, when his duties were over and the Empire no longer required his services, he would return and assume stewardship of his own lands.

Early on in our association, Britannicus and I had discovered that we had both been born in Colchester, the oldest Roman settlement in Britain. His family had moved away early in his boyhood to live in the region south of Aquae Sulis, in the family villa, but he had always retained happy memories of Colchester. Traditionalist that he was, however, he always insisted on calling it by its original name of Camulodunum. Colchester, he maintained, was a bastard name, Celtic and Roman mixed, which stood only for 'the camp on the hill.' As a name, he said, it lacked character. In the course of one discussion it came out that his father had had a friend in Colchester who had been a smith, and owned his own forge. This man's name had been Varrus, too. Britannicus didn't connect the name with me, personally, because no Roman citizen of his connection would have willingly worked with his hands. When I told him that this Varrus had been my own grandfather, his eyes widened with surprise, and he had wanted to know how Varrus the Elder had come to pursue a life of manual labour.

The answer to that was short and simple, and I had no worries about telling him the story of my grandfather, who had in fact been Varrus the Younger, youngest son of a minor branch of the famed Varus family. Over the course of centuries, our branch of the family had acquired an extra "R" in the spelling of its name and had, in the same process, lost almost all of the wealth associated with the one ‘R’ Vari. My grandfather himself had been brought up by slaves, which was not unusual in Roman households, but had become fascinated as a young boy with the smithy attached to the house. Drawn to the atmosphere of smoke and heat and the clanging of the smith's hammer, he haunted the place. The smith, for his part, took a liking to the young nobleman and taught him as much as he could about the art of forging and working with metals. It was a love that was never to leave the boy, and eventually, when he left the army, he set up a smithy of his own.

At first it had been a hobby, but as the smithy began to take up more and more of the young man's time, his father had become increasingly displeased. Arguments developed into open rifts, and the younger Varrus finally left home to realize his dream of working with metal. He had a little money from the sale of his smithy, and he made his way to Britain, where he set up another and began making tools and weapons to supply the army of occupation. Because he was Roman and an aristocrat by birth, and because he was a veteran of the legions, and because he made the finest swords available, he was able to build up a thriving business. He married the daughter of a wealthy merchant, also of pure Roman birth, and produced one son who, in his turn, married yet another Roman and produced me. But my father was killed on campaign and my mother died of a fever the following year. From then on, my grandparents raised me, my grandfather completing the task alone after the death of his beloved wife. He died while I was stationed in Africa.

When I had finished my story, Britannicus lay looking at me for a few minutes before asking, "What are you going to do when you leave here, Varrus? Doesn't seem as though you'll be doing any more soldiering, thanks to that." He nodded towards my mauled leg.

I grinned at him. "Smithing, like my grandfather. I'm going back to Colchester to work the old forge. It's mine, now."

His patrician eyebrow arched in surprise. "Smithing? Isn't it a bit late in the day to be starting over? You're a soldier, Varrus. What in the name of all the ancient gods do you know about being a smith?" I smiled at him, anticipating the impression I was about to make. "I probably know more about it than a lot of so-called smiths who are doing well by supplying the armies today, Legate. The old man taught me all he knew. I was as keen, and as good a student, as he had been. By the time I was thirteen, I could run the whole smithy. By the time I was fourteen I was making swords for local officers."

"Good God, I don't believe it!" But he did, I could hear it in his voice.

"You mean to tell me you really are a smith? A worker in iron?"

I nodded slowly. "Yes, Legate. Believe it. I really am." I dropped my voice. "I even know the secret of white iron."

He raised his head from the pillow, trying to sit upright, "White iron? You mean the magical kind, the one men have lost the secret of making?

You joke with me."

I shook my head. "No, Legate, may I die right now, I tell you the truth. To some of us, that secret was never lost — to the majority of men, however, it has yet to be discovered. You've seen Theodosius's sword."

"What about it?"

"Were you impressed by it?"

"Of course! Weren't you? It is magnificent. If I were superstitious, I'd be inclined to think it was made by Vulcan himself. I have never seen anything like it. It shines, almost, in the dark. And those patterns on the blade! I think they're Egyptian. At least, that's what Theodosius himself thinks they are."

I stretched a kink from my back and stifled a belch; then, when I was sure he thought I had no more to say, I added, "They're British, General, not Egyptian. The patterns are Celtic, from the mountains. And the blade wasn't made by Vulcan, it was made by Varrus. My grandfather made that sword for my father when he entered the legions. He had not quite finished it when my father had to leave, and so he kept it for when he would come home on leave. He never did. He died in Iberia.

"I played with that sword as a boy. Then one day some Roman officers saw it and wanted to buy it from my grandfather. It wasn't for sale. A week later, our smithy was broken open and the sword has never been seen again, until I saw it on display as the property of Theodosius himself."

"Good God, Varrus! " Are you suggesting that Theodosius... ?"

"No, General, of course I'm not. God only knows how it came into his hands. It's probably priceless. It may quite possibly be the finest sword ever made. A lot of men would give anything to own such a unique weapon."

We lay there in silence for a while, each of us thinking about the beautiful sword. Britannicus broke in on my thoughts.

"What makes it so different, Varrus? What makes it so much harder and sharper and cleaner than ordinary iron? And so bright?" I thought about that one carefully before I answered him. "I don't know, General. I honestly don't know. I know how it was made. The old man taught me how to duplicate the process, and we made some fine blades of a light grey colour, but we were never able to duplicate that blinding brightness. My grandfather swore it was the skystone that made the difference."

"The what?"

"The skystone — a stone that fell from the sky." I smiled at the look on his face. "No, it's true. A shepherd who worked for one of my grandfather's friends heard a terrible noise in the air one night, followed by a crash that shook the earth. It almost frightened him to death and kept him huddled awake beneath his bed skins for hours. When he peeked out in the morning, he saw a great hole in the ground, close by his hut. At the bottom of the hole was a rock, almost buried in the ground. The shepherd tried to dig it out, but it was so heavy for its size that he could hardly move it. He was frightened to discover it was warm, too, so he left it where it was and reported it to his master, who examined it but thought little more about it.

"That afternoon, in the course of a conversation, he mentioned it to my grandfather, who sent my father to bring the rock to him. It was as heavy as iron. For some reason, he kept it for years. And then one night, intrigued by the weight of the thing, he decided to try to melt it down, to smelt it. It turned out not to be easy and he almost gave up the attempt, but just as he was about to abandon it, he noticed that it had developed a glazed texture, almost as though it had been starting to liquefy. So he kept trying. He had to use a far higher temperature than ever before to melt it down, whatever it was. Eventually he succeeded, and from it he finally forged the sword that now belongs to Theodosius, mixing some of the skystone metal with an equal amount of normal iron. When the blade was finished, he polished it with an abrasive stone and it developed the finish you find so admirable. Whatever that skystone was made of is the material that made the sword so bright."

When he responded, his voice was admiring. "Bright! The thing is unnatural! Have there been any more of these fabulous skystones found? I find it amazing that no one else has ever talked of them."

I indicated my own frustration on that score with a quick shake of my head. "Again, I don't know. If that one hadn't fallen where and when it did, it might never have been found. Who's to know how many others there are like it?"

"Hmmm. I see what you mean. But do you really believe it fell from the sky, Varrus? That's impossible. I mean, I believe that it fell, but it must have fallen from somewhere!"

"I know it seems impossible. My grandfather felt the same way. But it was still warm when the man found it, hours after it had fallen, and it did contain something that isn't known to smiths anywhere. He finished up believing that it truly did fall from the sky."

His eyebrow shot up and he shook his head. "Astonishing! Have you ever tried looking for any more of these phenomena? These skystones? I mean, how do you know there aren't thousands of them just lying around waiting to be found?"

"Lying around where, General?" I grinned at him, shaking my head at the foolishness of the thought that occurred to me. "A man could spend a whole useless lifetime just walking around, looking at stones."

He sucked air through his teeth. "Yes. I suppose you're right. But if ever one could find such a stone again, could you make another sword like that one?"

I considered that. "Yes, I could. I know how he made it. I'm sure I could make another."

Britannicus lay silent, thinking. He might have wanted to say more, but Mitros came in to change our dressings and he made us both take the sleeping potions that he believed were the secret behind letting the body heal itself. We slept.

The following morning, I awoke to the sounds of grunting and movement, to find Britannicus being hoisted into a sitting position by two soldiers whom Mitros had drafted for the duty. They made him reasonably comfortable, eventually, in spite of his cursing, which died away when the physician pointed out that this was part of the curing process. When they had all gone and left us alone again, I asked him if he was in much pain. He looked at me without responding for a few moments, then eased his leg slightly sideways with both hands and shook his head.

"No, " he said, "doesn't hurt nearly as much as it used to. How about you?"

I smiled at him. "I feel no pain at all, as long as I don't try to move.

'Course, when I fall asleep, my body seems to want to move on its own. Then there's pain. I tend to wake up suddenly, very often."

He was watching me closely, frowning slightly. "Well, " he growled, "at least you're beginning to look a little better. Those purple bags have gone from beneath your eyes and your face has started to fill out again." He cleared his throat, his frown deepening, then added, "Mitros tells me you should soon be functional again."

It was my turn to frown. "Functional? What, you mean I'll be able to walk again?"

"No, of course not. We know you'll be able to do that. You might have a limp, but you'll walk perfectly well.

No, I meant... functional — physically, sexually." He seemed embarrassed.

"Oh, that, " I said, as a vision flared in my mind of the discomfort an erection would cause. "God, I prefer not even to think of that at this point."

He was looking at me strangely, and I felt myself flush under his gaze.

"What is it, General? What's the matter?"

He shook his head dismissively. "Nothing,. nothing at all." He paused, and then continued. "You're an abstemious kind of a character, aren't you?"

"General?"

"Abstemious, fastidious. You're not much of a man for the womanizing life, are you?"

"I suppose not, " I said, surprised and caught off guard by this unexpected departure from our normal style of talking. I added as an afterthought; "No less than any other normal man, though, if no more so. No, I don't think so."

He shook his head again, an unusual, almost musing expression on his face. "I've watched you, you know, over the past few years, and I've been pleased by your temperance. It's one of the primary elements that make up exceptional soldiers. "He saw by the expression on my face that I was uncomfortable with his line of reasoning, and added reassuringly, "Oh, you are normal enough, God knows. It's simply that there's nothing excessive about you, in the vicious sense. You do everything in moderation, it seems to me, nothing to excess. You don't drink too much, you don't whore too much, you don't fight or even argue without reason. You are a fine example to your men."

"Gods, General, " I said, "you make me sound too sweet to be wholesome."

"Ha! Far from it, but I apologize nevertheless. “He was quiet for several moments, and I had closed my eyes again, wondering when the orderly would arrive with the hot water for my morning ablutions, when he spoke again. "Varrus, have you ever been in love?"

My whole body stiffened in the bed as I wondered what had come over him to provoke such unaccustomed intimacy. Britannicus never indulged in this kind of idle curiosity about anyone or anything. "Never, sir, " I replied, hearing the awkwardness in my own voice.

"Never, Varrus? You have never been in love? Not once in your entire life?"

I thought about that, keeping my eyes closed, and as several errant memories chased each other through my mind, I felt a smile pulling at my mouth in spite of my earlier discomfort.

"Well, sir, " I said eventually, "I have known a few young women girls would really be more accurate, who set my heart a-pattering and my senses reeling from time to time in various places."

"Aha!" His voice sounded pleased. "And is there anyone in particular who still has power over you?"

My smile was easier now as I grew more at ease with our topic. "No, " I answered. "Not today, not really. No one holds that power over me, and I could be sad about that, if I thought for long about it."

"Ah, Varrus my friend, then you are unfortunate. There is nothing greater than the love of a good woman. It can sustain a man throughout any troubles, for any length of time."

The silence grew and stretched until I broke it. "Aye ... I've heard that said before, by several people."

" It's true." Britannicus's voice grew warmer and more enthusiastic as he honoured me with his confidence.

"Do you know, I can remember the day I first met Heraclita? I was about thirteen..." He broke off, then amended what he had said, "Well, I actually only saw her that first time, I didn't meet her. We didn't really meet for about another two years, but I had never forgotten her since that first time. You'll meet her some day, Varrus, and you'll see what I mean. She was — she still is — the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. I knew, even at that age, that my life would be built around her. We lived in different cities, so it was fortunate that our families were close friends. After that first meeting, however, our parents decided we would wed when we had grown, and we both approved. We became friends, I marched off to the legions, and years later we became lovers. But I had been in love with her since that first day I saw her, playing with a pet rabbit among the frosted sedge at the edge of a frozen pond, with her breath steaming in the cold air and her pink cheeks making her blue eyes seem even brighter than they were. And now we have been married for what?" He did a mental addition against the back of his closed eyelids and answered his own question. "Fifteen years. We were wed on my twenty-third birthday. She was twenty." His voice died away for a spell, his thoughts led inward by his words.

"My only regret about being what I am, " he resumed eventually, "is that I have so little time to spend with my wife. I do my soldiering alone, and she stays at home and keeps my private world in order for me. She could come with me, but camp life is no kind of existence for a soldier's wife, and the family of a senior officer can have much grief, particularly if the husband and father is strict with his command. But love, Varrus, the love of a good woman is of matchless value." He turned his face towards me and shook his head in mild perplexity. "I really find it difficult to believe what you say, that you have never been in love."

"Believe it. General, " I told him, smiling as I said the words. "I'm sure if I had been, I would remember."

The images in my mind right then were distracting and, for some strange reason I never really resolved, were causing me to feel some kind of guilt — perhaps because I felt I was, somehow, deceiving him. I was thinking of saying so, after which the conversation might have gone anywhere, but the medical orderly came in at that moment with the hot water for our morning ablutions, and the entire process of changing dressings resulted in a change of mood, which led in turn to our losing the desire to pursue what we had been discussing. Nevertheless, throughout the entire washing, cleansing, draining and changing of my dressings, I entertained and distracted myself by recalling the girl whose presence had been brought back into my mind by the way Britannicus spoke, the girl who had bewitched me the summer I joined the legions, when I was only fifteen. She was my spectral love, my special inspiration. I carried the memory of her with me, the physical, magical excitement of her, wherever I went in the service of the Empire, and the remembered sight of her face, the supple slimness of her waist, the deep, flashing blueness of her eyes and redness of her warm, sweet mouth, had nursed me to sleep many a cold night on campaign.

It was a wondrous time, that last summer of my boyhood, a time that would remain with me forever-more. I know now, or I strongly suspect, that my grandfather took special pains on my behalf that year, knowing that I would soon be gone into manhood and soldiery. He had a friend, a wealthy customer and patron, who lived in a superb villa close to Verulamium, and this friend invited my grandfather and me to spend the summer with him. We accepted, and I went to paradise for eight long, golden weeks. The villa itself was magnificent, but it was nothing compared to the lands! The summer fields were heavy, lush with ripening greenness, and the air was filled with the scent of the grasses, mixed with the dryness of sun-hot dust, the smells of dung and flowers. My ears were teased by the buzzing of flies and insects, the song of birds and the rustling of long grasses as they brushed against my legs. I made new friends there, a Roman boy my own age called Mario whose father was an overseer on the farm, and a younger boy called Noris, the son of the Celtic thatcher who had roofed all of the houses and buildings for miles around. Among the three of us, we hadn't a care in the world.

And then one day, less than a week before my grandfather and I were to return to Colchester, we heard about a festival to be held at the next villa to the east. The son of the villa's owner had recently been married to a girl who lived far to the south-west. The wedding had been in the bride's home, and now the son was bringing his new wife home. Everyone was invited to the celebration. There would be musicians, players, a dancing bear, games, and food and drink for everyone.

The dancing bear was the biggest I had ever seen, but when I managed to approach close to it I was very disappointed. The poor thing was half starved and sickly, its skin broken and ulcerous from rubbing constantly against the bars of its tiny cage, and its coat dirty, matted and awful-smelling. I felt outrage for the helpless, obviously brutalized creature, and fury at the hulking, half-witted giant who was apparently its owner. I immediately went looking for my two friends, determined to enlist their help in freeing the animal that night after everyone had gone to sleep. I had seen them just a short time before, heading towards the stall where the pie-maker was finding it hard to keep up with the demand for his goods, and I set off towards them, cutting directly across the middle of the tree-dotted meadow where the festivities had been set up. And there, in the middle of the field on that hot, dusty afternoon, I came face to face with my future dreams.

I had just swung smartly around the bole of a good-sized tree, taking the shortest route to the pie stall, when my eye was attracted by a bright blueness that I saw to be a dress, worn by a tall girl of about my own age. She had long, straight black hair, an achingly beautiful smoothness of sun-browned face and skin, high cheekbones, a bright-red mouth and wide blue eyes that seemed to leap from her countenance. I saw her, all of her, in one flashing glance and stopped dead in my tracks, as completely stunned as though I had been hit with a heavy club. She was breath-taking. I had never seen anything so beautiful, anywhere. She was with three other girls, all shorter than herself, and they were all laughing at something one of them had just said. I knew the others were there — I could see them moving and hear their laughter — but I was aware of them only as shapes. The girl in blue held my eyes and my attention completely. All four girls became aware of my attention at exactly the same moment, it seemed. They broke off their conversation abruptly and four pairs of eyes devoured every detail of my awkward, mid-step fascination, from the soles of my feet to the top of my head. Then, in that singular way that is unique to adolescent girls, they instinctively swung inwards, towards a common centre, giggling and chattering, convinced that somehow, by turning their backs on me and huddling together, they had disappeared.

The tall girl, however, distanced herself from her friends by simply raising her head and gazing directly at me. There was no smile on her face, no discernible expression in her eyes. She simply looked at me, and I at her, and somehow, across the ten paces that lay between us, I felt the warmth of her active, excited interest. My heartbeat sped up and my breath swelled and grew tight in my chest. I knew that I had somehow magically filled her universe as she had overwhelmed my own. Her eyes seemed to grow bigger and bigger as I gazed at her; they devoured me, filling my consciousness to the point where everything else faded away, and all I wanted to do was reach out and stroke the smoothness of her cheek. And then her friends were shouting and moving, pulling at her, urging her away. I had ceased to interest them and, miraculously, they had been unaware of what had happened between me and their beautiful friend. She went with them — unwillingly, it was clear to me — turning her head as she walked to keep me in her sight. Bereft of all memory of what I had been doing before, my own friends and the bear completely forgotten, I moved to follow her. She smiled and turned back to her companions, confident that I would not go far away.

I followed faithfully until the moment came — and I have no idea how it came or what led up to it — when we stood together, all others gone, the two of us alone, stranded in wonderful isolation among a throng of people who had no impact on us or our lives. I looked at her, speechless, and she at me. She smiled a perfect, pearl-toothed smile that made my chest constrict. I know we spoke, though I can recall no words, and then we walked together away from the festivities, away from the crowd, away from the eyes of people.

She was tall. She was lovely. She was mine. Neither of us doubted that, and there was no need to talk of it. There was no strain between us, no shyness, no false awkwardness. We touched each other gently, faces, ears and hair, with the awestruck, quivering fingers of reverent discovery. I touched a questing knuckle softly to the swelling, smiling fullness of her lips, and they parted, kissing my finger chastely. I felt the pliant slimness of her waist beneath my hand and almost caught my breath in panic as her face came close, close up to mine, and our mouths kissed. She was in my arms, filling my arms, enclosing me in her own, and I was overwhelmed by the closeness and the fullness and the softness and the clean, sweet-smelling scent of her, and we devoured each other with kisses, avidly, wildly, in the innocent need and fury and wonder of first love. She told me to call her Cassie, short for Cassiopeiia, the constellation that rose in the evening sky shortly before we realized how late it had grown. She knew my name was Publius. I never learned her full name, nor she mine. By the time we rejoined the festivities, they had turned out to look for her and a stern father took her jealously in charge and out of my sight.

I had to return home to Colchester the following day and I never saw her again. But I never forgot her, either. She told me that her father was a soldier, a legate, and she herself an army brat, living the army life, moving from camp to camp and country to country with her father's command. Through all my travels with the legions I watched for her — and for her father — each time we visited a new town or garrison, but without a family name, I could not even begin to look systematically. And so she had faded, gradually, into my memories. I watched for her in. each new town, even then, after fifteen years. And now that Britannicus had stirred up my recollections of her, I embraced them and used them to cushion me against the brute pain that even Mitros's gentle ministrations could cause my mangled flesh.

That particular day, and the discussion we had in the course of it, seems, in my recollection, to have been a turning point. During the next few weeks, we both began to recover more strongly, although Britannicus mended much faster than I did. A day came when he was able to leave the room and walk about outside while I still lay on my back. Within the month that followed that, he was exercising strenuously, getting into shape for his return to duty. Perversely, as he grew fitter, I grew more and more depressed. And then, one day, he was gone.

He visited me the morning he left and wished me Godspeed in my recovery, promising that if he ever passed by way of Colchester, he would find my smithy and visit me. We clasped hands and parted as friends. I had been returned to regulation sick bay by this time, tended by the regular medics, and I suppose I was feeling sorry for myself. The fact that Britannicus had gone, however, made me face up to my problems. I could either languish and die in bed, or I could set myself to making the best I could of a crippled leg. I set out to beat my handicap, and I won. Most of the physicians and surgeons who had examined my injuries — and there had been many over the months since I had been wounded — were of the professional opinion that I would never walk upright again. I was determined to prove them wrong, and I was intensely grateful that there were others, equally qualified, who did not share their opinions. One of the most scathing of these was Comius Attribatus, a brilliant surgeon of mixed Roman and Celtic blood who was also a grey-bearded veteran of thirty years in the army medical corps. There was nothing Comius had not seen in the way of wounds over three decades, he told me, and he swore that he had known men with wounds far worse than mine who had forced their bodies to conform to their will and learned to walk again, when reason and logic said they should have been cripples forever. I devoured his words, never able to hear enough of such stories, choosing to believe him because I wanted to more than anything else in the world. Under his close supervision I set out to retrain my cut and wasted muscles. It was agonizing, lonely and frustrating work, and my progress was very, very slow. But I soon began to make visible progress, and even the most sceptical watchers came to believe I would win, and to lend their support to my efforts. I sweated off every trace of fat on my body, and gradually, shaking and quivering with sustained effort, I replaced it all with healthy, corded layers of muscle. My left leg had been shattered, of course, the muscles torn and poorly reconstructed, in spite of the excellent work of the physicians, and that was something I had to accept as a limitation. But after six months of exercise and effort, the leg worked. I could walk on it. It was a limping walk, hesitant at times, but it was real Eight months after the return of Caius Britannicus to duty, in the dead of winter, I arrived home in Colchester, looking as good as ever on horseback, but limping like a lame duck when I tried to walk.

BOOK TWO - Colchester