Jack Whyte: The Sorcer part 1: The Fort at River's Bend

"He is a boy fully intent on reaching manhood as quickly as he can. As you must have been, at his age. Don't tell me you disapprove? Would you prefer him to be lifeless and unattractive, distasteful to women, like Derek's Droc?"

I shrugged, feeling foolish. "I hadn't noticed it till now, that's all I meant. Who are the girls?"

"I told you, Rena and Stella. They are from Ravenglass, like all the other girls in Mediobogdum."

"Aye," I grunted. "But whose girls are they, and what do they do around here?"

Tress was grinning now. "They live and grow, like all young people. Stella, the fair-haired one, works with her mother, Rhea, who works with me. She'll be a good needle- worker one day, that girl, and she has a good head on her shoulders, although it's turned askew right now whenever Arthur comes around. Rena is the daughter of Longinus."

"Longinus? Is she, by God? And why have I not seen her here before?"

"Because, my love, you've not had eyes for it. You notice only those with whom you have some pressing business."

"Hmm!" I sat silent for a while, staring again at Arthur and the two young rivals for his attention. If he was aware of any tension between them, he gave no indication, and shortly afterward all three rose and left the hall. I watched them as they wait out, and then I turned back to Tress.

"How long has this been going on, this thing with the girls? Does Shelagh know about it?"

Tress laughed. "Of course! Think you Shelagh is blind? Everyone knows, Cay. There's no secret to it."

"And does she permit it?"

Tress raised her eyebrows in amazement. "Permit it? How would she stop it? As well try to turn the tide by disapproving of its progress. That's a silly thing to ask."

"So she permits it."

"Permits what, Cay? The boy is growing, awakening to himself. Shelagh has no more ways of stopping that than you have. But acknowledgment is not encouragement. She keeps young Arthur on a short, tight rein at night. Other than that, there is nothing she can do."

I shook my head. "And I had not seen it until now."

Tress bent forward and kissed my cheek, caressing my chin lovingly as she did so. "I told you, love, it had no importance to you then, so you paid no attention."

I would in future, I swore to myself, and for the remainder of that night I spent my time wondering where Arthur was and what he was doing.

SEVENTEEN

It started to rain in the week that followed the incident of the eagle and the fox, and for the following fourteen days our entire world was wet and dank and grey, with thick banks of fog and mist roiling up from the valley beneath us like displaced clouds, seeking reunion with the lowering clouds above. The forested hillsides around us faded into shifting shrouds of textured blackness, and we lost sight completely of the high Fells that overlooked our mountain perch.

It was impossible to be out of doors and dry at the same time. Everything we wore became waterlogged, doubled in weight and smelled of dampness. Exposed wrists and necks and knees grew red and chapped from the constant, chilly friction of moisture-laden hems and, in the case of the garrison soldiers, the chafing, unyielding edges of cold, wet armour. Not once in that entire period did the sun break through the overcast. From time to time, every few days, the skies above us would lighten slightly, as though to hint at brightness struggling to break through, but such intervals were always short-lived; the layers of cloud between us and the promise of new light would always grow heavier again, and more dense.

Our people became dispirited with the lack of brightness, the late, leaden dawns and the early, depressing nightfalls. Even the horses, cattle and swine huddled miserably beneath any shelter they could find, too listless to forage for food, depending upon us to bring them oats and fodder. Occasionally, we would hear thunder rolling somewhere in die distance, but no lightning flashed. We grew inured to the heavy, dull silence that pressed down on us, broken only by the constant patter and hiss and the unending, listless drip of falling water.

And then, late in the afternoon of the fourteenth dreary day, I emerged from one of die buildings and looked up to see a hint of yellow, filtered brightness on the hillside above us to the south. I waited there, almost stoically, for the phenomenon to fade. Instead, it grew stronger, and the dull yellow effulgence strengthened and spread outward, hazily illuminating a large stretch of tree-covered hillside. The sky above was still grey, but it was the lightest grey I had seen now in weeks, so I leaned my shoulder against the doorpost and lingered there, feeling a tiny thrill of anticipation fluttering in my chest.

Then, through an unseen break in the clouds, a quartet of sunbeams lanced down to splash real light on the distant trees, bringing , the late-autumn colours into startling prominence. Still I remained, fascinated to see the sunbeams thicken and spread outward, joined by others now and melding together so that, all at once, the entire hillside opposite me was awash in light, reflecting and refracting flashes of colour and dazzling glare. When the clouds began to break apart, bright blue patches appeared where before there had been nothing but dull, impenetrable greyness. A sudden brilliance blinded me, as sunlight reflected from a puddle on the ground in the roadway outside the building where I stood, and I knew, finally, that the weather had broken. I considered going back into the room I had just left and telling the others the good news, but then I decided to leave them to the pleasure of discovering it for themselves, and I walked away towards my own quarters, whistling merrily.

The brief period of warn, days that followed was summer's last song. After that, the evening temperatures plummeted, and the mornings crackled with thick hoar-frost that sometimes lingered until noon. A few, errant snowflakes drifted down on us from time to time, and the people of our little commune threw themselves urgently into a tempestuous flurry of last-minute preparations for the long winter months ahead. We men piled up vast supplies of fuel for the furnaces and fires, while the women cleaned and aired our living and communal quarters, scrubbing the concrete floors and covering them with fresh, dried rushes brought up months earlier from the wetlands below. In addition to these tasks, men laboured alongside women in drying, salting, smoking and curing the last of our meats for storage: pork, wild boar meat, venison, poultry and small game—though little of that,, that year—beef and fish, both saltwater and fresh. The fat salvaged from the butchering was rendered down in vats to give us oil for cooking and for mixing with lye to prepare soap. The last yield of berries, wild apples, plums and nuts were gathered in and carefully preserved, and several late-arriving wagonloads of bagged corn, millet and mixed grain from the fields around Ravenglass had to be husked and ground into meal and flour. Some vegetables—turnips and cabbages and kale—we had grown ourselves in the few tiny patches of arable land we had been able to identify close by the fort, and these, too, had to be collected and stored in cool, well-ventilated storage rooms. The granaries and warehouses of the old Roman Horrea were still intact, after hundreds of years, and we made full use of them, so that before the first snow fell, towards the end of December, all our work was complete and we felt confident about facing the winter.

I was one of the very few in Mediobogdum who knew that almost a hundred years before, the Emperor Constantine, assuming the role of an apostle, had decreed December 25th, the date of the ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia, to be the proven birth date of the Christ. None had argued against him, despot that he was, and despite a widespread conviction that the "proof' on which the imperial decree was based smacked tangibly of political contrivance and expedience, what had been a pagan celebration from time immemorial was Christianized and sanctified, made respectable and sacred almost overnight. The smug churchmen had won a double victory: they had nullified a godless reminder of ancient times and evil ways, and asserted their superiority, and that of their religion, over all the people of the Roman world, by creating a festival of Christian worship at a time when all the world prepared for festivities in any case. But to all those old enough to remember their elders talking of what they could recall of what had been before, December was still the time of Saturnalia, when hard-working folk celebrated together their successful efforts to bring in their harvests and prepare for winter.