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

My life, I now realized, was no longer my own in the thoughtless, intimate way it had ever been, even in the days when I lived with the woman I loved as my wife. Now I was living for other people—the most important of them Arthur, but the others claiming my attention and my concern nonetheless. My priorities were theirs; my cares were theirs; and my duties revolved entirely around them. I told myself, as soon as the thought occurred to me, that duties always revolved around others, but the difference was clear and stark in my understanding: the duties I had known before leaving Camulod were structured, military and exact; they were definable and thus predictable; and they entailed a reciprocity in their execution—rewards, in the form of recognition, a sharing of responsibility, and an occasional relief from that responsibility in return for performance. That was no longer true. Nowadays, the responsibility was unrelenting.

Knowing I was being self-indulgent and self-pitying, I stepped resolutely into the bedchamber and reached down to grasp the blanket on my bed, just as someone knocked on the outer door of my quarters.

"Enter, the door is unlocked," I shouted, and then, curious to see who had come calling, I leaned back on my heel, craning my neck. When the door swung open, I was amazed to see Shelagh thrust her head through the opening and call to me.

"Cay? May I come in?"

"Shelagh! Of course you may come in. Since when must you await my bidding?"

The surge of pleasure I felt at the sight of her and the sound of her voice drove every thought of dissatisfaction from my mind, but yet I made no move to go into the outer room. The opportunity to benefit from the fact that I could see her while remaining out of her sight loomed too large for me to ignore, so I remained where I was, watching her through the open door of my darkened bedchamber. She leaned further into the room, keeping her hand on the door handle and looking about her, searching for me, and then, just as her eyes fastened on the doorway beyond which I stood in shadow, I saw that she had someone with her, standing close behind her on the threshold.

I strode out towards her, smiling a welcome, just as she entered, beckoning whoever was behind her to follow. The sight of the newcomer quickly slowed me to a halt, halfway across the intervening space. It was the young woman who had smiled at me the evening of the feast, the one called Tressa, whose high, full breasts and laughing eyes had disturbed me so greatly. Now I found myself confronted by those eyes again, staring at me, wide and alert, as though slightly startled, and I was immediately aware that her breasts were, indeed, high and full and impossible to ignore, causing the clothing that should have concealed them to enhance the sweep of their upper surface instead, and then drape vertically from their points. Shelagh saw none of this exchange of looks, and I was fleetingly aware of feeling grateful for her preoccupation with whatever she was looking at or searching for. She took one last, sweeping look around the room and then straightened, facing me.

"It's dark in here, and even dustier than usual. Merlyn, this is—"

"Tressa. I remember her from Ravenglass. Welcome, Tressa."

The young woman dimpled and flushed with pleasure, buckling one knee and shyly whispering, "Mester Cahy." I turned to face Shelagh squarely, feeling ridiculously aware of the other woman and strangely guilty for that very awareness, as though, in taking notice of her, I had sinned through disloyalty to Shelagh.

"How may I serve you? You must forgive me, I fear I am unused to having women here in my rude quarters."

"Aye, that's obvious." Shelagh was smiling, her eyes twinkling and full of mischief. "I have brought Tressa here to see what she must do. She will be looking after two of you, yourself and Lucanus, keeping your quarters clean and bright and aired, and mending your clothes and whatever else may require looking after."

"But—"

"No, no buts, Cay. That is the law, according to Shelagh, and you will save us all much grief and inconvenience if you will simply accept it as decreed. You men are the great ones for laying down laws, but there are times when women's laws are better and more sensible, and this is one of them. You work on those things that concern you,

and Tressa here will keep your surroundings neat and clean enough to make your work as pleasant as may be. Do you understand me?"

"But—"

"But? Pardon us, Cay, but we came here apurpose. Now, if you will stand aside, I wish to show Tressa her duties. Tressa, come."

I stood gape-mouthed and watched them as they examined every vestige of my quarters, talking between themselves and taking note of everything they thought to change or better. My initial annoyance passed, and soon I found myself taking pleasure in the sight of both of them. Tressa was no beauty, but she was young and radiant with health, buxom and sprightly enough to suffer little side by side with Shelagh's older, glowing loveliness. Both women were round and full where women needed to be both, and as they spoke together, both laughed quietly from time to time. Presently they completed their examination and returned to where I stood by the window.

"Well," Shelagh said, "I've shown Tressa what's in store for her. She'll keep out of your way, as much as possible, doing what she has to do during the day while you're about your business. The only reason you will have to know that she's about will be the uncustomary pleasantness with which you will be surrounded from now on. Good day to you."

Tressa bobbed, with her shy smile, and whispered my name again, her soft Cumbrian brogue doing strange things to the vowel sounds, and then they were gone, leaving me feeling as though I had been paraded, inspected and assessed—all of which was true. I stood at the window, watching them as they went out, and after they had gone from sight I remained there, peering out at the weather.

Between the top of the fort's outer wall and the line of the overhanging eaves above my window, I could see blue sky and small, white clouds scudding across it at a speed that suggested a high, brisk wind. Suddenly the room seemed dark and cold, unnaturally quiet now that the women's voices had been added, then subtracted. I strode to the door, collecting my cloak from a peg as I went outside into the brightness of the mid-morning sunlight.

I found nothing unusual in the silence that greeted me. Even with the recent growth in our numbers, tripling our presence here, fifty people were barely noticeable in a fort built to house six hundred, and the times when all fifty were present within the fort were few and far between. I knew that the wood-gathering party was in the forest again that day, as it had been for the previous seven, so that took care of at least ten men and probably closer to a score. Ambrose was out with Dedalus and Rufio, practising with the staves that fascinated him nowadays. Shelagh and Tressa had disappeared, presumably to join the other women who would all be indoors at their women's work at this time of day, and the boys would already be out beyond the walls, the morning hours of their tuition long over. Somewhere in the distance I thought I heard the sound of high, girlish voices; many of the newcomers had brought young families along with them, and the place was now bright with children of both sexes, where before there had been only the four boys from Camulod. I saw only one other living soul, one of the newcomers whose name I had not yet learned, as I made my way to the northern postern gate. We exchanged silent nods in passing and then I was outside, walking forward the few paces that took me to the edge of the precipice overlooking the valley at the rear of our perch.

Ahead of me to my right, on the far north-eastern side of the valley, the Fells soared up to tower over me. But it was the valley far beneath my feet that drew my attention, because the entire floor of it seemed to be alive, writhing with movement like woven matting covering a swarm of rats. The carpet, as I well knew, was made of enormous oak trees, and the turbulence that agitated them was caused by massive gale-force winds blowing inland from the western sea, twelve and more miles away along the vale of the Esk. Even here, on the heights above, the power of that wind was undiminished, buffeting me with heavy blows as it surged up the unyielding face of the cliff at my feet.