Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

I looked at her then, remembering and smiling. "Not long. Why?"

"I don't know. I was wondering, but idly, if there is more to this 'attraction' than I had thought. It had been my intent to seek you out today, somehow, even though I was well aware of the demands upon your time."

"Why? Why seek me out? To what end?"

"To provoke this talk and deal with the things that had been troubling me. I dreamed of you last night."

My guts contracted as dismay expanded in my breast. "Oh . . . Was it. . ."

"No, not one of those." Her smile was fleeting but her headshake was emphatic. "No prophesy this time; mere fancies, vivid and very real, but disjointed and confusing, most of them erotic. I dreamed I lay with Donuil, and could feel him within me, but sometimes it was you—never for long; never sustained—but there, from time to time. I woke up at one point, in some distress, over what I can't recall, but I decided to do something, to speak to you of this. I wondered, lying there awake in the middle of the night, what effect your dreams might be having on you. If this fragmented chaos of sleeping images could distress me, safely asleep in all good conscience, what might yours be doing to your peace of mind, with all your strictures and your disciplines and loyalties? I've watched you, Cay, and I have seen your agonies of guilt, though the gods know no such guilt was ever less deserved." She shrugged. "And you came here, unexpected. Or were you unexpected? Had I guessed, though unaware of it, that you would come here? I don't know."

Before I could answer her, we heard the sound of studded boots approaching in the passageway outside, and then someone knocked on the door.

"Commander Merlyn?"

"Yes, Marcus, I'm here."

"You asked me to remind you when the time had come to dress, Commander. I have your parade uniform prepared."

"Thank you, Marcus. I'll come directly."

The footsteps receded again and I stood up and moved close to where Shelagh sat, her eyes once more upon the flickering flames in the big brazier. "Shelagh," I said, speaking to the top of her head, "I am leaving here a very different man from the one I was when I first walked in. I know not what this . . . thing, this feeling, this sense of inner freedom is, or whence it sprang, but I am full of it and I know it is your gift. For that. . . for all of it. . . for yesterday, today and all the tomorrows to which we drank together, I am too grateful ever to be able to find words to define my gratitude. But you will know it. You'll see it every time you see my face or hear my name. That is my promise."

She rose to her feet smoothly and with great speed, turning to face me in mid-motion and looking me directly in the eye. The belt of knives seemed natural across her front.

"I know that, Caius Merlyn, and it gladdens me. You have been too sad, too guilt-stricken in past days, but that's behind us." She grinned at me, her huge, wide eyes flashing with wicked humour. "Lust if you must, but keep your hands about yourself, my friend. Thus, we may both enjoy, without false guilt. Now go, before someone finds us and sets all our good work to naught with idle talk."

I left her there by the fire and strode out into the day with a lightened heart and the strength of twelve tall men.

I opted to exercise the privilege of rank again, for the second time that day, and avoided the festive midday meal, although there was no way to avoid the sound of it. I chose to spend that time alone, and had Marcus, my temporary adjutant—an assigned replacement for the absent Donuil—make alternative arrangements on my behalf. Then, nibbling at a platter of food he brought me in my quarters, and preparing myself mentally for the formal activities that lay ahead, I spent a half hour going over all the arrangements in my head for perhaps the hundredth time. Eventually, when I was sure of having done all that I should have done there in the fortress, I slipped quietly out through the postern gate and found my horse, saddled and ready, where I had told my man to leave it, prior to joining the general festivities. Unseen by anyone, I allowed my horse to pick his way down from the heights, and then I spurred him, galloping all the way round the hill of Camulod to the camp built at the bottom of the hill before, and again after, Lot's treacherous attack years earlier.

I have always found it stranger than merely strange that I should have difficulty recalling the events of that afternoon. "Strange" is a foolish and feeble word to use in describing the blankness of my mind regarding all that passed. I think of words like "ominous" instead, but even that would be misleading, for no ill came out of that day's gathering. The plain truth is, it led to great success on every front, in every way. The events and decisions and the sheer enthusiasm engendered in that single afternoon marked, clearly and undeniably, the beginning of Camulod's most truly potent years, a period that was to span three decades. At the end of the clay itself, I was aware of all that had transpired—I must have been, for I was there, in charge, and in full health. But the time that came immediately thereafter absorbed me totally in other things, demanding all my skills and all my efforts, so that when I came to look back, eventually, on what had seemed at the time to be a momentous and portentous day, my mind was blank. The urgencies that had led up to it had been revealed by then, with the passing of time, as lacking stature, and had been replaced by greater urgencies and imperatives.

Dedalus distinguished himself that afternoon; no one had any doubt of that. His friends agreed his time had long been wasted as a soldier, and that he should have been upon a stage somewhere in Empire's headlands, stealing the hearts of emperors and languid women. There is no doubt he achieved what he set out to achieve: to win the hearts of all the Camulodian warriors and bind them into unity and amity again. He used me and Ambrose as his template, dwelling upon our startling similarities and on our different disciplines. He emphasized the difference of our births and boyhoods, one bred and raised right here in Camulod, the other in a distant part of Britain, yet both sprung, irrefutably, from Camulodian stock. Now we were joined as one, Commanders of Camulod and individually indistinguishable one from the other and yet. . . and yet. . . one fought with cavalry, the other infantry. Together, using all our combined skills, he told them all, we could conquer the world! And would they quibble over which of us they followed?

It was heady stuff, presented with the flair and brilliance of a born actor who could charm tears from statuary. But, it appears, the true mark of his triumph was that he had them all convinced, swearing eternal comradeship, even before he introduced the new training schedule Ambrose had devised, to teach each discipline the tactics of the other and make it possible for those gifted one way or the other to transfer between commands. That was the binding ring that sealed the staves into a barrel. From the moment the new plans were announced, the schism had ended.

I do remember, with great clarity, that at one point shortly before the parade was dismissed, I saw a single snowflake drifting down to cling to the tail of Rufio's horsehair crest. I looked up to search for more, but saw nothing. The snow that had fallen before dawn had almost vanished beneath the trampling of so many feet, but the cold persisted. I continued to scan the faces ranked before me, filling every available space in the camp's parade ground. Some of them, many of them now, I knew by sight, and many more by name as well. But some were yet strangers to me, although they all knew me. Another flake came down, and then a third, large, fat and as light as thistledown. And then, as Ambrose gave the order to dismiss, the snow began to fall in earnest, hushing everything, it seemed, and obscuring the milling mass of men heading for shelter.