Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

Once free of that killing slope, however, and on fairly level ground once more, warmth had begun to return to my muscles. I found what our runners call "the second wind," and my bone-weariness seemed to fall away from me within a short time. Even then, however, I did not mount my horse, but broke into a trot, instead, and soon found I could lengthen my stride into a full, clean run. Marvel that it seemed at the time, I felt my strength grow as I ran, rather than diminish, so that I was soon feeling euphoric, covering distance easily and covered by a sheen of hard-wrung sweat. Three miles and more I kept this up, up slope and down, before my legs began to falter, and then I called to the others to stop, beside an icy streamlet, where I washed in shocking, clear, cold water and then dried myself with a blanket before shrugging into fresh clothes from the store they had brought for Mordechai and me. Once dressed, I donned my armour and mounted Germanicus again.

A short time after that we regained the abandoned colony and found Liam Twistback waiting in his wagon for us, by a fire on the top of the little hill, with two rabbits spitted on sticks over the flames. All of us were hungry and the sounds and sight of broiling meat set our saliva flowing. Fresh bread Liam had, too, baked in the ashes of the fire he had kept burning all night long. When we had assuaged the fiercest of our hunger pangs, we told him of my misadventures and his face grew long in the listening.

"Poor people," he murmured, glancing around at the abandoned encampment beneath. "I feel great pity in my heart for all of them. Ill as they fell, through no fault of their own, they were abandoned by the entire world save this man Mordechai . . . How did you say his last name?"

"Emancipatus," I told him, noticing the way the clear, hard Latin sound sat ill in the fluid Eirish tongue I now spoke as well as my former hosts. "It means 'free man,' or rather, 'freed man.' "

"Aye, well, he's freed now, right enough, poor man. I should have liked to meet him, for all that we must leave his people rigid and unburied 'neath the open skies."

As I listened to him utter the words, I realized that Liam was right. We could not bury Mordechai's dead, for a number of reasons, the major of which was the one that had frustrated his own attempt: the hardness of the ground.

And so, in the end, we left them as they were, ranged neatly alongside the open, half-dug pit that should have been their grave, with the rough, barely remembered prayers I could recall as their sole benison.

Later, as I rode behind the wagon, idly watching father and daughter talking together on the driver's bench, I recalled the tenor of what Liam had said and thought about the fate of those sad folk who had been stricken with the leprosy. In my youth, I had heard tell of leprosy and its foulness and had, with shivering detachment, accepted its horrors as described to me. Why should I not? I had seen nothing of it; knew none who suffered from it; thought never to encounter it in my fair life. Some I had heard describe it as God's punishment on evildoers, His scourge on those whose sins were overweening, and in my youthful ignorance and folly I had had no thought to question what was said. Lepers were lepers. None thought of them as human folk. Now, however, I knew differently. Lepers were no more than ordinary people like ourselves who had contracted a dread, fell disease. And the one in ten thousand people who retained no fear of them, people like my friend Luke and his friend Mordechai, were helpless to assist them other than in giving solitary comfort and solace. But that comfort and that solace had a value beyond price to those who bore the brand of Leper.

Mordechai and his people had all died simply because, alone and unassisted, they lacked the means to sustain themselves through a hard winter. That such was a risk all people bore was true, and witnessed by the deaths in Camulod, but other, normal people had the opportunity, at least, of gaining help from neighbours and community. Had such communal help been offered—even from a distance and in fear and pity—to Mordechai's lepers, they might have survived. I knew now, beyond doubt, that there was moral wrong involved therein, but no means of redress would come to me. I had no one on whom to affix blame. There was no town nearby, no settlement whose people might have changed the outcome. The lepers here had fled normal community, some driven out, in fear of being killed, and others spurred by fears of passing on their contamination to friends and loved ones. The very nature of their illness demanded seclusion and sequestration, precluding normal human contact. But somehow, I felt, there had to be a means of alleviating the soul-searing pity of such things. I knew I was ill equipped to answer this by myself, but I resolved to take the matter up with Luke, once back in Camulod.

My drifting thoughts were interrupted at that point by a shout of warning from Rufio, who had seen movement ahead of us on the road. Our alarm was short-lived, however, for we quickly recognised our own men, a double squadron under the command of the taciturn Benedict, dispatched to look for us at dawn after the concern caused by our failure to arrive back at Glevum the previous night. They met us just short of the burned-out ruin of the Red Dragon hostelry, close to where the lesser road we followed joined the broader highway to Glevum itself, and thereafter we made better time.

Two hours later, deep in a conversation with Benedict, I was startled again by a loud, female shout from the wagon ahead of me as Shelagh leapt to her feet and then jumped down from the still-moving wagon to run forward, off the road to where my view was blocked by the vehicle itself. Startled into action, Benedict and I spurred our horses and cantered around the wagon just in time to see her launch herself upward towards the summit of the low hill we were traversing, climbing bent forward with her skirts already kilted and tucked between her knees, scrambling upward using hands and feet like a small boy fleeing from an angry farmer. Astonished, I turned to where her father sat smiling, watching her from the wagon.

"In God's name, Liam, what ails her?"

He grinned at me, waving his arm towards the sea. We had been climbing steadily for more than an hour, our path taking us parallel to the coast in a northeasterly direction, and at this point on the flank of the hill, no more than five miles from Glevum, the distant sea had come into view, off on our left. There, by some trick of height combined with clear morning light, a small fleet of vessels lay plain to see, some larger than others, all of them tiny and far distant, but one of them showing clearly the black galley outlined on its square, central sail. Shelagh had spied Donuil's return, or at least the return of her people. Now, with a shout of my own, I bade Benedict remain where he was and spurred my horse to the hillside in Shelagh's tracks, feeling the power of his mighty, bunching muscles as he thrust himself upward, overtaking her rapidly. I thought to catch her quickly, before she reached the crest of the hillside, but she was as agile as a deer and we gained the summit almost together, she mere paces ahead of me, leaping up and down in her excitement and waving with all her might towards the distant fleet. I drew rein and watched her, seeing the radiant joy that shone from her, a vision that rendered me momentarily incapable of looking towards the west and the galleys that lay there. Suddenly, then, she spun towards me and ran to grasp me by the ankle, tugging at me to alight.

"It's Donuil, Cay! He's here! My future husband comes to seek me!" As quickly as she had grasped me, she released me again and ran towards the edge of the summit, stopping only when she reached the highest point, there to begin waving again, although she must know as well as I that there was not the slightest hope of anyone aboard those craft seeing her. Grinning ruefully to myself, I swung down from my saddle to join her, looking carefully now for the first time towards the ships below. Clearly seen from this height, they were about a mile from shore, making great speed and proceeding directly towards the coastline under oar and sail. They made a stirring sight. Four great galleys, I counted, two of them larger than the others, and ten smaller craft, similar to the vessel Liam had built for Shelagh. These would be the vessels, birneys rather than galleys, built to transport Liam's livestock. I guessed that one of the two largest galleys would be Connor's—all four now clearly showed the black galley device on their sails. Feargus's craft, one of the smaller pair, I recognized by the colour of its sail, more reddish than the plain, dun brown of the others, and where Feargus sailed, Logan would be in consort, which marked his vessel plainly, too, since it was of a size with Feargus's. The fourth galley, though, was as big as Connor's, and I had no idea who might captain it.