Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

EPILOGUE

Some memories remain forever in our consciousness, branded upon our minds in the moment of their creation without awareness on our part of how or why that moment should be momentous. I will never forget my first view of the former Roman port of Glannaventa.

I stood on the stern deck beside Connor's swinging chair, my right hand resting on Arthur's shoulder. The other boys, Bedwyr, Gwin and Ghilleadh, were on the fore-platform with the remainder of our group, peering landward into the low-lying morning fog that clung to the calm surface of the water. I felt Arthur stir uneasily, itching to join his friends, and tightened my grip to hold him still. Connor had been speaking to him moments before, describing the land we were approaching, but now sat silent, his eyes seeking to pierce the fog.

Somewhere ahead of us and above, a gull began to cry and soon was joined by others in a screeching cacophony of noise. To my left, Tearlach, Connor's Captain, stood with Sean the navigator, both men equally attentive.

We had dropped anchor in the pre-dawn of a crystal, starry night, to await the coming of day, in order not to cause alarm by approaching the harbour without being recognised. At dawn, after the calm of the night, Sean had told us, a sea fog would spring up, but would soon dissipate in the fresh day's offshore breeze and the heat of the sun. The sun had risen an hour before, the anchor had been raised, and now we waited, held in place by occasional gentle oar strokes on one side or the other, for the breeze to come from the shore.

"Wind," Sean said softly. As he spoke, I sensed a difference, saw an eddy in the wall of fog ahead of us, and then the clouds parted and seemed to roll away and an offshore wind revealed what lay ahead of us, gilded in the bright sunshine of an early autumn morning.

The first thing I saw was a hillside; a low, swelling bank of land rising directly from the waters ahead and to our left, and the unworthy thought occurred to me that Sean had been mistaken and there was no harbour here. But then the fog bank rolled farther off and showed the bank to be an island, low and wide, around which the water stretched into a shallow bay.

"Half oars," Connor murmured, and Tearlach leaned towards the well of the ship to bellow the order to the men below. Slowly, gathering way only gradually, Connor's long galley began to move towards shore, propelled gently by only half the oarsmen, the others holding their sweeps inboard, standing up vertically so that they formed a row of palisades along each side of the vessel. The great sail, with its black galley device, hung empty from the enormous spar that supported it; its purpose was identification this morning, not propulsion. Ahead of us, the entire western shoreline of the port was revealed to be the exterior wall of a Roman fort, built of stone, from which long wooden piers reached out on either side of the central western gate, into the deep water channel. Above our heads, the watchman at the masthead called out instructions to the pilot below, guiding him along the channel. Someone on the walls began to blow a horn, and within moments we could see figures running along the parapet walk behind the walls.

Arthur squirmed and looked up at me.

"Please, Merlyn, can I go to the prow?"

I released him and watched as he ran along the central spine of the galley like a cat, never once looking where he placed his feet, and then I turned my eyes beyond the fort, looking to either side. Low, densely treed hills stretched away, rising steeply as they receded from the sea. I received simultaneous impressions of peace, strength, wealth and stability, although I had little on which to base such responses and all might have been merely wishful thinking.

"They know us now. Take us in, 'Tearlach." Connor swung himself to face me, a half grin twisting the corner of his mouth. "Well, Yellow Head, so far I think everything is as planned. Our welcome is assured; are you quite sure of yours?"

I glanced at him, then back towards the prow, where my party stood, their excitement evident from their attitudes. Donuil and Shelagh were there, holding their two boys Gwin and Ghilleadh by the hand, restraining them, and Dedalus and Rufio stood one on either side of Lucanus. In front of them stood Turga, Arthur's nurse, and the recently bereaved Hector, who had insisted on accompanying us, unwilling to remain in Camulod when his son Bedwyr's only friends were leaving him. Bedwyr and Arthur, the two oldest boys, were screened from sight by the adults. Hearing the creak of Connor's chair, I turned back to follow his gaze and was in time to see Feargus's galley slipping into place beside Logan's, both of them waiting safely out of range of any danger from the shore.

Looking away again, I wondered what form, indeed, our welcome might take. For all I knew, Derek of Ravenglass might even refuse us right to land in his domain. We had been enemies, he and I, thrown together only twice in the past, by merest chance, although we had never fought and had maintained a wary truce between us. I felt myself smiling and Connor noticed it.

"What are you grinning at?"

"I am about to approach a man who knows me only as an enemy, seeking sanctuary, and I have no idea how he will react. Both times we have met, it has been as enemies. And now I come to him as a supplicant, seeking a life for the son of a man he killed, for which I should have killed him. And yet, outside of my own kin and closest friends, and without any sane reason, I believe I would trust him over any man I know. I can't explain it any better than that."

He smiled back. "Well," he said, his voice strangely gentle. "If he refuses you, you can come north with us. Up there, since it's isolation you are seeking, you should find much to please you. But we'll soon find out if you're sane or not, for I think that's him coming out onto the pier."

A group of people were hurrying to meet us, some of them taking positions to receive thrown ropes, and among them, in the very centre of them, I saw the enormous figure of Derek, their king. I felt a stirring in my gut and, wishing to hide my own uncertainty, quickly looked away, down into the body of the boat, to where a pile of wooden crates lay bound. Within them were the treasures I had brought with me, to sustain us in whatever kind of life might lie ahead: cases of books and parchments, written by my grandfather, my father and my Uncle Varrus; my own favourite selections from the ancient weaponry in Publius Varrus's Armoury; Lucanus's medicinal supplies; a stock of arms and armour for the horses and men now confined in the two galleys that rode behind us; and, in one large crate, the most sacred and the most mysterious things I owned—the oaken case containing Excalibur, and the two menace-filled, iron-bound boxes that had belonged to my father's murderers, the Egyptian sorcerers Caspar and Memnon. In the time ahead, I estimated, I would have ample time to explore those chests and catalogue their contents.

Camulod and Cornwall and Cambria and their dangers lay behind us for a spell. Ahead of us lay Cumbria.

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed

in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

THE SAXON SHORE

Copyright © 1998

by Jack Whyte

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce t

his book, or portions thereof, in any form.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Map by Ellisa Mitchell

A Forge Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010

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Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Whyte, Jack.