Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

"I see. And your friend the physician, what is his name?"

"Mordechai. Mordechai Emancipatus. 'Mordechai the Free,' and he is well named. He is a Roman Jew, educated with me in Alexandria, and then in the legions under Theodosius."

"A Jew. Not a Christian?"

"No, an Aesculapian."

At last I could smile with him. "A brave man, by anyone's accounting. Do you know exactly where to find him?"

"No, but I know where to inquire. Mordechai mentions in his letter that they are located ten miles to the westward of a public hostelry widely known as the Red Dragon, about twenty miles south of Glevum. I'll find him."

"I am sure you will, and I'll make sure you do."

Luke and his forthcoming journey remained in my mind for the rest of that day, prompting me to think about the gifts I should be bearing to Donuil's father, the King of Scots. Luke would go bearing valuable gifts to Mordechai, a friend and colleague. Could mine to King Athol be less substantial? And yet, I asked myself, what did we possess in Camulod that could constitute a kingly gift? The answer was not long in coming. Horses, of course, the like of which were never seen in Eire! I resolved to take a stallion and a brood mare, matched as closely as could be, and I immediately felt better. I set aside the question of equipment, saddles and stirrups for the time being, deciding in my capacity as Legate Commander, as opposed to ambassador, that generosity could be carried too far when it affected safety, strategy and tactics. The gift of breeding stock, I reasoned, was munificence enough; saddlery, including stirrups, provided our cavalry with a military edge it would be irresponsible to relinquish, even to a prospective ally. But then I thought of other weaponry, and resolved to take King Athol one more gift no one could match in magnificence: a matching pair of short-sword and dagger, made by Publius Varrus, with hand-tooled belt and sheaths.

Delighted with my decisions, I summoned Donuil to share my elation, forgetting that we had already arranged to meet earlier that day to select the horses we would take with us on our journey. He listened carefully as I outlined my thoughts on our gifts—I mentioned only the breeding pair of horses, seeing no point in bringing up the potentially sensitive matter of saddlery and stirrups—and when I had done, he nodded his head sagely.

"My father will be most impressed; these are indeed gifts for a king. But they compound a problem I've been thinking about already this afternoon."

"What kind of problem?"

"Transportation, Commander. How are we going to get all these animals across the sea? Now you have added another two. Horses need room. They can't curl up in a corner and go to sleep like a man. We'll never find a ship big enough to take them all."

"Then we'll find several. We'll take enough gold to buy as many as we need."

Donuil was unimpressed. "Buy them where, Merlyn? I know Glevum's a harbour, but it has lain abandoned, or nearly so, since the Romans left. Lot's army went there after Aquae Sulis, remember? They found it just as desolate as Aquae, with nothing left to loot. There may be ships still using it, but I doubt we'll find more than one at any time."

The same thoughts had been running through my mind, but I knew, with an inner certainty I could not explain even to myself, that this was the course we should take. Even if it meant taking a blind chance on having to leave some of our party behind when we took ship, I was convinced deep inside that I was right, and I was confident that all would be well. Donuil listened as I explained all that, and then shrugged, accepting my enthusiasm and optimism.

"So be it," he commented. "You're the Legate, and I'm prepared to trust your judgment in this as in everything else." He paused, looking around him thoughtfully. It was late afternoon by then, darkening rapidly indoors, and we were in my quarters, sitting by a burning brazier and surrounded by leaping shadows.

"What is it, Donuil?"

He shook his head, then decided to proceed with what was in his mind. "Commander, do you remember all the candles you used in Verulamium, lighting up your tent at night like the noonday sun?"

"Yes, I remember them very well." They had been a gift from my friend Germanus, the Bishop of Auxerre in Gaul. "The light of learning," he had called them as a private joke between the two of us. The prelates and clerics who had gathered that year in Verulamium for the Great Debate between the Orthodox Roman bishops under Germanus and the British bishops who had followed the teachings of Pelagius had been superbly well equipped with beeswax candles and tapers of the highest quality. I had acquired half a wagonload of them for my own use when I wrote at night. Now I smiled at the memory. "Why do you ask?"

"I was wondering what happened to them all?"

"They were burned up, Donuil. That tends to happen with candles."

"All of them? You had cases and cases of the things."

"I know I did, but that was years ago. What made you think of that?"

"My father, Commander, and gifts. He's an old man, although you'd never think it to look at him from a distance, and seeing you sitting there in the dark reminded me of how he used to sit the same way, with one of his big wolfhounds' heads resting on his knee. We have no fine, bright candles in Eire, only smoky lamps, dirty old smelly tallow dips and firelight. It came to me that a gift of such things, such bright, clean light, would bedevil and gratify the old man."

"It probably would, Donuil. I would never have thought of such a thing, but it is a marvellous idea. I wonder if we could find some?"

"Nah, you're probably right. They'll all be gone, long since."

Now that he had brought the matter to my mind, however, I began to wonder what had happened to those candles. I had not used them all, I now realized, for I had been wounded on the way home and spent the next two years as someone else, without a memory. The last I remembered of them was watching them being loaded onto one of our wagons before we left Verulamium. Lucanus would know.

Another visit to Lucanus elicited the information that he had never seen the things, and that the wagons had been returned, with all their remaining contents intact, to our quartermasters. The following morning, after an hour's questioning and another hour spent searching, we uncovered ten cases of fine candles almost buried in a dingy warehouse against the north wall. I repossessed all of them, since they were mine, and four cases went immediately into our baggage as a tribute to Athol, High King of the Scots of Eire.

VIII

The morning of the day we were to leave turned out to be a momentous one for several reasons, and as a result we were obliged to postpone our departure for ten days. It began innocuously enough, when I awoke at dawn filled with a sense of well-being after a dream I could recall with perfect clarity.

Some people, I have learned, never dream of flying, of soaring above the earth like a bird. I have always had the power to fly, in my dreams, and always as an eagle. My pinions had borne me high in this grand dream, and the pleasure of it woke me with a smile upon my face. Nothing foreboding or prophetic marred my enjoyment. I had been gliding, I recalled, high above the training ground at the bottom of Camulod's hill, with the towering stone walls of the fortress on my left, and beneath me all the forces of the Colony had been marching and riding in parade, their ranks and formations bright with ceremonial colours and the metals of their harness burnished to inspection quality. A flash of light had attracted my eyes to a rostrum erected on the hill, and there stood Ludmilla, garlands of flowers in her long, black hair, her eyes and face aglow with happiness as she received and accepted the salutes and plaudits of the passing troops.