Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

"Of course." I kicked my horse to a canter and guided it around Luke's wagon, then kicked it again to a full gallop, closely followed by Ambrose, so that we soon outstripped our companions. For more than a mile we galloped, giving our mounts their heads until the first flush of pleasurable exercise began to pall on them and we reined in, slowing them down again to a walk.

"Well," I said, grinning. "You want to ask me about Ludmilla, so ask away, although I don't know what you expect me to say in response."

The fall of his jaw was ludicrous, and my own pleasure at his discomfort was heightened by the elation caused by my awareness that I had not, since the first moment of divination in Luke's Infirmary, experienced a single pang of envy or jealousy concerning him and Ludmilla. "You knew what I was going to ask you? How could you know? I had no idea myself I was going to ask you until the moment arrived."

"Come, Brother," I laughed. "Haven't you heard the tales about Merlyn? They say I have magical powers, and divination is the least of them." I was not at all inclined to tell him I had witnessed their first meeting, and thereafter listened shamelessly to their whisperings while I supposedly slept.

"Aye, I have heard them, hut I had thought them idle talk based on your friendship with Druids."

His answer brought my head around to face him sharply. There was a tone in his voice I had not expected. "What does that mean? You sound as though you half believe them."

He looked straight back at me. "I think I do. I mean, you have just told me something that you could not possibly know. How could you, when I did not know myself? And besides that," he added, after a long pause, "I remember the way you explained my mother's actions to me, and the truth in your voice that convinced me you were right. It was impossible for you to have known the truth of that, when the actions you described took place almost before you were born." He was half frowning, half smiling. "You said yourself, at the time, you didn't know whence your explanation came."

It was true. When first we met, I had reconstructed his mother's reasons for abandoning him in childhood, using nothing more than intuition to connect the few facts I knew to be true with the description I had gleaned of Ambrose's mother and her circumstances at the time when she had met and availed herself of our temporarily incapacitated father, in her great desire to provide her husband with a son. Neither Ambrose nor I would ever prove the accuracy of my reconstruction, but it had felt correct.

"Oh, for God's sake, Ambrose!" I snapped now. "I was guessing, that's all, guessing predicated upon some self-evident truths. And the same thing happened here! You are my brother, and a new brother, at that. I watch you closely all the time, now that you've come back into my life. It took no sorcery to see that you were smitten with Ludmilla and she with you from the first moment the two of you met. You have had eyes only for each other ever since, but do you think the rest of us have lost ours?" He was still staring at me, unconvinced, as I rushed on. "You had that solemn look about you, all at once, and wanted no one else to overhear your secret. What other secret could you have in the space of these short weeks? Ludmilla and I are almost related, through Uther, and she is one of Aunt Luceiia's treasures. Of course you would wish to ask me about her and about what you should do. That is only natural. No magic and no sorcery in guessing that. That should be apparent in what I say hereafter. For I have no idea what to tell you, or what you should do, other than to follow your instincts. Ask Ludmilla what to do! She probably knows far better than any of us, anyway. Marry the woman, but wait until Donuil and Luke and I are back in Camulod. You can do that, I hope?"

He was staring at me, only half hearing what I had said, I was sure. "Others know?" he asked, after a short silence, his voice filled with wonder.

"Only those who are not blind and care to look. Don't worry about it, man. Why should you care what anyone thinks, save you and your love? Such things happen, and it is natural."

His face broke into a smile and it was like the sun shining through a break in heavy clouds. "She may not have me," he said in a voice begging to be contradicted.

"She will have you, Brother. Of that I have not the slightest doubt. And if you label that prediction sorcery, I will lose respect for you."

"How can you be so sure?"

I had to smile at his innocence "Because I have seen her look at you, stonehead! We are not discussing unrequited love here. This is no tragic tale! The woman is as besotted with you as you are with her."

"She is? God! I thank you for that news! I will ask her tonight—today, as soon as I return." His face fell. "Aunt Luceiia will be furious."

"Ambrose, why would you even think such a thing? Luceiia will be delighted. She has not known you for more than a month, but already she thinks as much of you as she does of me. She will be delighted at the thought of such a marriage, binding the families of Pendragon and Britannicus even closer. Don't forget, her own daughter was the first of our family to marry into Pendragon blood." I cleared my throat. "Now, having done all in my power to make you feel better about the fate that awaits you, may I ask you to speak about something else before we rejoin the others?"

He looked at me, eyebrows raised. "Certainly. What?"

"This nonsense of my being magical, a sorcerer. What exactly have you heard?"

"Oh, that." He flushed, slightly embarrassed, as was I. "Well, nothing, exactly. I overheard one of the soldiers saying something about you one day, and I asked Donuil about it afterward. Donuil would tell me nothing, but when I pressed him he advised me to speak to some of the old-timers, so I approached the Legates Titus and Flavius."

"And? What did they tell you?"

"Nothing concrete. Certainly nothing to indicate that any of the whispered stories might be true. Titus told me that they had all arisen from an incident concerning the woman who became your wife, Cassandra. Something about her disappearance from a guarded room."

"I see. Did he tell you how it happened?"

"No, only that something mysterious had happened and had grown into a kind of soldiers' legend. He assured me that the magical mutterings were nonsense, but understandable in the face of soldiers' boredom and their tendency to gossip among themselves, fostered and fed by the mysterious, unsolved nature of the event."

"Hmm," I said, arriving at a momentous decision. "Tell me, Ambrose, do you ever dream?"

He grinned at me. "All the time. Nowadays I dream of Ludmilla."

"Those are daydreams. I meant, do you dream at night?"

"Of course. I understood you and I meant what I said. I dream frequently, almost every night."

I looked at him in surprise. "Do you, by God? Do your dreams frighten you?"

Now it was his turn to laugh. "Frighten me? Of course not. I usually can't remember them by the time I wake up, but they certainly don't frighten me."

"Then they don't come true?"

He reined his horse to a standstill. "What?" My horse continued walking and eventually he had to kick his to catch up with me, talking to the back of my head. "Caius, you are serious, aren't you? No, my dreams don't come true, except in the case of Ludmilla, and I'm not even sure of that. Do yours come true?"

"On occasion. That's why dreams frighten me." I did not look at him as I spoke the words and he fell into silence, riding beside me. Finally I turned to him again. "Look, Brother, I have never told anyone what I am about to tell you now, so listen quietly, please, without interrupting. It is not an easy tale to tell.

"The tale of Cassandra's disappearance is simply explained. Cassandra was never in that guarded room. It was a trick to protect her life, since I did not know whom I could trust, other than a few close friends who helped me smuggle her away from danger and conceal her. It suited my sense of humour at the time to be mysterious, but that single incident has now grown, as you say, into soldiers' legend. On other occasions, I have enjoyed good fortune, mainly in war, that might seem to be beyond the normal fortunes man is heir to. Fuel was added to the tales each time. Add that to the facts that I can read and write and have a gift for languages, and that I trained in boyhood with the Druid Celts, and I am set beyond the understanding of many who had none of these advantages. Now they whisper, and there are some who believe, that I have magical powers. It is all nonsense. And yet, I have a power that terrifies me and sets me truly apart from ordinary men and women; a cursed power of which I have never spoken to anyone. For years I fought the knowledge of it in myself, trying to make believe it was not so. But then, one day, I could no longer deny the truth of it, and now I have to live with it and with the terror of it. I have dreams, Ambrose, and all too frequently they do come true and they are seldom pleasant. I have had them all my life, despite the fact that I abhor and would happily abjure them."