Jack Whyte - The Eagles' Brood

"Did you lose much weight? You must have."

"Aye, I did, of course, but not as much as you might think. He kept feeding me almost constantly—strong broths, milk and honey, even ale! I was no Hercules by the time I finally started eating slops of mushed bread in hot milk, but neither was I skeletal. Anyway, my story... One night, in the middle of the night, I awoke, or half awoke, to find that there was someone in the room with me. I saw a shape in the dimness at the bottom of my cot and I saw a sword being swung at me. I rolled somehow, I don't know where I found the strength or the speed, and the blade only caught me in the side. My attacker fell on me and I grabbed him by the throat and began to choke him with all the strength I had. The effort brought on pain the like of which I had never felt, but I hung on to him and squeezed until I could bear no more and fainted.

"A short time later, I was told, someone looked into my room to check on me as they did every night, twice a night, and found me with my hands locked around the neck of my host, Marcus Aurelius Ambrosianus."

I felt my chest tighten in horror. "Ambrosianus? But why? He was an old man, you said!"

"He was sixty-nine, and feeble."

"But why would he do such a thing?"

"Good question, and one that everyone was asking, including me."

"Had he gone mad? Insane? Just like that?"

My father shrugged, his face expressionless. "You tell me. That's what the verdict was. I had never met the man, not while I was conscious at any rate. I had been a guest in his house for more than three months and in all that time I had not stirred from my bed. He had dropped in to visit me a few times during the first month of my stay with him, but I was always asleep or unconscious and so he stopped coming.

"The previous day, it seems, he had been seen sharpening his sword. And he had been behaving strangely, avoiding his family and his servants and hiding in his rooms for several days before that. There was never any question of my innocence in the affair, you understand. When they found me I was still all tangled up in my bedclothes and bleeding from the slash in my side. They found a lamp burning on the floor of the passageway around the corner from my room, and the scabbard of his sword where he had left it in his own room... The evidence was conclusive. He had lost his sanity and plotted my death far enough in advance to have taken his sword from where it hung in his day-room, making sure the edge was sharp enough to kill with. Then he had waited until the middle of the night, unsheathed the sword, left the scabbard on his bed and crept to my room, leaving his lamp behind him in the corridor so that its light would not awaken me, and so that he could make his way back quickly to his own room after killing me."

I felt stunned. "But it makes no sense, Father? Why you?"

"It made no sense to anyone, Cay, but insanity has its own sense. I was congratulated on my reflexes, ill as I was, and the whole matter was hushed up. I began to regain my strength very quickly after that and was out of bed within fifteen days. Fifteen days after that I was back on duty. Garrison duty, of course. I was still too weak to ride and I could not talk."

"Why didn't they retire you?"

"They tried. I wouldn't let them. Remember, I had no superiors. I was Stilicho's deputy in Britain, and Stilicho was Regent of the Empire. By the time they complained to him it was too late. We were recalled to fight against Alaric and his Visigoths and they needed every available man, even mute officers."

I was nonplussed and dissatisfied with the conclusiveness of his tale. And I was disappointed. If there were any parallel with our present situation, it had escaped me. "That's quite a story, Father, but what has it to do with Uther's case?"

He smiled at me, a slow, humourless smile. "Nothing, on the surface, Caius. Everything underneath. We were talking of evidence and of circumstances. In Uther's case the circumstances point to his guilt. If it were not for the circumstances that sent him out of that room with a motive to hurt the girl, there would be no question of suspecting his involvement in such filth."

"So?" I said, tentatively. "That's a big circumstance."

"Aye. It is. So be it. Marcus Ambrosianus made the attempt on my life and died for it. He was convicted post mortem of insanity because the circumstances surrounding his actions dictated that he had to be insane. I had done him no wrong. But consider this, if you will. How can I put this?" He plucked at his lower lip, then continued. "I had been in his house for more than three months. He was an old man. He had a beautiful young daughter of perhaps thirteen, fourteen, no more. I had heard my physicians speak of her in wonder. Apparently her hair was so white it appeared to be silver. They told me she was a real beauty, the type : that men fight over. Now, you have to understand that,, although I was badly wounded, I was not out of action in J other respects. My wound was to my mouth and neck. The rest of my body was functioning normally by the end of a month. I wasn't much older then than you are now. You understand me?"

I nodded. "Did you ever see the girl?"

"No, but she had been in my room, and I had heard her voice. She came with her servants on a couple of occasions. Anyway, I had been having dreams...recurrent dreams. Always the same, and always very...pleasant. I slept very heavily every night, but one night I dreamed that I awoke to find myself being, well, ridden's the best word to describe it, I suppose, by a woman. I couldn't see her through my', bandages and I couldn't move. She took me to completion and was gone, without a sound. I slept again and when I woke, I remembered and checked myself to see if it had really happened, but there was no sign of anything having occurred. It had been pleasant, extremely so, as I said, "but it was a normal enough dream, and I dismissed it... Several nights later it happened again, and again there was no sign of anything having taken place; in fact, this second time, I wasn't sure if I had had the dream or not. It happened again about a week later, mid in case you are beginning to think I am wasting your time, let me reassure you that I am not. Thereafter, it happened every night for a week and then every second night for another week. On some of these occasions I was barely aware of the dream, on others it was quite vivid. And on one particular night, when my bandages had been removed, there was a moon and I saw my dream mistress."

"His daughter!"

"No, and I was quite disappointed, because I had convinced myself she was the dream mistress. But this was a stranger. A true dream-woman. I had never seen her before. I didn't see her clearly, but I saw enough to know that I did not know her. She was merely a woman in a dream."

"And the dream never changed?"

"Never. I would struggle awake to find myself sheathed in her. I never remembered going to sleep again."

"Did you tell anyone?"

He smiled at me ironically. "What? That I was having erotic dreams?"

"So? What happened?"

A brief headshake, then, "Nothing. The dreams stopped, and I forgot them. About a week or so later, my host attacked me."

I blinked at him, frowning. "You never dreamed that dream again?"

"Never. From the night of the attack, I started sleeping more lightly, as you might imagine. I heard every sound in that house. My strength started to come back to me more and more quickly and, as I've told you, I was out of there in a matter of weeks."

"What happened to the daughter?"

"She left, after the funeral, to live with relatives in Danum. I never saw her again."

"So what is the point of the story? How did the old man find out you were dreaming of his daughter? Was it witchcraft?"

He snorted. "Aye, it was, of a kind. He never did find put I dreamed of his daughter. He never knew I dreamed." My father sucked in a great breath through his nostrils. "There is, however, a sequel to the tale. Many months later, shortly before I left Lindum to return to Londinium prior to setting sail for Italia, I saw a woman who resembled my dream- woman so much that it astounded me. We were in a crowded market-place and I saw her over the heads of the crowd between us. I tried to reach her but could not. I then tried to follow her, at least, but I lost her among the throngs of people in the street, so I went back to the market and found the merchant at whose stall she had been buying trinkets. I wrote him a note, asking him who she was." He looked me in the eye. "The fellow couldn't read. And I could not speak. I had to find someone who could do both. It turned out she was the young widow of Marcus Ambrosianus. She was pregnant."