Jack Whyte - The Singing Sword

"And you devised this scheme to loosen me up! It must be quite a favour you are looking for, Pendragon."

"You see what I mean?" Luceiia's tone was sharp. "You have proved him right already. Ullic has no favour to ask of you, and he needs no irony."

"Not fair, wife. There was no irony there!"

"It certainly sounded like it."

I raised my hands, palms outward in surrender. "Forgive me, then. Ullic, I beg your pardon. I am impressed, honestly, with the way you have approached this problem, as you call it, even though I have no idea of what's involved. But I must confess to being a little hurt that you would think that after all this time I would be insensitive to anything you asked of me, or said to me, that obviously means so much to you."

He cleared his throat. "Don't be hurt, Publius." That shocked me. He never called me Publius! "You will understand in a moment why I had to come about it this way, when you hear what I have to say."

I waited. He was obviously thinking hard. Luceiia had a strange half-smile on her face.

"It's about your eldest daughter."

"My daughter? Veronica?" I was puzzled. "What about her?"

"I want to marry her to my son, Uric."

"You what?" I was dumbfounded.

"I want my son Uric to be married to your daughter, Veronica."

Even hearing it the second time, I still could not believe my ears. "Veronica?" I said. "She's just a child! An infant!"

There was total silence for a few seconds. Ullic sat looking uncomfortable, his eyes lowered to his hands, which were clasped on the table in front of him. My thoughts were chaos, so great was my surprise. Veronica? The Magpie? It was unthinkable! I fastened on that aspect of my outrage and put it into words, hearing the harsh tone of my own voice.

"It's absolutely unthinkable! We will not speak of it!" As soon as I had said it, of course, I knew I was being too abrupt, for I knew she would have to marry some day. "There will be time enough in years to come for talk of marriage, once the child has grown."

Luceiia spoke, her voice gently chiding. "Publius, that is unfair. Where are your eyes? The child is almost grown."

I swung around to face her. "Don't interfere, woman. This is none of your affair."

She flinched as though I had slapped her, and in a way I had. When she spoke again, there was an implacable quality to her voice that I had never heard before.

"I am sorry, husband, but this is my affair. Veronica is my daughter, too, and I love her no less than you do. Your responses to me and to Ullic are both emotional and inconsiderate." I made to interrupt her, but she overrode me. "Let me finish!" I subsided and she continued. "Veronica is twelve years old and already, physically, a woman. Ullic is our best friend outside of the family. He is not suggesting that we ship the child off today, before supper. His thought was only to arrange a marriage, a marriage that would not take place until the girl is fully grown and ready to be a wife."

I was almost appeased, but not quite. The first stirrings of guilt at my harsh reaction made me sound surly, even to myself. "Then why all this secrecy?"

"What secrecy? Ullic was worried that you might behave exactly as you have. He knows how great your love for Veronica is. She is your sun, moon and stars."

I had to smile, and the surliness was gone. "No, wife," I said. "You are my moon and stars."

"Well, anyway, poor Ullic came to me, hoping I might be able to help him blunt your wrath. Look at the man. He is your dearest friend, your guest and a king, and he sits squirming at your table!"

I turned to Ullic, my guilt running at full flood now and tinged with shame. I reached across and grasped his left wrist. "Ullic, my friend, forgive me. My reaction was overstrong, I can see that now. But you hit me in a tender spot. We almost lost Veronica once ... She is very precious to me. In my eyes, she must always be a little girl... my little girl. The thought of losing her, even to a fine husband, is repugnant to me, even though, deep down, I know I'm being foolish. She is growing up. I've noticed it, and I've been resenting it. Your proposal surfaced unexpectedly. It hurt. I reacted violently. Pardon me."

He shrugged, his face breaking into a smile. "Publius, we are friends. There is nothing else in the world that I would have hesitated to ask you for. But I know how you treasure her, and I knew that everything would be in the asking, so I approached your wife, instead. And I was right, was I not? So was she."

I picked up a piece of bread and tore off a pinch of it, kneading it between my thumb and forefinger, seeing my daughter's lovely, smiling, innocent face in my mind. "So," I said, "tell me about this son of yours, whom you would have as husband to my Veronica."

"You met him when you visited me the time before last, two years ago. He was the age then that Veronica is now."

"So that makes him, what? Fifteen?"

"Almost. He has not quite filled his fifteenth year."

"So, when would you want them to be wed?"

"On his eighteenth birthday." This was better. Veronica would be a woman by then. Fifteen, almost sixteen.

"And why Veronica?"

"Why Veronica? Are you serious?" His smile was broad and easy now. "She is her mother's daughter! And yours, of course, although that's a misfortune she has learned to live with. I know my son could do no better."

"But she's a Roman."

His grin was all teeth and crinkled eyes. "Not so. She's a Briton, Publius. Don't you remember? The Britons were reborn at Stonehenge the night we met."

"So, you believe a Celtic-Briton match would be a good one, do you?"

His smile vanished instantly, to be replaced with an expression that contained no levity.

"Aye, my friend, I do. It would be good for the young ones and good for us. We are both kings, Publius, each in his own way, for you are Britannicus's heir, his spiritual heir if you like, in spite of Picus's return and in spite of your Roman fears of kingship. For I swear I never saw two more kingly men than you and he."

"You flatter me, Ullic." I was pleased. "I would not have expected that from you."

"I flatter no man, friend. It is the truth. No more than that."

We spoke no more for some time, each of us absorbed in his own thoughts. It was Luceiia who broke the silence, placing her hand gently over mine as she asked me, "My love, are we agreed? You seem to be in favour of the match, but you have not yet said so."

I looked from one to the other of them. "Is there any more wine?"

"Plenty."

"Then pour us all a draught to seal our bargain, woman. If we are to mix our blood with Celts, we might as well get drunk."

Ullic threw back his head and laughed a great laugh of relief and pleasure, and then he jumped to his feet and embraced each of us, and we drank a toast to our children and to their children whose own children would join our two peoples long after we were gone.

XIX

We were fortunate enough to be able to see Picus often during the two years of Stilicho's campaign in Britain, in spite of the fact that the fighting was intense and hectic all during that time. It was he who told us that the major problem facing Stilicho's forces was one of deployment, since the enemy they were fighting was seaborne and undisciplined and there was no master plan behind the Saxon incursions. Picus insisted that it was inaccurate to speak of invasion for that single reason: lacking a master plan, or even a recognizable leader, these attacks, significant and consistent though they were, nevertheless consisted simply of massive numbers of Saxons, Hibernian Scots, Caledonian Picts, and Franks from south Gaul striking without warning wherever they made landfall, so that Stilicho's armies were constantly reacting instead of initiating. This was a new form of war; there was never any question of military confrontation, of meeting and defeating a static enemy in a fixed battle.