Jack Whyte - The Skystone

"Right here where you wrote it, don't you remember? You taught me to read it and it was all I could read for years and years."

I stepped forward, my ears deaf to what she was actually saying, and stared in amazement at what she was looking at. Two letters, a P and a C intertwined, were incised on the plaster surface of the wall, their edges faded and smoothed but still legible, even after almost a decade and a half of exposure to smoke and soot. Now I could remember carving them in the plaster, watched by Phoebe, and telling her of my undying love for the beautiful girl in blue with the long, black hair. I could not believe, however, how completely I had forgotten doing so. I reached out and touched the letters, tracing them with the tip of one finger as I felt a hard, unaccustomed swelling in my throat for the boy I had been, and the hopes and dreams and fancies that had prompted me to carve a tribute to a girl who I knew only as Cassie. In truth, I didn't even know that Cassie was really her name. We had been flirting with each other, having fun, teasing each other with never a thought for reality and the lives we had to live with others.

Phoebe was watching me closely.

"No, Phoebe, " I said, sighing, "I never did find her. I looked for her every place I went, but I never saw her again. It's funny how I forgot doing this, though, carving her name here, and telling you about her. I forgot the reality."

Phoebe sniffed and turned away, bustling over to where she had left her shawl and her bag. "You'll find her again, you wait and see."

I laughed aloud. "Phoebe, " I scolded, "listen to yourself! It's been almost fifteen whole years! She is most definitely married long since and mother to a brood of brats. Her beauty, great as it was, will have faded long ago...

" But even as I laughed, my voice died away.

"And? What would you do, Master Varrus, if you turned around one day, tomorrow maybe, and found her looking at you, faded and fifteen years older, surrounded by her children? What would you do?" I was silent, visualizing the tall, blue-draped girl Cassie, trying in vain to add fifteen years and the effects of them to what I remembered. Phoebe's voice drew me back to where I was.

"Master Varrus?"

"Phoebe, my dear, I wish you would call me Publius. You and I have been friends for too long for any other nonsense."

She smiled and bowed her head, "Thank you, but I feel more comfortable with Master Varrus. You will find somebody else, you know. It's in you, the love. What you felt for that girl was far too strong to be allowed to rot or go to waste, you mark my words. And I should be home by this time. Cuno likes to have his meals on time. Good night, Master Varrus."

After she had gone, I sat by the banked, slowly smoking forge for a long time, thinking about my life and the changes I wished I could make in it. One of those changes, by itself alone, would be an absolute necessity if ever I were to meet the girl in blue again, or any other like her I had not achieved conscious erection since being wounded. Paradoxically, I had had regular nocturnal emissions, so I knew my body was still working, somehow, but lust was alien to me in my waking hours.

I rose, eventually, and made my way back to my house.

It became clear to me very rapidly that Equus and Cuno had both been correct when they told me that only the army dealt in cash in these parts, and so I set my mind to laying my hands on some of it. That I was able to do it quickly was due more to luck than to planning. A name overheard in a tavern where I sat one day with Equus after closing the smithy led to my presenting myself at the entrance to the local military headquarters at the start of my second month in Colchester, in the first week of March. The two young soldiers on duty at the gate looked at me with the mute, almost insolent indifference that their kind reserve for civilians, even when those civilians are obviously veterans. I stood firm, gazing back at them without rancour, waiting for one of them to address me. I was not dressed in the manner of a smith, but neither was there anything about me to mark me as an officer or as a man of noble standing.

"Well? What do you want? This is a military camp. If you have business here, state it and be done. If not, move on."

Almost word for word what I had expected. Now I spoke, letting them hear the iron in my voice.

"Pontius Aulus Plautus. Your primus pilus." They glanced at each other warily, wondering if they had been over surly to one who spoke their senior centurion's name with such authority. The one who had addressed me spoke again, his voice less abrasive, more conciliatory, more uncertain.

"What about him?"

"Tell him there is a stranger at the gate who wonders if he still flavours mutton stew with camel dung."

There had been three of us, junior centurions together in North Africa, and one very unpleasant tribune who had suffered long and painfully from chronic stomach upsets. Only the three of us ever knew why. The hint of a good story got them, as I knew it would. One of the soldiers spun on his heel, his eyes wide with mystification, and disappeared through the Judas gate.

Minutes passed. The remaining sentry did not look my way again but stood spear-straight, his eyes focused on infinity. Then came the sound of hobnails on cobblestones, the Judas gate opened again, and a vision in polished leather and burnished bronze stepped through and looked at me from deep-set, heavy-browed eyes, his frowning face a mask of displeasure.

"Publius Varrus." The voice was as I remembered it— deep, low-pitched, gravelly and capable of inspiring fear in officers as well as raw recruits. "You gutter-dropped son of an Alexandrian whore! I thought you were dead."

"No, Plautus, just avoiding you, as always."

He crossed the space between us in two strides and threw his right arm round my neck, starting to pull me down into a headlock, and then he remembered who and where he was and he turned the move into an embrace, holding me tightly to his breast, wordlessly, as seconds drew out into minutes. The clean, well-remembered scent of him took me back years to more carefree, if not happier, times. Finally we released each other and he held me at arm's length to look at me, letting me see the tears that had spilled from his fierce eyes.

"I did think you were dead, you know, " he muttered, and then he hawked and spat and spun around to face the staring sentries, his arm across my shoulders.

"Look at this man, you two. Mark him well! He is responsible for all your grievances. This is Gaius Publius Varrus, the kind of whoreson soldier puling little turds like you will never be. This man has hauled my arse out of more tight spots and saved my worthless life more times than I can count. Next time you find yourselves cursing me, curse him instead, for without him I wouldn't be here to plague your worthless souls. And if you stay in this army long enough, you might, some day, find a friend as good as him. You might, I say, but I doubt it."

That day stretched into a long, drunken night.

The following afternoon found me seated in the office of Antonius Cicero, a direct descendant of the golden orator, and legate commanding the military district of which Colchester was the hub. I knew him of old, tod, for I had served under him in Africa and with him, after my promotion, in North Britain. He was a close friend of Britannicus’s and newly appointed to this command by Theodosius. With us in the room were Trifax, the garrison armourer, and Lucius Lucullus, the paymaster, both of whom I had known and liked in pre-invasion days. Plautus was there, too, standing stiff against the wall, uncomfortable in the informal company of staff officers. It was gratifying to be so well remembered and so obviously welcome in their company, and I was relaxed as I spoke to them, telling them what I was doing now.