Starvation, Stirling realized with a cold chill, was only one poor harvest away, when no international trade routes existed to ship food by air or sea. He was too accustomed to living in a world where one nation's bounty could be sent in a matter of hours to another's drought- or flood-starved thousands. Another surprise for Stirling was the number of Christian churches they passed, constructed of stone or wood, depending on the size and wealth of the village or town that had built it. His surprise, in turn, startled Ancelotis. Are you not a Christian, then? the Scots king demanded warily.
Well, yes, Stirling responded, but I hadn't realized there would be so many churches, this early in history.
Ancelotis snorted, a sound of mingled anger and disgust. I may be descended from Druid judges and kings, but those Druids have been Christian for two centuries, Stirling of Caer-Iudeu. Mark you, there are those who follow the old ways, more now than when the Romans were still among us, but we follow the teachings of Christ closely enough. Not, he added wryly, that Rome is so very well pleased with us. Heresy, they call our notions of free will and the immortality of a man's soul. It's been a century or more since they declared our greatest Briton philosopher, Pelagius, a heretic.
Heretic? Stirling blinked, startled at the deadly serious use of such a word. He'd forgotten, or perhaps had never viscerally understood, how serious a matter heresy had been in the early Christian centuries. That disturbed him, deeply. Ancelotis, undaunted, continued to rail.
Imagine, declaring a man heretic because he dared stand up to that swine Augustine! And him with his damnable notions of predetermination, giving a man no moral reason not to sin! Why should a man follow truth and righteousness, when his nature and fate are set in stone before he's born, leading him to sin as God wills, rather than as he chooses. Bah! Ancelotis spat disgustedly to one side. 'Tis the knaves in Rome are guilty of heresy. Any fool can see a man must have his choice, whether to sin or no, or the notion of sin and redemption from it are nothing but a mockery. Let Rome rot in her dissipation, I say. I would almost rather sit down at table with these barbarians, Picts and Irish and Saxons, pagan and godless though they be, than a priest of Rome who calls us heretics for following the Christ as He was meant to be followed.
Clearly, the state of religion in the sixth-century British Isles was every bit as explosive a matter as it was in twenty-first-century Northern Ireland. Stirling vowed never, ever to get into a philosophical debate over religion with anyone from the sixth century. Ancelotis' vehemence reminded him all too unpleasantly of Belfast's raging argument over which version of Christianity would be the accepted, right, and true one. Nominally Christian or not, Stirling spotted occasional roadside shrines, some of them obviously pagan. These were often situated near groves of trees, wells, or natural springs. He caught glimpses of women in several of the groves, doing what, he wasn't at all prepared to guess and Ancelotis wouldn't be baited into commenting.
Surrounding it all—hill forts, villages, churches, fortlets, and pagan shrines—were the stubbled fields, orchards stripped of their ripened fruit, their leaves having mellowed in shades of buttery gold and coppery fire against the dark, wet wood, and water meadows and common-land pastures where flocks of hardy sheep and sturdy cattle grazed. Peasant farmers and shepherds, busy at the tasks of slaughtering pigs and cattle for the winter's larder and the shearing of wool from those sheep marked out for mutton stew, shaded their eyes and shouted as the cataphracti passed, a glittering cavalcade of armor and sun-burnished weapons.
Near sunset, the road they'd been following met up with another Roman highway running north-south through the mountains. A small fortification, larger than the mile forts they had passed with clockwork regularity, guarded the junction where two valleys met, each with their snaking road of stone looking like faded grey ribbons in the long shadows. Wooden towers jutted up against the darkening sky, while curls of smoke drifted toward the clouds from cookfires and—so Stirling hoped, at any rate—from the firepits that fueled the central heating system. The arched spans of a one-story aqueduct marched away toward whatever water source was nearest. Clearly, the Romans had considered this little crossroads fort critical enough to spend sufficient manpower, time, and money constructing a military aqueduct for it. A small village had sprung up in the shadows of the fort's walls, sending delicious smells wafting their way. Dogs broke into a furious clamor as they thundered into the village, heading for the fort's big wooden gates.
Artorius halted the combined cavalcade long enough to eat a hot meal, rest and feed the horses, and catch four hours' sleep. Stirling craved that more than anything else; more, even, than the thick stew and hot bread which their hosts at the little garrison served their royal guests. There wasn't even plaster on the walls here, just bare stones, squared off and mortared like brick. The lack of potatoes in the stew reminded Stirling with dull and admittedly selfish unhappiness of other deprivations he would face during the coming year. No fish and chips—at least, no thick-cut, deep-fried potato slices to eat with the fish—no ketchup to eat with the nonexistent potatoes, no corn, no coffee, no tea... not even a lowly chocolate bar. None of those items would be available anywhere in the British Isles for centuries.
The reality of sixth-century Britain crashed down across Stirling all over again, in all its appalling crudity, bringing home with brutal suddenness just how very trapped and alone he was. Home lay at least forty, maybe fifty miles behind him—and some sixteen centuries in his future. A whole millennium and more than half of another...
He held back a groan and sought the privy, a separate room with troughs engineered into the stone floors and wooden planks with holes cut through them topping stone retaining walls. The trickle of water could be heard, a steady stream of it entering from one side of each trough, washing the troughs clean through a drain hole in the other end, presumably into a communal cesspit. His privy business done, he staggered past several dark storage rooms piled high with weapons and spare lamps, jugs of oil and probably wine, judging from the smell, and stored foodstuffs, then reeled into the wet night air. He found the barracks where they were to be quartered by following the sound of Artorius' snoring.
Weary to his toe bones, Stirling collapsed on the camp bed reserved for his use, asleep before he finished falling down.
Lailoken had rarely been happier.
He'd ridden almost nonstop from Caer-Iudeu to Caerleul, in the process leaving behind two stolen farm horses, badly foundered by his ruthless determination to reach Caerleul ahead of the Dux Bellorum's cataphracti and its royal escort. Exhausting as it was, he reached the ancient Roman fortress on the Solway Firth well in advance of Artorius. He arrived just past sunset, riding a third sturdy draft horse liberated during the night from a farmer who had failed, foolishly, to brand his livestock. Banning, as pleased as Lailoken by the speed they had made, immediately gave him a deeply distressing order: Sell the horse.
Sell it? But—but, 'tis the most wealth I've had in years! It is one thing, surely, to ride an animal into the ground for good cause, but now we've made it safely here, you want me to just give it up?