"No they didn't, Uther. They merely enticed you. All three of them together could hardly have raped you, but only one of them attacked you, and she suffered for it."
He was watching me closely, a half smile still lingering around his mouth.
"You think I was too hard on them?"
"No, not too hard. They deserved some chastisement, I suppose. You let them off lightly."
"But?"
I shook my head. "But nothing. It merely occurred to me to wonder what they'll do now to feed themselves, now that their livelihood is gone."
He grunted. "They'll find a way. What would you have me do, take them with us?" He picked up my helmet and mounted the stairs to the loft, where he gathered his cloak, put on his own helmet and picked up his shield before returning to where I stood watching. As he handed me my helmet he asked, "Did I tell you how glad I was to see you?" I nodded, and he crossed to pick up a lamp that burned by the ale casks. "I'm always glad to see you, Cay, but today you looked beautiful. Usually you are unimpressive. In fact, most of the time, you're almost ugly. Today, however, you were magnificent. Mad, but magnificent." As he prattled on, he was kicking the rushes into a pile at the bottom of the wooden stairs. He decided finally that he had enough of them and dropped the oil-filled lamp so that it broke on the flagstones. As we watched, the flames spread quickly.
"This is no fit place for decent people, anyway." He glanced again at each of the bodies on the floor. "May they rest in peace, as the Christians say. Let's get out of here. Why did you come here, anyway?"
I felt as though I had been doused with icy water. I had forgotten! "Varrus is dying, Uther. We are called back to Camulod."
His face went blank with shock. "No...You can't mean that, Cay. Not Grandfather!"
I could only shake my head. His disbelief mirrored my own so closely, it threatened to unman me. "We have to hurry. I brought extra horses."
We left the hostelry and its silent crew to the leaping flames. Uther's horse was safely stabled in one of the buildings at the rear and I held it steady as he threw the saddle over its back and tightened the cinches, kneeing the horse in the belly as he did so to make sure it wasn't playing tricks on him by distending its gut. In the early days of using the device, we had often found ourselves falling sideways because the harness had not been properly secured. He swung into the saddle and I leaped up behind him and directed him to where I had hidden the other animals. He took the lead rein of one of the extra horses and we headed south, keeping off the road surface to save our horses' hooves.
Neither of us had spoken since we left the hostelry, except for a few grunted directions from me, and the silence lasted until we had ridden for three or four miles at a steady canter. It was Uther who spoke first, breaking into my thoughts and showing me a different, more serious side of himself than he had shown earlier.
"That was foolery, that nonsense back there. I could have been killed...would have been if you hadn't arrived. That would have been no great loss, but I can see now that you and the others would have wasted time and effort turning the country upside-down looking for me. It was criminal and stupid. Forgive me, Cay. I'll never take off again without letting someone know where I can be found. But how in the name of all the Roman gods did you know where to find me?"
"Bodies," I said. "Willing, female bodies. You saw them there when we passed through the first time, and you didn't get to use them, and then you found yourself with three days off within ten miles of them. It wasn't difficult. I know you, Cousin. But you are right. It was stupidity, although had you been killed, I doubt that it would pass as no great loss. Not from your grandfather's viewpoint. In his eyes, you were bred and trained for a purpose, and it wasn't to get yourself killed in a den of thieves and whores."
He said no more for a while, then, "How bad is he? How much time have we lost because of this?"
"I don't know how bad he is, but he must be really ill, or they wouldn't recall us from patrol. It'll take us about three days to reach Camulod at this speed—less if we cut down on sleep. As to time lost, no more than an hour, all told. I had to come this way and I wasted no time looking for you in Glevum. The fight was brief, long as it seemed."
I stood upright in my stirrups and looked back the way we had come. We were in a stretch of open grassland, cleared of trees years earlier by a farmer whose time had long since passed and now showing signs of reverting to forest. I saw a pall of black smoke above the trees in the far distance. We fell back into silence and rode each with his own thoughts.
We changed horses regularly and the miles dropped away behind us. When darkness fell, we took our horses onto the roadbed, riding between the trees on either side, seeing our way by moonlight. We stopped and slept for a brief spell after the moon went down, and were back on our way before the first flush of dawn, stopping only to void our bladders and bowels on that second day. Each time I got down from the saddle for such a purpose, I felt that I would never be able to walk properly again, and the thought of hauling my aching body back up into the saddle daunted me. But we had no trouble on the road and by mid-after- noon of the third day we came in sight of Camulod.
We had been riding through our own home territories for some time by then and had learned from our own outposts only that Varrus had fallen, breaking both legs and several ribs in rolling down the hillside. He had become congested in his lungs and had been spitting blood for the past eight days. Grim-faced, we travelled on, to be met by Aunt Luceiia at the entrance to the villa. She looked fragile, yet somehow indomitable, as she smiled at us through her tears.
When we had kissed her, Uther spoke. "How is he, Grandmother?"
"In great pain. But he's a stubborn man and will not die before he speaks to both of you."
There it was. We both knew there was no point in uttering stupidities about his not dying.
"Can we go to him now?" I asked.
"Of course you can. He is in his day-room." We left her and walked rapidly towards the room that had been my own grandfather's day-room. Both of our fathers were there already, one on either side of the bed. Patricus, head of the Colony's Council, was there too, white-haired and solemn. I could have wept when I saw what had happened to my great-uncle since we had left, just two short weeks before. He was a different man, a stranger to my sight. Only the eyes, set in the sunken, withered, pain-racked face showed me the Publius Varrus that I loved, and even they were misted with pain.
"Uther," he said. "And Caius. Welcome home." His voice was a hoarse whisper. He held out a clawlike, shrunken hand to each of us, and as I took his hand in my own I saw how the skin of his once-mighty wrist hung in folds and wrinkles from the bones. I pressed his hand to my cheek, feeling the wetness of my tears between the two surfaces. "What are the tears for, boy? This is the way of all men. We all have to die. I have lived far longer than I ought to have, and I have lived well. Have you ridden far?" I nodded my head, unable to speak. "I thought so." The parchment whisper held a trace of the old humour. "You smell like horses, both of you. Caius, this was your grandfather's bed. He enjoyed it for years before he died. I've had it only for days. I do not intend to die in it with the smell of rancid horse sweat in my nostrils." His fingers squeezed my hand gently. "Go you and bathe, both of you. I'll still be here when you are clean. Then I shall speak with each of you alone." His hand pushed gently against mine, "Go. I will not die before I speak with you, I promise. Picus, are the baths prepared?"
"Of course they are, Varrus. Have you ever known them not to be?"