"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."
I felt the small hairs on my arms and at the back of my neck prickle in horror and it must have showed on my face, for he barked his short, abrupt laugh. "That shakes you, eh? It shook me, too, at the time. That woman was black with the guilt of murder and I was the instrument she used, and yet the circumstances did not include her at all. The old man may have been mad with grief and wounded pride, but he was no more insane than I was.
"I told you they fed me with tubes. I had been drugged, through my food, every night and used like a stud bull, but Ambrosianus could not have known that... Somehow, he found out that his wife was amusing herself with me, and under the circumstances he had no other option than to believe that I was her willing partner." He paused for a moment, looking at me keenly before continuing in a clipped, emphatic voice. "You must understand I am not denying that I might have been perfectly willing, had I had any say in the matter, but the old man interpreted the evidence of his own senses and concluded that I was putting horns on him in his own house while enjoying his hospitality.
Had I been him, I might have handled it a little differently, but the whoreson in that bed would have been dead!" He leaned over the table and took the knife from my hand. "How would you have interpreted the 'hard facts' had you been him, Caius?"
I was chagrined, my voice reduced to a whisper by the enormity of what I was only now realizing and appreciating. "I see what you mean, Father."
"I hope so. And don't lose sight of the fact that I said I might have been her willing partner, given the chance. The point is I didn't have the chance—or the choice. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, in the final analysis I was not guilty of the sin for which he condemned me."
I dropped my face into my hands and combed my fingers across my scalp, heaving a deep breath. "So where does that leave us with Uther?"
The voice that answered me was gentler than I had ever known it. "Waiting to see how the girl reacts when she is well again and you confront him with her."
"And if he is guilty?"
"Then he pays the price."
"And?"
My father tossed back the remnants of his mead and stood up, reaching for his helmet, and indicating that our conversation was over. "And nothing, Caius. You know as well as I do, the price for violation of a woman in my command is death."
XI
To this day, I find it hard to believe that the confrontation between Uther and Cassandra never did occur. I have no explanation that a rational judge could accept as perfectly plausible. It simply worked out that, for one reason after another, the two were never brought face to face in my presence.
The first and most important of these reasons was that I was provided with genuine grounds for more than reasonable doubt of Uther's guilt by no less a person than my Aunt Luceiia, who had no suspicion of any suggestion of Uther's involvement in the matter.
I was summoned to her quarters on the afternoon of the day my father told me his story, and I went to meet her feeling guilty over my recent neglect of her. Aunt Luceiia was a very old woman by this time and she seldom ventured beyond "the family rooms," as she called her living quarters. From the age of six or seven, through the descriptions in my uncle's books, I had known another Luceiia. Therein I had met her when she was twenty-five, before she became wife to Publius Varrus, and thus she had remained in his writings over the years, unmarred and unimpeded by their passage. In reality, however, more than forty-five years had passed since then, and although the Luceiia Britannicus who lived today showed more than a slight resemblance to the raven-haired beauty of those writings, her hair was now snowy white and her face, still beautiful with its high- cheeked, sculpted lines, was deeply etched by the passage of time. I had not seen her since the day we returned front patrol, when I had stopped by to pay her the obligatory call to mark our safe return. I found her this afternoon, sitting in the light from the glazed window that was her greatest pride, a far more splendid aperture than the one in my hut, being made from four large and carefully fitted sheets of glass so fine that it was almost fully transparent.
As soon as she heard my footsteps, she turned to me and waited with upraised arms for her kiss. I embraced her and she squeezed me fondly. "Oh, you feel good when you're not all wrapped up in armour! I forbid you ever again to wear armour when you visit me, although I suppose that means I'll never see you at all, now that I've given you an excuse."