My hope was fulfilled that day in a way that I could not have dreamed of. The information my eyes relayed to my brain was so startling and so overwhelming that I did not trust myself to believe the evidence of my own senses. I rode back to the villa at breakneck speed, almost choking on my excitement.
It was dark by the time I got back. I leaped from my horse before its hooves stopped clattering on the cobblestones of the courtyard and shouted a greeting to my wife, who came running to welcome me home. We bathed together and I told her of my discoveries, and then for a long time we made little noise.
It must have been approaching the tenth hour when I entered Caius's cubiculum and found him reading by the light of two bright lamps. I was surprised to find him there, for I had presumed him abed long since. He was immersed in Ovid's Art of Love and feeling, he told me later, mildly nostalgic for the vanished pleasures of youth.
"Caius? Am I disturbing you?"
He looked up with pleased surprise. "No, not at all! It is a pleasure to see you back on your feet again. "
I felt the blankness of incomprehension on my face. "What?"
"I said it's good to see you up and around again. Marriage makes more men take to their beds than illness ever will. "
"Ohh!" I smiled, suddenly self-conscious. "I see what you mean. "
"Come in. Sit down and pay no attention to me. I was merely tweaking your nose. Perhaps I am growing jealous of your youth. "
"Are you so old, then, General? So suddenly?"
"Don't call me that. I'm old enough to know what I can do and what I'll never do again, my friend. What have you done today?"
"Caius —"
I started to blurt out what it was I had to tell him, but then I restrained myself. He watched me clench my lips and inhale deeply through my nostrils. Then I bit down on my breath and expelled the air explosively between my lips, the way a horse does. Caius waited, patient as always, for me to arrange my thoughts in order. Finally, I began speaking, feeling that I had the right words.
"I wanted to come to you with this as soon as I got back, but I was —
distracted — as you have observed. "
He smiled. "Where is she now, that your distraction has faded?"
"Asleep. Caius, what had you planned to do tomorrow?"
"Nothing that cannot be changed. What do you have in mind for me to do?"
"Could you stand the journey up into the hills with me? There's something I would like to show you. I need your advice. "
"I can think of nothing I would enjoy more. What do you have to show me?"
I shook my head. "I would rather not say, right now. You might think I had lost my wits. But it's important. I think I'm right. In fact, I know I'm right. But I haven't got the courage yet to back up my conviction. That's why I want you to see this for yourself, and to advise me. If I'm wrong, and I could be, I'd feel very foolish. "
The Britannican eyebrow was up. "You intrigue me, Publius. This sounds fascinating. I can hardly wait to see what it is. Will I recognize it?"
"I hope so, Caius. I hope so!"
"It has to do with your skystones, obviously. "
"Yes, it does. "
He raised his thumb and forefinger to the sides of his mouth, pinching his lower lip outward and downward, as though wiping away dried crumbs from a recent meal. "I saw some of them this morning, in the smithy.
Equus told me what they were. I was hoping to talk to you about them. "
"What were you doing in the smithy? You don't often go down there. " He smiled and told me what he had done that morning.
Apparently the villa had been as quiet as a tomb that day, after all the preceding weeks of hurly-burly, and Caius had been hard put to remind himself that this was normal. He had prowled the grounds like a lost soul, angry at himself for having slept later than usual and losing some precious hours. Then he found out I had been gone since dawn, up into the hills, and that increased his bad temper, for some reason. Luceiia, he said, had tried to be nice to him over breakfast but knew her brother well enough to see that he was in one of his most foul frames of mind and left him to his own devices.
He had spent two fruitless and frustrating hours trying to write, but found himself too volatile to concentrate for any length of time on what he was about, and eventually, some time after noon, he had found himself in the smithy, watching Equus pounding a glowing ingot.
Equus had looked up and seen him standing there, and had greeted him, calling him "Gen'ral!" He had picked that up from me. They had exchanged pleasantries for a while, and then Equus had returned to his work, leaving Caius to his own devices. Caius had then walked to the back of the smithy and idly examined the bizarre-looking stones that lay there on the shelf along the wall.
"Funny-looking things, aren't they?" Equus's voice had startled him.
"What are?" he'd asked.
"Them skystones. "
Only then had Caius realized what he was looking at, for I had kept them secret even from him, so keen was my disappointment in their size. Now he examined them more closely. There were seven of them, ranging in size from the smallest, about the size of a new-born baby's head, to the largest, which was the size of a half-grown boy's head. They were all the same kind of stone, a heavy, dull grey-black. And all of them were smooth: not the worn smoothness of a watered pebble, but more of a glassy texture. He had picked up one of the intermediate ones and hefted it, thinking that, if I were correct, this thing had fallen from the sky! His logical Roman mind told him that was impossible. Everything must come from somewhere, so where had it. fallen from?. Caius knew, as every child knows, that in order for something to come down from high in the air, it first has to be put up into the air. But the weight of this thing, he realized as he held it, made the thought of its being hurled upwards from the earth into the sky more than ludicrous. It was impossible. He knew how high and how far the strongest catapult could throw such a stone. He had seen his own armies hurl them, and they never were lost from sight. So how could this thing have fallen from the sky, on fire, as he knew I believed, and struck the earth with such ferocity that it could bury itself and throw up a ring of earth twelve or more feet across?
And yet, as he admitted to me that night, its surface did seem as though it had been melted at some time. And he knew I had dug it up from the middle of one of my "dragon's nests. " At least, he thought he knew that. At this point in his recital, Caius stopped and looked at me, waiting for me to say something. I did not know what he expected, so I shrugged.
"That is correct. I dug it up from a dragon's nest. What are you struggling with, Caius?"
He shook his head in bewilderment. "I don't know, Publius. All my education tells me that what you are asking me to believe is impossible. And yet you stand there facing me with all the confidence of an augurer who has just pulled a rotting heart from a healthy chicken. Until I see metal from these stones, I will never be able to accept your contention that they fell from the sky. And even then, I feel constrained to point out, any credence I give to the matter will be based strongly upon nothing more than my faith in your peculiar style of madness. " He paused for a short space. "But, as I say, your positive results have me mystified. What is it that you want me to look at tomorrow?"
The following forenoon found us high on the hill overlooking the valley of my dragons. There were only three of us — Caius, Equus and me — and Caius, at least, had enjoyed the ride up into the hills.