"It's too soft, and too narrow in its depth. Excellent for building defensive walls, but the other kind of stone was necessary to hold the gates." He was still looking about him, up at the cliffs. "There's none of it here. Where did it come from?" When he realized that I would not respond, he went on again. "They must have brought it in, from some other place. Every single block of it must have been dug up and shaped and then brought here ... No wonder there's not more of it." He looked back at me now, smiling again. "Am I right?"
"You are. Full credit, and full lauds." As I turned to wave the others forward I congratulated myself on the impulse that had led me to have them wait behind while the boy and I rode forward alone. We had been travelling eastward on the Tenth Iter, an intact, strongly built road eight paces wide, the latter part of our journey a long climb up a staggeringly inclined hill to the high pass the fort had been built to guard, which now lay above us. There, reaching a small plateau beneath the summit, we had emerged from the dense forest, for the first time since leaving Ravenglass, to see the top of the gate-tower of Mediobogdum on our left, partly concealed from view by a steep crest in the short entrance road. Reaching the crest—no more than a hard- won twenty paces from the road—we had enjoyed our first clear view of the empty, silent fort. It looked impressive, from the distance of a hundred or so paces, as grim and invulnerable as the day it had been built, perched on the edge of an abyss beyond which the slopes of the opposing valley's sides were hazed in distance.
Confronting the view, without forethought and purely on the spur of a momentary urge, I had turned to Lucanus, riding by my left knee.
"Keep the others here for a while, Luke. I want to take the boy forward with me for his first look. He's the one to whom this place is most important, though he doesn't know it yet. I want to share his first reactions to the place. "
Lucanus had merely stared at me, raising his eyebrows slightly, then nodded, and I had ridden forward alone, calling the boy to accompany me.
Now, as the others joined us, dismounting and stretching limbs, I moved forward and pulled on the entrance gate, hoping to be able to open it far enough to allow me to put my shoulder to the task. To my great surprise, it swung* towards me with much more ease than I had expected, the massive, thickly rusted metal hinge pins that held it in place squealing loudly, almost unbearably, as they turned, grinding in the holes that had been chiselled in the sandstone above and below to house them, the weight of the gate itself swinging it fully open to rest against the wall. I turned back to my companions, holding up my arms.
"My friends ... " All of them stopped moving to watch me, their faces showing a broad range of interested, curious expressions. "When we step through this gate, we will be doing more than crossing a mere threshold. We'll be approaching a watershed in our lives. Beyond these gates could lie a new future for all of us. I am moved to make this request of you, and you may think it a strange one.
"We are here because, we know we could live here, in this place, for the next space of years, if we so choose. But should we choose, that choice should be born out of deep reflection and consideration. These walls above us are sound, but they are ancient. Within the walls, I do not know, nor do you, what we may find, save that whatever we do find will have lain long untouched by man. And so I would like us to proceed from this point on, each one in solitude, uninfluenced by the comments of others. That will be difficult, I know, because the temptation to look at each other and share your initial reactions will be immense and purely natural. Your first reactions might differ, one from another, from disgust to excitement; I have no idea. But I want us to consider them together, later, not in the first, raw moments of speculation. Do you understand what I mean?"
They did, nodding and muttering in their various ways until Dedalus, as usual, moved matters along.
"So you want us to walk in silence?"
"Aye, Ded, I do. But more than that, I want each of us to walk apart. Go as you wish, where you wish, once inside, but try to stay away from the others. Look and absorb and examine and reflect and be honest With yourself, each one of you, but bear in mind what we seek to achieve here. Ask yourself if you can see this place as a temporary home, a place where you could live for several years if need be, and whether it can be adapted and suited to your own purposes and those we share in common."
Dedalus looked around at his companions and then grinned. "And when may we speak to each other again?"
"As soon as we are done. When you have seen enough, come back outside. We'll build a fire out here and eat together, and then we'll talk. There is no need to hurry. Let each take all the time he needs. You too, Shelagh. Are we agreed?" ,
Lucanus spoke for everyone. "You first, Merlyn. We'll follow."
I stepped from the shadowed passageway through the portals and into the fort with feelings of trepidation and excitement stirring palpably in my breast, aware "of the boy's head at the edge of my vision as he moved to stand beside me just inside the threshold. I wanted him with me, so that I might prompt his thoughts, and perhaps even see things through his eyes. Behind me, I could hear the footsteps of my friends following closely, and I stepped away to clear the way, my eyes rapidly scanning the open spaces and the buildings in front of me—seeking, evaluating, assessing and cataloguing. Someone nudged me from behind, and I moved forward, accompanied by young Arthur. Together we walked to where the Via Praetoria, the main central street on which we stood, reached the first of the long, low barracks buildings that stood on either side of it. I was aware of their construction—heavy logs, dry- mossed, green with age and, I suspected, rot—but even as I began to examine them, I was aware that this was not where I wished to begin my inspection of this place.
Arthur had already passed me and reached the first entrance to the building on the left, leaning his head forward into the darkness beyond the empty space where the door had once hung. I moved to touch him on the shoulder, bringing him back to look up at me.
"Not here, not yet. Let's go the other way."
"The floor's concrete, Merlyn. It's dirty, but it's flat and dry and doesn't look cracked or broken."
"Aye, well, we'll look more closely at that later. Let's head up this way, for now. We'll walk around the intervallum." I led him to the right and together we climbed the short flight of steps that led us onto the narrow perimeter road that hugged the interior, uneven base of the fort's walls.
"Well," I asked him, as soon as we were up there, "what do you think of this for a Roman road?"
He glanced up at the wall that reached above our heads at that point, and then followed the line of it with his eyes for approximately twenty paces, to where it dipped out of sight before beginning to rear up again, to climb steadily towards the tower in the south-east corner. That done, he turned and gazed back to where the others were beginning to spread throughout the grounds of the fort. The ground beneath our feet at this point was a hump of solid rock, bare even of moss, and from where we stood, the plan of the fort, classic as it was, was clearly discernible, with the high, arched concrete roof of the granaries marking the central administrative area unmistakably.
"It's different," he said eventually, his tone speculative.
"Aye, but how is it different? You'll have to be clearer than that, to pass this test"
He grinned at me. "The whole fort is different, and it had to be." I said nothing, waiting for him to expound on that, and after a pause he did, looking all around him as he spoke.
"This fort is built to accommodate itself to the terrain, isn't it? There has been no effort made to level it, as there would be with any ordinary fort. This road goes up and down with the walls and the lie of the land. Bowmen could shoot from down there, beneath the walls on the other side, and pick us off up here, but—" He looked up at the wall again. "But the parapet walk up there is wider at this point, probably to hold more defenders to guard against that. This isn't a road we're on as much as pathway, smoothed out. Not really built."