"A pathway? For whose convenience?" God, but I was proud of this boy! His eight-year-old mind was fertile and intuitive, showing an awareness and astuteness I would not have looked for in a recruit twice his age. At sixteen, most boys knew nothing militarily useful. He was already answering me.
"The garrison's, of course, to allow them to move to wherever they were needed."
"Why? Wouldn't they do just as well using the parapet walk?"
He looked at me wryly. "In an attack? They'd be falling all over each other, pushing one another off the walls. There's only room for one or two men at a time up there."
"Of course. You're right. Silly of me."
He smiled at me again. "You knew that. You simply wanted to find out if I knew it."
"I did." I ruffled his hair and stepped out again, and we walked in silence until we reached the south-east corner with its square angle-tower. Arthur stopped by the narrow steps leading up to the parapet walk.
"There's no door in the tower. What's in there?"
"Nothing, probably. It would have been used for storage."
"Then how did they get in?"
"From above, by a ladder through a hole in the floor up there."
"Can we go up?"
"Certainly, but be careful of the steps."
He was already halfway up, scampering almost on all fours, and I had to call to him as I followed more slowly while he ran the few steps to the tower's entrance.
"Careful, Arthur, don't go in there! That floor is old and probably unsafe. Fall through it and we'd have a hard time digging you out."
Sure enough, when I caught up with him, he was leaning against the doorway, gazing at where the few remnants of the ancient wooden floor sagged dustily towards the black depths of the lower level. He was making hooting noises like an owl through his cupped hands, his head cocked slightly to one side listening for an echo answering him from the depths beneath. Across the gulf that had been the floor of the room, another entrance, as naked of a door as this one was, offered a glimpse of the eastern parapet walk and the land beyond the wall on the eastern side. The jut of the tower walls on either side, however, prevented us from seeing anything of scope or value.
"D'you think they were ever attacked up here, Merlyn?" His wide, golden eyes were straining to see into the blackness beneath the remnants of the floor.
"They might have been, on occasion, but I doubt the attacks were ever strong or victorious. This place is too well fortified to tempt attackers. So I doubt, too, that there are any human bones down there, if that's what you're looking for."
His eyes swung to meet mine. 'Then what happened to the floor?"
"It collapsed, that's all. This fort has been here since the days of the Emperor Hadrian, remember? That was hundreds of years ago ... hundreds of years before even your Great-grandfather Varrus was born. A wooden floor will last for a long time, if it's cared for and maintained, but it will rot and decay quickly, like anything else, if it's left to the mercy of the weather, as this one was. A tree will fall and rot away to almost nothing in one man's lifetime. A flat, solid wooden floor will dry out and rot in much less time than that, if it's not-looked after. The doors would have gone first, fallen off their rusted hinges, and once they were gone, the wind and rain and damp were free to do their damage."
"Oh." His eyes had moved away and he was looking over my shoulder now, to where the southern shoulder of the Fell behind me seemed to scrape against the sky. "Would enemies attack from up there?"
I turned to look where he was pointing. "Why don't you tell me? Would they?"
His brow clouded and he moved to the wall, where he suddenly became a small boy again, lodging a toe awkwardly between two stones and straining to pull himself up to peer over the top of the parapet that barely reached my shoulder. He made the ascent on his second try and hung there, arms duelling the top, his toes pinched inward side by side in a narrow crack in the stonework, his head moving from side to side on its impossibly slender neck as he scanned the ground beyond. The mountain top he had been looking at was half a mile away from us on the other side of a steep gully, on the far side of the road from Ravenglass. He remained there for a long time, looking out silently, the wind ruffling his dark brown hair with its golden streaks. Finally he grunted and released his hold, dropping backwards to the parapet walk.
"No, they wouldn't. Can we go down now?"
"Lead the way. Why wouldn't they?"
"It's too far away, and too difficult. Anyone stupid enough to come down from there to attack would deserve to be defeated." He was skipping nimbly down the steep, narrow stone steps to the ground; I was following much more carefully. When I reached the bottom, he walked beside me, his eyes on the ground now, looking for anything that might be there waiting to be found.
"Why would they be stupid?"
He had lost interest in the far mountain top as a source of peril and was totally absorbed in scanning the ground about his feet, so that he answered without looking up at me. "Because they would have to climb up there first. That would be stupid, when there's no need. And they'd be visible for much too long on the way down ... then they'd have to climb back up from the gully before they could become dangerous to anyone. By then they'd be dead."
The red sandstone columns of the eastern gate-tower were looming in front of us by this time, and he darted ahead of me to disappear into the passageway. By the time I emerged from the portals after him, he was already half a hundred paces ahead of me, running up the long, overgrown but clearly discernible roadway that led to the flatfish drilling area beneath the frowning escarpment of the mountainside. In the south-eastern distance, I could see a tiny ribbon of the road that crested the pass between this peak and its neighbour and continued to its end by the town Derek had told me of, by the side of the Great Mere. At the crest of the road the boy stopped running, and stood, looking about him. I lengthened my stride to catch up to him.
"It's flat, Merlyn," he said as I reached him. "Why didn't they build the fort up here?"
He was right. We were standing on the edge of an area that was as flat as the great campus training ground beneath the hill of Camulod, although much smaller.
"It's more than simply flat, Arthur. It's been flattened deliberately, by men. But it's not big enough to hold the fort. You see that ramp over there?" He looked to where a narrow, sloping ramp led up to a slightly higher area that overlooked the space beneath. He nodded, slowly, his face showing puzzlement. "That's been built up, too. Can you guess why?" He shook his head, slowly. "I'll give you a hint. Think of Camulod."
Arthur shook his head, frowning. "I don't know what you mean, Merlyn ... unless you're talking about the campus. But then it doesn't make sense, Why go to all the trouble to clear just enough ground for a training area? Why not do it properly the first time, and build the camp on the flat area?" He answered his own question immediately, his whole face lighting up in a smile. "Because of time! They couldn't! This was done long after the fort was built, when there was time to do it at leisure. So it is only a training field. And that's the reviewing stand up there, just like the one built into the hillside of Camulod."
He was gone in a moment, his long, slim legs flashing as he ran and climbed to the reviewing stand, from which he looked down at me. Then, seeing that I had turned to look elsewhere, and apparently thinking himself unwatched for the moment, he became the child again, raising his hands formally and throwing himself into an unsuccessful handstand. He could not quite succeed in bringing his feet together, so that for a long, ludicrous moment he teetered there, reversed, his legs scissoring wildly before he toppled, slowly, the wrong way, to land flat on his back at great disadvantage to his dignity. Quick as a flash, he was on his feet again, dusting himself off and glancing at me almost furtively to see if I had noticed his misjudgement. I gave no sign, and he strode to the edge of the reviewing stand closest to me, drawing himself erect and frowning fiercely.