I reached the bottom of the gangplank before Ambrose and Ludmilla had negotiated its springy length, and I embraced both of them, suddenly overwhelmed by emotions that left me incapable of speech. Ludmilla was as beautiful as ever, although plumper, more matronly than I had ever seen her; she asked immediately about Shelagh, and then about Lucanus, Turga and the four boys. I answered her as well as I could, but having taken in her appearance of happy prosperity and contentment, I was now preoccupied in examining my brother. He looked magnificent—an obvious leader in every aspect and in every sense of the word—and I wondered what he was thinking about me, since I knew he was scrutinizing me every bit as closely. The crowds thronging the dockside swirled about us in every direction and we stood there, oblivious to them, the three of us content for the moment to share our own company in friendly, intimate, familial silence.
Still smiling, but assuming a more critical demeanour, Ambrose passed judgment at last on my outward appearance.
'The brown hair is ... nondescript, Brother. I preferred it when you looked much more like me."
"Hah!" I grinned at him and gripped his wife more tightly around her supple waist. "That's merely your opinion, Yellow Head, born of a lifetime of narcissism. Ask a woman who has had a surfeit of blond beauty how she feels about brown-haired and comely men, and I'll warrant you'll receive another answer. Is that not so, Ludmilla?"
She leaned away from me sideways, smiling, and peered back at me down the length of her nose "We-ell, Caius, I would have to say, speaking advisedly and as your sister in marriage, that had you looked this different, this unlike yourself, when you were younger, I might have taken more notice of you ... But then again, I might not. As a brother, however, I will confess that you are unequalled and quite surpassing any other such in all your attributes."
I blinked at her, wide-eyed and solemn, schooling my features into blankness before turning back to my brother. "Did your wife say what I think she said, that I am unique?"
"She may have, Brother, since you are the only brother that she has. I don't know. Then again, I seldom do. Being married to a goddess is a taxing task for ordinary mortals. It places demands upon men they are seldom fit to meet. Like comprehension of their spouses' wondrous wondrousness ... things like that ... "
"Yes ... " I reached out to intercept Ludmilla's fist before she could injure it against his breastplate. "But I think we had best bestir ourselves and go and find the others. Shelagh will be ecstatic to see the two of you. We had no idea you would be coming—" I broke off, my eyes moving from one of them to the other. "Why have you come? Is all well in Camulod?"
Ambrose cut me off again with a smile. "Hush, Cay, think you we would be here if anything were wrong? We came because we could, and for that reason alone. Everything is well, and better than well, at home. We had a rich and bountiful harvest followed by a short, mild winter, and my wife and I have not travelled together beyond Camulod since we were wed. Connor was coming here and had the space, and the time, to bring us with him, and I had messages for you and for Lucanus. So, we came. We will remain until Connor returns to collect us again, which will be, he estimates, within two weeks. Can you bear our company till then?"
"Aye, gladly, and for much longer." I turned to look again at Connor. "But only two weeks, you say? That is not much time, for a double crossing."
He shrugged, frowning. "Why not? It's more than enough ... Particularly since we'll be returning empty."
"Empty? From Eire?"
"Eire? No, we're not going to Eire. I told you, we wintered there, then returned to our holdings near Camulod.
Now I am bound for Alba, for our new holdings in the islands of the north-west, with twelve galleys full of Liam Twistback's cattle." He saw my look and laughed, waving towards the sea. "They're out there, safe out of sight where I left them, behind the island! No point in bringing them inshore to cause confusion, was there? Derek would have had an apoplexy to see them coming around the bank, thinking the Condranson fleet about his ears again. Logan and Feargus are riding with them, playing the sheep- herders to both flock and fleet. I must have speech with Derek—the work of an hour or so—and then I'm away again, before the tide turns. Everything I have to off-load here will be on the wharf within the half hour."
He glanced up towards his vessel again, checking the level of activity, and then reached out to shake with Ambrose.
"Farewell, Ambrose, and may the gods smile pityingly on you, stuck here as you'll be with these savages until I can return." He bowed over Ludmilla's hand. "My lady Ludmilla, I hope you will pass on my best wishes to my good-sister Shelagh, and I'll see you again soon."
He turned and clapped me a mighty blow on the upper arm with his open hand and then swept me into his embrace before stepping back to look at me with a grin.
"Look after these fine folk, Cay Brownhair, and take care they meet no ill, lest you bring the wrath of Camulod about your colourless head."
Then he was gone, leaving us alone on the wharf, listening to the receding thump of his wooden leg.
Knowing that Connor's men would bring their belongings after us, I led my guests towards the gate in the wall and beyond, into the fort and towards our temporary quarters. There, a squeal of delight from Shelagh told us we had finally been seen. From that moment on, everything degenerated into a chaos that endured through Connor's departure on the evening tide and then on into dinner. I had to resign myself to waiting until all the excitement had died down before I heard a single word of news from the south. Even then, I found I had to delve deeply for it, winkling each separate piece of information individually from my brother, who believed, and rightly so as I felt in the end, that there was nothing of real significance in any of it.
By the time we did manage to achieve sufficient privacy to speak with any kind of leisure about events in Camulod, it had grown late, and most of the household had retired. Lucanus had disappeared even before the evening meal, clutching the precious scrolls that Ambrose had brought for him, among them the one particular text that might shed light upon my condition. I was consciously willing myself not to dwell on that. Shelagh and the other women had gone off somewhere with Derek's chief wife, Jessica, after dinner, and had not returned. We men who remained—some score of us—had been left alone in one of Derek's private rooms, well-lit with lamps, tapers and tallow wicks and brightened and warmed in addition by fires in great, open braziers in chimneyed firepits against the walls.
Now the night had advanced, the general talk had been exhausted, most of the others had gone off to bed—some on their own feet, others assisted by friends—and Ambrose and I were the only two left awake, lounging on Roman couches before the one fire that still burned brightly. We were speaking in Latin, the tongue in which we both were most at ease. The talk earlier had all been in the coastal tongue, a language I thought of as being the Britannic vulgate, a seething broth of varying Celtic dialects and tribal intonations that came close, from time to time, to being indecipherable. The local variants, in particular, had left my brother gaping in bewilderment on several occasions. Derek's people had a way of chewing vowel sounds that was unique in my experience. One of the local men had pronounced, on his departure, that he was "g'yaun 'ame." The expression on my brother's face on hearing that phrase had made me laugh aloud, to my own embarrassment when the speaker turned to gaze at me in curiosity, wishing to share the jest.