TWELVE
"Well, Brother, what do you think?"
We were standing side by side, huddling half out of the wind and rain beneath the gabled eaves at the eastern end of the roofed stable, across from the barracks block in which I lived. The storm had raged all night unabated. As we watched our companions making their final preparations for the journey into Ravenglass, it was already considerably more than an hour after dawn, although only our minds told us the truth of that. There was little evidence that the sun had, in fact, risen. At that moment we were surrounded by a freakish and impenetrable fog: roiling, billowing masses of low, heavy clouds, churned by the howling wind, obscured everything from view beyond a score of paces in any direction; their density and volume safeguarded them against the fury of the gale, which would otherwise have shredded and scattered them to nothingness.
Ambrose said nothing for long moments, but then, when he did answer me, his response seemed contradictory to his obvious intent.
"I think we must be mad even to be considering leaving for Ravenglass now, in this weather. Even if he arrives on time, Connor will never be able to approach the harbour in a wind like this. He'll be forced to ride out the storm at sea and won't even think about coming inshore until the thing has blown itself out. When that happens, we'll know about it as soon as Connor does, since we are no more than twelve miles inland, and by the time we travel from here to there, he will be approaching anchorage and our reunion will be timely and opportune."
"But ... ?"
"But what? No buts, Cay. You asked me what I think and I told you—"
"Aye, and I could hear your reservations." I leaned close to him, shouting into the wind that had suddenly swelled to howl around and between us. "You are thinking about the fact that everything is ready now, for departure, and we spent much of last night making it so. And you're influenced by the fact that so many of our people are up and astir already, dressed for the weather and prepared to defy it, cheerfully or otherwise."
The wind dropped away again, leaving me shouting at the top of my voice. Germanicus sidled nervously. I curbed, him tight and continued, moderating my tone. "And on top of all that, you're angry at the weather itself, determined not to let it beat you. You don't want to let it push you into a position that you might later see, in your own mind, as weakness."
As I finished speaking my brother turned towards me in mocking disbelief, his mouth hanging open in exaggerated awe. "There you go again," he said. "You and your foreknowledge! How could you possibly know that? How could you know what I was thinking?"
I laughed outright at him and punched him on his mailed arm. "Idiot! You know as well as I do I've been thinking exactly the same things. I'll wager most of the others have, too. Each one, if you ask him, will probably admit that he has been thinking, longingly, about his warm bed, wishing he had stayed in it this morning instead of dragging himself out here to face a long, cold, wet and windy journey when there's really no need for it."
At this point, protected as we yet were under the stable's roof, everyone and everything was still fairly dry, although tousled and wind-blown. Only Ludmilla and Shelagh were missing, remaining sheltered indoors until it was time to leave. The others, a surprising number, had chosen to escort the Lady Ludmilla and her husband to meet the Eirish galley that would ferry them from Ravenglass back to the coastline close to Camulod. Dedalus, Rufio, Donuil and Lucanus were there, all of them wrapped, like Ambrose and me, in the dense, heavy, horsemen's cloaks of woven and waxed wool that were made to uniform specifications for all troopers by our weavers in Camulod. Arguably the most valuable foul- weather garment any of us owned, these military cloaks were modelled on those worn for hundreds of years by Roman legionaries, but had been redesigned to cover a mounted man warmly and completely, with a heavily draped, ample back that flared out to spread capaciously over the back of a horse, keeping the saddle, and hence the rider's buttocks, dry and protected.
Longinus, Derek's captain of artillery, was also there, but he was out in the roadway, sheltering from the elements for the time being beneath the leather canopy of the wagon that would transport Ludmilla and her belongings. His task in the forest completed, he was returning home to his normal duties and his family today and would ride beneath the driver's canopy on the wagon bench with Lars, Ludmilla's driver for the day.
The remainder of the party consisted of Arthur and Bedwyr, who had been permitted to accompany Arthur's uncle and aunt to bid them farewell. All four boys had sought permission to make the journey, days earlier, but in the interim the brothers Gwin and Ghilleadh had both come down with some form of sniffly sickness that had them, as Donuil aptly described it, flowing from both ends. They would now remain behind, despite their pleas to the contrary. The foulness of the weather would have kept the other two behind as well, had not Lucanus decided they would be better off out in the storm than stuck at home with their wretchedly sick companions.
As I watched the boys, admiring the confidence with which they sat their ponies, swathed in cloaks like ours but made to fit their smaller size, I noticed Dedalus coming towards me. His head was muffled in the cowl of his cape and his helmet made a bulky shape at his waist where he had fastened it to his sword belt by the chin strap.
"Cay, I'm going to go and fetch some coils of heavy rope to take with us. I'll throw them in the back of the. wagon. There's ample room. And I think we should take an extra pair of horses along, too." He glanced up at the roof above out heads as though he could see the leaden sky beyond it. "I think we might need them. There will be trees blown down everywhere, and the open roadway might have acted like a tunnel since this storm broke, channelling the wind. The road could be blocked, in places. If it is, we'll need to clear a passage for the wagon."
I glanced at Ambrose. "Ded's right. It could be a nasty journey, but the decision is yours, Brother, and now's the time to make it. Do we go, or stay and wait for the storm to blow itself out?"
Ambrose sighed and drew his cowl further over his head. His helmet, like my own, hung from his saddle bow. My horse Germanicus lifted his tail and made dung, and the warm odour of the fresh droppings mingled with the smells of wet earth and straw and horse sweat all around us.
"We go. Everything is ready, even Ludmilla. I promised Connor we would be there today, waiting for him. Neither of us considered the weather at the time, but a promise is a promise. I'll fetch the women. Tell the others to be ready."
I nodded to Dedalus, who left immediately on his own errand, and then, alerting everyone else to be ready for departure, I pulled myself up into the saddle as Ambrose disappeared through the rain in the direction of the quarters he and Ludmilla had been sharing with Donuil and Shelagh. He returned moments later, accompanied by both Women, and a very short time later we were beyond the gates of the fort, filing downward through the gusting rain to where the road led steeply down towards the valley of the Esk and Ravenglass, twelve miles away.
Four times we had to stop between our starting point and Ravenglass, to clear the road of toppled trees or massive, fallen limbs before we could proceed farther. On each occasion the effort of harnessing the extra horses and dragging the dead weight of the shattered wood aside caused us to look at each other and wonder what we were about, subjecting ourselves to such unnecessary punishment on such a day. For some reason, however, attributed much later to some communal form of madness occasioned by the storm, the complaints and wonderings remained unspoken.