We watched them leave, waving from the battlements until they rounded the bank ahead of us. Then we spent three days assisting Derek's people with the Herculean task of cleaning up the detritus of the storm, salvaging or demolishing the wreckage in the harbour so that it no longer threatened other vessels, and burying those bodies we could find, knowing full well that corpses would wash up on the surrounding beaches for months afterwards.
When all that could be done had been achieved, we made our way back to Mediobogdum beneath sunny skies, surrounded by the singing of a million birds and the lush greens of new, rioting foliage that was bright, in sheltered nooks, with heady, sweetly scented blossom: apple, pear and hawthorn, white and pink.
That homeward journey passed in reflective silence, by and large, each of us dwelling, according to our natures, upon what we might have faced on reaching Ravenglass had the storm not briefly gulled our enemies. I found myself recalling it already as a tempest.
We found the tangled mass of ruined trees still in place on the hillside, blocking the steeply sloping road up to our pass. We accepted its enormous presence with stoicism and yet also with vague feelings of surprise to find it all unchanged after a week had passed. Clearing it away, with axes and saws and ropes and teams of horses, and reopening the road would be our highest priority in the days ahead. We passed it by without pausing in our ascent, however, since we had left Lars and the single wagon safe in Ravenglass to await a summons once the way was cleared; it took us but a tiny fraction of a single hour to mount the steep, bypassing defile on horseback, proceeding in single file and grateful that this time we were unhampered by the torrents of cold water that had showered on us from every tree and sapling we had passed beneath on the way .down.
I was at pains to ride dose beside Lucanus on die most difficult section of the upward slope, for I had noticed some time earlier that he seemed to be in pain and to be making great efforts to disguise die fact: his face was pale and peaked, die lines around his eyes and mouth etched more deeply than I had seen them before. I made no mention of my concern, knowing him to be quick and querulous in denying such things, as though a sickness or infirmity within himself were deadly insult to his physician's craft. Rather than alert him to my suspicions, I merely contented myself to ride close by his side, saying little but prepared to seize him .should he begin to fall. Only when we had safely passed the worst of the upward climb did I leave his side, and then I moved directly to where Donuil and Shelagh rode ahead of us, side by side, talking quietly of their own concerns. Warning them not to look back at Luke, I alerted them to my concern and arranged with Shelagh to coax him to his bed as soon as we arrived safely at the fort.
A short time after that, we breasted die last steep gradient and saw the western wall of Mediobogdum bright in the midday sun, above us to our left. Dedalus blew a blast on a coiled, copper horn to announce our arrival, and by the time we turned off the road to approach the main gates, Hector and several others were on the way out to meet us. I felt myself smiling as I saw the welcome on their faces, but the major part of my awareness was concerned with the beckoning plume of shimmering smoke wafting from the flue above the bathhouse furnace. I greeted everyone as required, then hung my helmet and swordbelt from my saddle-bow, draped my cloak across the saddle and turned Germanicus over to Donuil, after which I made my way on foot directly to the baths.
The steam room had another occupant when I arrived and I sensed his presence immediately, even though he was invisible among the swirling clouds of steam. The voice of Marie, the young carpenter, answered my greeting. He was standing against the wall when I finally saw him, and he lowered his arms from over his head as I approached, then launched into a series of questions about our journey. Loath to be coaxed into a long and unwelcome chronicle, I forestalled him with an upraised hand, shaking my head and asking his forbearance, pleading weariness and the simple need to stretch out and relax. He shrugged and smiled and nodded, accepting my demurral, and returned to what he had been doing when I entered, raising one arm and reaching behind his head to press the fingers of his hand against his spine between his shoulders while he pushed the elbow backward towards his ear with his other hand. On the point of lying down, I watched him curiously instead, noting His closed eyes and the concentration with which he held his uncomfortable position for a count of perhaps twice ten before changing over and doing die same thing with his other arm. When I asked him what he was doing, he lowered his arms and smiled at me, his face flushing red.
"I'm stretching the muscles of my arms—these ones." He squeezed the massive muscles at the back of his right upper arm with his left hand. 'They're stiff and very sore. So are my shoulders and my back muscles—my belly, too, and even my thighs. It's all this felling of trees that does it, swinging an axe from dawn till dusk every day for the past three weeks. Chopping down a healthy oak is like to chopping through a boulder, according to Longinus. He says both will destroy the sharpest axe's edge and bruise any man's muscles, and I believe him." He stopped, turned slightly to brace his left hand against the wall at his back, then raised his right foot, patching it in his right hand and swinging it up behind him so that the long, divided muscles in his thigh sprang into tension. "Crassus, a Roman- trained masseur in the baths at Ravenglass, taught me this technique of stretching aching muscles once they are warm. It's unpleasant at first, but it eases them, relieves the painfulness and stops them from cramping. I've been doing it for months, ever since we arrived here, and it is effective. And it grows easier, too, with repetition."
I was looking at him as he spoke, noticing for the first time the perfect shapeliness of the clean-lined, sharp- etched muscles rippling beneath his skin. He was magnificently made and in the very prime of his young, glowing manhood, smaller than me by almost one third my weight, I guessed, but perfectly proportioned for his size. I glanced down at my own heavily muscled body, seeing the solid thickness of my thighs and calves and my flat belly, innocent of fat, yet lacking the clean, clear muscular delineation that was so striking in young Mark.
"I don't remember you as being quite so—muscular," I said.
He had finished stretching his thighs and was now bent forward, stiff-kneed, his palms flat on the floor.. He straightened up easily and grinned at me. "I wasn't—never have been, until I came here and started swinging an axe for hours every day. There, that's all. I'm finished now. A cold plunge and a brisk towelling, and I'll be a new man. You should try it, Cay—felling trees, I mean, I think you would enjoy what it will do for you"
He picked up a towel from the bench and wrapped it around his waist before he left, and I stretched out again, settling my own folded towel beneath my head and frowning thoughtfully as the first stinging trickles of sweat broke out at my hairline and across my belly. I had grown lax with myself lately, I knew, neglecting my soldier's regimen over the course of the past winter. I would begin the following day, I decided, and spend at least a part of each morning henceforth swinging an axe against solid oak.
No one else came in to mar my solitude. I bathed at leisure, then shrugged naked into my tunic, pulled my sandals over my bare feet, and made my way to my quarters, carrying the remainder of my clothing beneath my arm, bundled into the cuirass I carried like a basket. I was anticipating a pleasurable change into fresh, clean-smelling clothes, but all thought of such things disappeared when I found the woman Tressa in my quarters. She had evidently thrown wide the shutters to air my rooms, and seeing that immediately, I also saw beyond them to where she was working in the shadowed interior with her back to me, wielding a broom.