"Then blessed be the bounteous Tressa, and I shall rejoice to see you smug and smiling, sated and uxorious in future."
"Uxorious? I am not speaking here of marriage, Luke."
"Nor should you be, my boy, at this stage, but you are speaking of sanity and freshening gale winds of sound good sense. Come, let us walk, for I find the thought of speech on celibacy has suddenly become much less oppressive. I have words to say to you, now that you appear disposed to hear them."
And so we walked, back and forth beneath the stone walls of the ancient fort, and my old friend held me close, my arm tucked firmly beneath his as he spoke of his own agonizing over the requests I had made of him in the recent and not-so-recent past. He had felt all along, he said, that I was in error with my wishes on the matter of celibacy. I had been fleeing towards it, he believed, and he knew well that flight from life was no way to achieve the condition which I thought I desired so profoundly. He had come to believe, to be convinced, that I was determined to launch myself along a road that must surely lead me to failure and frustration, and so he had avoided the topic to the best of his ability. .
Now that I had decided to abandon my unrealistic wishes, he informed me, he could hope that I might find far more satisfaction in the little he could teach me of the celibate way of life, for he was prepared, much more so than before, to teach me what he knew of the philosophy that underlay the discipline.
I was surprised to hear him say these things, and I asked him to explain. He reminded me that my original thought had been to learn self-mastery in celibacy, hoping to use that same self-mastery to aid me in my teaching of Arthur. There was nothing arcane in self-mastery, per se, Lucanus said. That was a matter of pure discipline, and I was already close to being adept in the skill, simply by virtue of the life that I had led. Gaining the arcane lore of the magi who had mastered asceticism and self-denial was an exercise in a further discipline that lay beyond mere sexual self-denial, and that lore, he declared, was superfluous, something of which I had no need at all. My gifts, he swore, my own abilities, already lay in my possession; all I required to make the best and finest use of them was equanimity and peace of mind, both of which lay securely rooted in self-confidence. When I had once decided who and what I was, and had accepted and embraced my role in life, he was convinced all those gifts and abilities would be unleashed and would flourish.
Just beyond the half-way point of our circuit of the walls, ahead of us and rushing towards us, a group of noisy children approached, milling around like fallen leaves in a high wind. We stopped to allow them to swirl by us in a babble of high, excited voices, parting around us and ignoring us as though we were invisible. Lucanus turned to watch them recede into the distance and then walked for a long time in a silence I had no desire or need to break.
"Do you know, Caius," he eventually said, "I can't remember ever having run like that, although I suppose I must have. I was a child once, you know."
"So long ago, my friend, that you cannot recall being one?"
"Oh, I remember well enough ... Some parts of it at least. The happy parts, mainly, but those seemed very few. Do you remember your boyhood?"
"Aye, vividly, and with pleasure. Uther and I enjoyed a childhood shared by few, filled with the joy of being who we were. We spent every autumn and winter in Roman Camulod, and every spring and summer in Celtic Cambria, although the bruises that we gathered were the same in both places."
"Aye, and they were plentiful, I'll warrant. But speaking of bruises, what is happening with that blemish on your chest? Have you been exposing it to healing air, as I suggested?"
"Aye, I have, but not apurpose, now that I think of it. Since the arrival of your scroll and your assurance that the mark is not what I once feared it was, I've lost awareness of it. But I have been going bare-chested recently, thanks to the clement weather."
Lucanus stopped and turned to face me. "Let's have a look at it. Undo your tyings."
I was wearing only a simple tunic, slashed at the neck and tied with a decorative cord, and I undid it, pushing the material aside to bare my right breast. Lucanus peered at it and sniffed. "Aye, as I thought, it seems to be receding. I remember it as being larger. It will be gone within the month, I'd wager."
He moved on and I walked beside him, adjusting my tunic as he murmured something about the pleasantness of the day.
At that point, seeing that we had completed our circuit of the walls and come close to our living quarters, where a throng of people were milling about, he stopped and turned to face me squarely, reaching out to grasp me by the shoulder and demonstrating that his grip was younger and stronger than his thin face might suggest. In perfect seriousness, he told me that my decision was absolutely the right one to make, and then he went on to embarrass me by saying that he considered me to be the finest man that he had ever known, including my own father, and that he could think Of no one better equipped than me to face the task I had set myself.
The boy Arthur would be a king, he said, under my guidance, but given that guidance and the attributes we knew the lad to possess, he believed implicitly that Arthur Pendragon would grow to be a king whose like had never lived in Britain. Not an emperor like Alexander, but a king, conquering no new lands but nurturing and strengthening his own, and gaining for himself a name and reputation that would never die, no matter what came after him.
When he stopped speaking, Luke's eyes were awash with unshed tears, and I had to swallow hard to subdue the lump thickening in my own throat. Thereafter, we were silent until we parted before his door. There was no more to say.
That night, when all our new colonists were gathered at dinner, I crossed to where young Tressa sat among the other newcomers from Ravenglass and sat down beside her. My advent, unprecedented though it was, seemed to provoke no comment, and Tressa betrayed no sign of nervousness or curiosity. She simply welcomed me and then spent the entire mealtime talking pleasantly of general trivia with the others, a conversation in which I joined without reservation. I enjoyed myself thoroughly.
When the meal was over and the gathering broke up, I walked with her out into the evening air, which held a chill and the promise of a late frost. She shivered and clasped her arms over her breast; I unfolded my cloak, which I was carrying over my arm, and draped it about her. She stopped, surprised, and favoured me with a lingering, speculative glance.
"Don't be upset, Master Cay, but what are you about?'
I smiled at her. "What do you think I am about, Tressa?"
She shook her head slowly, smiling faintly in return. "I know not. How could I? This is the first time you have ever paid any heed to me at all, and today you almost ran away from me, I thought. But suddenly now you're sitting with me, looking at me, talking to me, and now wrapping me in your fine cloak."
I realized that I had lost all awareness of what I had thought of in the past as her alien speech patterns. Her voice sounded perfectly normal to me now. I nodded. "I almost did run away from you today, but I have had time and opportunity to think since then. Will you forgive me?"
"Forgive you?" She laughed, a delightful, gurgling sound, deep in her chest. "Why, what have you done that should require forgiveness? I've noticed nothing."
"Well, I have been afraid of you, for one thing."
"What?" She stiffened. "Why would you say a thing like that, Master Cay? Are you making sport of me? If 'tis so, and I think it must be, then I shall leave you now, for I have done nothing to warrant that."
"Shh! Hush." I raised my hand gently as though to touch her mouth and she stilled instantly, watching me from wide eyes. I laid my fingers softly against her cheek and touched the cushion of her lips with the pad of my thumb. "I had no thought to mock you, lass. I spoke the truth. I was afraid of you, foolishly, because I was afraid of me and how I wanted to respond to you ... to the way you make me feel." I leaned closer to her, stooping my head to gaze into her eyes. "Do you have any notion of how you make me feel?"