"Aye, and it may equally be true." We sat quiet thereafter, each of us with his own thoughts, until I said, "What if it is true?"
Now Ambrose roused himself and stretched. "What if it is? All that would change in our design is that Arthur might conceivably lose the Pendragon mountain kingdom in Cambria. True, it's his patrimony, but its loss would not be totally unbearable. He'd still have Camulod and all its strength, and the kinship of the Eirish Scots, and his claim to Cornwall. Sufficient there to keep a lad of Arthur's mettle on his toes for fifty years or so. Anyway, there's little profit to be had from fretting over it. If this boy is out there, somewhere, he will come forward, sooner or later, to declare himself—and when he does, he won't have Uther's Seal to wear on his right hand, nor Uther's armour on his back, nor Uther's Camulodian cousins on his side. Have you spoken to Derek yet about regaining Uther's armour?"
"Aye, several times. I believe he'll give it to the boy when the right time comes, but he'll do it through me. He has no wish for the child to know or even to be curious about who killed his father. He keeps the armour well maintained, though. I've seen it. It's free of rust and the leather harness is supple and well oiled ... " I sat gazing into the fire for a while, then expelled my breath loudly and stood up.
"You're right, Brother, there's little to be gained by agonizing over a child who might never have been sired or, if he was, might well have died in infancy. If he's still alive, and dangerous to us, we'll find out soon enough. But we won't discover anything tonight. Let's go to bed."
Ambrose remained with us in Mediobogdum for only two weeks on that occasion, at the end of which he returned to Camulod by the same route. But from the first day of that visit, young Arthur threw himself more wholeheartedly than ever into his training, working ceaselessly with the wooden practice swords and driving his companions to equal his own efforts. Remembering the sight of his Uncle Ambrose riding down from the high pass at the head of his troops, Arthur would take no rest from that time on until he had ensured that he, too, would one day make such a commanding appearance at the head of his own men. I was well content with that, and drove him the harder because of it, deriving pleasure from the speed with which he absorbed everything to which I set him, and from the satisfying way his lean, narrow frame soon began to fill out and grow visibly stronger.
I find it strange that I seem to have lacunae in my memories of that brief, happy time. Few coherent images linger in my consciousness of the passage of time in the period of years that followed; the summers and the winters, springs and autumns blended into a timeless, almost unheeding idyll during which we were unthreatened By the world outside and utterly uncaring of its affairs. To some extent, my inattention was attributable to the luxurious novelty of my life with Tressa. Perhaps the truth might be served better by phrasing that last observation as "the luxurious novelty of having Tress in my life," for I have no wish to suggest that we two settled in together to enjoy a life of conjugal bliss; that would be far from the truth. We did, however, grow quickly into a close friendship that was cemented by the sexual intimacy we enjoyed openly and without subterfuge.
Of course, there were events that took place during those years that do stand out, but all of those were self- contained, brief ruptures in the fabric of our daily lives— many of them pleasant, others less so. Marriages were made among our folk and Derek's, and children were born, and some of those—very few, thanks to our good Lucanus—died in infancy. One of our number, a newcomer from Ravenglass, ventured outside the north gate late one night, far gone in drink, and fell over the abyss to his death, taking with him the companion who had walked with him hoping to lead him safely home.
Ambrose himself returned as often as he could, at least once a year, as did Connor from Eire. I recall quite clearly that on his third visit, or it might even have been his fourth, Ambrose astonished us all by telling us that Camulod had garrisoned the abandoned town of Lindinis, or Ilchester as it was being called nowadays, the closest settlement to our Colony on the great road south to Isca. His announcement created a furore of questioning and debate upon die wisdom of such a thing.
Ambrose sat back throughout the entire chorus, smiling to himself and simply allowing us to vent our outrage and disbelief, his eyes ranging from face to face as he listened. Ilchester, he was informed, as if he did not know, had degenerated quickly after the legions left, becoming a dreary, squalid, dreadful place of ruins and desolation. It was entirely unsuited as a garrison station for Camulod's troopers. It was too far away from Camulod itself and would be practically indefensible in the event of attack from north or south. The road itself offered an enemy direct access to the walls. What was the Council thinking of, initiating such a thing, and had they no concern at all for the morale of the troopers stationed there in such a place?
I had noted the smile on my brother's face from the outset, and so had contributed nothing to the general storm of disapproval, preferring to wait and hear what he would say when it had blown itself out. Dedalus, too, I noticed, sat in silence, and it amazed me that none of the others seemed aware of that. His was the voice that should have roared above all the rest, and yet its silence went unheeded. Eventually, however, the noise subsided and the few individual voices that still muttered tailed self-consciously away into a lengthy silence that no one seemed inclined to break. I caught my brother's eye and leaned forward.
"Aren't you sorry you mentioned that?"
"No," he replied, his smile growing wider. "I expected it and I enjoyed it."
"Then you have a response?"
Ambrose looked about him. "Of course, and I'll give it gladly, although I may not be able to address every point that was raised here." He paused. "First, let me say that Lindinis, or Ilchester, whichever you prefer, is a vastly altered place from the desolate slum you knew. The ruins are all gone, leaving a wide, cleared space all around the fort. The walls stand high and strong, far higher than they were before, three earth-filled tiers of them, faced with new palisades of logs. Inside the walls, the houses are all rebuilt and full of people—the garrison and their families. We have new earthen walls reaching to new heights, new parapets and towers housing artillery, and a broad, deep, triple ditch surrounding all, crossed by three separate bridges that are raised and lowered from gate-towers by the garrison. The town is virtually impregnable today, even from the open road, and morale there is very high. In the space of a year, incredible as it might seem to you who knew it years ago, Ilchester has become a sought-after post." He stopped, and looked around from face to face.
"Now, why did we do it? Why did we go to such great lengths to redeem a lost town, thirty and more miles from our home base?"
Hector spoke up. "Overcrowding. It was bound to come to that."
"Precisely, Hector—overcrowding." Ambrose turned his gaze back on the others. "You were all there at home the year following the Great Winter. You know how hard we worked to build new quarters for the intake of soldiers we enlisted that year to fill the ranks left empty by the wars in Cornwall, and if you think upon it, you'll recall how much talk there was of reallocation of our arable lands for crops to feed them all. Years have passed since then, and each of them has seen a new intake of soldiers, because soldiers are our lifeblood.
"None of us can ever afford to forget the reason for Camulod's founding. It was survival! Survival in the face of catastrophe and invasion by aliens. That survival involves military readiness—not simply the will to fight but the strength to fight and win, and that strength is our garrison. The moment we allow our garrison to weaken in any way, we might as well lie down and die, because our survival will be at an end." Again he paused, letting his listeners agree to that before he hammered home his next point.