Now I took a generous pinch of it between two fingers and my thumb and wrapped it tightly in a twist of cloth. I made sure to close the box carefully, then handed the twist to Arthur.
"Here, there's nothing more to see of it than you have seen. It has no taste, no odour, no particular colour apart from black and brown, and no use that I could find for it. It does not dissolve in water, nor in wine, and it's not poisonous. Throw it in the fire, there, behind you."
He turned and did as I had bidden, watching to see what would happen. The twist landed on some unburned coals and lay there, beginning to smoulder at the ends. He turned to look at me and I waved him back to the fire, and his eyes returned to the smouldering cloth just as the powder inside it ignited. There came a sudden, concussive whuff of sound, a blinding glare of blazing light, and then thick clouds of black, evil-smelling smoke, shot through with whirling sparks, boiled up and belched outward from the brazier. I had been expecting it, but even I was taken aback by the ferocity of the reaction.
Arthur leaped to his feet in terror, the colour fleeing from his face as he fought against the panic that urged him to run and hide. He teetered there for a long moment, poised between flight and acceptance, and then he suddenly dropped to his knees, grasping a piece of kindling from beside the brazier and using it to brush a number of fierce-burning embers towards the hearth before they could set the entire room alight. I rushed to help him, horrified by the sight of so many burning patches on the rug Tressa herself had woven for me. Between the two of us, we somehow cleared everything before any noticeable damage had been inflicted, and then we both sat back on our haunches, puffing and laughing nervously.
"Well," said Arthur, "that's two things you can't burn without risk: the yellow grass and the black powder. What is it, Cay? Do you have any idea?"
I shook my head. "None. It looks like crushed charcoal, doesn't it? But it's not like any charcoal I've ever seen before."
"It burns so quickly, that's the frightening thing about it. No warning of any kind, just whoosh! and it's gone. Have you ever heard of anything like it?"
"Absolutely not, but the warlocks who brought it here were from the distant reaches of the Empire. Their names were Egyptian, but I suspect they came from even farther afield than that, perhaps from beyond the eastern borders, where the people are said to be yellow of skin. I'd wager that even if they were not from those parts; they'd been to them. Anyway, now that you have seen how this powder works, what do you think I ought to do with it?"
He shook his head and then smiled. "Use it to frighten people? It works very well for that."
I laughed with him and then rose to my feet and placed the box of powder back into its space at the bottom of the chest, after which I allowed him to help me in repacking everything else I had unearthed. As I was locking the padlocks, he stood off to one side, watching me.
"These things are very dangerous. Cay."
"Aye, they are that, but they're safe enough in there, for now, so long as I have the only keys to the boxes. There's only one of each. I haven't looked inside these things in years, but now I know I have to go through everything they contain, meticulously, and try to discover what each item is, and what might be done with it. I could never bring myself simply to destroy them without trying to discover what they are. D'you understand that?"
"Of course I do. They represent knowledge. Though you might not, there are people somewhere who know all the uses of them, and knowledge is power."
Knowledge is power. I smiled, hearing him quote the words I had said to him so many times.
'There were people, once, who knew the uses of them, Arthur, but they are dead. Perhaps they took their knowledge with them into their graves. We may never discover what these things are."
"You will. If you apply yourself, the way you're always telling me to apply myself, you'll answer all your own questions. All you need do is work at it."
I grinned, dropping my keys into my scrip. "You are impertinent, but I hope you are also right. Come, let's find Tress before she finds us and sees what we almost did to her handsome rug."
Tress, I knew, was visiting Shelagh, and as we walked towards Shelagh and Donuil's quarters I placed my hand casually on Arthur's shoulder, gauging his height as I always did. In the past few years he had shot up so that, where once I walked with my elbow only slightly bent to hold him, I now had to raise my hand almost to the level of my own shoulder.
"It will rain tonight," I said.
He looked up at the lowering clouds and grunted, his lack of interest apparent in his next question. "Cay, will you take me some day to see Stonehenge?"
"Stonehenge? Yes, of course, if you want me to. What made you think of that?"
"I was thinking of the lichen Grandfather Varrus noticed on the standing stones, the day he first waited with Great-uncle Caius to meet my Grandfather Ullic. It was a cloudy day then, too, like today. I was thinking, too, about knowledge and its power. When I first read that tale, I didn't know what lichen was, and so I asked Lucanus and he showed me some. I'd seen it before, but I'd thought it was just dirt and grime and that the colours in the patches were accidental. Lucanus told me lichen are living plants, just like moss. Today I see lichen everywhere. But if Grandfather Varrus had not written those words, I would never have known."
He half turned and squinted up at me, something else on his mind. "Grandfather Varrus had his books, and your Grandfather Britannicus had his, and I know you have writings set down by your father, my Uncle Picus. I've read all of them and I've learned much from them, but all of them have left me feeling ... I don't know what the correct word is ... incomplete? I feel as though I am still learning, still being exposed to the thoughts of my elders, and you are my most recent elder. Will you write down your thoughts some day?"
I found myself wanting to grin, self-conscious, yet amused and flattered. "I don't know, Arthur. I had not thought that far ahead. I have the task of caring for the books now, but I hadn't thought of adding to them. I haven't had time, to tell the truth. Of what should I write?"
"Of your life! About Camulod, and Ravenglass, and. Eire. And of my father Uther, and Cornwall. If no one had written down the early tale of how the Colony was founded, none of us would remember. This is an important task, Cay. Someday I will write my life's tale down, for my own sons and grandsons, just as Grandfather did." -
I grinned at him and squeezed the back of his neck, feeling the hard column of young muscle. "Should you live so long," I teased him, "I'll keep you mindful of that promise."
Ah, the dreadful things we say in jest!
There was one more item contained in those chests that was not maleficent, and I found it the following day. I mention it now because, insignificant and quaint as it seemed at the time, it yet became one of the two most powerful items contained in that evil collection.