Derek turned his head to look at me over his shoulder. "Why are we thus honoured? We're naught but visitors. This is your homecoming—you should be out there at the head of your men."
I laughed, wryly enough to make him twist around further to look at me, and then I told them what I had just discovered about my own appearance. After a while Tress asked, "Were you really that different, back then?"
Of course, Tress had never seen me as my true self, the man Connor called Yellow Head. I had been Cay of the brown hair and plain clothing since before she ever met me. No sooner had I begun to laugh again than the reality sobered me, so that my laugh died on my lips.
"Well," Derek growled, "Merlyn of Camulod does not exist outside his armour. Is that important at this moment? I don't think so, since the armour can't do anything without the man inside it. This lack of recognition means no more than that no one will see you've come home until you choose to show them, and that means you're free, for now, to sit up here with us and explain all the sights we'll see along the road."
I slipped my right arm about Tress's soft and supple waist and laid my left hand on Derek's shoulder. "I may not even be able to do that, my friend, for I'm already perplexed. That guardhouse wasn't there when I left, and this road we're travelling on was an old, grassy track. Those are the only two things I've seen so far that should be familiar, and they're both changed beyond recognition. But I'll explain what I can, so move over, both of you. Tress, you move towards the middle and I'll perch beside you, on the outside."
From that point onward, all along the road to Camulod itself, I saw differences everywhere and did my best, for a time at least, to point all of them out. Many of the great trees on both sides of the road, once so thick they had almost formed a wall, had been cut down and uprooted, their wood, I later learned, used to build houses and furniture, and new barracks blocks and stables down in Ilchester. As a result of the tree clearing, there were more fields in evidence now, too, on either side of the road. And everywhere I looked, there were houses, all of them wooden, some more strongly built than others. Multitudes of people were going about the business of their daily lives where once there had been nothing but rabbits, squirrels, deer and bears moving silently through dense thickets. All around me, as I rode, I saw the differences, and eventually my mind grew numb with the scope of them. I rode in silence then, trying not to see. so many changes, and my companions left me to my thoughts.
As we neared the end of the road, concealed from the sight of Camulod's hill fort by no more than a few hundred paces of fringing trees, the sound of children's voices, growing steadily louder, forced itself into my awareness. We came to a place where no more than a few giant trees remained on the right of the road. Arthur, Bedwyr, Gwin and Ghilly sat on their horses by the roadside, staring silently down into the open meadow beyond them. Now as we slowly approached, Arthur turned to look at me, his eyebrows raised high in a wordless question. The children's voices, raised in noisy, boisterous play, were loud enough here to cover the creaking of the wagons' axles and the crunching of the flint roadbed beneath our metal tyred wheels.
There appeared to be hundreds of children in the meadow, close to the road, ranging in age from five or six to some as old as ten or even twelve. They were surging everywhere, in front of and around a long, low building built of logs and roofed with thatch, the upper parts of its walls open to the weather, although I could see where shutters would be hung on less pleasant days. I wanted to stop and look, but I could not have reasonably done so without interrupting the entire train that followed us, and so I contented myself with craning my neck to see all that I could see in passing. Arthur pulled his horse around and brought it to the side of the wagon, where he could look up at me, but it was Derek who spoke first.
"What's going on there, then? I've never seen so many brats assembled in one place. Is it a camp? A camp for children?"
I shook my head, glancing at Arthur, who, I knew, was listening closely. "No, I don't think so. Not a camp. But a school, I think."
Derek's face was blank. "A what? What's one of them?"
"It's a place where children go to learn their lessons— how to read and write. The way Arthur and the boys did in Mediobogdum. We had a school there, too, though there were only a few children involved. This one looks far more organized." I looked down at Arthur. "What are you looking so glum about?"
He kneed his horse slightly away from the wagon, to where he would not have to peer up at me so sharply. "Will I have to go to school there?" He did not appear to relish the prospect.
I grinned at him. "I doubt it. Your next classroom will be the campaign trail, if I'm any judge. Besides, the oldest child I saw back there might have been twelve. You are beyond that, aren't you?"
He frowned slightly, until he saw that I was tweaking him, and then he smiled and pulled back on his reins, allowing us to pass by him as he swung about to rejoin his friends. The first brazen peal of a trumpet soon sounded ahead of us, to be echoed and answered by others in the distance as the word was passed from point to point that newcomers were arriving.
Moments later we rounded the last bend, and there sat Camulod, upon its hilltop. Tress caught her breath audibly, and Derek whistled softly through his teeth.
"So that's Camulod," he murmured, more to himself than to anyone.
"Aye, that is Camulod. We're home. Tress? What think you?'
"It's... it's very grand," she whispered, and I laughed again, feeling the pride swell in me.
"No more than you are, lass, and it's yours—all of it."
She turned sideways to look at me, thinking I was teasing her. "Why would you say that, Cay?"
"Say what, that it's yours? It is! At least, as much of it , as is mine is yours—in other words, all of it, and none of it. My family, Britannicus and Varrus mixed, created and built this place, Tress, and we have guarded it and governed it ever since. It stands on Britannicus land, but we have never sought to own it. The Britannici are the custodians of this place, holding it in trust but holding it nonetheless. And as my wife, you will be the castellan."
"And what about Ludmilla?"
The unexpected chill in her tone disconcerted me. "What about her? You and she—"
"Ludmilla is the mistress here in Camulod, Cay—the castellan, as you call it—and she has been since you left, perhaps since even before you left. She is your brother's wife and he has been in sole command here for the past six , almost seven, years, which means that she has, too, within her own domain. Do you expect to walk in there today and oust her, replacing her with me?"
"No, but—"
"No, but what? Think you Ludmilla will be grateful to simply back away and give up whatever systems she has put in place to run this ..." She fumbled, searching for a word to complete her thought. "... this town? Do you believe she will be thankful to me, a simple servant girl from Ravenglass, for stepping into her world and dispossessing her?"
"Tressa!"
"Don't 'Tressa' me, Cay. I'm very serious." Though she spoke in a moderate tone, her disapproval seemed progressively louder to me as she continued. "Have you thought at all about my situation here? I am not your wife, not yet. I have no rights here in this place, and I won't permit you to act or speak as though I have, or should have, or might wish to have. I am your... companion, nothing more, your consort—though most folk here will simply say your mistress, which is true enough. But I won't be thought of as an upstart or a troublemaker, and I won't be made to look like one against my will. Do you hear me?"