After that, Daglaef the Merchant came on another evening, not to sell, but simply as one man to sit by another’s fire and drink a pot of beer and pass an hour or two. He was a great talker, and listening to him on those long winter evenings, as I have always loved to listen to the talk of travelers, I heard tales of strange lands and stranger peoples, of beasts as large as mountains moving and with tails at both ends, of long sea voyages and distant cities; but also, in and out between all these things, much more concerning Caledonia and the Caledonians.
It was February, and I remember that there were snowdrops appearing through the sodden brown of last year’s fallen leaves in what remained of the Commandant’s garden, when Flavian came looking for me one evening. I had formed a fondness for the place, scarcely larger than a good-sized room, shut within half-ruined walls; it had a quiet of its own, remote from the bustle of the fortress, that made it a good place to come to when I wanted to think. I had been pacing up and down and then sitting on the bench of green-stained marble, thinking of the things that Daglaef the Merchant had told me, and wondering how they were going to fit into any plan of action; and when I turned to go back to my quarters, there he was, just behind me.
I noticed that there were three snowdrops, fully out, stuck into the shoulder strap of his worn leather tunic, which struck me as odd, more like Cei than Flavian. “Sir —” he began. “Sir —” and seemed for the moment unsure how to go further.
“Well,” I said, “what is it, Flavian? Not trouble with the squadron?”
He shook his head.
“What, then?”
“Sir, I — I have come to ask leave to take a girl from her father’s hearth.”
I cursed inwardly. It happened from time to time, and for the Company it was a bad thing. “You mean legally, before witnesses?”
He nodded. “Yes, sir.”
I sat down again on the bench. “Minnow, I’ve never forbidden the Companions to marry, you know that; I have no right, and besides, I am well aware that I should have no Company if I did; but none the less, I don’t like it. Let a man take the girl he fancies to bed with him when he wants to laugh and make love, and be warm in the winter nights; there’s no harm in that, and afterward he is a free man to kiss and ride away. But the bond that he forges when he takes a wife — that is not good for men who fight the kind of war that we fight.”
Flavian’s face was troubled but perfectly steady in its resolve. “Sir, the bond is forged already; going before witnesses can make no difference. We belong to each other, Teleri and I.”
“In every way?”
“In every way.” His eyes were clear and quiet, and they never wavered.
“Then if it makes so little difference, why marry her?”
“So that if — if there’s a child, no one can point a finger at her.”
“So the Minnow also has done his begetting under a hawthorn bush.” I was silent for a while, crumbling the chill emerald moss from the back of the bench under my fingers. I understood the three snowdrops now. Teleri must have stuck them there with the fingers of love, while they spoke, no doubt, of how he would come to me for my leave to marry her. “Who and what is she, this girl?” I asked, after a while.
Flavian had been standing stiffly before me all the while. “Just a girl — little and brown like a bird that you hold in your hand. Her father is a wool merchant.”
“You have little enough to offer. Will he give her to you?”
“Yes, because I am of your Companions, and because there might be the babe.”
“If I give you leave to marry her, you know how it must be, don’t you? You leave her in her father’s house when we march in the spring; and it may be that one day we shall come back to make our winter quarters in Deva again, and it may be not; and it may be that one day you will be able to send for her to some other place, or again it may be not; but either way you leave her in her father’s house. I’ll have no virtuous wives following the camp to cause trouble, only whores.”
“I understand — we both understand that, sir.”
I heard myself sigh. “So be it, then. Go and tell her. And Minnow, hand over the squadron to Fercos first. You need not come back into camp tonight.”
“Yes, sir.” He looked down and then up again. “I don’t know how to thank you, sir, I have not the words — but if I could serve you more truly than I have done since the days that I was your armor-bearer, I would.” His grave face flashed for a moment into its rare laughter. “If it would give you the least satisfaction to have my hide for a riding rug, you have but to say the word.”
“I think Teleri might like it better on your back than Arian’s,” I said. “Go now. She will be waiting.”
He drew himself up in the old formal legionary salute, and turned and strode away.
I remained sitting on the weather-stained bench, hearing his tread fade into the distant sounds of the camp, and I knew that I would have given everything I possessed in the world, to be as the Minnow was tonight. Everything save the leadership of three hundred men and the thing that we fought for. But when I came to think of it, that was all I did possess.
Spring came, and we heard the curlews calling far into the night as they came in from the salt marshes to nest on the higher ground. Bedwyr set off once more for Arfon, and once more got back with the grain carts filled; green flame ran through the woodlands, and above the marshes the furze was on fire. A wild unrest seized us all, but as yet there was nothing we could do save wait.
There began to be rumors of black war boats on the coast far north of the Wall; of Pictish envoys having been seen in this place and that. One day a hunter with wolfskins for sale came to me from the North, saying: “My Lord the Bear, last autumn the Cran Tara went out, and now the Scots and the Painted People and the Sea Wolves are hosting. I saw a band of the White Shield Warriors on the track from the west with my own eyes, and they say that Huil Son of Caw stands at the Dun of his forefathers to lead them.“ Two days later one of my own scouts came in with the same story and showed me a Scottish arm ring with dried blood like rust between the coils to prove it. Kinmarcus had been right, and this year would indeed be a race against time. . . . And still, as yet, there was nothing that we could do but wait, praying that the waiting time would not be long.
That is the disadvantage of cavalry in the North or in mountain country; one cannot march until long after the true start of the campaigning season. One must wait until there is grass enough to feed the horses, and that may be May, even the start of June in a late season; whereas those who go to war for the most part on foot, as the Saxons do, can take the war trail a month earlier. We had no means of knowing whether Hengest and Octa would use that advantage to march on us while we were still bound in winter quarters, or whether they might be waiting for reinforcements, or planned to make their stronghold at Eburacum and hold it against us when we came. It was hard to wait so, for Hengest to take the initiative, and for myself, I have always hated to fight on the defensive, though many of my greatest fights have been defensive ones. But I thought that in the long run, our advantage might equal theirs, simply because if the battle was finally joined close to Deva, we should have short supply lines, whereas theirs would be perilously long — always supposing that the menace from the North did not strike before Hengest did. Everything depended on that.
So we lived through that April in a growing fever with one eye always cocked toward the dark moorland shoulder of Black Bull, a day’s march away, where the nearest of our watchers and signal fires waited. And at last it came to May Day Eve. . . .