They were particularly fascinated by the technique I used to throw the weapons, and by the accuracy I managed to achieve, although they pretended to be overly concerned about the amount of time I spent practicing. They were correct in that. I did spend inordinately large amounts of time practicing that winter, but there was little else to do most of the time. When the weather was too cold and the snow too deep to do much outside, I converted the largest hall in the basilica into a practice arena, piling all the cots and tables and benches up against one long wall and throwing my spears from one end of the vast hall to the other. The distance was slightly less than forty paces, which was ample room for practicing throwing with accuracy, and I had ranged a series of tables and benches of differing heights across one end of the room so that I could make my way from one side to the other, jumping or stepping from one level to another and throwing from any of them as I went. At the far end, I had mounted a series of five boards to serve as targets, each of them painted with pitch in approximately the size and shape of a man. My watchers were amazed that I could announce my targets from any throwing height, specifying the area I would hit—head, chest, thigh, and the like—and then hit accurately from thirty to forty paces distant eight times out of any ten. That, to them, was magical. To me, it was the result of incessant hours of brutal, unrelenting work.
As time passed the weather eventually grew more pleasant, and as the worst of the snow began to melt and disappear, I was able to move outside to practice on horseback. Everyone else did the same, of course, happy to be able to ride out again after having spent such a long time immured by the heavy snow. The others rode abroad, however. I was more than content to ride by myself most of the time, exercising constantly in the courtyard that Enos had originally allocated to the cavalry mounts from Camulod. It was not a large space, but it was suitable for my needs, offering me sufficient room to wheel and weave and to accustom myself again to the rhythm and disciplines of casting a spear with accuracy from the back of a moving horse. Again, watching me at work, my new companions from Cambria, who rode small, sturdy mountain ponies and were not at all familiar with large horses, merely shook their heads and looked at each other in rueful recognition of my interminable folly. All of them, at some time over the winter, had taken their turn at trying to throw my spears, and some had tried much harder than others. None of them, however, had had the slightest success in mastering even the basic elements of the throw.
The only person I ever knew who showed a natural skill with my throwing spears from the very outset was, astonishingly, Cynthia’s younger sister. The child would often come to watch me as I practiced, and so unobtrusive was she that I quickly grew accustomed to her presence and eventually lost all awareness of it. She never spoke to me and never interrupted me in any way, but simply sat watching me out of wide, bright blue eyes beneath the thick, black fringe of hair that framed her forehead. Her cheekbones were magnificent, high and slanted, and combined with her long, slender neck they gave her a swanlike, regal look. I had only ever seen her smile on two occasions, neither of them inspired by me, and in consequence I always thought of her as a solemn, humorless child who took little pleasure in anything, although I was quite aware that there was precious little in her twelve-year-old life to give her pleasure. There were few children of her own age in Verulamium but even so she was forbidden to mingle with them. She spent her entire life surrounded by her elders, and her sole sources of enjoyment were the things they deemed enjoyable.
One morning toward the end of that long winter, when I had chosen to work indoors, Bishop Enos summoned me while I was in the middle of my practicing, and when I returned from speaking to him I found the tall, almost painfully thin child standing alone in the hall, hefting one of my spears speculatively in her right hand and eyeing the target closest to her, which I estimated at a glance to be somewhere in the region of twenty paces from where she stood. I had stopped short in the doorway and she was unaware of my presence, and I remained silent, waiting to see what she would do next.
Then I realized she already held the weapon in the throwing grip, the thong wrapped around her fist. She whipped up her arm, glided forward effortlessly and fluidly onto the ball of her left foot, and executed what appeared to me to be a perfect cast. The weapon hurtled out of her grasp, the tip of its tail spinning only slightly out of true, and shot toward the target, where it passed so close to the edge of the board that its whirling tail clipped the wood. Knocked off its true flight then, the spear clattered to the ground and slid across the floor to come to rest against the great fireplace. I muttered an involuntary exclamation of amazement.
At the sound, the girl spun to face me, her hands flying up to her mouth and her eyes flaring wide in panic. And then, before I could do anything to stop her or reassure her, she fled, throwing the great doors open and dashing out into the courtyard. I ran after her, calling to her to wait, but she paid me no attention and only ran the harder until she vanished from view around the corner of one of the outer buildings.
Annoyed and more than slightly exasperated, I returned to the long hall and picked up the spear. I was interested in my memory of how the child had thrown the thing. Admittedly the weapon was extremely light, and the probability was high that only by a fluke had she managed to combine the angle of her throw with the speed and pressure necessary to whip the spear forward with anything resembling accuracy, but nonetheless it had been an astonishing performance. None of the grown men who had attempted to throw these weapons over the previous months had even come close to doing what the Brat had done at first attempt.
In the ten days that followed I never once set eyes on her again. No doubt afraid that I must be enraged at her, she took the greatest of pains to stay well beyond the reach of my displeasure. Early in that period, I had thought of asking her father where I might find her, but, remembering that Symmachus had shown almost as much apparently ingrained disapproval of the child as he had of me, I thought better of it and sought out his wife, Demea, instead.
Demea greeted me courteously when I approached her that evening before dinner, making my way through the throng of her admirers and waiting patiently until she found the time to turn to me. The child, being a child, was not among the diners. She ate all her meals in the kitchens with the junior servants and the children of the serving staff, which was the custom. Children seldom ate with the adults at the main meal of the day, and most particularly so when the evening gathering was large and could become unruly and boisterous. Gaining a seat at the household table was one of the distinguishing rites of passage from childhood to adult status for people of both sexes.
Demea turned to me eventually with a gracious smile and asked after my health, plainly wondering what could have brought me to seek her out on this occasion, since in the normal way of things I would have contented myself to acknowledge her from a distance with a courteous nod of greeting and a pleasant smile. I cleared my throat uncertainly, suddenly uncomfortable and almost embarrassed by the remembrance of what this woman’s husband believed to be my motivation concerning his elder daughter. Demea cocked her head slightly, waiting for me to speak, a vaguely uncertain smile hovering about her lips. I cleared my throat again, then begged her pardon for imposing upon her in this way and asked her what her younger daughter’s name was.