He smiled and caressed her high-piled hair. "No, my dear, of course not. But you could please me more by changing it."
Enid hitched around in her seat to face him completely. "Changing it? The child's name? To what?"
He shook his head slightly. "I have no idea, child, but think of this place and what we have done here. This place is British. Its people are, too. We are a new breed here. It seems to me that the full name you would give your child is too Roman — too old-fashioned — for this time and place." He stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. "Your son will have the blood of Celtic kings in his veins, Enid. Kings of Britain. So give him a British name, one of your own." He grinned broadly. "But none of your Celtic jaw-breakers. Make it a simple name, one that men will hear and know and remember. A name for this land. That would please me greatly."
She stared at him for long moments and then reached out and took his hand. "Thank you, Father Cay," she said. "I like that. I will think carefully about it and try to find something that will please all of us."
She named the baby Merlyn, after the blackbird whose magical songs filled the long spring and summer days throughout the length and breadth of Britain. Caius Merlyn Britannicus.
XXX
The news of my own grandson's birth arrived from Ullic's people a short time later. No Roman nonsense there; the child, a boy, had been named Uther, Uther Pendragon. Mother and child were both well and would come to visit us in the spring, as soon as the snow, heavy in the hills this year, had melted.
I was content with the news of the children, but I was far from happy with the results of my attempts to pour a hilt for the new sword. Nine times I had tried it by the beginning of spring thaw, and nine times the result had been failure. Andros and I were convinced the technique must work eventually, once we had mastered the knack of pouring the metal in the correct volume, at the right speed and at the proper temperature, but our early efforts had been ludicrous, and I had often thanked God and my stars that the metal of the sword was as hard as it was, because I had been constrained to melt nine messes of bronze and gold from the adamantine tangs, cleaning them completely after each failed attempt. It was starting to prove expensive, too, for we were never able to reclaim all of the gold from the abortive attempts, and each time we tried again I had to melt a few more coins of Grandfather's hoard.
Perhaps it was because I had so much on my mind at that time that the significance of what Luceiia was saying escaped me when she told me that the two children, Uther and Merlyn, had been born at the same time, the fourth hour of the morning of the second day of January. Later, when I thought about it, I laughed to myself at the old wives' mutterings that would give the baby boys power over each other's lives in the years to come because of the coincidence of their birth. As I have said before, I never was a superstitious man, and although I was prepared to grant the strangeness of the timing, I well knew the cause of it. Had they been born together, under the same roof, I might have given the matter some more thought, but that is useless conjecture; they were born sixty miles apart, and they were as different as day and night from the time of their birth. Caius Merlyn Britannicus and Uther Pendragon would live their separate destinies. The cousins would grow up knowing each other well, but as individuals, with but little influence each on the other. I put the matter out of my mind and concentrated upon my own immediate problems.
And so it was that dawn of the Ides of March that year found me sitting alone in the smithy, waiting for my tenth mould to be cool enough to crack open, and looking admiringly at the silver blade of the sword that projected from the great cubic mass of the mould like a tongue of liquid light. I remember wondering then if I would ever be able to hold it properly in my hand as a finished sword. I touched the mould tentatively. It was still too hot. I hissed with frustration and impatience and made my way across to the villa in search of something to break my night's fast. I had not slept at all that night, but I had little awareness of that at the time. I was too tightly wound, like an overstressed spring, to think about sleep.
I heard my great-nephew Merlyn howling as I entered the villa. His mother had made her permanent home there since his birth, living in one small section of the house and refusing to have servants wait upon her. She was a Celt, never comfortable with having other people do the work she considered to be hers by right. As she put it, she could not enjoy having other people live for her. Because she was so obviously sincere in this, we humoured her, leaving her alone to look after her section of the big house, and the servants came down from the hill on two days each week to maintain the rest of the building. We made sure, however, that someone from the household stayed with her each night. Caius and I had both been there the previous night, so I had felt no guilt about spending the entire night in the smithy.
I followed the sound of infant wails to the kitchen, where I found Enid heating food in a pan over the fire. I greeted her and picked up the boy, soothing him into silence.
"Is he hungry, Enid? Is that why he's crying?" "No, he is a pig," she smiled. "That's why he's crying." The baby was quiet now, staring up at me with great, brown eyes. She came and pinched his fat cheek gently. "A greedy little pig, aren't you? He's sucked me dry this morning, so he'll have to wait. Even a cow runs dry, you know!" This last was to her son, who ignored her. "What are you heating there? Is there enough for me?" She nodded, stirring the contents of the pan. "There's enough for all of us, but Father Cay hasn't stirred yet." She paused for a heartbeat and then asked, "How old is Caius, Publius?"
"Cay? Let's see..." I had to think about it for a few moments. "Well, he's about five years older than me, I think, so that would make him sixty-two or sixty-three, something like that. Might even be a little older. Why do you ask?"
She frowned slightly. "I don't know. He seems to me to be ageing quickly, that's all."
"Ageing quickly? You think so?" I was surprised. "I haven't noticed anything. Not recently, I mean. There was a time, back a few years ago, when I really worried about him, but he came through that, and he's been in excellent fettle ever since ... At least, I haven't noticed anything to indicate otherwise. You evidently have. What is it?"
She shook her head. "I don't know, Publius. It's nothing obvious, but it is there. He seems to tire quickly nowadays and he sleeps more than he used to."
I laughed at that, tossing the baby gently into the air and catching him before he really lifted out of my hands. "That's because this fellow here has made him a grandfather. I mean, Cay is over sixty, Enid. Most men never see that age. The few who do tend to slow down afterward, particularly if they are spending most of their time playing with babies."
"Hmmm, I suppose they do." She tilted her head to one side in a gesture I had become familiar with and accepted my opinion. "I am probably imagining things. Put tomorrow's emperor down and come and eat. I'm famished even if you are not."
Caius joined us as we were finishing our meal, and he and I chatted together for a few minutes as Enid moved around preparing food for him, and then I left again to resume my vigil at the smithy. As I was leaving the house, I met Plautus coming in to visit and so I stopped to talk with him, too. It was one of those brilliant early mornings that presage a glorious spring day. He asked me where I was going and I told him that I was about to crack the mould for the tenth time. As soon as he heard that, he wanted to come with me and watch the operation.
"Are you quite sure about that, Plautus?" My question was only half in jest. "I am not the most pleasant or courteous person when my moulds do not turn out correctly."