"Then what right do you have? Is he not one of your tenants?"
"No, he is not. He is a colonist and he contributes his work to the Colony. He's also a free man."
"Then tell me, what would your recourse have been if he were one of your legionaries and behaved this way?"
Cay's response was instantaneous. "I would have had him flogged."
"Then flog him now, Caius, or you risk seeing others following his example."
"Nonsense! You are making too much of this, Luceiia."
At that point I intervened, seeing the wrath that was building in both of them. I suggested that we think upon what Luceiia had said and consider our options in the light of the seriousness of her charges. I also suggested that I would make a point of visiting the carpenter in question and having a talk with him. Both of them seemed satisfied with this, and we went on to talk of other things until the fire finally burned down without anyone making a move to replenish it and we all went to bed. The last thing Luceiia said to me before we slept was that she was glad I was going to speak to the fellow.
VI
Although I had fully intended to talk to Lignus the carpenter the next day, as I had promised Luceiia, I had forgotten in the enthusiasm of our discussion that I had also promised to ride into Aquae Sulis with Victorex, one of the colonists from Terra's villa. He was bound for the market there, hoping to buy a stud horse he had heard would be for sale, and I had volunteered to accompany him. It was a long and tedious journey to make alone, and I had business there that I had been putting off for some time.
We travelled in a fast, light cart, pulled by two horses, and had a pleasant journey together, talking of horses all the way, since Victorex seemed to have no other interests. When we arrived, however, Victorex discovered to his great disappointment that his hoped-for stallion was nowhere to be found. Unwilling to waste his journey completely, he went to make more inquiries and discovered that its sale had been postponed simply because its owner could not make the journey into town for that market day. Freshly determined to succeed, Victorex set out to find the owner's villa and make a private purchase, leaving me to make my own way back to the Colony in the cart. He would ride back on his new stallion, he said. I spent the night with him in Aquae and set out for home the following morning as soon as the sun rose above the horizon.
The journey back took the whole of the day. The weather was beautiful and I made excellent time on the road, but I was still almost seven miles from the Colony as darkness fell, forcing me to reduce my speed. I usually prefer to camp out rather than attempt to travel at night, but this night was mild and the sky was cloudless and moonlit and I was on my home ground, so I decided to keep going. I stayed on the main road south for another three miles and kept up a good pace to the point where the road came closest to the Colony. There I struck out overland, much more slowly, but travelling as the crow flies rather than taking the longer, more circuitous route offered by the track from the highway to the villa.
The only sounds I heard for the next hour were the squeaking of the cart's springs and axle and the muffled thud of my horses' hooves as I threaded my way between clumps and thickets, managing to find solid, grassy passage. When I saw the moon's reflection shining from the waters of the Dragon's Pool, I knew I was home, and my head was full of pleasant thoughts of hot bath water and hotter food when I heard an unearthly, wailing cry from the bulrushes that fringed the water. My blood froze like a child's who has heard too many stories of ghosts and monstrous apparitions, and the fine hairs on the back of my neck stirred with horror. I have never been a superstitious man, but there have been occasions in my life when I might have been converted, and this was one of them. The night that had been so clear and brightly lit by the moon a moment since was suddenly dark and filled with menace.
Even tonight, as I write these words long miles and years from the sight of it, I know the Dragon's Pool is still deep and dark, bordered by sedge and reeds and scrubby willows, its surface probably concealed by a curtain of mist. Tales told around the fires on dark, wintry nights still speak of ancient slaughters and chaos and the souls of drowned and murdered people dragging themselves from the deep waters in the darkness there to bewail their lost lives on earth.
My heart told my doubting mind that I had indeed heard such a sound. My horses had heard it, too, and that appalled me; they stopped in their tracks and one of them whickered softly, and their ears twitched around as they sought to locate the source of the strange noise. I sat motionless, willing my heart to slow down and behave normally, telling myself I was far too old to be frightened by noises in the night, however strange they might be. But it came again, and this time, even as my heart leaped in fear, I recognized the sound as being natural and human: a woman's voice, or a child's. My fear died, and yet I hesitated to call out, unwilling to break the silence, waiting for the sound to be repeated again.
It came again, and broke the tension that held me. I saw only the mist upon the water and the sedge, but I had heard clearly enough to know that the voice had come from close to the water's edge. I stood up and looked, but I could see only that the fog hung thickly enough over the lake and its shoreline to obscure my vision, so before going anywhere I moved to the back of my wagon and took out my tinder-box and the deep clay pot of oil-soaked rags bound tightly around dry sticks I carried for making torches or fires. Within minutes I had ignited some dried moss and blown it into flame, into which I dipped the edge of the oily cloth wrapped around one of the torches. Only then did I move away from the cart, holding the flaring light above my head as I approached the waterside. The full moon at my back threw my shadow grotesquely ahead of me as I walked. There was no noise now, except for the flaring of the burning torch. I called out, "Who's there? Where are you?" and heard nothing. No sound at all. I moved closer to the water, cautiously, beginning to think again that I might have given in to folly, since any human in distress would have responded to the approach of help. But there was nothing. With mounting uneasiness, I transferred the torch to my left hand and drew my sword, taking some satisfaction in the slithering sound it made scraping from its sheath.
I called out several more times, standing still each time and listening for a response that did not come, and at length my feet sank into the mud by the water's edge and I could go no further. The reeds surrounded me in a tall, dense sea reaching higher than my waist. If there was any living soul ahead of me, he or she must be afloat and so beyond my help. I turned around and saw my horses and cart where I had left them, and I began to make my way back. My shadow lay behind me now, and I had not walked six paces when I saw something I had missed on my way in. There was a trail through the reeds where someone, or something, had dragged itself along, moving from my left to my right. In the clear moonlight I could see quite clearly now where the path of my own entry crossed over the broken and flattened reeds. I swallowed a mouthful of gummy saliva, flexed my fingers around the hilt of my sword and followed the path to my right for a few paces. Then, appalled, I saw the light of my torch reflected in a gleaming eye and I dropped into a fighting crouch, sweeping my sword up in a hissing arc and bringing my torch in a flickering, roaring swing down and around in front of me at the same time. What I saw in that instant stunned me and I hung there, suspended, gaping at the spectacle of a small, naked and incredibly dirty and blood-stained child, a boy, whose single, staring eye was filled with terror and the certainty of death.