In a moment I was on my knees beside him, trying to sheathe my sword and jam the base of my torch firmly into the mud at the same time. The boy shrank from me, a terrified moaning emerging from his mangled mouth as he tried to escape, digging his right heel uselessly into the slick mud, pushing himself frantically backward to hide again in the rushes. I grasped at his leg to hold him and instantly identified the splintered, bloody end of a broken thigh-bone against my fingers. His entire body jerked in agony, his breath exploding in a solid grunt of pain, and he fell back, unconscious.
I snatched up my torch again and held it by him, looking intently at what the light now disclosed. The boy could have been no more than seven or eight years old and had been brutalized, savagely beaten to the point where he should have been dead. Shaken by that realization, I bent to his tiny body and listened for a heartbeat, but all I could hear was the flickering of the flames of my torch. I felt for a pulse and found one, faint but steady, beneath the point of his jaw. But the child was cold, chilled and naked. Cursing aloud, I got up and made my way as quickly as I could to the cart, where I unpacked my new cloak and then led the horses back down to the edge of the reeds. I wrapped the still-unconscious child in the cloak, doubling the length of it up from his feet, and then I threw my torch out into the waters of the lake and carried him to the cart, where I emptied the long tool box, dumping its contents on the ground, and then lined the bottom of it thickly with all the clothes I had. He was a very small bundle and fitted perfectly into the box. I climbed up onto the driver's seat and headed for home again, moving as quickly as I could without jarring the box or its occupant any more than I had to.
It took me an hour to complete the journey. I ran into the house, carrying the boy and shouting at the top of my voice for assistance. The family had just finished dining and the servants had entered to clear away the debris from the dining room, which was still brightly lit by a roaring log fire and dozens of lamps and candles. I placed my pathetic burden directly on the table, sweeping whatever was there into a shambles on the floor and unwrapping the folds of the cloak in which I had swathed him. Only then, in the brightly lit triclinium, did I really see how badly used the child had been. He was coated from head to foot in thick, slimy mud mixed with his own blood. His left leg had been broken in two places that I could see, and his right arm was twisted out of alignment. A large flap of skin and flesh had been ripped on his left breast and his little ribs were plainly visible in the wound. His mouth had been smashed; his teeth had punctured his lips and his lower lip had been torn almost in half. His scalp was deeply lacerated and dried blood had scabbed in his hair.
Luceiia took one brief look at me on my arrival, waited only to see that what I was carrying was human, small and injured, and immediately disappeared in the direction of our living quarters, calling out orders as she went to summon our medical staff and to fetch hot water and clean cloths and towels. The servants bustled to carry out her commands as Caius approached the table and looked and was speechless, as shocked as I have ever seen him. His face went pale and he clutched at the table for support as he gazed down at the boy, and then he turned and walked from the room, and I knew that he was going to vomit up his outrage. I had no time myself for outrage or for anger then; there was too much to do if we were to save the life of the child, who was now in a deep comatose state. Only later, when there was nothing more to do but wait, did I begin to seethe with fury.
Our physician, Cletus, had ministered to battle-damaged men for years. He bathed the boy carefully and thoroughly with mild soap and hot water before dusting the wounds and fractured limbs with healing herbs and setting and splinting the shattered bones. The child, deeply unconscious, showed no signs of pain throughout this procedure. Cletus then shaved the child's head, using my skystone knife, the sharpest blade in the Colony, to reveal the lacerations on the small scalp and to allow him to wash and clean the head wounds thoroughly. After that, he gently cleaned the broken mouth and fastened the torn, flapping lower lip with two tiny knots of twine, sewing the pieces together as delicately as a woman. Only then did he turn his attention to the wound in the boy's side, stretching the ragged flap of skin back into place and stitching it, too, firmly, with pieces of thick thread. All of that done, Cletus then swathed the patient in clean bandages and placed him in a cot in his own quarters, where he could maintain vigil over him for the remainder of the night.
Throughout the entire proceedings, Luceiia had been silent, responding only to Cletus's demands for this or that article of his healing craft. I had had nothing to say either; all my attention was focused on the boy and the physician. Finally, when the child was in bed, with cloth-wrapped bottles of hot water packed around him, Luceiia and I retired together to our family room. Someone, knowing we were still afoot, had kept the fire burning and the lamps and tapers lit. Caius had gone to bed. I went to the stone chiller and poured us each a mug of Equus's cold ale, taking it to the couch, where Luceiia sat staring into the fire. She took the mug from me but made no effort to drink. I sat down beside her and drank deeply, barely tasting the brew but grateful for its coldness.
My mind still could not accept the enormity of what I had seen this night. I had no illusions about childhood; few children were as well beloved and happy as ours were. Childhood, for the mass of men, was not supposed to be a happy time. It was a time to be passed quickly by; a time of harsh discipline in earnest of a harsher life ahead; a training time for manhood, or for womanhood. It was a time of learning the difficult lessons and essential skills that had to be learned well and quickly if the child was to survive to see full growth, to father and rear children of his own while he was yet still young enough to pass to them the lessons he had learned. The disciplines and punishments of childhood were severe, as they had to be; none but the very wealthy could afford to nurture and protect their progeny from life itself. Children who did not learn to cope were spoiled, in the worst sense of the word; they seldom survived.
But what had been done to this child was infamous. Had I known any full-grown man to treat another man in such a way and leave him in such condition, without direst provocation, I would have had him flogged. To treat a child like this, no matter what the provocation, was inexcusable. I felt that I would give much to find the nomad ruffian who had done it. I drank again and stared into the flames, seeing the boy's poor, broken face before me.
"I wonder who he is," I asked aloud, and instantly I felt Luceiia stiffen beside me.
"Are you saying you don't know, Publius? You don't know who this child is?"
There was wonder and disbelief in her tone. I turned to look at her.
"No, of course I don't. How would I know? I found him beside the lake. He had been abandoned there by someone. I would dearly like to know by whom."
Luceiia stared at me wide-eyed and her face went hard as stone. I felt an absurd swelling of guilt and some formless shame.
"Luceiia? What is it, in God's name? I told you, I don't know the child. Don't you believe me?"
She continued to stare at me, her eyes almost unseeing, her face frozen in that strange expression, and I thought she truly believed I was lying to her.
"Luceiia? What's wrong with you? I tell you I don't know the boy. Why would I lie to you?"
She finally looked away from me, down at the mug in her hand, and raised it to her lips, but she had barely begun to sip it when she jerked it away from her mouth with a grimace of distaste and held it out to me with a small shake of her head. Mystified, I took the mug from her, watching as she stood up and crossed distractedly from the couch to the small table where the brightest lamps burned. She leaned over and picked up a lamp and then turned back to me.