“I will join you with pleasure,” he said, and rubbed a hand across his face, dismayed at the untidy stubble. “But I would like to wash – and perhaps shave.”
“I don’t think you should put yourself to the trouble of shaving — certainly not for us,” she said, “But Cynric will help you to wash. Eilan, find your brother and tell him he’s needed.”
The girl slipped away. The lady turned to follow, then looked at him, seeing him more clearly in the light of the recessed cubicle. Her eyes softened from a smile of courtesy to one that reminded him of the way his own mother had looked at him, long ago. “Why,” she said, “you’re nothing but a boy.”
For a moment Gaius felt stung by the words — he had done a
” man’s work for three years – but before he could frame any
courteous answer, a mocking young voice said, “Yes, and if he is a
boy, Stepmother, I am a babe in long clothes. Well, stumble-foot,
are you ready to go tumbling in some more bear pits?”
Cynric came through the door. Once more Gaius was struck by how tall he was, but except for his great height he too was still a youth; though he would have made two of Gaius. He laughed. “Well,” he said, “you look a little less ready to be carted away by the old man who kills off fools and drunks. Let me look at your leg and we’ll see if you’re fit to set your foot to the ground.” For all his size, his hands were gentle as he examined the hurt leg, and when he was finished he laughed again.
“We should all have legs so fit to walk! It’s mostly a bad bump; what did you do, knock it on a stake? I thought so. Anyone less lucky would have broken it in three places and gone limping for life; but I think you’ll be all right. The shoulder’s another thing; you won’t be fit to travel for seven days or so.”
Gaius struggled upright. “I must,” he said. “I must be in Deva in four days.” His leave would be ended . . .
“I tell you, if you’re in Deva in four days, your friends will bury you there,” said Cynric. “Even I know that much. Oh, by the way” – he took on a deliberate stance and repeated as if reciting a lesson – “Bendeigid sends his greetings to the guest in his house, and bids him recover as best he may; he regrets that necessity keeps him absent this day and night, but he will rejoice to see you on his return.” He added, “It would take a braver man than I am to face him and tell him you wouldn’t accept his hospitality.”
“Your father is most kind,” Gaius replied.
He might as well rest. There was nothing he could do. He could hardly mention Clotinus. What happened next all depended on that fool who drove the chariot; if he went back and dutifully reported that the Prefect’s son had been thrown and maybe killed, they’d already be combing the woods for his body. On the other hand, if the halfwit lied, or took this opportunity to run away to some village not under Roman rule — and there were plenty of them, even this close to Deva — well, it was anyone’s guess. He might not be missed until Macellius Severus began asking questions about his son.
Cynric was bending over a chest at the foot of the bed; he drew out a shirt and surveyed it with a mixture of amusement and dismay. “Those rags you were wearing are only fit to scare crows,” he said. “I’ll set the girls to clean and mend them, if it can be done; they haven’t much else to do in this weather. But you’d look like a maid in a long gown in this.” He flung it down. “I’ll go and borrow something nearer your size.”
He went away, and Gaius fumbled in the remnants of clothing that lay folded beside the bed for the purse on the leather belt they had cut off him. Everything was untouched as far as he could make out. A few of the tin squares that still passed current for coin outside the Roman towns, a clasp, a folding knife, one or two small rings and a few other trinkets he had not wanted to wear hunting — ah yes, here it was. Much good it had done him! He glanced briefly at the scrap of parchment with the Prefect’s seal; his safe-conduct would be no good to him here, if it did not in fact endanger him; but when he left here, he would need it to travel.