I
i was six years old by the final year of the great evacuation, awakening to my life in the Colony we called Camulod, which, like Rome itself, had been built on a hill and dedicated to the high ideals that built the great Republic. It was Publius Varruss wife, my great-aunt Luceiia, who had thought of naming the Colony Camulod, in honour of Camulodunum, her brothersmy grandfathersbirthplace, an ancient place sacred to Lod, war god of the tribe of Celts the Romans had named the Trinovantes. Today men call it simply Colchester, meaning the fort on the hill, but her brother had refused to use that new, brash, graceless name. By modifying the ancient name to fit a new location, Luceiia Britannicus had honoured both her brother and his monument.
One of the first lessons I learned in extreme youth was that things had not always been as they were. Camulod had not always been rich in horses, nor had its economy been purely equestrian. It had been my own father who had changed everything, I learned, the year that I was born.
My father was Picus Britannicus, and his title was Legate, or General. He was Supreme Cavalry Commander and Deputy in Britain for the great Flavius Stilicho, Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the Emperor Honorius. In the year of my birth, 401 in the year of Our Lord and the eleven hundred and fifty-fifth year of Rome, Alaric, war chief of the barbarian Visigoths, had threatened invasion of the Roman heartland itself. He had penetrated as far as Stilichos home city of Milan before Stilicho was able to assemble an army by means of an emergency summons for all uncommitted legions to return to Italia to combat the threat. My father, a close personal friend of Stilicho as well as a trusted colleague and confidant, had answered that summons, embarking immediately with most of his troops and as many horses as he could transport in the time and the vessels available to him. The remaining stock, no less than six hundred and eighty prime animals, he had left in the care of his father, my grandfather, the proconsul Caius Britannicus, who had been named by Stilicho Legatus EmeritusSupreme Commanderof the Irregular Armies of south-west Britain. The charge implicit in my grandfathers title was the interim governance of the south-west, and the protection of its territories against invasion, pending the return of the Imperial Legions following the defeat of Alaric and his Visigoths.
By the time word arrived of my fathers departure, however, my grandfather was dead, murdered by a madman, and my great-uncle Publius Varrus had assumed command of our Colony. Uncle Varrus knew what Caius Britannicus would have wanted him to do, and so he used my grandfathers seal and sent out soldiers to accept the consignment of horseflesh. This immediate quintupling of the Colonys herds had a revolutionary and permanent effect on the Colony. Victorex, the stablemaster, had to increase his staff of grooms and stablemen tenfold, and farms that had been under the plough had to be given over completely and immediately to the keeping of livestock. But the concerns voiced over the loss of arable land in this exercise were quickly stifled by the realization that this great influx of mounts gave us the capability to reclaim previously abandoned lands, and even to break new ground, since our corps of mounted troopers quickly became large enough to permit constant patrols in strength, and continuous protection for all the workers employed on these lands.
The biggest impact of all, however, was upon our foot-soldiers. Now that we had the livestock, every man who wanted to ride was able to do so, at least for part of their duty. Very soon infantry patrols of our territories were a thing of the past. Our central core of infantry was reduced from fifteen hundred to eight hundred men, who were distributed as semi-permanent garrison troops to three of our major outlying villa farms, and to the fort of Camulod itself.
As I have said, mine was a happy childhood and I grew in sunshine, shaped into the man I was to be by two stern and loving guardians: my two great-uncles, Ullic, King of the Pendragon, and Publius Varrus, Master of Camulod. My youth was divided equally between the rugged, lovely hills and mountains of the Pendragon strongholds to the north-west, in south Cambria, and the calm beauty of the wooded plains and forests that, seen from the hilltop, spread like a carpet around Camulod.
Ullics Celtic hill people taught me to hunt with a sling and to trap with snares. They taught me to shoot with a bow and to fish for trout in the brooks with my bare hands. They taught me to sing and to pluck the harp and to love the history in their glorious songs, so that even before my voice broke from boyhood I was revered as a bard of great promise and had I not been who I was, the Druids would have claimed me as their own. As it was, I spent much time among Druid teachers, learning their sacred mysteries and the lore of their ancient ways, for they respected who I was and dreamed great dreams of fame for me. And while I was among them, they taught me to do all of the other things a boy must do: to run like the wind, mile after mile without respite; to wrestle and fight with my bare hands and feet; and to seek out the nests of the upland birdsthe curlew and the plover and the wild ducks and geesefor the succulent eggs they held. They bred in my impatient, questing soul the patience to stalk deer and the strength to ignore the timid, placid gentleness and see only the walking food. They broke me young to the mastery of their wild mountain ponies, so that by the time I was seven there was nothing on four legs that could throw me from its back once I was mounted.
There in that lovely, wild and sometimes savage land, I was always at peace, but Uther, the brother of my soul, was in his element. Uther Pendragon and I were cousins, born, by some strange conjunction of the stars, on the same day, less than an hour apart. From our youngest days we thought as one in many things, and this was something we took for granted. We were alike all our lives, as long as Uther lived, two sides of a medalliondifferent, perhaps, in appearance, but faces of the same piece.
He was the dearest friend I ever hadwarm, loving, generous and kind, and yet possessed of a wild mans temper and a wellspring of savage, primitive violence that could frighten me when it came into view, for it was utterly implacable. Those who knew him as a friend worshipped the ground he trod. His enemies went in terror of his name, for his strength was lethal and his enmity absolute. He chose to have no living enemies and worked hard to deprive them all of life, for only then, he said, could he trust them and know what they were doing. In his own way Uther Pendragon, King among his Celts, was far more savage than the hordes who sought to overrun this land of ours. It was my fate to love him as a brother and to be in fear of him throughout my adult life until he died.
Violence, as I have said, Uther knew and loved, but treachery was a trait that no man, even his greatest enemy, would think of in connection with his name. No man but I, and I only suspected, nor was I ever able to divine the truth, whether for or against him. Forty years and more have gone since Uthers death and I still wonder whether or not he did the deeds my mind tells me he did, the deeds my soul curses me for even thinking he could do. I have sworn to myself that, lacking any kind of proof, I have a duty to admit I might be wrong. But still, inside my heart, I know that Uther had a black and fearsome devil strongly chained, deep at the bottom of his soul. And still I ask myself, did he control it at all times, or did it sometimes control him?
Somehow Uther did n