The Burning Stone Read online

  TWENTY-THREE

  The day that followed Liam’s death was leaden, in every sense—leaden clouds and ugly, sullen weather obscured the skies; leaden, surly, stolid drops of rain cast sluggish ripples into dull-looking puddles; and as the long hours shuffled by on leaden, weary feet, Varrus felt a lethargic, hope-sapping awareness of the finality of his friend’s death, for it had been long months since last he thought of Liam as either master or mentor, although in truth he had been both. The whole house echoed eerily all that day from the absence of its normal bustle, with no more than the occasional shuffle of passing feet as folk moved listlessly from room to room, whispering if they had to speak, as if they felt it would be sacrilege to raise their voices. The neighbour women had come back again—for which Quintus was grateful—and had taken it upon themselves to console the widow and keep her simultaneously occupied and insulated while they prepared the bedroom for the rites to follow.

  In the meantime, Quintus himself had much to think about. Liam’s death had disrupted the affairs of the entire family, and what Lydia had told him about Shamus’s discontentment had grown enormously in significance in the short time since he had heard it, so that now it flickered and leapt high in his awareness like a dancing flame, demanding his full attention. Knowing Shamus as he now did, it seemed to him that the young smith, with his ability to translate the workings of the world into antagonism against himself, was likely now to follow his own instincts, without thought of how his actions might affect others. And those instincts, according to his sister, were advising him to run, far and fast, before he could be trapped into a life he did not want.

  Varrus could see where Shamus’s departure might be a blessing in disguise for the unfortunate young woman Eylin. Unless her father and brothers revised their opinions of her would-be suitor—an eventuality that Quintus considered highly unlikely—Eylin would soon find herself facing a world filled with grief and regrets. It was ironic that Shamus’s threatened disappearance would offer the young woman the real advantage of a brief period of heartache in return for a greater chance of happiness later. He thought, too, about the ways in which Shamus’s absence might also benefit him and Lydia: with the younger man gone, there would be more space in the Mcuil house for the pair of them when they were married. He would not have to build himself a house. The corollary, though, was that he would have to undertake the running of Shanna’s smithy, in essence taking over Liam Mcuil’s livelihood, with responsibility for his aging widow. That would be a full-time commitment, he realized. It meant that he, not Shamus, would be tied to a life he did not want, unable to continue working in the armouries with Demetrius Hanno, developing new and better blades…And so the trap that threatened Shamus now stretched open its jaws for Quintus Varrus, who, until that very moment, had been blissfully ignorant of its existence.

  Lost in his thoughts, he had drifted over to the street entrance to the smithy yard and was leaning against the end of the open gate, gazing into nothingness and unaware of his surroundings until the heavens opened without warning and vertical sheets of rain obscured everything, veiling the entire street ahead of him in a grey haze as the torrential downpour rebounded fiercely from the cobblestoned surface. He started to run back to the house, but knowing he would be drenched by the time he got there, he dashed into the stable on his right. He stood inside the door, shaking the wet from his head and slicking his short hair down over his forehead with the flat of his hand. The horse closest to him was chewing contentedly and watching him from little more than an arm’s length away, and it chuffed gently as he smiled back at it, admiring the amazing beauty and delicacy of its long black eyelashes.

  “Hello, Horse,” he said, recognizing the beast as Callum’s and reaching out to lay his hand on the blaze on its forehead. “You won’t be going back to Londinium for a few more days, I fear. We have to take care of poor old Liam first.”

  The horse chuffed again, then tore off another mouthful of hay from the pile in the crib, and Varrus moved along the row, checking on each of the animals, a rare full complement of eight, and listening for the roaring of the downpour on the roof to abate. At the end of the row, as he was about to turn away, he heard a different noise from all the others, coming from the space beyond the stall. It was the sound of falling water, but this was a hard tapping rather than a liquid plashing. He peeked around the end of the stall and saw the box that Callum had brought earlier. The sight of it made him frown, though in a perverse kind of way he was glad to see it, for the events of the past two days had driven it from his mind, and now it gave him something else to think about, something far removed from funerals.

  He crossed his arms on his chest and covered his mouth with two fingers, staring at the box with narrowed eyes, in no hurry to decide anything, but more curious about what it might contain than he had been since first he heard that it was coming to him, and he recalled what Marius had written: It was made to be destroyed.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Less than half an hour later, having commandeered the assistance of the part-time stableboy to move it, Varrus was still debating whether he wished to open the box, and how he might go about it if he did decide to proceed. Between the two of them, he and the boy had managed to carry it without too much difficulty from the stables to the smithy, once the rain abated sufficiently to let them do it without being completely drenched.

  Now, Varrus’s inspection of the box confirmed what Marius had written a couple of months earlier. It was solid and seamless, coated with sized sackcloth that had formed a thick, durable, impenetrable shell, and then coated again with a clear, thick, hardened wax, and the more he looked at it, the more it was clear to him that the only way to open it was to break it apart. But with what kind of tools? Despite Marius’s written assurance that he could not harm the chest’s contents in breaking it apart, the prospect of assaulting the container with a heavy, iron-headed hammer was a daunting one. It would be time-consuming, for one thing, and notwithstanding his uncle’s emphatic opinion, an errant blow might easily damage or even destroy whatever the case contained. Similarly, a sharp-pointed pickaxe was unsuitable, because while that would undoubtedly penetrate the box’s hard shell, it might also mar or mutilate whatever was inside.

  He turned away and moved to look at the racks and racks of tools Liam had collected over a lifetime of smithing. Most of them were fashioned for the handling of iron, but the craftsman in Liam had drawn him to well-made implements from disciplines other than his own, and he had amassed a fine collection of carpentry tools, which he kept separate from his ironworking tools. Varrus now looked more closely at the selection of drills, wood augers, and handsaws of varying sizes, together with some amazingly sharp-edged chisels and needle-pointed gouges, and it was the sight of one of those gouges, little more than an oversized awl, that supplied him with a sudden idea.

  Within a very short time, using a long, thin, but very strong chisel with a narrow, razor-sharp blade, and driving it with a heavy carpenter’s maul, he had chipped through the brittle outer covering of the box and was cutting into the wood beneath, quickly carving inwards and down until his chisel’s point broke through completely and he felt no resistance. He had made a hole slightly less than the size of his thumbnail, and he went immediately to work on a second one to match it, perhaps three inches along. In no time at all, it seemed, he had finished that one and two more, visualizing them as four corners of a rectangle, and he could tell that he was going to have to sharpen his blade if he needed it for any more cutting. For the time being, though, he had no need to cut further. Instead, he took a short-shafted iron hammer and a metalworking chisel and quickly punched out the wood between the four holes. Into this longer hole he inserted the end of a pickaxe, then braced himself with one leg against the upper edge of the box and hauled backwards with all his strength, trying to pry the lid apart. That was wasted effort, for the constricting sackcloth with its thick and seamless coatings of hardened size quickly proved impossible to breach by br
ute force.

  Undismayed, he reverted to using the wooden maul, though this time with a broader-bladed chisel, chipping away patiently at the sides of the hole he had made, widening it and lengthening it until it was big enough to admit the blade of a small handsaw. After that the work became much easier, because once he had penetrated the carapace of hardened glue, it became friable, breaking into small fragments under the saw’s sharp teeth. He had thought at first that the layered sackcloth might be a nuisance, but in fact the overcoating of wax contained the splintered fragments, and the tension of the glue held it sufficiently rigid for the saw’s blade to cut through it, at a shallow angle, almost like wood, save that he had to stop after every few strokes to remove loose fibres from the saw’s teeth.

  In little more than half an hour, working slowly and with extreme care, he had cut his way around the inner edges of the lid, save for where he had encountered two iron straps that ran from the back of the chest to the front. He had almost destroyed his saw blade the first time he hit one of those, not understanding what it had encountered, but then he had remembered Marius telling him that the box was iron-bound. From there, he had worked out precisely where he would find the remaining iron edges—one on either side of each of two straps, at the front and back of the lid—and then he sawed until he reached each one of them, by which time the muscles of his forearm were aching with the unaccustomed effort of sawing rather than hammering. Then, when only the coverings over the metal straps remained, he chipped away the glue that covered them and used a narrow metal file to cut quickly through the soft iron straps themselves, which yielded easily.

  When he had finished filing through the last of the metal straps, the lid fell down inside. But it did not fall far, landing on top of something mere inches from the top, and now he used a pair of angled iron tongs to lift one side of the fallen lid, allowing him to grasp the other end and lift the lid out. And there he remained for long moments, gazing down into the box in astonishment.

  It contained nothing but what appeared to be wooden scaffolding: horizontal struts of beautifully planed and squared wood, all apparently assembled haphazardly, yet with perplexingly great care, to do no more than support the sides of the box they filled.

  It was made to be destroyed.

  Baffled, he bent lower and examined the strut closest to him. It ran laterally from one side of the box to the other, a single, straight, square-edged piece of pale yellow wood, no more than two unciae in cross-section and showing no signs of brads or nails or any other kind of fastening where its ends abutted the sides of the box. It touched no other strut but the two laterals directly beneath it, in places that looked like uneven distances from either side. No brads. No fasteners. He bent closer still, frowning in concentration, and peered at the other pieces he could see, and they were all the same—uniform in cross-section and in length, depending upon whether they ran from side to side or from front to rear, and all beautifully made, crafted, in fact, by a master carpenter. Which made no sense at all.

  Curious, he picked up the carpenter’s maul and tapped the first crosspiece on the very top level, and when it did not move, he hit it again, harder. This time it did move, and he hit it a third time, hard and sharp, and it fell clattering onto the struts beneath it. He pulled it out and examined it closely, then set it carefully aside and went to work loosening the other three pieces on the top level. It was only when he was four layers down that he discerned what had been invisible until then. There was a solid object at the very centre of the space—another box, lodged firmly into place by the intricate framework of the surrounding struts and made of the same pale yellow wood as the struts themselves.

  As soon as he saw what was there, he stopped being so meticulously careful in the way he removed the wood, and the process accelerated, though he was still forced to deal with each individual piece separately because of the way they were interconnected. Eventually, however, he had stripped out everything down to the beautifully engineered platform on which the box itself sat, held firmly in place by braces above, beneath, and on each side of it. He carefully removed a flat covering that was essentially another lid, then stood looking down at the box itself. It was planed and shaved to perfection, then polished to bring out the natural beauty of the grain, and it was rectangular and not overly large; his spread hands, held thumb tip to thumb tip, covered it nicely.

  He stooped to lift it out of its cradle with both hands—and nothing happened. He grunted, adjusted his grip, and tried again, lifting much more strongly this time, and still it did not move, and he began to feel foolish. To lift it now, he knew, he would have to climb inside the box and squat, then lift it with his thighs, and that was plainly ludicrous, if only because the outer container was not big enough to permit him to do that.

  He stood back and considered, then moved to swing Liam’s pulley hoist around and position it above the box. And not too many moments later, the yellow box was sitting open on the apron of the forge while he gaped down at it, holding the letter that had been folded flat on top of the gleaming golden rows of coins the box contained: twenty columns of coins. He realized now why the packing crate had been so large. It had been designed to disguise the weight of its cargo. That much weight in a smaller box would have endangered everyone who handled it, but the same amount of weight in a container thirty times as large would draw no undue attention. He shook his head in admiration at his uncle’s ingenuity.

  Varrus closed the yellow box, cutting off the sight of the golden coins, then looked at the thick, many-paged epistle in his hand, fully aware that he ought to do something about concealing the treasure before he took the time to read his uncle’s words. And so he set the letter down where it would be safe, then swung the pulley hoist back over the forge apron and used it to move the box into a shadowy corner by the flue, where he covered it with a nondescript cloth before replacing the hoist. That done, he went into the house to find a place to sit and read Marius Varrus’s letter, which was written in straightforward Latin.

  So, Nephew, if you are reading this then I know you must be reeling mentally and physically at what you found in the middle of that ludicrous box I sent you.

  Let me put your mind at ease at once. The coins belonged to your grandfather, Titanius Varrus, and since I consider it unlikely that I will father sons of my own at this late date, and you are his last surviving relative in your own generation, the coins are yours by moral and by legal right.

  Although my relationship with him was more than slightly constrained, as you know, I believe your grandfather to have been an astonishing and highly talented, sublimely gifted man. You know, of course, that the Emperor Diocletian and he were lifelong friends. In an age when Emperors rose and fell like porridge bubbling in a pot and no one, anywhere, dared put his trust in anyone; when “loyalty” and “integrity” were words laughed at by cynics everywhere, and fidelity to ideals and to principles was as alien a concept as the notion of chastity in a whorehouse; when the very gods themselves appeared to have turned their backs on Rome, ignoring the weltering, noxious stew of would-be Emperors and spurning the venality of a corrupt and thoroughly rotted system, the virtue that men once thought of as honour did not exist.

  How, then, at such a time, could anyone have imagined the likelihood of an Emperor rising from the depths of nowhere to become the leader who would rebuild the armies and consolidate the Empire? Even more so, how could anyone, surrounded with the detritus of nigh on a century of imperial decay and self-centred imperatorial neglect, have been induced to believe that such an Emperor might flourish with the unswerving support of a single staunch, unflinching friend whose loyalty and commitment were never once questioned throughout his lifetime? Such tales are the stuff of legend, Quintus, but that is what your grandsire represented: he dedicated his entire life to the support and welfare of his friend and leader, Diocles. Titanius Varrus chose to follow Diocles, the son of a household slave on your great-grandfather’s estate. That single fact says much about
the character of both boys, long before they grew to manhood.

  To this day, no one really knows the extent of what Titanius Varrus was called to do in the service of his Emperor, for much of what he did was sub-rosa. To say he was privy to imperial secrets at the highest level is merely to state what is obvious to anyone who looks. Yet I believe it was something to do with his earlier clandestine activities on behalf of his late friend and Emperor that brought about his eventual assassination and the deaths of all but two of our family.

  Let me make it clear now that I have never voiced those suspicions to anyone, nor would I ever consider doing so. Suspicions are no more than opinions, and opinions such as those can trigger sudden deaths. I hope you see the sense of that and conduct yourself in similar silence.

  In many ways, your grandfather was born out of his time, for he subscribed to beliefs that had fallen from favour long before he was born. He believed in the ancient Republican values that had predated Octavius Augustus and all the other Caesars who came trotting after him. Titanius Varrus believed in stern-faced, uncompromising honesty, in both speech and behaviour. His heroes included giants like Cincinnatus and Cato the Elder, both revered for their unswerving loyalty, integrity, and civic duty. More humorously, and with genuine irony, he distrusted banks and bankers—unsurprising, perhaps, given that he wed into the wealthiest banking family in Rome. I once heard him remark—while I was in hiding in our shared eavesdropping spot—that he had given the Senecas a slice of his soul already, in marrying their daughter, so why should he give them the remainder of it by being fool enough to trust them with his hard-earned wealth?

  In keeping with that distrust, he was assiduous in hoarding his money, keeping its whereabouts unknown to anyone but himself and—albeit inadvertently—to me. Because once again, from inside our sideboard, I discovered his secret.