Read Online After Rome by Morgan Llywelyn - Free Book Online Page B

bring Kikero and his small harem inside to protect them from predators, and he learned to be careful where he put his feet. Yet he was proud of his achievement. Sometimes, after Cadogan had completed a task, he reached out and touched the well-set log, the perfectly smoothed plank, and said, “There now. There now.”
    His home was not modeled on anyone else’s ideas; it was shaped by its setting and his need. Its flaws and virtues were his own.
    As he and Quartilla emerged from the forest and he saw the fort waiting for him, his heart leaped. At that moment he could think of nothing he would change. He broke into a trot, anxious to be under his own roof again.
    He stopped short when the door creaked open.

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
    After handing his cape and the stallion’s reins to Meradoc, Dinas ducked his head to enter through the low doorway. Brecon and Ludno followed, chanting in unison, “May the spirits of the martyrs be with us.”
    The room was dimly lit by one fat beeswax candle in a tall iron holder. It took a few moments for Dinas’s eyes to adjust to the darkness. When he realized that Ludno and Brecon had dropped to their knees beside him, he knelt too.
    Dinas had not prayed in years. He struggled to remember the words he had once known by heart; the forms he had forgotten when he decided to forget about God. Aware that the others might be watching, he bowed his head over folded hands and silently moved his lips.
    The only sound was that of three men breathing.
    Keeping his head down, Dinas covertly examined the interior of the chapel. There was no ornamentation of any kind. His parents, like other Christians of their class, had a special room in their home set aside for worship. A whole series of priests had conducted services in a dignified apartment plenished with the finest accoutrements the family could afford. Vessels of gold and silver were supplied for the Eucharist. Colorful tapestries depicting stories from the Bible were hung on the walls.
    As a small boy Dinas had loved the vivid scene of Daniel in the lions’ den, with bones and human skulls lying scattered about.
    The interior of the martyrium of Deva was paneled with well-polished wood but there were no hangings on the walls. The only furniture was a narrow oak table covered by an altar cloth of bleached linen. The chapel contained nothing more except the candle in its holder, a carved crucifix on the wall—Dinas recognized the artistry of Brecon—and a faint, spicy fragrance, almost but not quite like sandalwood.
    I was right, Dinas thought; Deva is far too poor to be worth my interest. If the local Christians owned anything of value their shrine wouldn’t be so ostentatiously bare.
    Ostentatiously?
    The word caused an itch in his brain.
    He unconsciously cracked his knuckles while he concentrated on clearing his thoughts. An image of the half-abandoned marketplace slowly appeared behind his closed eyelids. Every detail was as clear as if he stood in the town square. There was nothing ostentatious about the poverty in Deva, it was real. The market was the proof of that. Yet from his own observations he knew commerce had not ceased. Someone always had something to sell; others always wanted to buy. Men like Ludno would find ways to make a profit.
    Opening his eyes, Dinas surveyed the interior of the chapel again. He noticed a minute deviation in the color of the wood paneling behind the altar. His thoughts narrowed to a sharp focus. Like a man crossing a river on stepping stones, one at a time, he followed a series of seemingly unrelated facts to a single conclusion. Walked around it in his mind, looking at it from all sides.
    And suddenly he was sure.
    Afterward he would think of it as inspiration.
    When he heard Ludno intone a pious “Amen,” Dinas stood up. “I am deeply moved,” he assured his escorts. “I must thank you for bringing me here, your martyrium is indeed a unique experience.