The Boat of Fate by Keith Roberts Read Free Book Online

a coward. I wish I’d died, I don’t know what to do.’ I clenched my fists; and to my horror and disgust, my eyes once more started swimming with tears.
    Marcus put down the spokeshave he had been using, released the work from the cramp. He said, ‘Your mother doesn’t hate you. She’s merely put you away from her. Which, perhaps, is not before time.’ He squinted along the beautiful curve of the haft, nodded, and placed it to one side.
    I said dully, ‘I wish I were dead. Please help me, Marcus. What am I to do?’
    He grunted. ‘On the subject of cowardice,’ he said, ‘you were defeated by superior force. Not particularly smart, maybe; but cowardly? I wouldn’t have said so.’
    I said, ‘I lost my sword. All because of the blood.’
    He stared at me, and sighed. Then he turned away, drawing his key ring from his finger. Above the bench, built into the corner of the little room, was a stout cupboard of unpainted wood. I had never seen it open. He unlocked it, swung the door ajar; and I caught my breath. The light gleamed on leather and steel; on the trappings of a soldier, of the army of everlasting Rome.
    He took the heavy sword down in its scabbard, pulled the blade clear of the sheath. I flinched at the sound it made. He turned with it in his hand; and this was no toy, no old blade dull with rust, but a live thing, bright and polished and terribly keen. He held it upright, the hilt between his palms, and thought for a moment. ‘Answer me a riddle,’ he said. ‘When a great fire burns, in the forest, what do people do?’
    I said, ‘I don’t know.’ My new fancy toy of rhetoric had completely failed me.
    ‘They light other fires,’ said Marcus. ‘And these lesser fires burn back towards the greater till both are spent. Do you understand?’
    I shook my head, tiredly.
    ‘Fear is like a fire,’ said Marcus. ‘Something bright and crackling, that can burn a man to a husk. I’ve felt it, times enough; but never so sharply, and never so hot, as the day I first saw my own blood running on the ground.’
    I looked up sharply, wondering. The notion that Marcus could ever have been afraid of anything had never occurred to me; it seemed impossible.
    ‘I made a vow that day,’ he said. ‘I swore that whatever happened, I would shed no more. And I found a lesser fire to burn away the great fire in my brain.’ He took my wrist, drew it towards him and closed my fingers on the sword-hilt. ‘Touch it,’ he said. ‘Hold it firmly now. Feel its weight. How it balances. Never be afraid of a sword again.’
    He left me then, came back with a tray on which stood bread, a bowl of soup and a flask of his famous tart wine. He said, ‘You did well to come to me. I was hoping you would. Tomorrow I’ll start you on some decent training. Now wipe your nose, and get some food into you. If I catch you snivelling again I’m going to kick your backside round the entire circuit of the town walls of Italica.’
    It was only that night, lying in the dark remembering what he had said, I realised that though the things he had warned me of had come to pass as he expected, there had been no word of blame. I don’t think I ever loved anybody as much as I loved Marcus then.
     
    And now I must span years, in which my life and schooling in Italica went on; rich years, I see now, while I grew from childhood to my first strength. Under Marcus I learned a soldier isn’t made in a few days, or even months. I had dreamed myself a Caesar, dreamed the spoils and glories; what I hadn’t dreamed was the sweat, the tedium, the endless repetition and disappointment of the training he gave me. Most days, sometime or other, we would ride out of Italica to our practice ground, a glade in the spinney in which I’d played that fateful morning. My targets were stakes hammered into the ground; he would keep me in play an hour or more, till my muscles sang and my whole body ached. He gave his praise grudgingly; I learned to put my heart and