The Eagles' Brood cc-3

by Jack Whyte

  "Bishop Alaric was your friend, Auntie. You loved and admired him. So did Grandfather Cay and Uncle Varrus, and everyone else who knew him. I have been raised according to his teachings, and although I never really knew him, I know he was a simple, godly man, that he lived in the love of the Christ, and that his living was beyond reproach.

  "All this I know, as I know that his entire being was dedicated to the propagation of the Church, Christ's Church. And yet here we are today, all of us in Britain, condemned and excommunicate because of his teachings and his beliefs, in spite of all his piety. That confounds me. What was his sin? What grievous offence against God was Alaric guilty of? He espoused the cause of Pelagius, whose teachings indicated that men have a God-given, divinely inspired nobility of soul, precisely because they were made in the Image of God!" Frustration threatened to overwhelm me, and I stopped to draw several deep breaths before I could resume. "My eternal salvation may depend upon it, Auntie, but I cannot accept an essential wrongness in that premise. God made man in His own Image and Likeness. Those are the basic tenets of the Church! And if that is so, then there is an element of the Divine in man, in his very nature. But now the men in Rome, die men who rule God's Church, have decided that their way, their definition, their interpretation of God's will, is more correct than the opinions of Pelagius, or Alaric, or any of the other British bishops who admire Pelagius's ideas. And to ensure they will have their way, they threaten all of us—this entire country—with eternal damnation! Faugh! It's disgusting!"

  Her face was utterly devoid of expression, revealing neither censure nor endorsement. I plunged ahead. "And so, I think...No, I believe, I'm convinced, that this debate you speak of will be the most important event of its kind in this country's history. Germanus is a soldier, and to have been both a Legate and a friend of my father, he must be a good one. It follows logically, therefore, that he must be a pragmatist. I can't imagine him as a zealot of the kind we envision when we think of the new Roman clerics. And yet, by the same token, his must be a formidable mind, schooled in logic and theology as well as in military strategy and tactics.

  He will be a fearsome and ferocious debater, a prosecutor. He would not be coming, otherwise.

  "This debate, Auntie, will be the arena in which all of the ideas, and the values, and the worthiness of Bishop Alaric, and Caius Britannicus, and Publius Varrus, and Picus Britannicus, and all their peers, will be either defended and exonerated, or attacked, vilified, condemned and proscribed. The Pelagian British against the Orthodox Romans. Heresy against dogma..." I paused, overwhelmed by the import of my own argument. "I have to go, Auntie. To Verulamium. I have to be there, to witness this, because after this event, in this four hundred and twenty-ninth year of Our Lord, no matter what the outcome may be, life in Britain will never be the same again. This entire land of ours, and all the people in it, will be on trial in this debate, not merely for their lives, but for their eternal souls."

  When I had finished, the silence between us was long and profound. I slumped in my chair, slack-muscled, as though I had been involved in some strenuous, exhausting physical endeavour. Finally my aunt moved to pick up a small mallet and beat the gong on the table beside her chair. Her housekeeper appeared immediately.

  "Martha, bring some wine for my nephew. The cold, sparkling kind from Gaul. Open a new jar from the ice house."

  When Martha had gone, I asked, "Why have you no male servants, Auntie? You're no man-hater."

  She smiled. "No, I simply prefer to have women around me. I have lived enough of my life in a male-dominated world. Women have different values, Caius, and I find I identify more easily with them, now that I am old." She paused, collecting her thoughts. "I wish your father had been hear to listen to you today. He would be very proud."

  "You think so? Thank you, Auntie."

  "Now be quiet and let me think."

  We sat again in companionable silence until Martha returned with my wine, which was delicious and icy. When she had served me and left again, my aunt said, "Of course you must go. I had intended to go myself, but I am too old and it is too far. You will be my deputy. But what about you Cassandra? You will be gone for months.*'

  "I'll take her with me. It will be wonderful for her."

  "All that way? And will you go alone? Just the two of you? All across Britain?"

  "Well, no, not alone, that would be asking for trouble. But just a small party, strong enough to be secure."

  "Against what? An encounter with a boatload of Saxon marauders?"

  I frowned at her. "What are you suggesting, Auntie?"

  She looked down and fingered a fold in her gown, keeping her gaze downcast as she said, "I may be interfering again in the matters of men, but you yourself said this debate would be—could be—the most important event in the history of Britain, Caius. Do you not think the style and substance of your attendance there, as our emissary from this western region, should be sufficient to substantiate the fact that there is a significant Christian presence here?"

  "What? You mean...?" I subsided, letting her unspoken suggestion filter through the clouds in my mind, and finally I had to smile, shaking my head in admiration. "You know, if I tend to forget that you are the sister of Caius Britannicus, and were married to Publius Varrus for decades, you always find a means of reminding me. You're brilliant, Auntie. And correct, needless to say. Camulod should attend this debate in full panoply. I will discuss it with Titus and Flavius, and we will put the matter to the Council immediately."

  "Good. I thought you might." She smiled. "As soon, of course, as your male mind came around to it. Now, tomorrow, we will ride out together to your Avalon, just the two of us. The weather is beautiful, and I have need of fresh, spring air. And it's high time I had the chance to evaluate this little priestess of yours."

  BOOK FOUR - Kings

  XXIX

  'The Senior Surgeon, Commander."

  I followed Donuil's pointing finger with my eyes, to where Lucanus was climbing the hill towards us. He rode bent forward uncomfortably, his downcast eyes watching his horse's hooves as the beast picked its way cautiously among the stones and boulders littering the sloping hillside. He was still no more than half-way up, making hard going of it, and I smiled at the picture he made, recalling a comment written by Publius Varrus many years before describing his own discomfort on a horse's back. I turned back to Donuil.

  "The good Lucanus is a brilliant surgeon and a fine physician, Donuil, but he's no cavalryman. He and you together must be the worst example of our military strength an enemy could see."

  Donuil grinned at me, completely unabashed. "Ah, but then, Commander, we are not your military strength. The Surgeon will never have to execute his surgery from the back of a horse, so his skills won't suffer from his lack of comfort when perched on an animal's rump. I, on the other hand, being the naturally spirited creature that I am, am improving daily in spite of—and you yourself will admit this—the direst of circumstances. My very race dictates I have a natural law to overcome. If the gods had meant us Ersemen to ride horses, they would have filled Eire with the things."

  I did not answer him. I was too busy scanning the meadow that lay below us. We were about to make our first road camp, and I had climbed this hill to survey the site I had selected, hoping to find it as ideal as it seemed from below.

  I was more than satisfied. "It's perfect," I said. "Now, I want the camp laid out down there as though we were on the plain in front of Camulod. Four equal areas oriented north and south, one for each squadron, the commissary and supply wagons in the middle, and the extra mounts there in the front, closest to the road. You follow me?" He nodded, and I raised my eyebrow, my only response. He flushed and nodded again, saluting me with his clenched fist.

  "Your pardon. Aye, Commander. Four separate areas, as in Camulod, one to each squadron, the commissariat in the middle and the extra horses in front, at the south, between the camp and the road for safety."

  "That's better. Please in
form the squadron commanders."

  He saluted again and rode off cautiously down the hill, although not quite so awkwardly as Lucanus, whom he passed on his way with a quick, distracted nod. I smiled as I watched him go, pleased with the way he was learning. It was against all his Hibernian training and background to submit to the kind of discipline I was exerting on him, but he was coping and coming to terms with it willingly.

  Lucanus came up alongside me and reined in his animal, a placid beast specially chosen for him. He loosened his helmet, pulled it off and wiped the sweat from his brow with his bent elbow.

  "On my oath, Britannicus, I will never understand why you people insist on wearing armour in weather like this. It's hot enough to melt flesh!"

  I smiled, but didn't even bother to answer him. As Senior Surgeon, he, above all others, understood the military requirement for preparedness at all times. He watched me closely, waiting in vain for me to rise to his bait, and then swung his horse around to look down into the valley.

  "They look good, don't they?"

  "Aye, Lucanus, they do. And so they should. They are good. They're the best. Camulod's best, and that means the world's best, for my money."

  On the road below us, our entire contingent was now in view, and they presented a pleasing picture of military correctness. The First Squadron, made up of our most experienced veterans, bore my great black and silver bear standard at their head—where the Roman Eagle would have been in bygone days—along with their own regalia: a crimson standard featuring a white stag and surmounted by a spread of antlers. They rode in a tight-formation column, with their squadron and troop commanders in the lead, followed immediately by the two standard-bearers, and then the remainder of the squadron, four ranks abreast in files of ten. Fifty paces behind their rear rank came the Second Squadron, in similar formation, followed in turn by the water wagon—a large, pitch-sealed, cylindrical oaken tank, laid on its side and mounted on a wheeled platform, drawn by two horses. After that came the six great commissary wagons—huge, double-axled things with enormous, spoked wheels of hand-carved oak, rimmed with iron tires—each drawn by a team of six massive draft horses. Behind the wagons came the extra mounts, tight-herded by the young men whose only work was with the horses, until the time they earned promotion and began training as troopers. Behind the extra horses, far back from their dust, and protecting them from attack from the rear, came the Third and Fourth Squadrons, equal in size to the First and Second, but made up of less seasoned troops and leavened by older, well-hardened men. One hundred and seventy-five fighting men in all, including officers, and exclusive of the commissary staff and herd boys, who brought the total number to just over two hundred.

  We watched in silence as they halted to await Donuil's approach, the commanders of the rearward squadrons riding to the head of die column to meet him. A series of shouted commands rose through the late afternoon air, and the First Squadron wheeled to the left and made their way from the road into the wooded meadow I had chosen as a campsite, crossing directly to the area designated for them. It took some time for the entire train to regroup in their allotted places, but then, at a shouted command, they all dismounted as one, and the open meadow was transformed as they set about making camp on this, the first night of the journey to Verulamium.

  "Quite a difference from the old, walled infantry camp, isn't it?" Lucanus murmured. »

  "No, not really, not when you think about it, Luke," I responded, using the name he had asked me to call him once we became friends. "It's still the same basic design they used in ancient times—four divisions and two cross streets. The only real difference is that walls are unnecessary, and unwanted. The horses are the walls, all by themselves. We simply split the horses up into four or more groups and have their riders stay close by them. And we increase the areas between the squadrons to leave enough room to manoeuvre in the event of an attack. It merely looks different. The new format works the same way as the old one did, and for exactly the same old reason—the one that's seldom recognized, but always honoured."

  Lucanus looked at me sidewise, sensing a trap. "Oh really? And what reason is that?"

  "Mess call, Luke." I was smiling, but serious nonetheless. "Think about it. It's more than simply Roman discipline. Digging the ditch and building the walls each day on the march was originally a very real precaution against attack, but the routine continued centuries after peace had been established throughout the Empire. There came a time—and it lasted for centuries—when the odds against a Roman camp being attacked must have exceeded ten thousand to one, and yet the discipline persisted."

  "Fine," he grunted eventually, when he realized I was waiting for him to ask. "I'll risk it. Why did it persist?"

  "Because it had another purpose, rooted in certainty." I could see that he was bracing himself to be the butt of some joke of mine, eyeing me warily and prepared to come up with some quick and witty rejoinder. "No, I'm serious. Bear in mind that the only time a legionary had to himself was at the end of the day. A very large part of the punctilious tradition of Roman camps came from the simple fact that, after a hard day's march, the commissary people needed time to prepare dinner without being harassed by hungry men with nothing to do. So to get around that, the Army made it a rule that the soldiers had to dig a ditch and build a rampart every day, then pitch their tents, before they were released to eat and relax. Gave the cooks time to get dinner ready. Now our troopers have to unsaddle, groom, feed and water their mounts, clean and tend to their harness, pitch their own tents and build their own fires before they can eat. Still gives the cooks time to make dinner. And dinner on the march is the most important part of a soldier's life— infantry or cavalry."

  "I suppose it is." Lucanus looked impressed. "It's certainly the most time-honoured. You can't buy that kind of security. And that reminds me," he went on, "speaking of buying, did you bring money?"

  I turned to smile at him. "Aye, I brought money. Gold. It's in the quartermaster's wagon. Why?"

  "Why not? The rest of the world still uses it, presumably, and we are going to pass through Londinium."

  That sobered me. "We are indeed, Lucanus. We are indeed. I wonder what it will be like?"

  He looked at me in puzzlement. "What? Londinium? Why should you wonder that? You've been there before, haven't you?"

  I shook my head. "No, never. You have, I suppose?"

  "Of course I have. I was there with your father, when Publius Varrus was brought there in chains by your grandfather."

  "When they met Stilicho, you mean?"

  "Yes."

  "Luke, that was years before I was born! It has been thirty years since Stilicho went back to Rome."

  "So? What does that have to do with anything, other than the compound fact that you're little more than a babe in arms and I'm not as young as I used to be?"

  I shrugged. "It seems to me a lot might happen to a city in thirty years, without the Army there to keep order."

  He dismissed that out of hand. "Nonsense, Caius. And anyway, the Army was there for at least a decade after Stilicho left. God, man, you're talking about the administrative centre of the Province, not some small hamlet filled with ignorant peasants. The civil authorities would have taken over immediately, when the Armies left. The curiales and the local magistracies and the Regional Councils. They were more than capable of maintaining order."

  I ducked my head, conceding ignorance. "Well, you may be right, and I hope you are. But I remember what my father said about trying to enforce the law without the strength of the Army to back you up. Anyway, we'll find out in a matter of days. Three days, four at the most, if we can keep up this pace."

  We had ridden forty miles that day, heading north from the Colony towards Aquae Sulis, but striking eastward at the intersection of the two main roads some thirty miles south of the town. We would spend the night here, in open meadowland beside a low-walled site that had been a march camp for centuries, and we would reach Sorviodunum, the first town on our rou
te, by mid-afternoon. Our outward journey would take us north-east via Sorviodunum, the town the Celts called Sarum, to Silchester, then to Pontes, and on to Londinium. From there we would head straight north to Verulamium along the oldest road in all of Britain. We would return along a westerly route, by way of Alchester, Corinium and Aquae Sulis, completing a rough circle and showing our presence across the entire interior of South Britain while keeping well clear of the coastal areas where there were rumoured to be heavy concentrations of entrenched Saxons.

  Lucanus put his helmet back on his head. "The lads are keen," he said, nodding down to the meadow. "They're in good spirits."

  He was right. The camp was already taking shape below us, as the troopers finished stringing their harnessing lines and tethered their horses in rows, leaving enough room between animals for each rider to work unhampered by his neighbours on either side as he unsaddled his mount and looked to the animal's needs.

  Some of the herd boys had begun to move among them, carrying bins of oats from one of the commissary wagons, while others were replenishing the water wagon's tank from the nearby brook and preparing to distribute the animals' drinking water. The remainder were attending to the tethering of the spare mounts, in the protected area directly to the south of the central crossway, closest to the road. Each horse carried its own nose-bag and leather water bucket in its saddlebags. The commissariat had been set up in the central space, equidistant from each of the four squadron encampments, with enough space surrounding it for the men to spread out and eat on the grass in comfort, if the weather was fine, or to deploy into formation around it rapidly, in the event of an emergency, without undue confusion.

  I remembered the night my father had designed the layout, emphasising the need for both disciplined formality and adaptable elasticity. His original design had been for a camp of four squadrons of forty men and horses. Lesser numbers could be accommodated at individual commanders' discretion, but any force greater than three squadrons in strength could begin to present problems in disposition, dispersal and discipline.