The Lance Thrower cc-8

by Jack Whyte

  He blinked, but never removed his gaze from mine. “What do you mean?”

  I smiled. “I have lived through a short but brutal war since last I saw you, Magister Cato, and it was not the Burgundian invasion everyone here was so perturbed about. Our war was fought in Benwick, after the death of my uncle Ban, the King there. I remember you warning us years ago to beware of becoming involved in civil war, where brother fights brother and everyone is hurt. Well, ours was a civil war over a kingship, waged between brothers, and several times during it I escaped with both my life and my hide intact purely through relying on the many lessons I had learned from you. And for that, for those, I thank you now.”

  “Hmm. You always were an attentive student.” He turned his eyes to Ursus. “Did you fight with Clothar in this war, Master Ursus?”

  To my great surprise, Ursus flushed crimson. “No, sir,” he said, “I did not. I left to return to my base in Carcasso before the war in Benwick really broke out.”

  “Ursus had no reason to remain in Benwick, Magister.” Both men turned to look at me, and I felt myself flushing as deeply as Ursus had. “He had no reason to be there at all,” I added, lamely, “other than to deliver me to my family, a task he took upon himself when Duke Lorco and his party vanished.” I looked from one to the other of them and grinned, feeling unaccountably better. “I must have been very young, in those days, to have appeared to be in need of an escort. That was all of seven months ago.”

  Wasting no words, I then told my teacher the story of the war, and how it had ended suddenly with Gunthar’s being struck down by an apoplexy in the course of a fit of rage. “Clement, Queen Vivienne’s physician, thinks the apoplexy that killed him was the cause of his madness, rather than the other way around,” I added, seeing their uncomprehending expressions. “Clement believed Gunthar’s worsening behavior might have been caused from the very beginning by some kind of … some kind of alien thing growing inside his head.” I was fully aware of how stupid that statement had sounded, but Tiberias Cato did not scoff.

  “A tumor,” he said.

  “Aye, that was the word! That’s what Clement called it. A tumor. He said it is a hidden, malignant growth that can develop slowly over years, occupying more and more room within a man’s head, and then suddenly explode and kill him. And as it grows, he says, it deprives its host—for the man in whom it grows hosts it as surely as an oak tree hosts a mistletoe—of life and strength and sanity. You knew the word, Magister. Have you heard of such a thing before?”

  “Aye, Clothar, that I have. I had a friend who died of it, long years ago in the army. It is not a pleasant way to die.”

  “Did your friend go insane?”

  “Not in the way you mean, I think, but by the time he died he was no longer the friend I had known for so long. It altered him beyond recognition, not merely physically, although it did that, too, but mentally—intellectually. The military surgeons were helpless—they knew what it was but they couldn’t cut into it without killing him. By the time the final stages hit him, he had been sick for three months, growing worse every day until it eventually killed him.” He broke off and spun to look up at me. “Have you spoken to the bishop yet?”

  “No, I haven’t even seen him yet. We’re just on our way in now. We have been traveling for weeks.”

  Cato frowned. “Then you’d better go directly to his quarters. He’ll want to see you without delay.”

  “Why, Magister?”

  “Because he has been waiting for you for more than a month, that’s why! And he leaves tomorrow for Italia, on Church business. He is required to be there long before the solstice and he will not return here for at least two months after that, in the early spring. And he has a mission for you to carry out that will not wait until he returns.” He waved a hand at me, dismissing me. “Mount. Mount up and ride, you have no time to waste and neither does the bishop. Go directly to his chambers. Hurry! Master Ursus here will walk with me and keep me company on the road back into town and I will see him safely quartered as a guest of the school. Leave your saddlebags and bedding roll with us. Off with you now. We will talk again tomorrow, you and I.”

  Germanus was meeting with several of his senior colleagues when I arrived in his quarters, and the junior cleric who sat on guard before the door to the episcopal chambers was a newcomer whom I did not recognize. He did not know me, either, but I had no trouble seeing that he disapproved of my dusty, road-soiled appearance from the moment he first set eyes on me. He sucked in his prudish little mouth and informed me primly and not quite discourteously that the Lord Bishop was in council and not to be disturbed under any circumstances. I nodded and returned the fellow’s disdainful look measure for measure. He was perhaps two years older than me, and every aspect of his appearance befitted the description “cleric.” He was pallid, soft looking, and stoop shouldered, his mouth turned down at the edges and his eyes creased with wrinkles from squinting in bad light, trying to decipher manuscripts written by others as insipid as himself.

  I turned my back on him as though to leave, but then unhooked the spatha from my side and spun around, dropping the sheathed sword on the table in front of him so that he reared back and raised his hands to fend off a blow.

  “I am not threatening you with it, man, I’m offering you an opportunity to save your hide and soothe my ruffled pinions at the same time. Now listen to me carefully. Whether you believe it or not, Bishop Germanus will want to see me. You say he is not to be disturbed. Very well. I am not asking you to disturb him. I merely want you to walk into his chambers, to where he can see you, and to stand there, holding that sword in such a way that he can see it. There is no need for you to speak, no need for you to interrupt him, no need for you to do anything except stand where he can see you and what you are holding. Can you understand that?” He could.

  “Now, let us examine the alternative, should you refuse to do as I ask. The bishop, I have been told by Tiberias Cato, has been waiting for me to arrive here for more than a month, although I did not know that. In consequence, I could not expect you to know that, either, so I will not complain about you. But I promise you Bishop Germanus will not be happy to know that you refused to announce me.”

  The man was instantly on his feet, clutching the sheathed sword in a white-knuckled grip and backing away from me as though I might be rabid and about to leap at him. He released one hand from its death grip and fumbled behind him for the door handle, keeping his eyes on me as he backed through the doorway and closed it, shutting me out.

  Within moments the door was flung open again and Germanus himself stood in the opening.

  “You came,” he said, and stepped toward me, opening his arms to embrace me, and as I returned his embrace, feeling the strength of his old arms hugging me to his bosom, I was struck, despite the vigor of his hug, by the extent to which he had aged since last we met. He was clean shaven and smooth cheeked again, after several years of going bearded, and his mane of hair was snowy white, but still thick and healthy. He held me at arm’s length and scanned me with his eyes, his gaze moving slowly, meticulously, over my face and body.

  “Older,” he said. “And stronger, more vigorous and, aye, wiser, more learned. You are become a warrior, my son, not merely a man.” He sighed a great, gusty breath, and smiled. “But then, we expected no less, those of us who know you. Come inside, come in. You and I have much to discuss and little time in which to do it, but your timing could really not be better. My conference with my brethren is almost complete, only a few remaining tasks to delegate for the term of my absence, and then I will be free of my parochial responsibilities until I return from Italia, which means I may have the rare treat of spending an evening at my own pleasure tonight. If you will please me by waiting—in here, I mean, in my chambers, not outside—I shall conclude my affairs and dismiss my brethren, and then you and I will eat and drink a cup of watered wine together. Will you do that for me?”

  “Aye, Father,” I answered, smiling, “
I will, and most particularly if the wine be well and truly watered, for I still mislike its being too strong.”

  “Then you shall have water. Come inside.”

  As we entered, the bishop’s arm around my shoulders, the officious cleric passed us on his way out, his eyes wide now and his mouth hanging open. Germanus stopped the fellow, then extended his palm for the sword the cleric still clutched. The young priest handed the spatha over, his face paler than before, and Germanus passed it to me without comment. I clipped it into place on the ring in my belt and winked at the cleric, who started in surprise and scuttled away.

  We dined together that night, as Germanus wished. The meal was delicious, a simple affair of a roasted hare, served with lightly boiled turnips and some kind of kale, both of them drenched in fresh-churned butter, and fresh-baked unleavened bread that had been liberally salted in the preparation. I eschewed the wine and drank water, but Germanus drank his lightly watered wine with great relish.

  Throughout the meal we spoke only of pleasant things, most of them family related. As usual, however, I ended up saying much more than I had intended to, and by the time we finished eating, the good bishop had drained me dry of every last vestige of information I could supply about my lost love, the beautiful Rosalyn. I do not know how I ever came to mention her in the first place, but I do know that I sat down to dine expecting to be asked about such things and determined to say nothing that might lead toward her. I had absolutely no intention of revealing anything about her, or the pain she had caused me. But I had reckoned, of course, without the bishop’s gentle, irresistible persuasiveness. It may have been something I said, or equally likely failed to say, that alerted him. I may have hesitated at the wrong point in response to a question. Who can tell? Whatever it was that I did or said, or did not do or say, Germanus was onto the scent like a hound on the trail of a fox, and all my resolve melted like snow in a warm wind. I told him all about Rosalyn and how she had left me, brushing aside the fact that she had had no choice but to leave when her family did. I should have known, however, that I would find little sympathy for my bruised feelings from my confessor.

  I knew that many of the religious brethren had begun decades earlier to distrust and avoid women, increasingly regarding them as vessels of sin; temptations made flesh in order to seduce men away from God. Father Germanus would have none of that, however, and for the simplest and most lucid of reasons: God, he believed and taught, is omnipotent and omniscient and therefore incapable of creating anything less than perfect. He had created woman to be man’s helpmeet and companion, equal in most things and unparalleled in one all-important respect: the continuity of mankind itself is the prime responsibility of woman; man’s participation in the process is at best incidental and all too frequently accidental. Without God’s gift of woman to share his world, man could not even exist. How then, Germanus asked, could any thinking person allege that women were creatures of evil? The mere suggestion was blasphemous and impious, since it implied that God Himself, the Creator, must be less than perfect. This was a perennial concern for Germanus, inspired by what he perceived to be a collective human weakness—the tendency, amounting almost to a willingness, to demean and offend the Deity by indulging in casual, unthinking blasphemy.

  He wanted me to understand the special nature of women, and he was determined that I should treat all women, regardless of birth and position, with courtesy, respect, and consideration of their God-given dignity.

  He himself had been married for years, he told me, to a wonderful woman who had brought him great happiness simply by sharing his life wholeheartedly, and although she had died while still very young and they had never known the pleasure of parenthood, he yet thought of her, years after her death, as the greatest blessing a bountiful God had bestowed on him. Without the benisons of her friendship and her physical love, he said, he could never have advanced to be the man he had become. She it was, Germanus said, who had awakened in him the confidence and self-assuredness to throw himself completely into any new endeavor he was moved to undertake, and to do so with complete conviction that he could achieve whatever he wished to achieve.

  Someday, Germanus assured me, I would find a woman created and designed by God Himself purely to be my helpmeet and my soul mate. I might not meet her soon, he warned, and I might meet others in the meantime whom I liked, admired, and even enjoyed, but when I found the one God had made for me, I would know it beyond dispute. As for the others I might meet in the interim, he told me, I should remember that every human being born had a mate somewhere and so I should treat all women with the respect and dignity I would expect to be shown by others to my spouse.

  My difficulties with Rosalyn seemed to amuse and intrigue the bishop: he was highly curious about how I could be so bold and daring in combat yet so utterly craven when it came to speaking to a young woman. Looking back on it later, it seemed to me that his interest sprang simply from the fact that I had been vulnerable enough to love, and to love so hopelessly and inadequately.

  Much as I appreciated the bishop’s amused concern with my amorous misadventures, I was no closer, after our long meal, to knowing what work he had in mind for me, and the mounting frustration of being ignorant about what role I had to play reminded me of a conversation I had had with him more than a year before, when I had approached him after a long period of soul-searching, prayer, and meditation.

  I had sought him out directly after matins, and he had stopped immediately upon seeing me waiting for him by the side of the path in the predawn dimness. His face had creased in curiosity and concern plainly caused by what he perceived in the very way I was standing, and he had broken away from his brethren to come directly to me.

  “Clothar, what ails you?”

  “Nothing, Father,” I answered. “I merely wished to speak with you, to ask you something.”

  “It must be important, I can see that from your face.” He looked up to where his secretary Ludovic stood waiting for him, and waved the man away gently. “Come,” he said to me. “Walk with me and tell me what is troubling you.”

  In truth, nothing was troubling me at that time. My intent was merely to solicit his blessing upon what I had decided, only the previous night and after months of thinking about it, to do with my life. Bishop Germanus was my hero, and for good reason: his life had been heroic in every respect. He had excelled in every task to which he had set himself and had never known mediocrity or compromise. Living in the school he had created and in the atmosphere that surrounded him, seeing how even the most mundane details of his everyday life inspired and uplifted his companions and his brethren, I had come to admire him so much that I could think of no better way to honor him than by trying to be like him in every respect, voluntarily following in his footsteps and dedicating my life to the glory and service of God by undertaking the triple oath, as he himself had, of poverty, chastity, and obedience. And so, with those thoughts in my mind and content to remain silent while I ordered my galloping ideas, I walked beside him through the gathering dawn as he led me back to his dayroom, where he seated himself across from me, folded his hands in his lap, and waited for me to say what I had to say.

  I cleared my throat. “I have been thinking, Father, that I would like to join the Church and become a bishop, like you.”

  My mentor recoiled as though I had tried to slap him, his eyes flaring in incredulity. He recovered himself immediately, and attempted—unsuccessfully—to turn his astonishment into a sneeze, but I felt my face flush with the shame of his disapproval.

  “You think me unfit,” I said, stricken, feeling my throat swell up to choke my words.

  “What?” His face betrayed utter confusion, and even in the pain of his rejection of me I was aware that I had never seen Bishop Germanus so completely at a loss for either words or understanding. And then all at once his face cleared and he was on his feet, gazing down at me. “Unfit?” he said. “What is this about unfit? In all the things I have ever thought about you, Cloth
ar, son of Childebertus, the word unfit has never entered my mind. There is nothing—you hear me, lad?—nothing for which I would consider you unfit. Look at me.”

  He reached out and grasped me by the upper arms, holding me tightly, almost painfully, and forcing me to meet his eyes. When I did eventually look at him, I saw his look soften, and he shook his head, making a soft sound that might have been one of regret.

  “As God is my witness,” he said, “there are few things easier to do in life than to cause pain and grief unwittingly simply by being human.” He drew himself erect and heaved a great, deep sigh, expelling it forcefully so that his shoulders slumped again with the release of it.

  “Clothar, Clothar, Clothar, what can I tell you? The last thing I ever expected to hear from you was the very thing you just said to me. It had never occurred to me that you might want to join the Church. And you misread my reaction. Misread it completely. Certainly, I was shocked, but it had nothing whatsoever to do with your fitness to do or to become whatever you decide to do or to become. It had everything to do, on the other hand, with me and with what I had planned for you, and with what I had decided was to be your role in life, for the next few years, at least.”

  For the next quarter of an hour, Bishop Germanus led me on a tour of the main residence of the school, where the teachers and lay brethren and others lived and worked. He took me into every room where people were working and praying, and pointed mutely to whatever the people there were doing, bidding me tacitly to pay attention to what I was being shown. I obeyed, but grew more and more confused as we went from room to room in silence until at length we returned to his dayroom and he crossed to the window, where he stood gazing out into the early-morning bustle of the square enclosure inside the main gates. I stood patiently, waiting for him to speak again.