by Whyte, Jack
The boy's face cleared, and he nodded, beginning to smile. I prompted him gently.
"So, therefore, living memory means . . . ?"
". . . That the last time something like that happened was so long ago that no one can even recall hearing of such a thing."
"Precisely."
"So it really means for generations, or for ages unknown. But. . ."
"But what?"
"Interregnum. Isn't a regnum a king's lifetime? Rome had emperors, not kings. Shouldn't the word be interimperium?"
I grunted a laugh. "It should I suppose, but it's an ancient word, dating from the time when Rome had kings, before the Republic was founded. It means what it means—the time between rulers—I suppose no one ever thought it worth the effort to change it."
"What's the difference, the real difference I mean, between a king and an emperor?"
I pursed my lips and fingered the end of my nose, scratching at an itch. "You know the rules, Arthur. You tell me what you think the difference is . . . I correct you if I think you're wrong, and if we disagree, we find an arbitrator. So, tell me."
"Territory . . ." He was thinking deeply. "And power."
"How so?"
"Emperors have power over kings."
"Not always. Not if the kings wish to deny that power."
"Then there is war, and the Emperor always wins, because he has the power of Empire behind him."
"Always? Then where is the Empire today? Alaric and his Goths sacked Rome before you were born, and Alaric wasn't even a king, he was a warrior— a warlord. So what does that imply?"
The boy sat silent for a long time, and then raised his head to answer me, and I knew from the expression in his eyes that he was far from confident about what he would say.
"I thought Alaric was king of the Goths, but even so, his victory means that the Empire was weak, too weak to withstand his strength . . . and that implies. . . that the man, the leader. . . the man himself. . . contains the greatness or the weakness. . . the success or failure of. . . of. . ."
"Of his enterprise, Arthur, whether it be an empire, a kingdom, or a chieftain's sway over his people. Bravo! It is the leader who commands the times in which he lives. Alexander, Scipio Africanus, Gaius Marius, Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus, Marcus Aurelius, Theodosius, Flavius Stilicho, and Alaric the Goth. Each stood against towering odds and fearsome enemies; enemies the likes of Pompey the Great, Darius and Xerxes and Hannibal— and Stilicho and Alaric were ranged against each other, until the emperor Honorius had Stilicho murdered and opened his own empire to defeat by Alaric."
"Hmm . . ." A long, contemplative silence followed that musing sound, and I made no attempt to break it. The boy was deep in thought. Finally he nodded his head gently. "So it's the leader who's important. It doesn't matter what he rules; empire, kingdom, town or fort. It's him, and the example that he sets, that inspires other men to fight for him and win."
"Aye, that's right, and the winning is very important. Never forget, Arthur, that in order to win, men must want to fight. . . And bear in mind, that doesn't necessarily hold true when you reverse it. It's not the same to say that to fight, men must want to win. Not at all the same. But to win, men must want to fight, they must be inspired, willing to follow their leader to the death. That willingness to die achieving victory for another man's purposes only results from great and inspiring leadership. No sane man will willingly follow someone he detests or disrespects. He might be constrained to do it, forced to fight, but then he'll never fight for any other purpose than to save his own life, and that means he'll never fight enthusiastically, to win a great victory for his leader. The lesson is ended. Out with you, now! I have work to finish here . . ." I paused, suddenly seeing the troubled expression on his face. "What? What is it?"
He shook his head, as though to dislodge an annoying thought. "Can't a bad man be a good leader, though? Not all victories have been won by great leaders, and some great leaders have been defeated. Isn't that true?"
"Yes, it is." His face remained clouded. "You seem perplexed. What's troubling you, Arthur?" There was a long silence.
"Was. . . was my father a good leader, Merlyn?"
The unexpectedness of the question, and the tremulous tone in which it was posed almost overwhelmed me, and I was suddenly and fully aware that this was an eight-year-old boy who spoke to me. Even as I write the words now, they appear fatuous in their presumption that I could have been unaware of such a thing, but in dealing with Arthur Pendragon, even in his extreme youth, it was impossible not to treat him as a perceptive and intuitive intellect, far older than his years. Now, with one question, he had reestablished his youthfulness and insecurity. The logical, analytical thinker was banished, and the tentative, unformed boy revealed. He had never known his father, Uther Pendragon, and we seldom spoke of him, simply, I believed, because he had never directly influenced the boy's life. Because of that, until this moment, had anyone asked me I would have opined that the boy seldom thought of the father he had never known. Now, with that one question, I knew otherwise, and I knew also that it was time to deal with my neglect. I leaned back and crossed my arms on my chest, considering my next words carefully. Arthur sat watching me tensely.
"Your father was not simply a good leader, Arthur, he was a superb leader. His men would have followed him anywhere—and they did. He was the best we had."
"Better than you, Merlyn?"
I smiled. "Aye, lad, far better me than me in many, many ways. He was bolder, more ferocious, more high-spirited and valorous. Uther Pendragon was a truly mighty warrior."
A beat of silence, then: "But was he a good man?"
"None finer. He might not have been good in the way bishops and other churchmen would like us to be good—always at prayer and full of piety— but your father was good in the way of simple nobility, justice and kindness. Some might have thought him wild and undisciplined, but he had a gentleness in him to match the wild rages that could sometimes sweep him, and his self-discipline was absolute, in its own fashion . . . And he harmed none who did not harm him." A very large portion of my mind was writhing in discomfort with my own memories of what I had once believed of Uther, but I dared show no discomfort here, and I knew well that the guilt causing these feelings was mine alone and had nothing to do with Uther as he was and had been.
"He was defeated and killed."
"He was killed in a skirmish, Arthur; struck down from behind in a wild scuffle in dense woods, and the man who killed him didn't know who he was. It was an accident of war, not a death in formal battle, defeated in the field."
"But he was defeated in battle, was he not? His armies were destroyed." This was growing difficult. I nodded to emphasize my words.
"Yes, he was defeated in a battle. His army was defeated on one occasion. But it was one army, and it was not large, and he had been in the field for long months without respite, and Lot of Cornwall caught him between three armies, two of those fresh and unblooded. There was no grand strategy involved, no contest between generals. Lot had more men, and they were fresh; your father had fewer and they were tired."
He sat staring at me, his face unreadable. To fill the silence, I began counting to myself. I had reached twenty before the boy spoke again.
"If he was a good leader, he should have known Lot was trying to entrap him. A leader's first responsibility is to the men under his command. You always say that."
"Well, yes, I do, and that's true . . ." I found myself trapped by my own lessons. "But—"
"There can be no buts, Merlyn. I've heard you say, many times, that command responsibility has no buts in it."
I silently cursed the exactness of his memory, but could not deny what he had said. I tried prevarication, not expecting it to be successful. "That is true, too, Arthur, but there are always exceptions to any rule. This occasion was one of those exceptions. Your father was concerned for you and your mother at the time. You were but new born and she was barely recovered from your birth,
and still unfit to travel."
"Then he should have sent us away to safety with some of his men. He should have remained to command his army."
"No, Arthur, I cannot allow you to condemn your father this way. You were not there. I was, although I was too far away to be of assistance to him. Your father was dealing with Lot of Cornwall—a liar, a treacherous coward and a weakling. Lot hired alien mercenaries from beyond the seas to do his fighting for him. He won by deviousness and perfidy, and he made sure that he himself was never in the slightest danger. Someone killed him on the day your father died, for I found his body hanging from a tree, but I don't believe it was any of ours who brought about his death. I believe one of Lot's own killed him, perhaps for vengeance, since Lot was open-handed with his treachery, abusing friend and foe alike. Your father, had he not been killed the way he was, stabbed in the back in a petty woodland brawl, would have emerged the victor in Cornwall that very day. He had fought for that victory, and he had earned it. His untimely death in that woods was a tragedy."
"A tragedy that might have been avoided, had he not permitted my mother and me to divert him from his duty."
I blinked at the boy in disbelief, seeing the rigid, unyielding lines of pain in his young face. "Arthur, how can you even think such a thing? That is simply not true!"
He glared at me, pale faced. "Women and war do not mix. You told me that yourself, only last week. If Mark Antony had not become involved with Cleopatra of Egypt, you said, all history would have been different. That involvement was Antony's tragedy."
I had said exactly that, but now I denied it without the slightest hesitation. "Nothing of the kind," I snapped. "The Queen was the means of Antony's downfall, but Antony's true tragedy was that he was pitted against an even greater leader than himself, Octavius Caesar, who was destined to become Caesar Augustus, Caesar the Great, first Emperor of Rome."
The boy sat blinking at me now, his face less bleak looking, and I watched him review what I had said, absorbing the possibility that the tragedy I had mentioned might not be the tragedy he had understood. I spoke on, making my own point now, attempting to ameliorate his.
"It's the greatness that counts, Arthur. Pompey the Great, Caesar the Great, Alexander the Great, Xerxes the Great. There are hundreds of such names, and some of them will be remembered forever. Bad leaders may win battles, from time to time, through sheer numerical superiority, the way Lot did in his encounter with your father. They may even win wars, from time to time. But they never achieve true greatness, Arthur. Your father might have, had he lived. Greatness is an attribute bestowed upon a leader by those he leads, and those, being men, are loath to ascribe greatness to a man who has not earned it. But your father's men believed in Uther's greatness, and so must you. Believe me, a man may have the gift of leadership inborn in him, but greatness is something that he has to learn, and to earn, beneath the eyes of those who trust him and believe in what he represents. He must earn that faith through a lifetime of being trustworthy—no easy task, for there can be no lapses in his record—and if he ever should betray that trust, for one moment, and be discovered, as he must—then it is lost forever. Uther Pendragon was never false to any man. He was a terrible enemy, once angered, but he was never false and his integrity was never questioned, even by his enemies—with the sole exception of Lot of Cornwall, who was more of a mad dog than a man. I promise you, no man who deals in slyness or in treachery or duplicity can ever gain that pinnacle of greatness. He may succeed in some things, for a time, but he will fail and fall eventually.
"Integrity, on the other hand, was an attribute your father possessed in abundance, and integrity, entailing honesty and forthrightness, courage, bravery, honour and strict justice in dealing with all men—and women, too— contains the beginnings of greatness. You do know the difference between bravery and courage, don't you?"
As I had spoken my encomium to his father, the boy's face had changed, the tension and the harried look receding visibly as he evaluated and accepted what he heard me say. I had never lied to him and now I could see he believed my words completely, true as they were, and his resilient good nature was reasserting itself visibly. Now my last question, the tone of it, and my ironic look, had the effect I hoped to achieve. He smiled and stood up, closing the large, leather bound book he had been reading.
"Bravery is something you can experience on the spur of the moment, faced with danger. To have courage, you must think about the dangers in advance, then weigh the risks, and then do what you have to do, despite your fears." His face grew serious again. "Uncle Connor is that kind of leader, too, isn't he? With integrity, I mean. His men would follow him anywhere, and they don't care that he has a wooden leg."
"No, they don't, because it's not important. They follow what they love in him. The integrity. The fierceness and the courage, loyalty and honesty that make him who and what he is. That's what I mean when I talk to you of leadership—your Uncle Connor is another great leader. Observe him closely, and see if you can discern what it is about him that endears him most to his men. Then, when you have followers of your own, remember what you saw."
"I wonder when he'll come?"
"He'll come when he arrives, and not before. Now away with you before it grows too dark for me to see what I'm writing."
I didn't see him leave, and he closed the door silently behind him, but I could not return to my writing after that. I had too much on my mind, and none of it had to do with my diurnal notes. The lad had managed to surprise me yet again with the depth and scope of his thinking, and I allowed myself now to think about the progress he had made in everything we sought to teach him.
More than a year had passed since the day Connor delivered the four matched ponies, and he was now overdue to return again from Eire. In the intervening months, Arthur and his young friends had grown to be a familiar sight throughout the length and breadth of our estates, riding their startlingly coloured ponies everywhere in perfect freedom, thanks to the absence of any kind of threat to our well-being, and all four boys including Ghilleadh, the youngest, at barely six years old now rode like young centaurs.
Arthur, their uncontested leader in all things, was growing like a sapling starved for light, shooting upwards with a speed and vigour that, at times, made him appear to be too thin. Lucanus, however, dismissed my fears on that each time I mentioned it, which was quite frequently. The boy, he said, was healthy as a horse. His bones were good, his shoulders broad and likely to be massive, and his chest, though seeming to be frail, was deep and well- formed, with solid ribs. First, the boy must grow to his ordained height, Luke said, pointing out that we Britannici had never been a stunted family. Once his upward growth had been achieved, a matter of another count of years to match the eight he had attained so far, the rest would grow to match. In the meantime, he maintained, filling the lad's quick mind held more importance than the simple and self-sustaining development of his body.
That much I knew was true, and we were working hard in concert, and much to Arthur's dismay at times, on educating him for the task he would assume in time to come. Like all boys, Arthur himself would have preferred his schooling to be different. Given the choice, which I was careful to prevent, he would have opted for the parts he loved instinctively and consigned the other, less enthralling aspects of his training to some unspecified period called "later." But then, he had no notion he was being trained for anything more demanding than the life he knew today. He was aware that, as the ward of Ambrose and me, he would assume our tasks some day and work for the welfare and safety of the Colony that was his home, but he was eight years old and time meant nothing to him. We were immortal in his eyes, and boyhood was eternal, and so he lived a boy's life of constant challenge and adventure, taking it hard sometimes when there were days of brilliant sunshine that were lost to him because his lessons kept him within walls. All in all, however, he seemed well content to learn, no matter what the topic, and his mind was like a sponge, absorbing and retaining all we
poured into it.
To make the process seem less personal and more palatable to the lad, we had decided, years before, that his close friends and cousins should be educated with Arthur, so that on days when he was made to fret indoors, he had at least the companionship of misery shared; Bedwyr and Gwin, and latterly Ghilleadh, suffered along with him, as did Ambrose and Ludmilla's daughters Luceiia and Octavia.
Their teaching was divided among six of us, with additional input from many others. Primarily, however, Ambrose, Lucanus, Donuil, Shelagh, Ludmilla and I myself had thought long and with gravity to devise a program that would meet the needs we had been able to define, all of us aware of the importance of the task we were delineating. The training must embrace two major elements, military and civil. Of that there was no doubt. Beyond that division, however, lay a country of bewildering diversities made the more difficult to traverse by the simple fact that none of us save Luke had any experience as teachers. Each of us had skills and knowledge to pass on, nevertheless, and some of those we shared with others of the group, so we had devised a program of instruction, hesitant and tentative at first, when Arthur was but four years old. That program had matured steadily since then, as we gained confidence and came to realize the nature, and the hunger, of the bright young minds with which we dealt.
In the range of what we termed "the civil studies" I was in charge of languages, although the task was shared by everyone. We taught the children patiently to read and then to write in Latin, eschewing Greek because it was not spoken in our land by then and we had few Greek texts. In spoken languages, the children worked in Latin but naturally spoke the local tongue, a liquid mixture born of Celtic and of Latin roots that had no name but flourished as a common, daily language known to all the people in our region. To keep the children's interest lively and alert, I also spoke with them much of the time in the Pendragon tongue, unsullied by Latin contaminations, and Donuil soon accustomed himself to speaking to them at all times in Erse, in which all six children could soon converse. Ambrose even attempted, at one point, to teach them the language used by Hengist's Danes, but that was a fruitless task, since his own knowledge of the tongue was rudimentary and there was no one near our lands who could assist him, and in any case young Bedwyr was the only one who showed the slightest interest in the alien sounds of that harsh language.