by Jack Whyte
"So," he said. "You scorn such relationships?"
"Between man and man? Of course I do."
"Hmm. They are unnatural, of course. Unpalatable, would you say? Unpleasant? Degrading?" I nodded, wordless. "And you could never have a friend who was. . . afflicted by such abnormality." It was not a question. I made no response. "It would repulse you?" I nodded again.
"Yes, Luke, it would. It does."
"How old are you, Caius?"
I frowned. "You know I'm thirty-one. Why?"
He smiled. "You are very old to be so young and innocent."
"Innocent?" I thought he was mocking me. "I am no innocent."
He waggled one hand from side to side. "In some ways, no; in others . . ."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
He looked me straight in the eye. "It means, my friend, that you are naive in some areas of your thinking. You have gone through life bearing these ridiculous notions within you while practising a selective blindness that is unconscionable."
I was frowning now, beginning to bluster. "What are you talking about? Are you accusing me of wishful ignorance in not suspecting you? You gave me no indications."
"Of what, Caius? Suspecting me of what? Indications of what? A lack of ability, of trustworthiness, of integrity?"
"Of deviance!"
"Ah! Deviance!" He swung away from me, averting his face and holding himself rigid in silence for long moments. Then: "Deviance. A wonderful word, Caius, so rich in meaning, so serpentine in its implications! Fell me, would you call your friend the Legate Titus deviant?"
"Of course not!"
"Quite. What about Flavius?"
"I—What . . . what are you implying?"
He turned again to face me. "Nothing, Caius. Nothing at all, I swear to you. Titus and Flavius are two of the finest men you and I have ever known. They are the best of the best, honourable, trustworthy, dependable, honest and upstanding. They are both old men now and have given their lives, all of their lives, to serving your father and his dreams and hopes and aspirations, and when he died they transferred all their loyalties to you. But have you ever seen either of them with a woman, Cay? For that matter, have you ever seen them apart for more than a few hours at a time?"
"Are you say—"
"I am saying nothing other than that, according to the strictures of your definition, Titus and Flavius are unnatural. Would you not agree?"
"No, I would not." This emerged as a whisper.
"Good. That, at least, is as it should be. Very well. Let us retrace our steps, you and I. This all began by my asking you one particular question— whether you had ever known me to consort with a woman. Now let me ask you another. Other than yourself, have you ever known me to consort with, or have personal, intimate dealings with a man, outside of my work?"
"No."
"Any man at all?" "No."
"Why do you suppose that is, Cay?"
"I don't know. Because you have no . . . friends. . . apart from me."
He nodded, acquiescing, smiling a little, wintry smile again. "Abnormal, would you say? Unnatural?"
I coughed, feeling awful. "No. Unusual, that's all. You are . . . unique in that."
"Thank you. Now I will tell you something else that might surprise you. Two things, in fact." He raised his cup and emptied it at a gulp, and then looked back to where I sat as though stricken, quivering with shame. "I have had far too much to drink today, which is the reason for this conversation's having taken place, and I have been celibate for thirty years."
"Celibate?" I had heard the word, but I had never considered it, or its true meaning, before now.
"Celibate. Sexually chaste and hence unfettered by my own lusts. Free of involvement. Free of commitment. Free of responsibility to anyone, sexually speaking, except myself. For thirty years. Longer than that, in fact." He picked up the jug again. "And now, if you will drink with me again, I'll tell you why. Are we still friends?"
I nodded, thoroughly chastened now, and held out my cup: He poured, replaced the jug, and then sat down across from me again. When he had settled himself, he grinned at me. "Celibacy," he said. "What does it mean to you?"
I shook my head, admitting my ignorance. "I'm not quite sure, apart from the lack of sexuality involved in it. Doesn't it mean unmarried?"
"It does, but the underlying meaning goes far deeper in certain contexts. In its absolute sense, celibacy entails total, voluntary abstention from any form of sexuality. What I'm going to speak of now is philosophy, Cay; my philosophy, but not of my invention, merely of my adoption. When I was studying to become a surgeon, I had many teachers, all of them brilliant men. One of them, however, was a phenomenon and a genuine magus, in the esoteric sense. You understand what I mean by that?"
"I think so. You mean he was a sorcerer."
He laughed again, delight in his voice. "A sorcerer! Well, I suppose he was, in many ways, but no, that is not what I meant. A magus is a Master, Caius, in the sense of mastery of arcane lore, of knowledge. The Magi who attended the Christ Child were not termed such without reason, but none would call them sorcerers. This magus, my teacher—his name was Philus, by the way—was a living repository of the arts and skills and all the acquired knowledge of the physician's craft down through the ages. He had a phenomenal memory, Cay, and could recall, verbatim, texts he had read in his extreme youth. Nothing Philus read or learned was ever forgotten; nothing he saw went unremembered. And he lived only to teach his knowledge to young, willing minds. He it was who taught me about celibacy, and he had been an adherent all his life. He equated celibacy with power, Cay, with potency. 'Empty your body of the urge to procreate,' he used to say, 'and you release in it the power to think, absorb and grow; the power to know and rule yourself; the greatest power available to man.' I had great difficulty with that, at first, for I was young and virile, rudely potent in that other sense. I had never known love, but lust and I were well acquainted." He paused, remembering. "I came to know Philus better, I believe, than anyone else ever had. In time, I became his disciple, and came to believe the truth of what he believed. He died when I had just begun to really learn from him, and soon after that I joined the legions. But I have never wavered from his ways. My life has been my work, and I have been content to have it thus." He grinned again. "And then you came along, with your injured little waif, Cassandra, and we became friends. I had never had a friend before, in the personal sense."
"Tell me more about celibacy and potency." My discomfort of moments earlier had vanished, and for the next hour and more, while the house grew dark and silent around us, Luke talked of his beliefs. The arcane mysteries of all mankind, he explained, were arcane simply because the mass of men were incapable of according them the concentration they demanded in order to be understood. The study, the seclusion and the academic self-absorption necessary for that understanding, he maintained, were incompatible with and mutually exclusive of the pettiness of fleshly things, the merest, yet the most disruptive of which was sexuality. To illustrate that thesis, he cited the misunderstanding we had just gone through, where he had said one thing, and I had heard another altogether and had been outraged, my narrow sensibilities offended. Only my preoccupation with the sensual, he said, could explain that.
I listened, fascinated, accepting the justice of his harsh criticism, and soon we even stopped drinking. I drank only his words thereafter, completely unaware that I was seated at my teacher's knee.
VI
I awoke. long before dawn the following day and made the fundamental error of rolling quickly from my bed as though it was a normal day. Of course, it was not. The day before, and the night that followed it, had been distinctly abnormal, and my body was polluted with poisonous wine residues. I spent much time in the steam room of the baths before the sun came up, attempting to sweat some of the toxins from my quaking frame, and had little stomach for food thereafter. I did, however, force myself to eat, and to drink great draughts of cold water, and by mid- morning
I was beginning to hope, although with reservations, that I might yet survive.
The day was brisk, with a hint of coldness in the breeze that augured an early winter, and I threw myself into my work, forcing my unwilling body to deal with the necessities of the daily round within the fortress. By noon, I had inspected the Guard and the Garrison, parading the latter formally in the courtyard. I had also visited the invalid troopers in all eleven of our hastily designated, ancillary sick bays, speaking with each of them who was capable of speech. I had looked in, too, upon Popilius in the Infirmary and found him clean-shaven once again, and looking far stronger than he had been the previous day. We spoke for some moments of his return to duty, but did not discuss the form such duty might now take. I had the feeling that he had no more desire than I to deal with the extent of his physical decline at present. I left the Infirmary deep in thought about the advancing age of all our most important personnel, and conscious of a disappointment at not having seen Ludmilla.
That thought led me to a recollection of Luke's passionate defence of celibacy as a path to esoteric power—whatever that might really mean, a skeptical voice said clearly in my head—and I shook my head in wonder at the strangeness of his viewpoint, telling myself that we would have to talk again, he and I, in sobriety and at greater length, about his convictions. His pronouncements, as they came back to me now in my distempered state, sat uneasily within me, rendered alien by the harsh light of day and the pounding of a violent headache, but I clearly remembered how impressed I had been at the time by the clarity and logic he had brought to their presentation. But then I had been drunk, and writhing in shame over the unwarranted assumption I had made concerning his sexual propensities.
I had almost reached the stables before I realised where I was going, and the sudden recognition of where I was made me stop in my tracks. I had not set out to go to the stables. I had not set out to go anywhere, in fact. I had merely begun to walk, and my feet had brought me here. Hovering indecisively, I quickly reviewed my list of duties for the day. All that I had set out to do that day, in addition to my normal tasks, had been done. I turned and looked back the way I had come. The scene was peaceful and ordinary. Guards stood at their appointed posts and the people of Camulod went about their daily business, scurrying or dawdling as their natures dictated. I saw the Legate Titus walk by in the distance, accompanied by one of his junior officers whose name escaped me, and then I saw Ludmilla, disappearing around the far corner of my great-aunt's house. I stifled the instantaneous urge to follow her, and turned my eyes elsewhere. A breeze wafted the smell of the stables into my nostrils, and with it came an image of a solitary grave by a placid lake, and a sudden emptiness in my chest. I had not visited the grave of my wife and unborn child since my return from Cornwall, a full week ago and more. Suddenly I knew why I had come to the stables, and I made my way inside and directly to the stall that held Germanicus.
As soon as he was saddled, I sought out Titus and informed him I was leaving the fortress for at least the afternoon, but possibly for longer. I told him I would be within summons, in my secret place—he knew of it, but not of its location—and reminded him of how I could be found in an emergency, by sending out trumpeters to the tops of the three highest neighbouring hills.
A very short time later I approached the main gates of the fortress.
Before I could pass through the portal, however, I had to rein in my horse and swing him aside to allow passage to an enormous wagon pulled by a team of four large horses that had just come up the hill road from the plain. The vehicle was piled high with massive wooden casks, and the driver inched his team forward slowly, cursing the horses fluently and familiarly by their individual names while peering back over his shoulder to where another man stood behind him, on the edge of the first row of casks, craning his neck to make sure that the topmost barrels of the load would clear the lintel of the gateway without mishap. They did, the load passed through and the second man spun nimbly, balancing himself easily with one hand on the teamster's shoulder before he stepped down and sank to the bench beside him. The teamster was unknown to me. The second man was Peter Ironhair, and I recognized him a heartbeat before he saw me.
"Whoa! Hold up there, Torn."
The wagon creaked to a halt and Ironhair faced me, eye to eye, less than three paces separating us.
"Well," he said, his voice pleasant enough. "It's the great Merlyn Britannicus, Legate Commander of the Forces of Camulod."
I nodded to him, keeping my face blank of expression. "Ironhair. Good day to you." He stood up again, looking down at me now, his eyes fixed in an unblinking gaze of cold hostility. Refusing to be challenged to a staring contest, I swung my mount around again to ride on, but the bulk of his wagon, slewed slightly sideways, blocked the gateway. I glanced back at him.
"Your wagon is blocking the gate."
"It's a big wagon." He made no move to signal his driver to proceed. I did it for him.
"Move on, driver."
"Stay where you are, Tom."
I sucked in a deep breath, being careful to show no sign of irritation. I was in an untenable situation, faced with a potentially ugly confrontation I could not avoid other than by backing down completely and riding away. I had no fear of seeming to back down to Ironhair in his own eyes; I would have ample opportunity, even if I had to create it myself, of straightening that matter out in days to come. But already there were people, passersby, forming a crowd around us, awaiting passage, burdened with sacks and laden with bundles, and by that almost magical chemistry found even in the smallest crowd, they were aware already of the tension between us. Besides that, several of the gate guards were watching now. The point was rapidly approaching where a public dispute would be unavoidable. I decided to put as fair a face upon things as I could, and gently guided my horse completely around, taking care to jostle none of the people close to me and urging them to fall back and let the wagon pass.
I rode off for some distance, back into the courtyard, and the crowd followed me. The wagon remained where it was, Ironhair still standing at the driver's bench, his eyes on me.
"Bring your wagon forward."
His answer was flat, unequivocal and provocative. "Not until you and I have talked."
I spurred my mount forward quickly, back to where I had been. The people behind me surged forward. Before they could hear me, I threw a quiet warning to Ironhair. "You are obstructing the thoroughfare. Move it now, or I'll have the guards move it for you and confiscate your load for public mischief."
"Hah!" His shout, and the broad sweep of the arm that accompanied it, were for the benefit of the crowd now within earshot again. "You hear that, people of Camulod? The noble Legate here threatens me with forfeiture of my goods if I do not, this instant, obey his commands. He has, I think, forgotten that his powers apply only to soldiers and not to honest citizens. I have broken no law, that he should bludgeon me with threats. All I have done, am doing, is being slow to move my wagon through this gate."
"Well, hurry it up, damn you, you're keeping me from my tasks!" This issued from the burly throat of the man nearest me, a hulking giant who plainly had no sympathy with Ironhair or his cause.
His interruption took Ironhair completely by surprise. He stopped, and gaped down at the man. "What?" was all he could summon up in reply.
"I said get your damned wagon out of my way. Are you deaf, as well as stupid?"
Ironhair was open-mouthed, and the sight of his surprise took the edge off my anger, so that I found myself having to stifle a grin. Another voice on my left took up the plaint. "Come on, Ironhair, move the shit-filled wagon and let us through the gates. We haven't got all day to stand around here while you preach politics."
"Politics?" I could hear the injury in his tone. "I wasn't preaching politics. This man was threatening me for no reason!"
"Aye," said the big man, "and so what? He had reason enough. You're a fool and a blowhard. Now there's three of us threatening you. Move it!"<
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"It's a heavy wagon!" There was a note of panic now in his voice.
"Then we'll soon lighten it. Let's have those barrels off, lads!" The crowd surged forward suddenly, and Ironhair had to shout at the top of his lungs to make himself heard above the growls that rose now from all around him.
"All right! All right, stand back! We're moving!" He punched Tom the driver on the shoulder and Tom flicked the reins. The horses leaned into their collars, the wheels began to roll and the wagon lumbered forward. I nudged my horse aside again to give it room, smiling openly now. Ironhair kept his eyes averted as he passed me amid a chorus of jeers and taunts. As soon as the way was cleared the crowd poured through, mingling with others who had waited on the other side of the gates. The two crowds melded into one swirling mass and an unknown voice came clearly to my ears from somewhere in its midst.
"No thanks necessary, Merlyn!"
I shook my head, grinning, and found myself eye to eye and grin to grin with the young decurion commander of the gate guard. He wiped the smile from his face immediately and jerked to attention, snapping me a smart salute. I returned it formally, my own face straight again, then swung my horse around to follow Ironhair's wagon back into the fortress yard, kicking him to canter until I overtook the vehicle.
"Ironhair!"
The wagon creaked to a halt and he swung around to face me, scowling. I gave him no chance to speak.
"Keep your mouth shut and listen, because I will never repeat myself. This once I warn you. In future, I act. The title you threw at me back there was accurate. Bear in mind what it means. You may seek to confront me again, but be aware that no matter what the outcome, you cannot win. By impeding me, or attempting to belittle me publicly, in performance of my duties or otherwise, and by causing confrontations of the type you just attempted, you are endangering the established order and the peace, and therefore the well-being of this Colony. We have problems enough in Camulod, caused from beyond, without internal dissension. That's why I clipped your wings in Council yesterday. You chose to take it as a personal attack, obviously. Perhaps it was, but it came from strength, Ironhair, not from weakness."