The Saxon Shore cc-4

by Jack Whyte

  "These are not all mine, you understand," he said, unfazed by the din and activity all around. "We just seem to attract them, somehow. My wife enjoys the sounds and smells of children, and all the gods know they can produce enough of both for anyone, so mothers who don't share her pleasure are happy to cater to it by lending her their own to care for while they do other things. Come and meet her. Bring the babby." He led Donuil and me out and into another hut standing apart from the one shared by "the brood," as he referred to the children, and there I met his wife Margaret, a jolly, laughing young woman of generous build who hugged Donuil and then welcomed me shyly, disguising her nervousness by fussing with the baby Arthur, whom I clutched firmly in the crook of my right arm. I thanked her warmly for the care she had evidently lavished on the child, and her confusion and embarrassment increased, so that I had, for pity's sake, to suspend my praises. She did assure me, however, and I had no doubt of it, that she would continue to look after young Arthur for the duration of our stay here among them, and that I need have no worries over his welfare. Some short time later, still flustered and red-faced, she made excuses and left the hut to see to the other children, leaving Connor, Donuil and me alone with the child and the jug of ale Connor had promised. I placed my squirming young charge on the ground at my feet, and the three of us sat and talked of trivial things before the brothers left me alone with the child for a spell. When they had gone, I sat gazing at the boy who lay quietly for the moment, looking up at me wide-eyed, and again I found myself marvelling at the beauty of his strangely golden eyes. I knew from my reading that my grandfather, Caius Britannicus, had had similar eyes, so I accepted that they must be a Britannicus family trait, although one that was seldom seen. But it occurred to me now that they must pass downward through the maternal side of the family, for Caius Britannicus had been this child's great-uncle. It was my aunt Luceiia who gave Arthur his Britannican blood, and therefore his yellow-gold eyes. Eagle's eyes, Publius Varrus had called them, and that memory led me to thinking again about who this child was and what he represented. I shook my head in wonderment at the making of him. So much mingling of noble bloodlines and so much family strength and character had fused together, so beautifully, in this one small boy child: Roman blood of two great families, and all the inborn strength and fortitude and dignity of the leading families of the great Celtic clans of Cambrian Pendragons and Eirish Scots. Surely, I thought, if Destiny awaited him, as I believed it did, the spirits of his ancestors would combine with sufficient potency to make him master of whatever lay ahead of him.

  I realized that I was straining, leaning forward in my armour so that breathing was becoming difficult, and the boy lay staring up at me, kicking occasionally with bare, plump feet. I leaned forward further, with some difficulty occasioned by the unyielding metal length of my cuirass, and poked him in his swollen little belly, making those inane, speech-like noises that all grown people seem to make when looking at infants. Then, embarrassed by the noises I was making, and by the way the child regarded me, as though to ridicule my efforts at addressing him, I stooped further, grunting with the effort, and picked him up, holding him above me at arms' length while I sat back, thankful to be stretching, and frowned up at him in perplexity. He continued to stare back at me, solemn faced.

  "What are you going to be, young Arthur Pendragon?" I growled. "Who are you going to be? Will you be a warrior? And if you are, what kind of fighter will you be? What will your enemies have to say of you?" Without warning, a stream of water leaped from his tiny spout and the sound of it spattering against my parade breastplate was ample commentary on how he cared about what his enemies might think. I sprang to my feet with a curse, laughing despite my shock and holding him still at the extension of my arms, turning him so the jet of his urine arced away from me. He gurgled, laughing with me, no doubt because of the sudden, swooping movements of my startled reaction, and a warmth swelled up in my throat, making me want to hold him close and press him to my breast. But he was very small and fragile, and my breast was encased in armour, so I merely set him down again while I dried my dripping harness, and then I carried him very cautiously back into the room with the other children. It seems strange to me now that I had no fear of handling him on that occasion, for his smallness awed me at other, later times. Perhaps it was his sturdy nakedness that day that made me realize he would not break from handling. Later in his babyhood, in Britain, where he was always clothed, he seemed far more delicate and vulnerable.

  Fingael, son of Athol, was conspicuously absent from the festivities that began before nightfall, by which time the odour of spit-roasted venison had permeated the entire community and brought a throng of people back into the central communal space before the rostrum in the expectation of feasting and music. Within an anteroom of the great long hall that took up one side of this gathering place, while the crowd outside was becoming more noisy and festive with every passing moment, my friends and I were welcomed yet again, less formally this time, at a reception attended by the king and all his most trusted followers. At the urging of Donuil and Connor I had laid aside my armour for the first time in weeks and had ordered my men to do likewise, so that we paraded ourselves in our finest clothes, without weaponry of any kind, in a clear gesture of trust and confidence in our host and his people. In contrast to our unarmed trust, however, all of Athol's people save himself and his sons came armed to the teeth, as the saying goes, and decked in their most savage finery, most of which set my Roman-instructed teeth on edge.

  I had been raised in the old Imperial tradition, to Roman tastes and sensibilities, in spite of the fact that my entire family on my father's side prided themselves upon being "British" and not Roman. By comparison with these Eirish Scots, however, even my mother's Cambrian Celts were restrained in their tastes and use of colour. I had noticed from the outset that Donuil's people had no fear of mixing colours, but this gathering in the Hall made all the bright raiment I had seen up to this point seem muted and drab, as the daily wear of most people is by comparison with their festive finery. With an evening of festivity stretched ahead of them, they had arrayed themselves in their finest and I had never seen so many bright and vibrant, violently opposed colours used in such profusion: yellows and greens and reds and blues intermixed haphazardly enough to challenge the eyes. And yet, as I grew inured to the welter, I began to perceive certain unities in the chromatic chaos. All of the clothing was patterned, I could see, and all of the patterns were based upon a simple check design common in the monochromatic work of all weavers. In the case of these Scots, however, the colours of the yarn the weavers worked were wildly mixed, dyed in a multitude of hues. Thus it might be seen that all the members of one family group might wear the same pattern of green and red, with cross-lines of hazy blue or white or even yellow offsetting the dominant checks, but the reds and the greens might vary from person to person in shades that ran from the palest, near- white green of sun-blocked grass to the deep green of forest conifers, and from anemic orange to the crimson of clotting blood. And sometimes, I could see, these colour variations would appear in one large garment, such as the great, toga-like robes in which several of the older men were swathed. The younger men, no less garishly caparisoned, wore armour with their brightly coloured clothes: breastplates and arm guards and sometimes even greaves or leggings of iron, bronze, brass or layered, toughened oxhide. All of them carried sheathed daggers of one kind or another at their waists, although there were no swords or axes to be seen.

  I mentioned the weapons to Connor, who sat beside me at one point, partly reclined upon a long, low couch that would once have graced some Roman household and that I guessed had been placed here for his special use, since the other furnishings in the anteroom were few and far more primitive. He looked at me with a half smile.

  "You find that strange, that men should go armed at all times?"

  I shrugged my shoulders. "Aye, in the King's Hall, among friends, on a festive occasion."

  He grun
ted, in what I assumed to be a stifled laugh. "They're not really armed, my friend. They left their swords and axes and their spears outside."

  "But not their daggers."

  "No, not their daggers. Their daggers are not thought of as weapons— more as a badge of free manhood."

  "Those badges all look lethal."

  "Aye, and they would be, were they ever drawn. But to the bearer, most of all. It is death to bare a blade in the King's Hall."

  I blinked at him, surprised. "Then why wear them at all? A man in drink might be provoked to draw."

  "True, but it's custom. No true man should ever be weak enough to permit himself to be provoked into suicide, therefore the custom has become a test of a man's true worth."

  "Speaking of that," I smiled, thinking it a good time to change the subject, "what has happened to your brother Finn? He's not here."

  "No, he has gone hunting." He looked away to where his father sat talking to Donuil and the hirsute Mungo. "My father decided he has a taste for goat."

  "Goat? And Finn had to go hunting for a goat? The paddocks I have seen are full of them."

  "Mountain goat," Connor continued, his face carefully schooled into emptiness.

  "Mountain goat. I see. And how close are the nearest mountains?"

  "Oh, very close, but they are not high enough to harbour mountain goats."

  "Are any?"

  "Aye, but the closest of them is a good three days' journey from here."

  "Three days. And three days back. How long to catch a goat?"

  "Long enough, my astute friend, to enable you to settle down here in peace for a while."

  "Aye, until Finn comes home. Does your father think an enforced exile will make him see me in a more friendly light?"

  Now Connor turned and looked at me directly. "My father is no man's fool, Caius Merlyn. His enduring kingship bears that out. By the time Finn comes home, my father will have formed his own opinion of your worth, from his own observation, uninfluenced by any other's perception. You will have earned your own place among us by then, your own identity. Thereafter, anything that transpires between you and Finn will be your own affair and will not reflect upon my father or his hospitality. As I said before, Finn has his own ways, but my father the king has his, too."

  I nodded, then asked what he had meant in referring to his father's enduring kingship. His answer surprised me, adding once more to my knowledge of these strange people.

  "You don't know our ways? Hasn't my brother told you of our rules of kingship?" I shook my head. "Well, we are different here in Eire from you, and from any other people I have met, including our neighbours. I know you call us Celts, and I suppose we are, since every other people in these lands is Celtic, save for those born, like you, from Roman stock, but we call ourselves Gaels." He pronounced the word almost as "Gauls," and I immediately took it to mean that his people came from Gaul and questioned him on that, but he shook his head. "No, I think not, although there might be something to it, back in the long ago. To my knowledge, though, we have no connection with those other Gauls. We are of this land, and have always been."

  "Whence comes the name then?" I saw from his face that he could not answer, and waved him on. "No matter, it's not important now. You were about to tell me of your custom of kingship."

  "Aye. The law of our people states that our king be of the people . . . king of the people."

  I stared at him. "I don't understand. Surely that is self-evident?"

  "Oh no, not so. How many kings do you know?"

  I shrugged. "Very few, a mere handful: my cousin Uther, who was always more of a brother to me than he was any kind of king. King he was, of course, after his father's death, king of the Pendragon strongholds in the Cambrian west. But Uther never ruled, in the kingly sense. He was a warrior chief, paramount, but king only in name. Then there was Lot, who called himself King of Cornwall, although the title was self-assumed; Vortigern, King of Northumbria; and Derek, King of Ravenglass, although again I assume that to be a false kingship, more vaunt than verity since Ravenglass is but a town, and a Roman one, at that. And now your father, the High King of Eire."

  "No!" His denial was so abrupt as to be near violent. "My father makes no claim to being High King of Eire. There can never be such a High King so long as there is one other king who disputes that claim. All of them would. Any High King of Eire would have to fight to gain and hold that rank. None has, to this day."

  "I see. But I have heard Donuil speak of your father as Ard Righ, I am sure. Is that not what the title means?"

  "Aye, in some sense, although in ours it simply means high chief, and therefore king. But Athol Mac Iain, my father, is King of the Gael—you would say King of Scots—and therein lies the distinction."

  "What distinction?" I felt foolish having to ask, for Connor looked at me as though I were feebleminded, and in truth I was beginning to wonder myself about my powers of perception, for there was something here that was eluding me.

  "Think about it, man," he exhorted me. "You said the words yourself: 'Lot, King of Cornwall; Derek, was it? King of wherever, which you said was only a Roman town; and Vortigern, of whom I have heard, King of Northumbria. Then Uther, your cousin, king of the Pendragon strongholds. You have defined the norm in your own words. Even the emperors of Rome conform to the common way: they are all kings or emperors of some place. They rule their people's holdings. They hold the land. Our kings are kings of the people and the people hold the land. We are unique in that, and so my father is the King of Scots and rules his people in trust—not their land, for it is theirs."

  I shook my head ruefully. "Now I see what you mean. It is indeed a distinction, and as you say, unique. I would never have seen it, had you not pointed it out to me."

  He grinned now, suddenly more relaxed. "Oh, you would have seen it, eventually. You would have noted that the kingship my father holds has its own encumbrances. As king of the people, he remains one of the people and is therefore under constant scrutiny. As a king without land of his own, he relies upon the goodwill of his people in time of war and in time of need to supply him with what he otherwise lacks, the resources of the land."

  "Wait a moment, Connor, this is too much too quickly for me. There is a contradiction here, involving the very idea of kingship. How can any man be a king and hold no land? Land, as you yourself have only now pointed out to me, is the very essence of kingship."

  He sat up straight and reached for the cup that sat on the ground by my feet, emptying it at a toss. "No, you are wrong, my friend. Think about it. Kingship, in its purest sense, untrammelled by language, involves rule: the governance and guidance of the people. It involves things spiritual and moral. It involves those elements of life and rules of living that dictate the difference between sane living and mere mindless savagery. The land itself is really unimportant. . . it is no more than the space a people occupies, and from time to time it may become unhealthy or untenable. The king of a land has nowhere else to go. The king of a people, on the other hand, may take his people anywhere they wish, or need, to go."

  I had lost all awareness of where we were, oblivious to the noise and movement all around us. Here, in the midst of a strange, unchristian people, in conversation with a man I would have dubbed a barbarian short months before, I was hearing talk of morals and philosophy the like of which I had seldom heard in Britain. Connor was still speaking.

  "That ability, that capacity, is what I meant when I spoke of my father's enduring kingship. Great burdens lie upon the man unfortunate enough to bear the title 'King' among our folk. He must have, and show at all times, great physical strength, and a soundness of mind to match it. When he becomes too old, too weak or too untrustworthy to serve as king—leader, guardian, champion and . . . what's your Roman word? Mentor? . . . That's it, mentor—in all respects in his people's eyes, he must step down or be deposed, allowing a better or a younger, but certainly a more able man—more able at that time, I mean—to assume the kingship. My
father Athol is old to be a king, but he is hale and strong and his word is law to all. His justice and his wisdom are renowned and, to this date at least, his fighting skills are unimpaired. I tell you honestly, Merlyn, I'm almost twenty years younger than he is, but I would not care to cross him."

  I turned to where Athol stood talking with another group, looming over all of them except Donuil, who still stood by his father's side. "Aye," I said, smiling. "He looks formidable, for all his years." As I spoke, a man approached the king and whispered to him, and Athol turned to look at me as though he had been warned that I was watching him. Then, excusing himself from the group around him, he made his way directly to where I sat with Connor, Donuil following him closely.

  "Master Merlyn," the king said as he approached, speaking in the accents I now knew to be the courtly, formal style of the Erse tongue. "I have been aware of spending little time with you, but I'm reassured by the sight of you two together. At least I know you have not been bored or ignored." He nodded to Connor, who merely smiled and held his peace. The old king's eyes flicked up and away towards the great doors of the Hall, which were being pulled open as he spoke. "The festive part of your welcome is about to begin. The people are gathered and the food prepared. Our bards and minstrels are assembled and awaiting our arrival." He smiled again. "You may find much that is strange to you in this evening's fare, but I think you will enjoy it. More than your men may, I fear, since I understand most of them do not have the tongue of our people."