by Jack Whyte
Your brother in God and friendship,
Germanus
It was to be another entire year, and I would receive a second letter from Germanus, before I would sit down to write to him again. At the time of reading that first letter, I had no thought of failing to respond immediately, nor did I procrastinate to any great extent. The intervening year quite simply vanished, eaten alive by the endless minutiae of tending a thriving, healthy community.
The recent intake of new troopers we had absorbed, for example, necessitated housing arrangements, since our barracks, built in the earliest years of our growth, had long been overcrowded. That crowding, reinforced by the fact that many of our former soldiery had lived outside the barracks with their families, forced us to take prompt steps to deal with the incursion of more than a thousand fresh men, a number of whom had families of their own in train. All required permanent, solid, new housing, for we could not simply dispossess the widows and children of our dead and missing veterans.
That task alone took months, involving every artisan and every set of muscles in the Colony, but eventually we had new, bright, modern quarters for our troops among the woodlands cleared of trees to build the houses that now filled the open spaces thus created.
Aunt Luceiia's Council of Women, led and inspired anew by fresh, young blood in the form of Ludmilla, Shelagh and their friend Julia, was of major assistance in this task, bringing pragmatic feminine common sense to a project that would otherwise have fallen to the lot of simple, stolid, military men. The result, achieved in a consensus of goodwill, was a system of quasi hamlets, practical above all as they needs must be, yet built with a regard for simple aesthetics and for the realities of life—community, comfort and ease of access—beyond the barrack-room.
Our training program, needless to say, continued throughout this building phase, as did the daily life of Camulod itself. Children continued to be born in ever-growing numbers throughout our domain. Shelagh bore Donuil a second son, Ghilleadh, as she had sworn to do, and Ambrose and Ludmilla had another daughter, Octavia. Young Arthur, now aged four, began to disappear consistently, to be sought and found each time in one or other of the stables, among the horses of which he had not the slightest fear. He and young Bedwyr, the son of Hector and Julia and some six months his junior, had become inseparable, and that caused me more than once to think of Shelagh's gift of dreams and of my own. She had been adamant at one time, I recalled, that only her two sons would be important in Arthur's future, and had dismissed young Bedwyr completely. Now it was evident that she had been wrong, and that her gift was not infallible. Clearly, she could discern matters concerning her own life and family, but suffered from common human ignorance beyond such things. Prescient she might be, but her prescience had limits, and that gave me, perhaps unworthily, some comfort when examining the severe limitations of my own gift.
Dedalus returned that year, as well, with his entire contingent, having lost not one man in more than two whole years and having been finally released from duty by Dergyll, whose wars, it seemed, were over and who now bore the title King of the Pendragon. Carthac and Ironhair had eluded Dergyll's vengeance at the last, but their force was spent, eroded and worn out by the incessant hammering of Dergyll's ever-growing army. Abandoned by their followers, the two, putative king and would-be king-maker, had disappeared from the Pendragon world months earlier, and Dedalus brought warning from Dergyll that we should watch for them within our boundaries. We discussed that warning, Ambrose, Donuil, Dedalus and I, and while we were prepared to discount such an incursion as most improbable, we yet took steps to warn our outposts and patrols to be on the watch for Ironhair. Then, in the summertime again, a second letter came from Germanus.
Auxerre, Gaul 437 Anno Domini Caius Merlyn Britannicus
Greetings, my dear Friend:
It has but lately come to my attention that a condition of civil war exists among the race of Pendragon whence your mother came. The tidings disturbed me, for there is no worse disease than civil strife, and I thought immediately of you in the hope you might be uninvolved. The fact that you have not written since I last sent word to you, however, invites me to suppose that your own sense of duty might dictate that you defend yourself and those whom God has placed within your charge. I pray that need has not arisen, and so shall write as though it had not.
I thought of you some months ago, upon a day of pleasant duty, and recalled a tale you told me once about your uncle's saintly friend the bishop Alaric. The tale involved, for I recall it clearly, the sacred altar- stone he had prepared to grace your gathering place in Camulod. I know you are familiar with the stone, since stone can never perish and therefore must be there still, in Christian use. I wonder, however, if you recall the occasion when you told me of the stone? It was on the first day we met, in my camp there beneath the escarpment from which you loosed the arrows that delivered us from certain death. We spoke of many things that afternoon, you and I, but I recall with fondness how you spoke of Alaric, whose soul you feared for at my judgment, and your description, almost defiant, of his gift to Camulod.
"Concealed within its case," you said, "its sanctity intact, it lies inured against the profane speech of ordinary men. Revealed, however, and exposed to view, it sanctifies the premises it graces and makes an altar of the meanest table on which it may be laid." You had a point to make there, my friend, and I heard it clearly, enunciated in words other than your own, by Jesus Himself: "Render unto Caesar those things which are Caesar's, and unto God those things which are God's."
Let me now enlighten you as to why I should be writing thus, for I have no doubt in my mind you must be wondering if age has overtaken me. Not so. Not sufficiently, at least, to debilitate my thinking.
The pleasant duty to which I referred earlier herein was the dedication of an ecclesia, a building erected solely to serve the Will of God and to enhance the spreading of His Word. A house of God, in fact; not a mere basilica or any similar place of commerce capable of housing a religious gathering and service, but a permanent house of worship that will never be profaned by worldly functions. Think of that, my friend. A Christian temple, unlike any built before our time, since it will house, permanently and for all time henceforth, the Holy Spirit and the Living Essence of our eternal
Saviour . . .
Of course, this was not the first such edifice to be built and consecrated to God's Truth. There are many such nowadays, throughout the world, and their use is spreading rapidly, for which we all give thanks. It was, however, the first such sacred place to be erected within my patrimony, and thus it prompted me to think of you.
How so? say you. Be patient yet awhile, for I have an answer, and it lies in this: The altar in our new ecclesia is built of hand-wrought stone, and in the upper slab, recessed and portable in case of sudden cataclysm, lies a holy, consecrated stone much like the one your Bishop Alaric bestowed on Camulod in gift. Now do you see my meaning?
When last I wrote to you, you were in mourning for your Aunt Luceiia who had been, throughout her life, a constant source of succour and a haven to those men of God who laboured in your land to spread His Word.
How fitting it would be, it seems to me, that you erect a small ecclesia within your lands in memory of her, and that it should contain, in permanent and public reverence, the very altar-stone bequeathed to you so long ago by one of God's great spirits on this earth. Picus Britannicus, your father, I know, would have had no objection to such a gesture of respect for loved ones and their God. What think you?
I shall await your response with patience and forbearance. But bear in mind, my friend, the man you know, who is less patient than the Bishop. Farewell, Merlyn. My thoughts and prayers are often filled with you and yours.
Your brother in God and friendship,
Germanus
A small ecclesia, built of stone. Two large horns on one dilemma, contained within a single phrase. With our current populace approaching the six thousand mark, four thousand and more o
f them Christian, smallness was not a fitting criterion for any place of worship we might use. Our communal religious ceremonies, few as they might be, were always held beneath the open skies and strongly attended. The very portability of Alaric's altar-stone was what made that possible. As for a stone edifice, the mere idea was ludicrous. Our fortress walls were made not of stone but of stones, painfully amassed, with great difficulty and single-minded obstinacy, over long years, by the combined and sustained efforts of an entire people inspired by visionary leaders. Stone walls, walls made of stone, suggested dressed and fitted blocks of quarried masonry in an edifice designed and constructed to withstand the ravages of time on the scale of centuries. Our walls were nowhere near so grand, for we had no quarries, no convenient source of stone.
Germanus's idea appealed to me, nevertheless, in its aspect of forming a useful and decorative memorial to the Founders of our Colony, and I brought the matter up in Council some time later. The result, however, was as I expected. After lengthy discussion of the matter, pro and contra, the decision of the Council, reluctant and regretful, was that here was an idea ahead of its time. Such an ecclesia might well be built some day and should be planned for, in the longer term, but the very grandeur of the notion dictated that the site should be elsewhere, close to a source of stone, where the labours of construction might be minimised. I wrote back to Germanus and explained, at length and with compassion, how and why we could not accede to his suggestion. Alaric's altar-stone, I assured him, would continue to be put to frequent and respectful use, and would suffer no erosion, safe within its carrying case. His response, received months later, was complacent, his enthusiasm undimmed by the prospect of "some day."
So time passed, and children grew, and Camulod prospered in peace, and the world outside paid us no attention. And then, one day, reviewing our parading troops on a special holiday created and deemed to mark the seventy- fifth anniversary of the founding of our Colony, I looked at the seven-year- old boy who rode between Ambrose and me, his head high and his wide-eyed young face flushed with pride and excitement at being part of such a grand occasion, and I realized that I had reached my fortieth year of life.
That night, in the celebration that followed the day's ceremonies, I mentioned the matter to our gathering at what had become our favourite spot, around the first firepit outside the fortress walls. For some reason, that night the women were not present, and I sat at ease among Lucanus, Ambrose, Donuil, Hector, Dedalus, Rufio, Quintus and Benedict. Huw Strongarm had been with us earlier, but had left to rejoin his own people whose voices we could hear, raised high in song, some distance from us on the dark hillside. Amid much raillery, I bewailed the fact that life had passed me by and soon I would be forty. Ded, closer to fifty, and Luke, now beyond sixty, gave short shrift to my complaint, and indeed it seemed, when we examined it, that I was among the youngest of our group. Only Donuil, Benedict and Ambrose were junior to me, and Ambrose by a matter of mere months. During a pause in the conversation shortly after we had abandoned the topic of my age, Lucanus changed the subject, addressing Ambrose.
"Do you ever regret, Ambrose, not having returned to visit Vortigern? I recall that when you first came here you were insistent that you should return to make your final severance with him face to face."
I found myself glowering fiercely at Lucanus, shaking my head urgently to warn him to desist. It had been years since Ambrose spoke of going east, and I had no wish to rekindle the ambition in his mind. Of course, I was far too late to forestall Luke's words. Ambrose made no response for a long time and when he did reply, his tone was musing.
"Yes, Luke," he said. "I do regret it. Not often, and for different reasons than you might suppose. The bonds that bind me here, to Camulod, are far more solid and enduring than those that once linked me to Vortigern, and yet I would like to return, some day, to see how things progress there in Northumbria without me."
"Then you should go, and soon."
I began to rise to my feet in protest, but Lucanus had my measure. He swung to face me.
"Both of you should go. Together, and immediately." He held up one hand to stop me from speaking. "Think of it, Merlyn, before you say you cannot. You talked of it before, planned it indeed, to happen after your return from Cambria. What has happened in the interim? We have had five years, almost six, of prosperity and peace. Our Colony is strong and secure, and no danger threatens anywhere. You have just been imposing on our collective goodwill as friends, weeping about how life has passed you by. Well, here is a chance to go out there and meet it, and arrest its too-swift progress. There is not one reason in this world why you may not go, not even if you were to leave tomorrow."
His eyes moved from me to Ambrose and back. No one else spoke.
"Is there?" He looked at each of us again. "Can you provide one? One solid reason why you should not take a furlough and enjoy yourselves away from home for a short space of months?" A pause generated no response from anyone present, and he continued speaking. "I thought not, for there is no good reason to the contrary, particularly when such a course would serve a useful purpose. By visiting Vortigern you could discuss alliance with him. There was a time you deemed that to be important, did you not? Nothing has changed in that, I think, save for the fact that you have done nothing to make it happen. Why don't you go now? Our affairs are in good hands and, though the hearing of it may surprise and dismay you, we can manage to live without you for at least a short time."
I looked at Ambrose, who returned my look and slowly began to smile.
"Brother," he said, "I think our friends have an eye to our welfare. I also think such an expedition would be fun. Why not do as Luke says, and simply up and go?"
I grinned back at him, already and quite suddenly convinced that we should, feeling excitement at the notion stirring in my breast.
"What about your wife? Will she allow you to leave? I have no such encumbrance."
"Hah! She will be glad to be rid of me for a spell, especially since I would be travelling with you, my saintly brother, and therefore likely to avoid temptation in the fleshpots of the world."
There are times when careful planning ensures success, and there are times when the most careful planning comes to naught. But there are also times when spontaneity brings benefits uncountable. This was one of those times.
XXVIII
On a morning more than two weeks after that, deep within the borderless, alien territory known as the Saxon Shore, I knelt in wet grass beside my brother, peering through a screen of bushes at a man who had almost fatally surprised us. He was evidently the owner of a hay- filled barn where we had spent the night, exhausted after a long day's travel in heavy rain, and he was a Saxon. We had come upon his barn without warning the previous evening, just as night was falling and, soaked and tired and lulled by the torrential rain, we had succumbed to the temptation to shelter there, uncaring whether the owner was Briton or Saxon. In the last half hour of fading light, thankful for the solid roof over our heads, we had unsaddled and tended our horses, then dried ourselves and changed our soaked clothing before crawling into the fragrant piles of loose hay that filled the building and on which our horses were feeding placidly. Sleep overcame us quickly. I can remember only feeling grateful for the softness of the hay and listening to the gentle crunching of the eating beasts, then nothing.
The extent of our exhaustion became apparent in the dawn of the new day, when Ambrose shook me awake, his hand clasped over my mouth. I looked where he was looking, and saw the form of a large man approaching through the trees. Motionless, we watched him come, each of us wondering what was to happen here. As he drew closer, he loomed larger, and I began to feel an insane urge to laugh aloud, because he still had not looked up to see our four horses among his hay, clearly outlined as they were to us, against the morning light. We ourselves lay hidden in the hay. Yet he did not look up, seemingly intent upon his feet, so deep was he in thought. And then, as my searching fingers closed about the handle of
my sword, a cry came from behind him and he stopped and turned away, listening intently. The cry came again, a woman's voice, and he called back, the tongue he used discordant and alien to my ears. Again the woman called, and then with a muttered curse he walked away, back whence he had come, until the trees concealed him.
Within moments, we had saddled our mounts and packhorses and Ambrose led them from the barn while I concealed the signs of our stay. I ran to join him immediately, thankful the rain had stopped during the night, and found him waiting just beyond the barn, holding the reins of all four animals, but making no attempt to mount. He held up one hand, wrapped about with reins, bidding me be still as he cocked his head to listen. I listened too. There was nothing to hear.
"He's gone," I said, my voice still low.
"Aye, but he might come back. What would you have done, had he seen us?"
I glanced at him, surprised that he need ask. "He was a dead man. Why?"
"You would have killed him, not knowing who or what he was?"
"He was a Saxon; what more need I know? Even before I heard him speak, I knew that."
Ambrose shook his head, pouting his lips. "No, he's no Saxon. At least, the language he spoke was no Saxon tongue I've ever heard, and I've heard several. Probably an Angle."
"A what?" I felt the blankness in my face.
"An Angle . . . some people, Vortigern's Danes among them, call them Anglians. Another race altogether from the Saxons. They come from farther north."
"Farther north of where?"
His teeth flashed in a quick grin. "Of where the Saxons come from. They are different peoples. Like Donuil's Celts and your Pendragons. The same in many things, perhaps, but from different places and speaking different tongues."
I shook my head. "Nah!" I said. "That can't be right. The Pendragon are Celts, too. I speak the Pendragon language, and though it sounds different from Donuil's tongue I could yet understand what Donuil said the first time I met him. You said this fellow here spoke unintelligibly."