by Whyte, Jack
He did not react to my humour as I had expected, but spoke with gravity. "You mock me, but you should not. Appearances matter greatly in such things as these we are discussing. In order to create a great impression—and that is exactly what I intend to achieve—you must make it memorable. Spectacular proceedings foster awe, and reverence, and therefore memories. Colour we will use, and music and spectacle, and massive ceremony carried out with dignity and due solemnity. Remember Rome, and the imperial persecutions of our faith. Thousands of the faithful died in dreadful purges, but those most readily remembered died in the arena, torn apart by lions and wild tigers, trampled and gored by angry elephants for the enchantment of the Roman mobs. We will have spectacle at this, the coronation of our King, and people will remember it and talk of it forever. Mark my words. "
He glanced down at the mould that lay on the table beside him, and reached to pick it up. "May I keep this, for now? I will return it. " I nodded, and he tossed it in his hand, then broke it open once again and stared at the perfection of the half apple that he could see. "When will you show Excalibur to Arthur?"
I shrugged, shaking my head. "I don't know. When he is ready, I suppose."
"And how will you know that?"
I scowled at him. "I have no idea, but I suspect you have. Am I correct?"
"Perhaps." He removed the apple from its mould and then replaced it carefully. "There is only one way to put this apple back..." I said nothing, and he pursed his lips thoughtfully. "I have an idea—yet unformed and incomplete, but fundamentally sound, I think. But it will entail keeping the boy in ignorance about the sword until the moment of his coronation. Is that feasible?"
"Of course it is feasible, but why must we keep him in ignorance?"
"Because I believe he must be as overawed as everyone else when we unveil it to the eyes of the world. If we are to present what will appear to be a miracle, then everyone involved—everyone—must see and experience the miracle." ;
I shook my head, suddenly feeling tired. "Now you have " lost me. A miracle, you say? I know you are a man of God, Bishop, and I also know the power of your mind, but tell me, please, how you intend to prearrange a miracle."
He told me, and I could find no sleep for the remainder of that night.
FIFTEEN
It is almost impossibly difficult for me to write about the period that followed that discussion. I have spoken of the fact that I had two momentous conversations in the course of that one week, and I have written fluently about the first of those, recalling every word, every inflection of Germanus's voice with clarity and exactitude. But the memories that haunt me of the ensuing time are harsh and bitter; fragmentary, pain filled images of grief and terror and despair and disbelief; images that withstand recall and defy description.
My old friend Dedalus, who had some training in the art of engineering, once told me a fundamental truth he said was known to every engineer. The occasion, I believe, was a discussion we were having about the way in which the army engineers had drained the mountain lake in which Publius Varrus had hoped to find his skystone. The lake had lain at the end of a mountain glen, formed by a dam of rock blasted from the mountainside itself in a cataclysm; they had examined the exposed side of the dam and then undermined it, cracking it open like a broken bowl. Using the example of the keystone found in every bridge's arch, Ded told me then that every construction, natural or man made, contained a central, focal point on which all its energies depended. Remove that point—that beam, or rock, or log— destroy it or dislodge it, and the entire construction would come crashing down in chaos and ruin.
The construction that I thought of as my life came crashing down after that second conversation, splintering in ruin and chaos on the hard floor of reality, and the disruptive force that brought it down was a human voice, speaking an alien tongue.
Briefly, we encountered a large force of Outlanders the day after I had talked so long with Germanus. Benedict brought the news of their arrival. He had been scouting with his forward force on our right flank, and one of his foremost outriders, riding beyond the limits of his own appointed sweep, had seen the enemy approaching. Had he been obedient to his orders and performing as commanded, he would have been elsewhere and would have missed them. As it was, he reported back to Benedict immediately.
From his concealed position, two miles ahead of us, Benedict watched and counted more than a thousand men, all of them afoot, moving in five divisions each perhaps two hundred strong. They had emerged from the forest in the east and crossed the valley bottom, headed directly towards us, moving steadily and in good order. Benedict waited to see no more, convinced that they knew where we were and were moving directly against us. He withdrew his scouts and rode back at full speed to report his findings. Between the enemy and us lay two wide valleys. The hillsides of the farther of these two were thick with trees; those of the nearer valley, atop which we now sat, were grass covered, with not a tree in sight.
I made my dispositions quickly, I recall, thinking clearly and logically. A thousand strong force must have been organized long since, and the odds were great that they had marched to intercept Germanus and his party and were unaware of our cavalry. A plan came fully formed into my mind, drawn from my memories of my grandfather's notes on the tactics of Alexander of Macedon. I quickly ordered a hundred of my men to dismount and present themselves as infantry, and sent the remainder of our forces out of sight on the far side of the hill. I then briefed Germanus quickly on how he should proceed.
He would descend into the valley at the head of a small, mounted party, riding towards the enemy in company with three wagons filled with another twenty of my men, all of them dressed as clerics. When confronted, my hundred would form a line and hold their position, waiting until the enemy attacked. The wagons and the riders would turn and flee, my "clerics" leaping out of their slow moving vehicles, abandoning both them and their defending foot soldiers and tempting the enemy to attack. Then, at the first sign of an enemy advance, my hundred would fall back uphill, in formation, to break and run only when the hostile force was committed to a charge across the valley bottom and up the opposing hillside. At that point, with the enemy charging uphill, I would loose my cavalry to sweep around and down on either side.
Germanus listened as I outlined my strategy, and then smilingly asked if his men might shout Alleluia! I smiled in return, and then withdrew beyond the hilltop.
It was quickly over, and hardly worth the mention, save for the carnage that took place. The enemy fought bravely and showed more discipline than I had seen in any of our recent enemies in Cambria, holding their individual formations well, and even constructing defensive walls with their shields to stave off our attacks. The sheer weight and numbers of our horses were too much for them, however, and the shield walls buckled, then disintegrated. From that point on, they were in defeat and few of them escaped alive.
I moved among the banks and rows of their dead and wounded, and I noted that they were, as Dedalus had said they might be, very poorly armed. Few possessed swords; their most common weapon was the battle axe, and some of them had heavy spears. Most of them, however, were armed only with thick staves and daggers, and many had no more than heavy, crudely carved wooden clubs.
Many of the wounded might survive, I thought, could they but gain some medical attention, but that was not my concern. I had neither the time nor the desire to care for aliens. Germanus, however, refused to abandon them to death and set his bishops to go in among them, offering aid. Shamed by the sight, some of my own troopers, especially the medical personnel, began to lend assistance, too, and thus we passed the remainder of that fruitless day catering to our foes and spent the night uncomfortably in a makeshift camp high in the hills.
Two days later, close to Londinium, which Enos told me had lain abandoned now for nigh upon ten years, and less than two days' travel from our destination in Verulamium, the talk about the evening campfires was still of the cavalry charge and how we had mow
n down the Outlanders, whom someone had identified as Jutes. I was distempered and out of sorts, for I had slept but little for the previous two nights, disturbed by terrifying but ill remembered dreams that startled me awake, time and again, drenched in clammy sweat and gasping in horror. My inability to recall what it was that had brought me screaming into wakefulness infuriated me because it frightened me deeply. I had spent a lifetime dreading dreams that eluded my recall, but I had dared to hope myself all done with that in recent years.
It was frustration born of those fears that made me impatient with such silly talk of victory that night, and I said something snappish about how fortunate we were that these had been mere Jutes and not Horsa's Danes. We had consumed our evening meal by then and were grouped around a fire. I was sitting beside Germanus with Tress on my left. Cuthric sat on the bishop's right, and on his right sat Cayena. Then came Dedalus, and Benedict, and I knew not who else, for the fire was high and fierce and concealed those people sitting across the circle from us.
I saw Cuthric raise his eyebrows at my words and then lean close to talk to Germanus, who answered him, listened again, then shrugged and turned to me.
"Cuthric heard you speak of Horsa and his Danes, and wondered how you know of him."
"I know he's there, and that's enough to know. Only now am I beginning to breathe freely, knowing that he and his horde lie far behind us. For the first few days, and in particular when we were headed directly east, I thought we might penetrate their new territory and encounter them at any time. We have women with us, and that thought did not appeal to me."
Germanus translated this for Cuthric and the big Anglian grunted in surprise and spoke again, looking this time at me. I waited for Germanus's translation.
"He says he is surprised that you should know of Horsa's presence in the Weald, but that the Danes are no longer there and your concerns were groundless. They remained there for a time, many boatloads of them, settling temporarily in several of the ancient Roman forts along the shore while they explored the land, looking for holdings they could seize. But then they left again, all of them, in a great fleet, nigh on a month ago."
"What? They went back to the north?" I was incredulous.
Again Germanus questioned Cuthric, but this time as the big man answered him I saw the bishop stiffen, and the blood drained from his face. "Dear God," he said, turning back to me, his voice gone slack with shock. "Cuthric says that Vortigern is dead." He swung back to face the Anglian and the conversation between the two became fast and filled : with tension. I could hardly bear to listen without interrupting, but eventually the elderly bishop slumped and spoke to me again.
"It's true. He's dead, slain in battle by Horsa himself.: The report was brought to Cuthric by one of his own elders, whose daughter fell enamoured of a Dane of Horsa's party, and the fellow boasted of his prowess in the fighting, and of how he had struck off the hand of the Northumbrian king the hand that had dared to threaten Horsa. Cuthric has no idea who Vortigern is, or was, nor did he suspect that you or I could know of him. To Cuthric, he was but an unknown, faceless name who happened to be a king, far in the north. God rest his soul."
"Amen," I whispered. "Do you know, I heard my father say it would come to this, when I was just a boy. He knew, even then, that naught but harm could come from bringing Outlanders into this land to live." I heaved a sigh. "So Vortigern is gone. And so is Horsa, back to the north. He will be king in Northumbria now, I suppose."
"A Danish king, in Britain? I hope not."
"How does your Cuthric come to know so much about Horsa?"
The bishop shrugged his shoulders. "He shares a common interest with you, I suspect. Horsa and his Danes are?!
a threat to the settled Anglians close by, to the north of them. " He hesitated. "I wonder, though, how much he truly knows. He says the sky was black with Horsa's banners. "
I frowned. "Why should that trouble you?"
"It rings false, somehow. The Saxons don't use banners, nor do the Anglians or Jutes. None of these people do. "
"Horsa's a Dane, not a Saxon, Bishop, and he has lived his life observing Vortigern. Now there is a man who uses banners. His emblem is—damnation, was—the wolf's head. I can't believe he's dead. Anyway, Vortigern used his banners all the time, for spectacle's sake. You understand that, do you not?" He ignored my jibe, which was ill timed, and I continued. "So you see, it's more than possible that Horsa has taken his example. Ask Cuthric what Horsa's banner was. "
That took but a moment. "He says it's a bear, not unlike yours, save that Horsa's bear is black, while yours is silver. Every one of his ships' crews has a black bear banner, but the markings on the individual banners vary. "
He turned back to talk to Cuthric again, and I watched the expressions on the faces grouped around the fire as the word spread of Vortigern's death. I was talking to Tress about it when I felt the bishop's hand on my arm. He was still deep in conversation with Cuthric, but I knew he had something he wanted me to hear. Finally he turned back to face me, his eyes troubled.
"Horsa returned to the Weald, nigh on a month ago, as Cuthric said earlier. He summoned his warriors, spent a week collecting them, then sailed away again. But less than one third of the total fleet sailed north again, with Horsa. The major portion sailed south, commanded by a senior captain. "
I felt an instant chill of premonition. "South? There's nothing to the south except the Narrow Sea. You think they crossed to Gaul, without Horsa?"
I doubt it" Again he swung away, towards Cuthric, and I leaned towards them, listening closely to the rattle of the alien language that sounded guttural and hoarse to my ears. They seemed to speak for hours, this time, but among the gibberish I suddenly heard the first word I had ever recognized upon the Anglian's lips, and it was Ironhair.
By the time Germanus had swung around to look at me I was already on my feet, the blood roaring in my ears and my body reeling from the crashing understanding that had flooded me. Ironhair! I had no need to hear another word than that accursed name to understand what had happened. Ironhair, the great collector of allies, pirates and mercenaries, had not been in Cambria when we went searching for him. He had been away, no one knew where, while in the meantime his armies had searched for Dolaucothi and its gold mines! I cursed myself because I knew at that moment what I should have known long before, because the information had been given to me by the man himself. His emissary, the man called Retorix, had suggested that I might choose to make peace with Ironhair, in order to have the time to assist my ally Vortigern in dealing with the Saxon problem in the far northeast. He had told me he knew about Horsa's Danes! How blind a fool could a man be? I should have known instantly which way the devious mind of Ironhair would lean!
. I might have fallen headlong into the fire had not Donuil sprung up at Tressa's cry and grasped me by the arm, pulling me to his chest. I saw Philip and Benedict looming behind him, all amazed, because they could not know what had occurred, what had been said. Not even I knew all, and yet I knew too much from the utterance of that one name alone.
I dragged in a deep breath and mastered myself. Donuil leaned over me, refusing to release my arm until I was seated, and I could see the concern and confusion in his face. Benedict and Philip had moved to stand behind me, and now Dedalus was there on my left, his fist clenched upon the hilt of the dagger at his side.
Tressa's fingers were digging painfully into my upper arm, and I reached up to take her wrist, nodding my head to reassure her that I was well. Then I turned immediately to face Germanus once again. My friend had aged visibly, within a matter of moments, the lines in his cheeks suddenly graven deeper before.
"What did he say?" I asked him.
He had to moisten his mouth and swallow before he could reply. "I am afraid I may have undone all your work, with this request to join me here, my friend—"
I cut him short, dismissing his apology with something approaching gruffness. "You're a bishop, not a seer, " I growled. "Whatever
has happened is no fault of yours. Tell me what Cuthric said. "
The others were all listening now; the only sound to be heard was the guttering of the fire in its pit. Germanus cleared his throat, then spoke quickly.
"The first wave of Danes came into the Weald last autumn, and spent the winter in the empty forts along the Saxon Shore. I told you that. Then, less than a month ago, Horsa returned with another, larger fleet and summoned all of them to rejoin him. He had made alliance, he said, with a king from the far west, a man called Ironhair, who required assistance in pacifying his domain. In return for that assistance, he was willing to provide land holdings in the territories to his north and west, and to provide the Danes with open access to the gold mines of Dolaucothi in the land of Cambria, in addition to the riches they could all win for themselves in the process of conquering the king's enemies. Ironhair was there, with Horsa, aboard his ship, and made his promise personally to the Danish warriors. They left within the week."
"How big was Horsa's fleet?'
Germanus relayed the question, and Cuthric listened closely, then shook his head in answering. Germanus nodded. "He does not know with certainty, but he was told there were in excess of two hundred ships."
"Two hundred! God curse the man to Hades, he is determined to become a king. The lands to the northwest of Cornwall are ours. He plots against Camulod, as well as Cambria. I must return, now, Germanus. Tonight." They dissuaded me from that foolishness quickly.
Germanus thought our entire force should head homeward at first light, but I rejected that. The bulk of them would move too slowly, tied as they were to the speed of the wagons. Instead, I would ride home ahead of them with .a small escort—small enough to travel at maximum speed < and large enough to discourage interference. Our main force would follow at its own best speed.
There was some discussion of who would accompany me and who would remain, but I made short work of that, having no patience with the democratic process In time of extremity. Donuil would ride with me, as would Tressa and Shelagh; Ded would come, too, and Benedict, and Bedwyr, together with a score of our best troopers, selected by Dedalus. Philip would remain behind, in overall command, with Falvo and Rufio. Their orders were to bring our thousand home to Camulod as quickly as they could. Germanus and his party were close enough now to Verulamium to make it safely on their own.