The Eagles' Brood

XXVIII

Avalon became my sanctuary in the days after the loss of my father. The rude hut we had been so glad of in the beginning was no longer quite so rude. Every time I had visited Cassandra, from the earliest days of her sojourn there, I had done some kind of work on the small building, and I usually .brought something with me to improve the place, to make it more weatherproof or more comfortable. It was now warm and snug, verging on the luxurious in some respects, although still tiny. Each time I arrived there, I left the world behind me, losing all thought of temporal problems as I descended the steep, twisting pathway to where she waited for me.

I had long since given up making any attempt to entice her to leave the valley and return with me to Camulod. Several times I had tried it, and she had come to recognize the attempts, so that now she would not even venture with me to the pathway leading up the hill. I made no serious effort to convince her that her return was important to me. I was really quite content to keep her there, all to myself, sharing her with no one, knowing that she was there, waiting to comfort me whenever the realities of life at Camulod became overpowering.

For a very long time after the events surrounding the death of my father, however, life around Camulod remained quiet, pleasant and peaceful. The upheavals caused by Lot's invasion, or by Caspar and Memnon's invasion, soon died down and passed into memory, and life regained its normal tenor. Donuil's education in our ways continued with a swiftness that surprised and gratified all of us. He was quickly accepted by the entire garrison—thanks to Centurion Rufio, who also flourished under his new responsibilities—and by the colonists themselves, and the friendship between us grew steadily as we discovered more of each other's character and disposition. Summer faded into autumn, with a fine harvest, which advanced slowly into another mild winter and a brilliant spring. All awareness of threats from outside seemed to have vanished, except that patrols still came and went regularly and there was no lessening of vigilance among the military guardians of the peace.

In the spring, however, Aunt Luceiia's ubiquitous bishops brought news of another kind: tidings from Rome.

I heard the news on my return from one of my frequent three-day visits to Cassandra in the springtime of the new year, when I was summoned to visit Luceiia. I found her in unusually high spirits, even for her. She informed me that, now that spring had arrived, she intended to return with me to Avalon—she herself used the name—to meet my Cassandra and convince her to come back with us and live a civilized life in Camulod, where she and I would be married.

I was nonplussed, and immediately at war within myself. Part of me saw the sense of what she was proposing, but another, possibly stronger part, was unwilling even to consider forsaking the private happiness I had known with Cassandra in our tiny valley. Aunt Luceiia, however, would brook no argument, and when I finally managed to insert a few words into her animated monologue I agreed that it would be wonderful, at least, for her to meet my love. I also asked her, although without much real interest, to be more specific about her "news from Rome," news of which I knew nothing.

Her eyebrows rose slightly in shock. "What do you mean, you know nothing about it? Everyone knows about it!"

I shook my head. "Forgive me, Auntie, but I have no idea what 'it' is."

She blinked at me, still looking slightly astonished. "Why, Germanus of course."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Germanus. Germanus is 'it.'"

"I see. Which Germanus are you talking about?"

Her eyebrows quirked into a fleeting frown of impatience. "General Germanus, your father's friend, the former Legate who served with him in Asia Minor under Stilicho. He is now the Bishop of Auxerre."

I was thoroughly confused and held up my hand, in an appeal for patience. "Please, Auntie, forgive me. I've been away for a time, and all of this has happened in my absence, so be patient with me if I seem confused. General Germanus is the Bishop of Auxerre, in Gaul?"

"That is correct."

I shook my head again, thoroughly confused. "But how can that be? How can a Legate be a bishop?"

My aunt sniffed eloquently. "Easily, it seems. Germanus retired from the Legions, as all men must at some time, and entered the priesthood, which few Legates, or other soldiers, for that matter, ever do. He was always a deep-thinking man, apparently, and he is now the Bishop of Auxerre, and a very highly respected theologian, according to the reports I have received."

"From your own bishops, of course."

"Yes." My aunt was unconscious of any irony.

"I see. So what else have your bishops told you?"

She bridled like a proud pony and answered me with an indignant expression and a condescending tone to her voice as though explaining the obvious to one who was already well informed. "That, in spite of the teachings of Pelagius being condemned as wickedly controversial, we the people here in Britain still cling to them."

"But we always have, Auntie, and we have always known it. What is so new about that?"

Luceiia drew herself upright. "The novelty, Nephew, lies in the fact that there is almost open, holy war among our British bishops. Not all of them are followers of Pelagius. There are many, it seems, who adhere to the teachings of Augustine of Hippo and the hierarchical powers of the churchmen in Rome. Those bishops, the Orthodox Bishops of Britain, as they call themselves, have written to Pope Celestine, begging him to intercede for them here in this country."

She paused for a moment, then went on. "Pelagius is dead. He died last year in Palestine. He died excommunicate."

"How so? Pope Innocent exonerated him!"

"No," she corrected me, "Innocent excommunicated him. It was Pope Zosinus, Innocent's successor, who absolved Pelagius, eleven years ago. That was short-lived, however. Zosinus changed his mind, and his decree, the following year, under pressure from the combined bishops at the Council of Carthage. Pelagius lived his last ten years apostate."

"Thereby proving the validity of his own beliefs. How can such total condemnation be Christian? I understood no sin was too big to be forgiven." Another thought occurred to me. "What of his followers?"

Aunt Luceiia sniffed. "We have all been declared heretics, although we have not yet been actively declared excommunicate. We are being told now that the Church Fathers in Rome consider us to have been misled for many years, seduced from the proper path of the Church's teaching through no fault of our own. They now wish us to submit voluntarily to the will and the teachings of Rome. The Holy Father in Rome, Pope Celestine, is sending Germanus of Auxerre, the warrior bishop, here to Britain to debate the question of Pelagianism—that is the name they are giving to our beliefs versus their 'orthodoxy'—with our own British bishops, in the great theatre at Verulamium."

She had my full attention. This was what my father had called for in his confrontation with the zealot priests. "A debate, you say? A public debate? When, Auntie? When is this to take place?"

She looked me in the eyes shrewdly, assessing the sudden interest in my voice. "In September, six months from now, but why do you ask? You wouldn't be thinking of going to listen, would you?"

Her tone made me smile. "Why not? Would it surprise you very much if I showed that much interest?"

"In matters of the Church? You?" she scoffed. "My dear boy, whatever hopes I might once have had for your salvation are long dead. You are my nephew, and I love you, but you are a scandalous libertine." She laughed aloud. "I can no more imagine you travelling from here to Verulamium for a debate between bishops than I could imagine my Publius, God rest him, earning his living as a fisherman."

I grinned with her. "Why not, Auntie? Publius Varrus, having decided he must be a fisherman, would have had boats sink beneath him from the weight of his catch." I paused, sobered. "Seriously, Auntie, I think it would be irresponsible of me to miss this debate, if I could possibly arrange to be there."

"Irresponsible, Cay?" She had caught my mood change, and leaned back in her chair to scrutinize me more closely, squinting her eyes slightly as she sought to read my expression. "Why irresponsible? That is a weighty word."

"This is a weighty matter, Auntie."

"Is it indeed? Well, I confess it is. Weighty and profound. I know that, but it surprises me that you should recognize it, too."

I made a wry face. "Am I that predictable? So easy to dismiss as shallow?"

"No, God forgive me if I make you feel that way, Caius. I am merely... surprised, that is all. You will admit, will you not, that you have never shown any interest in such things before?"

"Freely. But people change, Auntie, and I suppose I am changing..." I fell silent, and she allowed me time to collect my thoughts. "I've been thinking a great deal about my father, and the things he stood for, and I don't think I have ever in my life seen anything finer, anything more fitting, or more dignified and decorous, than the way he defied and denied those odious priests in Council that day, before he expelled them from the Colony.

"And yet, thinking of that, despite my admiration for my father's stance, and his judicious reasoning, not to mention his restraint—I don't think I could have put up with the abuse he swallowed that day—I've also had to think about the long-term effects of his actions that day. We have not heard the last of that affair, and my father is no longer here to deal with the repercussions. But someone will have to, and I think that someone will be me. Honestly, Auntie, I don't know if I can cope with that task. I haven't got the moral certitude, the scope of experience, the authority or the tempered judgment that my father had." I paused again, breaking new ground here, seeking new words to describe my thinking, and as I did so, I became aware of the expression on my aunt's face.

"What are you thinking? Do I sound arrogant?"

She smiled, shaking her head gently. "No, anything but. I'm entranced, but I don't want to interrupt your train of thought. Go on, Caius, please. Tell me your thoughts, and don't worry about mine."

I was sheepish, admitting my own bafflement. "Please understand, Auntie, that I'm as surprised as you by what I'm saying. I've never voiced these thoughts before today. They have been in my mind, obviously, but I haven't really been aware of them, other than in passing. There has been no urgency to them, if you know what I mean..." My mind was spinning, thoughts tumbling over each other faster than I could grasp them, and Luceiia remained silent, aware that what I needed was a sympathetic ear to hear my thoughts, rather than words to interrupt them. I floundered on.

"Bishop Alaric was your friend, Auntie. You loved and admired him. So did Grandfather Cay and Uncle Varrus, and everyone else who knew him. I have been raised according to his teachings, and although I never really knew him, I know he was a simple, godly man, that he lived in the love of the Christ, and that his living was beyond reproach.

"All this I know, as I know that his entire being was dedicated to the propagation of the Church, Christ's Church. And yet here we are today, all of us in Britain, condemned and excommunicate because of his teachings and his beliefs, in spite of all his piety. That confounds me. What was his sin? What grievous offence against God was Alaric guilty of? He espoused the cause of Pelagius, whose teachings indicated that men have a God-given, divinely inspired nobility of soul, precisely because they were made in the Image of God!" Frustration threatened to overwhelm me, and I stopped to draw several deep breaths before I could resume. "My eternal salvation may depend upon it, Auntie, but I cannot accept an essential wrongness in that premise. God made man in His own Image and Likeness. Those are the basic tenets of the Church! And if that is so, then there is an element of the Divine in man, in his very nature. But now the men in Rome, die men who rule God's Church, have decided that their way, their definition, their interpretation of God's will, is more correct than the opinions of Pelagius, or Alaric, or any of the other British bishops who admire Pelagius's ideas. And to ensure they will have their way, they threaten all of us—this entire country—with eternal damnation! Faugh! It's disgusting!"

Her face was utterly devoid of expression, revealing neither censure nor endorsement. I plunged ahead. "And so, I think...No, I believe, I'm convinced, that this debate you speak of will be the most important event of its kind in this country's history. Germanus is a soldier, and to have been both a Legate and a friend of my father, he must be a good one. It follows logically, therefore, that he must be a pragmatist. I can't imagine him as a zealot of the kind we envision when we think of the new Roman clerics. And yet, by the same token, his must be a formidable mind, schooled in logic and theology as well as in military strategy and tactics.

He will be a fearsome and ferocious debater, a prosecutor. He would not be coming, otherwise.

"This debate, Auntie, will be the arena in which all of the ideas, and the values, and the worthiness of Bishop Alaric, and Caius Britannicus, and Publius Varrus, and Picus Britannicus, and all their peers, will be either defended and exonerated, or attacked, vilified, condemned and proscribed. The Pelagian British against the Orthodox Romans. Heresy against dogma..." I paused, overwhelmed by the import of my own argument. "I have to go, Auntie. To Verulamium. I have to be there, to witness this, because after this event, in this four hundred and twenty-ninth year of Our Lord, no matter what the outcome may be, life in Britain will never be the same again. This entire land of ours, and all the people in it, will be on trial in this debate, not merely for their lives, but for their eternal souls."

When I had finished, the silence between us was long and profound. I slumped in my chair, slack-muscled, as though I had been involved in some strenuous, exhausting physical endeavour. Finally my aunt moved to pick up a small mallet and beat the gong on the table beside her chair. Her housekeeper appeared immediately.

"Martha, bring some wine for my nephew. The cold, sparkling kind from Gaul. Open a new jar from the ice house."

When Martha had gone, I asked, "Why have you no male servants, Auntie? You're no man-hater."

She smiled. "No, I simply prefer to have women around me. I have lived enough of my life in a male-dominated world. Women have different values, Caius, and I find I identify more easily with them, now that I am old." She paused, collecting her thoughts. "I wish your father had been hear to listen to you today. He would be very proud."

"You think so? Thank you, Auntie."

"Now be quiet and let me think."

We sat again in companionable silence until Martha returned with my wine, which was delicious and icy. When she had served me and left again, my aunt said, "Of course you must go. I had intended to go myself, but I am too old and it is too far. You will be my deputy. But what about you Cassandra? You will be gone for months.*'

"I'll take her with me. It will be wonderful for her."

"All that way? And will you go alone? Just the two of you? All across Britain?"

"Well, no, not alone, that would be asking for trouble. But just a small party, strong enough to be secure."

"Against what? An encounter with a boatload of Saxon marauders?"

I frowned at her. "What are you suggesting, Auntie?"

She looked down and fingered a fold in her gown, keeping her gaze downcast as she said, "I may be interfering again in the matters of men, but you yourself said this debate would be—could be—the most important event in the history of Britain, Caius. Do you not think the style and substance of your attendance there, as our emissary from this western region, should be sufficient to substantiate the fact that there is a significant Christian presence here?"

"What? You mean...?" I subsided, letting her unspoken suggestion filter through the clouds in my mind, and finally I had to smile, shaking my head in admiration. "You know, if I tend to forget that you are the sister of Caius Britannicus, and were married to Publius Varrus for decades, you always find a means of reminding me. You're brilliant, Auntie. And correct, needless to say. Camulod should attend this debate in full panoply. I will discuss it with Titus and Flavius, and we will put the matter to the Council immediately."

"Good. I thought you might." She smiled. "As soon, of course, as your male mind came around to it. Now, tomorrow, we will ride out together to your Avalon, just the two of us. The weather is beautiful, and I have need of fresh, spring air. And it's high time I had the chance to evaluate this little priestess of yours."