The Lance Thrower

VII

BISHOP GERMANUS

AS WE APPROACHED the walls of the bishop’s town of Auxerre, Ursus remarked on how peaceful it was, but I could hear the ingrained skepticism in his voice even as he said the words. One of the first lessons a mercenary ever learns, he had told me long before, is that outward semblances of peacefulness hold no guarantees of harmony or tranquility. An arrow can strike you just as dead, just as quickly, from an idyllic setting of calm as it can amid the seething anthill of a battlefield.

It was an afternoon in the middle of an autumn that had not yet stopped being summer, and the trees in central Gaul had barely begun to yellow. We were riding slowly, enjoying the heat of the late-afternoon sunshine and feeling no great need to cause ourselves discomfort by hurrying unduly. Ahead of us the western and southern walls of the town that was our destination crested the shoulders of a high hill and met on the summit, their junction fortified by the defensive thrust of a square guard tower. Ursus reined his horse in tightly.

“You know,” he said, sounding intensely frustrated, “that tower is about as useless as nipples on a bull.” He glared over at me as if expecting me to argue with him. “I mean, if I’ve ever seen a more stupid, witless place to build a defensive tower, I don’t know where it was. Who would ever mount an attack up there, I ask you? No matter what side you attack from, you would have to carry every bit of gear, every ladder, every heavy weapon up there with you, and once you’re up there, you’d still be looking up at the tower, inviting them to throw things down at you.”

I was grinning at him, knowing he was nowhere close to being as angry as he was pretending to be. “That’s true,” I said. “But then, if they hadn’t built that tower up there, there would be nothing to prevent an enemy from climbing up the hill and scaling those walls, perhaps even while another attack was happening lower down. That would—”

“Shsst!” He held up his palm to silence me. “Listen. What’s that?”

I had heard something, too. I cocked my head to the south, listening intently, and heard it again—the distant but unmistakable clack and clatter of wooden training swords. “Someone’s fighting, over there.”

Ursus had already spurred his mount and I followed him, angling down the slight slope and to his right in order to catch up with him, and together, knee to knee, we rounded the base of the hillside and galloped into a shallow valley. I realized immediately what was going on and waved Ursus down as I reined my horse in gently, slowing him to a canter.

“It’s my old teacher,” I told Ursus. “Tiberias Cato. That’s him, up there on the hillock, supervising sword training. On days like this he often brings his classes out here, away from the school and from the town. I used to love it when he brought us here. It always felt as though we had escaped for the afternoon.”

As we drew nearer to where Cato stood on the summit of his tiny knoll, I counted twelve boys gathered around him, all of them now listening intently to what he was saying and ignoring our approach completely, which was purely unnatural. The sight of it made me smile, remembering that even on those few occasions when whatever Cato had to say was boring, you never dared to show that you were less than enthralled by what he was telling you, and you never, ever looked away in search of diversion … not if you wished your life to continue being bearable.

But then, when we were perhaps a hundred paces distant, Cato himself turned his head to peer at us, then turned back to his class and continued speaking. Moments later, the boys all came to attention and saluted, then in unison began to walk back toward the town gates, traveling in pairs and walking unhurriedly and with dignity as befitted representatives of Bishop Germanus and his associates. Tiberias Cato watched us pull our horses to a halt in front of him.

“Clothar,” he said. “You finally return. Be welcome.” His eyes moved to Ursus, sweeping him from head to toe. “And you are?”

“Magister,” I interposed, “this is my friend Ursus, which is a shortened form of Ursus the Bear-killer. Ursus, this is the teacher of whom you have heard me speak so often, Magister Tiberias Cato.”

Ursus nodded graciously to Cato. “Master Cato,” he murmured, “I feel as though I know you well already, simply from what I have learned of your teachings.”

“My thanks to you, Master Ursus, for your courtesy.” Cato threw me a sidewise glance, on the point of making some biting comment, I was sure, but he held it back and invited us to dismount and walk with him. As I slid to the ground, I saw how his eyes flicked to the hilt of the sheathed spatha by my side. I brought myself to attention and unclipped the sword from the ring at my belt, and held it out to him, wordlessly. He took it from me with both hands, the fingers of his right hand fitting around the hilt with the ease of long usage, then drew the blade halfway from its sheath, bringing it up close to his eyes to inspect the edge. Finally he pushed the blade home and looked at me.

“I thought this had been lost long since, with Phillipus Lorco … and you, too, for a long time. How came you by it?”

Quickly I told him of the trap that had been sprung on us, describing how I had seen my friend Lorco die, and went on to relate how I had later found Lorco’s horse with the spatha still hanging from its saddle. “So now it is my pleasure to return it to you, Magister.”

His eyes widened and he thrust the weapon back into my hands. “Return nothing. The sword is yours.” He tilted his head slightly to one side, appraising me carefully. “You have aged, boy. You have grown up and changed—for the better, I hope. Does the prospect of fighting and warfare still excite you as it used to?”

I saw no benefit in lying to him, and I shook my head gently. “No, Magister,” I said quietly. “That admiration and the yearning for such things wither quickly when men begin to die around you. I have no urge in me now to fight or go to war again, nor do I think I ever will have such a need again. But if war comes to me”—I shrugged my shoulders—“why then I’ll face it and I’ll deal with it. My thanks to you, Magister, on that score, even although they are belated.”

He blinked, but never removed his gaze from mine. “What do you mean?”

I smiled. “I have lived through a short but brutal war since last I saw you, Magister Cato, and it was not the Burgundian invasion everyone here was so perturbed about. Our war was fought in Benwick, after the death of my uncle Ban, the King there. I remember you warning us years ago to beware of becoming involved in civil war, where brother fights brother and everyone is hurt. Well, ours was a civil war over a kingship, waged between brothers, and several times during it I escaped with both my life and my hide intact purely through relying on the many lessons I had learned from you. And for that, for those, I thank you now.”

“Hmm. You always were an attentive student.” He turned his eyes to Ursus. “Did you fight with Clothar in this war, Master Ursus?”

To my great surprise, Ursus flushed crimson. “No, sir,” he said, “I did not. I left to return to my base in Carcasso before the war in Benwick really broke out.”

“Ursus had no reason to remain in Benwick, Magister.” Both men turned to look at me, and I felt myself flushing as deeply as Ursus had. “He had no reason to be there at all,” I added, lamely, “other than to deliver me to my family, a task he took upon himself when Duke Lorco and his party vanished.” I looked from one to the other of them and grinned, feeling unaccountably better. “I must have been very young, in those days, to have appeared to be in need of an escort. That was all of seven months ago.”

Wasting no words, I then told my teacher the story of the war, and how it had ended suddenly with Gunthar’s being struck down by an apoplexy in the course of a fit of rage. “Clement, Queen Vivienne’s physician, thinks the apoplexy that killed him was the cause of his madness, rather than the other way around,” I added, seeing their uncomprehending expressions. “Clement believed Gunthar’s worsening behavior might have been caused from the very beginning by some kind of … some kind of alien thing growing inside his head.” I was fully aware of how stupid that statement had sounded, but Tiberias Cato did not scoff.

“A tumor,” he said.

“Aye, that was the word! That’s what Clement called it. A tumor. He said it is a hidden, malignant growth that can develop slowly over years, occupying more and more room within a man’s head, and then suddenly explode and kill him. And as it grows, he says, it deprives its host—for the man in whom it grows hosts it as surely as an oak tree hosts a mistletoe—of life and strength and sanity. You knew the word, Magister. Have you heard of such a thing before?”

“Aye, Clothar, that I have. I had a friend who died of it, long years ago in the army. It is not a pleasant way to die.”

“Did your friend go insane?”

“Not in the way you mean, I think, but by the time he died he was no longer the friend I had known for so long. It altered him beyond recognition, not merely physically, although it did that, too, but mentally—intellectually. The military surgeons were helpless—they knew what it was but they couldn’t cut into it without killing him. By the time the final stages hit him, he had been sick for three months, growing worse every day until it eventually killed him.” He broke off and spun to look up at me. “Have you spoken to the bishop yet?”

“No, I haven’t even seen him yet. We’re just on our way in now. We have been traveling for weeks.”

Cato frowned. “Then you’d better go directly to his quarters. He’ll want to see you without delay.”

“Why, Magister?”

“Because he has been waiting for you for more than a month, that’s why! And he leaves tomorrow for Italia, on Church business. He is required to be there long before the solstice and he will not return here for at least two months after that, in the early spring. And he has a mission for you to carry out that will not wait until he returns.” He waved a hand at me, dismissing me. “Mount. Mount up and ride, you have no time to waste and neither does the bishop. Go directly to his chambers. Hurry! Master Ursus here will walk with me and keep me company on the road back into town and I will see him safely quartered as a guest of the school. Leave your saddlebags and bedding roll with us. Off with you now. We will talk again tomorrow, you and I.”

Germanus was meeting with several of his senior colleagues when I arrived in his quarters, and the junior cleric who sat on guard before the door to the episcopal chambers was a newcomer whom I did not recognize. He did not know me, either, but I had no trouble seeing that he disapproved of my dusty, road-soiled appearance from the moment he first set eyes on me. He sucked in his prudish little mouth and informed me primly and not quite discourteously that the Lord Bishop was in council and not to be disturbed under any circumstances. I nodded and returned the fellow’s disdainful look measure for measure. He was perhaps two years older than me, and every aspect of his appearance befitted the description “cleric.” He was pallid, soft looking, and stoop shouldered, his mouth turned down at the edges and his eyes creased with wrinkles from squinting in bad light, trying to decipher manuscripts written by others as insipid as himself.

I turned my back on him as though to leave, but then unhooked the spatha from my side and spun around, dropping the sheathed sword on the table in front of him so that he reared back and raised his hands to fend off a blow.

“I am not threatening you with it, man, I’m offering you an opportunity to save your hide and soothe my ruffled pinions at the same time. Now listen to me carefully. Whether you believe it or not, Bishop Germanus will want to see me. You say he is not to be disturbed. Very well. I am not asking you to disturb him. I merely want you to walk into his chambers, to where he can see you, and to stand there, holding that sword in such a way that he can see it. There is no need for you to speak, no need for you to interrupt him, no need for you to do anything except stand where he can see you and what you are holding. Can you understand that?” He could.

“Now, let us examine the alternative, should you refuse to do as I ask. The bishop, I have been told by Tiberias Cato, has been waiting for me to arrive here for more than a month, although I did not know that. In consequence, I could not expect you to know that, either, so I will not complain about you. But I promise you Bishop Germanus will not be happy to know that you refused to announce me.”

The man was instantly on his feet, clutching the sheathed sword in a white-knuckled grip and backing away from me as though I might be rabid and about to leap at him. He released one hand from its death grip and fumbled behind him for the door handle, keeping his eyes on me as he backed through the doorway and closed it, shutting me out.

Within moments the door was flung open again and Germanus himself stood in the opening.

“You came,” he said, and stepped toward me, opening his arms to embrace me, and as I returned his embrace, feeling the strength of his old arms hugging me to his bosom, I was struck, despite the vigor of his hug, by the extent to which he had aged since last we met. He was clean shaven and smooth cheeked again, after several years of going bearded, and his mane of hair was snowy white, but still thick and healthy. He held me at arm’s length and scanned me with his eyes, his gaze moving slowly, meticulously, over my face and body.

“Older,” he said. “And stronger, more vigorous and, aye, wiser, more learned. You are become a warrior, my son, not merely a man.” He sighed a great, gusty breath, and smiled. “But then, we expected no less, those of us who know you. Come inside, come in. You and I have much to discuss and little time in which to do it, but your timing could really not be better. My conference with my brethren is almost complete, only a few remaining tasks to delegate for the term of my absence, and then I will be free of my parochial responsibilities until I return from Italia, which means I may have the rare treat of spending an evening at my own pleasure tonight. If you will please me by waiting—in here, I mean, in my chambers, not outside—I shall conclude my affairs and dismiss my brethren, and then you and I will eat and drink a cup of watered wine together. Will you do that for me?”

“Aye, Father,” I answered, smiling, “I will, and most particularly if the wine be well and truly watered, for I still mislike its being too strong.”

“Then you shall have water. Come inside.”

As we entered, the bishop’s arm around my shoulders, the officious cleric passed us on his way out, his eyes wide now and his mouth hanging open. Germanus stopped the fellow, then extended his palm for the sword the cleric still clutched. The young priest handed the spatha over, his face paler than before, and Germanus passed it to me without comment. I clipped it into place on the ring in my belt and winked at the cleric, who started in surprise and scuttled away.

We dined together that night, as Germanus wished. The meal was delicious, a simple affair of a roasted hare, served with lightly boiled turnips and some kind of kale, both of them drenched in fresh-churned butter, and fresh-baked unleavened bread that had been liberally salted in the preparation. I eschewed the wine and drank water, but Germanus drank his lightly watered wine with great relish.

Throughout the meal we spoke only of pleasant things, most of them family related. As usual, however, I ended up saying much more than I had intended to, and by the time we finished eating, the good bishop had drained me dry of every last vestige of information I could supply about my lost love, the beautiful Rosalyn. I do not know how I ever came to mention her in the first place, but I do know that I sat down to dine expecting to be asked about such things and determined to say nothing that might lead toward her. I had absolutely no intention of revealing anything about her, or the pain she had caused me. But I had reckoned, of course, without the bishop’s gentle, irresistible persuasiveness. It may have been something I said, or equally likely failed to say, that alerted him. I may have hesitated at the wrong point in response to a question. Who can tell? Whatever it was that I did or said, or did not do or say, Germanus was onto the scent like a hound on the trail of a fox, and all my resolve melted like snow in a warm wind. I told him all about Rosalyn and how she had left me, brushing aside the fact that she had had no choice but to leave when her family did. I should have known, however, that I would find little sympathy for my bruised feelings from my confessor.

I knew that many of the religious brethren had begun decades earlier to distrust and avoid women, increasingly regarding them as vessels of sin; temptations made flesh in order to seduce men away from God. Father Germanus would have none of that, however, and for the simplest and most lucid of reasons: God, he believed and taught, is omnipotent and omniscient and therefore incapable of creating anything less than perfect. He had created woman to be man’s helpmeet and companion, equal in most things and unparalleled in one all-important respect: the continuity of mankind itself is the prime responsibility of woman; man’s participation in the process is at best incidental and all too frequently accidental. Without God’s gift of woman to share his world, man could not even exist. How then, Germanus asked, could any thinking person allege that women were creatures of evil? The mere suggestion was blasphemous and impious, since it implied that God Himself, the Creator, must be less than perfect. This was a perennial concern for Germanus, inspired by what he perceived to be a collective human weakness—the tendency, amounting almost to a willingness, to demean and offend the Deity by indulging in casual, unthinking blasphemy.

He wanted me to understand the special nature of women, and he was determined that I should treat all women, regardless of birth and position, with courtesy, respect, and consideration of their God-given dignity.

He himself had been married for years, he told me, to a wonderful woman who had brought him great happiness simply by sharing his life wholeheartedly, and although she had died while still very young and they had never known the pleasure of parenthood, he yet thought of her, years after her death, as the greatest blessing a bountiful God had bestowed on him. Without the benisons of her friendship and her physical love, he said, he could never have advanced to be the man he had become. She it was, Germanus said, who had awakened in him the confidence and self-assuredness to throw himself completely into any new endeavor he was moved to undertake, and to do so with complete conviction that he could achieve whatever he wished to achieve.

Someday, Germanus assured me, I would find a woman created and designed by God Himself purely to be my helpmeet and my soul mate. I might not meet her soon, he warned, and I might meet others in the meantime whom I liked, admired, and even enjoyed, but when I found the one God had made for me, I would know it beyond dispute. As for the others I might meet in the interim, he told me, I should remember that every human being born had a mate somewhere and so I should treat all women with the respect and dignity I would expect to be shown by others to my spouse.

My difficulties with Rosalyn seemed to amuse and intrigue the bishop: he was highly curious about how I could be so bold and daring in combat yet so utterly craven when it came to speaking to a young woman. Looking back on it later, it seemed to me that his interest sprang simply from the fact that I had been vulnerable enough to love, and to love so hopelessly and inadequately.

Much as I appreciated the bishop’s amused concern with my amorous misadventures, I was no closer, after our long meal, to knowing what work he had in mind for me, and the mounting frustration of being ignorant about what role I had to play reminded me of a conversation I had had with him more than a year before, when I had approached him after a long period of soul-searching, prayer, and meditation.

I had sought him out directly after matins, and he had stopped immediately upon seeing me waiting for him by the side of the path in the predawn dimness. His face had creased in curiosity and concern plainly caused by what he perceived in the very way I was standing, and he had broken away from his brethren to come directly to me.

“Clothar, what ails you?”

“Nothing, Father,” I answered. “I merely wished to speak with you, to ask you something.”

“It must be important, I can see that from your face.” He looked up to where his secretary Ludovic stood waiting for him, and waved the man away gently. “Come,” he said to me. “Walk with me and tell me what is troubling you.”

In truth, nothing was troubling me at that time. My intent was merely to solicit his blessing upon what I had decided, only the previous night and after months of thinking about it, to do with my life. Bishop Germanus was my hero, and for good reason: his life had been heroic in every respect. He had excelled in every task to which he had set himself and had never known mediocrity or compromise. Living in the school he had created and in the atmosphere that surrounded him, seeing how even the most mundane details of his everyday life inspired and uplifted his companions and his brethren, I had come to admire him so much that I could think of no better way to honor him than by trying to be like him in every respect, voluntarily following in his footsteps and dedicating my life to the glory and service of God by undertaking the triple oath, as he himself had, of poverty, chastity, and obedience. And so, with those thoughts in my mind and content to remain silent while I ordered my galloping ideas, I walked beside him through the gathering dawn as he led me back to his dayroom, where he seated himself across from me, folded his hands in his lap, and waited for me to say what I had to say.

I cleared my throat. “I have been thinking, Father, that I would like to join the Church and become a bishop, like you.”

My mentor recoiled as though I had tried to slap him, his eyes flaring in incredulity. He recovered himself immediately, and attempted—unsuccessfully—to turn his astonishment into a sneeze, but I felt my face flush with the shame of his disapproval.

“You think me unfit,” I said, stricken, feeling my throat swell up to choke my words.

“What?” His face betrayed utter confusion, and even in the pain of his rejection of me I was aware that I had never seen Bishop Germanus so completely at a loss for either words or understanding. And then all at once his face cleared and he was on his feet, gazing down at me. “Unfit?” he said. “What is this about unfit? In all the things I have ever thought about you, Clothar, son of Childebertus, the word unfit has never entered my mind. There is nothing—you hear me, lad?—nothing for which I would consider you unfit. Look at me.”

He reached out and grasped me by the upper arms, holding me tightly, almost painfully, and forcing me to meet his eyes. When I did eventually look at him, I saw his look soften, and he shook his head, making a soft sound that might have been one of regret.

“As God is my witness,” he said, “there are few things easier to do in life than to cause pain and grief unwittingly simply by being human.” He drew himself erect and heaved a great, deep sigh, expelling it forcefully so that his shoulders slumped again with the release of it.

“Clothar, Clothar, Clothar, what can I tell you? The last thing I ever expected to hear from you was the very thing you just said to me. It had never occurred to me that you might want to join the Church. And you misread my reaction. Misread it completely. Certainly, I was shocked, but it had nothing whatsoever to do with your fitness to do or to become whatever you decide to do or to become. It had everything to do, on the other hand, with me and with what I had planned for you, and with what I had decided was to be your role in life, for the next few years, at least.”

For the next quarter of an hour, Bishop Germanus led me on a tour of the main residence of the school, where the teachers and lay brethren and others lived and worked. He took me into every room where people were working and praying, and pointed mutely to whatever the people there were doing, bidding me tacitly to pay attention to what I was being shown. I obeyed, but grew more and more confused as we went from room to room in silence until at length we returned to his dayroom and he crossed to the window, where he stood gazing out into the early-morning bustle of the square enclosure inside the main gates. I stood patiently, waiting for him to speak again.

“Come over here.”

I crossed to where he stood and followed his pointing finger to where two of the brethren were manhandling a cart loaded with straw through the main gates.

“They are working for the glory of God,” he said, and glanced at me sidewise. “Do you take my point?”

“No, Father …”

“Hmm. What do you think I was showing you in that little tour we took?”

I made no attempt to hide my mystification. “I don’t know, Father.”

“Work, Clothar,” he said. “I was showing you work, in the kitchens and the laundry rooms, in the classrooms and the library, and in the stables and the granaries. Work. All of it dedicated to the greater glory of God, and all of it performed by kindly, dedicated souls who are doing their best to fulfill the talents, skills, and abilities given to them by that same God.” He stopped again, interpreting my continuing confusion correctly.

“The point I must make here, Clothar, will sound uncharitable and perhaps unkind, but it is most certainly valid and accurate. The people performing all those tasks, doing all that work, are, for the most part, incapable of doing anything better or more demanding. To greater or lesser degrees, in the words of Holy Scripture, they are all hewers of wood and drawers of water. Were they capable of doing greater things, performing larger tasks, they would be about them already. But there are some tasks that require men of singular and outstanding abilities”—he looked directly into my eyes—“and there are some men born to achieve and to carry out singular and outstanding tasks.”

He turned away from the window and went to his worktable, eyeing the pile of documents awaiting his attention and talking over his shoulder to me as I followed him. “I believe, Clothar, that it would be a waste of your time and your God-gifted abilities were you to shut yourself away from the world now and immure yourself as a mere cleric. You might turn out to be a divinely gifted cleric, but not at this stage of your life. Look at me. I am supposed to be a fine bishop, according to my superiors, but as a bishop I am nonetheless very much the man whose life I lived for all those years before I was drawn to the Church.” He glanced sideways at me. “Do you know how I came to be a bishop?”

“Not really, Father.”

“Hmm. Would you like to hear the tale? It is not long in the telling.” I nodded, and he continued. “Well, as you know, I had been in the armies for many years, serving Honorius, who was both my Emperor and my friend, and when the war I had been fighting on his behalf came to an end, he permitted me to return here to Auxerre, which had always been my family’s home. Now, as it happened, the bishop in Auxerre when I came home was an elderly and much revered cleric and teacher named Amator. I remembered him well, for he had been my teacher when I was a boy, before I left to study the law in Rome, and he and I had locked horns on several occasions even then, for I was no one’s idea of a perfect student.” The bishop smiled to himself.

“Anyway, when I came home as the conquering hero of the wars, Bishop Amator was … unimpressed … that is as good a description as any, I suppose, and shortly afterward I discovered that he held what I considered at that time to be peculiar ideas about certain things, the foremost among which was hunting. Amator could not accept the idea that animals might be hunted for the sheer pleasure of the hunt. He had come to believe, somehow, that animals had souls just like people; souls of a different order, certainly, but souls nonetheless, and he felt it was a flouting of God’s love to hunt them and kill them without pressing need.

“Well, that set the two of us directly upon a collision course, for I had always been a hunter, loving the thrill of the chase and the challenge of the hunt itself. When I came home from the wars, I hunted on my own lands as I always had, relishing the wealth of game that had proliferated since I left, decades earlier. Bishop Amator, may God rest his soul, was incensed, and he condemned me publicly for setting a bad example to my people. And I am sad to report that, in my pride, I ignored him completely and kept on hunting, caring nothing for his disapproval.”

Germanus pursed his lips. “But then everything changed, almost overnight. Bishop Amator had a dream in which God appeared to him and told him he was going to die very soon, and that he must quickly prepare me, the biggest thorn in his side, to succeed him as Bishop of Auxerre.” He looked at me keenly. “Do you ever have dreams, Clothar?”

“Yes, Father, I do.”

“And do you remember them clearly, once you wake up?”

Did I? I had to think about that for several moments before shaking my head slowly and with more than a little doubt. “Sometimes I think I do, just after I awaken, but then when I try to remember exactly what I dreamed, it all breaks apart and most of what I can recall makes no sense at all.”

The bishop nodded, a half smile tugging at his lips. “That’s the way it is with most people. Dreams seldom make sense in the light of day.

“But the dream Bishop Amator had was different. He recalled it in perfect detail when he awoke, and that made him think very seriously about what it meant. He prayed for guidance for days before he finally accepted that the guidance had already been delivered in his dream, and then, having accepted that, he had to act quickly, for he believed that he would die soon but did not know when.

“He said nothing to me, naturally enough, for even although he believed the guidance he had received in his dream was genuine and sprang from God Himself, he knew, too, that I was less than reverent, to say the least. In my younger days I was intolerant and could be highly obnoxious whenever anyone crossed me, and Amator and I were already enemies. Then, too, Amator had to consider that although I had retired from active duty, I was yet a soldier of Rome—a condition that never lapses—and therefore I still owed my complete loyalty, by oath, to the Emperor and the Empire, should they have need of me. That was an extremely important consideration, for it meant that Amator could not simply approach me, even had I been willing, and appoint me to the priesthood as his successor, because there were conflicting vows involved. Before I could be free to take my vows in God’s service—as I must, to be a bishop—I would have to be freely released from my existing vows to the Emperor.”

“Did Bishop Amator travel then to Rome?”

Germanus loosed a single bark of laughter. “No, he was far cleverer than that. He approached the prefect of Gaul, the Emperor’s personal representative and chief magistrate in Gaul, and requested formal permission to absolve the Legate Germanus of his existing vows and responsibilities in order to induct him, as a retired and manumitted soldier, into the ranks of the clergy. The prefect must have been soundly astonished, for he and I had known each other well for many years and I am sure he must have laughed himself to sleep many a night, thinking of me as a humble cleric. In any event, he made no attempt to dissuade the bishop from his designs and gave his approval immediately, and only then was Bishop Amator at liberty to approach me directly.”

“And how did he do it? Were you angry that he had done what he had?”

Germanus smiled and shook his head. “No, not at all. He was very careful in how he went about his task of recruiting me. He said nothing until he considered the conditions to be perfect, and he took great care to prearrange their perfection. Then, when I was present among a large gathering of Christians called to celebrate the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, he made his move, announcing to all present that he had had a vision of the Lord, and then went on to tell about his dream and the message it had contained—that I, the Legate Germanus, had been chosen by God himself to succeed him—and that in the light of that revelation the prefect of Gaul had personally absolved me of my vows to the Emperor and the Empire.”

Germanus was grinning as he recalled the occasion. “There are times when a surprise is so great that the very word is inadequate. I was stunned by what Amator had told the people, and by what he had done … by how far he had taken the matter already, without my knowing anything about it. I was speechless and close to reeling and falling down in my confusion. And yet no one else seemed to be surprised, outraged, or upset. What the bishop had disclosed took everyone by surprise, but the old man was revered by his flock, and he had been bishop in Auxerre for many years, so no one thought to doubt his word. If God were going to communicate in person with anyone in Gaul, Amator would have been the one everyone expected Him to visit, so no one was surprised that it had come to pass.

“Amator told me himself, after everything was settled, that he had been the one most perturbed about the possible effects of his announcement. He considered me to be a hard man, which I suppose I was, and despite his own belief in the divine nature of his message, he expected me to storm off in a fury over his presumptuousness. After all, I had been accustomed to the autonomy of high command and to being answerable to no one but the Emperor himself. How then, he asked himself, would I respond to being manipulated—that was his word—by a mere bishop? He had brought a set of new vestments to the gathering with him, in the hope that I might be induced to take them away with me, and perhaps to think about what would be involved in wearing them, but in truth he had not really expected to succeed in recruiting me immediately or easily.”

“But that was not what happened … .”

“No, it did happen. I left the gathering immediately, as Amator expected, but whereas Amator thought my face was white with fury, it was in truth white with nausea. I was frightened to the point of vomiting. But I did not leave the premises. I merely sought privacy in a nearby building, where I spent several hours thinking and praying for guidance. The guidance materialized, and I returned to Bishop Amator, where I knelt and bowed my head, accepting what I had heard, in the belief and fear that to resist the summons would be to oppose the will of God. I bared my head, then and there, and the bishop shaved my pate to baldness in the tonsure of the Church. And that was that. From being an arrogant, victorious, hunting imperial legate, I had gone to being an impoverished, landless bishop in the space of one afternoon.”

I knew I was gaping at him as I sought to absorb that last statement, and he nodded his head, acknowledging my bafflement.

“Mind you,” he said, “the transformation was not that sudden. Nothing about me changed noticeably that day, nor for some time afterward, but profound changes had occurred within me then and there, nonetheless.” He paused, then smiled briefly. “I never hunted again, for one thing, and that, in the eyes of many people, was a change large enough to defy belief.

“And I began to pray as I had never prayed before, gaining strength daily as I indulged my newfound belief in God’s existence and His goodness. I swore three powerful vows, too, to live from that time on in poverty, chastity, and obedience to my superiors within the Church. The latter two oaths caused me little difficulty, since chastity had been a way of life since the death of my wife, years earlier, and obedience to my superiors had been ingrained during my years as a lawyer and then as a soldier. Only the vow of poverty contained any threat of difficulty, since from birth I had been enormously wealthy. But then I considered that I had no family left to whom I could give my wealth—I am literally the last of my line—and I discovered that the mere possession of riches meant less than nothing to me. And so I donated everything I owned to the Church—lands, buildings, chattels, goods, and my entire treasury of bullion, jewels, coins, and other specie. I rid myself of everything.” He glanced at me. “Believe me, Clothar, it was no sacrifice at all. In giving all I had to the Church, I acquired more than I could ever need.”

I sat gazing at him as he, in turn, sat gazing into the middle distance. Soon after he had become a bishop, I knew, people had begun to whisper that he had the power of miracles. There was one story of him casting out a devil from a young man that had always seemed truly miraculous to me—if, in fact, it occurred. I wanted to believe that it had, but by the age of sixteen I had long since learned that men were inclined to say more than their prayers before they went to bed at night, and most particularly so when they were passing along hearsay that had impressed them and that they wanted to make even more impressive in their turn. The event in question had been a public exorcism, apparently, witnessed by many people who all swore that Germanus, before he cast the demon out, forced it to disclose the hiding place of a sum of stolen money. True or not, the tale had brought the bishop great fame throughout northern Gaul, and people traveled to Auxerre from all around nowadays, hoping to have the holy bishop cure their afflictions, much to the holy man’s embarrassment.

I suddenly realized that he had returned to the present and was watching me watching him, and I sat up straight, clearing my throat in discomfiture. Germanus, however, appeared not to notice.

“So,” he said, “Clothar, son of Childebertus, have you understood what I was saying?”

I felt a sudden knot of apprehension in my throat. “I … I think so, Father.”

“I hope so, my young friend, but I will not test you on it Instead I will summarize it for you, making it as plain as is possible. Serve God, by every means at your disposal, Clothar, but do it properly, in freedom, while you gather the experience you will need should He call upon you to undertake one of His special tasks. How do I do that? you ask yourself.”

He smiled again. “Well, look at me. Consider if I had entered the Church when I was your age. Without the experience of love and marriage and the anguished loss of both, I could never have understood the pain that ordinary people feel on the loss of a spouse or a child. Without my years spent studying the imperial law, I could never have served the Church as assiduously as I have been able to through my understanding of legal issues and the basic workings of fundamental justice. And perhaps most important of all, without the years I spent in military service, exercising and coming to understand the principles of command and command structure, I could never have assumed the position that I hold now as Bishop of Auxerre, responsible for all the people who are in my charge today.

“You have greatness within you, Clothar, and nobility, and God Himself has a design for you to live by. But in order to achieve God’s will, I believe you must stay free. Plenty of time to return to the fold later, if your destiny sends you toward the Church. And that is enough of that, I think. Time now to talk of other things.”

By the time we finished eating it had grown dark outside, and one of the bishop’s brethren came in to replenish the fire in the brazier that took up most of the enormous grate. Germanus had always shown a tendency to be cold, even on warm days, and he liked to say it came from having spent far too many years in the warmer countries of the Empire, including Rome itself and Constantinople, to be truly comfortable in the cooler, more temperate climes of his homeland. Now that he was growing older and less resilient, he would add, his body was becoming less and less equipped to deal with chill temperatures and damp, nasty drafts.

When we had finished eating, we made ourselves comfortable in two large upholstered chairs that faced the fire, and Germanus sat staring into the flames for some time without speaking. I of course followed his example, perfectly content to enjoy the unaccustomed warmth of having a fire indoors on a crisp autumn night. The silence was a pleasant one and I felt perfectly at ease, knowing that my mentor would say whatever he wished to say when the time was right. And eventually he did, coming straight to the point without preamble.

“I know I told you before you left for home with Duke Lorco that I had work for you to do, but did I tell you anything of what I meant?”

“No, Father, nothing.”

“Hmm.” He fell silent again, and I glanced across at him to see whether or not his mouth was pursed in what we students had called the Bishop’s Pout, the moue that indicated he was thinking deeply. It was. Presently he stirred again and waved a hand to attract my attention.

“There is fresh, chilled grape juice in the pitcher over there beneath the cloth. Pour some for us, would you?”

When I brought him the cup he nodded in thanks.

“I want to tell you, Clothar, about a friend of mine, a man who lives in Britain. Have you ever heard of the Alleluia Victory?”

Of course I had, I told him. It was legend at the Bishop’s School.

Father Germanus, as Bishop of Auxerre, had been sent to Britain to debate the heretical teachings of a British theologian called Pelagius. I had learned about Pelagius from the loathsome Brother Anthony, whose harsh discipline had sent me, and many other boys, to the infirmary. We had learned that the teachings of Pelagius went against the Church in the matter of Divine Grace. The Church taught that mankind was incapable of achieving salvation without divine intervention on each individual’s behalf, in the form of spiritual grace acquired through the sacraments, but Pelagius had proposed the dangerous notion that each individual, made in God’s own image, contained within himself a spark of divine consciousness that allowed him to commune directly with God.

Pelagius had argued that the Church’s teaching in this matter negated the need for, and the efficacy of, any form of human law. Under the teachings of the Church, when it was reduced to its constituent elements, no man could be condemned for any sin, since he could claim that God had not given him the grace to withstand temptation.

Unfortunately, Pelagius’s own teachings, when reduced to their constituent parts, demonstrated that, since each man could speak directly to his God, men therefore had no need of priests or churches. Pelagius had been condemned and his teachings had been declared heresy, but his tenets had appealed strongly to many people, and most particularly so in Britain, where he had amassed a great following after his excommunication and death.

Germanus’s role in Britain had been to argue against the heresy in a convocation of British bishops held in the great theater at Verulamium, and on the way there, he and his traveling companions, all of whom were, like himself, Christian clerics unprepared to act as warriors, ran afoul of a band of marauders and would have been killed, had they not been rescued by a contingent of cavalry who happened to be passing through the area at the time on their way to Verulamium. As the horsemen came thundering down to the rescue, the exultant clerics had encouraged them with cries of “Alleluia!” and the tale had grown from one of a simple rescue to a mighty victory over the ungodly.

“Well, the cavalry commander who rescued me that day,” Father Germanus said, “was Caius Merlyn Britannicus, from a fortified colony called Camulod, in the west of Britain. He calls himself simply Merlyn of Camulod, and he and I became close friends, even though we had little time to get to know each other. Life works that way, sometimes. Anyway; I saw Merlyn again when I was in Britain several months ago—you may recall that I returned from there just before you left to go home—and he and I resumed our friendship where we had left off. He is a fascinating man, Clothar. Far more so now even than he was when we first met, almost two decades ago. He and I spent much time discussing certain matters of great moment for both him and me, and I made him a promise that I would return within the year to assist him with his plans and to perform a particular service for him.” He twisted his face into a grimace. “Alas, the Pope has called upon me to attend a conclave with the senior bishops in Italia, and I am constrained to obey. Unfortunately, that makes it impossible for me to keep my promise to a dear friend, and you can have no idea how deeply that angers and distresses me.

“Merlyn will understand my dilemma when he learns of it, I know, but the thought of merely writing him a letter is offensive to me. That would be too impersonal, and although Merlyn never would think so, I would perceive it as demeaning. And so I decided to ask you if you would be willing to go to Britain and meet with Merlyn on my behalf, to explain why I cannot be there and to carry my suggestions as to what he should do now that I have failed him.”

I cleared my throat, and when he looked at me questioningly I asked him if he could tell me about the personal service he was now unable to perform for Merlyn. He nodded.

“I promised him I would officiate at the coronation of his young ward, Arthur. The young man is quite extraordinary. I have never met him in person, but I have been in correspondence with him for a long time, at Merlyn’s request, and everything that I have read of his is most impressive. But apart from being scholarly and remarkably self-disciplined in his thinking, he also appears, from all accounts, to be outstandingly responsible in other, equally important areas. If he continues to make the kind of progress he has been achieving in the recent past, then according to Merlyn, and despite his extreme youth—he is a mere two years older than you—he will soon hold overall command of the cavalry forces of Camulod. He is also a devout and dedicated Christian.”

There was no hint of condemnation or even accusation in the bishop’s voice. “Now, that may cause you and your friends to roll your eyes, I know, but it is of extreme importance to us, within the Church, and I can only ask you to accept my personal assurance on that matter. God’s Church in Britain is in great danger at this time, gravely threatened by invading hordes of savage and implacable enemies who are godless and see Christianity as a laughable weakness. The people of Britain, including Merlyn’s people of Camulod, refer to the newcomers as Saxon Outlanders, but as such things always are, that name is far too simplistic. It implies that the invaders are of one race and one origin, whereas the truth is nowhere close to that. These so-called Saxons are a mixture of different peoples—Jutes and Anglians, Germanians and Danes, Saxons from the Danube and other, giant, blond-haired people who simply call themselves Northmen. Many of these people—most notably the Anglians—seek only a place to raise their families in peace and free of hunger. Their sole claim to the title of invaders is that they have moved in from beyond the seas, but few of them are fiercely warlike or aggressive. Others among them are, however, and among the most bloodthirsty of those are the real Saxons. Hence the name applied to all of them … it is a matter of the basest few earning hatred and fear for all of them.

“It appears, however, that the Saxons have set out to destroy God’s Church in Britain, because they recognize it, correctly, as a buttress and a rallying point for the ordinary folk of Britain to come together and withstand the Saxon threat. And so we are receiving reports that within the territories now being held by the invaders, few Christians—bishops, priests, or simple faithful—have been left alive.

“The forces of Camulod, properly ranged against the invaders with appropriate backing and the authority of the Church in Britain, could represent the salvation of our Faith. So I have written an episcopal letter to the current bishop of Verulamium, asking him to officiate at the crowning in my stead and to enlist the support of his fellow bishops in the enterprise. That is one of the documents I wish you to take with you when you go.”

I nodded my head in compliance. “Of course, Father. When would you like me to leave?”

The bishop laughed. “Not tonight, at least,” he said, “although I suppose you could, were it necessary. In the hope that you would be willing to do this for me, I have had everything ready for you to take for some time now, since I myself must leave tomorrow, as you know, for Italia. I admit, I was beginning to grow concerned, for both of us, that you might not arrive before I had to leave—but you are here now and nothing is lost. So … there is no immediate urgency for you to flee from here but you should not delay unduly, for the autumn gales will soon start stirring up the Narrow Seas between here and Britain, and no sane mariner will embark into the open sea once those begin. If you are tardy and miss the fair weather, you could be stuck on the coast for months on end before you can make a crossing. It happens frequently enough to make the seasoned traveler wary.”

“Then I will leave tomorrow.”

“Alone?”

There was something in his tone that gave me pause, and I hesitated because I had not even begun to consider what might be involved in this matter. He nodded, his expression grave. “Think about that carefully, Clothar. You may want to find someone to travel with you. I have no doubts of your ability, but you are embarking on a long and potentially harsh journey, filled with unforeseeable dangers, and looking at it purely from the viewpoint of common sense, it would be better not to tackle it alone with no one to watch your back.”

“I have a friend who rode here with me. He was with Duke Lorco’s party when they came here in the spring and he and I were the only two to survive whatever befell the Duke. He is older than I am, a mercenary and a fine soldier. His name is Ursus and we have become friends. He might be willing to come with me. I’ll ask him.”

The bishop nodded sagely. “Excellent,” he said. “Now let me tell you more of Merlyn and his plans.”

For upward of an hour then, he spoke to me glowingly of his friend Merlyn Britannicus and of Camulod, Merlyn’s home, and what it represented. Choosing his words with care, he told me briefly about how two of Merlyn’s ancestors, Publius Varrus and Caius Britannicus, had decided to remain in Britain after the departure of the legions and to fend for themselves and their dependants in a self-sufficient colony that they established in their own lands, a colony that had ended up being called Camulod, although the Camulod that they actually built was a stone-walled fortress surrounding an ancient hilltop fort that had existed since before Julius Caesar had landed in Britain four hundred years earlier.

Since its beginnings, the Camulod colony had thrived and expanded, especially after Caius Britannicus became the custodian of hundreds of heavy cavalry mounts abandoned by the armies of the imperial regent Stilicho when they were urgently called home, never to return to Britain. From then on, Camulod had become an equestrian society, and its defenders, who had always been soldiers trained in the Roman tradition, had become heavy cavalry troops, trained in the methods of Alexander of Macedon, whose own cavalry, six hundred years earlier, had conquered the known world and earned their monarch the title of “Great.” Camulod’s forces were now famed for protecting decency and human dignity within a land where anarchy and chaos had been proliferating now for decades.

Looking me straight in the eye, Germanus told me that Merlyn Britannicus, the third generation of his family to govern in Camulod, was one of the finest men he had ever known, but that he was even more impressive as a visionary. Born of mixed Roman and Cambrian Celtic blood, Merlyn had been taught by Druids for much of his early boyhood, learning the ways of that religion, but he had also been well and thoroughly trained by his Roman guardians in the classical, traditional methods of learning—including reading and writing, which the Druids lacked—and equally exposed to Christian teachings, so that his education had been far reaching. I found myself unimpressed by that as I listened, but I began to pay much more attention when the bishop moved on to tell me about Merlyn’s guardianship of the boy Arthur Pendragon.

This boy was being trained by Merlyn Britannicus not merely to govern Camulod but to govern the entire land of Britain as Riothamus, or High King. Germanus told me that the young man Arthur still had no idea of the destiny Merlyn had in mind for him. The boy believed, rather, that he was merely being raised and trained to be the finest man that he could be.

Any tendency I might have had to scoff at such a high-sounding claim died quickly when I realized that I was in much the same position—not, certainly, in being a king in training, but most definitely in finding myself surrounded at all times by teachers and instructors whom I respected and admired for their integrity, honesty, and abilities, and being guided by one towering mentor who was so clearly admirable and incorruptible that the idea of bringing shame or dishonor to him was impossible to think about.

Speaking clearly and explaining his thoughts to me as he went along, Germanus detailed the various things he wanted me to do when I arrived in Merlyn’s Camulod. The most obvious of these, and the one requiring least explanation, was the transportation and delivery of a substantial package of letters and documents. Those were for Merlyn’s eyes only, and even though the bishop admitted that Merlyn might be one of fewer than a score of nonclerical people in all Britain who still knew how to read—for there had been no schools and no teachers there since the Romans left, four decades earlier—he emphasized the dangers of people perhaps wanting to destroy the missives simply because they could not read and thus felt belittled and insulted. I mulled that point over in silence. It seemed to me that the bishop was exaggerating the danger to the documents.

The second thing he wanted me to deal with was far more in keeping with his wishes as a churchman. In all of Britain, it appeared, there was no permanent ecclesia—no house of God dedicated solely as a place wherein men might worship the Deity. Gaul had many ecclesiae nowadays, and more were proliferating like mushrooms everywhere priests traveled, but they were an innovation that had only come into fashion in recent years. Before the days of Constantine the Great, a hundred years earlier, the Church and its adherents had known much persecution and had met and worshipped in secrecy, but with the conversion of the Emperor himself to Christianity all of that had changed. Now it was not only feasible but desirable for permanent places of worship to be established in populous centers for the greater glory of God. As always, and as in everything, Bishop Germanus thought in terms of God’s greater glory.

Germanus wanted Merlyn—and his ward, Arthur—to build a stone church on their own lands, the very first ecclesia in Britain. He had discussed the matter with Merlyn while he was there on the island, but Merlyn had told him that there was no source of suitable stone or rock close to Camulod. He had promised, however, that once his agenda had been fulfilled and he had the leisure to find such a suitable source, he would give serious thought to building a simple edifice of stone that could serve the people of the region as a permanent place of worship. My task was to remind him of that promise.

And then came the most important charge with which I was to be entrusted. Germanus had also asked Merlyn to consider establishing within Britain a new order solemnly dedicated ad majorem Dei gloriam—to the greater glory of God. This order need not be religious, nor civil or military. It would be new—something unknown under the sun before now—and its primary purpose would be to glorify God by its very existence. Merlyn, it seemed, had promised to consider that, as well as the ecclesia, and I was to remind him of that promise, too.

“What kind of order did you have in mind, Father?”

Germanus looked at me in silence for a long time, a half smile on his lips, and then he shook his head. “I have no idea, my son.” He watched as my consternation and lack of understanding blossomed on my face, and his smile broadened into a grin that was filled with serene confidence. “It is not my place to know such things, Clothar. How could I be equipped to devise such a project? It would be hubris of the worst kind even to think about attempting such a thing. God Himself knows what He requires men to do in His name and to His glory, and when the time comes for something to be done, He will implant the shape and substance of His wish in the mind of someone—perhaps Merlyn, perhaps not—who will then cause it to become reality, and the order will be born. My task, when the idea first occurred to me, was simply to plant the thought in the mind of Merlyn Britannicus, as I am sure I was meant to do. He is facing a life filled with new possibilities, once his new kingdom is established. It may fail abjectly, but it may flourish wonderfully—only God Himself can see into the future and discern what lies ahead. Those of us who are no more than human can only place our trust in His goodwill and wait to be enlightened.

“Now, to other matters. We know what you must do in Britain. Now we must bend our minds to bringing you there safely. You have never been aboard a ship, have you? I thought not. Very well, here are our priorities. We must first deliver you safely to the coast. After that, we must find you a ship that will fit your needs, and we must make sure that you can use it.” He turned slightly in his chair to look at me, his eyes moving down the length of me.

“We need to speak of arms and armor now. From what Tiberias Cato tells me, your armor and weapons are well used and serviceable enough, but the overall appearance of your arms and equipment, with the sole exception of Cato’s own spatha, now yours, leaves much to be desired, in the face of the tasks I shall require of you. That, however, is simply remedied.” He called out a name that sounded like Armand, and a tall, strapping young cleric came in immediately from the anteroom, where he had apparently been waiting for the summons.

The bishop thanked him for his patience and asked him to bring in the articles that lay on the bed in his private chambers, and the fellow bowed and left, to return soon thereafter, walking with care and straining beneath the weight of a cumbersome box fashioned of rough wooden planks. It was as wide as my forearm is long, and twice as deep as it was wide. Besides being heavy, the thing was clearly awkward to carry, despite its having been furnished with handles of hempen rope. Armand carried it carefully over to the fireplace and lowered it cautiously to the floor, grunting loudly with relief as he released it and straightened up.

Armand fetched two more boxes, one atop the other, both smaller but apparently no lighter than the first one. The larger of these also had carrying handles attached, but these were of heavy, stitched leather, and the box had been smoothed and stained. It was perhaps two handspans in depth, the same from front to back and at least half again as much across the front. The one that sat on top of that, however, was vastly different. This was a solidly made hinged chest of precious citrus wood with an elaborate brass spring-lock, the key to which hung by a wire from the brass handle on the lid. Ornately carved on all five surfaces and lustrously polished to a sheen that reflected the flickering light from the fire in the brazier, the container was the kind of costly artifact that spoke loudly of enormous wealth and privilege. Citrus wood was so precious, and so much in demand, that there had been rumors circulating for decades that it had been entirely used up and no longer grew anywhere in the world. I had never actually seen citrus wood, and no one I knew had, either, but I recognized the magnificence of what I was looking at immediately and knew it could be nothing other than the fabled wood. I knew, too, that the piece in front of me was probably hundreds of years old, an heirloom of the ancient family of which Germanus was the sole remaining member.

Armand hoisted his burden onto the table, then placed the two smaller containers side by side. That done, he turned and bowed slightly to the bishop and then glided unobtrusively back out to the anteroom.

“Another new face, Father,” I murmured, trying not to make my curiosity about the boxes too obvious. “There have been many changes in the months since I went away.”

The bishop shrugged. “Aye, I can see where it might seem thus to you, but there have been no more than usual. You simply never noticed it before, because you were always here and for more than five years you absorbed each new face automatically and without thought as it came along. Now you have been gone for more than half a year and are seeing them all at once.” He bowed his head and rubbed the palm of his right hand with his left thumb, then looked back at me.

“Tell me about this friend of yours, this Ursus. Is he a good man?”

“You mean in the manner of Christian goodness, Father? I believe so. I have never seen anything to indicate otherwise.”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I meant good in the military sense. Is he trustworthy?”

“Of course, absolutely.”

“Are you convinced of that? That you could trust him with your life?”

I smiled. “I already have, Father, several times, and I have never felt the slightest doubt in his reliability, his courage, or his strength.”

“Hmm. What about money?”

“What about it, Father? I have none and neither has Ursus—he is a mercenary. But we have no need of money.”

“There is always a need for money, in some guise or another, believe me. You may drift across the land attending to your own requirements for as long as you wish and you will have no real need for money. But come the moment when you have to undertake a task like those I have set you here, you will need money and a strong supply of it, for you are entering a realm where only money achieves effects. Thus the reason I am asking you about your friend: you will be carrying large sums of money with you and on your person. I merely wish to be assured that this Ursus is able enough to defend you against thieves and trustworthy enough that he will not be tempted to become a thief himself. Tell me all that you know about him.”

It was my turn to talk then, and I did so at length, relating everything I knew and had learned about my friend Ursus. When I was finished, Germanus sat staring narrow-eyed at me for several moments, absorbing what I had last said, and then he nodded and stood up, pushing himself out of his chair with both arms.

“Now, come and look at this.” He crossed to the large box on the floor, and I followed, eager to know what was to be revealed to me, but I could have guessed at that all night long and never have imagined what he was about to show me. The sides of the box, I could see now that we were close to it, were hinged and secured by a simple metal hasp. Germanus undid the hasp and swung the sides of the box apart, and I gasped.

My first impressions were of rich golden, burnished browns, metal and leather, reinforced by the smell that came crowding into my nostrils, richly scented polish of the kind used to burnish and buff the finest leathers. The box contained an armor tree, a simple frame of crossed pieces of wood designed to store the various pieces of a soldier’s gear. I had seen a hundred of them, here and there, but I had never seen one installed in a box, for transportation or, as it turned out to be in this instance, for long-term storage. Furthermore, the armor growing on this particular tree was unlike any I had ever set eyes upon.

Several of my relatives had magnificent armor. King Ban’s had been made for him personally, as had my cousin Brach’s, and the results were impressive and spectacular, even intimidating. What I was gazing at here, however—and I knew it beyond certainty, for it could be nothing else—was Germanus’s own armor, the armor of an imperial Roman legatus, in all its opulent magnificence. Germanus reached out and rubbed the ball of his thumb gently across the deeply ingrained texture of an ancient and much-polished scratch over the left breast of the cuirass.

“Never could get that mark out,” he murmured, “but I never really wanted to, not badly enough. It served to keep me aware of my mortality. That was done by a heavy boar spear, thrown by. the biggest man I have ever seen. It hit me square and threw me bodily backward, over my horse’s rump. Lucky for me I didn’t land on my head and break my neck; but God was with me and the only damage I sustained was this one scratch.”

I was astounded, because the cuirass was leather, not metal, and a spear such as he described should have skewered him, cuirass and all. I said so, wondering all the while if he might be exaggerating, as soldiers always seem to do, but he merely smiled and shook his head.

“I cannot speak with any certainty about the harness worn by emperors, because I have never known an emperor who was a true warrior and actually fought and thus wore real armor, as opposed to ceremonial display armor, but I suspect that this suit here may be the finest single suit of armor ever made.” Once again he extended a hand and rubbed it gently over the glossy surface of the leather breastplate before plucking the helmet from the wooden ball that supported it atop the tree and holding it up close to his eyes with both hands. “It has been many years since I last wore this,” he breathed, “and looking at it now, I could regret never wearing it again were I to permit the self-indulgence.” A cloth bag hung from the “neck” of the tree, and he set the helmet atop the box and rummaged in it, extracting a plumed crest made from alternating tufts of pure white and crimson-dyed horsehair. With the ease born of years of practice, he clicked the crest into place on the helmet, transforming it in a moment from a magnificent helm to a thing of startling and imperious beauty.

“Here, try this on. Stand still.” I stood motionless, scarcely daring to breathe as he fitted the head covering over my brows. It felt heavy, and solid, but it fitted as though it had been made for me. “Impressive,” the bishop murmured. “When one wears such a thing oneself, there is seldom opportunity to admire it. Looking at it now, though, it has a certain splendor, I must admit.” He turned back to the tree, leaving the helmet on my head. “But look at the workmanship in this device.” He was referring to the cuirass, and I removed the helmet, tucking it beneath my arm before I stooped to look more closely at the cuirass.

It really was superb, an intricate and awe-inspiring creation of boiled, dried, hammered, and burnished leather, painstakingly fashioned in the shape of a stylized male torso. The planes of the pectoral musculature were utterly smooth and polished to a mirrorlike perfection that reminded me—I smiled at the thought—of my first sight of my cousin Brach emerging from the lake. Elsewhere on the piece, though, there was no expanse of surface larger than a tiny fingernail that was not covered with embossed carvings and workmanship of breathtaking, elegant perfection: rosettes and chevrons and thorny briarwork scrolls chased and embraced each other in apparent abandon yet flawless symmetry across and around the surface of the armor. Germanus stepped back from it, to admire it from farther off.

“Hand it to me, would you?”

Obediently I placed the helmet at my feet, then prepared to lift the cuirass from the wooden frame. I grasped it securely, lifted it—and almost dropped it in my surprise, whipping my head around in consternation to see that Germanus had expected this and was grinning at me again.

“Aye,” he said. “Bear in mind I said it’s the finest armor ever made. You have almost discovered why. Bring it to the table.”

I carried the unbelievably light cuirass, full front and back plates together, to where he was already waiting for me, peering into the second box. As I balanced the cuirass, allowing it to stand on its own upon the table, the bishop held something out to me. It was a flat, rectangular object wrapped in black cloth.

“That’s the secret of the armor,” he said as I unwrapped the package and then held it up in front of me, staring at it. Whatever the device was, I knew I had never seen one before, and yet it looked familiar. It was made of metal, a gridlike form square in shape and feather light and flexible where I would have expected much more weight and rigidity. And then I realized what it reminded me of. Once, when I was a child, we had had a summer of ferocious heat, and in the course of it my nurse had taken to weaving shades of thumb-wide bulrush fronds to hang in our doorways and window embrasures to keep out the sun while allowing the air to move into the darkened house. The simple square over-and-under weave of the leaves had entranced me, I remembered, because it looked so fragile yet was paradoxically strong. And now I was looking at the same kind of weave, fundamentally simple and straightforward save that instead of rushes, the smith had used slats of metal, extremely thin and a deep, dark blue in color, forming a slender woven plate of steel that I could flex between my hands. Germanus held out his hand for the piece, and I passed it to him. He pressed his cupped hand, containing the blue mesh, hard against the left pectoral panel of the cuirass.

“There is a layer of straps of this woven steel underlying the leather. In fact it lies between two layers, with the edges of the straps overlapping very slightly, and the edges of the leather are sewn together around the outer rims of the cuirass, front and back, very artistically. If you look very closely, you may see where the two layers meet, but it is not easy to find.” I bent forward and peered closely, but I could see nothing.

“It is a wonder,” I confessed. “I have never heard of such a thing. Where was it made, Father?”

“In Constantinople, where else? The smiths there can do magical things with metal, but the man who made this armor was the finest, most skillful armorer I ever knew. I was able to do him a service when I was in law, and he made this for me specially when I left the profession and joined the armies at the behest of the Emperor. There are arm guards and greaves and an armored kirtle in the box to complete the suit, as you can see, and even the leather dome of the helmet conceals a metal cap. It has served me well, in all my travels and campaigns. I have worn it throughout the Empire.” He made a sucking sound through his teeth. “But no more. Never again.”

“What will you do with it, Father?”

He tilted his head to one side and looked at me from beneath raised eyebrows. “I shall pass it to my son, my son.”

“Your son? I had no …” My voice tailed away in embarrassment, but he pretended not to have noticed.

“Of course I cannot give him all of it. The crimson-and-white helm crest is that of a legionary legatus—the legatus of Gaul—and the martial cloak and gauntlets that go with it also bear both my personal and my official insignia as legatus of Gaul. All of those pieces are instantly recognizable to anyone who knows about such matters and so would draw unwelcome attention were someone else to be seen wearing them. But with a plain crest of brown horsehair, the helmet’s effect would be much the same, and a plain, functional military cloak of waxed brown wool will go splendidly with all the rest.” He glanced sideways at my chest. “You’re a big lad, but you still have growth to complete. Nonetheless, the cuirass should fit you well enough even now, over a heavy, quilted tunic, and you’ll grow into it soon enough. The helmet’s headband is adjustable, so even if your head grows larger, which is unlikely now, the casque will fit you and serve you well.”

I was staring at him openmouthed, unable to believe what I had heard, but finally I found my tongue. “You’re giving this to me? To me?”

“Aye, but not all of it. As I said, I’ll keep the helmet crest, the cloak, and the embroidered gauntlets—those are purely decorative in any case, heavy and cumbersome and virtually useless. But the rest is yours to wear from this time on.”

He smiled, deciding to take pity on me. “Clothar, Clothar, think about it this way: I have no son of my own and you are the son of one of my dearest friends, and you have given me as much joy and pleasure with your simple honesty and strengths as your father did. I am an old man now, and soon I will die, and when I do, if this armor is still in my possession, venal people will squabble over it and it may end up being worn by someone whose possession of it would make me lie uncomfortably in my grave. Better by far that you should have it, with my blessings. You are going as my envoy into foreign parts, to deal with powerful people and take part in great events. It is fitting that you should be dressed appropriately for the part you may be called upon to play, whatever its nature. So, will you accept this, and my blessings?”

I felt tears standing in my eyes and could only shake my head in acceptance, incapable of speech. Again he affected not to notice.

“Excellent, then come over here, for there is something else I have for you, something that you can use at all times. But it came from far beyond Constantinople.”

He went to the table, opened the larger of the two boxes that lay there and lifted out a carefully wrapped bundle, which he laid reverently on the tabletop. He reached into the box again and pulled out what I immediately recognized as a set of supple, well-used, and carefully tended black leather saddlebags. He tossed them gently toward me, and as I caught them I noticed that instead of the two normal bags to be thrown across a horse’s shoulders, this device had four deep bags, a pair on each side, one superimposed above the other, and a long strap to buckle beneath the horse’s chest and hold the assembly secure. I noticed, too, that each bag closed with a strap and buckle.

“Large bags, capacious and useful. I designed them myself, on campaign many years ago. I found that I could never have enough carrying capacity when I was on the move. You’ll enjoy those. But this is what I want to show you.” He had been working to undo the wrappings around the bundle he had first drawn from the box and now he held up the garment it had contained. It was a surcoat of some kind, a plain rectangle of some strange material, folded halfway so that it hung down front and back in equal lengths. A hemmed, square-cut hole had been provided for the wearer’s head to go through, and there were transverse slits, also hemmed and no more than a handsbreadth wide, beneath the shoulders, permitting the shoulder surfaces to project straight out without being pulled downward. Other than that, the sides were open, and it was plain to see that they were intended to be held in place by a belt or girdle and probably a sword belt. It was a plain, dusty-looking shade of the untreated light brown wool called fustian, pale enough to be sandy or earthen.

Germanus tossed it to me, and again I reacted with surprise. This thing, too, was metallic. I held it close and peered at it, then squeezed it in my hands. It contained countless thousands of tiny, almost insubstantial metal rings, all sewn into place in overlapping layers so that the garment itself was flexible and probably more comfortable than anything comparable that one might find in Gaul, although I doubted that there would be anything truly comparable.

“That tunic will deflect a hard-shot arrow fired from close quarters,” Germanus said. “I have no idea where it came from or who made it, but it, too, was given to me as a gift many years ago by a visiting king from some far-flung part of the Eastern Empire, and he himself had no idea where it came from. The main thing about it, though, is that it works, and it is light enough and comfortable enough to wear in most situations where you anticipate that there might be danger and yet you do not wish to wear full armor. And it doesn’t clink. It rustles a little, but that’s all. If you wear it traveling, beneath your new armor, it will fill up the extra room in there. How goes the time?”

“I know not, Father. I have lost track completely.”

Germanus called again for Armand, and the large young man reappeared from the anteroom, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. In response to Germanus’s question, he informed us that it was the fourth hour of the night. He glanced at the fireplace as he spoke and crossed immediately to blow on the embers, coaxing them until he had a flame going again. When he stood up to leave, the bishop thanked him and gave him permission to retire to bed.

“Time, time, time,” he said as soon as the man was gone. “There is never enough of it. Now, to work. We have to get you from here to the coast, as quickly and efficiently as possible. Tomorrow morning, after I have gone, I want you to report to Tiberias and have him select his finest horses for your use. Each of your traveling companions should have two mounts.”

“There are only two of us, Father. Ursus and myself.”

“Aye, for the time being, but I would like to change that. You will require an assistant, an escort to look after your equipment and your weapons and your horses. I have one for you, if you will consent to take him. His name is Bors and you may remember him. He was in the student intake below yours and he began this year as the informal leader of the Spartans—a brilliant and gifted student, but troubled during these past few months. His parents died in an outbreak of plague late last summer, although we did not hear word of it until after you had left us. But it transpires that it was not only his parents who died. His entire family was wiped out, leaving no one alive. The boy needs something now to rekindle his interest in living. He has been morose and depressed and his studies have suffered for it, but he is still far and away the best and brightest in the school this year. I want you to consider taking him with you. He will benefit by it and so will you, I am convinced. Talk with him tomorrow and watch him for a day or two. If you feel that such an arrangement would work, invite him to go with you. I have spoken to Tiberias Cato and he knows my feelings on the matter, so there will be no difficulties in freeing the lad to accompany you. Similarly, should you feel uncomfortable about this, then Cato will attend to it and no harm will have been done. The boy himself knows nothing of this, so his feelings will not suffer if you reject him.

“So! Horses are looked after. Cato has his instructions. Now, I am assuming that you do not speak the Coastal Tongue, but does your friend, Ursus?”

“I am sorry, Father, I don’t know.”

“No matter, we will find out tomorrow morning, but it is important that you have someone with you who understands the language. Latin may serve you most of the time, but there are a multitude of tongues spoken in the world of mariners and the Coastal Tongue serves all of them.

“When you reach the seacoast, you will proceed to the town called Gesoriacum, which is the port closest to Britain, and ask there for one of three sea captains, all of whom know me and all of whom I trust. Find one of those three, it does not matter which one, but trust no others. Heed me in this, Clothar, for it is vital to your success. You may have to wait for several days, perhaps several weeks, but one of the three will arrive in the port sooner or later. It is home to all of them. You will give the one you meet a token from me, to prove you are who you claim to be. I have the three tokens, and the names of the three men and which token goes to whom. Put them in your saddlebags.”

He now opened the citrus wood chest and withdrew from it a small, slender handmade box of sandalwood that he opened to show three compartments. In each compartment was a small lozenge of leather with a man’s name burned into it, and a piece of jewelry. The first, named for Joachim, held a ring with a stone of lapis lazuli; the second, named for Sivio, contained a small silver pendant, looped to accept a chain; while the third, dedicated to Scapius, held a plain silver cross. Germanus read the names aloud, touched each of the tokens, and then closed the box carefully and handed it tome.

“Each of those men has an identical piece in his possession, given him by me. By giving him this one, you will have the absolute loyalty he would give to me. On the other hand, however, these men work hard to stay alive, so we cannot rely on their goodwill alone. That would be unjust. So …” He reached into the chest again, with both hands this time, and came out with both hands filled. “Here, open this up.”

I unrolled a long, supple money belt of soft black leather. It was slightly more than a handsbreadth deep and fastened with triple buckled straps, and the back of it was lined with finely woven wool so that it would not stick to the bare skin against which it would be worn. The main part—the back of the belt, assuming the buckles would be worn in front—was composed of three long lateral leather strips, each of them covering a narrow pocket the depth of the first joint of my thumb, and there were two rectangular areas at the sides, also containing pockets, although these were vertical and only half the width of the others. Germanus was pulling strips of black from a leather wallet.

“These are silver coins, ten to a strip, thirty in all. Tuck them into the three pockets. They’ll make a handy addition to your armor should anyone attempt to stab you in the back. These ones here, so much smaller, are of gold—thirty of these as well, in six sets of five. Tuck these carefully into the side pockets, and bear in mind that each of them is worth at least thirty and perhaps fifty of the silver coins. These are emergency funds only. Wear them against your skin at all times, Clothar, and let no one know you have them. You will be moving and living among men who would kill you without blinking for a single one of the silver coins, let alone the gold. For your expenses along the road, in mansios and taverns, use this.” He tossed me a small, heavy leather bag of coins. “Those are mostly copper, with only a few small silver pieces. It is the kind of money that will get you whatever you need without stirring anyone’s greed.” He dug again into the chest and tossed me yet another small leather bag, this one heavy beyond belief. “This you will use to pay for your passage to Britain, across the Narrow Seas. It is gold, but do not be afraid to use it.

“The route from Callis to Dubris is the shortest distance between the two shores, but there has been trouble in the southeast of Britain and the Saxon tribes there, particularly the ones who call themselves Danes, are moving to occupy the entire region and are notoriously unpredictable. Be guided by whoever is your captain, but be prepared to travel westward before you land. Ideally, if you have fair winds and the weather holds, you should round the peninsula called Cornwall and sail up the coastline as far as a place called Glastonbury. Camulod lies close by there. Again, your captain will know of Glastonbury.”

I wiggled my fingers.

“What? You have a question?”

“Aye, Father. How many coins should I pay the boatman? I have never handled gold before.”

Germanus smiled. “It is the same as lead, Clothar—heavy and cumbersome and valuable only to the extent it is coveted by others. Fall into the sea with bags of it on your belt and you will drown. But it has its uses, too. For a fair-weather crossing, say ten coins. Foul weather, half as much again. For outrageous risk, twenty coins, and for safe conduct all the way to Glastonbury in the west, thirty. That would be generous, but worthwhile.

“Now, what else is there?” He stood looking about him, his hands on his hips, then shook his head. “That’s it, I believe. I think we have covered everything. Now, another draft of grape juice, although I fear it will be warm by now.”

The fresh juice was warm but nonetheless delicious. As soon as I had drained my cup, however, Germanus rose.to his feet again.

“I would like to meet your friend Ursus, if it please you. Will you take me to him?”

“Yes, Father, of course, but he might be asleep.”

“He will be asleep—it is late. But this is a special night.” He turned and looked again at the magnificent armor on its tree. “We will leave this here for now, but all my people know it is now yours. You may collect it tomorrow or whenever you wish, but I would suggest you leave it until you have decided about young Bors. If he is to be your assistant, then he should begin with this. And he should learn everything from that point on—the care of your weapons, armor, and horses, the care and maintenance of your other clothing, the preparation of your food, and the prompt and exact execution of your wishes and commands. This is a learning process for the boy, to lead him into manhood. He has the makings of a splendid soldier, but he lacks this particular type of training, so I charge you to be conscientious in supervising and disciplining him. It will teach him obedience and humility, which is even more important. Now take me to your friend.”

We rousted a tousled and sleepy Ursus from his bed, and I introduced him to Germanus. Even under such imperfect and unexpected circumstances Ursus was honored to be meeting a man whose exploits and fame were legendary, and when Germanus invited him to walk with him for a while he accepted with alacrity, merely asking leave to throw some cold water over his head and pull on a warmer tunic. I was not allowed to accompany them, and so I went to my own quarters, where I sat on the bed, leaning back against the wall and going over the astonishing events of this amazing evening.

Perhaps an hour later, Ursus came into my room and shook my shoulder, startling me awake.

“You had better get into bed. You won’t sleep comfortably, propped up like that. I enjoyed talking with your friend Germanus … .” I peered up at him, hoping to hear what had happened between the two men. Ursus nodded. “I’ve never been to Britain. I’m looking forward to seeing it.”

“You’re coming with me? I was going to ask you tomorrow.”

“Aye, Germanus told me. He questioned me very thoroughly. Got me to tell him things about myself I didn’t know I knew. Anyway, he ended up by telling me what you’re about to do and asked me if I would consider going with you. Naturally I had to say I would, because I couldn’t live with myself if you went poking about on your own and got yourself killed. Of course, he knows that I’m a mercenary and out of work at the moment, so he hired me. To keep me honest.”

“He hired you? In what way? And for what?”

“To look after you. And for gold—more gold than I could make in ten years in Carcasso. He hasn’t given it to me yet, but he will tomorrow, in coin. So now I am in the employ of Bishop Germanus of Auxerre, which makes me worthy of respect even in Britain, and he has seconded me to serve under you as his envoy. The only problem I have now is Tristan. I don’t know what to do about him.”

“Tristan?”

“My brother. My youngest brother. Believe it or not, I’m fifteen years older than he is.” Ursus reached inside his tunic and pulled out a much-folded sheet of very fine parchment. “This was waiting for me when I arrived back in Carcasso. It is a letter from my brother, the first letter I have ever received. Don’t ask me how he found me or how the letter reached me, for I have no idea. Someone must have recognized me somewhere, and found out that I was calling myself Ursus, and in some manner the word made its way to Tristan. I have no idea how long ago this was written, or how long it took to reach me, but Tristan was in the legions, stationed in Lutetia, when he wrote it, and he was hoping we might be able to meet again someday. In it he tells me that my father, damn his black heart, died ten years ago, and my brother Simon now rules Montenegra in his place. I liked Simon. He and I were as close as any two in our benighted clan could be. I never knew Tristan at all. He was the smallest tadpole when I left, born to a younger wife after my mother finally died of trying to please and placate the black old boar that I’m named after.”

“How old is he now, then?”

Ursus blinked. “I don’t know. Yes, I do. I’m thirty-seven now, so Tristan must be twenty-two. He says in his letter he joined the legions on his sixteenth birthday and he’s been in for six years, so that would make it right.”

“He’s five years older than me.”

“Aye, that’s about what I would have guessed. Anyway, when I left Carcasso, I decided upon a whim to come up this way to ask about the lad, to see if I could find out where he is nowadays. He might be there still, he might have moved on years ago. I don’t know. But we have to pass by Lutetia on our way to the coast, so if you wouldn’t mind, I would like to stop there and ask about him.”

“Absolutely, of course. How long has it been since you saw him?”

“Hmm … twelve years, at least, perhaps longer. But he will probably have moved on from Lutetia by now. You know what the army’s like.”

“Aye, well, we’ll see when we get there. Now we’d better sleep. It’s late and Germanus leaves at first light. I’m glad you’ll be coming with me to Britain.”

He left and I lay back to think again about the adventures ahead of me, but I must have fallen asleep instantly, for the next thing I was aware of was the predawn crowing of a rooster.

Germanus was in fine fettle as he made his way out of the ancient town that had been the domain of his family for hundreds of years. I was merely one indistinguishable dot in the vast crowd of people who turned out to see him leave and wish him well, and he spent more than an hour moving among the crowd of well-wishers, embracing some and blessing others and thanking all of them for honoring him in this way.

When he spotted me, he came directly to where I stood and grasped me by both shoulders, looking straight into my eyes. “May God be with you, Clothar, my son,” he said. “I will be thinking of you and praying for you every day, that your mission to Merlyn Britannicus might bear fruit and bring great blessings to the people and the land of Britain. Go in peace.” He kissed me on the forehead and began to turn away, then hesitated and turned back to me, his smile widening. “I wore that armor for many years and during many campaigns, you know, and only ever once did I mar it with a scratch. Try to treat it with the same care, will you? No Saxon ax will cut through it, but a hard-swung ax could make a fearful dent in it, and in you for that matter, so promise me, if you will, that you will stay well away from hard-swung axes.”

“I will, Father,” I said, trying to smile despite the swelling lump in my throat. “I will. God bless you.”

He touched me again, cupping my cheek in his hand. “He already has, Clothar. Walk in His light, my son.” And with that he was gone, swallowed up by the crowd.

Later that morning, when the cavalcade was gone and the crowd had dispersed, I went looking for Tiberias Cato and found him, not surprisingly, in the stables among his beloved animals. He waved me to him as soon as I entered the main gates of the horse yards, and when I reached his side he nodded a silent greeting and pointed to a small group of horses in an enclosure close by.

“That one,” he said. “The bay. That’s the mount I picked out for the boy Bors. As your servant, he’ll have no need of a prancing warhorse, but that animal will be perfect for him. It’s sound and solid, and what it lacks in beauty it makes up for in willingness. The beast has a tractable nature, with enough strength and stamina to do anything he will require of it. It will carry him and a full load all day and every day if that’s what is required. The other one behind it, the gray gelding, is his packhorse. Same attributes, same stamina, merely less sweet to look upon. Have you decided yet to take him with you?”

“Bors? No, I haven’t even met him yet and know nothing about him other than what Bishop Germanus told me last night.”

“What more do you need to know, then? If Germanus vouches for him, how can you doubt the lad?”

“I don’t. I was merely pointing out that I have not met him yet. I think I may remember his face, but I won’t know until I see him.”

“Well, that’s easily remedied.” He shouted to a small boy who was cleaning out a stall behind him, bidding him drop what he was doing and run to the school, where he was to find Brother Michael’s class and ask the teacher to send the boy Bors back here to meet with Magister Cato. When the lad had scampered away, he turned back to me.

“I took the liberty of picking mounts for you and your companion Perceval, too. Didn’t think you would object to that. Come, I’ll show them to you.” As he led me back to where he had sequestered four horses for our use, he continued talking about Bors.

“He was always a bright student, right from the outset, and I knew that from the first day I set eyes on him, but everything about him’s different now, and none of the changes have improved him. Mind you, there’s a part of me that can’t really blame the lad, because he’s been through more misfortunes than many a grown man goes through in a lifetime. But still, enough is enough.

“It started with the news of his parents’ death. That would normally be enough to bring down any man—I mean, it happens to all of us, but none of us are ever ready for it when it occurs and it’s always devastating. But then a second messenger arrives, hard on the heels of the first one, this second one bearing the tidings that the remainder of his family—his entire clan—had been wiped out by the pestilence, along with three quarters of the population of the small town they had lived in.”

Cato sniffed loudly and braced one of his feet against the bottom rail of the paddock. “That second message is what did the boy in. Until it arrived, he had been grief-stricken and very normal in how he reacted and behaved. After he heard the news about the rest of his family being dead too, however, he changed completely. He grew bitter and resentful, and noisy in his bitterness. He started questioning the very existence of God, demanding to know how anyone could believe in the goodness of any God who could allow such things to happen … .

“Of course, that kind of talk was not too well received here, as you can imagine, and several of his teachers began to lean on him, but that only made him worse. He stopped working at his lessons altogether and went from being a bright student and a positive influence among the other boys to being a bitter, cynical recluse who never had a good word to say about anything or anyone.”

“So how did the other boys react to that?” I asked, and Cato turned to look at me with an expression of rueful skepticism that I remembered well.

“Not very well,” he said. “Some of them even joined forces to show him the error of his ways. But that was a waste of time, and often painful. Bors is a big lad, for his age, and he’s always been able to hold his own against lads twice his size. He thrashed a couple of them very badly and the others soon decided to leave him alone to stew in his misery.

“Germanus is the only one who refused to give up on the boy. I gave him up as unredeemable months ago, but the Bishop chewed on my ear for days and weeks until I decided to give the boy another chance. I did, and I kept working with the boy, biting my tongue every day and keeping what I really thought of him to myself. But nothing came of my efforts until a few days ago, and even then there wasn’t much to see. But whatever credit there is for that goes to Germanus. I don’t know what he did with the boy, or how he penetrated the tortoiseshell the lad has built about himself, but in the past couple of days young Bors has become more … tractable. Now that’s a word I can’t remember ever using before to describe a person. It’s a word I generally save for horses, obedient, biddable horses, but it fits what’s been happening with Bors. I wouldn’t say the boy’s more approachable, because he really isn’t, but there’s something happening inside that enclosed little world he lives in. Anyway, you’ll be able to judge for yourself soon enough. He should be here directly.”

By then we had been standing for some time looking at the four magnificent animals in the fenced enclosure he had led me to. All four were bays, of varying degrees of color, and all four were superb. Cato pointed out two in particular, one of them dark enough to be a chestnut, with only a single blaze of white on his forehead, the other with four white fetlocks. “Those two are yours,” he said. “There’s not much to choose from in the way of differences among the four of them, but those two would be my personal choice were I the one riding off into the unknown on them.”

“So be it, then, Magister. They shall be mine.”

“Good. They’re easy to identify as well, which does no harm. Here comes the boy.”

I recognized the boy immediately, and instantly wondered why I had not been able to recall him by name before. He had been a junior friend and something of a protégé to my own friend Stephan Lorco, following Lorco around for his first two years in the school in a condition resembling hero worship. He had already closed the outer gate behind him and was walking across the main yard of the stables, still several hundred paces from where we stood, and something in his gait, in the way he held himself, immediately caught my attention, making me look more closely to identify what it was that had struck me as being unusual, and before he had halved the distance separating us I knew what it was. He had not seen us yet, standing as we were in the shade of a low hut at the rear of the paddocks, with several lines of fencing between him and us, but there was a lack of diffidence in his walk that was unusual to the point of appearing arrogant.

Summoned from the classroom to meet with the formidable Magister Cato, he should have been filled with trepidation, wondering what he had done to engender such a command. Any other boy in the school would have been recognizably afraid. I would have been, in his place. But this boy showed no such concern. He walked confidently and purposefully, head erect, shoulders back, his pace steady and unhurried.

“He’s not afraid,” I said.

“No, not that one.” Cato’s voice was quiet. “A year ago he would have been, but now he doesn’t care. Grown up before his time, poor little catamite. There’s nothing I could say to him or do to him now that would make him feel worse, or even better, which is worse. That’s why he needs to go with you, if you’ll have him. He’s a man now, in his grief, but his body and the rest of him are still in boyhood. Those parts need to grow now, too, but in a man’s world, not a boy’s school. Bors! Over here.”

The boy turned toward the sound of Cato’s voice and came straight to where we stood. I saw him recognize me and frown slightly.

“Magister,” he said, looking at Cato and ignoring me.

Now that he was beside me I could see how much he had grown and aged in the time since I had last seen him. He was almost as tall as me now and half a head taller than the diminutive Tiberias Cato, and he was solidly made, with wide, strong shoulders; a deep, broad chest; and long, clean-lined arms and legs that rippled with well-toned, sharply defined muscles. His face was unblemished and attractive, albeit unsmiling, and his dark eyes held a guarded, reserved look.

It was a measure of my own growth in the months that had passed recently, however, that I saw him as a boy, although the fact that I was looking at him through a man’s eyes did not occur to me until much later.

“You sent for me, Magister.”

“Aye, I did,” Cato growled. “And I thank you for coming.” He ignored the slight quirk of the eyebrow that was the boy’s only response to his sarcasm. “You know Clothar of Benwick, I am sure. He is visiting us for a short time before leaving on a mission set for him by Bishop Germanus.”

Bors looked directly at me for the first time and inclined his head courteously.

“Of course, I remember him well,” he said, and then to me: “I was there when Stephan Lorco fought you for the Magister’s spatha. You should have won.”

“I have it here,” I said, tilting the hilt forward for him to see. “I was with Stephan when he was killed in an ambush, and I carry the spatha and use it now in remembrance of him.”

“Aye, that’s right, Lorco is dead, too, isn’t he?”

I was left speechless, not so much by the comment as by the tone in which it had been uttered, but Cato had been ready for something of the sort, I think, because his response was immediate.

“Aye, that’s right, as you say, he is. But Stephan Lorco was killed in battle, doing what he had been trained to do!”

That was not quite true, for poor Lorco had not even had time to see that we were being attacked, but I kept silent, watching for Bors’s response. He said nothing, however, and his only movement was to bite gently at his upper lip, but I clearly saw the pain that filled his eyes. Cato saw it too, I believe, for he spoke again in a gentler voice.

“Anyway, as I said, Clothar is leaving on a mission for Bishop Germanus. It will be dangerous, and Clothar is young to be entrusted with such responsibility, but the bishop chose him above all others for the task because he has great faith in this young man, as do we all. Since leaving here, he has fought in a short but brutal civil war in his own lands in Benwick, and has distinguished himself greatly. And he, too, knows what it is to lose close family, his parents first, and then his guardian and two brothers in this recent war. Bishop Germanus thought it might be good for you to speak with him while he is here. I thought so, too, which is why I sent for you. I know not what he might say to you, or even if you wish to speak with him, but here he is, and here you are, and I will leave the two of you alone.”

“Wait, Magister, if you would,” I said. He had been on the point of turning away but he stopped and looked at me with raised eyebrows. “I would like you to hear what I have to say to Bors.” The boy’s face was now set in resentment. I am not normally impulsive, but I knew I had to speak now what was in my mind and heart, and what was there was newly born in me, completely unconsidered and spontaneous.

“There is a man in Britain, Bors, two or three years older than I am and therefore less than five years older than you, who will soon be crowned as King of Britannia. His name is Arthur—Arthur Pendragon—and I have been told by the bishop himself that the man commands an army of heavy cavalry the like of which has not been seen since the time of Alexander the Great. Britain is being invaded as I speak, by a tide of different peoples from across the seas to the east of the island. The hordes are drawn to Britain’s wealth since the Roman legions left the island two score years ago. All of them are pagans, and they seem set to destroy God’s Church in Britain and to wipe out all signs of Christianity in the path of their conquest. Arthur Pendragon’s army is the only force that can gainsay them and hurl them back to where they came from.

“His teacher, a wise and powerful man called Merlyn Britannicus, is a beloved friend to Germanus, and has shaped the new King in much the same fashion as Germanus has trained us, in compassion and decency, but also in military strength, dedicated to the preservation of the laws of God and man and using the full force of his military power to back his convictions. I am to leave for Britain within the days ahead, carrying missives to Merlyn and to the Christian bishops of the land, bidding them rally to Arthur’s support and to mobilize the earthly powers of God’s Church on behalf of the new king.”

I drew a deep breath, not daring to look at Cato, and continued. “I will deliver my dispatches to Merlyn, and to the bishops, in accordance with the wishes of Bishop Germanus, and then I may return home to Gaul. But it is in my mind that I like the notion of this new King and his campaign to save his country from the pagan hordes, and so I may stay there, to ride and fight with him, so be it that I like the man as much after meeting him as I now enjoy the idea of what he represents. I’ll take you with me, if the idea pleases you. Will you come?”

The boy’s eyes were wide with disbelief. Finally, when he realized that we were both gazing at him, waiting for an answer, he gulped breathlessly, then whispered, “Do you—?” He swallowed, but when he spoke again his voice broke into a squeak on the first utterance—quickly mastered, but nonetheless indicative of his youth. “Do you mean that?”

I glanced at Cato, whose fierce, bushy eyebrows were now riding high on his forehead. “Do I mean that? Mark this, Bors, and mark it clearly. If you do come with me, it will be as my assistant—an extension of your training under my care. I will be the master, you the apprentice. You will not travel as a warrior, or as the equal to myself or my companion Perceval, although in time you may develop into both. For the time being, however, your duties will be onerous and will revolve purely around my needs—my weapons, my armor, my horses, my provisions, and any other requirements I might have. In return, I will be your guardian and your trainer and teacher, in trust for the faith placed in me by Bishop Germanus and Magister Cato here. But I warn you, I will be your master, until such time as you have proved to me that you have progressed beyond the point of needing to be taught.

“And I warn you, too, incidentally, that you will find few people who will tell you that questioning your master’s honesty and truthfulness is a beneficial or clever way to set out upon such a relationship. This one time, however, I will ignore the slur. Yes, I mean what I say, and you still have not answered me. Will you come with me to Britain?”

His eyes had filled with tears and for a moment I thought they would spill over, but he blinked them fiercely away and turned apprehensively to Cato, who met his question with an upraised hand. “Don’t come to me for guidance. As the man says, he will take you in trust for Bishop Germanus and myself. If you want to go, I have a horse picked out for you.”

The young man who walked away from us a short time later still walked with purpose and determination, but there was an air of excitement about him that had not been there when he first arrived.

“That was … sudden,” Cato said when we were alone again. “Unexpected, but well done, I think. I have the feeling you will not regret your impulsiveness.”

With Bors dismissed, Cato suggested that I follow him. I never could listen to a suggestion from Cato without hearing an order, and so I rushed to keep up as he walked back toward the camp.

“That spatha was never meant to be the prize, you know,” he growled. “I suppose I would have gotten around to giving it to you eventually, but I had something else in mind that afternoon. Then you went and fouled everything up by letting Lorco win.”

He led me into a low hut and into the tiny cubicle that served him as both home and workspace. There he pointed toward the farthest corner, where two sheaves of spears were stored.

“Those are what you should have won that day,” he said. “Won as a prize, upon the field, they would have been a trophy and would have saved me from the taint of playing favorites by giving them all to you. Now there’s no need to fret over any of that. They’re yours, a gift. Do you remember how to use them?”

I certainly did. He had brought these strangely strong yet lightweight, delicately shafted spears with him from the land where he had been raised, the land of the Smoke People. Each spear was tipped with a long, tapering, triangular metal head that came to a needle point and could, when well thrown, penetrate even the finest ring mail. The shafts were of the strange sectional and intensely hard wood that Cato called bambu. They were wondrous weapons, their slight weight and utter straightness permitting them to be thrown with great accuracy by anyone who had perfected the tricks of using them. On its most elemental level, the technique required an aptitude for wrapping the shaft quickly in the coils of a thin leather thong. With the thong gripped in the throwing hand, the hurled spear would begin to spin as the thong unwound, adding to its velocity and force. It was a wonderful weapon, and unique.

“They weigh next to nothing, but their length makes them awkward to transport,” Cato said. “But that’s why I went to such trouble choosing the boy’s two horses. You can pack one quiver of these on each side of the packhorse and stow the rest of its load around them. You have two bundles there, with just over a score of spears in each. Might seem like a lot, particularly when you’re traveling with them, but it isn’t, believe me. The things are irreplaceable, so every one you lose or break takes you one step closer to having none.”

Once again I was left fumbling for words by the munificence of such an unexpected gift, and the protests and objections that emerged from my lips sounded inane and self-serving even to me. In response to my witless question about what he would do once he no longer had them in his possession, Tiberias Cato merely smiled and cocked an eyebrow.

“What will I do without them? Much the same as I have done with them these past twenty years, which is nothing at all. But I’ll have less difficulty in resisting the temptation to use them to rid myself of some of the weaker sisters among our students. I frequently used to imagine myself standing in the middle of the practice ring, picking the slackers right off the backs of their circling mounts. So by taking these out of my reach, you’ll be assuring the future safety of the students. They are yours, Clothar, as is the spatha and the legate’s armor. Use them as we know you can and will, and we’ll make no complaints.

“Now, let’s go and find something to eat. Young Bors can pick these up for you later.”

Five days after that conversation, we rode into Lutetia to inquire after Perceval’s brother Tristan, making our way directly to the garrison headquarters, where we were told we would have to speak to the adjutant.

Perceval, I had decided on the day we left Auxerre, while I was still decidedly drunk with power on the assumption of my new role as mission commander, would no longer be known as Ursus. Now that his father had been dead for more than a decade, I argued, he had no longer any convincing need to conceal his given name and could stand tall as who he was by birth, Perceval of Montenegra. We were embarking upon a new life, I pointed out to him—bound for a new land where no one would ever have heard of Montenegra and where he could, if he so wished, begin a new existence, free of whatever taint he believed had clung to him thus far.

Ursus had been hugely unimpressed with my idea and my enthusiasm for making it real. Stubborn would not have been too strong a word to describe the strength with which he initially tried to resist it. He had refused even to consider the change at first, let alone accede to it, having been plain Ursus for so long, but he gradually relented under my incessant urging and my indisputable logic, and agreed to a trial—a purely temporary assay of the change—for a period of three months, stipulating only that he would never claim or acknowledge any association with the name of Montenegra, tied irremediably as it was to the memory of his detested father. That, he asserted, would be too much for him to stomach and so I accepted his refusal on that point.

In due time the adjutant returned, a pleasant fellow with the Roman name of Quintus Leppo, and assured us that no Tristan of Montenegra was recorded in their annals. Before Perceval could voice his disappointment, however, the adjutant volunteered the information that there was, or there had been, a Tristan of Volterra in their ranks until very recently.

Perceval’s head snapped up on hearing that. Volterra, he had once told me, had been a region in his father’s holdings of Montenegra. Where might we find this Tristan, he wanted to know immediately, and the adjutant asked him why he wished to know. When Perceval said he was his brother and produced the letter he had received, Leppo broke out in smiles and suddenly became a mine of information. Tristan, it transpired, was a close friend of his and still shared lodgings with him on the principal street of the old settlement of Lutetia. He had served out his mercenary contract and was spending some time in retirement now, debating whether to remain in the north or to seek employment for his skills elsewhere.

Barely an hour after that, we knocked on the door of Tristan’s lodgings and found him at home alone. By the end of that night, after he and his brother between them had drunk more beer and mead than I had ever seen in my life, it was decided that he would ride with us to Britain, sharing his brother’s fortunes and leaving future wealth or penury to the falling of the dice.

That decision did not displease me. I had formed an immediate liking for my friend’s younger brother, who was, I decided upon seeing him for the first time, close enough to me in age to be an equal—three or four years, I thought, flattering myself hugely, was a negligible difference. He was also one of the fairest, fine-looking young men it had ever been my pleasure to encounter. Indeed, the way the young women in the bar in which we drank that evening—the brothers drank, for the most part, while I merely marveled at their capacity for consuming the potions I could not stomach—fawned upon and draped themselves around the blond young man astounded me and made me vaguely envious.

Tristan, in truth, was something to behold. He was fair in the way that few other than the northern people of the snowy lands are fair. His hair was so pale that in certain lights it looked pure white, and his eyes were big and bright, piercingly blue with that hue that only certain flowers can possess. No trace of beard or mustache marred the smooth, gold-bronzed perfection of his face.

He liked me, too, from the outset, which is always a sure sign of future friendship, but what moved me most of all was the pure, undiluted, and unquestionable love and affection that he evinced for his long-lost brother from the moment of first seeing him and recognizing him there on the threshold of his lodgings. This was a man, I felt, who could ride with me anywhere.

He owned two horses and a full supply of armor and weaponry. He was, he assured me, a mercenary and a professional, prepared to sell his skills and his expertise to anyone who measured up to the criteria he demanded in an employer.

When we arrived in Gesoriacum, four riders and eight horses, we found Joachim, the first of Germanus’s three preferred sea captains, in residence, preparing to return to sea in search of one last cargo to trade and money to be earned before the end of the trading year. I gave him Germanus’s token of the lapis lazuli ring, and we discussed the price of hiring his boat and crew for our voyage.

We sailed for Britain at high tide on the following day.

I learned about the sickness of the sea on that brief voyage, for the Narrow Seas were rough and unfriendly to mariners, and their harsh lesson was to stay with me throughout my life.

Although I hated Joachim when, after two days of unimaginable agony, he suggested that we avoid the south coast known as the Saxon Shores and veer to the west, around the horn of Cornwall and then north to Glastonbury on the western coast, there came a day when the dawn was bright and golden and I looked out from the prow of the ship to see the high hill he named as Glastonbury Tor looming above the flat shores to the east of where we crept forward through a calm, still sea.