Sword at Sunset (57 page)

We carried him upstairs and laid him in the long upper chamber, at just about the time that he had stood last night with the half-empty wine cup in his hand and that strange brightness upon him,
crying to us, ‘I drink to tomorrow’s hunting. A good hunting and a clean kill!’ But he himself was the kill, as he had known that he would be.

We left him to the women, and when they had done their work, and he lay stiff and seemly on thinly piled bracken from the fodder stack, his sword beside him, Aquila’s cloak for a royal
coverlet, and the household’s best honey-wax candles burning about the long chamber, Aquila and I took up our stand at his head and feet to keep the death vigil. We had brought the hounds
into the room – my old Cabal and a leash of his own hunting dogs – that they might draw any evil spirits from his body, according to the rites of Mithras, though presently he would be
buried according to the rites of Christ. That was the one thing that we could still do for him.

I had sent Gaheris off on the steward’s horse to carry the word back to Venta, to Bishop Dubricius the father of the Council, to Justus Valens the second-in-command of the guard.
‘Tell them that we shall start to bring him back at dawn, and bid them come to meet us. Hurry, and you should be there well before first light.’ He had not wanted to go, he had begged
to share our watch, and I remember that he was crying. And I had promised him that he should share the watch that must be kept in Venta, and that for the moment he was of more service to his lord
on the road south.

It was very quiet in the long upper chamber, for the farm folk and the hunters had betaken themselves to their own quarters in their own huddle of shocked stillness; only we heard each
other’s breathing, and the soughing of the thin north wind in the bare chestnut tree outside, and the creaking of the old house at night, and once a dog howled and a voice stilled him, and
later he began to howl again. I could understand why Ambrosius had wished to come back to this place to die. Tomorrow there must come all the solemn panoply of a High King’s death, the slow
chanting of the Christian priests, the flaring torches illuminating the bull masks of Mithra, the bier hung with gold and imperial purple, the curling smoke of the death incense making the senses
swim. But tonight there was only bracken to lie on and familiar rafters overhead, the smell of the winter night and burning hawthorn logs, the harping of the icy drafts along the floor; and Aquila
who was not a brother to stand at his feet, and I who was not a son to stand at his head.

Ambrosius’s face had lost the look of surprise and the other, more strange look that had been upon it earlier. It had no expression now save a sternness infinitely remote. It was no longer
a face but a mask, with the brand of Mithras showing between the brows more clearly than it had done between those of the living man; a head nobly carved in gray marble for his own tomb, that had
caught the austere strength but missed the gentler things. It was not even very like Ambrosius any more. But looking down at it as I stood leaning on my sword, I saw it for the face of the King
Sacrifice; older than either Christos or Mithras, reaching back and forward into all time until the two met and the circle was complete. Always the god, the king, the hero, who must die for the
people when the call comes.

I suppose there must have been something in his ending, of the man who goes out to meet a quick death rather than wait for the slow and hideous one that he knows is coming to him. But more than
that, he had chosen his way for the deliberate purpose he had spoken of so reasonably last night, peeling chestnuts beside the fire, and for another that had nothing to do with reason ... I
remembered suddenly across the years, Irach flinging himself forward upon the Saxon spears at Eburacum. And for the second time in my life I glimpsed the oneness of all things ...

The hilt of my sword shifted a little in my hands which were crossed upon the grip and shoulders, and the light of the candles caught the royal purple of Maximus’s great seal, and set a
star of brilliant violet light blazing in its depths. I had never told Ambrosius that I would take up the task that he laid upon me, but I knew now that if by any means, by the grace of all the
gods that ever men prayed to, I could gain the High Kingship of Britain, I would do it.

I think that Ambrosius had known it all along.

chapter twenty-eight

O
N THE THIRD DAY AFTER
A
MBROSIUS
’
S BURIAL THE
C
OUNCIL
of the Kingdom met, as I had known that they
must before many days went by. My place in the government of the land had always been a carefully unformulated one; I had sat at the Council table whenever I was in Venta at the time when a meeting
was called, but always, as it were, as a guest. And that morning, as on so many other mornings, I received my formal invitation. And I knew, with a tightening of the stomach, that the time had come
for the opening phase of the trial of skill and judgment that lay before me.

An hour after noon, when she brought me my best cloak of violet cloth with the black and crimson border, Guenhumara set her hands on my shoulders and said, ‘Will they talk of who is to be
the new High King?’

‘Assuredly,’ I said, ‘but it is in my mind that now, with the Saxons stirring beyond the borders, is not the time to be king-making.’

She gave me a long clear look. ‘You know that the apple is yours, to stretch out your hand for.’

‘I believe that it may be, but I cannot afford to break Britain apart in plucking it.’

‘You are always afraid of breaking something, aren’t you?’ Guenhumara said, and she drew my head down and kissed me, with nothing but duty and gentleness behind her lips.

The Basilica at Venta must have been a place of beauty and splendor in the days when the world was still firm underfoot. Ever since I could remember, it had been half derelict, the frescoed
plaster falling from the walls, the fine Purbeck marble cracked and damp-stained, the gilding blackened. The huge wrought-bronze screens that had shut off the Council Chamber from the main hall had
been taken down in my grandsire’s time, and melted down for harness of war. But the place had a certain dignity and beauty still, though a beauty of decay and fallen leaves compared with the
pride of high summer.

I made a good businesslike swinging entrance through the west door, with Cei and Bedwyr and Pharic behind me for a ceremonial guard, tramped across the tesselated floor, and mounted the three
steps to the Council Chamber, and stood before the Council of Britain.

There was a stir and a ripple and a thrust of movement as those already there rose for me in all courtesy – save for Dubricius who, being a Father of the Church, rose for no man save the
High King himself. A cold diffused light shone down impersonally from the three high windows, and searched out rather than lit the faces of the men about the table. Dubricius himself, with eyes
alight and alert and cold as a seagull’s in a plump many-folded subtle face that seemed to be made of the finest quality candle wax, would be my chief opponent, I knew, and the two other
churchmen would follow his lead. The rest, I thought, would be more open to reason; some of them had been fighting men in their time, and two were soldiers still: Perdius, who commanded the main
cavalry wing of the war host, gave me the brief nod that was the nearest approach to a greeting that he had for anyone, and I caught Aquila’s dark frowning gaze as it came out to me like a
handclasp.

The King’s Chair, on the right of which Dubricius sat, was empty in the cold uncaring light, and opposite to it, a chair of state had been set for me. And when the grave courtesies of the
occasion had been exchanged, and the Bishop had prayed for the soul of Ambrosius the High King, we turned first to the lesser matters that must be dealt with; the mere camp routine of state, while
the recording clerks on their stools scratched away at their tablets in the background. When the camp routine had been disposed of, I remember that there came a pause, as though every man drew
breath for the true business of that day’s meeting of the Council.

Dubricius leaned forward, his big pale hands folded on the table before him, the great ruby on his thumb making one point of pride and fire in the clear emotionless light of the February day,
and looked about him at each of us in turn. ‘My dear friends, my brothers of the Council—’ He had a pleasant voice, unexpectedly dry to come from so unctuous a body, unexpectedly
moderate to come from a man with those eyes. ‘A short while since, in the opening moments of this sitting, we prayed for the soul of our late most beloved lord, Ambrosius the High King. Now,
since it appears that our Lord Ambrosius took his leave of this life without having at any time named his heir—’ The lively seagull’s eye turned first to Aquila and then to me:
‘That is so, my Lord Artos?’

Aquila sat very still and gave no sign, but I felt his gaze on me. ‘That is so,’ I said.

And Dubricius bent his head in acknowledgment until the broad chins flattened on the breast folds of his mantle. ‘Since it appears that our Brother Ambrosius has at no time named his heir,
there falls to us assembled here, the heavy and grievous task of considering the man best fitted in all ways to succeed him, and for that purpose above all, we are met here today.’

‘If the High King had but left a son!’ murmured a dejected-seeming Councilor renowned for his fruitless ‘if onlys.’

A carefully controlled impatience twitched at the Bishop’s brows. ‘The whole necessity for this meeting of the Council, Ulpius Critas, arises from the fact that the High King left no
son.’

Aquila, who had been staring at his own hard brown sword hand on the table, looked up quickly. ‘None in blood.’

‘We all know, I think,’ Dubricius said with dry courtesy, ‘where Ambrosius’s choice must have fallen, were it not that—’ He seemed for the moment at a loss
how to go on, and I helped him out.

‘That Artos the Bear, his brother’s son, was chance-begotten on a farm girl under a hawthorn bush.’

The Bishop again bent his head in acknowledgment and acceptance, though I thought with a trace of pain, such as a well-bred man might fail to conceal, were a guest to spit at his supper table.
‘There remains, then, unless my memory plays me false, but one other on whom the choice may rightly fall: Cador of Dumnonia also is of the Emperor Maximus’s line.’

‘Only on the dam’s side,’ another man put in, and a third added reflectively into the gray bird’s-nest of his beard, ‘But no hawthorn bush.’

Perdius, the cavalry commander, said impatiently, ‘Shall we lay aside this question of hawthorn bushes, which has to my mind very little bearing on the case, and choose whoever seems like
to be the man best fitted for the High Kingship? We have no experience of this Cador’s powers, but we know well the Bear’s. May I state now, once and for all, that I believe Artos, the
Rex Belliorum these many years, to be that man.’

‘Speaking as a soldier?’

‘Speaking as a soldier, in a day when we need above all things, a soldier to lead us.’

But Dubricius was a churchman, bound by the laws and the formulas of the Church. ‘So; but then again, Perdius, there may be others among us who may believe that the High Kingship, which is
of God, calls for other qualities, other qualifications, besides a strong sword arm. And in the judgment of these others, Cador of Dumnonia, the true-born son of his father, and a ruler already in
his own right, may seem to have the stronger claim.’

The soldier snorted. His broad reddish nose had been badly broken in his youth, and he possessed, as legacy of the damage, a peculiarly offensive one-nostriled snort which had caused many a man
larger than himself to curl up like a wood louse, but I do not think that he had ever used it on the Bishop of Venta before.

‘A ruler? A petty princeling with no better claim to the High Kingship than a whole fistful of others, save for this one small matter of a few drops of blood, which he shares with Artos
the Bear.’

‘And with one other,’ a lesser churchman said; and the implied warning and reminder that Artos had a son to follow him was clear in the small sharp silence that followed. One or two
of those about the table glanced at each other and away again. Medraut’s following was among the younger of the war host; the older men, the Church and the war-scarred veterans did not, I
think, even then quite trust him.

I was suddenly weary of sitting in my seat of honor and being argued over as though I were not there at all. I slammed back the heavy chair and stood up. To be the tallest man in any company is
a thing that has its uses, ‘Holy Father Dubricius, my Lords of the Council – here is a great arguing that it seems to me may well drag on until this day year and still be no nearer to
its settlement; and I would suggest that this, with the Saxons slinking to and fro like a wolf pack on our borders, waiting only for spring to be at our throats as they have not been for a score of
years, is not the time for a king-choosing at all. We have enough on our hands without that.’

Dubricius looked at me with a wakening gleam in his eye and there was a sudden stillness of close attention all around the table. ‘Surely, my Son, if the Barbarians are indeed moving
– though of that, we have little sign that differs from the signs in other years – then this, of all others, is the time to be swift in choosing a king, lest when the time of testing
comes, we must face it without a leader.’

‘If the thing might be done peacefully, yes,’ I said, ‘but do you not see that whichever way you throw the apple, there will be trouble,
bad
trouble, afterward? See now,
the choice lies between Cador and myself—’ I quelled a sudden movement from the Bishop. ‘Oh yes it does; I am not standing aside from this in humble apology for my left-hand
birth; bastardy makes me no less fitted to carry the Sword of Britain – and if the choice falls upon me, I know well enough that I shall have almost the whole body of the Christian Church
ranged against me—’