Ambrosius had run in among the hounds that were yelling all about the stag as it confronted them with lowered head. Even as he did so, one of the dogs, impaled on a deadly tine, was flung aside with its belly split open like a rotten fig. I heard the dying howl of the dog, and in the same instant a strange cry of triumph from the High King. I saw him spring to meet the great animal, scarcely attempting to avoid the deadly antlers, seeming rather to court them as naturally as a man goes to his woman’s arms after a long parting. The upward thrust of the strong branched and weaponed head and the flash of the hunting knife came in the same bright splinter of time, and as though in a dream or at a great distance, I saw the crumpled body of a man who did not seem in that moment to be Ambrosius flung up as the dog had been, and slither writhing across the stag’s shoulders, and crash down untidily, all arms and legs, among the thorn roots and the boulders. Then the Red Lord of the Forest swayed and staggered a step forward and plunged down upon him.
The hunters were shouting, running from all directions. And we – we were running too, now that it was too late, bounding upward with bursting hearts. He can have been only two or three spears’ lengths ahead of us, but it seemed a mile before we reached him. Then I was kneeling beside the tangle of beast and man, hauling the still faintly kicking stag off Ambrosius’s body, while Aquila and the boy drew him clear, and the hunters whipped off the hounds. Ambrosius’s knife was still in the great brute’s throat, and when I drew it out the blood burst out after it in a red wave. There was blood everywhere, soaking into the thorn roots, curling in rusty tendrils downstream with the flow of the little hill torrent. I dispatched the deer, and turned back to Ambrosius. And all the while the words of the old saw were chanting themselves maddeningly over and over in my head. ‘After the boar, the leech; after the hart, the bier.’
Ambrosius was quite dead, horribly dead, the whole lower forepart of his body smashed to red rags, one great gash where the tine had entered at the groin and burst out again below the breastbone, gaping raggedly over blood and torn gut and wet soft things that I could not look at. I was not Ben Simeon who had been to Alexandria. But his face was not touched. It wore a look of faint surprise (so many dead faces that I have seen have looked surprised; it must be that death is not like anything that we have imagined it to be), and under the surprise, a look harder to define, something of triumph, but not personal triumph, the look, perhaps, of a man who has fulfilled his fate, and gone gladly to the fulfillment.
Above the battered and mutilated body, Aquila and I looked at each other, and then bowed our heads. I don’t think any of us spoke – any of the three of us, that is; the hunters were murmuring among themselves, white-faced, as they got the dogs leashed, and turned again and again to stare in our direction. I looked at the ashen face and quivering mouth of Ambrosius’s young armor-bearer, and knew that the boy must instantly be got away and given something to do. Besides, he was the obvious choice, for he was the lightest rider of us all. ‘Take the least tired of the horses, and ride back to the farm. Tell them the High King is dead, and bring back a hurdle – no, stay – three of the hunters had best take the other horses and go with you. You’ll be quicker so than by rounding up three of the farm people.’
When they were gone Aquila and I straightened the King’s body somewhat, that it might not lie tumbled and unseemly when it began to stiffen. Then I stripped off hunting leathers and under-tunic, and tore the tunic into strips and bound them about his loins and waist, that none of the red wet ruin of things might fall out when we came to move him. Aquila held him for me the while; and when it was done, I picked him up and carried him down to the foot of the narrow combe, clear of the thorn scrub where they would be able to get the hurdle, clear of the blood and mess. The remaining hunters with their hounds had gathered at a little distance, and we forgot that they were there. I do not think that in all that time either of us spoke one word. Only I remember Aquila’s harsh painful breathing, for with the running and the struggle he must have all but torn the breast wound asunder.
In a while the party from the farm came back with the hurdle, and stood gazing down at the dead King, almost as silent as ourselves. Then we lifted his wasted body – he was nothing but yellow skin over the light bones – and laid him on the hurdle, and set off back to the farm. Somebody had gralloched the deer, and they flung its carcass across the back of a pony and brought it after us.
It was not so very far, traveling straight across the country, for the stag had looped and doubled many times in his flight, and the dusk had scarcely deepened into the dark when we stumbled into the courtyard, where the flare of torches beat harshly on our eyes and the farm folk came crowding around, and the sound of women’s wailing was in the air.
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 tha
n 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
Rex Belliorum
ON THE THIRD DAY AFTER AMBROSIUS’S BURIAL THE COUNCIL 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-nostril
ed 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.’