Jack Whyte - The Lance Thrower

“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.