Jack Whyte - The Sorcer part 2 - Metamorphosis

As you know, nonetheless, that part of me which was once a soldier refuses to allow me peace of mind when travelling through strange countrysides, and reminds me that I shall not always be in the domain of our Anglian Christian brethren. In addition to that natural and ingrained caution, there is a commonplace saying that the Lord, our God, helps those who help themselves, or words to that effect.

May I impose upon you to assist me in God's work? Your presence in my train, with a contingent such as the one you brought to Verulamium before, when first we met, would be a manifold blessing, both on the road and at the meeting place itself. I fear the gathering to which we ride on this occasion will be less cordial than that we last attended. I ask this of you with no knowledge or consideration of your own affairs, or plans, or your condition, in full cognizance of the selfishness of what I do. Should you be unable to accede to my request, I shall be disappointed but not offended On the other hand, should you decide to join us, I shall be happy indeed to renew our acquaintance and to thank God for His beneficence.

Enos will arrange to bring your answer back to me, and you and yours are remembered always in my prayers.

Your friend and brother in Christ

Germanus Pontifex

I was pacing my quarters by the time I finished reading, my thoughts leaping erratically like dried peas dropped on a drumhead. Since talking with Enos the night before, I had already accepted that he and his fellow bishops had been successful in converting at least some of the south-eastern Anglians to Christianity, but the thought of Germanus entrusting himself to such people nevertheless appalled me, for despite all of Enos's optimism and goodwill, to my own mind these people were, and would always remain, pagan savages, aliens and invaders whom a thin overlay of Christianity would never pacify or change. The knowledge that Horsa's horde of Danes would be present in that region when my friend arrived further underlined and emphasized my fears for his safety.

On the other hand, this invitation to accompany Germanus on his errand was less inconvenient than my old Mend might have thought, and I could see it held certain incontestable advantages, were I to examine it purely from a political viewpoint. Horsa's removal of his armies to the southeast offered an immediate and obvious benefit to Vortigern in the far northeast; he would no longer be under such great pressure to find a solution to the problem their presence represented in his own territories. The greater the number of Danish warriors who poured south-eastward, the less imperative would be the demands placed upon Vortigern's people to provide additional land for these mercenaries in their own territories, land they did not possess. Ergo, I reasoned Vortigern's pressing need for our visible support in the northeast would be proportionally lessened by the Danish exodus. I suspected he would be more than pleased were we to demonstrate our presence in the southeast, prior to riding north to join him as we had promised. That tied in well with my own desire to explore that region of the country, something that might be achieved only through the presence of Germanus and the acquiescence of his Christian Anglian converts. Certainly, as escort and honour guard to the bishop and his party, leading them northwards from the coast, my own troops would be able to move more freely through the area than they could possibly have done under any other circumstances.

Despite the strategic attractiveness of the invitation, however, the whole affair was vastly convoluted and fraught with political risk. Conflicting thoughts and notions flitted through my mind more quickly than I can define them now, all of them influenced by my own reservations over the manner in which Enos had defined Vortigern's sympathetic stance towards the heretics. It occurred to me that Vortigern might not be over pleased with my commitment to Germanus and his orthodox views on Pelagius, despite and notwithstanding the consideration that my commitment, if indeed I made one, would be born out of loyalty to my old Mend and not out of any active dedication to the premise he espoused.

In fact, the teachings of Pelagius, as I had been taught to understand them long ago, made eminent good sense to me. I accepted the basic belief that mankind was made in the image of God, born in possession of the divine spark enabling him to choose between goodness and evil. I could find no moral fault in the premise that each man and woman was therefore capable of communing directly with God and achieving his or her own salvation. The Fathers, of the Church, however, had decided in their wisdom that this belief was a form of pride, one of the greatest of the Seven Deadly Sins, and that mankind was incapable of achieving anything without the intervention of divine grace, administered through God's deputies, themselves. The theological hair splitting in the controversy that was bringing Germanus back into Britain was beyond my grasp, but I was fundamentally unswayed by the theologians' disputations. I had been taught the Pelagian way by the living example of my own dearest relatives and Mends, and I could find no fault in any of them. The result was that I lived my life according to the dictates of my conscience and I sought to sway no other person to my own beliefs.

Vortigern, however, I suspected of being more politically concerned in this dispute. He called himself a Christian king, though he admitted he was no theologian and therefore unconcerned with fine theological distinctions. He had never openly taken sides at the debate on Pelagianism in Verulamium. Yet it was true, nonetheless, that the two most outspoken champions of the Pelagian way, the bishops Agricola and Fastidius, were from Vortigern's domain, and he had allowed them thus far to function as they would, spreading their teachings throughout his extensive lands, north to Hadrian's Wall and all the way westward into northern Cambria, far north of the Pendragon lands. From that viewpoint, I thought, Vortigern would surely be inclined to look upon my services to Germanus with displeasure—a displeasure much allayed by the advantages to him in having; Camulodian cavalry present in Horsa's new territories.

By the time I stopped pacing and sat down to read the letter a second time, I had arrived at a number of decisions. I sat thinking for a while longer, and then took up a pen and a pot of ink and wrote down my list, simply to see how it looked. I found myself smiling as I did so, aware that my own habit of writing things down, now ingrained by years of practice, had led me to distrust, instinctively, the essential shape, outline and content of any idea that was not written down.

I read my list when it was done and felt some satisfaction. I would, as I had promised, lead a thousand cavalry into Vortigern's territories in the coming year. Before that, however, I would dispatch messengers to inform Vortigern that I would be delayed until midsummer, since I first must ride southward to. meet and greet our old friend Bishop Germanus and bring him safely to Verulamium again. Should; Vortigern come south to Verulamium for the occasion, I would lead my people back to Northumbria with him. In the meantime, I would have had a space of months in which to assess what dangers threatened Camulod from the Weald and the regions that surrounded it, and to impress the resident invaders there with the strength and power of our cavalry and our willingness and readiness to go to war against anyone who thought to abuse our peace. By the time I arrived back in Camulod from Vortigern's domain, it would be autumn again and Arthur's Cambrian sojourn would be at an end. He would then be of age to take up a full command as a captain and commander of the Forces of Camulod.

I had attempted, in drawing up my list of decisions, to define the impediments to success I could identify, but there were none of any importance. Ironhair had suffered a resounding defeat, on land and sea, and Cambria was now safely in the hands of Huw Strongarm. Huw's presence, aided by Connor's vastly increased naval strength with his two captured biremes, would, I believed, prove strong enough to deter Ironhair, and with him Carthac, from any quickly renewed attempt at conquest of the Pendragon. Similarly, Horsa's newly launched colonization of the Weald would remove the threat of war from Northumbria and the north in general.