Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

Thus passed the second year, with one more, golden harvest. Ludmilla had a baby girl that autumn, a raven-haired beauty whom she named Luceiia, and by Yuletide Shelagh was with child again.

In May the following year, again at the feast of Beltane, a stranger showed up at our gates, escorted by a guard from our southernmost border. At first glance, I did not recognize the stranger as a priest, yet when he raised his hand to bless me, I was unsurprised. He had that air of sanctity about him. He also had a heavy, weatherproofed package containing a letter from Germanus, a response to my epistle of two years before. I left him in the care of Donuil and Ambrose, and took myself off to read what my friend had written:

Auxerre, Gaul 436 Anno Domini Caius Merlyn Britannicus

Dear Friend:

You can have no idea how pleasant was the surprise I felt when I received your letter. I have read it many times since then, smiling each time as I perceived your face, clear in my mind, reflecting the conviction of your words.

I grieved for you, in reading of your loss. The brutal winter that deprived you of your friends and of your much-beloved aunt afflicted even us, here in the warmth of Gaul, but nowhere near as painfully as it scourged your land of Britain.

Let me add, however, that I have never feared for the condition of your great-aunt's soul. I have heard her spoken of by many of my brethren, as you know, and all who knew her spoke of her as being among God's blessed and chosen servants. She has passed into a life, Caius, where winter is unknown. Convinced of that, my prayers have gone to God on your behalf, that you might come to know the peace of mind such certitude entails.

Your missive reached the Bishop, here in Gaul. The Legate whom you remember retired from life long since, and has not even mounted a horse since our return from Britain all those years ago. Despite that flight of time, nevertheless, and without negating or regretting or maligning any of the duties and concerns that fill my life today and keep me working long into each night, I will admit to you, between ourselves, that I experienced some pangs of yearning when I read your words and felt the tone of them.

I live in contemplation nowadays but not, alas, in quietude. All who address me now—and there are far too many such, each day and every day—do so with regard to my position and supposed sanctity, my position in and of itself alone, be it understood, entailing the supposed sanctity. How refreshing then, my friend, to be hailed simply as a man and a fellow-soldier by such as yourself! Humility, I find, becomes more difficult to attain from day to day when one is constantly besought by supplicants and must deal with abject entreaties and with the obsequious flattery of those who seek preferment.

I note your mention of the absence of monastics in your lands. They are there, my friend, nonetheless, and are proliferating here in Gaul. I find them, in the main, obedient, pious and devout—though quite culpable, I fear, in meriting your succinct revulsion over their personal habits of cleanliness. Thanks to my own early military training and a lifetime of assiduous ablutions, my feelings tend to lean towards yours in that aspect, I will admit to your eyes alone! And yet the Bishop that I am today must, and does, recognise the value of self-denial and of rededication and devotion to the principles of Our lard, after the Godless excesses of the Empire. We must take care, however—and I am at pains to teach this viewpoint—to observe the median of moderation and avoid the temptation to excessiveness in bringing change. Fastidiousness aside, however, I find myself approving of the spirit underlying the development of this monastic application. I see the zealots within the movement plainly—their presence is impossible to miss—and I do what I may to obviate their intemperance, hut the outcome lies with God, as it must in all things earthly, and in Him I am content to repose my trust.

And upon that thought, I took much heart from your report upon the spread of Our Lord's work in Britain. Others send such word to me, not least the British Bishops, but the ratification from you, unsolicited, is encouraging. It pleased me, too, to read that the name of Pelagius is no longer heard in Camulod, save in your own heart, loyal to its roots. Would that were true elsewhere! In many parts of Britain, it appears, his heresy is still being taught despite our Verulamium conclave, although my schools do prosper otherwhere. I sent word to Bishop Enos of my gratitude for his service in this matter of your letter and asked him to assure himself from time to time of the good of you and yours.

I must observe, my friend, that Enos is correct to censure you, albeit mildly, for your attitude towards these Christian souls who bear the name of Saxon. I have thought long and deeply on this matter since reading of your difficulty in accepting the mere thought of such. Your ancestors, and mine, were once regarded in the self-same light by those who live in amity beside you now. Think upon that, and upon this: I speak of Christian souls, not of pagan raiders; of families now settled and secure on holdings that they nurture, with children who will know no other home. Consider it, my friend, in Christian charity.

I have sat hours here, writing by myself, and now grow tired. My prayers include you frequently, along with the quite selfish wish that we might meet again someday. Take care.

Your brother in God and friendship,

Germanus

It was to be another entire year, and I would receive a second letter from Germanus, before I would sit down to write to him again. At the time of reading that first letter, I had no thought of failing to respond immediately, nor did I procrastinate to any great extent. The intervening year quite simply vanished, eaten alive by the endless minutiae of tending a thriving, healthy community.

The recent intake of new troopers we had absorbed, for example, necessitated housing arrangements, since our barracks, built in the earliest years of our growth, had long been overcrowded. That crowding, reinforced by the fact that many of our former soldiery had lived outside the barracks with their families, forced us to take prompt steps to deal with the incursion of more than a thousand fresh men, a number of whom had families of their own in train. All required permanent, solid, new housing, for we could not simply dispossess the widows and children of our dead and missing veterans.

That task alone took months, involving every artisan and every set of muscles in the Colony, but eventually we had new, bright, modern quarters for our troops among the woodlands cleared of trees to build the houses that now filled the open spaces thus created.

Aunt Luceiia's Council of Women, led and inspired anew by fresh, young blood in the form of Ludmilla, Shelagh and their friend Julia, was of major assistance in this task, bringing pragmatic feminine common sense to a project that would otherwise have fallen to the lot of simple, stolid, military men. The result, achieved in a consensus of goodwill, was a system of quasi hamlets, practical above all as they needs must be, yet built with a regard for simple aesthetics and for the realities of life—community, comfort and ease of access—beyond the barrack-room.

Our training program, needless to say, continued throughout this building phase, as did the daily life of Camulod itself. Children continued to be born in ever-growing numbers throughout our domain. Shelagh bore Donuil a second son, Ghilleadh, as she had sworn to do, and Ambrose and Ludmilla had another daughter, Octavia. Young Arthur, now aged four, began to disappear consistently, to be sought and found each time in one or other of the stables, among the horses of which he had not the slightest fear. He and young Bedwyr, the son of Hector and Julia and some six months his junior, had become inseparable, and that caused me more than once to think of Shelagh's gift of dreams and of my own. She had been adamant at one time, I recalled, that only her two sons would be important in Arthur's future, and had dismissed young Bedwyr completely. Now it was evident that she had been wrong, and that her gift was not infallible. Clearly, she could discern matters concerning her own life and family, but suffered from common human ignorance beyond such things. Prescient she might be, but her prescience had limits, and that gave me, perhaps unworthily, some comfort when examining the severe limitations of my own gift.