Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

"Arthur!" he roared. "Where's Arthur?"

"I'm here, Uncle Connor." The boy's voice was almost squeaking with anxiety. Connor looked down towards the sound of it and pretended a great leap of fright.

"By the light of Lud! Are you my nephew Arthur? No, you can't be! You're much too big. Arthur Pendragon's just a little tad. I saw him but last summer and he wasn't half the size of you."

The boy was bright pink with pleasure. "I grew up," he said shyly.

"Grew up? Grew up! You soared, lad, you exploded! Let's have a look at you!" Connor bent quickly and picked him up, holding him effortlessly beneath the arms and swinging him with ease to the level of his eyes. "By the gods," he said, holding him at arm's length, "I soon won't be able to lift you at all if you keep growing this way. You're huge, boyo! Come here to me."

He clasped the lad to his breast, hugging him gently, his eyes closed, and then he opened them again and winked at me before transferring his grip and holding the boy out at arm's length again, his expression changing to dismay.

"Ach, fool that I am, I never thought you would have grown so big so quickly, and I brought you a wee, small gift, never thinking of the size of you today."

Behind young Arthur's back, from the rear of Connor's train, two warriors came forward through the crowd, each leading a brace of ponies, all four animals virtually identical, piebald beauties with a grace and delicacy the like of which I had never seen, They were miniatures of our great war-horses, between one third and one half the size and perfectly proportioned, and they had been groomed until their black and white coats shone like burnished metal. Arthur's eyes were fixed on his uncle's, mirroring the dismay he saw there.

"What, Uncle?" he said, his voice almost quavering. "What is it?"

"Ach," Connor said, savouring the moment and drawing it out. "It's just a wee horse and three of its friends. You might not like it, now that you're so big. Look!"

He transferred the boy smoothly into the crook of his right arm and turned him to where he could see the animals. I moved, too, keeping my eyes on Arthur's. For several moments the boy stared at the four perfect little horses, failing to absorb what Connor had said, but then comprehension dawned and his face became suffused with joy and incredulity and a stillness fell upon the watching crowd.

The boy was unaware of it. His entire world was taken up with the entrancing little horses he was beginning to perceive as his. He turned from them to Connor, his mouth forming a question that his voice was incapable of generating. Connor grinned at him, squeezed him close again and then released him to slip smoothly to the ground.

"Aye, lad," he growled, his voice gruff with emotion at the boy's delight. " They're for you. Go now and look to them."

The crowd fell back, parting to clear the way for the boy, but he stood hesitant, not yet quite able to believe. He took one slow step, and then another, gazing at the sight before him, then turned back to face Connor.

"Four of them? For me?" Connor nodded, and the boy looked back at them and then again at Connor, his face betraying swift-moving thoughts and varying emotions. "Can I . . . ?" His voice trailed away.

"Can you what?"

The boy swallowed hard. "Give some away? I have friends." He stopped short, looking appalled, afraid his uncle might grow angry. But then his young face settled and he plunged on. "Can I give Bedwyr one? And Gwin?"

Connor laughed aloud. "Aye, you can, and Ghilleadh, too, if he's big enough to mount one. But pick out your own first. That's why there's four of them."

It was then, in that moment of courage, determination and unselfishness, that I marked the change in my young ward, and saw the future man within the boy.

XXX

"Merlyn, what's an interregnum?"

It was an evening in early summer, and I was writing in my journal while Arthur, seated across from me, was reading one of his great grandfather's large, parchment books. I put down my pen and stretched, glad of the distraction.

"It's the name given to the time between the death of one ruler and the ascension of another. Where did you find that?"

"In here. Great grandfather Varrus was writing about something your grandfather said . . . That there had been so many emperors in power at one time for so long that there had been no interregnum in living memory." The boy's Latin was smooth and fluent, utterly colloquial, considering that he spoke the Celtic tongue most of the time.

"And how long d'you think that might have been?"

"Living memory? Simply what it says. . . No one alive could remember such a thing." He frowned slightly, watching my eyes. "Isn't that what it means?"

"So how long would it be?"

"Fifty years . . . sixty?"

I leaned back and locked my hands behind my head. "I think it's longer than that, if you consider the implications. Think about it."

He did, tilting his head slightly to one side, then dropping his eyes again to the page in front of him, a tiny frown of concentration between his brows. Finally he looked up, shaking his head in annoyance at himself. "I don't understand. Living memory is the memory of someone who is alive. Logic says it can't be anything else."

I smiled at his use of logic. "Perhaps so, but would you not expect a source of living memory to be someone very old, and might not his memories include the recollections of others who were old when he was young, and of their similar, stated memories of what others older than they had said?"

The boy's face cleared, and he nodded, beginning to smile. I prompted him gently.

"So, therefore, living memory means . . . ?"

". . . That the last time something like that happened was so long ago that no one can even recall hearing of such a thing."

"Precisely."

"So it really means for generations, or for ages unknown. But. . ."

"But what?"

"Interregnum. Isn't a regnum a king's lifetime? Rome had emperors, not kings. Shouldn't the word be interimperium?"

I grunted a laugh. "It should I suppose, but it's an ancient word, dating from the time when Rome had kings, before the Republic was founded. It means what it means—the time between rulers—I suppose no one ever thought it worth the effort to change it."

"What's the difference, the real difference I mean, between a king and an emperor?"

I pursed my lips and fingered the end of my nose, scratching at an itch. "You know the rules, Arthur. You tell me what you think the difference is . . . I correct you if I think you're wrong, and if we disagree, we find an arbitrator. So, tell me."

"Territory . . ." He was thinking deeply. "And power."

"How so?"

"Emperors have power over kings."

"Not always. Not if the kings wish to deny that power."

"Then there is war, and the Emperor always wins, because he has the power of Empire behind him."

"Always? Then where is the Empire today? Alaric and his Goths sacked Rome before you were born, and Alaric wasn't even a king, he was a warrior— a warlord. So what does that imply?"

The boy sat silent for a long time, and then raised his head to answer me, and I knew from the expression in his eyes that he was far from confident about what he would say.

"I thought Alaric was king of the Goths, but even so, his victory means that the Empire was weak, too weak to withstand his strength . . . and that implies. . . that the man, the leader. . . the man himself. . . contains the greatness or the weakness. . . the success or failure of. . . of. . ."

"Of his enterprise, Arthur, whether it be an empire, a kingdom, or a chieftain's sway over his people. Bravo! It is the leader who commands the times in which he lives. Alexander, Scipio Africanus, Gaius Marius, Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus, Marcus Aurelius, Theodosius, Flavius Stilicho, and Alaric the Goth. Each stood against towering odds and fearsome enemies; enemies the likes of Pompey the Great, Darius and Xerxes and Hannibal— and Stilicho and Alaric were ranged against each other, until the emperor Honorius had Stilicho murdered and opened his own empire to defeat by Alaric."