Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

"Wait, wait. Wait just a moment!" In my haste to interrupt him I was almost shouting. "My feelings, or the lack of them, for Ludmilla have no bearing here."

Now he blinked at me in astonishment, and a brief silence fell between us before he continued. "Are you serious? Then tell me, please, what has?"

I shook my head hard to clear it, thinking I was missing something of importance. "Lucanus," I said. "I am becoming confused, and angry. Let me speak slowly and clearly here. Any feelings I may have for Ludmilla, or for any other woman, are not at issue when we are talking of what is natural and what is unnatural. It is your tastes that are unnatural, your lack of a place for women, which amounts—can only amount—to a love for men. That love, while not uncommon, I've been told, could never be called natural or normal!"

"Oh!" His voice was soft, almost hurt. He rose to his feet again and made his way to the wine jug, where he poured for himself before offering the jug to me. I shook my head. When he had poured, he turned back towards me, resting his buttocks against the table's edge.

"So," he said. "You scorn such relationships?"

"Between man and man? Of course I do."

"Hmm. They are unnatural, of course. Unpalatable, would you say? Unpleasant? Degrading?" I nodded, wordless. "And you could never have a friend who was. . . afflicted by such abnormality." It was not a question. I made no response. "It would repulse you?" I nodded again.

"Yes, Luke, it would. It does."

"How old are you, Caius?"

I frowned. "You know I'm thirty-one. Why?"

He smiled. "You are very old to be so young and innocent."

"Innocent?" I thought he was mocking me. "I am no innocent."

He waggled one hand from side to side. "In some ways, no; in others . . ."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

He looked me straight in the eye. "It means, my friend, that you are naive in some areas of your thinking. You have gone through life bearing these ridiculous notions within you while practising a selective blindness that is unconscionable."

I was frowning now, beginning to bluster. "What are you talking about? Are you accusing me of wishful ignorance in not suspecting you? You gave me no indications."

"Of what, Caius? Suspecting me of what? Indications of what? A lack of ability, of trustworthiness, of integrity?"

"Of deviance!"

"Ah! Deviance!" He swung away from me, averting his face and holding himself rigid in silence for long moments. Then: "Deviance. A wonderful word, Caius, so rich in meaning, so serpentine in its implications! Fell me, would you call your friend the Legate Titus deviant?"

"Of course not!"

"Quite. What about Flavius?"

"I—What . . . what are you implying?"

He turned again to face me. "Nothing, Caius. Nothing at all, I swear to you. Titus and Flavius are two of the finest men you and I have ever known. They are the best of the best, honourable, trustworthy, dependable, honest and upstanding. They are both old men now and have given their lives, all of their lives, to serving your father and his dreams and hopes and aspirations, and when he died they transferred all their loyalties to you. But have you ever seen either of them with a woman, Cay? For that matter, have you ever seen them apart for more than a few hours at a time?"

"Are you say—"

"I am saying nothing other than that, according to the strictures of your definition, Titus and Flavius are unnatural. Would you not agree?"

"No, I would not." This emerged as a whisper.

"Good. That, at least, is as it should be. Very well. Let us retrace our steps, you and I. This all began by my asking you one particular question— whether you had ever known me to consort with a woman. Now let me ask you another. Other than yourself, have you ever known me to consort with, or have personal, intimate dealings with a man, outside of my work?"

"No."

"Any man at all?" "No."

"Why do you suppose that is, Cay?"

"I don't know. Because you have no . . . friends. . . apart from me."

He nodded, acquiescing, smiling a little, wintry smile again. "Abnormal, would you say? Unnatural?"

I coughed, feeling awful. "No. Unusual, that's all. You are . . . unique in that."

"Thank you. Now I will tell you something else that might surprise you. Two things, in fact." He raised his cup and emptied it at a gulp, and then looked back to where I sat as though stricken, quivering with shame. "I have had far too much to drink today, which is the reason for this conversation's having taken place, and I have been celibate for thirty years."

"Celibate?" I had heard the word, but I had never considered it, or its true meaning, before now.

"Celibate. Sexually chaste and hence unfettered by my own lusts. Free of involvement. Free of commitment. Free of responsibility to anyone, sexually speaking, except myself. For thirty years. Longer than that, in fact." He picked up the jug again. "And now, if you will drink with me again, I'll tell you why. Are we still friends?"

I nodded, thoroughly chastened now, and held out my cup: He poured, replaced the jug, and then sat down across from me again. When he had settled himself, he grinned at me. "Celibacy," he said. "What does it mean to you?"

I shook my head, admitting my ignorance. "I'm not quite sure, apart from the lack of sexuality involved in it. Doesn't it mean unmarried?"

"It does, but the underlying meaning goes far deeper in certain contexts. In its absolute sense, celibacy entails total, voluntary abstention from any form of sexuality. What I'm going to speak of now is philosophy, Cay; my philosophy, but not of my invention, merely of my adoption. When I was studying to become a surgeon, I had many teachers, all of them brilliant men. One of them, however, was a phenomenon and a genuine magus, in the esoteric sense. You understand what I mean by that?"

"I think so. You mean he was a sorcerer."

He laughed again, delight in his voice. "A sorcerer! Well, I suppose he was, in many ways, but no, that is not what I meant. A magus is a Master, Caius, in the sense of mastery of arcane lore, of knowledge. The Magi who attended the Christ Child were not termed such without reason, but none would call them sorcerers. This magus, my teacher—his name was Philus, by the way—was a living repository of the arts and skills and all the acquired knowledge of the physician's craft down through the ages. He had a phenomenal memory, Cay, and could recall, verbatim, texts he had read in his extreme youth. Nothing Philus read or learned was ever forgotten; nothing he saw went unremembered. And he lived only to teach his knowledge to young, willing minds. He it was who taught me about celibacy, and he had been an adherent all his life. He equated celibacy with power, Cay, with potency. 'Empty your body of the urge to procreate,' he used to say, 'and you release in it the power to think, absorb and grow; the power to know and rule yourself; the greatest power available to man.' I had great difficulty with that, at first, for I was young and virile, rudely potent in that other sense. I had never known love, but lust and I were well acquainted." He paused, remembering. "I came to know Philus better, I believe, than anyone else ever had. In time, I became his disciple, and came to believe the truth of what he believed. He died when I had just begun to really learn from him, and soon after that I joined the legions. But I have never wavered from his ways. My life has been my work, and I have been content to have it thus." He grinned again. "And then you came along, with your injured little waif, Cassandra, and we became friends. I had never had a friend before, in the personal sense."

"Tell me more about celibacy and potency." My discomfort of moments earlier had vanished, and for the next hour and more, while the house grew dark and silent around us, Luke talked of his beliefs. The arcane mysteries of all mankind, he explained, were arcane simply because the mass of men were incapable of according them the concentration they demanded in order to be understood. The study, the seclusion and the academic self-absorption necessary for that understanding, he maintained, were incompatible with and mutually exclusive of the pettiness of fleshly things, the merest, yet the most disruptive of which was sexuality. To illustrate that thesis, he cited the misunderstanding we had just gone through, where he had said one thing, and I had heard another altogether and had been outraged, my narrow sensibilities offended. Only my preoccupation with the sensual, he said, could explain that.