Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

I had been raised in the old Imperial tradition, to Roman tastes and sensibilities, in spite of the fact that my entire family on my father's side prided themselves upon being "British" and not Roman. By comparison with these Eirish Scots, however, even my mother's Cambrian Celts were restrained in their tastes and use of colour. I had noticed from the outset that Donuil's people had no fear of mixing colours, but this gathering in the Hall made all the bright raiment I had seen up to this point seem muted and drab, as the daily wear of most people is by comparison with their festive finery. With an evening of festivity stretched ahead of them, they had arrayed themselves in their finest and I had never seen so many bright and vibrant, violently opposed colours used in such profusion: yellows and greens and reds and blues intermixed haphazardly enough to challenge the eyes. And yet, as I grew inured to the welter, I began to perceive certain unities in the chromatic chaos. All of the clothing was patterned, I could see, and all of the patterns were based upon a simple check design common in the monochromatic work of all weavers. In the case of these Scots, however, the colours of the yarn the weavers worked were wildly mixed, dyed in a multitude of hues. Thus it might be seen that all the members of one family group might wear the same pattern of green and red, with cross-lines of hazy blue or white or even yellow offsetting the dominant checks, but the reds and the greens might vary from person to person in shades that ran from the palest, near- white green of sun-blocked grass to the deep green of forest conifers, and from anemic orange to the crimson of clotting blood. And sometimes, I could see, these colour variations would appear in one large garment, such as the great, toga-like robes in which several of the older men were swathed. The younger men, no less garishly caparisoned, wore armour with their brightly coloured clothes: breastplates and arm guards and sometimes even greaves or leggings of iron, bronze, brass or layered, toughened oxhide. All of them carried sheathed daggers of one kind or another at their waists, although there were no swords or axes to be seen.

I mentioned the weapons to Connor, who sat beside me at one point, partly reclined upon a long, low couch that would once have graced some Roman household and that I guessed had been placed here for his special use, since the other furnishings in the anteroom were few and far more primitive. He looked at me with a half smile.

"You find that strange, that men should go armed at all times?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "Aye, in the King's Hall, among friends, on a festive occasion."

He grunted, in what I assumed to be a stifled laugh. "They're not really armed, my friend. They left their swords and axes and their spears outside."

"But not their daggers."

"No, not their daggers. Their daggers are not thought of as weapons— more as a badge of free manhood."

"Those badges all look lethal."

"Aye, and they would be, were they ever drawn. But to the bearer, most of all. It is death to bare a blade in the King's Hall."

I blinked at him, surprised. "Then why wear them at all? A man in drink might be provoked to draw."

"True, but it's custom. No true man should ever be weak enough to permit himself to be provoked into suicide, therefore the custom has become a test of a man's true worth."

"Speaking of that," I smiled, thinking it a good time to change the subject, "what has happened to your brother Finn? He's not here."

"No, he has gone hunting." He looked away to where his father sat talking to Donuil and the hirsute Mungo. "My father decided he has a taste for goat."

"Goat? And Finn had to go hunting for a goat? The paddocks I have seen are full of them."

"Mountain goat," Connor continued, his face carefully schooled into emptiness.

"Mountain goat. I see. And how close are the nearest mountains?"

"Oh, very close, but they are not high enough to harbour mountain goats."

"Are any?"

"Aye, but the closest of them is a good three days' journey from here."

"Three days. And three days back. How long to catch a goat?"

"Long enough, my astute friend, to enable you to settle down here in peace for a while."

"Aye, until Finn comes home. Does your father think an enforced exile will make him see me in a more friendly light?"

Now Connor turned and looked at me directly. "My father is no man's fool, Caius Merlyn. His enduring kingship bears that out. By the time Finn comes home, my father will have formed his own opinion of your worth, from his own observation, uninfluenced by any other's perception. You will have earned your own place among us by then, your own identity. Thereafter, anything that transpires between you and Finn will be your own affair and will not reflect upon my father or his hospitality. As I said before, Finn has his own ways, but my father the king has his, too."

I nodded, then asked what he had meant in referring to his father's enduring kingship. His answer surprised me, adding once more to my knowledge of these strange people.

"You don't know our ways? Hasn't my brother told you of our rules of kingship?" I shook my head. "Well, we are different here in Eire from you, and from any other people I have met, including our neighbours. I know you call us Celts, and I suppose we are, since every other people in these lands is Celtic, save for those born, like you, from Roman stock, but we call ourselves Gaels." He pronounced the word almost as "Gauls," and I immediately took it to mean that his people came from Gaul and questioned him on that, but he shook his head. "No, I think not, although there might be something to it, back in the long ago. To my knowledge, though, we have no connection with those other Gauls. We are of this land, and have always been."

"Whence comes the name then?" I saw from his face that he could not answer, and waved him on. "No matter, it's not important now. You were about to tell me of your custom of kingship."

"Aye. The law of our people states that our king be of the people . . . king of the people."

I stared at him. "I don't understand. Surely that is self-evident?"

"Oh no, not so. How many kings do you know?"

I shrugged. "Very few, a mere handful: my cousin Uther, who was always more of a brother to me than he was any kind of king. King he was, of course, after his father's death, king of the Pendragon strongholds in the Cambrian west. But Uther never ruled, in the kingly sense. He was a warrior chief, paramount, but king only in name. Then there was Lot, who called himself King of Cornwall, although the title was self-assumed; Vortigern, King of Northumbria; and Derek, King of Ravenglass, although again I assume that to be a false kingship, more vaunt than verity since Ravenglass is but a town, and a Roman one, at that. And now your father, the High King of Eire."

"No!" His denial was so abrupt as to be near violent. "My father makes no claim to being High King of Eire. There can never be such a High King so long as there is one other king who disputes that claim. All of them would. Any High King of Eire would have to fight to gain and hold that rank. None has, to this day."

"I see. But I have heard Donuil speak of your father as Ard Righ, I am sure. Is that not what the title means?"

"Aye, in some sense, although in ours it simply means high chief, and therefore king. But Athol Mac Iain, my father, is King of the Gael—you would say King of Scots—and therein lies the distinction."

"What distinction?" I felt foolish having to ask, for Connor looked at me as though I were feebleminded, and in truth I was beginning to wonder myself about my powers of perception, for there was something here that was eluding me.

"Think about it, man," he exhorted me. "You said the words yourself: 'Lot, King of Cornwall; Derek, was it? King of wherever, which you said was only a Roman town; and Vortigern, of whom I have heard, King of Northumbria. Then Uther, your cousin, king of the Pendragon strongholds. You have defined the norm in your own words. Even the emperors of Rome conform to the common way: they are all kings or emperors of some place. They rule their people's holdings. They hold the land. Our kings are kings of the people and the people hold the land. We are unique in that, and so my father is the King of Scots and rules his people in trust—not their land, for it is theirs."