Jack Whyte - The Eagles' Brood

In spite of my own misgivings, I found myself applauding Vortigern's dignity, his decorum and his complete lack of anger. He continued to speak, looking around at all the faces watching him.

"You must understand, all of you, that these people I have...brought in...came at my invitation. They were not invaders; not pirates or savages. I sought them out, in their own land, and asked them to come here. Their fleets have made the seas around us safe again and their strength on land bars our territories to the invaders from the north. Their leader Hengist was my friend during my boyhood. He is my friend now. I know him well, him and his people, and I respect them. I also employ them in a manner that benefits both parties. We have given them land in return for their fighting skills and their assistance in protecting what is ours. I know they are alien and Outlanders, but our common interest in protecting what we hold together will lead to prosperity for both our peoples. There is a Greek word— symbiosis —that describes the situation. It involves two different species, with completely differing needs, coexisting in harmony and to mutual benefit. That is what we have achieved in Northumbria, and it is working well."

There was silence after this surprising speech as Vortigern's listeners took time to assimilate what he had said. Finally Pellus shook his head. "Well, King Vortigern," he said, "I've never heard of your symbiosis, but I know what makes sense to me and what does not. This with the Outlanders seems to me like sleeping with an adder in your bed. Better your bed than mine." He cleared his throat, shaking his head again. "I have no wish to offend you. I have shared your fire and your food and your drink and will not fight you with words you have no wish to hear. Your Outlanders are your affair and your lands lie far to the north-east, while ours are to the south-west. I pray your venture will work out for you, but hope never to see your 'allies' near to Camulod."

Vortigern smiled and stood up, bringing his people to their feet with him. "You never will, friend Pellus, but a time may come when you and yours might be glad to follow our example. For now, I will leave you with your discomfort, and free to speak your mind without fear of offending me. Good night."

He turned and made his way into his tent, and his going was the signal for the dissolution of the group around his fires. I rose quickly and left before anyone could notice that I had been sitting there in the shadows, and as I walked through the encampment towards another fire, I saw Ambrose ahead of me, crossing to my left. I called his name and waved so that he stopped and waited for me to approach him, that same look of slightly bewildered, almost hostile curiosity on his face. I stopped almost within arm's reach of him.

"You and I need to talk. Will you walk with me?" He nodded, wordlessly, and walked beside me as I led him through the lines of tents and out into the field where I had walked before. Once away from the dazzle of the campfires, our eyes adjusted to the darkness and the illumination from the gibbous moon in the cloudless sky was more than adequate to light our way until we approached a clump of large boulders that lay far enough from anywhere to be safe from casual listeners. There I stopped., "This is far enough."

"Far enough for what?" There was caution in his voice, and curiosity, and a hint of latent hostility.

"For us to talk without being overheard."

He shook his head, a tightly controlled, tense flick, as though dislodging a fly or a buzzing insect. "Why should we fear, or should you fear being overheard?"

"Because I have things to say for your ears alone."

He looked around, leaned back against a boulder and crossed his arms in front of him. "Well?"

I turned slightly away from him, glancing back towards the distant fires. These next few moments were going to be very important. "Tell me about your mother," I said. "What is her name?"

"Boudicca,'' he said, and nothing more. The name surprised me.

"Boudicca? The same as the Warrior Queen?"

"The same." There was no hint of levity about him. "My mother traced her descent directly from Boudicca, the Queen of the Iceni."

"Through three hundred years?"

He gazed at me, one eyebrow raised in the way my father had, and the way his father had before him, and for a time I thought he was not going to answer me. Then he said, "Yes, through three hundred years. You find that strange? Our blood is pure, unmixed and undiluted."

I frowned. "Your father was Roman, you said."

He nodded. "An exception to the rule. There have been others, but on the whole, not many. The Iceni of today are still the Iceni Caesar's legions fought. The same who burned the town of Camulodunum and almost took this country back from Rome."

"But you don't call yourselves Iceni today."

He shook his head, the start of a small smile on his face. "Nor did we then. It was the Romans who called us by that name."

"Of course," I said, matching his smile. "Where is your mother today?"

His face set into a mask. "Why would you wish to know that?"

I shrugged. "Mere curiosity. Is she in Lindum?"

"No." The negative was abrupt, accompanied by another jerk of his head. "I don't know where she is. I never knew my mother. I was raised by her sister, Gwilla, and by Jacob, her husband." He clearly had no more to say than that, but I could not settle for incomplete knowledge.

"You say you don't know where she is, not that she is dead. Is she in fact alive?"

"I told you, I don't know. No one does. She left me with her sister when I was a child and she disappeared. She hasn't been seen again."

"I see. And your father died before you were born?"

"Yes."

"And you are, what, twenty-eight?"

He frowned again. "How do you know that with such authority?"

I smiled. "Because you are six months younger than I am, and I'm twenty-nine." As he started to speak, I held up my hand to silence him. "Ambrose," I continued, "I have a story to tell you, and it is one that you may not enjoy, but you will be able to judge its truth for yourself, in the listening. All that I ask is that you let me tell it without interruption, for if you interrupt, with questions or denials, we'll be distracted and the whole story might not come out. Will you listen? And not interrupt, even though I promise you it will not be easy?"

He straightened up from his slouch and pressed his hands together, breathing deeply and finally emitting an explosive sigh. "You make it sound ominous, but yes, I will listen without interrupting you, even if what you tell me makes me want to kill you."

"I hope it won't," I said, and then I began. I told him the entire tale of Picus Britannicus and the wound he had taken, and the manner in which he had killed his host, Marcus Aurelius Ambrosianus. It took a long time, and before I was half-way through he had turned his back on me, leaning his weight against the stone behind him and staring off into the darkness so that I could not see his face. When I had finished speaking, a long silence stretched between us. I made no attempt to break it, knowing instinctively that he had heard enough of my voice and my words and that, whatever was going on in his mind now, he would take his own time in reacting to my message and the turmoil it had brought into his life. Finally, after a long stretch of utter stillness, he spoke without turning towards me, his voice drifting backward to me over his shoulder.

"So be it," he said. "I accept and believe your story. My mother was a whore and my father an ineffectual fool and a murderer, and your father—who is suddenly my father— killed him. Killed them both, in fact."

I waited, but he said no more, and I realized with mounting disbelief that he had dismissed the major part of what I had told him; had failed, in fact, to consider any part of it other than that sole aspect upon which he had seized. Stung to anger in spite of my resolve to accept whatever he might have said, I snapped, "I made no judgment on your mother! I did not know her, nor did you, so neither of us may presume to know her mind or to impugn her motives. And her husband, your father as you call him, was an old man, driven by an old man's despair to save his honour."