Jack Whyte - The Eagles' Brood

He shook his head with regret, rising to his feet. "I cannot, much as I would like to. I have things to do, and I have been lazy this morning, although I have told my uncle everything you told me, and he agrees with your reconstruction of events. Will you dine with me tonight?"

I felt my eyebrow go up at the mention of Jacob of Lindum's concurrence with my theory, but felt it best to say nothing about it then. Instead, I smiled at him. "With whom else should I even think of dining? Of course I will. Shall you come here?"

He nodded. "When the debate is over for the day."

We embraced for the first time as brothers, and went our separate ways, he to his affairs, and I towards the amphitheatre and the Great Debate.

After a long search of the large and strangely festive crowd who filled the amphitheatre, I found Lucanus seated among a group of single men, some of whom I recognized. They seemed to be the only people within the great place who actually appeared to be listening to the debate going on in the arena. Lucanus saw me and made room for me between himself and his neighbour who was, I noted with surprise, none other than King Vortigern, though there was nothing particularly regal about him today as he sat swathed in a huge, grey cloak, attentive to the events going on before him.

Vortigern glanced at me and nodded as I sat down. "Merlyn." He spoke softly. "Cold, out of the sun."

His eyes and ears returned to the debate and I nudged Lucanus. "What's happening?"

"You'll know as much as I, before you're much older." He did not look at me but spoke out of the corner of his mouth. "This fellow has just begun to speak, and already he has lost me. I've no idea who he is...one of Germanus's new bunch who were here where we arrived. The old fellow who spoke before him was going on about the findings of the Council at Nicaea convened by Constantine a hundred years ago...Something about Arianism and the Divinity of the Christus...I think he was defending himself against some earlier allegation, before I arrived, of Arianism, but I cannot be sure. It's quite difficult to hear clearly. These men are clerics, not trained actors."

He was correct in that. The present speaker had a thin, querulous voice that would have been indistinct from the other side of a dining-room table. From where we sat, some twenty paces from him and hemmed in by people, he was almost impossible to hear, even with total concentration. For some time I listened hard to the whine of his voice, trying in vain to decipher his words, but eventually my mind drifted to Ambrose and the changes to my life his life would bring.

When I snapped out of my reverie and returned my attention to the proceedings, another man was speaking. I had not even been aware of the change, and I found no great difference. My buttocks were sore. I shifted in my seat, searching for comfort, and the movement attracted the attention of King Vortigern, who looked at me sidelong, the hint of a smile on his handsome face.

"Are you enlightened, Master Merlyn?"

"No, Sir King." I grinned at him ruefully. "I am bored, and lost, and beginning to regret the long journey that I faced with such high hopes. I cannot hear the half of what they say, and more than die half of what I can hear flies over my head."

"You'll hear better tomorrow." Lucanus spoke from my other side and Vortigern and I both turned to him.

"How so?" Vortigern asked, and drew another grin, this time from Luke.

"Because tomorrow there will be no one here except the bishops. Look, this is the first day of the proceedings and already more than half the people have gone off to other things. The noise is dying down even as we speak. I don't know what they all expected, but it is lacking here, whatever it was. No spectacle, no pomp, no entertainment...merely a gathering of clerics, discussing abstractions." He glanced at me. "That is what we came to hear, is it not? Clerics discussing abstractions?"

I had to smile, serious as the matter underlying his question was. "It was, Lucanus," I responded, "but we did not foresee, I think, quite such abstract surroundings for the abstractions."

"Hmm! You would prefer distraction, I perceive."

"No," I demurred with a laugh, "not so. But I would prefer more concrete in the mix."

"Ooh!" He wrinkled his nose in disgust at my bad pun, but Vortigern laughed aloud.

Other people were turning around to look at us now, wondering what the cause of our hilarity might be, and Vortigern stood up, bringing all of his people to their feet with him. "Enough of this," he said, "I, too, am bored. I shall ask Germanus tonight to tell us what went on. For now, I feel like a pleasant ride in the countryside." He nodded a courteous farewell and left with his courtiers. A few moments later, Lucanus and I followed him, leaving the bishops to their polemics.

To no one's surprise, Lucanus's prediction was accurate. After the first day's dreary, arcane argument, few if any of the common people went again to the scene of the debate. I attended every day, for at least an hour or two, during the first week, but thereafter, as my disappointment with my own inability to comprehend the gist of the debated matters grew, my daily attendance dwindled accordingly. And not for two weeks, until the eve of the final day, did I have an opportunity to speak again with Germanus.

"The weather had grown gradually colder, day by day, so that men spoke of snow, notwithstanding that the trees were all still green, their leaves only beginning to show faint signs of russet. Drawn in search of warmth from the unseasonable chill of the evenings, by the start of the second week people had begun to gather in the temporary taverns that had been set up in several of the larger abandoned houses. The streets and alleys were all well patrolled by my men and by Vortigern's, so none of these places were in any way troublesome. On the contrary, they were warm, bright and cheerful for all their recent birth and temporary nature, all selling simple—and sometimes not so simple—nourishing food as well as ale and mead, and causing more than one visitor to shake his head in admiration at men's ability to turn any circumstance into profit.

Vortigern, Jacob, Lucanus and Ambrose and I, along with several others including Pellus, Cyrus Appius and some of Vortigern's circle, had formed a loose-knit caucus, gathering on most evenings, those of us who had no other duties, in one such place, which we had named the Carpe Diem, in recognition of the brevity of its existence—past and future—and of its owner's opportunism. As frequently happens in such instances, our presence attracted other soldiers but repelled most civilians, so that in a matter of days the Carpe Diem had become acknowledged as a soldiers' haunt.

On this particular evening, however, I had fallen victim to my conscience and remained in camp to show my face among our troopers and to bring my daily journal up to date, a task I loathed but one that had a long tradition in Camulod. The custom had begun with my grandfather, whose insistence upon keeping such a record had been the only thing that had saved the lives of all his men, as well as himself and my great-uncle Publius from charges of desertion and sedition. From that day forward, every expedition led by my grandfather or any of his family or descendants had been carefully chronicled from day to day. In my case, I was literate enough, and facile enough, to have perfected the art of keeping concise notations on each day's events. From time to time, however, normally once every third day, I would review these notes and amplify them into the form of a journal.

Such was my task this evening. Feeling the cold in my fingertips, I had asked Donuil to light a brazier in my tent, and had swung around my father's old campaign desk so that my back and my right side could enjoy the heat from the glowing fire. It was late, long since dark, but the proximity of so many clerics had produced a beneficial glut of splendid wax candles, fifteen of which burned steadily and luxuriously in three tripod-mounted holders around the back and sides of the desk, allowing me to write in unaccustomed brightness and comfort.