Jack Whyte - The Singing Sword

Caius ran his hand over his short, iron-grey hair from crown to forehead, pressing it down onto his brow with spread fingers as he sighed again. "But it does. It does, Publius. Think about it, and remember the people with whom we are dealing. Magnus's rebellion was over. New troops everywhere, all of undoubted loyalty to Theodosius, and all from overseas. Probably not one soul in the new garrison at Aquae Sulis had ever set eyes on Claudius Seneca, so when the man's own nephew denied that this was his uncle, who would contradict him? Officially, Jacobus Seneca brought back a nameless survivor who — "

"Impossible! I've told you, Cay, there were no survivors, other than me."

He stared at me. "Then why go to all the trouble of denying the identity of the corpse?"

"What d'you mean? To protect the swine's reputation, of course."

"Against what, Publius? All Jacob had to do was destroy the written confession, and Seneca was blameless. It would then have been a tragic end to a heroic figure: the noble Procurator, murdered by his abductors after a titanic struggle in an attempt to escape. That would have ended the mystery surrounding his disappearance very neatly, from everyone's viewpoint except yours."

"Damnation, that's not good enough, Cay." I was digging my heels in, mentally, knowing I was right. "There has to be another explanation. That whoreson was dead when I walked away from him, I swear it."

Caius shook his head slowly, unwilling to accede the point. "Then what other possible explanation could there be, Publius?"

I slammed my clenched fist into my palm. "I don't know, I don't know. But there has to be something, something devious and serpentine and reptilian. Something that would occur only to a damned Seneca, and we're missing it!"

Caius arrived at a decision. I saw it happen in his eyes, and then he snapped his head downward in a short, decisive nod.

"Very well, I'll grant that you may be correct, on the reptilian grounds alone. And we are not exactly devoid of resources in this. The truth is verifiable, although not immediately. I shall write to my friend Marcellus Prello again tonight and ask him to be more specific regarding this alleged sighting of Claudius Seneca in Rome. It may take a month or more to hear whether or not he has anything to add to his original report, but at least we'll know then, with some degree of certainty, if Prello spoke with conviction in his last letter, or if he was merely gossiping."

I felt better already. "Fine. So be it! But he's dead, Cay, and your friend Prello made an error of identification. I would wager on that. I don't know what motivated Jacob Seneca to do what he did in concealing the death of his unspeakable uncle, but I do know he did it. Claudius Seneca, may he be cursed anew by the ancient God of the Hebrews, is dead and burning in a firepit in Hades."

There was nothing more to be said at that time, I felt, but in spite of my surge of confidence, my peace of mind had been shattered for that day, and I ended up sleeping most of the afternoon away, lulled by a draught concocted for me by Caius's physician.

Within a matter of a few more days, however, a series of events was to occur that would drive all memory and all consciousness of Claudius Seneca from my mind.

III

There is a beast in every man who breathes, a beast that is born in him and lives within him all his life, in a constant struggle for dominance over what he would prefer to think of as his "better self." I say that with complete conviction because I have had to come to terms with my own personal beast, and it now lies dormant inside me; dormant, but far from dead. It stirs, occasionally, reminding me of its presence, of its poison.

My beast's chains are strong — as strong as I, a maker of iron chains, could make them. I know to my own cost, nevertheless, that they are frighteningly fragile.

I have not always known such things, for it is not in my nature to dwell for any length of time on matters I cannot pick up and either bend or straighten with a hammer. I learned of the reality of man's inner beast only when I was a man full-grown myself, and I learned of it from my friend Bishop Alaric, after he and I had seen at first hand the depredations of one sad man's beast, which had caused him to run amok among his friends and neighbours, crippling and maiming before he could be overpowered. Alaric said at the time that the man, whom we both knew, had been "possessed by the beast." Hearing these words from Alaric, a man of God, I assumed he meant the beast, the Devil, and I said so. Alaric, however, quickly brought me to order on my misunderstanding.

It is too easy, he told me, with that simplicity of speech I so admired in him, to blame all our human griefs and ills on Lucifer. In doing so, he said, we can evade responsibility for our own actions, whereas the fault, in truth, is attributable to a lesser, more human beast that alternates constantly between lying dormant or raging savagely within each of us, male and female. The degree to which each of us subjugates our personal beast dictates the goodness, or the greatness, we achieve in this life.

This was a new notion for me, a disturbing, discomforting idea with which, I must confess, I did not rush to wrestle. But at that time I had not yet truly encountered my own beast and, try as I would, the closest I could come to seeing it then, or even sensing its presence within me, was in my own cold enjoyment of the kill, in war. I knew what that did to me — the feral enjoyment of battle and the sick revulsion that followed. But that was no beast, I reasoned; it was mere guilt.

Many years later, under the threat of rain, late on a cloudy summer afternoon that was dark with flies and heavy with omens, I was to recall that occasion, and that discussion, very clearly, as I gazed, horror-stricken, at the signs of the victory of one more man's beast and recognized fully the hideous visage of my own.

Approaching this episode again has placed demands on me that are new and worrisome, because I must now write about the beast in man, and of the beast in me. I fear and loathe the task, but my course is clear: I may not deal in other people's faults unless I first lay bare, in full confession and acknowledgement, my own gross flaws. And so I must deal here with my friend Domitius Titens, and with the treachery I dealt him for his friendship.

Domitius Titens was our neighbour, the great-great-grandson, like Caius Britannicus, of one of the original villa builders in the region that we developed as our Colony. He was also my friend and an avid student of ironcraft. He would never have made a weapons-smith, but he learned quickly the artistic sleight of hand required to twist wrought iron into lovely, strong and decorative shapes.

He had been in the legions at the same time as Cay and me, and most of his soldiering had been done in the eastern marches of the Empire. He had served for years in Asia Minor and had ended up in Constantinople, at the Imperial Court, where he met and wed his red-haired consort, Cylla, bringing her back to his huge estates in Britain when his tour of duty ended.

Cylla Titens was, for a very long time, a part of my life that I could never bring myself to come to grips with. In the beginning, I thought of her as "Scylla," and imagined her to possess all the attributes of that mythological monster. She made my life a misery over a period of years, but I could never hold her wholly to blame for it. The fault was mine; Cylla was merely herself. Whatever power, for good or evil, she ever held over me she possessed only because I gave it to her, and it was that gift that rendered me incapable of dealing with her satisfactorily. She exercised a dark power with the dedication of a despot, and I was never able to break her hold.