Jack Whyte - The Singing Sword

Lignus would have been a piteous spectacle, had there been an ounce of pity in my soul. Luceiia had not exaggerated, he had been badly burned about the face and head. I lodged him in a stone hut, under heavy guard, when we returned to the villa where, with an ill grace born of my resentment, I went looking once again for Cletus and directed him towards yet another patient in dire need of his healing arts. Then, and only then, did I go looking for Caius.

I found him waiting for me in the triclinium, seated in front of a blazing fire with ten of the twenty-two councillors, far more than I had expected him to rouse, grouped around him. They were talking animatedly, but fell silent when I strode limping into the room.

"Ah, there you are, Publius!" Cay rose to his feet immediately and waved me towards an empty seat placed beside his own. I could tell by the tone of his greeting that he had been discoursing already while waiting for me. His voice rang with the orotund, slightly exaggerated resonance that he used to sublime effect when dealing with gatherings he wished to dominate.

"You must have smelled the concoction Gallo is serving us. Your timing is excellent and you probably need a hot drink, for the warmth of it, if not the stimulus."

As I moved to be seated, two of the household servants stepped forward bearing trays of steaming mugs filled with Gallo's personal specialty for long, dark nights: hot milk flavoured liberally with strong honey mead. I gulped one down completely and helped myself to another as Caius resumed his seat and continued speaking in his formal, gubernatorial tone.

"I've been telling our friends here about the discussions you and I have been having recently, concerning the increase in lawlessness that seems to be surrounding us." I noticed that he specifically ignored Luceiia's role in these discussions. "And I have apologized for rousing them from their beds at such an ungodly hour, except that the seriousness of tonight's events does indeed warrant such extreme actions."

I cut short whatever it was that he had been leading up to. "It warrants more than that." I looked around the faces in the room, but spoke directly to Cay. "How is the boy?"

He cleared his throat. "I believe his condition is stable."

"No improvement? He's still comatose?"

"Yes, I am afraid he is. There has been no improvement that I am aware of."

"Have you told these people what happened to him?"

"I have."

"Have they seen him?"

"No, I did not think that was necessary. There was nothing to gain by it; nothing to see except a small boy swathed in bandages."

"Hmmm!" I made a show of counting heads, though I knew from the first exactly how many were present. "We have twelve councillors here, out of twenty-two. That gives us a quorum. I think we should convene an extraordinary meeting of the Council here and now. Were all the others invited?"

"Yes, but for one reason or another they could not come." Caius cleared his throat, with some embarrassment, I thought. "I must confess, though, my summons was not worded with sufficient strength to indicate a Council summons."

"How could it have been? No one had thought of having one then. The idea only occurred to me now. But I believe it necessary that we meet here, formally, right now. We have ample and sufficient reason and there are some imperatives that have thrust themselves upon us in the past hour. If we tackle them resolutely, now, while the situation is still unfolding, we may solve all of them and save ourselves a long and weary task in time to come. Does anyone object?"

The councillors merely shrugged and muttered, but they were amenable enough. They had to be, and I knew that, because they did not really know what the agenda of the meeting would be. The only objection came from Caius himself. "It is very late, Publius. We could be here all night."

I recognized this as a mere formality. I could not, however, define the origins of the small, half-amused smile that had twitched at the corner of his mouth before he began to speak, and I made a mental note to ask him later what had prompted it.

"I doubt it. I would like to outline the situation now in force, as I see it, and make a few specific recommendations for action. If the councillors present approve those recommendations, we should all be in bed within the hour. If there are any serious misgivings voiced, I shall vote to adjourn until the full Council can meet tomorrow, in which case we can still be abed within the hour."

Caius shrugged his shoulders. "That is agreeable to me. Is anyone opposed?"

No one was, and we went directly into formal session with Caius chairing. He gave me the floor and I went straight into the tale of my discovery of Simeon by the lake. I described the child's injuries in graphic terms, attempting deliberately to enlist their horror and outrage.

Then, while they were still wide-eyed with disgust, I went on to describe the events that had followed: the scene in the cottage, the women chained to the bed, Lignus's struggle to avoid arrest and the fire which, had Lignus's hut been closer to other buildings, could have been disastrous to the Colony.

Having fixed that image of the possible outcome of these events firmly in the minds of my listeners, I outlined once again the minute but steadily noticeable decline towards anarchy that was becoming apparent in the towns of the region, and even in our own small Colony. I related the story of the dilemma that would face us as lawmakers and law-enforcers as Caius had first described it to me, repeating his device of distinguishing between rules, regulations and laws, and I emphasized the need for an authoritative and supportive stance from the Council in bringing these matters before the colonists and obtaining their moral support in what we were attempting to do.

I told them that if, as I suspected, they were in agreement with the concerns and sentiments I had expressed, and if they could accept Caius's and my own analysis of what was wrong, and if they could in fact identify potential difficulties ahead for our Colony as this atmosphere of moral lassitude continued and expanded, then they must clearly see where those concerns would lead all of us as councillors. I exhorted them to take a firm stance on this issue and to do so immediately, tonight. Lignus the carpenter, I argued, had presented us with a perfect opportunity to move decisively towards ensuring the safety of everyone in the Colony. Ours was ostensibly a Christian community. Christian law was simple, I pointed out; it has only ten real rules, the Commandments, and Lignus had broken almost all of them. If his son were to die, he would be guilty of the murder of his own child. His cruelty was so appalling and his disregard for any of the basic laws of society was so profound that his conduct endangered everyone around him, even though he had as yet caused no damage to anyone other than his own family. But, and I hammered this point home with my fist on the back of a chair, if a man will brutalize his own family, could anyone be foolish enough to hope that mere compunction would prevent him eventually from harming someone else's family? Lignus had not merely transgressed, I told them, he had gone far beyond the bounds of common, human decency. The entire populace would rise up in outrage against his crimes. We, the Council, could use that outrage as an opportunity — one that we hoped would never be repeated — to further our own designs for the protection of our colonists and citizens.

I spoke for almost half an hour and no one interrupted me, and when I had finished there was silence for a spell. I had stood up, under the spell of my own eloquence, my tongue loosened and made fluent by the potency of the meaded milk and my thoughts sharpened by my unquenched anger at what had transpired. Now I remained standing, waiting for a reaction to my diatribe.