Jack Whyte - The Singing Sword

"Is Father Andros in the villa today?"

"He was, earlier," I answered. "I spoke with him just before I came in here. But that was several hours ago." I wondered what he had in mind. Andros could do things with parchment and a stick of charcoal that verged on the magical.

"Well, at least he's not far away. Caius Britannicus, I have a suggestion to make to you and the Council. If you accept it, you will break precedent. I do not suggest it lightly. We are faced here with a major crisis. The fact that this Council has been in session for — how long? seven hours? — without resolving anything, only serves to emphasize the gravity of the situation.

"I have an idea that I believe will work. But I'm going to need some time to myself and the help of Father Andros to straighten out some of the lines of it. So I suggest that we adjourn this Council for, say, two hours. I promise you that at the end of that time we may reconvene with a reasonable chance of ratifying my plans."

There was an uncomfortable shifting as the other twenty men in the room took stock of this proposal, and eventually all eyes turned to Britannicus. I had never heard the Council chamber so quiet.

Caius cleared his throat and spoke to everyone. "What Vegetius says is true. To accept his suggestion would be to create a precedent that might become dangerous. We have to ask ourselves if we dare to violate our own rule, the only rule that governs our participation in this Council. Since our beginnings we have ordained that none may leave a Council meeting before all business facing the Council has been dealt with and resolved. This has allowed us to deal successfully with the dangers of procrastination. Successfully and, to this point, effectively. Do we dare to do otherwise now?

"On the other hand..." He paused, marshalling his thoughts. "On the other hand, what Vegetius is proposing is not a complete negation of the principle governing that rule. He is asking for time and the privacy to nurture and develop an idea that, whatever its substance, is absolutely germane to the problem facing us today.

"He is not asking for an overnight adjournment, merely for thinking space. All of us here have been unable, in the space of seven hours, to come up with any ideas at all. We are not simply lacking a solution; until Vegetius phrased it so succinctly, we had not even arrived at a definition of our problem. Vegetius Sulla has been ahead of all of us in defining, appreciating and, I hope, dealing with the problem. What he is saying to us is that all of our arguing is interfering with his capacity to think constructively. He is telling us that in the space of two hours we may eat, renew ourselves and return to this Council meeting refreshed and able to evaluate the worth of the plan he will then propose to us. So. How do you vote?"

The meeting was adjourned for two hours by unanimous consent.

XI

Vegetius was late in re-entering the Council room, and it was a measure of the high regard he had won for himself among our colonists that his twenty-one peers remained calm, talking quietly among themselves as they awaited his arrival. Eventually, some quarter of an hour late, he came bursting into the room and strode to the front, followed closely by Father Andros, our resident artist whose skill in drawing had amazed all of us for years. Andros clutched an armful of rolled parchments, and Vegetius began to speak even before he had reached the front of the room.

"My apologies for my tardiness, my friends, but you will see that we have not been idle since leaving you. Father Andros and I are going to show you some pictures. But first I want to remind you of the things I talked about earlier: the whistling stone — a children's toy and a deadly weapon for those skilled in its use; the naval galley that, painted blue, can disappear from sight in the full light of day; the Roman legion in full battle array that rested completely undetected by an enemy less than a quarter of a mile away, again in broad daylight."

He paused, and everyone in the assembly hung on his words, waiting for him to continue.

"None of these phenomena appears to be what it really is, given the proper — and by that I mean the carefully contrived and arranged — conditions. Their deadliness becomes invisible. Not just because they are made to look less deadly, but because they have been rearranged... disguised in such a way that men can look right at them and simply not see them." He stopped, waiting for a reaction, and got none.

"Do you understand what I am saying?"

Torquilius Linus, formerly a very successful lawyer, and one of the most distinguished-looking men in the room, coughed uncomfortably and spoke softly in his rich, baritone voice.

"I believe I do, Vegetius. I think you are telling us that you can conceal an entire hill — a mountain, almost — from human view. I must also say I do not believe that to be possible."

Vegetius clapped his hands together loudly. "You are absolutely correct, Torquilius. It is not possible. But that is not what I'm saying at all! I am saying that with effort, determination and careful planning, we will be able to alter the appearance of the hill to deceive men's eyes, by breaking up and concealing from view the outlines of the fortress — at least from here, a mile away." He turned to Father Andros. "May I have the first drawing? The view today."

Andros handed him a fat scroll, and Vegetius unrolled it and held it up where we could all see it. There was an audible, concerted intake of breath at the reality of the landscape depicted on the parchment. We were looking at a perfect rendering of the view of the fort hill from the courtyard of the villa. Andros had a gift that verged on the magical; with a few slashes of charcoal, he had captured the scene perfectly, so that the walls of the new fortifications stood out, clearly defined against the contours of the hill. He allowed us to admire it for no more than a few seconds before he released the bottom of the parchment, permitting it to roll itself up into a tube again.

Wordlessly, Andros handed him a second scroll, which Vegetius displayed in the same way. It was almost an exact replica of the first drawing, except that it was scored with hundreds of vertical stripes, and I realized what had been wrong with the first one.

"Can anyone identify the difference?" Vegetius's voice was hard-edged.

"Yes," I said. "The scaffolding was missing from the first drawing." A recent development, the newly erected scaffolding around our rapidly growing walls had altered the appearance of the fort quite radically over the previous months. I hesitated, unsure of myself. "It's not quite right in this one, either. There's something missing. I think."

"You're right, Varrus. But what is it?"

"The horizontals!" Firma's voice came from right behind my head. "The platforms of the scaffolding are missing."

"Good man, Fermax!" Vegetius released the bottom and let the scroll roll up on itself, already reaching behind him for a third, which Andros had ready for him. "Now, what about this one?"

The parchment he held now had vertical slashes scattered down the hillside in random fashion, far below where they had appeared before. Nobody said a word. The puzzlement in the room was almost palpable.

Wordlessly, Vegetius released this scroll and took a fourth from Andros's hand. This time, as he unrolled it, holding it high, there was a shocked mutter of reaction. The entire scene had changed. The hill was still there, but from a point about two-thirds up its flanks it was cloaked in a curtain of greenery. Bushes and trees completely hid the walls from view.

"You see, my friends? Magic! But all good Romans know there's no such thing as magic." He rolled up the scroll and reached for another. "Now," he said, deepening his voice dramatically. "Look carefully!"