“Is it bad, then?”
“Bad enough. You were right to have them bring you here. Another few days and…” He left the thought unfinished, concluding, “God is merciful, however; he has provided the best physician in all of Albion. He is even now at your service, and he will see you mended.”
“With God’s helping hand to guide him,” amended the brother just entering the room with a steaming bowl between his hands.
“Ah, Marcus, there you are. What kept you? Bring me the bowl and then go fetch my instruments.”
“Of course, brother,” replied Marcus, handing over the bowl.
“I cannot tell,” offered Fychan when his helper had gone, “whether he is an especially adept student or whether I am merely the most brilliant of teachers.” He sighed. “Perhaps we shall never know.”
Together they worked on me, the brilliant physician and his able student, and I relaxed into their care. The last thing I remember, before succumbing to the tincture Fychan gave me to dull the pain, was asking after the two farmers. “Where are they?”
“They are enjoying a hearty supper, I should think,” replied Fychan.
“Tell Julian to reward them well. They saved my life. Whatever he gives them, I will gladly repay—anything.”
“I will tell him,” said Marcus. “You are fortunate,” he continued. “Most Picti would have killed you for your cloak.”
“They are not Picti, surely,” said Fychan.
“Well, they are not Romans,” answered Marcus. “And they are not Scoti either.”
“Pagans in any event,” concluded Fychan.
Heavy-headed with the drug, I closed my eyes and slept, waking two days later with a sore head and an even more painful side. “That is to be expected,” Marcus informed me.
“Fychan incised the wound, bled it, and has bound the broken ribs. The pain will remain for some little time to come.”
“It does not matter,” I told him. “What of the farmers?”
“I know nothing of any farmers.”
“Then where are my clothes?” I said. “I want to get up.”
“We burned your druid garb,” Marcus answered. “It was filthy with blood and whatnot, and unbecoming any decent christian.”
“I want to get up,” I insisted.
“Julian is nearby,” said Marcus. “I will get him for you.”
He stepped from the room, returning a few moments later with Julian, who smiled when he saw me. “Come back to us at last, I see,” said Julian cheerfully. “The prayers of these good brothers have effected a wonderful cure.”
Even as he spoke, I thought it more likely that the native kindliness of the farmers and Fychan’s skill as a physician had far more to do with my rescue than did the belated mumblings of the monks, however sincere.
“He is most anxious about these barbarians of his,” said Marcus. “As you dealt with them, I thought you could best tell the result.”
Julian agreed and said, “They departed yesterday with a wagon piled high with supplies: seed barley from the granary mostly, and also oats, rye, eggs, and cured pork.” He smiled. “You got off lightly—the cost of your salvation was trifling, so to speak.”
“No gold?” I asked. “Did you offer them gold?”
“Your concern for them is laudable, Succat,” he answered. “But you need not worry. I offered gold, of course, but it is of no use to them. Trust me, the seed is far more valuable to barbarians.”
“They saved my life,” I told him.
“Fychan saved your life,” Julian corrected blithely. “Another day or two with those pagani and the only service we could have afforded you was a funeral.”
He gave me a superior smile and patted my hand as it rested on my chest. “Be not anxious,” he said. “You are in God’s hands now. We will not suffer you to fall again.”
He and Marcus exchanged a few words regarding my care, whereupon he departed, saying, “I will inform Bishop Cornelius of your splendid progress. He has been most solicitous of your recovery.”
“Thank him for me,” I said, sinking back. Although it had been brief, I was already exhausted by Julian’s visit.
My progress, as I saw it, was far from splendid. My side both ached and burned at the same time; the tight-wound bandage constricted my chest and made breathing an ordeal. I felt wan and ragged and weak as a newborn infant. It was all I could do to lie in one place and swallow the warm concoctions Marcus spooned into my mouth from time to time.
“I understand that you were captured by Irish raiders and sold as a slave,” Marcus said one day.
“That is true.”
He nodded. “And was it the barbarians who made you a druid?”
“They made me a shepherd,” I answered. “Becoming a bard was my own idea.”
“I see,” he said, his mouth squirming in a way that gave me to know he did not understand at all.
“Among the Irish,” I explained, “the filidh are held in highest esteem. They are the noblest of the noble. Even kings submit to them. All of creation is their occupation and concern; their lives are given to the study of whatsoever pleases them.”
“The dark arts please them most, I presume.”
“Then your presumption is wrong,” I replied—with far less vehemence than I felt; I lacked the strength for a heated argument. “The object of their scrutiny is to learn the truth of all things. Among the filidh truth is said to lead to justice, and justice to harmony, and harmony to love.”
“Well said,” granted Marcus.
“So that learning and truth may increase,” I continued, “they are free to travel where they will—to Britain, Gaul, and beyond.”
“Ah,” said Marcus, breaking in, “you became a druid in order to escape. I understand now.”
His presumption, accurate though it was, irked me. I resented these smug priests and their arrogant ways, holding all beneath them. “I became a druid,” I replied, “so that I might be a better man.”
It was, alas, far from the truth. I said it merely to rub the self-righteous smirk off his face. Instead it had very much the opposite effect. “That is what the Ceile De always say,” he sniffed, regarding me with a haughty expression. “They may call themselves Christians—but they are heretics of the most insidious kind.”
His reply might have stung me far more than it did, I suppose, had I known what the word “heretic” meant.
Lacking the strength for more strenuous debate, I swallowed my ignorance along with his insult. “You might think differently,” I told him, “if you had ever known one as I have.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
OVER THE NEXT many days, as I began to heal and regain my strength, I shuffled around the grounds of the monastery and observed all that was taking place. I noticed the presence of three or four bishops, which I thought to be a considerable number—even for such a place as the White House.
When I asked Julian about this, he said, “Of course they don’t reside here. They are attending the council. Naturally you would not know about this since you were gone when they arrived. Nynia and Cornelius, prudent churchmen that they are, thought it best to convene a council to draw up letters of condemnation to take to the conference in Turonum.”
Julian, Marcus, and I were walking in the walled courtyard of the monastic villa. “I see,” I said. “And what are they condemning?”
“The Pelagian heresy,” Julian answered. “And not only that, but Pelagius and all his followers as well.”
“What have they done?” I asked. “Put a pig in priest’s robes?”
“Deus veniam habeat!” exclaimed Julian, rousing himself to regard me in indolent amazement. “You have no idea who Pelagius is, do you?”
“I freely confess that I do not.” I returned his gaze coolly.
“Nor do I care. But it all seems like tedious nonsense to me.”
“You stand in danger of heresy yourself, brother,” Marcus warned.
“Do not mind Succat,” Julian said, adopting the air
of a long-suffering schoolmaster separating two rowdy pupils. “The Irish have befuddled him.”
“Through their persistent and enthusiastic propagation of error, these Pelagians weaken the body of Christ,” Marcus insisted. “They are a canker that must be cut out if the body is to retain health and vigor.”
Now, I had never heard of these Pelagians he mentioned, nor their leader. But the toplofty certainty with which these condescending clerics held their obtuse doctrines rankled and irritated me.
I am contrary that way.
Yet that I, who had thrown over the last weak dregs of Christian belief long ago, should care what a passel of pretentious, self-important priests thought or how they occupied their idle days seemed a peculiar absurdity, even to me.
Perhaps my natural tolerance for pomposity was wearing thin. Or perhaps Ollamh Datho’s high regard for truth and justice and his insistence that the forthright exercise of these virtues—like the tireless search for knowledge—must be conducted in simple humility had taken root in my soul. However it was, I found myself sharply disapproving of the bishops’ council before I knew even the smallest part of what it was about or what these heretics believed that was so damning to them.
Beside, if they were anything like the Ceile De, whom Marcus had likewise condemned out of hand, and who I knew to be unjustly accused, then these Pelagians had my entire sympathy.
The council of bishops commenced. As they were called away on other duties, I saw little of Marcus and less of Julian. I had whole days to myself with nothing to do. When the weather was fair, I walked down to the coast and prowled the shore, gazing out across the Irish Sea, hoping to catch a glimpse of the green Éireann hills, which, I was told, could be seen as a pale blue blur on the horizon when the days were bright and clear.
I never saw them.
Eventually this kindled in my mind the notion that I never would see Ireland again. Even as I stood on the strand with the waves lapping at my feet, searching the cloud-bound horizon, yearning for a glimpse of Éire, the notion was hardening into certainty. The world was turning and turning again. The tide of my affairs had already begun to change.
One night, as I lay on the pallet in my cell, I listened to the brother walk the grounds ringing his bell to call his brother monks to prayer. My heart squirmed within me, and I heard a voice saying, “Rise and go. You should not be here.”
But where should I go? And how?
As these thoughts turned in my mind, the voice came again: “Rise and go! Do not remain in this nest of vipers!”
And I did rise. I walked to the door of my cell and peered out into the darkened yard. “Where should I go?” I demanded, speaking aloud. “Where, in God’s holy name, should I go?”
There came no answer. The silence resounded through my heart and my soul. In that silence the hateful truth resounded: I belonged nowhere and had nowhere to go.
I spent a sleepless night and emerged the next morning with a sour taste in my mouth. I moved through the day and the days to follow like a sullen and dejected phantom, lost in pity and reeking of despair. Having done all I could to secure a future for myself, I had failed.
Wretched and ashamed, I took to my bed and did not rise from one day to the next. I lay in misery, berating myself for all my shortcomings, which had so richly contributed to my failure. From the beginning I had lied to friend and foe alike. I had stolen and cheated, seizing any advantage I could grasp, thinking of myself alone. I had deceived and betrayed almost everyone I met, but most of all Sionan, possibly the only person alive under heaven who loved me. Did she love me still? I wondered. No. She would have guessed the truth long since and would despise me now and evermore.
Rancorous, malicious, judgmental, and intolerant, I was swiftly becoming an object of loathing and disgust in my own eyes. My many failings weighed so heavily on me that I could no longer rise above them. Unable to alter the past or see any hope for the future, I sank lower and lower into an oppressive, desperate melancholy, mordant as grief and desolate as mourning.
When help did come at last, it was selfish and disloyal—but a drowning man will hung to any wreckage if it will delay the final dissolution. I grasped what was offered, and I hung on tight. It was all I could do.
Julian appeared in my cell one day. “Marcus tells me you have not been eating.”
When I made no reply, he moved to my bedside.
“What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” I said.
He sighed. “It is no use denying it, Succat. Plainly something is festering in you. Now, I ask you again: What is wrong with you that you hole up here like a wounded badger in his den, moaning and moping day and night?”
“You would not understand if I told you,” I answered, and that was true. How could anyone have understood?
“Succat,” he said, coming to stand over me, “the time has come to break clean with the past. It is no good yearning for something that can never be. You tried to find your friend Cormac—”
“Tried and failed,” I said bitterly.
“Then why not simply accept that it was not to be?”
“Easy to say,” I replied. “You have never known a fall, Julian. You cannot know how it hurts.”
“You may have failed, as you say, but must you wallow in failure forever? Get up, gird your loins, seek the salve of absolution for your sins. Tomorrow we leave for Turonum. Let that be your genesis.”
“You may be leaving for Turonum,” I replied, “but I am not.”
“No? I urge you to reconsider.”
“Why? It won’t change anything. You see before you a man who has lost everything: lands, home, family. The one person who might have helped me, I failed to find. In fact, everything I ever put my hand to has failed.”
“Listen to me now,” said Julian quietly. He sat down beside me. “You have had a great disappointment—”
“Great disaster, you mean.”
“No one blames you for feeling the way you do,” he said sympathetically. “It is only natural. But dwelling on the past and its hurts and harms will avail you nothing. The past is over and done. Let it go. Tomorrow you will begin again.”
“Easy to say.”
“In Gaul you will find yourself, Succat. I know it. There is opportunity for young men willing to work. You will have a fresh start. Think of it: You can begin again in a place where no one knows you and the past no longer matters. Your future is ahead of you, Succat, not behind. You must look to Gaul.”
He left me then, but his words achieved their desired effect. A short while later, I got up from my bed and walked for a last time down to the shore. The day was far gone, the sun low on the water. I looked out and saw what I thought was a smudge of pale blue cloud close to the horizon. It was, I imagined, the distant hills of Ireland.
I stood for a long time, trying to make myself feel something for Éire and its people—for Cormac and Sionan at least. I felt nothing. The affection I had allowed myself to imagine was dead. No doubt it had died in the ice and cold of the Celyddon Wood or out on the old Roman road. Perhaps the agony and fever of injury and disappointment had burned it out of me. Perhaps it had never really existed.
Now, as I stood gazing out across the water, I felt nothing. Not remorse, not grief, nor even relief. Nothing. Nothing at all. So far as I could tell, I was dead inside. My heart had become a cold, hard cinder—a once-bright ember taken from the hearth and laid on the dull flagstone to cool and cool until the last spark died.
I stood and watched the sun plunge in fiery haze into the dark blue sea, and then I turned my face away and walked from the water’s edge without looking back. When Bishop Cornelius and his entourage departed Candida Casa the next morning, I rode with them to begin my new life in Gaul.
PART III
MAGONUS
THIRTY-EIGHT
GAUL, ON FIRST sight, seemed very like Britain in most ways—save that the cities were more numerous and the garrisons were manned. Prosperity sat on the cou
ntryside like a matron grown plump with age. It was a broad land, with many woodlands, good streams, and few mountains. It seemed that perhaps Julian was right; this could well be a place where a man could thrive if he was willing to work hard.
Yes, and the more I saw of it, the more certain I became that hard work would be needed—and also luck. “Times being what they are,” Bishop Cornelius said, “there are bandits, brigands, and barbarians aplenty. They rove at will through the settlements and towns.”
Apparently this was only too true—especially in the north. This was why, he said, the garrisons had been removed from Britain. “The emperor has decided that the security of the northern frontier is the salvation of the empire,” continued Cornelius. “Everything now depends on its protection.”
So many legions had been amassed in the north that it left the great soft belly of Gaul open to the bandits and brigands, and these thought nothing of making swooping raids on the villas, farms, and settlements the soldiers could no longer defend.
From the moment we made landfall at Namnétes, we began hearing about all the atrocities perpetrated by the barbarians in their intolerable raids.
As Cornelius and Julian set about procuring provisions and hiring wagons, I strolled the lumpy streets of Namnétes, a fair-size market city on the banks of a wide river estuary to the south of the Armorican peninsula. I looked and listened and talked to the merchants in marketplace Latin. These bandits, they said, were rapacious, vicious, a scourge and a plague. No one was safe. The garrisons were inadequate; more soldiers were needed. The generals worried too much about the barbarians outside the borders and allowed murderous thieves free reign inside.
Such was the fear of the local population that I, too, began to grow concerned and was mightily relieved when Bishop Cornelius engaged five mercenaries to accompany us to Turonum, eight days’ journey upriver. Although it was early spring, the weather was already fine, with high, blue, sun-warmed skies filled with towering clouds; even the rain, when it came, was soft and gentle. Everywhere men and oxen were hard at work in the fields of the villas and settlements we passed along the way.
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