The hilt of my sword shifted a little in my hands which were crossed upon the grip and shoulders, and the light of the candles caught the royal purple of Maximus’s great seal, and set a star of brilliant violet light blazing in its depths. I had never told Ambrosius that I would take up the task that he laid upon me, but I knew now that if by any means, by the grace of all the gods that ever men prayed to, I could gain the High Kingship of Britain, I would do it.
I think that Ambrosius had known it all along.
ON the third day after Ambrosius’s burial the Council of the Kingdom met, as I had known that they must before many days went by. My place in the government of the land had always been a carefully unformulated one; I had sat at the Council table whenever I was in Venta at the time when a meeting was called, but always, as it were, as a guest. And that morning, as on so many other mornings, I received my formal invitation. And I knew, with a tightening of the stomach, that the time had come for the opening phase of the trial of skill and judgment that lay before me.
An hour after noon, when she brought me my best cloak of violet cloth with the black and crimson border, Guenhumara set her hands on my shoulders and said, “Will they talk of who is to be the new High King?”
“Assuredly,” I said, “but it is in my mind that now, with the Saxons stirring beyond the borders, is not the time to be king-making.”
She gave me a long clear look. “You know that the apple is yours, to stretch out your hand for.”
“I believe that it may be, but I cannot afford to break Britain apart in plucking it.”
“You are always afraid of breaking something, aren’t you?” Guenhumara said, and she drew my head down and kissed me, with nothing but duty and gentleness behind her lips.
The Basilica at Venta must have been a place of beauty and splendor in the days when the world was still firm underfoot. Ever since I could remember, it had been half derelict, the frescoed plaster falling from the walls, the fine Purbeck marble cracked and damp-stained, the gilding blackened. The huge wrought-bronze screens that had shut off the Council Chamber from the main hall had been taken down in my grandsire’s tune, and melted down for harness of war. But the place had a certain dignity and beauty still, though a beauty of decay and fallen leaves compared with the pride of high summer.
I made a good businesslike swinging entrance through the west door, with Cei and Bedwyr and Pharic behind me for a ceremonial guard, tramped across the tesselated floor, and mounted the three steps to the Council Chamber, and stood before the Council of Britain.
There was a stir and a ripple and a thrust of movement as those already there rose for me in all courtesy — save for Dubricius who, being a Father of the Church, rose for no man save the High King himself. A cold diffused light shone down impersonally from the three high windows, and searched out rather than lit the faces of the men about the table. Dubricius himself, with eyes alight and alert and cold as a seagull’s in a plump many-folded subtle face that seemed to be made of the finest quality candle wax, would be my chief opponent, I knew, and the two other churchmen would follow his lead. The rest, I thought, would be more open to reason; some of them had been fighting men in their time, and two were soldiers stilclass="underline" Perdius, who commanded the main cavalry wing of the war host, gave me the brief nod that was the nearest approach to a greeting that he had for anyone, and I caught Aquila’s dark frowning gaze as it came out to me like a handclasp.
The King’s Chair, on the right of which Dubricius sat, was empty in the cold uncaring light, and opposite to it, a chair of state had been set for me. And when the grave courtesies of the occasion had been exchanged, and the Bishop had prayed for the soul of Ambrosius the High King, we turned first to the lesser matters that must be dealt with; the mere camp routine of state, while the recording clerks on their stools scratched away at their tablets in the background. When the camp routine had been disposed of, I remember that there came a pause, as though every man drew breath for the true business of that day’s meeting of the Council.
Dubricius leaned forward, his big pale hands folded on the table before him, the great ruby on his thumb making one point of pride and fire in the clear emotionless light of the February day, and looked about him at each of us in turn. “My dear friends, my brothers of the Council —” He had a pleasant voice, unexpectedly dry to come from so unctuous a body, unexpectedly moderate to come from a man with those eyes. “A short while since, in the opening moments of this sitting, we prayed for the soul of our late most beloved lord, Ambrosius the High King. Now, since it appears that our Lord Ambrosius took his leave of this life without having at any time named his heir —” The lively seagull’s eye turned first to Aquila and then to me: “That is so, my Lord Artos?”
Aquila sat very still and gave no sign, but I felt his gaze on me. “That is so,” I said.
And Dubricius bent his head in acknowledgment until the broad chins flattened on the breast folds of his mantle. “Since it appears that our Brother Ambrosius has at no time named his heir, there falls to us assembled here, the heavy and grievous task of considering the man best fitted in all ways to succeed him, and for that purpose above all, we are met here today.”
“If the High King had but left a son!” murmured a dejected-seeming Councilor renowned for his fruitless “if onlys.”
A carefully controlled impatience twitched at the Bishop’s brows. “The whole necessity for this meeting of the Council, Ulpius Critas, arises from the fact that the High King left no son.”
Aquila, who had been staring at his own hard brown sword hand on the table, looked up quickly. “None in blood.”
“We all know, I think,” Dubricius said with dry courtesy, “where Ambrosius’s choice must have fallen, were it not that —” He seemed for the moment at a loss how to go on, and I helped him out.
“That Artos the Bear, his brother’s son, was chance-begotten on a farm girl under a hawthorn bush.”
The Bishop again bent his head in acknowledgment and acceptance, though I thought with a trace of pain, such as a well-bred man might fail to conceal, were a guest to spit at his supper table. “There remains, then, unless my memory plays me false, but one other on whom the choice may rightly falclass="underline" Cador of Dumnonia also is of the Emperor Maximus’s line.”
“Only on the dam’s side,” another man put in, and a third added reflectively into the gray bird’s-nest of his beard, “But no hawthorn bush.”
Perdius, the cavalry commander, said impatiently, “Shall we lay aside this question of hawthorn bushes, which has to my mind very little bearing on the case, and choose whoever seems like to be the man best fitted for the High Kingship? We have no experience of this Cador’s powers, but we know well the Bear’s. May I state now, once and for all, that I believe Artos, the Rex Belliorum these many years, to be that man.”
“Speaking as a soldier?”
“Speaking as a soldier, in a day when we need above all things, a soldier to lead us.”
But Dubricius was a churchman, bound by the laws and the formulas of the Church. “So; but then again, Perdius, there may be others among us who may believe that the High Kingship, which is of God, calls for other qualities, other qualifications, besides a strong sword arm. And in the judgment of these others, Cador of Dumnonia, the true-born son of his father, and a ruler already in his own right, may seem to have the stronger claim.”