I did not answer. I have never been a man to whom words came easily in the time of most need. The wrongs that had been done to him sickened me, I was torn with furious pity as for some hideous bodily hurt. And for the first tune, in that desperate cry against loneliness, I knew something of myself in the son I had begotten, and through my own dread of loneliness, that had made me flinch from the Purple, like called to like. In a moment more, I think that I should have put my arm around his bowed shoulders. . . .
But before I could do so, he wrenched himself away and sprang to his feet, and the chill, jibing note was back in his voice when at last he broke the silence between us. “Ah, na, that is too much to ask for, isn’t it?”
And the moment was gone beyond catching back. “That would be to ask for a gift, and I must not ask for a gift, I am only your son. If I were a chieftain of the Sea Wolves, then the thing would be different, and we might laugh together, even with the dagger naked between us. Sa, then I demand only my rights.”
I got up from the bed place, and we stood facing each other. “Your rights, Medraut?”
“A son’s rights in place of a son’s gift.” He was speaking half wildly now. “Today you sat in council with the lords of the Sea Wolves, Flavian with you, and Cei — the son of a Roman house who cannot even speak our tongue without the gutturals of the Rhenus half drowning whoever stands nearest him — and Connory and that young whelp Constantine and the rest; and where was I? Outside sitting on my rump with mere squadron captains around the cooking fire!”
“Are you not, then, one of my squadron captains?”
“I am also Prince of Britain; it was my right to sit at the council table — all men know that by blood I am Prince of Britain.”
“By blood, yes,” I said.
“Oh, my father the Emperor, there is small need to remind me that we are both bastards; have you found it to stand in your path?”
In the long silence that came after, the wind lifted the wolfskin over the doorway and teased the candle flame, and high in the darkness overhead, over toward the marshes, I heard the whistle of the wild duck passing. I was thinking suddenly that even on that last night in the upper room, Ambrosius had never spoken of Medraut; it was as though we both knew and tacitly agreed that his entrance into any plans for Britain’s future was unthinkable. Now I was thinking of Medraut coming after us, his hand on the Sword of Britain, and the fear was black on me, for all that I believed in and held sacred.
“If I were to bid you sit in council with me, it would be as though I stood up and cried before all men, ”This is my heir, to come after me! But that is the thing you have in mind, isn’t it?“
“I am your son,” he said again.
“Among the wearers of the Purple, the diadem has never passed of necessity from father to son. Your son’s rights, Medraut, do not include the Sword of Britain after me, unless I speak the word.”
The usual veil over his eyes seemed to thicken until the blueness of them was completely blank; and he said after a moment, in a voice that was suddenly silken: “How if I speak a word, then? How if I shouted the whole foul truth of my begetting to the camp?”
“Shout, and be damned to you,” I said. “The chief shame will not fall on my head, who had no knowledge of that truth, but on your mother’s, who knew it well!” There was another pause, filled with the sea-surge of the wind in the trees. Then I said, “You see, it is not so easy alter all.”
“Na,” he agreed, in the same silken voice. “It is not so simple after all. Yet maybe we shall find a way one day, my father. It is in my heart that we shall find a way.” The threat was clear.
“Maybe,” I said, “but meanwhile it is time for sleep, for the rising time for both of us must come early in the morning; and truth to tell, I wish to be alone.”
And when he had made me his low bow that was a mockery of respect, and ducked out through the skin-hung door hole, I sat thinking for a long while before I called Riada to me. I thought, among other things, that it was as well that there should be no public talk of Constantine coming after me. Cador and I understood each other well enough, that in the nature of things, the boy must be my heir; but it would be better — safer for Constantine and for the kingdom — that the thing should not be put into words and cried aloud in the Forum.
BEFORE the end of the month I was back in Venta. We rode in between roaring crowds who surged forward to fling golden branches and jewel-colored autumn berries under our horses’ hooves, and it seemed that the rejoicing of the whole city clamored like a clash of bells.
It was conqueror’s weather, not the half-regretful glancing back to summer that occurs sometimes in early autumn, but the sudden valiant flare of warmth and color on the very edge of winter that often comes toward the time of Saint Martin’s Mass. The sun shone like a bold yellow dandelion flower tossed into a cloudless sky, and a wind last night had dried the mud of the autumn rains so that the dust curled up beneath the horses’ hooves, the poplar trees stood along the streets as yellow torches, with their shadows under them reflecting the blue of the sky. And next day, when I was able at last to draw breath and turn my back for an hour on matters that concerned the war trail and the kingdom, the sun was still warm to the skin in the Queen’s Courtyard, where Bedwyr and I lounged side by side on the colonnade steps. The light was westering, and the sand-rose in its great stone jar laid an intricate tracery of shadow at our feet, and denser shadow stole out from the far side where the pigeons crooned and strutted on the roof of the store wing. But on the colonnade steps out of the wind, there was warmth to let one’s cloak hang open, a still warmth, lingering like the savor of old wine in an amber cup. The smell of the evening meal stole out from the cook place, and the movements and voices of women, and the fat bubbling laugh of the woman who had taken Blanid’s place when the old creature died last year.
I had been telling Bedwyr of all that had happened at the council table, and the course that I had taken as to the Saxon settlement, while he sat forward with his maimed arm supported across his knees, his narrowed gaze following the pigeons, listening to me without a word. I wished that he would speak, it was hard to tell the thing against this wall of silence. But when I had finished he still maintained it, until I asked him directly, “When I was young, I’d have torn out their living hearts, and my own also, before a Saxon should be left on British ground. Am I learning other things than the use of the sword, Bedwyr? Or am I merely growing old and losing my grasp?”
He stirred then, still watching the pigeons strut and coo. “Na, I do not think that you are losing your grasp; it is that you must learn to play the statesman now. For Artorius Augustus Caesar it is no longer enough to be a soldier, as it was for Artos the Count of Britain.”
I rubbed my forehead which felt as though sheep’s wool were packed behind it. “I have not slept much, these past nights, wondering if I have chosen the wrong course and maybe the rum of Britain. And yet it is still in my mind that it is the lesser of two dangers.”
“In mine also,” Bedwyr said. “We cannot stretch our shield-wall to cover the Forth to Vectis Water — it may be that this way will at any rate gain us more time.”