Her tone made me smile. "Why not? Would it surprise you very much if I showed that much interest?"
"In matters of the Church? You?" she scoffed. "My dear boy, whatever hopes I might once have had for your salvation are long dead. You are my nephew, and I love you, but you are a scandalous libertine." She laughed aloud. "I can no more imagine you travelling from here to Verulamium for a debate between bishops than I could imagine my Publius, God rest him, earning his living as a fisherman."
I grinned with her. "Why not, Auntie? Publius Varrus, having decided he must be a fisherman, would have had boats sink beneath him from the weight of his catch." I paused, sobered. "Seriously, Auntie, I think it would be irresponsible of me to miss this debate, if I could possibly arrange to be there."
"Irresponsible, Cay?" She had caught my mood change, and leaned back in her chair to scrutinize me more closely, squinting her eyes slightly as she sought to read my expression. "Why irresponsible? That is a weighty word."
"This is a weighty matter, Auntie."
"Is it indeed? Well, I confess it is. Weighty and profound. I know that, but it surprises me that you should recognize it, too."
I made a wry face. "Am I that predictable? So easy to dismiss as shallow?"
"No, God forgive me if I make you feel that way, Caius. I am merely... surprised, that is all. You will admit, will you not, that you have never shown any interest in such things before?"
"Freely. But people change, Auntie, and I suppose I am changing..." I fell silent, and she allowed me time to collect my thoughts. "I've been thinking a great deal about my father, and the things he stood for, and I don't think I have ever in my life seen anything finer, anything more fitting, or more dignified and decorous, than the way he defied and denied those odious priests in Council that day, before he expelled them from the Colony.
"And yet, thinking of that, despite my admiration for my father's stance, and his judicious reasoning, not to mention his restraint—I don't think I could have put up with the abuse he swallowed that day—I've also had to think about the long-term effects of his actions that day. We have not heard the last of that affair, and my father is no longer here to deal with the repercussions. But someone will have to, and I think that someone will be me. Honestly, Auntie, I don't know if I can cope with that task. I haven't got the moral certitude, the scope of experience, the authority or the tempered judgment that my father had." I paused again, breaking new ground here, seeking new words to describe my thinking, and as I did so, I became aware of the expression on my aunt's face.
"What are you thinking? Do I sound arrogant?"
She smiled, shaking her head gently. "No, anything but. I'm entranced, but I don't want to interrupt your train of thought. Go on, Caius, please. Tell me your thoughts, and don't worry about mine."
I was sheepish, admitting my own bafflement. "Please understand, Auntie, that I'm as surprised as you by what I'm saying. I've never voiced these thoughts before today. They have been in my mind, obviously, but I haven't really been aware of them, other than in passing. There has been no urgency to them, if you know what I mean..." My mind was spinning, thoughts tumbling over each other faster than I could grasp them, and Luceiia remained silent, aware that what I needed was a sympathetic ear to hear my thoughts, rather than words to interrupt them. I floundered on.
"Bishop Alaric was your friend, Auntie. You loved and admired him. So did Grandfather Cay and Uncle Varrus, and everyone else who knew him. I have been raised according to his teachings, and although I never really knew him, I know he was a simple, godly man, that he lived in the love of the Christ, and that his living was beyond reproach.
"All this I know, as I know that his entire being was dedicated to the propagation of the Church, Christ's Church. And yet here we are today, all of us in Britain, condemned and excommunicate because of his teachings and his beliefs, in spite of all his piety. That confounds me. What was his sin? What grievous offence against God was Alaric guilty of? He espoused the cause of Pelagius, whose teachings indicated that men have a God-given, divinely inspired nobility of soul, precisely because they were made in the Image of God!" Frustration threatened to overwhelm me, and I stopped to draw several deep breaths before I could resume. "My eternal salvation may depend upon it, Auntie, but I cannot accept an essential wrongness in that premise. God made man in His own Image and Likeness. Those are the basic tenets of the Church! And if that is so, then there is an element of the Divine in man, in his very nature. But now the men in Rome, die men who rule God's Church, have decided that their way, their definition, their interpretation of God's will, is more correct than the opinions of Pelagius, or Alaric, or any of the other British bishops who admire Pelagius's ideas. And to ensure they will have their way, they threaten all of us—this entire country—with eternal damnation! Faugh! It's disgusting!"
Her face was utterly devoid of expression, revealing neither censure nor endorsement. I plunged ahead. "And so, I think...No, I believe, I'm convinced, that this debate you speak of will be the most important event of its kind in this country's history. Germanus is a soldier, and to have been both a Legate and a friend of my father, he must be a good one. It follows logically, therefore, that he must be a pragmatist. I can't imagine him as a zealot of the kind we envision when we think of the new Roman clerics. And yet, by the same token, his must be a formidable mind, schooled in logic and theology as well as in military strategy and tactics.
He will be a fearsome and ferocious debater, a prosecutor. He would not be coming, otherwise.
"This debate, Auntie, will be the arena in which all of the ideas, and the values, and the worthiness of Bishop Alaric, and Caius Britannicus, and Publius Varrus, and Picus Britannicus, and all their peers, will be either defended and exonerated, or attacked, vilified, condemned and proscribed. The Pelagian British against the Orthodox Romans. Heresy against dogma..." I paused, overwhelmed by the import of my own argument. "I have to go, Auntie. To Verulamium. I have to be there, to witness this, because after this event, in this four hundred and twenty-ninth year of Our Lord, no matter what the outcome may be, life in Britain will never be the same again. This entire land of ours, and all the people in it, will be on trial in this debate, not merely for their lives, but for their eternal souls."
When I had finished, the silence between us was long and profound. I slumped in my chair, slack-muscled, as though I had been involved in some strenuous, exhausting physical endeavour. Finally my aunt moved to pick up a small mallet and beat the gong on the table beside her chair. Her housekeeper appeared immediately.
"Martha, bring some wine for my nephew. The cold, sparkling kind from Gaul. Open a new jar from the ice house."
When Martha had gone, I asked, "Why have you no male servants, Auntie? You're no man-hater."
She smiled. "No, I simply prefer to have women around me. I have lived enough of my life in a male-dominated world. Women have different values, Caius, and I find I identify more easily with them, now that I am old." She paused, collecting her thoughts. "I wish your father had been hear to listen to you today. He would be very proud."
"You think so? Thank you, Auntie."
"Now be quiet and let me think."
We sat again in companionable silence until Martha returned with my wine, which was delicious and icy. When she had served me and left again, my aunt said, "Of course you must go. I had intended to go myself, but I am too old and it is too far. You will be my deputy. But what about you Cassandra? You will be gone for months.*'
"I'll take her with me. It will be wonderful for her."
"All that way? And will you go alone? Just the two of you? All across Britain?"