"I haven't had much time to work on it, and I won't guarantee that it will work the way you want it to." He shook his head dubiously. "I knew what the problem would be. I've got to get enough weight into the pommel to counterbalance that bastardly long blade. The thing sticks out there like Rhea's teats, but Rhea's got the buttocks to balance her, and this thing doesn't."
I laughed at that. Rhea was one of the Colony's most outstandingly endowed young women, and Equus had been quietly lusting after her for some time.
He laughed with me, shaking his head. "Ah, that Rhea! Now there's balance! She's so well balanced, may all the gods bless her, that she can fall on her back as lightly as a feather, anytime she wants to, which is most of the time, except when she's around me." He laughed again, a great, raucous laugh directed at himself.
I reached out and clapped him on the shoulder. "You've made a start, anyway. Keep at it, Equus. By the day after tomorrow, I'll be able to work on it with you."
"All right, but you'd better be prepared to spend a lot of time on it. This whore is not going to give in to us just because we smile nicely."
"I'm prepared for that, my friend. And now I'm going to bathe, shave and eat. Council meets tomorrow and I want to be in good shape for the session."
I left him as I had found him, hard at work, puzzling over the weighting of the new weapon.
XXIV
I was late for the Council meeting the following day, in spite of all my good intentions, so I don't really know how the argument started. All I do know is that by the time I arrived, the session was about half an hour old and a great storm had blown in during the first fifteen minutes. I heard the hullabaloo as I approached the doors of the chamber, and the volume amazed me. I stopped outside for a few seconds and remembered Vegetius and his whistling stone, and then, on an impulse, I went looking for a trumpeter, or a trumpet. Typically, there was not a soldier to be seen anywhere, so I ended up getting a brass horn from my armoury.
Back once again at the doors of the Council chamber, where the racket was still going on, I tucked the horn under my arm, pulled the door open and stepped inside. The noise in the great room was unbelievable — complete pandemonium, with everybody shouting and screaming at the same time. I scanned the room looking for Caius and quickly located him at the front. He stood erect, watching the scene going on around him, and at his side stood Bishop Alaric. They were the only two people in the room, apart from myself, who were not making a sound.
I had served with Caius Britannicus for a very long time and thought I had seen all of his moods. On occasion, I had seen him angry, and on a very few memorable occasions I had seen him furious. I took one look at him that morning and I knew that I had never seen him this angry before. His face was pallid and the skin was drawn tight over his cheekbones, and his lips were so compressed that he seemed to have no mouth at all. But it was his eyes that gave me pause. They were like stones: hard, cold, unyielding and pitiless. I whipped the horn up to my lips and let its brazen scream smash everyone into silence.
They all turned to face me, stunned a little by the suddenness of the interruption. Then somebody said my name, and from the tone of the voice I could guess that its owner was about to try to solicit my support. I silenced him with another blast, holding this one until I ran out of breath. Nobody moved until I did, but then, as I started to walk, they began to talk again, and I silenced them again with a third blast. This time, as I removed the mouthpiece from my lips, I pointed to the front of the room and said, "Caius Britannicus!"
All eyes went to him. He remained rigid for a few seconds and then he said, "Let us be seated."
Again a voice was raised, and in an instant, Caius had drawn his sword from its scabbard and smashed the flat of it on the table in front of him with a clang. "SILENCE!" he roared. The silence he received was absolute and awestruck. Utter stillness.
"I said, let us be seated." This was almost a whisper. Now all the anger in the room had turned into embarrassment in the face of his wrath, and everyone sat down.
Caius picked up his sword again from the table, reversed his grip on it and hammered the point deep into the wood, so that the sword stood erect in front of him. When he spoke again, his voice was low, intense and sibilant with disgust.
"I have never in my life, never, been subjected to such a disgraceful display of spleen! How dare you subject me — and yourselves — to such debased behaviour! You people are the Council of this Colony. The elders! Collectively, yours is supposed to be the voice of wisdom!" His eyes raked every man in the room, and there were many who squirmed. Finally, after what seemed like an age, he spoke again.
"Now. I want you all to listen very carefully to what I have to say. I want each of you to make a supreme effort to forget about your own personal demands, or requirements, or interpretations of what you may or may not have heard before coming here." He bit his upper lip and glowered at them, commanding their attention, stretching the silence he had achieved. "Listen for your lives. It is I, Caius Britannicus, who speak to you!" His eyes moved from face to face and again he stretched the pause, making them wait for his next words.
"This is my house. You are here at my invitation. I brought this Council into being!" An expectant hush stilled the room. Finally, when he was convinced that no one was going to break the silence in defiance of him, he continued, and the clarity and conviction in his voice rang throughout the room, even though he spoke with no great volume. No one doubted by this time that they had given grave offence to the presence, the power, that was Caius Britannicus, and his gaze moved from face to face, singling no one out but leaving no one exempt from the import of his words.
"I will tolerate no more outrages of this kind in my house! Is that clear? If you want to behave like animals, or like hucksters in the street, then go and fight among yourselves in the stables or in the marketplace! Not here!" He was overwrought, brittle, and therefore fragile, in his anger. Struggling to calm himself, he lowered his head, pinching the bridge of his nose between the thumb and fingers of his right hand.
I began to move towards the front of the room just as Lars Nepos, a skilled leather-craftsman who was standing in front of me and to my right, leaned over to make a comment to his neighbour.
"Nepos!" I roared, slapping him hard on the shoulder. "Hold your peace! The man hasn't finished yet."
He subsided immediately, looking abashed, and I continued my walk to the front, coming to a stop just behind and to the right of Caius, where I turned and faced the Council, looking at their faces, searching for anger, resentment, hubris. All I saw was shame, mingled with concern for Caius.
He raised his head and squared his shoulders, and when he spoke again his voice had returned to its normal pitch though it was oratorical in its cadences.
"When we founded this Colony, we dedicated it to the cause of survival in the face of Armageddon, and we dedicated it to the preservation of all that was originally great in Rome.
"When we formed this Council, for the governance of the Colony, we spoke with pride of solving our problems nobly, in regulated session dedicated to the common good, as did our republican forefathers in the Senate. This Council is our Senate!" He stopped again, to allow that comment to penetrate the minds of his listeners, and again his gaze swept the assembly, missing no one.
"This Council is our Senate. That is the truth, but it has never been stated before, because it sounds overly grand and intimidating, and it reeks of affectation and unearned and inappropriate powers." Another all-encompassing, ranging look around, without breaking his tempo. "Nevertheless, it is the truth." His audience was spellbound.