“He’d do better to consult with me than that heathen sorcerer.”
The niche across the way was occupied. Lance hadn’t seen the priest huddled there. He blended with the stonework in his grey-brown robes. Lance had nothing against the lad, who looked as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders and no friendly earth on which to set it down. Suddenly, vividly, Lance remembered Father Tomas from Vindolanda, the human warmth that had underlain the old man’s bitterness. “Good morning,” he said, as civilly as he could. “The Merlin has always guided the king. But Arthur will listen to anyone who comes in good faith to advise him.”
The priest stared. Unlike the guards, he had no difficulty in meeting Lance’s eyes, and he did so coldly. “Good faith? Those words should burn your mouth.”
Lance uncurled. His hand was on the hilt of his sword before he could collect himself. “Your cloth protects you,” he growled. “If a man spoke to me so, he’d repent his words at the tip of this blade.”
“I am but a poor soldier of Christ, Sir Lancelot. I need no sword. You, however, are in sore want of repentance. Make your confession to me now, on this morning which is the day of our saviour’s birth! Your weak flesh has betrayed you, but your soul may yet be saved.”
Lance subsided onto the bench. The priest’s words were like a lead-weighted mesh. He’d thrown them well. Lance owed his confession to no-one but Art, but how easily the will could be drained from the weary and the sorrowful by such promises! Tell me, and in the name of God I’ll absolve you. I’ll take your crime away.
Nothing could do that. An old, bloody-minded instinct stirred in Lance, born of all the debates with Tomas by the Vindolanda fireside at night. “My soul and my weak, damned flesh are one and the same thing, priest. You can’t pull me out like a winkle from a shell. It’s not that easy—for either of us. And…” He paused, pushing a hand through his hair. “Since when did the solstice mark the birth of your god? I grew up with a Christian priest, and he’d come to our bonfires because he liked the warmth and all the food. But he never made such a claim.”
“You come from the wild moors. Your priest can have been little more than a farmhand.”
“On the contrary, he’d served at the shrine at Brocolitia, after Emperor Theodosius ordered the temple of Mithras there destroyed. As he constantly reminded us.”
“He was right to keep such honourable service in your minds. But he cannot have received the teaching from Rome that Christ was conceived at spring equinox, which fixes his birth at…”
“Winter solstice. Yes, I see. My father was a Roman soldier, and he and his comrades welcomed back the unconquered sun at this time, once the darkest night was done.”
“My teachers have warned me against such comparisons. Mithras, Sol Invictus—these are ancient demons, sent from the past to tempt men into their former bad ways. Christos is the only true child of the light reborn.”
Lance considered this. He was miserable enough that an argument—with anyone, about anything—felt like a blessed distraction. And poor Tomas had long ago thrown away his chances of creating a blind follower by teaching him—however reluctantly—to read. “I know a tale,” he said quietly, settling back onto the bench, “of a god who came to the earth in the form of a human child. The prophets who’d expected him called him the word-made-flesh, the son of man.”
“Be careful what you say, sire. Take care not to blaspheme.”
“The child taught in the temple when he was no more than twelve summers old, and his elders listened. He was baptized in the river Iarutana, which the Hebrews call Jordan, by a helper named Arup—Iochanan in their language, John in ours. And this Anup the baptist was slain, beheaded by their enemies. This god-child grew up—was put to death, and reborn at the equinox of spring.”
“You will tell me this is the story of one of your father’s demon gods, Ahura Mazda, Mithras or—”
“Neither. It’s the story of Osiris, who was ancient in the land of Egypt before Persian Mithras ever thought to slay his bull. Osiris was called the anointed one, and his story came to us through the Greeks, who translate that title as Christos.” He sat up, words coming to him with unaccustomed ease, as if Viviana herself had found her way inside him, or the ancient dragon’s fire. “Listen to me, priest. All faiths borrow and build upon what went before. Teach the people what you like. Lead whoever will follow you. But don’t steal their gods and their legends, then turn upon them with cries of blasphemy for worshipping in their own old ways.”
The priest drew breath to reply. Lance wanted to close his eyes. This new faith would never allow the elder ones the last word. The day was lost, he knew, the lamps of learning being pinched out, snuffed or suffocated all over the dragon’s isle. And now that his burst of energy was past, he no longer cared.
The priest was staring at the doors to the hall. They had drifted open silently, as if pushed wide by the breeze. The guards, staves crossed again on the off-chance, were gazing anxiously inside. Lance picked up a trace of ozone in the air. One of the guards leaned into the hall, listening. After a moment he turned. “You’re to go in, Lancelot, sire. His Majesty is waiting.”
***
Had the veil been parted to the future? Lance stood in the great vacant hall, its benches bare, its echoes returning with the distant flutter of the doves taking refuge in its rafters from the cruel sea wind. Arthur was alone. He was seated in the throne Coel had placed centrally to honour him, and he looked like a war-weary chieftain of forty summers or more. In decades to come, when battles and loss had worn out the youth from him, this was the face the men and women who loved him would see—hollowed beneath the eyes and cheekbones, pared down to unbearable beauty. After rage and sorrow had passed, and only gentleness remained… “Lance,” he said. “I knew you’d be there.”
“How did you know?”
“Where else would you be on a day of upheaval like this? I hope you’ll always come and find me at such times.”
“I’d have come sooner, but the guard said you were with the Merlin. Where is he?”
“Gone. Completely, in the same way he did when we met him on the stairs that night—with that popping sound, and the smell of copper and the sea—and I pretended not to notice. I think you were right, Lance—I don’t think this one was the same as the one in my visions and dreams, or even the one Ector thought he remembered. He was dying, and he wanted me to go on having a father. Any old man who’d turned up then would’ve probably got the job.”
“Oh, Art. Whoever he was—did he say anything to help you before he disappeared?”