The Druid King Page 12

  But, then, nothing turns out to be as easy as it first seems in this barbaric country, Caesar thought sourly. Five cohorts of Roman infantry were not welcome within the walls of any of these Gallic hilltop redoubts, not even here at Bibracte, the Eduen capital. Not only were the men constrained to sleep in the open, within sight of the comforts and pleasures of these rude cities; he himself was constrained to deliver the speech in the open as well. Even, as now, in the rain.

  This last performance shouldn’t even have been necessary. One would have thought Diviacx could have done the recruiting, being the brother of their vergobret and a druid as well. But no, as a druid, Diviacx could take no part in warfare, not even to the extent of standing by Caesar’s side with his mouth shut. And as Caesar had learned, the vergobrets were “tribal chieftains” in name only when it came to mustering troops. Each noble had his own collection of warriors, and the vergobret was powerless to raise an “army” except by force of charisma or oratory art.

  Speaking of which, you had better stick out your chin, and paint a smile on your lips and a gleam in your eyes, Caesar told himself.

  He nodded to Labienus, Labienus nodded to a centurion within the tent with no little relief, the centurion stepped outside and signaled to the trumpeters, who blew a fanfare, and Labienus marched out of the tent to take his place beneath his legion’s standard at the head of his troops, facing the assembled Edui.

  The trumpeters blew a louder, longer, and grander fanfare, and Caesar himself strutted out into the light rain, taking care to hold his crimson cloak away from his body with his upraised elbows and rotate his shoulders once, twice, thrice, to give it a proper dramatic swirl as he strode up to the map hanging from a lance plunged into the ground, and turned smartly to face the Gauls.

  Gisstus emerged quietly to take his usual place beside the map, from where, in the guise of a lackey helping to display it, he could whisper to Caesar anything he might need to hear.

  “Hail, Caesar!” shouted Labienus, snapping his arm out in a smart salute.

  “Hail, Caesar!” five cohorts of legionnaires roared, saluting in perfect unison.

  The Gauls, as usual, boorishly failed to join in the salutation.

  There they stood, no more than a hundred of them, with their hilltop city gloomily visible through the mist, a rabble of some hundred warriors confronting five cohorts of a Roman legion. Which was more or less Caesar’s point.

  “People of Gaul, I salute you!” Caesar began.

  This at least elicited a scattering of polite “Hail, Caesar”s, which would be described as an enthusiastic ovation in his next dispatch to Rome.

  “Rome has rid you of the scourge of the Teutons, built roads, aqueducts, and bridges, conferred upon you the benefits of commerce with the greatest civilization on earth,” Caesar declaimed.

  This was greeted by sullen mutterings, for even the Edui, who had made out better than any of the other tribes, were not dim enough to fail to comprehend that not only did all roads lead to Rome but most of the profit flowed along them in that direction as well.

  It was an old rhetorical trick. Caesar had used it so many times by now that he could do it in his sleep.

  “And now Rome will bring you riches and glory!”

  This never failed to pique their interest. Caesar then suddenly drew his sword, producing a mass intake of breath.

  With a flourish, Gisstus unfurled the map behind him, which depicted the northern coast of Gaul and the isle of Britain beyond in a manner designed to maximize the size of the prize and minimize the width of the channel that must be crossed to get to it. Caesar planted the point of his sword in the center of Britain as if it were a succulent fig on the end of a dining knife.

  “Britain, my friends, rich beyond measure, yet inhabited by people so primitive they think it the height of civilized fashion to paint themselves blue!” he declared.

  This brought rude, superior laughter. It always did.

  “Gold, silver, jewels, vast treasures, guarded not by great armies or mighty warriors, but by mere savages, a hundred of whom would be no match for a single Gaul!”

  This brought the usual cheers and banging of swords and daggers on shields.

  “I propose to bring the benefits of Roman civilization to these benighted savages—”

  Hoots of derision. “And take their riches from them!” someone shouted. Someone always did shout something like that. You could count on it.

  “Indeed, my friends! And share both those riches and the glory of triumph with you!”

  Utter silence. You could perhaps hear a few greedy drops of drool fall.

  “Rome is the most terrible of enemies, as the Teutons and a few misguided Gauls have learned to their sorrow, but Rome is also the greatest of friends, as you will now learn to your profit and glory and joy! We will invade Britain together, my friends, the noble warriors of Gaul—”

  Caesar half turned and pointed with his sword to the cohorts massed on his right hand, who, on the signal, drew their swords as one, held them high in the air.

  “—and the invincible legions of Rome!”

  “Hail, Caesar!” the legionnaires shouted. Some of the Gauls replied, and since his men had been drilled to repeat the salutation as they did, the illusion was created that everyone now repeated it in unison.

  “Hail, Caesar!”

  The illusion in turn created the reality, as such illusions tended to do, and the salutation was repeated spontaneously.

  “I like it not!” shouted a bluff blond fellow with an enormous unkempt mustache near the front.

  There was at least one in every crowd.

  “Dumnorix,” Gisstus reminded Caesar in a whisper. “Diviacx’s brother, but no particular friend of Rome.”

  “What is the great warrior Dumnorix afraid of, a horde of half-naked savages?” Caesar taunted, taking care to say it with a smile, so that the mockery drew laughter from all but Dumnorix, who glowered back at him, his fair skin blushing red.

  “I fear no man!” he shouted.

  “What, then, causes you to hold back from easy wealth and noble glory, O fearless Dumnorix?”

  Though the rage thus evoked in him was visible, Dumnorix apparently was clever enough to know he had best choke it back and escape with a jest. “We are no race of sailors, and that channel gets stormy,” he said. “We might find ourselves heaving our guts out before we got there, to say nothing of what the horses might do!”

  Modest laughter at this.

  “What, is the great warrior Dumnorix afraid of a little seasickness?” Caesar said good-naturedly, allowing him his escape. “Are there others here unwilling to sacrifice a bellyful of vomit for a mountain of gold and a paean of glory?”

  Louder and more derisive laughter.

  “Well, if there are, there are plenty of others in Gaul eager to take your share,” Caesar said with a shrug, and, turning on his heel, pretended to stalk off.

  But only for one, two, three paces. Then he stopped suddenly, snapped his fingers as if at his own forgetfulness, and turned back to face the Gauls.

  “Oh,” he said, “did I forget to tell you that half the booty we take will be yours?”

  The cheers and “Hail, Caesar”s were louder and more prolonged this time, and Caesar took care to make his exit into the tent before they had fully died out.

  “Another good performance, Caesar,” Gisstus said when Labienus had gone off to bivouac his troops, and wine had been brought to soothe Caesar’s throat. “Fortunately, the last.”

  Caesar sighed. “It did get boring,” he said.

  “But it was effective. Few of them are able to resist their greed, and the few that are clever enough to suspect our generosity are shamed into coming along for fear of appearing cowards.”

  “Except for that mound of lard, Gobanit,” said Caesar. “Nothing shames him.”

  The Arverni tended to oppose whatever the Edui favored, and the closer the Edui had come to alliance with Rome, the more restive they had
become. So replacing the biggest troublemaker, that Keltill, with his greedy and pliant brother, and getting him to create an “Arverne Republic” whose “Senate” could then keep electing him vergobret, had been a good idea at the time.

  But Gobanit had outlived his usefulness. He had grown so fat and lazy that the thought of him leading the Arverni into battle was ludicrous. He had dutifully supported the invasion of Britain, but made it clear that he himself would not cross the water. Meaning that he had not the charisma to persuade the hotbloods among the Arverni, who had practically made a god of Keltill, to come along against their distaste for Rome. And these were precisely the sort of elements the whole thing was designed to eliminate.

  Worse, if the restive leadership of the other tribes were to be eliminated without doing likewise to the Arverni, the effect would be to increase the relative strength of Rome’s bitterest enemy among the Gauls.

  “Something must be done about the Arverne situation before we embark, Gisstus,” Caesar said.

  Gisstus drew a forefinger across his throat.

  Caesar shook his head. “If Gobanit were simply eliminated right now, half of the Arverne nobles would suspect us, and all of them would be contending to take his place. It would be chaos.”

  “So we replace him with someone both more popular and more pliant.”

  “Indeed…”

  “The question is, with whom?” said Gisstus.

  “Find someone,” said Caesar.

  “And where do you suggest such a mythical creature might be found?”

  Caesar shrugged. “If one cannot find a unicorn,” he said, “one must make do with an antelope horn glued to the forehead of a white goat.”

  The spring sun warmed the land, the crocuses bloomed in the meadows, and the birds beginning their mating songs seemed to be calling upon Vercingetorix to be gone from this cowardly refuge, to cease learning, to go, to be, to do.

  And so Vercingetorix listened sullenly to the druid teachers drone on and waited for he knew not what. He practiced the figures of the way of the sword alone into exhaustion, and he waited. He dreamed each night of Rhia’s body, and he waited. He burned with impatience, and he waited.

  Only when Guttuatr finally appeared once more at the druid school did he realize what—or, rather, whom—he had been waiting for.

  The Arch Druid had brought him here. The Arch Druid had commanded him to remain. The Arch Druid could not be disobeyed. Therefore, only Guttuatr could free him from his captivity in this place.

  Guttuatr avoided him for two days, eyeing him from a distance, falling into conversation with other druids on his approach, shying away from him like a skittish colt or a teasing maiden. But, at length, Guttuatr finally allowed himself to be approached, walking near the edge of the forest.

  “How much longer must I remain here?” Vercingetorix demanded forthrightly.

  “Until you leave.”

  “That is not an answer!”

  “Ask a better question.”

  Vercingetorix sought to contain his ire. “May I go whenever I want?” he asked.

  “No man will stop you.”

  “May I go wherever I want?”

  “No man may do that,” the Arch Druid told him.

  Vercingetorix refused to let his exasperation overwhelm him, and spoke instead from the honest confusion in his heart.

  “Please, Guttuatr, speak to me plain, as the father I do not have. What am I to do? Who am I to become?”

  “You believe you are ready to seek such knowledge?” Guttuatr asked. “You believe you are ready to pay the price?”

  “Would I ask if I were not?”

  “You do not know what the price is,” Guttuatr said ominously.

  “It cannot be worse than the price I am already paying for my ignorance!” Vercingetorix exclaimed.

  “Walk with me,” said the Arch Druid, and he led Vercingetorix into the forest.

  Nothing more was said until the works of men were lost from sight, and the sounds of the druid school faded away into the chirpings of the birds and the whispering of the wind through the treetops, and even the loamy tang of the forest must have been as it was before men walked here and as it would be when they were gone.

  “Have you never thought to ask why you were brought here to safety?” Guttuatr then asked.

  “Does one question kindness?” Vercingetorix answered insincerely.

  “Was it kindness to make you watch your father’s burning in silence?”

  “Certainly not! It was very cruel!”

  “But a necessary cruelty,” said Guttuatr.

  “How can you call such cruelty necessary?”

  “Why were you taught the way of the sword by Rhia?”

  “That is not an answer!” Vercingetorix told the Arch Druid angrily.

  “But it is,” said Guttuatr. “For the two questions have the same answer. An answer that is also a question.”

  “Can you speak nothing plain?” Vercingetorix shouted.

  “Destiny is both the answer and the question,” Guttuatr told him calmly. “And more often than not speaks far less plainly than I.”

  “Destiny? Whose destiny?”

  “Yours, of course. That of Gaul…perhaps. There was a sign in the heavens—”

  “A comet declaring the coming of a king, everyone knows—”

  “So everyone wants to believe,” said Guttuatr. “But there was no comet.”

  “There was no sign?”

  “I did not say that, Vercingetorix. There was no comet, but there was a sign, a true sign, and a far greater one, the knowledge of whose meaning few possess.”

  They were approaching a small clearing in the forest. From within its shadows and between its tree trunks, Vercingetorix could see a mighty lone oak in a sunlit circle.

  “The sign of a Great Turning,” said Guttuatr, “of the death of the Age in which we live and the coming birth of the next. And…”

  “And?”

  Guttuatr turned to regard Vercingetorix most strangely.

  “When the Crown of Brenn tumbled from the brow of Keltill, and your hand plucked it from the air before it could fall…”

  Guttuatr hesitated for a long moment.

  “Yes? Yes?”

  “I saw that sign again.”

  And before Vercingetorix could speak, the Arch Druid stayed him by raising his hand. “Do not ask me what it means,” he said. “I do not know, I cannot know, for it was the sign of your destiny, not mine, Vercingetorix. You may choose to follow it blindly, or you may choose…to know.”

  They entered the clearing. The earth within it was covered with dark-green moss. And in the center was a single ancient oak. And growing from the bare ground sheltered by its gnarly roots were scores of white-speckled brown mushrooms.

  “What is this tree…?” Vercingetorix said softly. But he knew, for there was a magic here that he could feel.

  “Have you not been told that ‘druid’ means ‘man of knowledge,’ but the inner meaning is—”

  “Knowledge of the oak…This is…?”

  “That oak,” said Guttuatr. He laid the palm of his hand on the bark of the mighty oak. “This is the Tree of Knowledge.”

  “The Tree of Knowledge?”

  “Some call it the Tree of Life, for they are one and the same. Here a man becomes a Druid of the Inner Way. If he so chooses.”

  “If he so chooses?”

  “Few are the druids who choose to walk the Inner Way. For to do so is to know your own destiny.”

  “Who would not wish to know—”

  The Arch Druid silenced Vercingetorix with an upraised hand and a baleful stare. “What knowledge is the heaviest to bear?” he asked.

  Vercingetorix remained silent, for he did not know.

  “The knowledge of your own destiny,” the Arch Druid said.

  “Why should that be so heavy to bear?”

  “What destiny do all men share?” said the Arch Druid.

  And Vercingetorix kne
w. And though the heavy green leaves of the ancient oak moved not at all, he felt a chill wind blowing through the clearing, through his soul.

  “Yes, all men’s destiny is death,” said the Arch Druid. “To eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge is to step outside the dream men call time and know that our lives do not proceed moment by moment, like beads on a string. It is to stand upon a hill above a mist-shrouded forest, looking down on what will be. That hill is your death, and the foreknowledge of its meaning is the greatest power a man can attain. If he has the courage to encompass it while he yet lives.”

  He reached down, plucked a mushroom, held it up to Vercingetorix.

  “I offer you the gift of that knowledge now,” said the Arch Druid. “But I warn you, bitter or sweet, it is the one gift that can never be returned.”

  Vercingetorix reached out and took it.

  “Are you afraid?” asked Guttuatr.

  “Yes,” said Vercingetorix.

  “Good,” said Guttuatr. “He who would not be afraid to bear this knowledge is a fool, and thus unworthy. You may eat.”

  Vercingetorix found himself biting into the mushroom. It was bitter. He choked the rest of it down as fast as he could to avoid the taste, and then sat down between the roots of the Tree of Knowledge, leaned back against its ancient rough trunk, and waited to discover if what he would learn would be more bitter still.

  Vercingetorix awakens into a white mist so dense he cannot see his own body. The only sound is the susurrus of a distant wordless song of seduction.

  The mist begins to glow.

  And there is light.

  A single silver point of it above him.

  A star.

  A star that waxes brighter, and brighter, and brighter. It becomes the sun burning away the mist above him, and Vercingetorix stands upon the pinnacle of a fog-shrouded mountain. And now he can hear the chanting of an unseen multitude like a lover’s whisper crooning in his ear:

  “Vercingetorix…Vercingetorix…”

  The hill beneath his feet begins to turn, or the mist swirls round it, and all the world now revolves about the place where he stands, the unmoving hub of a great wheel turning the dance of life through time.