“You then sent the new King off to fight a great battle, at the head of the largest army ever assembled in Britain since the Romans first arrived with Julius Caesar. He won the battle, of course, and it was a great victory, which people think will be but the first of many, and flushed with the fruits of success, all of you have now returned home to Camulod, where I am finally permitted to find you and meet you to present my respects and admit my shame at having been so far removed from everything of importance that has happened in this land since I first set foot in it nigh on a year ago.”
The anger that had been smoldering inside me was now threatening to spill over, and I was aware that I needed to bite down on my ill humor. Evidently the man across from me felt the same way, because he raised one hand quickly, palm outward, stemming my flow of words with a peremp tory gesture born of years of command. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. Merlyn met me eye to eye.
“Germanus is dead.”
I blinked hard, I remember, because I felt I had been staring for too long and my eyes had begun to tingle strangely and then I shook my head, slightly confused, and cleared my throat. “What …? Forgive me, what did you say?”
“Germanus is dead. He died in Italia, after his meeting with the Pope and his fellow bishops. The word was brough to us a month ago, in a letter sent to Bishop Enos by Lu dovic, Germanus’s secretary. You know the man?” I could only nod, the import of what Merlyn was telling me begin ning to penetrate my awareness. “Aye, I thought you might He has been with Germanus for more than thirty years.”
“Forty,” I whispered. “Ludovic has been with the bishop for forty-three years. He is the bishop’s secretary, but they are close friends, too. They started out as students of law to gether, Germanus told me. He became a successful advo cate, but Ludovic quickly found that he preferred building cases to disputing them in open court, and so the two men became associates and remained together ever afterward.”
“I knew they were close, but I would never have suspected such a long friendship. Forty-three years is more than half lifetime. Anyway, Ludovic knew how important our affairs here in Britain were to Germanus, and so he took the time to write a long letter to Bishop Enos, describing the bishop’s final days and the circumstances surrounding his death, and he described in detail several of the conversations he him self had had with Germanus concerning our activities hen and the coronation we were planning. As you know, Ger manus firmly believed that the salvation of the Church Britain will depend upon the emergence of Camulod as military force under Arthur, and neither Bishop Enos nor can see any reason to doubt the accuracy of his expecta tions.”
Merlyn stopped talking and sat watching me closely whil I struggled to absorb all that I had just learned. Finally he leaned slightly toward me, his gaze still fixed on mine, and asked, “How do you feel?”
Even in my daze I recognized the futility of the question. I remembered having asked it myself of other people in pain, in just the same hapless way because there are times when you have to ask, and those are the only words that come anywhere close to framing the concern you are trying to express. I gulped and nodded my head, waving one hand in a small gesture to indicate that I was well and needed no help. It was a lie, of course, and we both knew that, but it served as an acknowledgment that my mind was still functioning. Merlyn accepted it and resumed speaking, still leaning toward me with the same narrow-eyed gaze.
“I want you now to think again about your dream, Clothar, in the light of what I have just told you. From all the information I have been able to gather—from Ludovic’s letter and from the eyewitness account of the priest who brought the letter to us—Germanus must have died very close to the time when you dreamed of his presence in your tent. I mean very close, Clothar … perhaps that selfsame night, and at the very hour you saw him, for he died in the deepest part of the night. His death occurred on the last night in March. Your dream, you said, occurred at the end of March or the beginning of April. I would like you to think more closely about that now, because it is of great import. I have asked Enos if he can remember when it was, but he was not in Verulamium at the time and did not return until several days later. He recalls only that you were excited by the dream and impatient to be on your way, and that you had waited for his return purely out of courtesy.”
I frowned, thinking about that. “I remembered the dream itself, no more. The particular night of its occurrence was unimportant.”
“Well, do you believe now that it might have been important after all?”
I felt myself frowning harder, knowing what he was now suggesting, but I was far from convinced that this theory of his might have merit. “How so?”
“How so? How so? Because, my young friend, if your dream occurred the night Germanus died, then he might really have been there in your tent, and for a purpose.”
I sat gazing at this man about whom I head heard so much and who now appeared to be disappointingly normal and quite incapable of performing any of the heroic exploits I had heard attributed to him. “That is nonsense,” I said eventually. “What possible purpose could he have for doing such a thing?”
“How is it nonsense?”
“I have already explained all of that, Master Merlyn, and even although it makes me sound ill mannered to say so, I thought I had made myself perfectly clear. If any of what happened that night had been real—if Germanus really had come to me in a dream—he would have known that everything was changing and that he was sending me off on a useless journey.”
Merlyn sat for a moment as though weighing what I had said, and then he nodded abruptly. “True,” he said. “From your viewpoint and as you perceive it, absolutely true. But look at it for a moment, if you will, from my viewpoint. What if I were to suggest that your journey was not merely useful but necessary, and utterly unrelated to anything you have envisioned? I have been thinking about that for some time now, but most particularly since you arrived here today, and I now believe that is the truth.”
I had no idea what he meant, and seeing my incomprehension, he said, “These,” and bent down to the floor at his feet and picked up the fat leather wallet I had given him on my arrival, an hour earlier, the wallet that contained all the documents Germanus had sent me to bring to his attention. He had accepted it graciously when I presented it and had then asked for my indulgence while he scanned its contents. His examination had been cursory, for the most part, and he had set several documents aside with barely a glance, quite irrespective of the imposing bulk of some of them.
One document, however—it appeared to be an epistle several pages long—had claimed his full attention, bringing him to his feet with muttered excuses as he walked away to read it in a muted whisper in the afternoon light of the window embrasure. That document now rested securely in the folds of his long outer garment, but he had stuffed all the other papers back into the wallet that he now brandished in front of me.
“The information contained in this wallet is the true essence of your task here in Britain, Master Clothar. I suggest to you now that it is the sole reason for your being here today, far more important in Germanus’s eyes than the matter of Arthur’s coronation. I invited Germanus to participate in that event because I knew his presence would add dignitas and authority to what we did, but he and I both knew, back then, that the event would take place whether he was present or not. So …” He paused, continuing to look me directly in the eye, then began again.
“Ask yourself this. Why did Germanus send you here, to me? He could just as easily have sent you directly to Enos at Verulamium. The letter you brought to him explained everything to Enos, did it not? Anything that he asked you after reading it was born of curiosity and not of a burning need to know important details, is that not so? Am I correct?”