His face clouded, and he sat staring for a space of moments into the flames in the fire basket, but then he collected himself again and straightened slightly, looking me in the eye. “You may or may not have heard mutterings of what is going on in the world outside our school, but there is widespread unrest, and troublesome events are shaping up here in Gaul … very real threats of another war, which is the last thing any of us needs. These threats are arising from several sources. Most particularly, however, they are emanating from the lands of the Burgundian tribes, to the south and west of where we sit today. The imperial military intelligence people have been warning us for years now that the Burgundians are poised to spill out of their present holdings in an attempt to conquer all of central and southern Gaul, and first and foremost, from my perspective, those are not good tidings for the Church. The Burgundians, as you know, are not Christian and are, in fact, violently opposed to us and to our faith. They seem to delight in killing priests and bishops and in persecuting the faithful wherever they find them, and so we—my brother bishops and our clergy—will be using all the influence at our disposal, marshaling and channeling our combined resources to deflect and disarm the rebels’ initiatives however and wherever we can—working in conjunction, of course, with the legions.” Again he paused, considering his next words.
“It was forewarnings of a Burgundian revolt that caused the Imperial Administration in Treves to summon Duke Lorco here from his base in Carcasso, but I have received forewarnings, too, from my own sources, concerning another aspect of the same revolt, and that is why I require your assistance—not because you are a doughty fighter and a champion of God’s work, although you show all the signs of growing into such strengths, but because you are Ban’s nephew and adopted son and Ban is my friend. And so I would have you leave here in four days’ time, bearing messages from me to your kinsman Ban and traveling with your friend Stephan Lorco and his father the Duke when they leave to return to their own lands in the south. Their journey home to Carcasso will take them within sixty miles of where you live, and I have asked the Duke to provide you with an escort from his group for that short portion of the journey that will remain to bring you to Genava. He assures me that he will see you safely delivered home. Will you do this for me?”
“Of course, Father,” I said, attempting to mask my disappointment at being sent home from school before my just time had elapsed. Even as I voiced my consent, however, I saw that he had told me nothing other than that he was sending me away. Because King Ban, my uncle, was his friend, he had said, Germanus wanted me to leave his school and go home. For what purpose? And if it were only to bear messages, why would he send me and not a fast-riding courier? Beginning to grow increasingly confused, I bit down upon my rising panic and forced myself to try to speak what was on my mind. “You want me to carry a message to King Ban … from you and in person … but what do you wish me to tell him, Father?”
He seemed completely unaware of my discomfiture and merely smiled, shaking his head very slightly in dismissal of any concerns I might have. “Nothing that you need lose sleep about. I will put everything into words on paper in the next few days, because it is of extreme importance that I say what must be said properly, with no possibility of being misunderstood. I shall therefore write, and rewrite, and write yet again. It will be sufficient for you to carry the missives that I write to your uncle the King, thereby assuring him that they come directly from me to him, as a friend. That done, and having spent some pleasant and restful times with your aunt, the Lady Vivienne, you will hie yourself back here as soon as may be, for this is merely the first such task I have assigned to you and by the time you return I will have great need of you … .” He broke off, arching one eyebrow. “You wish to say something.”
“I … I am to return, then, Magister? I thought you were sending me away for good.”
“I am sending you away for good, boy—for good reason and to even better purpose. I am sending you upon a mission for the well-being of God’s Church and her faithful servants, which means, in effect, that I am sending you upon God’s own work. But I am far from being finished with your education, if that is what you really meant to suggest. I have much in mind for you, and hone of it entails sending you back to Genava permanently as a punishment for having reached the age of sixteen.” He smiled. “In truth, I see little of Genava in your future, my young friend, at least for several years. That is, at least in part, why I am sending you home on this mission. It will give you an opportunity to take your leave of your family again before moving on to the next level of your endeavors.”
As his words washed over me I felt relieved, elated, and exalted. I would be called upon to do a man’s work here in central Gaul, it seemed. I felt the merest twitching of guilt in acknowledging then that I had been dreading my eventual return to Genava, fearing that the life I had known there previously would suffer gravely now by comparison to all that I had known here in Auxerre. Now, however, with the blessing bestowed by these new duties, I could return gratefully to the lakeside to revisit and embrace all my old friends and loved ones before taking off yet again on expanded adventures.
I had yet another cause for relief and exultation in my breast on that occasion, although I would have been loath to mention it to my august mentor. When it first occurred to me that I was being sent away, never to return to the school, my chest had filled up with the unanticipated and panic-stricken fear of being unable to fulfill my vengeance—that long-standing promise to myself that I would one day pursue, confront, and cut down the usurper Clodas of Ganis as just punishment for the murder of my parents and my grandfather, his own true king, Garth of Ganis. Were I to be sent home now, I had realized, dismissed from the school before officially achieving manhood, I might never have the opportunity to fulfill my dreams in that regard. Still a mere boy, I would have no voice in Benwick when I went back and that, allied with my reluctance to go back and live in what I now perceived to be a backward and inferior region, might easily combine to make it impossible for me to escape from the humdrum of daily life by the lakeside.
It was an unjust thought and one that was already causing me to feel guilty and ungrateful by the time I realized that I was wrong and Germanus was not banishing me permanently. As soon as that awareness dawned, however, I lost all feelings of fear and guilt in the burst of elation that flooded over me. I would return to Auxerre, and I would finish my schooling and my training, and I would leave the Bishop’s School as a warrior with all the skills, all the abilities, and all the weight of years that would enable me to claim King Ban’s promised assistance in my quest to regain my own rightful kingdom.
When I left the bishop’s quarters that afternoon, I was bubbling inside with excitement, and every philosophical thought that had simmered in my mind earlier had been obliterated by the import of what I could now look forward to doing and being. I had four days left as a schoolboy; four days to wrap up the raiment of my time as a student; after that, like a chrysalis shedding its outer skin, I would be reborn as an entirely new being: a man and a warrior dedicated to the greater glory of God.