Again he nodded. "Yes, I think so."
"Good. What is it?"
"Boys' voices have no place in men's affairs when and if their contributions are mere loud noises and ill manners ... " He arched his eyebrows the way he did in class, before he would articulate some thought that had occurred to him. "If that is true, it follows logically, therefore, that boys' voices may have some place in those affairs if they are serious and well informed." His eyes flicked from me to my brother and back to me. "Is that not so?"
"Aye, it is." I could smile again now, and I laid my hand on his head. "Serious is the key word, meaning sober and attentive and respectful. But a serious boy need not necessarily be well informed. Well intentioned might be a better way of putting it, for well-intentioned questions, well presented at the proper time, can lead to his becoming well informed ... Now, if you can remember what you wanted to contribute to this discussion, ask away."
The boy went very still, his gaze sharpening and his brows creasing very slightly as he marshalled his thoughts. Then he rocked from side to side, placing his hands palms down on his seat and anchoring them with his thighs, after which he sat hunched forward, gazing into the middle distance. I looked across his head to where Ambrose sat watching. Our eyes met, and Ambrose raised his eyebrows in a gesture of tolerant amusement, but our boy had now finished his deliberations.
"Not so much a question as a wondering," Arthur said. "I was wondering why it is that every great leader seems to carry the seeds of his own defeat with him, and why some of them manage to avoid having those seeds germinate, while others fail and perish because of them."
It was my turn now to be astonished. From time to time this boy, who lived and functioned as a normal, wild and thoughtless boy from day to day, was capable of coming up with the most astoundingly complex thoughts, observations and conclusions.
"Were we discussing that?"
"No, but you were talking of Vortigern."
"Yes, and where is the relevance to our discussion in your question?"
My tolerant question of the boy drew a disparaging glance and a withering response from the seldom-seen but very impressive man who dwelt inside him. "Isn't that obvious? Vortigern sowed the seeds of his own downfall When he imported Hengist's Danes to stand with him against the other invaders. My great-grandfather, Publius Varrus, wrote about it in his books, and so did Uncle Picus, and so have you, in your writings. In his hope of keeping the foxes away from his ducks, he brought a wolf into his house to live with him. He has committed the same basic error that the Romans did, when they took subject races and trained them in their own way of fighting, teaching them to overthrow the Empire. Alexander the Great, on the other hand, was far more fortunate. His weakness went unperceived."
"Alexander of Macedon?" Ambrose was grinning from ear to ear. "What was his weakness? He conquered the world, so it could not have been an overwhelming one."
"On the contrary, Uncle Ambrose, it could have been— should have been—a fatal one."
My brother frowned as though insulted, then looked at me. I kept my face blank, feeling no need to admit that my ignorance was as great as his. Arthur, in the meantime, was looking from one to the other of us, and I would have sworn he was unaware that neither of us knew what he was talking about. Finally, Ambrose bowed to the inevitable.
"Well, then, I admit you have me. What weakness have you identified in Alexander of Macedon—apart from his cavalry?" He was being facetious, of course, but the boy shook his head.
"No. That was it."
"What are you saying?" Ambrose's expression was ludicrous. "That it was a weakness? His cavalry?"
"No, his Companions."
"His—?" Ambrose threw up his arms in exasperation and looked to me for support. For my part, feeling as bewildered as he was, I schooled my features into calmness and cleared my throat before saying anything else. Arthur looked at me, waiting to hear what I would say.
"Arthur ... The Companions ... there are some who would say ... " I was beginning to feel ridiculous, and I cleared my throat ferociously and began again. "Look, boy, I have no wish to argue with you, but the Companions are generally accepted, by those who know anything about them, as the greatest fighting force of the Ancient World. They were hand-chosen by their king, Philip of Macedon, and they trained with him and rode to battle with him at their own expense, providing all their own horses, armour, weaponry and equipment. Each was an individual champion, a warrior of renown and unimaginable value, and when King Philip died, a victim of assassination, they transferred their entire allegiance to his son, the young Alexander, and conquered the world under his leadership, long before Rome had begun to gain any power of her own. How could they be defined, by you or anyone, as a weakness?"
Arthur grimaced. "Only in error. You are correct, Uncle. I've made the same mistake I made before: inexactitude. But, if I may say it without being impertinent, so have you and Uncle Ambrose. What I said at first was that every great leader seems to carry the seeds of his own defeat with him. It is the idea of the seeds that is important. It was Alexander's Companions who carried the seeds."
"What seeds, Arthur?"
"Their primary weapon of attack, the sarissa."
"The sarissa?" I could feel Ambrose's blank amazement and utter incomprehension mirrored on my own countenance. "Forgive me, lad, but I have no idea what you mean. We have been trying to improve upon Alexander's sarissa, in Camulod, ever since we first began to train our soldiers to ride horses."
"I know you have, and Uncle Ambrose is still working with it. But the design has changed. The weapons that the Camulodian troopers use are not sarissas, and therefore they are not so dangerous. Besides, Uncle Ambrose has also developed the means of counterbalancing their threat, even if it were there."
I looked at Ambrose. "My felicitations on that. What did you do?"
Ambrose shook his head and gestured with his hand to Arthur, attracting his attention. When he had it, he stood up and moved close to the fire, speaking down to the boy. "Tell me, Arthur, where have you learned all this about the sarissa?"
"From the books written by Publius Varrus and Caius Britannicus. The books from the Armoury in Camulod. We brought them with us when we came here."
"I know you did, but I thought I had read all of them, and yet I have no recollection of anything being said, in any of the volumes I have read, about the sarissa being a thing of weakness, or even a seed of weakness, which means I have not read all of them."
"Well, no ... "
"What does that mean?"
The boy shrugged. "That was never said, exactly, in any of the books. It was something that occurred to me while I was reading, and I merely wondered at it, when first I noticed it. I didn't think of it as weakness until much later, about a year ago, when I was thinking about how the Empire collapsed, and the weakness within the system that led to that."
I moved to interrupt him, but Ambrose waved me to silence. "No, Caius, let him finish. This is important, I think. I can see that weakness, Arthur, the Imperial flaw, I mean, but not the Alexandrian one. How—exactly how— did you come to construe the sarissa as a fatal weakness? No one else ever has, to my knowledge. Have you, Cay?"
I merely shook my head. Arthur looked from one to the other of us again, his eyes wide, and then his face split in a wide grin, his lambent, gold-coloured eyes laughing in disbelief.