Padrec moved toward him. Prudently, Meganius intercepted, but the priest shot it at Marchudd anyway. "They cannot live there."

"Well, if you will not take the lands freely and generously offered, then let the Faerie seek it where they will." Marchudd spread his hands. "In Gaul, for all I care." He laughed suddenly, pointing at Malgon. "Or at the end of the rainbow, for a start. Isn't that where the pot of gold is supposed to be, in Faerie-land? You are remanded to your Church. Guards, escort them out."

"Come, Sochet." Meganius put his hand to Padrec's shoulder, only to have it shaken off.

"Leave me alone."

But the bishop persisted in a soft voice. "Sochet, there is the reality of God and that of secular princes. There is nothing without a price. There will be missions to the Coritani and a biscopric. Whatever else, you did do God's work."

"And other horrors. Leave me alone."

Padrec stalked away with Malgon between the guards.

"Your grace," Marchudd invited carefully, "will you have some wine before you turn to business? We must consider Auxerre in this new biscopric."

"Thank you, no." With no more excuse than flat refusal, Meganius nodded curtly to the prince and followed after Padrec. Alone with Ambrosius, Marchudd took a wine decanter and two cups to the edge of the dais and sat down. "Some wine?"

"I don't believe I will, sir."

"I was being polite," Marchudd said with an edged weariness. "Sit. Here. Drink."

Ambrosius settled himself dutifully and took a cup. "So much for Patricius."

"Uncomfortable little man. Picts would have been far less trouble; pay them and forget it. Well, it's done. Except for the matter of Gallius' widow."

"My lord?"

"She's been talking to some of your men about the manner of her husband's demise."

Ambrosius considered it over his cup. "I was your legate in the field. It's my word against theirs."

"Of course, but I like to be tidy. I want this ended, Ambrosius. Was Gallius Urbi a good soldier?"

"He might have been, in time."

"But valiant."

Ambrosius sipped his wine without relish. "Now and then, like most men."

Marchudd's observation was distinctly curdled. "It never changes. You always have to buy people, and you never get the best for your money. Give the woman a gold laurel of valor."

"What? For merely following orders, and tardily at that?"

'Tribune, subside. Call it a matter of judgment. He was not tardy. You understand? He was an exemplary soldier who led the first foot into Churnet Head at great personal risk. For this, the posthumous gold laurel and a full pension to his grieving widow."

"Hell, why not a eulogy?"

Marchudd didn't even smile. "Why not?"

Ambrosius understood the prince's drift. Being quite self-possessed, he accepted it. Many things didn't matter now. "Why not? I'll write a commendation."

"In glowing detail," Marchudd suggested. "Something she can show the children and visitors."

Ambrosius reserved his private thoughts for the bottom of his cup. "Jesus."

"Precisely," said the quite capable prince of the Parish, Brigantes, and now a considerable number of the Coritani. "You know what Rome has said to Vortigern? 'Fight your own battles, boyo, we can't help.' There's only one real power that stretches now from the Wall to Jerusalem, Ambrosius. The Church. And I need trouble from them no more than I need it from the plebes. Me-ganius wants no part of the new diocese. You saw how he forced me just now."

"He's your man, isn't he?"

"Meganius is Meganius' man. We travel the same road enough of the time, but not today. He has an attachment to that painful little priest. So does Ger-manus."

Marchudd refilled his cup. "And Germanus thinks his favorite disciple is still in the Augustinian fold. I need his cooperation toward a bishop I and the Coritani can live with, and the price of that was the gentle treatment of Father Patricius. I think we have managed it all rather well." When he elicited no response from Ambrosius, he put his arm around the young man's shoulder. "Come, you heard Meganius. It is all God's work, isn't it?"

* * *

As mentioned, Ambrosius Aurelianus was a private man even in his youth. He wrote his own final word on the matter more than forty years later, in the last months of his reign as emperor of Britain.

The lessons were dear. I began with a large idea and larger ideal. If what I ended with was leaner, it was at least a workable truth. The value of disciplined cavalry has been proved by Artorius Pen-dragon. This last year at Eburacum, his use of cavalry in attack thoroughly shattered the Saxons under Cerdic. I passed to him a knowledge of the strengths and limitations of alae as I learned them against the Coritani. Although Marchudd was never convinced of its value and caviled at the waste of horses and equipment, my standard for both was clearer for this experiment, and of course the Faerie were expendable from the first.

cAo

The Boad of the ©ods

Summer was waning and the evening cool, but Me-ganius lingered in his atrium to see the western sky go from blue to smoky indigo, a hint of orange deepening to blood red as the sun sank to a narrow border of light on the horizon. His tarrying was not entirely aesthetic, although the meditation sometimes took the edge from his concern for Father Patricius.

A week since the shameful hearing, and his priest had disappeared. Worried, still Meganius could not send out the praefect's men in search of an ordained priest as if he were some errant husband. Discreet inquiries among the city's decurions and minor clergy were fruitless. Patricius had not been seen in any place one might expect to find him, not even in the shops, certainly in no chapel. The taverns, of course, were beneath consideration. Meganius threw it over. If the man was gone north again, he might have said good-bye, but what else could one do?

The light in the west was a mere thread. Meganius felt the chill. He rose from his bench and turned toward the portico. The tentative knock at the gate made his heart thud. He hoped.

4 'Never mind/' he called to the servants within the house as he hurried down the walk. 'Til go myself."

In the gloom, he recognized Patricius folded belly down over a smaller form that wove unsteadily toward

him. "Malgon? Oh, preserve us, is he hurt? Not dead?"

He helped Malgon lower his burden to the ground, as it couldn't stand on its own. The Faerie tried to straighten up; the effort destroyed what balance remained to him. They both reeked of cheap uisge. Malgon made a slurred attempt at speech.

"Padrec be much ... much in need."

"You're drunk."

Sodden as Patricius, Malgon collapsed on his rump, gazing blearily up at the bishop, then wilted down beside the other body. One of them belched.

Meganius counted to ten and then, drawing on a patient character, counted his blessings. At least he's come home.

"Corns!"

How many days was it now? When Padrec could think of things like that, he seemed to remember handing one of his gold bracelets to the obese tavernkeeper. What before that? Hazy. He left the palace and walked with Malgon. They found a dim little tavern near the south gate that made up in squalor what it lacked in charm. They drank wine at first, then called for uisge, then after—how long?—the fat man asked for a reckoning. That's when I paid with the bracelet, told him to keep the uisge coming.

The tavern never seemed to close. It was light outside, then dark and light again, and after that he couldn't see as far as the door and it didn't matter. One of them must have ordered food. A bowl of something appeared in front of Padrec.

Wine-drowned chicken? Oh, I can't, your grace. It's a fast day.

The uisge floated them into a raucous, orgasmic laughing jag until the laughter turned morose, and then they cried until exhaustion took them, and they bellowed for more uisge. Somewhere in one of the light periods, when the tavern bustled around the sodden island of

them, they began to keen, but the other customers complained.

Sing if you like, but stop that — whatever it is.

The complainers had a Coritani look to them. Padrec and Malgon quickly agreed on evident truth. Any tall-folk who objected to the voiced soul of Prydn was not in harmony with Mother and should be cleansed from her.

They managed to rise.

Padrec woke in one of the darker periods. He was lying on the floor with the taste of blood and vomit in his mouth. His lip was swollen and split. With great care, he hauled himself onto the bench again. Red-eyed Malgon was hung over the table like a garment carelessly thrown at it. When Padrec shook him muzzily, Malgon opened an eye like a hemorrhage.

"Tallfolk man says must go, Padrec."

"That was this morning," the tavernkeeper told them in a tone drained of patience. "Out, you two."

*Tminute." Padrec thought about the distance to the door, then melted over the table and lost consciousness again.

No, not near enough to oblivion. He could still think and dream, the dreary treadmill still turned, unable to stop. He dreamed of foolish things less painful than others: Marchudd princely in his chair of state.

Everyone knows Tir-Nan-Og and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Weren't we going to sing, Mai? No one said we couldn *t sing.

The treadmill turned, cranked by Ambrosius, and Marchudd prompted him in the words everyone knew, everyone knows.

Padrec moaned, lifted his head with effort, and turned the other way on the tabletop, the pillow. He dreamed of Dorelei humming softly before sleep, stroking his hair as he lay with his mouth against her small breast.

Be not where but only when The Prydn hoard be seen again

"Not the right words," Padrec mumbled into the pillow.

It seemed he slept on forever, a Tir-Nan-Og of the mind. The rest of the world and time hung on a rack, waiting while he dreamed. Of course he knew the right words, knew them from the cradle, from the time he left his mother's breast and fell asleep on his old nurse's lap.