The crystal cave - Mary Stewart [148]
This time he gave it. He demanded only that the remnants of the Saxon army should withdraw to the north, beyond the old Wall of Hadrian, which (he said) he would count the border of his realm. The lands beyond this, so men say, are wild and sullen, and scarcely habitable, but Octa took his liberty gladly enough, and after him, eager for the same mercy, came his cousin Eosa throwing himself on Ambrosius' bounty. He received it, and the city of York opened its gates to its new king.
Ambrosius' first occupation of a town was always to follow the same pattern. First of all the establishment of order: he would never allow the British auxiliaries into the town; his own troops from Less Britain, with no local loyalties, were the ones that established and held order. The streets were cleaned, the fortifications temporarily repaired, and plans drawn up for the future work and put into the hands of a small group of skilled engineers who were to call on local labour. Then a meeting of the city's leaders, a discussion on future policy, an oath of loyalty to Ambrosius, and arrangements made for the garrisoning of the city when the army departed. Finally a religious ceremony of thanksgiving with a feast and a public holiday.
In York, the first great city invested by Ambrosius, the ceremony was held in the church, on a blazing day near the end of June, and in the presence of the whole army, and a vast crowd of people.
I had already attended a private ceremony elsewhere.
It was not to be expected that there was still a temple of Mithras in York. The worship was forbidden, and in any case would have vanished when the last legion left the Saxon Shore almost a century ago, but in the day of the legions the temple at York had been one of the finest in the country. Since there was no natural cave nearby, it had originally been built below the house of the Roman commander, in a large cellar, and because of this the Christians had not been able to desecrate and destroy it, as was their wont with the sacred places of other men. But time and damp had done their work, and the sanctuary had crumbled into disrepair. Once, under a Christian governor, there had been an attempt to turn the place into a chapel-crypt, but the next governor had been outspokenly, not to say violently, opposed to this. He was a Christian himself, but he saw no reason why the perfectly good cellar under his house should not be used for what (to him) was the real purpose of a cellar, namely, to store wine. And a wine store it had remained, till the day Uther sent a working party down to clean and repair it for the meeting, which was to be held on the god's own feast day, the sixteenth day of June. This time the meeting was secret, not from fear, but from policy, since the official thanksgiving would be Christian, and Ambrosius would be there to offer thanks in the presence of the bishops and all the people. I myself had not seen the sanctuary, having been employed during my first days in York on the restoring of the Christian church in time for the public ceremony. But on the feast of Mithras I was to present myself at the underground temple with others of my own grade. Most of these were men I did not know, or could not identify by the voice behind the mask; but Uther was always recognizable, and my father would of course be there, in his office as Courier of the Sun.
***
The door of the temple was closed. We of the lowest grade waited our turn in the antechamber.
This was a smallish, square room, lit only by the two torches held in the hands of the statues one to either side of the temple door. Above the doorway was the old stone mask of a lion, worn