Camulod Chronicles Book 8 - Clothar the Frank (16 page)

"You are the
orphaned
son of a
dead
and
landless
king who was once a fine man and much loved by everyone who knew him. But he is gone now, long since dead, and the lands he ruled are hundreds of miles from here, governed now by the man who killed him and usurped his title and his holdings. You are still a boy—a mere child, ten years old—and you have nothing . . . no prospects, no wealth, no hopes at all, other than those for which you are beholden to King Ban. Do you hear what I am saying, boy? I knew your father, and I was proud to know him. I knew your mother, too, although no more than by sight, but she was the most beautiful lady I ever saw, more beautiful even than her sister, the Lady Vivienne." He shook me gently, tilting me from side to side and never taking his eyes off me. "I thought to have known you now, for years, but what I'm hearing spilling from your lips today is unlike anything I would ever have believed you capable of saying."

He brought me even closer to his face, so that I could see the individual hairs on his cheeks and the scar at the end of his nose where he had once been bitten in a fight. "Do you know how far your feet are off the ground as I hold you here, Clothar son of Childebertus? I could throw you like a pebble, and leave you lying where you fell. But here is a promise I will make to you freely. If I ever,
ever
hear you speaking of your uncle Ban like that again, I'll strip off your breeches and flog you with my belt until you bleed. Is that clear?" He shook me again, a single, violent jerk.
"Is
it?"

I nodded my head, suddenly overcome with shame and struggling to hold back hot tears. Clodio continued to hold me. "Good," he said. "Let's hope I never have to do that. Now, it's obvious that you've only recently found out about what happened to you as a babe in arms, and I suppose that could be seen as grounds for being angry. Before I put you down, however, I have one more thing to tell you. Are you listening?"

I was, but I was also beginning to grow astonished at the ease with which this man was holding me aloft. He showed no sign of strain at all. His breathing was easy and his voice relaxed. "Yes," I said through the lump in my throat, and nodding for emphasis. "I'm listening."

"Then listen well. I want to tell you something about your father. His soldiers and his people worshipped him. Do you know why? I do. I know why. Some people might give you a hundred other reasons, and they would all be true, to some extent . . . He was tall and strong and good to look upon. He had a pleasant nature and laughed easily. He had a beautiful wife and generous, loving friends. But none of these things explain why he was so much loved. But this one reason that I know, this one thing alone, explains it, and the explanation is very simple, yet very profound: your father treated all people with dignity and truthfulness.

"That may not sound like much to you, at the age of ten, but it is an awe-inspiring thing, almost impossible for ordinary men to achieve. And yet your father lived his entire life behaving that way. He never lied; he never looked down on anyone as being lesser than himself; he never treated anyone badly, unless that person had behaved badly and merited punishment. Your father never had an unkind word or an insult for, or about, anyone who had not earned them. Childebertus of Ganis would never have spoken to me, or to anyone else, the way you did here today. Bear that in mind. If you are going to announce yourself to be your father's son, then be true to his memory and to his honour. Be
worthy
of his name.

"Now, I am growing tired, so I am going to put you down, but when I do, you will stand there and wait until I have finished what I have to say to you. Are we agreed?"

I nodded, wordlessly this time, and he lowered me to the ground.

"So be it." He stood glaring down at me now, plucking at his lower lip, his right elbow resting on his left fist. "Do you have any of that poison left in you? If you do, this is the place to spit it out, because I've heard it now and I won't be too disgusted to hear more of the same . . . disappointed, perhaps, but not disgusted. Have you more to say?"

"No, sir." The words emerged as a husky rasp.

"Good. Then we will treat this little episode as a bad dream, and neither one of us will mention it again, to anyone. Agreed?"

I cleared my throat. "Agreed."

"Bene.
I have been looking for you. That's why I was in the stables. Chulderic asked me to keep an eye open for you and to send you to the old oak tree on the riverbank when I found you. That was about an hour ago, perhaps half an hour more than that, so he might be there now, waiting for you, or he might not. If he is not, then you are to wait for him. Why are you not in school today?"

I told him about my all-night session with King Ban, and he listened closely, nodding his head from time to time.

"Well," he said when I had finished, "I can see now why you were so upset. Understandable, I suppose, that you would react badly to having your whole life exposed suddenly and unexpectedly as being different from what you had believed. But there's no reason to flog yourself over it. You see that now, don't you? Good. Now you'd better go and find Chulderic. You know he doesn't like to be kept waiting, by anyone. And if you value your life, don't use that tone of voice you used with me and
don't
tell him you're a king's firstborn son and that he must now show you respect. He'll puke all over you and then beat you senseless. Respect, you will soon learn, is something that has no price. You can't buy it and it's a thing you'll never get by demanding it. You have to earn respect, boy, from one man at a time, and you can't cheat in any way while you're about it. You'll see, someday, because you'll earn it yourself and you'll pay it willingly to others. Now go on, get out of here and find Chulderic."

I had much to think about, although from an entirely different perspective now, as I made my way from the stables to the huge old oak that spread out over the placid, muddy waters of the deep stream that wound through the valley and formed part of the defenses in front of our castle. I set out still smarting from the shame that had swept over me as I caught the rough edge of Clodio's tongue, but as I walked, my understanding of what had happened began to settle into a new appreciation, one that had been there all along but had been overwhelmed by my delayed reaction to all that I had learned the previous day and night, so that by the time I reached the riverside I felt far better than I had felt since wakening that morning.

Chulderic was not there when I arrived and so I made myself comfortable on the lowest bough of the great tree, my back braced firmly against its bole, then set myself again to reviewing the events and disclosures of the previous night.

"I saw your father sitting like that once." I jumped, startled to hear Chulderic's voice so close to me. I had been so deeply involved in my thoughts that I had not seen him approach. "But he was higher up, hidden among the leaves, waiting to jump down on a party of raiders as they rode underneath. He was sitting the same way, though, hands clasping his left knee, just like you now, and his right leg stretched out along the branch."

I swung to face him, flushing guiltily as I prepared to scramble down from my perch, shamed to have been caught slacking when I should have been at my lessons.

"No, stay where you are."

I froze, caught awkwardly in the act of turning my back to him, my belly against the tree limb as I spread my hands against the rough bark, ready to push myself out and away. Carefully, I eased my body around to where I could see him again, and he made a flapping motion with his upturned palm.

"Stay up there for now. Stay as you were, otherwise I'll have to look down at you."

Moving awkwardly and in danger of falling, I cautiously hoisted myself up to where I could regain my secure perch against the bole of the tree, and only after I was firmly seated did I dare to look over again to where he sat astride a tall, black horse, looking back at me. He had not sounded angry, and now it seemed to me he did not even look angry, and a sense of wonder began to stir in me. He had always been a stern, unsmiling and demanding taskmaster, this dour old soldier, and I would never have suspected that he could be as soft-spoken as anyone else. And yet here he was, addressing me courteously without either scowling frown or rough-edged tongue.

"The King has told me that you knew
my
father, Magister." The sense of the words was strange to my ears, and stranger still was my boldness in speaking to him directly without invitation. Magister was the term all of us boys used in addressing Chulderic, and it was a
term
of respect, as well as an accurate description of his rank. He was Master-at-Arms to King Ban and as such, in times of peace, his duties included acting as our instructor—we being the young men and boys who would eventually, God willing, become the commanders of the armies of Benwick. Chulderic was our tutor and our trainer in the crafts of war that we studied constantly. He knew everything concerning weapons and warfare and honour and the ways of officers and warriors, and we depended upon him entirely for enlightenment and guidance.

There were twelve of us in the boys' corps at that time, ranging in age from eight through sixteen, and there was no implication, in our calling him Magister, that we might all be slaves to his mastery . . . except that, of course, we were, utterly and abjectly. Chulderic was not a man to defy, to deny or to challenge. His discipline was renowned, and none of us would ever have dared to question it or to rebel against it. He was merciless, demanding and implacable in his expectations and pitilessly critical of all our efforts to do well and to win his praise. And yet sometimes he would relent, and would bark or grunt an unintelligible sound that was his only indication that one of us might have—
might
have—achieved a barely acceptable standard in something we had attempted. But now here he was, speaking to me in a quiet voice like a normal man.

He had swung his horse to face me as I addressed him and for a moment I quailed, expecting him to rebuke me for impertinence, but he merely looked at me with a peculiar expression, then nodded, almost imperceptibly.

"We could not tell you, before now. You were too young to know such things. They were too dangerous for you to know because, being a child, you would have asked a thousand questions and prattled to anyone who would listen, and sooner or later word would have reached the wrong ears." He scratched at his beard with his fingertips, then tucked in his chin and peered down along his nose, stretching a single long white hair out to where he could see the end of it. "Hmm," he grunted, and then twisted the offending hair around his finger and jerked it out by its roots. "More and more of those in there, nowadays."

I had no way of knowing if he had meant me to hear that, but I was stricken with awe to see this unexpected aspect of a man who had terrified me for years, and yet all I could think to do then and there was look more closely at his beard. It was black and long, neatly trimmed at the ends and very straight, with little curl to it.

But I could see white strands among the black, now that he had drawn my attention to them.

"I knew him longer than I've known you," he continued. "And I've known you all your life, since the day you were born. He was my friend, your father, as well as being my employer."

"Your employer?" I was no longer afraid, my apprehension swept away completely by his suddenly revealed humanity. "You mean you
worked
for him?"

"Aye, I did. Does that surprise you? I worked for him gladly. I was his Master-at-Arms long before I came here to join King Ban."

"But the King said he was in the army with you, and that you first met my father there, too, when he joined you fresh from Rome."

Chulderic nodded, deeply and slowly. "That is true, we all met in the army, and we grew close over the next ten years. Mind you, I was no more than a common soldier in those days, only newly appointed to command a single squadron, whereas the three of them—Ban, your father and latterly Germanus—were all field officers. But they chose to trust me and my judgment, for reasons of their own, and I somehow became their confidant, their messenger whenever they had need of one. But the day came, as such days always must, when we left the armies, all four of us at the same time, because we had fulfilled all our obligations. Our campaign was finished and our work was done and we were finally freed to go home.
They
were free to go home, I should say. I had no home to go back to. Your father knew that, and so he invited me to ride with him and be his man, in return for my board and keep and a parcel of land to call my own, an undisputed place to lay my head at day's end. Sounded to me as though I wouldn't find a better offer, and I never did."

"Did you know my father when he lived in Rome?"

He shook his head. "No, I did not. He had done his stint in Rome before he joined us, and I know he was glad to get away from it."

"What did he say about it?"

"I can barely remember, it has been so long, but it will come back to me if I take time to think." His chin tilted upward as he gazed at me with narrowed eyes. "Jump down now and run to the stables. Pick yourself a horse and come back here as quickly as you can. King Ban would have me tell you what I know about your father and mother, all of it in one day, and so I will, but I will be able to do it more easily if we ride. I never was a man for sitting indoors and talking. I need fresh, blowing air to keep my head clear when I am thinking. Go you now."

I ran like the wind all the way to the stables, where I quickly found the senior groom and told him why I needed a horse. I picked out my favorite, a black gelding almost as tall as the one Chulderic rode, and saddled it quickly, tightening the girth securely before I swung myself up onto the big animal's back. Then, mounted, I sat for a few moments inhaling the odors of the stable before I nodded to the groom to open the door, and I listened, as I rode out, to the sounds my horse's hooves made on the floor of packed earth and straw. I remember quite clearly the sensations of stretched tension and thrilling excitement that filled my chest that day as I rode back to where the Master-at-Arms was waiting. He watched me approach and kicked his horse into motion as I drew near him. For a while we rode in silence, side by side, as we walked our mounts among and between the buildings outside the walls of King Ban's castle.