Camulod Chronicles Book 8 - Clothar the Frank (17 page)

As soon as we had passed the last of the houses, Chulderic kicked his horse to a canter, then to a lope, and finally into a gallop, and I kept close to him, barely half a length behind him and to his left, exulting in the surging power of the big animal between my knees and the way the wind ruffled my hair. We did not gallop far, however, before he pulled back on his reins and slowed to a canter, saying there was no point in overtaxing the animals.

The path he had chosen stretched upwards, rising gently and consistently over the course of two miles to the crest of a ridge that ended in a high cliff and offered a breathtaking view of the lake hundreds of feet below. As we approached the summit and the steepest part of the climb, we dismounted and led our horses, but they were both panting as hard as we were when we reached the top and stopped, overlooking the vista before us.

"Now that is a sight worth beholding," Chulderic said. "Large enough to be a sea, yet still a lake of fresh water."

He looked about him, then dropped his horse's reins on the ground and went to sit on an old log that some previous visitor had dragged close to the edge of the cliff.

"Come. Sit."

I did as he bade me, and for a while we sat staring at the view and waiting for our breathing to return to normal.

"Your father joined the army on his sixteenth birthday, did you know that?" I shook my head. "Aye, well, he did. That's the traditional age for boys to become soldiers, as you know. Has been for hundreds of years, stretching right back to the earliest days of Rome, when every soldier was a farmer and every farmer was a soldier. But it doesn't happen much today, at least not among the wealthy."

I said nothing, and he continued after only a brief pause. "Your grandfather Jacobus was wealthy, your father's father, that is. He was from Britain, a lawyer. Traveled to Rome to study there, and then remained to practice his craft, at which he was apparently very good—one of the best in the city, I've been told. He could easily have arranged to keep his son at home and out of the army, had he so wished. But he didn't. He let the boy go when he wanted to, and was quite content to do so. Strange relationship between those two, for father and son: they liked each other—loved each other might not even be too strong a way to put it. You don't see that too often among civilized people. Everyone likes to talk about the tightness of family bonds and the obligations of blood relationships and kindred, but it's all lip service, nine times out of ten.

"Anyway, your father had always wanted to be a soldier, ever since he had grown big enough to make a hero out of one of his cousins, Medroc, another migrant Briton. Medroc was a senior officer in the Household Guard, the Emperor's personal bodyguard, and Honorius himself thought very highly of him, trusting him as he trusted few others. From the way your father spoke of him, time and time again, Medroc must have been a sight to behold in his golden parade armour—enameled sky blue insets in cuirass, helmet and greaves, a high horsehair crest on the helmet, dyed sky blue to match the enamel insets, and a military cloak of sky blue cloth, trimmed with gold edges. I would have enjoyed seeing that myself. I've heard of the finery of the Household Guard, but I never saw any of them."

"But you came from Rome, Magister. How could you not have seen them?"

He pursed his lips as he looked at me, one eyebrow rising high on his forehead. "Because they were in Constantinople with the Emperor when I was in Rome, that's how. Rome hasn't really been the Imperial City since the time of Constantine, and that was more than a hundred years ago, as near as spitting. The Roman garrison troops in my day—I mean the permanent troops who never left the city—were famed, and still are, for the ornate richness of their uniforms and armour. They made ordinary troops like us look like beggars, even in our parade uniforms. But the Household Guard were the elite troops of the entire Empire, hand-picked from the best of the best for their size, appearance and prowess, and privileged as no others ever were. Their blue-and-gold uniforms were legendary.

"From the first time your father set eyes on Medroc in his fine plumage, he dreamed of someday becoming one of the Emperor's Guard. The lad's career was clearly laid out, all the way from basic training under Cousin Medroc's watchful eye, to a solid and rewarding position as an officer in the Household Corps, thanks to his family's influence. It was all cut-and-dried and carefully arranged."

He looked at me, making sure that I was listening closely before continuing. "But there's a lesson there, lad, concerning your father and his cousin that you should keep in mind from this time on: the trouble with things that are too neatly cut-and-dried is that they often break when a strong wind comes up, because they're too dry to bend. Your father had been in the Household Guard for less than a year, still a snotty-nosed trainee recruit, when Medroc got himself killed during a garrison mutiny in the far south of Gaul, near the border with Iberia."

"Iberia? What was he doing
there!
Was he traveling with the Emperor?"

"No, but he was traveling
for
the Emperor, carrying urgent dispatches from Honorius himself to the legate commanding in southern Gaul, and he arrived in a mountain town along his route just in time to get himself and his men safely bedded down for the night and soundly to sleep before the garrison mutinied. The garrison commander, who from all later reports was a complete pig, was assassinated in the darkest hour of the night, along with all his officers, and Medroc awoke shortly after that to find himself being dragged out of bed. He was a witness to their mutiny, and they knew him to be a loyal and trusted officer of the Emperor, because they opened and read the dispatches he was carrying. They killed him right there, probably before he really understood what was happening to him. Of the twenty troopers in his escort, two were lucky enough to escape that night and survived to raise the alarm. So that was the end of Cousin Medroc, and of your father's dreams of an illustrious career in the personal service of the Emperor.

"Medroc's death went unnoticed for a long time, as far as I can tell, lost sight of in the confusion and upheaval of the campaign against the mutineers. It was a hard campaign, too. I remember it because it was my first. I had been in the army for several years by then, but that was the first time I had ever been called upon to fight, and it was the only time I ever had to fight against our own, Roman soldiers just like us. We had no idea what had driven them to mutiny, or if, under the same conditions, we might have been tempted to join them. Fighting them was not a pleasant experience, from that viewpoint alone.

"But besides that, the success of the mutiny from the outset had attracted malcontents and deserters from all over southern Gaul, so that what had started out as a town garrison with an arguably legitimate grievance soon grew to something else entirely, approaching the size of an army . . . a rabble, certainly, but strong in numbers.

Strong enough to defeat the first few units sent out to contain them and put the mutiny down. They won those opening actions easily, because the men sent out against them underestimated almost everything about them. But those early, easy victories were the worst things that could have happened to them. They grew too confident after that. They honestly thought they could win in mutiny, the damn fools—even proclaimed one of their own as Emperor just before we brought them to battle after six weeks of floundering around in mud and rain. That was it. We killed every last one of them, one way or another. Them that survived the fighting died the way mutineers always die, some of them flogged to death, some hanged, and others beheaded. The four ringleaders, soon identified by turncoats desperate to save their own lives, were crucified . . . the only modern army crucifixions I've ever heard of."

Chulderic fell silent after that, and I had the good sense to say nothing and simply wait for him to start talking again.

"At any rate," he began, finally, "by the time the dust settled after all that, the faithful Medroc had been forgotten, long since replaced by some other talented and brilliant young man who doubtless looked just as fine in his parade armour, and Medroc's protégé, young Childebertus, had become just another faceless trainee with no influence and not even seniority to protect him. It didn't take him long to discover that his relationship with Medroc had been resented by more than a few of his fellows, and his life within the Household Guard became very unpleasant very quickly.

"A call went out around that time for volunteers for a new, highly mobile cavalry force to be stationed on the Rhine River, where the difficulty of keeping invaders out had not grown easier in three hundred years. The new force was to be an elite one, and well paid, to compensate for the danger and hardship involved in what they had to do. Your father had always loved horses and was a natural cavalryman. He recognized salvation when he saw it, and he became one of the very first applicants for the new force. Within months of that he was here in Gaul, transferred out of the Emperor's Guard and into the new cavalry division. That's where he met me and the King, although Ban was only Ban of Benwick at that time." He broke off and looked at me again, his brow creased in thought. "Did Ban already tell you all this?"

"Yes, Magister . . . some of it, anyway."

"Then what the blazes did he want
me
to talk to you about if you already know what I'm supposed to tell you?" This was more like the Chulderic I knew, snappish and impatient with anything he saw as being trivial or time wasting, but he said no more after that first outburst, and I dared to speak up once more.

"About how my parents died, Magister—I asked the King last night to tell me and he would not, because he had not been there to see it for himself. But he told me you had witnessed all of it, and he said you were far more able than he to tell me the truth of what happened."

"Hmm." There was no sign of impatience in the old man now. He stuck out his lower lip and gazed into the distance across the lake. "He was wrong, then. I was nearby, but I was not there. Had I been there, I would not be here today." He straightened his back and stood up. "Come, ride with me again while I try to find words for you."

2

Chulderic and I remounted and made our way down the slope, veering more and more to the left as we descended, so that by the time we regained level ground we were far from where we had begun our climb to the summit. Once again we rode in silence, traversing a landscape of grassland scattered with clumps of scrub willows, alder and hawthorn while Chulderic searched his mind for memories he could describe. And then, without sign or warning, he began again.

"We had barely left the army life behind us when Childebertus first met your mother. I remember that clearly. It must have been within the first few weeks of our liberty.

"We were on the road home, I remember, but we were barely out of the German territories, headed south towards Benwick and moving at our own pace, still full of the heady feelings of freedom after so many years of regimentation and routine, and Ban had just finished telling us a story that none of us believed. He told us he had been betrothed, years earlier and at his father's insistence, to an unknown woman. We thought he was gulling us, trying to hoodwink us for his own ends, and when we pressed him for more details, calling him a liar and a lout—which we could do because we were his friends—he admitted that he had been thirteen and she a mere infant at the time. But he swore he had never even seen her, so he could not say if she had one head or two, and we all had a good laugh over his foolishness.

"He could see we were still unconvinced, nevertheless, and so he told us she was the daughter of one of his father's oldest allies, a king called Garth of Ganis, who ruled over a federation of clans among the Salians, the northern Franks, in the rich lands to the south of the Rhine delta. Her name was Vivienne of Ganis, and he swore to us that before leaving home to come on this campaign, he had renewed his pledge to marry her, sight unseen and for the good of his people, when he returned victorious from the wars. Well, he was returning now, he said, and curious to see what kind of burden he had been saddled with to please his father, and so he was going to visit
her
father's place, Ganis, on the way south, since we would be riding close by it, to the eastward.

"Well, we were his friends, so we were not gentle with him when he told us about that. In fact we roasted him for a long time as we rode southward, but when we drew close to where he was to leave us, we decided we should all accompany him to inspect this mysterious intended bride. We proposed it in jest, but instead of being angry, Ban made it plain he was glad that we would be with him when the time came for him to step forward and identify himself to his future wife and her father." Chulderic paused and smiled. "With us around him, it would be obvious that he was being truthful in saying he was on his way home from the wars and had stopped only to pay his respects to his father's old friend in passing, and there would have been no question of his simply dropping by to examine his betrothed. Mind you, had the lady turned out to be less than beautiful, Ban would have been forewarned and able to conduct himself appropriately thereafter, in terms of the speed with which he might rush to take up his solemn marriage duties.

"But as it turned out, there was no need for such caution. King Garth made us welcome and sent for the Lady Vivienne, bidding her come and meet her betrothed. Well," Chulderic turned in his saddle and looked sideways at me, "everyone knows how that turned out." He hawked deeply and spat, and I looked at him in dismay, thinking it a reaction to his memory of the meeting and what it had led to, but his face was serene.

"What we did
not
know," he continued, "because no one had ever thought to tell Ban, was that his lady had a sister—a twin sister, whose name was Elaine."

At the mention of my mother's name, even though I had been expecting it, my skin rose up in gooseflesh and the hairs on the nape of my neck bristled.