Camulod Chronicles Book 8 - Clothar the Frank (18 page)

"She wasn't there when we arrived, and we saw no sign of her for the whole week of our visit, because she had gone to be with her father's elder sister, who lived some distance away and was ailing. Vivienne was to have accompanied her, but had fallen sick herself, and so had remained at home with her father, which was fortunate for Ban. When he found out that his wife-to-be had a twin sister, however, it seemed only natural for him to ask if the two were identical, but he was told no, they were exact opposites in appearance, and being Ban, he took that to mean that the other twin must be unattractive, as the opposite of the lovely Vivienne. We did, too, in all justice.

"During that week we were entertained like kings, and Ban and Vivienne grew dizzy with love of each other. By the end of the week, Ban had sworn to return and wed her as soon as he could stir his own father to attend the nuptials, and all of us had grown confident that he and she would make a perfect pairing.

"But then, on the day before we were to leave, the other sister, Elaine, returned home, and Childebertus was lost from the moment he set eyes on her. It was absolutely true, what Ban had been told: she was the very opposite of her twin in appearance. Her hair was raven black, instead of Vivienne's spun gold; her skin was dusky olive, instead of lily white; her eyes were dark, deep blue, much like yours, instead of sparkling green. In all things like that the two of them were as different as could be, but the truth was that the Lady Elaine was even more beautiful than her sister, a thing that none of us would have thought possible before we saw her."

"How old was she then, Magister?"

"It seems to me she was seventeen at that time, and had been betrothed almost at the same time as her sister—within a matter of months—but to a much older man than Ban, a close neighbor and trusted friend of her father. This man, whose name was Gundevald, was greatly famed as a warrior, we were told, and had ridden off to join the Imperial Armies two years earlier, leading his own men. He had not been heard from since, but was expected to return soon, since the wars had ended, for a spell at least."

Again Chulderic fell silent for a while. "Within an hour of first setting eyes on the Lady Elaine I found myself thinking it was fortunate that we were to leave the following day, for that young woman, betrothed elsewhere or not, could not turn her eyes away from Childebertus, that night in her father's hall. She claimed all of his attention, too, and a blind man could have seen it would be dangerous to leave the two of them alone together for any length of time."

"Why so, Magister?"

Chulderic jerked up straighter, plainly astonished by the question, but then he remembered who had asked it, and simply waved his free hand, as though dismissing my enquiry. "Because she was betrothed—sworn and dedicated to another. Betrothal is a solemn promise, legally undertaken, to wed someone, Clothar. It can not be discarded lightly. A man who forswears a betrothal insults, defies and challenges his betrothed's entire clan, and by extension of that, any man who knowingly seduces and suborns another man's betrothed commits an act of war against both sides of the marriage contract. The woman is not deemed to be at fault in such things, being a mere woman; the man, the contract breaker, bears the fault, and draws all the wrath upon his own head.

"In this case, the Lady Elaine was already committed to Gundevald, but it was plain for anyone to see that she would have run off that very night with Childebertus had he encouraged her in any way. Fortunately, he did not, and we left the following morning without incident, or so I thought at first.

"In fact, he had made an assignation with the young woman while the rest of us were all asleep, and they had passed several hours alone together. It was the height of stupidity, and it very nearly brought us all to disgrace. What actually transpired between the two of them I know not, but had they been discovered in their tryst, there would have been a butcher's bill to pay, for all of us."

He paused, evidently thinking back, and then sniffed. "I had thought he looked very pleased with himself when we were getting ready to depart that morning, and I wondered why he should be so cheerful when the rest of us were feeling sorry for ourselves, having to be up and on the road so early in the day. The answer was obvious: he had not been to bed at all that night and was still wide-awake and full of vigor when it came time for us to leave. The rest of us, on the other hand, had slept for a few hours—far from sufficient for our needs, after having drunk long and deeply the night before—and so had had to drag ourselves untested and unhappy from our beds. I overheard heard him talking to Ban, later that day, about Elaine, raving about her beauty and her wit, and although he actually said nothing about it, that was when I knew, in my gut, where he had been the night before. I could hear it in your father's voice that afternoon and see it in the way he carried himself . . . he was cocky, full of himself, walking on air. But it was a fool's risk he took that night, no matter how deeply in love he thought he was and no matter how cleanly he managed his folly. He knew better than to behave as he had. He was a man of seven and twenty at the time, with a duty to consider the welfare of his friends and not set them at hazard."

"Did you confront him with your knowledge, Magister?"

Chulderic jerked his head to one side, hard. "No, I did not. Told myself I had no proof and that no harm had come of whatever he did that night. But I went around for weeks afterwards waiting for something to come of it and expecting to be pursued and challenged. It took me a long time to wipe the incident from my mind. It was the only willfully selfish, inconsiderate and stupid thing I ever knew your father to be guilty of, and I don't think even he realized the risk he had taken or the scope of what he had done."

"And did anything . . . happen?"

"No, nothing at all, as things turned out, and we reached Benwick safely without either Ban or Germanus becoming aware of what Childebertus had done. I was the only one who knew, and I did not let on I knew anything. Life went on, and Germanus rode directly homeward to Auxerre before we reached the bounds of Benwick's lands, and your father and I settled down to live in Benwick with Ban. Be careful here. Mind your eyes."

Our surroundings had changed; the open space through which we had been riding earlier had been swallowed up by encroaching brush, much of it a thorny shrub that rose above the height of a mounted man and was armed with long and vicious spikes that could shred exposed skin or pierce an eyeball. I had become aware of the thorns and the danger they posed just before Chulderic drew my attention to them, and for a short time after that we rode in silence, giving all our attention to the path we were following. At one point, the growth surrounding us was so thick that we had to ride one behind the other, holding our arms up in front of our faces for protection against the wicked thorns, but that was the worst of it, and from then on the growth thinned rapidly until we were riding through glades again.

We came to a stream that was completely concealed from the path we were on by a thick screen of bushes, and we noticed it only because the noise it made in its rocky bed was loud enough to reach our ears. We soon found a way through the barrier of brush that separated us from it, and as we emerged on the other side, Chulderic drew rein and sat staring at the rushing water for a while before pulling his mount's head around to the right and kicking the animal into motion again, allowing it to pick its own way along the bank.

"I know this river," he said, "but I've never seen this part of it. And yet I was close to here last night. I think we're downstream from where I crossed, so we'll probably find the spot . . . That visit to Ganis marked a turning point in all our lives, for nothing was ever the same after it."

The transition from observation to reminiscence was so smooth that I almost failed to recognize it, but Chulderic was already unaware of my presence and heedless of any need for time and logic in what he was thinking and saying.

"Ban was wild with impatience to be wed, now that he had met his bride-to-be, and he spent the entire journey homeward to Benwick making plans to sweep up his father and transport him and his senior advisers back to Ganis as quickly as possible for the wedding. But as soon as we arrived in Benwick it was plain to see that there would be no wedding in Ganis that year.

"Ban the Bald was no longer the lusty, swaggering King of six years earlier—the last time that his son Ban had seen him. He had fallen from a horse more than a year before our return and had aged grotesquely since then. He was so greatly changed, in fact, that Ban himself said later he would not have recognized the old man, had he met him anywhere other than in his own home. I was there when he first saw his father on that occasion, and I saw how badly it affected him. It frightened him, probably more than anything else in his life had until that time, because it showed him that no man, not even his own formidable father, is invincible or immortal.

"The fall had shattered the bone in the King's right thigh, driving the splintered end out through the flesh, and despite the efforts of his Roman-trained surgeons, the wound had festered and would not heal, and so the King had not walked since the day he fell, more than a year earlier. And that inability to walk had brought the old King close to death, because it had robbed him of all bodily strength, since he could no longer fight or ride or even train to keep himself in condition.

"I had never met the King, but I had heard great things about him, and nothing I had heard prepared me for the man I actually saw. He looked to me, an outsider, to be on the very edge of death when we arrived, and in fact he was dead within two months of our return. It was as though he had kept himself alive only to see his son safely returned, and from the moment he saw Ban and assured himself that all was well with him, he simply lay back and allowed death to take him. So what had begun for Ban as a triumphal return home ended in a grief-filled vigil as he waited for his father's life to end.

"We buried the old man at the far end of summer, just as the first tinges of gold began to appear among the leaves of the forest that surrounded the castle, and we installed his son Ban as King of Benwick in his father's stead within a month of that. Then, for a period of months following his assumption of the kingship, throughout the entire winter of that year, Ban struggled mightily to re-establish the harmonious flow of government that had begun to break down during his father's long illness.

"Of course, he had also sent word of his father's condition back to King Garth in Ganis as soon as he had arrived home, so everyone in Ganis knew that the wedding feast would be postponed. In the beginning, spurred by false hopes, the talk was of a brief postponement until such time as King Ban was back in control of himself, but that changed swiftly as his condition worsened steadily, and it was soon known in Ganis that the old King would never return there. By the spring of the following year, however, the old King's death and the changes it entailed had all been absorbed and accommodated, and the marriage of Ban and Vivienne had been firmly arranged for the autumn of that year.

"Your father had much to do with that, encouraging Ban constantly, from the moment of his father's burial and his own accession to the throne of Benwick, to waste no time in returning to Ganis and claiming his bride. The marriage, and the presence of a Queen in Benwick, Childebertus maintained, would work greatly to the new King's advantage, giving his rule an appearance of permanence." Chulderic paused, appearing to consider what he had just said. "All of which was very true, and excellent counsel," he continued eventually, "but hardly unselfish, since Childebertus knew he could not see Elaine again until Ban returned to Ganis. As Ban's closest friend, he would be the King's witness at the ceremony, as Elaine would be her sister's, and so the two of them would meet again, legitimately, at the wedding of their friends. But his chances of spending time with her, even then, grew daily less as the time for the return of her betrothed, Gundevald, drew ever closer. That time was already long overdue, and your father was almost wild with impatience to return and see Elaine again before his rival could return to claim his bride. Childebertus would be content to settle for that, since he knew it was the very best he could expect.

"And so they met again, in due time, this pair of lovers not- to-be, and still Gundevald had not returned from his campaigning. By that time, however, mere concern over Gundevald's late return was being replaced by grave misgivings."

Chulderic's attention was caught now by something else, something low and dun colored and immobile, out of place on the edge of the stream ahead of us, and he was already spurring his horse towards it. I kicked my own horse forward, following him until he dismounted beside the body of a young buck, less than two years old. It lay half in and half out of the water, its head, complete with immature antlers, almost completely submerged.

"Throw me your rope."

I did as he ordered, scooping the tightly coiled circle of plaited leather from where it hung from a thong by my knee and lobbing it into his outstretched hand. As he worked to unravel it, shaking out the tight-wound coils with both hands, I watched his eyes move constantly, taking note of everything there was to see in the clearing on the bank, from the dead animal itself to the grass around the area where it lay, and the fringe of bushes that screened the clearing, concealing it from view from any distance greater than ten paces.

Finally, apparently satisfied with what he had seen, he stepped ankle-deep into the stream and looped one end of the rope around one of the deer's haunches, tying it securely before throwing the other end to me.

"Here," he growled. "Loop this around your saddle horn and pull this thing up onto the bank, clear of the water."

My horse made short work of the haul, and moments later I had dismounted and stood looking down at the deer with Chulderic.

"Might have been a natural death," he murmured, more to himself than to me.