Camulod Chronicles Book 8 - Clothar the Frank (65 page)

"Come over here."

I crossed to where he stood and followed his pointing finger to where two of the brethren were manhandling a cart loaded with straw through the main gates.

"They are working for the glory of God," he said, and glanced at me sidewise. "Do you take my point?"

"No, Father . . ."

"Hmm. What do you think I was showing you in that little tour we took?"

I made no attempt to hide my mystification. "I don't know. Father."

"Work, Clothar," he said. "I was showing you work, in the kitchens and the laundry rooms, in the classrooms and the library, and in the stables and the granaries. Work. All of it dedicated to the greater glory of God, and all of it performed by kindly, dedicated souls who are doing their best to fulfill the talents, skills and abilities given to them by that same God." He stopped again, interpreting my continuing confusion correctly.

"The point I must make here, Clothar, will sound uncharitable and perhaps unkind, but it is most certainly valid and accurate. The people performing all those tasks, doing all that work, are, for the most part, incapable of doing anything better or more demanding. To greater or lesser degrees, in the words of Holy Scripture, they are all hewers of wood and drawers of water. Were they capable of doing greater things, performing larger tasks, they would be about them already. But there are some tasks that require men of singular and outstanding abilities"—he looked directly into my eyes—"and there are some men born to achieve and to carry out singular and outstanding tasks."

He turned away from the window and went to his work table, eyeing the pile of documents awaiting his attention and talking over his shoulder to me as I followed him. "I believe, Clothar, that it would be a waste of your time and your God-gifted abilities were you to shut yourself away from the world now and immure yourself as a mere cleric. You might turn out to be a divinely gifted cleric, but not at this stage of your life. Look at me. I am supposed to be a fine bishop, according to my superiors, but as a bishop I am nonetheless very much the man whose life I lived for all those years before I was drawn to the Church." He glanced sideways at me. "Do you know how I came to be a bishop?"

"Not really, Father."

"Hmm. Would you like to hear the tale? It is not long in the telling." I nodded, and he continued. "Well, as you know, I had been in the armies for many years, serving Honorius, who was both my Emperor and my friend, and when the war I had been fighting on his behalf came to an end, he permitted me to return here to Auxerre, which had always been my family's home. Now, as it happened, the bishop in Auxerre when I came home was an elderly and much revered cleric and teacher named Amator. I remembered him well, for he had been my teacher when I was a boy, before I left to study the law in Rome, and he and I had locked horns on several occasions even then, for I was no one's idea of a perfect student." The bishop smiled to himself.

"Anyway, when I came home as the conquering hero of the wars, Bishop Amator was . . . unimpressed . . . that is as good a description as any, I suppose, and shortly afterwards I discovered that he held what I considered at that time to be peculiar ideas about certain things, the foremost among which was hunting. Amator could not accept the idea that animals might be hunted for the sheer pleasure of the hunt. He had come to believe, somehow, that animals had souls just like people; souls of a different order, certainly, but souls nonetheless, and he felt it was a flouting of God's love to hunt them and kill them without pressing need.

"Well, that set the two of us directly upon a collision course, for I had always been a hunter, loving the thrill of the chase and the challenge of the hunt itself. When I came home from the wars, I hunted' on my own lands as I always had, relishing the wealth of game that had proliferated since I left, decades earlier. Bishop Amator, may God rest his soul, was incensed, and he condemned me publicly for setting a bad example to my people. And I am sad to report that, in my pride, I ignored him completely and kept on hunting, caring nothing for his disapproval."

Germanus pursed his lips. "But then everything changed, almost overnight. Bishop Amator had a dream in which God appeared to him and told him he was going to die very soon, and that he must quickly prepare
me,
the biggest thorn in his side, to succeed him as Bishop of Auxerre." He looked at me keenly. "Do you ever have dreams, Clothar?"

"Yes, Father, I do."

"And do you remember them clearly, once you wake up?"

Did I? I had to think about that for several moments before shaking my head slowly and with more than a little doubt. "Sometimes I think I do, just after I awaken, but then when I try to remember exactly what I dreamed, it all breaks apart and most of what I can recall makes no sense at all."

The bishop nodded, a half smile tugging at his lips. "That's the way it is with most people. Dreams seldom make sense in the light of day.

"But the dream Bishop Amator had was different. He recalled it in perfect detail when he awoke, and that made him think very seriously about what it meant. He prayed for guidance for days before he finally accepted that the guidance had already been delivered in his dream, and then, having accepted that, he had to act quickly, for he believed that he would die soon but did not know when.

"He said nothing to me, naturally enough, for even although he believed the guidance he had received in his dream was genuine and sprang from God Himself, he knew, too, that I was less than reverent, to say the least. In my younger days I was intolerant and could be highly obnoxious whenever anyone crossed me, and Amator and I were already enemies. Then, too, Amator had to consider that although I had retired from active duty, I was yet a soldier of Rome— a condition that never lapses—and therefore I still owed my complete loyalty, by oath, to the Emperor and the Empire, should they have
need of me. That
was an
extremely important consideration, for
it meant that Amator could not simply approach me, even had I been willing, and appoint me to the priesthood as his successor, because there were conflicting vows involved. Before I could be free to take my vows in God's service—as I must, to be a bishop—I would have to be freely released from my existing vows to the Emperor."

"Did Bishop Amator travel then to Rome?"

Germanus loosed a single bark of laughter. "No, he was far cleverer than that. He approached the prefect of Gaul, the Emperor's personal representative and chief magistrate in Gaul, and requested formal permission to absolve the Legate Germanus of his existing vows and responsibilities in order to induct him, as a retired and manumitted soldier, into the ranks of the clergy. The prefect must have been soundly astonished, for he and I had known each other well for many years and I am sure he must have laughed himself to sleep many a night, thinking of me as a humble cleric. In any event, he made no attempt to dissuade the bishop from his designs and gave his approval immediately, and only then was Bishop Amator at liberty to approach me directly."

"And how did he do it? Were you angry that he had done what he had?"

Germanus smiled and shook his head. "No, not at all. He was very careful in how he went about his task of recruiting me. He said nothing until he considered the conditions to be perfect, and he took great care to prearrange their perfection. Then, when I was present among a large gathering of Christians called to celebrate the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, he made his move, announcing to all present that he had had a vision of the Lord, and then went on to tell about his dream and the message it had contained—that I, the Legate Germanus, had been chosen by God himself to succeed him—and that in the light of that revelation the prefect of Gaul had personally absolved me of my vows to the Emperor and the Empire."

Germanus was grinning as he recalled the occasion. "There are times when a surprise is so great that the very word is inadequate. I was stunned by what Amator had told the people, and by what he had done . . . by how far he had taken the matter already, without my knowing anything about it. I was speechless and close to reeling and falling down in my confusion. And yet no one else seemed to be surprised, or outraged or upset. What the bishop had disclosed took everyone by surprise, but the old man was revered by his flock, and he had been bishop in Auxerre for many years, so no one thought to doubt his word. If God were going to communicate in person with anyone in Gaul, Amator would have been the one everyone expected Him to visit, so no one was surprised that it had come to pass.

"Amator told me himself, after everything was settled, that he had been the one most perturbed about the possible effects of his announcement. He considered me to be a hard man, which I suppose I was, and despite his own belief in the divine nature of his message, he expected me to storm off in a fury over his presumptuousness. After all, I had been accustomed to the autonomy of high command and to being answerable to no one but the Emperor himself. How then, he asked himself, would I respond to being manipulated—that was his word—by a mere bishop? He had brought a set of new vestments to the gathering with him, in the hope that I might be induced to take them away with me, and perhaps to think about what would be involved in wearing them, but in truth he had not really expected to succeed in recruiting me immediately or easily."

"But that was not what happened . . ."

"No, it did happen. I left the gathering immediately, as Amator expected, but whereas Amator thought my face was white with fury, it was in truth white with nausea. I was frightened to the point of vomiting. But I did not leave the premises. I merely sought privacy in a nearby building, where I spent several hours thinking and praying for guidance. The guidance materialized, and I returned to Bishop Amator, where I knelt and bowed my head, accepting what I had heard, in the belief and fear that to resist the summons would be to oppose the will of God. I bared my head, then and there, and the bishop shaved my pate to baldness in the tonsure of the Church. And that was that. From being an arrogant, victorious, hunting imperial legate, I had gone to being an impoverished, landless bishop in the space of one afternoon."

I knew I was gaping at him as I sought to absorb that last statement, and he nodded his head, acknowledging my bafflement.

"Mind you," he said, "the transformation was not that sudden. Nothing about me changed noticeably that day, nor for some time afterwards, but profound changes had occurred within me then and there, nonetheless." He paused, then smiled briefly. "I never hunted again, for one thing, and that, in the eyes of many people, was a change large enough to defy belief.

"And I began to pray as I had never prayed before, gaining strength daily as I indulged my newfound belief in God's existence and His goodness. I swore three powerful vows, too, to live from that time on in poverty, chastity and obedience to my superiors within the Church. The latter two oaths caused me little difficulty, since chastity had been a way of life since the death of my wife, years earlier, and obedience to my superiors had been ingrained during my years as a lawyer and then as a soldier. Only the vow of poverty contained any threat of difficulty, since from birth I had been enormously wealthy. But then I considered that I had no family left to whom I could give my wealth—I am literally the last of my line—and I discovered that the mere possession of riches meant less than nothing to me. And so I donated everything I owned to the Church—lands, buildings, chattels, goods and my entire treasury of bullion, jewels, coins and other specie. I rid myself of everything." He glanced at me. "Believe me, Clothar, it was no sacrifice at all. In giving all I had to the Church, I acquired more than I could ever need."

I sat gazing at him as he, in turn, sat gazing into the middle distance. Soon after he had become a bishop, I knew, people had begun to whisper that he had the power of miracles. There was one story of him casting out a devil from a young man that had always seemed truly miraculous to me—if, in fact, it occurred. I wanted to believe that it had, but by the age of sixteen I had long since learned that men were inclined to say more than their prayers before they went to bed at night, and most particularly so when they were passing along hearsay that had impressed them and that they wanted to make even more impressive in their turn. The event in question had been a public exorcism, apparently, witnessed by many people who all swore that Germanus, before he cast the demon out, forced it to disclose the hiding place of a sum of stolen money. True or not, the tale had brought the bishop great fame throughout northern Gaul, and people traveled to Auxerre from all around nowadays, hoping to have the holy bishop cure their afflictions, much to the holy man's discomfiture.

I suddenly realized that he had returned to the present and was watching me watching him, and I sat up straight, clearing my throat in embarrassment. Germanus, however, appeared not to notice.

"So," he said, "Clothar, son of Childebertus, have you understood what I was saying?"

I felt a sudden knot of apprehension in my throat. "I . . . I think so, Father."

"I hope so, my young friend, but I will not test you on it. Instead I will summarize it for you, making it as plain as is possible. Serve God, by every means at your disposal, Clothar, but do it properly, in freedom, while you gather the experience you will need should He call upon you to undertake one of His special tasks. How do I do that? you ask yourself."

He smiled again. "Well, look at me. Consider if I had entered the Church when I was your age. Without the experience of love and marriage and the anguished loss of both, I could never have understood the pain that ordinary people feel on the loss of a spouse or a child. Without my years spent studying the imperial law, I could never have served the Church as assiduously as I have been able to through my understanding of legal issues and the basic workings of fundamental justice. And perhaps most important of all, without the years I spent in military service, exercising and coming to understand the principles of command and command structure, I could never have assumed the position that I hold now as Bishop of Auxerre, responsible for all the people who are in my charge today.