Camulod Chronicles Book 8 - Clothar the Frank (76 page)

But then had come the beginnings of the dissolution of the Empire and the ending of the Pax Romana, and what had since happened here in Britain was a microcosm of what was happening to a greater or lesser degree in the rest of the Roman world. The roads were no longer safe because they could not be protected, and so almost overnight they had been transformed from avenues of opportunity and growth into long, inimical, tree-shrouded lanes filled with the threats of imminent violence and the constant fear of invasion and enslavement. Cyrus's words about Camulod's army not being big enough gained more and more relevance as I thought about what he had meant, and although the notion seemed strange to me at first, I soon began to accept that much of the rule of law might be restored here by the simple expedient of having bands of armed men patrolling the roads to safeguard travelers and discourage thieves and bandits.

5

It took us nearly two weeks to travel from Camulod to Verulamium. That was several days longer than it ought to have taken us, yet the journey across the belly of Britain was largely uneventful, and in fact highly enjoyable once we had reached the truly uninhabited uplands, and when we finally reached Verulamium we found Bishop Enos in residence.

Verulamium was a shell of a place that could barely lay title to the name of town any longer, and the bishop's residence was a plain, unimpressive building, long and low and purely functional, with no single element of beauty to distinguish it. But it was built of stone and it boasted a solid and enduring roof made of tiles imported many years earlier from Gaul.

The town had once been a thriving regional center, and the evidence of that was plain to be seen everywhere and most particularly in the surviving public buildings of the old administrative center, many of which were imposing and spacious. With the departure of the legions, however, and the subsequent eruption of anarchy over the ensuing decade when people lost all fear of being punished for anything they chose to do, Verulamium became, like most of the other towns in Britain, too dangerous a place in which to live, because it attracted plunderers and looters the way a carcass attracts flies. And so most of it had been abandoned, left to the mercy of the elements.

One thing had saved the place from being completely abandoned to neglect and decay, however, and that single thing was the reason for the continuing presence of Bishop Enos and the long line of bishops who had lived and worshipped there before his time. Verulamium had been the home of Britain's first Christian martyr, a saint called Alban. Alban had been executed by the Roman authorities two hundred years earlier, in the third century of the new, Christian calendar, for saving the life of a proscribed Christian priest during one of the periodic persecutions of the sect in the days before the Emperor Constantine had emancipated them and their religion by taking up the Cross himself. When arrested and challenged for his so-called crime—providing aid and sustenance to an enemy of die state—Alban had steadfastly refused to recant his newfound belief in the one true God and had been decapitated for his faith.

After that, the town had quickly become widely revered as the home of the blessed Saint Alban, and a shrine had been erected there in his honour, in response to the occurrence of several miraculous and unexplainable wonders. Even to the present time, according to Bishop Enos, miracles continued to occur as the result of the saint's blessed presence, and the shrine continued to attract more and more visitors with every year that passed. The town of Verulamium might be as dead as its Roman past, Enos remarked to me, but Saint Alban's shrine would never know oblivion, and in recent years people had stopped talking of the town as Verulamium, referring to it nowadays simply as Saint Alban's Shrine.

There was a gathering of some kind going on when we arrived there, and the unexpected appearance of a large band of disciplined horsemen caused no small amount of consternation among the participants. Bishop Enos himself, who was a much older man than I had expected him to be, was the first to recognize the armour and trappings of our Camulodian troopers and he quickly brought his flock to order, explaining to them who we were and promising that no one had any reason to be afraid of us.

Listening to the bishop as he called for the attention of the panic-stricken assembly, and carefully observing the unfolding activities in the meadow outside the town walls where the gathering was being conducted, I was impressed to see—and there was no possibility of it being other than it appeared—that the mere mention of the name of Camulod had an immediate calming effect on the crowd. As soon as they heard Bishop Enos mention the name, people began repeating it and they turned to stare inquisitively at the mounted representatives of the distant colony where, rumor had it, the rule of law was still in force and men and women could live in freedom from threat and fear.

Sitting as I was, however, slightly apart from the main body of the troopers, I saw something else. There was one small band of men among the crowd whose behaviour was greatly different from that of the people surrounding them. When we first swept into sight of the gathering, the assembly had scattered in panic, reassembling only very slowly after they had seen for themselves that we were not poised to murder them. But one band of men had refused to scatter and had indeed closed in upon themselves, grouping tightly around one man and what appeared to be his family: a woman and two children. The man at the center of this group stood taller than all the others, dominating all of them by at least half a head, and he was carefully coiffed, his hair and beard meticulously trimmed. His eyes were moving even as I noted him, cataloguing our contingent of troopers and flitting from Cyrus to his decurions and finally to me and my small group. I heard Perceval's voice.

"The tall fellow over there, Clothar, surrounded by the bodyguard. He looks like a chief of some kind—a leader, certainly, whatever rank these people give their headmen. Wonder who he is."

"I noticed him, too. He could be a king, judging from his bearing, but he might just as easily be some kind of champion or chieftain, as you say. We will find out about him later, from Bishop Enos. Cyrus, put your men at ease and take me to meet the bishop, if you will."

Enos, however, was not to be idly diverted from his responsibilities. Our arrival had interrupted a prayer gathering in celebration of the anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Alban, and the bishop invited us to step down and join with him and his congregation in the final prayers of the ceremony. Only when it was over and he had blessed the participants and sent them on their way did he approach me and acknowledge that he had heard me say earlier that I had messages and missives for him from Germanus. He was most hospitable, graciously accepting the leather pouch of writings that I had for him and betraying not the slightest indication that he might be impatient to sit down somewhere and start reading them. Instead, he went out of his way to arrange accommodations for all of us, quartering the troopers in the central hall of the town's basilica, the administrative hub of the former Roman military government. Germanus, he told us, had cleaned out this and many similar large rooms years earlier, setting his followers to sweeping away the detritus of decades of neglect and turning the refurbished premises over for use by the hundreds of pilgrims who had flocked to Verulamium to attend the great debate he staged here between the orthodox adherents of the Church in Rome and the misguided bishops of Britain who had chosen to follow the teachings of the apostate Pelagius.

Bishop Enos, aware of the ongoing needs of the legions of pilgrims who visited the shrine of Saint Alban each year, and anticipating that the steady increase in their numbers might lead to the town's having need again of spacious accommodations in the future, had seen the wisdom of maintaining the public rooms in good condition for use as dormitories. The main hall was perfect for our uses, featuring two great stone fireplaces, one at each end of the long room. Wooden cots were already in place at one end, strung with rope netting, and an ample supply of straw-filled palliasses set up on end on some of them, to allow the air to circulate between them and keep them dry, while at the other end of the hall someone had arranged rows of tables and benches. A large courtyard at the rear of the building, paved with cobbles and covered with straw, was easily capable of accommodating all our horses, and the yard itself lay but a few moments' walk from the grazing meadows beyond the town walls.

Only when he was absolutely satisfied that our needs had all been attended to did the bishop leave us to our own devices while he retired to read the material that I had brought with me from Gaul.

6

Enos sent for me the following morning and began our meeting by asking me how much I knew concerning the information I had brought to him. I told him truthfully that Bishop Germanus had discussed the matter with me at some length, that he had selected me to come to Britain to convey his hope that Enos would stand as substitute for Germanus in the solemn ceremonies that would surround the coronation of Arthur Pendragon as the Riothamus, the High King of Britain. Bishop Germanus, I said, had hoped that Bishop Enos would not merely consent to deputize for him but would use his powers of persuasion to exhort his fellow bishops within the congregation of Britain to lend their support and their ecclesiastical backing to Merlyn's undertaking in recognition of the benefits and advantages that the Church itself would gain from enlisting the support of Camulod's formidable military strength.

Enos sat silent while I said all this, nodding his head only occasionally as I approached the end of what I had to say, and when I was finished he sat frowning into the distance for a spell before nodding his head once more, this time emphatically, and rising to his feet.

"Every word of what you have said makes perfect sense," he said, "although of course it demonstrates only that you are a gifted listener, since the sentiments you express are Germanus's. But I have decided to do precisely as he wishes in these matters, and to that end I will do all in my power to enlist the support of all the bishops in Britain for the task ahead." He hesitated briefly.

"I know Merlyn Britannicus well, and I have always admired and respected him. His entire family have been friends of mine for many, many years. And because of that, I pay no attention to the outrageous statements that silly, presumptuous and ignorant people love to make about him—this nonsense of sorcery and magic. Merlyn Britannicus is no sorcerer. The very idea is ridiculous. He is a man of his word and devoted to the study and pursuit of truth, albeit his personal idea of truth might differ greatly from that of many another. I have met Arthur, too, Merlyn's ward. A sweet child, when he was a child, but now grown, it seems, into a formidable young man. He will do well in anything to which he turns his mind."

The bishop paused, staring into the distance and nodding in contemplation. "He was impressive, young Arthur, even as a boy. He showed evidence of piety and knew the meaning of respect, and he had a brain capable of great subtlety, corresponding even with Germanus himself." He straightened abruptly, almost as if shaking himself awake. "Of course, he is a warrior now, and I have no measure by which to judge him in that Merlyn says he is the best, however, and I see no reason to start doubting his word now on such a matter."

"So, pardon me. Bishop Enos, but will you attempt to contact Merlyn now?"

"Of course. Immediately. Merlyn must learn of this at once, by the fastest possible means. I shall send out priests tomorrow at first light, to Cambria and Cornwall in the west—for he could be in either place or between there and here by now—bearing word for him to meet me here."

I was gaping at him, wondering how he could sound so confident. "Pardon me," I said again. "But how many priests will you send out?"

The bishop frowned, but I saw that he was merely counting in his head and not annoyed by my question. "A score," he said. "I believe I can spare that many."

"And you believe that will suffice? Twenty men?"

"No, twenty
priests,
and each of them will spend this night and the remainder of today transcribing copies of a letter I have already written. Each man will carry ten copies, and one of those two hundred copies will eventually make its way to Merlyn."

"Eventually? How long will it take?"

The bishop looked at me as though I were an obtuse schoolboy. "As long as is necessary. The first portion will be longest. It will take a week and more for our first score of men to make their way across the country. After that, once they are arrived in Cambria and Cornwall, the search will progress more and more quickly as they meet and mingle with others like themselves. The word will quickly spread among God's servants. And those who know will share their knowledge, including the knowledge of the letter I have sent to him. He will be found, and as soon as he is, a copy of the letter will be taken to him."

He broke off and looked at me quizzically. "Now there is something worth considering. As soon as Merlyn reads what I have written he will come running right here, to Verulamium, but in the event that he cannot do that, he will at least send a letter here to me by the fastest possible means. Allied to that, it occurs to me that you are probably thinking of returning now to Camulod. Am I correct?" He waited for my nod and then returned it with one of his own. "I thought so. Might I suggest that would be unwise? Merlyn's opinions and decisions will come directly here to me, either in the person of Merlyn himself or in a letter. In either case, you will want to be present when that occurs, to take part in what comes out of it. You won't be able to do that if you're in Camulod, so I would suggest you remain here for the next few months. Once you know what has been decided, you can then return to Camulod and deliver the word of what will happen, while we—myself and
my
fellow bishops—may follow at a more dignified and stately pace, permitting Camulod to make adequate arrangements for housing all of us. What think you of that?"