“Bishop Sisebut sent me to enquire about a codex. I can return at another time –”
“No.” Laurentius gestured him in. “And you are my nephew, not a visitor. You must make use of my library whenever you wish.”
“Your nephew by marriage.” An odd shadow passed over the young man’s face. “Not by blood.”
Laurentius inclined his head. “That is true,” he said, smiling. “But you are no less welcome.”
A hectic flush had risen on Athanagild’s neck. “Do you find your home much changed on your return?” The question mirrored Laurentius’s recent introspection with uncanny precision, but when he looked at his nephew, Athanagild was looking away, clearly unsure of himself. Laurentius, long accustomed to commanding men and recognising introversion disguised as reserve, sat down and poured them both wine. Athanagild perched uncertainly on the lectus opposite, holding the wine cup self-consciously.
“The house is unchanged.” Laurentius smiled at him. “But it was my father’s house, and without him inside its walls, it no longer seems like my home.”
“And you are no longer the person you were when you left it.” Athanagild looked directly at him when he spoke. The sun falling through the lattice caught his face as he did, turning the hazel eyes to rich topaz and his hair to flame above the pale skin. The effect was startling, but it was the expression in his eyes that jolted Laurentius, as if Athanagild saw straight through the years of blood and war and command to the boy Laurentius had been when he bid his father farewell in this same room.
“Yes,” said Laurentius slowly, hearing an uncharacteristic roughness in his voice. “I am not the person I was when I left.” Athanagild nodded as if the answer was no more or less than he had expected. For a time, neither of them spoke. The atmosphere felt rich with leather and parchment. Laurentius turned the wine cup in his hand, a strange feeling stealing through his body.
“It is peace,” said Athanagild, then coloured at Laurentius’s quizzical expression. “The feeling I have in this room,” he explained. “It’s peaceful here. I imagine it must be a luxury after so many years at war.” He smiled, a sudden blaze of joy that was gone as swiftly as it came, fading back to wary stillness. Laurentius had an unsettling desire to draw forth that unguarded joy again.
“And you?” Feeling the need to readjust the balance of the conversation to a place in which he was more familiar, Laurentius gave Athanagild what he hoped was a cool smile, detached but still interested. “Do you find the surrounds of the monastery peaceful?”
“There is much that I might learn there.” In the moment before he turned away, something flashed in Athanagild’s face that was so savage Laurentius thought perhaps it was a trick of the light. Before Laurentius could ask anything further, Athanagild went on, “Is Constantinople truly as magnificent as the stories we hear?”
“Oh, more so.” On a topic so well suited to capturing the imaginations of young men, Laurentius was able to speak without any risk of the uncomfortable intimacy he had felt moments earlier. Athanagild listened eagerly, asking questions that at times were so unexpected that Laurentius found himself openly laughing. It was only as the shadows grew long and Athanagild stood to take his leave that Laurentius realised they had not touched again on his life at the monastery.
“How do you find the instruction of Bishop Sisebut thus far?” Laurentius said as they walked through the silent villa. “I understand you are to study under his direction. It is a great honour.”
“He favours me.” There was a certain edge to Athanagild’s voice. “Not least because of my family’s connection to yours. Sisebut is an ambitious man. He realised early that I could prove of benefit in his rise in the Church.” Laurentius did not miss the hard gleam in his eyes as he spoke.
“Ambition is not a sin,” he said lightly, watching the boy’s face as he did so.
“No, ambition is not.” Athanagild paused at the door, his expression carefully blank. He looked at Laurentius with that same disquieting directness. “I would like to return here,” he said. “To your library.” He coloured, the same hectic flush, and Laurentius found himself again moved by the glimpse of vulnerability.
“You must come whenever you wish.” He gripped Athanagild’s arm, surprised at the whipcord strength beneath the cloth. “Your father, I think, trained you with sword,” he said, smiling to cover his sudden disquiet.
“Not like you.” Athanagild met his eyes. “I wish I could have seen you fight.” He spoke with a quiet intensity that hit Laurentius like a gut blow. “I can imagine you there. Amidst the smoke and flame on the water, fighting for your life.” The awareness in his eyes sent a trickle of heat down Laurentius’s spine. He dropped the arm as if it were a hot coal.
“I can assure you,” Laurentius said lightly, “it was nothing so impressive.”
Athanagild’s mouth lifted in a brief, hard smile that seemed much older than his years. “I doubt that,” he said softly. He held Laurentius’s eyes just long enough to turn the trickle of heat to a raging blaze, then walked away, leaving Laurentius staring after him until the gloaming faded to night.
AD 687, several months later
Hispalis, Spania
Seville, Spain
The room was thick with the scent of wine, meat, and men.
Autumn had cooled the nights in Toletum before Laurentius rode south with the royal entourage, but here on the flat plains by the River Bætis, the air was sultry. The dank smell of mud drifted through the open windows of the œca and from the atrium beyond. King Erwig, Laurentius had learned, did not travel well in the heat. He wore an unnatural pallor, and his hands shook when he drank.
Laurentius bore one of Spania’s most honourable names, dating back to the old Roman aristocracy. Now, however, observing the drunken spectacle in the once great domus of Sunifred, Duke of Hispalis, he felt himself a stranger in his own land.
Sunifred sat to the right of King Erwig at a long table set on the dais. The duke was a man of expansive gestures and an even more expansive waistline. His voice had grown as much as his girth during the interminably long feast, and now it carried clearly across the clatter of dishes, punctuated by wild gestures of his wine cup, the contents of which decorated both the red mass of his beard and the table in front of him.
“Your mother was a niece of Chindasuinth,” he was saying now, for at least the tenth time that night, Laurentius noted resignedly. Clapping the king’s shoulder with one great paw, Sunifred waved the wine cup dangerously close to Erwig’s face. “Your father may have been a godforsaken Greek, but you have some of Chindasuinth’s blood in you. That is why we supported your claim. But, by God, we have seen little in the way of thanks!”
He raised his cup and the men of his thiufa roared in approval, returning his salute with their own raised cups. It was a good thing, Laurentius thought as he looked at them, that weapons were not permitted in the king’s presence. The night had an undertone of savagery that he didn’t care for.
Erwig seemed almost comically small beside the vast bulk of Sunifred. He was not a tall man, and his hair, cut square in the Greek fashion, framed a thin, anxious face. Beside his towering Gothic cousins, long haired and bearded, boasting elaborate jewelled torques and brooches, his own royal purple faded into insignificance.
“Whilst you squabble over land in Toletum, we in the south fill your treasury with our oil and grain and maintain our own thiufae to hold your borders against the barbarians from Africa. And what help do we get?”
Sunifred’s hand on Erwig’s shoulder pushed the king to one side with such force that the smaller man almost toppled from the lectus. Guards moved toward him, but he gestured them away, recovering himself to jeers from the men on the floor.
Laurentius released a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. In another time, not so long distant, Sunifred’s action would have meant war. Looking at the thunderous expressions on the faces of the Toletum court, Laurentius was not entirely certain that it would not still.
Back in Toletum, the aristocracy had long since adopted Gothic-style halls, with the king seated on a chair at the head table. In the capital and to the north, the distinction between Roman and Goth had long faded to no more than a memory. But here in the south, it had been barely a generation since the last imperial forces had been expelled. The old customs remained, as did the greatest of the old villas. It was plain that the Toletum nobility found reclining on lecti an insult to their dignity. Whilst the Hispano Romans of Hispalis lounged comfortably, picking at their plates with their hands, the northerners sat stiffly upright, swaying without the support of the high-backed chairs to which they were accustomed, unable to find solid purchase amongst cushions on the low-backed lecti. Laurentius, whilst of the Toletum party, sat amongst his Hispalis peers, glad to be removed from the theatre playing out on the dais. Since his return to Spania, he had been almost constantly travelling in the king’s retinue. A decade and more abroad in the imperial naval force, the Karabisianoi, had lessened his tolerance for men who talked of war whilst sending others to do the fighting. He was grateful for a night where he was at least nominally removed from their immediate vicinity.
The southern Goths lacked the easy elegance of the Hispalis Roman nobles but were both untroubled by the distinction and more at ease than their Toletum counterparts. Sunifred rested one foot on the lectus, his elbow propped on it as he faced the king. He was not quite as drunk as he chose to appear, Laurentius thought; the blue eyes watching Erwig were shrewd and calculating. Sunifred could trace his descent from the legendary King Liuvguild and was long accustomed to the power his name and blood conferred upon him. The condescension of the old Roman nobility concerned him as little as it had his famous forbears. Unlike Erwig and the self-conscious Toletum court, he revelled in his Gothic heritage, wearing its garish trappings of gold armbands and jewels woven into his long hair with casual arrogance.
“My men have fought off ten raids at sea this summer alone,” he was saying now. “When will we see the Chrismon-and-peacock standard amongst our ranks? We have no coastal forces. When does your Comes Exercitus plan to answer our pleas for help?”
The taller man to Erwig’s left stirred, and cold eyes met Sunifred’s. Following his wedding to Cixilo, King Erwig’s daughter, it was Count Egica who held the title of Comes Exercitus, Count of the Army. It was he who signed the orders that commanded the provincial armed forces: the thiufae, and their leaders, the thiufadi.
“You speak much of these raids,” said Egica coolly. “Yet by all accounts the Arab army was vanquished in Africa five years ago, their forces scattered into the desert sands. These vessels that – you claim – threaten our shores can be no more than opportunists looking for plunder. And pirates, surely, your great warriors can easily expel.”
Sunifred’s eyes narrowed. He licked his lips, stained purple from the wine. Egica held his gaze, and the chatter in the room died away.
Laurentius found he was again holding his breath.
“Do you name me liar, Egica sunau Ariberga?” Sunifred’s Gothic accent thickened his speech. “In my own gards?”
One broad hand dropped to his side, instinctively feeling for the spatha that was not there. Egica’s dark eyes did not miss the gesture.
“I am merely saying that whilst our forces fight a very real foe in the mountains to the north, protecting Mater Spania from neighbours who covet her riches, the south hoards wealth that belongs by right to the Crown. Your coastline squabbles deny us men who could help us protect our northern border as we must.”
Sunifred slammed his cup on the table, and Erwig jumped nervously as the big red head leaned around him to address Egica directly. “Do not think that I, nor any other in this room, are ignorant as to your ambitions, Fráuja.” Sunifred spat the honorific with contempt. His voice was low, but the menace in it carried clearly throughout the œca. “We know you come amongst us as the next King of Spania – and be warned, Fráuja, that we are all watching the manner in which you conduct yourself. Neither your marriage nor your bloodline assures your succession. We elect our kings. They do not inherit. There are others amongst us who hold equal right to the throne – and require no marriage to substantiate it.”
The two men stared at each other, fierce blue eyes meeting hooded black. Erwig shrank between them, his thin figure swallowed by the larger presence of those on either side. Looking at Egica’s hand, white knuckled as he clenched his eating knife, Laurentius felt a rivulet of cold sweat trail down his spine.
“Fráujan minus.” The voice that broke the tense standoff belonged to Julian, archbishop of Toletum. He had moved forward from the rear of the room and stood now behind Erwig’s lectus, one pale hand resting on the king’s shoulder. The large ruby of his office glinted on the third finger, and candlelight lit the gold thread worked into his white robes. “Our Lord watches us all.” His stern eye and tone of authority stilled the room. “It is by His grace that Flavius Erwig wears the crown, and only in His house should such discussions take place.”
The noble seated beside Laurentius gave a low, ironic chuckle. “Erwig rules by the grace of Archbishop Julian, who did him the good favour of poisoning his predecessor,” he muttered.
His wasn’t the only murmured aside. A hum of comment passed through the œca like a wave, and the tension was broken. Erwig flushed but took the opportunity to turn and talk to Julian, who leaned forward to listen.
Sunifred settled back on his cushions, raising his cup to Egica in mock salute. Egica himself did not move.
He is still and dangerous as a serpent waiting to strike, Laurentius thought, watching him. Whether Egica’s venom was directed at Julian or Sunifred was hard to say; the dark eyes flickered between both. Laurentius, taking a large gulp of wine to still the rapid thudding of his heart, shivered at the hatred in their depths. The whispers surrounding the death of King Wamba, Egica’s uncle and Erwig’s predecessor, were persistent. They had become more so since Egica had married the new king’s daughter and risen so high at court.
Egica, Laurentius was aware, did not share his father-in-law’s passivity. Laurentius had watched him closely during the long weeks they had ridden together and developed a wary respect for a man he sensed was both ambitious and venal.
The men of Sunifred’s thiufa burst into raucous song. It referenced the old pagan gods, Tyr and Berkana, and Julian’s face tightened with annoyance.
“It takes little to scratch away the veneer of sophistication, no?” murmured Laurentius’s neighbour. “They are barbarians themselves, these Goths. Two centuries have done little more than put a shine on the unfinished product.”
“They achieved what our forefathers could not,” replied Laurentius coldly. He had little time for the supercilious chattering of the old Roman nobility. “They unified Spania beneath one ruler, and they created a code of law to protect it.”
“By blood and the sword,” sneered another.
“By blood and the sword was the Empire created,” replied Laurentius.
“Well, if one studies Livy –” began a third.
“Excuse me,” said Laurentius abruptly.
Ignoring the shocked expressions of his elegant companions, he stood and strode through the open corridor to the atrium, where he stopped and inhaled the cool air gratefully. He should have been more gracious, he knew, but he had never found the haughty snobbery of the old families anything but grating, even if he was honest enough to admit that he privately shared some of their outrage at Gothic crudity. As if to prove their words, an old fountain, long dry, crumbled in the centre of the atrium. Looking at it, Laurentius felt a familiar flash of irritation. He glanced around, noting the uneven surfaces where lumpy plaster covered the beautiful mosaics beneath. A clumsy tapestry on one wall depicted the Christogram, the only image permitted by the laws of the Hispanic Catholic Church, which outlawed all iconography. He allowed himself the luxury of imagining the old artistry beneath and wondered, as he often did, what treasures were lost fore
ver beneath the crude piety of the Goths.
“Art is God’s spirit working through man.”
Laurentius turned to find Julian standing beside him. The archbishop smiled, the large gold pectoral cross about his neck seeming almost too heavy for the thin body beneath. He looked tired, Laurentius thought, wearied from long days in the saddle. Julian was a man meant for scholarly pursuits, not the rigours of travel. In his mid-forties, he looked much older.
Laurentius touched the wall where glimpses of old colour still showed through. “I know they depict terrible sin,” he said. “But it seems – if you will forgive me, Your Grace – an insult to God that they are no longer visible.”
“If God had intended them still to be seen, they would be.” Julian smiled gently. “In time, God will find His artists amongst our own.”
They were interrupted by the quiet arrival of Felix, bishop of Hispalis and a student of Julian’s. Laurentius liked Felix; the man had a subdued integrity that did not quite conceal the strength beneath. He is no fawning acolyte, thought Laurentius, as Felix turned to him now.
“Not only will God find those to wield a brush. He will also find leaders who will rule in the light of God instead of by the edge of the sword,” he said softly, dark eyes afire with the strength of his convictions.
Laurentius returned Felix’s smile. He could not help but like both men of God, although there was reason enough to do otherwise. “I admire your faith,” he said. “I fear my own falters at times.”
“You are an educated man.” Julian gestured around them. “And this was the world of your father’s father. Such things test our faith.”
“Knowledge tests our faith?” Laurentius looked between the two men curiously.
“Of course it does,” said Felix calmly. “It raises questions only God can answer. That is why it is best left to those in the bosom of Our Holy Father. Learning must always be tempered with spiritual understanding.”
The King's Coin: Ambition is the only faith (Visigoths of Spain Book 2) Page 2