Lælia could not look at her grandfather; she knew he would not wish her to see what was on his face. Theodefred and he looked at each other for a long time, then Theodefred turned to her. The shadow of a smile passed over his face.
“Riccilo,” he said, “bade me tell you that the servant you sent her has proved useful indeed. Safia has become close companion to Egilona of Aurariola and playmate to both Wittiza and Roderic. She has also found a messenger to bring word from Tuy. She is, it seems, a most resourceful young lady.” He smiled. “If anything should occur – should you need us – Corduba is your home, Lælia, and Riccilo your blood. Do not hesitate to come to us.” Lælia inclined her head gratefully, touched.
“And how,” said Paulus, staring at the multitude of men on his fields, “do you intend me to feed this generously provided force of yours?”
Theodefred looked between them, smiling openly. “Riccilo also tells me,” he said, grinning, “that Acantha has ways of feeding stray armies.”
Paulus shook his head in mock exasperation, but he was smiling. “I will welcome your forces gladly,” he said. “But I will ask that you drink a cup of wine and give me your company for the night.”
Theodefred’s smile faded. “I cannot,” he said, “though I wish to all the gods I could. If it should be even marked that I am missing, Egica will not believe me innocent. My household servants believe me ill. The men of my personal thiufa have been gradually disappearing for weeks; as yet, none suspect them of riding south. I would keep it that way as long as I may, and that means I ride tonight, alone.”
He came close to Lælia and touched her face. “Do not forget what I told you, Lælia,” he said quietly. “Riccilo loves you, though she is not the kind to speak of such things more than she must. Be safe in the coming times.”
Lælia had never been easy with physical affection, and she found, as the years progressed, that emotion made her lose the words she had found so late in life. She nodded mutely but said nothing. Theodefred looked as if he would say something else, but her face must have appeared cold and unwelcoming, as she knew it often did when she was uncomfortable, and he let his hand fall without speaking further.
Theodefred reached out and gripped her grandfather’s elbow. The two men clasped arms tightly. Lælia thought there was more emotion in their silence than any words could have expressed. Then Paulus nodded, and Theodefred mounted his horse.
Her grandfather stood on the portico, watching the silent darkness, long after Theodefred’s tall figure had been swallowed by the night.
42
Athanagild
July, AD 692
Toletum, Spania
Toledo, Spain
“My men intercepted this letter.” Sunifred’s voice echoed around the deserted church, louder than any sermon. “Liuvgoto has been writing to that whoreson, Egica. Telling him every detail of our southern formations – who supports us, who has provided troops, where they are. Even as with one hand she writes to me and our allies in the south encouraging us to go to war on her behalf, with the other she informs Egica of our movements.” Sunifred waved the piece of parchment in the air, face engorged with rage, red veins standing out in angry relief.
“Fráuja, please.” Sisebut put out a placating hand, which Sunifred shook off impatiently. Sisebut cast Athanagild a worried glance. Surreptitiously Athanagild moved to the heavy doors, closing them on the curious ears beyond, as Sunifred paced.
“She is a dangerous, traitorous bitch, and I want her dead!” Sunifred hit the back of a pew with the parchment, which crumpled and tore in his hand.
“Compose yourself,” said Sisebut, rather more sternly. “None must hear you say such things.”
“I don’t care if they do!” Sunifred strode angrily for a few moments, watched by Sisebut and Athanagild who stood silently to one side. They had both seen this mood before. In recent weeks, especially since Alaric had ridden north to face Egica’s coming army with the bulk of Sunifred’s forces, it had become all too familiar. Athanagild had learned to simply wait out the storm.
It did not take long.
“She has sent men to their deaths.” The fury had faded from Sunifred’s tone, and his voice was bleak. “Alaric has sent word that Egica mounts his defences with uncommon accuracy, seeming to guess their every next move. And all the while my vicious, double-crossing bitch of a cousin has been betraying us. Plotting with her feeble-minded daughter, Cixilo, to regain the throne. Liuvgoto’s ambition has no end.” He turned to Sisebut, who watched him with trepidation from the nave. “I have tried your way, at your urging. Egica locked them both in a monastery, whereas I promised to make allies of Liuvgoto and Cixilo, to treat them and Cixilo’s son with generosity and indulgence. But only a crown will appease Liuvgoto. She knows her daughter does not possess the strength the take the crown as queen, so she plays both sides to ensure her grandson Wittiza gets it. We have no option now.” Sunifred’s face was dark. “You do see that, do you not?”
“I cannot countenance what you suggest.” Sisebut’s face was pale. “I cannot hear such things spoken, Fráuja. And certainly not in this holy place.”
“You cannot hear! You cannot hear?” Sunifred’s tone was derisive. “Everything you have asked, I have permitted. You may place whom you choose in the bishoprics and undo all those canons that would deprive the Church of coin. You may charge fees for christenings, or present churches to your relations and friends if it benefits you. You may exact a fee from those Christians who would trade with Jews – and fine Jews themselves if they are found not to have converted and be living under Christian faith. If men should leave and marry, they may be permitted to rejoin orders when they choose, no matter how short the marriage, and given only minimal penance.
“In short, Sisebut, I have given you license to undo every stricture placed upon the Church, its earnings, and its moral practices these last hundred years.” His eyes narrowed, became calculating. “I have overlooked certain… predilections, shall we say, that a less tolerant man would not find so easy to overlook.” He allowed his eyes to slide sideways to Athanagild, then back again. “And all I ask in return – the only thing! – is that Liuvgoto and Queen Cixilo be disposed of as the traitors they are.” He stepped closer and glared at Sisebut, his tone lowering to become soft and insidious. “Or would you prefer to find yourself, several moons from now, attempting to explain those predilections – and your support for my rulership – to a council headed by Egica himself?”
Sisebut blanched and swallowed. “No,” he said feebly. “That would be… unconscionable.”
“Good.” Sunifred nodded grimly. “Then we are in agreement, are we not?”
“But –” Sisebut was pale, his eyes darting like a trapped animal.
“Don’t concern yourself.” Sunifred’s voice was rich with contempt. “I will see that no blame falls on you. Liuvgoto is old, and all know her daughter has been sick with grief since Egica took her son away. Their passing will come as no surprise and will occasion no comment.”
Sisebut turned away. His hands trembled as he fingered his stole, and his face was ashen. “What would you have me do?” he said, his voice low.
“Laymen cannot gain entry to the monastery.” Always a man of action, Sunifred was calm now that he knew himself in control of the situation. “A messenger from the court will bring you a gift, with instructions. All you must do is ensure that the contents find their way into Liuvgoto and Cixilo’s wine. None dear to you will be implicated.” He glanced over to where Athanagild stood unobtrusively against the wall, head turned discreetly. “You!” Sunifred beckoned him.
“Fráuja,” said Athanagild respectfully.
“Alaric’s brother, are you not?”
He bowed. “I am.”
“Then you will serve your king – as does your brother?”
“Of course, Fráuja. Anything you ask of me.” He cast a glance at Sisebut. “As long as my father in Christ permits it.”
Sisebut nodded p
alely but didn’t meet his eyes.
“Of course he agrees,” Sunifred scoffed. “Everything he has he owes to me. He knows it can be taken as easily as it was bestowed.” He glared at Sisebut. “Never forget that.” He turned to Athanagild. “Someone will find you,” he said brusquely. “Be ready.”
Athanagild returned to his cell in the monastery, his mind whirling.
Laurentius and Shukra were both in Hispalis, ostensibly preparing the men of the fleet there to join Egica’s forces, although, in reality, their charges had already scattered, joining the southern forces in the thiufae of their fathers. He could send for either of them – but for what purpose?
Athanagild paced the narrow confines. Two paces forward, turn, two back, turn. He sometimes thought he would one day find it difficult to think without that same steady motion. Rather than finding the cell’s confines oppressive, he had come to welcome them. Within these walls, he found the only true peace and privacy he owned. But now he paced in agitation.
I cannot poison the queen and her mother, he thought, horrified at the detached manner in which he was forced to even consider such atrocities. But if he did not do as Sunifred commanded, he would be unmasked not only as Sisebut’s whore but as a traitor to Sunifred’s cause. And even Athanagild knew Liuvgoto’s plots could no longer be ignored. They endangered not only his own brother but all those who risked their lives to fight for Alaric and Sunifred. The rebellion might well be doomed to failure, but Liuvgoto’s treachery too easily discarded the lives of good men, made a mockery of their sacrifice.
Somehow, he must find a way to keep the two queens safe, the Church free of scandal, and Sunifred happy, all without raising Sisebut’s suspicions that Athanagild was anything other than his loyal confidant. He paced, trying to think through the myriad of competing concerns.
First, he considered the Church itself. If Sunifred triumphed, he would forever own the archbishop, compromising the Church. On the other hand, if Egica was victorious, he would see Sisebut executed alongside Sunifred and appoint an archbishop who was his own slave. Both options would see the Church lose its integrity and role in Spania’s future. Athanagild must find a way to circumvent both options. To do so, he must determine who might be deserving of the role of archbishop and see that man installed by his brethren before others took control.
With the rapidity of mind that had seen him rise so fast not only in Sisebut’s affections but in the very fabric of Church politics, he mentally reviewed each of the prominent bishops, rejecting them one after another: too rigid, too weak, too pious.
Felix. He thought of the quiet, dignified bishop of Hispalis, an educated man of high birth, an acquaintance of Laurentius, and of the now-dead Archbishop Julian. He considered Felix’s record. There was no taint of partiality there, and Egica would find in Felix nothing to threaten him. Likewise, if Sunifred should, by some rare chance, prevail, Felix possessed a calm nature able to both mollify the worst of Sunifred’s excesses and preserve that which was truly important to the Church.
With that settled in his mind, Athanagild turned to the second problem: that of the two women he was tasked with murdering. For let us not delude ourselves, he thought bitterly. Murder is what I am asked to do. The two women must live. That was an absolute and incorruptible truth. Athanagild would not be responsible for their deaths, but he must also ensure they did not die at the hands of another. If the plot to murder them was ever known beyond the Church’s own brethren, as Athanagild felt sure that one day it would, it was at Sunifred’s door that blame must be laid, not that of the Church. To do that, Athanagild knew, he must be the sole person involved, the only one able to testify to the plot and its execution. He could not take this task to another. Who, he wondered, do I know who is both assassin and confidant?
Immediately, it was Shukra’s mercurial, lethal figure he saw. Athanagild winced. Shukra, he knew, would not like either the task itself or being forced to keep such a secret. But he would, Athanagild was certain, know how to circumvent the poison. And even if he loathed the secret, Shukra would keep it.
Athanagild stared at the wall, seeing in it blank parchment upon which his words would fall. Two letters, then, he must write. One to Felix, laying out his suspicions, the corruption he had been a part of and continued to witness. It must be a careful balancing act of diplomacy, a confession rather than a call to action. Groundwork laid for the day when stern, impartial judgement would be needed. Enough to inform, but not quite enough to condemn. Not yet.
He looked again at the blank wall. Why, if I know what must be done, do I hesitate?
The answer, when it came, was a third problem, one both confusing and unwelcome: that of loyalty, and to what, and whom, it was owed.
Athanagild knew that in Sunifred’s plot to poison Liuvgoto and her daughter, fate had presented him with the perfect opportunity to expose Sisebut’s corrupt ambitions to the judgement of his brothers. He knew, too, that it was what he should do, and without delay, if he himself was to survive the bloodletting that hovered on the horizon.
And yet again, I am bound by loyalty. Athanagild paused in his stride, frowning. He could not fathom why it was that he felt loyalty to a man who had violated him from boyhood in the most vile ways, taken his body with never a regard to the young soul within. A man who had done nothing but lie, scheme, and corrupt. He knew only that to betray anyone who believed in his loyalty seemed to his own heart an unforgivable sin, a betrayal of the code to which he had been raised. And yet he lived in a world where the same powerful men who claimed to live by that code sinned daily against God in their pride and ambition.
But despite his evil, he thought, Sisebut and I share a secret that would see us condemned not only in the eyes of the Church but in the hearts of our own fellow men. For this alone, I feel a strange loyalty to him. The realisation sickened him. It is this that binds me to him, this shared, great sin that makes me now hesitate. Not because I fear exposure myself, though I know it would mean my death, but because I know that for all his evils, the sin of his sexual nature is the one that Sisebut is powerless over.
To whom, then, did he truly owe loyalty? To what?
Laurentius’s face, grim and closed, swam before his eyes. Laurentius, Athanagild suddenly knew, had sacrificed every feeling within in order to serve Spania. He would never allow personal considerations to take precedence over that loyalty. Laurentius was loyal to Spania.
And I, Athanagild realised with a bittersweet twist of his heart, am loyal to both Laurentius and Spania, for in my mind, they are one and the same. They are the honour with which I was raised and the future I believe in.
Whatever loyalty he felt to Sisebut or the Church, Athanagild knew it could not be allowed to interfere with what was best for Spania itself. Athanagild’s own conscience was his burden to carry, not something he could allow to be an obstacle to what was right.
Athanagild left his cell and made his way to the writing room. In the early hours of the morning, two letters left in a messenger’s satchel from the monastery in Toletum, one to Felix, bishop of Hispalis, and the other to Shukra, the magician.
Athanagild watched the day rise over the sleeping city, his eyes gritty with exhaustion. In the red and gold hues of dawn, it was not beauty that he saw, but the blood and money spilled for the dream to which his loyalty belonged – the nation that men called Spania.
43
Yosef
Summer, AD 692
Sebastopolis, Anatolia
Elauissa Sebaste, Cilicia, Turkey
Sebastopolis was at once the same as any merchant port Yosef had passed and yet utterly different. Beneath the seething morass of trade and greed, desperation and avarice, lay the turbulent undercurrent of war, ready to erupt at any moment. Yosef had no business there other than to sail, and he wished to find none. But few ships were leaving for Constantinople, most traders wary of the increasingly volatile waters beyond the harbour.
“It is folly to sail unless under the protection
of the fleet,” said one merchant gloomily in a tavern by the dock. “And the fleet is going nowhere. Not at the moment, at least.”
Undaunted, Yosef began to walk the back streets. His years as a lone wanderer had taught him to look far beyond the first negative. There was, always, a way from one place to another. The secret lay in finding those with motivation to travel it. Mention of the fleet made Yosef wonder if perhaps Theo might be found in the port. It was an outside chance, Yosef knew. The imperial fleet was large, their ports many. It would be well to enquire, but such enquiries must be done with subtlety. Subtlety meant taverns and the women within them who knew men’s secrets.
He smiled as he approached a low, arched doorway in a back alley in the late afternoon. The faint sound of girlish laughter echoed from within, followed by the rumble of a man’s voice. There was no better place to begin his search.
Will I forever seek the back alleys? he wondered as he pushed open the door. After all my time roaming, after Fei Hong, is this what I am now? A man comfortable with whores rather than one who truly loves? Will there ever be a wife for a man such as I have become? For a moment, an image of Sarah flitted across his mind. He took a deep breath, calming the sudden skip in his heart. The memories seemed more frequent now but no less jarring when they occurred. A wife as Sarah could have been is not meant for such as me, he thought as he stepped into the dark interior. Only in places such as these will I ever find solace, and with that I can be content.
I must be content.
The King's Coin: Ambition is the only faith (Visigoths of Spain Book 2) Page 34