Camulod Chronicles Book 8 - Clothar the Frank

by Whyte, Jack

  Looking me straight in the eye, Germanus told .me that Merlyn Britannicus, the third generation of his family to govern in Camulod, was one of the finest men he had ever known, but that he was even more impressive as a visionary. Born of mixed Roman and Cambrian Celtic blood, Merlyn had been taught by Druids for much of his early boyhood, learning the ways of that religion, but he had also been well and thoroughly trained by his Roman guardians in the classical, traditional methods of learning—including reading and writing, which the Druids lacked—and equally exposed to Christian teachings, so that his education had been far reaching. I found myself unimpressed by that as I listened, but I began to pay much more attention when the bishop moved on to tell me about Merlyn's guardianship of the boy Arthur Pendragon.

  This boy was being trained by Merlyn Britannicus not merely to govern Camulod but to govern the entire land of Britain as Riothamus, or High King. Germanus told me that the young man Arthur still had no idea of the destiny Merlyn had in mind for him. The boy believed, rather, that he was merely being raised and trained to be the finest man that he could be.

  Any tendency I might have had to scoff at such a high-sounding claim died quickly when I realized that I was in much the same position—not, certainly, in being a king in training, but most definitely in finding myself surrounded at all times by teachers and instructors whom I respected and admired for their integrity, honesty and abilities, and being guided by one towering mentor who was so clearly admirable and incorruptible that the idea of bringing shame or dishonor to him was impossible to think about.

  Speaking clearly and explaining his thoughts to me as he went along, Germanus detailed the various things he wanted me to do when I arrived in Merlyn's Camulod. The most obvious of these, and the one requiring least explanation, was the transportation and delivery of a substantial package of letters and documents. Those were for Merlyn's eyes only, and even though the bishop admitted that Merlyn might be one of fewer than a score of non-clerical people in all Britain who still knew how to read—for there had been no schools and no teachers there since the Romans left, four decades earlier—he emphasized the dangers of people perhaps wanting to destroy the missives simply because they could not read and thus felt belittled and insulted. I mulled that point over in silence. It seemed to me that the bishop was exaggerating the danger to the documents.

  The second thing he wanted me to deal with was far more in keeping with his wishes as a churchman. In all of Britain, it appeared, there was no permanent ecclesia—no house of God dedicated solely as a place wherein men might worship the Deity. Gaul had many ecclesiae nowadays, and more were proliferating like mushrooms everywhere priests traveled, but they were an innovation that had only come into fashion in recent years. Before the days of Constantine the Great, a hundred years earlier, the Church and its adherents had known much persecution and had met and worshipped in secrecy, but with the conversion of the Emperor himself to Christianity all of that had changed. Now it was not only feasible but desirable for permanent places of worship to be established in populous centers for the greater glory of God. As always, and as in everything, Bishop Germanus thought in terms of God's greater glory.

  Germanus wanted Merlyn—and his ward, Arthur—to build a stone church on their own lands, the very first ecclesia in Britain. He had discussed the matter with Merlyn while he was there on the island, but Merlyn had told him that there was no source of suitable stone or rock close to Camulod. He had promised, however, that once his agenda had been fulfilled and he had the leisure to find such a suitable source, he would give serious thought to building a simple edifice of stone that could serve the people of the region as a permanent place of worship. My task was to remind him of that promise.

  And then came the most important charge with which I was to be entrusted. Germanus had also asked Merlyn to consider establishing within Britain a new order solemnly dedicated ad majorem Dei gloriam—to the greater glory of God. This order need not be religious, nor civil or military. It would be new—something unknown under the sun before now—and its primary purpose would be to glorify God by its very existence. Merlyn, it seemed, had promised to consider that, as well as the ecclesia, and I was to remind him of that promise, too.

  "What kind of order did you have in mind. Father?"

  Germanus looked at me in silence for a long time, a half smile on his lips, and then he shook his head. "I have no idea, my son." He watched as my consternation and lack of understanding blossomed on my face, and his smile broadened into a grin that was filled with serene confidence. "It is not my place to know such things, Clothar. How could I be equipped to devise such a project? It would be hubris of the worst kind even to think about attempting such a thing. God Himself knows what He requires men to do in His name and to His glory, and when the time comes for something to be done, He will implant the shape and substance of His wish in the mind of someone—perhaps Merlyn, perhaps not—who will then cause it to become reality, and the order will be born. My task, when the idea first occurred to me, was simply to plant the thought in the mind of Merlyn Britannicus, as I am sure I was meant to do. He is facing a life filled with new possibilities, once his new kingdom is established. It may fail abjectly, but it may flourish wonderfully—only God Himself can see into the future and discern what lies ahead. Those of us who are no more than human can only place our trust in His goodwill and wait to be enlightened.

  "Now, to other matters. We know what you must do in Britain. Now we must bend our minds to bringing you there safely. You have never been aboard a ship, have you? I thought not. Very well, here are our priorities. We must first deliver you safely to the coast. After that, we must find you a ship that will fit your needs, and we must make sure that you can use it. He turned slightly in his chair to look at me, his eyes moving down the length of me.

  "We need to speak of arms and armour now. From what Tiberias Cato tells me, your armour and weapons are well used and serviceable enough, but the overall appearance of your arms and equipment, with the sole exception of Cato's own spatha, now yours, leaves much to be desired in the face of the tasks I shall require of you. That, however, is simply remedied." He called out a name that sounded like Armand, and a tall, strapping young cleric came in immediately from the anteroom, where he had apparently been waiting for the summons.

  The bishop thanked him for his patience and asked him to bring in the articles that lay on the bed in his private chambers, and the fellow bowed and left, to return soon thereafter, walking with care and straining beneath the weight of a cumbersome box fashioned of rough wooden planks. It was as wide as my forearm is long, and twice as deep as it was wide. Besides being heavy, the thing was clearly awkward to carry, despite its having been furnished with handles of hempen rope. Armand carried it carefully over to the fireplace and lowered it cautiously to the floor, grunting loudly with relief as he released it and straightened up.

  Armand fetched two more boxes, one atop the other, both smaller but apparently no lighter than the first one. The larger of these also had carrying handles attached, but these were of heavy, stitched leather, and the box had been smoothed and stained. It was perhaps two handspans in depth, the same from front to back and at least half again as much across the front. The one that sat on top of that, however, was vastly different. This was a solidly made hinged chest of precious citrus wood with an elaborate brass spring-lock, the key to which hung by a wire from the brass handle on the lid. Ornately carved on all five surfaces and lustrously polished to a sheen that reflected the flickering light from the fire in the brazier, the container was the kind of costly artifact that spoke loudly of enormous wealth and privilege. Citrus wood was so precious, and so much in demand, that there had been rumours circulating for decades that it had been entirely used up and no longer grew anywhere in the world. I had never actually seen citrus wood, and no one I knew had, either, but I recognized the magnificence of what I was looking at immediately and knew it could be nothing other than the fabled wood. I kne
w, too, that the piece in front of me was probably hundreds of years old, an heirloom of the ancient family of which Germanus was the sole remaining member.

  Armand hoisted his burden onto the table, then placed the two smaller containers side by side. That done, he turned and bowed slightly to the bishop and then glided unobtrusively back out to the anteroom.

  "Another new face, Father," I murmured, trying not to make my curiosity about the boxes too obvious. "There have been many changes in the months since I went away."

  The bishop shrugged. "Aye, I can see where it might seem thus to you, but there have been no more than usual. You simply never noticed it before, because you were always here and for more than five years you absorbed each new face automatically and without thought as it came along. Now you have been gone for more than half a year and are seeing them all at once." He bowed his head and rubbed the palm of his right hand with his left thumb, then looked back at me.

  "Tell me about this friend of yours, this Ursus Perceval or whatever his name is. Is he a good man?"

  "You mean in the manner of Christian goodness, Father? I believe so. I have never seen anything to indicate otherwise."

  "No, that's not what I meant. I meant good in the military sense. Is he trustworthy?"

  "Of course, absolutely."

  "Are you convinced of that? That you could trust him with your life?"

  I smiled. "I already have. Father, several times, and I have never felt the slightest doubt in his reliability, his courage or his strength."

  "Hmm. What about money?"

  "What about it, Father? I have none and neither has Ursus—he is a mercenary. But we have no need of money."

  "There is always a need for money, in some guise or another, believe me. You may drift across the land attending to your own requirements for as long as you wish and you will have no real need for money. But come the moment when you have to undertake a task like those I have set you here, you will need money and a strong supply of it, for you are entering a realm where only money achieves effects. Thus the reason I am asking you about your Mend: you will be carrying large sums of money with you and on your person. I merely wish to be assured that this Ursus is able enough to defend you against thieves and trustworthy enough that he will not be tempted to become a thief himself. Tell me all that you know about him."

  I did so at length, and when I was finished, Germanus sat staring narrow-eyed at me, absorbing what I had said, and then he nodded and pushed himself out of his chair with both arms.

  "Now, come and look at this." He crossed to the large box on the floor, and I followed, eager to know what was to be revealed to me, but I could have guessed at that all night long and never have imagined what he was about to show me. The sides of the box, I could see now that we were close to it, were hinged and secured by a simple metal hasp. Germanus undid the hasp and swung the sides of the box apart, and I gasped.

  My first impressions were of rich golden, burnished browns, metal and leather, reinforced by the smell that came crowding into my nostrils, richly scented polish of the kind used to burnish and buff the finest leathers. The box contained an armour tree, a simple frame of crossed pieces of wood designed to store the various pieces of a soldier's gear. I had seen a hundred of them, here and there, but I had never seen one installed in a box, for transportation or, as it turned out to be in this instance, for long-term storage. Furthermore, the armour growing on this particular tree was unlike any I had ever set eyes upon.

  Several of my relatives had magnificent armour. King Ban's had been made for him personally, as had my cousin Brach's, and the results were impressive and spectacular, even intimidating. What I was gazing at here, however—and I knew it beyond certainty, for it could be nothing else—was Germanus's own armour, the armour of an imperial Roman legatus, in all its opulent magnificence. Germanus reached out and rubbed the ball of his thumb gently across the deeply ingrained texture of an ancient and much-polished scratch over the left breast of the cuirass.

  "Never could get that mark out," he murmured, "but I never really wanted to, not badly enough. It served to keep me aware of my mortality. That was done by a heavy boar spear, thrown by the biggest man I have ever seen. It hit me square and threw me bodily backwards, over my horse's rump. Lucky for me I didn't land on my head and break my neck, but God was with me and the only damage I sustained was this one scratch."

  I was astounded, because the cuirass was leather, not metal, and a spear such as he described should have skewered him, cuirass and all. I said so, wondering all the while if he might be exaggerating, as soldiers always seem to do, but he merely smiled and shook his head.

  "I cannot speak with any certainty about the harness worn by emperors, because I have never known an emperor who was a true warrior and actually fought and thus wore real armour, as opposed to ceremonial display armour, but I suspect that this suit here may be the finest single suit of armour ever made." Once again he extended a hand and rubbed it gently over the glossy surface of the leather breast plate before plucking the helmet from the wooden ball that supported it atop the tree and holding it up close to his eyes with both hands. "It has been many years since I last wore this," he breathed, "and looking at it now, I could regret never wearing it again were I to permit the self-indulgence." A cloth bag hung from the "neck" of the tree, and he set the helmet atop the box and rummaged in it, extracting a plumed crest made from alternating tufts of pure white and crimson-dyed horsehair. With the ease born of years of practice, he clicked the crest into place on the helmet, transforming it in a moment from a magnificent helm to a thing of startling and imperious beauty.

  "Here, try this on. Stand still." I stood motionless, scarcely daring to breathe as he fitted the head covering over my brows. It felt heavy, and solid, but it fitted as though it had been made for me. "Impressive," the bishop murmured. "When one wears such a thing oneself, there is seldom opportunity to admire it. Looking at it now, though, it has a certain splendor, I must admit." He turned back to the tree, leaving the helmet on my head. "But look at the workmanship in this device." He was referring to the cuirass, and I removed the helmet, tucking it beneath my arm before I stooped to look more closely at the cuirass.

  It really was superb, an intricate and awe-inspiring creation of boiled, dried, hammered and burnished leather, painstakingly fashioned in the shape of a stylized male torso. The planes of the pectoral musculature were utterly smooth and polished to a mirror like perfection that reminded me—I smiled at the thought—of my first sight of my cousin Brach emerging from the lake. Elsewhere on the piece, though, there was no expanse of surface larger than a tiny fingernail that was not covered with embossed carvings and workmanship of breathtaking, elegant perfection: rosettes and chevrons and thorny briar work scrolls chased and embraced each other in apparent abandon yet flawless symmetry across and around the surface of the armour. Germanus stepped back from it, to admire it from farther off.

  "Hand it to me, would you?"

  Obediently. I placed the helmet at my feet, then prepared to lift the cuirass from the wooden frame. I grasped it securely, lifted it— and almost dropped it in my surprise, whipping my head around in consternation to see that Germanus had expected this and was grinning at me again.

  "Aye," he said. "Bear in mind I said it's the finest armour ever made. You have almost discovered why. Bring it to the table."

  I carried the unbelievably light cuirass, full front and back plates together, to where he was already waiting for me, peering into the second box. As I balanced the cuirass, allowing it to stand on its own upon the table, the bishop held something out to me. It was a flat, rectangular object wrapped in black cloth.

  "That's the secret of the armour," he said as I unwrapped the package and then held it up in front of me, staring at it. Whatever the device was, I knew I had never seen one before, and yet it looked familiar. It was made of metal, a grid-like form square in shape and feather light and flexible where I would have expected much more wei
ght and rigidity. And then I realized what it reminded me of. Once, when I was a child, we had had a summer of ferocious heat, and in the course of it my nurse had taken to weaving shades of thumb-wide bulrush fronds to hang in our doorways and window embrasures to keep out the sun while allowing the air to move into the darkened house. The simple square over- and-under weave of the leaves had entranced me, I remembered, because it looked so fragile yet was paradoxically strong. And now I was looking at the same kind of weave, fundamentally simple and straightforward save that instead of rushes, the smith had used slats of metal, extremely thin and a deep, dark blue in color, forming a slender woven plate of steel that I could flex between my hands. Germanus held out his hand for the piece, and I passed it to him. He pressed his cupped hand, containing the blue mesh, hard against the left pectoral panel of the cuirass.

  "There is a layer of straps of this woven steel underlying the leather. In fact it lies between two layers, with the edges of the straps overlapping very slightly, and the edges of the leather are sewn together around the outer rims of the cuirass, front and back, very artistically. If you look very closely, you may see where the two layers meet, but it is not easy to find." I bent forward and peered closely, but I could see nothing.

  "It is a wonder," I confessed. "I have never heard of such a thing. Where was it made, Father?"

  "In Constantinople, where else? The smiths there can do magical things with metal, but the man who made this armour was the finest, most skillful armorer I ever knew. I was able to do him a service when I was in law, and he made this for me specially when I left the profession and joined the armies at the behest of the Emperor. There are arm guards and greaves and an armoured kirtle in the box to complete the suit, as you can see, and even the leather dome of the helmet conceals a metal cap. It has served me well, in all my travels and campaigns. I have worn it throughout the Empire." He made a sucking sound through his teeth. "But no more. Never again."