Camulod Chronicles Book 8 - Clothar the Frank (74 page)

"Sweet Jesus!" As the others swung to face me I pointed upwards. "Look!"

To the east, a golden beam of sunlight had sprung blazing, clean edged and brilliant from a narrow, bright blue gap in the clouds.

3

From that moment of seeing the first ray of sunshine breaking through the rain clouds, the entire land of Britain seemed to change its mind and welcome us, showing us warmth and beauty and hospitality where before we had known only dankness, gloom and despondency.

The memory of my first sight of the distant fortress of Camulod, sitting high on its wooded hill overlooking the rich and fertile plain beneath, has remained with me forever afterwards. Strangely enough, looking back upon it across the distance of years, I realize now that I did not think of it as a fortress at all when I first saw it. I saw Camulod from afar as a place of great and exciting beauty, rather than as a defensive bastion. I saw that the place had none of the grandeur or magnificence of the great castellated fortresses of Gaul, and in the years to come I would see many finer and stronger buildings and fortifications along the southeast coastline of Britain itself, the so-called Forts of the Saxon Shore, built by the Roman occupying forces hundreds of years earlier and abandoned when the legions left.

What I saw in the distance that first day, for reasons I have never known or sought to understand, was a symbol of hope and, most surprisingly in retrospect, of peace, because it had become obvious by the time we came within sight of Camulod that day that, despite what Philip had told us about being at peace, we were in a land fully prepared for war. There were parties of soldiers moving everywhere we looked, mainly cavalry but with a substantial leavening of infantry, and we were challenged constantly by people demanding to know who we were and what we were about. Fortunately, the fact that we were both well dressed and well mounted worked in our favour, for it quickly became apparent to us that the enemy, whoever they might be, went largely afoot and owned little of the sophisticated weaponry carried by the troopers of Camulod—that word,
troopers,
was a new one to me, but easy enough to understand. Close to the hilltop fort itself, at the bottom of the winding road that swept up to the main gates concealed behind the curtain wall, a vast training ground of hard-packed earth that showed no single blade of grass was filled to apparent capacity with wheeling, constantly moving groups of training troopers.

That close to the castle walls, no one paid us any attention and we mounted all the way to the main gates before we were challenged again, this time by the senior member of a vigilant band of guards who stood before the gates, eyeing everyone who came and went and from time to time questioning anyone who excited their curiosity or caution. I remained mounted and stated our business, saying that I knew Merlyn Britannicus was not available, but asking to meet with someone who could speak on his behalf.

That someone turned out to be a giant of a man, perhaps twice my own age, who strode out from the gates some time later and stood looking down at us without speaking, his arms crossed upon his enormously broad chest as he examined each of us from head to foot. The guards had told us to dismount while we were waiting for this fellow to be summoned, and now that he had come I found myself wishing I had remained on horseback. Even unarmored and wearing only a simple tunic, this man was hugely tall and physically intimidating, even larger and stronger looking than my cousin Brach, the biggest, most muscular and imposing man I had ever known.

He made no effort to speak to us at first, more concerned with assessing any threat that we might represent to him or to his people. His eyes moved over each of us meticulously, missing nothing and even examining the harness and trappings of our horses. Finally, however, he seemed satisfied and nodded very slightly, the set of his shoulders relaxing visibly. He introduced himself, in a voice that was pleasantly deep and surprisingly gentle, as Donuil Mac Athol, adjutant to Merlyn Britannicus. He spoke in Latin, as did we all, but with an intonation I had never heard before. Knowing him to be a local of some description merely from his name—Mac Athol meant son of Athol in the Gallic tongue—I assumed he was a northerner, from the mountains, perhaps a Cambrian. It transpired that I was wrong. He was a Scot, from the island of Hibernia across the western sea, but I would not learn that until later.

I had said nothing to him until then and had no way of knowing whether he had been told who we were or what we wanted with Merlyn, but he addressed me first, ignoring my two older companions.

"You come from Auxerre? From Germanus?" I nodded. "Well, I hope there's no great urgency to your mission. Merlyn is gone, where and for how long no one knows, not even my wife, and that's a wonder, for she knows everything. Tell me your names."

I introduced myself first, and then Perceval, Tristan and Bors. Donuil's eyes moved to each person as I said their names, and when I had finished he nodded again.

"Good, then. Perceval, Tristan and young Bors. Be welcome in Camulod. Come inside now and we'll find someone to look after your things for you, your gear and your horses . . . although I imagine you, young fellow, will want to stay with your beasts and make sure no one touches anything without your say so, am I right?" When Bors nodded, Donuil grinned in response. "Aye, I'd have been disappointed had you said otherwise. So be it. We'll come back and find you in a while. But you three, are you thirsty? We have some fine brewers of beer here in Camulod. Come you and let's see if we can find some of their best."

After dinner that night, on what was merely the first of many long, pleasant evenings by the fire in the quarters belonging to Donuil and his lustrous and beautiful wife, Shelagh, we received our first lessons in the intimate family tale of the development of Camulod and the two families, Britannicus and Varrus, that had brought it into being and shaped it into the self-contained and practically self-sufficient society it had become.

We talked about Bishop Enos, too, and about the mission I had been charged with regarding him. I now believed that I must talk to Enos without delay. No one in Camulod knew how or where to find Merlyn, but my experiences at the Bishop's School had taught me that few organizations were more adept and well qualified at communicating among themselves and finding people than was the Church itself. Bishop Enos had work to do, both with and for Merlyn, on behalf of his friend and colleague Germanus of Auxerre, and I, too, had information to communicate to Merlyn. It seemed to me there was a far better chance of reaching him through Verulamium and the ecclesiastical contacts of Bishop Enos than there was of finding him through the offices of anyone in Camulod.

Donuil listened to all this, impatiently I thought, and would have demurred had not his wife forestalled him, agreeing with my viewpoint. After that—and it was plain that the giant Donuil had not the slightest desire to challenge Shelagh's judgment—the only objection he could think to raise was that Enos might not be in Verulamium when we arrived there.

"I prefer the odds on that gamble," I told him. "Even if Enos isn't there when we arrive, chances are he won't be far away. Verulamium's not merely his home, it's the center of his activities. As the bishop there, it's unlikely he would stay away too long. His duties and responsibilities depend too much upon his being there most of the time. Over in Gaul Germanus seems to be forever traveling, but he is seldom absent from his bishopric in Auxerre for more than a few weeks at a time, even although he has an entire staff at his disposal because his territory is a lot bigger and broader than is Enos's."

By the end of that visit we had agreed that my friends and I should continue our journey without delay, heading north and west, following the route Merlyn himself had taken with his party at various times on the way to, and back from, Verulamium. Donuil would provide us with all the instructions we would need to find the town itself, and he generously offered us an escort of Camulodian troopers. We declined that, at first, believing, rightly or wrongly, that we would be less conspicuous traveling as a small group, but Donuil and Shelagh were both adamantly opposed to our going unescorted. We had no notions of the dangers we might have to face, they told us, reiterating their warnings until we threw up our hands and complied with their wishes.

I asked them then about the assistance we had been assured we would find provided by Cuthric and Cayena, influential Anglian leaders that Germanus had told me about. Husband and wife, they were Christians of long standing and had established themselves and their people widely in the lands surrounding and to the south and west of Enos's seat of Verulamium. Cuthric was what Germanus termed both a sage and a mage—a wise man and a devout Christian by nature and education, but also a man learned in the mysteries and esoterica of his people's ancient beliefs and rituals. Cuthric was accorded great respect and honour by his people, and his wife, Cayena, was the perfect consort to his presence. Even Merlyn and his party, Germanus had told me, had accepted the couple's beneficent influence on the Anglian community, and the fact that Merlyn and the forces of Camulod would recognize such people as a community rather than a nest of invading Outlanders went a long way towards explaining the kind of people these newcomers must be.

Donuil and Shelagh, however, could offer us no realistic hope of finding support among the Anglians, simply because they had no evidence to suggest that the Anglians were even out there any more. No word had been heard from Cuthric and Cayena since Germanus had returned to Gaul, and that entire eastern half of Britain had been sinking into a quagmire of escalating warfare and invasions. Beyond the boundaries of Camulod itself, which was not large, they told us, the entire land was in the grip of anarchy, a condition that they swore we could not begin to understand, having lived our whole lives under the benign influence—no matter how weak or tawdry that might now be—of the Pax Romana.

They were correct; we were to discover that very quickly and be forever grateful that they had made us heed their judgment, for had we ridden out of Camulod as we had first intended, four of us with eight horses, secure in the hubris of knowing our own prowess as fighters and warriors, we would not have survived the first five days of travel. Until we experienced the lawless condition of the country for ourselves, assessing it with our own eyes against the standards we had been taught to apply to life in all its aspects, we could not possibly have anticipated the immense and frightening differences that now existed between life at its worst in Roman Gaul and what passed as "normal" life in Britain. And all of those differences that we were to discover in such a short time—the utter lawlessness, the disregard for human life and dignity, and the rampant hostility, violence and brutality that we found everywhere—had all sprung into existence in the mere two score of years that had elapsed since the legions left, taking with them the power of the state to sustain and enforce justice.

4

We were less than ten miles beyond the outer boundaries of Merlyn's colony, guarded as it was by vigilant horse troopers and infantry manning an outer ring of defenses day and night, when we saw the first evidence of the lawlessness that would be all around us from then on: a sullen, heavy column of black smoke twisting upon itself and rising straight up into the afternoon sky. We veered off the road to investigate at my insistence, for the Camulodian troopers who escorted us would have ridden on by, too inured to what they would find even to bother looking for a cause, and soon we came to a clearing that had contained a squalid, rudimentary farm.

The burning buildings were already falling in upon themselves, their walls made of bare sapling trunks, rather than clay and wattle, and their roofs unthatched, mere racks of crossed poles layered with filthy straw that burned greasily. The farmer still spun slowly at the end of a rope and had been disemboweled after hanging. The naked, broken body of his wife lay under his dangling feet, partially covered by his trailing intestines. Two dead children lay nearby, one of them killed by an axe or sword stroke that had split the tiny skull asunder, and the other had been thrown into the inferno of the burning hut, leaving only a thin pair of legs and feet protruding into the farmyard.

I swung down from my saddle, expecting to do I know not what, but as the visual impressions swarmed upon me in quick succession, each of them worse than what had gone before, I was unable to contain the violent retching that swept over me. I staggered to one side, clutching for something to hold on to and finding nothing as I fell to my knees and vomited.

I was not alone, I saw as I straightened up. Young Bors had offered his sacrifice along with mine, and Tristan, although he had apparently retained his morning meal, sat stone-faced and ashen, staring into the trees and obviously unwilling to look at the carnage around us. Perceval was the only one of our four who appeared unmoved, although I knew him well enough by now to be able to see that he was deeply angry. Beside him, the young tribune whom Donuil had assigned to head our escort sat gazing at me, his expression unreadable. I spat to clear my mouth of the sour taste of vomit, and Perceval wordlessly tossed me the water bottle that he always kept hanging on his saddle. I rinsed my mouth thoroughly before crossing to the young tribune.

"Who would have done this, Cyrus?"

The young man shrugged, his mouth twisting downwards. "Anyone," he said. "Bandits, thieves, envious neighbors, perhaps even Saxon raiders."

"Envious neighbors? How can you find humor in a thing like this? And Saxons, this close to Camulod? Are you sure?"

He shook his head. "I see no humor here and I am sure of nothing, Lord Clothar, although I doubt this would be the work of Saxons. It's too small a thing—despite its immensity for those who died here. If there were Saxons in this region, there would have to be large numbers of them and we would soon find out." He was looking about him as he spoke, his eyes on the ground. "There were no large numbers here, no swarming footprints that I can see. This was probably done by a small group of bandits. There could have been nothing here worth stealing, save for a few skinny animals." He waved towards an empty sty and a trampled pile of filthy straw. "A pig, perhaps a cow."