The Centurion's Empire (21 page)

they could close therein, because they took part with the Jacquery. After this discomforture thus done at Meaux the
Jacques never assembled again together, for the young Ingram, Lord of Coucy, had about him certain men of war, and
they slew them whenever they found them without any mercy.
—The Cronycle of Syr John Froissart,
Book One
(1322-1377), Lord Berners' translation of 1525 (adapted)

The Hussontal castle had been built only recently, and loomed new and clean above the spring-green countryside as the
riders approached. Vitellan's first impression was of a building approaching ancient Roman standards. The countess had
ordered that the survivors of Vitellan's party were to be her sole escort as she returned. She led the way, riding one of
the packhorses. The approach to the drawbridge had been lined with the hanged bodies of some dozens of servants who
had collaborated with the Jacques.

"She means to bed you, Master," muttered Guy softly, giving hardly a glance to the battered, bloodied specters that hung
to either side of them. "An evil thing."

"As evil as a rampaging Jacque might be?" asked Vitellan, staring after the shapely "form of the countess on the horse
some way ahead of him.

"Great evil don't excuse lesser evil. Ah, I wish Mai were here. He were a great Christian scholar and a good man, he'd
have the words I can't find."

"A great
Jewish
scholar and a good man," Vitellan quietly corrected him.

"Master!" Guy exclaimed. The countess turned around, but Vitellan just smiled and waved. She nodded to him, then
turned to glare again at the figures now visible beyond the drawbridge.

"People seem to confide in me," Vitellan explained. "Perhaps it is because they know that I shall soon disappear into
time, taking their secrets to safety. Years ago Mai was offered conversion to the way of the Church or death. He tried to
live as a Christian and even studied for holy orders, but as

it came to pass his true faith was too strong, and so he lived as a Jew in secret."

"But—but he gave such good Christian counsel, he fought bravely, he was my friend."

"And when Christ met his soul in paradise he probably welcomed Mai all the more because he had remained true to
what he believed in."

"But the Jews, they spread the Black Death, they sacrifice children to the devil—"

"If you believe that then you'd believe the King is a spotty green cow."

"They, they killed Christ, ye can't deny that!"

"It was Roman soldiers who scourged Him, drove the nails though His flesh and thrust the spear into His side, Guy .. .
and I'm a Roman soldier."

"Master, but—"

"Were Mai alive, would you still call him friend now?"

"Master, Master, I—yes! He was my friend, my best friend. Dumfargh, you're as bad as he was with such questions. Next
you'll be saying that you're a Jew too."

"Would it matter?"

"No, damn you Master, no!" Guy exclaimed, and the countess glanced around again. Guy lowered his voice. "You're
changing me, giving me thoughts that could have me burned at the stake."

"My father was Roman; my mother Egyptian."

Guy turned and spat angrily at the last hanging corpse in their grisly guard of honor. "Why bother to tell me you be not
a Jew when ye've just taught me not to care?"

"So that you will not lie awake wondering about it for the rest of your life, Guy. As to whatever might happen between
myself and the countess, I want your respect."

"But I want to save you, Master. Guilt will tear you limb from limb, shame will burn your heart to cinders."

"Oh so,
how
would you know, Guy of unshakable virtue?"

"I know because—because the Lady Anne—she—we lay together in the fields the night that Meaux burned!" After
forcing the words out one by one Guy scowled sullenly at the ears of his horse.

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53

Vitellan pondered this, composed several replies in his mind, but thought the better of each in turn. "Thank you, Guy,
for ... your concern" was all that he could manage by the time their horses' hooves boomed hollowly on the wood of the
drawbridge.

Those servants and guards who had helped the countess and her family to escape stood cheering and flinging petals at
the little party. Within the keep stood the count, wearing blood-spattered armor and flanked by thirty of his knights.
The cheering continued as the countess motioned her escort to stop, then she rode on to where the count was standing.
He held out a hand to her and they began to speak. Abruptly his face paled and his hand dropped. The onlookers fell
silent.

"So you slew a few servants while at the head of thirty knights and all their men," the countess was saying. "These few
English rescued me from
nine thousand Jacques
who had stripped me naked and flung me to the ground."

"I was not there! How could I have helped?"

"You were only fifteen miles away, 'assessing the strength of the enemy,' or so the Count de Foix told me in Meaux. He
was man enough to ride in and defend three hundred noblewomen and their families. Why were you not at his side?"

"I did not know that you were in Meaux."

"You knew that three hundred of us were at the mercy of the Jacques. Why did you not come to help?"
The count had no answer. He stood looking up at her, silently begging forgiveness that he knew she would not give.
When he looked to his knights they were all staring at the ground.

"Get out," hissed his wife.

When the count left the castle he was riding alone. The keep remained in silence, with only the horses snorting and
nervously clopping the ground. Presently the countess turned in her saddle.

"Guy." The word echoed briefly from the stone walls and Guy rode forward. She turned back to the knights. "Guy, vou
will so to Riave, where mv brother Raymond is shelter-

ing with my children. If you please, bring them back here safely. Take two English bowmen with you, in case you meet
with another Jacque army."

Under Anne de Boucien's instruction Guy had acquired a few dozen words of French by now. He understood enough to
know that the knights were being humiliated.

"Yes, ladyship. Brave French knights, want come also?" he asked in slow, tortured French.
Thirty armored arms shot up at once.

"Take them if you will," she said coldly. "And Guy, as you return be pleased to call upon Lady Anne de Boucien at
Trakel and give her my compliments. I wish our children to be introduced."

As he rode from the keep at the head of his company of thirty knights Guy glared at Vitellan. The Roman centurion
shrugged and shook his head.

A fortnight later Vitellan awoke just before dawn in the bedchamber of the countess. The night had been hot and
oppressive, and she was sprawled naked on the bed, a tall woman with very fair skin. Her hips were very slightly broader
than had been the ideal in Britannia in the first century, but her breasts were in good proportion and still well shaped,
even after three children.

Vitellan turned from her to gaze across the French countryside as it came to life under the splash of color along the
horizon. Thirteen centuries earlier he had watched the sun setting from the family villa on the slopes of Vesuvius, never
dreaming what his future held. Nearly five hundred years previously, sitting on an overgrown Roman wall, he had
watched the sun rising through the mists of Wessex. He had spent the spring night alone, in the open. A local warlord
had sent his daughter to lie in his bed and seduce him. It was to be the basis of an alliance against Alfred. Vitellan had
been lonely and desperate for affection, or at least warm and willing company. He had had to flee his own bed, and it was
then he had decided to again flee even farther, into the future, before petty politics turned his welcome sour in that
century.

"You look out to the east," said a voice behind him. "You

still think to go to Switzerland and forsake my bed for a tomb of ice."

Vitellan turned back to her. "This is a lovely place," he said listlessly. "Then stay."

"I do not belong. Too many times I have been valued for being a wondrous traveler from ancient times, rather than a
man. I have been hated for it, too. In adversity everyone is together, but it's the peace that is the real test. Now you have
peace, of a kind, so I must walk away before I am chased."

"Do I count for anything with you?"

"My beautiful, loving, shapely lady, I have to leave because I care for you so very much. People tolerate us being together
because I am still a hero, but that will change. Your children will be scandalized, and your knightly brother Raymond
does not consider sensual consummation to be part of courtly love. Guy is due back with Raymond and your children
tomorrow, remember?"

"We can go to my summer estate while my children stay here for their education. I could send Raymond to Switzerland
to prepare—"

She caught herself, but Vitellan shook his head. He returned to the bed and put an arm around her shoulders.

"Raymond can prepare my way, that is a good idea. In the meantime I shall stay for the summer, at least."

"No more than that? You have such silly fears, Vitellan. I am a countess, I am powerful enough to protect you. Besides,
you are a great and good Christian: who would want to hurt you?"

"Good and lovely lady, the world is alive with men who would gladly burn a saint at the stake for a little advancement. As
to your power, remember what it was reduced to at the gates of Meaux, and how long it took to fall so far? I have no place
in your life, your marriage, or your kingdom. Such a strange and exotic man as me will bring sorrow to you, I understand
your people well enough to know that."

"You can't prefer the ice to me!" she shouted indignantly. "What is it that draws you back to be frozen again? The glory
of living to be a thousand years old?"

"I am already over a thousand years old." The countess hung her head, baffled and angry. 'Then what?"

"The search for home, perhaps," he replied wistfully.

"So ... the Roman Empire fell while you slept, and you hope to sleep until it arises again. You want to abandon France
because it is full of barbarians—like
me!"

The countess had worked herself up to something approaching baffled fury as she spoke. She's most dangerous when
she's naked, Vitellan reminded himself.

"Rome never really fell, I learned that soon after I was last unfrozen," he said in the hope of distracting her. "The
capital was moved east to Constantinople when barbarians swarmed over the West. Roman rule still flickers on in that
bankrupt, overgrown city, but I am not going there in search of Old Rome, my love. Neither am I so foolish to search for
it in the future. Your own century has greatness that Rome never achieved, and Rome had barbarities that you would
never tolerate. The Rome that scholars dream of never really existed. I should know, I once walked its streets."

"Then why leave?" demanded the countess.

"You want a long life with me, but it is not mine to give."

She frowned for a moment, biting her lip as if making a difficult decision. "If you have no place in my century, then take
me with you, let me share your bed of ice as you share my bed now. I'll miss my children, it would wring my heart to
leave them, but... but life is cheap and they are well provided for. I nearly died at Meaux a month ago, and I might die of
the Black Death next month. Love is cruel, my brave and kind centurion, and it makes lovers cruel as well. Take me with
you, and we can have a long and happy life together in some century to come."

Vitellan hung his head, then took her hand and kissed her fingertips one by one. Abruptly she snatched her hand back
and turned away from him.

"You don't want me to come with you, I can tell," she exclaimed angrily.

"As I said, you want a long life with me but it is not mine to give," he repeated slowly and patiently. "Were we both to be
treated with my poisonous elixir and then

frozen, we would have very little time together once we were revived. I am dying; I shall be dead within two years at
most."

She shrank back reflexively, suddenly fearing that he might be diseased.

"My elixir poisons me," he explained. "Even taken in small doses it is harmful. Because it has not been kept cold as we
traveled across France, it has slowly been becoming yet more toxic with each week that has passed. Even though I am
accustomed to it, I am slowly dying from its effects, and the damage cannot be reversed. Were you to drink some without
being used to it you would die within days, yet even taking it in small doses will kill you slowly. Where do you think that
I go early in the morning when I slip away from your bed? I go to vomit up blood. I had only a few years to live in 870 a.d.,
and by this year of 13581 have declined further. My stomach has been burned to a ruin by my elixir. If I stay here I shall
bring great sorrow and dishonor to you, then I shall die horribly before your eyes. If I am frozen again, I shall remain
alive and faithful to you until the day that I die, even if you can no longer touch me. You could confess your sin of
adultery with me to a priest and be certain in God's eye$»that you would never repeat the, sin with me." He raised her
chin so that she faced him again, and he tried to smile. "Adorable lady, what more could you ask for in a lover?"
She slid forward and held him tightly. Vitellan could feel tears trickling down his chest, and it was a long time before
she spoke again.