The Pope's Assassin

by Tim Severin

  We travelled under a sky full of scurrying clouds, and the countryside was much the same as before. Expanses of open grassland between low, rounded hills gave way to stretches of bog land dotted with small lakes and reed-fringed ponds wherever the drainage was poor. We were beginning to see evidence of human occupation. We came across groups of burial mounds shaped like over-sized anthills. According to Beorthric they marked the graves of tribal leaders whose peoples had grazed their cattle in the region long before the Avars entered the land.

  ‘People like the Gepids?’ I asked. We were passing a cluster of the mounds, six or seven of them, each still taller than a man, though they had badly worn away over time.

  ‘Possibly. The Avars arrived as conquerors.’

  His words brought to my mind the image of the warrior prince on the gold flagon, triumphantly dragging along his running captive by his hair.

  Beorthric nodded towards Kunimund riding a short distance ahead of us. ‘The Avars are a ruling class, lording it over the Gepids and other peoples they dispossessed . . .’ He did not finish his sentence but reined in his horse, swung down out of the saddle, and picked up something from the ground. It was a lump of sheep dung, shiny and fresh.

  ‘I thought so,’ he said, holding it up to show me. ‘I’ve been noticing signs of grazing for the past few miles. We’re nearing a village.’

  It proved to be a straggling hamlet of poor houses, each with its tiny vegetable plot. There was a single street of bare earth, a couple of long open-sided sheds where the livestock could find winter shelter, and little else. Once again I failed to detect any Avar features in the faces of the people who appeared in the doorways to stare at us. They were mostly women and small children dressed in layers of ragged clothing. They looked pinched with hunger. The only men I could see were greybeards and I supposed that the able-bodied adults and youths were somewhere out in the grasslands tending to their flocks. One of the elders greeted Kunimund warmly as he dismounted, though I noted several hostile glances directed towards Beorthric and myself where we sat waiting on our horses.

  After a brief conversation with our guide, the greybeard pointed to a building that stood a little apart. Kunimund turned to us and beckoned, smiling. Uncertain what to do, I glanced across at Beorthric. He caught my enquiring look, and gave a slight shrug. He, too, was unsure. Finally, I decided that there was no point in hanging back now that we had come so far. I slid down from my horse and handed over the reins to the old man. Beorthric joined me as we caught up with the Gepid already limping towards the house. I was encouraged to see there was an overhang to its roof where charcoal was stacked and – more puzzling – an even larger pile of dry horse dung.

  The plank door was propped open, and I smelled smoke and scorched timber as Kunimund led us across the threshold. The interior was a scene of clutter and disarray. It was a large open space, with a floor of beaten earth and a high ceiling. A screen partitioned off the far end, presumably where the goldsmith lived. His furnace stood on the ground in the centre of the workspace. It resembled a chunky clay pot, about two feet high, with immensely thick walls. The snout of a large, fixed bellows poked into one side. Scattered around the furnace were all manner of tools and waste material – tongs, fire rakes, hammers, cup-shaped crucibles, water bucket, dozens and dozens of fragments of broken clay, broken metal scraps and a pair of low three-legged stools. The metal worker was off to one side, kneeling on the ground. With one hand he was using tongs to hold an odd-shaped lump of clay steady on a thick stone slab. With a hammer in the other hand he was tapping on the clay. As I watched, the clay began to split and crack, falling away in chunks, revealing the shape of a metal axe head at the core.

  Kunimund called a greeting. With a final decisive tap of the hammer, the metal worker finished his task, laid down the tongs and hammer, and rose to his feet to face us. He was small and thickset, his heavy tunic specked with burn marks, and he wore a leather apron.

  Beside me Beorthric kept up a running translation as Kunimund explained the reason for our visit. ‘He’s saying that we’ve heard about his reputation as a master craftsman, and you wish to talk to him about his skill, maybe order some items,’ Beorthric murmured.

  I was looking about me, puzzled. A large smoke hole in the centre of the roof directly over the furnace let in daylight, and there were narrow unglazed windows in the walls. But the corners of the room were in deep shadow. The place was very dark and gloomy for doing fine or delicate work. The only metalwork I could see were farm tools propped against the wall or casually thrown in a pile.

  The craftsman pulled a rag from his pocket. Wiping his hands, he came forward to speak with me. His callused fingers were thick and stubby, the nails encrusted with grime. Trickles of sweat had left streaks on his soot-smeared face.

  Beorthric nudged me. ‘Say something,’ he muttered.

  I realized the craftsman was standing in front of me, waiting to hear what I wanted to ask. Distracted by his rough-hewn appearance, I said the first thing that came into my head. ‘What’s the horse dung for?’

  He looked bemused. ‘He says he mixes dung with clay to make the moulds, and to repair holes in the furnace,’ Beorthric translated.

  I fumbled for words. Something was wrong.

  ‘Tell him that we’re interested in the items he makes to decorate horse harness,’ I suggested.

  The man went across to a wooden chest against the wall and brought out several pieces to show me. In shape, they were similar to the harness buckle I had seen in Rome, but they were crudely made, lumpy and rough. I picked one up. Judging by its weight the buckle was made of poor-quality bronze. I ran my thumb over the rough surface, feeling the grit.

  ‘Does he have any buckles that are any smoother?’ I asked.

  The craftsman showed me a shallow tray filled with sand. ‘He says he casts the buckles in sand moulds,’ Beorthric translated. ‘But if you wished to order better-quality pieces from him, he could use a stone mould.’

  I looked around me helplessly. This was not at all what I expected.

  ‘Can he work with silver?’ I asked.

  This time there was a long pause before he answered. ‘He says that he has never worked in silver, but thinks he could learn.’

  Finally, I accepted defeat. I was speaking not to a goldsmith but to a village blacksmith. Kunimund had misunderstood what sort of person I was looking for.

  I turned to the Gepid to explain the mistake, but Kunimund must have slipped out of the building. He was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Thank the smith for his time,’ I said to Beorthric. ‘Say we are sorry to have interrupted his work.’

  The blacksmith nodded politely as we made our farewells and headed towards the door.

  ‘That was a dead end,’ I said, turning to Beorthric as we ducked out of the building and out into the street. ‘Try to make Kunimund understand that we are looking for a skilled goldworker, someone like the man who repaired the breastplate for the khagan’s horse.’

  Beorthric had come to an abrupt halt. I looked up to see why.

  Confronting us was a half-circle of mounted men. They were sitting quietly; each man had a lance with a pennant, and a sword at his hip. Those not dressed in chain mail were wearing padded over-tunics. Every bearded face under the rims of their metal helmets had the features that marked them as Avars.

  Standing in the middle of the semi-circle was Kunimund. He was glaring at us, and I read both triumph and loathing on his face. Too late, I understood the depths of his hatred for the enemy who had destroyed the Ring.

  ‘That bastard betrayed us,’ said Beorthric beside me.

  Chapter Ten

  THE AVAR PATROL searched us with rough efficiency. They took away all our weapons, including the little knife on its cord around Beorthric’s neck. His scramseax aroused their professional interest. They passed it from hand to hand, testing the balance, admiring the sharp edge and commenting on the blade’s unusual shape. They also found my money belt
and gave me several slaps to the head when I explained I was bringing the gold coins to be melted down and turned into tableware. I stuck with my story and the man I took to be the officer in charge eventually decided that the matter would be more fully investigated after they had delivered us to their commander. Then they lashed our wrists together with rawhide strips, hoisted us up on our horses, and tied our ankles together with a leather strap that passed under the horse’s belly to prevent us falling off. As the patrol left the village with troopers holding our lead reins, I twisted round in my saddle to get a last view of Kunimund. He was standing by himself in the middle of the street and, judging by the scowl on his face, he was disappointed that we had not been treated more harshly.

  The Avar cavalrymen did not spare us. Their horses were fit and well trained and they rode at the same bone-shattering pace as the Gepid had set. Staying upright in the saddle was agony. When I tried to speak with Beorthric, the trooper holding the leading rein of my horse lashed me across the face with his whip. I sank into a resentful silence as we were hustled onward. The angle of the afternoon sun told me that we were heading south-east. By dusk we had ridden through two more villages, each as shabby as the last, and swum with our horses across a large river. It meant that I was bedraggled and cold when, finally, we stopped for the night in yet another meagre settlement. There we were dragged off our horses and manhandled into a cow byre, both of us so stiff and bruised that we could barely stand. The Avars seated us back to back on the straw-covered earth and tied our arms each side of a stout post. Then they left us alone. It was our first chance to talk.

  ‘Kunimund’s a Gepid, forced to be a servant for the Avars. Why would he have betrayed us?’ I asked. Our captors had removed our ankle fastenings and I could feel the pain as the blood returned to my feet.

  Beorthric sneezed. The straw was old and dusty. ‘How would you feel towards people who had killed or enslaved your family and left you half crippled with a broken leg? He knew very well that he was taking us to meet a village blacksmith, not a goldsmith.’

  ‘He couldn’t have known that an Avar patrol would be passing by.’

  ‘Maybe not. But sooner or later he would have turned us in.’

  Beorthric’s remark did nothing to lift my spirits. All afternoon I had been growing increasingly pessimistic about our fate. The two troopers we had left waiting for us at the Ring would ride back to their guardhouse and report to their sergeant that we had disappeared. Their sergeant was unlikely to pass on the information to his superiors, even if he knew who they were. With Margrave Gerold’s death it was not clear who was now in charge of security in Avaria. As for Archbishop Arno, he was a pragmatist. Hearing nothing more from Beorthric or myself, he would drop the idea of using the warrior flagon to further his schemes. He might even believe that Beorthric or I – or both of us together – had taken our chance to steal a sizable fortune in gold solidi. Whichever way I looked at our situation, it was obvious that no one knew we were prisoners of the Avars, nor would they care.

  My gloomy thoughts were interrupted by a bellow from Beorthric. He continued shouting until finally one of our Avar captors came to the entrance to the byre. The Saxon roared angrily at the man who glared at him, then turned and left.

  ‘What was all that about?’ I asked Beorthric.

  ‘I told him we needed food and something to drink.’

  All of a sudden I realized how hungry I was. We had not eaten since Kunimund had provided us with milk for breakfast.

  ‘I should never have trusted Kunimund,’ I said morosely. ‘I was too easily fooled.’

  ‘Be thankful that you didn’t tell him about the warrior flagon,’ Beorthric answered. ‘It would give the Avars something else to question you about, in addition to why you were carrying so much coin.’

  The wooden post was pressing into my back and I shifted my position. ‘What difference would that make?’

  The Saxon gave a sardonic grunt. ‘When people think you have something to say of interest to them, they redouble their efforts to make you talk.’ His tone of voice left me in no doubt that he was speaking from personal experience.

  The Avar returned with some stale bread and a wooden pail of water which he set down on the straw beside us. He unfastened my hands first and stood over me as I wolfed down some of the food and drank some water, scooping it up in the palm of my hand. Then he tied me up again and it was Beorthric’s turn. As I watched the big Saxon eat, I wondered where he had been interrogated, and by whom. Most likely it was when he was captured by the Franks and before he became a turncoat. There was no way of knowing what the Franks had done to make him switch sides. It could have been a promise of generous pay or, equally, it could have been that he was tortured until he betrayed his own people. After that there would have been no going back. He had to join Carolus’s irregular forces. It left me with the worrying thought that Beorthric might be another Kunimund: someone who retained a deep-seated hatred for those who had made him suffer.

  *

  The following afternoon our captors brought us into what was evidently the winter headquarters of their ruler, the khagan. A hundred or so wooden houses of varying sizes occupied a patch of level ground halfway up the side of a shallow valley. Clustered around these permanent dwellings was a raggle-taggle assortment of tents, lean-tos and makeshift cabins, as well as a number of waggons with canvas tilts that served as homes. There was no sign of defence works such the great palisade at the Ring, and I presumed the khagan of the Avars had not yet had time to build and fortify a new capital following the disastrous invasion of his territory.

  A chill wind carried a fine drift of rain that settled on our faces and on our horses’ manes as our escort led us along the muddy paths that criss-crossed the settlement. Looking about me, I saw families going about their daily business, ignoring the dismal weather. The Avars were a sturdy-looking people, burly and vigorous. The women were dressed in heavy shawls and long thick skirts, the hems dragging in the mud, while their children were bundled up against the cold. The men wore fleece caps and heavy capes of dark oily wool. No one paid us the slightest attention. By the time we reached the centre of the settlement the rain had become a downpour. The patrol drew up in front of a single-storey building of massive timbers noticeably larger than the rest. In another country it would have been the home of a prosperous farmer. It dominated an open square of beaten earth which was steadily turning into a quagmire. Here we dismounted, and our escort led away our horses. Their officer pushed Beorthric and me, our hands still bound, towards the double doors guarded by half a dozen heavily armed Avar, presumably the khagan’s attendants. Once again we were searched for weapons, and this time I noticed that the officer’s sword and dagger were also taken away before we were allowed inside.

  We found ourselves in an antechamber, ill-lit and smelling of wet wool and leather. Mud-spattered rugs covered the floor and more rugs, mostly in dark red and brown patterns, hung on the walls. Seated on benches on each side of the antechamber were half a dozen Avars. Apparently they were waiting their turn for an audience with their ruler, Khagan Kaiam. The bands of embroidery on the sleeves and collars of their jackets, the intricately patterned stitching on their soft leather boots, and their ornate belt buckles showed that they were men of substance. Heavily bearded and with luxuriant moustaches, they wore their hair in long braids wound with coloured strips of cloth, then tied in a knot at the nape of the neck and held in place with a metal clasp. These clasps, like their belt buckles, were made of gold or silver.

  We stood waiting for perhaps half an hour. The Avars studiously ignored us and I noticed that our escorting officer had brought one of my saddlebags with him. When the door to the inner part of the building finally opened, it was to admit an armed attendant who addressed several sharp questions to our escort. He must have been granted precedence for we were beckoned forward, leaving the other Avars waiting.

  As I crossed the threshold, I missed my step and almost fell headlo
ng. The floor was several feet below ground level. A short flight of steps led into a cavernous semi-sunken room where weak autumn light entered through narrow slit windows. We were in an audience chamber, gloomy and full of shadows, which extended almost the entire length of the building. A little off-centre a charcoal fire glowed in a fire pit, the smoke rising to a roof vent. The furnishings were both ordinary and slightly barbaric. There were folding iron stools and low tables of dark wood as well as a number of large storage chests that looked as if they might contain valuables. Rugs were everywhere, on the floor, thrown across the furniture, hanging on the walls. The man I presumed to be the khagan sat at the far end of the chamber on a portable high-backed throne of carved wood. He was too far away for me to read his expression, but he and the score of attendants and councillors standing near him were dressed as richly as the Avars waiting in the anteroom, and they all wore the same distinctive hairstyle.

  I was still taking in this unexpected scene when, without warning, the patrol leader beside me dropped to his knees. Then he leaned forward and extended himself flat on the carpet, face down and arms outstretched. For a moment I hesitated, only to hear Beorthric beside me hiss, ‘Get down!’ A quick glance in his direction confirmed that the Saxon was already halfway to the floor. Awkward with my bound wrists I followed his example. I lay still for several seconds, breathing in the musty smell of the carpet. Then the khagan made a vague grunting sound, the signal for all three of us to get back on our feet. Ignoring Beorthric and myself, the khagan beckoned to our captor to come closer.

  ‘What’s being said?’ I whispered to Beorthric as the khagan began questioning the officer who gave his answers in a deferential voice.