The Centurion's Empire

by Sean McMullen

  Louise turned to Vitellan. "This is for you, Sir Vitellan, and the lady begs most ardently that you accept it." It was a strip of red cloth from the lining of the magistrate's cloak, wound about with a braid of black hair. He twined it around his fingers,, then lifted it to his lips. The countess cast her eyes down, but did not move otherwise.

  "Guy, go now, up to that tower," he ordered. "Signal when a heavy crush of Jacques has built up."

  "Aye, Master. Is that a special favor?" he asked suspiciously.

  "It was all that a certain lady had to cover her nakedness. William of Ockham would have called it symbolic allegory."

  "Hah! I calls it an unseemly suggestion."

  "Why Guy, you dirty old man. What would Mai have said?"

  "T'bugger would be too busy laughin'. I'd best be climbin' the tower, Master. Good fortune to ye, and try to stay alive. I'd hate to be the Icekeeper as let you die."

  "I'll return, Guy, and help you to burn this despicable town."

  The Count de Foix rode over to Vitellan as he made ready to mount a packhorse in his butt-leather armor.

  "Friend, the ladies are full of concern, they say that you are too ill to fight," he said apologetically. "Please, stay here with the bowmen and a few men-at-arms. The ladies will need a leader as fine as yourself to defend the Market if the worst happens to us."

  "Guy can do that," replied Vitellan. "I have to be seen to ride out with you, even if my fate be that of the blind king of Bavaria at the Battle of Crecy. You must understand."

  The count reached over and seized his arm, full of admiration. "I do understand, and you are welcome. May God protect you, and all of us."

  "When ye will, Master!" Guy called from the tower, then he came down the stone stairs at a run. Guy, Giles, and the two other bowmen began firing through the portcullis to drive the Jacques back as it was being raised, then the horsemen rode out onto the bridge behind the Count de Foix and the Captal de Buch. Then these two knights and their company came out to the gate of the market place and issued out under the banners of the Count of Foix and the Duke of Orleans, and the Captal's penon. They set upon those villeins, who were but poorly armed. When the villeins saw these men of war well appareled and issuing out to defend the place, the foremost of them began to recoil back, and the gentlemen pursued them with their spears and swords. When they felt the great strokes they recoiled all at once and fell for haste each on the other. Then all the noble men issued out of the barriers and soon won the place, and entered in among their enemies and beat them down by heaps and slew them like beasts, and chased them all out of the town. They slew so many that they were weary, and drove many others into the river. That day they slew of them more than seven thousand, and none would have escaped if they had followed the chase any further. When these men of arms returned again to the town, they set it afire and burned it clean, with all the villeins of the town that It-IE <_ c in I umuin 3 cririrvc i J i

  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.

  I Hfc LbN I UKIvJINb tnr-IKfc 1 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 k
new 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 a
gain.

  "So this is the end?" she asked bleakly.

  "No, my darling, no, no. We can have a few months more of glorious happiness on your summer estate, just as you say. Passion is sweeter for a little guilt and guile, after all. When I am returned to the ice, we shall not have to watch each other wither and age. There will be no scandals to tarnish your name and honor, and on the day of your death you will know that I am still alive and faithful to you."

  They lay down together again, with nearly horizontal beams of sunlight streaming in through the windows picked out in motes of dust. The summer passed peacefully in that part of France, and the weather was dry, mild and balmy. Vitellan made no secret of his origins, and as a result he attracted many dozens of scholars. He enjoyed talking about life in the Roman Empire at its zenith, and filling in details about great events that were once common knowledge but had somehow been omitted from the historical chronicles. The countess was always in his company, sleeping with him by night, and sitting proudly beside him by day as he enthralled rooms full of learned men with tales of Christ that he had heard from people who had actually met Him. The only secret that Vitellan maintained was that of where and when he would be refrozen for his next great leap through time. It was something that nearly everybody asked about in passing, but nobody cared enough to dwell upon. After all, when great news is being shouted throughout a town, who asks where the crier lives?

  Switzerland: 28 December 1358, Anno Domini

  As the autumn sun blazed against the towering white peaks of the Berner Alpen, the clear evening sky promised a bitterly cold night. A meltwater stream that fed the headwaters of the Rhone splashed through a deep gorge that guarded the approach to the village of Marlenk, and a single jfope and plank bridge was its only link with the road that led north to Berne and south to the St. Gothard Pass and Italy. Marlenk was a cluster of three dozen stone cottages, a large inn, a chapel, and a length of low wall that was more windbreak than fortification.