by Whyte, Jack
I had absolutely no idea what he meant, but I schooled my face to remain blank and nodded knowingly.
"It was your mother who first noticed that there was something wrong about Clodas. None of us noticed anything, but then, we were only men. Your mother, with her woman's instincts, detested him from the first moment she met him, although she said nothing for a long time afterwards. She sensed something in his attitude that was offensive, and she felt it down deep in her gut. She felt it in the way he looked at her, and in the tone of his voice when he spoke to her. In the months that followed, she heard her husband speak of him often, but she said nothing, merely avoiding the man and hoping that your father's business with him would soon be done.
"But then Clodas confronted her again, appearing unexpectedly one day when she was alone in the household, your father off on a hunting trip and me with him. Nobody knows what was said on that occasion, but there was no doubt in anyone's mind that Clodas had offended the Queen. She called her guards, and she defied him openly in front of them, forbidding him, upon pain of banishment, ever to return to Ganis while her husband was away from home. Then she had him marched out of her gates and sent on his way back to Rich Vale. Everyone who was there heard her clearly. A public rebuke was probably not the cleverest thing she could have done to a proud and self-absorbed man, no matter what the provocation he provided, but she reacted as she saw fit at the time.
"What he said to her that day she would never discuss, not even with your father, but she called Clodas high handed and self-serving and noxiously full of self-love and she told her husband to beware of him and to trust him in nothing.
"That put your father in a vise, right there, because he had already committed himself, publicly, to trusting Clodas in matters of both import and consequence, and to withdraw that trust purely on the unsubstantiated opinion of his newlywed wife would have caused Childebertus much embarrassment. And yet his wife's opinion was of great value in his eyes and in his heart. He knew she would never lie to him and he could not say the same about Clodas. Had your mother told us what really happened between her and Clodas that afternoon, of course, that might have been the end of all of it, then and there, and your parents might still be alive today. But she held her peace, and thereby tied your father's hands, and that led to tragedy.
"I've been thinking about it now for years, wondering why I didn't cut the serpent down myself, simply for causing me to try to imagine what he might have said or done, or even tried to do. But that's a fool's task, because I did nothing. Nor did anyone else. She was stubborn, Elaine of Ganis, and she kept her secret, no doubt for what she thought were excellent reasons.
"Afterwards, both of them behaved in a very civilized manner to each other, knowing that everyone was watching them and waiting for some sign of hostility, and eventually the tension eased and seemed to die away completely. Then, a full year and more after the upheaval, the Lady Elaine announced herself to be with child, and from that moment the priorities of all of Ganis changed visibly. Everyone breathed more easily. Clodas had long since withdrawn into Rich Vale to tend to his own affairs, and your father spent most of his spare time with his wife, anxious to be with her as much as possible while she was carrying you . . . That situation, an appearance of peace, lasted for a whole year, from the end of one summer through the beginning of the next."
3
In the silence that followed, a skylark broke into song and spiraled upwards, its miraculous voice defying comparison with the size of its tiny body, and I listened to it distractedly as I waited for Chulderic to resume speaking. But the silence extended until I grew concerned that he would say no more, and finally I could wait no longer.
"And then what happened, Magister?"
"Everything, at once." It was as though he had been waiting for me to ask, because his voice betrayed no surprise at my question. "The world fell apart in the space of one afternoon, and the calamity was over almost before anyone realized it had begun."
"But you knew."
"Aye, I did. At least I was among the first to learn of it." I realized afterwards that Chulderic might have construed my comment as an accusation, but his response was instantaneous, a straightforward acknowledgment of truth. "But I was too late even then to stop any of it. As his Master-at-Arms, I should have been there by your father's side, to guard his back and see to his welfare, but no, I was miles away, playing the fool with a woman while my best friend was being murdered—the man who had given me everything I owned and who had entrusted me with his life and his family's safety."
Although I was still only a child of ten, even I could see that this confession was a bitter and heartfelt one, wrung out from a deep well of pain, and I felt sorrow for the powerful Master-at-Arms. I resisted the urge to say anything, however, fearful that I might say exactly the wrong thing and offend him without wishing to.
"I was in love, you see . . . or I thought I was. You were about six weeks old at that time, perhaps eight weeks, and your mother was in fine health again. She had fed you from her own breasts for the first month of your life, but then something happened and her milk dried up—don't ask me what it was; I have no knowledge or understanding of such things. But the upshot of it all was that a wet nurse had to be found—a woman who had lost a child of her own and had milk to feed a starving babe whose own mother could not give him suck.
"They found two, both of them, by sheer coincidence, recent widows. One was called Antonia, a comely little thing, young and well bred of solid Roman stock. Her elderly husband had been a landowner and some kind of local magistrate. The other was called Sabina, a widowed woman from Ganis. Both lived within a day's journey of your grandfather's castle, both had lost their babies in childbirth, and both were in milk. Antonia had a fragile air about her, but Sabina was all woman, beautiful and self-assured and sultry looking. Sabina was also closely connected to some of the senior Salian chieftains—her dead husband, a warrior called Merofled, had been one of Clodas's closest friends—so the matter of the politics had to be considered in the choice.
"In the event, your father went to see Sabina, took one look at her and declared her to be suitable. None of us were surprised at the choice, because the woman was simply too beautiful to ignore . . ." He lapsed into silence, thinking back to what he could remember of that time, then sighed sharply, snapping himself back to the present.
"Anyway, I was with your father that day, as I always was, and he gave me the task of bringing Sabina back to Ganis immediately, to meet your mother. By the time we had ridden the eighteen miles from where Sabina lived to where your mother was, I had already fallen deeply in love with her . . . she was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, more beautiful than a week-old fawn or a well-trained falcon . . . and to my eyes, at least, ten times lovelier than your mother, who had been until then the loveliest woman I had ever known. When I first met her—Sabina, I mean—she was in mourning for her lost child, but it was plain to see that her grief could not conceal her pleasant nature, and despite her loss she went out of her way to be charming and friendly towards me. She was no longer mourning her husband, however, and she managed to make that clear from the outset. By that time, she told me, Merofled had been dead for many months, and I had the distinct impression she was angry at him, if anything, for leaving her as he had.
"Be that as it may, your mother both liked her and needed her, and so she made Sabina welcome. All of Sabina's love and attention was lavished upon you, and of course that seemed to banish her grief, so that she soon became herself again. That transformation completely overwhelmed me. I became her slave."
I glanced sideways at him. "You said you were playing the fool with her when my father was killed, Magister. Is it always foolish to love someone?"
His eyes narrowed to slits, but instead of snarling at me, he slowly wrinkled his nose as though he could smell something rotting close by. "No . . ." His voice faded away into silence. "No," he grunted again, drawing the word out this time until it w
as almost a growl. "No, it is not foolish to love someone, but believe me, boy, it is sheer madness of the worst kind to permit love for a woman to come between you and your sworn duty. And it is punishable folly when you allow love for an unknown woman to seduce you from your sworn trust. I was guilty of all of that, and my punishment has been justified."
I blinked at him in surprise. "What punishment, Magister? How were you punished?"
"By being left alive, boy. In all the years that have passed since that time no day has gone by, without my remembering my guilt over that afternoon and what I allowed to happen."
"What did happen?" I was incapable of masking the frustration in my voice.
"I went riding in the woods, with you and your nurse, instead of doing what I was supposed to do, which was to protect your father. It was a beautiful summer's day after two weeks of rain, and your mother had finally returned to full health. She and your father had spent little time together since your birth and, since the kingdom was at peace and all was tranquil, your father had deemed it an ideal time to spend some time with you and your mother.
"He arranged a small hunting party, a score or so of friends, men and women both, and a small body of servants to look after them. I was in charge of the hand-picked squadron of guards, as always, but on that occasion I was in conflict with your father's own wishes. My first priority was always his security—and his family's, of course—and normally he was content with that. But this occasion, Childebertus told me, speaking as a friend, was for sheer pleasure for himself and your mother and he did not wish it to be spoiled for her by the constant and oppressive presence of a host of guards. I was not happy about that, but there was nothing I could do to change it.
"We left King Garth's castle in the middle of the week, intending to spend three or perhaps four nights by the river in the greenwood, depending upon the weather, and it was soon evident that we would remain for all four nights, because the weather was perfect. We hunted all day the first day out, and killed sufficient meat to keep us amply fed for the entire period. Then, on the second day, we fished in the river, and while we were less successful there, we yet caught enough fine trout to feed us well.
"On the third day, which started out fiercely hot early in the morning, your father and mother decided to remain in camp, close by the river's edge, and they wanted no company, so they sent everyone off to find things to do for the day. Not even I could stay behind, your father said. I argued with him, knowing he was wrong, but he was determined and even more stubborn than I was. Since the day they were wed, he told me, he and your mother had scarcely spent a moment alone together. There were always people around, and he was sick and tired of it, so this one, solitary day, he was prepared to flout all the rules of conduct, to offend anyone who cared to take offense, and to spend some time absolutely alone with his wife. He knew I would refuse to remove his guards entirely, but he insisted that for this one day they should be removed to no less than twice the normal distance they maintained from the encampment.
"And so it was. I posted the guards personally, almost doubling the number of men because the perimeter expanded as they spread outwards from the center of the encampment. Even so, by the time they were all stationed the protective ring around the encampment was a fragile one, at best. And then when I returned to inform your father that I had done as he wished, he ordered me, too, away, insisting that I spend the day with you and your Frankish nurse, Sabina, protecting both of you. He knew I was taken with her. I was unhappy with the laxity he had created among his own people, but I must admit I was lulled by his sense of well-being, and I've told myself a thousand times that no sane person could have anticipated treachery and murderous hatred on the scale of what took place that afternoon.
"But the fact remains that I was more than willing to wander off into the forest with Sabina and you. I carried you in my arms as we went and she walked close beside me—close enough to touch me as she walked and for me to smell the clean, fresh scent of her. She had dismissed the young man—no more than a boy, really—who was always with her, setting him free for the day and promising that she would be almost as safe with me as she always was with him, and he had gone scampering off on his own somewhere.
"Had I known where he was scampering to, I would have cut the legs from under him before he took a step. The whoreson ran straight to Clodas, who was calmly awaiting word, a few mere miles away, that the guards had been relaxed, that I had been removed from the scene, and that he could attack at will. The entire episode had been prearranged, months earlier, and all of us had been manipulated into participating."
"But—" I was unable to absorb what he had just said.
"Aye, but! How could such a thing be possible? How could it be achieved, and who would be sufficiently cynical to arrange it? The answers came quickly enough, once the damage was done—one observation leading to another like swaths of scythe-cut corn in a reaper's windrow.
"Our guards went down quickly, but some of them held out long enough to raise an alarum. I was about a mile away from the encampment when I heard what I thought was a shout and then a blast on a horn, quickly cut short. On another occasion I might have paid it little heed, but I was ill at ease that afternoon. I started running towards the sound, holding my sheathed sword high and free of my running legs as I went and abandoning you and the nurse Sabina on the instant, despite the sounds of her voice crying to me.
"By the time I had covered half a mile I was beginning to flag, for I was used to riding, not running, but by that time, too, I was hearing the sounds of men's raised voices ahead of me where there should have been none. And then I heard hoofbeats coining directly towards me through a dense copse of bushes and I crouched behind the trunk of a tree, hoping that the rider would break cover close enough for me to bring him down. He did, and I was able to grab his reins and unseat him. I was about to stab him but I recognized him as one of my own men, a Panonian mercenary called Fallo, who had been with us for years.
"He had a dagger drawn when I attacked him, and he almost killed me before he recognized me, but we were both falling at the time and instead of sticking me in the chest, his blade glanced off my cross-belt and carved a deep trench underneath my left arm. I bled like a pig and we had to scramble to stop the bleeding, for he had hit a large vein, but while he was tending to me he told me all he had seen.
"Childebertus was dead. That was the main thing Fallo had to tell me. No doubt of it, he said. He had seen the King die with his own eyes. The guards had been overwhelmed in silence, for the most part, struck down by arrows from a distance, but some of the arrows—one of them aimed at Fallo—had missed their marks and the alarm was raised. By then the enemy was already charging into the encampment in force, thundering hard on the heels of the volley of arrows, a solid body of horsemen designed to ride down and obliterate anyone left standing. Fallo and three others that he knew of had fallen back to the encampment, managing to keep ahead of the enemy, and it was as he ran towards the center of the camp that Fallo saw Childebertus at the entrance of his tent, half- naked and clutching a sword and shield.
"Before he could even shout a warning, Fallo saw a horseman dressed entirely in black gallop out from between two tents and bear down on your father, the horse's shoulder striking him and hurling him backwards, to hit and rebound from the side of his own tent then fall over a guy rope and sprawl on his face, his sword jarred from his hand. Clearly stunned by the force of the fall, your father then started to struggle to his knees, but the figure in black was already leaping down from his horse, swinging a heavy one-handed axe over his head. Fallo was still ten paces distant when the rider buried his axe between the kneeling King's shoulders. Your father died then and there, but his killer worked the axe head free and then tried to sever his head, moving around him to the side and starting to take careful aim with his upraised weapon. He didn't even see Fallo coming, and by the time he noticed him he was too late to escape. It was his head, not your father's, that fell from its t
runk. And even as he killed the man, Fallo recognized him."
Chulderic stopped abruptly, his jaw set, and reined in his horse, staring through narrowed eyes into some scene that was forever closed to me.
"It frightened him at first, he said, to recognize the whoreson because the fellow was supposed to be already dead, killed a year earlier. The man was Merofled, who had once been Clodas's closest crony and husband of the supposedly widowed Sabina. Fallo had struck off his head with one wild sword blow, and although he knew not how, he sensed nonetheless that this man's identity was important and should be witnessed. But even as he scrambled to pick up the severed head he was attacked by other newcomers and almost died there beside your father. He forgot about Merofled's head then and concentrated instead on saving his own. First two, then five assailants surrounded him, but he managed to cut his way out of the circle and escape, aided by the fact that several of his attackers quit fighting him to join another group who had entered the central tent and captured your mother. Unable to help her—he told me she had been surrounded by more than a dozen men and I believed him— Fallo stole one of their horses, but in fighting to mount it he had to leave behind his sword when it stuck fast in the body of the last man he killed."
Chulderic kicked his horse into motion again. "So, there it was, the entire conundrum in a nutshell, although I could not see it even then. As Fallo spoke the words that bared it all, the connection between Merofled and his 'widowed' wife passed over my head, leaving no impression. I was stunned by everything he had told me . . . stunned, I will admit, into something approaching mindlessness. When I heard Fallo's description of what he had seen, the horror of what he was telling me left me fighting to draw breath, as empty inside as though my guts had been scooped right out. The sudden knowledge of these brutal deaths—your father's and your mother's—hit me as a personal judgment and condemnation. It was a crippling, punishing confirmation of my own worst fears and it was simply too much to absorb at one time.
