Camulod Chronicles Book 8 - Clothar the Frank

by Whyte, Jack

  "Aye, Father," I answered, smiling, "I will, and most particularly if the wine be well and truly watered, for I still mislike its being too strong."

  "Then you shall have water. Come inside."

  As we entered, the bishop's arm around my shoulders, the officious cleric passed us on his way out, his eyes wide now and his mouth hanging open. Germanus stopped the fellow, then extended his palm for the sword the cleric still clutched. The young priest handed the spatha over, his face paler than before, and Germanus passed it to me without comment. I clipped it into place on the ring in my belt and winked at the cleric, who started in surprise and scuttled away.

  We dined together that night, as Germanus wished. The meal was delicious, a simple affair of a roasted hare, served with lightly boiled turnips and some kind of kale, both of them drenched in fresh-churned butter, and fresh-baked unleavened bread that had been liberally salted in the preparation. I eschewed the wine and drank water, but Germanus drank his lightly watered wine with great relish.

  Throughout the meal we spoke only of pleasant things, most of them family related. As usual, however, I ended up saying much more than I had intended to, and by the time we finished eating, the good bishop had drained me dry of every last vestige of information I could supply about my lost love, the beautiful Rosalyn. I do not know how I ever came to mention her in the first place, but I do know that I sat down to dine expecting to be asked about such things and determined to say nothing that might lead towards her. I had absolutely no intention of revealing anything about her, or the pain she had caused me. But I had reckoned, of course, without the bishop's gentle, irresistible persuasiveness. It may have been something I said, or equally likely failed to say, that alerted him. I may have hesitated at the wrong point in response to a question. Who can tell? Whatever it was that I did or said, or did not do or say, Germanus was onto the scent like a hound on the trail of a fox, and all my resolve melted like snow in a warm wind. I told him all about Rosalyn and how she had left me, brushing aside the fact that she had had no choice but to leave when her family did. I should have known, however, that I would find little sympathy for my bruised feelings from my Confessor.

  I knew that many of the religious brethren had begun decades earlier to distrust and avoid women, increasingly regarding them as vessels of sin; temptations made flesh in order to seduce men away from God. Father Germanus would have none of that, however, and for the simplest and most lucid of reasons: God, he believed and taught, is omnipotent and omniscient and therefore incapable of creating anything less than perfect. He had created woman to be man's helpmeet and companion, equal in most things and unparalleled in one all-important respect: the continuity of mankind itself is the prime responsibility of woman; man's participation in the process is at best incidental and all too frequently accidental.

  Without God's gift of woman to share his world, man could not even exist. How then, Germanus asked, could any thinking person allege that women were creatures of evil? The mere suggestion was blasphemous and impious, since it implied that God Himself, the Creator, must be less than perfect. This was a perennial concern for Germanus, inspired by what he perceived to be a collective human weakness—the tendency, amounting almost to a willingness, to demean and offend the Deity by indulging in casual, unthinking blasphemy.

  He wanted me to understand the special nature of women, and he was determined that I should treat all women, regardless of birth and position, with courtesy, respect and consideration of their God- given dignity.

  He himself had been married for years, he told me, to a wonderful woman who had brought him great happiness simply by sharing his life wholeheartedly, and although she had died while still very young and they had never known the pleasure of parenthood, he yet thought of her, years after her death, as the greatest blessing a bountiful God had bestowed on him. Without the benisons of her friendship and her physical love, he said, he could never have advanced to be the man he had become. She it was, Germanus said, who had awakened in him the confidence and self-assuredness to throw himself completely into any new endeavor he was moved to undertake, and to do so with complete conviction that he could achieve whatever he wished to achieve.

  Someday, Germanus assured me, I would find a woman created and designed by God Himself purely to be my helpmeet and my soul mate. I might not meet her soon, he warned, and I might meet others in the meantime whom I liked, admired and even enjoyed, but when I found the one God had made for me, I would know it beyond dispute. As for the others I might meet in the interim, he told me, I should remember that every human being born had a mate somewhere and so I should treat all women with the respect and dignity I would expect to be shown by others to my spouse.

  My difficulties with Rosalyn seemed to amuse and intrigue the bishop; he was highly curious about how I could be so bold and daring in combat yet so utterly craven when it came to speaking to a young woman. Looking back on it later, it seemed to me that his interest sprang simply from the fact that I had been vulnerable enough to love, and to love so hopelessly and inadequately.

  Much as I appreciated the bishop's amused concern with my amorous misadventures, I was no closer, after our long meal, to knowing what work he had in mind for me, and the mounting frustration of being ignorant about what role I had to play reminded me of a conversation I had had with him more than a year before, when I had approached him after a long period of soul-searching, prayer and meditation.

  I had sought him out directly after matins, and he had stopped immediately upon seeing me waiting for him by the side of the path in the predawn dimness. His face had creased in curiosity and concern plainly caused by what he perceived in the very way I was standing, and he had broken away from his brethren to come directly to me.

  "Clothar, what ails you?"

  "Nothing, Father," I answered. "I merely wished to speak with you, to ask you something."

  "It must be important, I can see that from your face." He looked up to where his secretary Ludovic stood waiting for him, and waved the man away gently. "Come," he said to me. "Walk with me and tell me what is troubling you."

  In truth, nothing was troubling me at that time. My intent was merely to solicit his blessing upon what I had decided, only the previous night and after months of thinking about it, to do with my life. Bishop Germanus was my hero, and for good reason: his life had been heroic in every respect. He had excelled in every task to which he had set himself and had never known mediocrity or compromise. Living in the school he had created and in the atmosphere that surrounded him, seeing how even the most mundane details of his everyday life inspired and uplifted his companions and his brethren, I had come to admire him so much that I could think of no better way to honour him than by trying to be like him in every respect, voluntarily following in his footsteps and dedicating my life to the glory and service of God by undertaking the triple oath, as he himself had, of poverty, chastity and obedience. And so, with those thoughts in my mind and content to remain silent while I ordered my galloping ideas, I walked beside him through the gathering dawn as he led me back to his day room, where he seated himself across from me, folded his hands in his lap and waited for me to say what I had to say.

  I cleared my throat. "I have been thinking, Father, that I would like to join the Church and become a bishop, like you."

  My mentor recoiled as though I had tried to slap him, his eyes flaring in incredulity. He recovered himself immediately, and attempted—unsuccessfully—to turn his astonishment into a sneeze, but I felt my face flush with the shame of his disapproval.

  "You think me unfit," I said, stricken, feeling my throat swell up to choke my words.

  "What?" His face betrayed utter confusion, and even in the pain of his rejection of me I was aware that I had never seen Bishop Germanus so completely at a loss for either words or understanding. And then all at once his face cleared and he was on his feet, gazing down at me. "Unfit?" he said. "What is this about unfit? In all the things I have ever thought a
bout you, Clothar, son of Childebertus, the word unfit has never entered my mind. There is nothing—you hear me, lad?—nothing for which I would consider you unfit. Look at me."

  He reached out and grasped me by the upper arms, holding me tightly, almost painfully, and forcing me to meet his eyes. When I did eventually look at him, I saw his look soften, and he shook his head, making a soft sound that might have been one of regret.

  "As God is my witness," he said, "there are few things easier to do in life than to cause pain and grief unwittingly simply by being human." He drew himself erect and heaved a great, deep sigh, expelling it forcefully so that his shoulders slumped again with the release of it.

  "Clothar, Clothar, Clothar, what can I tell you? The last thing I ever expected to hear from you was the very thing you just said to me. It had never occurred to me that you might want to join the Church. And you misread my reaction. Misread it completely. Certainly, I was shocked, but it had nothing whatsoever to do with your fitness to do or to become whatever you decide to do or to become. It had everything to do, on the other hand, with me and with what I had planned for you, and with what I had decided was to be your role in life, for the next few years, at least."

  For the next quarter of an hour, Bishop Germanus led me on a tour of the main residence of the school, where the teachers and lay brethren and others lived and worked. He took me into every room where people were working and praying, and pointed mutely to whatever the people there were doing, bidding me tacitly to pay attention to what I was being shown. I obeyed, but grew more and more confused as we went from room to room in silence until at length we returned to his day room and he crossed to the window, where he stood gazing out into the early-morning bustle of the square enclosure inside the main gates. I stood patiently, waiting for him to speak again.

  "Come over here."

  I crossed to where he stood and followed his pointing finger to where two of the brethren were manhandling a cart loaded with straw through the main gates.

  "They are working for the glory of God," he said, and glanced at me sidewise. "Do you take my point?"

  "No, Father . . ."

  "Hmm. What do you think I was showing you in that little tour we took?"

  I made no attempt to hide my mystification. "I don't know. Father."

  "Work, Clothar," he said. "I was showing you work, in the kitchens and the laundry rooms, in the classrooms and the library, and in the stables and the granaries. Work. All of it dedicated to the greater glory of God, and all of it performed by kindly, dedicated souls who are doing their best to fulfill the talents, skills and abilities given to them by that same God." He stopped again, interpreting my continuing confusion correctly.

  "The point I must make here, Clothar, will sound uncharitable and perhaps unkind, but it is most certainly valid and accurate. The people performing all those tasks, doing all that work, are, for the most part, incapable of doing anything better or more demanding. To greater or lesser degrees, in the words of Holy Scripture, they are all hewers of wood and drawers of water. Were they capable of doing greater things, performing larger tasks, they would be about them already. But there are some tasks that require men of singular and outstanding abilities"—he looked directly into my eyes—"and there are some men born to achieve and to carry out singular and outstanding tasks."

  He turned away from the window and went to his work table, eyeing the pile of documents awaiting his attention and talking over his shoulder to me as I followed him. "I believe, Clothar, that it would be a waste of your time and your God-gifted abilities were you to shut yourself away from the world now and immure yourself as a mere cleric. You might turn out to be a divinely gifted cleric, but not at this stage of your life. Look at me. I am supposed to be a fine bishop, according to my superiors, but as a bishop I am nonetheless very much the man whose life I lived for all those years before I was drawn to the Church." He glanced sideways at me. "Do you know how I came to be a bishop?"

  "Not really, Father."

  "Hmm. Would you like to hear the tale? It is not long in the telling." I nodded, and he continued. "Well, as you know, I had been in the armies for many years, serving Honorius, who was both my Emperor and my friend, and when the war I had been fighting on his behalf came to an end, he permitted me to return here to Auxerre, which had always been my family's home. Now, as it happened, the bishop in Auxerre when I came home was an elderly and much revered cleric and teacher named Amator. I remembered him well, for he had been my teacher when I was a boy, before I left to study the law in Rome, and he and I had locked horns on several occasions even then, for I was no one's idea of a perfect student." The bishop smiled to himself.

  "Anyway, when I came home as the conquering hero of the wars, Bishop Amator was . . . unimpressed . . . that is as good a description as any, I suppose, and shortly afterwards I discovered that he held what I considered at that time to be peculiar ideas about certain things, the foremost among which was hunting. Amator could not accept the idea that animals might be hunted for the sheer pleasure of the hunt. He had come to believe, somehow, that animals had souls just like people; souls of a different order, certainly, but souls nonetheless, and he felt it was a flouting of God's love to hunt them and kill them without pressing need.

  "Well, that set the two of us directly upon a collision course, for I had always been a hunter, loving the thrill of the chase and the challenge of the hunt itself. When I came home from the wars, I hunted' on my own lands as I always had, relishing the wealth of game that had proliferated since I left, decades earlier. Bishop Amator, may God rest his soul, was incensed, and he condemned me publicly for setting a bad example to my people. And I am sad to report that, in my pride, I ignored him completely and kept on hunting, caring nothing for his disapproval."

  Germanus pursed his lips. "But then everything changed, almost overnight. Bishop Amator had a dream in which God appeared to him and told him he was going to die very soon, and that he must quickly prepare me, the biggest thorn in his side, to succeed him as Bishop of Auxerre." He looked at me keenly. "Do you ever have dreams, Clothar?"

  "Yes, Father, I do."

  "And do you remember them clearly, once you wake up?"

  Did I? I had to think about that for several moments before shaking my head slowly and with more than a little doubt. "Sometimes I think I do, just after I awaken, but then when I try to remember exactly what I dreamed, it all breaks apart and most of what I can recall makes no sense at all."

  The bishop nodded, a half smile tugging at his lips. "That's the way it is with most people. Dreams seldom make sense in the light of day.

  "But the dream Bishop Amator had was different. He recalled it in perfect detail when he awoke, and that made him think very seriously about what it meant. He prayed for guidance for days before he finally accepted that the guidance had already been delivered in his dream, and then, having accepted that, he had to act quickly, for he believed that he would die soon but did not know when.

  "He said nothing to me, naturally enough, for even although he believed the guidance he had received in his dream was genuine and sprang from God Himself, he knew, too, that I was less than reverent, to say the least. In my younger days I was intolerant and could be highly obnoxious whenever anyone crossed me, and Amator and I were already enemies. Then, too, Amator had to consider that although I had retired from active duty, I was yet a soldier of Rome— a condition that never lapses—and therefore I still owed my complete loyalty, by oath, to the Emperor and the Empire, should they have need of me. That was an extremely important consideration, for it meant that Amator could not simply approach me, even had I been willing, and appoint me to the priesthood as his successor, because there were conflicting vows involved. Before I could be free to take my vows in God's service—as I must, to be a bishop—I would have to be freely released from my existing vows to the Emperor."

  "Did Bishop Amator travel then to Rome?"

  Germanus loosed a single bark of laughter. "No
, he was far cleverer than that. He approached the prefect of Gaul, the Emperor's personal representative and chief magistrate in Gaul, and requested formal permission to absolve the Legate Germanus of his existing vows and responsibilities in order to induct him, as a retired and manumitted soldier, into the ranks of the clergy. The prefect must have been soundly astonished, for he and I had known each other well for many years and I am sure he must have laughed himself to sleep many a night, thinking of me as a humble cleric. In any event, he made no attempt to dissuade the bishop from his designs and gave his approval immediately, and only then was Bishop Amator at liberty to approach me directly."

  "And how did he do it? Were you angry that he had done what he had?"

  Germanus smiled and shook his head. "No, not at all. He was very careful in how he went about his task of recruiting me. He said nothing until he considered the conditions to be perfect, and he took great care to prearrange their perfection. Then, when I was present among a large gathering of Christians called to celebrate the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, he made his move, announcing to all present that he had had a vision of the Lord, and then went on to tell about his dream and the message it had contained—that I, the Legate Germanus, had been chosen by God himself to succeed him—and that in the light of that revelation the prefect of Gaul had personally absolved me of my vows to the Emperor and the Empire."

  Germanus was grinning as he recalled the occasion. "There are times when a surprise is so great that the very word is inadequate. I was stunned by what Amator had told the people, and by what he had done . . . by how far he had taken the matter already, without my knowing anything about it. I was speechless and close to reeling and falling down in my confusion. And yet no one else seemed to be surprised, or outraged or upset. What the bishop had disclosed took everyone by surprise, but the old man was revered by his flock, and he had been bishop in Auxerre for many years, so no one thought to doubt his word. If God were going to communicate in person with anyone in Gaul, Amator would have been the one everyone expected Him to visit, so no one was surprised that it had come to pass.