Gallicenae (23 page)

The fisher captain spouted a laugh. “What d’ye think? A bumper of mead, and—Ah, two girls on hand, I see. Hoy, Keban, Silis, which of ye’d fain be first?”

The former caught at the table edge before her and sat unwontedly silent, but the second, merry, asked, “What, are you that well heeled tonight, Maeloch?”

“Aye, and horny as a narwhal,” he said, striding close to rumple her locks. “Been outside o’ town this past month, helping Kadrach the cooper.” No boats like his, and few ships, put far out to sea at this time of year. Maeloch sobered. “And now I’m done, well, looks to me
like a spell o’ calm weather ahead, after the blows and high seas we’ve been getting. Belike there’ll soon be a summons for the Ferriers. I’ll enjoy myself here, for I’d better be home tomorrow night.”

Mirth had retreated as he spoke. Several men drew signs. “Lackwits!” Maeloch said amiably. “Why shrink ye when I bespeak yon duty? Would ye liefer the ghosts spooked about ashore, for aye?”

Since other benches were crowded, he sat down with Adminius and Herun. Opposite were Budic, Keban, and Corentinus. He peered past sputtering candles. “But ye’re the Christian priest!” he exclaimed.

“Not precisely my title,” the chorepiscopus replied. “No matter. I’ve heard talk of you, if I mistake me not.” He offered his hand across the board, for a clasp in the manner of Ysans who were equals.

Maeloch ignored it, scowled, said harshly, “Why d’ye pester honest men at their hard-won ease?”

“My son, I came not to pester, only to make acquaintance. And ever since I heard of your strange task, I’ve wished to talk with one among those who do it. Somehow the chance has not come.”

“Nor likely will.” Maeloch grabbed his mead from the servant and swilled deep. “We’re no puking preachers, we’re plain working men, but this duty we have from our fathers, ’tis holy, and we’ll not speak of it with any who share it not, let alone ye who’d mock it.”

“Oh, but I would never mock,” said Corentinus quietly. “You have right, ’tis far too sacred a matter. I wish to understand what happens on those nights.”

“That ye may scuttle it?” fleered Maeloch. He drank more, snorted, grinned. “Enough, I seek no fight. Keban, honey, are ye ready to frig?”

The woman looked downward. “I don’t—sudden-like, I don’t feel so well,” she mumbled. “I’m sorry, but could I just sit a while?”

Maeloch stiffened. “Next to the priest? What’s he been feeding ye?”

“Let her be,” Corentinus snapped. “Yonder’s a wanton for you.” His tone sharpened. “Or is it unthinkable you seek the wife I suppose you have?”

Rage flared. “What business of yours, shavehead? I’ve heard ye deny the Gods of Ys, the Pact of Brennilis, in the Forum; and I’ve heard the sea growl in answer at the gate. No more! Get out!”

“Now, wait a bit,” Adminius urged.

Maeloch scrambled to his feet and around the table, to stand behind Corentinus and ask, “D’ye leave on your own shanks, or do I frog march ye forth? Quick!”

Corentinus rose, stepped over the bench, looked down an inch or two into the malachite eyes. “Are you that afraid of me?” he murmured.

Maeloch snarled and seized the right wrist of Corentinus. Instantly, the pastor jerked between thumb and forefinger and freed himself; and something happened with an ankle and a shove; and Maeloch sprawled on the floor.

Men swarmed up and around. “No brawl, hoy, let’s ha’ no brawl!”

“God forbid,” said Corentinus mildly. As the fisher climbed back up: “Maeloch, friend, I know you’re awearied, overwrought, and belike I provoked you. ’Twas not my intent. I humbly beg your forgiveness. May I stand you a drink?”

What could a sailor do but accept?

A fresh beaker, drained, had him asking where a priest had learned such a trick for a tussle. “Well, that’s a bit of a story,” Corentinus said. “Care to hear? Later I’ll be happy to teach you the art, if you like.”

Men crowded around. Corentinus leaned back, laid ankle over knee, and began: “’Twas from a Sarmatian, on the south coast of the Suebian Sea, back when I was a deckhand. He was a wanderer himself, an outrunner of those Sclavonic and other tribes that’re pushing in, now when the Goths and their kindred have pulled out. My ship was adventuring in hopes of getting amber at the source, ’stead of overland. First, you may know, we had to round the Cimbrian Chersonese and pass through the straits to the east. Those’re wild and haughty folk there, Angli, Jutii, Dani, not really German although they claim the royal houses of the German tribes stem from them; and they have some mightily curious customs—”

Keban, too listened. Silis sat apart; she had no interest in geography. One hand cradled her cheek, the fingernails of the other drummed the table.

2

Merowech the Frank and his grown sons had been in Condate Redonum buying slaves. They did this four times a year—a healthy young male shortly before equinox and solstice. Everybody in the city knew why; nobody dared speak about it. A few times the Roman authorities had, in private talks, offered to supply condemned criminals free. The Frankish headmen spurned it. They would give their Gods nothing but the best.

Merowech always obtained the victim, using the money collected from the laeti, because the sacred grove stood on his land. It was he who speared the naked body that sprattled strangling from a rope flung over a bough. (The corpse was left for the carrion fowl. Eventually the bones were taken away and stacked on that hill where the midsummer bonfire burned.) To other leading men of the neighborhood fell the honor of poleaxing and bleeding the animals that were also sacrificed, drinking some of the blood and sprinkling the worshippers with the rest. Afterward the carcasses went to Merowech’s cookhouse, and everybody feasted in his hall. Thus nourished, Wotan and His sky-riding war band ought to grant victory in battle.

For the vernal equinox an additional purchase was required, a young woman. While the slain kine roasted, the men took her to a newly plowed field nearby. There Merowech swived her, followed by as many
more as wished to call Fricca’s blessing on their crops and their wives. She then went to work for the household whose turn it was, if she survived. Often she did not.

This day was glorious. Throughout the forest, buds had swelled and burst into leaf, blossom, a tumble of tender colors leading off toward reaches where sunlight speckled shadowiness, a whispering in breezes that were mild and laden with fragrances. The lesser birds jubilated. Overhead passed the great migrators, homeward bound.

Regardless, Merowech, Fredegond, Childeric, and Theuderich rode in helmets and ringmail, weapons at hand. Their dignity demanded it. They were not only the holders of acres broad and rich, they were garrison officers. It was on condition of the Franks providing the principal defense of the Redonian canton that the Romans had allowed them to settle there. Or so the official agreement read. Judging from what his father had told him, Merowech didn’t think the Romans had had much choice, as weakened as the Empire was by its internal wars. Nowadays it seemed somewhat recovered, but the precedent had been set; and who could say how long till the next collapse?

A prudent man always went armed. If nothing else, the Franks had their own quarrels. Merowech, for instance, had a dispute over grazing rights under way with his neighbor Clothair, in which bickering half a dozen carls had gotten cut down. Clothair might take it into his head to waylay Merowech; success at that could be worth whatever weregild was negotiated afterward.

Wariness did not forbid mirth, as the warriors rode along the track that twisted toward their farm. They swapped tales of what they had done in town, brags of what they would do elsewhere. When their japes turned to the woman and her expectations, they used their German-laced Latin so she would understand. She gave small response. It was as if she had shed all the tears that were in her. Numbly, hands bound, she trudged along at the end of a cord around her neck, secured to a horse. The man still grimaced to hear, but kept his mouth shut. At first he had cursed the Franks, and when they bade him be still, gibed that he had nothing to lose. A couple of judicious kicks taught him that that was mistaken.

Talk veered to politics. Merowech kept his ears open and his mind well stocked. “Yes,” he said, “as nigh’s I can guess, the latest news from Italy means Theodosius will indeed bring a host against Maximus. Which one’ll outlive that day, the Gods will decide; but we’d best strengthen ourselves. At this coming feast, I mean to broach a thought—”

Abruptly men were on the road, ahead, behind. They numbered about ten, Gauls from the look of them, gaunt, ragged, unshorn, armed mostly with peasant’s weapons, knife, wood ax, hook, sickle, sling, just a couple of spears and swords in grimy hands. The exception was a fork-bearded, scar-cheeked young fellow who must be their chief. He bore no marks of starvation or disease, but moved like a cat; though
travel-worn, his garb of green had been cut from excellent stuff, a helmet covered his head, a metal-reinforced leather corselet his body; in his grasp were buckler and javelin, across his shoulders a scabbarded blade.

“Halt!” he cried cheerily. “Get down off those horses. Pay your toll and you can go unharmed.”

“What’s this?” Merowech bawled. “Who in Frost Hell are you?”

“The Bacaudae, the Valiant.”

“No, none of them infest these parts.”

“We do now. Dismount.”

“Donar’s whang, he blunders in that!” Merowech growled to his sons in their native language. He had heard about modern cataphracts, but those were afar in the South and East; his kind were fighters afoot. “Snatch your weapons while you jump down, and let fly. I get to cast at him. Then form a shield-burg with me, and we’ll go reap them.”

In the same motion that brought him to the ground, he released the francisca hung at his saddlebow and hurled it. The dreaded throwing-ax, which flew ahead of every Frankish charge, should have cloven the young Gaul at the throat. But he was alert for it, dodged, launched his spear—and Merowech’s round shield had a dragging shaft in it that he could not dislodge.

From boughs and from behind boles on either side, arrows whistled. Childeric howled and sank to his knees, a shaft through his left calf. “Hold, hold!” shouted the Bacauda headman. “No more shooting yet!” He glided nearer to Merowech, his own sword free to meet the Frank’s iron. “You’re neatly ambushed, dad,” he laughed. “Admit it, throw down your arms, and you needn’t get hurt worse.”

Merowech bristled. “Honor—”

“Oh, stop quacking. What use will you be anybody but the crows if you make us wipe you out? We can do it quite handily, you know. But we want you to carry a message for us.”

“I fear he’s right, father,” Fredegond muttered. “I’m learning his face. We’ll get revenge later.”

Merowech nodded. “You do have us trapped,” he forced from a throat that felt as if noosed. “What do you want?”

“To start with, drop your weapons,” said the Gaul. “Then listen to me, and pass on what I tell you.”

The Franks made themselves surrender. Horrible humiliations followed. The Bacaudae did them no injury. Rather, they removed the arrow from Childeric and bound up his wound. However, they took from them their arms, armor, horses, money, slaves, everything but undergarments—even shoes, because several of the brigands had only crude footgear.

The man and the woman who had been destined for sacrifice wept, she too, in the embraces of their rescuers. “There, now, there, now,” said the leader, who called himself Rufinus, “you’re safe, you’re free,
you’ll come along with us to a wonderful city and I’m sure its King will make good places for you.”

“What King is he?” asked Merowech.

“You’ve no need to hear that,” Rufinus answered. “But listen to me. I went on a mission to such of my old comrades as I could find in our old haunts. They followed me back. I chose you to catch because of knowing what errand you’d be on. Your Gods gave you no help, though we were spoiling Their sacrifice. Think about that, Frank. Become a little more respectful of civilization.”

“You say that, you, a highwayman?”

“We’re none like that,” Rufinus said sternly. “We’re honest folk who want nothing more than to come back under law, a law that is just.

“Listen well. There are going to be more like us in the woods and on the heaths roundabout. In time they’ll find wives and beget children. By then they won’t be hungry ragamuffins, but well outfitted and dangerous to run afoul of.

“Their first equipment they’ll get from… my master. Food? The woods have plenty of game, as shrunk as the population is. Whatever else they need, they’ll trade for, or pay for out of some very reasonable tolls they’ll levy. They’ll harm nobody unless they’re attacked, but if they are, they’ll punish it hard. Do you hear me?”

“You mean outlaws intend to settle our lands?” Merowech choked on his indignation.

Rufinus laughed. “Not quite outlaws. They’ll earn their keep. They’ll keep down the real robbers. In case of invasion, they’ll be scouts, and they’ll harass the barbarians while the cities raise troops, which they’ll guide. In a while, I think, they’ll be ready to make you Franks settle for just giving animals to your Gods. That’ll cost you a great deal less!

“Tell your people at their gatherings. I don’t suppose they’ll be overjoyed. However, my word may start some of them thinking. We don’t really want to teach you the lesson with fire and steel. We’ve got better things to do.”

Merowech stared a long while before he said, “This is no Roman thing. Who’s behind it?”

“I can’t name him yet,” Rufinus replied. “But I will say he’s the grandest lord any man could dream of having.”

3

On the south side of Ys, between the city wall and the bluffs rising to Cape Rach, was a small crescent of beach. To the east the land mass butted against Aurochs Gate. Thus enclosed on three sides, the strand was often sunless and chilly. An incoming tide could make it dangerous, and the steeps were also a menace to the children whom they tempted to climb. Hence the place was not much used.

Occasionally, on sunny afternoons with ebbing water, Vindilis and Innilis took Dahut there. The girl loved it and was forever begging to go, no matter how raw the weather. She had discovered her chances were best when one of these two Mamas had her in charge. That woman would send for the other one, and the three would walk between those towers called the Brothers, and turn off Pharos Way onto the trail that went precariously down. Thereafter Dahut could do whatever she liked, within reason. Sometimes she wheedled her guardians into allowing what might seem unwise, but they had learned how surefooted she was, and how strong a swimmer. Frequently, though, she would keep motionless for an hour or more, listening to a shell or the surf or the wind, staring out over the deeps where seals and dolphins played, gulls and cormorants winged, ships and great whales passed by.