Camulod Chronicles Book 8 - Clothar the Frank (3 page)

That said, however, I did not permit them to journey with me as knights. They traveled as I did, in plain, dull, homespun clothes that, while they did nothing to disguise the strength and bulk of the wearers, yet made them seem less visible than their normal, rich and brightly colored clothing would have. I made it plain to each and to all of them that we were traveling into danger in a land that I had once known well but which had since degenerated into chaos and anarchy, peopled by savage hordes of invaders, and that sumptuous clothes and rich armour and trappings would invite unwelcome attention. We would not be making a triumphal progress, I warned them time and again. This journey was mine alone and it was one of contemplation, a pilgrimage. They would escort me, at their own behest, purely to keep me safe from harm in a strange land. If they chose not to dress themselves in drab colors and walk afoot, they were at liberty to remain at home in Gaul.

They brought their weapons with them, of course, but the armour that they wore was plain and old—sturdy, well-worn leather instead of metal, yet serviceable and strong. Our intention, and again I went to great lengths to make this very clear before we left our home, was to appear strong enough to defend ourselves wherever we went but not wealthy enough to attract predators. They grumbled and complained as I expected, but they soon recovered their good humor in the prospect of a great adventure, and we set out in early summer, as soon as the spring gales had blown themselves out.

We gained our first sight of Britain near the island men call Wight, and turned west immediately to make our way along the coast, sailing towards the setting sun until we eventually cleared the hazardous, rock-strewn tip of the peninsula of Cornwall and swung back to head north-eastward along its other coastline, seldom varying our distance of a quarter mile from the land. Cornwall was a bleak and inhospitable place, protected by high, precipitous cliffs and jagged, broken rocks over which the breaking waves spumed constantly. Although the sight of it brought back a flood of memories, I kept my mind directed farther north, to where the location of the single stone church the King had built would be visible from far out to sea. Glastonbury, men called the place, and its high tor reared up from the marshes that surrounded it, protecting Britain's first
ecclesia
in its lee. We sighted it the following afternoon, when the sun was halfway down the fall from its zenith, and overcome by sudden, deep misgivings, I decided immediately to turn our boat around and find a sheltered beach to the south, where we could disembark and spend the night before approaching Glastonbury early in the day.

There were people watching us from the slopes of the rising ground to the northeast as we approached the shore in the pre-sunrise light the next morning. They stood in groups of two and three, or stood alone, and I could detect no signs of hostility or fear in them as we drew closer. Nevertheless, I scanned them carefully as our oarsmen brought us in towards the land, and only when I could distinguish them individually did I allow myself to breathe peacefully again. All of them were men—no women in sight anywhere—and that single fact assured me that these were the latest of the line of anchorites that had subsisted here in this barren yet sacred place for hundreds of years.

I had never been able to discover why this lonely, inhospitable place, huddled among its surrounding salt marshes, should be held sacred. Its origins were shrouded in ancient mystery, but tradition held that the Druids in antiquity had inherited the hallowed place from the priests and worshippers among the ancient race who had ruled this land and called it Alba since the beginnings of time, long ages before the founding of the village in Italia that would one day grow to be known as Rome. The Druids themselves had never made a dwelling of the place, to the best of my knowledge, and yet the legend went that Glastonbury had always been a place of worship. The high tor that reared above it was said to be hollow, constructed by the gods themselves to shield a gateway to the Underworld, and wise men shunned it, afraid of being lost forever in the enchanted maze of twisting paths that girdled and encircled the tor's heights and slopes.

Two of my young companions leaped into the shallows before we grounded on the sand and offered to carry me ashore, but I waved them away and lowered myself carefully until I stood in knee-deep water, and then I waded ashore and waited, eyeing the people who stood there watching us. For a long time no one spoke, on either side, but eventually one frail and bent old man moved forward, leaning heavily on a long staff, and made his way to where I stood, and as he came I noted the plain wooden Cross he wore about his neck, suspended on a leather loop. I waited until he reached me and then bowed my head to him in greeting. He was older than me by far and I recognized him, although I could not recall his name. As his rheumy eyes gazed into mine, I watched for a similar spark of recognition. None came, and I gave my son Clovis the signal we had arranged.

Clovis stood slightly behind me, his arms filled with a thick roll of heavy woolen cloth, woven on our broad Gallic looms from the spun wool of the hardy sheep of southern Gaul. At my nod, he stepped forward and knelt to lay the roll of cloth at the feet of the old Master, whose eyes softened with pleasure as he looked at it. It was not a great gift, from our viewpoint, having cost us nothing but the time it took our weavers to make it, but it would clothe this entire community in fresh, new garments, perhaps for the first time in many years. The old man looked back at me then, and I addressed him in the language known as the Coastal Tongue, the trading language, an amalgam of a score of languages that had been used along the coasts of Britain and the mainland for hundreds of years, asking him if we could leave our boat in the shelter of his bay for several days. He nodded deeply, maintaining his silence, and I bowed again and turned back to my boat to make my final arrangements with our captain. He and his men would wait for us here, and I assured them we would be gone for mere days: five at the most, and probably less.

Within an hour of stepping ashore, my ten companions and I were on our way inland, striking first to the northeast around the base of the tor and then swinging south and east again, following the fringes of the extensive salt marshes on our right. I was the only one of our party who was mounted, riding the single shaggy garron owned by the community of Glastonbury, and it occurred to me now, looking down on them, that my youthful companions, used to riding everywhere, were unaccustomed to walking for any sustained length of time. They would be sore and weary when they laid themselves down that night and the nights that followed, for long miles stretched ahead of us, and every pace would be across Tough country unworn by human passage. For the first time, the reality of that troubled me.

None of these men, I knew, had any idea of why we were there or why it was so important to me to make this long and seemingly pointless journey. But they had come, and they were ready for anything I might demand of them, simply because I had invited them to accompany me into this foreign land on a quest of some kind, a quest whose roots lay hidden in bygone times, in what was to them my unfathomable past. Looking at them now, I felt the difference between my age and theirs. They saw themselves embarking upon an adventure, whereas I was more than half convinced that this journey was folly, bound to generate nothing but grief and pain and disillusionment. Knowing nothing of this Britain, they were filled with excitement over what it might hold in store for them, whereas I had known the land too well in former times and knew it could now hold nothing for me that was good. All that was good and wholesome in my youth, Britain had sucked from me long since, condemning me to exile in the place across the seas that had once been my home and had since become my prison. There was nothing I could hope to find here except perhaps the remnants of a dream, the last, tattered shadows of a vision that had once, for a brief time, achieved blinding reality before being destroyed by the malice of ignorant, venal men.

Thinking of that, I called my company to a halt and sat facing them, moving my gaze from face to face as they stood looking up at me, awaiting instructions of some kind. I smiled at them, incapable of resisting the inclination.

"Well, my young Mentis," I began. "Here we are, in Britain. Look about you now and take note of what you see, because I doubt you may have really looked since we landed here." I watched with interest as their eyes began to register their surroundings, their initial, tolerant indifference gradually giving way to a range of emotions, none of which approached happiness or excitement. I broke in on their thoughts just as they began to show signs of starting to talk among themselves.

"Britain,"
I said loudly, bringing their eyes back towards me. "It may not seem the fairest land you have ever seen, but I had friends here once who swore that it was. There are no vineyards here, no hillsides rich with grapes, and the summer sun that shines later today might leave you cool and longing for your own warm breezes. It can be hot here, but in fact it seldom is. The winters are brutal, too, cold and long and wet . . . always damp and dank and chill. Anil yet this is a land where great ideas and noble ideals took root and flourished for a time, a time you have all heard about. . . and although it was a tragically short and strife-torn time, yet it was wondrous. It was a time without equal, and a time without precedent, and it was
my
time in the way that today is yours . . . the time of youth, of dreams and high ideals."

Their expressions were thoughtful, their eyes flickering back and forth from me to each other and sometimes to the drab landscape surrounding us. I nodded and spoke on.

"Such a time might never come to Gaul, lads, for in Gaul we love our comforts far too much. We have grown too somnolent for such things, too lazy, basking in the warm sun of our provinces. It takes a place like this island, Britain, where the sun is frequently a stranger and cold is more familiar than warmth, to keep men moving and to spur them on to pure ideals, great deeds and high activity. And on that point of high activity, you are about to discover what I mean. You will walk today as you have never walked before . . . fast and far and over rough country." I saw a few smiles break out. "You find that amusing, some of you. Well, that pleases me. But save your smiles and guard them close, and bring them to me fresh when we camp tonight. I warn you, there are no horses out there waiting to be taken and bridled, not today—or if there are, I shall be much surprised. By the time the sun goes down today, before we are halfway to where we are going, you will all be footsore and weary, with aches and pains in places you don't even know exist at this moment. And then, once we reach our destination tomorrow or the day after, depending upon what we find, we will turn around and retrace our path." I looked at each of them, one after the other, moving from left to right, and they stared back at me with ten different expressions, ranging from tolerant amusement to shining eagerness, and even to truculent suspicion. I reached down to fondle the ears of the beast beneath me.

"None of you is used to, or prepared for, what I will demand of you within these next few days—" I threw up my hand to cut short the mutterings of protest as they began. "And I know, too, that your military training has been long and thorough." That sounded better to them and they shrugged, appeased and slightly mollified, preening themselves and flexing their muscles gently. "But you are trained as horsemen. Mounted warriors. Knights, if you will. Not infantry. Not foot soldiers. And foot soldiers is what you are become, here and now, today and tomorrow, and you will find the effort overwhelming. And so I wish to make it clear immediately that if any one of you—anyone at all—finds the effort too much for him within the next few days, he must say so, and we will leave him safe, with a companion, to await our eventual return. There will be no disgrace attached to that. Some efforts are too much for men not trained in the discipline required, no matter their proficiency in other things. We all have limitations, and none of you has been faced with this hardship before. You may find, any one among you, that your limitations lie in this . . . and if so, you must make that clear to me. Do you understand me?"

There came a rumbled chorus of assent, and I nodded again. "Good, so be it. Now we must move quickly and quietly—not in silence, but it would be best to make no noise that might be heard from afar. We have no friends in this land. Bear that in mind until we are safe afloat again, and let's be on our way."

We moved on immediately, having established among ourselves that the march would be endured by all without complaint of any kind, no matter how grave the nuisance of blistered feet or the pain of cramped and aching muscles.

We camped that night in a quiet woodland glade between two low hills, having seen not a sign of human habitation since we left the settlement at Glastonbury, and sometime before dawn a gentle, steady rain began to fall. We rose up in the predawn darkness and broke our fast as we moved on, huddled against the weather and chewing on roasted grain and chopped dried fruit and nuts from our ration scrips. Some time after noon the rain dried up, although the clouds grew ever more threatening and sullen, and towards mid- afternoon I began to recognize landmarks: hill formations and a single grove of enormous trees, sheltered among the hills, that was achingly familiar. I stopped there, signaling a halt, and as my escorts spread themselves out to rest, vainly trying to find dry spots beneath the towering trees, I sat on my garron, gazing north-eastward towards the mist-shrouded brow of one particular hill that, had it not been there, would have permitted me to see beyond it one of the dearest sights of my young manhood. I was glad the hill was there, however, for I had no desire to see beyond it and I felt not the slightest temptation to approach closer to it.

From its crest, I knew, I would have been able to look out across a stretch of forested plain to another distant, solitary hill that stood like a sentinel among the rich lands surrounding it, its crest crowned by a strong-walled fortification that had once housed the first true High King of all Britain, Arthur Pendragon, with all his family and friends, his armed might and his great and lofty and ultimately impossible ideals. I had no doubt it would be inhabited still, but it was no longer Camulod, and I had no wish to know who ruled there now. I climbed down from my horse and ate and rested with my young men, and then I marshaled them again and struck onwards, south by east on the last leg of my journey, just as the clouds above us pressed even lower and the rain began to fall in earnest.