The Centurion's Empire (22 page)

"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.

The sentries of the village militia watched a dozen pilgrims approaching on their way south to Rome. They pitched
ragged tents on the wayfarers' green beside the bridge, but only one chose to cross to the guardhouse and enter Marlenk.
He was a priest, well spoken and friendly, and carried no weapon but the knife that he-used for eating.
Outside Marlenk's inn two grizzled English men-at-arms were cutting firewood in the snow slush. They wore leather
jerkins and heavy mittens, and the liripipes of their hoods were wound around their necks against the cold. Supper came
soon after sunset at this time of year, and the aroma of roast pork was strong on the air.

"The day's old," observed Lew as the sunlight retreated up the peaks.

"Year's old too, world's old, just like us as is old," complained Guy, trying to balance a skew-cut log on the chopping
block. "Our village in England fallin' apart, and such young as is left all want to go to France and fight in the Free
Companies."

"More fool they," said Lew, shaking his head before swinging his axe again. "France is full of strange and evil men."

"Aye, the Jacquerie. Fought 'em at Meaux, and in other parts of Brie." Guy spat into the snow.

"I heard they roamed the north killing nobles. I heard they roasted one knight on a spit after killing him, and made his
lady and children watch. Then they ravished them, and tried to make them eat his flesh before they killed them too."

"That might have been at Beauvais," said Guy after thinking for a moment. "A few good men-at-arms could have
stopped 'em before they'd done such mischief, but France has nonesuch. France is fallin' apart. We're fallin' apart too."
He paused for Lew's reply, but when he got none he selected another log from the pile. "It's quiet here in the mountains,
then?" he asked with a trace of sarcasm.

"Quiet? We're on a major road." Lew laughed. "And what with the League expandin' there's been no shortage of wars.
I've fought in every one since the Confederates defeated Leopold of the Habsburgs near Schwyz in 1315. I've become a
good citizen of the cantons so as to live here and do the Master's work."

"So who's to watch over the Master when we're dead?" Guy asked testily. "The young of our own village don't care for
tradition. Hah, there's scarcely any young left!"

"That's as why we're here," replied Lew, forever optimistic. "That's why you revived the Master from his sleep, brought
him over the salt sea, crossed the Kingdom of France, fought the Jacquerie and climbed up here into the Berner Alpen."

"Cold, bare place."

"I like it. Came here wi' Tom Greenhelm in 1311.1 dug

the ice for his chambers, even married a wench I rescued near the Grimsel Pass. Ah Guy, we're lucky to see such
wonders as these mountains, just as we're lucky to have met the Master."

"Lucky? My bones ache with the cold, and I can't draw breath of God's air as easy as can in England. Lungs hurt, feet
hurt, piles hurt, and for what? End of our lives and end of tradition! In a few days the Master leaves us, then where are
we?"

"Here in Marlenk. Come spring we'll go down into Ob-walden and marry you to a fat widow. What with wars and the
plague there's a shortage of husbands. You could have the empty cottage near mine."

"Me? Live on this icicle in the middle of nowhere?"

"Why not? Much commerce and news goes by on that road, and all manner of folk call in here to—ah, see? A traveler on
the bridge. Looks to be a priest."

They watched a man in a dark clerical tunic with a pilgrim's badge pay the toll, then come tramping up the path to the
village, his iron-shod clogs clinking against the stones. He leaned wearily on his staff, and hailing them in Latin he
asked what language they spoke. Lew replied that Latin would suffice. They had both learned it for years in preparation
for Vitellan's revival.

"Father Guillaume of Chalon," said the priest, as if he expected them to know him by reputation. After a moment he
took the cue from their blank stares. "I'm a scholar, well known in northern France. As I passed through Berne with my
fellow pilgrims the bishop there told me a wondrous tale of an English traveler named Vitellan. He'd left a week before
us, so we hastened to catch up."

"Ye wish to talk of learned matters to Master Vitellan?" asked Lew.

"Yes, very learned matters. The bishop said that Vitellan is soon to leave again, for places where none of us may follow."
Lew looked to Guy and raised his eyebrows. Guy nodded. Their Master's instructions had been quite clear: he would
always be available to talk with scholars. Lew stamped off to his cottage, where Vitellan was staying. The Countess of
Hussontal was at the inn, and to avoid unsavory

rumors Vitellan now refused to sleep under the same roof as her.

"So what of the Master d'ye know?" asked Guy.

"That he was a Roman soldier, that he fought the Danes with Alfred the Great of England, and that he was born in the
time of Christ."

"How much d'ye believe?"

"I keep my mind open. He may be a fraud, he may be a madman. He may be Lazarus, raised from the dead by Christ and
now unable to die. He may even be the devil, trying to tempt us."

"He's none o' those," said Guy defensively. "He's slept packed in ice beneath our village in England for most time. On
his own reckonin' he'd not have walked the earth and breathed God's air more than thirty-six years out of all his
centuries."

"He slept in ice? In England?"

"Aye. We harvested ice in winter to last through summer, but now the young folk don't care for tradition. They want to
serve in great castles, or fight in France or even fight in the Holy Land."

"Surely not, there's not been a crusade for ninety years."

"Aht, some Cyprus prince plans a Ninth Crusade once he ascends the throne, but no matter. Our young folk will turn to
anything rather than tend the Master's ice. That's why we're here in—ah, what's that new name for the Cantons'

League?"

"Switzerland."

"Switzerland, where there be mountains an' rivers of ice all year round and Master Vitellan can sleep without ice
harvests."

The priest nodded as if he already understood the wonders being explained.

"How long has your village kept him frozen?"

"Oh, I don't know countin'. Master Vitellan's father met wi' Christ, so that's how old he be."

"But that's thirteen centuries, at least."

"Aye, that sounds to be right. He was unfrozen once, as I knows it, and defeated the Danes. Now our village in England is
all but deserted and can't make ice. We planned for

it, though, so the Master's been unfrozen again and brought here."

"I don't follow."

"We're all old, we can do nowt but launch the Master one last time, wish him well, then live what lives we have left in
fear o' God as the good Christians we be."

The priest frowned. "So your master is not immortal," he said flatly. "While awake he ages as we do, but when he
sleeps, he sleeps in ice for centuries."

"Aye, that he does," Guy confirmed, but Father Guil-laume was no longer paying him attention. Lew was returning with
a man of medium height dressed in a quilted surcoat, war boots and shoulder cape. His face was emaciated, but his
features were still recognizably Mediterranean.

Much of the traffic that passed over the Alps between the Italian states and the rest of Europe came by Marlenk, and its
people knew of the latest fashions in dress and cuisine even before those who lived in the capitals of the great kingdoms.
Marlenk's inn was the focus of the local economy, and although most of its patrons were humble pilgrims and
merchants, it was sometimes used by nobles. Tonight there was a French countess, the knight commanding her escort, a
great scholar, and an English traveler named Vitellan to whom they all deferred.

Fresh straw was on the floor, and the table was set before the fire and laid with two layers of damask. The
serving-trestles were already heavy with pewter plate, although some silver had been put out for the use of the
countess.'The French knight, Raymond, entered. He surveyed the room, then checked with the guards outside. The sky
was clear and the moon full, and he shivered with the implication before returning inside and sending a maid for his
sister, the countess. He was a survivor of Poitiers and had an ugly scar on his upper cheek to show for it. To distract eyes
from his face he wore a tunic gleaming with Bargello work in silver thread, and a wide hip belt with polished latten
plates sewn all around.

The innkeeper, local priest, and captain of the militia passed as the dignitaries of Marlenk, and were waiting by
the fire and wearing their best. Vitellan entered with Father Guillaume, and a moment later the countess appeared. She
had changed out of her traveling robes already, and was wearing a green sleeveless surcoat with diagonal vermilion
striping over a gown with tight, buttoned sleeves. Her hair was netted, and framed by a long silk veil, adding a suggestion
of modesty to what was otherwise the height of fashionable dress. The sweet scent of her concealed ambergris
pomme-d'embre cut through the lingering reek of the recently evicted cattle and sheep.

While introductions were being made over sheep marrow fritters and goose heart pastries, Lew and Guy crept in with
their firewood and began to stoke up the blaze. The innkeeper served wine mulled with his best spices.

"These spices are from further away than our geographers could guess at," he told the knight as he sipped from his
goblet.

"But never as far as Master Vitellan's journey," added the countess. The innkeeper waited to see that the others were
smiling and nodding before responding with a polite laugh himself.

Over bacon broth Vitellan gave what was by now a well-rehearsed account of how he had obtained ajar of what was now
known in his village as either the Frigidarium Elixir or the Oil of Frosts. This allowed him to be frozen without dying.
Lew was then called over to recite a couple of dozen verses of an epic describing how the Roman's servants had
established the village of Durvonum, now Durvas, in the southwest of England, and how they had harvested ice each
winter to keep their master preserved through thirteen hundred English summers. A roast piglet was brought in on a
large dish, flanked by capon pastry subtleties in the form of towers that seemed to guard it. Serious conversation trailed
off, to be replaced by the soft notes of a slender lap-harp under the fingers of a thin, intense Bohemian itinerant.
Vitellan, who could eat no solids, was given more broth.

Father Guillaume of Chalon rapidly proved himself to be an enigma. He knew all the courtesies to be accorded the
countess and her knight, yet he displayed brash familiarity as well. Once the piglet had been reduced to bones Vitellan
took up his story again, explaining that traditions had begun to break down in his English village at the start of the
century. The Icekeeper of the time, Tom Greenhelm, made a decision to move Vitellan to the perennial snows of
Switzerland. Tom journeyed there with six others, including the teenage Lew, and they explored and dug at several sites.
It was forty-seven years before they had finally excavated a chamber that was suitable. Tom, well over eighty by then,
returned to England and had the Master revived. He presented Vitellan with a map sealed in a lead tube that showed
where the new Frigidarium was located, then died some days later in his sleep. Guy Foxtread was appointed the new
Icekeeper.