Camulod Chronicles Book 8 - Clothar the Frank (48 page)

I was staring hard at Clodio as all this came out, knowing exactly whence he had gained his insight and wondering admiringly at the extent and depth of his evident friendship for and intimacy with the King, and probably with the Queen, too. I was sure that such talk could not be common knowledge, as he claimed. Had it been so, Gunthar would have learned of it long since and, being Gunthar, would have taken steps to guard against it. Or would he? I found myself hesitating there, acknowledging that there was but one man for whom Gunthar had always shown genuine respect and fear. King Ban, his father, had always overawed Gunthar, and now that I thought of it, it seemed inconceivable to me that Gunthar would make any move to fulfill his own ambitions while there was any chance that Ban yet lived and might come home to knock him down and put him firmly in his place. But yesterday the word had come that Ban was gravely injured. How grave the wound might be could be something that was open to interpretation, depending upon the sympathies and loyalties of the reporting messenger.

If that was so, and if the messenger were friend to Gunthar, or if he had an eye to his own enrichment, then the tidings rendered might well have tempted Gunthar to trust his fortunes to the gods of chance.

"The messenger, Clodio, the one who came yesterday from Chulderic. Who was he?"

"His name is Grimwald. Why. is it important?"

"It might be. Is he a friend to Gunthar?"

"No one is a friend to Gunthar. But Grimwald would like to be one of his cronies, there's little doubt of that. He sidles after Gunthar like a lovesick pup after a bitch in heat, sniffing at the great man's arse and falling over his own feet."

I knew then that what I had been supposing was right: the messenger had made his choice and weighted his message, and Gunthar had seen his opportunity to seize the power he lusted to possess.

"Hmm. Tell me, is the old postern gate still in use?"

"What, you mean the old gate in the back wall by the lakeside, above the rocks at the high-water mark? Nah, it's been sealed up these five years now, ever since a boatload of Alamanni almost succeeded in using it to steal into the castle. Ban ordered the door torn out and then he filled the entranceway with mortared stones. No one will ever enter or leave that way again. Why do you ask about that? You look as though you've bitten into something with a nasty taste."

"I have, old friend. What I was thinking was that if we left here now, today, Ursus and I, and some division of the enemy—and I mean Gunthar's forces—were later to take over control of the castle and deny entry to our friends, you might be able to open up the postern gate during the night and let us back in under cover of darkness. But that's not going to be possible, so mayhap we have to stay here, useless as we are in such a case." I looked at Ursus, who sat watching me with pursed lips, his arms folded tightly across his chest.

"He's dead, isn't he? Ban's dead. That's why you're here."

I turned back to Clodio. "Aye, Clodio, he is. It grieves me to have to be the one to tell you of it, but he died two days ago." I described the seriousness of the wound. "Even Sakander the surgeon could do nothing for him."

I told him, then, how Beddoc's men had slipped away in the night to bring the tidings to Gunthar, and how Ursus and I had taken off after them, passing them and leaving them behind by nightfall.

As I spoke, Clodio's eyes did not waver from mine. "But the most important thing in all of this is not known yet," I continued, speaking to him directly and quietly. "Not to anyone here, at least. You were right in what you said about the Queen and how she had been working on King Ban. Before he died, the King assembled all his men and decreed in their presence that he was disinheriting Gunthar and naming Samson to rule in his place. Knowing that, there can be no doubting that Beddoc was on his way to warn Gunthar. Beddoc's people will yet be several hours behind us, but we've already been here for more than an hour, so they can't be that far away. That's why it was so important for me to arrange to use the postern door." I swung back to Ursus. "We have to decide . . . I have to decide, I know. We can't simply continue to sit here doing nothing."

"You could come through the caverns." Clodio's voice was so quiet that I barely heard it, and the meaning of his words took some time to penetrate my consciousness, so deeply was I concentrating on what I must do next. I sat up straighter, suddenly alert.

"What did you say?" I asked.

"I said you could come in through the caverns." His voice was still barely audible.

"What caverns?"

'The King's Caverns, below us, in the rock."

I leaned closer to him, watching the tiny half smile on his face blossom into a wide grin as he decided that he had done the right thing in telling me of this.

"Which king's caverns, Clodio? King Ban's?"

"Aye." He was grinning hugely now. "But King Ban the Bald, the old man, your grandfather. And he told his son, our King Ban, that he had been shown the caverns by his father, who had learned of them from his, and so on, back until the days before the fortress was built."

"Wait!" I held up my hand. "I don't understand this. Why have I never heard of this before? I grew up here, and never once in all my boyhood did I hear a whisper about any caverns."

"I know you didn't, nor did anyone else, because no one knows they're there. Only myself and the King ever knew of it, and I only found out by accident. And then Ban swore me to secrecy. You never heard mention of it because you were never meant to, along with everyone else. It's the biggest and best-kept secret in all of Benwick."

"But there must be an entrance somewhere . . ." I was thinking furiously. "If they're right under our feet, as you say, then there must be an entrance nearby, somewhere along the beach, above the high-water mark. But if that's so, then why has it not been found by others, long before now?"

"Because it isn't there." There was no trace of a smile on Clodio's face now. "It's nowhere near the lakeside. There is only one entrance, and it's far from here, inland."

When he told us where it was, I remembered the place, recalling that I once had known it very well indeed, having spent a fair-sized period of my boyhood playing there. But I had covered every bit of space in the caves that were there—I would never have called them caverns—and had found no hidden entrances or exits. One small tunnel I remembered, leading from one chamber to another, but that was all. I said as much to Clodio and he agreed with me. He, too, had played there as a boy, he told me, and had never seen anything unusual. But then one day he had seen the old King and his son emerge from the caves without ever having gone in. He had been playing there all day with half a score of friends and none of them had seen any sign of either the King or his son in all the time they had been there, until both of them had come out.

Everyone had thought it was magic, and they had hidden lest the old King see them and decide they had been spying on his sorcery, but as soon as the two Bans were gone, everyone had descended in a rush upon the caves, searching them from top to bottom in a hunt for some indication of whence the old King and his son had sprung.

A few years later, sheltering from a sudden summer storm with his friend Ban in the same place, Clodio had recalled the event and mentioned to Ban what they had seen that day. No one had ever been able to make more sense of what had occurred that afternoon, he said, and the incident had gradually been forgotten. Now he mentioned it only as a curious memory. Ban showed no reaction. A short time later, however, Ban vanished completely after uttering an unearthly, terrified howl that echoed eerily through the emptiness of the caves.

Clodio scoured the caves and found no trace of his friend, the King's son, and so, badly shaken, he made his way back as fast as he could to the castle, intending to summon help. And there he found Ban, sitting placidly against the wall waiting for him.

For months after that he wondered what had happened, for, of course, Ban offered no explanation. He merely smiled mysteriously, and thereafter he would appear and disappear from time to time, simply to keep the mystery alive. It was not until another three years had passed that Ban had shown Clodio the secret doorway set into a blank rock wall at the back of the cave. By that time, however, they were fully grown and fast friends, having already saved each other's lives in battle, and their trust in each other was absolute. And Clodio had kept the secret until now.

"I know the place, the caves, I mean," I said. "But how will I find the secret entrance?"

"You won't. Even knowing it's there you'll never find it, not if you search for it for a hundred years. You won't find it until I show it to you. King Ban knew nothing of it until his father showed it to him, and Ban the Bald told the same tale of being shown by his father. The secret goes from generation to generation."

An appalling thought hit me then. "So Gunthar knows of it."

"No." Clodio's response was whiplash-quick and sharp. "Never. Empty your mind of that thought. Gunthar has no idea the caverns exist. When he turned twelve and should have learned of it, the King, by sheer good fortune, was involved in quelling a revolt by the Alamanni on our northern borders. When he returned from his campaign, he found his son absent, vanished no one knew where, hunting with his cronies. Even as a twelve-year-old, Gunthar was a law unto himself. Anyway, for whatever reason. Ban never did find a convenient time to show Gunthar the secret. The boy's fourteenth and fifteenth birthdays came and went, and still he had been told nothing, and by the time he had turned sixteen and attained manhood, his father had decided, for reasons of his own, to tell him nothing. It has turned out to be a wise decision. I am glad to have been able to play a small part in it."

"You played a part in it? How so?"

He almost smiled at me, but at the last moment all that transpired was a quirking of one corner of his mouth. "Through friendship, and through shared responsibility. You forget that I, too, knew the secret."

"But—forgive me for being blunt, my friend—why would the King entrust you with the secret and yet deny it to his son?"

"You just said it yourself: trust. Ban trusted me. He could not bring himself to trust Gunthar. And I urged him, quietly, to trust that judgment that bade him remain silent despite the unease he felt over what he saw as a duty to his firstborn. I reminded him that he had sired four sons and that the secret of the castle's strength or weakness need only be passed to one of them to endure."

"I see. So have you told any of the other three?"

"No. You are the only one who knows, and even you know nothing yet."

"But I am not the King's son."

"No more am I. But you will be worthy of the trust, Clothar, and when you—should you—choose to pass the knowledge on, you will divulge it wisely, I have no doubt."

"Does Queen Vivienne know about it?"

"No."

"Hmm." I glanced sidelong at Ursus, wondering how he was perceiving all of this, but he was staring down at the ground between his feet and I had no means of knowing if he was even listening. I looked back to Clodio. "Tell me about the entrance. I find it difficult to imagine any well-used entrance being as completely concealed as you describe."

"I did not ever say it is often used. Ban's tomfoolery aside, it is opened only once every ten years or so. The doorway was built by a master stonemason a hundred years ago and more, but it is a doorway the like of which you have never seen."

"So how will I find it, alone?"

"You won't. You will find me. If you leave now, and should there be treachery so that the castle falls into Gunthar's hands, I will make my way out and through the caverns each day at noon. I will wait in the caves there for an hour, then return here if you have not come to find me. I will do this every day for ten days, and after that I will assume you have been found and killed, and so will stop going. But if you do come that way, bring no more than a score of
your best men, and make sure you bring sufficient cloth to bind their eyes, for none of them must see the entrance or the exit on this end. Now you had best leave, before Beddoc and his people reach us. Where will you go, once you are out of here?"

I looked at Ursus and shrugged my shoulders. "Vervenna first, I think. That seems to be the most obvious place to start. But we'll approach it carefully, for only the gods can know what we'll find there. And if there's no one there, that too will tell us something." I stepped quickly towards Clodio and laid one hand upon his shoulder. "Thank you, old friend. I will not forget. Let's hope our expectations are ill founded and we'll have no cause to call for your assistance. But if we're proven right and the madness we fear does break out, we'll be there by the caves one day, waiting for you. Go with God, Clodio."

"I will, young Clothar, but I would far rather have gone with my King. Be careful."

2

We rode into it. Rode unsuspecting into the chaos and destruction that marked the beginning of Gunthar's War and were engulfed by its madness within the space of two heartbeats. One moment we were forging ahead determinedly through the still unceasing downpour, our horses plodding side by side along a broad and muddy woodland path, and the next we had rounded a bend in the path and found ourselves at the top of a steep defile leading down into a tiny vale that was choked with corpses. It was still not yet noon and the noise of the lashing rain was loud enough to drown any noise from the flies that were beginning to swarm here in uncountable numbers.

At first glance, I could not tell what I was looking at, but beyond that first uncomprehending look there was nothing that could disguise the atrocity of what we had found. My first conscious impression was of a score of bodies. The number sprang into my mind as though it had been spoken aloud, and I recall it clearly
.
A score of bodies
.
No sooner had I acknowledged it, however, than I saw that it was woefully inadequate, for another score and more lay sprawled and half concealed by bushes. And at that moment, as though it had been preordained, the rain stopped falling, for the first time in days, to leave us sitting stunned in a silence that seemed enormous, gazing in stupefaction at the carnage before us.