There were twelve of us in the boys’ corps at that time, ranging in age from eight through sixteen, and there was no implication, in our calling him Magister, that we might all be slaves to his mastery … except that, of course, we were, utterly and abjectly. Chulderic was not a man to defy, to deny, or to challenge. His discipline was renowned, and none of us would ever have dared to question it or to rebel against it. He was merciless, demanding, and implacable in his expectations and pitilessly critical of all our efforts to do well and to win his praise. And yet sometimes he would relent, and would bark or grunt an unintelligible sound that was his only indication that one of us might have—might have—achieved a barely acceptable standard in something we had attempted. But now here he was, speaking to me in a quiet voice like a normal man.
He had swung his horse to face me as I addressed him and for a moment I quailed, expecting him to rebuke me for impertinence, but he merely looked at me with a peculiar expression, then nodded, almost imperceptibly.
“We could not tell you, before now. You were too young to know such things. They were too dangerous for you to know because, being a child, you would have asked a thousand questions and prattled to anyone who would listen, and sooner or later word would have reached the wrong ears.” He scratched at his beard with his fingertips, then tucked in his chin and peered down along his nose, stretching a single long white hair out to where he could see the end of it. “Hmm,” he grunted, and then twisted the offending hair around his finger and jerked it out by its roots. “More and more of those in there, nowadays.”
I had no way of knowing if he had meant me to hear that, but I was stricken with awe to see this unexpected aspect of a man who had terrified me for years, and yet all I could think to do then and there was look more closely at his beard. It was black and long, neatly trimmed at the ends and very straight, with little curl to it. But I could see white strands among the black, now that he had drawn my attention to them.
“I knew him longer than I’ve known you,” he continued. “And I’ve known you all your life, since the day you were born. He was my friend, your father, as well as being my employer.”
“Your employer?” I was no longer afraid, my apprehension swept away completely by his suddenly revealed humanity. “You mean you worked for him?”
“Aye, I did. Does that surprise you? I worked for him gladly. I was his Master-at-Arms long before I came here to join King Ban.”
“But the King said he was in the army with you, and that you first met my father there, too, when he joined you fresh from Rome.”
Chulderic nodded, deeply and slowly. “That is true, we all met in the army, and we grew close over the next ten years. Mind you, I was no more than a common soldier in those days, only newly appointed to command a single squadron, whereas the three of them—Ban, your father, and latterly Germanus—were all field officers. But they chose to trust me and my judgment, for reasons of their own, and I somehow became their confidant, their messenger whenever they had need of one. But the day came, as such days always must, when we left the armies, all four of us at the same time, because we had fulfilled all our obligations. Our campaign was finished and our work was done and we were finally freed to go home. They were free to go home, I should say. I had no home to go back to. Your father knew that, and so he invited me to ride with him and be his man, in return for my board and keep and a parcel of land to call my own, an undisputed place to lay my head at day’s end. Sounded to me as though I wouldn’t find a better offer, and I never did.”
“Did you know my father when he lived in Rome?”
He shook his head. “No, I did not. He had done his stint in Rome before he joined us, and I know he was glad to get away from it.”
“What did he say about it?”
“I can barely remember, it has been so long, but it will come back to me if I take time to think.” His chin tilted upward as he gazed at me with narrowed eyes. “Jump down now and run to the stables. Pick yourself a horse and come back here as quickly as you can. King Ban would have me tell you what I know about your father and mother, all of it in one day, and so I will, but I will be able to do it more easily if we ride. I never was a man for sitting indoors and talking. I need fresh, blowing air to keep my head clear when I am thinking. Go you now.”
I ran like the wind all the way to the stables, where I quickly found the senior groom and told him why I needed a horse. I picked out my favorite, a black gelding almost as tall as the one Chulderic rode, and saddled it quickly, tightening the girth securely before I swung myself up onto the big animal’s back. Then, mounted, I sat for a few moments inhaling the odors of the stable before I nodded to the groom to open the door, and I listened, as I rode out, to the sounds my horse’s hooves made on the floor of packed earth and straw. I remember quite clearly the sensations of stretched tension and thrilling excitement that filled my chest that day as I rode back to where the Master-at-Arms was waiting. He watched me approach and kicked his horse into motion as I drew near him. For a while we rode in silence, side by side, as we walked our mounts among and between the buildings outside the walls of King Ban’s castle.
As soon as we had passed the last of the houses, Chulderic kicked his horse to a canter, then to a lope, and finally into a gallop, and I kept close to him, barely half a length behind him and to his left, exulting in the surging power of the big animal between my knees and the way the wind ruffled my hair. We did not gallop far, however, before he pulled back on his reins and slowed to a canter, saying there was no point in overtaxing the animals.
The path he had chosen stretched upward, rising gently and consistently over the course of two miles to the crest of a ridge that ended in a high cliff and offered a breathtaking view of the lake hundreds of feet below. As we approached the summit and the steepest part of the climb, we dismounted and led our horses, but they were both panting as hard as we were when we reached the top and stopped, overlooking the vista before us.
“Now that is a sight worth beholding,” Chulderic said. “Large enough to be a sea, yet still a lake of fresh water.”
He looked about him, then dropped his horse’s reins on the ground and went to sit on an old log that some previous visitor had dragged close to the edge of the cliff.
“Come. Sit.”
I did as he bade me, and for a while we sat staring at the view and waiting for our breathing to return to normal.
“Your father joined the army on his sixteenth birthday, did you know that?” I shook my head. “Aye, well, he did. That’s the traditional age for boys to become soldiers, as you know. Has been for hundreds of years, stretching right back to the earliest days of Rome, when every soldier was a farmer and every farmer was a soldier. But it doesn’t happen much today, at least not among the wealthy.”
I said nothing, and he continued after only a brief pause. “Your grandfather Jacobus was wealthy—your father’s father, that is. He was from Britain, a lawyer. Traveled to Rome to study there, and then remained to practice his craft, at which he was apparently very good—one of the best in the city, I’ve been told. He could easily have arranged to keep his son at home and out of the army, had he so wished. But he didn’t. He let the boy go when he wanted to, and was quite content to do so. Strange relationship between those two, for father and son: they liked each other—loved each other might not even be too strong a way to put it. You don’t see that too often among civilized people. Everyone likes to talk about the tightness of family bonds and the obligations of blood relationships and kindred, but it’s all lip service, nine times out of ten.