He continued with the Clodia masquerade, handing her down and astonishing the dirty rag-tag young woman by stepping aside in manner courtly. After giving him a look she thought austerely highborn, she went in. Cormac, stooping exaggeratedly low, passed into the hall of the king.
Now all must wait in an anteroom or defense-hall whilst Irnic in his scarlet Roman cloak went somewhere within. There were no sentries. Cormac stood easy. He knew that one must ever wait while the wearer of a diadem was apprised of one’s presence. He also knew that a messenger had already galloped here on just that mission, and the Gael prepared himself to dislike the Suevic lord of Galicia.
Nor was there aught unusual in that; mac Art of Eirrin had had nothing good of kings but only treachery-and if there had been good of them too, he’d forgot it because he wanted to do.
The officer returned and Cormac was conducted into the presence of the king.
Others were there of course, the advisers and hangers-on called courtiers who ever clung about thrones. Cormac was careful not to notice them or even the young woman directly beside the high seat. He kept his dispassionate gaze fixed steadily on the man seated atop a two-step dais. He wore a robe dyed brightly in the vermilion hue of the minium brought up from the bed of the nearby River Mino, and its hem was purfled with cloth-of-gold.
He was tallish in the body and short in the leg, neither pale nor dark, neither handsome nor ill-favored. He’d a good brow and big hands. His twisted topknot, brown like his beard and droop-ended mustache, was worn over his right ear so as to accommodate his royal diadem. This was an inch-high band of gold sheet doubtless laid on over bronze plaques. The violet stones called almandines decorated it, with an interesting fleck of winking mica and two fair garnets, dull and lifeless amid the gleaming purple stones, which were convex. His swordbelt, mark of the military men of which he of course was supreme commander, was similarly decorated and the buckle appeared moulded of pure gold, in twisted bands like a fine torc.
Behind him hung a nicely woven tapestry, showing a battle or two and centering on the same eye-in-circles sigil that decorated the door-hanging. Cormac recognized a tall vase as Greek, stolen long and long ago.
Only another minor king, Cormac thought, remembering how Hengist had styled himself “king” in Kentish Britain when the Jutish pirate had but three hundred followers and perhaps a score of horses. The most notable aspect of this one was that he was little older than his visitor, and that he was making no effort to look ferocious. The Gael tried not to be impressed.
“Veremund, Rex Suevorum!” a voice announced from the king’s left, without bothering to mention Galicia. Cormac didn’t bother to glance at the annunciator.
“Who are you,” King Veremund said, in a baritone that sounded more like a well-controlled tenor. “Why are you come here?”
Rather than answer, Cormac stepped aside and swung a courtly arm out to his companion of the torn skirt. “May I introduce to the lord King of the Sueves the Lady Clodia, of the Roman Kingdom of Soissons, and lately of Tours. Affianced through blackmail of her father to the hideous monster Sigebert One-ear, and now fleeing in quest of protection.”
Ah, Sigebert mine deadly enemy-how ye’d be loving those words-dog!
The king leaned forward. “A Frankish noblewoman, here? Fleeing a legal betrothal arranged by your father, my lady?”
Bad cess, Cormac thought, and only just managed to seem unhasty in his reply: “A betrothal into which her most misfortunate father was scurrilously tricked and forced, my lord King. Indeed, her father is more than pleased that his lady daughter is after escaping the thrice-cruel Sigebert.”
Clodia sopped that up like bread in the gravy, and essayed to appear the lady. She succeeds, Cormac thought, about as well as I might. Veremund gazed at her for a time, muttered “Lady Clodia” without further committing himself or his land, and leaned back. Again he looked upon mac Art.
“It’s Cormac mac Art I am, a Gael of Eirrin-though not for these eight long years, lord King.” And a little murmur rose in the great hall.
“Cormac, mac, Art,” Veremund said, enunciating elaborately, and he smiled to let his visitor know he was known here. Fame-and infamy, Cormac thought-be damned. “The ‘mac’ is ‘son of’, is it not?”
“Aye, lord King.”
“And the Lady Chlodia is not your woman.” This time Veremund gave her name the Gothic rather than the Roman pronunciation, in the way that “Childeric” and “Hilderic” were the same name, depending upon who uttered it, and where.
“No, lord King! Not my woman,” Cormac said as though shocked. “But under my protection.”
Someone snorted. Cormac continued to gaze upon Veremund, who nodded and leaned a bit to one side, resting his arm and looking thoughtfully at the two strangers to his land. Now Cormac allowed his peripheral vision to take in the woman seated beside the king, on his left. Several years younger-indeed in her teens, surely-she was perhaps the queen, except that she bore strong resemblance to Veremund. Cormac wondered whether under his beard the king too had a strong chin, and dimpled.
The Gael was also sure that the young woman’s pale blue eyes were regarding him appraisingly.
Veremund asked, “You bore my lady Clodia away from Tours?”
“From Nantes, my lord Veremund-a few spearlengths ahead of King Clovis’s Loire fleet. We durst not venture south along the coast, as milord of Burdigala has a… quarrel with me and my comrades. It’s the whole coast his ships are now patrolling, searching for our ship.”
“Raven.”
Hardly out of touch, these folk whose shipping or shores I’ve never raided, Cormac noted, and said, “Aye, my lord. So… it’s down to your shore we sailed, in hopes of finding a more friendly reception and fair trade for… a few items of trade that my lord Veremund, King, surely had more need of than the Visigoths for whom they were intended.”
Someone among the nobles collected around the king chuckled appreciatively; a different voice laughed its scorn. Veremund again sat forward, having noted the visitor’s first words more than his last.
“You crossed Treachery Bay?” *
* [The Bay of Biscay. Its Roman names are Sinus Aquitanicus and Sinus Cantabricus, or Cantaber Oceanus, Cantanabria being Calicia’s eastern neighbour, sprawled in a thin strip across most of the northern coast of Hispania. Only those who live far from it call that lovely body of water the Cantabrian Sea; to those who know it, it is ever the Bay of Treachery.]
“Aye, my lord. And-”
“There has been a storm! Storms.”
Cormac nodded solemnly. “Aye, lord King, and storm and sea like to have swallowed us, I make admission without shame.”
Now Cormac glanced significantly about him, for the first time noting the few men gathered here: Suevi under their tortured hair, darker Hispano-Romans though in the same short, decorated tunics, and a bald old man in a black-girt robe of aquamarine. Some looked most impressed and some were manifestly trying not to appear so; all stared at Cormac mac Art.
“A feat indeed, Cormac mac Art.” Veremund glanced over his nobles. “And from stories that have reached these ears concerning yourself and the Dane Wulfhere, I am not disposed to disbelieve the unbelievable of you. Nor am I loath to welcome such intrepid sailors… who have brought such embarrassment to the Goths! And… why were you in Nantes, Cormac mac Art?”