Camulod Chronicles Book 9 - The Eagle Read online

  The Eagle

  JACK WHYTE is a Scots-born Canadian who has been around long enough by now to have done most of the tilings he ever wanted to do, and all of those seem to have been connected, in one way or another, to storytelling. His novels on King Arthur have been translated into a number of languages and are sold worldwide, a fact that Mr. Whyte finds gratifying and astonishing at the same time. Having brought his Arthurian cycle to a close with The Eagle, he is now deeply involved with a new project, a trilogy of novels examining the rise and fall of the Knights Templar. The first of those. Knights of the Black and White, is now available from Penguin. Jack Whyte lives with his wife, Beverley, in Kelowna, British Columbia.

  Also by jack Whyte

  A DREAM OF EAGLES

  The Sky stone

  The Singing Sword

  The Eagles' Brood

  The Saxon Shore

  The Sorcerer, Volume I: The Fort at River's Bend

  The Sorcerer, Volume II: Metamorphosis

  Uther

  THE GOLDEN EAGLE Clothar the Frank

  THE TEMPLAR TRILOGY

  Knights of the Black and White

  Order in Chaos

  PENGUIN CANADA Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (Canada),

  90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd,

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland,

  25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia),

  250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd,

  11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ),

  cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa

  ) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd,

  Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in a Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada),

  a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2005 Published in this edition, 2006

  123456789 10 (OPM)

  Copyright © Jack Whyte, 2005

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright

  reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

  or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form

  or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording

  or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and

  the above publisher of this book.

  Publisher's note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents

  either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Manufactured in the U.S.A.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Whyte, Jack, 1940- The eagle / Jack Whyte.

  Sequel to Clothar the Frank.

  ISBN-10: 0-14-305164-4 ISBN-13: 978-0-14-305164-0

  I. Title.

  PS8595.H947E199 2006 C813'.54 C2006-901877-4

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of (rude or otherwise, be lent, re-sold,

  hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and

  without a Similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at

  www.penguin.ca

  Special and corporate bulk purchase rates available; please see www.penguln.com/corporatMalM or call 1-800-399-6858, ext. 477 or 474

  To my wife, Beverley,

  who, after more than a quarter century

  of living with the Res Britannica,

  has mixed feelings about cleaning

  out the vaults and moving on to

  other fields . . .

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  Although this is a stand-alone novel, capable of being read without knowledge of, or reference to, anything that has gone before it, it is, nonetheless, a sequel to Clothar the Frank, and it chronicles the events of Clothar's life in the aftermath of his meeting and befriending Arthur Pendragon, High King of All Britain. The story features many of the same characters and places involved in the previous book, and that means that much of what I wrote in my preface to Clothar the Frank is no less relevant and appropriate here than it was there.

  Be warned, then, that readers familiar with Clothar and his previous exploits will find much of what follows here to be familiar, but I have chosen to repeat it for the benefit of new readers who are not familiar with the fifth-century world of which I write.

  I have said before that, in approaching this story, I was forced to come to terms with a few historical realities that bore heavily upon my vision of how the legend of King Arthur came into existence. In my mind, the entire story revolves around the Arthur/Guinivere/Lancelot triangle, and everything that occurs in the legendary tale is attributable to the humanity—and the human weaknesses—of the King himself, the dysfunctional nature of his marriage to Guinivere and their joint attraction to the brilliant foreign warrior known as Lancelot.

  But Lancelot's full name is Lancelot du lac, Lancelot of the Lake, and it is a French name. Lancelot himself, the legend tells us, was a French knight who crossed the sea to England expressly to serve as a Knight of the Round Table at King Arthur's Court. Well, even making allowances for legendary exaggeration, that simply could not have happened in the middle of the fifth century, because in those days England was still called Britannia and the land now called France was still Roman Gaul.

  Not until more than a century later, when the Anglo-Saxon invasions of Britain finally came to an end and the tribes called the Angles emerged as the dominant force, would Britannia begin to become known as the land of the Angles—Angle land, and eventually England. By the same token, Roman Gaul would not become known as France until much later, when the invading Franks finally established their dominance over their arch-rivals, the Burgundians. Over time, the Frankish territories became the land of the Franks— France—while the Burgundians remained in their own territories of Burgundy.

  Reputedly wonderful horsemen, the Franks are the people generally credited with bringing the stirruped saddle to western Europe, and from the time of their first appearance in the Roman Empire, along the Rhine River in the third century, they had a reputation for being blunt spoken and utterly tactless, probably because their original tongue contained few of the subtleties of Latin or Greek. Be that as it may, we still use the term "speaking frankly" to denote directness and an unwillingness to mince one's words.

  Clothar, then, is my interpretation of Lancelot. Academic opinion indicates that the name Lancelot probably developed from the Latin word lancearius, a Roman military denomination that was probably similar to the European lancer regiments of the nineteenth century. In Clothar, I have posited a Frankish horse warrior who, as a close and trusted friend and companion of the High King, Arth
ur, earns himself an undying reputation as an archetypal hero, the character who will be called Lancelot centuries later by French storytellers who have heard of his fame and his exploits but have lost awareness of his real name.

  Language

  The major difficulty any author faces in writing historical fiction is that of language, because language is constantly evolving and we have no real knowledge of how people spoke and sounded, in any language, hundreds of years ago. We cannot even comprehend how people from different regions of a tiny country like Britain were unable to understand, or speak to, one another as recently as a hundred and fifty years ago, but the truth is that people from Yorkshire, from London and from other regions of the country spoke dialects so different from each other that they were, in effect, completely different languages. I have chosen to write in standard English, but even that is a relatively new development, since the language was only "standardized" in the nineteenth century. Before that time, there was no orthographically correct way to spell anything.

  Most of the characters in my stories would have spoken in the ancient Celtic, Germanic and Gallic tongues—tongues that are completely lost to us nowadays—while the major characters, the kings and leaders, may or may not have conversed in Latin. And in those instances where people of mixed tongues met and mingled, they would have spoken the lingua franca of their time, although the real lingua franca—literally the language of the Franks—had not yet come into common use. But throughout history, whenever people of mixed tongues and races have come together to trade, human ingenuity has quickly developed basic, fundamental languages to fit the needs of the traders. In Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, that language was Swahili. In Oriental Asia, it was Pidgin. We do not know the name of whatever trading language was dominant in fifth-century Europe, but I have chosen to call it the Coastal Tongue, because the coast was the interface point for most traders. One unusual word used quite widely in this book is Magister. It is a Latin word that has given us our modern words magistrate and magisterial, but it was a word in common use in the Roman army in the fifth century. It appears to have had two levels of meaning, and I have used it in both senses here. The first of these was the literal use, where a student or pupil would refer to his teacher or mentor as Magister (Master), with all appropriate deference. The second usage, however, resembled the way we today use the term boss, denoting a superior—officer or otherwise—whose status entails the accordance of a degree of respect but falls far short of the subservience suggested by the use of the word Master.

  ONE

  1

  "Chariots."

  The word apparently made no impression on the man to whom I had spoken, so I said it again, raising my voice slightly, despite the absolute silence, to make sure that he could hear me. Again, however, he chose to ignore me, his attention focused on the layer of whiteness that ended at the threshold of the cave that sheltered us. It had started snowing early that afternoon, tiny, individual flakes blown on a chill wind, their appearance unsurprising beside the sudden, harsh reality of the drop in temperature and the wind's strengthening bluster. But the snowfall had increased steadily ever since, so that now, a mere two hours later, the entire world had turned white, and the leaden clouds overhead were already leaching the light from the day, creating a premature dusk.

  "What about them?" It was a dismissive response, and he kept right on talking, ignoring his own question, as though by merely acknowledging my reference he had dealt with the chariots in full. "This snow does not appear to be passing us by, my friend. It looks as though we might have to bring the horses inside. We could be here for the night." Arthur Pendragon, nominal High King of All Britain, squinted at me in the darkness of the cave with snow-dazzled eyes. "That means we will have smelly lodgings, but well sheltered, and at least their body heat should stave off the worst of the chills, in the absence of firewood." Stooping to avoid banging his high, crested helmet against the low ceiling, he moved inside to where I sat with my back securely in a corner of the wall. He placed his long, sheathed sword carefully against an outcrop in the cave wall where it would not fall and then nudged my outstretched foot with his toe. "Move over, unless you want the entire floor for yourself."

  I made room for him, and he eased himself down beside me, then bent forward awkwardly, tugged the heavy war helmet from his head and placed it on the floor between his upraised knees. That done, he sighed and leaned back, scrubbing at his short-cropped hair with the palms of both hands before turning to peer more carefully into the depths of the cave that sheltered us, his dark, yellow- flecked eyes narrowing in concentration as he tried to penetrate the gloom back there. He was two and twenty that year, but looked older than he actually was, his face lined prematurely with the strains of leadership, and somehow, in spite of our relationship as High King and Frankish Outlander, he had become my dearest friend in the four years that had passed since my arrival in Britain at the age of sixteen.

  "It's dark back there," he grunted, and I did not contradict him, for I already knew the cave was both long and deep. We were seated in the day-lit area before the cave swung to the right, about five paces in from the entrance. Beyond where we were sitting, the darkness became absolute. Across from us, the corresponding angle in the wall was sharper, a knife-edged projection of stone jutting outward to form a flat-sided baffle that concealed the widening of the cave from anyone looking in from outside.

  Past the corner formed by the flat-edged rock, the place widened to become more of a cavern than a simple cave, although it was pitch-dark back there. I knew from my first casual exploration that the roof was high enough to permit a tall

  man to stand upright, because I had done so and been able to stretch my hands above my head. I also knew there was a well-used fire pit in the middle of a spacious floor, because I had blundered into it, falling forward onto my hands and coming perilously close to twisting my ankle. One outthrust hand had landed on a smooth fire stone, and after I straightened up I had lobbed it into whatever lay in the darkness ahead of me. The pause that followed, and then the sounds as the stone struck the wall and fell to the floor, told me that there was more than sufficient space for men and horses beyond the limits of my vision.

  Arthur turned back to me in the fading afternoon light. "It's not exactly a bedchamber in Camulod, is it?"

  "It's dry," I responded, "and it's large. There's a fire pit, too, so it'll warm up, once we drag some dead wood up here."

  His face wrinkled into his familiar half smile. "Up here from where? And did I hear you say 'we'? Are you suggesting that the chosen Riothamus of Britain should go out foraging for dead wood? That he should slide and slither down a mountain in a snowstorm and then fight his way back up again, dragging a tree trunk like a common charcoal burner? Is that what you are trying to tell me?"

  "No, not at all, Seur King." I wrapped my cloak around me more securely, shutting out the chilly draft that was gnawing at my legs.

  "What is that?"

  "What is what?"

  "That word . . . that expression you use when you address me as king. You could be calling me nasty names, for all I know."

  I thought hard, wondering what in the world he was talking about, and then I laughed. "Oh, you mean Seur"

  "That's it. What does it mean?"

  "Nothing dire, rest assured. It is a term we use at home in Gaul. A term of respect used in addressing a superior, as in Seur King, or Seur Something-else. That's all. And sometimes we use it as a personal gesture of honor, when we are dealing with someone who has no royal rank, for example, but who is otherwise admired as a clever or a noble man. Like Merlyn, for example. I might call him Seur Merlyn in speaking to him, or perhaps even Seur Caius."

  "Aye, very well. Now, what were you saying, before I interrupted you? You had made some kind of unacceptable suggestion . . . a hint, if I remember correctly, that I might think seriously about toiling like a common charcoal burner."

  I shrugged. "I was suggesting nothin
g, other than that you should, perhaps, think in terms of fuel, rather than of firewood, and that there are large amounts of it down below us, quite easily accessible. We could take our horses down with us and let them pull the load up—the snow's not deep."

  "Not yet, but give it time."

  "Hmm. No need. It will take all the time it needs and wants, Seur King, heedless of whether or not we choose to give it any. Most important of all in this discussion, however, is the self-evident truth that I, as a loyal retainer and faithful companion, might well go down there alone, as you propose, and do what needs must be done. But the storm is worsening, as you say, and I might only be able to make one passage. Thus, it seems to me that if you would prefer your kingly arse to stay warm all night long, instead of having it freeze to the bones in the darkest hours, you might consider it worthwhile, for once in your life of slothful privilege, to set aside your dignitas and concern yourself with simple comfort and survival."

  "You mean I should come with you—share the labor—work like a common clod?"

  "Did I say that? Aye, I suppose I did. But think of it as sharing the warmth afterwards, rather than the labour beforehand."

  "Put like that, I admit the notion does have a certain logic to it." He scratched his chin. "Slothful privilege. You know, you're the only man in Britain who would dare say such a thing to me, in such a way."

  I could no longer keep my face straight and grinned at him. "Aye, I know. You keep telling me so. But that, as you are always pointing out, is because I'm nothing but a foreigner, lacking the proper awe of your status and stature."

  "Status and stature? Both in one breath? That's clever, Clothar, that's very good. You always manage to redeem yourself just short of the executioner's sword." He glanced again towards the back-lit entrance and its curtain of swirling snow. "Damnation, I swear it's getting worse. Even God has no respect for my situation here." He sighed dramatically. "Well, I suppose we had better go and see to it. No point in sitting here idling while things worsen. Come on, then, up you get." He rose quickly to his feet, giving the lie to his earlier act of weariness, and held out his hand to pull me up.