The Half-Slave Read online

  ‘We need to know if there is going to be an uprising of the northern tribes. If there is, we need to know when and where they will attack. You must find out who leads the Cheruskkii and, if you can, you must kill him. He is a threat that has to be removed.’

  They wanted him to be a spy and an assassin. ‘I’d be on my own, without weapons.’

  ‘It will be dangerous, there’s no denying,’ Clovis said.

  ‘How will I get the information back to you?’

  ‘One of my agents will contact you.’

  ‘How will I know him?’

  ‘He’s a Frisian. He will find you.’

  ‘How much time do I have?’

  ‘Not much. If they’re going to come, they’ll come next summer.’

  Ascha breathed in deep. This was not what he had expected but he knew with every fibre of his being that he held his future in the palm of his hand. He would never get a second chance. But what did he want? Wealth? Land? Women? All that, of course, but there had to be more. Think man, think!

  And then it came to him.

  He was a half-slave, caught in the hazy twilight between slave and free. He had struggled with the shame of it ever since he could remember. All he had ever wanted was to be whole, the same as his brothers. The Theodi would never give him that, but Clovis could. Clovis was Overlord of the Franks. Clovis could do anything.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I want,’ he said.

  ‘Be my eyes and you can have anything,’ Clovis said. He had pulled his heels up onto the bench and sat with his knees hunched under his chin, chewing his nail.

  ‘I want 100 solidi.’

  There was a brief pause. ‘Agreed!’

  ‘And my freedom.’

  Clovis and Basinia looked at him in astonishment. ‘You’re not a slave,’ Clovis said. ‘You’re half-free. We would never have armed a slave.’ He spoke with disgust, the very idea abhorrent.

  ‘I know, but it’s what I want,’ Ascha said. ‘I want you to make me a free man. I want there to be no doubt.’

  Clovis walked away shaking his head. ‘I know of no procedure for making a half-slave into a free man,’ he said. ‘The law does not allow it.’

  ‘You owe me!’ Ascha growled.

  For the first time, it occurred to him how closely interwoven their lives were. If he had not saved the young Frank’s life at Samarobriva, Clovis would never have become Overlord and he would never have become a hostage.

  Clovis seemed to think the same. He nodded slowly. ‘Very well,’ he said evenly. ‘Do this and I will declare you free. After that, any man who calls you half-slave will be flogged until his back is raw.’

  Ascha saw the Overlord give his mother a thin smile. A bargain!

  ‘Swear it!’ he said furiously.

  Clovis paused. ‘I swear it.’

  ‘On your father’s grave.’

  Clovis scowled.

  ‘I swear this on the blood of my dead father Childeric and on his grave. May I join him in the cold earth and stones take the place of my eyes if I break this sacred oath.’

  Ascha drained his glass. He sat for a long time staring into space. Could he trust them? Of course not! Bauto, the old dog, had been right on that count. But it was worth the risk. Pull this off and he would be a free man. He would be whole. He wasn’t so stupid as to think it would be easy. But he knew he was ready. He’d been ready all his life.

  Ascha put down the glass and stood up. A log shifted in the fire, sending out a flurry of sparks and a sudden gust of heat. Outside, in the hall, there was a burst of raucous laughter, like a sail tearing.

  ‘Make the arrangements,’ he said, ‘and I’ll do it.’

  After that things moved quickly. Flavinius put Ascha up at his house across the river and arranged for him to travel overland as a woodcarver. Flavinius took away his Frankish army clothes and weapons and replaced them with a rough coarse-weave tunic, a short hooded cloak and the kind of soft cap that craftsmen wore. Flavinius gave him an old satchel, his tools, a blanket and enough flour and hard biscuit for a month.

  Unable to sleep for excitement, Ascha spent the night drinking beer with Flavinius. Neither of them spoke much. Flavinius told him briefly what he might expect to find on the road and then they lapsed into silence. Ascha’s thoughts were of the future and, if Flavinius had any opinions on what Ascha had agreed to do, he kept them to himself.

  The next day Ascha went down to the city gate, strode past the grinning skull of Eberulf the Herul, and headed east.

  7

  Ascha set a brisk pace, following the old military road that ran from Gesoriac on the coast through Tornacum to the Rhine. He knew he didn’t have long before the rainy season arrived and the dirt roads on the other side of the Rhine would become quagmire. He pushed himself hard, switching between running and fast marching, as he had done in his army training. He met peddlers and tattered hawkers, their wares piled high on their backs, farmers moving their bleating livestock and women selling eggs by the roadside. They gave him no trouble. Sometimes, he came across groups of Frankish settlers, surly men, hollow-eyed women and grimy-faced children trekking south in oxcarts that yawed and pitched like boats in a storm.

  One day he encountered a Frankish war band. He lifted a hand in friendly greeting and stepped aside to let them pass, but they tramped on without a sideways glance. They were swathed in deerskin, their clothes stiff with dirt and grease, and led by a warlord with white-bristled cheeks who rode a shaggy pony and glared at him with eyes as hard as flints.

  He came to a sordid village high in the forest they called the Arduenna. Smoke and the smell of cooking drifted on the evening air. A sullen knot of villagers watched him from the side of the road. They asked him where he thought he was going in such an all-fired hurry. He shrugged and said to the Rhine. You an escaped slave, they asked. When he said he wasn’t, a villager picked up a stone and pitched it at him. He kept on going.

  He went on, moving up through the high country, working his way east. At nightfall he left the road and found a sheltered spot beneath the trees. He sat and ate his bread and then rolled himself in his blanket. He listened for a while to the cry of the wolves, his fingers laced behind his head, and then he slept.

  A week after he left Tornacum, he came to a wide valley. A stiff wind was blowing and a cold rain clicked on the leaves. He looked down on a sluggish pewter-coloured river and knew he had reached the Rhine.

  Flavinius had spoken of the Rhine as the edge of civilization, beyond which lay darkness and barbarity.

  ‘One winter, when my grandfather was a boy, the Rhine froze.’ Flavinius had said. ‘The barbarians crossed over in their thousands. Vandals, Suebi, Franks and Alemanni.’

  The Romans were unable to hold the barbarians back, Flavinius said. Their lines gave way, frontier posts were abandoned and farms and border towns overrun. The great landowners fled and the poor were left to fend for themselves. Barbarian lords took over the great estates and the Gauls found themselves ruled by new masters.

  Ascha was half way up a wooded hill when something made him stop. He turned and looked back. Three riders were coming round the last bend in the road. He felt a sudden tingling in his spine, the barest sensation of danger. He walked on, eyes on the ground. The riders rode past, splashing him with wet muck. He saw that they wore long Frankish cloaks and sealskins, the hoods pulled over their heads. They had gone some way up the hill when one of them pulled on his reins, turned and walked his horse back toward him. The man pushed his cloak off his face. Ascha saw that he was an Easterner, dark-skinned and black-bearded, carrying a long sword on his hip. There was the glint of mail beneath the man’s cloak. The rider came up close forcing Ascha off the road. He felt the man’s eyes upon him, taking in the mud speckled clothes, the soiled boots, the dark hair cropped short under the grubby cap. The gaze lingered on the satchel at Ascha’s hip.

  ‘What are you?’ the rider said in a guttural accent.

  ‘No-one, Lord.’

&
nbsp; ‘What’s in the bag?’

  ‘Tools.’

  ‘What kind of tools?’

  ‘I’m a woodcarver.’

  The man gave a derisive snort. ‘Where you from, Carver?’

  The other two riders had stopped. They turned their mounts and rode slowly back, moving apart as they came, filling the road. One said something, and the other laughed. Ascha had a bad feeling about them. He looked about. Thick woods on one side of the track and, on the other, the ground fell away sharply. The rain started up again, pattering on the leaves above his head.

  The first rider shouted at him. ‘Answer me! Where you from?’

  ‘From my village, Lord.’

  ‘And where, damn you, is your village?’

  ‘Over there,’ Ascha said and gestured with one slack arm to the mist shrouded hills behind.

  He knew as soon as he spoke, that it didn’t sound right. The man looked to where he pointed and then back at him. ‘You’re lying,’ he hissed, and his fist dropped to his sword.

  Ascha snatched off his cap and waved it under the horse’s nose. The horse reared and squatted back on its haunches and took a couple of steps back. Ascha scrambled under the horse’s neck and ran to the side of the road and leapt over the bluff. He hit the ground and slithered down the bank in a wet slurry of mud and leaves and gravel. He rolled and slid a good way. He looked for something to hide behind, made a grab for an overhanging branch and ducked beneath the tree’s exposed roots. He lay there, chest heaving, quiet as a mouse. There were shouts from the road and he wished he’d gone further down. Above him, he heard the jingle of a bridle and a horse blowing. Stones and gravel rolled past his ear. There was a creak of saddle leather as a rider leaned forward, looking for him. By the sound he guessed they had moved down the road, looking for a way down the slope and then he heard them coming back.

  Ascha lay on his stomach, waiting, hoping they wouldn’t dare follow with the horses.

  ‘Said he was a woodcarver,’ he heard the first man say.

  ‘We’re not looking for a pox-ridden woodcarver.’

  ‘I think he was lying,’ the first man growled, annoyed his judgement was in question.

  ‘Well, he’s gone now,’ the third man said.

  Ascha lay listening. The first two were foreigners but the third man was a Frank and high-born. And he knew the voice. Ascha felt his senses jangling. Where had he heard him before?

  ‘If he was woodcarver, why did he run?’

  ‘You probably scared the shit out of him,’ the Frank said.

  With a start, Ascha recognized him. The Frankish lord he had clashed with in the Great Hall. Lord Ragnachar’s man. He held his breath while the rain soaked him to the bone.

  A grunt and another curse, a rock came skittering past. After a while the Frank said, ‘We’ve wasted enough time, let’s go!’ They pulled their horses back and Ascha heard them splashing through the puddles as they trotted away.

  When he could hear them no more, he slid down the valley side on his back and heels, stones clattering beneath him. He came to a stop at the bottom and lay there for a moment, gasping for air and listening. He looked up at the ridge in both directions. No sign of them. He wiped his mouth with his arm. What in Tiw’s holy name was Ragnachar’s man doing out here? And who was he chasing? Whoever it was, he wouldn’t last long once those three got hold of him.

  And then it occurred to him. What if it’s you they’re after? He shook his head. No, not possible. Clovis had no reason to send men after him, and besides, a troop of Antrustions was more his style. And the Overlord was unlikely to reveal his plans, and not to his uncle Ragnachar if Verecundus was to be believed. Ascha chewed it over but could make no sense of it. How much do you want this, he thought? You want it enough to die for? Because you’d better!

  A sheep trail led through the trees. He scanned the valley rim for a while, then turned and followed the trail north.

  The rain stopped and the clouds began to lift. A cold sun shimmered over the valley, splashing the woods in a golden honey-coloured light. He came across a small settlement by the riverside. Nothing much, a sprawl of cabins and a landing for boats. Thin gasps of blue smoke gusted, and there was a stench of ship’s caulk. He’d found a crossing point. Flavinius had refused to give him money. You won’t need solidi where you’re going, he’d said. Now he had to find a way to get across the Rhine.

  He saw some men caulking a boat and asked them for the boat-master. A watersider with pock-marked cheeks jerked his head towards the jetty where a river man was driving wedges into an oak log.

  ‘That’s him. That’s Wacho!’ the watersider said.

  The boat-master was a Frank, his workers mostly Gauls. He supposed that was how it was these days. Wacho was a big man running to fat with a bald head and a large nose. When Ascha walked up, he was gnawing a hambone. A small ship lay alongside the jetty, its spindly mast scratching the sky’s grey underbelly.

  ‘We be of one blood,’ Ascha said.

  The boat master looked at him without replying. Ascha looked at the hambone. He hadn’t eaten for two days and was hungry.

  He tried again. ‘She’s a fine ship!’

  The ship was sturdy rather than beautiful but she was northern built. Long strakes overlapping like roof tiles. A good waxed sail. Six oars, four in the bow and two behind the cargo space. She’d ride the water well, he thought, sliding over the waves like a swan not ploughing through them as did the fat-arsed Roman and Gaulish vessels.

  ‘I’m looking to go across.’

  The Frank gave him a hard stare. ‘An’ you can pay f’that?’ he said.

  I’m a woodcarver.’ Ascha said. ‘Best there is. Take me across and I’ll cut you your own prow-head. Gods, serpents, boars, dragons or hell-fiends, you name it, I’ll carve it.’

  ‘What do I want with a prowhead?’ the Frank said. ‘This is is the Rhine, not the ocean, an’ my Clotsinda ain’t no war ship.’

  ‘River squalls can be treacherous. A prowhead will protect you from bad river spirits and keep watch over you while you sleep. It will bring you good fortune.’

  The master peered at him and scratched the side of his face, thinking it over. He turned and tossed the hambone into the water. Ascha watched the bone arc through the air and sink through a ripple-whorl into the silt.

  Wacho agreed that Ascha could carve a prow for the Clotsinda. They would be sailing the next day when the passengers Wacho was waiting for arrived. If Ascha didn’t finish in time, they would sail without him. In the meantime, he could dip into the watersiders’ rabbit stew and sleep with the other unmarried men in the cow shed.

  Ascha spent a long time grinding his chisels against his slate stone, testing the edge with his thumb. When he was done he went to the rivermen’s wood yard and found a block of unseasoned oak as high as his shoulder. He sketched out a dragon-monster with chalk, rubbing out the lines and redrawing them until he was satisfied. Then he picked up a mallet and began to carve.

  Ascha worked fast, lopping off corners and gouging great chunks. He chiselled the head, cutting deep bulbous eyes to see hazards in all weathers. A beak of a mouth, hard and terrifying to drive away the river demons, and a spiralling and serpentine body, thick as a man’s thigh. As he carved, chips of oak flew from his blade, like sparrows before a storm.

  Ascha lost all sense of passing time. Once he looked up and saw a group of the riversiders’ children watching him. They were in rags, the little ones naked, bellies stretched tight and skin shadowed with dirt. He spoke to them but they shook their heads, their toes kneading the mud like dough.

  He is eleven when he discovers he can bring life from wood and stone. His mother and Hanno encourage him with words as warm as milk. Hroc sneers and tosses his tools in the midden. One day his father comes into the workshop. He bends his big head under the lintel and frowns into the gloom. He pokes the chisels and stone punches on the bench with a thick finger so they clink and runs a hand over a bench floury with dust.


  ‘They say tha has the gift,’ he says gruffly. He picks up a carving of a bear and holds it up to the light.

  Ascha waits.

  ‘I was a carver once,’ his father says after a while.

  ‘Tha, a carver?’ Ascha says, not believing.

  ‘My father died suddenly and I became hetman.’ Aelfric gives Ascha what might have been a smile. ‘Perhaps tha’s inherited thi gift from me?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Ascha says. The thought that his father might have been a carver has never crossed his mind but he can hear the regret in his father’s voice and senses what might have been.

  ‘A good likeness,’ Aelfric says handing him back the bear. ‘But tha’d do better with limewood.’

  Aelfric turns to go. He pauses at the door, his hand on the latch.

  ‘Remember, lad, the spirit of a carving lies in the wood. Without it thi work has no life. It will be as cold as the grave. If tha’s to become a carver tha must free the spirit. Free the spirit within!’

  And he is gone.

  Late in the afternoon and a flatbed mule cart came trundling down the river path. Ascha looked up. Next to the mule driver sat an old man with a grey beard and a gown the colour of tree bark. A young woman was in the back with a shaven-headed slave boy. Trotting behind the cart came another slave, a big fellow with the build of a wrestler.

  Wacho ran his hands down his shirt and went to greet them. He shook hands with the old man and helped him down. They talked and threw sharp glances at the black clouds roiling in from the north. Ascha reckoned they were deciding whether to leave, and risk getting caught in the storm, or wait until the following morning.

  As he watched they seemed to come to a decision. Wacho took the old man by the elbow and led him towards the cabins. The girl hitched up her skirts, jumped down and followed them, stepping over the puddles. With a squeal of iron on wood, the two slaves dragged the chests off the cart and laid them down in the mud. The driver climbed back on the cart, whipped the mule and the cart went bouncing back the way the way it had come.