Jack Whyte - The Lance Thrower

“What was he like, my father?”

“What was he like? ” He twisted in his seat and looked at me more closely than he had before, scanning my face. “He was much like you, to look at—or you will be much like him, when you are grown. Same eyes, same hair, same mouth, I suspect, once your face fills out. You’ll certainly have his nose when you reach manhood, although yours will be straighter. I do not normally pay attention to such things, but even I can see you resemble him far more than you do your mother. Her hair was glossy black, like crow feathers, and in bright light it sometimes looked almost blue, like the sky at night. Yours is not quite black—it’s more like your father’s, dark, deep brown, and your skin is dark, like his. Your mother’s skin was very fair.”

“That’s how Frotto’s mother knew I am not really your son. I’m too dark skinned.”

“Nonsense. She knew because Vivienne had not been with child—you can’t hide that—and you were suddenly here. It’s true our boys are all tow-headed like me, but that counts for naught.”

I bowed my head, afraid that what I had to say next might anger him. “If it please you, Sire, I asked you what my father was like, and you told me how he looked, but what I really meant was, what manner of man was he?”

“Hmm.” His mouth quirked upward, but not in a smile. I could see him nibbling at the inside of his cheek. “I know not how I can answer that … . He was the kind of man who turned heads everywhere he went. He had … he had a certain way about him that told everyone, without a word being spoken, that here was someone to note and admire—not because he was comely to look upon, although he was that, too, but because he filled a room with his presence and he … he seemed to glow with authority and promise .”

“Tell me about him, if it please you.”

“I suppose if I ask you what you would like to know, you’ll say everything .” He was smiling again and I nodded. He nodded back. “Aye, well, let’s see what comes to mind.” A log collapsed in the brazier and sent up an explosion of sparks, some of which swirled outward, one of them landing on the King’s leggings. He flicked the tiny ember to the floor, then rose to his feet again. He picked up another length of fresh wood and used it to poke the fire down before he thrust it deep into the heart of the flames. “He wasn’t a Frank, you know, not really, although his mother was. That’s how he got his Frankish name, Childebertus.”

“Chillbirtoos;” I repeated, savoring the sound of it.

“Aye. You’re three-quarters Frank yourself, through your grandmother and your mother, but the other fourth is all your father’s blood.”

That stunned me, for I had never thought of myself as being anything other than a Frank. “What was he, then?”

“He was a Gael, from Britain. Remember, I met him in the army, when I was with the legions. He came to us from Rome, as a recruit, and had been living there for most of his life, but he was born in Britain. By the time we left the legions, his father, Jacobus, had died, and so he had no reason to return to Rome. He came here to Gaul with me instead and met your mother shortly after that, when I began to pay court to her sister.”

“A Gael …” There was something wondrous in the sound of that.

“Aye, but there was more to him than that, according to his father’s account. I never met your grandsire Jacobus, and Childebertus never spoke about him much, but Germanus told me more about your family, years later. He had come to know your grandfather in Rome, where they were both lawyers, and it was Jacobus who later introduced Germanus to the woman who would become his wife. She was a kinswoman of the Emperor Honorius, so that in marrying her, Germanus himself formed some kind of kinship with the Emperor. They became friends, too. It was Honorius himself who convinced Germanus, after the death of his wife, that he should give up the law and become a soldier. But that’s Germanus’s story, not your father’s.

“What Germanus told me was that your father’s family could trace their paternity, the bloodline of their fathers, directly back through twenty generations to the province of Judea, to the time of the Christ himself and beyond that. That seemed unbelievable to me when I heard about it, but Germanus said it was a solemn matter of great family pride and he had no doubt of the truth of it.”

I had no interest in that story, for my mind had fastened on the place-name he had mentioned. “Judea?” The name was strange to me. “Is it in Britain?”

“No, nowhere near it.”

“But I thought the Gaels all came from Britain.”

“No, that’s not so, either. Many are from northern Gaul … Gaul, Gael, it’s the same basic word. But Judea is the land where Jesus, the Christus, was born.”

“That was Galilee.”

“No, Galilee was the region he lived in, just as this place we live in now, Genava, is a region of Gaul. The Scriptures tell us Jesus was born in a place called Bethlehem, but he lived in the town of Nazareth. All three—Galilee, Nazareth, and Bethlehem—are in Judea. The people who live there call themselves Jews.”

I had heard of the Jews, but I had thought they all lived in a place called Jerusalem. I knew nothing more about them, or what being a Jew entailed, except that I had been told long before, by my earliest tutor, that the Jews had used the Roman law to crucify the Christ and were therefore guilty of the Blood of the Lamb . The words still rang in my mind, and although I had never understood their meaning, the condemnation they contained had sounded grim and unforgivable. This sudden revelation that my father might have shared that guilt appalled me. “My father was a Jew? ”

“No, he was a Christian. Well, by his ancestral blood and descent he was Jewish, I suppose, but by belief he was a Christian. One of the most sincere Christians I ever met. It can be confusing, all this talk of Jewish creed and Jewish blood, but I’ve seen enough spilt blood to know that it’s all red—doesn’t matter who it comes from. It’s impossible to distinguish the shed blood of a black Nubian from that of a blond Northerner or a flat-faced, brown-skinned Hun. I don’t even know who my own grandfather’s grandsire was , let alone where he came from, and I don’t care. I know where I belong, and that’s enough for me. But according to your own family historians—and they took great care of their clan’s history—your father’s ancestors have been Christians for four hundred years, and numbered among the very first followers of the Creed.”

“Are they small people, the Jews?”

The King smiled, perhaps at me, perhaps at a memory. “You mean in size? No, not if they resemble your father. He was taller than me, by the width of his fist, and broader across the shoulders. He was a big lad, Childebertus. But he was half Frank, half Gael, remember. Most of his Judean traits, if ever there were any, might have been bred out of his clan long since. He was dark of skin, as you are, but no darker than many a Roman I’ve met born and bred in Italia, so I can’t judge by that.

“But Judea is a desert land with a fierce sun, from what I’ve heard, so the people there must be dark skinned, and they probably dress differently because of the heat in their homeland. Here in our land, however, wearing the same clothes we wear, who would know how to tell them apart from others? You’ll meet some folk who’ll tell you that the Jews are accursed, because they crucified the Savior. That might be true, it might not. I prefer to make no judgments on it. And I know, that when it comes to God and godly matters, there will always be people who claim to have exclusive access to God’s ear and wishes. Well, let them all make their judgments without involving me. They will, anyway. What I know is that my dearest friend, the finest man I ever knew, took pride in his Jewish descent and was taught to revere the memory of his Judean forefathers. So why should I believe what others mutter when I have my own memories to prove that they are wrong?”