Belisarius nodded. 'But I'm here to give your King a warning.'
Bertgils said, 'Aelfflaed told me about that too.'
'If there's a sand-grain of truth in it, you need to be prepared.'
'All right. But I'll be frank with you. The King is made of stem stuff – he has had to be just to survive his own succession. He has no patience with prophets and auguries.'
'At least we can try,' Belisarius said.
'I owe my daughter that much. And in the meantime there is the feast.'
'Yes, the feast!' The voice boomed like thunder, and what felt like a side of ham slammed into Belisarius's shoulder.
Bertgils bowed. 'My lord.'
The Butcher was tall even among these tall Germans, and his chest was as wide as a barrel. Under a leather coat he wore a jacket of chain-mail, even here in his own hall. A monstrous silver cross hung by a gold chain around his neck, and each of his stubby fingers was adorned by a gleaming ring. He wore a vast moustache like the rest, and his hair was pulled into a knot on top of his head, exposing a neck that was dyed bright red from chin to chest, giving him the look of a huge predatory bird. His breath stank of spoiled meat. Belisarius tried not to recoil.
At the Butcher's side was a demure woman, much younger than he was – no older than Aelfric in fact, if that. She was expensively dressed too, and bizarrely she wore a sieve of silver on a chain around her neck.
Aethelred snapped, 'So you're the east Roman.' The King spoke a coarse Latin, to Belisarius's surprise.
'I'm honoured to meet you.'
Bertgils showed the King Belisarius's gift; Aethelred thumbed the precious pages casually, leaving grimy marks, as Belisarius tried to explain its provenance.
'I see you have brought along a pet monk.' The King turned on Boniface, who quailed. 'Ah, you're the one they call Pretty-face, are you not? Do you have a gift for me, Domnus Pretty-face?'
'I do not, King, for as you know I will partake neither of meat nor ale, and therefore-'
'What do you think of our monks, Belisarius? Do you have them where you come from? Do you know, I believe the abbot of that precious monastery is as rich as I am. What do you think of that?'
'We eschew personal wealth,' Boniface said bravely. 'All we have is dedicated-'
'To the works of God, blah blah. But, Belisarius, here is the thing. I often wonder if we need these Christians at all! What is Christianity but the relic of a vanished empire? All this airy waffle, all this scribbling and writing – it makes no difference to the lives of my people, you know. You've seen them, Belisarius. Their lives are blood and dirt; what matters to them is kin, loyalty, not abstractions.'
Boniface, frail, spoke up again. 'We offer the people a hope of a better life beyond this one. We offer them the healing peace of God which surpasses-'
'Yes, yes. And meanwhile your drunken bishops lord it in their palaces, your priests collect dues from villages where they never show up to teach, your monasteries are full of false monks who neither know nor care what your rules are.'
'I cannot defend the wrongs perpetrated by my brothers,' Boniface said. 'But, King, I can only do my best. For if you cup your hands around the tiniest of flames, eventually you will bring forth a conflagration in men's minds.'
The Butcher barked, 'Yes, but to what end? Do you really want to see a new Rome arising, defying the wyrd as much as the old, using up everything and crashing into ruins? Must we go through all that again? Look around you, man! You are still building your churches out of the rubble of the last 'conflagration'.' Aethelred snorted magnificently. 'I need a drink.' And he stalked off into the body of the hall, where his thegns came to fawn around him.
Aelfric comforted Boniface, who seemed exhausted.
Belisarius murmured to Bertgils, 'Your King expresses strong ideas, but with much anger.'
Bertgils nodded. 'And it is always best, Belisarius, not to get in the way of that anger.'
XVI
The hall filled up. Belisarius and the others followed Bertgils to their places at the rear, behind the rows of drunken thegns.
The King sat on his throne of stone, with his young wife at his side and his athelings close by, a line of them ranging from children with wooden play-swords to young men and women. German kings still took many wives, despite the best efforts of the priests to suppress such practices.
At length the feast began, with a burst of music from a harp. Servants brought hot meaty broth from the cauldrons hanging over the fire. Others carried in immense plates of meat. The thegns used their own knives to hack at butchered hogs. In their heavy coats and fur leggings they looked like bears, tearing at the carcasses.
The air grew thick with the smoke from the candles and lamps, and the soot from the fire, and the stink of broiling meat. Huge shadows played among the rafters of the tall ceiling. The noise increased until you had to bellow like an ox to make yourself heard.
And the drink flowed like a river. Belisarius sipped only cautiously, striving to keep a clear head. He tried the mead, which, fermented from crushed honeycombs, was very strong; and wine, which was raw and new and too strongly flavoured for his taste.
The ale, which the Germans called beor, was sweet and lumpy, with a consistency like porridge. When the ale came the purpose of the King's wife's silver sieve became apparent. When ale was poured for the King she used her sieve to strain out the grit, which she then dumped on the floor at her feet, where dogs lapped it up eagerly.
The gift-giving began. Belisarius watched curiously as one by one the thegns approached the throne, to be given a gift by the King – and, sometimes, to deliver a gift in turn. The gifts were precious, always jewellery or weapons; often they were bracelets to wear on the arm, a very old custom. And there was no doubt much significance for these jostling courtiers in the value of the gifts exchanged, and the precise degree of warmth of the King's embrace.
These Germans had imported their culture from their homelands. It was a primitive society of kinship, of small communities tied together by blood, with the King bound to his companions by gift-giving and oaths of loyalty. And yet this culture had displaced the sophisticated Roman Britons in a few centuries, and grown until it had sprouted powerful kingdoms. Why, Offa had negotiated with continental emperors and corresponded with the Pope.
But perhaps these petty kings in their wooden palaces had gone as far as they could. Their politics seemed fragile and anachronistic to Belisarius, and in the future their kingdoms might prove more vulnerable than any of those present tonight imagined.
As the level of general drunkenness reached new heights, the singing began. The songs were of the relentless German type, each line split into two halves with two stressed syllables each, just like the Menologium, Belisarius thought. But in their compelling rhythm Belisarius imagined he could hear the slap of oars, the echo of a migration across a cold ocean.
Bertgils leaned towards Belisarius and yelled in his ear, 'These are old songs from the days of the great migration. We mourn our lost homeland. We mourn our ancestors. And for light relief we mourn the shortness of life.'
'You're a cheerful lot,' Belisarius shouted back.
Bertgils grinned. 'We are a people without an afterlife, at least except for those few of us who are successful warriors. We have a lot to be gloomy about.'
'But you're Christian now.'
'There is that,' Bertgils said dryly. 'Belisarius, about this prophecy – I do think we need something a bit more substantial to take before Aethelred and the witan. For instance, if this threat of 'dragons' is real – where is it to come from? Aethelred knows all about the other German kings, and the Picts to the north, and the British to the west.'
Belisarius mused, 'It might come from another direction altogether.' He turned to the computistor. 'Boniface,
