It was all over but the feasting, and even that was taking on a weary air by the end of the sixth day after Clovis’s coronation as king of the Salian Franks. His people had sat him upon a massive throne of blackened oak: the Lightning Throne, formed from an ancient oak tree charred by lightning. The Franks took that legendary lightning strike to have been a blessing from their god of storms and strength, Donar.
The bloodshed in the great hall seemed to have reassured the Franks of their choice of Clovis to lead them, as if it had been a necessary sacrifice that showed the will of their gods. I got the sense that they may have been suspicious of a transition of power that went peaceably, without at least one rival losing his life.
Clovis was too engulfed in the securing of alliances to have time for me, beyond pulling me close when he fell into bed in the middle of the night. Whatever caring he felt, he displayed by posting guards over me: whether to prevent me from fleeing, or to protect me from those who might wish to kill or steal his pet seer, I did not know. Probably both.
The Franks accepted that the daughter of Nerthus was half human, and I was allowed to dine in the great hall with the rest of the revelers. My companions were often Terix and, unfortunately, Basina, but I also broke bread with Remigius, Audofleda, and the tooth-and-hair man, who I learned was a king in his own right, of a place called Cambrai. He was a cousin of Clovis, his name was Ragnachar, and he looked at me with a lust to which I was not immune.
The thorough plowing that Clovis had given me had sated me for only a day, after which the hunger for touch returned with fresh force. That hunger was my constant companion, a gnawing need that neither food nor wine could appease. In desperate moments I brought release with my own hands, but it was a meager shadow of the joining I craved. I wanted the skin of another next to mine. I wanted a man’s mentula filling me. His seed moistening me. I wanted his mouth on my breast, his cock in my hand. What was my finger flicking on my stamen, compared to that? I didn’t even see a vision, when I pleasured myself; that’s how shallow a joy it was.
So when Ragnachar looked at me with hunger in his eyes, I looked back and saw the tall, muscled thickness of his body, his legs like logs, and his arms as thick as my waist. His face was buried beneath a brown beard, but what I could see of it was pleasing enough. There was no fat on him, only a great mass of muscle layered on a broad frame. I thought his bones must be as thick as a bull’s.
I wondered if his rod was as large.
It was an idle lust on my part, and without intent. Whenever I spied Clovis and Ragnachar together, I was struck by their differences. Clovis might look lanky as a barn cat next to the bear that was Ragnachar, but it was Clovis whose stance subtly bespoke command. He had stepped into his role as leader as if born to it, and was maturing before my eyes. He was relaxing into his new power, and appeared calmer and more confident than while his father had been alive.
Ragnachar, like most of the Frankish nobles, could speak Latin. I’d learned from Remigius that Christian monks and priests made it their mission to spread the faith in their god, and sought to civilize the barbarians by teaching them to read, write, and speak the mother tongue. He himself had once tutored Clovis and Audofleda.
The barbarians took the free education, knowing it to be useful; the religion, they ignored. Except for the women, Remigius had said, looking meaningfully at me with his soft brown eyes. The women were the spiritual heart of any people, and where they led, their husbands and children would follow.
Remigius seemed an intelligent man, but he was mad if he thought that I, of all women, could be lured to his faith.
I was in the great hall now, sitting near the end of a long table, Bone at my feet, Terix across from me. A musician plucked a lute, the melody so strange to my ears that I could not tell if he did it well or poorly. A scattering of men and women, their dogs and their children, milled about the hall talking and drinking, or put their heads on their folded arms and slept at a table. Babies cried, and children shrieked and threw tantrums, signaling their exhaustion. Even Terix had had enough, judging by the shadows under his eyes.
At least he wasn’t wearing his turd outfit anymore. I myself was back in Audofleda’s rust-colored gown.
“Did I tell you how Basina and Childeric met?” Terix suddenly asked, emerging from his contemplation of his mug of mead.
“On a battlefield, slicing the throats of the wounded?” It sounded like fine entertainment for one of Basina’s temperament.
“Nearly. Audofleda told me that Childeric was banished from the Franks for several years, and went to Thuringia. Basina was wife of the king there. When Childeric’s banishment ended, he came home and took over the tribe. Basina followed him. When she got here and Childeric asked her why she’d left her husband, she told him and everyone listening that it was only the strongest man who deserved her loyalty. He was flattered enough to keep her.”
“Or he saw that she wasn’t the type of woman it was wise to disappoint.”
“She does look like she’d happily eat your liver for breakfast, doesn’t she?” Terix said. “Audofleda is terrified of her. Not that she says so, but she shrinks into herself when her mother is around. The light goes out of her eyes.”
“I hope you’re being careful, Terix.”
“I haven’t touched her.”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Well, just a little bit. Her skin’s so soft, and she’s as innocent and eager to please as a puppy . . . It would be cruel to say no.”
I shook my head. “And you berate me for my lusts.”
“It was no more than kisses, Nimia, I swear it. And a little fondling. Harmless!”
And there she was, Audofleda. I watched her scan the room, and her gaze land on Terix. She lit up, her face glowing, and hurried toward the table, hesitating only for a moment when she saw that I was there, too. When Terix looked up and saw her, the same sunny glow illuminated his features.
Uh-oh.
Lust was one thing, easily displaced. But love? It was a path to grief.
Audofleda sat at the end of the table and looked shyly at me. “I’ve wanted to apologize to you, Nimia, for those things I said when we first met. I know now that you did my father no harm.”
“You do?” I blinked at her, thinking she did not look like a girl who had learned the truth: that her mother and brother had smothered her father in his bed.
“Terix explained it all to me.” She cast an adoring look at him, then turned her big blue eyes back to me. “He is very loyal to you, and I know that no one as sweet and funny and tenderhearted as he is could be loyal to anyone who was not good.”
I stared at Terix, who had the grace to blush.
“Can you tell my future?” she asked, leaning forward and putting her hand on my forearm. “Can you tell me whom I’ll wed?”
“I . . . I don’t know if I could. I don’t know that you’d want to hear the answer, either. The future is rarely what we expect. Or wish for.”
“Could you tell me at least if I’ll be happy?”
As I looked into her eyes, and felt her warm hand on my arm, I felt the essence of her. This wasn’t anything I’d experienced before, but somehow her openness allowed me to see into who she was, and what paths she would tread. I caught a glimpse of understanding: that the road we took into the future was half of our own making.
“You’ll be happy,” I said, my voice sounding far away to my own ears, “if you choose to be. Events will not be as you wish, but you will rise above them and find your joy. If you choose to.” I put my hand over hers and squeezed, suddenly feeling it imperative that she hear me, and remember. “Your happiness in any situation will be your choice, Audofleda. Your choice.”
She pulled her hands away. “Th-thank you?” She turned worried eyes to Terix.
I hoped that she would remember my words, and that someday she would have reason to silently thank me.
Before we could say more, Clovis joined us. His winter eyes took in the way that Audofleda and Terix leaned toward each other, and their glances of reassurance. His lips quirked in amused disdain, and then his gaze narrowed on Terix, who was too absorbed in Audofleda to notice.
“Yes, Clovis?” I said, hoping to distract him from whatever murderous thoughts were slicing through his head.
He turned to me. “I need you.”
Lovely words, with so many meanings . . . both good and bad.
I stood and linked arms with him, guiding him away from Terix and Audofleda. We walked toward the great doors, open to the late-afternoon air.
“What is it?” Up close and in daylight, I could see the strain in his face. The kingship had not, perhaps, been as easy for him as I’d thought. He looked tired.
“What does Sygarius expect of me?” he asked. “Do you know?”
“I know some.” I knew because I’d told Sygarius a mix of lies and truth about Clovis, to conceal my own misdeeds. “He thinks you a, er . . .”
“A what?”
“A hotheaded simpleton.”
“What?”
I shrugged. “He said you were a ‘mere boy.’ He’s going to be surprised that you gained the crown.”
“Does he think me loyal to him?”
“He knows you did not respect your father, nor Childeric’s choice to serve Sygarius for money.”
Clovis swore. “That’s unfortunate.”
“Why?”
“It’s going to be much harder to conquer Soissons if he’s already on guard against me.”
I was silent, trying to take in what he was saying. “You are only six days a king, and already plotting to invade Soissons?”
“I’ve been ‘plotting,’ as you put it, since I was old enough to understand that we were mercenaries, and not the rulers descended from gods that I thought. I was raised with tales of my grandfather Merovech, who was the son of a Frankish queen and a quinotaur—”
“A quinotaur?”
“A sea beast, with the head of a bull and body of a fish. A beast of Neptune’s . . . or Neptune in a beast’s form.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what shape it was, only that it came from the sea. The quinotaur took the queen, and she birthed my grandfather Merovech. Or so I believed.”
“You don’t now?”
He held out his hand, palm down. “Do you see scales? But I might have believed, still, if I hadn’t seen so little evidence of divinity in my father. To be paid to fight . . . where is the honor? Is that the behavior of a god? A true king fights for land. He fights for the right to rule. He fights to protect his people. He does not fight for coin, doled out to him as if he were hired to do the laundry.”
“But why must you take Soissons? And so soon?”
“I want to unite all the Franks under my banner; all the tribes. To do that, we need a common enemy, which Sygarius, the last dux of the Western Roman Empire, conveniently provides. But that’s only the beginning, Nimia. Soissons is the gateway to all of Gaul. Gaul will belong to the Franks. It is our destiny.”
“If you already know that, then you don’t need me.”
He stopped walking, and pulled me to a halt, as well. “How can you say that? You have been the one to guide me to where I am today. Without you, I might not be king. I need you, Nimia.”
He needed my visions, not me. Not Nimia, the foolish girl who kept hoping that her heart would be cherished by a murderous, power-mad Frank.
“I need,” he said, “for you to tell me how to kill Sygarius.”
