Read Camulod Chronicles Book 8 - Clothar the Frank for Free Online Page A

voice. "My father had a crippled scribe whose task it was to teach me. But that was long ago."
    "And do you still read, today?"
    He looked me in the eye, defiantly, as though I might challenge him to prove his next words. "I could . . . had I the time or the will."
    "Then you might like to read the treasure we will take from here, for it is all in words, written on fine parchment. Piles and piles of it, covered in fine script over a period of several lifetimes by men long dead. Would you wish to read what it has to say?"
    Lars laughed suddenly, a harsh, deep bark. "Nay, Lord, I would not. But if there be as much as you describe," it will make a heavy burden. I'll gladly help you carry it, but I would rather die beneath the lash than have to read it." The others joined in his laughter, and I waited, smiling still.
    "You're right, it will be heavy, three large bundles. So I suggest you and another make a litter of poles, the easier to carry it between four men. Four more of you to dig this grave, working in pairs."
    "Who was he, Lord? The man we are to bury?" The questioner was Origen, the youngest of our group but already famed among his peers for his coolheaded courage and a wisdom beyond his years.
    I shook my head. "As easy for you to say as for me, Origen. A vagrant, perhaps, who stumbled on this place and remained here to die."
    "Then why the labour of a burial, Lord? Why not simply leave him where he is?"
    That stopped me short, because I recognized the danger hidden in the simple question. Why, indeed, go to the trouble of burying a long-dead pile of unknown bones? But my tongue had already gone ahead of me so that my answer was as glib as any long considered, and my smooth response evoked another burst of laughter from my listeners. "Because he's in my bed, my friend."
    As the laughter died away I looked up at the rapidly darkening sky above our heads. "Laugh as you will, but I mean it. We will stay here tonight and return to the coast in the morning. This is as safe a place as we could find in all this land, for no one knows it exists. The rain seems to have passed, but should it return we can all sleep beneath the old roof, there, packed in like grapes on a stem, but warm and dry. But there is only one small bed, and I lay claim to it, as senior here. Our bony friend will not feel the dampness of cold earth atop his bones, but I would find his dusty presence irksome, sharing the bed with him." That drew another chuckle, and as it died I spoke into it.
    "So, the three of you who are left idle for the moment will have a task as well: two of you to gather up the bones of our dead friend and wrap them carefully for burial in the blanket that covered him, while the other shakes out the remaining bedding and the sleeping furs. Clovis, I leave it to you to do the shaking out. Take pains to shake out all the dust here in the open, if you will, but do so with respect. We may not know who this man was, but we know he died here alone and friendless, probably unmourned. And looking about the place in which he died, we found no weapons . . . not a sword, an axe, a knife or even a club. No means of self-defense at all, which tells me that this dead man was a man of peace."
    "Either that or a base-born, gutless fugitive." The whispered comment had not been meant for me to hear, but it reached my ears nonetheless. The speaker, Armis, known as Blusher to his companions, knew I had heard his comment, and a deep red flush swept up his face.
    "Perhaps so, Armis. You may be right. But we will never know, will we? And thus, we'll look at it my way. Do you agree?"
    Armis said nothing at all, the red tide in his cheeks growing even deeper, and I turned back to the others, none of whom had yet laughed as they normally would at Armis's discomfiture.
    "We will tend him as though he were one of us, treat his remains with dignity, and see him to a decent burial at last. After all, but for the seas between this land and ours, he might have been