“What’s this one called?” he asked his constable, Godefroi, sitting his charger next to him.
Godefroi—like his king, sitting easily in a deep saddle, high pommel in front, high saddle-bow behind, feet braced in steel stirrups—raised his eyes to heaven. “Ceolnoth. Archbishop of Cantwarabyrig. God, what a language.”
Finally the procession reached its goal, finished its anthem. The bearers lowered the chair; the old man stumbled out of it and stepped across to face the menacing silent figure in front of him, metal man on armored horse. Behind him the smoke of burning villages smudged the sky. He began to speak.
After a while the king raised a gauntlet, turned to the papal legate on his left, Astolfo of Lombardy: a cleric without a see—as yet.
“What is he saying?”
The legate shrugged. “I have no idea. He seems to be speaking English.”
“Try him in Latin.”
The legate began to talk, easily and fluently in the Latin of Rome—a Latin, of course, pronounced in exactly the same way as the inhabitants of that ancient city spoke their own, modern tongue. Ceolnoth, who had learned his Latin from books, listened without comprehension.
“Don’t tell me he can’t speak Latin either.”
The legate shrugged again, ignoring Ceolnoth’s faltering attempts to reply. “The English Church. We had not known things were so bad. The priests and the bishops. Their dress is not canonical. Their liturgy is out-of-date. Their priests preach in English because they know no Latin. They have even had the temerity to translate God’s word into their own barbarous speech. And their saints! How can one venerate names like Willibrord? Cynehelm? Frideswide, even! I think it likely that when I make my report to His Holiness he will remove authority from all of them.”
“And then?”
“This will have to become a new province, ruled from Rome. With its revenues going to Rome. I speak only, of course, of the spiritual revenues, the proceeds of tithing, of fees for baptism and burial, of payments for entry into sacred offices. As regards the land itself—the property of secular lords—that must fall to its secular rulers. And their servants.”
The king, the legate and the constable exchanged looks of deep and satisfied understanding.
“All right,” said Charles. “Look, the graybeard seems to have found a younger priest with some grasp of Latin. Tell him what we want.”
As the list ran on and on—of indemnities, supplies to be provided, toll to be paid to protect the city from sack, hostages to be delivered and laborers to start work immediately on a fort for the Frankish garrison to be installed—Ceolnoth’s eyes widened with horror.
“But he is treating us as defeated enemies,” he stammered to the priest who translated for him. “We are not enemies. The pagans are his enemies. It was my colleague of York and the worthy bishop of Winchester who called him in. Tell the king who I am. Tell him he is mistaken.”
Charles, about to turn away toward the hundreds of mailed horsemen waiting behind him, caught the tone of Ceolnoth’s voice, though he did not follow the words. He was not an uneducated man by the low standards of Frankish military aristocracy. He had learned a trifle of Latin in his youth, learned too some of Titus Livius’s stories of the history of Rome.
Smiling, he drew his long, double-edged sword from his scabbard, held it like a merchant’s balance.
“This will not need translating,” he said to Godefroi. Then, bending from the saddle to Ceolnoth, he said slowly and clearly, two words.
“Vae victis.”
Woe to the conquered.
Shef had considered all the possible plans he could use to attack Ivar’s camp, weighed them like moves on a chessboard, rejected them one by one. These new ways of making war introduced complexities that could lead to confusion in battle, loss of lives, loss of everything.
It had been much easier when line had clashed with line, battled hand to hand until the stronger side won. He knew that his Vikings were becoming more and more displeased with these new things. Yearned for the certainty of the clash of arms. But the new ways had to be used if Ivar and his weapons were to be defeated. Old and new must blend.