I shook my head, trying to swallow the lump in my throat and blinking my eyes fiercely to stem the tears that threatened to spill out of me. “No,” I whispered, almost choking as I tried to speak. “I wasn’t trying to kill him … I only wanted to beat him badly, to teach him a lesson.”
My father’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Why? And what lesson?”
“To keep his big mouth shut and stop telling those lies about me.”
“What lies?”
I was crying openly now, the hurt spewing out of me. “The same ones he always tells. Every time I meet him he tells all his friends that I’m not really who I am. He tells them you’re not my real father, and that my real mother was a … was a faithless whore who left me and my father when I was a baby to run away with another man. He says his mother says that you and Mother took me in out of pity, and he says anyone can tell, just by looking at Gunthar and Samson and Theuderic and Brach, that I’m not their brother. I hate him and he’s always lying and I wanted to make him stop, to make him afraid of me so that he would stop.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, scrubbing at my face with my sleeves to dry my tears, and when I opened them I saw my father frowning at me in stupefaction.
“How long has this been going on?”
I knew then that my mother had never mentioned the first incident to him, and young as I was, something inside me shrank and withered. “For a long time. Since I was seven.”
“Three years? Why haven’t you told me this before?”
What could I say to that? I knew that if I spoke the truth my mother would have to answer for it, and in my confusion, wondering myself why she had said nothing to him, I could think of nothing else to say. He was glowering deeply now. “Answer me, boy. Why didn’t you come to me?”
“I …” And suddenly the answer sprang to my lips, along with the knowledge that I could protect my mother. “You told me not to,” I said, and saw his eyes widen. “When I told you about Ector stealing my knife you were angry at me. You told me that you had more to think about than silly boys’ squabbles and said if I came running to you every time someone did something to me that I didn’t like, I would never grow up.”
He gazed at me for a long time, his lips moving together soundlessly as though he were nibbling something, and then he drew himself erect and breathed out through his nose. “That’s true, I did, didn’t I. But that was a long time ago. You were, what, six at the time? And I had a fresh war on my hands. That very day you came crying to me over your stolen knife, as I recall, I had just received word that an entire unit of my men had been ambushed and wiped out by marauders, less than ten miles from here.” His hands moved to the heavy buckle at his waist and he undid the belt of his leggings, folding them over one arm and dropping them heavily over the back of his chair, beside his sword belt. “But at six, I suppose you would have been too young to know anything about the seriousness of that. You saw your own problem that day as the most serious one in the world, and I barked at you like an angry dog and sent you off to resolve it by yourself. And you’ve never brought me another problem since, have you? Not until now.”
He walked to the window again and stood staring out at the garden, clasping his hands behind his back. “I need to think about this, but I’ll tell Chulderic he need have no fears about your savagery—that you did what you did for good reason—good enough to satisfy me, at least. Leave me now. Go to the bathhouse and clean yourself up. Tell Lorio I want him to look at your injuries. I’ll have someone bring you fresh clothes. And we’ll say nothing to your mother about your punishment today. When you’re presentable again, come back here.” He turned back to face me. “Show me your hands.”
I went to him and did as he had asked. He took one of my hands in each of his own, turning them over to inspect my swollen fingers and mangled nails. When he was satisfied, he grunted and released me. “Well, they’re not permanently damaged, but you’d better be sure to have Lorio bandage those two fingers on your left hand. I imagine that’s all he’ll be able to do for you, other than to rub in some liniment. The bruising will go away and the nails will grow back, but you’re going to be sore for a few days. I think that, and the punishment you’ve already undergone, will be sufficient for the sins you’ve committed. What about Frotto?”
I blinked at him. “Frotto? What about him, Father?”
“What am I to do with him and his friends? Do you want me to have them whipped?”
“No!” I surprised myself with my vehemence and with the realization that I was no longer angry with Frotto. “No, if you please. Let them go.”
“I already have, but I could bring them back and have them flogged. Are you sure you want to let this quarrel end that simply?”
“Yes, Father.”
He shrugged, but I could tell he was pleased with me for some reason. “As you wish. We’ll say no more about it. Do you think you frightened him enough to make him stop baiting you?”
I frowned. “Perhaps not, but I think Chulderic did.”
My father’s face broke into the wide-mouthed smile I loved. “Aye,” he said. “I believe you might be right about that. Off with you now, and see Lorio, but waste no time. Come back here as soon as you’re clean and dressed again.”
How easy it is for us to delude ourselves in matters we simply do not want to confront. Thinking back on that afternoon—and it is a scene I have revisited countless times—I am constantly astounded by my own lack of perception. Of course, I was only ten years old, no matter how grown up and worldly I believed myself to be, and yet it has often seemed to me that the mindless relief with which I sought my freedom, scampering off to the bathhouse to be tended to and fussed over by Lorio, would have been unchanged had I been twice the age I was.
I threw myself into the task of washing away all signs of my misadventures that day, accepting the stinging pain of hot water on my bruises and injuries as an easily bearable penance. When I was clean and dried, Lorio massaged my aching hands, then smeared them with unguents and bound them carefully in clean bright white bandages of boiled linen. I was appalled by that clean brightness, for the sight of it filled my mind immediately with the impossibility of concealing the bandages from my mother. She would immediately want to know what I had done to myself. The fact that my father had told me we would say nothing to her about my escapades that day became meaningless. Neither of us, I knew, could lie to her, for my father’s celebrated courage and heroism were all confined to what he did in battle. Even at ten, I knew they counted for naught in his own household whenever he clashed with his wife. My father would tell her the truth, and she would be angry.
Thinking such thoughts, I made my way slowly back to my father’s day quarters in the gathering dusk. It did not cross my mind that my father had not denied Frotto’s taunts, as my mother had; I had too many other thoughts to occupy my mind. Because of the shame and humiliation I had already brought upon myself that day, I was convinced that nothing could make matters worse than they already were that afternoon.
My father was still reading when I returned. The broad chart he had been studying earlier, whatever it might have been, was still spread on the table in front of him, but his attention was now focused elsewhere. He was sitting in his huge chair, deep in concentration and whispering to himself as he deciphered the script on a thick wad of paper sheets held stretched between his hands. As I entered the room he finished reading one page and moved it to the back of the pile, and the entire wad sprang back into the tubular shape in which it had been delivered, rolling itself up over his left thumb. He anchored the moved sheet carefully against the others in his left fist and then straightened the entire bundle again before he continued to read. I could tell from the speed of his whispering that he had already read the script at least once before, for first readings were always slow and hesitant as the eyes and the mind struggled with deciphering the written words and separating them from each other, trying to make sense out of the densely packed mass of characters that covered the paper. I stood patiently until he reached a natural stopping point, when he released the right edges of the missive again and allowed it to snap back into shape before he rolled it tightly and slid it back into the leather tube in which it had come to him.