“Dom?” I repeated, raising my voice to capture his attention, but he shook his head again, disregarding both me and Milo, and spoke to Lorco.
“I’m to summon you to the Chancellor,” he said.
The smile vanished instantly from Lorco’s face. A summons to the Chancellor was never issued lightly, nor was it treated as anything less than disastrous. Brother Ansel, the Chancellor, was first deputy to Bishop Germanus and was charged with the daily running and discipline of the school whenever the bishop had to go away, which occurred with some regularity. There was little doubt that he was an able administrator, but he was also a man utterly devoid of both humor and mercy. Ansel had become famed for the intolerance and inflexibility of his views and for the ferocity of his punishments. None of us were sure if Germanus was aware of Ansel’s other side, and of course, no one rushed to inform him that his deputy was preternaturally cruel and remorseless, and every student in the school behaved with extreme caution whenever the bishop went away.
Lorco’s face had drained of all color as he tried to think of what crime he must stand charged.
“No, it’s not that,” Dom continued, looking quickly from Lorco to Milo and then to me, seeing the effect his words had had on all of us and trying to reassure us with flapping hands. He turned hurriedly back to Lorco. “It’s nothing bad … at least, I don’t think it is … . He’s not after you … I believe it’s your father.”
Death. The word, unspoken, clanged loudly in all our minds. The only time anyone ever seemed to speak of parents here was when word arrived that one or another of them had died unexpectedly.
“Wha—” Lorco had to cough to clear his throat. “What about my father?”
“He’s here, I think. In the school.”
That was even more startling than the summons to the Chancellor. “My father?” The disbelief in Lorco’s voice would have been laughable at any other time. “You’re mad. My father’s more than five hundred miles from here, probably in Hispania, pacifying the Iberians.”
Dom merely threw up his hands, palms outward. “I don’t know, then. Perhaps I’m wrong. But there’s a strange man in with the Chancellor, someone I’ve never seen before, and he looks like a soldier, and I know your father is a soldier. I went in to do some transcription for Brother Marcus in the vestibule beside the bishop’s day room and I heard old Ansel talking to someone, so I peeked through an open door and saw this man. I couldn’t hear much of what they were saying, but what I could hear sounded boring. I didn’t pay any attention to them at all after that, to tell the truth, until I heard your name being mentioned. And I’m pretty sure I. heard the man say something about his son. A little while after that the door opened and old Ansel stuck his head out and sent me to fetch you.”
Lorco looked at me, his eyes wide, and I shrugged. “Better get going,” I told him. “It’s not wise to keep old Ansel waiting, and besides, Dom might be right. If he is, and your father’s here, that’s good, is it not?”
In truth, I was not sure whether it was good or not. We boys, as the stoic Spartans we were supposed to be, seldom spoke among ourselves about our homes or our parents, and the reason for that was more self-defense than reticence. When you were as completely immersed as we were in a life that offered ample hardship and few comforts, it became foolish to endanger what little equanimity you possessed by dwelling on memories of home and family and the softnesses and luxuries you could find there.
Fortunately, Lorco’s face broke into a wide, toothy grin as soon as I asked the question. “Better than good,” he said. “It’s unbelievable. If my Tata’s really here, we’ll all have some fun. You’ll like him, I promise you.”
It turned out to be true. The man with Brother Ansel was Lorco’s father, Phillipus Lorco, another former legate who had soldiered under Germanus’s command and now held the military title and rank of dux, or duke. As Duke Lorco, he was now the imperial governor of a huge territory in the southwest of Gaul that included the entire mountainous region separating Gaul from Hispania, but in his time with the legions, even before the advent of Germanus, he had won great acclaim and successes coordinating and conducting hard-fought, relentless campaigns against the Burgundian tribes who had been invading south-central Gaul and spreading havoc there for nigh on a hundred years.
He was now here in Auxerre, it transpired, because he had been urgently summoned by Germanus’s military successors to attend a gathering of imperial strategists in the fortress at Treves, Germanus’s own former base and still the military headquarters at that time for all of Gaul. The purpose of this extraordinary assembly was to coordinate a campaign against the ever-bellicose Burgundians, who were once again threatening to break out of the territories they had now occupied for decades, this time to engulf the entire southwest, of Gaul. Duke Lorco’s contribution to the planning and prosecution of the campaign had been deemed both invaluable and a sine qua non of success.
Faced with a journey of several hundreds of miles north to Treves from his home base in the ancient fortified town of Carcasso in the south, and aware that the most direct route to his destination would take him within a hundred miles of Auxerre, where his eldest son, Stephan, was in school and prospering, the Duke had allowed himself sufficient time in advance of the gathering to visit his old friend and commander Germanus, his primary purpose to arrange to take his son back home with him to Carcasso when the boy’s schooling was completed and the Duke’s own duties in Treves were concluded.
It turned out that the bishop was not in Auxerre for his arrival but was expected to arrive back in Auxerre the following day. In the meantime, the senior Lorco had three days to spend in Auxerre before striking out for Treves, and Brother Ansel had magnanimously permitted him to renew his acquaintance with his son.
I had the privilege of meeting Duke Lorco that same afternoon, when he came with his son to be introduced to me and Milo as Lorco’s closest friends. He was a friendly, affable man with an easy manner and a charming disposition that stirred a fleeting spasm of resentment in me at the thought of how fortunate Lorco was to have a living father. The sensations caused me to flush with guilt and shame at what I judged to be disloyalty to my adoptive parents in Genava, and with those feelings came an abrupt awareness of how much I missed them and how greatly I wanted to see them again. I would give anything to see my stepfather’s face again I thought then, and with the notion, Ban of Benwick stood before me in my mind, gazing at me with that raised eyebrow of his and smiling his slightly crooked grin.
Those feelings passed and left me feeling content as I stood beside Milo, watching Lorco leave the school with his father. They would dine together privately that evening in the Duke’s quarters in the nearby mansio, the local hostelry maintained by the imperial civil service for the accommodation of couriers and others traveling on official affairs. Whether Lorco would return to the school that night at all was something that remained to be seen, although I hoped that he might not. He was so obviously happy and proud to see his father and to have had the opportunity to introduce him to us, his friends, that I felt he deserved to be allowed to spend every moment that he could in his father’s company. The mere occurrence of such a thing—a student remaining out of the school overnight—was unusual enough to cause all kinds of talk among the other students, and for once the boys talked as they never had before about the places they came from and about their loved ones. More than a few tears were shed without much effort being made to hide them, so that there was a subdued atmosphere in the dormitories at curfew that night that was almost palpable, despite the countering excitement over the coming day’s activities and the promised competition.