Conqueror

X

The document was yellowed with age, grimy with much handling. Wuffa recognised handwriting in somewhat ragged lines, perhaps scrawled in a hurry. But he couldn't read it. He couldn't even read his own name.

'So this is the prophecy,' prompted Ulf.

'Yes! It was written down at Isolde's birthing bed. For two hundred years my family have preserved it – two hundred years of waiting, reduced to this moment. I knew you would come. I knew.'

Ulf said cautiously, 'What do you mean? How did you know?'

'Because the light has returned to the sky.' Ambrosias pointed to the ceiling of his cramped room.

'The comet,' Wuffa breathed.

'Yes! And it is the comet around whose visits the prophecy is structured.' In a quavering voice Ambrosias began to read:

These the Great Years/of the Comet of God

Whose awe and beauty/in the roof of the world

Light step by step/the road to empire

An Aryan realm/THE GLORY OF CHRIST.

The Comet comes/in the month of June.

Each man of gold/spurns loyalty of silver.

In life a great king/in death a small man.

Nine hundred and fifty-one/the months of the first Year.

The Comet comes/in the month of September.

Number months thirty-five/of this Year of war.

See the Bear laid low/by the Wolf of the north.

Nine hundred and eighteen/the months of the second Year…

'And so on.' Ambrosias said reverently, 'This prophecy says that the comet will come again – and it has come before.'

'How can that be?' Ulf asked reasonably. 'Comets are like clouds. Aren't they? How can it come back?'

Ambrosias snorted. 'How could I possibly know? Ask Aristotle or Archimedes or Pythagoras – not me! All that matters is that it does so. And that is the basis of what the prophecy describes. My family, scholars all, refer to this as Isolde's Menologium, a calendar. For it is a calendar of a sort – but not of the seasons but of the comet's Great Years, each of them many of our earthly years long, marking out the events of man. Do you see?

'For example, the second stanza talks of the comet's appearance in the year of the Saxon revolt against the Vortigern. And then nine hundred and fifty-one months pass, marking the first Great Year, before the comet returns again, and then thirty-five months after that-'

'Nine hundred and fifty-one months,' Ulf mused. 'That's seventy years? Eighty?'

Ambrosias looked at him. 'You people are traders, aren't you? Illiterate or not, you can figure well enough.'

Wuffa said, 'You're going too fast. Why do you speak of the Vortigem?'

'Because that's what the prophecy says, in the first stanza. Look, here – ah, but you can't read it! "Each man of gold/spurns loyalty of silver. /In life a great king/in death a small man"…'

"'Man of gold?"'

Ambrosias reached out and tugged a lock of Wuffa's blond hair. 'Don't you people use mirrors? And as for "great king"-'

'That is what "Vortigern" means.'

'Yes! The reference is clearly to the revolt against him. So, you see, knowing that enabled my family to fix the start of the first Great Year at the date of the revolt. And then we were able to look ahead to the events foretold in the second stanza, to calculate its date. By then Isolde was already long dead, and I was not yet born. Yet the events the verse foretold came to pass, thirty-five months into the Great Year. "See the Bear laid low / by the Wolf of the north."'

Wuffa glanced at Ulf. 'Ammanius told us that "Artorius" may have been a nickname-'

'The Bear,' said Ambrosias. 'And what is the Wolf but you Germans? Why – that is your own name, Wuffa.' His watery eyes gleamed. 'And if you count up the months, the forecast date of Artorius's death was correct. Thus my prophecy holds truth. History is the proof of it – the proof!'

Wuffa felt uncommonly afraid. A practical man, he was not accustomed to thinking deeply on such mystical issues. It was only chance that he had run into the bishop in Lunden, chance that had brought the two of them here – but chance that seemed to have been predicted centuries ago. And yet, he saw, if he could take all this in, there could be advantage to be gained.

But surely the same thought had occurred to Ulf, his rival.

Ulf got to the point. 'And what next? What does the prophecy say of the future?'

Trembling now, Ambrosias raised his document, but it seemed he knew the words by heart:

The Comet comes/in the month of March.

The blood of the holy one/thins and dries.

Empire dreams pour/into golden heads…

Again Wuffa was baffled. 'What does it mean?'

'Why, don't you see? The blood of the holy one thins and dries… Dreams pour into golden heads… Isolde's blood is drying in my old veins; I am the last of her line. But you are here, with your golden heads, to be filled with the dream and to carry it forward. I knew this night would come. Even when my family abandoned me here, I knew all I had to do was to stay and wait for the Second Great Year to elapse, for those nine hundred and eighteen months to wear away, wait for the comet to reappear. For these words, uttered by an ignorant young woman in labour two centuries ago, are describing our meeting – right now, here, tonight. And now my sole remaining duty is to pass the prophecy to you. Isn't it marvellous?' And he clutched the prophecy to his chest. He seemed to be trying not to weep. Wuffa saw that these brief moments were in some way the fulfilment of his whole life.

Ulf said, practically, 'We cannot read, either of us. What use are we to you?'

Ambrosias replied, 'You can remember, can't you? You people are famous for your sagas, your long dreary poems. I hear them floating up from the village on the night air, though I thank Sol Invictus that I don't understand a word. You will remember, and teach your own children, who will teach theirs. Thus the prophecy will be passed down your families until such time as even you Outer Germans learn the benefit of literacy. My time is at an end – my life, my family – even Britannia, or the last vestiges of it. It has been an heroic age. But now that day is done. You are the future, you Germans, you Norse. You! Why, the Menologium says so.'

'But what's the point of all this?' Wuffa asked quietly. 'What of the far future? What does your calendar say of destiny?'

Ambrosias's eyes were huge. 'There will be a great crisis,' he said. 'At the close of the eighth Great Year.'

Wuffa said, 'And when is that?'

'Who can say? My grandfather once tried to add up all the months in the Menologium, and divide by twelve and so forth, but everybody knows you can't do figuring with numbers above a few hundred.'

'But it will be centuries from now-'

'Oh, yes! More than four hundred years, my grandfather believed.

The whole world will tremble, north pitted against south. But a hero will emerge, and with the love of his brother he will win an empire. And then the future will be shaped by the will of his children – of yours – and they will call themselves Aryans. An Aryan empire. This is his plan.'

'Whose?'

'The Weaver's. The spinner of the prophecy, who sits in his palace of the future and sees all – and schemes to establish the new Rome. But, you understand, the prophecy must be fulfilled, in every particular, in all the Great Years, if this shining future is to come to pass. Otherwise darkness will surely fall.' And with these chilling words he pawed at his prophecy, reading it over in the dim light of the animal-fat lamps. 'Now. Are you ready to learn?'