The Book of Love (18 page)

“Besides, it takes one wild, red-haired creature to understand another. And when Matilda is older, the two of you will look like a ferocious brother and sister as you ride out to do battle together. Your enemies will cower at the very sight of you and the chroniclers will write about your adventures in perpetuity.”

With a final grunt, Conn continued his show of disdain and pushed past the duke, determined not to reveal to anyone that he was secretly delighted by this task. He shouted his parting line for the benefit of the other men who may have been eavesdropping.

“Fine, but your version of high-paid and mine had best be the same.”

“Come in, little Boudicca.”

While Conn sat on a stool with his back to the door, he had the acute hearing and highly tuned senses of the most experienced warlord. Knowing who came up behind him was a skill that determined life over death on the battlefield.

Matilda swallowed as she stepped into the soldier’s chamber, a weapons room that adjoined the stables. Swords and pikes hung from the walls, while axes and smaller knives were displayed on a rough table. She glanced at them as she approached the man who would be her new weapons master. While she was secretly thrilled that Godfrey had taken her seriously enough to entrust her training to his most hard
ened warlord, this huge man’s reputation for fearlessness in battle was daunting. Matilda was not sure what to expect from him, but she was determined not to be intimidated.

Conn gestured to the table where he sat, staring at a chessboard. He still had not looked up at her. “What move would you make here, if you were I? This one?” He indicated the black knight. “Or that one?” Pointing to the black bishop.

Matilda contemplated the board for a moment before responding. “Neither.”

Conn looked up now for the first time, coming face-to-face with the teenage girl who would be his protégée, and caught his breath. He had seen her from a distance when she rode with Godfrey, but up this close he was completely taken aback. Even in her rough training garments, she was as utterly gorgeous as if she were gowned in silks and jewels. Perhaps that would be to her benefit in battle, as men would be disarmed by her appearance. He would need to find as many angles as possible to give her advantages in war, as her petite stature was going to be problematic.

“What do you mean, neither? Both are good moves.”

Matilda nodded, getting closer to the board. “Yes, but both are obvious and provide only immediate relief. If you look ahead by three or four moves, you will see that neither is of any benefit to you in the long run. I would go after the rook, here. It will take longer, but it will bring you that much closer to taking the white king. Check in six. If your opponent is unskilled, checkmate.”

The Celt’s face split into a grin. “You do not disappoint me, girl. And you have passed your first test. Now sit down, and we shall play a proper game.”

Matilda hesitated. “What do you mean, sit down?”

Conn shrugged. “Does
sit down
have another meaning that I am not aware of?”

Matilda snapped back at his sarcasm, “No, but I am not here to play chess. I can do that with the old men in the castle. I am here to train in weaponry.”

Conn stunned her by leaping to his feet as fast and unexpectedly as
a flash of lightning, knocking the stool across the room as he did so. He grabbed her wrist roughly and twisted it sharply behind her back until she cried out in pain. He kept it there to make his point. Matilda held her breath, but she didn’t struggle as he delivered his first lecture to the fledgling student.

“Now, little girl. I could have just snapped your wrist in half. You are small and fine-boned, and the average opponent you face in battle will be built far more like me than like you. He will be a hardened soldier and a man who won’t care that you are female and won’t treat you any differently from the other men he is determined to slaughter. Or worse, he
will
care that you’re female, which means he’ll keep you alive long enough for you to wish that he hadn’t. The point, little sister, is that in light of your size and your sex, you cannot fight with men on a level battlefield if you are, by chance, unhorsed. This means you will have to be smarter and faster in hand-to-hand combat than anyone you face.”

Conn released her, gently now. “So, before we begin with your weapons training, I would see how your mind works.”

He gestured to the chessboard, bowing theatrically. “After you, my lady.”

Matilda beat him. But she had to admit that it was not the usual routing she was used to giving her other opponents across a chessboard. Conn was the rare mental match for her; it was an auspicious start to a relationship that must necessarily be based on respect. Matilda would learn over her training that there was as much to admire in Conn’s intellect as there was in his weaponry skills. While he was completely mute when asked any questions about his past, he was clearly a citizen of the world, and an educated one.

Following the game, Conn chose one of the small, lightweight swords and tossed it to her without warning, to observe how she caught it. He was impressed by her speed and grace in reflex action. The first lesson would be in the basic handling of a weapon, and those qualities
would determine her success. Matilda had indicated that she wanted to one day carry Bonifacio’s sword into battle, but at the moment it was as tall as she was. That was a weapon she would have to grow into. As they walked toward the practice field in the growing heat of a Tuscan afternoon, Matilda asked him, “Who is Boudicca?”

“Boudicca?”

“Yes. When I entered the weapons room, you said, ‘Come in, little Boudicca.’”

“Ah. You don’t know who Boudicca is? Well, I suppose you wouldn’t. But you should. Come listen then, as the history of great military leaders will be critical to your education.”

Conn gestured to a bench at the edge of the practice ground that had been cut from a fallen tree. He began to reveal the legend of Boudicca, and the natural storyteller embedded within his genetics emerged from his soul as he did so.

“First, you must know about the great people who were and are the Celts. There was a time, little sister, when the Celtic tribes covered most of Europe. They were called the Keltoi then, and sometimes the Galli, which is where the land of Gaul gets its name. And here in Italy, you are aware, I hope, that the Ligurian Celts settled in Tuscany, establishing, among other things, your sacred city of Lucca. The Celts had a great passion for the gifts of nature as found in the land, and they were able to feel the presence of God in the earth. It was in this way that they chose where to settle and where to build places of worship. Lucca is one such place. There is another in France, a place called Chartres, which is so sacred that it became the center for all ceremonial spiritual initiations for the Celtic tribes in Europe.” His eyes glassed over slightly for the briefest moment. “Chartres. It is a place of unequaled beauty and power.”

Matilda sat up with the mention of Chartres. “Isobel has told me of Chartres. Her mother came from there, from a place called La Beauce.”

Conn nodded. “La Beauce is the region, Chartres is the town at the heart of the region.”

“There is a great school there.” Matilda hesitated. She didn’t know this enigmatic giant of a man well enough to speak openly about her
personally held spiritual beliefs, particularly as they were now considered dangerously heretical by the orthodox Church. But Isobel had told her that the school of Chartres taught from the Book of Love. She waited to see if he would volunteer any knowledge of her heretical brethren in France.

She was disappointed. Conn was not a nut easily cracked, and he simply nodded, noncommittal. “There is.”

She tried one more thing. “Have you been there?”

He turned the full force of his focus on his student now and took control of the conversation. “I have. And that is another story for a different day. The first lesson for any warrior is not to lose focus on the issue at hand. And our issue is the history of the Celts and the legend of Boudicca, so let us return to it.”

Matilda nodded mutely and allowed him to continue without further questions. But he had revealed something to her in this brief encounter about Chartres, something she was determined to understand more about in the future.

“The Celtic tribes encountered great resistance by many opponents, but none as dangerous to their survival as the Romans. And while this was true throughout Europe, it was specifically the case in the islands. And it was there that Boudicca was a warrior queen of the first century, a woman of the Iceni tribe of Celts. After the Romans invaded her lands, she fought back and led an army against the Roman legions herself. While she was victorious in her first battle, the Roman factions chose to punish her for her audacity by kidnapping the girls of her tribe, including Boudicca’s two daughters, and throwing them to the whims of the most hardened legionnaires.”

Conn paused for a moment, remembering he was in the company of a teenage girl who was still a maid. He did not need to give her the graphic details of the mass rape afflicted upon Boudicca’s daughters and the other Iceni girls.

“Suffice it to say that they were most violently abused and many were murdered. As their mother and queen, Boudicca became bent on having justice, gathered a Celtic army the like and size of which had
never been seen before, and attacked the Romans. She decimated the legions who had invaded East Anglia but did not stop there. So inflamed was she by the pain and injustice that had been inflicted upon her people, she descended upon the great city of Londinium itself. Her siege of this sophisticated Roman stronghold was one of the most brutal in history, but it was also an example of superior strategy, which we will examine in later lessons. But here is what you must know most of all about Boudicca, other than that she is painted by artists as having hair the same color as our own.” He winked at her then, pulling on one of her plaits to emphasize the physical anomaly that marked their spiritual kinship.

Matilda was listening with rapt attention. She loved nothing more than a magnificent story that was told with passion.

“As she attempted to rally support, Boudicca learned that the Iceni tribe were viewed as barbarians by the Romans. As a result, some of the allies she required were hesitant to join with her. You see, the Celts did not believe in committing their sacred teachings or their histories to writing, or to sharing them with outsiders, which made them a dangerous mystery to many. The Romans, on the other hand, used writing to expert effect and created advantage in war through the art of propaganda. And they had done exactly this in their war against Boudicca, by referring to the Iceni and other Celtic tribes as uncivilized monsters who sacrificed children to their pagan gods. Of course, this was not true, as the Celts revered all life in their sacred teachings. But in making the people believe that they were ridding the world of a monstrous race of animals, the Romans made it somehow acceptable to massacre as many Celts as they chose.

“So Boudicca, in her outrage, decided that she would go to war with the Romans on their own battlefield. In addition to her military might, she would hire scribes to tell the tale of what the legionnaires had done to the girls of the Iceni, to show who the true barbarians in this war were. At this time she adopted a battle cry which she would use for the rest of her life.”

He paused to see how closely Matilda was listening. He was not dis
appointed. She hung on every word and could not wait to hear what the brave, avenging Boudicca’s cry in battle had been. When Conn didn’t continue immediately, she prodded him.

“Well? What was it?”

He grinned at her. “Something I think you will appreciate. Boudicca carried a banner into battle that read, THE TRUTH AGAINST THE WORLD.”

He left it there, hanging in the air.
The Truth Against the World.
Matilda was speechless. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard. A warrior queen fighting for justice against a gargantuan opponent, carrying a banner for truth. When she finally spoke, it was with great resolve.

“Conn, you must train me in all of Boudicca’s strategies.”

The ginger-haired giant jumped to his feet with the grace of a panther. “Well, come on then, little sister. Boudicca didn’t defeat the Romans by sitting on a log.”

Thus began Matilda’s training in arms, with a weapons master who would become her fiercest defender and protector but also one of her greatest teachers on and off the battlefield. As with everything else that she set her mind to, Matilda rapidly became capable to the point of deadly when handling a weapon. What she lacked in size and muscle she made up for with the grace of natural athleticism and superior cunning on the battlefield, much to the credit of Conn’s expert training and careful understanding of his protégée’s character.

By the time she was sixteen, the countess of Canossa was entirely capable of leading an army. She was, in fact, rather looking forward to it.

Matilda was considered by those around her to be bold and fearless through most of her life, but the truth was that she had a tremendous fear of the dark, and of being alone in it. This was the result of the dreams and nightmares she had experienced as far back as she could
remember. Her dreams had always been vivid, and often bizarre and disturbing. Now that she was older, she also understood that she was dreaming of the time of Jesus. This was part of the prophecy: that The Expected One would have dreams and visions of the last days of the savior’s life, but specifically of his crucifixion. As she prepared for bed on the eve of her sixteenth birthday, she had thus far been spared the specific vision of our Lord on the cross. When she awoke the following morning, on the advent of the vernal equinox, she would not be able to say the same thing.

Matilda was in the middle of a mob and all around her was chaos. People were screaming, shoving. The omnipresent sun of early afternoon beat down upon them, mixing sweat with dirt on the angry and distressed faces around her. She was at the edge of a narrow road, and the crowd just ahead began to jostle more emphatically. A natural gap was evolving, and a small group moved slowly along that path. The mob appeared to be following this huddled mass of humanity that began to move toward her. It was then that Matilda saw the woman clearly for the first time.