Merovech - Erin Page
fiction ☆
fiction ☆
— What do we say of the unknown father?
Clovis considers his mother’s question. She watches his face change in the flickering candlelight. The year is newly 462, and the Roman Empire wanes faster than her son’s thoughts. Tonight, the two of them are the last of the Franks known as the Salians to their Roman governors, but tomorrow they aspire to become the first two of something new. Tomorrow Clovis will meet the family of the woman he intends to marry. They must have their story straight by then. Clovis, sighing, says, Why don’t we say what is true?
Basina can only laugh.
Clovis’s unlined face absorbs the alternating shadow and light. His expression is unreadable, but in his sigh she hears a trickle of weariness, like a riverbed drying up against its best efforts.
Basina closes her eyes and ears and leaves herself open only to her memories. For a moment, she remembers Bisinus, the big man with eyes the color of a winter sky, who had given her his name and a daughter. She gave that daughter back to him when she left them on the shores of Thuringia. She closes herself to that memory, too, before the girl child’s warm little hands can grasp at her hair. She remembers the younger, slighter man with eyes the color of river otters, who had awaited her across the sea in Gaul, the Great Man she said she would have, even if it took everything else from her. Basina feeds live coals to this memory, until she feels the warmth that the young king Childeric gave her in hopes that she would bear his own children in turn, until she feels the flames of longing and sadness and shame and pride caressing her as she anticipates now, this, what happens next.
— I am your mother, and I love you, says Basina. That is the only truth I know.
They meet in the tent, Clovis and his mother Basina, where the young king holds his most important meetings. This is the final progress of the royal Salian Franks. As the candles struggle against the late night winds, Clovis’ grey eyes flash against the guttering light.
— But you do know the one who should be the father I claim, says Clovis. Basina sees things clearly, as though her son’s words strike a blaze in the dark. Clovis, still so young, follows his instincts unwaveringly, as she once did, before the men and women of Gaul made her doubt. From the footprints they’ve left behind in the soft loam he sees how they will move forward in triumph. Just as his father saw on the rocky shores of Thuringia, Clovis sees on the Burgundian riverbanks another young woman awaiting a man who will make her queen, if only he can understand his own promise.
— So we will tell it, then, says Basina.
— So it will be told, says Clovis.
Perhaps the father of Clovis was Childeric, the last king of the Salian barbarians. Perhaps it was Bisinus, the last king of Thuringia. But between Basina and Clovis the story or idea or truth, that falls from their lips and frequents their dreams and haunts their thoughts, takes form. Childeric had whispered it to his son in the cradle, as his own father had told it to him. Basina knows it, but not where she knows it from.
One day long ago, a woman of the people who will one day be called Merovingians, bathed in the Gaulish sea, and a creature out of time and memory whelmed her again and again in the foaming water and against the sandy shore, his scales and talons and cold blood melding again and again and again with her warm arms and long bright hair and laughing mouth, and from their joining a man with grey eyes and an immense gift for winning battles was born.
— Whether he is my father, or grandfather, or me, says Clovis, what people will remember is how they felt when they heard the tale of my ancestry. — Clovis, son of Childeric, whose father Chlodio harried Rome, whose father was… Basina trails off.
— Primordial, Clovis finishes.
— Elemental, Basina corrects.
For a final moment, Basina experiences grasping fingers and flashing eyes and slick scales and hills of sand and wine pouring into soldiers’ mouths and the creaking of a ship’s hull and the sound of an infant’s cry and a stylus slicing through wax and the thwack of the tent snapping against the Burgundian wind. Then she speaks aloud the name of the man that peopled Clovis and Basina’s shared stories and dreams and ideas.
— Clovis, son of Childeric, son of Chlodio, son of Merovech, says Basina, of the Seas.
— The Conquering Seas, says Clovis.
Erin Page (she/they) is a technical writer and marketing specialist by day, and a historical fiction writer by night. An active member and reviewer for the Historical Novel Society, she has also published her fiction and essays in several anthologies, including District Lines and Mytholog. When she is not working on her upcoming novel, she can be found touring historic landmarks or relaxing at the nearest winery. She resides with her family in South Carolina. You can check out her substack and her website to read more of her work.
