Unfamiliar plants twined about long wooden frames, set in rows marked by colored stakes. “Vines,” said her guard. “For wine.” As the road curved, these gave way to fields along more forest and, up ahead, a gate like that at Erfurt. Wooden palisades stretched to either side. A hill rose far behind them, topped by a white building much like those she had seen, shattered, along the road.

Inside the gate, she found a scene almost exactly like Erfurt. Houses of wattle and daub lined dirt roads. Women sat outside, suckling babies, heating sprouted grains to make malt, churning milk to make butter, spinning wool on spindles, scraping skins to make leather. Standing at a forge set carefully far from the houses, a blacksmith hammered the blade of a plow.

All this was familiar enough, the simple life of a German village. But climbing the hill, they came to a smaller gate, set in a wall of stone. Inside, facing a courtyard, she saw that white building, with what looked stone tree trunks along the front and, to either side, smaller rectangular buildings, with a third nearer the gate. The red tiles on their roofs were mainly intact, if clearly old. An arch at the middle led into the main one.

The wagon turned parallel to the arch. “The villa of Athies,” said her guard; “Your home”. Two women came out, wearing dull woolen robes, their dark hair loose behind them. Together they helped her out of the wagon, then half-knelt, saying, “At your service, my lady.” They introduced themselves: her new slaves, Frotlindis and Framberta.

Hrotgund was stunned. As men unloaded the trunks the Franks had sent with her, she stared at this strange building, wondering what hand had shaped those stone trunks and set them in front of a house that itself might have been carved from a mountain.

When Frotlindis gently ushered her inside, her wonder only grew. She came into a large open room, the walls painted red with black and yellow bands running from floor to ceiling. The floors were covered with a hard shining stone she had never seen, inlaid with intricate patterns. And the light! There was so much light, coming in from what looked like opaque stones set in openings in the wall. The Thuringii had no windows and certainly none of glass, not even the thick plates used here. The effect to her was miraculous.

“Did the Franks build this?”

Frotlindis smiled. “No, my lady. A Roman, long ago. It was his villa.”

Again, the Romans. She knew little of them. That they had ruled a great kingdom, including Gaul. That once they had been stronger than even the Franks. That they had never conquered the Thuringii nor the other Germans in the north. That they had come from a city far to the south. When she thought of a city, she imagined a place like Erfurt, with houses of wattle and daub within a wooden palisade. Yet here was this house of stone, filled with colored walls, ornate floors and light. Was Rome then more like Athies?

The women took her to a room. In Hermanfred’s palace, she had slept between partitions; this closed space seemed to her like a house within a house. A platform took up much of it, with a back angled up from the middle and a linen mattress on it. “Your bed.” She stared. At Erfurt, she had slept on a sheepskin on a bank of earth along the wall. When she touched the mattress, it was incredibly soft. “It is filled with feathers,” said Frotlindis. The bed was flanked by small bronze tables, each with three clawed feet and holding a lit oil lamp. A bronze disk with a handle lay on one – Frotlindis picked it up and held it before her; Hrotgund saw… her own face. Just as if she were looking into a well. It was dirty, she saw, and her hair wild, from days without combing.

The walls here too were covered in color, but also stained, sometimes clumsily patched where water had damaged them. A single window, with its thick pane of glass, added diffuse light to that of the candles. Her slaves, with the help of two men, brought in her trunks and set them by the walls.

Framberta brought her a metal cup full of wine and a small round loaf of bread, finer and softer than any she had ever tasted. Gently, they took off her dusty robe and replaced it with one from among her things. The change felt wonderful after days in the wagon.

What is more, all this kind treatment reassured her. Again, she was being treated as a princess, not a slave, or even a prisoner. She remembered what the warrior had said of Berthefred: “He must be one of us now.” Was this her own fate – to become a Frank?

She would have time to ponder all this. For the moment, she had one urgent desire. “I would like to wash,” she said. She had to repeat it – her Frankish was still clumsy – but once they understood, they ushered her out the door, down a painted hall, and back outside, then right, to one of the two smaller buildings.

As they stepped through a stone arch into an entryway, she smelled burning wood. A curtain hid an alcove at left; a doorway opened into another room at right. The smell from the alcove told her its purpose and when one of the slaves opened the curtain, she saw a bench along the back with a hole in the middle and a small pile of leaves in the corner. A pitcher of water sat by the wall. She almost laughed to see something so like an altar for so simple a purpose, but stepped inside and did what she needed, then used the leaves and the water to clean herself.

When she stepped out, her slaves showed her into the other room, where pegs stuck out above a bench. Piles of linen sat on a table beside this, with small pots. The images in here were faded, but she could make out naked forms splashing in water. Frotlindis lifted off her dress, then pointed to another door, and a small pool beyond it. “Cold,” she said. Then she leaned into the room with the pool and pointed to another door. “Warm.” Then she gestured to indicate a further place. “Hot”. Looking back into the main room, she pointed to a door in one corner: “You return here.”

Hrotgund stepped cautiously into the first, cold pool. Like all Germans, she loved to bathe, but had only done so in streams and fountains. She had never used a bath before, much less a Roman bath, with its frigidarium, for cool water, its tepidarium, for warm, and its caldarium, for hot. By the time she got to the bracingly hot water at the end, she felt cleaner than she had ever felt, fully refreshed from her days of travel, even for a moment freed of the horrors which had haunted her. Back in the dressing room, Frotlindis and Framberta rubbed her vigorously with cloths, then spread soft, sweet smelling ointments on her bare body before putting her in a fresh linen robe and combing out her wet hair, plaiting it as it dried.

For the first time since leaving Erfurt, she felt at peace. “Now,” said Framberta, “you are ready to pray.”

Exiting the bathhouse, she headed back towards the villa.

“Where are you going, my lady?”

“Why, to the household gods.”

“We have only one god here. Come.” And they led her towards the building opposite the baths. She saw a shape like the crossed sticks above the entrance, which was closed with curtains.

A man about forty stepped out from these, wearing a white robe. His dark hair was cut in a ring around the shaved top of his head. He wore a pendant, also like the crossed sticks. “I am Father Elias,” he said. “I am to bring you to Christ.”

“Who is that? Is he nearby?” she asked.

His eyes twinkled, but he remained impassive. “He is everywhere, as is His Father, and with them the Holy Spirit.” The last word made her tremble. The Thuringii feared spirits. “I will answer your questions soon enough. But first let us pray.”

The women tied back the curtains. She saw a few rows of benches inside and beyond them a wooden altar, covered with a red cloth, which bore a metal cross flanked by candles. As he led her inside, she saw a fading mural to her left. It showed a man with a flock of sheep.

“That is Christ,” said Father Elias. “He is our Shepherd.”

A shepherd with long hair? “He looks like a king,” she said.

Leading her to the front, he bowed deeply before the cross. He looked at her and she understood she was to do the same. When he raised his hands and looked up, she followed suit. He began to intone words in a language she had never heard. Again, she trembled slightly. Was this witchcraft?

Then he began to speak in Frankish. “Dear Lord, welcome our pagan daughter Hrotgund into your bosom and show her the beauty of your Eternal Light.” He continued for some minutes, and then said, “Amen.” Again, he looked at her and she followed suit. “Amen.”

Back outside, she asked, “What is ‘Amen’? Is it a magic word?”

“Not magic, like Satan’s magic, but it has power, yes. It is a Hebrew word. It means, ‘So be it’.”

“What is Hebrew? Is that the tongue you were speaking?”

“Hebrew is the language of the Old Testament, the books which come before Christ’s. But the language we use for prayer is that of the Romans. It is called ‘Latin’. It is the Latin of the Church, not what we Romans speak among ourselves.”

Her eyes widened. “Are you a Roman? Do you come from the city in the south?”

He led her to one of two stone benches that flanked the villa’s entrance. “I am a Roman, yes. But from Gaul. My ancestors were Celts. But we have lived for centuries under Roman rule and so now we are Romans. Romans of Gaul.”

Hrotgund’s mind raced. So many new things to learn…

“Do all Romans follow the crossed sticks?”

“The Cross, my child. And it is the Christ we follow. The Cross is only the symbol of His Sacrifice. But yes, we Romans have long followed the Christ. And now, praise God, many of the Franks too, including their kings. Which is why Chlothar has sent me to instruct you.”

She considered that a moment. Why would Chlothar want anyone to instruct her? But then, why would he want her brother to be one of his warriors?

She kept these questions to herself. What mattered now was that she was to follow Christ. Yet Elias had made it plain that not all the Franks did. “But some Franks still follow the old gods?”

“The demons, you mean. Yes, the Franks and many other barbarians are still pagans.”

“Who are the barbarians, Father?”

He cocked his head. “Why you, child. The Franks, the Thuringii, the other Germans. All who are not Roman. Even my own fathers were barbarians before the Romans came.”

So she was a “barbarian”. It seemed strange to be given a name by others, a name not of her choosing. And with that, a new belief. But she reminded herself: everything she knew was gone. Nor was her will her own. She did not yet wait on others like Frotlindis and Framberta, but she was a slave, too, in her way, though held for what purpose she did not know.

“Let me begin now to teach you to be a Christian. You will learn Latin soon enough, but let us start with a prayer in the German tongue, so that you may understand… These are the words you will say on each Lord’s Day.” She did not understand. “You would call it the ‘day of the Sun’.”

“Do not the Franks do the same?”

“Yes, though the Church tries to change this. But they still talk of the day of the Moon, and then those of demons: Tyr’s day, Odin’s, Thor’s, Freya’s…. Only the sixth day is that of an old Roman demon, Saturn.” A thought struck him. “But you will not know the moons. The Franks use those of the Romans, but they begin with that of Mars, the so-called ‘god’ of war, as once the Romans did. Then there is April, which is for a Greek goddess of love, followed by the month of Maia, another Greek goddess, the month of Juno, whom the old Romans called the queen of Heaven, the two emperors, Julius and Augustus, and after that only numbers, from September, the seventh month, to December, the tenth. We Romans begin the year with the month of Janua, which is “door”, though some claim it is for a two-faced demon named Janus. Our second month, and the Franks’ last, is Februa, which is ‘purification’.”

Now Hrotgund was wholly a nine-year old girl, her tragedies forgotten as she struggled to understand. “There is so much to learn!”

“Yes. But you seem to me a very smart girl. No doubt you will manage.”

“Yes,” she said firmly. After all, she had no choice.

“Now, repeat this after me: ‘Fadar is usa firihobarno’.” That, she could understand: “Father of us mortals”.

After she said it several times, he went on: “The is an them hohon himila-rikea.” That is in high Heaven’s Kingdom…. As she spoke all this aloud, she heard the similar sounds in the paired words: fa, fi; the, them; ho, hi. “But it is a song, Father!”

He nodded. “Verse, yes. In the German style. But the Church has allowed liberties here so that the people may chant it, and so learn it more easily.”

“Does Latin have no verse?”

“Oh yes. But it is very different. At any rate, let us continue. ‘Geuuihid si thin namo uuordo gehuuilico….’ ” Holy be Your name, however said.

Now that she heard an order in the words, she could hold them more easily in her mind. She repeated this and the lines that followed:

Let your powerful kingdom come;

Your will be done in this world

On Earth also,

As it is above in Heaven!

Give us your aid each day,

Lord the Good, your holy help,

And pardon us from the sovereign sky

As we do other men;

Nor let us be tempted by evil spirits,

Following their will, as we deserve,

And protect us against all harm.

Amen.

He had her repeat all this several times. Then they went to the chapel, lifted their arms to Heaven and recited it together as a prayer.

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