A/N: I don't really know what to say about this. Other than, it's historically accurate. Minus the languages, but it's hard to find translated texts from the ninth century.
I don't own anything recognizable.
It was not known by anyone at home, but Gunther knew very well the dark side of humanity. He saw it every time that he went to Frankia and its neighbors with his father.
The connections of the Breech family reached across most of the known world. That was how Magnus knew how to lie so convincingly. He knew the truth of the matter, he knew how these foreign worlds worked so that he could twist them to suit him.
However, Magnus only ever knew the parts that he saw, the business and wealth. It was Gunther who would pull away, bow out, and explore these beautiful and new cities and places. He was the one who spoke to the people, he learned their colloquialisms and used them, while Magnus was stiff and professional in his speech.
Magnus had yet to see the desperation and darkness in these foreign lands. Gunther could list the places.
Paris, for instance.
Paris was where they got their wines, because the wine made around Paris was cheaper than that in Italy. It was also where some cloth came from, but not the perfumes. Those were bought in Venice, from the Byzantine traders.
And while Magnus worked, Gunther would sneak away and wander.
The things he saw.
La sang et le vin ont le même couler, les filles de joie dansent avec les voleurs, mendiants et brigands dansent la même danse, puisque nous sommes tous des gibiers de potence.
He saw mothers holding their children and hushing them as they screamed and cried for lack of food, he saw prostitutes sitting together, tired and defeated, not even trying for customers.
He saw thieves staring at him, deciding if he was worth it. But he had a dagger and a small sword beside him, and they didn't want to provoke him into hurting them. They weren't that stupid.
At least, that was what he saw at first.
Then, his red doublet made them angry, red was expensive. Red meant he was rich. A rich boy, come to laugh at their pain! How dare he? How dare he?
Then, he would have to defend himself against those who stood to knock him down. Then, even the smallest children hated him.
That was the thing. There was a distinct difference between Then and Now.
Now, the red doublet was a sign that Gunther was come. Now, he was met in the street and people awaited his approach.
The mothers held out their hands for the food he offered for them and their children, returning the gesture with a blessing. The prostitutes would ruffle his hair and smile a real smile when he gave them money and walked away.
But that was just one place.
Les Andalous, les Juifs, les Maures, vienn'de partout de tous les ports, les voyageurs et les merchands, vienn's'y reposer en passant.
Les Catalan et les Flamands—vont y flamber tout leur argent.
He had been told, by a thief who was counting the coins he had stolen (Gunther had numbed himself to their way of life ages ago), about the Valley of Love, a brothel ran by the docks on the Seine. The man had sung its praises, and as he did, Gunther found himself more and more grateful that his father's ship never docked by this place.
It cost pennies, apparently. Pennies. And yet the women wore pearls and velvet.
That was what terrified Gunther so. He knew very well how much pearls cost (he knew the prices of everything by now). The fact that even one woman could on a salary of pennies was astounding, but when all of them could? And were clothed in velvet? He was honestly scared.
So he tried not to think about it. But the thought of the brothel just kept coming back. It never left his mind, not really. Even in the idyllic kingdom of Kippernia, where they were protected by a Dragon and the tree in the training yard kept its blossoms for much longer than the trees in the forest, it never left his mind. The women in fine things who accepted pennies.
Paris wasn't even the half of it. Sometimes, when they went east, they went to Hammaburg. On the very outskirts of Frankia, Hammaburg still spoke the Germanic tongues, and they were one of the three towns Charlemagne had built in this outreach, the other two just north of them: Magdeburg and Bardowick.
Hammaburg was a large trading city, with goods from the Frankians, the Vikings, and the Rus changing hands every day, spices and furs and other such things. Gunther didn't speak much of the language, but he knew enough. He knew enough to understand the unhappiness he saw in parts of the city.
Jemand beglügt uns, jemand betrügt uns, jemand hält uns für dumm! Wir müssen hungern—andere lungen in den Palästen 'rum! Schluß!
There wasn't the immediate distrust on seeing his red doublet in Hammaburg—they saw things from so far away, who had time to marvel over red?—but there was distrust. An English boy who was only halfway fluent, who made up words when he couldn't remember the real ones, and got conjugations hopelessly confused…no, there wasn't a lot of trust for him.
But it was better than in the past, when he only spoke French to the people.
But language aside, he knew and saw displeasure. The people, the subjects of Charlemagne, were relatively few in number and while they were happy that a castle was being built to protect them from the Slavic tribes and the Vikings to the south, they were still unhappy that their ruler only sent them a castle after their city had been nearly destroyed multiple times by the Slavs.
Gunther felt bad for them. Their children died from these attacks, not to mention from the regular cold and disease. Even just coming to trade, he had gone hungry a few times. Life was hard and he knew it.
But knowing it didn't make it any less painful to see it.
Sie's fort, sie's fort jetzt, kommt nimmer mehr. Liegt draußen im Meer, drunten, und kamm nie mehr zurück…versunken, ertrunken!
There was once a young man, barely older than Gunther himself, who wandered the sea-strand. He was a damaged young soul, that Gunther knew.
"Sie's fort," was all he ever said. She's gone.
Once, Gunther ventured to ask who "she" was, despite his poor command of the language. The man had only shaken and declared, "Ich hab' nichts gemachen! Nichts gesehen!" (I did nothing! Saw nothing!)
Worried, Gunther had changed the topic, to the shells in his hands. The boy assured him that he had collected them all, each one himself. Offered if he wanted to see.
Gunther accepted them, called them beautiful, and suddenly he was being spun around. The boy, whoever he was, was declaring him an angel, better and kinder than anyone ("You cannot be bad to anyone!"). And he continued to praise him until an older man came, pulling him away, apologizing for his son and leading him away.
Gunther wanted to laugh at the idea of him being an angel, but he never did. Especially when he asked about the boy. Apparently his betrothed had been helping her family fish and had fallen from the boat, drowning in the river. Drove the boy mad.
What more could possibly happen to these people? No, he didn't want to know.
Gunther had even gone to the Emirate of Córdoba, the Moslem land in the south of the Iberian Peninsula. He had been but a child the first time he had visited, no taller than his father's hip. Córdoba was the place that first taught him the hardships of the world. But it was surprisingly gentle about the lesson.
He had been following his father through one of the markets, marveling at everything around him, but had gotten separated. Not surprising, considering.
Bohémienne, nul ne sait le pays d'où je viens. Je suis fille de grand chemins. Qui peut dire où je serai demain? C'est écrit dans les lignes de ma main.
Trying to find his father he had nearly been trampled by a horse, but a young woman grabbed him, pulling him out of the way. She held him when he started crying out of terror, and asked him, surprisingly in French, where his parents were. His French was barely existent at that age, but he managed to tell her that he lost his father.
He never knew her name, but he learned that she was a gypsy. Picking him up and carrying him, she spoke to him, asking what his father looked like, where he had last seen him, why they were here, and so on.
They found Magnus, who (in complete opposition to his normal actions) was relieved to see his son again. But when he saw the woman, he shouted at her, shooing her. "Never ever associate with those people again, do you understand?" he had said, turning to Gunther.
"Why?" was all he asked, staring up at his father in confusion.
"Because gypsies are dirty and they steal."
"But…" he didn't continue, not wanting to challenge the dark look on his father's face.
Perhaps he shouldn't have needed to see him so angry at the kind gypsy woman to know that his father was just as cruel to everyone as everyone was to them.
Un fleuve d'Andalousie coule dans mon sang, coule dans mes veines. Le ciel d'Andalousie, vaut-il la peine qu'on y revienne?
He found the woman by accident a few days later. He was allowed to wander around the work area, where they were changing the dual church-and-mosque into a mosque. He had never seen a building like this one and he was curious, but Magnus had no desire to wander about the building site.
The woman was sitting with a few others, offering to read palms. Gunther, remembering what his father said (even if he thought it stupid), didn't go over, but he did watch. Especially when they abandoned the palm reading to dance and sing.
He moved closer when a crowd formed, the Moors who were working on the Cathedral-Mosque beginning to keep time with their hands, everyone else joining in. He watched as the woman who brought him back danced, her skirts flaring about her bare feet. Their song was French, and though French wasn't a common tongue here in the Emirate, people weren't put off by it.
Unfortunately, Magnus came and pulled Gunther away, muttering to himself about "filthy gypsies." Gunther frowned at him, unhappy. He liked those people, they seemed happy. Happier than he was, anyway.
Blind hate. That was what he saw in his father. That was what the Emirate taught him of the world. Blind hate was common. Returning from the Emirate, he realized that when he tried to tell of the beautiful Cathedral-Mosque and how a large amount of the population would bend down to the ground facing the south east five times a day, no one listened. They passed off the Moslems as barbarians.
Blind hate was what he learned to recognize from the Emirate of Córdoba. And then he saw it everywhere.
Though of all these places, among the worst was Venice, at least to his mind. Gunther loved Venice, of course, but there was one overwhelming piece that was far too close for comfort. He didn't need to wander to the slums to see it, he didn't need to hear people tell stories.
He saw a woman hated by everyone around her; he saw her lash out against them. It hurt because he had seen her new to Venice, excited and wide eyed.
She had come from the Magyar people, her language so shockingly different from any other language spoken in any city or town in Frankia.
And she was hurting.
Légy átkozott, egész fajod! Süket füleknek prédikálij! Nézd meg magad! A rabja vagy!
She had come with the bride from Byzantine, the young wife of one of the Breech family contacts. The woman was to be her maid. Still was, actually. No one knew how she came to be the wife's maid, but no one asked.
However, outside of the household, the woman was mocked for her poor command of both French and Vulgar Latin (though she spoke Greek fluently). She was mocked for her ancestry, and hated for the fact that her people had destroyed so many Frankian outposts. Things she had no control over.
Gunther didn't like to think about how he was in the exact same position.
She held her head high most days, ignoring everyone, but then there came the times when she turned and screamed at her tormenters. She screamed in her tongue, her pain translating loud and clear.
Gunther didn't like to realize that in her screams, she was braver than he was and he was training to become a knight.
Her French was just as bad as his German, so Gunther sympathized with her, letting her talk to him and telling her that he was in the same way, and that he sometimes wished he could be so brave as her.
Apák, fiúk egymásnak igy adják tovább! A gyûlölet fertõz több nemzedéken át! A gyûlölet oly végtelen, uralkodik a lelkeken!
Upon realizing that he was the same, the maid turned to him and said very seriously, "It never stop. You must brave be. Vár rád a végzet, szép nem szinház az élet."
"That would be so much more reassuring if I knew what you were saying," he said. She laughed, though her laugh was as real as Gunther's typically was back in Kippernia (not at all), and left him.
Of course, he found her crying a few days later for the hate she received.
And yet, somehow in the horrors and unhappiness that he saw, he also saw the most beautiful things.
Il est beau comme le soleil, ma mervielle, mon homme à moi. Il me prendra dans ses bras, et pour la vie, il m'aimera.
He saw a woman in the slums of Paris, sighing to anyone who would hear her about the wonderful man who was going to marry her. A butcher, he would provide for her. Handsome as anything, too.
Gunther sat with her, letting her paint the picture of how they had met, just outside the Cathedral of Saint-Étienne. She was so earnest about it, her joy was almost infectious to everyone else in the area. It was a lovely change, and no one put her off being happy.
This woman would make the resident starving poet write her poems and songs, making her all the happier. She promised to return, to take care of everyone as Gunther did, but more frequently.
She did return, he saw her in the later years. She wore better clothes now, and always smelled of flowers. Her husband was apparently still handsome as anything and kind, and now she was the proud mother of two little boys—Peppin and Louis.
And he was happy for her.
Bist du glücklich? Kannst du mich immer noch ertragen? Ich bin schwerig, es lebt sicht nicht sehr leicht mit mir.
Das ist Unsinn! Schau, was dir meine Augen sein! Ich liebe dich. Ich möchte niemals fort von dir. Bist du glücklich?
In Hammaburg, when he didn't see the mad boy on the beach, he would sometimes see couples walking together. Despite the hardships, they would always be smiling, love clear in their eyes.
One particular couple stuck with him, though he only saw them once. The man was older, around King Caradoc's age, while the woman was significantly younger. But while she spun herself under his arm, he laughed. When he pressed a kiss to her brow, she would blush and giggle.
He never saw them again, but he remembered them. They were in love, and he could recognize and appreciate that, no matter what Jester said.
Tan maheka maheka, rang daheka baheka—Mujhe tu gulaab si laage. Jo hai yeh nikhaar aur yeh singhaar, to kyoon na kaamna jaaga? Tera ujla ujla jo roop hai yovan ki dhoop hai.
The beauty of the Emirate was immediately apparent, in the buildings, in the people, in the music in the markets and the laughter of children in the streets. But the most wonderful part, at least to Gunther, were the times when he heard people speaking languages he didn't know.
That was the trick. Gunther spoke a lot of languages to varying degrees of proficiency. He recognized phrases in Arabic at that point too, so he knew when it was some extremely foreign tongue. And he heard a lot of them.
Apparently the Muslims reached far into the Orient, a place cut off since Rome fell, and so some of the people he saw might come from there, of all places. Though, considering the amount of foreign merchants, he probably missed a majority of them. But the ones he caught were probably among the best (not that he'd know any differently).
He saw men with silks to trade, but they were far in between. He saw men who traded spices, and he did business with them regularly. But sometimes he saw a young trader with dark skin, calling out endearments to women, young and old. He assumed they were endearments anyway, considering the tone of voice and the fact that every once in a while, a woman looked back and smiled, blushing.
He couldn't tell though, because the language was so completely foreign from every other language he had ever heard.
And he loved it.
Szivbõl szeretni mámor, elvész közel s a távol! És érezd a szived lángol, eltûnt a múlt a mából!
Despite the pain and hardship the maid from Byzantine went through, she was still kind, which completely astounded Gunther.
He once saw the maid and her mistress together in the courtyard, speaking together in Greek. His Greek was good enough that he understood most of what they were saying.
The bride, apparently, was uncertain if her husband loved her, and if her life would just be misery. How strange, Gunther had thought. He had heard nothing but praise for her in the entire time that she had been married into this family.
He never would understand women.
But the maid took her mistress' hand and told her what, in her experience, love was and what looked like. She had waxed poetic, occasionally slipping back into her own tongue but always returning to Greek.
Gunther, standing in the shade of the villa, just out of sight, listened. He was amazed at the faith that this woman had in humanity, the belief she had that there was nothing more beautiful than burning in the heart of a fire fuelled by "true love."
He had long since written off nearly everyone to be cruel and tried to close himself off so he wouldn't be hurt. The fact that this woman, who was so mercilessly attacked that she wept and screamed, still believed in that amount of love…it made Gunther uncomfortable to think of it and his own failings in that regard.
How was it, exactly, that the worst places he knew also taught him that he was failing in his faith in humanity while theirs was alive and thriving?
Translations:
1st French: Wine and blood share the same color, prostitutes dance with thieves, thieves and bandits dance the same dance since we're all gallows birds. (La Cour De Miracles, Notre Dame de Paris)
2nd French: Andalusians, Jews, and Moors arrive from every port, travelers and merchants rest there a while. Catalonians and Flemish alike blow all their money in one night. (Val D'Amour, Notre Dame de Paris)
1st German: Someone is lying to us, someone is cheating us, someone takes us for idiots! We must hunger while others hang around their palaces. Enough! (Milch, Elisabeth)
2nd German: She's gone, she's gone now, will never come back. Laying out in the sea, under, and can never return. Sunken, drowned! (Sie's Fort, Rebecca)
3rd French: Gypsy, no one knows my land. I am a child of the road. Where will I be tomorrow? It is written on the palm of my hand. (Bohemienne, Notre Dame de Paris)
4th French: An Andalusian river flows through my veins. The sky of Andalusia, is it worth returning to? (Bohemienne, Notre Dame de Paris)
1st Hungarian: Damn you, all your race! Preach to deaf ears! See for yourself! The addicted! (Gyúlölet, Rómeó és Jùlia)
2nd Hungarian: Fathers, sons, so pass on to each other! The infectious hate over generations! The hatred is so endless, reigns in the soul! (Gyúlölet, Rómeó és Jùlia)
Hungarian comment: Life is not a beautiful theater (Parbáj, Rómeó és Jùlia)
5th French: He is handsome as the sun, my miracle, my man. He will take me into his arms and he will love me forever. (Beau Comme le Soleil, Notre Dame de Paris)
3rd German: Are you happy? Can you still stand me? I'm difficult, it's not easy to live with me./That's nonsense! Can't you see what's in my eyes? I love you. I never want to be apart from you. Are you happy? (Bist du Gluklich, Rebecca)
Hindi: Your body is fragrant, your colors blaze-to me you seem a rose. When there is such beauty and adornment, why wouldn't desires awaken? This bright beauty of yours is youth's sunlight. (O Rey Chhiori, Lagaan)
3rd Hungarian: True beauty is loving with all your heart so that everything else fades into the background. And to feel your heart get lost in a sea of passion. (Szivböl Szeretni, Rómeó és Jùlia)