King Arthur: The Bloody Cup: Book Three

by M. K. Hume

  ‘Any sensible man regrets the passing of good and righteous things,’ Percivale murmured.

  ‘Aye, but any sensible man recognizes when the time has come to relinquish foolish dreams of glory,’ Gruffydd retorted. ‘The Saxons, Angles and Jutes are entrenched in the lands of the east, and they can’t be dislodged. Still, they haven’t advanced a mile since Mori Saxonicus.’

  ‘Nor will they while I remain alive to hold them back,’ Artor vowed softly. No man present doubted his words. ‘But the north is not so secure, is it, my friend?’

  ‘I can hardly credit that any descendant of Luka could foment troubles within the northern tribes. There’s bad blood in this new Brigante king, but he’s a clever young bastard. Modred is a scheming, ambitious youth who seems to have inherited none of his grandfather’s charm.’

  ‘I don’t like his name . . . it has an ominous sound,’ Odin growled from his station near the doorway.

  ‘You’ll like the young man even less when you meet him, Odin. Rumour whispers that Morgause spent a night in Verterae on her way back to Segedunum after the battle of Mori Saxonicus. Luka’s youngest son was very fair and Morgause was still attractive, if you ignored her total lack of charm. Apparently the young prince was smitten, and a child, Modred, resulted.’

  Artor wondered at the depth of his spymaster’s knowledge of his sister.

  ‘Morgause was none too pleased to be pregnant late in life, and King Lot wasn’t amused either, so Modred was sent back to his father as soon as she whelped him. The boy survived Simnel’s rebellion and was raised by Luka’s last living heir, in case he begot no sons. So now you have another unpleasant kinsman, one who intends to use his bloodlines to further his own ends.’

  ‘All women are much the same in the darkness, whatever their age,’ Odin remarked, causing Percivale to blush scarlet, to the amusement of the older men.

  ‘Still chaste?’ Gruffydd stared at Percivale, amazed.

  ‘Still!’ The High King laughed with genuine mirth.

  ‘You’re being unfair, my lord,’ Percivale pleaded. ‘I’ve only ever loved one lady . . . and she’s long gone. I’m determined to wait until I meet the right woman.’

  Artor knew that his servant dreamed of Nimue, his childhood friend. Percivale had never moved beyond a young man’s first infatuation and his lack of experience blinded him to his hopeless idealization of Nimue. The High King would have laughed at the childish delusions of men if he had not recognized that Gallia had become his own idealized, perfect woman.

  ‘What has marriage to do with rutting?’ Odin asked with bland interest. ‘Celibacy is a very strange solution to an unsuccessful search for a true woman.’

  ‘One I doubt you ever practised, my large friend,’ Percivale retorted, his face still flaming in embarrassment.

  Odin simply grinned through his grey beard in his snaggletoothed way. Only his brown and broken teeth showed the weakness of old age.

  ‘So,’ Artor mused, ‘Gawayne and this Galahad approach Cadbury, as do Bedwyr and his nameless wife, and Modred, who is Morgause’s youngest son and the illegitimate king of the Brigante. We already have Anna’s twins with us. The next generation is gathering to pick my bones clean while I’m still alive.’

  Among the warriors in the room, only Gruffydd remembered Uther Pendragon as another High King who had clutched at immortality. Gruffydd shivered, fearing the sins he might have to commit in his master’s service. Whenever he remembered the king’s foster-brother, Caius, as he lay writhing on a bloody pallet, Gruffydd thanked the Tuatha de Danaan that he hadn’t been required to carry out Artor’s orders. Another hand had stopped Caius, so Gruffydd was clean of the assassin’s taint Of course, he would obey his beloved lord for as long as his hands could hold a blade. Long years of proximity had taught the spymaster that Artor never acted maliciously unless he was pushed into a blind rage, a condition that rarely troubled the king in his old age. But would Artor order an assassination if such a cowardly act would save the west? Of course he would. And could Artor live with the consequences of such shame? For the sake of the Union of Kings, and for the preservation of the people, Artor would learn to endure.

  ‘If he can do it, then I can,’ Gruffydd whispered, and Artor’s eyes swivelled towards his sword bearer as if he could read his old retainer’s mind.

  ‘This turmoil you feel is the way of old age,’ Gareth said lightly. ‘You are still hale and vigorous, but you approach sixty years, the same age as your father when he succumbed to death. The young wolves will always gather as the leader of the old pack greys with time, so you must beware of jealousy and rage. That foolishness was Uther’s way.’ He smiled at his king. ‘My grandmother and your old friend, Frith, would have told you that what comes will come.’

  Artor nodded and stared down at the pearl ring on his thumb. Many years had passed since his hand had been so slick with blood that the pearl had glowed from within encrusted gore. In Artor’s jaded imagination, the pearl had resembled a blinded eye.

  ‘Aye, our Frith was a wise woman, as was my friend, Myrddion. I wish they were still with us. But Frith’s ashes lie in Gallia’s Garden, and Myrddion must have succumbed to old age by now.’ He smiled gratefully at Gareth. ‘It’s neither death nor the end of things that I fear.’

  The warriors and the spymaster were not inclined to respond, but Odin sensed the danger in allowing Artor to fret, so he answered for them all.

  ‘Those among us who care for you know that the kingdom will eventually be lost after you have gone beyond the shadows, master. We don’t fear this fate, for we know it is inevitable. But we dread the pain of slow decay, and a return to the bad old ways of the past.’

  ‘You’re my second self, Odin,’ Artor answered him. ‘Sometimes I wonder why you’ve stayed with me for so long, why you’ve forsaken children, love and comfort for my cause. Why, my friend?’

  ‘We each gave an oath, master. And I’ve never regretted my part of the bargain.’

  The autumn wind that stirred the fruit trees of Cadbury wound sinuously through forest, mountains and grey, glacial valleys. In far-off Cymru, the breezes sought impudent entry to the stone villa built around the ruins of a venerable oak tree. Persistent as cold winds are, they managed to find entry through tightly sealed shutters that had worn a little at the hinges. One single tendril of frigid breeze stirred the hair of a woman who sat by a guttering fire.

  Gradually, the wind died in the heat of a room that was awash with colour. The black, close-knit walls, the aged timbers and the smoke-blackened rafters were brought to life by great woven and embroidered hangings that coiled with strange creatures and the persistent image of a black-clad man. Hanks of vegetable-dyed wool, in every imaginable shade of green, gold, orange, red and woad blue, hung from the ceilings ready for the great loom that glowed with hand-polishing in the corner. Dried herbs, flowers, leaves and even seaweed hung in another corner, their heads hanging downwards and the fading colours adding to the rich ambience of the room and its occupant.

  The floors were flagged, an unusual feature in these climes, and were softened with woven rugs and knotted whorls of brilliantly coloured rag. Soft, brain-tanned hide was stretched over cunningly shaped wooden benches to provide seating and, in a series of pegged shelves, racks of crude glass jars stood like miniature soldiers along the stone walls. Those jars had survived the long journey from Cadbury, and now the flames from the fireplace played over their surfaces, hiding their contents under the sheen of scarlet and gold.

  The woman turned as she felt the cold air stir her knee-length, braided hair. She rose with unconscious grace and moved to the troublesome shutters with a hank of new wool in one hand. Her eyes sharpened in the chill draught and, with concentration, she rammed the wool into the narrow gap, checked with her hand that no more cold air could intrude into her sanctuary and then returned to her seat.

  The grey-muzzled wolfhound at her feet didn’t bother to rise from its comfortable rug.

  Beauty and
sorrow hung on Nimue like a rich, invisible cape.

  Her face remained unlined, although she was almost thirty-nine years of age. Unlike Queen Wenhaver, the advance of middle age had only brought Nimue gravity and fine-boned elegance. Her hair was still silver, but it was now exceptionally long and was bound at several lengths by argent clasps. She wore grey, as was her habit, but the colour was pale and tinged with a memory of green, like still water under full moonlight.

  Nimue’s face was unchanged, but her eyes showed the passage of long, hard years. The deep blue of her irises no longer snapped with the curiosity and the fire of her youth, for the Maid of Wind and Water was now wholly dead. Her essence had fled on that doleful evening when Myrddion Merlinus went to his gods upon a huge pyre on the mountain peak. The Lady of the Lake now ruled her inner depths with patience, compassion and a never-ending, adamantine determination.

  As she twisted her spindle and drew out the raw, cleansed wool into a fine thread, her mind ranged upon the night wind, far to the north, to the west, and to the south - seeking, asking and questing for the object of her search. Nimue had never cared for magic, nor truly believed in the secret world of spells and curses. Such primitive superstitions had been the subject of much mirth between herself and Myrddion in those happy days when her children were young, before his eyes clouded with blindness.

  ‘I see better now that I’m sightless than ever before, sweet Nimue,’ he had consoled her. ‘My spirit leaves my body, and sees you as you are. It journeys far, beyond my fleshly strength, to watch my friend, Artorex, and the struggles he must fight in the south and in the east. Even Morgan, poor sad Morgan, feels the edges of my presence. How she jumps as she darts around her malodorous, old woman’s room and searches for me.’

  They had laughed without malice, but in her heart Nimue had not believed him. Myrddion had sensed her anxiety that his mind was failing and her blue eyes had welled with tears, even while she had laughed at his jokes. There were times, deep in the night, when he had woken and begun to speak in a voice she scarcely knew, describing strange wagons that needed no horses, spears that destroyed cities of glass and the great tapestry of human history that stretched out before his eyes to the ends of time. She wondered then if her husband was truly the wisest man alive, or only lost in the dreams of crazed old age.

  She had recorded his visions, for he had no memory of them once he had spoken them aloud, and then husband and wife had puzzled over their meaning.

  ‘Most of the future is closed to me, my dear,’ he had told her, his craggy, still-handsome face turned towards the light. ‘You should consign my dreams to the fire. Magic doesn’t exist but, perhaps, some inner vision does. And if such insight is true, it can trick us into relying on it when our minds and hearts are what should guide us. So put my dreams aside, my beloved, for they are only the shadows of shadows.’

  But Nimue had disobeyed him and had begun to weave and embroider her wool into a fitting record of the glory of his blindness. Nimue believed in her heart that her man was not a magician but a great poet and that towering images crowded his still-young brain. But then, after the funeral pyre, so filled was she with hot, scarfing grief that her three sons had had to carry her back to their mountain villa and her mind had descended into a pit of madness.

  Wild-eyed, she had threshed and fought through unspeakable nightmares until her sons had been forced to bind her to her bed. Bleeding willow trees, scorched rosebuds, crucified women and blind dragons had assailed her in her horrors, until her sons had quailed to see the welts rise on her white flesh as she mutilated herself.

  Then, as sudden as her violent descent into madness had come, her senses had returned. That night, she had dreamed of struggling through a wilderness of half-sentient trees that guided her towards bloody water and a willow tree that hid an unimaginable horror. Screaming, she had been impelled by unseen hands to part the weeping foliage of the tree while her eyes had willed themselves to close, for she knew she would find her own self beneath the blood-soaked branches.

  But her strength was as nothing against the power of the dream.

  ‘Nimue!’ the demon had called. His strong, right hand had gripped hers, while his left hand had shielded her eyes. Then, just as she was fainting with terror, he had drawn her back into the hollow tree and the comforting nest of her bed. Her dark-haired lover had kissed away every burn, scald and tear that her hands had branded on to her flesh. His dark eyes had drunk her in until she feared her soul would be lost to this demonic creature of the shadows and the chaos between the worlds, and she had wept in her loneliness and her loss.

  ‘It’s only me, Nimue. I’m your old husband. Don’t you know me?’

  And then she knew that the dream still consumed her, for this creature was not Myrddion in withered age but in all the power of mature youth. How beautiful he was, and how his hair caught at hers in a net of darkness. She would have pulled away, but his eyes were the same as when she had first met him, lustrous, amused and full of pain.

  ‘But you’re dead, Myrddion! You must leave me to my sorrows, for your cooled ashes already lie in the burial urn. I would rather be crazed or lifeless than trapped in a hopeless search for you.’

  He had kissed her thread-scarred fingers.

  ‘You will live on, my beloved. You will live long, and when you call, I will come and we will talk and laugh as we did when I breathed in the fashion of men. You can send for me in your thoughts, and I will be here.’

  So Nimue had been forced to acknowledge what Odin, the least learned of her old friends, had always instinctively known, although they had never spoken of it: the soul goes on, and some fortunate few can send their spirits out upon the wind and find the souls of those who call to them, beyond grief, beyond sorrow and beyond the small indignities of death.

  ‘Mother?’ a voice called from the kitchen.

  Her reflection was broken.

  As she entered the room, a servant girl from the hill people was in the act of clouting Nimue’s youngest son with a crude ladle. He had stolen bread and was dipping the crusts into the mutton stew. Her eldest son, Taliesin, was attempting to wrestle the dripping morsel from his brother’s hand.

  Nimue simply raised her index finger. ‘Enough!’ The word fell like a single pebble into a still pond.

  ‘Forgive me, Mother,’ Taliesin apologized and dropped his brother’s arm. ‘I should know better than to disturb your peace.’

  ‘You owe me no apologies, but Gerda shouldn’t be made to look foolish by the behaviour of any of my sons.’

  Like all of her kin who eked out a precarious living in the mountains, Gerda was short and very dark. Both of Nimue’s sons towered over the irritated woman whose ancestry must have gone back to the little painted people who had lived peacefully in the isles for thousands of years. Nimue felt a flash of shame for her thoughtless children and pressed Gerda’s hand lightly in apology.

  Taliesin promised to present his second greatest song to Gerda if the servant would deign to forgive him. His eyes were so distressed that the maidservant put away her indignation.

  ‘Have done with your glooming, boy. I knew you and your brother when you were both still soiling your loincloths, so neither of you had better touch Gerda’s stew until I decide to give it to you.’ The kitchen maid, who was little older than a girl herself, brought the wooden ladle down sharply, but without hurt, across the crowns of two repentant heads.

  Nimue’s sons were the wonders of the hill country. The boys were alien creatures to the simple folk because they were so unlike each other that, had the people not known of the lovers’ devotion towards each other, they would have sworn cuckoos had been placed in the Stone House nest.

  Taliesin was a reincarnation of his father, a symphony of black and white, but with eyes that were almost too blue to be human. He had fashioned a harp during his youth and had found the gift of music in his fingers as he learned to play the instrument. The grandams in the village spied the mark of white hair at h
is temples and nodded in archaic understanding of his qualities.

  Glynn ap Myrddion was Nimue’s middle son. He was barely seventeen years of age, and was as fair as Taliesin was dark, but his eyes were wholly inherited from his father. Glynn’s black eyes were made doubly powerful by the fairness of his eyebrows and the golden hue of his skin. Taliesin’s passion for music, poetry and song did not lure Glynn, but the healing trade called him, as it had his father, and he had trailed old Myrddion like a small shadow as the old man collected and prepared his herbs and medications. Seamlessly, Glynn had become his father’s strong right hand and, even now, the lad was treating sick children with feverwort at a village over the hills. The hill people swore that his hands had some magic in them, but they also understood that Taliesin’s fingers were likewise blessed.

  As for Rhys, now sixteen and very full of his mathematical talents, the art of construction was his métier. Tinkering always, he had constructed his mother’s favourite loom, he adored the menial tasks of thatching and he coaxed wood and stone to give up their ancient secrets.

  All three were well versed in the small miracles of the soil and green and growing things, so Nimue had little cause to find fault in any of her tall and slender sons. Rhys was the most powerfully built of them all, recalling ancestors that Nimue had never known. And now that he had heard of a smith in a nearby village who needed an assistant, Nimue expected him to depart for several months before returning to construct a working forge of his own.

  Yet she sighed.

  The wind blew fiercely on their hilltop. Even as they shared their meal in the kitchens with Gerda and her mute, sheepherder husband, Col, she could hear the voices as they called on the night gales.

  ‘Taliesin must leave the hill country to stand with King Artor in Cadbury and beyond,’ the voices told Nimue. ‘Obey us, Woman of Water, for your son is needed. Artor’s way is ending. Although your son is still young in years, you must allow him to finish what his father started, for the Bloody Cup is soon to come.’