King Arthur: The Bloody Cup: Book Three

by M. K. Hume

  Her blood didn’t touch Artor’s sandalled feet, but he was aware that it stained his hands.

  ‘What could she have been had you never ridden on to her lands, Gawayne?’ Artor mused. ‘And how would she have fared with a different father and another adviser? They are to blame, as are you and I, for no guilt can be apportioned to any of my servants for her death.’

  Artor surveyed the carnage in the atrium from behind the careful façade of his royal responsibilities. But what he felt beneath its mask, even Taliesin couldn’t fathom.

  ‘Her servants will be set free after they’ve been questioned,’ Artor instructed Gawayne. ‘They’ll be permitted to leave the villa, but they may take nothing with them, for this house is now part of Galahad’s wealth. Her possessions are forfeited to your son, for he understood Lady Miryll’s intent when he first met her. We’ll let her people wander until they find a tribe who’ll give them shelter, for I’ll permit no more bloodshed in this place.’

  ‘What of that one there?’ Gawayne asked, pointing to a servant with a broken arm. ‘He shouldn’t be permitted to walk away. How did he break his arm?’

  ‘You can question him if you wish’, Artor said, ‘but he will remain unharmed. I’ll not waste more lives when my real quarry has escaped and is miles away from this place.’

  Galahad entered shortly after Artor had given his orders and the king’s bodyguards had commenced to shuffle the servants away for questioning. He was momentarily taken aback by Miryll’s corpse, but Artor searched in vain for any compassion in his fiercely beautiful face.

  ‘Excellent,’ Galahad pronounced pompously. ‘The slut has gone to meet her maker. It saddens me not at all, for she was an abomination.’

  Artor was shocked; Galahad’s callousness was so at odds with the Christian code he embraced so enthusiastically. The young man looked so smug that Gawayne stepped forward and slapped his son’s cheek as hard as he could.

  ‘What was that for?’ Galahad was genuinely unaware of his heartlessness.

  ‘Lady Miryll is as she was made, my son,’ Gawayne said. ‘And, to my shame, so are you. I wish that you had some pity in you, as your Jesus demands.’

  For once, Galahad found he had no glib, easy reply.

  Gawayne turned back to Artor and bowed very low to his kinsman. ‘I ask that you allow me to place her in a skiff, my lord. If no one wants to wash Miryll’s poor body clean, then I’ll do it myself. Let me send her to the sea so her soul may be cleansed in the great ocean, and so my unborn child might sleep on the bosom of the waves.’

  ‘As you wish, Gawayne,’ Artor replied. Then he turned to Galahad, but no liking softened the king’s features.

  ‘I grant you ownership of this isle as of today, Galahad. You will hold it secure for me.’ And with that, he left the atrium.

  Evening came softly and the spring flowers had begun to close their petals with the approach of darkness as Gawayne, Odin, Percivale and Galahad bore the body of Lady Miryll to the small dock at the end of the island. The twilight air was sweet and, to Gawayne’s tired senses, it seemed to skirl its way through the gardens back towards the villa. By morning, it would have scoured the stucco and wood of the building clean of Gronw’s stink. Perhaps the smell of blood in the atrium would also be leached away.

  In the end, Taliesin had aided Gawayne in the women’s ritual of cleaning the mutilated corpse. The harpist had watched his mother serve this same, final office to his father’s desiccated remains and he understood the dignity involved in performing these last rites.

  Stripped, cleansed and perfumed, Miryll lay upon a simple bed frame with her hair fanning out around her face. Gawayne had plundered her jewel box and found a golden necklace that now covered the severed neck and acted as a bond that joined throat and face together in a semblance of sleep. Her body was decked in fine cloth, while her arms were decorated with bangles.

  After their ministrations, Lady Miryll was, once again, the mistress of Salinae Minor.

  Before Odin and Percivale raised her bier on to the skiff, Gawayne placed his left palm upon her gently swelling belly. He allowed himself to wonder, for one brief moment, what their child might have been like . . . but then he reminded himself that he had many sons.

  Galahad accompanied the bier because he had searched his heart and found it wanting in Christian charity. He realized he had been jealous of the lady, not of her body, but of the easy manner in which she had cast a spell over his father, a man he could never truly understand or love.

  Odin bore her frail corpse because he knew that he owed her spirit a debt for shedding her blood. He had no regrets, for his duty lay squarely with ensuring the safety of the king, but blood guilt is a hard burden to bear for those warriors who were born in cold northern climes. By offering Lady Miryll this last dignity, Odin hoped that her shade would not await him at Udgard when death finally embraced him.

  Percivale attended the ceremony for Artor’s sake. The king couldn’t attend, for to do so would be to imply guilt over his actions. Only Percivale knew how Artor had pounded the wall of his apartment with both fists when he left the atrium. Only Percivale knew that the High King had fallen on to his knees and prayed to the Christian god for forgiveness. For Artor didn’t know if he had truly intended to execute Miryll out of hand.

  A king’s way was to sweep all threats aside. The man’s way was to protect the innocent and the frail. Artor could not be faithful to one duty without failing in the other. And now the High King would never be sure what his final choice would have been. The memory of his beloved Gallia lay across his heart like an ingot of lead for the first time in his long life. Had he been Uther Pendragon, he would have killed the woman and her unborn child without any qualms of conscience but, being Artor, he suffered.

  Percivale carried Artor’s end of the lady’s bier, his lips moving soundlessly in the prayers of atonement.

  Taliesin waited patiently at the end of the dock, his harp uncovered in the crook of his arm. The skiff was still tied securely, but its sail was set and it was ready for its final voyage.

  Once the corpse was in place, Gawayne loosened the rope at the tiller and the skiff leapt away into the current, bearing its effigy of ruined beauty.

  Taliesin sang the lady’s death song.

  The sweet male voice travelled far on the evening breeze, disturbing the birds as they nestled in the reeds and causing hunters to shiver with superstitious dread as they worked at their trap lines. Those few fishermen who heard the distant thread of song or saw the skiff skim past them on the waves felt as if they had been dealt a sudden blow, and they mourned a loss they could not name.

  For beauty itself was riding on those waves and in the notes of the song, haunting and unearthly.

  Gawayne watched the skiff and its pale burden until the flood bore them away into the growing darkness. Against his will, he wept silently now that no one could see the sheen of tears on his smooth cheeks. Concealed by the shroud of darkness, Gawayne could not tell if he wept for Miryll or himself.

  CHAPTER IX

  ANOTHER SAXON SUMMER

  ‘She’s dead, mistress! She’s dead! Your child! Our child! And the High Bastard lives because I failed in my task.’

  Gronw slumped over the neck of his failing horse and tried desperately to recall the face of his long-dead mistress. She had died when Miryll was an infant and Gronw had to struggle to recall the details of his lover’s face.

  ‘Our Miryll is dead,’ he sobbed in contrition, lest the gods send her shade winging after him on the night air. ‘She must be dead by now!’

  Gronw was largely indifferent to Miryll’s fate, for she had willingly played her part in the execution of the hurried plot to kill Artor. It was she who had placed the drugs in the food given to the guards. And it was she who had knocked at Artor’s door and then lured the king along the corridor to the baths. Naked and laughing, she had plunged into the fug of the calidarium and had played her part in Gronw’s attack on the king. Even when Ar
tor had knocked the breath out of her body with his fist, she had giggled while Gronw attempted to drown the king.

  The glorious task that filled his brain with promise was far more important than the life of a girl child, he told himself. She knew the implications of what they plotted.

  Gronw felt a sudden rush of hot tears stream unchecked down his face.

  Miryll had been a sweet child when they had settled at Salinae Minor, and he had almost come to love her as she played in her favourite places in the villa. But when he saw the reflection of her dead mother’s face in Miryll’s eyes, and smelled the perfume of her mother in the child’s newly washed hair, a storm of loss rolled over him and any affection he might have felt for the young girl was washed away in a tide of bile and bitterness.

  After leaving Salinae Minor, Gronw had ridden for days, pausing only to rest his horse and steal a little food before taking to the back roads again. Several times, mounted men had swept past his hiding places beside the old Roman road and he knew that Artor’s warriors were in hot pursuit.

  But when fear and weariness were so heavy that he felt crushed by his burdens, he had only to feel the Cup inside the warmth of his leather jerkin to have his spirit restored. The smooth metal edges eased the feelings of guilt that niggled at the edges of his reason. He had Ceridwen’s Cup, the Cup of Lucius, and he would fill it to the brim with fresh blood, again and again, to give renewal to his mistress and her daughter.

  ‘I can sleep when I reach Deva,’ he whispered wearily into the night. ‘I’ve only to reach Deva, and all will be well.’

  He chanted this mantra over and over as his horse moved painfully into the north.

  In Cadbury, the High King stalked through his halls like a caged beast. He found no comfort in conversation, in the hunt or in his fruitful fields. His lands closed around him like a stifling shroud so that he felt like a living man prematurely buried in his grave.

  Nothing had changed since he had led his troop out of Cadbury for the journey to Glastonbury. Superficially, Artor could see no changes in the faces of his court, in the security of his treaties with the Celtic tribes and in the continuing lack of coordinated resistance from the Saxons.

  But Artor knew that everything had shifted out of focus since he had returned from Salinae Minor. The shades of Miryll and her son troubled him little, for they were small voices in a great tide of dead who waited at the edges of sleep to trouble his dreams. But the implications of the attack on Glastonbury disturbed his rest every night.

  Beyond doubt, someone had plotted his downfall, and that conspirator was clever and well-organized. Gronw had vanished as if he had never existed; only a very efficient cadre of sympathizers could hide the Pict from Artor’s warriors and agents. The formation of such a web of co-conspirators required careful planning, great patience and fierce determination. Gronw, an unknown Pict from the north, could not set up such an organization; he did not have the power or reach to find, enlist and organize malcontents.

  Gronw was an opportunist. He had managed to capitalize on the visit of Gawayne and Galahad to Salinae Minor with dashing effrontery. Likewise, when Artor had arrived at the isle with his troops, Gronw had immediately devised an assassination attempt that could have achieved his aims as effectively as his original plan might have. Chance had saved Artor, rather than any flaws in Gronw’s hasty changes of plan.

  ‘Whoever my enemy is, he is far more dangerous than my Saxon adversaries, because I am being attacked from within and the aggressor has remained invisible,’ Artor muttered to himself. ‘I cannot defend myself against an enemy within my walls who is so very well-entrenched.’

  Artor’s angry path had taken him back to his apartments. For a moment, he stood at the door, trying to gather his wits. Then he recalled that, in his concentration on plot and counterplot, he had forgotten the petitioners for his judgement. With a show of unnecessary force, Artor hit the door with his palm and strode into the quiet room.

  ‘Lord?’ Odin raised his head from the sleeping couch that he was straightening.

  ‘I’m an ageing fox caught in a trap by one foot. Dare I gnaw off my own limb to be free?’

  Odin stared at his master with concern.

  Artor was dressed for his Judgement Hall, and now he threw his golden torc across the room with as much force as his arm could muster.

  ‘Artor!’ Odin protested. ‘How can I help?’

  ‘You can’t, unless you know some way to spirit me out of here.’

  The king’s brow furrowed and Odin thought for a moment that Artor might weep.

  ‘But where would I go, anyway, if I deserted my duty and ran? There’s nowhere open to me but here!’

  Odin retrieved the king’s torc and straightened his master’s robes.

  ‘I’m afraid, Odin. I see no way out of this mess!’

  The last words were shouted, and Percivale ran into the room.

  ‘More of you to witness my shame?’ Artor threw himself into his chair and lowered his grizzled head into his hands.

  Artor had studied the teachings of the philosophers and he fully understood that his kingdom was in decline. He smelled decay in his land like the rot that appeared in the folds of old parchments. Unerringly, he recognized its corruption in the squabbling carelessness of his warriors and the malice in men like Modred.

  The nobles and the warrior class had forgotten the horrors of life caught between the twin evils of a despotic ruler and ruthless invaders. Artor had banished war and enforced peace and the rule of law, so very few of the denizens of Cadbury Tor remembered the distant past when the fortress was in ruins and its great defensive walls were unkempt and blurred with young trees and rubbish. They had either forgotten the rule of Uther Pendragon or had not been born when that ancient madman held the land in the grip of his terrible lunacy.

  Human beings quickly forget the taste, the smell and the agony of pain. After several decades of stability, some Celtic aristocrats had forgotten how exceptional Artor had been during his youth and, even in the embers of his life, he still kept Celtic borders secure from invasion. Some arrogant nobles, who had never learned the lessons of history, had come to believe that they could rule in the High King’s place.

  ‘Even if my kingdom was hale and strong, I would still be under attack from the growing weakness in myself,’ Artor told Odin with a catch in his voice.

  If truth be told, Artor recognized the smell of decay in his own growing rage at everything and everyone around him.

  Neither Odin nor Percivale found any comforting words that could ease Artor’s distress. Dumb and miserable, they could only show their love and faith, twin burdens that bowed the High King’s shoulders even further.

  Later that day, after his judgements were complete, Artor took his misgivings to the one person who listened impartially to his distress.

  ‘You’ve ridden too far these last few weeks,’ Lady Elayne told him, her fingers pressed against his forehead as if he was a sick child. ‘And you must be very tired.’

  By all the rules of Church and man, Artor should have avoided the company of Bedwyr’s wife. The court would be quick to judge her as a faithless wife if they were discovered together. Of course, he would be judged guilty as well, although no one would dare to raise a hand against him. In the rough justice of public opinion, Lady Elayne would be damned as a whore if she was compromised in the company of the king. But Artor needed a confidante, and one who had a cooler, less biased brain than his loyal bodyguards. Selfishly, he often sought private conversations with Lady Elayne. If he felt any obligation to Bedwyr, he silenced his conscience with the reminder that neither he nor Lady Elayne had committed any impropriety.

  Artor sighed. ‘The Saxons don’t care if the king is tired. Nor do those elements of Celtic society who plot against me. They wish to turn back the sand glass to those lawless days before Ambrosius brought the tribes out of barbarism. Yes, I’m tired, but I can sleep later. Today, tomorrow and for many days to come, I must be prepa
red to ride at need.’

  With his whole heart, Artor wished that he could rest his aching head against Elayne’s cool hand and take courage from her concern.

  ‘My lady, I’m old and my body betrays me after every hour I spend in the saddle. Were I young again, this Saxon summer wouldn’t stretch my strength so far. Sadly, the west has grown complacent after many years of peace.’

  It was now Elayne’s turn to sigh. Her new role as the king’s confidante was inherently difficult, and she had been forced to struggle with her conscience over the last three months since Artor had returned from Salinae Minor.

  She loved Bedwyr dearly, as a man and as her husband, and she had no intentions of betraying her marriage vows with King Artor. She blushed at the thought, for the king had never importuned her sexually. However, Elayne was aware that Queen Wenhaver and gossips within the court would make a world of sin out of her innocent role. By being alone with Artor, she exposed Bedwyr to ridicule. But some visceral kinship linked her with the High King, and encouraged her to accept Artor’s confidences. She understood his vulnerability and his growing need, for no man who possessed blood in his veins could survive without someone to share his inner - most thoughts. Those few who ignored the necessity for intellectual intimacy with others ultimately descended into madness.

  Also, because Elayne was an honest young woman, she acknowledged that a part of her took pleasure in her growing importance to the High King of the Britons. She couldn’t deny how very flattering it was to be sought out by a powerful man, not for her sexuality, but for her intellect. For perhaps the first time in her life, Lady Elayne was truly needed, and such heady knowledge was difficult to relinquish.

  ‘Are the barbarians truly stirring, my lord? I’ve heard tales of their savagery, but we’ve not felt their menace in my lifetime.’

  ‘They stir, Lady Elayne. And this time, they’ll come on horses. They’ve learned from us, so this time I’ll need more than dumb beasts to hold them back behind the mountain spine. Ratae, Venonae, Lavatrae and even Portus Adurni have sent messengers seeking reinforcements to repel the wolves who are now baying at their gates. Fortunately, no leader has risen to unite the Saxon enclaves, so we can pick them off piecemeal, thanks be to Mithras and the other gods of war and soldiery.’