by M. K. Hume
Artorex looked at the ashen face of Caius among his warriors.
‘Lord Caius, you will personally hang this man who has brought dishonour upon your troop, then you will cut off his stinking head and send it to my rooms. You will throw his carcass to the dogs - if they will eat such carrion. Then you will bury your innocent warriors with all due respect, for they died as good Celts - and they didn’t beg, like this cowardly animal. Reparation will be made to their families for their loss, although gold is not worth the life of a good man. We are Celts! We don’t make war on innocents, and we don’t betray the justice of our cause.’
One by one, each member of the troop spat on the weeping face of Gwynn ap Owyn, and the warriors dragged him away.
Once more, Artorex looked down sorrowfully at the assemblage.
‘The duty of maintaining the honour of the Britons is a responsibility that weighs on all warriors. But the very survival of the west demands that our actions reflect the glory of our cause. I am ashamed that a creature such as Gwynn ap Owyn has soiled the reputations of his companions and of us all through his cowardice and brutality.’
Artorex looked directly at Caius, to ensure that his brother understood the full import of his words. Then Caius escaped to follow the Dux Bellorum’s orders and salvage his honour in the eyes of his men.
‘We are nothing if we do not hold to honourable and ancient ways that exemplify our history. Saxon men are our enemies, not their women and children. We fight for home and hearth and the glories of our past, not for the thrill of bloodshed. Let it be understood from this time onwards that no blame for the six innocent men who died today will be attached to any soul here. I take it upon myself, for I am the Dux Bellorum.’
Artorex’s sadness, his patriotism and his charm had the crowd roaring his name as he made his way back to the garrison. His heart was heavy as he ordered Targo to ensure that red gold should be sent to six innocent widows and that good land should be deeded to their sons.
That little tactic worked well, didn’t it? a small part of Artorex’s consciousness whispered wickedly. Perhaps it’s time to send Myrddion back to Venta Belgarum.
CHAPTER XIX
UTHER’S LEGACY
Myrddion Merlinus understood his own nature far too well. He accepted that he was born to be a strategist, the right hand of great men, and a coldness in his nature ensured that his intellect always ruled his emotions. There was no hardship in replacing a wife and children with the actualities of power, for his sexual drive was easily slaked.
If the truth were told, Myrddion loved plots and books far more than any living, breathing creature. Horses were mere transport and a dog was a slobbering nuisance. Books and scrolls never failed, while they never desired anything in return. He had friends, including Llanwith and Luka, but these two men only understood the edges of his agile mind. One day, they would die and he’d weep - he who hadn’t shed a tear in nearly forty years.
Fortunate is the man who has such self-control for, without love, there can be no pain and no sense of loss. His preternatural youth was born out of his even temper and the great walls he had built around his heart. Even Artorex, Myrddion’s personal creation, was often just a means to an end. Myrddion recalled how, at the decimation, he had felt pride in Artorex’s cleverness and fixity of purpose, without truly recognizing at the time the connection between the death of Gallia and of the woman who had been killed under the willow tree. Now, in the darkness of the night, Myrddion felt a thickness in his throat and an unaccustomed prickle in his eyes as he thought of Artorex’s words to the crowd. Myrddion winced as he recognized the pain that the young man must have felt as he lifted small Nimue high, acknowledging an orphaned child, while his own Licia would never know her father.
‘You’re becoming old and maudlin, Myrddion,’ he told the lamp flame. ‘You’ll soon be fit for nothing but hoary old stories around a warm fire.’
But Myrddion’s knife-sharp brain knew that he lied. His path through life was set and his allegiances had been given long ago. There was no path for him other than to be what the gods, or demons, had decreed for him, so thoughts of suffering must be shoved aside.
He turned to the tangible problem at hand.
‘The sword. We must find the sword. Without a High King to counter Katigern Oakheart, we’re finished. And Artorex cannot become High King without that sodding sword.’
Myrddion had puzzled and teased his brain over Uther’s final spite for nearly a year and a half. Morgan was not privy to all of Uther’s secrets. She had held great sway over that terrible old despot, but theirs was a relationship based on hatred and need. Myrddion had no doubt that Morgan kept Uther alive well past his appointed time, not out of compassion, but so the old monster might suffer as he watched his natural son eclipse him. Had Morgan possessed the sword, it would already be in the acquisitive fingers of King Lot, for Lot’s wife was, after all, her dim-witted sister, Morgause. Morgan had been shrivelled with hatred when Uther expedited the death of her father, and she would gladly destroy the kingdom using King Lot, rather than allow Artorex to succeed to the throne.
‘Ah! Old loves and old hatreds,’ Myrddion told the flame, his only confidante. ‘I’d pity Morgan if she didn’t hate quite so hard. Uther deserved every second of pain she gave him, but Artorex bears no guilt for the crimes of the High King. Morgan has blighted her life for a curdled justice.’
No, the sword was as lost to Morgan as it was to everyone else.
When Uther was near to death, and even his servants were fearful of entering his apartments in Venta Belgarum, Myrddion came to believe that Uther had entrusted the sword and crown to Bishop Branicus, Uther’s personal confessor. He’d asked the venerable man outright if Uther had given him the symbols of kingship, and could still recall the bishop’s stern and seemingly honest reply.
‘I don’t have either crown or sword, Lord Myrddion. If I had them in Venta Belgarum, I would give them to you.’
The old bishop had passed away only one month after his obstinate master. Another priest, a younger man, had replaced Branicus and the trail was now cold. Myrddion knew and understood the ways of priests, so he could have sworn that the old bishop hadn’t told a direct lie.
‘But did he tell the complete truth?’ Myrddion asked the flame. ‘The Church of the Christus is a world of its own, and power is the mortar that holds it together. Did he tell the truth?’
Myrddion selected a piece of raw chalk and wrote the bishop’s words on his table top. Then, his senses straining, he measured the weight of every word used by the old bishop.
‘The bishop spoke to me as a man, flame, and not as a priest. He said, I do not have, he did not say the Church does not have.’ So the Church probably did hold the sacred objects, but not at Venta Belgarum. The priest had been careful to name that city and deny that the crown and sword were there. The bishop didn’t lie, he simply didn’t reveal all of his knowledge.
Myrddion remembered that Branicus had been half-Roman, but he was also part Spanish, a man who understood the frontiers and the terrible cost of barbarian invasion. He probably would have preferred to give up the sword and the crown, but he had not. Why?
‘Because Uther had bound him to an oath. Of course! The old fox made the bishop swear that Artorex would not receive the symbols of power from his hands. The bishop knew that I would eventually come to him when Uther was on his deathbed. He recognized that he would be obligated either to break his vow or damn the safety of Christian Britain. The Saxons have no love for the Christian god. Branicus must also have known that he, too, was sickening. What would he do? What would I do?’
The candle didn’t answer, but it flickered in encouragement.
‘If Branicus didn’t lie to me directly, he indicated that he sent the objects away to somewhere safe. But where have they been sent? There are no clues for me in his words.’
Myrddion struggled to follow the bishop’s dilemma. No one, not even a man of God, could have listened to Uthe
r’s confessions without distaste. The bishop was privy to all of Uther’s gruesome secrets, but he’d taken them to the grave as the rules of his church demanded. But did he want the relics to be found?
‘Yes, flame! That dour old man has told me so in his own words. He’d have given them to me were it not for the oath he gave to Uther Pendragon and the sanctity of the confessional.’
Myrddion was bone-deep weary. He had unravelled the edges of the bishop’s reasoning but only rest and further contemplation would solve the puzzle.
After wiping away the chalk words with his sleeve, Myrddion retired to his bed, but his sleep was troubled by dreams of a willow tree, its ancient branches trailing down to the water of a deep and silent lake. He attempted to enter its confusion of branches but the tree itself barred his way.
Gruffydd had received a rough hide sack that held the head of the vicious Gwynn ap Owyn. He lacked the heart to view those coarse features so instead he decided to return the gruesome trophy to Durobrivae in the care of trusted confederates. They were instructed to mount the head on a stake before the willow tree as a tangible message of Celtic justice.
He felt that Nimue had been amply avenged.
‘Should she be told of her birth when she is older?’ Gallwyn asked him. ‘The tale might cause her pain, but someone else will certainly inform her of the fate of her birth mother one day.’
‘Of course she must be told,’ Gruffydd retorted. ‘But we should wait until she can fully understand, and we should give the girl her mother’s hairpin at that time. Let us hope that she becomes a Celt before that day and has ceased to be a Jutlander.’
‘The blood price you asked for her has surely been paid,’ Gallwyn murmured nervously.
‘Aye. But Nimue is under Artorex’s protection, so I fear for her safety in the years ahead. He has set his seal upon her and she may grow to resent what it represents.’
‘I’ll do my best to guide her along the paths she must travel, Gruffydd, for I’ve a good few years left before I’m done. I’ll raise her right.’
‘At any road, Lord Myrddion has sent word that he and I will ride to Venta Belgarum tomorrow. He is planning Artorex’s strategies, so we must prepare for his next campaign.’
Gallwyn gave a brief shudder. ‘I always hated Venta Belgarum. Uther was like a thin, white slug, and his slime was everywhere. Take care, my friend, for there are rumours among the common folk that Lord Artorex must declare himself High King if he is to fight off this Katigern creature. If he waits too long, a pretender could steal his crown.’
‘That’s the whole trouble,’ Gruffydd responded dourly. ‘At the moment, he doesn’t know where to find the crown, or even if it still exists.’
In hundreds of other rooms throughout the kingdoms, innumerable men dreamed of the sword, the crown and the legacy of Uther Pendragon. Some of these men were honest at heart, while some were almost wholly devoured by lust for power. Some were noble and others were vicious opportunists, for the sword of Uther Pendragon had a lustre and allure that did not depend upon its gems and its blade. The sword was the key to the kingdom, and the crown was a mark of the favour of the old gods.
In the frozen north, King Lot was desperate to find Uther’s sword. He and his family had excellent claims to the throne through his marriage, while his eldest son, Gawayne, was even more likely to win the crowd’s acclaim, for he was a handsome young man with more than his share of natural charm. More importantly, Gawayne was mad for glory and had begged his father to allow him to serve in Artorex’s army.
Artorex had been nonplussed by Prince Gawayne’s open admiration and his total inability to lie. Quixotically, he had sent Gawayne to lead the garrison at Venta Belgarum in the full knowledge that Gawayne would have been urged by both parents to search out Uther’s sword. He had gambled that Myrddion’s best guesses were right and that Uther had hidden the sword elsewhere. Gawayne had indeed searched assiduously for the sword, but it had remained stubbornly elusive.
At first, as Dux Bellorum, Artorex had been unfettered by the absence of the symbols of power, for he was the war chieftain and that role was more powerful than the inherited status of the tribal kings. The Dux Bellorum could demand troops from the tribes and was solely responsible for the shape and outcome of the war.
Artorex was already a king in all but name.
But Gruffydd knew with certainty that Katigern Oakheart had a legitimate claim to the throne of the High King of the Britons through his grandfather. Gruffydd also understood that Vortigern himself would not have approved of the wanton destruction that the barbarians had brought to the east. The White Dragon, a creature of ice and cold, came as predicted and it had spread its wings over the land of the Britons and killed them with its frozen breath.
It remains to be seen if the Red Dragon of Artorex can withstand such an onslaught, Gruffydd thought. The Saxons fear prophecies even more than we do, while Katigern knows our history. He’ll do anything in his power to hinder Myrddion’s search for the sword of Uther Pendragon.
Venta Belgarum was Celt and would remain so until the whole kingdom turned to dust. The High Kings had been crowned in its church, where once a sacred tree had flourished in the days of Druid ascendancy. Venta Belgarum was not the heart of Britain, but it was the blood of the body.
The city was unchanged from Uther’s time, because Artorex kept a strong garrison to combat the Saxons who had refortified the coastline near Anderida. Artorex had chosen Gawayne as leader after seeing the young redhead in battle, as icy and as controlled as Myrddion himself. But off the battlefields, the boy had roguish charm, rash passions and a natural bent for leadership so, in the teeth of objections from Llanwith and Luka, Venta Belgarum had eventually become Gawayne’s charge.
Thus far, Artorex had found no cause to regret his choice. Gawayne may have been subject to his parent’s ambitions, but he was a loyal Celt with a ferocious desire for victory.
When Myrddion and Gruffydd arrived in Venta Belgarum, after several gruelling days on horseback, Gawayne was quick to welcome his visitors. After the usual bowing, scraping and detailed reports, the two men were permitted to rest before preparing for the night’s feasting. Gawayne was determined to impress his noble visitor with his hospitality and planned a night of enforced carousing for his guests.
So, instead of resting, master and servant made use of the afternoon to visit Uther’s erstwhile apartments.
‘These rooms have been tightly sealed since the death of Uther, my Lord,’ Gruffydd reported. ‘To be honest, the servants are terrified of this part of the palace and would refuse to clean it anyway, so we can expect clouds of dust once we are inside.’
‘I’m certain the relics aren’t here but I wish to understand the bishop a little better. It may help me discover what he chose to do with his difficult inheritance.’
Privately, Gruffydd believed that Myrddion was indulging in superstitious nonsense, but his master was very nearly always right when he assessed a situation.
Gruffydd took a long, iron key and inserted it into the great doors to Uther’s private apartments.
The door fittings protested as rusty metal hinges ground against equally rusty supports. The doors seemed jammed, although only six months had elapsed since the entrance was sealed, and both Myrddion and Gruffydd had to use their best efforts to force open the great oak planks. Uther’s servants had obviously neglected his apartments during the period before his death.
With a groaning and a splintering, the doors finally gave way.
‘The stench in this room is foul,’ Myrddion exclaimed. ‘I smell the works of Morgan here.’
I smell something long dead, Gruffydd thought irreverently.
A mantle of dust lay thinly on every surface, and Myrddion drew his finger through a cobweb that masked the entry to Uther’s bedchamber.
‘There’s something evil resting here,’ Myrddion shuddered. ‘I can feel it.’
The great bed with its thick coverlet of fur had been neat
ly made. On one side, to the right, a cushioned stool was placed so the bishop could hear Uther’s confessions. Every corner of the room was hazy with dust motes, a patina of neglect and a miasma of sickness.
But the white furs on the bed had been ruined forever by the remains of a large crow with outstretched wings that was pinned to the bed by long nails. Its skeletal body and empty eye sockets still seemed to shriek with life. With distaste, Myrddion realized that the torn wing feathers around the nails holding its carcass to the bed indicated that the bird had been alive when it was fixed in place. It had been left to starve to death - or to be devoured alive by the rats.
‘What is that, lord?’ Gruffydd whispered, pointing towards a cloth-covered shape across the great window of the bedchamber.
So vast was Uther’s prestige that his window had been constructed of small pieces of imported glass, so that no chill should find entry and attack his old bones. Gruffydd knew the window existed, but now it was completely shrouded by a dusty length of black wool.
‘Pull that blanket down and let in some light,’ Myrddion ordered.
Gruffydd approached the black cloth.
He gripped the fabric, and pulled - and almost screamed with shock.
The corpse of a woman had been nailed to the window frame by her spread-eagled hands and feet so that her remains formed an obscene cross. The rats had left evidence of their presence on the dried corpse and Gruffydd was revolted by this proof of Morgan’s malignancy. Transfixed by the grim scene, Gruffydd realized that the stains on the floor, and a gaping wound in the throat, indicated that the woman had been dead or dying when she had been nailed into position.
‘What sickness is this abomination, lord?’ Gruffydd asked in a whisper.
‘It’s nothing to do with her Druid teachings, and it’s nothing Christian. But it’s all Morgan. I believe she intended to keep Uther’s spirit locked within this chamber forever. She placed the woman to guard the window and used the crow as the vessel for his soul. Then she attempted to have the apartments sealed off for a long, long time.’