King Arthur: Dragon's Child: Book One (King Arthur Trilogy 1)

by M. K. Hume

  Artorex was looking determinedly upwards as he ran, for he could hear cries of frustration and the muffled sound of Gawayne’s crude and imaginative swearing at the top of the stairway.

  Artorex and Gruffydd emerged through a large, open hole in the flooring at the top of the steps. They found themselves in a circular space with a high, crudely constructed roof.

  Gawayne looked over his shoulder at the two men as they clambered into the turret. His face was a study of mingled rage and chagrin.

  Then, before they could join him inside the tower, he made one more leap towards the curving wall.

  A tongue of metal protruded from the stone blocks of the tower.

  It was the tang of a hilt-less sword.

  Gawayne was a strong and well-built young man. Ygerne, Uther’s queen, was his grandmother and the fair Morgause was his mother. His father, King Lot, now run to fat with advancing age, had been a large and burly man, but neither Gawayne nor his father stood near to six feet tall.

  The tang was at least one foot beyond the reach of Gawayne.

  Gruffydd understood why Gawayne was so red-faced and angry. To leap as this young man had done, while stretching his fingers to their maximum reach, risked plunging to certain death through the hole in the wooden floor.

  But Gawayne could not reach the tang that was so tantalizingly close. He could almost touch the blade, but it remained just beyond his reach. And there was no object in the tower that could help him to overcome his lack of height.

  During his short life, Gawayne had heard tales of the murder of Gorlois. His Aunt Morgan had told him, again and again, of the unfairness of all that had befallen the family and that the crown truly belonged to the descendants of the Boar of Cornwall. The young man firmly believed that the finding of Uther’s sword was a blood debt that was owed to his kin.

  But it remained a few inches beyond the reach of his questing fingers.

  ‘Step aside!’ Artorex ordered imperiously.

  Gruffydd considered, irrelevantly, how Artorex could so easily have earned Gawayne’s life-long enmity had he added the words ‘little man’ to his command.

  He recalled the welcome given to Artorex by Lucius.

  ‘You have grown tall,’ the priest had stated unsmilingly.

  Gruffydd found himself grinning at the old man’s ingenuity. This priest was Roman through and through - their race had not ruled the world because they were fools.

  Unlike Gawayne, Artorex had not been raised as the son of a tribal king. Nor did Artorex accept the strictures of the Roman way of life. For him, there was no glory in raising his right hand, almost hesitantly, and gripping the tang with his strong, work-hardened fingers.

  ‘This burden is not for you, Gawayne,’ he told the angry youth gently. ‘Truly, I wish it were yours to take - but it is not.’

  And then Artorex pulled down with all his strength, feeling the unmortared steel slide out of its stone sheath with the long hiss of an angry dragonlet.

  He held its chill length in both hands before him and gazed at his fate with regretful eyes.

  Gruffydd knelt on the dusty floor.

  ‘My king!’ he stated reverently.

  His thoughts were of the clever Lucius, a priest who had gambled the destiny of a kingdom on a man he had not seen since he was a three-day-old babe. The bishop had wagered everything on the chance that the son would inherit the stature of his father.

  Gawayne also knelt on the accumulated dirt of the floor in full obeisance to Artorex.

  ‘My liege,’ he whispered.

  But the young man’s face was twisted with the bitter taste of his failure.

  Gripping the blade in his left hand, Artorex extended his right hand to assist Gawayne to his feet.

  ‘You will never have to kneel to me, cousin. I understand only too well how deep is your family’s hatred of my father and, perhaps, of me. I would feel the same rage were I in your shoes, for Uther used every means imaginable to take what he desired, without remorse or conscience. If you believe nothing else of me, you must accept that I hated him just as deeply as you or yours ever could.’

  Gawayne looked suspiciously into Artorex’s unshuttered eyes as he stumbled to his feet. The grey irises were no longer flat and unreadable. Some trace of Morgan’s gifts told Gawayne that this man really did not want the kingship, but that he was harried by the demons of his blood towards a fate that would be neither fair nor kind.

  Gawayne shuddered. ‘I believe you, my king, and I pledge to you that I will be your man from this moment on. I am yours to command.’

  ‘Then my first command to you is to remember, in those times when you are happiest with your friends and your family, that this burden will probably make me the loneliest man in the west.’ Artorex looked at the sword once more as if the weapon was a living, venomous serpent. ‘Come, nephew, we have work to commence.’

  Turning to Myrddion’s spy, Artorex smiled conspiratorially.

  ‘And you also, Gruffydd. For you are now my sword bearer.’

  With a casual disregard for the destiny he held in his hands, Artorex tossed the sword of Britain to Gruffydd, who barely caught it before it could tumble down the stairwell.

  CHAPTER XXI

  THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM

  By the time Artorex’s band of men left Glastonbury, the Dux Bellorum was thoroughly irked by the unsought honours he was forced to accept. Myrddion, Luka and Lucius treated him as they always had, but every priest, monk and villager, not to mention Gawayne’s bodyguard, bowed so low whenever he approached them that he rarely had the opportunity to gaze upon their faces. Even before he left that hallowed place, Artorex was feeling solitary and uncomfortable.

  He refused to partake in a celebratory banquet, preferring a simple meal with his fellows of bread, cheese, fine ham and fruit. Nor did he want the potent cider made by the monks in this sacred enclave. Rather, he preferred the exceptional water of Glastonbury, filtered in the earth through the ages until its purity was like balm to his angry, tortured soul. He had a dislike for the crown, and Lucius’s assurances that it had been cleansed by the waters of the pool didn’t appease him.

  As usual, it was Myrddion who found a way to resolve Artorex’s stubbornness.

  ‘Do you have among your holy men a worker who is skilled in shaping precious metals?’ he asked Lucius.

  ‘Aye. The man who reforged the sword is a Jew who is knowledgeable in those arts.’

  The men at Lucius’s table were shocked for, while the whole world knew that the Jews were the acknowledged masters of working with precious metals and gems, a Hebrew at a monastery such as Glastonbury was tantamount to a Roman king of the Saxons.

  ‘His Jewish name was Simeon, but we at Glastonbury have always called him Simon. He is a Christian now and has come to this land expressly to follow in the footsteps of his Lord.’

  He looked around the assembled group.

  ‘I see by your faces that you consider his race accursed, but the Lord Jesus was also a Jew, so how could I bar Simon from the monastic life he craved? Simon is skilled in the use of herbs and simples, and he can cure many ailments that would normally cause death. Most importantly for your purposes, he is also highly skilled in working with precious metals. For many years, Simon would not use his God-given skills, but preferred to toil in the fields and the orchards, as if only hard, physical labour would expiate some sin in his past. He is now our blacksmith, but his fingers have not lost their cunning. I expect that Simon would make the hilt of Artorex’s sword, if I ask it of him.’

  All the Celts looked doubtful. The Jews were a hated race, although the reason for this loathing was lost in the mists of time. Simply put, Jews were not to be trusted, because the whole world knew they devoured infant children.

  Perhaps we always need someone to bear the brunt of our own shame and anger, Gruffydd thought with sudden insight.

  ‘Then you shall use the earrings, the gold and the jewels in the box I gave you, for they were part of
Uther’s most treasured possessions,’ Myrddion suggested.

  Artorex slammed his simple wooden cup down on the table.

  ‘I’ll not take anything else from that bastard,’ he shouted.

  ‘But, Artorex, my friend, they weren’t his gems,’ Myrddion replied. ‘As far as I can ascertain, the pearwood box contains trophies taken from many of his victims. His servants told me how they saw Uther toying with these gems from time to time, and how he gloated over the souls of those who had stood against him and were, ultimately, defeated. The baubles weren’t his to keep.’

  ‘Then it is possible that these jewels are now the property of Morgan.’ Artorex was adamant, but Myrddion knew he had the better hand in this particular game.

  ‘The earrings belonged to your mother, part of her dowry, according to Lucius’s recollections. She wore them on the night Uther first saw her face.’

  ‘She wore them again on the night you were born, my king,’ Lucius added. ‘How she suffered! Trickery had brought Uther to her bed, she’d seen her husband’s head set on a spear point, she’d been raped by her husband’s murderer and now she was bearing her ill-conceived child. She could so easily have rejected you. Many women would have wanted to have you killed and seen to it long before they came to childbed. But Ygerne carried you to full term, and she placed those gems in her ears when she felt the first birth pangs in the palace of Venta Belgarum.’

  Artorex almost gagged, so deep was his disgust for Uther Pendragon.

  Lucius gazed deeply into the eyes of the new king. ‘Ygerne chose to cleanse those defiled baubles with new life. She knew what Uther would do to her in the years ahead, the daily violent rapes while he was still potent, and the many indignities that she would endure to keep her daughters alive. Perhaps she hoped that you would avenge Gorlois, or nullify the death and suffering that had laid waste to her life. I could not know her mind, but her purpose was pure, for Ygerne is a frail and beautiful soul.’

  Artorex was spellbound, for this was the first time he had been made fully aware of the suffering experienced by his mother.

  ‘I was present at the birthing, Artorex. I had been summoned to assist the king’s confessor, Branicus, who feared Uther above all living creatures. When you were born, poor Ygerne cried out for her baby and she managed to suckle you but once, before Uther ordered the bishop to take you away and expose you to the wind and the snow. I can assure you that she wept most bitterly for her dead son.’

  Lucius paused.

  ‘But Branicus was a true man of God. He couldn’t cast a healthy child upon the snowdrifts and live to sing the Mass or shrive other souls in the confessional. However much he desired to convince Uther Pendragon to embrace Mother Church, he could not, at the last, damn his own soul for what he earnestly believed would bring the greater good. He entrusted your life to me - and the rest you know.’

  ‘Uther’s hand took the earrings from Ygerne’s ears, for all that she begged to be allowed to keep them,’ Myrddion continued the tale gravely. ‘He would not even allow her the solace of memories. The midwife told me so. She had no reason to lie - for Uther had her murdered within the week to still her tongue. I think his madness began when he stole the innocence of Ygerne over her husband’s mutilated corpse. I often saw him toy with those jewels and gloat over them, although I did not understand the evidence of my eyes at that time. He owned far more precious gems, including many baubles that vanished after his death, but not even Morgan dared to gaze upon the objects of Uther’s madness.’

  ‘It is a veritable Pandora’s Box,’ Lucius added to the blank incomprehension of most of the men in the room.

  ‘As you say, Lucius, it’s a Pandora’s Box,’ Myrddion said sadly. ‘But instead of unleashing the ills of humanity on the world, these objects are symbols of defiance, love and the refusal to accept tyranny, even if denial means death.’

  Myrddion examined his hands as if he saw, and smelt, traces of blood still upon them.

  ‘Do not reproach yourself, Myrddion,’ Lucius advised softly, with infinite compassion. ‘You kept the dragon in check as well as any mortal could, and you diverted his worst excesses into useful pathways. Your cunning held the west safe against the Saxons and, most of all, you and your friends wrought Artorex into the man he has become. I am human enough, and sufficiently Roman, to hope that Uther rages at you still from Hades.’

  ‘Very well,’ Artorex said. ‘I accept that my mother’s earrings will shrive the evil from the crown.’

  ‘And the sword?’ Myrddion asked. ‘The chain of power used by Gorlois, the rings, and the bands and torcs of all those nameless men who lost their lives in defiance of Uther should make a hilt for your sword that can cleanse and rejuvenate the weapon. In that way, your hands will always touch clean metal.’

  ‘Yes, the sword as well,’ Artorex replied. ‘You win, old man.’ His temper was still uncertain, but he was now a little mollified. ‘If I’m to accept your advice, I’ll require that the hilt should mirror the pattern of my dragon knife.’ He pulled the weapon from its scabbard and placing it reverently on the scarred wooden table.

  ‘Forgive me, Father Lucius, for baring this blade at holy Glastonbury,’ he added apologetically.

  The bishop smiled his permission and turned to one of his monks.

  ‘Boniface, my friend, please ask Brother Simon to join us. And I would be grateful if you could bring me the pearwood box that lies on the chest in my cell. Thank you, my friend, for sparing the bones of an old man.’

  Artorex marvelled at the grace of the orders given by Lucius, and how tasks were turned into pleasures under his smiling gaze.

  This man would have been a better king than Uther. And he would be better suited to the task than I can be, by far, Artorex thought regretfully.

  ‘My friend, I serve Mother Church, so earthly power is not for me,’ Lucius said as if he had entered the secret compartments of Artorex’s mind. ‘When I was younger, and learned the cost of our losses on the battlefield, I was driven insane. I came to learn that it is only men with great strength and moral courage who can ensure that power does not corrupt. Your path is more difficult than mine, for I am not forced to test my soul with temptation, day after day, for the remainder of my life.’

  Perhaps God has given this priest the ability to read my thoughts, Artorex pondered. I would not be surprised, for his sanctity is certainly beyond doubt.

  Gruffydd had followed the conversation concerning Uther’s relics with interest. He was surprised at the amount of wickedness that the great ones indulged in, and was even more amazed that the common folk never realized that their lords and masters manipulated them. When the crowds cried their acclaim for Uther, they had known that he had been responsible for the murder of the Boar of Cornwall, but they also wanted to believe the romantic nonsense told by the storytellers of Uther’s great passion and how Lord Myrddion had used magic to deliver Ygerne into the High King’s bed.

  The people will believe anything, Gruffydd marvelled to himself. Still, I’m interested to see what a Jew looks like.

  Gruffydd was soon to discover, with some disappointment, that there were only minute differences between Jews and Romans.

  He looks quite ordinary, really, Gruffydd decided as Simon entered, his hands tucked into his homespun sleeves.

  Simeon, or Simon, as Lucius called him, was a blue-jawed, black-eyed man whose face was ruddy from working at the forge. His hands, while heavily calloused, were very delicate. Mostly clean-shaven, unlike many of his race, Simon’s mouth was full and red, and his nose was long and narrow across the nostrils.

  Lucius smiled a greeting towards the Jew.

  ‘Our guest, Lord Artorex, is soon to become the High King of the Britons. He has paid us the honour of requesting a boon from you,’ Lucius said.

  ‘I’ll do anything you ask, Father,’ was the quiet, unemotional reply.

  ‘The sword that you reforged for me needs a hilt that must be made as a match to this dagger, so they beco
me paired pieces, if you like. Can you complete this task, Brother Simon?’

  Brother Simon picked up the dragon dagger with an odd reverence. ‘This is beautiful work, for all that it is wrought in iron. The man who forged this hilt was a master craftsman.’ Simon’s hands ran over the curiously shaped hilt and hand guard with obvious pleasure.

  ‘The maker was a village smith from the fringes of Aquae Sulis,’ Artorex responded with the natural pride of ownership. ‘He felt he owed me a debt, and repaid me with this dagger.’

  ‘Yes, I can make such a hilt. But the sword of a king needs embellishment, as does this beautiful knife,’ Simon stated. ‘I can feel the man in this weapon, for he is an artist, one who understands the fire in the metal.’

  ‘We have “the embellishment”, as you call it,’ Myrddion responded.

  At that point, Brother Boniface returned with the pearwood box balanced delicately on his open hands. At the direction of Lucius, Brother Simon opened the box and inhaled a small breath of appreciation when he saw the contents. Item after item was placed on the rough planks of the table, as the Jew gave a running commentary on the quality of each ornament.

  ‘These earrings are very fine - and weren’t made in these isles. One of my race made these delicate links, and cut these garnets so that their dark beauty is softened. These rings are only large gems in raw gold,’ he continued. ‘They are powerful, but were wrought without any real skill. They were made in the far north. As for this chain and those torcs, they are old, very old, the little honey people shaped them once, but they have been remade, and the perfection of the metal cries out for a noble purpose. Yes, they could make a wondrous hilt for the sword - and also embellish the hilt of the dagger.’

  The men around the table nodded in satisfaction.

  ‘But lords, gold is soft, especially gold as pure as the metal in these objects. Why, this gold is almost red! A hilt and a guard of such a metal would be beautiful, but it would also be dangerous to the bearer of the sword. The first strong blow would carve through the hilt like butter.’ He gazed into the eyes of Artorex. ‘Lord, do you intend to actually use this sword in battle?’