by M. K. Hume
‘It’s time to question Luka’s murderers now,’ Artor decided softly, and rose to his feet.
The oak tree selected by Artor to enforce his punishment grew on the very edge of the forest in a place where the prisoners could be clearly seen with the naked eye from the hall in Melandra. The tree was huge; a forest giant from the old days, and Artor marvelled that it remained standing, for the pragmatic Romans regularly destroyed the sacred trees used by the Britons in their religious ceremonies. Always practical and knowledgeable, Myrddion explained that the Roman legate of the garrison had used this same oak to execute those Celts who resisted their new masters, or to torture any unfortunate Druids who were captured alive.
Artor would have shuddered, but he was steeling himself to be stern, implacable and just. The High King was under no misapprehensions: he would order cruel torture and execution in order to extract details of the plot that killed his friend, and he would ensure that even the most obdurate Brigante warrior could not ignore his resolve.
A flag of truce was planted before the oak and its grim, weeping fruit. Myrddion himself approached Melandra and invited all citizens, servants, warriors and aristocrats who loved justice to come forth and witness the High King’s justice.
They came, strong warriors, old men, women, lordlings in their gold and finery, squabbling children and even house slaves, just as Artor had predicted.
‘Kill us!’ the two ragged mercenaries begged the crowd from the tree. ‘We are Brigante; we are loyal servants of the people while the bastard Artor is an ill-begotten, bloody despot who keeps the people poor. He will torture us for our patriotism. For love of the goddess of war, kill us now and be merciful!’
Some of the crowd rumbled in agreement, but most of the warriors present had either ridden with Llanwith’s cavalry or had stood at the shield wall at Mori Saxonicus. They knew, beyond any doubt, that every piece of gold given by the tribes had paid for weapons, food for the bellies of the warriors and as reparation to the widows of the dead. Brows furrowed and many men would have walked away if Artor had not ordered them to stay.
‘Your king, Luka, was my mentor and my friend. The Brigante are honoured by the legends of the three travellers, of whom even the smallest children have heard. For forty years, as prince and king, Luka slew Saxons in bloody campaigns across our lands, and kept you safe in your fine homes. How did he warrant what was done to him? Look on your king that was, and bear witness to the type of death he was given after forty years of service to the Brigante tribe and the Celtic peoples.
Myrddion had laboured to reassemble the rotting corpse of his old friend and had laid him under a length of fine cloth. The smell of death was a sickly prelude to the obscenity that Artor revealed to the gaze of the crowd, nail holes and all.
‘People of Melandra, I ask you to walk past your erstwhile king, and remember his father, remember his sons; remember your pride in Brigante courage, in the salvation of the realm, and then look at what King Luka’s sacrifices have earned him. Look!’
Under his stare, most of the citizens that were present filed past the bier, some out of curiosity but most out of fear. Several warriors laid an earring, a cloak pin, a ring or some other treasured possession on the livid skin of the mutilated body, and women laid flowers, but many citizens looked at the body and seemed utterly unmoved. Simnel was conspicuous by his absence and remained inside Melandra, under the protective cloak of fifty loyal warriors.
Once the citizens had viewed Luka’s corpse, Artor began his interrogation of the assassins.
‘Who paid you? How much were you given, and what were your orders?’ Artor demanded of the two men as they hung by their wrists with their feet barely touching the ground. Unsupported as they were, the stress on their chest muscles was agonizing.
But twisted faces, panted breathing and laboured curses were the only replies that the two Brigante warriors gave to Artor’s questions.
‘Odin! Prepare to crucify them! And, while you do so, you will put out their eyes, for they have no right to look upon the sun and this fair land that they have betrayed. Remember King Luka and the laughter he gave us so generously.’
Odin began his preparations, but the assassins still refused to speak. Throughout that long and blood-soaked day, ever-increasing measures of pain were inflicted upon the bodies of the miscreants and, although many citizens were sickened and turned away, still more watched the atrocities committed with ghoulish appreciation.
The felons were hung on different sides of the great trunk where they were unable to see each other or to take comfort from shared pain. Nails were driven through their wrists and ankle bones. Their fingers were removed, as were their toes, their ears and their noses. Only when hot spearheads were applied to the bleeding bodies did the men finally break, and confess those details of the plot of which they were aware.
Afterwards, Artor showed the population that he could also be a merciful king.
‘Honour should go to these warriors, dogs as they are! They’ve proved their courage and their loyalty to their cowardly master, Simnel, who has not lifted one finger to save them, or even fire off an arrow shot that would kill them and release them from their pain. They earned the right to die as warriors, for all that I’ve been forced to lose a friend I loved. Release them, Odin!’
The Jutlander beheaded them at once.
The crowd sighed.
‘People of Melandra, do I leave you to the rule of Simnel and his fellow conspirators, rather than Luka’s grandson, who has been spared with the help of his loyal servants? Tell me what you want. I’d be loath to cut Brigante lands from the union of kings and leave you to fight alone next summer when the Jutes and Angles pour out of Eburacum, Cataractonium and Petuaria, but you may be sure that I will leave you to your fate if you wish to follow the usurper. I’ll sign no treaties with a man who murdered my friend.’
The crowd stirred as if a sudden gust of wind had caught them unawares. Faces paled, for no sensible man could be ignorant of what breaking the union would mean. Those warriors who had fought at Eburacum remembered the threat of Katigern Oakheart and decided Simnel’s fate, as Artor had known they would.
That night, Brigante hands delivered the usurper and his co-conspirators to Artor. Those men who confessed to their part in the plot were granted a speedy, painless execution, and their wives and children were permitted to keep his land and property, so that the children did not suffer for the sins of the fathers.
But Simnel received justice in full measure.
Artor had to fight against his own rage day and night. Of the murderers involved in the assassination, Luka’s cousin was the least fortunate in his fate. Simnel was hung on the door of the great hall of Melandra with the same nails that had impaled Luka thrust through his quivering and still-living flesh. He was then left on the door to die.
The ordinary folk were completely overawed by Artor, who came each morning to speak to the dying man. The mouth of Luka’s cousin was parched with thirst, and his wounds were festering and black with flies. As he suffered, the High King took his ease and recounted to the traitor his memories of Luka. Although Simnel screamed, gibbered and begged, he was forced to live until his body could no longer endure.
For subtle cruelty, Artor could almost be Uther Pendragon’s superior.
When the unfortunate man died, his body was cut down and left for the dogs on the hall’s midden heap. Then, with Luka’s grandson firmly installed upon his father’s throne, Artor and his warriors disappeared like the cold wind of winter that had brought them to Luka’s lands.
But they left few friends in their wake.
In the months that followed, the use of Luka’s name was forbidden within Artor’s hearing, but Myrddion and Targo would laugh as they recalled Luka’s irrepressible spirit, his bright irony and his gift with a blade. They were comforted by their memories, even as they remembered his sardonic, irreverent joy. But Artor was bereft. Targo and Myrddion exchanged worried glances, but neither man
was prepared to voice the sudden reality of what had been vague fears for the king’s well-being only a few months previously.
To the entire Celtic population, the message from Artor was unmistakable. To harm any person under the protection of the High King would bring inevitable retribution and merciless justice would prevail.
‘Our people are fortunate that Artor’s loyalty extends across the whole of our nation, for the tribes would have disintegrated years ago without the enforcement of his commands,’ Myrddion said to Targo with great earnestness.
Targo’s eyes were hooded, and his old man’s mouth was pinched with regret.
‘When you make a weapon, friend Myrddion, it should serve your will,’ he said softly. ‘When you make a man, he should serve his own will. We were arrogant, my brother, for Artorex wasn’t meant to be any man’s weapon.’
Myrddion winced. ‘He was all we had. And I would use him again if the circumstances were the same.’
‘Would you?’ Targo asked earnestly. ‘Truly?’
‘Probably. Just as I believe you would batter Artor into unconsciousness a thousand times to prevent him from sharing Gallia’s fate at the Villa Poppinidii. Even now, you’d do the same to save him if you had the muscle for it.’
‘Aye,’ Targo whispered. ‘Nothing really changes where the heart is concerned.’
Or the mind, Myrddion thought dismally.
But changes in the fortunes of a nation, coupled with extremes in human ambitions, can bring years of bad luck that seem to have no ending, or so it appears to those suffering mortals who experience these travails.
Artor’s trials were just beginning.
CHAPTER XVI
CONTAGION
Later, no one could, or would, say who brought the contagion to the population of Cadbury. Traders were considered the most likely source of transmission of the disease, for their travels took them to a variety of locations, both clean and unclean, throughout the land. These men came to Artor’s western fortress because it had become a centre for the exchange of luxury goods, grain, mead, honey and the many varieties of pasture meats that were smoked and dried against the long sea voyages to the continent, and even to glittering Constantinople.
The disease found its way through every nook and cranny in stone, wood and thatch. It struck indiscriminately and without pity. When most of Gallia’s family had died of plague in Aquae Sulis so many years before, money and power were no protection against the steady and inexorable march of an illness that led to death or infirmity.
A fever was the first symptom suffered. In the early stages, it did not seem severe, but it proved to be debilitating. Then, within a few days, the patients found that their flesh was covered with sores, particularly under the arms and in the folds of the body. Then came delirium, and contagions of the lung, followed by death.
Even Myrddion, with all his learning, was powerless to halt this strange, alien disease that sapped the strength, and then the will, to survive.
Remembering Ector’s quarantine of the Villa Poppinidii, Artor sealed off the tor completely from the outside world.
Soldiers manned a series of barricades that prevented travellers, petitioners and pilgrims from climbing the hill leading to the palace on Cadbury Tor. The inhabitants of the tor were told that, if they journeyed outside of the quarantined area, they would not be readmitted.
In Cadbury town, the houses of those afflicted were locked up or, on some dire occasions, burned to the ground. The High King knew that new houses could be built, but the terminally ill had no magical route to return to the land of the living.
Insensitive as always, Wenhaver complained pointedly and publicly about the stink of funeral pyres and burning homes. She bewailed the boredom of her isolated life until Artor fled from her as if she was the source of the contagion. Then she began to regale anyone who cared to listen with tales of her husband’s abandonment.
Perhaps if Wenhaver had become pregnant, her selfish, childish ways would have passed as an aberration of her youth. But fate had rendered her sterile, a state in which she was secretly pleased, for she feared to lose her trim waist and soft round breasts in the birthing of new life. She remained obstinately uninterested when Artor spoke of the need for progeny, never considering for one moment that the High King could still dispose of her if she failed to provide an heir to the throne of the Britons. Her belief in her father’s influence over the High King remained irrationally strong. Inevitably, the situation created an argument of epic proportions between husband and wife in the first weeks of Cadbury’s baptism of fire with disease.
Wenhaver spoiled a relatively pleasant evening by complaining of her boredom after Artor had rolled away from her willing flesh and was considering whether or not to sleep in her over-soft bed.
‘There is absolutely nothing to do, Artor. I can’t go riding, and one can only sew a certain number of samplers before tedium sets in. You won’t permit strangers to visit us, and I can’t even call for my robe maker.’
Artor considered her flower-like face with hooded, untrusting eyes.
‘Would you prefer to catch a disease where you’d swell with festering sores, vomit up green slime and then choke to death?’ He lifted one of her hands and examined its pink perfection. ‘If not, I’d suggest you continue to weave or spin. Of course, you may well develop callouses on your beautiful hands with unaccustomed work.’
‘Don’t be horrid, Artor,’ Wenhaver snapped. ‘I just don’t like sitting here doing nothing day after dreary day, and I don’t want to slave like a peasant.’
‘Since you haven’t borne sons for me, then perhaps you could serve some usefulness by collecting worn or unused cloth or rags for those townsfolk who are dying. If you can’t become a mother, then perhaps you could become a queen.’
Artor’s comments took Wenhaver’s breath away, as well they might. Secretly, although she wanted no children to thicken her narrow waist or cover her clean flanks with stretch marks, the inability to bear a child was a wrench. She was used to being feted for her appearance, her style and her feminine perfection, and she was mortified that she had remained childless.
‘Don’t blame me, Artor,’ she snapped and bit hard on her thumbnail until it tore.
‘There are young men at Cadbury who have been sired by me, and several of my daughters are approaching marriageable age. I would seem to be potent. But before you accuse me of shaming you, I have refrained from bedding any willing women since I made my wedding vows.’
Artor’s bastards were the last straw for Wenhaver. She knew of Artor’s sexual prowess, of course, as did every person on Cadbury Tor, but to boast of his infidelity? She threw her silver brush at him, conveniently forgetting that an unmarried king may sow his seed wherever he chooses.
‘I hate you,’ she hissed, and Artor shrugged as he climbed out of her bed.
‘I take it you are choosing celibacy rather than further physical congress with me. After all, my efforts seem to bear little fruit in your eager body.’
Naturally, Wenhaver had meant no such thing. The pleasures of the bed were a great solace that bound two otherwise incompatible people together. And now her husband was offering an even greater insult than sneers at her childlessness. He was suggesting that he had only bedded her to get her with child in the first place.
How could she answer him, even if she had been able to control her rage? Wenhaver could never beg him to share her bed without admitting that she desired him. Worse still, how could she confess her mortification that she was unable to carry the son that Artor craved? She felt like a royal joke.
Wenhaver could have wept with misery.
Artor was ashamed of his cruel response to her childless condition. The queen was still under twenty and he understood her days had been wearisome in recent times. After chiding himself for the whole morning, he approached Wenhaver’s rooms to apologize.
What he found in her apartment made his blood boil.
Wenhaver had joined her ladies else
where in the king’s house but, as Artor turned to leave the disordered apartment, a rustle of clothing halted him in his tracks. In the belief that a thief had somehow penetrated the security of the tor, Artor drew his knife. Then Myrnia, who was curled into as small a ball as possible on the floor, screamed aloud when she saw his shadow.
‘What are you doing on the floor, Myrnia? Heavens, child! I could have stabbed you by accident.’ Then Artor’s eyes flared with shock. ‘Who has done this thing, Myrnia? I order you to tell me!’
Myrnia tried to cry but one eye was damaged, torn and bleeding sluggishly. The lid was almost ripped away, while her nose was raggedly sliced on the same side, and her nostril was torn in the outer corner. Her mouth had received a similar wound.
Even with the ministrations of a skilled healer, Artor knew that the girl was scarred for life.
‘Who did this, Myrnia? I swear that they will be punished.’
Her head turned carefully, for Myrnia was in obvious pain.
‘No, my lord, even you cannot save me.’ Her one good eye was full of tears, and her wounds were slowly oozing blood.
‘The queen did this terrible thing to you, didn’t she? Answer!’ Artor’s mouth twisted with shame, for he knew that he must share some of Wenhaver’s guilt, for he had provoked his wife to anger.
‘What did she use to cause these wounds?’
Myrnia opened her hand and a simple, elegant object lay on her palm, marked obscenely with a smear of the servant girl’s blood at the tip. A small, beautifully carved, bone handle held a very thin but sturdy length of silver as long as Myrnia’s palm. At its very tip was a simple, blunt hook. Myrnia had been attacked with a tool used for hooking and twisting strands of wool.