The Forgotten Kingdom

by Signe Pike

  The hands were gone. Their humming had ceased, and the silence stirred her.

  Then Eachna’s voice came. “Open your eyes, little bird.”

  Slowly, slowly, the women helped Angharad to sit. The temple felt watchful. Beyond the thatched roof, high overhead, the night sky was breathing.

  Angharad felt the reed matting beneath her skirts, her legs stretched out before her. She felt the priestesses gathered round in the sort of stillness that follows a great storm.

  “Open your eyes, little bird,” Eachna said again. “You have been dreaming, don’t you see? Only now are you coming awake.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Lailoken

  Tutgual’s Fortress at Clyde Rock

  Kingdom of Strathclyde

  13th of April, AD 574

  The currachs moved silently through the night water.

  The sky was moonless as the tide traveled inland. The wind was at our backs, pushing us closer to the behemoth black rock.

  Eira had found her way to Languoreth. I did not know how. But now I knew she was safe. She had sworn she would wait.

  So now, I must live.

  We’d sharpened our swords and readied our spears. Fendwin had polished his dirk. I watched Artùr coil and uncoil his rope three times about him now, as if for luck, securing his grappling hook at the back of his hip.

  We’d been preparing for the raid for several days, and that sort of thing tended to bond men completely. Perhaps it was because the Dragon Warriors and the men of Mannau were more alike than we were different. We both believed wit and brawn were of equal importance. I’d grown fond of the way the Scots got things done.

  “I always thought the cliff looked great fun to climb. ’Tis a shame you have to do it in the dark. The view from the top is magnificent,” I said.

  I thought Artùr allowed a hint of a smile, though I could make out only the whites of his eyes. He and his men had painted their faces to merge with the rock. “Next time, perchance,” he said.

  Ten men to climb and overtake the might of a fortress. But one hundred more were divided between these eight small currachs and the rest of Aedan’s fleet, awaiting our signal a short distance out in the firth. By the time Artùr and his men reached the cliff top, it would not yet be daybreak, but Strathclyde’s sky would blaze with our own brand of fire. Artùr and his men would steal into the uppermost level of the fortress and set the roof of Tutgual’s great hall alight.

  This is how our raid would begin.

  I’d watched Artùr train as our men tarred the currachs black. He was deadly with his blade. His spear throws toppled targets. He excelled at swimming, bested his brothers in footraces and in hand fighting, and had committed several good poems to memory (which he recited with reverence when given enough drink). Not to mention he’d grown up climbing the crags of Mannau’s cliffside fortress for fun, so he could pick his way up a sheer rock face as if he weighed little more than a feather.

  I’d gladly try my hand at fatherhood were I guaranteed a boy such as Artùr.

  It seemed to defy both fairness and reason, but Aedan’s five sons were all rather like that. The king of Mannau, his lands pressed by enemies on every side, had bred a strange race of godlike warriors.

  Rhys came to mind. I turned to look out over the black sheen of water.

  Aye. But there is the difference, I thought. Rhys excelled at weapons, but he did not favor war. Artùr thrilled for it.

  This was the difference between life or death.

  I heard the low murmurs of warriors praying to their gods, but I had not returned to mine yet. I was not yet ready.

  “Ho, now, we’ve drawn close enough,” I said.

  We drew water with our oars, easing the boats beneath the trees overhanging the river. Now was the time for the climbers to disembark. The tide would carry them upriver as they swam.

  Aedan rested his hand upon his son’s curly head. “Artùr, take care.”

  “Aye,” Artùr said. His deep voice was calm.

  I watched as he and his men slipped over the edge of the currach into the frigid, salty water. The cold would burn, make their bodies seize up. But their strokes were sure and silent as they made their way across the expanse, disappearing from sight as they neared the base of the rock. We had spoken many times about what would come next.

  Grip your way up the vertical face that rises above the river Leven.

  At the top of the cliff, use your grapple to pull yourself up, over the rampart.

  The grass below will be soft and thick—they will not hear you land. Here are the kitchens, the well, the smithy, and two guard huts. Silence the lookouts first. Then on to the hall.

  A scattering of men will be asleep in the dark, drunk on mead. You must be quick, or their death cries will raise the alarm. There will be oil lamps and torches. Light the thatching of the hall.

  Tutgual’s men will come racing up from below to put out the flames.

  The fire will signal Aedan’s fleet. The fire will signal us, waiting in the small patch of wood.

  Two men must unbolt the outermost gate.

  We will be there, knocking. Let us come in.

  The climb was our only uncertainty. So we waited in our patch of trees to rush the lower gate, our currachs pulled ashore and hidden with brush.

  The stars faded. Just as first light was threatening to dawn, I saw it.

  Fire licked crisply across the thatched roof of the hall, carried on the wind. We listened for cries of alarm from the guards.

  “Steady…” Aedan’s whisper was hoarse. And then he said, “Now!”

  Beyond Clyde Rock, his fleet was racing through the water.

  We crouched low as we ran our way through the wood. Then we lifted our shields, bursting through the forest and into the clear expanse.

  A watchman’s warning was garbled as Artùr appeared on the platform behind him and slit the man’s throat. I watched as the guard dropped, thudding lifeless on the grass. Tutgual’s men would have heard the alarm from below. I did not envy them the moment they realized their fate.

  “Quickly,” I called to the men. “They’ve made it down to the gate!”

  The clash of swords rang through the fiery dark, and suddenly I was thrust back into Arderydd. There—wasn’t that Gwenddolau’s war cry? There I stood, praying Angharad made it safely to the warriors below. There I crouched, holding Rhys as his body gasped and choked.

  I did not have to summon it. Battle rage came upon me. I only obeyed it. Yanking my sword from its sheath, I charged the gate with a yell as the men of Mannau opened it from within.

  I nodded to Artùr and his foster brother, Cai, as they stepped back from the gate, slashing my sword into the weak place between shoulder and neck of the first guard I saw.

  Blood spattered my armor. The guard screamed in pain.

  He looked at my face. I saw recognition dawn before the light left his eyes.

  “Aye, Lailoken!” I shouted. Come! Test me. Who would die next?

  Blood after blood.

  You. Eat my blade. Choke upon my justice.

  My hands were slick with blood upon the oar, but we rowed swift and steady, powering the currach as one while we looked back at Clyde Rock. Black smoke billowed. The ramparts were painted in blood. I had raced up to the hall, even as it burned, in search of Tutgual’s body. The king’s chamber lay empty. But it did not so much matter.

  Soon Stratchlyde and beyond would hear of our raid.

  Or, rather, the raid of Aedan mac Gabrahn. For it was right that the fame should belong to Aedan.

  I would not be remembered. No man of Tutgual’s had lived to tell the tale.

  And as the bewildered villagers from the settlements along the water stood safely on shore, the wind picked up. The men of Mannau hoisted their sails. There was no mistaking the fleet of Aedan mac Gabhran. Aedan journeyed on to win the throne of the kingdom of Dalriada from his brother, Eoganan. Now he claimed two kingdoms, Mannau, and Dalriada in the west. The battles
of Aedan and his men had only just begun.

  But Arderydd had been answered. And Gwenddolau’s breath came like a sigh.

  Aye. Rest now, brother. It has been done, I told him. Now your spirit may at last dwell in peace.

  IV.

  AD 580

  CHAPTER 34

  Languoreth

  Fortress on Clyde Rock

  Kingdom of Strathclyde

  2nd of June, AD 580

  “Tell me the story of how you came to be Tutgual’s wife.”

  I stood with Elufed on the exposed black shoulder of rock below the guard hut, looking out over foamy whitecaps on a gloomy summer sea. In the six years since the raid, the hall and huts had been rebuilt. June was proving a farce of summer, and we were wrapped in our cloaks. Soon the whip of wind would penetrate wool, skin, and bone, and we would be forced to return to the dimly lit hall, where the air was close, smelling of sickness.

  Tutgual was ailing. He had never ailed before. But I had learned never to hope.

  Elufed’s eyes were a reflection of the water, churning and gray. The queen did not care to speak of her childhood. In fact, she seldom had. But there was something to this day—the wet smell of kelp and soil and salt, this sloping rock where we so often stood, a place apart, where no one else might see or hear.

  The swans had returned.

  And I had seen a nostalgia in her eyes when she looked upon her husband, helpless and prone, the papery skin of his cheeks scarlet with fever.

  “I was a child in a place of dreaming,” she began. “And my mother a woman of great wisdom and import. I never knew my father. It was like that, among women. Men did not matter. If a woman wanted a child, she took a lover—sometimes a warrior, sometimes a king. And then one day a Briton came upon horseback with a torque upon his neck. I did not speak his tongue, but I knew him for a lord, and I could tell from his eyes he was looking for my mother. His eyes were hungry and vacant as a ghost’s. He was searching to discover who he might become. I led him to our settlement, and he stayed for three nights. When the man departed, my mother sent me with him.”

  “And you went of free will?”

  “Not precisely.”

  I did not want to imagine. I did not want to press. So I asked instead, “Did you not wonder about your father?”

  “Tutgual became my father—he became all things. Father, husband, lord. And I knew, if I wished to survive, I must become all things to him. And so I have done. Perhaps you find that strange.”

  “I do not think it strange,” I said. “I quite understand.”

  “There was a yellow-haired guard who smiled kindly upon me,” she mused. “One of my mother’s lovers. But he rode off to war and never returned. Another guard came in his place. Always it was so.”

  Elufed fell quiet, and I knew that was all of her story I would have on this day. Perhaps someday the queen would say more.

  “I must return to the hall and look to my husband,” she said.

  “Of course. And Rhydderch will soon be arriving from Partick. I’ll stay awhile longer and watch for his boat.”

  Elufed nodded. She took a few paces, then turned. “Yes. Stay out awhile, Languoreth. The sea air truly does you much good. It is easy out here, to think of what one might become.”

  Elufed’s eyes held mine. It was a look another would not notice.

  I watched her wind her way down the path, past the old well and the kitchen house, and climb the steps to the place where the great timber hall stood proud upon the hill.

  I puzzled over her meaning. What one might become?

  I thought of the old king, his lungs laboring with fluid, his priests burning camphor and letting his blood. He asked me for a remedy some days ago, though he sent his priests to watch me prepare it. Ever shrewd, he was, and the mixture had done him some good—even his men of Christ had said as much. They could not know how my fingers yearned to pinch from my little jar of nightshade.

  I could not be blamed now, if his health should falter.

  Now his queen bade me linger while she went inside, and I understood what Elufed meant to do. I was not the only woman on Clyde Rock with knowledge of plants.

  I had waited so long to take Tutgual’s life.

  But Tutgual’s life was not mine to take.

  Death took the king swiftly; he dropped first into a sleep. It was a gentler end than he deserved. But his queen—though stone on the outside—possessed a kind heart.

  Rhydderch had been the king’s chosen tanist. It was a strong motion in his favor, but it would not make him king. Now the Council of Strathclyde sat shut within the great room of the hall on Clyde Rock, deciding our fate.

  The boats had been ceaseless as the petty kings and chieftains, Wisdom Keepers and priests of the council, came from all across Strathclyde to view the body of the king. It was not to be removed until the new king had been chosen. The deliberation lasted less than one day.

  “It shall be Rhydderch,” the queen assured me. “It was always meant to be.”

  I looked worriedly at Rhian, who was sitting beside me. But she was not distraught at the thought of Morcant being passed over. Rather, her blue eyes filled with hope as she turned to me. “When you are made queen, I wish to join a nunnery. Make it so, Languoreth. I cannot abide another day.”

  I reached for her hand. When the doors of the great room opened, we stood. Elufed stepped back.

  The councilmen flooded out, departing while the tide was yet favorable. But not before stopping before me and inclining their heads.

  Bowing to their queen.

  I blinked, disbelieving, as if stepping into sun.

  Had this not been the plan of so many since I was a child? Cathan and Ariane. My father. Elufed. Now, at forty winters, I was at last queen.

  As each petty king or chieftain, Wisdom Keeper or priest, stepped near—meeting my eyes, bowing his head—the meaning of my position dawned with more light. Their eyes filled with a constellation of feelings as each looked at me.

  Already it had begun. For they wished me to see precisely what they thought of me. Admiration. Resignation. Happiness. Hesitation.

  I—Languoreth of Cadzow—was the new queen of Strathclyde.

  There is no ceremony in Strathclyde for a woman who becomes queen.

  I stood on a platform before a sea of people at the Gathering Place in Partick, not beside Rhydderch but watching from a short distance away.

  We were both dressed in the purple reserved for only the most noble to wear.

  Rhydderch swore his oaths to Christ and the land with great feeling under the watchful eyes of Father Natan. The torque of Tutgual was fixed upon his neck.

  The torque of Elufed was clasped upon mine. But I swore no oaths.

  It was not always that way. Long ago, among the Britons, there were tribes who called queens their main sovereign. It was they and they alone who made pacts with the Gods. That was before the Romans came. By the time I was born, queens were wives of kings.

  But that did not mean we did not have power.

  I swore no oaths. It didn’t trouble me; in fact, I found it quite freeing. For though I was queen, I was somehow less bound.

  And I knew precisely where my allegiance lay.

  After all the feasting and the toasting and the dancing and the smiling—oh, the smiling that must be done!—we slept as if we had been craving sleep for winters.

  The next day, we when we woke, we took breakfast in our chamber, just Rhydderch and me.

  His gray eyes were happy and touched on me with pride. “Yours is the first petition I shall hear as king,” Rhydderch said with a gentle bow of his head. It was not like him to be playful. I was not quite sure what to do.

  “Are you quite certain you are prepared?” I asked.

  “I know to whom I am wed.” He smiled. But then he reached for my hand. “Tell me what you think needs righting before we begin.”

  “Very well,” I said. “I would first speak about Morcant.”

  �
�Aye. You will be pleased that even I do not think it wise to keep him in Strathclyde, but I have not yet decided what I should do.”

  “I have given it some thought. Morcant is bullish, and his retinue strong warriors. He delights in fighting—so I would say put him to good use. Strife continues with Bernicia in the east. Why not arrange a marriage between Morcant and a daughter of the Gododdin?”

  “Morcant is already wed,” he said.

  “He is a danger to you here in Strathclyde. Who knows when he might try to come against you? And Rhian has been unable to give him any children. You are too shrewd a man to be blind to her bruises. Busy him with adversaries and find him another wife. One more suited to his temperament.”

  “I do not think he will set her aside.”

  “Rhian wishes only to enter the church. Surely, if Morcant knows no other shall have her…? I have heard Caw’s youngest daughter is strong-minded, and of course her father is a Christian chieftain of both wealth and good influence. He will approve of Morcant—it is a powerful match to be aligned with the brother of the king. And Caw is loyal to Strathclyde. He would never betray you.”

  I could feel his mind turning. “Please, Rhydderch,” I said softly. “I fear he may kill her.”

  He pushed away his plate. “Then there is nothing to consider. It will be done.”

  “Thank you, my king.” I exhaled in relief.

  “And the next?”

  “I should very much like to keep Torin as captain of my guard.”

  “Very well. I approve. But he must select double again the number of men who now guard you, and those warriors shall be subject to my approval. It is important you are safe,” he said. “You are beloved by half the people and disfavored by the other because you are crossways of their god.”

  “That I know,” I said.

  And then Rhydderch straightened. “And now, I think, you would ask me about your brother.”