by Paul Finch
The abbot was so impressed that he spread the word, until it reached the ear of his cousin, Earl Corotocus of Clun, who was in search of a medical expert of his own. When Earl Corotocus offered him a post, Zacharius at first resisted. His cell at Titchfield Abbey was different from those of the monks, who were given to asceticism — he had a carpet, a divan, a roaring fire, tapestries on his walls, shelves lined with books. Compared with this luxury, life in a military environment was not so attractive. But, of course, there were still certain things that Zacharius could not have at Titchfield, which Earl Corotocus could provide in abundance, primarily wine, women and song.
For these reasons alone, and no others, he finally joined the earl's household. Of course, not everybody approved.
"Why are you preparing your infirmary in the open air?" Father Benan wondered.
On Zacharius's instruction, servants had now helped Henri move barrels of water and sacks of grain from several outhouses in the central courtyard in order to make space for beds, though these outhouses were little more than straw-thatched shelters with neither walls nor doors to keep out drafts.
Zacharius glanced up from where he'd laid out a central table and was in the process of arraying his instruments. "My dear Benan, the rooms in this fortress are noisome and stuffy…"
"It's Father Benan," the priest interrupted.
Zacharius smiled to himself. "If any patients are admitted to my infirmary while we're here, Father Benan, the best thing they can have is fresh air."
"But it's only March. And it's cold."
"In which case we bed them with warm blankets and place braziers filled with hot coals alongside them."
Benan chewed his lip uncertainly. He was a youngish man, but plump, with a pink face and, despite his shaved cranial tonsure, long, white-blonde hair cut square across the fringe. Though he mistrusted scientists in general, and Zacharius in particular, he secretly shared the doctor's penchant for foppery and good living. Even now, in the midst of a war, he wore white silk gloves adorned with his rings of office, and a white silk tabard over his hooded black robe.
"You don't intend to open a hospital for local sick people?" he asked.
Zacharius laughed. He well knew Benan's 'High Church' views on this sort of thing — namely that it was important to alleviate suffering wherever possible, but that pestilence was God's punishment for sinfulness, and that to combat it could be seen as a form of heresy. On previous campaigns, in an effort to win the hearts and minds of a local populace, Earl Corotocus had thrown Zacharius's service open to local peasants and villagers, at his own expense — much to Father Benan's chagrin.
"My question was a genuine one," the priest said.
"So was my response," the doctor replied. "You think after what we've done in this land, anyone would come here? Even if their bowels were riddled with worms, their limbs rotted with leprosy?"
Benan chewed his lip. There was no riposte to so valid a point. He eyed Zacharius's surgical instruments. Apparently the doctor had commissioned their manufacture himself, again paying out of his own private funds. They included forceps, a scalpel, a bone-saw, a curette, a retractor, and a curved needle. To Benan's eye, they looked less like instruments of medicine and more like implements of torture. Of course, in his heart of hearts, he knew that Zacharius meant well, despite his lecherous proclivities, and that these menacing items had no more to do with the Devil and heresy than the swords and spears wielded by the earl and his soldiers, but these were confusing times to be a priest.
"I hope you have cause to treat no-one while we are posted in this castle," he finally said.
Zacharius shrugged. "So do I. But for different reasons than you, I think."
Benan was affronted. "My concern for the welfare of men's souls is more important than your concern for the welfare of their bodies."
"That is a higher philosophy, Father Benan, that many of your fellow clerics no longer share." Zacharius fixed him with a frank stare. "First of all, the Church itself educated me in these arts. The Franciscans at Oxford encouraged me all the way. At Titchfield it was the same. But even among those few who objected, it's amazing how quickly a man's principles can be put aside when he himself comes down with a sickness."
As always, Father Benan left Zacharius's company frustrated rather than irked, nervous rather than righteous. He returned to the castle chapel, which was located beneath the kitchen, and sandwiched between the barrack house and the Great Hall. As befitted a functional military outpost, it was little more than a subterranean chamber, built from bare, grey stone and austere in that typical Norman style. The altar table itself was a slab of granite. The pews were stiff, wooden things, embellished neither with carving nor cushion. There was no presbytery here, not even a sleeping compartment containing bedding. He'd seen no altar cloths, no silver candlesticks, no precious vessels of any sort; no doubt, if there had been some they were now in the grasp of the Bretons or the Welsh.
The contrast between this place and his sumptuous residence at the earl's great castle on the River Severn near Shrewsbury could not have been more marked. There, he had had a huge four-poster bed with blankets of feather down, servants at his beck and call, good food, good wine, silver plates to dine off if he wished. The chapel there was lined with white plaster and inlaid with frescoes telling tales from the Bible. There were statues on pedestals, holy inscriptions in the footways. The thuribles and chalices were of white gold; the altar was bathed daily in the reflection of a huge stained glass window, which depicted the Saviour ascending to a deep blue heaven, his noble brow crowned with roses.
What did Benan have for a window here?
A cruciform slit high in the east wall, through which sunlight might occasionally find its way, though only via a series of connecting shafts. Even during daytime it provided almost no illumination.
The dour environment matched the priest's mood. Yet again, he knelt at the altar and prayed for guidance, though he was increasingly worried that this was a vain hope. Earl Corotocus, though a valued member of the royal court and a steadfast defender of the faith, was a cruel and violent man. He kept a great house and ran orderly estates, he undertook the most dangerous missions in the name of his king, but there was nothing Christian in the way he conducted his campaigns — they lacked both chivalry and magnanimity; he was rarely generous to those he defeated. Not only that, he employed a man like Zacharius, whose sins were deemed tolerable because of his uses, and yet whose uses were also of questionable virtue. And, of course, Benan himself was no saint, no martyr. He hung his head in shame as he prayed. He never spoke out against the earl's excesses. He rarely questioned Zacharius any more for fear that the doctor's glib tongue would tie him in intellectual knots.
The earl's army was in a poor moral state right now, Benan reflected. They had crushed the Welsh easily, without losing a single man, without incurring so much as a minor flesh wound. That had seemed very unlikely given the initial circumstances of this uprising. A number of English-held castles had been besieged or, in the cases of Hawarden, Ruthin, Denbigh and Grogen, captured. The town of Caerphilly had been burnt to the ground. To have then entered the fray and triumphed so easily, it was tempting to say that God was on the side of Earl Corotocus. But deep down inside, Benan had a nagging fear — based as much on common sense as on clerical instinct — that the exact opposite was true. And that God would very soon prove this.
CHAPTER SIX
"Countess Madalyn, what do you know of the Thirteen Treasures of Britain?"
At first the countess was too distracted to respond. They had emerged onto a barren hillside. After the green fog of the cave, she was disoriented by the glaring daylight. There was also a stiff, raw breeze. It wasn't as bitingly cold as it had been earlier, but her body ached with fatigue and she hunched under her fleece.
"Thirteen Treasures?" she said. "Artefacts… artefacts from myth?"
"Not myth, my lady… history." Gwyddon strode on. "Wondrous weapons of war gathered by the founder of my ord
er, Myrlyn, as protection for Britain after Rome's legions were withdrawn. Yet, one by one, in the darkness and chaos of those strife-torn ages, all of them were lost. All except one. This one."
He came to a halt. Countess Madalyn halted alongside him.
In front of them, a large circular vat made from something like beaten copper was sitting on a pile of burning logs. Two younger priests used poles to stir the concoction bubbling inside it. There was a noxious smell — it was sickening, reminiscent of burning dung. Foul, brackish smoke rose from the vat in a turgid column. When the countess came closer, she saw a brown, soup-like liquid, all manner of vile things swimming around inside it. At this proximity, its hot, rank fumes were almost overpowering.
"This effluent?" she said. "This filth…?"
"Not the filth," Gwyddon replied. "The thing that contains it."
"A cauldron?"
"Not just any cauldron. You've heard of Cymedai?"
She looked sharply round at him.
He smiled. "I see that you have."
"This is the Cauldron of Regeneration? But that is only a legend."
"Certain details concerning its origins are legend. Not all."
She appraised the cauldron again. There were no eldritch carvings around its rim, as she might have expected, no images or inscriptions on its tarnished sides. It looked ordinary, in fact less than that. It might have been something she'd find covered in cobwebs in a cellar or the cluttered corner of an apothecary's shop.
"It was never the property of two ogres living in a bottomless lake," Gwyddon said. "Its creators were never roasted alive in an iron building that was actually a giant oven. But there is some truth in the story. It was brought here from Ireland to keep it from the Irish king Matholwch, who sought it for his own. Once in Britain, it was given to the care of Bendigeidfran, who was slain resisting the Irish invaders. It was, as the bards tell us, broken in that fight, but it was later repaired and hidden again. For centuries its whereabouts remained a mystery, until Myrlyn located it. Since then, it has passed from one generation of our order to the next, always in safekeeping."
He spoke fondly, and with his usual eloquence. But Countess Madalyn was fast becoming weary.
"I come to you with a genuine grievance, Gwyddon. I offer you a fabulous reward. And you mock me with this!"
"Mock you, countess?"
"Both you and I know that this is some harmless cooking pot."
"Indeed?"
He clapped his hands, and a young slave stepped forward. It was one of those who had served Countess Madalyn earlier. In full daylight, she identified him as a boy, though, by his cadaverous face, emaciated frame and the brand-mark on his forehead, which looked to have festered before it finally healed, servitude had been cruel to him. The mere sight of the wretched creature touched her motherly nature. Christendom forbade human slavery, and now she understood why.
Gwyddon, of course, had no such scruples. Reaching under his robe, he drew out a bright, curved blade and plunged it into the slave's breast, driving it to the hilt, and twisting it so that ribs cracked. Blood spurted from the slave's mouth. He sagged backward on his heels, but only when the blade was yanked free did he drop to the ground.
For a long moment Countess Madalyn was too aghast to speak.
"Have I…?" she eventually asked, her voice thick with disgust. "Have I quit the company of one devil only to be wooed by another?"
"Everything I do has a purpose, countess."
"Everything Earl Corotocus does has purpose…"
"Wait and you will see."
Gwyddon signalled and one of the acolytes from the cauldron came forth with a ladle. Gwyddon took it, knelt, and carefully drizzled brown fluid over the slave's twisted features. When the ladle was empty, he handed it back, rose and retreated a few steps, all the time making some strange utterance under his breath.
Nothing happened.
"Master druid," the countess said. "As a Christian woman, I cannot…"
He hissed at her to be silent, pointing at the fresh-made corpse.
To her disbelief, she saw a flicker of movement.
Though the blood still pulsing from its chest wound darkened and thickened as the beat of its heart faltered and slowed, the body itself was beginning to stir. There was no rise and fall of breast as the lungs re-inflated; the eyes remained sightless orbs — unblinking, devoid of lustre. But there was no denying it; the slave was struggling back into a ghastly parody of life.
First it sat upright, very stiffly and awkwardly. Then it climbed to its feet with jolting, jerking motions, more like a marionette than a human being. The undernourished creature had been stick-thin and ash-pale before, but its complexion had now faded to an even ghostlier hue. Its mouth, still slathered with gore, hung slackly open.
Gwyddon's acolytes muttered together in awe. The chief druid himself seemed shaken. He licked his ruby lips. Sweat gleamed on his brow.
The corpse stood there unassisted, as if awaiting some diabolic command.
At length, Gwyddon came out of this daze and snapped his fingers. An acolyte rushed forward with a towel so that he could wipe his crimson spattered hands.
"This… this is not possible," Countess Madalyn stuttered, circling the grotesque figure. "How can he have survived such a wound?"
"He didn't," Gwyddon said. "He's as dead as the iron that slew him."
She waved a hand in front of the slave's eyes — they didn't so much as blink. Gingerly, she prodded him with a finger. Even through his blood-drenched tunic, she could tell that his flesh was cooling. She prodded again, harder — the slave rocked but remained upright, staring fixedly ahead.
"This is hellish madness," she breathed.
"This is the Cauldron of Regeneration," Gwyddon said. "As the Mabinogion states, it makes warriors of the slain."
"Warriors? This vegetable! This mindless thing!"
"Could he be more perfect for the task? He'll follow any order, no matter how fearful. He'll feel no pain, no matter how agonising. He'll commit any deed, no matter how atrocious."
"And he can't be killed?"
"Countess, what is already dead cannot die a second time."
"I don't believe you. This is druid trickery."
Gwyddon regarded her icily, and then re-drew his curved blade and spun back to face the slave. With a single overhand blow he hacked into the fellow's neck, not just once, but twice, thrice, in fact over and over, cleaving through the sinew. The countess stumbled backward, a hand to her gagging mouth. But Gwyddon hacked harder and harder, blood and meat sprinkling his robes, blow after butchering blow shearing through tissue and artery and, at last, with a crunch, through the spinal column itself.
With a thud, the head fell to the ground.
The slave remained standing. From his feet, his own face peered upwards, locked in the grimace of death, yet somehow with a semblance of life.
Even after everything she'd been exposed to, Countess Madalyn was nauseated, faint with horror. Only amazement at the seeming miracle and the importance of retaining her aristocratic bearing kept her from running shrieking. Again, she circled the mangled figure, though it took her some time to gather coherent thoughts. Enormous but terrible possibilities were presenting themselves to her.
"If he's a warrior, why didn't he try to resist you?" she asked.
Gwyddon found a clean corner of the towel, and dabbed it at the blood dotting his face. "I raised him, and therefore I am his master. He will not attack me. He cannot attack me."
"If this is true, why have you waited so long to bring this weapon to our notice?"
He shook his head at such a foolish question. "Whose side should I have rewarded with it? The Norman-English, who covet Welsh land and seek to make serfs of its people? Or the Welsh and Irish, whose Celtic Christianity is a harder, more barbarous brand than anything found east of Offa's Dyke."
She turned to face him. "So why give it to us now?"
"I don't give it to you."
"Why do you offer it?"
"As I say… now the Welsh have a figurehead. Someone who isn't driven merely by lust for plunder, like Gruffud. Or by personal ambition, like Madog."
"And, of course, someone who is sympathetic to the old ways?"
"Of course. After what you've witnessed today, how can you fail to be?"
Countess Madalyn looked again at the mutilated slave. She knew she was viewing something that couldn't be, yet her eyes did not deceive her. Even truncated, with his head at his feet, he stood rigid to attention. She prodded his chest, his back, his shoulder. He remained standing. She circled him again to ensure there wasn't a pole at his back.
"You've resurrected a murdered slave, Gwyddon," she finally said. "An impressive feat of magic. But can this thing on its own — this ruined, headless cadaver — prevail against Corotocus's knights? Can it resist his slings and catapults?"
"It won't be on its own."
"And how long will it take to raise an army of these horrors, with one cauldron, and one potion? This thing will have rotted to its bones before you're finished. In God's name, we'll all have rotted to our bones."
"Normally perhaps," Gwyddon said. "But I think we're all about to benefit from a change of season. There's a hint of spring in the air, wouldn't you say?"
Two more of Gwyddon's acolytes now approached the cauldron with sticks and stirred its contents vigorously. Thicker, even more noxious fumes swam into the air. Gwyddon tracked their upwards path. The sky was pregnant with grey cloud, much of it already tainted by the smoke that had risen steadily since the brew was first heated. The countess recalled her earlier thoughts that the wintry chill had lessened, that the frost was melting — and now the first drops of rain began to fall. Polluted rain, as was clear from the brown smears it left on the druids' white robes. Rain which, when she cupped it in the palm of her hand, looked and smelled like ditch water.
A bolt of lightning suddenly split the sky over Plynlimon; thunder throbbed like a thousand battle-drums. The rainfall intensified until it was teeming, a waterfall pouring from Heaven. Gwyddon's acolytes fled to find shelter, but not Gwyddon himself. He was lost in a reverie of prayer, his arms crossed over his breast, a clenched fist at either shoulder. His eyes were closed, his broad, bearded face written with ecstasy as the water streamed from it.