Camulod Chronicles Book 4 - The Saxon Shore

by Whyte, Jack

  "He can't go east, either, for along the Saxon Shore, by our own reports, the invaders spread farther inland every year, and the whole land is war-torn. Nor can he go to Vortigern's kingdom, up in Northumbria. The problem with the Danes there is too perilous. South and southeast of us, the situation is the same as on the Saxon Shore, heavily invested with aliens. Southwest and west are Cornwall and Cambria, Ironhair's domain, and in the north, below the Wall, the Picts swarm everywhere." He paused, looking around, and then continued in the same tone.

  "That leaves two, or three, alternatives. We could send him to Gaul, to live with your friend Bishop Germanus in Auxerre, or we could send him to his mother's people in Eire, or even to their new holdings among the isles off Caledonia. All of those possibilities, however, safe as they may be, remove the boy from Britain, and that seems wrong. We all believe that if he is to be of any use to Britain as a man, he should remain in Britain as a boy." He stopped. "Your turn, Brother. What must we do?"

  I sat for long moments, looking at no one as I sought to digest all I had heard, and then I spoke my mind, saying the words that had been forming there since the first man had spoken.

  "Deadlock," I said. "There's nothing to be done. Your analysis is accurate and nothing can be gained by sending Arthur out of Britain. We will have to keep him here, in Camulod, and make the best of it. There's no alternative."

  "Ah, but there is, one other, and we have agreed to adopt it." I looked at Ambrose now in surprise.

  "I've missed it then. What is it?"

  "We've been discussing regions, Merlyn; north, south, east and west. We don't require a region for this undertaking, simply a place to live, an isolated area; a place that's far enough from here to be secure, yet close enough to give us ease of access."

  "That is a contradiction in terms."

  Ambrose shook his head. "No, it is not; not if you have Connor's galleys at your command, and if the place you choose lies close to his waters and under his protection."

  My mind gave a great leap, and fragmentary images of a fleet of galleys flashed behind my eyes.

  "We believe you must take the boy, Merlyn, and go with him, under Connor's protection. Arthur is your ward, and you have jurisdiction over his upbringing. Go then, and raise him in peace and safety. Wait!" He held up a hand to stop me from interrupting him. "No one suggests you should do this alone. Some of us will go with you. Donuil and Shelagh and their boys, who are young Arthur's friends. Ded and Rufio will go, and Turga. I shall stay here and govern Camulod, for someone must, but I shall visit with you every year."

  They were all staring at me. I blinked and shook my head. My tongue was dry. I swallowed thickly.

  "I cannot do that, but someone must. Send someone else."

  I had not heard the door open behind me, but now Lucanus spoke over my head.

  "You can do it, Merlyn, and you must, for no one else is suited to the task as you are."

  I swung in my seat to face him, but he was already passing me, followed by Connor, who grinned at me and nodded before taking a stool from its place against the wall and placing it beside the chair in which Lucanus now sat. I gazed from one to the other of them, my heart hammering, and suddenly identified the tension I had felt since entering the room. They knew! All of them knew.

  "You told them."

  Lucanus merely shrugged and raised a hand. "I told them you are troubled, yes. I told them of your skin condition and your groundless fears, and I assured them that the best thing you could do is leave here for a while until you are satisfied that you are well again. I told them also that I would go with you as your friend, since I am not really needed here at present. Camulod, I am pleased to say, has no lack of medical skills or personnel. Besides, by being with you, as your physician, I could ensure that, with the proper care and attention, we can clear up this condition of yours. It interests me. Skin ailments always have."

  I listened in disbelief, hearing no mention of the dreaded name of my "condition" as he continued.

  "So, it seemed reasonable to us all that since we two are the boy's principal instructors, we should take him with us, thus solving several problems at one time. Connor here offered us his galley for our journey, and then Donuil and Shelagh volunteered to come with us, and others followed their lead. We were here all night discussing the matter."

  I licked my lips, moistening them before I spoke. "Come with us to where, and for how long?"

  Lucanus smiled at me with open candour. "To Cumbria, not Cambria. It is far in the northwest, below Hadrian's Wall and sheltered by mountains. The Roman influence was strong up there, I recall, and the region was garrisoned until the final days of the withdrawals. There is a port there, Connor tells me, where he sometimes stops to buy fresh meat. It is called Glan, something. . ." His eyes crinkled as he sought the name.

  "Ravenglass," I said and saw his eyes go wide in surprise. "The Romans called it Glannaventa, but to the local Celts it has always been Ravenglass, Yr-afon-glas, The Green Harbour."

  I was conscious of a great and solemn stillness, somewhere deep inside my breast, and my dream of the previous night came flooding back. Arthur had been there in that dream, standing upon a headland with his back to me as he gazed out upon a sea dotted with Connor's galleys. The wind had stirred his cloak and he had turned to me, laughing a strong man's laugh, and I had seen his adult face before I saw the crimson dragon blazoned on his chest and was amazed to see he wore his father's armour. I had reached out to touch it, feeling the coldness of the metal plate beneath my outspread fingers.

  "Arthur," I had asked him. "Where did you find this armour?"

  He had laughed again, the same loud, rolling laugh, and I had looked up into the enigmatic, shrewd, but not unfriendly eyes of the man who had slain Uther: Derek, who called himself the King of Ravenglass.

  EPILOGUE

  Some memories remain forever in our consciousness, branded upon our minds in the moment of their creation without awareness on our part of how or why that moment should be momentous. I will never forget my first view of the former Roman port of Glannaventa.

  I stood on the stern deck beside Connor's swinging chair, my right hand resting on Arthur's shoulder. The other boys, Bedwyr, Gwin and Ghilleadh, were on the fore-platform with the remainder of our group, peering landward into the low-lying morning fog that clung to the calm surface of the water. I felt Arthur stir uneasily, itching to join his friends, and tightened my grip to hold him still. Connor had been speaking to him moments before, describing the land we were approaching, but now sat silent, his eyes seeking to pierce the fog.

  Somewhere ahead of us and above, a gull began to cry and soon was joined by others in a screeching cacophony of noise. To my left, Tearlach, Connor's Captain, stood with Sean the navigator, both men equally attentive.

  We had dropped anchor in the pre-dawn of a crystal, starry night, to await the coming of day, in order not to cause alarm by approaching the harbour without being recognised. At dawn, after the calm of the night, Sean had told us, a sea fog would spring up, but would soon dissipate in the fresh day's offshore breeze and the heat of the sun. The sun had risen an hour before, the anchor had been raised, and now we waited, held in place by occasional gentle oar strokes on one side or the other, for the breeze to come from the shore.

  "Wind," Sean said softly. As he spoke, I sensed a difference, saw an eddy in the wall of fog ahead of us, and then the clouds parted and seemed to roll away and an offshore wind revealed what lay ahead of us, gilded in the bright sunshine of an early autumn morning.

  The first thing I saw was a hillside; a low, swelling bank of land rising directly from the waters ahead and to our left, and the unworthy thought occurred to me that Sean had been mistaken and there was no harbour here. But then the fog bank rolled farther off and showed the bank to be an island, low and wide, around which the water stretched into a shallow bay.

  "Half oars," Connor murmured, and Tearlach leaned towards the well of the ship to bellow the ord
er to the men below. Slowly, gathering way only gradually, Connor's long galley began to move towards shore, propelled gently by only half the oarsmen, the others holding their sweeps inboard, standing up vertically so that they formed a row of palisades along each side of the vessel. The great sail, with its black galley device, hung empty from the enormous spar that supported it; its purpose was identification this morning, not propulsion. Ahead of us, the entire western shoreline of the port was revealed to be the exterior wall of a Roman fort, built of stone, from which long wooden piers reached out on either side of the central western gate, into the deep water channel. Above our heads, the watchman at the masthead called out instructions to the pilot below, guiding him along the channel. Someone on the walls began to blow a horn, and within moments we could see figures running along the parapet walk behind the walls.

  Arthur squirmed and looked up at me.

  "Please, Merlyn, can I go to the prow?"

  I released him and watched as he ran along the central spine of the galley like a cat, never once looking where he placed his feet, and then I turned my eyes beyond the fort, looking to either side. Low, densely treed hills stretched away, rising steeply as they receded from the sea. I received simultaneous impressions of peace, strength, wealth and stability, although I had little on which to base such responses and all might have been merely wishful thinking.

  "They know us now. Take us in, 'Tearlach." Connor swung himself to face me, a half grin twisting the corner of his mouth. "Well, Yellow Head, so far I think everything is as planned. Our welcome is assured; are you quite sure of yours?"

  I glanced at him, then back towards the prow, where my party stood, their excitement evident from their attitudes. Donuil and Shelagh were there, holding their two boys Gwin and Ghilleadh by the hand, restraining them, and Dedalus and Rufio stood one on either side of Lucanus. In front of them stood Turga, Arthur's nurse, and the recently bereaved Hector, who had insisted on accompanying us, unwilling to remain in Camulod when his son Bedwyr's only friends were leaving him. Bedwyr and Arthur, the two oldest boys, were screened from sight by the adults. Hearing the creak of Connor's chair, I turned back to follow his gaze and was in time to see Feargus's galley slipping into place beside Logan's, both of them waiting safely out of range of any danger from the shore.

  Looking away again, I wondered what form, indeed, our welcome might take. For all I knew, Derek of Ravenglass might even refuse us right to land in his domain. We had been enemies, he and I, thrown together only twice in the past, by merest chance, although we had never fought and had maintained a wary truce between us. I felt myself smiling and Connor noticed it.

  "What are you grinning at?"

  "I am about to approach a man who knows me only as an enemy, seeking sanctuary, and I have no idea how he will react. Both times we have met, it has been as enemies. And now I come to him as a supplicant, seeking a life for the son of a man he killed, for which I should have killed him. And yet, outside of my own kin and closest friends, and without any sane reason, I believe I would trust him over any man I know. I can't explain it any better than that."

  He smiled back. "Well," he said, his voice strangely gentle. "If he refuses you, you can come north with us. Up there, since it's isolation you are seeking, you should find much to please you. But we'll soon find out if you're sane or not, for I think that's him coming out onto the pier."

  A group of people were hurrying to meet us, some of them taking positions to receive thrown ropes, and among them, in the very centre of them, I saw the enormous figure of Derek, their king. I felt a stirring in my gut and, wishing to hide my own uncertainty, quickly looked away, down into the body of the boat, to where a pile of wooden crates lay bound. Within them were the treasures I had brought with me, to sustain us in whatever kind of life might lie ahead: cases of books and parchments, written by my grandfather, my father and my Uncle Varrus; my own favourite selections from the ancient weaponry in Publius Varrus's Armoury; Lucanus's medicinal supplies; a stock of arms and armour for the horses and men now confined in the two galleys that rode behind us; and, in one large crate, the most sacred and the most mysterious things I owned—the oaken case containing Excalibur, and the two menace-filled, iron-bound boxes that had belonged to my father's murderers, the Egyptian sorcerers Caspar and Memnon. In the time ahead, I estimated, I would have ample time to explore those chests and catalogue their contents.

  Camulod and Cornwall and Cambria and their dangers lay behind us for a spell. Ahead of us lay Cumbria.