The Poisoned Throne: Tintagel Book II

by M. K. Hume

  ‘You’re very brave for a man who has been taken by Roman legionnaires,’ Constantinus said with no particular emphasis on his words. ‘Perhaps you’re one of those Britons who find Romans to be palatable during times of warfare, as long as we are on your side and your interests prevail.’

  ‘I’ll not be happy until all Romans have left our lands and my people are left in peace.’

  Here speaks a fool, Severa thought. He can’t possibly believe that Rome is to blame for all the ills of the world.

  Drusus cuffed Cledwyn across the back of the neck once more, and the young man shook his head to clear his ringing ears.

  ‘It’s easy to be brave when your enemies are tied up and can’t retaliate,’ the young man muttered through his teeth. ‘But your fellow Romans learned a little of our true mettle yesterday, praise be to the Lord of Hosts.’

  Constantinus paled.

  ‘You’d best pray that my men have suffered no lasting harm or you’ll learn at first hand why Romans rule the world,’ he replied, his eyes steely.

  While this exchange and mutual chest-thumping was taking place, Severa watched both men closely, viewing their expressions, their gestures and their body language with more intensity than usual.

  ‘Were you born in Caernarfon near the place that the Romans call Segontium?’ she asked suddenly. She moved forward so that the moonlight lit her hair and bare face.

  The young man turned towards her as if he had forgotten her existence, and the girl noted a sudden stiffening of his upper lip.

  ‘Answer me,’ she ordered.

  ‘Aye! I was born in Caernarfon, some twenty-one years ago.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I would have imagined. You were already born when King Caradoc and my foster-mother, Endellion, came to your grandfather’s court in those bygone days. My mother saw Magnus Maximus for the first time during that visit and she fell in love with him.’

  She turned to face Constantinus when Cledwyn remained silent. ‘This young man is my cousin. The family resemblance should be easy to see,’ she added in a sad voice.

  She paused to glare at the prisoner.

  Constantinus responded by lifting up the captive’s face and staring fixedly at him. Satisfied, he nodded in agreement.

  ‘He knows who I am,’ Severa insisted. ‘You do know me, Cledwyn, don’t you? And where you travel, your father will be close behind. He has already decided that you are to become my betrothed, hasn’t he? You would have imprisoned me and begotten a child on me. And then you would have silenced me – permanently. You, sir, are little more than an animal.’

  Severa’s voice had risen with distress, so Constantinus raised his hand to cover her mouth in case she was correct, and Conanus and his assassins were close at hand.

  Somehow, Severa worked her mouth free of the centurion’s grip.

  ‘Perhaps you can tell me what lies your father has foisted on your people, so that my mother’s name should become a rallying cry for your cause? Has he said the position of High King of Britannia was stolen from him? If he has, he is a liar! My father earned that title by force of arms and risking his own life for the people of these isles in conflicts that he fought against the Picts, the Hibernians and the Saxons. But what has Conanus ever risked? He fought for lands and riches, and sought the spoils and prizes available to those who rode with Magnus Maximus. He is betraying the old oaths he swore to his master when he disturbs my peace and tries to steal my life and my destiny. I will never – ever – marry against my will, even if I have to cut my own wrists to defeat my uncle. If he wants a throne, he must look elsewhere.’

  All three men stared at her openly, two with admiration and one with a dawning fear of failure.

  ‘He didn’t tell you that I would be an unwilling participant in his plans, did he? Were you led to believe that I needed to be rescued from a cruel oppressor?’

  She paused for breath and her eyes flashed with the anger that surged through her.

  ‘Was Marcus Britannicus painted as a wicked seducer who was determined to force his way on me? The gods knew that Marcus wasn’t much of a man, but I would have been a willing participant in my marriage. King Aeron would never have forced me into a repugnant union, even if he had been disappointed at any decision I might have made. You must ask yourself why I’ll have nothing to do with you and yours. If I have my way, you’ll be freed so you can inform your father that I’ll never yield to his demands.’

  Constantinus cleared his throat and patted the girl’s shoulders in admiration. But this caress was so brief that she could almost have imagined it.

  ‘Unfortunately, Lady Severa doesn’t have the power to free you. I don’t intend to relinquish my hold on such a valuable prize as yourself, regardless of the fact that you are her cousin. We will be riding to the site of yesterday’s confrontation at first light, so you should pray to your gods that I find nothing there that will earn you the harshness of a lingering death.’

  The centurion paused and then smiled in a way that made the captive’s blood run cold.

  CHAPTER XI

  At Dice With Devils

  And life is given to none freehold, but it is leasehold for all.

  Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Book 3

  Four horsemen rested in the trees at the base of a tall row of hills. Although three of the horsemen crouched in their saddles, one was tied by his arms and ankles around the neck and flanks of his horse, a most uncomfortable position that meant he was staring at the earth below him rather than the landscape ahead. Without complaint, he had refused to speak further during the pre-dawn hours. The young man had given his captors his name and place of birth, but he had no intention of giving them any indication of his purpose as they rode through the uncompromising landscape in the early-morning light.

  Frustrated, Constantinus had finally let Cledwyn ap Kynan be, but the captive took little pleasure from the cessation of the torture that had been inflicted on him.

  ‘I’ll find out your secrets sooner or later, boy, and you’ll come to regret not being frank with me when you had the chance,’ the centurion offered in a soft, controlled voice. Cledwyn had no doubt that the Roman meant exactly what he said.

  Just before sunrise, Drusus forced Cledwyn to lie across his horse’s saddle and then tied the prisoner’s wrists to his ankles below the horse’s belly. When he was immobilised over the horse’s back, Drusus pulled the coarse ropes tight to ensure there was no chance of escape. Then, leading the horse by its reins, Drusus mounted his own stallion and the small party set off to investigate the smoke that had been observed on the previous day.

  Almost immediately, they found the charred remains of deserted wagons. During the night, the three fugitives had been unable to see the dark shapes in the lee of the river. Now, at the scene, Constantinus saw evidence that the wagons had been deliberately abandoned by the legionnaires to increase the pace of the column, and he took heart from this small mercy.

  They rode on, following the path of the river initially, but then moving away from the route followed by Paulus and his legionnaires, a dangerous place if Conanus was in pursuit of the column.

  With scant respect for the comfort of their captive, the three travellers rode through a glorious late-summer morning. The sky was a soft-washed blue as the orange-red sun climbed above the cliffs. In the sunshine, the riders could feel its warmth but in those places where the hills were folded into ravines, they were plunged into pockets of deep shadow where a chilling breeze cut through them. In this wild landscape, Constantinus rode cautiously with a growing feeling of dread, although at least he could bask in the knowledge that possession of their prisoner, who was almost certainly Conanus’s son, would be a strong bargaining tool if they were ambushed by the Armorican warriors.

  The journey eventually came to an end when the small party rode cautiously around the bas
e of a low hill and entered a larger valley carved into the hills as if a giant had taken a knife to the landscape and hacked out a river bed that could cope with a rushing stream. Across the waters, a tangle of dark rubbish still released an occasional twist of smoke that dissipated almost immediately in the breeze sweeping through the valley from the sea.

  Constantinus rode up the slope, waving a warning hand to indicate that the others should await his instructions. As he reached his observation point, the scavenger birds saw him and took to the air in an untidy cacophony of curses and complaints, bloated from the gorged meat on which they had been dining. Constantinus shuddered at the sight.

  The smell of burnt cloth, cooked meat and butchered offal struck him in a black wave. He knew that sweet, ugly aroma from bitter experience. As he peered into the mass of charred flesh he recognised the remains of bone and connective tissue that left the travesty of a hand clawing at the sky in a vain plea for mercy.

  With the tip of Drusus’s short stabbing spear, Constantinus carefully prodded at the pile of bodies in a vain search for the red cloaks of legionnaires or, perhaps, any face that might have been spared by the flames and remained recognisable. Meanwhile, Drusus had left Severa and the hog-tied captive, so both soldiers continued their grisly search until they were convinced that the ten bodies piled together in the unlovely sprawl of violent death were not Roman casualties.

  Both legionnaires searched outside the perimeter of the pyre and discovered the eloquent signs of horses and men in combat, evidence that spoke of a sudden attack from a prepared ambush position. A troop of horsemen had thundered out of the east from a narrow fissure between two small hills in what must have been a surprise attack triggered by desperation. The centurion recognised the traces of Roman infantrymen who had formed into a defensive square to repel their assailants. Pools of dried blood, brown splashes on the dry grass and deeply churned earth had left a mute story of a vigorous defence.

  After the skirmish, a troop of horsemen had ridden away in haste from the site of the battle. Another track, slightly larger, continued on in a south-westerly direction, so Constantinus reasoned that the troop of Roman defenders had let their attackers ride away while they cared for their injured and disposed of the enemy corpses.

  ‘The only conclusion I can make from these remains is that some of our troop must have died and more would have been wounded, along with at least ten of the Armorican warriors,’ he said as he paced around the battle site and evaluated the evidence. ‘The Armorican force wasn’t large enough to allow them the luxury of taking their dead with them, so they must have taken their wounded and ridden off to lick their wounds. Paulus would have carried out a mass burning of the enemy dead while he tended the Roman wounded from his own column. He would never burn the corpses of friends with an inadequate supply of lumber, so he will have taken his dead and burned them at a more suitable place along their line of march. I know Paulus! He’d never allow the scavengers to feast on the remains of his men. Never!’

  ‘Then he can’t be very far ahead of us,’ Drusus added, his eyes scanning the landscape around them.

  Constantinus began to walk briskly towards the top of the steeply eroded river bank. The erosion had left outcrops of loam and rocky areas where the roots of the undergrowth had well-established root systems.

  ‘We’ll scout among the higher points of the hills to see if there are any places where Paulus might have set up his camp,’ he told Drusus as they surveyed the terrain around the field of death. They were quickly rewarded for their diligence.

  At the top of a nearby hill, stones had been moved into place to erect a large cairn over a section of earth where recent rain had created a depression. The centurion realised immediately that this was the sort of burial site that Paulus would have selected, for his men could scrape away the loosened soil with their shields to create graves, where the physical remains of the legionnaires would be covered with the residual earth, and the entire site topped with local rocks and stones to ensure that the corpses couldn’t be eaten by scavengers.

  ‘Do you want me to expose the faces of our dead, Centurion?’ Drusus asked.

  ‘No! Let them rest. Given his situation, Paulus has done his best to give our men a good burial in a place that wasn’t of their choosing. I’d like to know how many died, but I don’t want to disturb them by interfering with the remains. I can wait till we meet up with Paulus to discover who perished . . . and how.’

  Severa prayed silently over the makeshift cairn, rather than ask questions about the centurion’s plans for the future. She correctly assumed that he would inform her of his plans once they had been decided, so she forced herself to make no comment when Constantinus turned his horse in the direction of the track left by the Roman column.

  ‘We’ll follow Paulus at speed! Every moment separated from the column is dangerous now. Your uncle has exposed his determination to take you captive, regardless of the cost to the men who are part of his command.’

  And so, regardless of the complaints from Cledwyn, the three rode at a brisk trot towards an uncertain meeting with Constantinus’s own command.

  When fugitives know that every tree might hide an archer and that every fold in the hills might harbour a force of assassins, each mile of travel becomes a contest between stretched nerves and the need to maintain a semblance of self-discipline. The horses caught a scent of fear from their masters and became fractious and inclined to bridle at any loud noises or changes in the breeze. As if in sympathy with the fates, a line of storm clouds began to gather as the day waned, and the members of the party could see that grey and sullen thunderheads were about to burst open in a torrential downpour.

  Cledwyn complained that he had lost all the feeling in his hands and feet, but Drusus ignored him.

  ‘Your father and his minions care little for the honour of warfare, so they prefer to attack from cover,’ the scout responded succinctly. ‘Ambushes are cowardly at best, but when so much death has resulted because an ambitious and greedy man is trying to imprison a woman who can be counted among his kin, none of his confederates have any right to comfort. Be grateful you’re not dead!’

  ‘Aye!’ Constantinus added. ‘Your only value is the fact of your birth, but you’d be dead already if I had any sense. Keep your fucking mouth shut!’

  The threat silenced Cledwyn immediately. Severa was glad she was not an enemy in the centurion’s power.

  A long twilight was stretching out ahead of the travellers and, as their horses weren’t overtired, Constantinus opted to continue their journey slowly until full darkness was upon them. But there was still some faint light to guide them on their way when they rounded a bend in the track and Conanus’s true colours and ruthless savagery were finally revealed to the party.

  No one in the small group had thought to wonder if the servant girl had escaped in the river valley. In fact, Severa had given no thought to the unfortunate girl at all, while Constantinus had presumed that she was still with Paulus and the column.

  The fugitives found a message from Conanus that he had left for anyone who might be following.

  Close to the path, the body of the servant girl had been laid out on a prominent rock which couldn’t be missed by other travellers.

  Severa was the first to see the discarded corpse. Her young eyes picked out a flash of white on the grey stone, the girl’s body prominent in a landscape almost wholly composed of charcoal, dark-blue and dim greens.

  Shel must have been captured on the previous day, because she was a novice rider and unable to control her mount.

  Paulus was aware that the servant girl had taken the place of Severa in the column, so nothing was to be gained by carrying out a pursuit of her captors. Unfortunately, as the senior officer in the column, he couldn’t take any action that might put his command at risk. But he would never abandon a women’s corpse by the side of the roa
d if he had been in the same position as Conanus. He would have ordered her corpse to be given a decent burial, even if such a decision had cost him valuable time.

  No, this body had been dumped after the main Roman column had passed this way. Was the corpse a warning? Or was it just another demonstration of the Armorican’s callousness?

  When Conanus had begun his interrogation of the girl, he would have realised quickly that he’d been tricked and this girl had been substituted for Severa. He should have permitted the harmless creature to go free once he discovered that she was of no value to him, but he had been elevated to power in the service of Flavius Magnus Maximus, a pitiless man, and had fed on the Roman’s power until it fitted him like a second skin. His own ruthless nature could be seen in the assassination of Gratian, the Roman emperor, in bygone years.

  Conanus had maintained a hold on his lands in Armorica in the face of heavy opposition from his peers in Gallia and those emperors who succeeded Gratian in Rome. He had thrived because he was utterly ruthless and gave no quarter to anyone, be they kings, warriors or a harmless village girl.

  With total disdain, Conanus had turned Severa’s serving maid into a thing of no value. Her body bore the unmistakeable bruises, cuts and abrasions of pack rape, after which her throat had been cut. Then, as with the corpse of Marcus Britannicus, her remains had been dumped in a public place where her humiliation and shame could be seen by every bucolic passer-by.

  Drusus swore, while Constantinus remained silent, although his lips tightened and his face paled. With unusual savagery, he dug his heels into the ribs of his horse and galloped along the track in uncontrolled temper.

  Severa and Drusus took off in pursuit.

  ‘Aren’t we going to bury her?’ Severa asked when she finally caught up with Constantinus. ‘The woman deserves better than to be devoured by scavengers.’