M. K. Hume [King Arthur Trilogy 04] The Last Dragon

by M. K. Hume

  ‘You talk about things I don’t understand, Arthur, but I don’t care. I’m a plain man who knows he’s incapable of kingship. Unlike you, my boy! What a king you’d have made!’

  Before Arthur could protest that there was nothing he wanted less, Maeve and Blaise came tripping into the hall and brought the scent of flowers and sunshine with them. Maeve’s face was transfigured with joy. Her usual pallor was stained with rosy colouring and her green eyes were emerald bright with excitement. Like a cat, she had a small triangular face and a certain lanky grace under a head of thick, bright red hair. Unlike most red-haired tribeswomen, her face was free of freckles, but a faint dusting of gold reflected the time she had spent in the sun during the last few days. Her manner today was also out of character, the self-contained reserve replaced by an elfin animation.

  ‘May we talk to you for a moment, Father?’ she asked, her eyes sparkling. She glanced at Blaise for support and confirmation, and the Dumnonii princess hurried into an obviously prepared speech. Arthur quickly understood why the girls had been together, head to head, all day.

  ‘Master Bedwyr,’ Blaise began. ‘As you know, I am to be wed to the heir of the Otadini tribe. I will be a queen in time,’ she added with unconscious pride. ‘My father sends me to the north because it is safe from Saxon or Jute attacks. Maeve and I have become friends.’

  Both girls held up their thumbs, which bore identical cuts across the ball. ‘We mingled our blood, Father, so we could become sisters,’ Maeve explained. ‘It hurt, but I didn’t care, and I didn’t cry, did I, Blaise?’

  Her friend nodded eagerly. ‘We would like to remain together, so I’m asking your permission to take Maeve with me to Onnum as my friend and companion. She will be protected from harm in the bosom of the Otadini tribe, and she will find a good husband there, especially when it becomes known that she is the daughter of the Arden Knife.’

  Gape mouthed, Bedwyr looked at his son, who seemed as surprised as he was, and then back at his youngest child.’ ‘But, lass, you can’t just go riding to Onnum as if you were going to a fair. Your proposal is absurd, and your mother would weep to lose you,’ he said. He was desperately confused, for he had never really understood Maeve, with her odd little face and quirky, restrained personality. ‘Have you considered what your mother will say? She’ll be heartbroken that you don’t want to remain with her.’

  ‘But you intend to send us west soon,’ Maeve replied earnestly. ‘I know you do. And Mother will never leave you, so I’ll just be an added responsibility to my brothers and sister when we arrive there. Wouldn’t I be safer if I travelled with Arthur and Eamonn to King Geraint in the north?’

  Bedwyr was unsure how to respond, so he sent for his wife in the hope that she could persuade her exasperating young daughter to see some sense. Of course, Bedwyr could simply refuse Maeve’s request, but her early brush with death had created a certain mystique around the girl, and few people were prepared to deny her anything. Arthur sent a servant to fetch some herbal tea for his father, whose complexion had paled from the stress of his daughter’s surprising request.

  Elayne hurried into the hall. She was accompanied by Eamonn, and her children were hot on her heels. The gentle susurration of her woollen skirts on the flagging made a soft counterpoint to the clicking of Maeve’s hard-soled sandals as the girl impatiently paced across the floor. Four sets of eyes looked up as Elayne entered, her own eyes reflecting her anxiety. She gazed at Bedwyr’s face and her hands went out to him with concern and love.

  ‘My darling! Girls! Arthur! Why has the peace of the house been disturbed at a time when we should be at rest?’ As always, Elayne’s voice and manner were calming, and Arthur watched as Bedwyr’s agitation lessened and his frown gradually cleared. Mother has a special gift that can turn chaos into peace, Arthur thought. No wonder Artor turned to her when everything around him was falling apart.

  A servant entered with Bedwyr’s herbal tea, and Elayne nodded at her son with approval. ‘Sit down and take your drink, darling husband. You’ll feel better when you do, and no matter what has upset you we’ll find a way to make all well,’ she soothed in her gentle voice.

  Quickly and with passion, Maeve repeated her request. Elayne listened calmly as Blaise added the same arguments she had used earlier. The mistress of Arden treated the girls like adults and gave all her attention to their proposal.

  ‘I understand your desire to travel with your friend, Maeve. A true friend is very hard to find, especially one with whom you feel comfortable and who intends to be your sister for ever.’ Elayne smiled up into their faces as they held each other’s hands with the natural grace of the very young. ‘But you must accept that such a proposal would cause concern to Bedwyr, who understands the difficulties of travel in lands controlled by our enemies. The Otadini tribe is far away, and the Saxon numbers are thick between Arden and Onnum.’

  ‘But Arthur will be with us, and he and his warriors will be protecting our party,’ Maeve assured her mother as if their roles were reversed.

  ‘True, Maeve, but Arthur is only one man,’ Elayne said calmly.

  ‘My brother will be travelling with us as well,’ Blaise put in. ‘And we have a whole troop of my father’s warriors under Arthur’s command. We are as safe as my father could make us for my journey to Onnum.’ Blaise could understand Elayne’s negative response to their request. She was a clever girl and she knew that Elayne would comply with Bedwyr’s wishes. She is my enemy, Blaise decided, although the thought didn’t anger her. In Lady Elayne’s place, Blaise knew that she would have taken the same approach.

  Discussion continued to rage for some time. Eamonn understood his host’s concerns, but he thought the new Blaise a vast improvement on her old self, and if this change of nature was Maeve’s doing he’d cheerfully welcome her into their party. He said as much to Bedwyr, his wife and Arthur, although he acknowledged that they had reason to be concerned about the dangers of such a journey. Cunningly, he raised the valid point that Arden would soon become unsafe for Maeve and the other children because of the threat of Saxon invasion, incursions that would probably be successful.

  Eventually, Maeve’s siblings were sent to supper and an early bed while the decision swung first one way and then the other. Arthur admitted that the journey would be hazardous, but he and the rest of the party were travelling north anyway. If they reached Onnum safely, Maeve’s future would be secure for now.

  ‘Can we really protect any of our children?’ Elayne wondered. ‘What do you say, Father Lorcan? Is there any merit in considering Blaise’s invitation to Maeve?’

  ‘Of course there is. There is a certain amount of danger, but the gains are long term and would be considerable. Is she safer here? Or would she be safer in the borders of Cymru? I would consider what Maeve needs, rather than what she wants.’

  ‘You’re being oblique, Father Lorcan. Kindly say what you mean,’ Bedwyr snapped. ‘Word games are irritating.’

  ‘Maeve is a very lonely little girl, isn’t she?’ Father Lorcan responded. ‘If she journeyed to the north, would she be happier? You must be prepared to balance one future against another; one threat against another threat. You are her father and I wouldn’t like to make your decision for you, but logic indicates that Blaise’s proposal has great merit.’

  ‘I will sleep on the problem,’ Bedwyr decided gruffly. ‘To bed, all of you. Everything will seem clearer in the morning.’

  As they lay in bed, Bedwyr and Elayne regretfully made the final decision to allow Maeve to travel towards an uncertain future in the Otadini tribal lands. They had never understood their strange, fey daughter, and both knew that she would vanish one day like the Otherworld creatures she so resembled. Both parents concluded that they would have to keep the girl under lock and key for months if they were to be sure of keeping her at home. And so Bedwyr decided to bow to the inevitable and let Maeve go with Arthur and her new-found friend.

  The girls were ecstatic at the news, while the
rest of the household set about their duties with long faces. Maeve packed her bags so quickly that Elayne was forced to completely re-do the whole task, while selecting a servant girl to accompany her daughter on the journey. The number of persons in Arthur’s party seemed to be increasing by the minute.

  Two days later, the party rode out of Arden to tears, regret and wild joy. Maeve scarcely looked back at her parents, who wept at being parted from their youngest child. For her part, Maeve was chattering so happily with Blaise that Arthur wanted to slap her for her indifference to the feelings of her parents and siblings. Then, with long embraces and tears, he tried to fill the gap that Maeve was leaving.

  The road that lay ahead would be long, but the girls appeared to be happy to undertake their perilous and tiring journey. Arthur hoped they were, and turned his horse’s head reluctantly towards the north-east, twisting his body round in the saddle to wave fond farewells to his parents.

  He continued to wave until his arm ached and the palisades disappeared from sight among the shadows of the great trees. Only then, when the last traces of his home had vanished, did he face forward again and begin to think of the uncertain future that lay before them.

  CHAPTER XX

  BETRAYAL AND LOSS

  There is only one eternally true legend – that of Judas.

  Joseph Stalin, at the trial of Radek in 1937

  Mareddyd sat at his ease in a hostelry just outside Vinovia, just past the river that cut deep into the landscape. His booted feet rested on top of the beer-stained table and he had tilted his stool back at a precarious angle so he could rest against the wattle and daub wall behind him. His facial features reflected none of the turbulent thoughts passing through his brain as his mind calculated the amount of time that had elapsed since he had seen the Dumnonii party, quite by accident, at Cataractonium. Now, by assuming the travelling rate of a group of its size, he could make a rough estimate of when they should arrive in Vinovia, which would tell him how long he had to put his plan into effect. He’d only caught a glimpse of the Dumnonii warriors at a distance, but there was no way that a hundred yards could deceive him. He knew Arthur, the Cornovii bastard, by his hair, his height and his fucking arrogance, for he was riding through neutral territory as if he were safe from Saxons, Jutes and the many packs of outlaws that stalked the Roman road between here and the wall.

  ‘God damn his eyes! If there was any justice, he’d have died at Calleva instead of becoming a hero,’ Mareddyd whispered into a mug of inferior ale. Putting his thoughts into words fanned his slow-burning, never-quenched fury.

  The indignities of the argument at the Warriors’ Dyke sprang, fresh and bleeding, into Mareddyd’s mind, for the details were still sharp and appallingly clear. He would never be able to forget his shameful defeat and the backs of all those sons of the nobility that were turned upon him, even if many of them had since learned to think better of their stance. Those suggestions of cowardice had driven him to run for home like a yellow dog with its tail between its legs. For once, he knew his father had been mortified, and Mareddyd had moved heaven and earth to ensure that his father remained ignorant of the full details of the family shame. Tewdwr didn’t want to be cut out of the succession because his son was a laughing stock, and he never tired of telling Mareddyd just how much he had damaged the family name.

  ‘The damned family name!’ Mareddyd exclaimed drunkenly.

  Several unshaven cut-throats looked in his direction with careful, hooded eyes, but none of them were the men he sought, so he curled his lip and ostentatiously turned his head away from them. Somewhere deep inside his gut, Mareddyd carried a lump of hot lead that burned and burned, and grew fiercely hotter with the passage of time.

  He stared at his fine, princely boots. He had worn these same boots in the cavalry charge at Calleva at a time when he hoped to win glory and wipe away the collective memory of his shame. That prick Eamonn was in the same troop. The boy had suddenly been elevated to manhood because of the pressures of the war, but the Dumnonii brat had had the effrontery to stare at Mareddyd and mouth the word ‘coward’ in his direction. What did Eamonn pen Bors know? He was a third son, as useful to his tribe as a tit on a bull, and just as ugly. Frustrated, Mareddyd drank deeply from his mug and bellowed at a harried serving girl to bring more of the tasteless brew. She nodded her head in acknowledgement and averted her eyes as she hurried to obey him. Mareddyd didn’t see the contemptuous gesture she made with her fingers, but he heard the muffled laughter of two peasants of indeterminate race and he glared in their direction.

  ‘Who do you think you’re looking at?’ he snarled, and the cluster of dung-stained farmhands looked away, their faces wiped blank of any emotion.

  Like Eamonn, Mareddyd had been given little opportunity to distinguish himself in the charge at Calleva. Despite his upbringing, Mareddyd was an indifferent horseman, mostly because his mounts tended to shy away from his cruel hand on a straight bit and his liberal use of a hardened hazel whip. The young warrior had wounded only one man, a stroke he achieved with an underarm sweep of his sword. Then, in his anger and frustration, he had deliberately veered to ride down a wounded Saxon who was being helped to his feet by a tall blond slut, obviously one of the camp followers. He had enjoyed the thud and crunch of breaking bones under his horse’s hooves and the scream of the woman, high and thin, like the cry of a distant hunting bird.

  Then he had felt cold eyes on him as the cavalry troop re-formed, and he turned in the saddle to see Lord Bedwyr watching him with eyes that were cold with undisguished contempt. What had the Cornovii whelp told his father? Mareddyd was indignant. How dare a mere master of trees look at him as if he were a turd that had fouled his boots? But somehow Bedwyr had contrived to ensure that Mareddyd was given no further opportunity to distinguish himself.

  ‘It was Arthur’s fault,’ the young man murmured to himself. ‘The bastard always made sure that any credit that could be earned would go his way.’

  ‘Sir?’ The serving maid was standing before him with a clutch of filled mugs in each hand. She was very careful to keep beyond the reach of Mareddyd’s fists and feet.

  ‘Nothing, bitch,’ he snapped. She placed the mug on the table top, served several other customers and scuttled back to the plain bar with a blank expression tattooed firmly on her work-soiled face.

  What does she matter anyway? Any man desperate enough to fuck her would have to do it in the dark, Mareddyd thought with an appreciative grin at his own wit, but his memories soon wiped the grin off his face.

  He’d no sooner returned from the far gate of Calleva, his ears assaulted by the screams of burning men, than he’d seen the front line of the Atrebate defence still holding firm against a determined Jute attack. And there, in the front of the defensive line, and without a shield for protection, that Cornovii bastard was slaying any man who came within reach of that sodding Dragon Knife and his new sword. Mareddyd was forced to listen to the open admiration of cavalrymen praising that glory hound for his supposed courage as the Jutes broke and ran. For the first time in his young life, Mareddyd had prayed with real passion for the destruction of his nemesis, Arthur of Arden.

  But the bastard wouldn’t die. He survived the Marine Fire and the trap that should have seen all the Atrebates either cut into bloody sides of meat or burned alive. He had seen the awe and veneration in the faces of common warriors and nobles alike, and had ground his teeth in frustration.

  The only virtue in that endless day had been Mareddyd’s realisation that Arthur couldn’t be Bedwyr’s son. Seen side by side, Bedwyr and Arthur were completely different in every aspect of their physical features.

  ‘So Arthur really is a bastard,’ Mareddyd had whispered to himself. That was when he began to scheme how he could use this observation to his own advantage.

  Then he had overheard the muffled whispers in the latrines and learned something that drove him wild with jealousy and anger. To this day he could recall the stink of faeces that made him ga
g in the confined space, and picture the coarse lengths of raw torn cloth that separated the facilities for the common warriors from those used by nobles and women.

  ‘Not that there was any real difference. Both stank like a badger’s armpit,’ Mareddyd muttered under his breath.

  Two warriors had been talking beyond the fragile wall. By rights, considering the substance of their gossip, they should have been more circumspect, but as Mareddyd was the only person to hear them, and he was invisible, he was glad of their indiscretion.

  ‘Did you see the warrior on the line in the red cloak?’ one disembodied voice had asked, his voice hushed with awe. ‘Bedwyr’s lad?’

  ‘Aye. It was a pleasure to see some real swordcraft. I’ve not seen such skill since I was a boy in my first battle at Moridunum,’ the second man answered in a gravelly voice that suggested advanced, but still vigorous, age.

  ‘That was a fair time ago,’ the younger voice answered with a trace of humour. ‘I would have thought your eyes would have given out by now. Bowmen need good eyesight.’

  ‘It’s been near enough to thirty-five years, I think, because I was only fifteen at Moridunum. They were the days, boy, for that was a real line we held. Three days! And my eyes might be old, but they still work well enough. I’m still a master of the long bow. In these bad times, even old farts like me are needed.’

  ‘Aye, Grandfather,’ the younger voice replied with respect. ‘So who was it who fought like Bedwyr’s boy? Bedwyr was at Moridunum too, if I recall correctly, having escaped from the Saxons who held Caer Fyrddin.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. When the battle was over he was stiff with blood from the crown of his head to the soles of his ragged sandals. He was covered in blood the whole three days. I recall he told me afterwards that he saw enough blood at Moridunum to last him a lifetime.’