by J A Cummings
A laugh from their left drew their attention. A burly man with salt-and-pepper hair and a gold circlet on his forehead stood there, leaning against one of the wooden columns of the mansio’s colonnade. His clothing was some of the most sumptuous Arthur had ever seen, but he wore his sword like a man who knew how to use it. Bedivere dropped his hand, his own blade nearly touching the ground.
“Uriens,” he said.
“King Uriens, Sir Bedivere,” the man corrected him archly. “Show respect.”
“Of course. I… Your Majesty.” He bowed. “It’s been a very long time.”
“Indeed it has.” Uriens came forward and clasped Bedivere’s forearm, then Brastias’s. He nodded to Ector, who nodded back, and he pointedly ignored Illtyd. He turned to Kay. “And who is this young man?”
“This is Sir Kay of Caer Gai,” Sir Ector introduced. “My son.”
“Your son,” Uriens echoed. He scanned Kay from head to toe, then nodded. “In time, he may be a good man, as you once were.”
Arthur rankled. “With all due respect, Your Majesty, Sir Ector is still a good man.”
Uriens looked down his nose at Arthur and sniffed, “Who are you to address me so boldly?”
Ector gave the answer. “His name is Arthur. He is my foster son.”
“Foster son? Some stray you took in out of the cold, and he thinks he can speak to me, a king, with such criticism in his tone? You raised him poorly, Ector.” Uriens leaned closer to the young man. “Ector was a good man, when he was whole. Now he is a cripple.”
Arthur stood his ground. “An injury doesn’t render a good man bad.”
“Then why can only those who are physically perfect become kings?” Uriens challenged smugly.
“You managed somehow.”
Everyone froze, shocked by the temerity of Arthur’s words. Uriens roared and backhanded the youth with ferocious strength, knocking him from his feet. Ector rushed toward them, trying to intercede and stop the king from doing more damage to his impertinent boy. Arthur saw the fury in the king’s eyes and knew he had overstepped. He gathered himself and prepared to fight.
Merlin’s voice rang out sharply. “Enough!”
Uriens, who had raised his hand to deliver another blow, pulled back abruptly. “Bah,” he snarled, giving ground in deference to the druid.
Merlin walked over and grabbed Arthur by the shirt, hauling him to his knees. “Apologize,” he said. “Now.”
“I am sorry for showing disrespect,” the boy said. “Forgive me.”
The king stood over him, still angry, but a hard look from Merlin made him stand down. “You are beneath my contempt. I will not forgive you, but you have received your punishment. Speak to me that way again, and I will beat you until you wish to die.”
“Thank you for your mercy, Your Majesty,” Ector said. “He is headstrong.”
“It will get him killed.” Uriens turned his back on Merlin and Arthur, addressing Bedivere and Brastias. “I assume you are going to Londinium for the spectacle?”
Brastias nodded. “Yes, my lord. If the new High King is to be named, I want to be there to see his face.”
“Don’t you intend to try the sword?”
“Why would I?” the knight asked. “I have no right to the crown.”
“No one does.” Uriens grinned. “I intend to try it. I am wed to the High King’s stepdaughter, after all, and that makes me heir enough.”
“Lot will no doubt say the same,” Bedivere said.
The king’s face darkened. “I am sick of hearing that fool’s name.” He turned his back. “Good luck finding lodging. The place is filled with my entourage. I myself have had to be content with the old legion commander’s quarters, but at least it is heated from the baths.”
Uriens walked away, and Arthur’s mind supplied him with a few rude parting words for the king. Merlin seized his ear and squeezed it before he could utter a sound. He glanced at the druid, who stared at him warningly. Arthur bit back on his disobedience and stayed quiet.
Brastias looked at Merlin with a raised eyebrow. “Well?”
“We have lodging, but not in the mansio. Follow me to the temple of Minerva.”
The temple was across from the bathhouse, still within the greater rectangle of the city walls but outside the mansio. It was quiet and smelled faintly of incense, but steam from the bathhouse was carried through an underground tunnel to make the temple warm. It was a welcome respite from the long cold hours on the road.
The knights set about making themselves and Garwen comfortable while the squires prepared the bedrolls and got the horses unburdened and tended. Kay made a point of sitting with his back to the statue of Sulis-Minerva.
When Arthur’s chores were through, Merlin pulled him aside.
“I am going to talk, and you are going to listen.”
They went outside again. Arthur reluctantly left the cozy warmth of the temple and followed Merlin out into the street. When they were safely out of earshot of the rest of the company, the druid turned to face him.
“Tell me why you insulted King Uriens.”
“He insulted my father.”
“And?”
Arthur blinked. “What do you mean, ‘and’? Sir Ector is the finest man I know. Isn’t that reason enough? If everyone hadn’t intervened, I would have fought him for what he said.”
Merlin sighed. “You would have fought him and lost. In a one-on-one fight with a man like Uriens, you would be pummeled into paste. You are quick and well trained, but he is a massive brute with a powerful arm, as you now well know.” He examined Arthur’s fat lip. “There is a time to fight and a time to store your spite for later usage.”
“But he insulted my father.”
“No.”
He was getting frustrated. “Of course he did. You heard him.”
“I heard him say nothing of the sort.”
“He said Sir Ector is no longer a good man.”
“From a military point of view, what King Uriens said was true. But he said nothing about your father.”
Arthur swallowed hard, suddenly understanding that Merlin meant Uther Pendragon. He looked away, feeling overwhelmed and at a loss for words. Merlin, however, had not run out of things to say.
“When we reach Londinium and you pull the sword from the stone, when you speak of your father, you must always mean the late Pendragon. Sir Ector was your guardian, and you may love him like a son loves a father, but he can never be your father in the eyes of the world. You must erase that term from your mind, and all of the loyalties it engenders must be eliminated, too.”
“I can’t do that,” he objected quietly. “Sir Ector has given me too much.”
“And what will you give him when your claim to the throne is cast in doubt because you can’t remember which man is your sire?” Merlin put his hands on Arthur’s shoulders and looked into his eyes. “From this moment forward, every word you speak will have import. Every gesture of your hand, every nod of your head, every smile given or refused… they will all be scrutinized, judged and interpreted in the royal court. You cannot speak freely ever again. Do you understand me?”
Arthur gestured helplessly in frustration, a vague flap of his hands. “What do I say? When do I speak?”
“You speak only when your words are carefully chosen, and you speak freely only in private with those people you can trust. Only share your thoughts and innermost opinions with the most intimate members of your circle. No one else can be trusted.”
The young man looked away, watching people roaming about inside the mansio’s plastered courtyard. He sighed. “King Uriens is married to my mother’s daughter? My sister?”
“Morgana.” Merlin sounded uncomfortable, and Arthur glanced at him. “She suffered at his hands, and I took her to the convent to be with her mother. Morgana had other ideas, though, and now nobody knows where she is. But that is unimportant. What is important is that no drop of Pendragon’s blood flows in her veins, or in her sister’s.
They have no better claim to your throne than any other stray dog in the street.”
“So Uriens has no valid claim, either.”
“No. But that won’t stop him from trying, or from attempting to take that throne by force. When you are revealed, he will be your enemy, mark my words.”
Arthur sighed. “I think he already is. Merlin, is there anyone I can truly trust? Will I be hunted all of my days now?”
“The answer to both of your questions is yes.”
He put his hands on Arthur’s cheeks, cupping his face in gentle hands. The touch felt familiar, somehow, as if it had happened before. Arthur felt a distant memory stir of a similar moment of having his face in someone’s hands, hands that shivered with power the way Merlin’s did. He had almost resurrected the memory in full to see it for what it was when the druid spoke again.
“Arthur, I promise you, you can always trust me. I have nothing but your best interests at heart.”
The young man felt grateful, but a part of him itched with suspicion.
Merlin seemed to sense it, and he asked, “What are you thinking?”
Arthur stepped back. “I am thinking about what you said, and about trust. Goodnight, Merlin.”
He walked back into the temple, his head lowered, his mind awash in doubts.
Griflet beckoned to him when Arthur returned to the temple. “Here,” he said. “I’ve put our bedrolls together so we can save a little body heat. It’s going to be a very cold night.”
“It already is,” he sighed, sitting down beside his friend. He rubbed a hand over his face, taking care not to bump his swollen lip.
“I can’t believe you said those things to King Uriens. The man’s a beast! Haven’t you heard the stories about him?”
“No. I can’t say that I have.”
“My uncle told me all about him. Before he was King of Rheged, he was a soldier in the High King’s army. He and Lot the Northman had a running competition to see who could kill the most Saxons. They would slaughter everyone - men, women, and children. Anything to add to their body count.”
Arthur frowned. “That’s horrible. Did the High King punish them?”
“Hardly,” Griflet snorted. “He rewarded them. He made them petty kings under his protection, gave them land, and even gave them his own stepdaughters as wives.” He lay back on the bedroll and spread out like a star. “If that’s the sort of behavior that a High King cherishes, I’m not sure we need a new one.”
He lay down, too, nudging Griflet’s leg over so he could have space. “Maybe the new High King will be less bloodthirsty.”
“I hope so,” the other squire said. “But Uncle says that the thing that makes a king rise above the rest of men is the things he’s willing to do for power.”
Arthur considered saying more, but Merlin’s warning to watch his words kept him silent. He rolled over onto his side, his back toward Griflet, who kept talking.
“I’ve never seen a sword in a stone before. I wonder how it got there.”
Arthur shrugged. “Magic, I would expect.”
“Whose?”
“Merlin’s.”
“Druids can put swords into stones?” Griflet asked, his voice thickening with impending sleep.
“That one can.”
“Amazing.”
He yawned and rolled closer to Arthur, leaning his stomach against the other youth’s back. Arthur didn’t object. He had missed the feeling of another body resting next to his. He closed his eyes and tried to pretend that it was Amren behind him, and memories of Samhain night made him blush.
Griflet tossed an arm around his waist, falling silent at last. Arthur had never known anyone who could talk as much as his fellow squire. He wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that in his chattering, Griflet revealed things he wasn’t supposed to say. No doubt this was the sort of person he was going to have to guard against, when and if he spoke his mind. Merlin’s counsel was sound, as always.
A scuffing sound attracted his attention, and he looked up to see Brastias and Garwen sneaking out of the temple together, hand in hand. He smiled to himself, having no difficulty imagining what they were planning to do. He wondered what it was like to love a lady, to feel a soft womanly body beneath him instead of a taut boy full of angles and bones. He thought of that distant day on the riverbank when Niniane had kissed him, and he remembered how the touch of her lips had tingled through him all the way to his toes. He thought that someday he might like to try to love a woman, just to see the way it felt. He was sure it would feel glorious.
The pleasant fantasy of Niniane escorted him to slumber.
The longhouse was loud, filled with raucous soldiers and their warlords. Hengist, the Saxon king, sat on his throne with one leg over the arm, his left hand holding a drinking horn overflowing with mead. Beside him knelt a Pictish slave girl wearing only bracelets and a string of beads, her hair plaited down her back. She held a platter filled with bread and cheese, and the king picked morsels from it while he enjoyed the evening’s entertainments.
A new slave trader had arrived from Anglia with a host of good new stock. Hengist was pleased with the current crop. There were strong backs in the meek and broken men, and a fiery-eyed woman or two who could be amusing to tame. There were children, too, pretty girls and boys with dark hair and alabaster skin. It was these slaves who were the centerpiece of the entertainment tonight.
In a ring of shouting men, two young boys were armed with spears that were much too long for them. They had been ordered to fight, and although they spoke not a word of the Saxon tongue, some well-placed jabs and gestures helped them understand well enough what they’d been told to do. Despite their understanding, they had not been fighting, which had tired Hengist to the ends of his patience. One of the boys, the younger of the two, was crying in distress and begging for his mother, or so Hengist supposed. He gestured impatiently, and one of his soldiers, Acwel, kicked the weeping child between the shoulder blades with his heavy boot.
The unlucky boy staggered forward and onto the tip of the spear held by his unwilling opponent. The younger boy stopped crying in his shock, and blood poured from his mouth as he looked up at his adversary. The boy holding the spear began to scream. Acwel and Hengist and the rest of the men laughed.
The door to the longhouse opened, admitting cold air, a scattering of snowflakes, and Hengist’s brother, Horsa. The soldiers hailed him with a loud cry of welcome, and the warrior lord had barely taken three steps when someone pressed a horn of mead into his hand. He continued walking, drinking as he went, his eyes on his brother’s face.
Hengist had seen that look before and it made his sword hand itch. When Horsa was close enough to hear him, he asked, “What news do you bring me?”
“The Britons are gathering in Londinium,” he said. “All of their kings and their best generals are in one place.”
“Why?”
“Something about a test to select a new king. Their magician put a sword into a stone and they’re testing all their men to see who is strong enough to pull it out.”
Hengist almost laughed in disbelief. “Why? That’s so strange.”
Horsa shook his head. “It doesn’t matter why. The point is that they’re going to be there, all of them, and if we can attack and overrun the town, we can slaughter them all and the island will be ours.” He leaned toward his brother and urged, “It is a gift from Woden. How can we refuse it?”
“It could be a gift from Woden, or a trap from Tiw,” he hedged. “We don’t want to be greedy and incur the wrath of the gods.”
“But brother!” Horsa objected. “All of them, all in one place? Surely they are planning some attack against us. We would be mad not to attack them first.”
Hengist drank deeply from his horn and watched as the dead child’s body was carried out of the hall to be tossed to the pigs. He could feel Horsa staring at him impatiently, eager for the order. Horsa lived for the fight, for the spray of blood and the clang of steel. There h
ad been a time when Hengist, too, would have jumped at the chance to slaughter the native Britons, back when he and Horsa had first led their warband here to Britannia’s shores at the behest of that old fool Vortigern.
They were no longer just a warband, though. Now they had land, and their families were here, and Hengist was less intent upon destruction than he was upon creating a safe Saxon Britannia. He had people to protect and their security to think about, and Saxon children who deserved to sleep safely in their beds without fear of reprisals from the wild British tribesmen who surrounded them.
Finally, he made up his mind. “Send a spy.”
Horsa looked disappointed. “A spy?”
“Yes. Send someone to find out what they’re actually doing, and why they’re all in one place. Find out if they’re massing an army, or if they’re having one of their strange festivals. When we have more information, we will decide what to do.”
Another pair of boys were being outfitted with spears and shoved into the ring. Horsa sat in his chair, which was equal in size to his brother’s and situated at Hengist’s side. He tugged the Pictish slave girl’s hair, but she did not react. Her grip on the platter stayed strong, the dish not even moving despite the yank he had given her. Horsa nodded.
“Obedient.”
“She’s been well trained.”
“I will take her tonight.”
Hengist shrugged, although he had planned to do the same. It was time he went to his wife’s bed, anyway. “I don’t care.”
Horsa laughed at the boys in the ring, and his brother waved over his right hand, Bearn. His friend and brother came to him immediately, bending low so that he could hear Hengist over the din from the floor.
“Yes, my lord?”
“Bring Ganile. I finally have a use for her.”
Morgana stretched decadently, lounging in the nude on her lover’s bed of soft rabbit fur. Ganile lay beside her, smiling, her hand gently tracing circles on Morgana’s lower abdomen where it was a flat plane between her hip bones. Uriens had never liked how slender she was, but Ganile didn’t seem to mind. After all of the pregnancies and the three stillbirths she had endured, it was a point of pride to her that her belly could still be flat. She knew that her body was attractive to men and women alike, something that she was determined to use to her advantage.
