“Enough booty here to satisfy Caros, eh?” said Candless, making a small joke at Arthur’s Roman name Carausius. It was the name by which Arthur was known when he was admiral of the British fleet and had made a fortune by retaining the loot of the pirates he was sent to scour from the Narrow Sea between Gaul and Britain. When the emperor Diocletian found out he was being cheated, he had ordered Carausius to his court in Milan, intending to execute him, but the Briton had simply suborned his legions and his fleet, and sailed to Britain. There, his command of the straits meant that he was safe.
A decade of conflict with the Romans had followed, but now there was an uneasy peace. The new emperor had other concerns, and British rebels could be ignored. Grabelius laughed at the joke about Arthur’s thefts. “The paymasters will be pleased, too,” he said. “Did all this come from the pilgrims?” Candless shook his head. “Earned some of it myself, but I admit the devout travellers have helped build this little nest egg. It’ll buy plenty of troops for Arthur if he needs them. Send that message with your feathered friends.”
Grabelius slapped the genial rogue on the shoulder. “I’ll also carry word to him myself,” he promised. “One more thing, can you get some ears into Kinadius’ court? Arthur wants to know what he is thinking.” Candless grinned. “I already have one or two little birds there who sing sweetly to me,” he said. “I will be using your pigeons in a few days to send the words of their songs.”
XIII - Kinadius
Milo rode at the head of the trooper escort, Sunici horsemen from Gallic Belgica, as they trotted along the southern bank of the sea forth. He could see in the distance the steep-sided clifftop fortress of the Votadini tribe, a stronghold established where the waist of Pictland was belted from sea to sea by a chain of fortifications. The most easterly of them was Dunpendyrlaw, the landmark ancient hillfort near the coast where Bishop Candless had established his Dun Pelder settlement and was building his cathedral.
King Kinadius of Alba was overlord of the chieftains who held those strongpoints and he had taken as his eyrie the volcanic plug of Dun Eidyn that dominated the valley of the Forth. It was a stronghold that had been been occupied for millennia, most recently by the Votadini, and before them by the Romans, who called it ‘rock place,’ or ‘Alauna.’ It was steep-sided on three faces, its access a sloping ramp of rock on the fourth side where a settlement had long existed outside the fortifications.
Arthur’s men had burned down that hamlet, but Kinadius was rebuilding it and the fortifications on that one approachable side, so Milo rode through a bustle of merchants, labourers and waggoneers bringing timber and stone to the builders. His throat was tight with grief and fear of the expected audience and he seemed almost in a trance as he swung down from his horse and entered the great hall of King Kinadius mac Ailpin, Rex Pictorum.
The king of all Picts was at a table consulting two of his jarls and looked up at the bustle as his son in law came in. “Milo!” he exclaimed in surprise, “back so soon?” He looked eagerly behind the youth at the still-open door, but his daughter Sintea was not there. “Is the princess with you?” he asked. Milo stared at the king, an intimidating, blue-tattooed, burly figure who was fingering his long braided hair, a sign Milo knew, that he was disturbed. Tears came to the youth’s eyes and he dropped to his knees.
Kinadius glanced, puzzled, at the jarl Baric, who as his vassal had the responsibility of maintaining the peace in Milo’s lands. The warlord gazed back, blank. Kinadius stood up and said roughly: ”Where is she?”
Milo looked up at the monarch. “She is dead, king,” he spoke simply. “She contracted the plague and she, she is dead.” Kinadius’ ruddy face paled. He stood as still as a statue, eyes boring into Milo’s. “What do you mean, boy? Is this your jest? Tell me the truth, by the gods!” Still kneeling, Milo lowered his head, his own grief painfully obvious to those who stood in the silent hall, but the king stepped forward and grabbed Milo’s hair, pulling his head up to look into his face. “This is the truth?” he whispered. “Sintea is dead? How and why is this?”
He shook the prince’s unresisting head, still clutching a handful of the youth’s hair. Milo looked up, tears brimming in his eyes and said: ”My lord king, it is true. She contracted the black plague in Chester. She died within a day. I wish it were me. We had to burn her, we had to burn my Sintea.”
Kinadius boiled over. “You young bastard!” he shouted, backhanding the kneeling youth across the face, the square-cut stone on his ring opening the boy’s cheek and cutting his lip. Milo, stunned, still knelt and seemed unaware of the blow. Kinadius smashed his fist into the prince’s face, toppling him. “You have killed my daughter in your filthy Britain,” he raged. “You exposed her to disease and you caused her death!” The youth was struggling to his feet, tears running down his face and mingling with the blood on his chin when Kinadius hissed. “You can pay for it. You can pay now!” In a single motion, the Pict thrust his leaf-bladed knife in under the boy’s ribs, puncturing his heart with an expert, warrior’s stroke. The big man stood panting, the whole weight of the boy’s slim body suspended on his blade.
Milo’s eyes widened and his mouth formed an ‘O’ as he gasped at the shock of the blade and the tearing, exploding pain in his chest. Blood blossomed like red flowers and soaked the front of his white tunic. In moments, the garment was sheeted as red as the ruby Guinevia had so carefully attached at its neck.
Milo looked directly into the face of his killer and saw blind rage, no satisfaction, no remorse, no human feeling, just a demonic rage that possessed the king’s visage. He tried to speak, but his world was ebbing into gray and a strange sense of lassitude had made his limbs weak. The boy’s eyelids fluttered and closed.
Kinadius pushed him away with his left hand and wrenched the knife free, a dribble of blood running from his forearm and elbow to drip onto the flagstones and be soaked up by the rushes on the floor.
The dead prince made a crumpled heap at the king’s feet and the captain of Arthur’s troopers, who had entered the hall with the prince, ran from the rear of the chamber where he had stood in shocked disbelief, wrenching at his sword, dragging it from its scabbard.
Kinadius’ bodyguard, more used to their ruler’s rages, were better prepared. A spearman stepped forward, leveling his weapon as the trooper ran towards the dais. Two more stepped up, the horseman stopped, uncertain, his sword drooping, unused. The bodyguards glanced at their king. He nodded his head. “Him,” he said. The first spear thrust slammed the trooper backwards, then the others were plunging their points down and the trooper was shouting his last, calling out of treachery until he choked on the bubbled blood from his mouth.
Most of Milo’s escort were dismounted and died under the spears of the castle guard. Three fought their way clear, kicking their steeds recklessly down the stone causeway, and Kinadius, cursing, ordered his men to saddle and pursue. Two of the trapped troopers survived, bloodied but not seriously wounded and were hustled away to the prison tower.
Kinadius flung himself onto his throne, pushed his face deep into his bloodied hands and groaned. His wife, summoned by a servant, ran to put her hand on his shoulder. He shook it off. “This is aye no time for softness, woman,” he growled. “We’ll be breaking out the pikes and sacrificing to him once more.” He nodded to the carved sandstone effigy of Antenociticus, a British frontier god of war and warriors that stood in its own alcove and looked down on the hall’s denizens. “Arthur won’t stand for this. One of us will have to die.”
The woman ignored her husband’s words. “Is Sintea, is my child really dead?” she gasped. “The boy said so,” Kinadius responded, indicating with his foot the figure of Milo, still huddled on the floor. “I didn’t get the truth of it yet, but I’ll have it from those two prisoners.” The wife fell to the floor, wailing. “Why?” was all she could say.
“Why?” said the king bitterly. “Because she went to Arthur’s pox-ridden court and caught its foul pestilence. I should burn the pla
ce. I should never have agreed to her going. Now, get away, I have work to do.”
As he called for aides and hurried to muster for war, the trio of escaped troopers were racing for any safety they could find, and their route naturally took them east along the side of the firth, to the cathedral of Bishop Candless on top of its ancient earthwork. .
Two of the fugitives arrived at dusk, having left their wounded comrade, whose horse had gone lame. The man urged the others on. “I’ll be there tomorrow,” he said. “Tell the bishop about me, ask him to send some help.” The duo were in time to find Grabelius readying for his long ride south, and blurted out their news of treachery and murder.
Candless and the cavalrymen heard the news in grim silence. “Kinadius will be here within a day, he’ll recall my affiliation to Arthur,” said the bishop soberly. “I’ll need to raise my clan or he’ll have my head, and you’ll need to get urgent word to Arthur. The frontier will be afire in the matter of a week.”
“This news will not wait,” said Grabelius. “Send for my two troopers. We’ll start at once. You two, get fresh horses right now and be ready to go.” To Candless, he said: “We’ll take the Roman road south and we should outrun any pursuit. You’ll have men here asking questions, but you should be able to muster enough protection to be safe.”
Candless agreed. “The king will look to the frontier. He’ll have to rally the chieftains, because he’ll not have ready resources to raise enough men himself. He’ll be anxious about some traitor taking his chance to seize Kinadius’ own power. I’ll buy a clan’s warriors, I have the silver already.” The bishop sighed, then continued: ”I’ll get some of it cut up and distributed, we can make coin from it later. With gold in hand and the prospect of loot, I can have a good force to join Arthur’s when he comes north. I’ll send the pigeons with the news, too. Arthur will want to know as quickly as he can, because you know, he will come north. He will not countenance the death of his son. Kinadius will pay a terrible price for this day’s work.”
As he spoke, Kinadius was considering that very prospect. He had questioned the two captive troopers and heard of the terrible plague that was sweeping Britain. With threats and gold, he made them swear to keep secret what they had heard and seen that day, gave them Milo’s blood-soaked tunic and instructed them to ride swiftly to Arthur with a tale of being beset by outlaws who had killed the prince.
“You never got to my fastness,” he told them. “You were ambushed by robbers on the road and I am in pursuit of those bandits.” The two Britons bowed their heads in agreement, were given fresh horses and provisions and sent south. Both men kept silent and did not say that Arthur’s cavalry commander and two troopers had left their column before it arrived at the River Tay and Kinadius’ hall, so the king had no knowledge of the contact with Bishop Candless.
Instead, he felt that by using the excuse of keeping out the plague, he could close the Wall to all traffic, and would ensure that the three fugitives could be caught and killed long before Arthur learned that the tale of bandit ambush of his son was false. “That might hold Arthur for a while, though he will come north to investigate for himself, but it will buy us some time,” he told the jarl Baric. “My men should quickly kill those three who escaped. They will have great difficulty getting south and it is best if we make sure they don’t. Then, before Arthur comes snooping, we have time to persuade the clan chiefs that we can defeat him, get their forces organised and take his kingdom for ourselves.”
XIV - Tyne
Grabelius and his four horsemen slipped away from Dun Pelder soon after midnight, heading for the crumbling timber and earth ramparts of the Antonine Wall. It was a barrier in only a token sense, but one that might be manned by Kinadius’ sentries. From there, it was two hard days’ travel on the fine Roman road of Dere Street, south to the formidable Wall of Hadrian.
This stone frontier of the Roman empire ran 74 miles from sea to sea and was a high battlement with a rampart 15 Roman feet high and ten feet wide. It was fronted on the northern side by a wide berm that sat behind a deep, steep-sided defensive ditch. Watch towers every one-third of a mile were supplemented with fortified gateways every mile or so, and where possible the long-ago builders had run the Wall along ridgelines or other landscape features to make it more formidable.
Grabelius had passed through the wall several times and knew that even from the south it was a difficult barrier to cross, for a parallel, 20 feet wide flat-bottomed ditch with earth ramparts on either side protected its rear and created a zone controlled by the soldiery.
Even though the Wall was no longer manned as it had been during the days of empire, it was still operated as a customs barrier, with local warlords enforcing customs duties or tribute from all who passed through its gates.
Grabelius knew this was the chief obstacle on their route south and guessed that his small group would be on the same road as the messengers Kinadius would send. Their task would be to alert his vassals to the three fugitives who had escaped the murders of the prince and his escort. Grabelius’ mission was to elude the pursuers and to cross into the relative safety of Britain to get word to Arthur. Candless’ pigeons might be quicker, but they were less reliable and the message they could carry would not be as explicatory as that from a human messenger. This news was too important to trust to the mercy of a hungry hawk.
The legate urged on his troopers, not sparing their big Frisian mounts and turned the squadron away from Dere Street, which would have led them to the military strongpoint Corstopitum, a major crossing. Instead, he headed across the heaths and marshes towards the east end of the Wall at the Aelian Bridge, named for Hadrian’s family, that spanned the River Tyne.
The cavalryman recalled from a past crossing there that the fort which commanded the bridge was on the north bank, at the end of the Tyne gorge and was the site of a town of about 2,000 people. His calculated gamble was that Kinadius would send first to the larger garrison at Corstopitum, 20 miles to the west of the Aelian Bridge and more centrally sited on the Wall, to spread word of the three escapees both west and east from there. The Pict king could not know that there were not three but six of Arthur’s men on the run, one wounded and on his way to Candless’ stronghold, the others racing to the Wall.
By heading for the unimportant castrum at one end of the great rampart, Grabelius hoped to bluff their way across before word reached the small garrison. There was, he knew, a small, unnamed Roman road on the south side which ended at the bridge. This would offer a link to the metalled north-south road Ermine Street, means of a speedy journey to Eboracum. From there he could dispatch fast couriers across the Pennines to Arthur to tell him of his vassal king’s treachery and of the murder of his son. Speed was essential. Arthur needed the news before Kinadius could rally forces for an undeclared attack on Britain.
On the third day, in late afternoon, the weary group of five trotted their horses into view of their crossing. They had slept, tight-rolled in their woollen military cloaks in the wet bracken for just a scant hour while their tired horses had what rest they could and munched on the sacks of forage and bags of oats Candless’ copers had intelligently provided. The big horses’ strength had been vital to the prolonged pace of the ride and Grabelius thanked the gods for the forethought his king had shown years before when Arthur demanded a breeding programme of the gallant Frisian mounts.
Now, the cavalryman scanned the flatlands ahead of him, a rolling heath that gently descended to the big river. He could discern the line of the Wall itself, a blue-grey blur that crossed their southerly path, but his eye was drawn to the eminence where the Roman strongpoint stood, now occupied by Kinadius’ own forces.
The square-cut Roman stones withstood the bitter northeastern winds, and the high ramparts, pierced on each of the four sides by twin, gable-topped watchtowers, gave the sentries a fine view over the surrounding district. Grabelius knew he had little chance of approaching unnoticed, and knew too that the bridge would be closed and guarded aft
er nightfall. He pulled his weary troop into a small wood and rummaged in his saddle bags for his best tunic. While the horses were watered, the men scrubbed themselves as clean as possible of the journey’s dirt and beat the road dust out of their cloaks, so that the troop that trotted out of the woods a half hour later looked respectably fresh and military. Grabelius rode ahead, the troopers maintained a crisp formation and they arrived at the barrier across the bridge, under the looming wall of the fortress. Oddly, it was built on a peninsula so that defenders could only exit by the western gate, but five horsemen posed little threat and the guard had not been turned out.
Evidently, thought Grabelius, word about us has not yet reached here. “Your business?” demanded a slovenly watchman.
“None of yours,” responded Grabelius, staring down at the man from his high saddle. “I am on the king’s business.”
“You carrying goods?” asked the watchman.
“Do I look like a trader, you fool?” snarled Grabelius.
“You can’t pass until I know,” said the guard, stubbornly. “Anyway, you’d best wait for the officer.”
His men stirred, and Grabelius responded quickly. “The king’s man does not wait for some peasant.” Three more watchmen appeared from a small shelter and glanced at them nervously. The horsemen looked competent, trouble could be costly. The first watchman reached to his belt and produced a small hunting horn, which he put to his mouth and blew several times. “Best wait now,” he said, smiling sourly at Grabelius. “Officer’s coming.”
A Fragile Peace Page 7
