After a while, my fears eased. The villages we passed by, cautiously not approaching close without scouting them first, had largely escaped the fatal breath of the pestilence and we found workers in the fields, animals being tended and woodsmen at work. When we reached the garrison town of Virconium, at the River Severn crossing, however, matters were different. Someone had set up warnings at a vineyard by the roadside, grim skulls on stakes, and I sent two men forward to investigate. Their news was chilling. More than half the town had died. “They said it began in the barracks, lord. Two or three soldiers fell sick, then suddenly almost all had died within three days,” one reported. “After that, it raged through the whole town. So many fell to the plague there were almost too few living to dispose of the dead.”
Once again, I hardened my heart. There was nothing to do now. Those who would die, had died. Those who survived seemed immune. “Ride on,” I said. It seemed that people who lived close to others were most at risk. I dreaded to think how my garrison at Caerleon stood, and no messengers had yet returned. Maybe that told me what I needed to know.
We climbed the steep moors in a blinding rainstorm, tightly wrapped in our oiled wool cloaks against the driving wind and water and I wondered if the gods were tugging at me to turn back before it was too late, but I set my jaw and we continued. I had faced Death before. It was no friend, but it was inevitable and the Fates would choose the manner of our going.
So it was we rode in along well-watered valleys and under steep-sided hills to the vast castrum on the Usk and my heart was in my throat. If this garrison had been devastated like Virconium’s, the whole western flank of our nation was unguarded and I might never recover it from any invader. Candless kicked his horse up alongside mine. “Best send ahead,” he said briefly.
There was no need. A mile or so from the town, we saw the tall figure of Myrddin striding lithely to meet us, unmistakable with his grey scholar’s gown, white cloak and lignum vitae staff. I stiffened in the saddle, wondering if this meant terrible news, but a cry from the carriage behind me, where Guinevia’s maids had alerted her to her mentor’s approach told me that she at least saw it as a happy omen.
Soon the sorcerer, Candless and I were gathered under a sheltering oak, and Myrddin, brief as ever, had told us good news. “I heard of the pestilence and hurried back from the Standing Stones and some other business, back to Caerleon before the sickness got there,” he told us. “I ordered the gates closed to all outside, and established rules of hygiene and so forth.” I imagined the guard commander, slack-jawed at the sorcerer’s casual assumption of authority over his tribune and the latter, awed by the imposing Druid, meekly nodding his own tame acquiescence. Myrddin would have high-handedly rattled out a string of orders and left the tribune feebly assenting that his underlings follow the wizard’s directions.
Well, it had worked. The town had stayed under martial law, or as I privately amended that to myself, Myrddin’s law, for almost two months with strict controls over admittance and over the supplies that came in from the surrounding countryside. Those controls, plus well-enforced rules regarding sanitation and disease prevention had been a total success, and we had not lost to plague even a single man of the garrison, or a citizen of the town, either, though the latter were of less concern to me.
“The plague is not now a threat here,” Myrddin informed me, calmly. “But I have not released anyone yet. All are still confined in the town until you decide to open the gates again.” I grunted, at least he’d allowed his High King to have some authority.
“The garrison is unaffected?” I asked again. The sorcerer bowed his head.
“Awaiting your orders,” he said ironically.
“Go and talk to Guinevia,” I said impatiently. “She needs you.”
XXI - Blood
What the wizard and his pupil spoke about, I never did discover. Guinevia, I knew was near-suicidal. She had first lost her father, whose grisly, tortured death she had glimpsed psychically, and she had undergone brutal treatment herself at the hands of captors. Now she had lost her son, a boy of 17 murdered by the man whose throne he was supposed to inherit. No wonder her spirit was broken
I’d taken vengeance on Milo’s treacherous killer, and presented Guinevia with half of his skull, which she had grasped eagerly, for it was a powerful icon in her spirit world. She taken it and our son’s blood-soaked tunic into the private chamber where she did her magic, and I shuddered to think of the torments she could now inflict on the killer’s soul.
I also handed over to Myrddin the beautiful sword that incorporated powerful tokens from both the pagan and the Christian religions. This sword, and the golden Torc of Caratacus, were two of the three things Myrddin said could tempt the gods to look favourably upon Britain. Already, the sorcerer had possession of the torc, although I had no idea what he had done with it. Next he would want the third element of the sacrifice, which I was uncomfortably aware was the blood of a British royal.
“Does that mean,” I had asked Myrddin, “that we have to kill a king?” As I was that person, I regarded his answer with some interest. He seemed quite languid about the matter.
“Oh,” he said airily, “it could be any royal, the gods only want the sacrifice, you see.”
I didn’t actually see, but just grunted.
He understood that I didn’t comprehend exactly what was wanted, so condescended to explain a little more. “The gods,” and I noted that he addressed me as he would speak to a small child, though I am half a head taller than he and considerably larger, “the gods simply want a willing sacrifice. They require that they are acknowledged as your masters, so they want something that will be painful for you to give, and it must be given freely. Do you understand?”
It seemed clear enough, I nodded. We’d had many signs of their displeasure, blood moon and blood-red tides, invaders, strife and wars, the pestilence and its vast cloak of death, the murder of my son. Next might be the armoured heel of a conqueror. We had to give them something to regain their favour. It was just a pity, I thought, that we couldn’t simply slaughter the Christians.
I was brooding on the demands. I had, it was true, denied my gods, but I had done it for Britain. I had needed those Christians and their forces, so had been publicly baptised as one of them. It must have angered the gods a great deal, I thought, to bring down a wrath like this.
Myrddin and Guinevia entered my chamber. He had a spring in his step, she was trailing behind, pale and face set. “Sit down, lord,” Myrddin said, almost gently. “We have news for you.”
Today, I cannot remember the words they spoke, for my mind was roaring like a mountain torrent in springtime spate. I know only that Guinevia wanted to die. They explained it to me several times, but all I could grasp was that my lover, the mother of our son, wanted to leave me for the Underworld.
Myrddin made it sound almost reasonable when he put the core of their plan to me. Guinevia no longer wanted to live, and the gods wanted royal blood. It was a perfect match. She could die by the sword that was an icon of two religions and – the worst shock of all – they wanted me to kill her.
“I would suffer less if you killed me, my love,” she said. “You could make my death as sweet as it could be, and as swift. It would be the perfect sacrifice, you giving me to them, all for Britain, and I could see our son again, and be with him in Asgard as we wait for you to join us again.”
The day drifted into dusk. They spoke fair words to me, but I continued to shake my head, stubbornly. I could not countenance Guinevia leaving me, and I certainly could not bring myself to execute her. Britain could rot, I would rather be a slave before I would kill the woman I loved.
“Then I will kill myself,” she said calmly. One look at her clear blue eyes told me she meant that. She would, she said, take poison, or stab herself in the Roman way, falling on a sword to provide the blood the gods demanded.
Myrddin stood silent to one side, watching with his sardonic half-smile, and not for the first
time, I hated him. Then he spoke. “Guinevia makes perfect sense, lord,” he said. “If she is going to die anyway, why not make her death meaningful?”
It was cold, hard, pragmatic logic and I hated the sorcerer for it. Why could he not dissuade his pupil from this? Instead, she took it as validation of her decision, and nodded agreement. I was helpless. The decision was made for me, and so it was that we made ready to travel to the Standing Stones, so I could kill my lover and then, I would kill myself.
XXII - Sulis
Myrddin went ahead to make his preparations for the sacrifice. All must be perfect, we have no second chance,” he explained before he rode out of Caerleon, taking the carefully-wrapped pagan/Christian sword. I noticed that for once, he was not travelling alone. He had four slaves with him, one of them familiar to me, a fellow who had played music while we ate, and another I’d seen before, a dark-complected, tattooed Pict whom the wizard had acquired after one of our punitive expeditions into Alba. Candless had raised an eyebrow at the man too, later explaining that he thought he knew him.
The bishop, one arm held in a sling, was recovering from his ordeal of being crucified on his own church door, and was still gloweringly sullen about the treasure he had been forced to abandon. “We’ll go back with some force to Dunpendyrlaw and find it again,” I promised, for I could certainly use the silver and Candless had been readying it for me, though he seemed to have forgotten that.
As if he read my thoughts, he grinned at me, guilelessly widening his startling blue eyes. “It is all your treasure, of course, Caros,” he said, using the diminutive of my long-ago Latin name. It gave me pause. Caros. The memories that name brought… Once I was Carausius, a soldier of Rome. Those faraway days of more than two decades before seemed precious now. I sometimes wondered how much happier would I have been to remain a decurion, or a humble sailor. Just to command a squadron of blue-sailed war galleys on the salt waters of the Narrow Sea, as once I did, seemed at that moment so desirable I felt I would give everything to do it again. To carry out a simple, defined, undemanding task would be so freeing. Instead, I had to reconcile Britain’s gods and I had to kill me lover to do it. Without intention, I released a gusty sigh and shook my head.
Candless was eyeing me speculatively. “You don’t have to do it,” he said quietly, intuitively understanding matters. “Let Myrddin do his own magic.”
“It wouldn’t work, old friend,” I said. “She’d kill herself. She’s resolved on her path. The least I can do is to perform the last favour of making her death swift and easy.”
Candless stared at me, assessing my words and my own resolve. “Aye,” he said. “You’ll have to do it.”
I turned away. There were things to be done before we followed Myrddin to the place of sacrifice.
The leaves were turning golden, the long summer was ending, and the crops that had not failed for lack of men to work the fields had to be gathered. Shepherds and herdsmen had not been as badly affected by the plague as had the field workers who lived in communities, so the flocks and herds were in fair shape, but it would soon be time for the annual slaughter. All the cattle could not be kept fed through the winter months and there was much work to do, bringing in grain and hay, making the woodpiles and readying the halls for the winter snows and wind.
And over it all was the sorrow of the plague deaths. The homes of most plague victims had already been burned, along with their bedding and clothing. Only goods of iron or wood were saved, but the small numbers of survivors took little pleasure in their unexpected gains of property, for the losses of family, cousins or fellow villagers had bitten too deep. Seasonal rituals like mushroom picking, once a joyful communal event and an excuse for horseplay and flirting in the woods, now became solitary expeditions for lone pickers. The women still collected moss for our privy needs, and boiled walnut shells to make dye, but too often it was just one or two women working together, not a circle of females spinning thread from sheep’s wool and laughing and gossiping in happy harmony.
Guinevia was a ghost in my life. I glimpsed her around the castrum from time to time, thin and pale, head bowed, a silent shadow of the vital, vivacious Druid she once was. I spoke to her, but she brushed me aside and hurried to some private place. And as each day ended in purple dusk, I was one day closer to the time when I would have to take her life, and my own, although the latter did not seem of much moment.
Word came from Myrddin, carried back by the dark-visaged Pictish slave, that all was readied and we should journey south to join him. We rode out the next day, Guinevia insisting she took a horse, and not travel by raeda carriage. I gave her my black Frisian warhorse Corvus and took the stallion’s stablemate Nonios for myself.
We rode out by the sparkling waters of the Usk and turned east alongside the Severn Sea where once Guinevia had made sacrifice of a gallant girl to recruit the sea god’s help. Manannan mac Lir had responded and wrecked an invader’s fleet, sending a great bore of water up the sea to destroy it. This day, as we rode over the stone bridge at Gloucester where Guinevia had performed the sacrifice, our sorceress hardly even raised her eyes to the place or to the beauty of the day.
Through the territory of the Dobuni, the villages were empty of folk, as the plague had hit the region hard, but as we mounted the ridge to the Fosse Way and turned south on the ancient road, we came across more occupied habitations and at Aquae Sulis, where the Romans built their great bath on the sacred hot springs, we saw our first real gathering of folk since we had left our own at Caerleon.
“It looks as if the plague hit less hard here,” said Candless, and several of the town’s jarls who came to meet us confirmed his diagnosis. “Your messengers came with instructions, which we followed. We had already closed the gates, and we took the advice you sent, lord. We burned the homes and goods of the plague victims and we burned their poor bodies, too,” they reported. “We lost one citizen in ten, but we have had no new plague cases for weeks now, and the news from the countryside is the same.”
Candless and I looked at each other, thanked the jarls for their news and offer of hospitality, and opted to camp outside and upwind of the city that night. Caution is rarely wasted. The next dawn, we were again saddling up, for one last long day’s ride to the Standing Stones on the plain. I considered a diversion to visit Caros Camp, but steeled myself. Best to get this business over with.
XXIII - Sarsens
Firelight reflected off the clouds showed us where Myrddin had made camp, some distance from the Stones, and we rode towards it through the dusk with relief, stiff and sore from the journey. The Druid was sitting on a camp stool, warming his long fingers at the fire, and he rose casually, brushing at his robe, unsurprised at our swift arrival.
He greeted us cheerfully, which seemed ill-suited to the occasion, embraced Guinevia, who stood silent and seeming indifferent and even nodded cheerily to Candless, which was out of character for the sorcerer. Then he led me aside as the servants bustled to prepare food and bedding for us and our mounts.
“Everything is ready,” he said happily. “We will do the ceremony at first light in three days’ time, when the auspices are right. I understand that Guinevia has the boy’s tunic?” What that had to do with anything I did not know, but I was aware that she had two small parcels at her saddle bow and kept them by her side when she was not on horseback. One, I knew, contained the partial skull of King Kinadius. The other, I had heard through one of Guinevia’s maids, held the tunic. “She does not let either thing be far from her hand, lord,” the woman had told me, as I dropped a piece of gold into her paw. I was slightly ashamed to spy on my lover, but a king has to do things that ordinary men do not.
“She has it.”
“Good, it may be useful” was all the Druid would say.
I dismissed the matter. “Can you work your magic on her?” I asked, pleading as I had never done before. “Persuade her that this step,” I could not bring myself to elaborate what step I meant, “tell her that she does
not need to die?”
Myrddin shook his head. “She wants to kill herself anyway,” he said coolly. “May as well use that sacrifice for something necessary.”
I turned away, angered, before I vented at him. Myrddin rarely treated me as his king, and he was too useful to me to risk punishing him. I would have to find another means, another piece of leverage to get my way.
We did not see much of the sorcerer or his slaves for the next two days, for he moved away from the camp and slept elsewhere, presumably doing his magic. Guinevia was not involved in them, and remained in her tent until the evening before the planned ceremony, when the wizard arrived looking pleased with himself. “I brought mutton for our dinners,” he announced, adding “and wine,” at my sour glance.
We sat in semi-darkness near the fire, Guinevia and I picking at our last meal. I could hardly take my eyes off her, even drawn and pale as she looked, she was lovely in the firelight and my whole being ached at the thought of the morning’s bloody work. I tried to coax her into words, but she shook her head and looked aside, then slipped quietly away to her own pavilion. I spent the night under the cold stars and the bright full moon, wondering where my soul would be tomorrow, if I would walk with the Hunter or stand beside the Bull.
And then the hours had slid by, the wolf light spread, and the time had come.
Guinevia emerged from her pavilion and my breath stopped. She wore a dress of silk the colour of cornflowers and had laced her barley-gold hair with simple daisies. All she said was “I am ready,” and her eyes pierced my heart. At that moment I knew that once she had gone, I would follow. I touched first Exalter where he hung at my hip, then checked my punching dagger in its sheath behind my neck. Last, I put my thumb to the place under my sternum where the dagger would enter. If Guinevia had to die, so would I.
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