King Arthur: The Bloody Cup: Book Three

by M. K. Hume

  He smiled wistfully at Percivale.

  ‘I speak harshly because you are clean and good, Percivale, and I want no part of any ill that comes to you. Look into your heart before you reach out your hand to clutch this vessel to your breast. And pray that such an object never finds its way into King Artor’s court. It would destroy the king more certainly than any blade could. He is a good man, your Artor, for I saw the character in his face long before you were born. But a king must make compromises to rule as long as he has, and the Cup will find his weaknesses. As to his court, I haven’t been to Cadbury and I cannot imagine those men who surround him, but the Cup would discover every vile detail and every ambition in their natures.’ Brother Simon stared at his useless hands. ‘I would regret my assistance to you if it should bring harm to the High King or to any of his loyal subjects. Better I should be dead than be a traitor to the man who labours to preserve God’s church.’

  Percivale could offer no comfort, other than to bow respectfully and then leave the old man to his regrets.

  As Percivale left the room, Brother Simon turned back to the new mould and began to oil it with shaking hands that were mere clubs. Tears rolled down his leathery cheeks, not only in sorrow, but also in joy. Glastonbury would be the last home he would ever know; although the Cup may have taken his hands, God had given him Glastonbury. Simon’s faith was as strong as the metals he had once mastered. For good or for ill, the Cup was loose on the land, but Simon believed that God would prevail.

  That night, Percivale dictated a written message to a priestly scribe, addressing it to Bishop Otha. Then, before first light and in secrecy, he took his leave from the religious enclave. Otha couldn’t be trusted so, as a precaution, Percivale had questioned all the older priests during the course of the one afternoon in order to divert suspicion away from Brother Simon.

  In the letter delivered personally to Otha, Percivale pronounced himself defeated by the passage of time in his search to find the origins of the Cup.

  Then, like the smoke from the kitchens he had once tended, Percivale disappeared into the welcoming darkness.

  Four days away as the crow flies, Gronw tossed fitfully as he slept on a pile of filthy straw in a stone hut in Ordovice country. His dreams were filled with the many faces of Gernyr Raven-Hair, her lower lip gripped between her white teeth as she thought up devilry. Her dark eyes were agleam as she stroked his thighs, his groin and his lust-blinded eyes. The black warrior groaned as he remembered the texture of her white throat as it pulsed with fierce life under his kisses. Then he saw her beloved, fearsome face as it jetted blood from the severed arteries that fed the stuttering beat of her heart.

  Her brilliant eyes still possessed him, body and soul.

  He writhed in his sleep and wished that he could gaze on her remembered beauty for just one more moment. Even the unconscious release of orgasm couldn’t soothe him, as her eyes burned themselves into his brain as they had for a thousand nights before this one.

  Eventually, exhausted and numbed, Gronw slept on dreamlessly in his malodorous hut.

  Nimue woke from a dream of blood and murder, and felt the shade of Myrddion stretched comfortingly beside her.

  ‘Taliesin does well,’ she told her beloved. ‘My heart tells me he eases the king’s pain.’

  In Nimue’s imagination, Myrddion’s voice gently answered her as he stroked her hair.

  ‘He’ll need to be stronger still. As will you, my beloved. The unseasonable winds from the south blow cold when they should be warm. Dire portents are coming and you must be ready to do your part. Those who live by the taint, smell and taste of spilled blood are growing stronger by the hour. You are one of the chosen few who can do what must be done.’

  ‘But do I have the strength to play my part in what must be?’ she asked, her eyes like deep pools of blue water as she looked out into the empty darkness.

  ‘You always have the strength to do what must be done, my lady.’

  Her arms embraced the nothingness that lay beside her and she dreamed of Myrddion’s touch, uncaring of the wind from the south or the portents of evil that wailed on the dark air.

  CHAPTER XI

  DOGGEREL AND DREARY DAYS

  Salinae Minor dreamed in the night wind, her breast pressed against the cold, dark waters of the river and her trees and roofs shrouded in a thin blanket of snow. Her statues were pale blurs in a landscape of charcoal trees and glistening, diamond-white gardens, and the villa seemed to hover over the silver drifts.

  Inside, a roaring hypocaust heated the floors and every window was shuttered and the doors barred. The furniture and servants had scarcely changed, although Galahad’s personal guard had taken up residence with much noisy joking and young male sweat. Even the slow-falling snow that entered the atrium couldn’t chill the glowing braziers and warm tiles that resisted nature’s extremes. More long shutters sealed the atrium from the body of the house, dimming the light and containing a feeling of cosy contentment and safety.

  Galahad had efficiently organized the good order and comfort of the villa, but even his energy could not hide the fact that the heart had been plucked out of Salinae Minor and had not yet been replaced with another. Already, in the cobwebs forming in corners and through the thin line of dust that was filtering down on to wooden surfaces, the absence of women spoke wordlessly of Miryll’s fate.

  In the scriptorium, Galahad and Percivale stared glumly at a line of puzzling words that Galahad had written on the tabletop with a piece of charcoal.

  ‘I’m damned if I can understand the meaning of this sodding rhyme,’ Galahad muttered irritably. ‘Artor will skin me alive if we don’t decipher Lucius’s puzzle, so I’m doomed to become a pair of slippers for the High King’s feet.’

  Percivale was about to grin in rueful companionship at Galahad’s little joke, but he realized that Galahad was serious. The young man’s abundant hair was tousled and untied, and even his normally perfect eyebrows seemed to be tangled. Under weary lids, his fine hazel eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep.

  ‘Can we explore this rhyme from another direction?’ Percivale suggested tentatively. ‘Perhaps we should determine exactly what we do know - and work outward from there.’

  ‘We know that Lucius brought the Cup to Glastonbury,’ Galahad stated. ‘He admitted that fact to anyone who asked.’

  ‘If that’s correct, the Cup has no history in this land,’ Percivale responded. ‘So it can’t be the Celtic relic that you thought was hidden at Salinae Minor.’

  Galahad looked thoughtful.

  ‘I suppose not,’ he said. ‘So what was secreted away in the tower? It must have been something important for Miryll’s father to write of it, so we now have two mysteries to puzzle over. Shite, but I’d prefer to be doing something rather than sitting around trying to puzzle out silly rhymes and mysteries.’

  Percivale was as humble as Galahad was arrogant, but Percivale saw no reason to ram his beliefs down the throats of his friends, unlike Galahad who saw conversion to the Church of Rome as his duty. However, their shared faith was proving to be an asset in their developing friendship, although Percivale had never spent so many hours on his knees, a practice that Galahad deemed necessary to support his spiritual health. Arrogant and difficult in character, as straight as a sword blade and as brutally direct, Galahad was the stereotype of a Christian warrior in the imaginations of those unfortunate men and women with whom he came into contact. Only close proximity and empathy revealed the uncertain, troubled man who was struggling to break the influence of an exotic and repellant family. Percivale understood that Galahad dreamed of lasting glory to wash away all memories of his famous libertine father, his grasping grandfather, his sorceress great-aunt and his hate-motivated grandmother.

  ‘Has anyone mentioned anything to you about the Salinae Minor relic except for what you discovered in the scrolls?’ Percivale asked.

  ‘During my visit to this place with my father, both Gronw and Lady Miryll avoided me
as if I carried the plague.’ Galahad toyed with a reed pen. His fingers picked at the stem, splintering and ripping the delicate point until it was pulpy and useless.

  ‘Do you think that Lady Miryll might have revealed something to your father, even inadvertently? Both Miryll and Gronw seem to have treated Lord Gawayne like a pet hound, and she spent a whole day in his company. They must have talked about something.’

  ‘After we left Salinae Minor, Father complained incessantly all the way to Cadbury. The main topic of conversation was Salinae Minor and its past. He objected strenuously to my dislike of the place and, while I’m no longer sure what he said because I hardly listened, he mentioned the execution of Miryll’s mother by her husband, Miletus, without giving me her name. Father was adamant that Salinae Minor was a venerable place, and that I was being unreasonable in loathing the whole menagerie.’

  ‘Did your father give any reasons for his judgement? I’m certain you would have argued with him about it.’

  Galahad laughed thinly. ‘He takes no notice of anything I say. He’s Gawayne, one of Artor’s immortals!’

  Percivale waited, much as he had with Brother Simon at Glastonbury. He understood that even the cleverest and most manipulative of men hate silences and so they hasten to fill the void.

  ‘Have you heard the legend of an old man from another land who is reputed to have built the original church at Glastonbury?’ Galahad asked.

  ‘I vaguely recall the tale.’ Percivale shrugged, careful to hide his knowledge of Josephus until he knew the direction of Galahad’s thinking.

  ‘Father told me that the man who built the church was the same person who built the tower on this island. He’d already found Rufus’s notes on the old scrolls but Father was uninterested in the references to an old man.’

  ‘Perhaps the legend of the old man might be the link we’re searching for,’ Percivale said cautiously. He resisted the link between the tower on Salinae Minor and Glastonbury church. In his mind, Salinae Minor would always be pagan and drenched in blood.

  ‘Damnation! I can’t remember what Father was maundering on about. But if you give me a moment, I might remember.’ Galahad paced the room, and Percivale wondered how difficult it was to be sired by a legend such as Gawayne.

  Visibly, Galahad wracked his brains. ‘Father just shrugged, and he agreed that he’d never heard of the trader of the scrolls . . . or another outlandish name like that.’

  Percivale stared at Galahad in disbelief. For such a dedicated young man, and one who was a zealous Christian, the Otadini prince was occasionally remarkably obtuse.

  ‘Could the name he mentioned have been Arimathea?’

  ‘Possibly. I don’t remember.’

  ‘Do you recall the holy stories of the Church?’

  Galahad looked blank, but then realization slowly animated his face.

  ‘Is it possible? Could Joseph of Arimathea be the Trader? The same Joseph who brought Jesus to this land? Who buried the Lamb of God in his tomb?’

  Both warriors stared at the words on the tabletop with eyes that were round with excitement.

  ‘The legends insist that Joseph came to Britain, but I always assumed that the tale was a fiction,’ Galahad said, his face shining.

  ‘Perhaps the legend was a memory from times long gone and the tale has changed with the passage of time. Have you ever seen the likes of the Glastonbury thorn elsewhere in Britain? Myrddion Merlinus believed the thorn tree came from a sprig of Christ’s crown of thorns. But who can say after all these years?’

  Galahad shook his head. His eyes constantly returned to the charcoal words scrawled on the tabletop.

  ‘First things first,’ Percivale insisted, noting his master’s preoccupation. ‘What was the relic that came from this place? And where is it now? Listen to me, Galahad, and stop leaping to conclusions about the origins of the Cup.’

  ‘It must be in the tower. Where else could it be?’

  Decisively, Percivale rose to his feet. ‘Then it’s time we searched the tower.’

  ‘Aye.’ Galahad smiled at his friend. ‘Searching is far better than staring at that damned rhyme.’

  Several fruitless hours followed.

  The tower had been stripped of all trace of Miryll’s existence and only the bare stone room with its many narrow apertures remained. A few leaves from the last winds of autumn had banked up in the corners, for the servants were unwilling to enter this ghost-ridden space where the air was almost frozen from the winter chill. The two warriors tapped the stones with knife hilts, checked the stairs and lay on their bellies and burrowed into the crude foundations.

  But they found nothing.

  ‘I wonder what this room contained before Miryll’s occupation?’ Percivale stared around the small space.

  Galahad shrugged. He was seated cross-legged on the central stone that raised him some two feet above the tower floor.

  ‘If you lived here, would you sleep on a cold stone bed?’ Percivale asked him.

  ‘I don’t even like sitting on this thing. It clearly wasn’t intended to be a bed and, if it’s an altar, its presence in a tower room makes no sense. Who would put an altar here? Think of the effort and ingenuity needed to raise the stone into place.’

  Percivale gingerly kicked at the slab of stone. ‘Why is it here?’

  Galahad ran his hands over the rough surface. There was no carving, and no pagan symbols. In fact, it was just a rectangular rough-cut stone in the middle of a tower, in the middle of an island.

  Both men dropped to their knees and started to inspect it in earnest.

  Percivale was a practical man, as is anyone who has once hewed firewood and cleaned dirty pots for his daily bread.

  ‘The floor should collapse under the weight of this stone,’ he muttered to himself. He strode to the nearest aperture. If he craned his neck, he could see huge oak slabs protruding some two feet out of the walls. They were little more than six inches apart in two rows all round the tower, and made it look as if it wore a crown of spikes.

  Galahad watched Percivale as he crawled around the room and examined the iron-hard floor so closely that the tip of his nose was almost touching the timber.

  ‘There are heavy beams, then thinner slabs of wood set on crosspieces. And here is a groove in the flooring.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ As usual, Galahad spoke first and thought afterwards.

  Percivale was dirty, tired and exasperated. ‘See for yourself!’ he retorted irritably. ‘A competent craftsman would have spotted this seam sooner. Unfortunately, I’m not a carpenter and I’m not remotely familiar with stonework.’ Percivale was now talking to himself as a rush of ideas tripped off his tongue. ‘I’m sure that this floor was built for a specific purpose.’

  He looked at the bemused Galahad. ‘Think, Galahad! Why would anyone go to all this effort . . . years of backbreaking work by a team of skilled workers? I know that oak is difficult to shape at any time, even with iron implements. A small grove of old trees has been sacrificed for . . . what?’

  Percivale hurried on, ignoring Galahad’s puzzled face.

  ‘Now, do we try to move the stone? There’s a seam there, but it’s black with age. No. There’s not a hope of moving it, even if we had the strongest warriors in Britain to carry out the task. There has to be another way.’

  Percivale darted out of the tower room and down the stairs.

  Galahad followed.

  ‘Yes!’ Percivale stated excitedly. ‘There it is, in the centre of the wheel.’

  Galahad craned his neck upwards from the twelve steps that led up to the tower chamber. ‘What am I looking at, Percivale? I swear I’ll clout you if you keep mumbling nonsense at me.’

  Percivale pointed upwards.

  The great double spokes of a wheel made of ancient oak were clearly obvious. The wood was hardened through years of seasoning to the rigidity and colour of old iron.

  ‘Look at the centre of the structure. It’s six feet in diameter and inlaid wit
h dressed timber.’

  ‘So?’ Galahad was curt. His expression remained blank, and Percivale was reminded that the kin of Morgause weren’t noted for their intelligence.

  ‘If you wanted to hide something, where better to put it than under a slab of stone that can only be accessed by opening another slab of wood under the floor of the tower room. Does anyone ever look upward when they’re in a place like this?’

  Light was beginning to dawn inside Galahad’s inflexible thought processes. If Percivale’s calculations were correct, there had to be a circular cavity below the floor that supported the stone.

  ‘We’ll need ropes to check that cavity,’ Galahad said eagerly. ‘You’ll need to find a pulley and some sharp chisels.’

  Percivale laughed at the younger man’s enthusiasm - although he was less impressed at being ordered about like a slave.

  ‘I’d prefer to do this chore in the daylight when we can see what we’re about. If you wish, you can try to find entry at night but I plan to eat, then sleep soundly through the hours of darkness. This hiding place has been here for hundreds of years, so it can wait until tomorrow.’

  Unwillingly, Galahad agreed, but neither warrior really slept well through the long, cold night, although their reasons for sleepless - ness were quite different. Galahad was in hot pursuit of a Christian relic and the reputation he would win with such a discovery. Percivale was searching for God’s purpose, for he was sure that Joseph of Arimathea would never bother to hide a relic unless it was important to the Christian faithful.