The Blood of Kings: Tintagel Book I

by M. K. Hume

  Once again, Maximus changed tack.

  ‘At any road, my old friend, I’m working on a solution to the problems of reigning inside a triumvirate.’ His wolfish smile seemed to split his face. ‘Don’t look so alarmed, Caradoc. I’ll only be shaking up the insulting complacency of Valentinian and his advisers. Mind you, I’ll probably be shaking up Theodosius as well. I have some useful allies in the north who might provide some surprises for him.’

  ‘You must beware, Maximus,’ Caradoc warned. ‘Rome has survived because it has a structure that has lasted down the centuries. It would be very hard to overcome the obstacles that would be placed in front of you. Even the rank incompetence of Gratian couldn’t bring the city down. Any man who tried to take her would feel the weight of a thousand years of history collapse on him. You don’t know the terrain of Italia, because no attacking army has set foot on its soil for many centuries. Please don’t tempt the fates, Maximus! I have very few friends in this world and I’d like to keep the ones I have.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Caradoc. I don’t plan to invade Italia. I’m not an idiot, so I would never act until I was absolutely certain. But before I can do anything in Rome, I have some Pict warriors to slaughter along my northern borders.’

  As the Roman continued to scan through the parchment, some forgotten detail reasserted itself in his memory. His brow furrowed.

  ‘Caradoc? May I ask another favour of you? I trust it won’t be too onerous.’

  ‘The last time I agreed to assist you, I ended up as a regent and acting as the High King of Britannia,’ Caradoc laughed wryly. ‘Very well! Ask away!’

  ‘Decius has come with me, but he’s very ill. I believe he’s dying. I couldn’t refuse him, because he’d have tried to follow me by himself and he’d have perished in the wilds of Belgica. Would you be prepared to care for him here until such time as I return?’

  Caradoc’s breath caught in his throat. Maximus was speaking of Decius as if he was a faithful old dog who’d become a nuisance. Yet Caradoc was almost certain that tears threatened to spill out from behind the emperor’s traitorous eyes.

  ‘Of course! Decius is a friend, and he will always be welcome in my house.’

  ‘Good! Good!’ Maximus surreptitiously wiped his eyes when he thought his friend wasn’t watching. ‘I’ll send him on his litter this evening.’

  Nothing more on the topic of Decius was said; a long discussion on the current campaign followed, during which Maximus picked his friend’s mind clean of every piece of useful information. Only when the emperor had left the villa to make his preparations for his journey into the north did Caradoc have any real opportunity for reflection.

  The evening began to lengthen. Caradoc staggered out of his bed and cursed his weak legs and the pains in his ankles, before pulling on a robe and taking up the sturdy staff that Endellion had found for him. As he gripped it with both of his crippled hands, he reflected that the simplest dexterity was beyond him. He thought of Decius and was saddened.

  He was forced to order several servants to leave him to his own devices before he reached the forecourt and the small orchard of fruit trees below it. He sought out a stone seat where he could watch the sun on the horizon, hear the din of warriors from the roadway beyond the villa walls and smell the fruit blossoms in the sweet night air. Such a scene of peace should have eased his worried mind but, instead, it provided an ironic backdrop to his doom-laden thoughts.

  The clouds were edged with fire as the sun approached its full extension. Why was Maximus so obtuse? He had an opportunity to create a huge empire, one that would be mighty in the future but, instead, he looked backwards and yearned for a throne that had lost its validity. Caradoc had never seen Rome and he had no desire to visit its seven hills. All that he had been told, and all that he had seen of invading barbarian tribes, told him that the Roman world was heading towards its death knell. If the emperors refused to adapt to the new world, they would be swept into the past.

  Could Maximus succeed in his crazy quest? He would try. But Theodosius would never permit such an attack on the status quo to be successful, and Maximus would go into the shades.

  No! If Maximus attempted to attack Rome, he would inevitably fail. And if he failed, the world of Britannia would shudder to a stop. There would be no going back and the life that Caradoc loved so much would be finished.

  As pink and white blossoms fell about him, Caradoc considered the strange nature of love. He didn’t love his wife, or even either of his sons, although he was very fond of them. Only Endellion had shown him what love could be.

  Likewise, his Roman friend had wed twice and had fathered many children, but he had never demonstrated love for any of them. Only Decius, a worn-out decurion who had served him for decades, could draw a tear from the hard heart of Magnus Maximus.

  ‘What fools we are,’ Caradoc murmured. ‘We live without the warmth of human contact for so long.’

  The sun sank below the horizon and the light began to fade. But Caradoc continued to sit quietly in the encroaching darkness. His mind was leached of all thought as he absorbed a beauty that he could barely see.

  The darkness was complete when Endellion’s servants finally found him and returned him, kindly but firmly, to the prison of his bed.

  CHAPTER XXI

  THE SCORPION IN THE NEST

  A man’s character is his fate.

  Heraclitus

  The months and years were running quickly together as the tide of human affairs ebbed and flowed while Caradoc continued to sicken. Decius had travelled back to Tintagel with the Dumnonii king, for he stubbornly refused to die until his master returned from his travels. Nothing had been heard of Maximus, or Aeron, and no more long letters had come either to trouble or ease the minds of those who waited at the fortress. Endellion grew pale from the many duties and concerns that occupied her, in addition to caring for two old men. Meanwhile Severa began to grow tall and willowy, and traces of her father could be seen in her wilful strength of purpose. The little girl took to spending her hours with Decius, who told her many stories about her father and her mother.

  Endellion spent her free time in her father’s rooms. His body betrayed him gradually, but his mind remained sharp and, when he was awake and in his full wits, father and daughter would speak quietly together about any number of topics. Both cherished these intimate and intensely-private times. Endellion would read to Caradoc from a never-ending supply of manuscripts; sometimes she managed to beg, borrow or steal a manuscript that was totally improper for any young woman to touch, least of all to read. In the long evenings, she would occasionally speak with Decius and she observed his stubborn hold on life; something of Severa’s obsession with the old man had captured Endellion’s empathy.

  ‘Can’t you see, Endellion?’ Caradoc asked. ‘God has sent Severa to Decius to give some meaning to the last dregs of his life. Meanwhile, she learns all the good, the brave and the noble in her father’s history. Yes, Decius no doubt makes his master seem a far better man than he could ever hope to be, but think about the situation in which she finds herself. She has no mother, no father and no kin, now that Meriadoc is dead. Kynan is far away in Brittany, so he will never return to these lands. Without Decius, how would she have learned the history of her family? Who would give her a sense of belonging?’

  Endellion was struck by Caradoc’s explanation. She had never possessed a mother, but she had never felt the lack because Caradoc had told her everything she had ever wanted to know about Saraid. Once Caradoc went to the shades, she would be as alone as Severa.

  ‘Yes, Jesus has sent Decius to give Severa a special gift. I can see that now.’

  As he slept under his furs in the snug heart of his fortress, Endellion looked down at her father’s shrunken form and knew she was presiding over the death of one of the great British kings. She understood that others would
come in the future to rival Caradoc’s achievements. However, few would be as reasoned or as tolerant. Where Caradoc had walked, life had flourished. If he killed, he did so with cold precision and without the rejoicing that some men felt. Whether history remembered him or not, a man such as Caradoc would remain rare.

  ‘Why are you spending so much time with a husk of a man? You’re young, Endellion, and I’m poisoning your youth.’

  Caradoc’s voice was so faint now that she could barely hear him and the huge bones of his face had pushed through his age-thinned skin, so that only his spirit seemed to light him from within. She kissed his hand and he felt her silent tears on his skin.

  ‘I can’t rest if you won’t go outside and spend some time in the sunshine. Fetch me some wildflowers and return to tell me everything you’ve seen that interests you. I long for the open air. I also hunger to go riding, but I know such pleasures have now gone forever. Please obey me, daughter. After all, I’m not likely to run off in your absence.’

  ‘You would, if you could. You’d order one of the servants to carry you outside and they’d obey anything you asked of them.’

  ‘I promise that I will obey, but only if you’ll agree to rest and spend a little time walking along the clifftops. Would that be an acceptable bargain, Endellion?’ Endellion knew she was being outmanoeuvred, but she ceded the field of battle to the old campaigner and promised that she would stroll along the cliffs.

  On the sheer precipices of the mainland, the long grasses had been flattened by the winds that blew in from the ocean. Yet wildflowers still nestled among the grass, where they were protected by the long, hardy fronds. She set to work and quickly gathered a large bunch of them, filling the basket that she had hooked over her saddle.

  Then, in the beauty of the soft, warm afternoon, she rode down to the causeway and dismounted. The tide was out, revealing shiny-black rocks, limpets and small stretches of sandy gravel, where seagulls squabbled and fought over tasty shellfish morsels. Endellion sat on a drying rock and watched their antics for several minutes. Then she clambered down onto the narrow beach, tied up her skirts and began to hunt through the crevices and spaces under the rocks in the hope of finding something unusual that would amuse her father. Pieces of timber, splintered remains of ships, had found their way onto the shore, reminders of human frailty in the face of the ocean’s eternity.

  Several broken shells came to light, but Endellion discarded them as being too damaged. She discovered one rock pool that was protected by a small crab, which she eventually caught and moved into another pool so that she could search through the dark recesses of its home for sea treasures.

  Her strong fingers explored deep into the rocky extremities of the pool and, finding nothing, she continued to rake through the sand and the pebbles. The waters clouded immediately, but she suddenly felt something hard as she probed with her forefinger, and managed to get a grip on a smooth, egg-shaped object. Elated, she drew out her prize.

  At first she believed she had found a pretty pebble, except that something about its slick surface was unlike that of any she had ever seen. She held the object up to the light.

  Unlike normal stones, even fragments of quartz, it wasn’t quite opaque. With the light behind it the stone was a pale, crystalline green with dozens of tiny bubbles trapped within its depths. Endellion turned it again and again until, partially obscured by the strange bubbles, she discerned a minuscule leaf buried into the stone’s heart. The tiny veins, the vivid green of the upper side of the leaf and the silver of its underside, told her immediately that what the sea had given her was a plum-sized egg of green amber.

  Her heart beat quickly and she would have returned to Tintagel immediately, but her curiosity impelled her to search a little further. She discovered no more pieces of the rare amber, but treasure trove still existed in the pools. The skeleton of a fingerling, still intact; an unbroken, brown and white shell scraped clean by the waves; a single, stained tusk as long as her hand and, finally, a piece of driftwood tortured and shaped into a spiked crown by wind and water were retrieved by her busy hands. Eventually, satisfied with her search, she took all the trophies back to the fortress. Her legs were very weary by the time she reached the forecourt, but she had little time for weariness. Caradoc was waiting.

  The long twilight filled Caradoc’s room with a soft glow. Light bounced off the waves and limned the underside of the low clouds that filled the western sky, while Caradoc had arranged for a silver mirror to be mounted so he could observe the world outside the unshuttered window. As Endellion entered the room, her father was turned onto one side so he could watch a group of fishermen at work. Once their fine nets had sunk to the bottom, the two men in each boat would draw up the load of captured fish by hauling on ropes attached to the weighted outer edges of the nets.

  ‘Look, Endellion. They’ve caught a bumper crop of fish.’ Her father knew she was there, although he hadn’t turned his head to acknowledge her presence. She went up to the end of his bed and gazed out of the window at the wild scenery below the ramparts of Tintagel.

  Because of the shape of the bay, the causeway and the headland, the waters were often very rough and dangerous, especially when strong, offshore winds blew. The local fishermen were always alert for changes in the weather; rips and rogue currents were known to drag careless fishermen far out to sea, a journey from which they would never return.

  On this day, the waters were relatively calm. But, despite this, the catch that was dragged into the boat was landed with much more difficulty than usual. This exceptional cast of the net would provide the fortress with food for many months to come, Fortuna having favoured the fishermen for one particularly auspicious afternoon.

  Endellion placed the wildflowers she had collected during her stroll in vases, then seated herself on a stool beside his bed and offered her trophies, one by one, to her father. Caradoc’s eyes sharpened with pleasure and he handled each still-damp object with surprising dexterity.

  Each item received his full attention, but Endellion had left the amber egg until last. As soon as she placed the cool shape into his hands, she saw Caradoc’s face begin to glow with genuine appreciation as he raised the egg up to the window so that the setting sun could illuminate it from behind.

  ‘You’re a truly fortunate young lady, daughter. Green amber of this size is very, very rare and to have a leaf trapped within it? . . . What a wonderful prize! How did you find it?’

  The story of her discovery, and their discussion on the quality of each item, took up the entire space between dusk and darkness. Caradoc listened like a child, asking the occasional question that helped him to visualise the place where the amber had made its final home.

  ‘I’ll have an exceptional jewel made from this stone so that you’ll have something special to remember me by once I make my final journey to the shades,’ he told her. ‘Leave your gift from the sea with me and I’ll return it to you shortly.’

  Endellion obeyed and another day sank into the sea in the strange and surreal silence that had ruled over Britannia since Maximus had ridden away a year earlier.

  In the dead hours before the dawn, death comes quietly to carry away the souls of the sick and the feeble. On this night, Severa wakened, teased by an awkward presentiment of trouble, before hurrying down to Decius’s room.

  The old man was barely breathing so, panicked, the child ran pell-mell to fetch Endellion. A quick glance at his blue lips and nails and the slowness of his breathing told Endellion that the end was in sight.

  With Severa’s aid, Endellion carefully lifted him so that he was almost sitting upright.

  Decius opened his eyes as they raised him. He stared into one of the dim corners of the room and moaned in alarm. Severa gripped his hand tightly.

  ‘So . . . it is true,’ he panted. ‘The dead come . . . to take . . . their killers . . . into . . . the darkness.’<
br />
  ‘Fear no dead men or frightening tales, Decius. You have acted with honour for all of your life. You’ll be judged by that honour,’ Endellion whispered in his ear, and watched as his panic settled.

  ‘No!’ Severa moaned. ‘Please don’t die, Decius. Who will talk to me about my father? Who will care for me?’

  ‘Lady Endellion . . . will do all . . . that’s right.’

  He seemed to sleep for a few moments and then, just when his breathing slowed dangerously, he snapped awake again. Severa dipped a piece of cloth in cool water and raised it to his mouth. The ancient, wizened lips sucked weakly on it.

  ‘Lady, will you pay . . . the Ferryman for . . . me?’

  ‘Of course, Decius. All will be done as you would wish.’

  ‘Tell my master . . . to beware. Tell him . . . I loved him like . . . a son.’

  Endellion promised to do so. Then, without fanfare or trouble, Decurion Decius, Roman officer and loyal friend, died with a smile on his face.

  In the silence that followed, Severa burst into tears. Endellion embraced the child with all her strength.

  ‘Hush, Severa. You owe more to Decius than weak and sickly tears. He would want you to ensure that he goes to his gods like a warrior and a man, rather than a helpless weakling. He was a warrior, so you must take the place of your father, his leader and master.’

  Severa had learned much at Decius’s bedside. Her small hands tried to tear her robe from neck to waist in the old expression of grief. Endellion had to help her.

  ‘What must I do for Decius?’ Severa asked.

  ‘Go and find your nurse, the cook and the other serving women and tell them that Decius has died. Ask them if they will lay out our friend.’

  ‘What will they do to him?’

  ‘Why, they’ll wash him and clean him, and then brush his hair to make him look his best. After that, we will place some coins in his mouth that will be used to pay the Ferryman, so he can cross the River Styx and enter the shades. You can help, if you wish. I know Decius would be honoured for your help.’