The Killing Way

by Anthony Hays

  “And you seem sober.”

  I chuckled. “You were never one to throw compliments about freely.”

  “Forgive me, Malgwyn. I have been in ill humor of late.”

  “And why is that?”

  “My vote has been courted by two other lords.” Bedevere’s words drew a dark cloud over me, as dark as the moon was on this eve.

  Kay and Bedevere both commanded regions of our land, scattered about the countryside, thus giving them seats on the consilium.

  “Who?”

  Bedevere shook his head regretfully. “I am not at liberty to say. I gave my word.” This surprised me not. He was known for his honesty, discretion, and piety. To those such as Vortimer, these were mere words. For Bedevere, they were a creed, an oath.

  “Such currying of favor is common.”

  “Not this sort. When I mentioned Arthur and my pledge to him, they said that by the time of the vote, Arthur would be of little consequence.”

  Kay looked bewildered as I absorbed this new information. Begging Bedevere for the names of his supplicants would do no good. That reputation for honor and honesty I mentioned was well earned. And if Eleonore’s death did have something to do with the election of a new Rigotamos, I doubted that those behind it would approach Arthur’s chief aide themselves. They would send others to probe his loyalty.

  Bedevere had returned to Castellum Arturius solely for the consilium, to see his old friend become Rigotamos. He lived at the barracks with the common soldiers, eschewing the habits of Kay and other officers of high rank. There had always been something of the hermit in him.

  “That’s all that was said?”

  He nodded. “Made no sense to me either, but I was cautious not to probe too deeply.”

  This was disturbing news indeed. Logic told me that the statement meant that Arthur was to be disgraced or assassinated. Only by these methods was he to be disregarded. Assassination seemed all but impossible; here in Castellum Arturius he was well protected. Perhaps the death of Eleonore was an effort to disgrace him. I knew that there were those rivals who would have Arthur’s place, but murdering servant girls seemed an odd way to lay disgrace at Arthur’s feet. Who stood to gain? That was always the question. Vortimer stood out as the one who bore the most consideration.

  But the girl? Why her? I was struck by the coincidence that Lord Tristan courted Eleonore and also counseled treating with the Saxons. Could Tristan be part of such a conspiracy? Could he have told Eleonore of it in an unguarded moment? I shook my head, trying to dislodge all these insistent thoughts. Perhaps I was letting too many bedevil my mind.

  Kay extended the invitation. “Will you stay with us, Bede-vere?”

  The burly officer paused to consider. “Aye, ’tis been too many a moon since I shared a meal with Malgwyn.”

  “Then join us.”

  The three of us continued on to Kay’s timber house on the main avenue leading from the hall down to the barracks. I still had my doubts about Kay, but the closer I kept him, the more chance I’d have to observe him. That Bedevere joined us was an added pleasure. We had shared many campfires. Aye, we had both blocked battle-axes aimed for the other’s head.

  We spoke of inconsequential matters as we neared the house. As we reached our destination, I was surprised to see a small figure sitting on the ground to the side of the door. It was young Owain, Nyfain’s son.

  “ ’Tis late an hour for a youngster such as you to be wandering the lanes,” I said, cuffing his ear with my one hand.

  “I sought you at your hut, but you were not there. A soldier in the great hall told me he saw you heading toward Lord Kay’s house. I ran here.”

  “What brings you out so late?”

  He frowned. “I was waiting at your hut earlier, during the banquet. Eleonore came to see you. She claimed it was urgent that she meet with you, but she would not tell me what secret she held. She said it was for your ears only.

  “When I heard she was dead, and that Arthur had appointed you as his iudex to investigate, I thought I should tell you straightaway.”

  I tousled his hair. “You were right to tell me. But it could have waited until morning. Why aren’t you abed?”

  “Father Accolon and Mother have not come home. I do not like to be alone at home.” He hung his head in embarrassment at this confession.

  I looked to Kay, who nodded, smiling down from his great height. “What do you think? Can you find a corner in your stables for this yearling?”

  “You shall bed here,” Kay agreed. “I’ll send a servant to find Accolon or Nyfain and let them know of your safety.”

  The boy’s eyes brightened and he turned to me. “Do you have work for me tomorrow?”

  “Perhaps, if you can get up in time after a night out carousing with screech owls.”

  “I’m sure Master Malgwyn can put you to good use,” Kay said. “Go have Cicero find you a bed.” The lad scampered inside.

  “You are a strange man,” Bedevere said, studying me with a wry expression.

  “How so?”

  “You have practically raised that boy, yet you don’t wish your own child to know you are her father. Aye, you threatened to beat Cuneglas senseless when he let the truth slip.”

  Scowling, I turned away from my old comrade. “ ’Tis not as simple as that,” I murmured. No matter how much I had wronged her, my mind was not on Mariam. If Eleonore was serious enough about some matter to seek me out, she had something of import to tell. But I had no proof, not a kernel of cracked corn to tie this to any alleged conspiracy. I could not allow myself to be distracted.

  Merlin was still locked away at the barracks, and I still had no evidence to free him. While Owain slipped into a peaceful, if lonely, slumber, Bedevere, Kay, and I sipped watered wine, served by Kay’s crotchety old servant Cicero. Arthur’s trust seemed ill-placed at best. I said as much.

  Kay removed his cloak and began to make a fire in his wide hearth. Spring was coming, but so far it had not warmed the evenings. “Remember when we were at the river Glein?”

  I nodded.

  “The Saxons seemed so weak, so few. Even Arthur was puzzled. But it was you, Malgwyn, who sensed the deception. It was you who counseled Arthur to send riders around the Saxons’ camp and behind the hills beyond.”

  Vortimer and the then youthful Lauhiir, I recalled, had demanded a head-on attack against the Saxons we saw across the river. Something in their manner, as distant as they were from us, gave me pause. Double their force had been waiting beyond the hills, waiting for our attack, so they could flank and surround us. We would have been massacred. “It was nothing,” I said finally, still remembering the clamor of voices around the fire. “A feeling only.”

  “I willingly hazard my purse on your feelings, old friend.”

  I snorted. “As you wish,” I answered, rising and making for my bed. In time we too fell victim to exhaustion. The day to come would be wearing indeed. There were many to question and many answers to find. As I lay on my simple pallet in Kay’s house, I could hear in the distance the rock masons working still at some task set for them by Ambrosius, some fancy of his, I supposed.

  A rustling at the door revealed Kay, bending to step into the room. “Kay, I may be a drunkard and a whoremonger, but I’m not a prisoner to be guarded either.”

  Kay’s handsome face burst into a smile. “Maybe I fear you will slip out and empty my larder.”

  “Old friend, as exhausted as I am, I couldn’t raid the largest ware house of wine in all of Britannia.”

  “Perhaps. But I will stay awake while you rest—”

  “There is no need for that!” I protested.

  “My life would be forfeit if you lost yours. That is the way of it, and you know this as well as I.”

  Kay fell to sharpening his sword, while I shook out the furs on my bed, checking for any bedbugs or other visitors, and then fell asleep with little trouble. I dreamed of my Gwyneth and a laughing, merry child whose clothes ran scarlet with b
lood.

  With the pink fingers of a new dawn came new thoughts; I had slept no more than a couple of hours, maybe three, when I rolled over and saw the sun begin its ascent. Kay, exhausted as I, sat on the stone floor, his back propped against one of the posts. The morning’s dew left a dampness in the air that penetrated to my bones. With those thoughts came more thoughts, more memories.

  Old comradeship, a feeling of pity, those were not the reasons that Arthur had come to me. That he had respected my talents in war, I knew. That he loved Guinevere enough to throw me a bone from his table, I doubted not. But there was a more important reason Arthur turned to me in this matter.

  While I lived at Ynys-witrin, training as a scribe, a particularly horrible event occurred. In those days, the abbey was but a round wooden stockade surrounding a group of twelve huts. The village below was hardly even that, just a cottage or two and a trader.

  One black night, I rolled over in my sleep and irritated my arm, still raw where it had been severed. As I tried to readjust, a screech broke the still night air, a screech not like that of an owl, but that of a human, a young man’s screech.

  Springing from my pallet, I found the brothers gathered around one of the wooden huts. Inside, lit by the flickering of torches, was the crumpled figure of Gnaeus, a fresh-faced newcomer to the abbey, a boy hardly old enough to know the taste of a barber’s knife, more naïve than experienced, always eager to help.

  Coroticus, newly appointed abbot then, wearing lots of jewelry and a heavy, gold cross, arrived as did I. With staff in hand, he motioned everyone back. I saw that two of the stouter brothers held a grubby, local thief of the name of Gareth, who struggled fearfully. “Whence came he?” I asked.

  “One of the brothers caught him fleeing the abbey after the boy’s scream was heard.” I did not know who answered, so many were talking.

  “This man,” said an old brother named Aneirin, whose face held a bright red birthmark, “killed young Gnaeus with this.” He held up a bloody-edged rock in his right hand.

  “And this?” Coroticus indicated the thief.

  “A common thief, my lord.”

  I watched the bandit carefully for a moment. “Let him go,” I ordered, though I had no authority. Coroticus nodded and the two brothers released the smaller man. I took a pebble from the ground and tossed it to the thief. He caught it in his left hand. “He may be a thief,” I said, “but he didn’t kill this boy.”

  “How know you this?” Coroticus asked, a questioning smile on his face.

  I shrugged. “For one thing, he’s too short. Gnaeus would have had to have been lying down, and from the way he lies, it’s obvious that he was standing and fell to the ground.”

  The brothers all looked at me then. “And anyone used to battle knows that a left-handed wound is usually caused by someone right-handed. This man is left-handed.” At this the brothers considered me with open disbelief, but none of them had seen battle.

  “Seize him and lock him up tightly,” Coroticus ordered. “We will test this theory on the morrow when there is more light.”

  “But my lord . . .” Aneirin began to protest. “This man,” and he indicated me, “is not of the Christ.” I had never liked Aneirin, whose eyes wandered to places they should not. He had a nature ill-fitting a man of the Christ.

  Coroticus held up a hand. “Perhaps not, but he is of the world and that is what we need. Tomorrow will be as good a time for reckoning and handing this thief over to the decurion as now. And our minds will be sharper.”

  With that, all was done as he commanded, but not before I saw that there were no signs of the little thief forcing his way in. Whoever had killed the boy had been let in. And besides, there was nothing in a brother’s cell to steal. More likely, the thief had been after the abbot’s store house. On my way back to my own cell, I stopped at the store house and saw fresh scratches in the wood where someone had tried to pry it open.

  The next day brought two surprises. Gareth, the little thief, had escaped from the cell where he had been so securely placed, and Aneirin, the old brother with the bright birthmark, had hung himself.

  All agreed that the thief had been the murderer of the boy, and the old brother, who had been especially fond of Gnaeus, had killed himself out of grief. Coroticus never asked me about the affair, other than to comment on the scrape on my cheek the next day or the fact that the door to Gareth’s cell had been opened from the outside. No dishonor had come to the abbey, and though the decurion sent a patrol out to find the culprit, Gareth had disappeared. Yet, people wondered and stories travel.

  This day, I knew, I must move swiftly in my inquiry. The longer I took, the less likely I would arrive at the truth. My mind was occupied with two necessities. One, I needed to account for the girl’s movements that night. Two, I needed to find, if I could, where she was killed. Knowing those two facts would lead me further along my thorny path. And if our land held anything in abundance, it was thorns.

  I remembered then that I had promised the abbot at Ynys-witrin that I would copy a manuscript for him. A stack of secondhand parchment leaves lay on a table in my hut. He needed only an extra copy and did not require better materials. As always, though, he would want the hair sides facing and the parchment sides facing, an annoying detail, but one I was bound to abide. That would be a task for later.

  “Rise, Kay! The sun has beaten us from her bed. Eleonore will remain unavenged while we laze around.”

  Kay’s eyes flickered open and he blinked quickly, hoisting himself onto his elbows. “I need some water.”

  “You do not drink Arthur’s posca in the morning?”

  Posca was an ancient Roman drink, vinegar with enough water in it to make it drinkable. The old Roman soldiers, one hundred years before, had drunk warmed posca in the mornings. The bitter, biting taste did much to clear the cobwebs from your head, but left your mouth tasting like soured wine. It was one of Arthur’s Latin affectations, one that I gladly ignored.

  “I would fain drink bear piss than that rot. Arthur is a fine man, but he leans too heavily on some of the old ways while ignoring others.”

  “You mean his belief in the Christ.” It was not a question.

  Kay nodded. “I believe in the Christ too, but I know many who wonder what it profits them. A farmer near Ynys-witrin asked of me not a fortnight ago if Jesus would make his crops grow larger, if Jesus the Christ would put food on his table. They say the gods of old watched over a man’s crops, if a man made proper sacrifices for their pleasure.”

  “I am not a religious man. But that is not the way of the Christ. His way is not about putting food on tables or making the land more fertile. Nor does he seek sacrifices for his plea sure. He is about more than that.”

  “Be careful, Malgwyn. You’ll be wearing a monk’s robes soon,” Kay chided me. “And yes, you are correct, but many of the lords have their men working as passionately as that busybody Patrick does in Ireland. But they are not converting people to Christianity; no, they are leading people back to the old gods.”

  A thought struck me. “Kay, what of the Druids I saw in the fort? Are they truly with Vortimer?”

  “Aye. He brought them here to irritate Arthur.” He paused, a crease marking his brow. “Some, but others came on their own, during the feasting.”

  “Cuneglas thought as much. Why does Arthur not send them away or, better still, imprison them?”

  Kay hung his head. “Malgwyn, you know that I do love Arthur as a father, but of some things he is afraid.”

  “How so?”

  “He fears that paying too much attention to efforts designed to lessen his chances to succeed Ambrosius will simply bring his opponents more converts.”

  “Well, Vortimer should buy them better robes. Those they wear are not suitable for holy men. I thought Druids wore white.”

  “He cares not for that. He is cheap; white cloth is expensive. We have few fullers to whiten them. Besides, he cares only for their effect on the people.”
/>   That suited me as well. Fullers used urine to whiten the cloth, and the smell was worse than fermenting woad or the tanner’s stench. “What of these Druids? Are these bards? Or are they acolytes?” What I knew of the druids, I knew from my father and the old men of our village. Before the Romans brought schools to our towns, only the Druids could read, and they were divided into three classes: those who had priestlike duties and presided over their festivals and sacrifices, those who were bards and held the histories of their peoples in their memories, and those who knew all legal precedents and decided questions of law. At least, that much my father told me.

  “I know little of them, Malgwyn,” Kay answered with a shake of his head. “Arthur frowns on any of us being seen near them. He considers them ungodly and blasphemies on the Christ. But he has no control over Vortimer and Mordred. At least not yet.”

  “Mordred is courting the Druids?”

  “Mordred courts anyone he thinks might raise his standing with the people.”

  “Arthur should remind the people that Druids believe in human sacrifices,” I pointed out. “That would be enough to turn me in other directions.”

  I threw back my fur and set my feet on the ground and saw that Kay had a queer expression on his face. “What?”

  “Human sacrifices! Could not the Druids have had a hand in this matter?”

  I considered it. “Perhaps. But Druids only kill at certain times of the year. In another fortnight or two it will be time for Beltane, their sacrifice to the gods for good crops, but this is too early. And though Eleonore was strangled and disemboweled, she was not murdered a third time. Druid victims are killed thrice.”

  The sun had finally risen above the mist shrouding our land, and I stared out the door at the Via Caedes, the lane, as it ran through the fort, beginning to fill with people on their daily chores. Even now, early in the spring, the land was a vibrant green, painted only with daubs of blue and yellow from spring flowers. On a clear day, you could stand atop the walls of the fort and see all the way to Ynys-witrin, the land lying out before you like some plush, fertile blanket, coating the earth as it would a woman’s curves. Large blocks of a deeper green paneled the fields, copses of trees—oak, beech, elm— tall and thick and ancient. I was not a traveled man, but I often wondered if there could be a place more beautiful.