by M. K. Hume
The old men sucked on their toothless gums, and wondered aloud what strange kin of Uther’s could have come willingly to Venta Belgarum.
Targo mixed with the press of excited men, sipped ale slowly - and listened. The rumour-mongering was active and told that two of the more important tribal kings and the famed Myrddion Merlinus had brought Artorex to Venta Belgarum as their champion, and that he fought with all the skills of a Roman, a Celt, and a barbarian. Targo heard talk that Artorex even resembled Uther Pendragon, and might well have some kinship to the High King. The veteran’s heart quailed to imagine the consequences if the High King should catch a whisper of such gossip.
When Targo meandered his way back to the narrow attic room he shared with Artorex, the warrior found his protégé stripped to the waist while Myrddion tended to his wound. Llanwith lounged on Artorex’s pallet, but Luka was conspicuous by his absence.
‘By all the gods, Artorex, you made money for me today,’ was Targo’s opening sally. ‘If I’d known you were going to be so profitable, I’d have had you in the arena years ago.’
‘I’m happy that somebody is pleased,’ Artorex replied. ‘Myrddion believes I should have killed Ban, and not drawn the ire of Uther.’
Myrddion continued to stitch a shallow slash on Artorex’s forearm. He smiled indulgently.
‘I merely suggested to Luka that the High King wouldn’t be disposed to forgive your lesson in courtesy,’ he stated. ‘Personally, I was not the least surprised that you permitted Ban to live, but the fact that the crowd demanded it as well was unusual. That was a factor that I hadn’t expected. Nor will Uther forgive you for your popularity with the masses.’
‘Well, it’s too late now,’ Targo responded. ‘All of Venta Belgarum has heard the name of Artorex. When I left the drunkards downstairs, you had assumed giant proportions - and you bore magic weapons.’
He paused momentarily.
‘Incidentally, there is gossip that says you are either Uther’s bastard child or you’re some distant kin to him.’
Artorex looked shaken. ‘I’m not, am I?’
‘What?’ Myrddion asked.
‘Am I Uther’s bastard son?’
‘No, you’re not his bastard son.’ Myrddion’s reply was definite.
The silence dragged out achingly.
‘Perhaps it’s time we left Venta Belgarum for the good of our health,’ Llanwith murmured from the edge of his bed. He seemed outwardly unconcerned, and casually kicked off his boots for comfort.
‘We’ll know what to do after Luka returns,’ Myrddion replied, as he completed the last stitch in Artorex’s wound. ‘I’ve never known how he does it, but kitchen maids feel compelled to whisper juicy titbits of gossip into Luka’s little pink ears.’
Uther sensed that his final destiny was fast approaching. He knew that age was about to defeat the iron fist of his mind. His skin was thin and its papery surface bruised and bled easily. His bones supported neither flesh nor muscle beneath his wrinkled skin, and he realized his remaining vitality was slowly rotting from deep inside his body. His chest pained him, his ankles and feet were swollen to twice their natural size and they were blue and cold to the touch.
Uther wasn’t afraid of physical death, and he had few regrets about how he had achieved his ends during a long and bloody life - except for the seduction of Ygerne. All things considered, her amazing beauty had not been worth the scandals, the trouble and the tears she had showered over him in the many years since he had first seduced her and stolen her from her first husband, Gorlois of Cornwall.
And now, when he should have been entitled to lay down the sword, draw peace from his confessor and live out his last days in a semblance of comfort, Ygerne had sent him a nasty and dangerous tool of revenge.
Artorex! Even the name, with its unambiguously regal Rex, was an insult to Uther’s rule. He should have smothered the brat himself when Ygerne’s midwife shoved the tiny, whining bundle into his arms. At the time, he feared that Ygerne had borne one last child to her dead spouse, a son who might one day claim Uther’s throne to settle the blood debt he was owed.
But he, Uther Pendragon, would never surrender his crown so easily.
‘Lucius! That sodding, pious bastard!’ Uther swore pungently, describing the Bishop of Glastonbury in soldier’s terms.
Lucius of Glastonbury had taken up the squalling infant and had sworn to Uther that he would never see the brat again. At the time of Ygerne’s travails, Uther hadn’t yet recognized the grasping power of the Church of the Christus - but he understood its ambitions now. The troublesome brat had been grown to manhood in a faraway place, safe from Uther’s arm, and had been raised more as a Roman than a Celt - as was that Satan-spawn, Lucius. The boy had been trained from birth to be a weapon against Uther Pendragon, led by the trusted Myrddion Merlinus, who had plotted against him and guided his enemy’s path to manhood.
Uther fumed impotently and hurled his silver cup feebly against the wall, where it rolled pitifully in the red lees of wine. How like spilled blood the wine appeared. He could no longer remember a tenth of the men he had killed, but the Boar of Cornwall’s face had never left him, waking or sleeping. After all, that filthy cow, Morgan, never allowed him to forget whose child she was, and how his wife, her mother, would never truly love him for the treacherous crimes he had committed in the name of lust.
‘Damn the bitch!’
He should have had her strangled - but he desperately needed her skills with herbs and magic spells.
And now, the brat had come to Uther’s Hall and had dared to lock eyes with his liege lord. He should have died at the hands of Ban, but the High King’s champion had been outwitted by the tactics of Myrddion. Uther had watched as the eyes of his faithful servant Botha had measured the young man; he was certain that Botha recognized the father in the son.
Perhaps other men were speculating on Artorex’s parentage at this very moment.
‘Botha!’
Uther had been the king of the Atrebates when Botha had first sworn allegiance to him. Botha was a young, red-headed warrior of the Trinovantes tribe, from Camulodunum beside the Litus Saxonicus. He had fled from his tribe, his city and his family because of a woman, having killed his cousin in combat over her adultery. A blood price pursued him, and Botha was as landless and as friendless as any man can be.
Uther had met Botha on a windswept, dreary plain beyond the swamps of Venta Icenorum. The Saxons had pillaged a church and killed its priests in an orgy of ferocity, and Uther had answered the call of the Catuvellauni tribe who hurried to root out the barbarians. The Saxons had been harder to prise from the land than lice from bedding, and many Celts had bled into the cold, winter earth.
Uther had fought with his men, as was his custom, and had swept aside the Saxon battleaxes with his huge sword as if they were mere willow wands. Only a partly frozen trail of blood and brain matter had betrayed his feet, and he had eventually slipped under the weapons of his enemies.
Then Botha had appeared out of the press of warriors, straddling the King’s body with his strong, golden legs, and used his sword and shield in a wicked, glittering wall of death. Uther had managed to scramble to his feet and kill a Saxon who was about to behead Botha from behind. And so they had fought on, back to back, until the barbarians had been slaughtered.
In his youth, Botha had been a genius in the pure art of killing, but he’d also been a man with a core of decency that lent his trade a certain dignity and beauty. He had sworn his oath of allegiance to Uther in the old way, with his neck beneath the King’s heel, signifying fealty for life, and Uther had taken a grim pleasure in the devotion of such a powerful, vital creature. In truth, the High King had never really appreciated Botha as a man until his own arm had grown weak and unpredictable, because he had always considered his most trusted servant as little more than a good dog.
Botha had survived the cruel passage of years with more vigour than his liege lord, and some blackness in Uther resented the
ageing strength of his servant.
Still, for all his envy, Uther trusted no one living the way he depended on Botha.
The High King couldn’t comfort himself with the possibility that Artorex was a pretender. Uther had seen his hair and remembered his own plaits, and the difficulty of keeping his red-gold curls in order. Ygerne had called it barbarian hair. She’d loved his hair - at least when he still had warm blood flowing through his veins.
Memory can be a cruel taunt, and Uther had earned its pangs.
He shouted querulously for his manservant and ordered that Botha should join him immediately, regardless of the hour. Of all the men who walked in the sunlight of the Celts, Botha alone would obey him without question. Uther would send Artorex, Merlinus and the traitor kings to die at Anderida at the hands of the Saxons, just as he had sent Ygerne’s husband to certain death years before. The bastard would become a dead hero and Uther would be suitably mournful at the loss of such promise and patriotism.
Uther’s rheumy eyes hardened.
For now, he had a more pressing problem, and only Botha could be trusted to solve it.
‘Botha dared to bow his head to that upstart,’ the High King muttered, as he sucked on his withered lips like a toothless old woman. He smiled secretively, and the air in his bedchamber seemed to leach away with his malice and cunning.
Botha would solve his dilemma because the warrior was a man of unimpeachable honour. When they were both young men and Uther had yet to win the gold crown of kingship, he had learned the measure of Botha. Uther remembered the crunch of a rib cage when he had buried his blade in a barbarian chest. The Saxon had gaped stupidly as Uther twisted the huge sword up into his heart - and saved Botha’s life.
Although forty years had passed, Botha still remembered who owned his life. He could recall the blood, slime and mud and how he had wept when Uther took him into his guard. He’d sworn to serve his master and, through all the long and bloody years that had followed, Botha remained true to his ancient oath.
And he would obey now.
For Uther’s misbegotten by-blow must be expunged utterly! Uther’s light must never be allowed to wane, even if the west must fall, so that his memory would be shielded in the glory of the legend. The Villa Poppinidii had nurtured Artorex as boy and man, so the villa, Ector and all within it must be destroyed and burned to the ground.
Uther had no compunction in ordering such a cowardly and petty act, for kings stand above honour and their most trivial desires are attained with simple orders. Kings are above the laws of man - and the gods.
Cat-footed, Botha entered Uther’s chamber. His shadow was huge and menacing in the last darkness before the coming of dawn.
‘Are you faithful to me unto death, Botha? And to me alone?’ Uther asked the grey-headed warrior, with a mouth suddenly gone as dry as grave dust.
‘I swore an oath to you, my King, that I would never serve another man while breath remained in my body. That oath cannot be broken, except by death.’ Botha’s face was sad, as if he knew already he was about to be used as a pure instrument in an impure cause. His noble, lined brow was frowning and his red-bearded jaw was clenched, as if in pain. The eyes of the warrior, as unclouded and as direct as those of the youth he had once been, looked inward at some invisible, unbearable truth.
Uther almost pulled away from his murderous grip upon the future, and he almost took pity on the one soul in the whole world who had given him unqualified love. But Uther had drunk the cup of raw power for far too long, and even the faithful Botha must play his part in the High King’s memorial.
‘What news of this Artorex?’ Uther demanded.
One way or another, Botha heard everything that happened in Venta Belgarum.
‘King Luka has been dallying with the serving maids, hunting out news. I gave him your orders personally - so Myrddion now knows his fate.’ He smiled at his king. ‘Luka drank more than was his intention, seeing no harm in the plump little pigeon who is my eyes and ears in the kitchens. Luka was imprudent in his bed talk with Eilyn, and he spoke of Artorex, of a daughter and another babe who quickens in the womb of his wife.’
‘Damnation!’ Uther swore expressively.
Already there were heirs presumptive squabbling for his throne before he was even laid out on his deathbed. Soldiers may die in battle, but Uther could not depend on chance and the vagaries of childbirth to rid him of further claimants to his throne.
‘The children of Artorex must die - and the dam - and all those souls who dwell within the walls of the Villa Poppinidii must perish with them. This is your duty to me, Botha. You must obey for the security of my kingdom.’
Uther offered Botha no explanation or justification for the wanton murder of innocents. Kings don’t explain, especially to those souls who are hand-fasted to them for life.
Botha nodded, just once, and Uther felt a momentary pang of grief as if he had broken a good sword over his knee.
‘Take only trusted men, use whomever you must, but don’t fail me. And ensure that no one lives to gossip that Uther has killed innocents. Disguise yourself as you see fit.’
Botha nodded, and Uther could see the shame leaking from the eyes of the old warrior.
‘Go, Botha, and order my confessor to attend me at once,’ Uther whispered.
Such business shouldn’t be spoken aloud in the halls of the High King and, even now, Uther felt his heart stutter in his chest as if a huge fist clutched it and squeezed.
‘My lord is ill,’ Botha protested. ‘Permit me to send for Morgan.’
‘Bring me my confessor, Botha. Then carry out your orders,’ Uther commanded, turning his face away from the one man he trusted. In truth, he couldn’t face Botha’s wounded eyes.
As the sound of Botha’s boots faded into silent darkness, Uther slowed his breathing with an effort and contemplated the action he’d set in motion. Many men and women had died for the west, and many more would bleed to hold such a small island kingdom within their hands.
The light from an oil lamp slanted across the bedcovers and lit the King’s profile with what he knew to be the cruel truth. He was as he had always been, a raptor in a cage of pigeons, with little thought for the weaker souls who lived and died at his command.
‘So why do I feel so cold and alone?’ Uther demanded of the silent air. ‘Send me my confessor!’
His feeble wail was like the thin cry of crows seeking carrion.
As his confessor shuffled through the doorway on unwilling feet, Uther saw Morgan, like a storm crow herself, standing directly behind his priest. The lamplight caught the delicate bones of her face so that, for a moment, a skull stared back at him with the fire of the wick burning in empty sockets.
Uther blinked. Morgan was herself again, beautiful and cold as carved alabaster.
She clutched an amulet round her throat and locked her eyes with his. And she smiled.
Artorex would have preferred to be alone. The inevitable plummet of his spirit after the heat of battle had left him feeling lonely and confused. A bare week ago, he had been happy and at peace with his lot in life. Now the rabble called his name, but he dare not set foot outside his room, and his life could be forfeit to the High King of the Britons, for no particular reason apart from Uther’s spitefulness.
Luka returned to the inn a little before midnight. Llanwith had fallen asleep on Artorex’s pallet and the small room shook with his stentorian snores. Artorex was seated cross-legged on the floor, wrapped in his cloak and obstinately cleaning his weapons, while Targo was asleep in an untidy mound of clothes and sinewy muscle across the entrance to the room. Characteristically, Myrddion had vanished some hours earlier.
Luka’s entrance was noisy and embarrassing.
He had spent the evening drinking rough Gallic wine with his informants among the High King’s retinue. As he entered the dimly lit room, Luka tripped over the inert body of Targo and crashed to the floor, waking a startled Llanwith in the process.
The Ord
ovice was on his feet, sword drawn, in an instant.
Artorex continued to hone his dagger.
Like a magician, Myrddion appeared in the doorway and helped the sprawled Luka to his feet. With a muffled hiccup and a slurred apology, the warrior fished around in his cloak and, with a drunken flourish, drew out a crumpled scroll. He giggled.
‘Our orders have arrived from the High King, Myrddion. Uther has decided that we should raise a small troop and attack the Saxon fort at Anderida.’
He executed a drunken bow and would have fallen flat on his face had Llanwith not jerked him upright by his leather jerkin.
‘Anderida?’ Myrddion was actually shocked by Luka’s news. ‘That marsh-infested hellhole? It’s almost directly across the straits of the Litus Saxonicum. Has Uther gone utterly mad?’
Llanwith pen Bryn began to laugh. It came out as a long, raucous guffaw that seemed to start at his toes and rose slowly and ever more loudly until his mirth made the icy shutters appear to quiver.
‘What causes your amusement, Llanwith?’ Myrddion asked with exquisite, dangerous courtesy. ‘That flea pit has been in Saxon hands for twenty years. Gods, it was one of the first towns to fall to the barbarian kings, and you can spit across the straits of the Saxon Sea from there.’
‘I know, Myrddion,’ Llanwith hiccuped through a succession of suppressed giggles. ‘Uther’s outmanoeuvred us! We’re off to Anderida, and precious few of us will return if the High King and the Saxons have their way.’
‘Precisely!’ Luka said with owlish seriousness.
Myrddion snatched the crumpled scroll and read its contents quickly.
‘Uther suggests that if we are so eager to stop the Saxon menace, then we should push them back into the ocean. We are permitted to raise a troop, if any sensible warrior chooses to commit suicide with us. And he insists that Artorex must lead the attack personally, for he is now Uther’s champion of the west.’
