Merlin?
Cassian’s gasp affirmed the High King’s delusion.
Alyn attempted to cover it. “Aye, milord, ’tis Merlin Emrys’s belt, an honor given to me by your queen.” He gently removed Arthur’s hand. “But ’twas not me, nor Merlin, who comforted you, milord, but the Holy Spirit.”
It had to be, else Alyn would have been as dumbstruck as the rest in the room. Yet what he had seen … not with his eyes—
“Indeed, yes,” Cassian spoke up. “For we all prayed God’s intervention for the spell that assaulted you so vicious and sudden.”
No wonder Arthur trembled. The eagle tangled with the red dragon over a sea of blood. Not even angels, if indeed that is what the white birds were, could separate them, much less keep them from plunging into the red tide.
Birds, wings, blood … that is what Alyn saw as he’d prayed over the High King. He needed to get home to Glenarden, to Brenna. His sister-in-law could surely heal this madness.
“I thank you.” Arthur clasped Alyn’s arm with the strength needed to wield Excalibur. “I thank you, Father Alyn.”
Rather than correct the High King, Alyn bowed and stepped away as Arthur rose to his considerable height on steady feet. With a wave of his arm to encompass the still-wary brethren, he announced, “Thanks be to all of you.” He arched, stretching his shoulders and back, and rolled his head first to one side then the other before motioning Alyn closer.
“I admit to being as anxious as Lady Kella to find out the extent of damage to the fortress and those who defended it,” he whispered as Alyn leaned in.
“I assure you, milord, that my companion and I will see to her safety and sequester her from the rest of your men as is only proper. With your permission, of course.”
“Granted.”
Ignoring Cassian’s scowl of disapproval, Arthur glanced about at the gathering of men still watching him as if ready to break and run. With a hearty laugh, he returned to himself and clapped his hands on his stomach. “By the Virgin,” he bellowed, “I pray no one else ate the sweetmeats last eve, for they set my belly to conjuring nightmares.”
“Musta come from a bullock taken before knowin’ his first cow,” one of the young warriors remarked, taking up the effort to restore the normal humor.
Another, more seasoned fellow whacked the youth across the back of the head. “Ye simpleton, sweetbreads is the beastie’s innards, not his outards,” he bawled with a bawdy cup of his hands and thrust of his hips.
Guffaws of amusement erupted around the room, and the disquiet over their leader’s behavior vanished. Arthur rounded up his captains and led them outside, the others rapidly following, save Angus.
The king of Strighlagh pulled Alyn aside as the younger man gathered his belongings. “What make you of that?”
Alyn didn’t have to guess what that was. He was still shaken by the unfolding of the strange occurrence. “I think Arthur is greatly troubled by Modred’s seeming withdrawal of support. Coupled with too much hard riding and too little rest, and the mind plays tricks on itself. Even my night was unsettling,” he admitted.
Angus considered for a moment. “Aye,” he agreed, “I have only to account for my loyalty and that of my men. The Dux Bellorum must rely on the loyalty of a shifty lot, if there ever was one.” He gave Alyn a clap on the back. “Good to have you home, Father.”
Alyn winced within at the undeserved title but replied, “Thank you, sir. It is good to be home.” The title Father would not abandon him, no matter how Alyn strove to disown it.
Suspicion toward Alyn seemed to seethe in Cassian’s gaze as the archbishop waited by the door until the Angus left with his attendants. Then Cassian caught Alyn’s arm as Alyn followed them outside.
“A brief word, Father.”
The innuendo in his tone confirmed Alyn’s intuition that Cassian now considered him an enemy, if not a fraud. But if the archbishop sought explanation, there was none save what he’d told Arthur. The Holy Spirit had used him … and all the other clergy there.
Cassian kept his voice low. “I will be watching you closely, young man. I have never seen the High King lapse into such a trance.”
Nor had Alyn. But it certainly wasn’t his doing. Cassian would have been welcome to take authority at any time, but he hadn’t. Annoyed, Alyn brushed the bejeweled hand away from him.
“And I pray, Your Grace, that God is watching all of us.”
The clouds that shadowed the dawn burst at midmorning and continued to pour water in sheets over the travelers. High King to tagalong were soaked to the skin. Kella couldn’t believe Alyn had told Arthur about her. Now everyone knew who she was, for though Alyn swore they’d kept their voices low, the witnessing warriors to the conversation had keen ears. Now, when nature called, she felt a hundred pair of eyes following her and her escort—either Alyn or Daniel—off into the thicket.
In spite of her isolation, talk wafted down the line of the spell Arthur suffered that morning and how Alyn had prayed him through it. She and Daniel longed to question Alyn about it, but he was as closemouthed as a clam bound for the pot.
Not for the first time since Alyn returned from the East, Kella wondered at the change in him and the accident that had turned his outgoing personality inward, where it simmered with mystery. Had he really summoned spirits in front of priests? And that kiss … When had her longtime friend acquired such a fierce passion?
What had not changed was his compassion. Last night, he’d offered it just when she needed it most.
Maybe God had answered her prayers for help. With a priest. A special one. Maybe God had forgiven her. The revelation caused a gurgle of hope in her throat. Uplifted for the first time since hearing the dreadful news from Strighlagh, Kella squeezed her eyes tight.
Father, thank You for sending Alyn home to help me find the man I love.
“Are you well?” Alyn cut his gaze sidewise, drawn from a long silence by her reaction. Rain ran off the hood of his oilcloth cloak and over his face.
“I was thanking God for being with us thus far. And for sending you and Daniel to help me find Lorne and Da.” Kella couldn’t tell if the half cock of Alyn’s brow was surprise or disapproval. “Yes, I do pray,” she informed him.
Alyn hadn’t lost that way of making her feel as though she had to defend herself.
“Good. I’m pleased to hear it.”
Kella exhaled heavily. She always fell short of Alyn’s aspirations to godly perfection, even when she tried.
She’d not been born to any significant bloodlines. Her father, though a recognized champion among men, had won no lands to provide her a dowry worthy of a noble marriage. Her gift of penmanship and languages had been her sole deliverance to the noble life to which she aspired.
And now that she was so close to wedding a prince, here she was riding like a warrior into a battle where emotions and fear vied for dominance in heart, mind, and soul. Other women might shrink away in despair, but she was a champion’s daughter with something to fight for—love and the child conceived in it.
Bedraggled from a night of deluge spent in an abandoned Roman fortress along the wall, Arthur’s entourage approached Strighlagh. Neither Lorne nor her father was among the men who rode out to greet the High King and Angus. And the devastation! Kella hadn’t been able to hold back her tears.
The village at the base of the rock hill was all but destroyed. Even the whitewashed walls of the fortress sitting regally above it had been smudged with smoke from the fires set at its base. Graves were still being dug as Arthur’s party rode by, so the High King had stopped to pay homage to the lost.
The reception had been short of enthusiastic, but given the burden the people bore, no one could blame them, not even Arthur. He made no attempt to hide his tears as Archbishop Cassian prayed over the desolation for the lost and the survivors.
As soon as they arrived, Lady Elaine spirited Kella off to a bathhouse so she could relieve herself of the mud and warm her bones, which were ch
illed from the harsh travel. Two small ovens heated the structure, one at each end. Kella marveled at the luxury, although she’d been no less awed the night before when Daniel and Alyn not only erected a shelter beneath the decaying ramparts of the fortress, but brilliantly kindled a fire of wet wood. Having read rain forecasted in the sky, Daniel had collected tinder and kept it dry in his pack. Alyn then used some black salts and a clear liquid from this alchemy chest to light it when Daniel had misplaced or lost his steel.
Delighted as Kella was for the drying warmth, she couldn’t help but notice Alyn’s extreme caution with the ingredients for his tiny flame. He’d sweated profusely in spite of the chill and sworn them both to secrecy over it. Naturally, Kella asked outright if his accident was somehow connected to the powder and oil.
He shook his head. “These are used for skin afflictions, nothing more.”
“But fire,” Daniel pointed out.
“’Tis a use discovered inadvertently and best forgotten.”
And that was that. As if Alyn were proud of it on the one hand and afraid of it on the other. More questions came to Kella’s mind, but she decided to keep them to herself. For now.
Once bathed and dressed in a turquoise gown with a sleeveless black tunic of heavier weight, she felt like a woman once more. Her clean hair spilled in spirals from a beaded black headband as she accompanied Lady Elaine into the great hall later that evening. Remembering Gwenhyfar’s comment about setting a brave example for Strighlagh’s grieving women, Kella held her head high, though a raw sob burned in her chest.
“You show great courage and strength, milady,” Elaine whispered as she led Kella to a U-shaped dais, behind which was a large mural of country life painted by none other than the Angus himself.
It was hard to believe the same hand that wielded weapons so skillfully had created such a vision of light and peace. On the king’s platform, boards had also been laid on trestles in the same U formation and set with plates made of flat rounds of fresh bread. Each one was artfully decorated with colors made from assorted food dyes. Only Arthur, Cassian, Angus, and his lady had been given polished silver plates. A further mark of honor was the saltcellar set before the Dux Bellorum.
“How lovely,” Kella complimented, admiring the variety of flowers, vines, and knots painted by the kitchen staff.
“Our cooks hoped to lend a bit of festive air, given the gravity of this homecoming,” Elaine confided.
Most of the guests, seated to the left and right of the center where Arthur and Angus presided, already enjoyed the wine, meat pasties, and cheeses put out for their enjoyment. The lady of Strighlagh seated Kella, as the only other woman at the king’s table, at an empty place at the far end of the left wing of the dais, which was headed by Cassian and reserved mostly for his brethren. Upon dipping her head in acknowledgment of the archbishop, Elaine took the end seat opposite him.
Acutely aware of the archbishop’s disapproving scrutiny, Kella wondered to whom the empty stretch of bench between the lady and her belonged.
“Many of our women who have suffered similar losses as yours are sequestered in mourning,” Elaine observed. “I can’t help but wonder at the wisdom of you continuing into Pictish territory, given the uncertain state of affairs.”
“With all due respect, milady, I cannot accept my losses until I have seen the bodies,” Kella answered … she hoped not too sharply. She scanned the room for Da’s wild thatch of red hair or Lorne’s oiled white-gold mane as if she could will them there. “I am convinced that if bodies are missing, and the enemy has no use for dead ones, that they are hostages or refugees.”
“It is plausible,” Lady Elaine conceded. “Though Errol’s captain’s witness—”
“Is of a grave wounding,” Kella reminded her. “A dead man cannot crawl away.”
Elaine gave her a placating smile. “I pray you are right, Lady Kella. We’ve lost too many to those renegade Miathi. Would Arthur had kept Modred friend and together they rid themselves of the Miathi murderers, so that our full attention can be fixed upon the Saxon wolf Aethelfrith.”
Modred was, at the least, indifferent to the Miathi problem. At the most, Arthur had made an enemy, and his enemy would become Modred’s friend. Neither bode well for the effort to find her father and Lorne in the Pictish hills, even if the High King would give his blessing. Was that why the lady tried to dissuade her? Panic clutched Kella’s chest. What if Arthur forbade her to leave, and Alyn and Daniel refused to disobey him?
“Miladies, to what do I owe the honor of being summoned to the High King’s table, much less seated between two roses like the thorn that I am?”
Alyn. Kella knew it before she looked up to see him dressed in a splendid red tunic embroidered with black. A sterling torque of wolves’ heads snarled nose to nose at its closure beneath his Adam’s apple.
“Father Alyn?” Lady Elaine asked, though she knew Alyn of Glenarden well. “The Dux Bellorum requested your presence specifically, but I must say, you look more the prince than the priest.”
The lady was right, Kella thought, nodding her permission for him to sit next to her at the questioning lift of his brow.
Alyn slid onto the bench, bunching the spread of Kella’s skirts next to him. “Of late, I fear I’m not much of either,” he replied to Elaine. “After my sojourn in the East, I’m torn between the study of sciencia and the formal service of God.”
“Ah, a druid in our midst.”
At the lady’s mention of druid, Cassian stopped in mid-sip of the Gaulish wine he enjoyed. Clearly, with the disciplined silence of his flock, he had no trouble overhearing the conversation at the opposite end of the wing.
“Perhaps you might continue your work at Llantwit, where you were educated,” Elaine continued thoughtfully. “There is always a need for good teachers at the university.”
“Christian teachers in particular,” Cassian spoke up.
Albion’s universities had once been solely druidic, taught by masters with twenty to thirty years of study in natural philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, geometry, medicine, jurisprudence, poetry, oratory, and the languages of learning—Greek and Latin. But with the coming of Christianity, most of the druids had converted, and monasteries began taking over such places. Cassian objected to the few preexisting druidic schools like Llantwit, which still included nonbelieving masters in their staff.
“If you meant what you said about learning the mind of God through the study of His creation, that is,” the archbishop said to Alyn.
Alyn met the subtle challenge, his voice as steely as the hard blue of his gaze. “I did, sir, and I do.”
Cassian’s skepticism faded with a smile that Kella recognized. He thought he was having his way.
“Then I shall be delighted to recommend you to the bishop there,” he offered.
So, sending Alyn to Llantwit, away from Arthur, suited the archbishop’s purpose. Kella sliced cheese from the wedge, enough for her and Alyn, though she kept Cassian clearly in the corner of her eye. After what Alyn had confided to Daniel and Kella last evening regarding the Arthur’s strange behavior at the inn, perhaps the head priest considered Alyn’s newfound favor with the High King a threat.
“I appreciate your offer, Your Grace,” Alyn said. “But I am not yet ready to settle anywhere for a while. I am off to my home in Glenarden.”
Another difficult homecoming … though Da might have made his way there after the battle.
“That is not what I hear,” the archbishop replied, pulling Kella from her hopeful introspection. “But we shall discuss that later,” he said as a young man carrying a lion-shaped pitcher of spiced and herbed water approached the table to fill the lavers for hand-washing.
The feast was ready to commence, and Kella’s stomach, for all the anxiety she suffered, growled in anticipation.
Chapter Nine
Usually feasts were jovial and entertainment a must, but with the scent of burnt wood still lingering in the air, the urgency of impendin
g war lay like a cloud over the atmosphere. The hosts and their guests were more focused on eating to the tunes of the harpers than merrymaking—Kella in particular. The travel seemed to have restored her characteristic hearty appetite as well as color to her cheeks.
When the servants placed honeyed puddings and fruits and nuts on the table, Alyn, more than glad to be done with the meal, allowed her to finish his portion in addition to her own. Though he wanted no part of it, his mind was on the business at hand. The business of impending war. Why he’d been summoned to Arthur’s table vexed him as much as how Cassian knew that Glenarden would not be his ultimate destination.
Eyewitnesses to the attack and the later ambush came before Arthur’s table to add their perspectives to what had already been reported. The village had taken the worst of the attack, but the marauders had set fire to the gates and wooden towers of Strighlagh’s fortress as well, while those villagers who’d managed to take refuge behind its walls had watched, helpless, from the parapets as their homes and shops burned below … some with their neighbors in them.
Elkmar of Errol told of the ambush. How the border guard leading Strighlagh had given chase along a pass, where they were showered on both sides with arrows and spears. Then the escapees turned upon their pursuers. Prince Lorne had tried to organize a retreat from the vulnerable spot, only to be outflanked by more of the enemy.
Or had he led the retreat? Alyn wondered. God forgive him, he wanted to think the best of Kella’s beloved, but only the worst came to his mind.
“We were surrounded on all sides, milord,” Elkmar told Arthur. “I saw my prince run clear through with a lance before I could get to him. Another of the—” He used a term unfit for a lady’s ears and, remembering the ladies, cast an apologetic look their way. “Well,” he murmured, “he cut off milord’s head—”
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