by M. K. Hume
‘I heard my name mentioned,’ the High King interrupted as he entered the room. He knelt beside Targo’s pallet and gripped the old man’s hand tightly. ‘Nimue says you’re thinking very seriously about leaving me. How can you trust me not to fuck up without you to guide me?’
Nimue’s face flushed at the soldierly language, but Targo grinned, baring his few remaining yellowed fangs.
‘That’s my boy! Yes, you’ll probably fuck up, but so would a Caesar in this country of boneheads and sodding rain. Can’t be helped, boy. It can’t be helped.’
The old man lifted Artor’s hand and kissed it. Nimue felt tears prickle behind her eyes and was forced to dash one hand across her cheeks to wipe away their traitorous tracks. The death of a great warrior was no time for weeping.
‘I’ve loved you like a son, my boy. I loved little Gallia too. My heart hurts even worse to think of little Licia all grown up, and a wife, and us not there to see her on her big day. Old Frith was always right, wasn’t she? Fate gives some men greater burdens than others.’
Artor was dangerously close to tears; Nimue could sense them hovering in his shark’s eyes, which were now simply wintry and sad.
‘If the priests are right, Targo, then Frith and Gallia are both waiting to greet you. Lady Livinia, Ector, Luka, the Scum . . . so many friends will be there awaiting your arrival.’
Nimue had no idea what the two men were talking about, but the shared love and life experiences that bound them so tightly were revealing the High King of the Britons to her in a totally new light. Before her eyes, Artor was becoming a true man, capable of love in full measure as well as the ruthless capacity for power that she had previously seen in him.
Perce hurried into the room, balancing a dusty flagon and some rough pottery cups on a simple wooden tray. He bowed to the king and commenced to fill the crude pottery with a rich, ruby-red wine.
Artor raised one eyebrow at Nimue, who explained Targo’s last desire was for a fine glass of wine, and of her decision that they should join him in his tipple. As she spoke, Myrddion entered the room and was also handed a full cup.
Perce lifted the old man tenderly and supported him on cushions. With Nimue’s help, Targo drank deeply and a little colour came back into his pale face.
‘To Artor, King of the Britons, my lord and my last master,’ Targo said gravely in his failing, thin voice. ‘My best master, who has given me my greatest triumphs.’
Just as solemnly, Nimue, Perce and Myrddion drank with him to Artor’s good health.
‘In recompense for my loyalty, I ask that you remember your promise, my lord,’ Targo added craftily, his eyes alight. ‘I ask that you do right by young Perce. He’s nearly ready and he’ll be a loyal warrior who will guard your back for the love of me. I’ll sleep better if I know that he has taken my place.’
Artor raised his cup, drank and saluted Targo.
‘By the hours you once spent teaching me to stay alive, by the tears we shed together and by the losses we bore as one, I swear I will keep my word to you, my friend.’
‘That’s fair enough,’ Targo wheezed. ‘Now, what’s a man got to do to get a drink around here?’
Perce glanced an unspoken question at Nimue, who nodded almost imperceptibly. The young man filled Targo’s cup.
‘How fast are you, boy?’ Targo asked slowly.
‘I’m fast enough.’ Artor’s voice broke. His eyes streamed with tears, although his mouth was held firmly by the force of his will.
Targo drank a little, and then waved the cup away with ebbing strength.
‘I’m very tired,’ the old man whispered, and closed his eyes.
Odin came to the door, summed up the situation at a glance and then stood guard at the entrance like a stone effigy.
Targo dozed for five minutes or so. His breathing sounded very loud within the confines of the quiet room. Nimue held his liver-spotted hand and stared into the cup of half-drunk wine on the stone floor beside her. It seemed to swirl like a pool of pumping blood.
The old man’s eyes flickered, and then opened tiredly.
‘How strong are you, boy?’ The words whistled through his shrivelled lips.
‘Strong enough,’ Artor replied evenly, although his face was wet.
‘So think before you act . . . Targo’s law! Remember?’
Once again, the old man’s eyes drooped shut as if he now lacked the strength to keep them open. His breathing was slower and more laboured, until Nimue thought that the heaving chest wouldn’t rise again. But Targo’s will to live was still strong, and he opened his eyes once more.
‘Nimue? Lovey? My short sword is yours.’
‘Never mind, you old darling. Just sleep, and we’ll watch over you while you rest. Artor is here. And Myrddion, Odin and Perce will stay close to you.’
She caressed the old man’s forehead with the long, gentle strokes of a mother, as if Targo was a small child. The old man obediently closed his eyes once more. Targo was a husk, a shell that was cracked and broken beyond repair. His heart still laboured on but Nimue knew that his soul would soon be free of his useless body.
His eyes snapped open.
‘Odin!’ he called, his expression suddenly desperate. The Jutlander stepped forward into the light of the lamp so that Targo’s fading sight could see the outline of the familiar, shaggy body.
‘Promise to guard his back! Whatever it takes, you . . . heathen . . . lump. Guard my boy’s back.’
‘To ruin! To the death!’ the Jutlander swore, and Nimue began to sob. She could no longer watch in silence but she couldn’t turn away either.
As she watched the final minutes of Targo’s life, it was almost as if his god smoothed the wrinkled old face with a great invisible cloth, until the years that burdened his body began to fall away. Now Nimue could see the narrow, clever face that Targo once wore when he was young and vigorous, and her sobs increased in frustration and despair.
‘He’s gone,’ she whispered with a blend of joy and anguish. ‘His heart is still beating slowly . . . but his soul has fled.’
Gradually, so quietly that the watchers could barely discern the small differences, Targo’s breathing slowed and weakened . . . and then stopped.
A single heartbeat stirred the frail chest one last time, and then Targo’s body was dead.
Artor kissed the dead lips and rose to his feet, ignoring the tears that darkened his short beard. His face was twisted, with regret, loss and something darker that reminded Myrddion that the king had borne more than his share of losses during the past year.
‘I will wash Targo myself, my lord, and sew him into his shroud,’ Nimue promised.
She gazed up into the ashen face of the High King and stroked his hand hesitantly. Artor seemed oblivious to her small, comforting gesture.
‘Do you wish him buried?’ she asked, proud to give this final, woman’s grace to the old warrior. ‘Or burned?’
‘Targo will be burned as a true Celtic warrior. And his ashes will rest at the Villa Poppinidii where he spent so many happy years.’
Artor’s sharp gaze turned on Nimue, and he seemed to see her truly for the first time. For one brief instant, she thought his eyes would pierce her heart, and she shivered under his fierce regard.
‘I will send a shroud to you, the very best that my kingdom possesses. I thank you, Nimue, apprentice of Myrddion, and I am forever in your debt.’
‘I live to serve you, my lord. You only have to ask.’
Artor bowed, turned abruptly on his heel and strode out of the room. Myrddion stared fixedly at the iron-straight back with a kind of fear and, reluctantly, followed his master, the High King of the Britons.
Artor entered his wife’s apartments like a tidal surge. His raw emotions caused the perfumed air to crackle around him.
‘Wenhaver? Where are you, woman?’ he bellowed.
The queen’s ladies fled from him like gaily painted birds disturbed by a hawk.
Wenhaver entered from her s
leeping room, her long hair unbound, and looked at Artor with something very like disdain.
‘I am here, husband. There is no need to shout.’
‘Where is the cloth of gold that came as a part of your dowry? I want it!’
Artor’s voice was crisp and curt, and the maids observed him cautiously from under lowered eyes.
‘I plan to make that length of cloth into a gown, my husband, so I must decline to give it to you.’
‘Your desires are of no interest to me. The cloth is mine, and was paid for when I married you. I have a use for it.’
Artor’s right fist clenched and unclenched unconsciously. The maids clustered in the corner of the sumptuous room to avoid the coming confrontation.
‘Don’t force me to search for that cloth, Wenhaver. It’s mine, not yours, so it will be used to shroud old Targo, my most trusted servant, who is newly dead.’
A wiser and less grasping woman would have acquiesced in the face of her husband’s obvious distress. But, as usual, Wenhaver saw his demands through the filter of her own desires. She had found a replacement for her husband in her bed, and she had set her heart on an ostentatious gown, one designed to eclipse every woman in the west.
‘That smelly old man! No, he cannot have it! My father owned it, so it’s mine and I mean to keep it.’
Her voice had risen until she was quite shrill. Artor, by comparison, became dangerously quiet.
‘You’ll obey, woman, and you’ll comply with my wishes this very minute. Now!’ He pointed at the prettiest of Wenhaver’s handmaidens. ‘You! Find the cloth! This instant!’
‘I am warning you, Linnet. Don’t you dare do his bidding,’ Wenhaver shrieked.
Linnet’s loyalty swivelled between Wenhaver’s spiteful face and the king’s implacable eyes.
‘Linnet, you will obey! I am the king!’
Her decision had been made for her. She ran to a large chest, opened the heavy lid, and began to search through precious lengths of fabric until she struggled to lift out a bolt of shining gold.
Wenhaver stamped her small foot. ‘I will have you whipped, Linnet, and I don’t care who your father is. You are not the king’s servant, but mine. I order you to give that cloth to me.’
‘If you touch that child, Wenhaver, I will visit the exact same injuries on your body as you inflict on her, after I publicly tell all on Cadbury Tor of the reason for your punishment. Beware what you say, madam, for I am the High King, and you have never paid for Myrnia’s scars. She may have been a servant, but she was in my service, so you will have a care. You are merely my excessively tiresome and stupid wife, who can be removed from your position at my whim.’
Any clever young aristocrat in Wenhaver’s service soon learned to cover their ears so they could swear on either the Tuatha de Danann or the Christus that they’d heard nothing during the course of their duties in her chambers.
Without another word, Artor eased the glittering cloth from Linnet’s unresisting hands and strode out of the room. Behind him, he heard the crash of precious glass pots of unguents and perfumes strike the wall, and Wenhaver’s voice shrieked until he swore she sounded like the coarsest prostitute.
‘Let her rave,’ he whispered softly, as he strode back through the rabbit warren of corridors. ‘The selfish bitch will live my way, or not at all.’
Nimue raised her tear-stained face as he entered. Targo lay naked on his pallet, except for a strip of cloth that concealed the old man’s genitals. Perce and Nimue, between them, were washing the old man’s body.
‘Here!’ Artor said softly, as he draped the wonderful, expensive cloth over a stool. ‘Targo deserves the shroud of a king, and so he shall have the best that I own. In three days, his funeral pyre will be lit in the forecourt of Cadbury Tor.’
As quickly as he had come, Artor was gone again.
Odin chanted in his own tongue while Nimue was sewing Targo’s remains into his shroud. Then, as she was about to finish the last of the stitches, the Jutlander slipped a small carving of a wooden ship on to Targo’s breast.
‘Once the maidens take his soul to Valhalla, Targo will have a boat that he can row through the heavens,’ Odin explained quietly.
‘Targo believed that he must pay the Ferryman his fee to cross the River Styx. The High King has left the fee with me,’ Nimue said sadly, and laid two golden coins on Targo’s closed eyes.
She sewed the last stitches, and the remains of the old Roman were hidden from the light.
‘By sea, by fire, by boat or by the horses of the air,’ Odin intoned, ‘our friend will go to the gods as all great warriors must.’ He turned to face Nimue. ‘You did the best you could, little dragonlet.’
Nimue flashed a quick, surprised glance at Odin’s broad face. ‘You speak excellent Celt when you wish to do so,’ she said. ‘It’s something about you that I have never noticed before.’
Odin bowed his head and smiled slyly. ‘Targo always knew. He taught me to speak your language, so I listened and learned. Targo said I could serve my master better if everyone thinks I’m stupid.’
Nimue laughed for the first time in many sad hours. It was an appreciative gurgle of amusement at Targo’s foresight - and Odin’s duplicity.
‘I certainly won’t tell anyone,’ Nimue promised. ‘And I’ll swear that Perce won’t reveal your secret either. After all, you’re Perce’s mentor now.’
‘Nimue! As if I would!’ Perce protested with mock affront.
The three friends gripped hands across Targo’s withered corpse, and laughed and wept by turns. The old warrior would have appreciated their laughter.
Nimue, Perce and Odin remained with the shell of the old man, and kept a long watch through the night. Nimue prayed, and every breath she took was a hymn to speed Targo on his way to the afterlife. She had seen his soul depart his body and she had no doubt that Targo lived on in another world that was beyond her knowledge or understanding.
There were no more deaths from the contagion. It vanished from Cadbury as it had come, speedily and without fanfare. It was as if Targo’s death marked a return to normality. Always sensitive to the power of symbols, Artor set his considerable energy to the task of galvanizing the population for one purpose, building a massive funeral pyre for his friend. Carts were sent out of Cadbury into the forests, and they returned, groaning under the weight of long, straight trees that had been stripped and prepared on site for the ritual conf lagration.
The population did not begrudge Targo the efforts they expended for his funeral. As arms master to the High King and the last Roman warrior in Britain, he had the romantic gloss of legend. He had stood at Artor’s shoulder for many years and, in his great old age, had assumed a giant’s stature in the eyes of the common people. He stood tall for all of them, for he was a common man who had touched the gods and, like the ordinary citizens of Cadbury, he had died as they, too, would eventually perish.
The funeral pyre took many days to build, so Artor sent word of the coming event to Targo’s old friends. Only Wenhaver had nothing praiseworthy to say of the old soldier, she sulked and nagged by turns. Artor simply ignored her childish behaviour. The queen could bear insults, but indifference drove her half-mad with rage. When a number of the loyal kings arrived for Targo’s last ceremony, she was an unwilling hostess, completely lacking in charm. The fact that those who had known Targo cared nothing for her rudeness simply added to her feelings of injustice.
A week after Targo’s death, his body was placed atop an impressive pyre of massed logs. The air was sweetened by the heady odours of precious attars set in wax combs amongst the wood to mask the smell of corruption beneath Targo’s golden shroud. Artor ordered that the old man should go to the afterlife without armour or weapons for, as he told Llanwith, Targo had proved his status as a warrior and had no need of swords to proclaim his courage as a man.
The morning of the burning dawned sweet and clear. The fortress walls had been opened and it seemed to Nimue’s eyes that the whole of Ca
dbury town filled the square and every raised structure that gave them a vantage point. Excited boys swung their legs over the edges of the roofs while they waited to see the great Artor honour his sword master. A festive air filled the square with a hum of excitement, and many women had collected flowers that they threw on to the pyre, where their brilliant colours softened the harsh majesty of the rough-hewn logs.
Nimue had dressed in her finest, cradling Targo’s old sword in her slender arms. She followed directly behind her master, clad in his customary black, as he stood to one side of the tribal kings. As always, Myrddion’s tall, slim figure was both graceful and manly, and was now adorned by a serpentine gold chain across his chest.
The crowd sighed as Artor came forth from the great hall, accompanied by his queen. Wenhaver had dressed ostentatiously in a gown of many brilliant colours. As always, she was heavily adorned with gems and wore her hair long and loose like a maiden. Several women in the crowd pursed their lips with disapproval at such a festive display, but the younger girls were awed by Wenhaver’s undoubted beauty, even if it was marred by a surly, proud expression.
The king was a sombre figure, dressed in deepest sable without adornment. Only his amber hair and gold dragon crown provided any colour.
Artor’s face looked stern and strong, but Nimue knew that the king had wept for hours the previous night, for she had heard him when she strayed near his apartment. Gruffydd had told her that Artor was inconsolable, and had kept to his room as much as possible. She alone among the crowds saw the pallor under the king’s tanned skin, and the swollen eyelids hooding his grey eyes.
When the assembled guests had settled, Myrddion Merlinus stepped forth and raised a tall black staff that was the symbol of his office.
‘Hear, people of Britain! We have come here today to honour a man who arrived in our lands as a stranger, in a time of strife and danger. He dwelt among us for many years and served us with great courage and skill. All who wish to honour him should speak now, and remember Targo, Sword Master and Bodyguard of the High King of the Britons.’
