by M. K. Hume
Myrddion smiled distantly.
‘Why did you choose the word, would?’ Nimue asked calmly, although her heart skipped a beat.
‘You must be innocent of all knowledge of my sins, my child, in case I am exposed. But, the king’s orders to Gruffydd came too late, for the death of Caius had already been arranged. For the first time, I doubted the word of my lord and master.’
Myrddion’s eyes were bleak, and a little catch of pain caught in Nimue’s throat. Her master was kind and human, and murder was both an unnatural and an unforgivable act for him. But worse than murder was his loss of trust.
‘Sometimes, you are a little barbarian in your thoughts,’ Myrddion said quietly. ‘But you are right, it was determined that Caius would die in an accident arranged by Artor. I should have realized that the king’s intentions were for the good of the west, but he didn’t tell me of his plans until after Caius had departed.’
‘You are too good a person, Myrddion, to understand the true viciousness or the pragmatism of human beings.’
‘Whatever the outcome, Nimue, I no longer trust Artor with our lives. He loves us, but he would use us up if it became necessary to save the west from danger. I’ve learned that I’m no better than he is. In fact, I’m worse because he has never failed me and I broke my faith with him. I don’t know how I can live with the shame. I can’t imagine facing him, the son I always wanted, and doubting him, as I will from this point onwards.’
Nimue cradled his craggy face in her hands.
‘Nothing is forever, master, not even love.’
‘He is now the perfect king because he has mastered his nature, but I regret that he has lost some of his humanity in the process. If the cause of the west could be advanced by our deaths, Artor wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice both of us.’
‘Of course,’ Nimue answered. ‘That choice is his burden, and also his fate. ‘But he would sacrifice himself as well,’ she added as an afterthought. ‘He already has.’
Myrddion wept silently, and Nimue longed to raise her hands to his twisted face and wipe away his hopeless tears.
‘I desired to make the perfect king, Nimue. In my hubris, I believed I could mould a suitable young man into another Caesar - for the sake of the people, and for my inflated pride. I was successful, but I find I cannot bear to face what I have done.’
Myrddion looked so sad that Nimue hugged him hard with her good arm. Myrddion tried to pull away, but she gripped his hair and he laid his head on her shoulder. He wished he was younger and wiser.
‘We must leave Cadbury,’ Nimue said quietly. ‘And the sooner the better. But it must be after Enid is delivered of her child, for I have promised to assist her with the birth. We should go far away, Myrddion, to a place where the Celts, the Saxons, Artor or any of the warrior kings cannot find us.’
‘You have never called me by my name before,’ Myrddion whispered.
‘I have called you by name a thousand times, but you were never listening. You thought yourself old and celibate, and that I was far too young for you. You ran from me as if I had the contagion, when you are all I could ever want, or ever will.’
‘But I will be dead before you reach middle age, Nimue. You have not thought of the practicalities of such a union.’ Myrddion tried to pull away from her, but his efforts were only half-hearted. ‘And I am needed here in Cadbury.’
Nimue chuckled richly and seductively. ‘Gallwyn was dead at fifty, and young warriors can be mown down like grain during the harvest. Death comes, sooner or later, so we should snatch what happiness we may while we can. I do not count the cost. We are friends first, and yet we can still be lovers. I have so much to learn from you, Myrddion, and you, my love, can learn from me.’
Myrddion would have spoken, but she laid two fingers on his mouth to silence him.
‘Artor needs you, but he will survive your loss. A gulf lies between you now, and you will both bleed internally in the full knowledge that the gap cannot be breached. It’s better that we go, my Myrddion, with love for Artor still alive in you, rather than risk its erosion with the passage of time. Better to be with me, my love, even if only for a little time. Artor has his Gallia. And you shall have me.’
‘I will think on it,’ Myrddion whispered. ‘Enid has a month before the birth of her child.’
‘I can wait, my love. I have waited for several years, so what is one more month? But time is narrowing here at Cadbury, for Wenhaver grows worse and worse, and her spite knows no bounds. She’ll harm me if she can and I fear her spite far more than I fear the revenge of Caius. Artor may have defeated the Saxons, but Wenhaver will be the death of him in the end. I’d prefer not to watch the decay of a dream.’
Myrddion winced, for he had shared that dream for the whole of his adult life.
‘There must be some remedy,’ he exclaimed.
‘The remedy will only be found if Wenhaver can change, and only if Gawayne can be persuaded to return to the north with his wife and child. Yet my reason tells me that Wenhaver would only seek out another lover.’
‘Then we are in the hands of the gods.’
‘No, my love. Our future lies in our own hands, and in no others. You have proved this truth in your judgement of Caius.’
On the road to Tintagel, taken in easy stages to spare Caius’s wounds, Gruffydd waited his chance. His orders had come from the mouth of Artor himself, so Gruffydd knew that the needs of his king must be sorely pressing if he was forced to send a trusted friend to assassinate his own foster-brother.
Gruffydd felt soiled at the thought of a cowardly stab in the darkness, but he had followed Artor for most of his life and he couldn’t throw away an allegiance that had become an essential part of his life. Gruffydd could not know that his king was near to breaking point, for he was repeating an ancient sin committed by his father, Uther Pendragon, by imperilling the soul of a man who loved him.
Shortly after midnight, when the darkness was absolute and the fires had banked and guttered, Gruffydd waited silently behind Caius’s travelling tent, his dagger sheathed at his waist. Eel-like, he slid through the tent flap and stood over the supine body of the king’s foster-brother.
Caius’s eyes snapped open, and Gruffydd recoiled in surprise.
‘Help me,’ Caius whimpered, even as a spasm rippled through his whole body.
Gruffydd saw that Caius’s pallet was dark with blood where his wounds had pulled apart and bled anew. He shook his head in confusion. What other assassin lurked in the darkness? What was happening here?
Even as he shouted for the guards, Gruffydd’s eyes and ears were straining to discover whether another killer was hiding in the shadows. As he lit the wick of an oil lamp with shaking hands, he thanked his gods that the blood of Caius would not stain his soul and that his master would be freed from guilt.
When light revealed the interior of the tent and its writhing inhabitant, Gruffydd could see clearly how the healing cuts on Caius’s belly and thigh were now oozing blood, but no fresh wounds marked the man’s body. Gruffydd’s lips curled with distaste, for now his unpleasant orders made sense. Sword wounds were distinctive, especially on flesh that stretched over layers of fat. Gruffydd had seen Nimue return to Cadbury Tor, wrapped in warm wool with dried blood in her fine hair. Like the rest of the inhabitants of the fortress, he had speculated on the identity of the Wildewood murderer and the audacity that led to his attack on the Maid of Wind and Water.
So this sick bastard is the monster of Wildewood, Gruffydd thought to himself with contemptuous horror. No wonder Artor wants him assassinated.
‘What ails you, lord?’ Gruffydd asked softly of the desperately ill man. He was careful to ensure that his face was wiped clean of all suspicion.
Caius continued to thrash about in his sweaty, bloody clothing.
‘I’m ill! My stomach and bowels boil, and my head aches abominably. I can scarcely see you, Sword Bearer. I command you to fetch a healer to tend to my needs.’
‘Of cou
rse, lord, you have but to ask,’ Gruffydd replied evenly, his thoughts firmly fixed on the remembrance of a laughing boy, a battered widow, and a disembowelled girl.
‘And, in pity’s name, leave the light,’ Caius yelped, for in the corners of the tent he could see pallid faces peering at him. Caius’s dead had come to wait for him. The sick man gibbered as yet more faces loomed out of the darkness and smiled at him.
‘What is wrong, my lord? Why are you frightened? The tent is empty but for your guards. No one here will harm you.’
Caius whimpered and turned his face into the pillow. ‘Can’t you see them? The girls? Who let in the dog? Get it out! Get it out! I am the king’s brother, so obey me! Get the whole hell-brood out of my tent.’
Caius almost screamed in his hysteria and the miasma of horror and illness in the tent was so thick that the warriors clutched their amulets and rolled their eyes superstitiously.
‘What dog, lord?’ one warrior asked nervously.
‘Go to the nearest village and find a healer,’ Gruffydd ordered the frightened man, cutting smoothly into the silence. ‘But you don’t need to be overly fast about it. For all that our master looks ill, he is still remarkably strong and isn’t at death’s door.’
Gruffydd had his own nightmare visitors, the men he had killed and the friends who had gone to the shades before him. But his dead weren’t hungry for his pain, his fear or his suffering, thanks be to all the gods of all the nations.
The sick bastard! Gruffydd thought viciously. I hope he hurts! I hope he shits his insides out before the healer returns with a cure. But his face remained impassive, even sympathetic, as he organized lighting, clean water for washing and a fresh robe for the sick man.
As it was obvious that Caius was unfit to travel, Gruffydd decided that the party would remain in their present encampment until the situation resolved itself. Already, he was composing the report he would make to Artor on his return to Cadbury.
Less than two hours later, Gruffydd’s messenger returned with a white-haired old woman from a nearby village. The healer possessed a pair of light blue eyes that proclaimed her barbarian blood. Her amulet was a simple stone, pierced through the centre, and hung round her neck on a crude cord of flax. She was small, bent and lean, and Gruffydd could see the raised veins on her swollen hands.
Caius hissed as she approached him, and cowered in abject fear at the thought of a Saxon woman touching his body. She ignored him, sat on her heels and stared at his flaccid, naked body that was leaking blood and serum.
‘Do you like mushrooms?’ she asked her patient politely.
‘What have mushrooms got to do with anything?’ Caius howled. ‘Do your job and heal me, witch!’
She rose, nodded to her patient, and walked out of the tent. The old woman would have walked back to her village had Gruffydd not waylaid her.
Self-possessed and impassive, she stared into Gruffydd’s soul through his frowning eyes. What she found there seemed to allay her anxiety.
‘What ails the brother of the High King, mother?’ the Sword Master demanded bluntly.
‘Besides his many sins? I am not sure, master,’ the old woman replied enigmatically. ‘But it is certain that I cannot help him.’
‘Will he die?’ Gruffydd snapped, irritated by her riddles.
‘The Woman’s Comfort mushroom has caused him to bleed. He ate it three days ago, and he is now beyond all mortal aid. His dead have come for him, so permit me to return to my people. I must wash myself clean of the stink of him.’
Gruffydd raised his brows.
‘Woman’s Comfort is a pretty little mushroom that all women know. Some Christians also call it the Angel Cap. Only the greatest of needs, or the greatest of hate, would justify its use to cause the death of another living person. The very breath of your man is envenomed. I cannot tell what comes from his person and what from the mushroom poison in his blood.’ She looked at Gruffydd with a woman’s sharp sense of wickedness. ‘Do not ask me to minister to your patient, for my hands would become polluted.’
‘By the poison?’
She laughed, freely and openly. ‘No. By him.’ She pulled her ragged cloak about her narrow, old woman’s shoulders. ‘Have a care, good man, and bury him deep when he breathes his last, for he carries the death of others with him.’
In the two days and nights that followed, Caius raved at unseen shades that taunted him.
The warriors pointedly refused to tend to his needs. Strange things seemed to hover in the shadows in the corner of the tent, just out of view, and no sensible man chose to gaze on a wight.
Only Gruffydd remained to assist the dying man. He left copious amounts of water within Caius’s reach, but the patient remained parched, no matter how much fluid he drank.
Gruffydd took care to avoid asking what Caius had eaten, and from whom his rations had come. He did not want to know.
The son of Livinia Major took a long time to die, and the High King had not broken his oath in the process. Myrddion had given his last gift to his well-loved master.
Enid was heavy-bodied and dreamy in her final month of pregnancy, and Gawayne was a proud father-to-be. Even so, the Otadini prince continued to seek out willing girls in Cadbury town.
And Wenhaver smiled until her jaws ached with the strain.
When Gruffydd returned with the news of the death of Caius, Artor’s heart seemed lighter, but his eyes examined Myrddion speculatively. This mood lasted a mere day, and to everyone at the court of Cadbury, the relationship between master and healer seemed unchanged. But the eyes of both men were filled with shadows.
Artor rode to Venta Belgarum at the end of autumn. As was his custom, he sought absolution from the bishop of that venerable city, for his heart was heavy with guilt. He had come, late in life, to understand Uther’s belated piety.
Every night, Artor squirmed in his bed as he considered the dangers to which his Licia and his grandson, Bran ap Comac, had been exposed by his failure to execute Caius as soon as he became aware of the man’s guilt. And he found himself reliving Myrddion’s expressions of disbelief, and the old man’s scorn and anger when he informed him of the total inadequacy of Caius’s punishment. Worst of all, Artor knew that only Myrddion had the skill to destroy Caius so thoroughly. Gruffydd had mentioned mushrooms, and who but Myrddion had such knowledge of mushroom and fungal lore? Artor also understood that the blood on the hands of the healer was his own fault because he had mishandled the whole affair when a little honesty would have spared his old friend.
The High King was scarcely gone from Cadbury when Wenhaver began her campaign to reel in Gawayne. Myrddion and Nimue, who both knew her methods well, watched with amazement as the queen invited Lot’s heir to afternoons in the garden, even though the flowers were dying because of the cold night frosts. Her retainers were often sent away on various errands, and only those closest to the queen knew how she was flouting her wedding vows.
Gawayne, for his part, was beginning to experience unfamiliar pangs of guilt. As the baby moved inside Enid’s belly and prepared for its entry into the world, he found himself unable to meet the gentle eyes of his wife, for he knew he had betrayed her innocent trust. He had come to realize that he had betrayed Artor as well, and his admiration for the High King had always been pure and total. Gawayne’s true loyalties did not belong to Wenhaver, but she played upon his sexual weaknesses, and the lure of her body, luscious and inviting, was a more potent force than any notions of loyalty. If he sometimes wondered whether she betrayed Artor, and himself, with other men, he thrust such thoughts aside as unworthy. Gawayne really was a bonehead within the convoluted plotting of the court.
Nimue was called to Enid’s rooms when she took to the birthing stool. The child was huge, and Enid was tiny at the pelvis. The labour was protracted, and Nimue began to fear that Enid would die.
After a night and a day of hard labour, Enid was exhausted. Gawayne had fled from the room once his wife began her travail. The sound of her scr
eams from the contractions, and her agonized pleas, echoed through the fortress until Wenhaver huddled in her room, demanding that her maids sing for her so that the sounds of childbirth were muffled.
During one seemingly endless contraction, Enid held Nimue’s hand so hard that her nails drew blood.
‘Don’t let my son die,’ Enid begged once the contraction had passed and she could breathe once more.
Nimue tried to feed her a little broth, and hid her fears behind practical action.
‘I must call for Myrddion, Enid. I know he is a man, and he has no place in the business of women’s labour, but you are too small to bear so large a child. You will both die if we don’t use his skill.’
‘Then send for him, but tell no one,’ Enid panted, as another contraction arched her swollen body with agony.
Nimue ran to Myrddion’s apartments, leaving Enid with her old nurse. Her hands were still stippled with blood as she burst into the study of her master.
‘Enid is dying. The child is too large to be born, and the birth canal is tearing. I need your help.’
Myrddion did not argue.
Snatching up several glass vials and a small leather wallet, he ran after Nimue. The route to the birthing rooms was obvious, for he could hear Enid in her extremity, although her screams were growing weaker. He had no doubt that Gawayne’s wife was near to death.
The nurse was afraid for the safety of her mistress, so she wasn’t overly scandalized by the presence of a male at such an intensely female event. She hovered over her mistress, so Myrddion sent her for water, and measured out several drops from one of his vials into the glass.
‘She must drink. This distillation of poppy juice will take away the pain and Enid will sleep.’
