The Wolf and the Crown (The Perilous Order of Camelot Book 3)

by A. A. Attanasio

  Cei looked to either side, as if the sea rocks themselves would answer in his defense. "They deserved to die. They tried to murder you! And in the chapel, no less!"

  "And your judgment is greater than my command, is that it, Cei?" Arthor stood close to the large man. "I am your king."

  "Well, yes, of course ... " Cei looked perplexed, then angry. "Why do you think I confronted them? They raised knives against the king! Am I not your seneschal? Am I to abide treachery?"

  "Cei! Brother Cei!" Arthor's irate stare softened, and he shook his head sadly. "We are not to rule by power alone, you and I, nor any in our court. Don't you see? Before us, Rome. Before Rome, the Chieftains. All men, who ruled by might of arms and terror. We have a chance now for something greater."

  "Those men would have gathered others to oppose you."

  "Those men would have spoken of mercy when asked how they survived a failed attempt on my person." Arthor put his hands on Cei's shoulders. "Your heart acted for me, and I love you for that. But your heart must give more to the world henceforth. We are not Romans or Chieftains. We are Christians. We will not rule by the sword but by love. Do you accept this from me, brother?"

  An expression of deep thought closed Cei's face to a frown. "You are my king. I must accept what you say."

  "But do you not believe it is good? Speak to it."

  Cei shook his head. "No, Arthor. Love is for priests and mothers. For a warrior, love is deadly. Once he was delivered into the hands of the centurions, what good was love for our Savior? And, brother, if you think we are not already in the hands of our enemies, you are a simpleton."

  Nynyve

  King Arthor remained on the beach after Cei departed. He sat engrossed in thought about how a Christian, commanded to love even his enemies, could possibly reign as king, especially beset by foes determined to murder the very people under his protection. When he noticed Bedevere stand up from where he hunkered among the boulders, he thought perhaps Cei had returned to apologize for stalking off. But the figure who appeared with Bedevere was a woman of Celtic height and complexion, pale-skinned with cinnamon hair. She wore a traditional gwn, a diaphanous green skirt that fell to her ankles and left her breasts bare.

  With a wave, Arthor beckoned her to him. The sight of her half-nakedness did not perturb him, for this custom had persisted among rustic Celtic women throughout the land and was not considered provocative. Yet, his ears and cheeks did flush crimson at the sight of her tall beauty and with no clansmen in sight to watch over her. Such brazenness indeed startled, and Arthor's fifteen-year-old heart beat hard with lurid surprise.

  "My lady—where is your escort?" the king asked as she strode directly toward him, arms open to embrace.

  "The king is my escort," she spoke in deep-throated Gaelic, putting her arms on his arms and bending one knee before him. "No harm can come upon me in his care."

  Arthor gently pulled her upright and gazed with undisguised ardor into her hazel eyes, the moonlight of her skin, the deepening sunset in her long, softly curling hair. "You are too lovely a maiden to have come from anywhere without escort."

  "I have not come from anywhere," she replied, earnestly studying his boyish features and manly stature. "I have always been here. Your mother sent me to you. I am to instruct you in Celtic ways. Did she not tell you? I am Nynyve of the Lake."

  The dulcet sound of her voice reached through the darkness inside him like the stinging light of stars. Her beauty, so perfect, so unmarred by even a single freckle, seemed almost supernatural. "Are you an enchantress?"

  Nynyve laughed, a velvet laugh enclosing him in softness.

  He pried her arms from around him, and anxiety pinched his stare. "Is this some magic trick of Morgeu's? Is it? You'll not deceive me twice, sister. Not twice!" Angrily, he hooked his arms around her legs and shoulders and swooped her off her feet.

  "What are you doing?" she asked, frightened.

  "Salt!" he gnashed, striding across the wet sand. "Salt will break the illusion." Into the sea he carried her, turning his back against the foaming surf. Holding her tightly, he bent his knees to dunk them both beneath the waves. When he lifted her sputtering out of the frothing water and saw that her body had not shapeshifted and her face remained as lovely under a web of wet hair as before he had immersed her, he released her.

  Contritely, he knelt in the sea and let the waves beat him.

  []

  Mother Mary, news has come to me that Merlin lives, yet is possessed of Satan. Can this be true? If so, I must trust to you and your Son to free him from the great adversary—as I must trust you to liberate my brother's heart from his murderous inclinations. I am frightened for Cei. He is so strong in body and in faith and still so weak of temperament. Merlin possessed by evil, Cei owned by ferocity, Marcus wounded and irate at me for not plunging my men into battle, and the invaders swarming ashore in greater numbers daily. Mother Mary, I thought I'd go mad today, balked about by such troubles! And then, on the beach, I met a woman of such exceeding beauty and charm, I forgot my worries. Yet, even with her, a deeper worry asserted itself. I was certain she was an illusion. I dunked her in the sea to dispel my suspicion, and she fled from me—laughing. I feel so foolish. Morgeu has scarred my soul, Mother Mary. I trust no woman. I doubt even the kind words of my own mother, an abbess herself. My sword, that I know. Our preparations for war are almost complete, and soon I can give myself to what I trust most. And if I survive, if I save the duke's realm from the invaders, I must kneel before my mother as I am kneeling before you now. I must pray with her for forgiveness of my sin of lust. I must pray that your Son, who lived and died for love, will lift this burden from my heart that I may at least learn to love as other men.

  Vampyre in the Chapel

  At sunset, Morgeu's tented wagon pulled up to a chapel on a hill overlooking Watling Street, not far from Verulamium. A dozen worshipers sat in the pews, chanting vespers, when the heavy oak door blew open and Morgeu entered with a gust of autumn chill and pouring leaves. "Out!" she shouted. "Leave this place at once!"

  The congregation gazed appalled at the intruder as she strode down the aisle, red robes blustering in a stiff night wind. The flames of altar candles jumped, gasped, and died at her approach.

  "Out!" she screamed again, shoving the priest aside from the wood pulpit and seizing the rosewood crucifix from atop the sacristy behind the altar. "Out or be damned!"

  Most of the communicants quickly exited, but a few farmers remained, unwilling to forsake their worship for a wild woman. When she smashed the crucifix to splinters against the altar, they leaped to their feet. "She's wicca—and mad!"

  "Wicca I am!" she shouted at them. "But mad am I?" She showed her small teeth in a grimacing smile. "At this moment, King Wesc sends his storm raiders to raze your harvest fields—and you sit here praying to a god who killed the son that preached love. Ha!"

  Alarmed by her curse, the farmers clambered over the pews and ran out the door. Only the priest remained, a small, bald man with wide ears and kindly eyes, his hands tucked into his brown cassock. "Daughter, you bring your rage to a place of peace."

  "This is not a place of peace, you dolt." Morgeu kicked over the wooden altar. "This is the shrine of Hela, Queen of the Dead. War chants belong here. You desecrate her sacred province."

  "Calm yourself, daughter." The priest showed her his empty hands. "Once a pagan shrine did occupy this hill. This site has been cleansed of that infernal history generations ago."

  "Cleansed?" She stamped her foot, and darkness filled the chapel as the sun dipped under the horizon. "Life cannot cleanse death. It is death that cleanses life."

  "You are not well." The priest took her arm and felt the cold, rigid strength of it. "Come to my hut. I have wine and bread. We will eat together, and you will tell me of Hela."

  "No." In the dark, she had the stout bearing of a man. "Leave at once or, I swear by all you hold unholy, you shall be damned."

  "I belong here," the priest sa
id softly. "I cannot leave unless you come ... " He stopped speaking. A man stood in the doorway with eyes lucent as a cat's—and a white shadow that shivered on the ground before him like teeming starlight. "Come in, brother."

  "I am here," the vampyre said, standing so suddenly beside the priest that the cleric started and cried aloud his last mortal words, "My God!"

  The Furor in Londinium

  Of course the rain fell heavily when he arrived and lightning lashed the sky. He came through the south gate of the city with the drovers bringing their culled herds to market. He carried no weapon, and he appeared very old. None of the guards bothered to question him. Along the Avenue of the Centurions, with rain splashing off his floppy-brimmed leather hat, he proceeded directly to the majestic steps of the governor's palace.

  Severus Syrax, magister militum of Londinium, sat in the throne room among columns of pink marble and statues of emperors when a herald announced, "The wizard Merlin begs an audience with you, my lord."

  Syrax stiffened. He dismissed the accountants and clerks who had been reviewing with him the city's autumnal stores of grain and livestock, and he summoned two priests and the full contingent of his personal guard before he gestured for the wizard.

  Even without his famous midnight-blue robes and conical hat, Merlin's long, sallow skull and dragon-socket eyes identified him to the warlord. "Stand well back from me, demon, and say what you have come to say."

  Gorlois smiled with savage glee at the sight of his former comrade-in-arms. The arrogant coxcomb had not changed one whit. He still obviously spent more time trimming his Persian-style beard and coiffing his curls than drilling his troops or reviewing the battlements. "I have come to speak on behalf of King Wesc."

  "The Saxon bloodsucker?" Syrax leaned forward on the satin squabs of the marble throne to inspect the wizard. He had been deceived before by this shapeshifter. "What of your creature, that beardless brute Arthor?"

  Gorlois had never seen Arthor, yet the Furor's vision compelled recognition. That whore-son begot on my wife by another man! The weakling brother of the warlord I died defending!

  The duke's personal rage whisked away before the power of the Furor, and he spoke with the voice that the Lawspeaker had instilled in him: "Arthor is far away in the west, beleaguered by Wolf Warriors. His future is doubtful. I must do what I can to bring peace to this island. And so I speak for King Wesc and the Foederatus."

  Syrax soundly banged his fist on the arm of the throne. "I've paid my annual tribute to the damnable Foederatus!"

  "Your tribute has won you peace here in Londinium," Gorlois continued to relay the message from the Furor. "The Foederatus have left your fields and fisheries unmolested. Now King Wesc wishes to extend this Pax Foederatus westward, to other Roman coloniae—and for your role as his legate he will pay you gold."

  Fight for the Coast

  Ocean light glinted from the brass fittings of the mounted warriors that King Arthor led on patrol along the winding coast road. Inland, Kyner and Lot had fanned out with their troops to clear the countryside of roving Wolf Warriors and wildwood gangs. At their mutual destination, Neptune's Toes, Marcus would join them as counselor, his injury precluding his riding into battle.

  The troops that Arthor led were the Duke's, and they displayed the full regalia of Roman soldiers. The impressive sight of them in their polished helmets and flexible body armor filled the boy with pride to ride at their head.

  As a warrior of Kyner's clan, Arthor had worn a second-hand helmet purchased from an itinerant armorer. His cuirasse had consisted of scuffed leather. And only on diplomatic visits with his stepfather to Roman courts across Gaul had he seen soldiers wearing about their waist the sporran of metal-bound thongs that now his foot soldiers wore.

  Bedevere had shown the young king how to don Roman battle gear and also how to command an imperial army. As a clan warrior, Arthor had always before ridden to combat in small squads, camping in the forest and sleeping under strewn leaves. The caravan trek to the north had been the largest expedition he had ever undertaken. And never had he ridden before an entire cavalry wing and infantrymen trained in legionary tactics.

  At nightfall, the regularity of the army's encampments left Arthor agog. Each soldier carried two stakes for use as a palisade inside the ditch dug by them for the night. As if a mirage forming from twilight, garrison tents rose within a fortified perimeter. Scouts delivered reports from the territory that would be crossed in the next day's march, and Arthor learned from the Duke's commanders how to deploy the troops to meet each day's challenges.

  Battles raged frequently and tediously among the numerous coves and estuaries along the rocky coast. And much as Arthor longed to lead the efficient troops in their flexible body armor and closely packed, disciplined ranks, Bedevere insisted that the king remain on the hilltops among the other commanders, the better to learn the tactics and strategy necessary to direct an army.

  Marcus's commanders would just as soon have seen the rustic boy-king rush off to battle as have had to explain to him every small detail of their warplans. The Duke, out of courtesy to Ygrane, a holy woman much revered in his province and the widow of his former lord, Uther Pendragon, had given orders that Arthor be allowed command position in the ranks—though given no genuine authority.

  "They treat me like a boy," Arthor complained to Bedevere at night, alone in the camp's one regal purple tent. "I've fought Saxons, Jutes and Angles, and I know their strengths and weaknesses. I'm no dolt with a sword."

  "Certainly not, sire." Bedevere snuffed the canopy oil lamp and paused before exiting. "You must remember that Marcus has not given his pledge. In his eyes—and in truth, my lord—you are yet a boy. If you can accept this, you may survive to manhood and find that you have become a king in more than just title."

  Wanderings

  The souls of Merlin, Dagonet, and Lord Monkey suffered within the assembled form of Rex Mundi as the demon Azael and the Fire Lord alternately abandoned them to fulfill themselves. When the Fire Lord broke away to accomplish the tasks that God set for him, the rages of the demon harrowed the trapped souls. And during the intervals when the demon left the angel to hold together the magical body, everyone burned with insatiable yearning for heaven.

  End thith tewibble thuffewing! Dagonet pleaded, and Lord Monkey's animal cries sharpened.

  Merlin refused to use the gems from the Otherworld that he carried in the pockets of the robe to break the magic he had wrought. Exiled again to the dwarf's body, he would never find his way back to his own flesh.

  As Rex Mundi, between bouts of demonic despair and angelic longing, clarity opened. While Azael and the Fire Lord mutely circled each other, the wizard commanded Dagonet to silence, mesmerically eased Lord Monkey to sleep, and trancefully searched for his own flesh.

  Merlin sensed his body far to the east and continued to direct Rex Mundi to travel in that direction. But the continual digressions of Azael and the Fire Lord sent the conglomerate body reeling off in unexpected directions.

  Avoiding all settlements, the tall creature of horrid aspect followed old dry creek beds, roadside ditches screened by thornbrush, and drear forest paths. Berries and tubers provided sustenance when the cultivated fields and orchards stood empty. Large animals instinctively avoided the supernatural being. And only the most foolhardy and desperate brigands dared accost him.

  An arrow whistled among the trees, aimed for Rex Mundi's cloaked breast, and the hairy, leathern hand snatched it out of the air. The archer thrashed away through the underbrush.

  An oafish farmer, driven mad by Saxon plundering and the murder of his family, slashed at the gruesome wanderer with a tree limb. It broke like punk wood across the broad back. The glare of rage in that terrible face set the madman's insanity deeper in his brain.

  Merlin did not allow the monkey soul or the demon to take human life except when the assailants themselves offered the certainty of threat to other people. Shrieking monkey fury, Rex Mundi leaped among en
camped gangs of mercenaries and bandits. His blows blurred with lethal speed, and he spun among the foes of life like a whirlwind of death.

  These rare murderous episodes barely hindered Rex Mundi. He traveled swiftly across the autumn countryside, accompanied by wind and rain.

  Haunting Verulamium

  Morgeu restored the chapel outside Verulamium to a shrine for worship of Hela, Goddess of Death. Several other chapels occupied hills and knolls elsewhere around the town, and the enchantress felt that the Christians would reasonably abandon their claim on her temple—once enough of the townspeople who tried to reclaim their chapel lost their lives to the Goddess.

  Church elders came by daylight with pikes and lances to drive the witch from their chapel, and a ferocious bear descended from the forest and intercepted them on the hill path. The slashing paws slew four men and maimed two others before the giant ursine lumbered back into the dark woods.

  That night, the survivors came bearing torches, accompanied by a gang of mercenaries armed with swords and two bows with a quiver of arrows to share between them. Out of the clear sky, lightning flashed and struck with explosive force in their midst at the exact spot of the bear attack. The gang scattered, and Terpillius stalked them on the dark hillside, his bloodless face leering suddenly into torchlight before his fangs struck.

  Samhain, the new year of the ancient calendar, saw the arrival of an exorcist from Lindum. Accompanied by four armed men out of Londinium, the exorcist came at noon to the possessed chapel. He bore a venerable text, holy relics, and a phial of water from the Jordan blessed by the pope himself.

  He found Morgeu seated on the earthen floor, the pews shoved to the walls and carved with pagan symbols—spirals, glyphs of horned dancers, pentagrams.

  "By the mundane power of the Holy Father in Ravenna and the celestial glory of God Most High and His only begotten Son ... "