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

by A. A. Attanasio

  At the horses, she made no struggle and was allowed to ride sitting up in the musky embrace of a cavalryman. Onto the moonpaths they rode, leaving Tintagel behind shining like a heap of bones. Silver wands hung in the forest. The empty outcry of an owl heralded their swift passage, and the soughing wind carried chill news of rain to the north.

  Severus Syrax and Count Platorius stood waiting her arrival in a glade amber with firelight. Two score men milled among the trees where they had camped, eager to see for themselves the renowned queen of the Celts, mother of Morgeu the Fey and the boy-king Arthor. They kept a respectful distance from where stood the magister militum in his turbaned helmet and fur-trimmed metal breastplate and the count in a beaverskin cap and long fur cloak.

  Ygrane said nothing as the cavalryman eased her to the ground. In the firelight, her placid face seemed carved of amber and occupied from within by the flames' restless shadows. She gazed without ire or anxiety at the two warlords.

  The count bowed before her and crossed himself. "Mother, forgive us. Your son's stubbornness forces our hand."

  She made no reply, and Severus Syrax appraised her coolly, the thin lines of his mustache curved in a smug smile. "Do you know why you are here?"

  Her green eyes lidded knowingly. "I assume I have been summoned by the Maker of Snakes."

  Obsessed with Red

  Before life, there was sleep. Morgeu returned there between her long astral flights and the brief time she spent awake, tending the needs of her body. She felt desperate to find a way to retake Gorlois' soul from Merlin.

  All her adult life she had been desperate for vengeance against the wizard whose magic had doomed her father. That was why she was obsessed with red. As well as her scarlet robes, the draperies of her tower chamber in Camelot hung scarlet. Rugs of crimsoned fleece covered the stone floor. The bower of her bed caught the window breeze in veils of red gauze. Even the stools, bed table, and writing desk gleamed with vermilion lacquer. The color carried the power of blood, of life, of the eternal wound between day and night, and it conferred on her the mortal strength to avenge what a demon had taken from her.

  In her meditations on how to thwart the demon who had thwarted her, she often fingered her red hair and pulled it to her teeth to gnaw. At those times, only her hair seemed truthful, for it was already dead.

  She lay among the tangled scarlet sheets of her bed, gnawing a tress of her hair when Lot entered. The crease between his storm-gray eyes warned of a grief that cleaved his brain, some conflict that he waited until he sat at the edge of her bed to voice. "Merlin tells me that I am not the father of this child. Yet, I already know you will say he lies—for he is Merlin, your foe."

  Morgeu said nothing. She gnawed her hair and watched.

  "I know he has stolen the soul of the child—the soul that is your father." Lot's mouth was not visible behind the dense gray whiskers of his drooping mustache, and his soft, nearly whispered words arrived as if telepathically rendered. "I care not at all whose soul you carry back to this world. You are an enchantress. You have this power to summon souls. I accept this. But you are my wife. The flesh you use to garment this soul must be mine woven with yours. I am Lot, son of Lug Lamfada of the Long Arm. I am father by Elen of the warriors Delbaeth, Loinnbheimionach, and Cohar. I am father by Pryderi of the Golden Hair of the warrior twins Gwair and Galobrun. And I am father by you of Gawain and Gareth. I will not father a son sired by another."

  With the little strength she had left from her tedious journeys in the ether worlds, Morgeu reached out and pressed her thumb between her husband's eyes. In a chant voice, she sang quietly for him, "You are a great warrior and the father of great warriors. Save your ire for the enemy. Save your strength to break the enemy. Or else the houses burn and the fields run wild. Until you, good and strong were twins, two different brothers. But in you, they are one soul."

  When her thumb came away, Lot felt peaceful and sure of himself. Bird chatter filtered through the red draperies among glimpses of cloudlight. A wisp of baking bread climbed the morning from the cookhouse below.

  His wife smiled at him, and his heart beat proudly in his chest as he rose to go, admiring the crimson fleece underfoot, the dark grain of the door, the fine mating of archstones on the lintel—the world so full of everything that he did not notice the nothing she had given him.

  Wings of Twilight

  At each twilight, both at dawn and evening, motes of spectral light flitted among the tall grass, the hedges, and the tree boughs, drawn to the giant wheel of the Round Table that Cei and the lay brothers rolled toward Camelot. Cei initially paid them little heed. To his mind they were lightning bugs, fireflies, or will-o'-the-wisps.

  Sunrise and nightfall were busy times, preparing meals and the campsite. Not until the fifth night did he overhear one of the lay brothers' prayers nervously mention faeries.

  "That's what those lights are," the lay brother informed him when he inquired. He looked, but by then night had fallen.

  In the morning, he paid more attention to the flitful shapes so proficient at riding the breezes down from among the trees. The size of the wheel required the men to follow the major highway east and avoid the more direct forest routes where low-lying boughs would block their progress. So, Cei moved from one roadside ditch to the other, chasing the sparks that gusted from the woods on either side. At last, a roadside peddler chanced to clap his hat over a fiery mote. When Cei peeked, he indeed beheld a tiny being, vaguely human, with diamond-carat halo, mica-fleck eyes, and fog-blur raiment.

  Fear glinted in Cei like a musical note spun over and over again on his taut heartstrings. He prayed fervently during that morning's breakfast of barley bread and salt fish, pleading for angels to guide and protect them.

  By nightfall, with fatigue from the long day's trek weighing heavily and fog seeping across the highway from the woods, Cei felt his prayer had gone astray. Shadowshapes of gnomes and trolls appeared to rear from the ditches, and the faeries gusted in swarms down the highway like fiery balls of swamp gas.

  Cei turned to mouth encouragement to the lay brothers, but the milky fog had enclosed them entirely. What silhouettes he saw stood immobilized, like statuary in a foggy garden.

  "Cei, son of Kyner, what a handsome and practical table you have there." The darkly gleaming voice came from a tall man in yellow boots and red vest. His pixie-slanted emerald eyes shone with an enigmatic light. Behind him, the fog sheared away to reveal a burning sunset among the trees to the west, a fiery horizon streaked with purple clouds. "Will you let me pull the Round Table along with wings of twilight? I could lead you to a place in the Happy Woods where the Piper plays tirelessly and the celebration never ends. Or, if your Christian soul prefers, I will just stroll beside you, a faerie escort back to your king. What say you, Cei? Will you dance merrily—or risk the road ahead?"

  Whimpering fearfully, Cei flung himself at his horse and hurriedly began unwrapping the lambskin from the Graal. By the time his trembling hands revealed the chrome goblet and he turned about, the elfin stranger had vanished.

  A lay brother slouched out of the fog carrying kindling. "Brother Cei, lay away the Graal—please. There's no priest about to recite the Mass, and we're all too weary for long prayer."

  The Ghosts of Lovers

  The king's escort accompanied Eufrasia from Camelot through the forests of the realm. They crossed numerous streams swollen by spring rains on their four days' ride to the wooded fringe of the plain where Bors Bona's army had encamped. They arrived weary and bedraggled after moonset in the midst of a starblown night. As they had been ordered, the escort went no farther with the chieftain's pale-haired daughter. Eufrasia rode alone out from among the trees, fingering the small phial that Arthor had given her and that she had loop-knotted with a fine gold chain and hung about her neck.

  Before she had departed Camelot, the hollow-cheeked wizard had held her with his odd viper eyes and said, "There's much magic upon that phial. Your beauty carries it. A
ll who look upon you at night, from scouts and sentinels to company commanders and the warlord Bors Bona himself will see for themselves the ghosts of lovers they've lost. Every man has lost one whom they have loved. You will be that shape for them. But beware women. They will see you for who you are."

  She went past a ploughed field where early barleycorn stood in uneven rows upon the rocky ground. A horseman on patrol stood in his shadow at the sight of her. With a tentative voice, he hailed her, and she rode on and made no reply. Ahead, a sulfurous light ignited and waved. Dimly, she discerned a bowman among the dark alcoves of the wood, his underlit face ajar with surprise.

  Campfires twinkled in the meadow beyond the turned fields. She rode slowly, giving ample opportunity for the watchful eyes in the tenanted dark of the forest to observe and see what their hearts told them. A few quavery voices called to the ghosts they saw, though most watched silently as she trespassed their watch slow and solemn as the specter they discerned her to be.

  Out of the black solitude of the night, she rode into the camp and paced upon the dancing shadows from the fires toward the central pavilion tent, where Bors Bona's eagle standard stood beneath a snapping banner with a boar's head emblazoned upon it. Dogs shied from her, horses whinnied, and ranks of soldiers lifted themselves from their elbows where they lay, eyes agog. None moved to stop her.

  At the pavilion tent, she dismounted. The standing guard backed away from her, lance slipping from his fingers. Bors was on his feet when she entered, roused by the sound of the falling lance, hand on his sheathed sword hung from the tent pole. In his gray wool nightshirt and stocking feet, he sat down on his trestle cot and gazed at her, eyes white in the dark tent. "Mother?"

  Star House of the Gods

  Dagonet rode four days north and, at dusk, fired a white arrow at the fourth star that quivered in the blue heavens. "Wish me luck, master," he said to Lord Monkey, who sat patiently on the riding board of the dray cart.

  Into the twilight he hobbled, his back throbbing from days of hard riding—and the curse the talking fish had inflicted on him. As he limped under the cold starlight, beneath Arcturus and the Ploughman, he could not accept that Merlin, who had lived and adventured with him as Rex Mundi, would abuse the magic that the Fire Lord had used to grant him stature and beauty. The dying fish had said that to spite him, to cause him doubt. He would allow no uncertainty to taint his purpose. He would win worthy station in the king's court and make something more of himself than the vagabond he had been before.

  The arrow was nowhere to be found. He searched through the gloaming, growing more desperate as night fell. Darkness encompassed him. Then, the moon rose, and the nocturnal forest accrued silvered and dusty blue shapes. A polychrome glint of motion caught his eye, and he glimpsed the platinum fletch feathers of the arrow wink in and out of sight among the wicker of a hedgerow. He bolted after it, his cramped back muscles punishing him.

  A hare had been struck by the arrow and darted across the moonlit terrain. Dagonet followed it doggedly, running bent over, arms outstretched. Into a cleft in a tussock the hare slipped, pulling the arrow shaft after it. The bowman fell to his knees before the opening and thrust his arm in.

  He felt root cables or what he thought to be thick tendrils until he pulled one through and discovered in the silky light a root-braided cylinder. Pulling away the woven roots, he uncovered a tarnished bronze scroll-case, its central tube engraved with the coils of a snake-bird, its caps winged with sphinxes. The tangled roots twined umbilically into the crevice, connecting to other scroll-cases.

  As the moon climbed to the cope of heaven, he withdrew a mound of these bronze-encased parchments, over two hundred and thirty ancient documents, a library buried in a former century. He lugged them several at a time back through the woods to the dray cart. After he finished and Lord Monkey's cart trundled away with the moon in the treetops, Dagonet collapsed exhausted.

  Birds yammered all about and the sun lay as a warm blanket atop him when he woke to find Lord Monkey nibbling gooseberries from a wicker basket with a small note attached. Brave Dagonet, you have unearthed the library of Hipparchus, the Greek astronomer who drafted the blueprints for the Star House of the Gods, a copy of which later served Ptolemy. They were carried off to Hyperborea by Greek navigators to hide them from Roman barbarians. I doubt I will sell these. They are a treasure worth more than money. Go five days north now—and be wary, for you enter upon the Pictish realms. Trust in God and keep faith with our king. — M.

  Guardians of Dusk

  At each twilight, Cei made certain to unsheath the Graal, stand upon his horse to place the chalice atop the upended Round Table, and kneel with the lay brothers in prayer. After that, the faeries stopped intruding. To make certain there were no further visitations from the pale people, he convinced a priest from the church at Isca Dumnoniorum to accompany them to Camelot.

  Dawn and dusk, he conducted the synagogal service of scripture reading, psalm singing, and homiletic sermonizing that, at this time in the history of the Church, comprised the Mass: In turn, under the priest's supervision, each of the lay brothers and Cei had the opportunity to lead the ceremony and to serve as Christ's surrogate by administering the Eucharist.

  The giant wheel rolled easily enough on the old Roman highways with the dozen and more men of the company to bend their backs to it. When potholes and rifts in the road blocked their way, they laid down sturdy planks to bridge the gaps. During the frequent rains, the men sang to keep their spirits up, and the wheel rolled on. At streams where the slat bridges were not sturdy enough for the Round Table, the men gathered flat rocks and devised ripraps.

  The greatest obstacle was not the ill-repaired roads, the weather, or the terrain, but the cities. On the journey north, the Round Table rolled through the port of Isca, where the priest joined them, then the tree-lined boulevards of Lindinae, Aquae Sulis with its famous baths, magisterial Corinium, where in the autumn Cei had gambled away his horse and sword, Letocetum with its many vintners and cellars of every blush of wine, the equestrian town of Uxacona and its boisterous race courses, and busy Viroconium of the ample markets. All greeted the Round Table with jubilant celebration—for all had been terrorized by the roving war parties of the magister militum's army.

  In each city, the elders and council members sought to entertain and laud the bearers of the Graal and the Round Table. They believed that these ambassadors of the king, if properly propitiated, would summon the royal forces: Arthor had cleared out the brigands from the surrounding farmlands in the prior season and each municipality wanted him to defend them from Syrax. They knew that circumstances limited the king's might, and each made a strenuous case for why their city most deserved regal intervention.

  Time and again, the Round Table had to be wheeled out the city gates in the middle of the night to elude the supplicating crowds who wanted to hold the king's men until he sent defenders. In the outlying fields, cruel evidence of Syrax's army everywhere abounded—torched orchards, trampled fields, shattered mills.

  The labor of pushing and pulling the great wheel with hawsers proved utterly exhausting on the hilly north road that followed the River Amnis to Cold Kitchen and Camelot. In the evening, none had strength for more than a cursory prayer of thanks to God.

  During one such meager prayer under a twilit sky, Cei noticed that the man kneeling beside him wore yellow boots and a red vest and smiled mischievously, green eyes aslant. "When the king inquires how you managed to roll the Round Table through the countryside unmolested by the enemy, tell him the Guardians of Dusk, the Daoine Sid, provided protection and kept you hidden from malicious eyes. Tell him that, for he is the son of our former queen, and we do him honor."

  Cei jumped to his feet, fell backward over the lay brother behind him—and when he looked again, the elfin man had disappeared.

  The Magister Militum's Ambition

  Severus Syrax provided a lavish feast for Ygrane. In his pavilion tent on the Belgae plain, an ebony t
able carved with foliate patterns stood mounded with lemons, oranges, figs. "Imported from my family holdings in Canaan," the magister militum proudly announced. "These are the goods we could bring regularly to Britain—and more. Silks from Cathay. Ivory from Ethiopia. Saffron from the Indus Valley. Rare woods and the finest incense out of Kashmir. Persian tapestries. Oils of sesame and olive from Libya. My family has trade facilities in all these remote places, and they are eager to do business with us. They want our fine wool, our cattle and hunting dogs, our tin, copper, gold and silver, our salted mackerel and our delectable oysters, our pewter ware unrivaled in the world. With ports on every side and the Roman roads already in place, trade will be brisk, the profits high. Think of it, Ygrane—an island of affluence and abundance!"

  "Affluence for the Celts and the Britons, Syrax?" Ygrane inquired skeptically, refusing to sit on the cushioned chair he offered. "Or are they to serve merely as another resource—cheap labor, while our Foederatus masters reap the profits of our abundant island?"

  "There is plenty for all to share." From a silver decanter, Syrax poured amber wine into a crystal goblet and offered it to the abbess. "An alliance with the north tribes will benefit all."

  "This is our island, Syrax, built by the toil of Celts and Britons." Ygrane waved away the goblet of wine. "The north tribes have no love of industry. They are plunderers. That is their faith."

  "Faiths change." The magister militum saluted her with the goblet and sipped the wine. "Look at yourself. Now you are a fanatic Christian, yet in earlier years you ruled as a pagan queen. Let us share this island with the Foederatus, and in a generation they will have acquired a taste for linen over animal hide. Trust me."

  "I do not trust you, Syrax. If you yourself believed what you say, you would have given pledge to Arthor as your king and persuaded him of the merit of trade. You and I well know that your alliance with the Foederatus requires rulership of Britain to pass to them—not a British or a Celtic king."