by M. K. Hume
Myrddion remembered Uther’s cold blue eyes and shuddered at such a callous metaphor, knowing from experience that men such as the prince were capable of almost any horror in pursuit of their ambitions. It was six years since he had treated a jagged wound on the warrior’s arm, but the memory was still vivid enough to leave him in no doubt that, if he saw the need, Uther Pendragon would turn the whole land into a sterile desert.
On the other hand, Ambrosius was honoured for possessing a more reasoned approach to the wars he was forced to fight. When the High King led offensives against the Saxons, Angles or Jutes, he spared women and children and took orphans to be raised as slaves and servants. Ambrosius believed that small children, when they were removed from their families before they had become imbued with outland culture, could be trained to become useful Celts as they grew. His moderate approach was applauded by the Celts, but scorned as weakness by the Saxon traders. Wisely, Ambrosius forbade any Saxon merchants from straying onto his lands, having learned that infiltration via commerce was soon followed by an invasion that used the intelligence gained by the merchants.
Myrddion had never met Ambrosius, but he was impressed by what he heard of the High King’s strategic planning and his analytical assessment of the political realities of life in Britain. He understood instinctively that Ambrosius was seeking to absorb the barbarians, rather than waiting to be gobbled up by the sheer weight of their encroaching numbers.
‘Ambrosius is an astute ruler,’ Myrddion told his fellow healers as they shared the information they had learned during their ministrations to the sick. ‘May he live long, for his method of dealing with the Saxon menace is likely to work. If they can be harnessed to his throne as vassals, perhaps Celts and Saxons can live together amicably. We are not so very different, under the skin. Remember Captus, King Merovech’s officer at Châlons? He was a perfect example of a man of common sense who had learned to deal fairly and reasonably with men of many races.’
Myrddion spun a pretty eating knife on his palm, the blade Captus had given him when they parted after the Battle of the Catalaunian Plain. The Frank officer had been amusing company and was fiercely devoted to his land but, like many of his race, he had discovered that the earth must be shared if it was to flourish. Captus recognised that constant warfare turns fertile acres into scorched desert.
‘Aye, Ambrosius holds the fate of the west in his hands, so we must be thankful that the High King’s common sense and Uther’s brilliance as a warrior have kept the Saxons stalled at Londinium, although the brothers must be constantly vigilant. Heaven help us if the heirs of Constans should ever perish.’
‘Then I’ll pray for them . . . hard,’ Cadoc said ironically. ‘I’ll even pray for that bastard Uther. I’ve only seen him the once, but I know why superstitious folk whisper that his sire was a dragon. I could easily believe it, once I’d met the son of a bitch.’
‘Master?’ Brangaine called from the shadows. The flickering from the fire softened her harsh, middle-aged features and exposed the delicate bones under her weather-beaten complexion. Long acquaintance and familiarity can blind the keenest eyes. With a pang, Myrddion recognised that she must have been a lovely creature in her youth.
‘Yes, Brangaine?’
‘The others won’t question you, believing that you would never willingly take us into danger, but I have Willa to consider and she’s very frightened, so I must ask. In fact, she has been terrified ever since that thug tried to attack us on the docks. The poor child has odd dreams that haunt her and she’s been fair demented from some kind of premonition since we’ve returned home. I don’t know for sure what she sees or dreams about, but I’d like to tell her we’re going somewhere safe and gentle just to set her mind at rest. She’s nigh on eight now and she’s growing like a weed, but maybe she saw things at Tournai that might have twisted her mind out of balance.’
Myrddion bit his lip guiltily, because he had scarcely spared a thought for the scarred child who travelled with them and had become the centre of Brangaine’s universe. Now that he was forced to consider the matter, Willa had appeared very pale and remote of late.
‘I’m sorry that I’ve been thoughtless about the little mite, Brangaine. She never complains, so I sometimes forget she is with us, but that’s no excuse for my carelessness. You say she’s been troubled? How?’
Now it was Brangaine’s turn to be mortified at her forwardness in implying any fault in her master, a man who had always put the welfare of his dependants before his own health. She would have remained silent, but her love for Willa drove her to answer.
‘Willa doesn’t talk much to anyone, even when she’s alone with me. It’s almost as if she doesn’t need to put her thoughts into words . . . or she doesn’t trust anyone with whatever memories lie in her head. You’ve always been kind to her, master, but the poor little creature is very troubled. I’ve asked her about her worries over and over again, but up until yesterday she wouldn’t tell me.’
Myrddion stifled his impatience at Brangaine’s rambling, apologetic explanation. He waited, as did the rest of the party, their eyes softened by pity, interest or shame at their previous indifference to the child’s concerns.
‘Willa’s not lacking in wit, Master Myrddion, for all she scarcely opens her mouth. She often knows exactly what I’m thinking before I say a word. And now she tells me she’s scared of the dragon that will burn her up. She says you are taking us to a place where we will be captured, imprisoned and scorned. She seems to have waking dreams just like you do, master, but she doesn’t fit and she doesn’t forget what she sees in her dreams. She just knows things, and I’m frightened for her.’
‘Not another soothsayer!’ Cadoc exclaimed acidly, speaking without thinking. ‘You’re bad enough, master, and you fair give me the collywobbles when your eyes get that look about them.’
‘Don’t poke fun at Willa, Cadoc.’ Finn cuffed his friend lightly. ‘The Sight is no joke.’
Cadoc’s frankness was sometimes inappropriate and hurtful, although the scarred healer would never deliberately wound anyone. But he was impelled to fill any silence with words, and these utterances were often too close to the truth for comfort.
‘No, it’s not,’ Myrddion agreed. ‘And I hope, for Willa’s sake, that you’re mistaken, Brangaine. But if Ceridwen has chosen the child to drink from her cauldron, then we cannot change what the goddess has decided.’ He gazed down into Brangaine’s eyes. ‘It is possible that one of the Mother’s priestesses might consent to tutor Willa so that she learns the obligations of her Sight and how to control it for the benefit of other people. Have no fears. I assume you are speaking of Uther Pendragon, but I’ll not take the child into the dragon’s jaws. We’d all be safer and happier if she never sees the prince.’
‘Thank you, master,’ Brangaine whispered, her lined face transformed by a wide, relieved grin. Her smile was only slightly marred by a missing canine that had been knocked out by a brutal husband, a man who regularly relieved his own fears of the future on her flesh until the day he perished in Vortigern’s army near Tomen-y-mur.
‘I, for one, am far happier avoiding the High King and his brother,’ Cadoc added. ‘And I’m sorry, Brangaine, for my unkind jokes. You know I don’t know when to keep my mouth shut sometimes. But that’s no excuse for hurting the feelings of a friend.’
Brangaine waved away Cadoc’s apology, forgiving him, as always, for the sake of his huge, warm heart. The others murmured their relief and gratitude until Myrddion was forced to acknowledge how apprehensive they had been at the prospect of returning to the ambit of Ambrosius and his brother. Out of loyalty and love, these ordinary people had followed him into the paths of many dangerous and unpredictable men. They had forgiven him again and again for the injuries and the dangers they had experienced in helping him to achieve his ambitions. Bridie had paid a price in pain and permanent disfigurement when she had inadvertently crossed Rome’s former magister militum, Flavius Aetius, at Myrddion’s bidding
, so the whole party of healers had cause to fear any future contact with men as unpredictable as Uther Pendragon and Ambrosius Imperator. But love of Myrddion had kept them silent while he, high-handed and blind as he often was to the needs and fears of less clever people, had failed to see how deeply they had longed for a quiet life.
I’ll try to be more considerate in the future, he promised himself silently. I’ve taken their loyalty for granted, while they’ve saved me from the consequences of my stupidity again and again.
Durobrivae passed under the wheels of the wagon, leaving impressions of the same ruin, hostility and threat in the healers’ deepening dismay. The Saxons were quite at home now, and were deeply rooted in the British soil. Myrddion wondered if any Celts regretted their part in the defeat of Hengist and Horsa, brothers who would have shared the land with the original inhabitants because they had initially been invited in as immigrants. These new invaders were the sweepings of the north, and lacked most of Hengist’s virtues. They were transforming each village and township into replicas of the places they had known in their distant homelands and were scouring away all signs of the culture that had existed before their arrival.
What, then, can we expect of Londinium when we arrive? Myrddion asked himself. He realised that thoughts of the great city preyed on the minds of the whole party, but no one was prepared to give voice to their feelings of apprehension.
Privately, Myrddion had already decided to skirt the central parts of the city entirely, though they would be forced to use a bridge to cross the Tamesis river and pass through the outskirts. With a pang of recognition, Myrddion conceded that he had already broken his promise that he would share his decisions with Cadoc and Finn. He sighed inwardly, for he understood that he, alone, had determined that it would be unkind to add to the women’s nervousness.
I have patronised them as if they were children. How would I feel in their places?
But the habits of leadership are strong and Myrddion had been making decisions that affected the lives of other, older people since he was sixteen years old. He knew in his heart of hearts that he would find it difficult to change.
As on their previous visit, Londinium continued to spread outwards, but because the land was featureless and flat the city lacked the impact and visual beauty of Rome’s seven hills. Nor did it enjoy the stunning clarity of light that glittered on the blue waters that surrounded Constantinople on three sides. The Tamesis was brown and fouled and, like the Tiber river, threatened anyone who drank its brackish waters with infection, disease or death, but the graceful bridges that spanned the Roman river loaned elegance to the Tiber’s turgid depths. The many trees, frescoes and mosaics of Ravenna shouted aloud the pride of its citizens, but Londinium barely boasted a single tree, as the poor had hewed down every sapling to feed their winter fires.
The shell of one building caused Myrddion to dismount and explore the dusty ruins. He sighed as he picked up a set of rusted forceps from the remains of a bed. Now that he examined one of the long, narrow rooms that lay open to the sky, he could see the detritus of a hospital: barrels for water and scraps of rags left to moulder on the leaf-strewn ground. Everything of value had been pilfered long ago and only the forceps remained to remind the healer that Roman surgeons had laboured here by the banks of the Tamesis to drive death away from strong young warriors.
Wherever their eyes rested, the healers had noticed evidence of rapid social change and the havoc that had been deliberately wreaked on fine old buildings. Either their purpose had been swept away by the Saxon advance or the invaders had utterly rejected the religious beliefs that had given the original architects cause to raise one stone upon another. Christian churches, Roman temples, the forum, the baths, theatres built in the Greek style and even the hippodrome had been chopped up piecemeal. In their places stood halls, huts and barn-like storage sheds all constructed from timber. Open markets still flourished as they always had, but the goods for sale were either local or northern, as if the time-honoured commerce with the continent was now curtailed or, at the very least, much diminished.
Yet, for all its tawdriness and sprawling dirt, something lingered in the air of Londinium. Perhaps any place that has known the chariots of the Iceni, wicked and glowing in the sunlight, or the might of the Roman galleys, resplendent with red-dyed sails, coursing down the Tamesis to berth on an island in the flood, retains some sheen of past glories. Rome had never felt the hand of a master who was not Roman-born until she was as ancient as the Seven Hills themselves. Ravenna had been newly built and even Constantinople seemed set for generations of peace.
But Londinium had known many masters, receding back in time until it was a collection of rough huts on the edges of Tamesis’s mud flats. Blood stained her streets, whether sod or stone, and every passing conqueror had left some part of his spirit in the city’s soul. Londinium smelled of home, but Myrddion’s prescience stirred and he knew the city also awaited greatness like a half-woven cloak of scarlet wool.
‘Let’s get out of here as fast as we can,’ he ordered as he remounted his horse, and the uncomplaining oxen were forced to move at their fastest pace, the speed of a walking man, to escape the distrust and jealousy that gleamed in the eyes of the denizens of this place. Myrddion recognised the sheen of greed and resentment in the many eyes that assessed the value of the goods in the two wooden wagons. The threat from footpads was very real.
Eventually, the fading light forced the healers to call a halt when they arrived at a small farming community on the outskirts of Londinium. Six years earlier, they had paused at this same spot to ply their trade when they were travelling across Britain to Dubris, and Myrddion was reminded once again of his meeting with Uther Pendragon. In the intervening years the community had scarcely changed, for the huts had already carried the stamp of Saxon traders and gradual neglect. What was new was the hatred that shadowed every face, for small villages on the margins of Londinium regularly felt the sting of Uther’s attacks. Saxon and Celt alike resented and feared the prince’s ruthless tactics.
This time, the healers paused only long enough to eat and to replenish their water barrels from the communal well before repacking the cooking utensils and moving on. Myrddion gave Cadoc the rusted forceps to repair and the two assistants were appalled to learn that a Roman hospital, a miracle of modern healing, had been allowed to rot.
‘Typical of Saxons!’ Cadoc grunted. ‘They spoil everything they touch.’
Myrddion shook his head sadly. ‘No, I wish it were so, but it isn’t. That building was looted and gutted long before the Saxons came, probably as soon as the galleys left their island harbour and headed out to the open sea for the last time. I have no doubt that our own people destroyed that hospital through greed, superstition or their hatred for the Romans.’ Cadoc would have argued, but Myrddion cut him short. ‘I hate what the Saxons have done to Londinium, but I refuse to be blinded by patriotism. We are just as venal as they are.’
The healers broke camp in unusual silence.
Before they left, Myrddion searched through his clothes chest until he found a cylinder filled to bursting with simple maps of Britain and the countryside. Opening the cylinder, he thanked the goddess for his habit of charting his movements during the time he had followed Vortigern’s standard. He found his chart of the lands near Londinium and his tapered forefinger sought out the web of Roman roads that branched out from the hub of the city like spokes in a chariot wheel.
He rejected the road to Calleva Atrebatum, which ultimately branched towards Ambrosius’s stronghold at Venta Belgarum. Common sense dictated that the High King would ensure the route to his capital was frequently patrolled, and Myrddion had no desire to come to his attention. Above this thoroughfare, he had sketched in an alternative route that wound towards the north and bypassed the old Roman fortresses. This roadway would lead them into higher country, but the Saxons would avoid it because the Catuvellauni and Dobunni tribes would surely prevent the invaders from gaining a sin
gle toehold on such an important communications route. At Verulamium, a town still perilously close to Londinium, a smaller, less travelled path led across the uplands to Corinium and, from this centre, to Glevum and onwards into Cymru.
‘We must head north-west to join the Roman road to Verulamium,’ Myrddion told Cadoc and Finn, who had taken the reins of the two wagons. ‘Praxiteles, your task is to protect Finn and the women from any attack. I will support Cadoc in the lead wagon and, if we push on through the night, we’ll reach Verulamium some time tomorrow.’
‘Good!’ Praxiteles spoke carefully in his halting Celt. ‘I smell trouble all around us, master, worse than Italia or the Frankish kingdoms. There is no law here.’
The night was full of the sounds and smells of spring and should have been pleasant had the travellers not sensed a pall of danger that hung over the roads like an invisible spider’s web. Every corner represented a possible threat and every dark coppice could have concealed watching eyes. Moonlight illuminated the roadway, but so much was hidden by the darkness among trees and ground cover that enemies could be all around without being seen. Within the wagons, the women slept lightly, but Myrddion could make out the gleam of Willa’s eyes as she stared out at the dark trees that hemmed in the road, one girlish hand resting on her downy cheek.
He pulled his horse close to the side of the wagon.
‘Sleep, little one,’ he whispered, so as not to disturb Brangaine. ‘Tomorrow will see us far along the road and safe from the clutches of the Saxons, Uther Pendragon and the High King.’
