Prophecy: Web of Deceit (Prophecy 3)

by M. K. Hume

  But Ulfin was not quite done. As Ruadh clambered to her feet and crouched warily, seeking a firm foothold in the nest of leaves that had served as a sleeping pallet, Ulfin focused on the source of his pain with a malevolence that chilled her to the bone.

  Slowly, slowly, he switched knife hands. ‘If you’ve killed me, then you’ll go to the shades with me, you dirty whore,’ he whispered in a voice that was pregnant with menace. Then, through willpower alone, the warrior moved at a speed that would have been impossible for most wounded men. With a quick lunge that Ruadh almost evaded, he half buried his knife in her thigh.

  But Ruadh knew that he had been forced to extend himself to reach her, and her own knife slashed at his groin again so that, finally, like a lightning-struck tree, he began to topple backwards until, panting, he lay supine on the earth.

  Ruadh kicked his knife away into the darkness and threw his scabbard after it. Then, smiling, she retrieved Artorex and wrapped them both in her stained cloak. She crouched on the ground just out of Ulfin’s reach, knife at the ready, and waited. A few pieces of discarded wood on the fire coaxed it back to life, and Ruadh warmed her cold hands and even chillier spirits while she waited for Ulfin to die in agony.

  At first, the guardsman screamed obscenities until he heard Ruadh laugh at him. Then he begged for assistance, knowing that she had been Myrddion Merlinus’s assistant. When that plea met with no success, Ulfin started to pray to every god he had ever known.

  ‘Can’t you even die like a man?’ Ruadh snapped. ‘You’ve raped and murdered for years, yet you’ve never understood what it’s like to be a victim. I plan to leave you to consider your own death once I’ve repaired your little love tap in my leg.’

  And so, although he begged and threatened by turn, Ruadh checked the wound in her thigh and used a little water from her bottle to clean the nasty puncture. Wishing she had any one of her master’s unguents, she bound the wound with a strip of her robe taken from along the hem, placed Artorex in the sling around her neck and retrieved her horse.

  ‘Farewell, Ulfin. With luck you’ll die before the scavengers find you, but I wouldn’t count on it. Look out into the shadows under the trees and try to remember the innocents that you killed on behalf of Uther Pendragon and your own lust. Gorlois is certainly waiting for you, since my master was sure that you killed the king by stealth. You might just pray to him, if you think it would help.’

  And, although Ulfin howled and cursed, Ruadh rode away into the early morning towards Verlucio and the road that would lead her, eventually, to the Villa Poppinidii. The wind sighed through the flat green lands, and as the sun rose she marvelled at earth that bore man’s touch so fruitfully. Because she had approached Aquae Sulis on the eastern road, her directions had been reversed and two weary days passed before the gates of the villa hove into view.

  Ruadh was tired, her head ached insistently and she knew she had a slight fever, but nothing mattered except for the completion of the task. When she first saw the villa, neatly whitewashed in its cluster of well-kept outbuildings and surrounded by rows of fruit trees, vegetable patches and the ploughed fields that would bear grain in the spring, she felt as if she was finally home. Even Artorex was no longer squalling, although he announced his hunger as she rode her horse up to a crazily paved forecourt and eased herself out of the saddle. Her thigh ached with a sullen, nagging persistence, but she felt herself begin to smile, and Myrddion’s ascetic face swam to her from her memory.

  ‘We made it, little king. Artorex will live and thrive here. And, with Ulfin dead, he is safe from Uther and all of the tribal kings. We are home at last.’

  POSTSCRIPT

  Non omnis moriar.

  [I shall not altogether die.]

  Horace, Odes III, 2

  Bemused by their strange visitor, Ector and Livinia, master and mistress of the Villa Poppinidii, agreed to foster the child, Artorex, out of respect for Bishop Lucius of Glastonbury. Although she was born in Aquae Sulis, Livinia was the last child of the wealthy Poppinidii gens and her father had but recently succumbed to death, leaving her tribal husband, the bluff, strong Ector, to run the villa with a devotion that was just as powerful as her own. Ruadh, the Celtic woman who was the bishop’s messenger, refused a place in the household, pleading the plight of her children who lived north of the wall. Livinia eyed the girl’s pallor with concern but, out of respect, said nothing.

  Frith, the nurse of Livinia’s son, was blunt and observant. She persistently demanded to know what ailed the girl until Ruadh admitted that she was suffering from a knife wound. Clever with woman’s medicine, Frith stripped off the filthy bandage and eyed the suppurating wound with concern. Her sensitive nostrils told her that the wound was poisoned.

  Andrewina Ruadh knew the signs better than Frith, having served in battlefield surgeries with her master for several years. She had feared as much when her temperature had begun to increase, but the safety of Artorex was far more important than her own life, so she had continued onward when she should have sought treatment.

  Frith applied a drawing ointment and what poultices she had, but both women knew the meaning of the livid line heading up into the groin. Frith hugged the flame-haired girl who was so brave and forthright in her acceptance of impending death.

  ‘What might I do for you, child? I can keep you comfortable with drugs, but you will die anyway.’ The elderly woman’s face was still and proud below her white-blond hair.

  ‘We shall do nothing, Frith. I wish I’d seen my children one last time, or told my beloved master, Myrddion, that he is not responsible for my death. But these wishes are only foolish, girlish dreams. I knew what could happen when my leg began to swell, but I continued with my journey. The child is the important thing, so perhaps it would be better if I simply disappeared.’

  Then Ruadh gripped Frith’s work-worn hands passionately and her grass-green eyes were compelling and full of prescience, although her flesh was burning to the touch. ‘Protect Artorex, Frith. Care for him fiercely and with all your heart for my sake. I have loved him as if he were my own child and he filled me with new hope and purpose.’

  ‘I’d love any babe, regardless of his appearance or nature, but when I hug him I’ll speak of you, so he will always know what was sacrificed for him.’

  ‘No!’ Ruadh’s voice was sharp with a terrible urgency and her flushed cheeks and bright eyes were hot with feeling. ‘You must promise me, Mother Frith, that you won’t burden that little boy with any guilt about my death. I understand the deadly ties of obligation, so promise me that you’ll not doom him so thoroughly before he becomes a man and learns what is his place in this world. I will disappear, as is fitting, having played my small part in his salvation. That’s enough for me.’

  ‘What will you do?’ Frith asked with her strange, pale-blue eyes full of compassion.

  ‘I will ride fast and hard, for I’ve a wish to see the sea before I die. Who can say? For now, a warm bed and good food is all I require. I’ll be gone by sunrise.’

  By the next day, Ruadh was far too sick to ride very far at all. Her leg was swollen and blackening and her temperature continued to increase. Frith would have told her master, Ector, how gravely ill the younger woman was, but Ruadh begged the luxury of choosing where she met her end. With Frith’s assistance, she mounted at dawn and disappeared as swiftly as she had arrived.

  The Old Forest beyond the Villa Poppinidii seemed so cool and inviting to the delirious woman that she forced her reluctant horse into its dripping green depths. Careless of lichen and moss that was treacherous underfoot, or the dangers of fallen, mouldering logs, she allowed the horse to pick its own way as she dreamed in a daze of pain and high temperature. With an animal’s instincts, her horse forced its way into an inner glade where sweet, fresh grass grew under an insipid sun, even in winter. But Ruadh was almost finished. Scarcely knowing that she had fallen, she struck a long, low monolith of stone that lay in a weak ray of sunshine.

  When she re
turned to painful consciousness, Ruadh lay partly across the slab of stone, practically touching a rudimentary cup and a series of lines and spirals that had been carved crudely onto the flattish top of the monument. She had split her head when she fell, and a spider-crawl of blood had run down the spiral pattern and into the tilted cup. Bemused, she stared at the bloody cavity for a long time.

  She wished she had a fraction of her master’s gift so she could know if the child, Artorex, was worth the sacrifice of her life. Ruadh loved the sunlight and the darkness; she revelled in the small joys of existence, even the miseries that came with every new day; she would miss the experience of growing old, and a part of her confused brain felt a momentary resentment for the years she was casting away for a baby with compelling eyes.

  ‘Ah, Myrddion, he’s such a little boy for such a great fuss and so much blood spilt. I will miss you, my last and best love. I hope you remember me . . . but I suppose you’ll forget. Everyone does – as they should.’

  Perhaps Myrddion’s legendary kinswoman, Ceridwen, took pity on Andrewina Ruadh. Perhaps the poison in the wound and the delirium that could only end in death lifted briefly so that Ruadh’s mind was swept clean of the confusing images that clouded it. With a clarity that turned the events of her last days into a shaded dream, she saw the small glade, the blood-stained stone and the shadows that danced with every stray breeze to reach the drying grasses without the filter of pain and fever.

  ‘This forest is a good place to rest . . . a sweet place, Myrddion. I’m dying, but it’s not so very bad, and the sun is shining . . .’ she whispered softly to the empty glade. Her words were inadequate for the sudden outpouring of love that she felt for the land, her family and her friends, the baby and her dear Myrddion. She continued to whisper her thoughts to him as she rolled herself off the stone until her poisoned leg struck the ground and sparked an agony so intense that she almost fainted.

  ‘I must go . . . not here . . . not now,’ she whispered, and began to drag herself painfully across the sere grasses towards the cool shadows of the trees. In that painful, last burst of struggle, she slipped and slid over the detritus that covered the forest floor as, like a wounded animal, she sought the place of her final sleep.

  Then she found a nest of roots, raised out of the leaf-shrouded loam to form a twisted roof of wrist-thick, curving shapes.

  The mosses that covered the ancient wood beckoned with a promise of velvet softness that would cool her addled, over-heated mind. To rest her hot cheek against that cool green bower! Only a little more effort and she could drag her body into the womb of the tree and curl into the shape of that small, welcoming space. Then, with the last of her strength, she said her prayers like a little child and allowed her consciousness to soar away.

  Myrddion Merlinus hunted for Ruadh for a long time, but he was eventually forced to accept that Andrewina Ruadh, his Celtic woman, had returned to her own children who lived north of the Vallum Antonini. He never discovered that her bones became a part of a twisted knot of roots in the Forest Sauvage, and he took pleasure in dreams of her life, healthy and happy, with her grandchildren by her side.

  Although he returned to Venta Belgarum in times of need to serve an increasingly dangerous and erratic king, he steadfastly refused to give his healing skills to Uther Pendragon’s war machine, preferring to train apprentices and oversee the spy network that had become central to the High King’s defence of the realm. Myrddion became a traveller, using his significant skills of diplomacy and his understanding of science and weaponry to drag the tribal kings into the dangerous present. With Llanwith pen Bryn and Luka of the Brigante by his side, he scoured the north, building alliances and solving old blood feuds, but always searching for the child he had given away a decade before.

  In Segontium, Myrddion’s cadre of friends and healers prospered and, in the fullness of time, spread throughout the west. With an ageing woman’s stoicism, Brangaine mourned for Willa, although Myrddion never told her the full and brutal story of the children’s execution. Other little ones needed Brangaine’s big heart, so she held her sorrow close to her breast and continued to live with a calm but pensive face.

  One grey day, when the winds blew bitterly across the charcoal straits from Mona island, the companions gathered on the sea dunes near Myrddion’s old home. Only a tragic set of circumstances could bring these rootless warriors against warfare, disease and accident together, all at once and in the same place. The gulls wailed mournfully, the skies were flinty grey with pregnant clouds and the sea was a mad, crashing beast under the dull, senile sun. The growing white stripe in Myrddion’s greying hair streamed in the wind as he hugged Finn Truthteller to his breast, while Bridie, Brangaine and Rhedyn clustered around his tall, austere figure.

  Cadoc had died, untimely, of a fever caught at Canovium as he treated a household of sufferers. In death, he would finally rest within a stone’s throw of Olwyn, Myrddion’s grandmother, and Myrddion realised that his youth had irrevocably fled, leaving him to accept a lonely middle age.

  ‘Do not mourn for my dear Cadoc.’ Myrddion’s voice was sombre, but his face was illuminated from within. ‘Our dear friend lived in joy and in service to others, long after a time when he believed that his usefulness was over. The goddess took him back to herself, overly jealous of the love and laughter that he carried with him throughout the world. We should weep for ourselves, for we will never see Cadoc smile again or feel his strength at our backs, as dependable and solid as the flint of these mountains. Such friends are rare and fleeting gifts from the gods and we should cherish them while they dwell among us.

  ‘We must rejoice, for Cadoc cannot die while one of us remembers his pleasure in each day, his compassion for those unfortunates who bleed and suffer, and his practical ability to create order out of chaos. We’d have starved to death in Gaul without him, wouldn’t we? Or we would have gone afoot at Châlons without his capacity for thievery.’

  The companions of the road laughed then, remembering the scarred man’s loyalty and practical common sense. And they wept too, but the tears were fleeting as they shared their memories as friends do after long separations. In joy, they consigned Cadoc’s body to the earth.

  In Venta Belgarum, Ygerne dwindled, her beauty fading to a transparent memory of a terrible curse. Never again did she bear a child for Uther Pendragon, although he remained in her thrall although loathing her for being the embodiment of his many weaknesses. He never discovered that she quickened three times and that, guessing at the fate of any child who resulted from her travesty of a marriage, she begged for Morgan’s intervention. The spark of each new life in her womb was quickly extinguished.

  Ygerne prayed until her knees were twisted with arthritis as she offered the God of the Christians an earnest penance for the children she believed were murdered in her name. The queen begged her cruel husband to release her from her long service, for she hungered to enter a nunnery close to Tintagel where she could hear the sea crashing against the cliffs and watch the hawks and gulls hunting on the wind. But Uther, although impotent and coldly vicious in his jealous old age, would not even release her to God. So, frail and distant, she sat in her ruined rose garden and waited for the mercy of death.

  But fate had not quite finished with the fabled Ygerne. Nor had it forgotten the Dragon of the West and the Demon Seed.

  Fortuna turned her wheel once again, and time clicked forward with a sound like thunder, or with the echo of distant, future battles. Ceridwen and the Mother answered Myrddion’s fervent prayers and smiled upon their children at last.

  The child, Artorex, was growing tall.

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  This novel has been a labour of sweat and tears, and it proved to be far more difficult than I ever expected. From my point of view, the legend of Merlin has always had some gruesome contradictions at its heart, and interpreting these oddities became my hardest task. A wise and decent man could never betray Queen Ygerne as brutally as the legends suggest th
at Merlin did. I could never understand the flaw in Merlin’s nature that made him Uther’s collaborator, for some versions of the legend suggest that Uther tried, like Herod, to murder his son by killing all the infant boys in his city in an effort to destroy the seed of his loins.

  No, no, and . . . no! My Merlin couldn’t be such a monster without good cause.

  So, as well as creating the plot line, weaving in the legends and devising a believable Uther, Ygerne, Gorlois and Morgan, I was challenged to make Merlin into a man who does his best with what he’s stuck with, a mantra that I chanted mentally, day after day. How do I avoid the healer becoming a contemptible, annoying whiner who constantly complains that Uther made him do it?

  My answer was simple, but I found it quite difficult to achieve. Coercion had to be used via the two elements that I had already made central to Merlin’s character. First, he worshipped the goddess, Don, who is still immortalised in the name chosen for Aberdeen’s river, and she remained a formidable Celtic deity. If Merlin believed that the goddess had chosen him to create the circumstances that brought Arthur into the world, then he might have felt impelled to assist the High King. Also, through the people he loved, and because family mattered so much to the man who was a rejected boy, his companions could be used as bargaining chips by an unscrupulous High King.

  At least, I’ve tried to explain the contradictions in Merlin’s character. The reader is the only person who can judge if I’ve been successful.

  Another challenge for me was the fact that I wrote the Merlin trilogy out of order, after the publication of the novels on King Arthur, although they are actually a prequel to the Arthurian series. I can honestly state that when I started writing the first trilogy, I wrote my Arthurian books for fun and without any real thought of being published from a remote outpost such as Australia. But the Merlin books create the groundwork for Dragon’s Child, The Warrior of the West and The Bloody Cup, so it became imperative that the third book of Merlin should flow seamlessly into Dragon’s Child, the first book of Arthur.