Medraut

by David Pilling

  “I was in error,” came the reply, “led astray by bad counsel. Those men who slew Cei are my captives. I offer them up to you, as an apology.”

  “As blood-price,” spat Bedwyr, his voice dripping with contempt.

  Artorius sighed. This was all so much theatre. The hard fact was he couldn’t execute Maelgwn, even if the man richly deserved it. Such an act would throw Gwynedd into turmoil and send a wave of panic through the other kings of Britannia.

  Nor could he simply remove the traitor. If Maelgwn had any close kinsmen, or a son of adult age, Artorius might have deposed him and set up a new King of Gwynedd. There were none. A spate of sudden deaths among the royal family, suspiciously soon after the death of Cadwallon, had seen to that. The worst punishment Artorius could hand out was tribute and hostages to ensure Maelgwn’s good behaviour in future.

  “Fetch the captives, then,” Artorius said irritably. “I would look on the men who killed my friend.”

  At a word from Maelgwn, the luckless men were dragged forward. Artorius regarded them bleakly. They were a sorry lot, dirty and terrified, all the fight beaten out of them. Some bore the marks of hot irons on their shoulders, the tell-tale sign of thieves.

  Did such men as these really lay Cei low? Artorius wondered. How degraded was he, near the end? I should have gone to Caer Gai myself to settle our quarrel. The stiff-necked old fool. He deserved better. So much better.

  Maelgwn, all eagerness now, pointed out one of the captives. A thin, slick, rat-like man with a pathetic little tuft of beard on the end of his pointed chin.

  “This,” said Maelgwn, “is Gwyddawg fab Menestyr. It was Gwyddawg who hatched the plot to murder Cei.”

  Artorius vaguely recalled the man. A minor chieftain who long ago disgraced himself in battle. Cei had insisted on humiliating him. A mistake, as it turned out. Gwyddawg’s little red eyes were damp with years as he stared hopelessly up at Artorius. “L-lord,” he stammered, “p...please, dread king, I....I....”

  His words trailed off into meaningless sobs and babbling. Once, Artorius would have been repelled by such a display. Rendered almost physically sick. Now it just filled him with a sad emptiness. Gwyddawg had lived all his days in terror, and would end the same way.

  “Behead them,” he ordered Maelgwn. “All of them. Just you. With your own sword. Now.”

  Maelgwn paled, but there was iron in the High King’s voice. He gulped, hesitated, and finally slid down from his horse.

  Gwyddawg died first. Retching with fright, he was made to kneel and bare his neck by two white-robed guardsmen. Maelgwn curled his fingers, sheathed in fine white leather gauntlets, around the hilt of his sword. Slowly lifted the weapon high above his head.

  It flashed down, and the bloody work began.

  3.

  It was quiet at Caerleon, with most of the men gone off to war. Artorius had not led his host from the capital for six years. Since then peace and prosperity had reigned in Britannia. A golden time, over all too soon.

  Gwenhwyfar feared what lay ahead. In public she was all imperious confidence, striding through the halls, corridors and gardens of the palace, rings flashing on her fingers. She knew the servants and guards took heart at the sight of her, as did the citizens. Every few days she went out into the city, escorted by four elderly spearmen and a train of slaves carrying wicker baskets full of freshly baked loaves. The bread was given to the poor, a custom Gwenhwyfar had observed since she first arrived in Caerleon from Powys.

  The people of Caerleon loved their queen for her open-handed generosity. Tales of her largesse spread beyond the city and inevitably grew in the telling. She was amused to learn that the peasants in the countryside talked of her as a living saint, capable of healing the sick with her touch.

  “Let them believe what they will, poor foolish creatures,” she remarked. “If it makes their lives easier, and the rule of my husband more popular, all the better.”

  Secretly she liked the thought of being famous and beloved in her own right. The people valued Gwenhwyfar for herself, not just her position as wife of the High King. Their love offered security.

  While the queen basked in popular fame and gave food to beggars, her husband’s eldest son Llacheu governed the land as regent. Now a man grown, he sat in his father’s chair in the Round Hall and dealt out justice. Because women were not allowed a formal role in government, Gwenhwyfar did not attend these sessions. Because Llacheu was no fool, he often asked her advice in the evening.

  Gwenhwyfar was in her private garden, alone save for two guards who kept discreetly out of her sight, when evil came to Caerleon. This was her private hour of the day, when she liked to sit by the pond and indulge her thoughts. Unless some emergency threatened, not even Llacheu would disturb her peace.

  It was a cold but still winter’s morning, with snow glistening on the tiled roofs of the palace. Gwenhwyfar sat wrapped up in a fur-lined cloak and hooded mantle against the chill, quietly contemplating the frozen water of the pond. Her mittened hands cradled a flask of hot wine. She took long sips from the flask, relished the liquid heat as it spread through her body. Occasionally her guards stamped their feet to get warm. Otherwise all was silence in the garden, save for the distant hubbub of the city.

  The sound of running footsteps, sandals flapping on a tiled floor, broke her chain of thought. She frowned and looked up, ready to deliver a stinging rebuke to the invader. She held her tongue. Iorweth, one of Bishop Cadwy’s priests, stood in the porch doorway. He was young, only recently tonsured, tongue-tied, flat-footed and something of a fool. Yet it did not do to offend the bishop. As the High King’s second son, Cadwy was the third most powerful man in the land. When Artorius was gone, he would be the second. Gwenhwyfar forced her lips into a smile.

  “Brother Iorweth,” she said. “I am pleased to see y...”

  The words died in her throat. Iorweth’s fat, clumsily shaven face was white with terror. His tongue, too big for his mouth in any event, slobbered in revolting fashion as he tried to speak.

  “My lady,” he managed at last, “the Devil is among us!”

  Gwenhwyfar raised an eyebrow. She made a point of never showing the slightest hint of fear, even if her insides churned with panic. It was part of the royal mask she had donned, long ago: gracious but cold, generous but dignified. Reserved and distant, as a queen should be, though not without mercy.

  She slowly rose from her bench.

  “The Devil in Caerleon,” Gwenhwyfar said with deliberate calm. “How interesting. Take me to him.”

  The frightened priest led her through the main complex of the palace, a warren of halls, corridors and galleries, out into the streets. Gwenhwyfar’s four spearmen fell into step behind her, faithful veterans left behind by Artorius to guard his queen night and day.

  There was a small crowd gathered at the western gates of the city, which stood wide open. Gwenhwyfar sensed the fear and excitement of the citizenry, and acknowledged their cheers with a gracious smile. Her smile melted into a frown of disapproval when she spotted Bishop Cadwy under the arch of the gate, flanked by six of his black-robed monks and a troop of spearmen. Archers crowded the walkway above the gate.

  To look at, Cadwy was much like his father. Big, burly, red-haired, and bristling with pent-up aggression. He would have made a formidable warrior, but from an early age was marked out for the church. Devout to the point of fanaticism, he brought furious energy to his role as Bishop of Llandaff, the highest clerical office in Britannia. Under his leadership, the native British church had gained a new drive and intensity.

  The queen was a little frightened of Cadwy, and nervous of his ambition. She knew he despised women, regarding them as the degraded children of Eve, and objected to her influence at court. If the bishop had his way, Gwenhwyfar would be relegated to the shadows. A mere ornament, her practical existence confined to providing the High King with healthy children.

  She stopped before the gate. Her spearmen clashed to a halt, while the citiz
ens knelt and bowed their heads. Gwenhwyfar exchanged cool smiles with Cadwy. His priests glared at her with ill-concealed loathing.

  “My lady,” said the bishop, with some semblance of a bow.

  “Your grace,” she responded. “Your creature tells me the Devil is loose in Caerleon. Have you chased him out already? A pity. I had hoped to meet him.”

  Cadwy’s ruddy cheeks flushed a little. The thoughts behind his grey eyes were easy to read: one day you will, my lady, depend upon it. Some of the priests hissed. One or two made the sign of the cross at her.

  “Brother Iorweth has a fertile imagination,” the bishop replied, giving the agitated young man a hard look. “The Evil One has not come among us in person. His ways are more subtle. Instead he sends an agent disguised as pestilence. Come forward, my lady, and see for yourself.”

  Intrigued, Gwenhwyfar walked under the gate. Cadwy and his followers parted ranks to let her through. Beyond lay the white road east, towards the edge of free Britannia and border of the Debated Lands, fought over between Saxon and Briton since the days of Ambrosius. The immediate landscape offered a peaceful view of fertile fields, watered by tributaries of the river Wysg, gently rolling hills thickly wooded and overflowing with game.

  Outside the gates, a bowshot away, the road was occupied by a covered wagon drawn by two stringy oxen. A crook-backed man in rumpled peasant garb stood by the wagon. He leaned heavily on a thick oaken staff, his features lost under a pointed black hood.

  “Plague victims,” explained Cadwy, who had trotted up to the queen’s side. “If they come a step closer, the bowmen on the gate have my permission to shoot them down, oxen and all.”

  Your permission, Gwenhwyfar thought sourly.

  “Where is your brother, the regent?” she demanded. “Should he not be informed?”

  Cadwy smiled. “Llacheu is weighed down by affairs of state,” he answered blandly. “I see no reason to add to his burden.”

  Gwenhwyfar advanced a few steps, followed by her spearmen. “You cannot enter the city,” she called out to the hooded peasant. “I am sorry. Yet there is a convent two miles north of Caerleon. The sisters keep a house for the sick. There you will find shelter, food and medicine.”

  The peasant straightened a little and pushed back his hood. Gwenhwyfar recoiled a little at the sight of his face. It was deeply lined and sunken, the flesh sagging off fragile bones, eyes almost lost in their bony sockets. His skin was a dirty yellow colour, akin to a man in the last stages of an ague or consumption. Most of his hair was fallen away, and the few remaining scraps clinging to his scalp white and brittle. There was an oiliness to the yellow skin, an unhealthy sheen that put Gwenhwyfar in mind of rotted fish skins.

  “I think you, but the sisters of Christ can do us no good,” he answered in a hoarse croak, wracked with pain. “We made the journey to Caerleon for one reason. We ask to see the Queen. Only the Queen can heal us.”

  Gwenhwyfar was now within a spear’s length of the sick man.

  “Beware, my lady,” warned Llyr, the captain of her guard. “Don’t go too close to these invalids.”

  She ignored him. Her heart was touched by the man’s obvious distress, and Gwenhwyfar wanted to offer what comfort she could. “Who is in the wagon?” she asked gently.

  “My daughter and granddaughter,” came the reply. “Her husband and two other children died last week. The plague wiped out our entire village. We are the only survivors.”

  His deep eyes were wet with tears.

  “Please. I think you are Queen Gwenhwyfar, of whom so many tales are sung. The bards say you have the power of healing. I am an old man, and don’t have many years left anyway. But my daughter is young enough to marry again. My granddaughter is just a child. They deserve their chance at life.”

  Gwenhwyfar hesitated. She glanced over her shoulder, saw the people crowded on the battlements of Caerleon. Rumours of the drama unfolding outside the city gates must have spread quickly, as such rumours will. The people were watching her.

  The queen knew she could not afford to fail the old man and his family, even if she wanted to.

  “Come,” she said, moving closer. “Fetch out your daughter and her child. I will do my best.”

  “Stay back, if you wish,” she added to her spearmen. These hard-bitten warriors, who had faced down any number of fearsome Saxons, Picts and Scotti, cringed from the spectre of the plague. Cadwy said nothing. He drew back to his priests and watched, arms folded in their heavy sleeves.

  The old peasant helped his womenfolk down from the wagon. They were even more ghastly to look upon; stick-thin and drained of all their strength, mere bags of brittle bones and taut yellow skin, on the very cusp of death. The woman’s age was hard to determine, since the plague had leeched all the youth and vitality out of her. Her thin hair hung in lank white folds over hunched and narrow shoulders. The infant clasped to her sunken breast was no more than two years old, a tiny body wrapped in a grey shawl, eyes closed like one already drifting out of this world.

  Gwenhwyfar approached the woman first, who stared hopelessly, eyes feverish and unseeing. Feeling no end of a fraud, Gwenhwyfar reached out and placed her hands lightly on the woman’s temples. The skin was unpleasantly warm and greasy to the touch.

  Despite her enemies in the church, the queen was a devout Christian.

  “Christ heal you,” she said awkwardly. “May His mercy and power flow through me, as the mere vessel of His will.”

  After a moment, she laid her hands on the child’s head and repeated her appeal to Christ. Then it was the old man’s turn. He swayed a little on weak legs, clinging to his staff. Slow tears plodded down his fallen yellow cheeks. Gwenhwyfar stepped back.

  “I can do no more,” she said. “God be with you.”

  “Thank you, my lady,” whispered the old man.

  His daughter was beyond speech, and showed no awareness of her surroundings. Her father helped her and the child back into the wagon. Then he took the halter of the oxen and turned them about. The beasts shambled away down the road, dragging their sad burden.

  “Go north,” the queen called after them, “to the convent of St Mary. Tell the abbess you are under my protection.”

  She watched until the wagon was just a dark blot on the road. Finally she turned, to see the people of Caerleon gathered on the walls and before the gates. The citizens regarded her with silent awe, while even Bishop Cadwy and his shabby priests had lost some of their open contempt. Llyr and his spearmen, she noticed, kept their distance from her.

  “What ails you?” she demanded. It was unnerving to see Llyr afraid. Artorius had chosen him as the captain of her bodyguard due to his nerveless courage.

  “You touched them,” he muttered, his scarred face drained of colour, “laid your hands on plague victims.”

  “I won’t be infected,” she replied with forced confidence. “Christ is my guardian.”

  Gwenhwyfar smiled, but her charm had no effect. Llyr and his comrades shrank away from her. She strode past them and walked back to the city gates. Now it was her turn to be afraid. She cursed her impulsiveness. Would she be allowed back into Caerleon, or exiled as a potential carrier of disease? Cadwy stepped in front of her. The blood ran cold in Gwenhwyfar’s veins as she faced him down.

  What a fool I am! I have handed him the opportunity to destroy me.

  To her surprise, there was no hostility in Cadwy’s expression. He looked her up and down as though for the first time.

  “That was a brave act,” he said eventually. “I couldn’t have done it.”

  Gwenhwyfar looked at him suspiciously. Did he mock her? She detected nothing beyond respect in his tone, and there was not the faintest glimmer of amusement in his eyes.

  “I will return to the palace,” she declared. “Who will stand in my way?”

  “None, majesty,” said the bishop, “not after this.”

  He bowed his head and shuffled aside. His priests did the same, and the bishop’s spearmen
, until they formed a lane. Gwenhwyfar advanced confidently to the gate, aware of hundreds of eyes fixed upon her. She was used to the people of Caerleon cheering her name. Now a ghostly silence reigned, and the beating of the queen’s heart sounded like a drum in her ears.

  4.

  “Go to Caer Gai,” said Artorius, “and fetch Cei’s head. Maelgwn told me the murderers set it up on a spear above the gate. They dumped the rest of his body in the forest. Don’t bother looking for it. The carrion-eaters will have picked his bones clean by now.”

  “Yes, father,” Medraut replied obediently.

  The two men were together in the High King’s pavilion, on the banks of the river beside Ddinas Emrys. Artorius had refused to accept King Maelgwn’s offer of hospitality. Instead he camped his army under the walls of the hilltop fortress. The fort was now decorated with sixteen severed heads, once belonging to Gwyddawg fab Menestyr and his fellow murderers, impaled on stakes. Artorius had ordered Maelgwn to set up the heads over the gates of his own stronghold, while the decapitated bodies were fed to pigs. An extra humiliation, designed to remind Maelgwn of the crushing nature of his defeat and the terrible wrath of the High King.

  Artorius sat on a camp stool, his heavy arms rested on a table. He had doffed his cloak, and his coat of golden ring-mail gleamed on a stand in the corner. Otherwise the tent was sparsely furnished. His shield and helm were neatly stacked on the lid of a battered old chest at the foot of his narrow bed. He still wore Caledfwlch at his hip.

  Medraut noticed his father always carried the legendary sword in waking hours.

  Does he sleep with it? the young man wondered idly.

  He imagined the old man asleep on his back, Caledfwlch held naked across his chest. The High King looked tired. He had summoned Medraut to his tent shortly after dawn, and appeared to have slept badly. His eyes were puckered and weary. The weight of age and fatigue pressed down, more clearly than ever, on those powerful shoulders.

  Don’t die, father. Not yet. Not before I have my chance of revenge.