Artorex remained silent, and handed the babe to Gallwyn. The cook wrapped her in her warm furs, and held her to her withered breasts.
‘But I can’t tell you who this man is. And neither can Lord Caius, who’s been unable to extract the answer from his troop. His warriors protect this beast - for at least one warrior must be aware of his identity. The poor girl’s blood must have covered him from head to toe.’
A number of the warriors from Caius’s troop paled, concerned at the anger of the assembled throng.
‘Hear me!’ Artorex ordered. ‘I am the Dux Bellorum, and I scorn to shed innocent blood! I’ve thought long on this matter, and I’ve asked myself what the great ones would have done.’
The crowd was silent to a man.
‘There, in the words of the immortal Caesar, was my answer.’
The crowd remained mute as they waited for his decision.
‘The troop of my brother, Caius, is thirty in number, and they shall be decimated until the murderer stands forth or his brothers deliver him to justice.’
The crowd began to stir.
‘May I have your permission to invoke the old punishment of the legions? Do we decimate?’
Gradually, slowly at first, and then growing in power, the crowd roared their approval.
‘Decimate! Decimate! Decimate!’
A secret part of Artorex felt ill at the thought of the punishment he was proposing while the vengeful, bitter part of him sang for the pure justice of it.
The troop was isolated and divided randomly into three groups of ten men each, while Caius watched impotently. He schooled his face to show no emotion as each man in the ten was forced to draw straws. The man with the shortest straw in each group, gibbering with fear, was placed inside a circle formed by the other nine warriors.
‘Are you the man?’ Artorex asked each of the three condemned men. ‘Do you know who he is?’
Desperately, the victims denied the charge in turn, including all knowledge of the incident. Perhaps they still hoped for mercy.
The crowd held its breath.
‘I am the Dux Bellorum. Any guilt associated with what is about to occur will be mine, and mine alone.’
He paused.
‘The nine must kill the tenth. They may use their hands, their spear shafts, or the pommels of their swords. No metal or sharpened weapons may be used.’
He paused once more.
‘And those who will not carry out these orders will join their brothers within the killing circle until they agree to hand over the murderer of the innocent.’
Artorex waited and watched.
Perhaps these warriors feel that my threat is a bluff, he thought as he watched the three condemned men. Or perhaps they hope for intercession from the crowd. But Artorex knew that the thrill of bloody spectacle gripped the assembly.
‘You will begin,’ he roared.
The sound of wood, fists and even stone on flesh was sickening; Artorex felt every blow.
The three warriors took a long time to die.
‘Now, will any man in the troop speak out?’ Artorex waited. ‘No? Then we begin again, this time with eight!’
The decimation was sickening, for its coldness gave added horror to the justice that it symbolized.
Finally, when Artorex asked the question for the third time, one of the warriors walked to the foot of the dais and lifted a tear-streaked face to look deeply into the grey eyes of Artorex.
‘I suspect the murderer to be Gwynn ap Owyn, my lord. He is my sister’s husband. I have no proof, but he was covered in blood to the shoulders when he returned to the campfire at Durobrivae. He wouldn’t say where he’d been, and just gave me a wink. Forgive me, lord! I kept silent for the sake of my sister and her children.’
‘Return to your group,’ Artorex ordered. ‘You will receive a just punishment at my discretion for your failure to impart this information at an earlier opportunity.’
He gazed over the assembled warriors.
‘Gwynn ap Owyn! You will stand forth.’
No one moved, but suddenly two veterans in the troop turned and began to drag forward a large, middle-aged man.
The warrior immediately began to snivel and beg.
‘Do not protest your innocence to me or I will personally cut your tongue from your head. You are no Celt, for you allowed six of your brothers to die for your crimes. You do not deserve to live.’
Artorex looked at the ashen face of Caius among his warriors.
‘Lord Caius, you will personally hang this man who has brought dishonour upon your troop, then you will cut off his stinking head and send it to my rooms. You will throw his carcass to the dogs - if they will eat such carrion. Then you will bury your innocent warriors with all due respect, for they died as good Celts - and they didn’t beg, like this cowardly animal. Reparation will be made to their families for their loss, although gold is not worth the life of a good man. We are Celts! We don’t make war on innocents, and we don’t betray the justice of our cause.’
One by one, each member of the troop spat on the weeping face of Gwynn ap Owyn, and the warriors dragged him away.
Once more, Artorex looked down sorrowfully at the assemblage.
‘The duty of maintaining the honour of the Britons is a responsibility that weighs on all warriors. But the very survival of the west demands that our actions reflect the glory of our cause. I am ashamed that a creature such as Gwynn ap Owyn has soiled the reputations of his companions and of us all through his cowardice and brutality.’
Artorex looked directly at Caius, to ensure that his brother understood the full import of his words. Then Caius escaped to follow the Dux Bellorum’s orders and salvage his honour in the eyes of his men.
‘We are nothing if we do not hold to honourable and ancient ways that exemplify our history. Saxon men are our enemies, not their women and children. We fight for home and hearth and the glories of our past, not for the thrill of bloodshed. Let it be understood from this time onwards that no blame for the six innocent men who died today will be attached to any soul here. I take it upon myself, for I am the Dux Bellorum.’
Artorex’s sadness, his patriotism and his charm had the crowd roaring his name as he made his way back to the garrison. His heart was heavy as he ordered Targo to ensure that red gold should be sent to six innocent widows and that good land should be deeded to their sons.
That little tactic worked well, didn’t it? a small part of Artorex’s consciousness whispered wickedly. Perhaps it’s time to send Myrddion back to Venta Belgarum.
CHAPTER XIX
UTHER’S LEGACY
Myrddion Merlinus understood his own nature far too well. He accepted that he was born to be a strategist, the right hand of great men, and a coldness in his nature ensured that his intellect always ruled his emotions. There was no hardship in replacing a wife and children with the actualities of power, for his sexual drive was easily slaked.
If the truth were told, Myrddion loved plots and books far more than any living, breathing creature. Horses were mere transport and a dog was a slobbering nuisance. Books and scrolls never failed, while they never desired anything in return. He had friends, including Llanwith and Luka, but these two men only understood the edges of his agile mind. One day, they would die and he’d weep - he who hadn’t shed a tear in nearly forty years.
Fortunate is the man who has such self-control for, without love, there can be no pain and no sense of loss. His preternatural youth was born out of his even temper and the great walls he had built around his heart. Even Artorex, Myrddion’s personal creation, was often just a means to an end. Myrddion recalled how, at the decimation, he had felt pride in Artorex’s cleverness and fixity of purpose, without truly recognizing at the time the connection between the death of Gallia and of the woman who had been killed under the willow tree. Now, in the darkness of the night, Myrddion felt a thickness in his throat and an unaccustomed prickle in his eyes as he thought of Artorex’s words to the crowd. Myrddion winced as he recognized the pain that the young man must have felt as he lifted small Nimue high, acknowledging an orphaned child, while his own Licia would never know her father.
‘You’re becoming old and maudlin, Myrddion,’ he told the lamp flame. ‘You’ll soon be fit for nothing but hoary old stories around a warm fire.’
But Myrddion’s knife-sharp brain knew that he lied. His path through life was set and his allegiances had been given long ago. There was no path for him other than to be what the gods, or demons, had decreed for him, so thoughts of suffering must be shoved aside.
He turned to the tangible problem at hand.
‘The sword. We must find the sword. Without a High King to counter Katigern Oakheart, we’re finished. And Artorex cannot become High King without that sodding sword.’
Myrddion had puzzled and teased his brain over Uther’s final spite for nearly a year and a half. Morgan was not privy to all of Uther’s secrets. She had held great sway over that terrible old despot, but theirs was a relationship based on hatred and need. Myrddion had no doubt that Morgan kept Uther alive well past his appointed time, not out of compassion, but so the old monster might suffer as he watched his natural son eclipse him. Had Morgan possessed the sword, it would already be in the acquisitive fingers of King Lot, for Lot’s wife was, after all, her dim-witted sister, Morgause. Morgan had been shrivelled with hatred when Uther expedited the death of her father, and she would gladly destroy the kingdom using King Lot, rather than allow Artorex to succeed to the throne.
‘Ah! Old loves and old hatreds,’ Myrddion told the flame, his only confidante. ‘I’d pity Morgan if she didn’t hate quite so hard. Uther deserved every second of pain she gave him, but Artorex bears no guilt for the crimes of the High King. Morgan has blighted her life for a curdled justice.’
No, the sword was as lost to Morgan as it was to everyone else.
When Uther was near to death, and even his servants were fearful of entering his apartments in Venta Belgarum, Myrddion came to believe that Uther had entrusted the sword and crown to Bishop Branicus, Uther’s personal confessor. He’d asked the venerable man outright if Uther had given him the symbols of kingship, and could still recall the bishop’s stern and seemingly honest reply.
‘I don’t have either crown or sword, Lord Myrddion. If I had them in Venta Belgarum, I would give them to you.’
The old bishop had passed away only one month after his obstinate master. Another priest, a younger man, had replaced Branicus and the trail was now cold. Myrddion knew and understood the ways of priests, so he could have sworn that the old bishop hadn’t told a direct lie.
‘But did he tell the complete truth?’ Myrddion asked the flame. ‘The Church of the Christus is a world of its own, and power is the mortar that holds it together. Did he tell the truth?’
Myrddion selected a piece of raw chalk and wrote the bishop’s words on his table top. Then, his senses straining, he measured the weight of every word used by the old bishop.
‘The bishop spoke to me as a man, flame, and not as a priest. He said,
I
do not have, he did not say the
Church
does not have.’ So the Church probably did hold the sacred objects, but not at Venta Belgarum. The priest had been careful to name that city and deny that the crown and sword were there. The bishop didn’t lie, he simply didn’t reveal all of his knowledge.
Myrddion remembered that Branicus had been half-Roman, but he was also part Spanish, a man who understood the frontiers and the terrible cost of barbarian invasion. He probably would have preferred to give up the sword and the crown, but he had not. Why?
‘Because Uther had bound him to an oath. Of course! The old fox made the bishop swear that Artorex would not receive the symbols of power from his hands. The bishop knew that I would eventually come to him when Uther was on his deathbed. He recognized that he would be obligated either to break his vow or damn the safety of Christian Britain. The Saxons have no love for the Christian god. Branicus must also have known that he, too, was sickening. What would he do? What would I do?’
The candle didn’t answer, but it flickered in encouragement.
‘If Branicus didn’t lie to me directly, he indicated that he sent the objects away to somewhere safe. But where have they been sent? There are no clues for me in his words.’
Myrddion struggled to follow the bishop’s dilemma. No one, not even a man of God, could have listened to Uther’s confessions without distaste. The bishop was privy to all of Uther’s gruesome secrets, but he’d taken them to the grave as the rules of his church demanded. But did he want the relics to be found?
‘Yes, flame! That dour old man has told me so in his own words. He’d have given them to me were it not for the oath he gave to Uther Pendragon and the sanctity of the confessional.’
Myrddion was bone-deep weary. He had unravelled the edges of the bishop’s reasoning but only rest and further contemplation would solve the puzzle.
After wiping away the chalk words with his sleeve, Myrddion retired to his bed, but his sleep was troubled by dreams of a willow tree, its ancient branches trailing down to the water of a deep and silent lake. He attempted to enter its confusion of branches but the tree itself barred his way.
Gruffydd had received a rough hide sack that held the head of the vicious Gwynn ap Owyn. He lacked the heart to view those coarse features so instead he decided to return the gruesome trophy to Durobrivae in the care of trusted confederates. They were instructed to mount the head on a stake before the willow tree as a tangible message of Celtic justice.
He felt that Nimue had been amply avenged.
‘Should she be told of her birth when she is older?’ Gallwyn asked him. ‘The tale might cause her pain, but someone else will certainly inform her of the fate of her birth mother one day.’