“Roman engineers built most of it,” I told Arthur. “The High King’s stonecrafters have added to it.”
He refused to believe such a mundane explanation. Arthur was barely out of his teens, full of the naïveté and credulous innocence of wide-eyed youth.
“Not even the Romans
could have built so high without the aid of the gods,” he said. Then he crossed himself.
I held my tongue. If he knew what the gods truly were, he would weep in shocked disillusion.
“Look, Orion!” he shouted. “Ambrosius himself is at the parapet to welcome us!”
It was true. The bright blue-and-gold flags of the High King snapped briskly in the hot breeze up on the crenellations atop Cadbury’s
main gate. The drawbridge was down and through the open gate I could see that the castle’s courtyard was thronged with people. If Ambrosius had truly sent those scoundrels to murder Arthur, why would he be waiting at his castle’s main gate with pennants flying?
I thought I knew the answer. The would-be murderers had been sent by Aten, the Golden One. He knew I was resisting his commands to kill
Arthur, so he arranged the previous night’s attack. Even though it had failed, it had opened a wound of suspicion between the High King and his young adopted nephew.
Arthur spurred his mount lightly and trotted up the steep, dusty road, eager to reach the castle. I urged my horse forward, to be close enough to protect Arthur if the need arose. He had no idea that the gods he dreamed of wanted
to kill him, no idea that I was defying those so-called gods to protect him.
“My uncle Ambrosius waits to greet us,” Arthur said as I pulled up beside him. His handsome face was wreathed in a delighted smile.
“You see? The word of your victory at Amesbury has pleased him,” I said.
“Yes, perhaps so,” Arthur agreed.
I glanced up at the flapping banners atop the open castle gate. I could see
a group of men standing there, watching our approach. One of them must have been Ambrosius, Arthur’s uncle, High King of the British Celts.
Arthur’s eyes followed my gaze, but I heard him muttering, “We can drive the barbarians completely out of Britain, drive them away for good—if only Ambrosius will have faith in my plan.”
“He will, my lord, I’m sure,” I said.
Arthur nodded, but it was obvious
that his thoughts had turned elsewhere. We rode along in silence up the switchbacks of the road, climbing the hill on which Cadbury castle was sited.
“What do you think of the castle, Orion?” Arthur asked at last. “Have you ever seen such mighty walls, such high towers?”
I smiled and kept the truth to myself. “It would be difficult to take by storm, my lord.”
“Difficult!” He laughed, a youthful,
boyish laugh. “I could defend Cadbury against all the barbarian hordes for a hundred years!”
No, I thought. You won’t be allowed to live that long.
3
Ambrosius styled himself High King of the Britons, which meant that many of the petty kingdoms of the isles professed allegiance to him. He had earned that fealty by battling the Saxons and the other invading tribes for many years, building the
string of hilltop forts such as Amesbury in the hope of holding the invading barbarians to their beachheads and not allowing them to penetrate into the heartland of Britain.
He had fought other Celts, as well. Celtic Britain was a patchwork of petty “kingdoms,” each ruler jealous of his neighbors, suspicious of the kingdom over the next hill. When the Romans ruled Britain, the Celts had all bowed
to Roman law. But once the legions were withdrawn, the very year that Rome itself was sacked by the Visigoths, the Celts swiftly reverted to their paltry rivalries.
Like his father before him, the Elder Ambrosius, this High King had won his shaky allegiances as much by the power of his sword over his fellow Celts as the need for all the Celts to unite against the invaders. The allegiances sworn
to him were grudging, at best. Only a High King of inflexible will and exceptional power could keep the lesser kings loyal to him.
Now, as we assembled in the castle’s great hall to have audience with the High King, I saw that Ambrosius Aurelianus—as he styled himself—was getting old. His lifelong struggles against the Saxons and his own Celtic neighbors had taken their toll. He had once been
tall and stately, I could see, but the weight of responsibility had bent him and stooped his once-broad shoulders even though he tried to appear dignified in his royal fur-trimmed robes. His hair and beard were gray, nearly white, and thinning noticeably; his face had the pallor of approaching death already upon it.
In contrast, Arthur was strong and straight and vital, practically glowing with
youth and bursting with confidence and enthusiasm about the future.
We had all washed off the dust of our journey from Amesbury before this audience with the High King. Sir Bors had teased me, as usual, in his rough way: “Pity the wash bowl isn’t big enough for you to sit in, Orion,” he had said, with mock seriousness. “We all know how you like to bathe yourself, like a fish.”
The other knights
had laughed uproariously. My cleanliness was a subject of much humor among them.
But we were all scrubbed, beards and hair trimmed neatly, and wearing our best tunics for Ambrosius. Even young Lancelot, his battle-earned knighthood scarcely a month old, had dressed in his finest Breton linen for this exalted moment.
The audience was largely ceremonial, however. Ambrosius received us in the great
hall, with half the castle’s inhabitants thronging the room. The women wore long gowns of rich fabrics, decked with gems and pearls. None of the men wore mail, although they each carried their favorite sword at the hip, many of the scabbards more heavily jeweled than the women.
“A pretty bunch of dandies,” Sir Bors growled under his breath. “They’d be useless in a fight.”
The hall itself was
almost as large as Priam’s court in old Troy. Long embroidered tapestries covered most of the rough stone walls, some of them not yet finished, their pictures of battles and hunts incomplete, lacking. Late afternoon sunlight streamed into the hall through the windows set high in the walls. It would take hundreds of candles to light this chamber at night, I thought.
The High King walked slowly,
stiffly, through the bowing crowd. A woman walked beside him, dressed all in black and so heavily veiled that we could not see her face. She seemed youthfully slim beneath her floor-length skirts. She kept her gloved hands at her sides, she did not take Ambrosius’ arm or touch him in any way. Indeed, he seemed to keep apart from her quite deliberately.
Ambrosius sat wearily upon his hard throne
of carved dark wood. The mysterious woman remained standing off to one side. The High King welcomed his nephew and thanked Arthur in a thin, parched voice for driving the barbarians from Amesbury fort. Arthur knelt and kissed the High King’s hand, then got to his feet.
“My lord,” he said, in a clear tenor voice that carried across the room, “we can drive the Saxons completely out of Britain,
if you will allow it.”
I was well away from the throne, standing behind Bors and Gawain and the other knights, among the squires, but I could see Ambrosius’ eyes shift momentarily toward the veiled woman.
“We will speak of this another time,” Ambrosius said. “This day is to be given to feasting and celebration, and to prayers of thanks for your great victory.”
Arthur wanted to insist. “But
my lord—”
Ambrosius silenced him by lifting a hand.
“In addition,” the High King said, “it is my wish to introduce you to another visitor to this court.”
He turned toward the woman in black. She stepped forward, still veiled so heavily her face was impossible to see.
“This is the princess Morganna,” said Ambrosius, “of the kingdom of Bernicia, far to the north.”
Morganna reached up with both
her gloved hands, lifted the veil from her face, and let it drop back over her shoulders. A sigh swept through the great hall. She was the most fabulously beautiful woman any of them had ever seen: hair as dark as a stormy midnight, eyes that glowed like sapphires, skin as white as alabaster.
I had seen her before. I knew who she was. Among the Creators she called herself Aphrodite.
4
For the
next two days—and nights—Arthur spent every moment with Morganna. He was infatuated with her, besotted as only a young man can be.
“She’s enchanted him, all right,” said Sir Bors, chuckling.
I had sought Bors out, worried that Arthur was being cleverly turned away from speaking to the High King about his plan to drive the Saxons and all the other barbarians out of Britain for good. Bors had
made himself at home in one of the castle’s many private chambers, a room so near the stables that I could smell the horses. But to Bors it was almost sinfully luxurious, with a feather bed and serving wenches at his beck and call.
“And why not?” he added. “The lad’s done well enough. Why shouldn’t the High King give him a princess to wed? It makes political sense, Orion, tying Bernicia to Ambrosius’
domains here in the south.”
“But Arthur’s plan…”
Bors grunted. “It’ll keep. Winter’s coming; there’ll be no campaigning for months to come.”
“The Saxons will use those months to fortify their bases,” I said.
“Can’t be helped. No man can outfight the weather.” Bors hefted a flagon. “Relax, Orion. Enjoy the fruits of victory. Have some wine. Find yourself a wench or two.”
It was tempting. Too
tempting. Ambrosius was blunting Arthur’s purpose with the luxuries of his castle. Wine, women, and winter were going to delay Arthur’s plan, perhaps fatally. Or was this Aten’s doing?
“Thank you, my lord,” I replied to Bors. “Perhaps later.”
He laughed and poured himself a mug. I bowed and took my leave of him.
“Find yourself a wench or two,” Bors repeated as I stepped through the heavy oaken
door of his chamber. I could hear his thick laughter even after I closed the door.
I thought of Anya, the goddess I loved. How could any mortal woman compare to her? Yet … the temptation was there.
5
That night, as I lay in the dark, narrow barracks on my straw pallet among the snores and stinks of the other squires, I tried to make contact with Anya. I needed her help, her guidance, her warmth
and love. Squeezing my eyes shut, clenching my fists with the effort of it, I strained every atom of my being to translate myself into the realm of the Creators.
And found myself, instead, in the middle of the dark night out on a windy plain. I had not traveled all that far. Looming all around me were the giant megaliths of the stone circle of Salisbury.
I immediately recognized the place; in
another lifetime I had helped the Stone Age tribes of this region to build this site. They were just beginning to turn from hunting to agriculture, and my goal had been to help them predict the seasons so they would know when to plant their crops. Ever since, though, Stonehenge was revered with awe as a religious site. The Druids had conducted human sacrifices here until the Romans stamped out the
practice. I wondered if they had returned to their bloody ways, now that the Romans were gone.
Black clouds were boiling across the sky, blotting out the moon and stars. Forks of lightning flickered in the distance. A storm was coming, driven by the wind that scattered the dry leaves and set the trees to moaning. In the blue-white glare of a lightning strike I saw that two people were approaching
the center of the ring, where I stood beside the sacrificial altar. A man and a woman. I could not make out their faces but I knew who they were.
“Orion, is that you?” Arthur’s voice.
“Yes, my lord.”
I could see now that the woman walking beside him was Morganna—Aphrodite, as I knew her.
He lifted both his arms and swung around, pointing at the immense stones rising all about us.
“Don’t tell
me that
this
was built by mortals,” he said, his voice a mixture of awe and delight.
I said nothing. In centuries to come, I knew, men would claim that extraterrestrial visitors built Stonehenge. How little they believed in themselves!
“How did you get here?” Arthur asked.
“The same way you did,” I replied, looking at Aphrodite.
Suddenly he seemed embarrassed, as sheepish as a lad caught in
a misdeed.
“Morganna brings us here every night,” he said, his voice dropping almost to a whisper against the gusting cold wind. “By magic.”
Another lightning bolt cracked the black sky, etching her incredible face in cold white brilliance for a flash of a moment. I could see she was not pleased.
Even in fury she was matchlessly beautiful. Her eyes, which had been as richly blue as sapphires
when I’d seen her at Ambrosius’ court, were emerald green now. Instead of the heavy stiff gown she’d worn then she was clad now in a long white hooded robe that left her lovely arms bare. The hood was down, and her hair cascaded past her soft shoulders like a stream of flowing ebony.
“How dare you?” she spat.
I glanced at Arthur. He was standing absolutely still, frozen in time, as if he’d been
turned into a statue. She had put him in stasis, I realized, so she could deal with me.
“You mean to murder him, don’t you?” I accused.
“He will experience pleasure enough before he dies,” Aphrodite said, gesturing to the dark stone altar. I saw that a groove had been chiselled into it, to carry away the blood of the sacrificial victims.
“I’m here to protect him,” I said.
“Aten told me you’ve
become troublesome,” she said carelessly. “So be it. The Druids will have two victims this night.”
I was unarmed, except for the dagger strapped to my thigh. I tried to reach for it, but found that I was frozen, too, unable to move a muscle.
Thunder rolled across the dark sky. Aphrodite laughed. “You would defy Aten, Orion? How foolish of you. Tonight you die the final death. There will be no
revival for you.”
I strained with every speck of energy I possessed, but could do nothing. I was imprisoned totally.
Smiling like a cobra, Aphrodite stepped to me and twined her bare arms around my neck. “I could make you very happy, Orion, if only you wouldn’t resist me. Forget your Anya and love me, Orion, and you can live in rapture forever.”