‘I’d never permit anyone or anything to harm you, my lady. Every year with you has been a joy for me.’
Ygerne lowered the fragment of bread and honey that she was about to eat and examined the face of her beloved, drawing pleasure from every feature. Gorlois’s hair was greying fast, but his body was still hard and slab-muscled, although little wrinkles had begun to appear around his eyes, neck and hands and the skin had begun to sag slightly around his flat belly and buttocks. Never a vain man, Gorlois was unconcerned except for his fear that Ygerne would tire of an old man. As if she could read his mind, Ygerne reached across the table and pressed his nut-brown hand.
‘You think yourself unworthy of me, husband, as if I was something rare and precious. I am a pretty face, a superficial, accidental arrangement of features that some people find pleasing. But my face isn’t my heart, my lord, which belongs to you alone. I have never seen a man I could love except you, and I swear that I never will. I’m simply Pridenow’s daughter, not particularly clever or accomplished, but a woman who has been smiled upon at birth by the Christian God and the Tuatha de Danann.’
Unused to displaying such overt affection, Ygerne blushed, and her beauty almost stopped Gorlois’s heart from beating. She was a superb wife and a loving
mother, and over the years even the stiff-necked Dobunni had come to worship Gorlois’s gentle queen.
‘We have been summoned to Venta Belgarum by the High King, my beloved. He has demanded the presence of Morgan and yourself as well, although I cannot understand why he should wish to see you. The High King shows little interest in women and even less inclination to wed – indeed, the united kings worry that he has no heir to take his place if he should fall in battle. He is angry with me, I know, because I did not send troops to the northern campaign. Frankly, beloved, I don’t have so many men that I can afford to waste them in the north.’
‘Is Uther so reckless that he spends good warriors like copper coins?’ Ygerne asked, unconsciously placing her finger on the salient argument behind her husband’s refusal to obey his king’s demands. Gorlois had come to recognise that a shrewd strategic intelligence lay behind her guileless blue eyes.
‘Uther will send whole phalanxes of seasoned warriors to certain death in order to bludgeon his enemies into submission. He’s not reckless, but something rather worse. His troops are of less account than his horses, his tents or his weapons, and he uses them ruthlessly to achieve his ends. I’ll place my men under his control when we are threatened in the south, but I won’t strip my villages bare of boys and old men for the benefit of other tribes.’
Ygerne gazed into Gorlois’s congested face. Her husband was angry now, with the slow, inexorable rage that his enemies feared. Once he was committed, he couldn’t be deflected.
‘You trifle with the unity of the kings, my lord, although I understand your reasons. But surely our men must fight the length of the mountain spine if we are to defeat the Saxons.’
Ygerne looked so serious that Gorlois stroked her cheek affectionately and his dark mood lifted.
‘That’s true, my lady. I flirt with disaster,
but what am I to do? Uther is not Ambrosius. I swore my oaths to Ambrosius’s plans for our people, and while Uther hates the Saxons like poison, he detests most other people as well, even good Britons. He’s dangerous, my dear, and I’d not take you anywhere near him if I had any choice in the matter.’
Ygerne laughed a little, but her eyes were sombre. ‘I’m an old woman, husband, and as you say, the High King is not swayed by the words of women. I am prepared to accede to his wishes and travel to Venta Belgarum under your protection. I’d not have you suffer because you try to safeguard me. After all, what can he do to me?’
‘I dislike the idea of the vulgar crowds gawking at you, sweetheart. Morgan will enjoy such an excursion, but I’m loath to drag you away from the quiet of Tintagel. I know you are safe here, for all our people would be prepared to die for you.’
‘You’re a dear man, Gorlois, but why would anyone stare at me? I’m past the age of maidenly beauty and relinquished any pride in my appearance many years ago. But the crowds will certainly find much in Morgan to marvel at. That girl worries me, husband. She’ll not marry, and she dabbles in spells that I fear to even imagine. She should have been a boy, and then the study of sword and spear would have assuaged her need to excel.’
‘Aye, sweetheart, our Morgan is a wondrous woman, and I’d have no fears if Uther took a fancy to her. I’d back our girl against the dragon, and that’s the truth.’ Gorlois shook his loosened hair as if to banish a wicked thought. ‘She’d cut his throat if he laid a finger upon her.’
Ygerne smiled with that bewitching curve of her full mouth that always stirred her husband to passion. ‘She’s more likely to turn him into a toad, if I know my girl,’ she said. ‘Or she’d try, at the very least.’
Then she crowed with merriment as her
husband picked her up bodily and carried her off to their warm bed and his even warmer embrace.
Later, as her husband dozed under the furs, Ygerne stared up at the oak rafters and listened to the winds of autumn as they swirled around Tintagel. Venta Belgarum! The name rolled off her tongue with a sweet softness, like a loving word or a caress. Once she had feared to venture away from this wild coast and its broad rich lands, but now a frisson of excitement raised the hair on her arms. Perhaps the queen of the Dumnonii could assist her husband in his duel of words with Uther Pendragon. And if, later, she wept during her dreams, she did not remember the images of blood and fate which were weaving a rope around her, stronger by far than her own beautiful hair.
The same winds cleansed the streets of Venta Belgarum, lifting any accumulated litter and sweeping it into dark corners. They stirred the fruit trees in the healers’ small orchard and threatened to strip the boughs of their ripe fruit. In his narrow sleeping room, Myrddion dreamed, pillowed by Ruadh’s breasts.
With great reluctance, the healer had sunk his scruples and taken the Celtic woman to his bed. She was warm and loving, and Myrddion was starved of the adoration that can live in a woman’s eyes. If he wished that Ruadh were Flavia, he was too gentlemanly and too kind to allow such a wish to take root. Ruadh had lost everything women value, so he could not deny her this simple release, even though his common sense warned him that any emotional entanglement could be very dangerous.
In the room that Brangaine shared with Willa, the eleven-year-old child tossed, moaned and wept in the grip of a painful dream. Brangaine woke and rose from her pallet to collect a mug of water from the well, and when she returned Willa’s face was wet with tears. Lovingly, Brangaine watched
over her darling’s sleep.
Willa was tall for a girl and as slender and graceful as a young aspen in the forest. Her hair was now a glossy chestnut mane that fell thickly past her tiny waist without a hint of curl. Her small breasts had budded, and her hands were beautiful and animated, even in the throes of her dream. So entrancing were her fingers with their almond-shaped, delicate nails that few men saw her scars. Even her feet were slender and beautiful, and accentuated an air of fragility and delicacy that inspired most males with a desire to protect her from the evils of the world.
The closed, fluttering eyelids covered irises that were as bright and as green as fine Roman glass, with silky, hidden depths that seemed to beckon the watcher into her soul. Her sweet mouth and even teeth mitigated a nose that was a fraction too long and too narrow for perfection, yet this flaw accentuated her beauty so that her immature face and form was both innocent and angelic. Her loveliness terrified her foster-mother and she took enormous pains to keep young Willa as far from the haunts of men as possible.
Besides Brangaine, only Cadoc was fully awake in the whole of the sleeping household. Unable to sleep, and too anxious to rest, he had checked their only patient, Prince Luka, by lamplight.
The Brigante lord had remained in a deep sleep for two weeks while they had transported the wounded home from the north. When Luka had finally woken from his long dream, he was disoriented and his muscles were too weak to permit him to stand. Now, recuperating in Myrddion’s house, he was slowly returning to health while the healers examined the effects of a blow to the head on the normal functions of the human body.
Cadoc grinned affectionately as he left the sleeping prince to his rest. The Brigante was lucky that his head was so hard. A lesser man would have died before the apple harvest was completed. Even now, although he still suffered from headaches, Luka was making jokes and pining for a
horse or a woman – in whatever order.
Rarely had Cadoc been so irritable and so sleepless. The house was very still and the city had hunkered down to rest, like some great beast finally grown weary of light, drink and danger. Cadoc cleaned every surgical tool he could find by lamplight and then began to reorder the scriptorium, trying to burn away the sleeplessness that stemmed from a deep-seated anxiety. His master, the healer of all healers, was spiralling down into a dangerous, bleak depression. Cadoc had watched his friend’s distracted, inverted mood gradually darken as he grappled with Uther’s increasingly high-handed behaviour. Cadoc was afraid that Myrddion was walking along the edge of a deep chasm where the friable earth was crumbling under his booted feet, and would tumble into the depths of a killing despair at the slightest error of judgement.
‘Vortigern was a monstrous man, but he could be understood. That dirty son of a whore liked being the High King and intended to stay on the throne of Maximus, whatever the cost. He could be as crooked as a rock adder, but he was sane.’
Cadoc spoke aloud in the bleak silence of his thoughts. After midnight, the old villa seemed full of unquiet spirits, and Cadoc, superstitious despite his practical upbringing, drew comfort from the sound of his own voice.
‘Ah, Cadoc!’ A dimly lit form stepped out from the darkness of the colonnade. ‘You’re becoming poetic in your old age.’
Cadoc almost dropped a precious jar of powdered aconite, a poison that Myrddion was using for experiments. He spun awkwardly, clutching his jars to his naked chest as Brangaine appeared before him, swathed in a long sleeping robe and carrying a totally inadequate oil lamp. The mellow light was kind to her ageing face, softening the grey in her hair and erasing the lines that seamed her eyes and the edges of her once-full lips.
‘Blood of the gods, woman, you scared me shiteless,’ Cadoc swore as his heart threatened to
burst out of his chest. Gradually, his breathing slowed, and he lowered his tense body down on to the nearest stool.
‘Two of us – and we’re both wakeful in the night. Misery loves company, Cadoc, so I sought out the other watcher in our household. We may as well worry together as apart, so I’ll fetch some warm milk to soothe us.’
When Brangaine returned with two shallow bowls of heated and sweetened milk, Cadoc had cleared some of the clutter he had created in his orgy of cleaning, so the two colleagues could sit on their stools and warm their hands around their bowls. Brangaine noted the deep furrows between Cadoc’s usually merry eyes and sighed sadly.
‘I heard you talking about the Burning Man, Cadoc, and I thought of my husband, who was killed in Vortigern’s ranks beyond Tomeny-mur. The High King was a violent, dangerous and superstitious creature, but he was a true king for all that he stole the crown for his own purposes. Lord Ambrosius might have expected too much of our master but he was always kind to him in his own way. Ruadh has also told us how gentle he was when he was alone with her.’
‘Aye, Ambrosius was a fair man,’ Cadoc murmured as he sipped his sweetened milk.
‘But the son of the dragon is another matter altogether! I can barely say his name without feeling sick. The man kills because he can – without even Vortigern’s excuses of superstition and ambition. Perhaps I could understand him if he was crazed or perverted, but he’s cold and inhuman, Cadoc. He’s only looked at me once, and my blood fair froze in my veins.’
‘Our master weakens,’ Cadoc whispered. ‘Something happened at Calcaria that made him heartsick.’
‘We all know that Uther killed the little Carys, Cadoc, so say it aloud. Myrddion knew the truth and covered up the murder. It’s killing him slowly, so
you must face the worst, Cadoc, like us women who were forced to cleanse the poor little body that Uther dumped on us like so much spoiled meat. Saxons don’t leave a woman unraped, or let their victims cool until the bodies are rigid and cold before they abandon them for their enemies to find. We know, Rhedyn, Ruadh and I, and no one had to tell us how the poor little thing perished, or that she was pregnant with the king’s child.’
‘Beware,’ Cadoc hissed, ‘for you’ll be killed if you’re heard. To say what you have said is treason.’
‘It is the truth. The Mother
and
the Virgin Mary saw Carys die and they will ensure that Uther is repaid for his sins,’ Brangaine hissed in turn, and her eyes were suddenly hard and bright like river pebbles under shining water. ‘And her women perished after her, I’m told, the victims of Saxon murderers. Nonsense! Not even a five-year-old child would believe such drivel.’
Cadoc’s powerful hands turned his bowl of milk again and again. Brangaine watched his restless fingers and understood his concerns.
‘Yes, our master knew that Uther gave the orders that led to the death of the girls, and that Ulfin creature carried out the deed for him. This loss of innocent lives is devouring our master from the inside out. I’ve seen his eyes – aieee! But I worry, for I can feel the days shortening and the hands of the goddess are drawing us all towards her. She’s the Blue Hag now, and her face is ageing into winter. She’ll have what she wants, and we mortals must suffer for it.’
Cadoc stared at Brangaine with eyes as round and smooth as brown glass beads. Brangaine was not particularly religious. In fact, she teetered between Christianity and the old religions as the mood took her, and sometimes combined both. During their years together, Brangaine had been a rock of common sense and was rarely disturbed by the emotional storms of the other women in the house. Her love was saved for Willa, her master Myrddion Merlinus, and the toddler Cathan who
had been found at Verulamium. But Venta Belgarum was a filthy cesspit beneath its fair and superficial beauty, so brutalized children were often dumped at the doors of the House of the Healers. As always, Myrddion had no heart to turn innocents away, so the rooms of the old villa reverberated with the shy laughter of little ones as they learned to play. Though she showed affection to all, Brangaine’s devotion was hard won, and her heart was given to only three.