M. K. Hume [King Arthur Trilogy 04] The Last Dragon Read online

  Mellyr tapped his own chest to indicate where the queen had driven the blade between her ribs, and directly into her heart.

  ‘She stood for a heartbeat, her eyes fixed on the king with an expression of such contempt that I’ll never forget it. Then she pulled the knife out with the last of her strength, and folded as if her knees had collapsed under her weight. She died where she lay, and the expression of loathing in her eyes never changed.’

  ‘What happened after that?’ Pedr asked. The description had been so vivid that he was desperate to know the king’s reaction. His long years of loyalty demanded some mitigating excuse in the tawdry tale of love, lust and revenge.

  ‘I don’t know. I fled like a coward, because I had seen what I should not have seen, and I feared the king’s retribution. The rest you know. Trystan’s body was set afire inside the hut and his remains were left for the scavengers, although Mark’s warriors were disgusted by such undignified orders. Lord Trystan was a warrior of many gifts, one of King Artor’s most trusted vassals, and to treat his corpse with such disrespect was a stain on their honour. We all knew that the Dragon would demand reparation for this murder – for murder it was, despite the provocation. But fortune favoured our king and Modred plunged us all into war before Artor could take action.’

  ‘Yet he buried Queen Iseult with all the dignity of her status, despite the fact that she’d made him a cuckold. Surely that stands to his credit?’ Pedr protested.

  ‘Some women are so lovely and so compelling that they drive men mad, regardless of their characters or their intentions. Our queen was married to an old man when she was little more than a child, and before her adultery scarcely anyone in the Deceangli lands did not worship her for her piety, her goodness and her care for her people. I believe Mark dared not anger them by treating her corpse with disrespect.’

  ‘That, at least, speaks well of him, although I’ll admit that the murder of Trystan is a stain on his honour. Old men in love can be so very foolish,’ Pedr said, and Elystan cackled his agreement from his stool by the fire.

  In the dark corner near the hearth, a young boy pushed his cowl away from his sleepy head. Although he was exhausted from the labour of cutting wood and laying fires during the day, he had listened to the cruel story with interest. Hesitantly, he added his own mite to the story of the queen’s death, making the blood of all the men present run cold with disgust.

  ‘Why did our king keep her body for so long?’ he asked naively. All eyes swivelled towards him. ‘She was lying in the king’s hall for over a week . . . until she started to smell too ripe to remain above ground. I set the fires for her every morning and evening and scraped out the ash. The king often visited her corpse while she was waiting for the burial rites.’

  ‘What are you maundering on about, boy? It’s normal to lay out an important personage so that her subjects can pay their respects.’ Pedr added a cuff to the boy’s ear to his scornful comments.

  ‘Ow! What did you do that for, Master Pedr? I was only asking a question. You know that the king permitted nobody to come into the hall while the mistress was laid out there – just me. Everyone knows fires have to be lit and hearths cleaned, so no one notices me and my brushes. So why did the king . . . er . . . touch her?’

  Pedr could think of nothing to say, and even Mellyr was momentarily lost for words at the awful implication of what the boy was innocently suggesting. Then, with a sudden indrawn breath, the seneschal found his voice. ‘What do you mean, lump, when you say touch?’

  The boy looked awkward. ‘Our master stroked her body a lot when he forgot that I was there . . . and he talked to her as well. I saw him pulling down her skirts one day when I was going into the room. She was dead . . . so I couldn’t understand what he was doing.’

  Mellyr crossed himself and even Pedr swore a gross oath under his breath. In the hushed silence that followed, every man present wished he was somewhere else – anywhere but in this room.

  Mellyr was the first to find his wits. ‘You’ll say nothing to anyone about this, boy, if you value your head on your shoulders. I don’t care what you understand – or don’t understand – just keep your mouth shut about what you saw, for all our sakes. Or we’ll all swing for it.’

  Shamefaced, the servants dispersed to their beds or their duties in haste, aware that their souls had been stained with something so unclean that no amount of water would wash away the unwanted knowledge. Even Pedr suddenly looked like the old man he was.

  In the hall, Mark continued to berate the dead Iseult while tears of self-pity ran down his gaunt face. Outside, shivering with new-found knowledge, Mellyr checked that the guards were on duty, found a new flagon of wine in case his master should call for it, and then scuttled away to his cold, unhappy bed.

  For the first time, the seneschal considered the possibility of flight. He was well over forty, his sons were grown and his wife had died of brain fever four years earlier. He knew he had reached the latter part of his life span and his tongue found a broken tooth in the back of his jaw that reminded him of his age. Soon he would be in his dotage. A daughter dwelled in far-away Pennal. Perhaps there, where the ocean winds scoured the black beaches clean, he could free himself from the filth he had seen and heard. Perhaps he could forget the scorn in Queen Iseult’s dead eyes and this new horror could be cast out of his imagination and his memory.

  ‘By Ban’s head, I swear I can imagine what Mark was doing,’ Mellyr whispered into the darkness of his narrow room, where his status allowed him to sleep alone. ‘I can see his old man’s hands stroking the queen’s thighs, even though her flesh must have been cold and swelling. May God preserve us from such abomination!’

  His mind flinched away from his new awareness. The darkness offered no possible justification for the king’s actions, and the wind chilled the air in the narrow cell so that Mellyr shivered in his woollen robe.

  ‘I think I’ll steal away to my daughter’s croft in the morning,’ he said to himself. ‘There’s nothing to keep me in this place of pain and misery. At least, I’ll not have to watch Canovium soiled by our king’s downfall. Such a fate will come, because God doesn’t permit such sins to go unpunished.’

  Finally, when he had made his decision, the seneschal was able to sleep. No night terrors were visited upon him, and in the morning he awoke to a roll of thunder and the whispering wind of a growing storm.

  Long after the seneschal had fled, and numbed by the boredom of endless servitude to a master who was too frightened to leave his citadel, the warriors of Canovium were caught unprepared when King Bran and his son Ector, nominated heir to Artor’s throne, eventually arrived to smoke out King Mark. Nearly eighteen months had passed since the High King’s death, but the council hadn’t forgotten the treachery of the Brigante and Deceangli tribes. At a hastily convened meeting at Viroconium, the assembled kings had cast both tribes out of the confederation and then set a huge blood price of gold in punishment for Artor’s death that must be paid promptly by the conspirators. Ultimately, the debt was paid by traders and landowners, even though they had taken no part in the decisions to break their oaths of fealty, because they feared another bloody conflict if they refused the kings’ demands. The Deceangli debt was paid in full, but the southern kings still demanded the body of King Mark, preferably alive, so warriors were despatched under Bran and Ector to advance on the fortress of Canovium.

  Mark raved and railed against the Ordovice king, swearing that he’d never open his gates and submit to Ordovice arrogance. Drunk and terrified, he swore he’d commit suicide in the forecourt of his fortress rather than submit to such oafs or permit them to drag him off in chains like a common felon. But the lords of his court and the merchants of Canovium knew that his end had come, so they sent a petition to King Bran in which they promised to deliver the person of King Mark – alive or dead – if the Ordovice warriors spared the town.

  Politics always works to the same pragmatic pattern. When a ruler becomes a liability
to trade and business, even the most faithful of his friends will look the other way as he is dragged down from his throne like a worthless slave. Mark was overcome by his own guard. His hands and feet were trussed together, despite his struggles, before he was delivered to King Bran on a spavined horse. Thus Canovium saw their loathed king no more, and the citizenry swore that the air became cleaner after his departure. The landowners of the tribe selected a distant kinsman with an honourable reputation to take Mark’s place, and life went on for the Deceangli tribe as if he had never existed. Such is the realistic attitude adopted by men and women who must earn their bread through toil.

  Ector was twelve and growing tall, although he had not yet won his place as a warrior. But he had watched King Artor die at Camlann with such gallantry that the boy’s pride in his family name had increased tenfold. Too young to rule, regardless of King Artor’s intentions, the lad nursed a fierce resentment towards the Brigante and Deceangli tribes, and the cowardice of King Mark had only served to heighten his loathing. Coldly, Ector suggested that the traitor should be imprisoned by the shattered citizens of Deva until the loyal kings could gather to decide his fate.

  So Mark was locked in the darkest recesses of the old Roman prison of that city, where his jailers ensured that he should take no physical pleasure from continuing to live. The Romans had understood the indignity of pain, so Mark’s cell was so small that he could scarcely move in the confined space. Rotten, vile-tasting food and stagnant, slimy water sustained his body, although the prisoner was forced to scavenge for vermin and insects in his cell to supplement his diet. He was aware that his jailers urinated and defecated in his water and thin gruel, but starvation robs even the most fastidious man of pride and he devoured what was given to him in an effort to stay alive.

  Kept naked except for a filthy blanket, he was always cold. Lightless, his eyes forgot the warmth and vividness of the sun; verminous and filthy, he lost the power to smell his own stench. With pleasure, the people of Deva refused him any dignity or honour, and treated him worse than the Saxons treated their captives, for he was no longer granted the status of humanity.

  So King Mark awaited his fate in torment, while around and above him Deva healed herself. Life went on.

  CHAPTER II

  JUDGEMENT

  I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.

  Job 30:29

  Life for life,

  Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,

  Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

  Exodus 21:23

  Mark the traitor, erstwhile king of the Deceangli tribe and co-conspirator with Modred, the Matricide and Regicide, cowered under a filthy, flea-infested blanket in a deep cell in Deva. The golden city had suffered hideously in the War of the Matricide, when Modred had broken the laws of the High King and the tribes that had held sway since the legions had manned its venerable walls. For Modred had chosen to send a message to the kings that the ancient code of neutrality that had protected the port of Deva for so long no longer existed under his regime. No more moots would be held in Artor’s circular hall, which had been built by that master of wild magic, Myrddion Merlinus, for the Picts had burned it to its foundations of stone, leaving the rafters gaping open towards the sky. The unarmed citizens had perished in its broad, straight streets where they were cut down like autumn grasses by the tyrant and his allies, the hated Picts, to the perpetual shame of his Brigante tribe.

  The ruins of Artor’s hall were sad reminders of the waste of human life. Close to the water, on land that overlooked the long neck of river which led to the open sea, the venerable Roman construction took advantage of a small area of flat land on a ridge that jutted over the wharves and the hustle and bustle of trade ships that had brought Deva her wealth and her protected status. Impious hands had never been raised against her stout walls and fine old buildings until Modred loosed the Pictish vermin upon their common enemies, the Latinised Celts, and raped the gracious, civilised town in a welter of fire and blood.

  Standing beside his mother, Bran surveyed the ruins with a melancholy nostalgia for happier days. He had first seen his grandfather, Artor, High King of the Britons, on these cracked and broken stones, which had once served as the stage of a Roman amphitheatre. He had been a boy at the time, and had come with his father to a meeting of the kings, but no one had then informed him of his true relationship to the High King.

  Through the eyes of a twelve-year-old boy, the other had seemed a living, breathing god. At the height of his powers, Artor had dominated the great men in the room by sheer force of intellect and personality, but Bran had been most impressed by his muscular grace and his clever manipulation of the squabbling kings who consistently opposed him. His armies had been fresh from their stunning victory over the Western Saxons in southern Cymru, but for all his military prowess Artor’s proposal to restrict the Saxon advances along the mountain spine of Britain had been fought every step of the way by that fractious, ambitious group.

  Bran sighed as he remembered the faces of men who had become legends through the telling and retelling of their exploits. His mother, herself enshrined in the songs of the poets, looked at her son’s anguished face with concern. In this ruined place, she too was remembering, thinking of the tall, ascetic figure of Myrddion Merlinus whom the Saxons already called Merlin. The barbarians spoke of him with awe, for they believed him to be a magician and a wielder of wild magic. In their arrogance and simplicity, they could not imagine how Artor had defeated them, again and again, except through sorcery. With affection, mother and son remembered old Targo and stolid Odin who had stood at their master’s back and protected the High King with their heart’s blood. And there was Gruffydd, disreputable and irreverent as always, but holding Caliburn, the High King’s sword. The younger Bedwyr, scarred by the Saxon slave collar but bearing deeper wounds that shadowed his eyes, stood in the background and expressed his disgust with the kings and their recalcitrance in every line of his whipcord body. Now all that strength and hope had gone into the shadows, or been defeated by time.

  ‘This place is full of ghosts,’ Anna sighed. ‘If I close my eyes, I can still see them and hear them, but then the dreams are shattered when I gaze on these ruins. I am grown old, my son.’

  ‘Aye, Mother. This hall was more than just a meeting place, at least to me. Three High Kings served the people here, in equality and duty, but all that was finest in their ideals was washed away by Modred’s civil war. The amity has been broken for ever.’

  Both looked up at the sky through the burned rafters that Myrddion had designed for King Ambrosius with such imagination and brilliance. Most of the circular wooden wall was irreparably damaged, as were the captured Saxon banners, looted and burned by the Picts and the Brigante. Charred timbers were evident in the tall ceiling, while cracked and fire-scarred stone was empty of the cushioned seats where the kings had lounged with their retinues. Bran stroked a broken stool that Artor himself had used, shunning panoply for efficiency, valuable now because it was all that was left of a grand idea.

  ‘We shall judge Mark of the Deceangli here. Fitting, don’t you think, Mother? It was Ector’s idea, which surprised me. I never thought him to be a vengeful lad, but in the short time he knew King Artor he learned to worship him. And now he thirsts for Mark’s blood.’

  Anna sighed. As Artor’s only legitimate child, she had the right to demand Mark’s death as her own blood price, but many long years of secrecy had protected her real identity from the High King’s enemies, and she had no desire to demand more bloodletting. She still feared for her grandson’s future, for the boy had little of Artor in him, but much of his father. In her heart of hearts, Anna doubted that either boy or man had the necessary long view to defeat the Saxon advance, or the cold-blooded authority to save the Celtic people. They were, simply, too decent to do what needed to be done in the dark days that were upon them. She sighed. The times were bleak when goodness was a chara
cter flaw. She was loath to make this admission to herself, knowing that their futures lay in dutiful but ultimately futile hands. But none of her inner despair showed on her lined and tranquil face.

  ‘Ector will soon learn that the actuality of judgement is very different from his desire for revenge. Any decisions made here will have repercussions which he must learn to endure. The boy is still very young to lose his childhood, but the Saxons won’t wait until he becomes a man.’

  ‘I have called the kings to Deva, Mother, and most will come of their own accord. The Brigante tribe has been ordered to attend with the gold they have gathered in reparation. Fortunately, their new king is little more than a boy and took no part in the civil war. In fact, Modred put a price on the boy’s head, fearing that any living kinsman would threaten his grip on the kingdom. I’ve never met Scoular ap Seosamh but I hear the name is apt. He’s overly educated, I’m told, and values old scrolls and knowledge from the past more than people. Obviously, he will lean on trustworthy Brigante lords, if there are any such persons, but he seems to mean well. Ironically, those butchers will now have a king who can write, which will be an interesting challenge for them.’

  Anna laughed sardonically and her son was reminded that she was Artor’s daughter, her thoughts very much like a man’s, particularly in practical matters. ‘But Luka was a Brigante. You never knew him, Bran, but he was full of laughter, fun and loyalty. Artor loved him very much and killed his murderers in a bloody display of personal grief. Don’t allow yourself to damn the whole tribe because of Modred. He was his mother’s son, only twisted, and Morgause herself was a creature of vanity, ruthlessness and cold ambition. Your kinfolk were terrible people.

  ‘A little education won’t hurt the Brigante sensibilities,’ she continued reflectively. ‘And it won’t hurt them as much as being ruled by a madman like Modred. No, I wrong him. Modred was so full of his own importance that he willingly sacrificed the honour of his tribe for his own advantage. That’s not madness: that’s hubris in its worst form. Father always said to beware of hubris. Artor’s own father was consumed by it, and many had good reason to know how brutal Uther Pendragon became. You should remember his legacy, my son, and stay free of the seductiveness of power.’