Clash of Kings (7 page)

Olwyn was rigid with anxiety. Would Melvig follow them? This road was thick with brigands. Were the two stout fellows who controlled the straining oxen sufficient to protect them?

The coastal road snaked over hills and river valleys, although it always remained within sight or scent of the sea. The land was largely wild and empty, for the winds blew strongly here, and twisted the trees into stunted pathetic forms that seemed to flinch away from the shore. The winds intruded into the leather tent on the travelling cart, and although the women were mostly dry, sand turned their eyes gritty and their feet were chilled to painfulness, regardless of the piled furs that surrounded them. Sleep was difficult in such stuffy quarters, and even when the pallid sun shone and the leather cover was removed, mud made the journey equally unpleasant.

Eventually, after three long days, they arrived at Pennal. Conical huts clustered around a curved bay where muddy silt and black weed made the air rank with a rotting sea smell, and the odour of fish seemed to permeate the only inn. Olwyn and Branwyn slept under a reed roof and discovered the discomforts of straw bedding.

‘There are lice in the beds, Mother. I think I’d rather sleep on the wagon,’ Branwyn complained as she scratched her pale arms to bloody stripes with her nails.

‘We’re all suffering, daughter. But tomorrow we head inland, so the air should be sweeter. I’ll not rest easily until we are under Fillagh’s roof. I left a message for my father telling him that I wish to spend the night of the solstice at Caer Fyrddin, where a special pyre is lit. I’ve never told him falsehoods in the past, so perhaps he will be deceived. Pray that he believes my lies! If not . . .’

Olwyn’s voice trailed away, leaving her daughter to consider a number of unpleasant possibilities. Branwyn lay in her crude, prickly bed and cursed the ocean’s gift that had made everything go so disastrously wrong.

At that inauspicious moment, the child decided to move in her belly, hands and feet turning, pushing and kicking. Branwyn grimaced and tossed abruptly, careless of any discomfort to the babe.

‘I hate it! I hate it! I hope it dies as soon as it’s born,’ she snarled aloud. ‘No demon’s child is entitled to life. Its father was a prince of evil, so no good can come of this accursed creature.’

Olwyn was appalled and struggled upright so that she could gaze at her daughter’s angry face.‘Don’t tempt the gods with your pointless threats, Branwyn. If the gods really permitted a demon to quicken your womb, they have a purpose that neither of us can understand. The Old Ones will not be mocked. Nor will they be bargained with, nor lied to. Most of all, they’ll not tolerate our pitiful defiance. If the child is born, you must raise it whether you care for it or not.’

As Olwyn sank back into her verminous bed, Branwyn thrust her fist into her mouth to stifle her sobs. No! Though the seas might boil and the gods might smash the earth to bloody dust, she’d never love nor care for this child. Let her mother raise it, for Branwyn had learned that the goddess was cruel and had no love for women and children. She killed them often enough, didn’t she?

‘I wish the stranger had murdered me outright, for he killed everything else,’ Branwyn whispered into her folded cloak, which took the place of a pillow in this filthy little room.

Olwyn had been struggling to sleep but her senses suddenly felt unnaturally sharp. She heard her daughter’s muffled words and her heart stopped for one agonising moment.

May the gods protect us! She was raped!

She listened to her daughter’s breathing as it gradually slowed. The girl drifted off into a shallow sleep, disturbed by nightmares that racked the tender, fragile body. Olwyn swore that she would do anything, and forgive everything, if her daughter would only learn to laugh again.

For the first time, Olwyn wondered if perhaps it would be best for everyone if Branwyn’s bastard were to die in childbirth. Then, in penance, she begged Ceridwen and the Mother to forgive her for the impiety of her thoughts. The gods would decide.

The track to Llanio was difficult for horses, servants and travellers. Once the sea was behind them, the lightly forested hills, perilous with scree and black ice, rose steeply. The wind howled constantly and only Olwyn’s willpower drove the little group onward to their destination. The journey wasn’t far as the crow flies, but four long days passed before Llanio hove into view.

The Demetae tribe was very different from the peoples of the Ordovice and the Deceangli. The High King’s mother was Demetae, and he spent half of every year in the south where the air was softer, the coastal beaches were heavy with white sand and the river valleys provided rich silt that encouraged successful farming. With such resources, the Demetae should have been well fed, satisfied and content with their lot.

The reason for sullen faces and a general feeling of gloom, even in a backwater like Llanio, originated from the actions of King Vortigern. A man with an iron fist and an even harder mind, Vortigern had ruled Gwynedd, Powys, Deheubarth and other, smaller states since his youth. He had even made incursions into the lands of the Cornovii and the Dobunni and had, until recently, been undisputed High King of the united tribes of the south. Then Ambrosius the Wise had returned and had stamped out any small fires of rebellion within his lands.

Ambrosius and his younger brother had crossed from Brittany where they had sought shelter after Vortigern murdered their brother, Constans, who was the High King at the time. For years they had roamed the Roman world, but now Ambrosius had returned to Venta Belgarum and lit a beacon in the south. At Llanio, Olwyn heard news of the return of the legitimate king that ran on the wind like storm clouds, a potential threat that chilled Olwyn’s heart.

Vortigern would not forsake his entrenched position in Cymru, regardless of Ambrosius’s ambitions, for the west endured as the seat of his power. Nor would Ambrosius risk banishment again by loosing his followers against the regicide before the time was ripe. Rumour hinted that Ambrosius played a waiting game and left Vortigern to hold the west until circumstances and old age brought his enemy within the reach of his sword. So the small world of the Britons waited on a knife’s edge in an illusion of peace and prosperity.

The Demetae and the Silures ought to have revelled in their good fortune, for they lived in an age of security under the firm hand of a wise king who had reached his fortieth year but was still hale and vigorous. Vortigern had two youthful sons to rule after him and no enemies threatened his reign. Yet, beyond logic and custom, he had taken a Saxon woman, Rowena, to wife. Her yellow hair, cerulean eyes and smooth golden skin inflamed his blood and addled his kingly wits.

At first, the Demetae lords were amused by their king’s passion. They eyed Queen Rowena’s long legs and sniggered behind their hands at the thought of Vortigern imprisoned by those smooth, golden limbs while in the thrall of passion. Unfortunately, Vortigern feared the growing strength and cleverness of his older sons, and Rowena fed his paranoia with subtle warnings of threats and treachery. She begged him to take her own kin as bodyguards, and, dazed with lust and nervous of his sons’ ambitions, Vortigern agreed.

So the Saxons had come to Dyfed, to be welcomed by their new master. But Vortigern’s subjects remembered the barbarian raids of the past, the gutted churches and burned villages of the east coast, and they seethed inwardly.

But when a king commands, who dares to argue? Each day, more and more Saxon families arrived in Dyfed, using their height and their favoured position to lord it over the native population, who were forced to bide their time. Many resentful eyes watched the king and his dangerous wife with envy and concealed fury. When Rowena bore a son and became pregnant again, the Demetae began to fear a new threat: a half-Saxon king who would change their ways for ever. In hope, they looked towards the young Vortimer, the king’s son by the Roman Severa, who suddenly seemed the best of a bad choice of wives.

Olwyn neither knew nor cared how deeply anti-Saxon fever ran in Llanio, although she observed a demolished Roman villa where the stones had been pulled apart and left to lie in the fields while a building of crude logs took its place. When she asked her manservant what the structure was, he told her that a Saxon had arrived with his house carls and had built his timber hall on the heights where the Roman administrative centre had once stood.

‘What fool would tear down a stone building to erect so crude a structure in wood?’ she asked.

The man shrugged expressively. ‘The Saxons distrust all things Roman and destroy any traces of the legions rather than use them. Too often in the past, the Romans have defeated them in pitched battles. For all that they are the favoured friends of King Vortigern and act as his personal guard, they are brutes at heart, barbarians, with cruel, angry gods and strange, uncivilised ways.’

Olwyn examined the alien, threatening building through the flap in the leather tent as the carriage lumbered past on the path leading down to the village.

‘That hall has an overbearing aspect, for it dominates the high ground so that only fire could destroy it. Still, Vortigern may come to regret his choices, especially if he’s tardy in his obedience to the goddess. She’s older and stronger than any of the Saxon gods.’

‘Yes, my lady,’ her servant answered, but he feared the long, iron swords of the Saxons that could kill the serpents of the goddess just as easily as the Roman legions had slain the druids on Mona. He was a thoughtful man who knew the world was changing, and the changes weren’t for the better. He also feared the Saxon warriors who stood a head taller than most of the tribal warriors.

The track from Llanio to Moridunum, also known as Caer Fyrddin in the common language, was in good condition, and well travelled. Mounted warriors, the occasional farmer laden down with trade goods and produce, a priest and several Saxons shared the journey with Olwyn’s carriage. The road was very steep in places, forcing mother and daughter to walk beside the wagons so the oxen could climb the dangerous incline. The journey was no less uncomfortable than in the north, for cold rain still fell drearily and thick mud impeded their progress.

Weary to the bone and pinched with cold, the travellers arrived at Moridunum. The Roman name conjured up thoughts of doom and madness, but Olwyn had been told that the town was situated some way inland on a broad, sluggish river, and possessed a pleasant aspect. Above and beyond the houses, the old Roman fortress that had given the town its name commanded a tall hill, one of a small chain that beetled over the river valley. Although the gulls rose over the dark houses in grey, squabbling clouds, the sea itself was some miles away, on sandy beaches that lipped the river mouth.

Fillagh had been so lost to reason, or so bedazzled by love, that she had eloped with a Romano-Celtic farmer who prospered on the river flats where the soil was rich, dark and deep. A man of the soil, with the warrior nature of both races lying dormant within his blood, Cletus One Ear was happiest when he was overseeing the ploughing or counting his fat-tailed sheep. Cletus Major, his father, had been a wine merchant like generations of Romans before him, but his son hated the trade that provided the red gold that purchased his river acres. When the old man died, Cletus Minor decided that the business should pass into the hands of a younger brother, while Cletus, the eldest son, chose to ‘muck around in the mud like a peasant’.

But Cletus Major had been wrong in his scathing opinion of his son’s ambitions. Dyfed was rich in arable land and, although floods constantly turned his fields into water meadows, Cletus One Ear had green fingers. Vegetables, fruit trees, even grain on the drier land, made him a happy, contented man with an equally contented, if somewhat eccentric, foreign wife.

Late in the afternoon, the travelling cart drew up at the gates of the Roman villa that had been built on a rise leading towards the township of Caer Fyrddin. Olwyn’s heart fell. Admittedly, while the town itself staggered up the hill like a drunken shepherd, this particular structure was well maintained, but instead of tiles the roof supported crude thatch, and Cletus had not whitewashed his walls, so they presented a dung-coloured face to the world. Chickens and several ducks had taken ownership of the forecourt and, although the villa’s gardens were laid out in efficient rows, there was not a single flower or ornamental shrub to be seen. Winter vegetables, blackberry canes, fruit and nut trees dominated the villa’s landscape in well-weeded, straw-protected phalanxes.

Olwyn scarcely had time to set foot on the crazy stone paving at the villa’s entrance before a tall, corpulent man with a florid face, a wide, gap-toothed grin and a shiny bald pate enveloped her in a bear hug. Lifted off her feet by this apparent madman, Olwyn was completely breathless by the time he had squeezed her vigorously, kissed her on both cheeks and then deposited her back on her feet.

‘Welcome, sister Olwyn! Welcome! On my oath, but you’re a tiny little thing. No meat on your bones. Well, my cook will soon remedy that problem. And this little maid must be Branwyn. Welcome, child, and come out of the wind. Little ones in your delicate condition should be warm and cosy, with a special spiced wine and a lovely bowl of fresh stew to toast your chilled fingers.’

Swept into the villa with the assistance of a plump arm and hands the size of small hams, Olwyn could only guess that this tornado of a man was her sister’s husband, Cletus One Ear. The fact that the lobe of his left ear was missing, along with most of the side cartilage, seemed to verify her assumption. Branwyn, who had mastered passive resistance during their long journey to the south, gaped in consternation at the huge man and realised that he would undoubtedly have carried her inside if she hadn’t decided to enter on her own two feet.

‘Olwyn! Branwyn!’ a high-pitched voice squealed delightedly, and Olwyn found herself enveloped yet again, this time in the plump, matronly arms of her younger sister, Fillagh.

Thirteen years had wrought much change in Fillagh’s appearance. Although she was a year younger than Olwyn, Fillagh could have passed for a decade or so older. Her plentiful black hair had a faint sprinkling of grey, while multiple childbirths had thickened her once-tiny waist and widened her hips. Extra weight pillowed her small form so that her cheerful, open grin and widespread arms reminded Olwyn of her long-dead mother.