The Bloody Cup (46 page)

He lifted her up and cradled her in his arms.

‘I wish our lives were otherwise,’ Artor whispered, his face buried in her unbound hair.

‘Aye. So do I. But you are the High King, and I am the mistress of Arden. Our separate lives are predetermined. But if you ever need a friend, my lord, then I am yours until I die. You need never be lonely, for Elayne will always be yours to command - in all but this.’

Artor smiled down into her eyes, then kissed her deeply, as a lover would, for the last time. When he pulled away from her, he pressed his fingers to his lips as if to retain the taste of her.

Then he rose and bowed low to her. A thousand whispered endearments were compressed into that single moment. Lost in his lambent grey eyes, Elayne drank in a lifetime of companionship and refused to weep for what could never exist.

‘Arise now, my lady, for I hear the sound of horses. The time has come for us to resume our separate lives.’

When they were taken back to Cadbury Tor by a detachment of Artor’s personal guard, the whole town rejoiced in the salvation of the king. Elayne stood at the fringes of a cheering crowd, smiling ruefully as she watched the king’s tall figure engulfed by the assembled warriors, nobles and citizens.

When their lives returned to their even, preordained banalities and the thaw of winter began, Artor ordered that the small hut should be torn down and burned. Some memories are best kept in the heart rather than in the physical world where temptation always provides a keener edge to desire.

The day of the hunt was a memory that Elayne hugged to her breast, although her eyes no longer followed the passage of the king.

CHAPTER XVII

THE TRACE

Bedwyr lounged on a rough bench in a hole-in-the-wall inn at Mamucium. The reek of sour wine, vomit and urine permeated every board of the structure, while the filthy straw over the sod floor crawled with vermin.

The cold bit deeply into Bedwyr’s bones, so he wrapped his fleece cloak around him more closely. The hide was untanned and smelled vile, and no one even glanced in his direction.

Nursing a cup of very rough cider, Bedwyr sank his head low and watched his fellow drinkers.

The Blue Boar had a motley clientele. Shepherds, layabouts, the odd carpenter and at least one scarred warrior stood or jostled for a bench seat in the fug of sweat, smelly clothes and stale stew. The floor of the small room was unnaturally warm and Bedwyr guessed that the old Roman baths, now slimy and disused, had a functioning hypocaust that someone had primed with wood to warm the premises. Bedwyr closed his eyes, with one hand gripping his cup and the other wrapped firmly around his purse.

Someone jostled him, so he opened one eye and cursed fluently.

A one-eyed farmer peered at Bedwyr suspiciously as he moved along the bench, grumbling in a half-drunken slur. He closed his eyes again as a heavy rump settled on the other end of the seat. A slouching figure leaned against the wall on his other side. Hemmed in, Bedwyr summoned up a phlegm-coarsened snore.

The men around Bedwyr talked and moaned about their lives. The winter was proving to be harsher than usual, their masters were unreasonable and one man had a brother who had been arrested by the town watch for rape. Their complaints were many and were mostly levelled at the town council and the local king. However, their ill feeling was also directed at King Artor because he was permitting Christianity to flourish within his realms.

One man spat on the straw near Bedwyr’s booted foot and the spy barely managed to avoid flinching.

‘Them priests be a menace to all right thinking men,’ the man complained.

‘They spread their milky ways on every soul in sight,’ another agreed. ‘Who cares about heaven if here and now is so sodding awful?’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ a smoother, more educated voice agreed. ‘The sooner the Druids return, the happier I’ll be. It was fairer when the Druids gave the laws because they left a man alone, unless he killed or thieved.’

One of the men disagreed, pointing out that Druid law was very similar to Christian dogma, but his friends howled his argument down. They seemed to have a rosy view of the justice meted out by the Druids, and Bedwyr took a brief moment to wonder how long these three idiots would prosper if the old days were to come back again.

They’d most likely end up inside the wicker man, he thought.

‘At any road, a new order is coming to the west,’ the man next to Bedwyr said. ‘I heard there’s a movement starting up called Ceridwen’s Cup.’

‘That’s a stupid sodding name,’ the standing man replied laconically. ‘And you ought to be more careful what you say aloud in a place like this.’

Casually, the standing man contrived to kick Bedwyr’s exposed ankle. Bedwyr snarled, swore and slumped even lower against the wall.

‘He’s drunk,’ the fat man next to Bedwyr said dismissively.

‘Ceridwen’s Cup was supposed to have brought knowledge and all good things to the people,’ the man with the smooth voice said. ‘Like the Horn of Plenty, it can’t be emptied.’

Bedwyr snored, causing the three men to remain silent for a short moment.

‘It’s still a stupid sodding name,’ the standing man snapped. ‘But I’d like to find out what it’s all about. Life with the Cup couldn’t be worse than what we have, so how can I find out more?’

The fat man drew in his breath with a sharp hiss, and Bedwyr felt the timbers of the seat shift as the man suddenly flexed his large buttocks.

‘All you need do to find other like-minded men is to mention the Cup in passing. They’ll know what you’re seeking,’ the first man murmured.

‘So what does the Cup stand for? I’ve only heard of it in whispers,’ the standing man asked, scepticism thick in his voice.

‘We’re of a mind that the people should decide what the laws are. King Artor is too far away to know how we live, if he even cared. Eating off gold plates won’t help him to know much about working people.’

‘You talk like a babe at times, Alwyn. Killing Saxons isn’t my idea of an easy life.’

‘Don’t use my name, you shit! Anyways, the Saxons don’t follow the Christian ways and they’re still true to their old traditions, which are much like ours used to be. Why are the Saxons our enemies? The sodding Romans saddled us with the Jewish god and what good ever came from that cursed race?’

The man beside him stirred his fat rump again and spat.

‘I don’t know,’ the standing man muttered. ‘It seems to me that the Romans didn’t burn folks alive like the Saxons do. There’s nothing wrong with this nice warm floor that we have here and the Roman roads are good for moving sheep to market. Besides, the Romans went away, but there’s no sign the Saxons will ever leave.’

The third man’s smooth voice interrupted the standing man’s recitation of practical Roman habits.

‘I’d be careful if I were you, or you’ll be judged by the Druid when the day of Ceridwen’s Cup comes to our lands. He’s got no patience with those Celts who don’t know where their future lies.’

‘Is that a threat?’ the standing man demanded belligerently and Bedwyr heard the grating of a knife as it was eased from its scabbard.

‘Why don’t you listen before you make up your mind?’ the seated man answered in a placatory voice. ‘There’s a meeting coming for all right thinking men.’

‘Where?’ the standing man snapped.

‘Don’t be stupid. This isn’t the place to talk about it. The walls in this fleapit have ears.’

The seated man gave Bedwyr a nudge in the side. He grunted and cursed drunkenly.

‘You can ask for the Cup at the Lady,’ the smooth-voiced man hissed. ‘But I should tell you that if we don’t think that you’re with us, then you’re against us!’

The bench groaned as the heavy man moved from the seat alongside him. Bedwyr peeked through one cautiously opened eye.

He saw two retreating backs.

Where’s the third man? he thought to himself.

Then the standing man eased his whipcord body away from the wall.

‘Did you hear all that, Lord Bedwyr?’ a soft voice whispered in the Saxon language. The standing man appeared to be speaking softly to the empty air.

Bedwyr opened both eyes but kept silent.

The man who stood to his right was lean, dark and sun-browned. His black eyes were alert with intelligence.

‘Are you Trystan’s man?’ Bedwyr asked softly. He felt a sudden clasp of strong fingers on his wrist.

Bedwyr nodded his comprehension. He had never met Gruffydd’s kin but he knew that Trystan was second-in-command in Artor’s spy network.

‘Sit! I’m getting a crick in my neck from looking up at you.’

The bench seat moved slightly as the spy slouched down next to Bedwyr. He leaned his back against the wall like any sensible man in such a den of iniquity.

Bedwyr pretended to waken slowly.

He stretched his arms and yawned and, by accident, managed to slap his companion across the face.

He apologized oafishly and shuffled to his feet to buy his companion a mug of vile-tasting cider in atonement.

Once reseated, Bedwyr leaned back against the wall and mimed drinking deeply, although his companion could see that the level of cider didn’t seem to be lowering in his rough pottery jar.

‘Who are these maniacs?’ Bedwyr whispered, although the noise in the small room was deafening.

The spy shrugged. ‘Most of those who find their way to the Cup seem to be malcontents. From what I can gather, the Druid preaches revolution and attempts to convince his converts that even Saxons are a better alternative than a southern king who doesn’t care about the north. There are other forces at work in this game but, as yet, I can’t work out what they are.’

‘Humpff!’ Bedwyr gave the appearance of sinking into gloom and drink.

‘Several of our spies have vanished from the area, which is the reason I’ve been sent here from Deva. We’re playing a dangerous game, Bedwyr, with invisible men who take care that only stupid pawns are exposed.’

‘Where is this lady of whom they spoke?’ Bedwyr asked quietly.

‘It’s an inn called the Blue Lady,’ the tall man answered softly. ‘It’s near the abandoned forum. By all accounts, it’s a den for thieves, lowlifes and outlaws, so I’m not surprised the Fellowship of the Cup uses it as a rallying point.’

‘Then it seems I must go drinking at the Lady. I’ve always considered blue to be a lucky colour.’

The tall man gripped Bedwyr’s forearm painfully.

‘Don’t be as daft as these cattle. You’ve been seen, you’ve come to their notice and you haven’t been invited to their little get-together. My presence won’t alarm the natives, so I’ll go. Meet me by the old stile at the crossroads two nights from now. I’ll be there at dusk and I’ll pass on to you whatever I discover. For the sake of the gods, don’t expose me by blundering into a place where you’ll stand out like dog’s balls.’

Then, as slippery as any eel, the spy rose to his feet and vanished into the press of malodorous men.

Bedwyr spent two miserable days scratching at bedbug bites and cursing the filth of this northern city. The icy weather made the cobblestones treacherous to walk on and the days were so dark and miserable that Bedwyr huddled in his stinking furs and snuffled like an old man.

He had caught a head cold, but he comforted himself that he’d not been infected with anything worse. For all that it was still a trade town, Mamucium had decayed after the Romans had abandoned the isles. Inertia, or lack of a firm hand, had caused the town to degenerate physically since Luka’s benevolent despotism as tribal chief, but now it hunkered down in its rotting, wooden buildings. Remnants of glory lingered in an ordure-stained stone forum and the slimy and chipped mosaics of the abandoned baths, but Mamucium had seen too many armies come and go, while it festered from within.

Two days are a long time when inactivity is forced upon an active man. Bedwyr frequented the coarsest inns and his stomach turned sour from bad wine and worse beer. On the afternoon of the second day, he made his way to a stone monolith situated a little outside Mamucium and set at the centre of the crossroads, as if it marked some ancient, forgotten wrong. Bedwyr had brought his horse, his hound and a full pack, hoping to be on his way at speed once he had concluded his business with the tall spy.

Waiting was tedious, so he sat in the lee of an old oak out of the worst of the wind, where he could watch the stone in comfort.

Darkness came gradually and Bedwyr began to worry. The nameless spy seemed to be a clever man, but he trod a dangerous path and, if what he’d said could be trusted, several men had already perished because they had proved to be overly curious about Ceridwen’s Cup.

When a figure came running, Bedwyr did not desert the shadows of the oak immediately. The runner could be anybody, muffled as he was in a long black cloak.

Gradually, Bedwyr became aware of a flame bobbing along behind the fleeing figure. Within a few minutes, two shapes loomed out of the darkness, rimmed by the light of the flaming torch that one man carried high in his left hand. The men wore muffling hoods and the light revealed the glitter of their drawn knives.

The man being followed gave a small cry and summoned up a final burst of speed to reach the ancient rock which he used to protect his back as he turned to face his pursuers. Bedwyr was moving to position himself behind the assailants when the two figures attacked the winded fugitive in deadly, silent combat.

By the time Bedwyr and his dog joined the fray from behind the two attackers, their quarry had already fallen to his knees. Bedwyr closed the gap between them quickly and immediately fell into the stance of the knife-fighter, while his Arden knife hissed in its eagerness to taste blood. His hound leapt at the throat of one man, her great jaws closing over an extended arm. The man screamed and tried to shake the grim beast off him, but her sabre teeth were lodged deeply in his flesh and her jaw was locked. His knife flashed once, then again, and Bedwyr’s hound cried thinly like a child.

Bedwyr knew his companion of the road was gone.

The two assassins fought like animals, kicking and spitting to gain any advantage, and Bedwyr blessed his years as a warrior. He rolled and ducked, kicked and then struck from behind, just as they did, but he was a trained killer, and his experience told in the final result.