The Bloody Cup (5 page)

Percivale tensed at Gareth’s effrontery, while the stolid Odin raised his white eyebrows.

Artor shook his leonine head and Gareth almost flinched, but his faith in his master held true.

‘You are among the few men left alive who know the tale of Gallia and my childhood at the Villa Poppinidii’, the king hissed in warning.

Percivale’s mouth gaped open.

As always, Artor saw everything. ‘Keep your mouth tightly shut on this matter, Percivale. You’d be wise to remain silent about my secrets. I am an old man, and my temper is uncertain.’

Percivale wanted to protest that he knew no secrets but he heeded Artor’s warning and closed his mouth.

Artor resumed his pacing. ‘I know that neither of the twins can be told of their birthright. Rumours that Anna is my sister places them in an invidious position as it is. But in spite of the danger, I cannot help but wonder if one of them has the temperament and the ability to become the heir to my throne.’

‘Perhaps,’ Odin rumbled.

Gruffydd hobbled into the room, leaning on a cane and swearing as one swollen foot came in contact with the doorframe. The sword bearer was now decrepit, and his temper and health hadn’t improved with the passage of time.

‘Perhaps you can offer an old man a goblet of good wine.’ He smiled. ‘I know you favour water but, as far as I’m concerned, it’s only good for pissing, making things grow or washing my beard. You’re the king, so there must be something drinkable stashed away in here.’

Artor nodded, and Percivale opened a chest where flagons of wine awaited the king’s pleasure. Pottery mugs were lifted on to the king’s desk, for Percivale knew that the king would expect his guard to drink with the old sword bearer.

‘You should have cast off that slut you married when you had the chance,’ Gruffydd muttered darkly. ‘And found yourself a real woman, one who could bear the son that would carry on your line.’

‘Even you, old friend, should learn to keep your mouth closed over your teeth.’ Artor’s glacial stare promised dire consequences if Gruffydd continued to offer unsought advice. ‘I’ll speak to you first if I want the matter discussed.’

‘Damn it all, Artor, you can glare at me all you like, but nothing changes because you’re in a bad mood,’ Gruffydd responded tactlessly. ‘Targo was dead right about that bitch of yours. It’s not too late to remove her, and you can’t throw everyone out of Cadbury who speaks the all too obvious. She’ll be the death of you and, with her luck, she’ll survive to a disgusting old age, whining and carping as she fondles those young men she seduces.’

‘Enough!’

‘A winter or two at Tintagel would do wonders for the queen’s temperament,’ Guffydd persisted, ignoring Artor’s stormy expression. ‘It’s far away and bleaker than a witch’s tit in a snowstorm. Your mam never took to it overly, by all that I’ve heard, and Duke Gorlois managed to spend most of the year in his summer capitals. Even Morgan, who professes to love all things pertaining to her father, avoids Tintagel like the plague.’

Artor’s expression was stony, and Odin read something dangerous in the shark’s glare that had never quite deserted his lord’s countenance. He concentrated on cleaning his nails.

‘It’s an excellent idea, my lord. Just send her away,’ Percivale soothed. ‘And no blood will have been spilt.’

‘I’ll think on it,’ the king said curtly. Then he threw his arm over the thin shoulders of his agent in belated welcome. ‘Now, spymaster, how go my lands?’

Gruffydd was very grey and had the disreputable look of a townsman down on his luck. During the period since Myrddion Merlinus had disappeared, only Gruffydd seemed able to resurrect and maintain the web of spies who provided Artor with intelligence.

The spymaster felt a familiar ache in his chest whenever he thought of Myrddion Merlinus. Cadbury had survived the scholar’s departure but a light had been permanently extinguished in the eyes of the High King when his friend had deserted him. Without the fair Nimue, the Maid of Wind and Water, the glamour of life at court had vanished, along with magic and long peals of honest laughter that offered hope to the sternest and most adamantine heart. In the long years of loss, Artor had avoided mentioning the name of his friend. Even the memories of the common people relegated Nimue to the role of fair, inhuman enchantress who had stolen Myrddion away.

Gruffydd sighed and considered his own mortality as he sipped Artor’s excellent wine. Events of the recent present were less clear to him now than were the deeds of yesteryear, and he knew that he would soon pass on the care of Caliburn to his eldest son. In private, Gruffydd admitted that the blade was almost too heavy for his thin arms to lift.

Gruffydd kept Myrddion’s spy network ticking along, but he was a realist and knew that he added nothing of significance to a formula decided by that wise old courtier so many years earlier, when Artor’s kingdom was still young and fresh. Since the departure of Myrddion, the free west went on, for Artor expended his blood and his soul to ensure the kingdom endured, but Cadbury was frozen in time - and hovered on the brink of decay.

‘Stop dozing off over my excellent wine and tell me how my tribal kings are faring.’

Gruffydd started, grinned apologetically and put his scrambled thoughts in order.

‘Well,’ he began. ‘I can say that Wynfael is no epicure like his father, the gods be praised, so Leodegran’s kingdom fares better without him. When he dropped dead while trying to mount a slave girl, his whole tribe was mightily relieved. The man was so corpulent when he died that he could barely walk, unless it was to stuff his face with food. Wynfael is a Christian, so his oath to the Union of Tribal Kings will hold. Those maniacs seek martyrdom at any price, so I’m convinced that you could cast off your troublesome wife and her brother would confine himself to praying for her soul. He disapproves of his sister.’

Artor remembered Wenhaver’s father as a man with expensive, exotic tastes. How strange that the son should deny his father’s vices for the dubious attractions of religion.

‘Bran and your Anna hold the Ordovice lands with strong hands,’ Gruffydd continued. ‘In fact, the last of the Demetae who have managed to survive seem to welcome Bran as their master. And the Cornovii remain true to your cause. The faithful Bedwyr has emerged from Arden - with a wife, if you can believe it. I expect him soon, my lord.’

‘Everyone seems to be coming to Cadbury of late but, of all my guests, Bedwyr is most welcome. Mori Saxonicus would have been harder won without him, and the gods alone know when we’d have cracked the lice in Caer Fyrddin if Bedwyr hadn’t let us in through the old sewers.’ Artor’s brows drew together in a frown. ‘What of the south? What of the Dumnonii, the Durotriges, the Belgae and the Atrebates? Have the remnants of the eastern tribes joined the Regni with whole hearts, or do they still long for the old days?’

Gruffydd blinked in surprise. Artor’s parents both came from southern tribes who had always formed the core of the High King’s power base.

‘Aye lord. Perhaps they are a little complacent, for there has been no Saxon attack for three years and our borders appear to be accepted by the barbarians. But some displaced Celts from the east are disappointed that you haven’t driven the Saxons into Oceanus Germanicus. However, they are not fools, for they understand how deeply rooted the Saxons and Angles have become. Some Iceni are even calling their old country by the name of Angleland. And the South remains faithful.’

‘Any sensible man regrets the passing of good and righteous things,’ Percivale murmured.

‘Aye, but any sensible man recognizes when the time has come to relinquish foolish dreams of glory,’ Gruffydd retorted. ‘The Saxons, Angles and Jutes are entrenched in the lands of the east, and they can’t be dislodged. Still, they haven’t advanced a mile since Mori Saxonicus.’

‘Nor will they while I remain alive to hold them back,’ Artor vowed softly. No man present doubted his words. ‘But the north is not so secure, is it, my friend?’

‘I can hardly credit that any descendant of Luka could foment troubles within the northern tribes. There’s bad blood in this new Brigante king, but he’s a clever young bastard. Modred is a scheming, ambitious youth who seems to have inherited none of his grandfather’s charm.’

‘I don’t like his name . . . it has an ominous sound,’ Odin growled from his station near the doorway.

‘You’ll like the young man even less when you meet him, Odin. Rumour whispers that Morgause spent a night in Verterae on her way back to Segedunum after the battle of Mori Saxonicus. Luka’s youngest son was very fair and Morgause was still attractive, if you ignored her total lack of charm. Apparently the young prince was smitten, and a child, Modred, resulted.’

Artor wondered at the depth of his spymaster’s knowledge of his sister.

‘Morgause was none too pleased to be pregnant late in life, and King Lot wasn’t amused either, so Modred was sent back to his father as soon as she whelped him. The boy survived Simnel’s rebellion and was raised by Luka’s last living heir, in case he begot no sons. So now you have another unpleasant kinsman, one who intends to use his bloodlines to further his own ends.’

‘All women are much the same in the darkness, whatever their age,’ Odin remarked, causing Percivale to blush scarlet, to the amusement of the older men.

‘Still chaste?’ Gruffydd stared at Percivale, amazed.

‘Still!’ The High King laughed with genuine mirth.

‘You’re being unfair, my lord,’ Percivale pleaded. ‘I’ve only ever loved one lady . . . and she’s long gone. I’m determined to wait until I meet the right woman.’

Artor knew that his servant dreamed of Nimue, his childhood friend. Percivale had never moved beyond a young man’s first infatuation and his lack of experience blinded him to his hopeless idealization of Nimue. The High King would have laughed at the childish delusions of men if he had not recognized that Gallia had become his own idealized, perfect woman.

‘What has marriage to do with rutting?’ Odin asked with bland interest. ‘Celibacy is a very strange solution to an unsuccessful search for a true woman.’

‘One I doubt you ever practised, my large friend,’ Percivale retorted, his face still flaming in embarrassment.

Odin simply grinned through his grey beard in his snaggletoothed way. Only his brown and broken teeth showed the weakness of old age.

‘So,’ Artor mused, ‘Gawayne and this Galahad approach Cadbury, as do Bedwyr and his nameless wife, and Modred, who is Morgause’s youngest son and the illegitimate king of the Brigante. We already have Anna’s twins with us. The next generation is gathering to pick my bones clean while I’m still alive.’

Among the warriors in the room, only Gruffydd remembered Uther Pendragon as another High King who had clutched at immortality. Gruffydd shivered, fearing the sins he might have to commit in his master’s service. Whenever he remembered the king’s foster-brother, Caius, as he lay writhing on a bloody pallet, Gruffydd thanked the Tuatha de Danaan that he hadn’t been required to carry out Artor’s orders. Another hand had stopped Caius, so Gruffydd was clean of the assassin’s taint Of course, he would obey his beloved lord for as long as his hands could hold a blade. Long years of proximity had taught the spymaster that Artor never acted maliciously unless he was pushed into a blind rage, a condition that rarely troubled the king in his old age. But would Artor order an assassination if such a cowardly act would save the west? Of course he would. And could Artor live with the consequences of such shame? For the sake of the Union of Kings, and for the preservation of the people, Artor would learn to endure.

‘If he can do it, then I can,’ Gruffydd whispered, and Artor’s eyes swivelled towards his sword bearer as if he could read his old retainer’s mind.

‘This turmoil you feel is the way of old age,’ Gareth said lightly. ‘You are still hale and vigorous, but you approach sixty years, the same age as your father when he succumbed to death. The young wolves will always gather as the leader of the old pack greys with time, so you must beware of jealousy and rage. That foolishness was Uther’s way.’ He smiled at his king. ‘My grandmother and your old friend, Frith, would have told you that what comes will come.’

Artor nodded and stared down at the pearl ring on his thumb. Many years had passed since his hand had been so slick with blood that the pearl had glowed from within encrusted gore. In Artor’s jaded imagination, the pearl had resembled a blinded eye.

‘Aye, our Frith was a wise woman, as was my friend, Myrddion. I wish they were still with us. But Frith’s ashes lie in Gallia’s Garden, and Myrddion must have succumbed to old age by now.’ He smiled gratefully at Gareth. ‘It’s neither death nor the end of things that I fear.’

The warriors and the spymaster were not inclined to respond, but Odin sensed the danger in allowing Artor to fret, so he answered for them all.

‘Those among us who care for you know that the kingdom will eventually be lost after you have gone beyond the shadows, master. We don’t fear this fate, for we know it is inevitable. But we dread the pain of slow decay, and a return to the bad old ways of the past.’

‘You’re my second self, Odin,’ Artor answered him. ‘Sometimes I wonder why you’ve stayed with me for so long, why you’ve forsaken children, love and comfort for my cause. Why, my friend?’

‘We each gave an oath, master. And I’ve never regretted my part of the bargain.’

The autumn wind that stirred the fruit trees of Cadbury wound sinuously through forest, mountains and grey, glacial valleys. In far-off Cymru, the breezes sought impudent entry to the stone villa built around the ruins of a venerable oak tree. Persistent as cold winds are, they managed to find entry through tightly sealed shutters that had worn a little at the hinges. One single tendril of frigid breeze stirred the hair of a woman who sat by a guttering fire.

Gradually, the wind died in the heat of a room that was awash with colour. The black, close-knit walls, the aged timbers and the smoke-blackened rafters were brought to life by great woven and embroidered hangings that coiled with strange creatures and the persistent image of a black-clad man. Hanks of vegetable-dyed wool, in every imaginable shade of green, gold, orange, red and woad blue, hung from the ceilings ready for the great loom that glowed with hand-polishing in the corner. Dried herbs, flowers, leaves and even seaweed hung in another corner, their heads hanging downwards and the fading colours adding to the rich ambience of the room and its occupant.