Dragon's Child (26 page)

Every day, when his duties as steward were done, Artorex sought Gallia out, even if she was playing with little Livinia, or gossiping away the last of the winter with Julanna. And Gallia always obeyed her husband, for she was as eager as he was for the pleasures of the bed. Trivial stimulations, even the sight of a bare foot, could ignite his lust, so that each day passed like an Otherworld dream and the only reality was his Gallia, laughing earthily as she stroked his body; Gallia, biting his shoulder until the blood came; Gallia, crying out with her eyes blind in a passion that was her very own.

Gallia had much to occupy her days, besides the heady distractions of lovemaking. After the death of her mother, the wives of her many brothers has seen to her wifely education over the years and she was already hard at work on a length of wool designed to serve as a winter tunic for her husband. She also took pleasure in learning the more mundane tasks of cheese-making, preserving fruits and curing meat. She might never need to prepare the food her family consumed, but no provident Roman matron would leave servants to their own devices without supervision.

As spring advanced, Gallia knew that she was with child. She hugged her belly and smiled those secret smiles that every woman in the villa could read with complete accuracy.

Around her, Gallia saw that new life was insistent and paramount. The landscape was newly washed by the onset of spring into a tapestry of green and chocolate; young lambs, calves, foals and chickens stumbled, cavorted and tumbled over their gangly limbs; puppies and kittens squirmed into every free nest of straw in the stables and the wild birds were noisy in the alder trees as they protected their nests. The whole world was pregnant, like Gallia, and she gloried in her new condition.

Artorex remained in blissful ignorance until Gallia chose her own time to tell him of the wonders that would soon come into his world.

One night, he lay spent upon their bed, his flesh fast cooling as Gallia slid down into the hollow of his shoulder and whispered in his ear.

‘Will you cease to love me, my dearest master, when my belly is too big for the pleasures of the bed? Or will you find a compliant maid, my stallion, and leave me to pine?’

‘What . . . ?’

As with all men, Artorex was made to sound and act like an idiot when a woman holds the reins of love.

‘Your heard my words, my heart.’ She smiled shyly. ‘There are quite a few months left for us, of course, but I fear our time alone may soon be over.’

‘You are with child!’ Artorex exclaimed flatly.

In all honesty, he had no idea how he felt about this unexpected news.

Gallia pouted. ‘You sowed the seed, Artorex, and now your child grows within me. But I am fearful that a son of your size may well nigh kill me.’

Artorex felt a warm surge of pride run from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. He had sired a child. It grew, even now, under his hand. The wonder and mystery of it almost stopped his heart.

Artorex kissed his wife’s mouth, her belly and her heart, and she could find no fault in her husband’s reaction to the news.

Now, spurred on by circumstances, Artorex had reason to work.

In what time was free to him, he began to clear Ector’s bridal gift and, once the site was bare, he marked the outline of a simple six-roomed villa. He couldn’t afford the luxuries of the Villa Poppinidii, but he would build his own house with his own two hands if he must, so that his child would know its own roof.

Artorex was blissfully and joyously happy, for he had never known such true contentment. And when villagers and servants showed their affection by assisting him to flag the earth with split stone, build walls of wattle and mud and lay out gardens for the developing house, Artorex knew that such unalloyed joy was both a temptation and a challenge to the gods who control us all.

He roofed his house in the Celtic way, with plaited thatch and split stakes of wood, so that the steep pitch of the roof could provide storage space for water as well as shedding rain or snow. Gallia looked at his strange, hybrid efforts and was happy as only a woman near full term can be.

The house was shaped like a square but open at one end, except for thick-planked wooden entrance gates. The courtyard, or atrium, was cobbled with river stone except for a small alcove that served as Coal’s stable. Artorex built the manger and stall himself from wood dragged from the forest and sawn over a pit.

Until their house was completed, he and Gallia shared his cramped quarters at the Villa Poppinidii. Julanna vowed that she did not want her friend ever to leave, but Gallia pointed out that she would only be a short walk away. In fact, the stone flue from a chimney that Artorex had cunningly copied from a northern design could be clearly seen from the villa.

‘But you will have to work like a servant,’ Julanna pouted.

‘Only if I wish to do so.’ Gallia laughed. ‘I still have my maid and manservant, and Frith has asked Lord Ector if her great-grandson, Gareth, could be permitted to work for Artorex. Fortunately, when Frith makes a decision, nothing deflects her.’

As his house grew, so did Gallia, and Artorex began to fear for his wife’s health, so large was the child within her belly.

But still his fortune held. When Gallia’s waters broke, her labour began quietly. Her tiny frame seemed unable to bear the great rippling surges of the contractions but, within a surprisingly short time, Gallia was delivered of a fine, healthy girl child, with dark, bronze curls and amber eyes.

When he held the strong, squirming body in his arms for the first time, Artorex thought his heart would break with his love and fears for her. Now he knew how Gallia had felt when her family had died of the pestilence. Now he understood Julanna’s nameless fears for her child. He swore to protect his Licia, for so he named her, for as long as he lived.

When the child was one week old, and autumn had turned the land into a carpet of gold and flame, Bregan, the blacksmith, came to the gates of the Villa Poppinidii with a cloth-wrapped gift for Artorex. Bregan refused an offer of food and drink, and wouldn’t stay, for Artorex was supervising his workers in the south pastures.

‘I’ve kept my promise. Tell Lord Artorex I made this gift with all the skills I possess.’

When Artorex returned from the fields that evening, Gallia gave him Bregan’s gift. As he struggled with the twine binding, she stared at her young man of nearly twenty-two years, and her heart was full and grateful.

Within the wrapping was a swathe of fresh grass. Within the grass was a dagger.

The blade was well over fifteen inches in length, slightly curved and shining. It was an instrument of death. The edges were razor-sharp and a vicious point ensured that the dagger would be perfect for both thrusting and slashing.

But it was the pommel that left Artorex and his wife gasping with surprise.

Bregan was a fine blacksmith and no one could conjure blades for scythes and reaping hooks so well in all the villages in the vicinity of Aquae Sulis. But Bregan had nurtured a streak of artistry in his soul that had been unused in his agricultural trade, until now.

Somehow, Bregan had designed and constructed an iron dragon. This creature was nothing like the pretty, malevolent toy that Llanwith bore on his dagger, but was a creature of such might that it could have sprung from the iron veins of the mountains themselves. The beast’s head and body formed a pommel that was scaled so that the grip was firm, with the snarling mouth of the dragon at the very end of the shaft. Its half-furled wings curved backwards and offered protective wings of metal for the hand that held it. The dragon’s tail curled forward in a strange spiral to enter the dragon’s mouth at the end of the pommel. The owner’s hand was cradled in a fist of iron.

Fish skin was bound around the dragon’s body on the hilt, providing a cushion for the owner’s hand. The gaping jaws and ridged brow bone of the snarling head formed nasty, jagged teeth on the pommel, perfect for striking at close range. The hilt of the knife mimicked the scales of the great dragon beast, creating a dagger that was strange, alien and wonderful.

Bregan had made a weapon quite unlike the straight-handled Roman short swords, or even the longer Celtic blades that possessed such beautiful twining decoration. Here was a blade that was neither sword nor dagger, one constructed both to kill and to protect, so that its owner need not fear that a sudden slash from an enemy would sever his fingers or shake his grip. This dagger was a miracle of function and beauty.

Artorex was stunned and his jaw dropped, causing Gallia to accuse him of looking like one of her brother’s fish.

‘I refused several potential husbands because they looked like cods,’ she laughed, but her eyes were drawn to the strange, deadly weapon.

‘I’ve never seen such a knife,’ Artorex marvelled. ‘See? The dragon’s wings protect my knuckles, while the tail protects my palm and fingers. Bregan has created a masterpiece.’

‘You deserve it,’ Gallia insisted loyally.

‘No,’ Artorex murmured. ‘I’ve no totem, least of all the dragon. Men such as Prince Llanwith deserve the protection of this beast, but who am I to carry the Winged Worm of the Celtic Kings?’

‘You’re my husband. You’re heroic and noble, and I’ll not listen to your silliness. Do your hear, Licia? Your father pretends that he’s just like other men - the dolt! We know, don’t we, my little dragonlet.’

When Targo was shown the weapon for the first time, he stroked it with his calloused fingers as if it were the body of a woman.

‘Bregan has laboured over this weapon for more than a year. He pondered the design for many a day, searching for a totem that would do you justice. He chose the dragon, at last, because the Roman legions carried it, and also because it is a creature born in fire. He has made you a weapon the like of which I have never seen, a counterbalance to the sword. It is without the reach, but it is deadly as it waits for an opening. Truly, I envy you this gift.’

The men of the villa marvelled at the design of the dragon knife and many men hefted it to feel its wonderful balance. Bregan’s gift drew many other warriors to his forge in the years that followed, but no weapon he designed ever matched the odd beauty of this simple iron knife. Later, Artorex would be given weapons with pommels of gold, silver and electrum and set with gems of great worth, but Bregan’s dragon of iron would never leave his side.

So is the stuff of legends made.

Still, Artorex’s idyll of happiness endured. When another spring came, full of promise, his house was finished and the small family made their way to their new home. Otherwise, little changed at the Villa Poppinidii. Gallia had larger duties in her daily life, but she still spent her free time with Julanna and occasionally Gallinus sent money, so her small home filled with the household items that all women hold dear.

By the time the seasons changed and winter had come again, Gallia was pregnant once more and Artorex believed his waking dream would last forever.

Then the three travellers returned, after the passage of three long years, and with them came the time for Artorex to move towards his destiny at last.

CHAPTER X

 

The solstice was at hand, and the days were grey and grim when the three travellers next visited the Villa Poppinidii. It had been a harsh winter thus far, and the earth had been frozen into iron, while the nights were made fearful by the howling of wolves. Half a dozen hides were stretched and freezing on the fence of the horse paddock, and Gallia was stitching a collar of wolf fur for Artorex’s woollen cloak. In a dim afternoon, the horsemen rode up the treacherous, icy path to the villa.

Their baggage, such as they carried on their weary horses, was placed in their usual rooms by the servants of the villa, while the three men were led to the baths to wash away the rigours of their cold journey.

Then, at the customary welcome feast, Artorex met his patrons once again.

Myrddion clasped his arm in a display of friendship between equals and Artorex was surprised to see how lightly the eleven years since they had first met rested on the ascetic face of the scholar. Myrddion’s skin was unlined and was as smooth as the complexion of a youth, but the white streak in his hair was wider now, almost shocking in its silver contrast with the black hair that still fell in a thick mane to his shoulder blades.

Luka, on the other hand, had aged considerably since Artorex last bade him farewell. His plaits were threaded with white and he was heavily bearded. Most noticeable, beside a torc of massy gold around his throat, was a band of that same ruddy metal worn across his forehead. Power and responsibility had settled into the deep creases that ran from each nostril to the corner of his mouth, and extra flesh now padded his lithe frame with the trappings of authority.

As for the ever-silent Llanwith pen Bryn, the seasons had taken their toll on him also. His hair was thinning, even as his beard was now beginning to curl upon his breast. A great disc of the eternal serpent devouring its tail held his cloak at the shoulder, and heavy golden arm rings adorned each wrist.

The three men wore their might like great cloaks, so that Artorex wondered how he had ever dared to speak aloud in the presence of these noble leaders.

‘What news from the east?’ Ector asked, as was his custom each time the travellers arrived at the villa. The three guests looked grave and, as was usual, it was Myrddion who bore the weight of imparting unwelcome news.

‘The Saxons advance daily, swelled by more and more shiploads of warriors, so that even Londinium will fall if Uther doesn’t find a way to slow their march.’

Ector was shocked. Londinium was the greatest of the Romanized Celtic cities and the centre of Britain’s commerce. Such news could not be immediately absorbed, least of all believed.