M. K. Hume [King Arthur Trilogy 04] The Last Dragon (18 page)

‘Not really, masters. I was well fed, and the monks found that I had some intelligence, so they taught me to read and write. I laboured over my letters for the whole ten years, but I was rarely beaten and I found comfort in the crude stone and wooden sculptures of Jesus and the saints. I realise now that I was happy then.’

‘Yet you left,’ Arthur piped up, his childish voice causing Lorcan to raise his mobile eyebrows in surprise at the boy’s impudence.

‘Yes, lad, I did. I left with my master and a delegation that had been invited to travel to Tolosa, or Tolouse, where churchmen from many countries had gathered to shape the rules of the Holy Roman Church in the west. The Merovingian kings ruled their Frankish lands in splendour, but Tolosa belonged to the Visigoths. It was where I first saw the Pope, although as a minor cleric my sole task was to copy out my master’s speeches and the long arguments over church doctrine.’

The three lords remained silent. In truth, they were stunned that their simple fishing expedition had caught such a prize as this man. And in the small town of Letocetum, of all places!

‘Apparently my skills in copying Latin were superior to most of my peers’, or so I was told when a church lord, a cardinal from Rome, demanded my services. The monks of my order were very flattered that a pupil of theirs was chosen for preferment, so I was handed over like a trifle or a gift that would win influence for my master with the church hierarchy. I was excited to see Rome, the place where Holy Peter died and the martyrs had perished for the glory of the faith. I was as a child among those wondrous souls.’

‘You sound bitter, Lorcan, yet the places you have seen are remarkable, considering your age,’ Gawayne said. ‘Of all the men I have ever known, only Myrddion Merlinus travelled more widely than you, and he was a healer, so more doors opened to him than to other men.’

‘Yes, I saw Rome in all her filthy decay. I met great men and evil men before I passed my seventeenth birthday, and I was too young to see that vice can flourish in the most holy of places. Ultimately, I ran away after two years and hid myself in Monza, north of Milan, where great mountains loom over the landscape and are perpetually shrouded in snow. I worked as a field servant while my hair grew out, and then I married a woman and bought fields of my own with coin I earned through hard labour. I was happy with my beautiful wife and my two babes for several years, but the wheel turned and war came to the north once again. Old Italia is racked with constant warfare. Petty kings and barons appropriate any land they can steal and, in turn, have it snatched away from them.’

‘Did you lose your lands, Lorcan?’ Arthur asked softly, his face shadowy with sympathy. Lorcan shrugged, but his shoulders hunched as if from a remembered wound.

‘Aye, I lost everything in one bloody night. My wife, my little ones . . . all dead in the ashes of our house. The raiders thought I was dead too.’ Lorcan grinned like a wolf and his canines seemed very white and sharp in his dark face.

‘Over the next four years, I found every one of them. I killed them all – seventeen of the bastard sons of whores. I knew nothing of war and death when I started, but like my talent for languages, I found I had a gift for violence too. Later, I became a mercenary and took red gold to fight for any side that paid in coin. Sometimes I’d change sides, and later return to my original employers. And when my lust for revenge was finally satiated I realised I had become exactly what I hated most, and my conscience afflicted me with a wound that wouldn’t heal.

‘Once again, God showed me his mercy and I was taken in by a priest who was neither particularly good nor very kind. He had a wife and children, you see, a secret family contrary to all the rules of the church. He helped me to become sane enough to pass for a man rather than a monster. Although I had broken my vows, some ties cannot be forgotten and I donned my cassock again. He shaved my head into the tonsure and I was born again as Father Padraig, an Irish priest far from home on a pilgrimage to the holy places.’

‘Why didn’t you go back to your home?’ Arthur asked. The older men shifted on their stools, bemused by Lorcan’s abbreviated tale. He had seemed to speak honestly, but much of his story had been left unsaid. And perhaps it was better so.

‘Why, young Arthur, I did go home. The monastery hadn’t changed, but I didn’t go inside. I couldn’t bear to hear the name of Brother Lawrence, you see. The forge was still in the village, and one of my brothers had become the blacksmith when my father and four of my brothers died from the coughing disease two years earlier. My village was stranger to me than Tolouse, Rome or Monza had been. I learned the sad truth that we can never go back to the places of our childhood. We cannot start again.’

‘So here you are, an unwilling man of the cloth in a land racked by fear of the barbarians,’ Gawayne said reflectively, his chin resting on one hand and his eyes keenly assessing Lorcan for any sign of prevarication.

‘Yes, here I am. Sometimes I drink too much when I remember my children, but I always try to recapture how I felt in the monastery when I thought I had a future and an ideal to follow. So far, I’ve only learned that I’m still a fool.’

So that’s the reason for his aggression and his wildness, Bedwyr thought. He’s a man who has lost everything and given himself over to hatred – just as I did. But there was no Artor to save Lorcan. I think I understand him now, he decided, and coughed to cover a lump that had suddenly appeared in his throat.

‘If you are of a mind to agree,’ he said, ‘I am prepared to offer you employment, the chance to preach your religion and a comfortable refuge for as long as you choose to remain in Arden Forest. In return, I ask that you christen my daughter and care for the spiritual needs of my wife and any others who might convert to your way of life. Such an arrangement would be of great value to me at this time.’

Lorcan nodded. He could see the appeal of a respite from the tribulations of travel by accepting a winter in Arden Forest, so he readily agreed.

‘But I want more of you. If I believed in providence, then I would say that Fortuna had spun her wheel in my favour when King Gawayne’s warrior stole you out of Letocetum. My son, Arthur, needs a tutor. We have decided that he must learn to read and write Latin, and become proficient in geography and any of the other skills needed to make him an asset to my tribe. In return, I will pay gold for your services. By the time your task is finished, you will have sufficient funds to travel anywhere you choose without fear of having to beg for your supper.’

Lorcan began to refuse, but common sense withered the words in his mouth. Bedwyr could tell that he was seriously considering the offer.

‘Please, Father Lorcan, I’m certain I would enjoy learning to read if you were to teach me.’ Arthur added his persuasion to the discussion. ‘It won’t be very much fun if my teacher is dull and boring, but I think it might be very interesting if I were to learn my letters from you.’

‘You think so, do you?’ Lorcan retorted ironically. ‘You’ll soon learn that I’m a hard taskmaster, with
very
high standards. After all, I have been to Rome, and that means you have a distinguished tutor to ensure you mind your manners.’

‘You’re teasing me,’ Arthur replied with a flash of temper. ‘I’m not a little boy, you know.’

‘I’ll give you my apologies, young Arthur, when you prove that to me.’ Lorcan turned to Bedwyr and bowed with a level of cynicism that caused the Master of Arden to cringe inwardly. ‘You have purchased yourself a tutor, Master Bedwyr. If you come to regret your decision, it will be no fault of mine.’

With that parting shot, Lorcan crushed a nut in his hard, callused hand. Bedwyr sent a servant to find suitable accommodation for his children’s new mentor, although he explained that Lorcan could build his own hut and church if he so wished. That night the first frost came, and Bedwyr wondered if Fortuna had sent him a gift that resembled a double-headed axe: the weapon was forged for both good and evil, depending on how you gripped the fish-skin haft.

The boy saw a fox treading carefully over the frozen ground of the forecourt, heading for the kitchens and the scraps that could be found in the rubbish pits beyond the orchard. Although Arthur’s window was narrow and high, some instinct warned the animal that it was being observed. It looked upwards with glittering eyes and its nose tasted the night wind for potential threats. For a moment, boy and fox seemed linked together by a thread of kinship, as strong as iron wire, and then the momentary communication was broken as the fox disappeared into a black puddle of shadow.

CHAPTER VI

COLD COMFORT

‘The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; and you may almost hear the beating of his wings.’

John Bright, speech in House of Commons, 1855

Like all children, Arthur discovered that the concept of schooling was more pleasurable in contemplation than in actuality. Father Lorcan, as he insisted on being addressed, decided that classes should begin as soon as the family had broken their fast. Ector had not yet returned from his quest, but once an arms master was hired the afternoons would be taken up with learning to use a variety of weapons more complex than Arthur’s sling and knife.

When Father Lorcan was introduced to Lady Elayne, those two very different persons found something of merit in each other, and Bedwyr was relieved that the priest was proving to be more affable than any earlier impressions could have predicted. Maeve was christened and the sterner name of Medb kept for occasions when she was naughty or fractious, and within a week Arthur felt as though he had been studying Latin forever.

‘If you don’t practise your letters, you’ll never learn how to write,’ Father Lorcan grunted crossly after Arthur admitted that he had failed to work with his chalk and slate as he had promised.

‘But I was tired,’ Arthur said, his face mulish and rebellious.

‘Do you plan to be a man whose word is good, or a creature whose word means no more than a puff of wind?’ Lorcan’s face was set in uncompromising lines.

‘But I . . .’

‘The answer must be one or the other.’ Lorcan’s voice was very cold, and Arthur felt his stomach lurch in response. All his teacher’s jesting manner had fled, leaving a chilly, disapproving sneer in its place.

‘I want to be a man whose word is iron,’ Arthur replied in a voice so small that Lorcan demanded he repeat his response.

‘Yet you break your word to me the very first time I ask for it,’ Lorcan retorted. Arthur scanned his face surreptitiously, but there was no softness there. ‘What do you have to say for yourself, young Arthur?’

Lorcan waited while the silence between them dragged out ominously.

‘I was wrong, so I’m sorry,’ Arthur muttered reluctantly.

‘Look at me when you admit fault, boy.’

Arthur’s eyes were mutinous and glitteringly cold, but he apologised once again. Lorcan suddenly laughed, and Arthur’s back stiffened in affront.

‘You’d like to send me to the devil, wouldn’t you? But this lesson will be important for the rest of your life, so I’m going to ensure you remember what I say. Your word is everything, Arthur, whether you give it in small things or in great matters of state. You must understand that there are no degrees of dishonour.’

‘But, Father Lorcan, surely it’s much worse to break your word to your king than to fail to practise your letters?’ Arthur looked just a little smug, believing that he had discovered an answer to Lorcan’s accusation that permitted him to retain some shreds of self-respect.

‘Ahah! So now you’re making judgements, are you? Any man who breaks his oath, no matter how trivial, is a man who is not to be trusted. Either your word is good, or it is not.’

‘I don’t understand, Father Lorcan. Truly, I don’t.’ Arthur was genuinely puzzled, and, knowing that even such a simple matter could be crucial to his development, Lorcan decided to take him to his father for arbitration.

Tutor and student approached Bedwyr as he discussed the last of the harvesting with his steward, a dour man whose rather shifty appearance was a trick of nature, for Budoc pen Gildas had a mind like an iron mantrap below his ferret-like features. As the noble visitors to Arden had cut deeply into Bedwyr’s reserves of winter food, the master was irritated by the interruption, but he managed to hide the greater part of his impatience. Budoc looked skyward with a slight smile on his narrow features, a grin that simply added to Arthur’s shame and his anger with his tutor.

Lorcan explained Arthur’s reasoning. ‘I have tried to explain that an oath given on a trivial matter is just as important as one that is offered in life-changing circumstances, but Arthur has not grasped the concept. Because I have been in the land of the Franks, I cannot think of a local example where trivial oath-breaking has led to greater sins, and I hope you can provide such an instance to aid his understanding.’

Bedwyr frowned in earnest now, and Budoc took a quick step backward to avoid overhearing the conversation. Arthur wished fervently that the earth would open up and swallow him, regretting that he had ever attempted to argue with his tutor. His eyes darted from Bedwyr’s brown eyes to Lorcan’s glittering black ones, but he found no comfort in either.

Bedwyr’s greying brows knitted together and the look he shot at his son was both disappointed and angry. Suddenly, the finer details of the harvest no longer seemed important, so he dismissed Budoc swiftly and turned his full attention to his foster-son. Under his direct gaze, Arthur’s eyes dropped and his sandals made little circles in the sod. The boy looked no older than his age, which Bedwyr found disconcerting and disappointing, because he had become accustomed to treating Arthur like a young man.

‘You’ve heard of the Matricide, haven’t you, Arthur?’ he began, choosing his words carefully.

The boy nodded and raised his eyes to meet Bedwyr’s direct stare. ‘Modred broke his oath to the High King,’ he answered. ‘And his actions eventually started the civil war.’

The Master of Arden searched for the perfect words to drive Lorcan’s message home. ‘I remember when Modred first came to Cadbury,’ he said at last. ‘He lied constantly, even in small matters. Later, regarding larger issues, he avoided committing his warriors to King Artor’s forces with one excuse after another, all of which were without any basis in truth. He was always eager to gossip and to twist circumstances to his advantage, but no one within the fortress believed a word he said and no one in Cadbury believed that he was a man of honour.’