M. K. Hume [King Arthur Trilogy 04] The Last Dragon (9 page)

But Mark had been weakened by the effects of starvation, and Deinol ap Delwyn’s guard had no difficulty in intercepting him. A tall, red-haired warrior knocked Mark flat on his back while another warrior drew his sword and pressed it against the traitor’s corded neck.

‘Kill me then!’ Mark crowed, with a voice as high as the cry of rooks in a distant wood. ‘Prove how brave you are by killing an unarmed man,’ and he pressed his throat against the sword point, forcing the warrior to lean away.

‘No!’ Deinol ap Delwyn ordered with unusual authority, for he was normally a passive and friendly young man. ‘Too much Deceangli honour has been lost because of you, Mark. I’ll not stain the consciences of good warriors with the guilt of your death, even if you sink those claws into my eyes. You disgust me.’

‘Hold him down,’ Bran ordered. ‘He refuses to speak for himself in a rational manner, so I ask the kings to pass judgement upon him.’

‘This is no court,’ Mark snarled, rising shakily to his feet and dragging his blanket around his lean flanks. ‘I’ve sat among you time after time and listened to you whisper treasons against Artor when you disagreed with his orders. You are hypocrites!’

Several kings looked away from his mad black eyes.

‘None of you has the right to judge me. Given my choices, you’d have betrayed Artor for gold and land as readily as I did. You don’t have the right.’ The last words were howled almost maniacally, and spittle flew from his toothless, rotten gums.

‘
We
have the right.’

A stern voice fell into the shocked stillness with the grating violence of a sword dragged along a metal breastplate. ‘The citizens of Deva who were betrayed by you and your hell-spawn master have the right to call you to account and pass judgement on you.’

The man who spoke had stood at the back of the hall with a group of other men whose grave faces, half-healed wounds, amputations and plain clothing marked them as both ordinary citizens and victims.

‘I am Causus Gallio, often referred to as the Gaul. My father was a member of the council of Deva, but in his youth he had served with the Romans in Gaul under Flavius Aetius. He retired to Deva as a trader in wool and lead, so I was born a Briton, and my children were also born on this hallowed soil. For generations, Deva has served as a sanctuary for all natives of these islands and as a conduit for the wealth that came from the new tribal traders of the Middle Sea. The Roman Empire may be dead, but Deva presented a sense of order and honour in an uncertain world. My wife is a Brigante woman, or she was until the Picts raped her to death in the fall of Deva. My father died at the city gates with the other members of Deva’s council as they attempted to parlay with you and your evil master. They were unarmed. They were killed where they stood, like felons rather than true Britons. I claim the right to judge you and to be your executioner, as do my fellow citizens, those who have suffered and bled because of your greed.’

‘I played no part in Deva’s destruction,’ Mark protested, as the men with Causus strode, limped and hobbled to the centre of the hall. But the words came out as a whine rather than an accusation. ‘Modred chose to send a message to Artor which told the High King that the old ways were gone and finished. You were his victims, not mine.’

‘But you said nothing to Modred that could have saved us,’ roared an old-young man with wild eyes and a crazed expression. His face had a red scar that ran from his right eyebrow across his nose to his jaw, while his arm had a wrapped stump where his forearm and hand had once been. ‘I am Jacobus ap Lorweth, and my kin are both Roman and Deceangli. My mother was born within spitting distance of your accursed hall, Mark, and she was killed in her own house while surrounded by her grandchildren. Why did you permit the Picts to kill children, you traitorous bastard? Why did you turn your face away from your own people?’

‘You have the right, citizens of Deva, to demand reparation from all of the Deceangli nobles assembled here.’ Bran’s voice was hard, for he had found it difficult to hear the stories of these two men and learn that they were true Britons who had been irreparably wronged by Modred and Mark.

‘I have been appointed as the new magistrate of Deva since the old was executed by Modred,’ Causus said slowly. He gathered his gravitas around his stocky form as if he were donning an invisible cloak. ‘We have decided already that we will not call for judgement on anyone but Mark, a man who had the power to save our people, but chose to remain silent and comply with the orders issued by Modred. Perhaps the Matricide would have stayed his hand had Mark insisted. Perhaps it is Mark who should take the ultimate responsibility for the actions of the traitors.’

‘Then you may announce your judgement,’ Gawayne called from the Otadini camp. ‘It is clear to me that you are owed a large portion of the blood price paid by Mark’s and Modred’s tribes, and that this traitor should be judged by the people of Deva.’

Voices rose in vociferous agreement. Inured to the predictable moral weakness of the kings, Bran smiled sardonically at their eagerness to pass on the unpleasant task of judgement to other shoulders. He was aware that many of them must be feeling a twinge of guilt at Deva’s fate, for Artor was the only ruler who had made any attempt to save the city.

The men of Deva conferred briefly, and then Causus Gallio faced the assembly.

‘Then we demand the body and soul of this creature. He would welcome death as a release, so we decree that he shall live. He dreads any return to the cells of Deva, so we decree that he shall rot there. I hope that he will remember the dead of our city until his last breath, and I pray that his victims visit him during the long nights and cluster around him until he howls to his gods for release. Even then, we will keep his husk alive to suffer as we have suffered. As my father often said:
So let it be written: so let it be done
.’

Mark began to shriek in a voice far more powerful than his ruined body should have permitted. As he was dragged away, he begged for a clean death, beating at the breastplates of his guards with ineffectual fists. When this tactic failed, he swore vile insults in a futile attempt to goad them into striking him down and killing him. The kings sat like stone, their faces turned away from Mark’s shame, until the sounds of his despair faded and stillness returned to King Artor’s hall.

Then, with a great beating of wings and a cry of exultation, the owl took to the air, swooped low over the heads of the assembled lords, and with unnatural speed swept upwards through the burned rafters until it disappeared into the sun-drenched daylight.

‘The goddess has received her sacrifice and has departed,’ Taliesin murmured, and ran his fingers over his harp strings with a sound identical to the beating of unseen wings.

The judgement of Mark, former king of the Deceangli tribe, had been completed. It was time now to begin the serious discussion of securing the future of tribal Britain.

CHAPTER III

IDYLL

A single sparrow should fly swiftly into the hall, and coming in at one door, instantly fly out through another. In that time in which it is indoors it is indeed not touched by the fury of the winter, but yet, this smallest space of calmness being passed almost in a flash, from Winter going into Winter again, it is lost to your eyes.

The Venerable Bede,
Ecclesiastical History of the English People

‘Mother! Look!’

The shrill piping of pleasure came from high in an ancient oak, and for one short moment Elayne felt a thrill of fear for her wayward eldest son. He had climbed far too high for a boy of seven, and she could barely make out his wildly curling russet hair among the autumn leaves of the canopy.

Seven years! Such a long time, yet no day passed without a tangible memory of the man who had fathered her first child. As she stroked the weathered bark of the venerable oak, she was reminded of the mental strength of the last High King of the Britons. He had been strong, firm and age seared, like a tree that has seen every vicissitude of man: fire, the axe, and the destructive waste of the sword. But the heart of the man, like the tree, was still sound and growing. Time had taken away his keen eyesight and the strength of his arms, but nothing could dim the intelligence and the sympathy in his clear grey eyes.

How she missed their talks, those long afternoons when they had walked through the echoing halls of Cadbury. Artor had been the only man who had ever valued her talent for detecting guile and lies, who understood her as a person and not as a potential mother who could add to the glory of her tribe. Had he been younger, would they have cleaved to each other, thigh to thigh and breast to breast? But such thoughts were disloyal, unworthy and pointless, for Artor had gone into the great darkness while she was the wife of his most loyal vassal, Bedwyr of Arden. A single night, time out of time, when king and lady had been threatened by the coldness of death, had been all that fate had permitted. Yet Fortuna, or God, had ordained that one last gift should be proffered to a man who had given away everything of personal value. Before he died, he had known that he had fathered a son.

‘Mother? You’re not watching!’ a petulant voice called out from the crown of the tree. ‘Look up here, Mother! The world is quite different from upside down.’

Her wayward son was laughing as he swung on the wind, his knees hooked over a sturdy branch so that his long curling hair hung down below his merry, fearless face. With her heart in her mouth, Elayne tried not to reveal her panic. ‘Come down, Arthur! At once! Your cousin Ector will soon be here with his betrothed. What will they think if they find you abed with broken limbs because you were showing off in a tree? You’re not a little boy any longer.’

Arthur swung upward and gripped the branch with two dirty, grass-stained hands that were large for a boy of his age. As agile as an eel, or the otters that frolicked in the rivers where the pools were deep and leaf dappled, the boy scrambled down the tree, his small face screwed up with uneasiness.

‘You won’t tell Ector, will you, Mother? He’d laugh at me for playing like a baby.’ Arthur was so distressed that he slipped as he dropped from the lowest branch and a twiglet scored his forearm from elbow to wrist.

Although she was heavy with child, Elayne swung his strong, growing body into a warm embrace. He squirmed with embarrassment under her caresses, but nevertheless permitted his mother to wipe away the line of blood from his arm before kissing his cheek and releasing him.

‘Your nurse is waiting, Arthur, and she will be cross if she lacks the time to bathe and dress you for Ector’s visit. What will Ector’s beloved think if you look like a beggar or an urchin, with leaves in your hair and your hands as dirty as the paws of a farmer’s boy? Old Caitlin will be shamed before her king.’ Although her tone of voice was mock-serious, the boy remained sunny tempered while Lady Elayne plucked a stray dried leaf from his curls and planted a kiss on his broad forehead.

‘Besides,’ she said with a secretive smile. ‘We have a very special visitor coming with Ector on this occasion. Taliesin mentioned him when he visited us last winter, and you might have heard tales of his exploits. Then again, you may not know of him, because boys are notoriously bored by stories of old men.’

The lad looked closely at his mother with a narrow, measuring gaze that almost stopped her heart. Artor had examined faces just so, carefully and coldly, and she was swept back to another time and place, when she had been in great peril but had become gloriously and deliriously alive.

At such times, Elayne felt shame at the vividness of her memories. Here, in the Forest of Arden, they were untroubled by the world outside its borders. She was able to forget the first year of her marriage, the peril of Bedwyr’s journey into the north with Percivale and Galahad, and the vicious hatred of Queen Wenhaver that had made her sojourn in Cadbury so dangerous. But the scent of the wind on icy mornings, the cry of a hunting hawk high above the trees, or even the smell of burning logs in the depths of winter, could speed her back to that other time, and that other Elayne, who had yet to learn the taste of womanly tears.