The Bloody Cup (9 page)

Gawayne’s breath caught in his throat and his easy, seductive compliments were immediately forgotten.

The prince’s day passed in a waking dream as Lady Miryll strolled with him through the gardens and whiled away the afternoon with stories designed to amuse her visitor. Before he was aware that the light was fading, evening came with a gentle reminder that they should return to the villa to bathe and dress for the evening meal.

Galahad was uncharacteristically silent when Gawayne joined him in their room, and the prince had to coax his son into speech. The young man had spent the day amongst the shelves of the scriptorium, looking through dusty rolls of fine vellum and Egyptian parchment.

‘Father, there’s a large collection of pottery jars stored here, all very ancient, to judge by the dirt and dust that covers them. I found documents that were rotten and still others that were brittle with age. I couldn’t understand the language, but I found notes written by Lady Miryll’s father that speak of an ancient relic that has been hidden here for safekeeping.’

Gawayne was surprised to see his son’s excitement, for the young man rarely expressed enthusiasm for anything but his god.

‘That may be so,’ Gawayne said slowly. ‘Miryll spoke to me of some treasure that was supposed to have been hidden in the tower.’

Galahad was silenced for a moment, before rushing back into speech.

‘I believe the scrolls may have been written in Aramaic. I’m only guessing, but the notes written by Rufus refer to the original builder of the tower as having spoken in that heathen tongue. The name, Josephus, also suggests that he was of that cursed race - a Jew.’ He gazed piercingly at his father. ‘Can you imagine the wealth of knowledge stored here?’ he asked in awe. ‘It must become the property of the Church.’

‘The Church! The bleeding Church! Don’t you think of anything else?’

‘Not often, Father. Except, of course, of my duty to you.’

As Galahad paced about the room, Gawayne reflected that his son had at least found something on the island that captured his interest.

‘Salinae Minor is neither a fair nor a healthy place, Father,’ Galahad added stiffly. ‘I can smell the decay that pervades this villa and lies under the scent of the perfumes.’

Gawayne dismissed his son’s warning with frank incredulity. ‘Really, Galahad! All I can smell here is good cooking and cleanliness. Surely, Salinae Minor and its tiled floors make an exquisite change from the rushes thrown over flagging stone, the odour of your grandfather’s hounds and the odd old fish head that stinks up Lot’s hall. Grow up, boy, so we can enjoy this brief sojourn while we can.’

Galahad couldn’t deny that Lot’s house was lice-ridden and dirty, especially during winter, so he retreated into a sulk.

‘I am certain there’s a relic here in this villa, Father. I believe it’s a holy object and I do not trust the hands that protect it.’

‘Well, whatever it was, it’s long gone!’ Gawayne turned away. He was accustomed to Galahad’s odd obsessions and was impatient with the prejudices that so easily blinded his son.

That evening, Gawayne drank freely. The wines were sweetened with honey and were liberally poured during the meal. Afterwards, he had little recollection of the stumbled journey to the top of the tower and even less of the intense sex that took place on a pile of furs in the very centre of that looming, circular space. As he grunted and moaned over Miryll’s sweet young flesh, he imagined he heard the sounds of chanting in a strange tongue, but his mind was muddled by the needs of his body and the heady perfume of the moist loins below him. Puzzlingly, he found his erection remained painfully and stubbornly unsatisfied, no matter how often he spent himself inside the woman beneath him.

Eventually, he found himself being led from the tower on trembling legs and taken to the luxury of Miryll’s soft bed. When his body permitted him to sink into an exhausted sleep, he dreamed of women who wound white arms around him and drove him painfully with the whips of their desire.

When he reluctantly left the embrace of sleep, he looked at Miryll lying beside him, tousled and still endearingly beautiful. He scowled at the awkwardness his lust had caused. The girl had been virginal! This much his sluggish brain remembered. Well, I can’t marry her! She knows I have a wife over the Wall, Gawayne thought gratefully. So there shouldn’t be any tears. But she’ll want something - women always do!

To punctuate his thoughts with some form of action, Gawayne planted a perfunctory kiss on the dishevelled black hair that fanned out over the pillow.

Miryll opened sleepy eyes and watched the naked Gawayne climb from her sleeping couch. She stared at the softened belly and the sagging neck of her ageing lover but, other than a small grimace of distaste, she said nothing. Her eyes were flat and enigmatic as she stretched like a sleek kitten.

‘I imagine you’ll be eager to depart for Cadbury, Prince Gawayne.’ She smiled perfunctorily up at her guest. ‘You must forgive me if I’m still abed when you’re ready to depart. I’ve asked Gronw to oversee your passage back to the river bank.’

Then Miryll stretched once more, folded her long, narrow hands under her pillow and went back to sleep with the ease of a small child.

Gawayne had expected tears, arguments and angry demands from a forsaken young lover. He had been braced to cajole and to flatter, so his abrupt dismissal was both surprising and deflating. The prince had little option but to tiptoe back to his room, leaving Miryll to her careless slumbers. Fortunately, Galahad was still asleep.

Gawayne felt manipulated and used. Ignoring the obvious truth that he had left a hundred women over the years with as little affection as Miryll was now displaying towards him, Gawayne indulged in a middle-aged sulk that lasted through a cursory meal, a silent journey from the island and the recovery of their mounts and provisions.

Galahad pursed his flawless, chiselled lips in annoyance when his father swore vilely after dropping a pannier on one foot.

‘I trust you slept well last night, Father?’

Gawayne grunted in reply.

‘You didn’t take your rest in our quarters,’ Galahad continued. ‘I hope Lady Miryll was worth the effort.’

‘What would you know, boy? And I don’t wish to speak of Salinae Minor any further. I’d lief pretend the place doesn’t exist.’

Galahad had the impudence to laugh at his father’s discomfort. ‘Was the lady unappreciative of your charms? Could the great Gawayne be growing old?’

Gawayne clouted his son as if he was till a fractious boy. Twin spots of colour mounted on Galahad’s cheeks and his eyes took on a distinctly unchristian glint of anger.

‘Shut your mouth, laddie, and treat your father with some respect. How I spend my nights are my business, not yours.’

Galahad refused to retaliate, but he skewered his father with one last observation that would trouble Gawayne for the rest of their journey.

‘If she could have persuaded me to break my vows, Father, the woman would have taken me. Have you considered why she wanted one of us in her bed, and why we are so summarily dismissed when she has achieved her goal? The lady has a purpose other than your charms.’

Gawayne leapt carelessly on to his mount in an attempt to convey a nonchalance he did not feel. Something old and musty stirred below the splendour of Salinae Minor, and Galahad had recognized it in Miryll’s eyes.

‘You’re an infernal irritant, Galahad, far worse than any black-robed priest,’ Gawayne snapped. ‘In fact, you’re almost as infuriating as Morgan, your great-aunt.’ His gaze met his son’s amused, hazel eyes as their horses moved closer together. ‘But in this case, I’m afraid you could be right.’

CHAPTER IV

KIN, LOVERS AND SUNDRY OTHER ENEMIES

A southerner with dark braids and shifty eyes slid into the least reputable alehouse in Deva, the Blue Hag, and approached a simple slab of sawn logs that served as a makeshift bar against the far wall. His eyes darted nervously around the room and he wiped sweaty palms down his stained woollen shirt.

Inside the shoddy room, which was thick with fire smoke, the smell of some kind of fish-head soup and men in various stages of drunkenness, the stranger stood out simply because he reeked of fear.

‘I’m looking for Octa, the owner of this shit heap,’ he demanded of a shepherd who was hunched over a wooden bowl of greasy soup. The man shook off the stranger’s hand.

‘Get your paws off me’, he snarled. ‘Octa’s over there by the pot.’ He pointed a grime-stained finger at a man ladling out bowls of soup and pottery jugs of beer to his customers.

The stranger nodded, and then slithered his way through the press of men until he reached the innkeeper.

‘A man called Pebr comes here from time to time,’ the stranger began.

The innkeeper allowed his gaze to slide away from his ladle and focus on the newcomer.

‘A one-eyed man,’ the stranger added.

‘Perhaps he does, and perhaps he doesn’t. Who’s asking?’

‘It’s none of your business,’ the stranger rasped. ‘Just tell him that I’m in Deva and I have his cup. The message is that it’s begun. Have you got that? It’s begun. I’ll be here again in three days to see if there’s an answer from Pebr.’

The innkeeper filled another bowl and slapped it on to the rough-sawn bench. Some of the oily grey sludge splashed on to the stranger’s hand.

‘Do you understand?’ the stranger repeated, sucking the greasy mess off his fingers.

‘Aye. You’ve got his sodding cup. As if I care! It’s sodding begun - whatever it is you’re talking about. It’s in three days, if you say so.’

The stranger dropped a few worn coins into the smear of soup on the planks. ‘That’s for your trouble.’

Then he disappeared into the press of men packed into the Blue Hag.

‘Sodding southerner!’ the innkeeper cursed, but he picked up the coins and reflectively licked them clean.

Had the stranger chosen to check behind him, he would have seen a tall shadow leave a moment or two behind his retreating back. Had he been listening carefully, he would have heard deft feet slide into step behind him as the moon disappeared behind a bank of cloud.

An iron-strong arm suddenly encircled him from behind and gripped his throat. A knife blade ended any sound he might have made, as it sliced through his larynx. Carefully avoiding the sudden jet of arterial blood, the one-eyed man let the stranger’s jerking body drop into the spreading puddle of his lifeblood.

The last thing the stranger felt was Pebr’s boot as it caved in his ribs in silent contempt. As the stranger’s hearing and sight failed, the one-eyed man was already walking away.

‘Men who use my name never speak another word’, Pebr One-Eye muttered softly.

Inside the alehouse, Octa wiped his sweating brow and reflected on the dangers of the world. But he said nothing. Silence ensured that wise men kept breathing.

Cadbury stirred like a hornets’ nest as winter deepened and each day welcomed some new visitors of note for the population to gawk at. Balyn and Balan had initially been wonders but, now, within hours of each other, two more sets of visitors had ridden up the spiral fortification that led to Cadbury Tor, with an accompanying panoply of personal guards and packhorses.

Modred ap Cynwael had been the first to arrive. The citizens of Cadbury were cosmopolitan and accustomed to visits by envoys from the continent but, even in such exalted and exotic company as visitors from Gaul and Spain, Modred stood out.

Like all the scions of King Luka of the Brigante, Modred was lithe, dark and finely shaped. Yet, despite his natural comeliness, the man projected a sense of narrowness and crookedness. Perhaps such impressions were tricks of the light, for Modred’s limbs were clean and robust, if a little too thin for military beauty. He rode his richly caparisoned horse without any need for the cruel mouth restraints favoured by so many lords. Like the fabled centaur, his body rose smoothly from the trunk of his mount, his legs hidden by a capacious woollen cloak clasped at the throat with a golden boar’s head. White-haired grandfathers shivered at the sight of the golden emblem, as if the bad days of Gorlois and Uther Pendragon had returned.

Modred dropped his reins and slid from the back of his horse, ignoring the stable boy who ran to lift the dangling leathers from the mud.

He bounded up the steps leading to Artor’s hall and pushed open the doors unceremoniously, brushing Percivale to one side as if the king’s bodyguard was invisible. With Gareth and Percivale close behind him, Modred strode jauntily towards the twin thrones.

Artor rose from his seat.

‘Who are you to break the peace of the High King’s house?’ Artor asked the question courteously, but those warriors present could have warned Modred that the king’s eyes were as cold as the gales of winter.

Odin was the first to move. He drew his battleaxe and stepped forward. The remainder of Artor’s personal guard loosened their weapons in their sheaths and Percivale drew his sword with a sinister little hiss.

‘Why, uncle, such a welcome!’ Modred’s eyes gleamed with intelligence and laughter. ‘If your servants want my weapons, they only have to ask.’

The young man, no older than the twins and, in his own way, as comely as Balyn and Balan, ostentatiously held his arms away from his body while Gareth and Percivale thoroughly and roughly disarmed him. As Percivale removed a murderous, narrow blade from Modred’s boot, the King of the Brigante laughed sardonically.

‘Take care of my little plaything, boy. It was a personal gift from my mother.’

Percivale flushed to the roots of his russet hair in embarrassment, while Artor’s brows knitted in irritation at the twin insults to his bodyguard’s honour and to his own position as High King of the Britons. The emblem of Morgause on the blade, with its entwined serpents, was clear demonstration of where Modred’s allegiances lay - with himself.

‘Be careful, good Percivale.’ Artor smiled with a sweet insincerity that was as polished as Modred’s arrogance. ‘My sister could quite readily have poisoned the blade.’ Artor’s chill smile remained fixed on his nephew. ‘Royal, or not, Luka’s grandson or not, you’ll not carry arms within the precincts of the High King’s hall. Nor have you earned the right to insult lords such as Percivale and Gareth who have far higher stature in this land than you do. You’ll curb that sharp tongue that has been the birth gift of your mother, else men here may be tempted to call you to task as a deedless bastard who lacks honour.’