Web of Deceit (60 page)
‘Make way!’ Myrddion shouted, his voice blown into rags by the gale. ‘Gorlois comes home to Tintagel, so make way!’
Uther scarcely paused at the garrison and raised his left fist in Gorlois’s customary salute. A part of Myrddion was amazed at how acutely Uther must have observed his Dumnonii rival, for the action was a perfect mimicry of the Boar’s salutations.
‘I am home,’ Uther croaked in a voice that was scarcely audible. ‘A Saxon nearly got me, but I’m hard to kill.’
The guards laughed at their master’s gallows humour and Uther rode on as his troop
clattered behind him, sawing at their horses’ bits to keep their heads up in the treacherous conditions. They rode into the sea mist, and were suddenly confronted by dizzying drops on either side of a narrow wooden bridge.
Uther didn’t hesitate. Fleet-foot knew his stable was near and that he would be fed sweet hay and clean water to reward him after the long ride. Given his head, and as eager as his rider, the stallion leapt away as Myrddion and Uther’s personal guard clattered behind. Hooves on the wooden planks of the bridge sounded hollowly, and one horse screamed shrilly as the whole structure shivered slightly in the gale. Then they were across and a steep, winding path led them upward, up and up – towards raw flint walls that towered above them until Myrddion felt dizzy and sick, and could only grip his horse’s mane for dear life with whitened knuckles.
A hastily opened gate welcomed them into a dark, narrow forecourt, and Tintagel was taken.
While the guard disposed of the few men protecting the lower gate with disciplined efficiency, Uther dismounted and tossed the reins of Gorlois’s horse to a boy who had come from the small stables, his eyes blurred with sleep. Myrddion watched the boy’s expression change to one of terror as he saw the two gatekeepers die in fountains of their own arterial blood.
‘Bar the gates and then follow me,’ Uther hissed at Ulfin. ‘Your men may have any women they find in the fortress, save only for the queen and her hell-born daughter. But tell them to be quiet about it, for any undue noise will rouse the garrison and we can do without an assault.’
‘Aye, lord,’ Ulfin grunted, and beckoned Botha to his side to relay his master’s orders. Out of unexpected and uncharacteristic sensitivity, Uther had capitalised on Ulfin’s unquestioning obedience, and
left his captain in a subordinate role that spared Botha from compromising his personal code. Myrddion grudgingly admitted that his treatment of Botha was one of the rare decencies in the High King’s behaviour.
Perhaps there’s hope for him after all, Myrddion thought. The healer trusted that the captain’s cool head would save as many lives in Tintagel as possible, so he took his satchel from his saddle and gripped the free hand of the stable boy who was still frozen with fright, although he clutched Fleet-foot’s reins with the other.
‘Listen to me, boy. Do you want to live? You do? Then obey me to the letter. Take the horses into the stables, and treat them as you would for your master. Stay with them, groom them, and feed them grain from your store, for they have travelled many long miles. But whatever you hear, do not leave the stables and you might survive the night. Do you understand?’
The youth stared up into Myrddion’s eyes and nodded dumbly. The healer handed over his own horse and gathered the reins of several others, until the stable lad began to function in his customary, comforting routine, although his face was ashen under the wind-torn moon. The mist that had disguised their approach had been blown away on this bare outcrop of stone, and they were surrounded by the thunder of crashing waves and howling winds below the inner wall and the citadel.
High king and healer surveyed legendary Tintagel. The fortress was small and primitive, and built of unmortared stone that was lined with a thick stucco of mud, dung and straw. Roughly circular in shape, with protruding additions that had grown randomly around a central tower, the fortress had an archaic set of thatched roofs over a framework of undressed oaken branches. Tintagel’s great age was clearly written in the primitive building methods that were stitched together with younger, more sophisticated rooms, built by the ancestors of King Gorlois.
Below the parapet of stone that
covered the flat top of the castle grounds, narrow paths snaked between knee-high grass blown flat and desiccated by the wind. The paths wound perilously around the sloping walls of the cliffs to small conical huts of stone that clung to the dizzying edges of the sheer drop to the waves below. Here the servants of the citadel lived, bred and died, generation upon generation, flowing back to the forgotten past when the tribe first crossed the Litus Saxonicum and defeated the blue-tattooed Picts. Tintagel had been ancient even then, and no man had set foot on her solid stones without the permission of her lord and master.
Until now.
Uther had disappeared, so Myrddion began the journey to the core of the labyrinthine fortress, remembering ancient legends of the Mother’s dwelling, another maze below the earth with a monster at its heart. Putting aside his superstitions, he climbed any stone stairs he came to, reasoning that Ygerne’s nest would be in the centre of the fortress at its highest point. Then, out of the claustrophobic silence of the winding corridors, he heard a woman wail in a shrill, unearthly crescendo of horror. Cursing, he followed the keening sound until, suddenly, it was cut off.
‘Where do you think you’re going, Merlinus?’ Ulfin whispered from behind the healer’s back. Myrddion felt the sharp point of a knife blade against his kidneys.
‘Do you plan to murder me from behind now that my usefulness is over? I promise you that if you send me to the Mother before my time, your days will be haunted by my unquiet spirit.’
‘I repeat, healer. Where are you going?’
‘I’m searching for Morgan before some idiot kills or rapes her. Uther Pendragon doesn’t need the whole Otadini tribe and their allies pouring over the wall with a thirst for his blood. Those mad northerners have very precise concepts of the duties owed to ravaged kinswomen.’
The knife was withdrawn
a fraction, and Myrddion began to check each of the four rooms running off a central set of worn stone steps that led to the highest point of the tower. The rooms were oddly shaped and very small and should have been cold and forbidding, for the walls were sealed with ancient mud to deflect stray breezes. Raw wooden shutters kept out the gusting, spiralling winds. However, the dun-coloured walls were mellowed to some extent by hanging fabrics of soft colours: rose, yellow-gold and verdant green reminded Myrddion of fields of rampant wild flowers. Perhaps Ygerne had woven these hangings with her own hands during the long years while she waited for her husband to return from his many battles. The threads were vegetable-dyed, so that the hangings shimmered and moved with a semblance of life that infused something plain and unadorned with subtle, changeable beauty, much like the colouring of the queen herself.
Respectfully, Myrddion closed each door carefully. Only two remained for his attention and the healer feared to push on the old, hand-polished wood of the first. He pressed his ear to the door instead, knowing that Uther would not welcome any interruption if he was in the room with Ygerne, yet terrified that the queen might be seriously injured, even dying. His bargain with the High King had not included violence to the person of King Gorlois’s wife.
There was no sound, only the loud beating of Myrddion’s frightened heart. Cautiously, he pushed open the door, which complained with a squeal of ancient metal straps. Conscious of Ulfin’s threatening presence at his back, Myrddion inched his way carefully into the darkened room.
Something brushed his arm with a sting of fire and Myrdion instinctively threw himself sideways. A dark shape flew at Ulfin, all claws and wild hair, wielding a small knife with such deadly intent that it almost caught the seasoned warrior in the eye. The blade skidded along his forehead
and the smaller figure stumbled. Too fast for Myrddion to intervene, Ulfin gripped the figure, twisted it in his arms and was about to break its neck when Myrddion’s wits returned.
‘Not for your life, Ulfin! It’s Morgan! Morgan, the queen’s daughter! Remember Uther’s orders.’
‘You bitch!’ Ulfin growled from the back of his throat as blood from a ragged slash across his forehead dripped into his eyes. ‘I’ll make you pay for that cut.’
Before Myrddion could stop him, the guardsman broke the hand that held the knife with a deliberate twist of the fragile bones.
‘Gods, you’re an idiot!’ Myrddion cursed as Ulfin pushed the shocked woman back into the room and threw her onto a narrow bed more suited to a servant than a princess. Myrddion had time to notice the cell-like, spartan nature of the room, which possessed little furniture except for a pair of clothes chests and a single stool. A small pottery jar filled with dried flowers rested on the thick stone sill of the shuttered window. It was the only sign of femininity that Myrddion had ever observed in the Dumnonii witch.
‘Let me see to Morgan’s hand, Ulfin. By all that’s holy, don’t make her suffer. Don’t bring the wrath of the Mother down on us.’
‘Get out, healer, unless you like to watch.’ Ulfin raised one hand to his forehead and wiped away the blood while his left hand pinned the struggling, silent woman on the bed. ‘The bitch has scarred me for life, so I’ll treat her like the whore she is. Get out, unless you want to share her.’
As Ulfin’s free hand was already busy stripping away his tunic and unlacing his leather breeches, Myrddion sobbed and backed away from the ugly scene. Once outside the room, he slid down to the icy floor and prayed to the Mother for those women in Tintagel who were being forced to suffer as the spoils of war. As he prayed, the screams in the last room began again, higher and higher, and the noise was infused
with such loss that Myrddion covered his ears and beat his head against the floor until his blood soaked into the old boards.
When the two rooms were finally silent, Myrddion was still unable to move. Images ran through his mind like thread on a spindle: bloody babies, bleeding feet, an old man in a huge bed covered with a white fur, a girl crucified over an open window, a woman with savage eyes and pointed teeth and, at the end of a long parade of horrors, a sword with a dragon on the hilt. It leaked blood from one end of the metal to the other in a thick, viscous stream.
Just when he thought that he could bear no more, Myrddion felt a touch inside his mind that was as gentle as a Judas kiss. ‘You’ve done what had to be done, good son of my heart. As your reward, you will suffer my dreams no longer. Rise up now, for my daughters will need your ministrations.’
The voice was neither male nor female, and Myrddion wondered why the whole fortress was not awakened by the androgynous thunder of it.
‘So this is the voice of the Mother – or God – or
something
. Or, perhaps, I’ve gone mad.’
Both rooms were still, not with healing sleep or peace, but as if the gale outside had left this spike of stone at the very centre of a greater, cataclysmic whirlwind. Myrddion sat against the wall and waited. His time had come at last.
Oderint dum metuant.
[Let them hate, so long as they fear.]
Accius Lucius,
Atreus
When Ulfin finally stalked
out of Morgan’s room, Myrddion’s head had sunk upon his bent knees in exhaustion and he almost slept. Ulfin kicked him viciously on the thigh.
‘She’s all yours, if you want her. The bitch is as cold as the winds that blow from the Western Isles.’
Myrddion clambered painfully to his feet as Ulfin swaggered away, fastening his heavy leather body armour as he went. ‘Watch your back, Ulfin, for I swear that you’ll die in the most grotesque way you can imagine. Nor will you recognise the blade when it comes after you.’
Ulfin turned slowly and grinned nastily at the healer. Morgan’s knife wound had ceased to bleed but the edges of the skin were ragged and would scar badly. Let him wear her mark with pride, Myrddion thought savagely.
‘Do you prophesy again, healer? Or is it just more hot air?’
‘It’s a promise, Ulfin.’
As the warrior began to
strut away, Myrddion made a vow to himself. He determined that while he couldn’t take Ulfin’s life with his own hands, he’d not lift a finger to treat the guardsman or alleviate his suffering if his wound should begin to rot.
‘You’re like an old toothless dotard who mumbles nothing but empty words,’ the warrior sniped back over his shoulder. ‘See to the hell-bitch, if you don’t want to use her yourself.’ Then Ulfin disappeared down the stone stairs that led to the lower rooms. His footsteps clattered on the hollowed stone treads with the sound of dry bones clicking together.
Myrddion crossed the threshold of Morgan’s room cautiously, but no threat lurked in the deep shadows to harm him. Inside the claustrophobic space, Gorlois’s daughter was a dark shadow on her bed, rolled into a coarse blanket so that only a hank of long black hair was visible.
‘Come, Lady Morgan, I’ll not harm you, but your wrist needs treatment if you wish to use your hand properly in the future. Don’t be afraid of me. You know I’m only a tool of the Mother – for good or for ill – so we serve the same mistress.’
Morgan surged up and the rough cover slid away from her white, naked body. Ivory flesh, black hair and a soft fur triangle between her legs were carelessly exposed, as were the bruises caused by the hands and knees that had been used to force her into physical submission. Purple and blue, the marks of Ulfin’s large paws and sharp fingernails covered her breasts, her thighs and the narrow column of her throat. A single bite mark that had drawn blood revealed the brand of Ulfin’s ugly mouth on Morgan’s pale breast.
But Myrddion had no time to be either embarrassed or ashamed by Morgan’s nakedness, for her burning black eyes bored into his from a face that was swollen, bruised, tear-stained, but undefeated. Her fury was a live, cold thing, more intense than Uther’s rages, so that Myrddion
took a step back from such all-consuming loathing.