Web of Deceit (69 page)

After pounding with his clenched fist on the gate, Myrddion had to wait impatiently for some little time before the gatemaster roused himself, thrust on a pair of breeches and staggered out into the darkness to open the smaller door within the large, reinforced and barred gate. Thanking him, Myrddion threw him a coin for his trouble.

‘The king’s healer ain’t so bad for all that men call him the Storm Crow,’ the gatemaster told his sleepy wife. ‘Look! He gave me a silver piece just to let him into Venta Belgarum.’

‘Umm,’ his wife murmured, and opened one eye. ‘Why would anyone be abroad on a night like this? Mark my words, there’s trouble ahead.’

‘But we’ve still got the silver,’ the gatemaster chortled, and bit on the soft metal for emphasis. He was a practical man.

Unaware that he was the topic of idle speculation, Myrddion strolled directly to Uther’s hall after leaving his horse at the king’s stables in the care of ostlers who were none too pleased to be wakened in the middle of the night. At least, Queen Ygerne would require an explanation from him, so he made his way directly to her door. There were no questions from the guard, although several warriors looked at him sideways from under their brows with expressions that Myrddion couldn’t fathom. In the queen’s apartments, he found two strange women sitting with Morgan and the Mother of the Britons.

‘Tell me that it’s all a lie, Myrddion Merlinus,’ the queen begged when she recognised her visitor. ‘You took my son to your house of healers because it was sickly, or so Willa told me before she was taken away. I don’t understand, Myrddion. I saw the boy. I saw him with these two eyes and he
was strong and lusty. He had Pridenow’s eyes, as if my father had come back to me from out of the shadows. He can’t be dead!’

Myrdion lowered his head to hide his lying eyes. ‘Your child is lost to you, highness, where neither you with all your love, nor I with all my skill, can find him. I wish it were not so, for your sake.’

The queen sobbed as if her heart would break, while across the sumptuous gilded bed Morgan smiled enigmatically. Did she guess how carefully Myrddion had worded his reply to the queen? Even now, was she factoring a new possibility into her poisonous plans for her stepfather?

Myrddion shrugged. He didn’t care what Morgan did to Uther. The High King had earned Morgan’s interpretation of vengeance. First things first.

‘Where are Willa, Ruadh and Berwyn?’ he demanded, so that it became Morgan’s turn to flinch and ponder a politic reply. As usual, the queen’s daughter decided to enjoy the echo of another person’s pain.

‘They’ve gone, Myrddion Merlinus. Aye, you’re the Storm Crow indeed, for those whom you love seem to vanish in a puff of smoke. Don’t ask us. We were summoned to attend to my mother when she was left alone. You could ask Botha, I suppose, because he knows everything that my stepfather does.’

‘Ruadh never came back from seeing my husband, or so Willa told me. Those lovely girls!’ Ygerne wept harder and turned her face into her pillow.

‘Shite! Uther wouldn’t dare!’ Myrddion exploded, but he knew that any High King who had just won a dangerous game would wish to sweep the board clean of all the minor pieces.

‘Wouldn’t he just? Perhaps you know our master better than we do,’ Morgan gloated.

‘Please excuse me, highness,’ Myrddion muttered, and rushed from the room. His booted heels struck the floor with the sound of bones breaking, and his hands clenched and unclenched against his will as he strode towards an explosive
meeting with the High King.

Botha attempted to bar the door. ‘Don’t make me kill you, healer,’ the captain begged, his honest hazel-brown eyes stark with distress. ‘Your girls aren’t within, I promise you.’

‘Let me see him, though I go to the shades because of it.’ Myrddion’s temper, controlled for so long, now vomited forth like the waves of lava he had seen in the Middle Sea, sending cool waters to boiling as oozing sheets of liquid stone poured onto the black sands at the volcano’s flanks. ‘Let me see that son of a whore.’

‘Let him in, Botha,’ Uther called in a loud, unnaturally reasonable voice. ‘Although I cannot see why I should be disturbed at such an early hour of the morning.’

Myrddion’s palm hit the door with a thud and sent it crashing inward. Uther still lounged on his disordered bed, but his hair was unbound and cascaded in a wild tangle down his back. The odd glint of silver marred the blond lights in his hair, caught by the unkind, revealing light of the oil lamp.

Myrddion scanned the room and the one beyond it. Empty! Every item of furniture appeared to be in place, but Myrddion noticed a small smear of blood on the woollen blanket that was tangled around the king’s long, bony feet.

‘Where are the hostages, Uther, damn you?’

Slowly, Uther swung his legs over the edge of his pallet and stretched his long spine to sit at his ease on his disordered bed. ‘You’d best ask Botha, for I have no idea. Of more moment to me – where is Ulfin? And have you done what you vowed to do?’

Myrddion moved forward impulsively, and Botha barred his way once again. His honest face was shadowed by distress and his big hands were ready to grasp the healer if he attempted to attack the king’s person. But Botha’s sword still rested in its scabbard, against all his warrior instincts.

‘I have done what you asked of me, Uther Pendragon,’ Myrddion hissed, spitting out the High King’s name as if it were a curse. ‘Your dragonlet is gone, but Queen Ygerne told me it had Pridenow’s eyes. Do you plan to explain to Ygerne’s father beyond the shades what you have done to his grandson? By the Mother, I can smell your dead as they wait for you where the shadows are darkest in the corners of this room.’

‘And Ulfin?’ Uther asked, but his calm was sufficiently shaken to send his eyes darting towards the
darkness at the edges of his comfortable chamber.

‘I met him at the crossroads outside the city several hours ago. He rode away after trying to blind me with his reins, but I’ve no doubt he’ll turn up like the base coin he is. To Hades with Ulfin! I’m more concerned for the girls.’

Uther shrugged and Botha forced Myrddion out of the king’s room by sheer force of muscle, although the burly warrior took care to spare the healer any hurt. Once the door was closed, he sighed deeply and patted Myrddion on the shoulder.

‘Apparently we are brothers in sin,’ he muttered under his breath, so that Myrddion was forced to strain to hear him.

‘Where are they, Botha? I acquit you of any blame if they’ve come to harm, but I must know because they’re my responsibility.’

Botha signed and Myrddion could almost feel the weight of the captain’s honour pressing against his warrior heart. ‘I was ordered to take all three women to Uther shortly after noon. Ruadh, the midwife, was gone, praise be to the Mother, so a little less guilt presses on my soul. But the girls . . . I brought them to Uther’s apartment and I waited outside this door. I’m afraid my lord took his pleasure with them. I heard what he did to them.’

Two tears leaked out of Myrddion’s eyes. ‘Neither had ever known a man.’

‘So I supposed. Their innocence mocks my pretence at manhood.’

‘So where are they now?’ In his heart of hearts, Myrddion didn’t really desire to see or hear the truth, but habits of clear thinking forced him to go on to the bitter, brutal end.

‘Afterwards, Uther called for a member of the guard to take them away,’ Botha replied, his broad, strong face creased with shame. ‘The High King tried to spare my sensibilities, I suppose.’

‘I don’t envy you your duties, Botha. I hope you have the courage to endure what you must, but I
have no ties left to Uther, other than those I choose to grant to him. Now, take me to the guardroom, if that is where the girls are being held.’

Botha led the healer out of the great building, into the stables and then to the barracks behind them. Half a day had passed since the girls had been taken from the queen’s chamber, so Myrddion held only a frail hope that the girls were still alive.

‘Stay here, healer, and permit me to discover what has happened,’ Botha ordered. Myrddion obeyed reluctantly, although common sense told him that Botha would wring the truth out of the warriors faster than he could.

A very angry Botha soon returned in company with two shamefaced warriors. ‘Follow me, Myrddion,’ the captain hissed. ‘As for you two, fetch bolts of cloth from the stores. I don’t care where you find them – just make sure you do. And ensure those other whoresons complete the tasks I demanded of them. I don’t care if it’s the middle of the sodding night. I want six men equipped with sharp axes ready to chop down trees for a funeral pyre. If they aren’t ready when I return, I’ll take the skin off
your
backs.’

Myrddion tried to question Botha as the captain stalked away, but the warrior glared at him so ferociously that Myrddion’s heart sank to his boots. At a fast trot, Botha led
him through the gates of the city wall towards the open midden where the town’s rubbish was thrown – and eventually buried.

‘Not the midden!’ Myrddion gasped, but Botha had already roused the gatemaster with oaths and fists to assist them in their search as they passed out from the dark skirts of the city. As Botha ploughed ahead, Myrddion snatched a torch from the gatemaster, who shivered away from the expression in the healer’s eyes.

The rubbish dump was located in an eroded, narrow ravine that ran parallel to the city walls. Many enterprising citizens simply dumped offal, broken goods, the bodies of dogs and other pets, the contents of their night-soil containers and bowls of food scraps straight over the walls. Botha was already wading through accumulated filth towards two pale glimmers of white that were outlined by a heavy yellow moon.

Myrddion knew what they would find.

Holding his torch high and cursing as his robe and boots were fouled by soft, unspeakable sludge beneath his boots, Myrddion struggled to join the large warrior.

‘Here are the little ones. Shite! Shite! Shite!’ Botha shouted as, beyond the wall, dogs began to bark at the sudden noise.

Berwyn had been tossed face first, so Myrddion was spared the sight of her bloodied, birthmarked face, but Willa was sprawled half over the other girl’s legs and her wide-open eyes and mouth shrieked soundlessly at uncaring gods.

Her body had been stripped bare and was swollen and livid with bruises, burns and cuts. Blood smeared her loins and legs, and Myrddion turned away, unable to imagine their deaths.

‘So Uther did exactly as he promised.’

‘Aye. They were killed by his guardsmen. Raped to death, I suppose, unless their poor little hearts stopped from fear of what would befall them.’

Myrddion’s mind rebelled from the nightmarish scene of waste and murder. Moonlight glinted on his straining knuckles and the rigid set of his jaw as his lips moved soundlessly in a prayer or a curse. Even the jaundiced moon seemed to
recognise the wretchedness of the crime that had taken place below it, for it hid its face in a mass of cloud and concealed the pathetic, tumbled corpses.

‘Look for me no further, Botha, except in those times when the news is too terrible for contemplation. I’ll heal no more men who serve under Uther Pendragon’s banner, nor live in this city of cowards and knaves. I wish you well, Botha, for all that you serve a monster, so I beg you to give my girls a clean burial, as I believe you plan to do.’

‘Ah, healer, we who serve must sometimes suffer more than the dead. I regret I am a coward, hiding behind an ancient oath. Aye, I will ensure that the whoresons who killed them will sew them into shrouds, lop down trees and build their funeral pyres. I don’t care if it takes the entire night. Then I’ll send the little ones to the flames as if they were men and warriors.’

Botha wept soundlessly, but Myrddion could see the silver snail-tracks of tears on his cheeks. He understood the shame that Botha felt, but the healer had no words of mercy to offer. As he strode away, he heard the captain’s final words, asked of the uncaring, dolorous night.

‘What else can a man do?’

When Ruadh rode her horse into the stream that would eventually wind its way towards the small settlement of Spinis which lay to the north, the servant felt sick with worry. She was determined to travel as far as possible while the light lasted, so she drove her horse to splash through the shallows even when the sun had virtually set. Then, when she spied a shelf of rock protruding out into the streamlet, she forced her steed to climb out of the water in the concealing darkness. The task was completed with much complaint and splashing, a disturbance which set little Artorex into lusty crying.

‘Damn you, horse, we can all rest when we reach the woods. I know it’s dark but you and I are going onwards.’

Although the horse bridled in
complaint, Ruadh’s only concession was to dismount, put one finger in Artorex’s questing mouth and then lead her steed through light cover until the streamlet was behind her and she could no longer hear the gentle swirl and burble of its waters.

She rested for several hours, wrapped in her stolen cloak to keep them both warm, although she decided to forgo the comfort of a fire. While exploring her meagre rations, she discovered that Lucius’s saddlebags contained a further surprise: a worn eating knife with a narrow, razor-sharp blade. Its handle was made of polished wood that had been smoothed by generations of hands, and the blade had been sharpened with a whetstone so often that Ruadh decided that it was halved in width through many years of regular use.

‘Look, Artorex,’ she told the baby. ‘Lucius has given us a sharp little stinger in case someone tries to hurt us. Now, who would want to do that to a fine and bonny babe like you?’

Tired, hungry and soiled as little Artorex was, he responded to Ruadh’s crooning voice and sucked hard on her forefinger as she hunted for the leather bottle and Lucius’s dwindling supply of milk.

‘It’s nearly all gone, sweetheart. And it’s cold! We’ll have to find a cow, a goat . . . whatever . . . by morning, or else little Artorex will be hungry.’ As she crooned, she filled the bottle and put Lucius’s makeshift nipple in the infant’s mouth. He sucked vigorously.