Web of Deceit (70 page)

Wise to the ways of newborns, she waited to change his loin cloth until after she had patted away his wind. Once he felt himself clean and dry, he sighed like a tiny old man and promptly fell asleep. Too weary to eat, Ruadh followed him into slumber after wrapping them both in her purloined cloak. As
she drifted away, she could hear the faint tinkle of her horse’s hobble bells as it searched for sweeter grass under the spreading elm trees.

She woke long before dawn and, mindful of Lucius’s instructions, she gave little Artorex the last of the milk, chewed on a strip of dried meat herself, thrust an apple in her robe for later and sought out her horse. The sky was a sullen charcoal, but a rime of light illuminated the eastern horizon, so she knew it was time for them to go.

Day followed day in slow travel as she settled into the rhythms of the child and her horse. She managed to purchase milk and wash the child’s loincloths at a crofter’s cottage beyond Spinis, and found a woodcutter’s wife in the forests outside Cunetio who was carrying a chubby, year-old child on one hip and had another, a little older, clinging to her skirts. For a few coppers, the woman fed the infant to satiation and replenished Ruadh’s bottled supplies, accepting her tale that she was the child’s aunt, and was trying to return the orphan to her parents in far off Glevum. The countrywoman smiled and nodded, accepting Ruadh’s glib lies because of the red shades in her hair and the peach fuzz on Artorex’s skull.

Although she had avoided all villages and towns, a woman alone, mounted on a valuable horse, must have excited some talk, even among the isolated peasantry who lived far from the network of roads that marked civilisation. When she rested for the night in vestigial forests south of the hamlet of Verlucio, she had almost relaxed in the knowledge that she had Lucius’s knife and scabbard concealed in Artorex’s little linen robe, which had become quite grubby from their travels.

She had risked a fire to cook a plump chicken she had purchased earlier from a dour elderly couple who had driven a hard bargain. But Ruadh hadn’t begrudged them their small victory. While Artorex slept, she rode through the dense trees trying not to lose her sense of direction as she plucked the feathers from the poor bird on horseback. A small trail of
brown and orange feathers marked her passage, while the smell of sodden fowl was a necessary evil. Fortunately, the elderly couple had agreed that she could dunk the fluffy, bronze-coloured bird in boiling water after she had wrung its neck with an efficiency born of long practice.

As the chicken cooked over an open fire, the mouth-watering aroma of crisping skin and bubbling chicken fat was as delicious as the white meat itself. As she gave a little chicken grease to the drowsy child on one finger, Ruadh discovered that although she was lonely, she felt an odd happiness. She fell asleep beside the dying fire with her arms wrapped around the sleeping child cuddled into the curve of her shoulder.

She woke with a knife blade against her throat, a male body pressed against her back and hot, foul breath on the nape of her neck. For a short moment, Ruadh was disoriented and confused but then, as her heart raced and a rough hand followed the contours of her body, the ice in her blood caused her brain to begin working.

The baby awoke as a rough hand gripped its leg and twisted. Artorex’s scream of outrage was shocking in the quiet darkness under the trees and two horses whickered in alarm.

‘You’ve got the king’s brat! By the twisted sisters of war, you’re a clever little bitch, aren’t you?’

A rough hand jerked her head sideways and bared her face in the dim light, although the knife blade never wavered from the hollow of her throat. Within the enveloping cloak, and knowing she only had seconds to act, her right hand slid under the howling child and gripped the scabbard that was tangled in the hemline of his robe.

‘The Pict bitch! Well, I’ll be damned!’

In the last of the firelight, a pallid moon outlined a shaggy head, but obscured the features of the man who now kneeled above her, straddling her trapped hips under the cloak.

But she knew who it was. How could she not? ‘You’re Ulfin. Uther’s dog.’

‘Aye, bitch. Why weren’t you killed with Myrddion’s other whores? But I’ll soon remedy that – and then I’ll see to the child. But first I’d like to find out just what
Ambrosius saw in you. What do you say, bitch?’

‘Your breath reeks like a man ten days dead,’ Ruadh gasped as she extracted the knife from the scabbard as gently as she could. Artorex provided a handy diversion by screaming even louder.

Ulfin struck her hard enough to jar her teeth in her head and make her senses swim. Stunned, she still managed to hold the knife tightly against her body.

A brutal hand tore the cloak away so Ruadh spat at him, hoping to keep him engrossed in his task.

‘You’ve got yourself a filthy mouth, whore. Maybe I’ll cut out your tongue before I kill you. Uther would appreciate such a gift and your fancy boy, the healer, would be touched to have a part of you to cherish, if Uther is stupid enough to let him escape with his life.’

Ulfin changed his knife from one hand to the other, but Ruadh knew that she gained nothing by the exchange, as an able warrior could use either hand with equal skill. With his stronger right hand, he dragged her robe open, tearing the wool where it laced together, so that her breasts were exposed. Ulfin bit them until they bled.

Just wait, Ruadh’s mind told her. Remain patient. If he tries to rape you, he’s the one who will be exposed and vulnerable. That’s when you’ll have your chance. Just wait!

He reared back from her, took off his belt and let it fall, scabbard and all, across her legs. Then, even as she winced, he pushed up her skirts to expose her lower body. His hand was rough and meant to hurt her, but Ruadh steeled herself and allowed no sound to escape her lips.

Artorex screamed on in the stillness of the oak trees.

As Ulfin fumbled with the lacing of his trews, he dropped his eyes for a moment. Ruadh acted without
thought, even though she was pinned down. She suddenly reared her upper body towards him with a strength fuelled by panic and rage and plunged the slim knife deep into his bared lower belly. As her Pictish husband had taught her, she immediately twisted the blade to gut him.

‘Bitch!’ Ulfin howled, and clutching his belly with one hand he struck out at her with his knife. Even though she twisted and rolled her upper body away from him, she felt his blade graze her ribs with a sharp sting of fire. Before he could strike at her again, she wielded Lucius’s knife like a scalpel and attacked his genitals.

Howling, screaming and clutching the ruins of his manhood while he tried to stem the rush of blood from his wound, he fell away from Ruadh’s pinned legs. With the speed of youth and desperation, the Celtic woman rolled away from Artorex with one part of her mind trying to protect the infant whose clamour was loud, enraged and demanding.

But Ulfin was not quite done. As Ruadh clambered to her feet and crouched warily, seeking a firm foothold in the nest of leaves that had served as a sleeping pallet, Ulfin focused on the source of his pain with a malevolence that chilled her to the bone.

Slowly, slowly, he switched knife hands. ‘If you’ve killed me, then you’ll go to the shades with me, you dirty whore,’ he whispered in a voice that was pregnant with menace. Then, through willpower alone, the warrior moved at a speed that would have been impossible for most wounded men. With a quick lunge that Ruadh almost evaded, he half buried his knife in her thigh.

But Ruadh knew that he had been forced to extend himself to reach her, and her own knife slashed at his groin again so that, finally, like a lightning-struck tree, he began to topple backwards until, panting, he lay supine on the earth.

Ruadh kicked his knife away into the darkness and threw his scabbard after it. Then, smiling, she retrieved Artorex and wrapped them both in her stained cloak. She crouched on the ground just out of Ulfin’s reach, knife at
the ready, and waited. A few pieces of discarded wood on the fire coaxed it back to life, and Ruadh warmed her cold hands and even chillier spirits while she waited for Ulfin to die in agony.

At first, the guardsman screamed obscenities until he heard Ruadh laugh at him. Then he begged for assistance, knowing that she had been Myrddion Merlinus’s assistant. When that plea met with no success, Ulfin started to pray to every god he had ever known.

‘Can’t you even die like a man?’ Ruadh snapped. ‘You’ve raped and murdered for years, yet you’ve never understood what it’s like to be a victim. I plan to leave you to consider your own death once I’ve repaired your little love tap in my leg.’

And so, although he begged and threatened by turn, Ruadh checked the wound in her thigh and used a little water from her bottle to clean the nasty puncture. Wishing she had any one of her master’s unguents, she bound the wound with a strip of her robe taken from along the hem, placed Artorex in the sling around her neck and retrieved her horse.

‘Farewell, Ulfin. With luck you’ll die before the scavengers find you, but I wouldn’t count on it. Look out into the shadows under the trees and try to remember the innocents that you killed on behalf of Uther Pendragon and your own lust. Gorlois is certainly waiting for you, since my master was sure that you killed the king by stealth. You might just pray to him, if you think it would help.’

And, although Ulfin howled and cursed, Ruadh rode away into the early morning towards Verlucio and the road that would lead her, eventually, to the Villa Poppinidii. The wind sighed through the flat green lands, and as the sun rose she marvelled at earth that bore man’s touch so fruitfully. Because she had approached Aquae Sulis on the eastern road, her directions
had been reversed and two weary days passed before the gates of the villa hove into view.

Ruadh was tired, her head ached insistently and she knew she had a slight fever, but nothing mattered except for the completion of the task. When she first saw the villa, neatly whitewashed in its cluster of well-kept outbuildings and surrounded by rows of fruit trees, vegetable patches and the ploughed fields that would bear grain in the spring, she felt as if she was finally home. Even Artorex was no longer squalling, although he announced his hunger as she rode her horse up to a crazily paved forecourt and eased herself out of the saddle. Her thigh ached with a sullen, nagging persistence, but she felt herself begin to smile, and Myrddion’s ascetic face swam to her from her memory.

‘We made it, little king. Artorex will live and thrive here. And, with Ulfin dead, he is safe from Uther and all of the tribal kings. We are home at last.’

POSTSCRIPT

Non omnis moriar.

[I shall not altogether die.]

         Horace,
Odes
III, 2

Bemused by their strange visitor, Ector and Livinia, master and mistress of the Villa Poppinidii, agreed to foster the child, Artorex, out of respect for Bishop Lucius of Glastonbury. Although she was born in Aquae Sulis, Livinia was the last child of the wealthy Poppinidii gens and her father had but recently succumbed to death, leaving her tribal husband, the bluff, strong Ector, to run the villa with a devotion that was just as
powerful as her own. Ruadh, the Celtic woman who was the bishop’s messenger, refused a place in the household, pleading the plight of her children who lived north of the wall. Livinia eyed the girl’s pallor with concern but, out of respect, said nothing.

Frith, the nurse of Livinia’s son, was blunt and observant. She persistently demanded to know what ailed the girl until Ruadh admitted that she was suffering from a knife wound. Clever with woman’s medicine, Frith stripped off the filthy bandage and eyed the suppurating wound with concern. Her sensitive nostrils told her that the wound was poisoned.

Andrewina Ruadh knew the signs better than Frith, having served in battlefield surgeries with her master for several years. She had feared as much when her temperature had begun to increase, but the safety of Artorex was far more important than her own life, so she had continued onward when she should have sought treatment.

Frith applied a drawing ointment and what poultices she had, but both women knew the meaning of the
livid line heading up into the groin. Frith hugged the flame-haired girl who was so brave and forthright in her acceptance of impending death.

‘What might I do for you, child? I can keep you comfortable with drugs, but you will die anyway.’ The elderly woman’s face was still and proud below her white-blond hair.

‘We shall do nothing, Frith. I wish I’d seen my children one last time, or told my beloved master, Myrddion, that he is not responsible for my death. But these wishes are only foolish, girlish dreams. I knew what could happen when my leg began to swell, but I continued with my journey. The child is the important thing, so perhaps it would be better if I simply disappeared.’

Then Ruadh gripped Frith’s work-worn hands passionately and her grass-green eyes were compelling and full of prescience, although her flesh was burning to the touch. ‘Protect Artorex, Frith. Care for him fiercely and with all your heart for my sake. I have loved him as if he were my own child and he filled me with new hope and purpose.’

‘I’d love any babe, regardless of his appearance or nature, but when I hug him I’ll speak of you, so he will always know what was sacrificed for him.’

‘No!’ Ruadh’s voice was sharp with a terrible urgency and her flushed cheeks and bright eyes were hot with feeling. ‘You must promise me, Mother Frith, that you won’t burden that little boy with any guilt about my death. I understand the deadly ties of obligation, so promise me that you’ll not doom him so thoroughly before he becomes a man and learns what is his place in this world. I will disappear, as is fitting, having played my small part in his salvation. That’s enough for me.’

‘What will you do?’ Frith asked with her strange, pale-blue eyes full of compassion.

‘I will ride fast and hard, for I’ve a wish to see the sea before I die. Who can say? For now, a warm bed and good food is all I require. I’ll be gone by sunrise.’