Web of Deceit (71 page)
By the next day, Ruadh was far too sick to ride very far at all. Her leg was swollen and blackening and her
temperature continued to increase. Frith would have told her master, Ector, how gravely ill the younger woman was, but Ruadh begged the luxury of choosing where she met her end. With Frith’s assistance, she mounted at dawn and disappeared as swiftly as she had arrived.
The Old Forest beyond the Villa Poppinidii seemed so cool and inviting to the delirious woman that she forced her reluctant horse into its dripping green depths. Careless of lichen and moss that was treacherous underfoot, or the dangers of fallen, mouldering logs, she allowed the horse to pick its own way as she dreamed in a daze of pain and high temperature. With an animal’s instincts, her horse forced its way into an inner glade where sweet, fresh grass grew under an insipid sun, even in winter. But Ruadh was almost finished. Scarcely knowing that she had fallen, she struck a long, low monolith of stone that lay in a weak ray of sunshine.
When she returned to painful consciousness, Ruadh lay partly across the slab of stone, practically touching a rudimentary cup and a series of lines and spirals that had been carved crudely onto the flattish top of the monument. She had split her head when she fell, and a spider-crawl of blood had run down the spiral pattern and into the tilted cup. Bemused, she stared at the bloody cavity for a long time.
She wished she had a fraction of her master’s gift so she could know if the child, Artorex, was worth the sacrifice of her life. Ruadh loved the sunlight and the darkness; she revelled in the small joys of existence, even the miseries that
came with every new day; she would miss the experience of growing old, and a part of her confused brain felt a momentary resentment for the years she was casting away for a baby with compelling eyes.
‘Ah, Myrddion, he’s such a little boy for such a great fuss and so much blood spilt. I will miss you, my last and best love. I hope you remember me . . . but I suppose you’ll forget. Everyone does – as they should.’
Perhaps Myrddion’s legendary kinswoman, Ceridwen, took pity on Andrewina Ruadh. Perhaps the poison in the wound and the delirium that could only end in death lifted briefly so that Ruadh’s mind was swept clean of the confusing images that clouded it. With a clarity that turned the events of her last days into a shaded dream, she saw the small glade, the blood-stained stone and the shadows that danced with every stray breeze to reach the drying grasses without the filter of pain and fever.
‘This forest is a good place to rest . . . a sweet place, Myrddion. I’m dying, but it’s not so very bad, and the sun is shining . . .’ she whispered softly to the empty glade. Her words were inadequate for the sudden outpouring of love that she felt for the land, her family and her friends, the baby and her dear Myrddion. She continued to whisper her thoughts to him as she rolled herself off the stone until her poisoned leg struck the ground and sparked an agony so intense that she almost fainted.
‘I must go . . . not here . . . not now,’ she whispered, and began to drag herself painfully across the sere grasses towards the cool shadows of the trees. In that painful, last burst of struggle, she slipped and slid over the detritus that covered the forest floor as, like a wounded animal, she sought the place of her final sleep.
Then she found a nest of roots, raised out of the leaf-shrouded loam to form a twisted roof of wrist-thick, curving shapes.
The mosses that covered the ancient wood beckoned with a promise of velvet softness that would cool her addled, over-heated mind. To rest her hot cheek against that cool green bower! Only a little more effort and she could drag her body into the womb of the tree and curl into the shape of that small, welcoming space. Then, with the last of her strength, she said her prayers like a little child and allowed her consciousness to soar away.
Myrddion Merlinus hunted for Ruadh for a long time, but he was eventually forced to accept that
Andrewina Ruadh, his Celtic woman, had returned to her own children who lived north of the Vallum Antonini. He never discovered that her bones became a part of a twisted knot of roots in the Forest Sauvage, and he took pleasure in dreams of her life, healthy and happy, with her grandchildren by her side.
Although he returned to Venta Belgarum in times of need to serve an increasingly dangerous and erratic king, he steadfastly refused to give his healing skills to Uther Pendragon’s war machine, preferring to train apprentices and oversee the spy network that had become central to the High King’s defence of the realm. Myrddion became a traveller, using his significant skills of diplomacy and his understanding of science and weaponry to drag the tribal kings into the dangerous present. With Llanwith pen Bryn and Luka of the Brigante by his side, he scoured the north, building alliances and solving old blood feuds, but always searching for the child he had given away a decade before.
In Segontium, Myrddion’s cadre of friends and healers prospered and, in the fullness of time, spread throughout the west. With an ageing woman’s stoicism, Brangaine mourned for Willa, although Myrddion never told her the full and brutal story of the children’s execution. Other little ones needed Brangaine’s big heart, so she held her sorrow close to her breast and continued to live with a calm but pensive face.
One grey day, when the winds blew bitterly across the charcoal straits from Mona island, the companions gathered on the sea dunes near Myrddion’s old home. Only a tragic set of circumstances could bring these rootless warriors
against warfare, disease and accident together, all at once and in the same place. The gulls wailed mournfully, the skies were flinty grey with pregnant clouds and the sea was a mad, crashing beast under the dull, senile sun. The growing white stripe in Myrddion’s greying hair streamed in the wind as he hugged Finn Truthteller to his breast, while Bridie, Brangaine and Rhedyn clustered around his tall, austere figure.
Cadoc had died, untimely, of a fever caught at Canovium as he treated a household of sufferers. In death, he would finally rest within a stone’s throw of Olwyn, Myrddion’s grandmother, and Myrddion realised that his youth had irrevocably fled, leaving him to accept a lonely middle age.
‘Do not mourn for my dear Cadoc.’ Myrddion’s voice was sombre, but his face was illuminated from within. ‘Our dear friend lived in joy and in service to others, long after a time when he believed that his usefulness was over. The goddess took him back to herself, overly jealous of the love and laughter that he carried with him throughout the world. We should weep for ourselves, for we will never see Cadoc smile again or feel his strength at our backs, as dependable and solid as the flint of these mountains. Such friends are rare and fleeting gifts from the gods and we should cherish them while they dwell among us.
‘We must rejoice, for Cadoc cannot die while one of us remembers his pleasure in each day, his compassion for those unfortunates who bleed and suffer, and his practical ability to create order out of chaos. We’d have starved to death in Gaul without him, wouldn’t we? Or we would have gone afoot at Châlons without his capacity for thievery.’
The companions of the road laughed then, remembering the scarred man’s loyalty and practical common sense. And they wept too, but the tears were fleeting as they shared their memories as friends do after long separations. In joy, they consigned Cadoc’s body to the earth.
In Venta Belgarum, Ygerne dwindled, her beauty fading to a transparent memory of a terrible curse. Never
again did she bear a child for Uther Pendragon, although he remained in her thrall although loathing her for being the embodiment of his many weaknesses. He never discovered that she quickened three times and that, guessing at the fate of any child who resulted from her travesty of a marriage, she begged for Morgan’s intervention. The spark of each new life in her womb was quickly extinguished.
Ygerne prayed until her knees were twisted with arthritis as she offered the God of the Christians an earnest penance for the children she believed were murdered in her name. The queen begged her cruel husband to release her from her long service, for she hungered to enter a nunnery close to Tintagel where she could hear the sea crashing against the cliffs and watch the hawks and gulls hunting on the wind. But Uther, although impotent and coldly vicious in his jealous old age, would not even release her to God. So, frail and distant, she sat in her ruined rose garden and waited for the mercy of death.
But fate had not quite finished with the fabled Ygerne. Nor had it forgotten the Dragon of the West and the Demon Seed.
Fortuna turned her wheel once again, and time clicked forward with a sound like thunder, or with the echo of distant, future battles. Ceridwen and the Mother answered Myrddion’s fervent prayers and smiled upon their
children at last.
The child, Artorex, was growing tall.
This novel has been a labour of sweat and tears, and it proved to be far more difficult than I ever expected. From my point of view, the legend of Merlin has always had some gruesome contradictions at its heart, and interpreting these
oddities became my hardest task. A wise and decent man could never betray Queen Ygerne as brutally as the legends suggest that Merlin did. I could never understand the flaw in Merlin’s nature that made him Uther’s collaborator, for some versions of the legend suggest that Uther tried, like Herod, to murder his son by killing all the infant boys in his city in an effort to destroy the seed of his loins.
No, no, and . . . no! My Merlin couldn’t be such a monster without good cause.
So, as well as creating the plot line, weaving in the legends and devising a believable Uther, Ygerne, Gorlois and Morgan, I was challenged to make Merlin into a man who does his best with what he’s stuck with, a mantra that I chanted mentally, day after day. How do I avoid the healer becoming a contemptible, annoying whiner who constantly complains that Uther made him do it?
My answer was simple, but I found it quite difficult to achieve. Coercion had to be used via the two elements that I had already made central to Merlin’s character. First, he worshipped the goddess, Don, who is still immortalised in the name chosen for Aberdeen’s river, and she remained a formidable Celtic deity. If Merlin believed that the goddess had chosen him to create the circumstances that brought Arthur into the world, then he might have felt impelled to assist the
High King. Also, through the people he loved, and because family mattered so much to the man who was a rejected boy, his companions could be used as bargaining chips by an unscrupulous High King.
At least, I’ve tried to explain the contradictions in Merlin’s character. The reader is the only person who can judge if I’ve been successful.
Another challenge for me was the fact that I wrote the Merlin trilogy out of order, after the publication of the novels on King Arthur, although they are actually a prequel to the Arthurian series. I can honestly state that when I started writing the first trilogy, I wrote my Arthurian books for fun and without any real thought of being published from a remote outpost such as Australia. But the Merlin books create the groundwork for
Dragon’s Child
,
The Warrior of the West
and
The Bloody Cup
, so it became imperative that the third book of Merlin should flow seamlessly into
Dragon’s Child
, the first book of Arthur.
Incidentally, if you want to learn what happens to Merlin,
Dragon’s Child
will answer most of your questions.
Morgan and Ulfin were two particularly difficult characters to place within my version of the legend. Ulfin assisted Merlin to inveigle Uther into Tintagel for the specific purpose of the rape of Ygerne, so he becomes a person of importance. Yet anyone who served under Uther Pendragon when he was at his murderous worst could not be a benevolent character. Hence, Ulfin becomes very like the guards at Belsen or Auschwitz. He is not entirely monstrous, because he lacks the intelligence to be truly evil, but he is a born follower who gains all his status and respect by sheltering in a powerful man’s shadow. If such a flawed character should lose the approval of Uther, it would be much like losing the ability to breathe, so Ulfin would have searched for Ruadh until he found both her and Artorex. Only death could stop him from completing this quest. I decided he should die appropriately, at the hands of a woman and during an attempted rape.
Morgan did not become wicked overnight. I hope I showed that her desire for power pre-dated her father’s death. In many ways, she would have made an excellent man, but as the warrior’s role was denied to her, she takes power in the
only way she can. After all, she lacks the glamour and beauty of her mother while possessing Gorlois’s strength and determination. Perhaps, out of love for her father, she would have rejected the role of fabled witch eventually if he had survived to old age, and might have chosen the more benevolent role of wise woman and herbmaster. Hence, Gorlois’s death sent her into a dangerous new search for power and revenge that would ultimately poison her life.
Botha is another matter entirely. His terrible fate in
King Arthur: Dragon’s Child
and the lessons that his loyalty to the High King teaches Artor makes him a pivotal figure in my version of the Arthuriad. Botha is the only person who actually loves Uther Pendragon, although he is aware of the dark side of his master’s nature. To a certain extent, The High King protects Botha and his precious honour from Uther’s excesses. I found it extremely difficult to create a character who serves with Ulfin, but who is as decent as Ulfin is vile. As with Myrddion’s character, I had to analyse Botha’s difficult situation, which rose to a crescendo with the murder of the little girls, and marked the end of Botha’s more privileged position with his master.
Readers of
Dragon’s Child
will see a notable difference in Uther’s treatment of Botha. The High King no longer has a brute such as Ulfin to serve as a buffer between himself and his most loyal servant.