A Fragile Peace
Authors: Paul Bannister
© Paul Bannister, 2014
Paul Bannister has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Credit for the map of King Arthur’s Britain belongs to Kelvin Jones.
We had turned back the Romans and reached an uneasy peace with their emperor, Constantine. He was concerned with matters greater than dealing with the fractious tribes of our misty northern island, so he looked Truth in the eye, made grudging acknowledgement of our support at a critical battle, and left us to our own devices.
He had not even executed me for killing his father. “Arthur,” he told me, “I never liked the old brute.” Now, my task as ruler of Britain is to extract us from the strangling grip of the Christians and their faraway masters, to restore our island’s own gods and to use their help to rebuild our independence.
If that were not enough, I have to cope with invaders from both the east and the west and to keep the rebellious Picts quiet in the north. “Gods, Saxons, Gaels, and painted clansmen,” I grumbled. “It will be raining toads next.”
Outside my stone-flagged chamber overlooking the harbour at Chester, it was raining, though happily not amphibians, and my old wounds ached. I pushed aside a heap of scrolls, equipment lists, petitions, troop dispositions and a mass of requisitions for naval supplies. Cordage and leather, wool, canvas, iron, grain, beer, tents, timber and salt could all wait. I limped to the window aperture for a breath of air and to view the activity outside the fortress walls.
The harbour was bustling. Among the usual berthed vessels I noted two newly-arrived trading ships, probably Gallic to judge by their broad, oak-ribbed, heavy-beamed hulls and brown leather sails. They were offloading a dozen chained slaves, ivy wreaths on their heads to indicate that they were for sale. One, I noted with interest, had chalk-whitened feet, a Roman custom to distinguish an imported slave subject to extra taxes. I wondered idly where he’d come from, Africa, maybe.
The slave master, a burly, ringletted brute, was moving among the coffle of humans for sale and was tying a tablet around the neck of each. I knew it would list their virtues and skills, and likely some of their faults. As well as praise for the merchandise’s ability to work wood or dig ditches would be a warning about any proclivity to steal, escape or tamper with the slave women. One tall fellow was wearing a cap, an indication that he did not carry the usual six-month warranty that he was free of disease.
Behind the trading ships and the small drama of human misery on the quayside, a blue-sailed war galley was moving out of the harbour. She was under oars, the sweeps rising and falling in unison like wings to the tap of the coxswain’s hammer. She and her blue-green uniformed sailors would be heading out to patrol the treacherous straits west of Britain, hunting the Hibernian raiders who had become emboldened while our forces were busy in the south.
My eyes fastened on the sleek lines of the galley, checking her from the carved and painted ram at the prow to the broad steerboard at the stern. The copper fasteners that held her leaden sheeting in place on the hull glinted, signalling that her proud captain had taken extra efforts over her appearance. The rigging was taut, all equipment neatly stowed, a fine sight. I would give a lot to be a ship’s captain again, braced on the rolling deck as my graceful vessel slid over the green waves in the clean salt air, with sea raiders to find and destroy “and no damned lists and scrolls to read,” I grumbled.
Behind me, I heard the slap of a sandal on the flagstones and turned to see my cavalry commander Cragus Grabelius entering the chamber. “Chariot races,” I said without preamble. “A festival for the gods and a celebration for the men.” Grabelius raised an eyebrow but looked otherwise unperturbed. “Chariot races, eh?” he said. I nodded.
“Time to give everyone a break from routine. Let’s have a few days of celebration, some gambling on the races, some sport in the amphitheatre, a bit of spectacle, a chance to show off our heavy horses as deterrent to our enemies, and a time to make a peace offering to the gods. We can bring Milo and Sintea down here, present them to the people, that sort of thing,” I said, referring to my son, the heir to the throne of Alba, our troublesome neighbour to the north.
Grabelius was a good officer and went straight to the heart of the exercise. “Peace offering, lord?”
Again, I nodded. “Myrddin’s been giving me an ear ache about it,” I said, speaking of the Druid sorcerer who was a key advisor to me and was the mentor of my pagan witch lover, Guinevia.
Grabelius really did not need my explanations. He knew as well as I that we had once only barely snatched Britain back from Roman rule in a blood-soaked battle on our island’s shingled southern coast. The victory was not conclusive, and we had nearly been defeated when the Romans came back several years later. More important events in their empire caused them to withdraw their troops before they could crush us, and we had raised a new army and later taken the fight to them in Gaul.
That campaign had seen me kill one emperor and make peace with another after our magnificent British cavalry had decided a critical battle outside Rome between two contenders for the imperial purple.
By an irony of the Fates, I needed to lead a Christian army to save pagan Britain even though I was secretly a devotee of Mithras and the other ancient gods. Almost unwillingly, I had helped the emperor Constantine, whose father I had executed after his invasion of Britain, to finally dispatch his rival for the throne. He, politically astute, had then empowered the Christians who would keep him there.
I suspected he was no more a follower of the Nazarene carpenter than I was, but Constantine had made his bargain, my horsemen had helped defeat his enemy and the Serb had firmly anchored his rule.
Myrddin, a cynic with no regard for the new religions, had informed me that the only way to bring back the old gods to Britain and avert the doom that would surely arrive without their protection was to restore the important icons of their reign. The key symbol of the ancient days of power, he informed me, was the Torc of Caratacus, a bull-headed rope of gold that once adorned the throats of Britain’s kings and was their chief regalia.
This treasure, looted by the Romans, had been hidden and retrieved and would, Myrddin said, when combined with a special sword and some royal blood, possibly be enough to placate the gods and convince them to return. It was all mysterious to me
, and Myrddin had smiled his insufferable smirk when I said so, airily assuring me that he would manage matters. I reminded him that I was his king, and he offered me a mocking bow but remained silent. He knew that his gods were more powerful than any ruler.
I remembered his prophecies in the time before we had met the invading Romans. Myrddin had told me then that the gods wanted Britain saved by the sea and I must crush her enemies in the way the gods alone wished. “There is more,” he said, and I remembered how he looked, imposingly tall, his dark hair neatly plaited, hawk’s nose and piercing blue-crystal eyes under dark and shaggy brows.
“There is more,” he had repeated, pinning my gaze. “The gods are with you now, but you one day will not be with them.” Well, that prophecy had come true. I was still a pagan, but to the world I seemed to be a Christian king, as I had been baptized as the price for recruiting an army of Jesus-followers.
Myrddin had foretold that, all those years before, when his voice had gone remorselessly on: “You will be Carausius of Britain,” he had said, calling me by my Latin nomen instead of the ‘Arthur’ I had taken as my British name. “You will bring peace and fortune to your nation. When you are dead, you will lie in one of its holiest places, under its great mountain and in Britain’s true heart, but the price will be to deny your gods.”
I remembered how I felt when he said those awful words. The shock was as great as if I had fallen into an icy mountain stream. I had blinked into his stare and his eyes had softened.
“It is an awful toll to pay, and it is not one that will bring you happiness,” he said, “but you must know and you must accept it, even if you do not un
derstand. Britain requires it.”
Those long-ago words echoed through my mind as clearly as if the sorcerer was speaking them again in this red sandstone fortress of Chester, and it took an almost-physical wrench to bring myself back to the present.
Grabelius was standing looking at me and I realized I had probably been mouthing the wizard’s words. Certainly I had been lost in my tumbling thoughts. “Chariots,” I said as if that was what I had been considering. “You can display some of those expensive Frisian horses and frighten anyone who would challenge us.” I referred to the magnificent beasts we had imported from Saxony, to create the world’s finest heavy cavalry. We had taken them along as a show of strength when I had to meet the emperor Constantine. It was either a bad error or a good thing, and we had been at the wrong place at the right time, and it had been politic to add our cavalry to Constantine’s forces at the battle for Rome. This had occurred at the Milvian Bridge two years before, in 312 AD.
My Sarmatians on their fine Frisian horses had rolled up Constantine’s enemies with a flank attack, he had won the battle and the imperial crown and in grudging gratitude had tacitly relinquished his claim on the British throne.
Our troops had recently completed the long, wearying journey home and I felt we should celebrate a triumph of sorts with a festival. “We could bring Milo here, to publicly underscore his role and our pact with Kinadius,” I said.
This, too, needs explanation. Milo was my son, and King Kinadius mac Ailpin, clan lord of the Votadini, was the most powerful of the Pictish chieftains, master of a kingdom that stretched from the firth near Eidyn’s Burh almost to the Wall of Hadrian. Our pact, sealed with the marriage of Kinadius’ daughter Sintea to Milo, was that I would support the Votadini king in his tribal wars and Milo would succeed to the throne of Alba on Kinadius’ death.
The agreement fixed with a bloodied handshake had brought an uneasy peace to the borderlands along the Wall, which was more of a tax-collectors’ barricade than a true military fortification, but at least the cattle thieving had eased and the raiders had not sacked and burned settlements in the region for two years now. Kinadius was keeping his word better than most of the Picts with whom I had dealt.
Gra
belius was staring at me again.
“Yes, chariots,” I said. “And Milo and his wife, what’s her na
me?“
“Sintea Valens,
lord,” said Grabelius smoothly.
I scowled. I should remember my daughter in law’s name. I recalled the day of the handfast ceremony well, as I’d also been doused in water and publicly became a Christian that day. The things a king has to do to keep his authority. I must have scowled, for I caught Grabelius’ flinch. Men can be awed by me, for I am a big man, badly scarred, an obvious, thick-necked warrior and as king I often have to be ruthless. I suppose men think me cold, for I have lost so many comrades that I do not befriend easily. I am what the army made me, Car the Bear, and I suppose that makes me hard, even cruel. The thoughts must have been passing across my face, for I sensed Grabelius’ growing unease. I shook off the introspection and changed the subject.
“I have an idea for the courtyard,” I said. “It could help us with strategic planning.” I thought I heard Grabelius sigh, and looked at him with suspicion, then continued. “We often have to move troops, especially cavalry, around the island to deal with threats. Why don’t we make an
itinera
in the courtyard, made to scale, showing the distances between key points so we can see which units are closest and could be moved to meet a threat most quickly? We could make one pace on the courtyard equal, say, to an hour’s travel.”
Grabelius definitely sighed that time. “You’d have to place something to represent each unit where it is stationed, and I’m sure the spies would love that, lord,” he said, watching cautiously for my mood. . “And, it would take considerable effort to keep it up
dated.” It was my turn to sigh.
“About
those chariots,” I said, again.