Death of an Empire (2 page)

PROLOGUE

Three years after this, he himself [Constantine, King of Britain] . . . was killed by Conan, and buried close by Uther Pendragon within the structure of stones, which was set up with wonderful art not far from Salisbury.

Geoffrey of Monmouth

The Giant’s Dance loomed out of the rain and sleet in dark shades of charcoal. Myrddion dismounted and waded through the dying grasses, which were flattened by the strong winds that howled over the great plain. He had never seen the Giant’s Dance, but he had been told about the great stones that seemed to have been placed in the landscape by a gigantic child playing with pebbles. Looking at the Heel Stone, he felt a twinge of disappointment. The Dance was extensive and the healer had no notion of how the lintel stones had been winched into position, but he was mildly disappointed by the smallness of the scale.

Hunching his head and shoulders under the fur-lined hood of his woollen cloak, Myrddion leaned against a bluestone column that was slightly shorter than a full-grown man. The slick wetness of the rock was both cold and vibrant under his sensitive fingertips.
Listening with that odd other-sense that plagued sections of his family, he could hear a thick humming noise reverberating out of the blue monoliths, and revised his poor opinion of the imposing nature of the Dance. Something very old and menacing dwelled within the strange arcane circles of stones. The origins of the Dance had been lost in the vortex of time, but one local legend suggested that the Lord of Light, Myrddion’s namesake, had built it during the ancient days.

‘Are you done, master?’ Cadoc stood at the very top of the huge, encircling mound, his nose bright red in the chill wind and his hunched figure a picture of cold misery. ‘This wind would freeze off a witch’s tits.’

‘You’ve no soul, Cadoc,’ Myrddion murmured, knowing his servant would be unable to hear him over the howling gale. ‘Get out of the wind for the moment,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll come along shortly.’

The apprentice raised one wool-wrapped arm in acknowledgement and trudged down into the ditch that encircled the Dance. Every movement of his stolid warrior’s body spoke of his dissatisfaction with the weather. Cadoc was loyal and indispensable within the healing tents, but the scarred warrior hated cold weather and dreaded the prospect of sailing to the land of the Franks across the Litus Saxonicum. He would follow where Myrddion travelled, but the healer knew that the ex-warrior with the ugly burn marks on his face and neck would complain irritatingly every step of the way.

Myrddion sighed, but regardless of the invisible yet palpable presence of Cadoc waiting at the wagons he made his way to the very centre of the Dance. One huge, upright stone bore the marks of a blade, and Myrddion followed the shape of the carving with his ungloved hand.

‘A knife!’ he whispered aloud. ‘What in the name of Bran and all
the gods caused the symbol of a knife to be carved into these stones? This whole place is a mystery.’

As he peered closely at the slick, icy surface of the stone, Myrddion recognised that the design of the knife was outland. No Celtic swordsmith had wrought this dagger, and only a skilled and observant engraver could have picked out its details on the stone. The healer memorised the shape in case he should ever see such a weapon again.

A pale moon struggled with dense clouds that were pregnant with sleet, and almost unconsciously Myrddion was drawn to the centre of the great horseshoe of stones where a large, rough-cut block of heavy local rock lay like an altar. There, at the very heart of the Dance, he felt a gathering of dark symbols, as if he could pull back a curtain and watch the builders as they laboured through uncounted generations to bring the circle to life. But for what purpose?

Wheeling constellations. A sunrise that sent long bars of light and shadows racing across green grass, while shaggy shapes chanted to the thudding accompaniment of hardened spear-shafts as they struck the ground. He could feel no blood – only the light that flowed in great rivers as it cascaded through his eyeballs and burned his retinas. A star hovered over the central pair of stones with the great crosspiece positioned over it. In a dim, trance-like state, Myrddion realised that he was drifting off to the edges of a fit; that old, much-feared unconsciousness when he said and did things that defied his waking, scientific mind. With a wrench powered by all the anger that hid in the child who was almost grown to manhood, he pulled himself away from the star and the river of light, seeing the figures fade into gusts of rain as he returned to his true self.

His right hand was pressed against the altar stone, which still felt warm from the touch of long dead sunrises. Myrddion snatched
his hand away and the connection with the Dance splintered like frostbitten rock under the mason’s hammer.

‘Never! Never again! I’ll not live and fear the past or the future,’ he screamed. ‘I’ll not know.’

But flurries of wind and rain blew his voice away.

‘All I want – all that I’ll accept – is to find Flavius, whoever he is. If I have to travel beyond the Middle Sea to the cataracts that support the pillars of the world, then I’ll go. But I’ll know why my father played dice with my life before I was born. I’ll face him and, if need be, I’ll kill him if that’s what it takes to be free of him. And I’ll not use the fits to track him down.’

Brave words! Myrddion’s inner self sneered. What we want and what we get are rarely one and the same thing. The healer raised his eyes to the cloud-shrouded moon and laughed at his own foolishness. The gods will not be mocked, he thought sadly. They’ll not free us from the curses of our births. But I still want to know!

‘I want to know,’ he whispered aloud, then turned and ran through the circle, past the bluestones and beyond the Heel Stone, until he came to the mound and saw the wagons huddled together around the makeshift fire that Cadoc was attempting to keep alive.

Again, Myrddion laughed and hurried towards the wagons, his friends and the sense of a purpose that would give him no inner peace until it was achieved. Behind him, the Dance waited as it had done for a thousand years. Not even a Demon Seed could disturb its long dreaming as it slumbered under the whips of the winter winds. It slept and dreamed until it would be needed again.

MYRDDION’S CHART OF THE ROUTE FROM SEGONTIUM TO DUBRIS

CHAPTER I

AN INAUSPICIOUS MEETING

For how can man die better than facing fearful odds For the ashes of his father and the temples of his gods?

Demosthenes,
Olynthiacs

In far-away Tintagel, where the fortress clung to a barren rock thrust out into a cold, howling sea, Queen Ygerne stood in her forecourt, wrapped in furs and shivering in the gelid afternoon air. To the west, the obscured sun coloured the thin, storm-ravaged clouds with a transparent orange glaze. Light struggled with darkness, like the battle that raged within her spirit. With hands thrust in coarse woollen mittens, she clutched at her flat belly and begged the goddess to be kind. Then, for good measure, she prayed to the Virgin Mary that the immortal mother would intercede with the Christian god and bless her unborn child.

When Ygerne had become certain of her third pregnancy, she had told her husband, King Gorlois, that this time she was sure that her infant would be a boy. Her heart clearly told her the formless child’s sex, and she already dreamed of him, soft and milky, nestling in her arms. Gorlois had whooped with joy, for although his girls, Morgan and Morgause, were a permanent
celebration of the wonder of their union, his masculine pride was stirred by the thought of a son to inherit the kingdom of Cornwall. Gorlois asked so little of Ygerne, and loved her so generously and purely, that the queen was overjoyed that she could give him his heart’s desire. The solstice feasts had been transformed by the fertility and felicity of their shared love.

Then, as the rains of winter set in with a vengeance, the Boar of Cornwall had been called away by Ambrosius, the new High King. With regret, Gorlois had departed, for to leave his wife in the death days of the year was a wrench that made his heart ache. Gorlois knew she would be kept safe through the devotion of his guard and servants, but this new pregnancy gave his absence an additional poignancy that made the Dumnonii king short-tempered and depressed. As he rode across the causeway from Tintagel on his new colt, Fleet Foot, with his personal guard trailing behind him, he dared not look back at the fortress in case he should see the weeping face of Ygerne. He cursed Ambrosius and his demands, then straightened his back and galloped away from everything he loved.

Now, in a grey place of stone, sea and wild things on the wing, Ygerne tried to commune with the developing son who lay in her womb. As yet, the child had no thread of consciousness to speak to her, so she felt very alone on her spur of rock, far from the courts of men. A shadow lay over her mind, as if a blanket had blotted out the warmth of the sun and extinguished all light. She longed for spring and the swelling of her belly, but the skies promised hard weather before the King of Winter perished and the new lord was born in a wave of perfumed flowers and soft rain.

The sudden pain, low in her belly, was so swift and sharp that Ygerne dropped the bag of mending she carried with her during the day. She stared at the spilled clothing on the stones of the forecourt, at one of Gorlois’s knitted gloves that had fallen a little
way from the woven bag and lay, like a crumpled grey flower, already unravelling at the thumb. To her cringing, shocked gaze, the ruined glove became the centre of her universe as the pain tore through her – and then was gone. Her legs trembled, and she felt a sudden leak of blood trickle down her thighs.

‘Are you well, my lady?’ A concerned guardsman had approached her, shocked by her sudden pallor. ‘For the love of the gods! Alarm! The queen is unwell!’ he shouted as Ygerne’s knees began to buckle with shock. ‘To me! The queen needs assistance!’

As the guardsman swung her delicate frame into his arms, Ygerne knew her son had died and she began to keen, frightening the poor man so that his strong hands shook. Rushed inside the fortress, to her servants and her huge marital bed, Ygerne could only weep with sorrow and lost hope. As her serving women clucked their tongues over her bloodstained legs and hurried to staunch the bleeding, she turned her face into her pillow and asked the gods why Gorlois was being punished.

Light as fingertips on her lips, faint words came to her out of the depths of her mind. ‘Not yet, Ygerne, your time is not yet come. Be patient, for you’ll have what you desire in time.’

‘How will I tell my love that his son has perished?’ she asked her serving women, who could only shake their heads and try to comfort her. ‘How will I explain to Gorlois when I cannot understand myself?’

Out on the peninsula, the wind howled a message that chilled her spirit. ‘Not yet! Not now! You must wait!’

Cadoc leaned against the rough side of the heaving boat and vomited into the sea. Ever since the port of Dubris had been left behind, the warrior had been unable to control his gorge, so that now he hung with his body half out of the vessel, a picture of abject misery. In the inexplicable way of humankind, Myrddion and Finn
Truthteller were unaffected by the pitching and rolling of the ancient, salt-encrusted vessel, while Cadoc suffered his seasickness acutely.

‘You have to eat something, Cadoc,’ Myrddion coaxed, while the man’s face spasmed with sudden nausea. ‘You could develop a serious illness if you don’t eat for days on end.’

He held out a bowl of clear soup, cold, but nourished with herbs, shredded chicken meat and a little poppy juice to settle the stomach, but Cadoc waved it away. The servant’s face was grey under his rueful grin, but Myrddion persisted. He depended on Cadoc’s superlative organisational ability, and having sold his wagons and livestock rather than risk them on the dangerous crossing of the Litus Saxonicum he would need the purchasing expertise of his servant once the wallowing, wooden vessel made landfall.

‘Please, Cadoc,’ he urged. ‘I’d not give you anything that would increase your discomfort. Sip the soup slowly and the nausea will pass. Trust me, my friend.’