M. K. Hume [King Arthur Trilogy 04] The Last Dragon (66 page)

The only virtue in that endless day had been Mareddyd’s realisation that Arthur couldn’t be Bedwyr’s son. Seen side by side, Bedwyr and Arthur were completely different in every aspect of their physical features.

‘So Arthur really
is
a bastard,’ Mareddyd had whispered to himself. That was when he began to scheme how he could use this observation to his own advantage.

Then he had overheard the muffled whispers in the latrines and learned something that drove him wild with jealousy and anger. To this day he could recall the stink of faeces that made him gag in the confined space, and picture the coarse lengths of raw torn cloth that separated the facilities for the common warriors from those used by nobles and women.

‘Not that there was any real difference. Both stank like a badger’s armpit,’ Mareddyd muttered under his breath.

Two warriors had been talking beyond the fragile wall. By rights, considering the substance of their gossip, they should have been more circumspect, but as Mareddyd was the only person to hear them, and he was invisible, he was glad of their indiscretion.

‘Did you see the warrior on the line in the red cloak?’ one disembodied voice had asked, his voice hushed with awe. ‘Bedwyr’s lad?’

‘Aye. It was a pleasure to see some real swordcraft. I’ve not seen such skill since I was a boy in my first battle at Moridunum,’ the second man answered in a gravelly voice that suggested advanced, but still vigorous, age.

‘That was a fair time ago,’ the younger voice answered with a trace of humour. ‘I would have thought your eyes would have given out by now. Bowmen need good eyesight.’

‘It’s been near enough to thirty-five years, I think, because I was only fifteen at Moridunum. They were the days, boy, for that was a real line we held. Three days! And my eyes might be old, but they still work well enough. I’m still a master of the long bow. In these bad times, even old farts like me are needed.’

‘Aye, Grandfather,’ the younger voice replied with respect. ‘So who was it who fought like Bedwyr’s boy? Bedwyr was at Moridunum too, if I recall correctly, having escaped from the Saxons who held Caer Fyrddin.’

‘Yes, you’re right. When the battle was over he was stiff with blood from the crown of his head to the soles of his ragged sandals. He was covered in blood the whole three days. I recall he told me afterwards that he saw enough blood at Moridunum to last him a lifetime.’

‘But you still haven’t told me who fought like the boy in red,’ his companion repeated.

‘It was the Dragon King himself, my boy. I saw him standing and fighting as close to me as you are now. And the boy out there on the battlefield today was King Artor’s twin. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that Lord Bedwyr’s wife played the game of the two-backed beast near to twenty years ago. But you didn’t hear that from me.’

That had been many months ago, and no opportunity to use the information had arisen since then, but when Mareddyd had recognised his enemy in the party he had seen at Cataractonium he had realised immediately that this was his chance to achieve his longed-for satisfaction at last.

He’d ridden out of Cataractonium as if the Wild Hunt was hot on his heels. Uncaring for the value of horse flesh, he had nearly killed two beasts in a desperate dash to reach Vinovia before the Dumnonii party arrived. Then, anxious to set his plans in place, he had sent a message to a renegade Saxon trader he knew, a man who had influence with Saxon war parties.

Mareddyd had come north to forge links with the Saxon traders who valued the cider, wool and pork that was produced in the Dobunni lands. The young prince was no fool when it came to matters of business, and he realised that only those kings who built strong connections with the Saxons would survive the catastrophes that were to come. His father and grandfather refused point blank to have dealings with the enemy, considering that any tribesmen who did so had forgotten their honour and were traitors to the British cause.

Mareddyd scoffed at his kinsmen’s arguments, but he was too wise to openly express his plans. What his grandfather didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. People who lived in the past tossed around words like ‘traitor’ without understanding what was necessary if you wished to survive and prosper. For Mareddyd, the meeting with this particular trader was useful, for the northerner’s contacts would make a great deal of money out of their association, ensuring that the Saxons
owed
him. That much he understood about Saxon pride.

Mareddyd drained his mug again and felt the warm beer curdle in his gorge. He had some difficulty believing his luck. After a few words, coins had been exchanged at Vinovia’s best inn and Mareddyd had discovered that Eamonn had come north with his sister Blaise. The red-headed slut was called Maeve and she called the leader of the party ‘brother’. The group was a fine clutch of Celt nobility, far from the comfort and protection of their tribes. When he wanted to do so, God showed his favour in strange ways. Mareddyd grinned happily, allowing his white teeth to flash in his tanned face. Finally, Fortuna was turning his way.

Arthur tried to keep the party moving quickly along the Roman road. They travelled by daylight, and Arthur insisted that they moved well off the road and the open ground that ran beside it when they stopped to rest. As a further precaution, all fires were banned at night. At first, Blaise complained about cold porridge and dried meat, but Maeve proved to be Arthur’s unexpected ally and convinced the Dumnonii princess that to warn outlaws that a party, including four females, was travelling on the open road would be foolish. With surprising tact, she persuaded Blaise that any deprivations they suffered turned each meal into a picnic, and the girls and their maidservants competed with each other to find the most interesting ways of serving cold food.

‘Your sister is a treasure,’ Eamonn told Arthur cheerfully, nodding in Maeve’s direction. ‘Blaise is far more pleasant now that Maeve talks sense to her. If I have any say in the matter, I’ll recommend to King Geraint that he treats her like the princess she is. Congratulations, Arthur. Maeve is a sensible girl.’

‘I can’t take any credit for Maeve’s virtues, Eamonn. I really don’t know her as well as I should, but you’re right when you call her a treasure. I’ve never known her to be so animated.’

Arthur refrained from sharing his most pressing worry with Eamonn. The itch at the back of his skull had returned. While he was taking every precaution within his power to ensure their anonymity, something in Vinovia had set his extra sense on edge, despite the fact that nothing in the grimy, multi-racial town had given him any obvious reason to be on his guard.

Vinovia was a frontier town where interaction and trade were engaged in by Saxons and Celts alike. As an erstwhile Roman garrison, the abandoned fortress had always had a village around it that catered to the basic tastes of the legionaries. In its prime, women, drink, trade and amusements had robbed the soldiers of any spare coin they might have had on those occasions when the army bothered to pay them. While the Roman soldiers had sworn that Vinovia was the arse-end of the world, their absence had caused a financial loss to the gambling and whoring establishments that relied on their patronage.

But frontiers always need a Vinovia. The small town was situated on the road leading to the wall, so it was the perfect meeting place where Saxons, Jutes, Angles, Jews and Celts could set up deals, make trading alliances and exchange coin for a range of practices.

Some interaction and communication was necessary between the peoples who shared this bitterly divided country. Farmers on both sides still produced wool, grain and other commodities which needed markets if the population was to survive and, with luck, prosper. Goods still filtered into the north of Britain from the lands of the Franks and the Visigoths, and this trade too was necessary to both sides in the conflict. Vinovia had its own special dangers, but they were less obvious than those of many of the hamlets, villages and towns that Arthur’s party had successfully passed through during their journey.

But Arthur had developed an inordinate belief in the accuracy of his inner voice, so he was determined to take every precaution he could.

Blaise continued to remain close to Arthur, as if she had belatedly recognised that he was central to the party’s security. Since they had left the nameless village far to the south where she had, for the first time, confronted the realities of life in dangerous territory, she had developed a healthy respect for her brother’s friend, although she was still unsure whether she liked him very much.

‘He’s nothing like your father or your other brothers, is he?’ she had whispered to Maeve as they hovered on the edge of sleep, while still three days’ journey from Cataractonium. Both girls were exhausted after weeks in the saddle, and both were suffering from the dust and heat of summer.

Maeve rolled over, wincing as her tender thighs protested at the movement. Leaning on one elbow, she examined her friend with the clever, owlish expression of a very tired girl.

‘No, he’s my half-brother, and his father was a very important man. No one talks about it very much, but we all know that Arthur has skills and raw talents that the rest of us will never possess. We don’t care, though, because we love him. Arthur’s a very special person, Blaise. Lasair worships him, and Nuala says he’s her ideal man. Yet he’s the kindest brother anyone could ever want, considering he can’t be expected to treat younger siblings as amusing company.’

‘Eamonn says he’s an exceptional warrior,’ Blaise replied, chewing over Maeve’s praise with her meticulous, detail-obsessed thought processes.

‘I couldn’t say about that. But I have watched him all my life, and in every type of weather he’d be out in the courtyard, bare-chested, exercising and practising movements with his knife, sword, bow, spear, shield or any other weapon of death you can think of, including a sling.’ Maeve yawned delicately, like a slender tawny cat. ‘You should see him with a sling – he’s death on legs.’

‘How can you speak of him so, Maeve? You say you love your brother, yet you refer to him in such a manner?’ Blaise’s face lit up with anger at her friend and her black eyes were sharp and glittering with something a little stronger than annoyance.

Unfortunately, Blaise was an angry girl and had been difficult from birth. God, or Satan, or Fortuna, it didn’t matter which, had played a cosmic joke on her. She should have been born a boy, just as her name implied. She hadn’t been intended to wear skirts, play the whore with a seductive fan or work at domestic duties when she wasn’t gravid with child. Blaise knew that she had been destined for a life where she could be more active and self-determined than her female sex permitted. And so, regardless of the season or the celebration, she remained permanently at war with her world.

Suddenly, Maeve recognised the warrior behind the black eyes of her eleven-year-old friend. ‘I’m beginning to think you like Arthur, Blaise, or at least the idea of him,’ she gasped with sudden insight. ‘I think he’s your ideal man too. Heavens, Gilchrist will have some hard work to do to keep up with my brother.’

‘There you go, Maeve, reminding me of the purpose of this journey just when I was feeling content with life.’ Blaise giggled endearingly. ‘I don’t know why I’m laughing, because my situation might become dire. I’ve never even seen Gilchrist. He could be ugly, or short, or unmanly, for all I know.’

‘Or he might like boys more than girls. He might like to sew and weave, or be a farmer, or wear women’s clothing.’ Maeve was listing the most outlandish and ignoble traits she could think of, and both girls collapsed into a series of helpless giggles. At that moment they were children, but for the most part the girls spoke and thought like little adults. Within two years, by the time the moon blood first came to them, both girls would be married. In three years, they would be mothers or they would be dead. Too many young women died in childbirth, and the odds were that one of them would perish in a welter of blood and pain after hurried sex entered into to produce the children who would perpetuate the tribal structure. In the unenlightened world of the tribes before the arrival of the Romans, the lowliest male slave had more freedom than a noblewoman, but Boudicca, the Iceni bitch-queen, had begun a slow change in male attitudes. Now the Saxons, who were patriarchal in the extreme, had set back the status of women once more.

Maeve’s mind must have danced ahead to the same conclusion. ‘Do you ever wish that you’d been born a man, Blaise?’

‘Ever? Always! I used to say it wasn’t fair, but half of all babies are girls so childbirth is always a game of chance. I wish I was Eamonn. I’d be grateful every day, just for the freedom to wear trews.’

The girls giggled again at the thought, which would have shocked their mothers and brought down the anger of the Church upon their hapless heads. But they didn’t care.

‘To run without skirts tangling round my knees,’ Blaise whispered longingly.

‘To be able to climb a tree without risking death,’ Maeve added.

‘To go fishing in a coracle.’

‘To learn to swim in a lake.’

‘To get my hands dirty, growing trees and building my own tree house.’

‘To go hunting.’

‘We could go on forever, but everyone, including our families, would think we were moon mad.’ Blaise looked sad and defeated. ‘That’s why we like each other, Maeve. Both of us hate living the way we must.’

‘I have a huge list of things I don’t want to do, starting with spinning,’ Maeve said.

‘And weaving, sewing, mending, darning, knitting . . .’ Blaise grinned in the darkness.

‘Cooking, cleaning, planning menus, preserving fruit, drying fish and meat, collecting eggs . . .’

‘Sitting down to pee, wearing so many clothes, being polite at all times . . .’

‘Smiling until my jaws ache.’ Maeve was now well into the spirit of the game.

‘Being sold off to the highest bidder like a cow,’ Blaise added bitterly.

‘Never learning to do more than basic counting and simple reading, and pretending that all men are better than we are, no matter what oafs they might be.’ By now Maeve’s tone was almost, but not quite, venomous. She finished the litany of ills with this decisive, cynical statement and Blaise nodded her agreement. ‘I have read in Arthur’s scrolls of a society of women in Greece who lived without men, finding all their pleasure in each other.’