The Bloody Cup (21 page)

But the night was utterly still. Except for himself, the whole villa appeared to be asleep.

Taliesin ran across the inner court, dragging doors open and searching rooms as he went. In one room, a bleary-eyed Odin struggled to rise, while in another, Galahad cursed and searched for his weapon. Taliesin continued with his frantic quest, his thin sandals almost silent on the tiled floors as he retraced his steps.

At the end of a long corridor, a thin sliver of light beckoned from under a closed door.

Taliesin hit the door running and was immediately enclosed damply in a thick white mist.

The baths. I’m in the baths, he thought as he edged his way along the wall.

Behind him, the door closed of its own accord.

A flicker of white skin loomed out of the mist for a brief moment and then vanished with a low gurgle of laughter. Taliesin tasted danger like the rust of iron on his tongue. Such was his confusion that he almost fell blindly over Artor’s feebly threshing legs. He could vaguely see a dark figure looming over the long body of the High King, holding Artor’s head under the water.

Taliesin had no time to think. He lashed out with stiffened fingers strengthened by years of practise on harp strings and struck the enemy somewhere below the black cowl. The figure grunted, loosened its iron grip on Artor’s shoulders and sprang back with one hand clawing at its throat.

Impelled by need, Taliesin turned his back on the dark figure. Every instinct told him to drag Artor from the hot water. So, with a strength he barely knew he possessed, Taliesin pulled his king by the ankles until the unconscious man lay prone and dripping on the wet tiles.

As he bent over Artor’s body, Taliesin felt a stinging sensation along his upper arm and he fell backwards, with one hand searching automatically for the site of the pain.

The black figure came at him and Taliesin scrambled out of the way. As he struggled to his feet, his mind was beginning to compose his own death song, for he realized that he was unarmed and vulnerable. Then, like a dream slowed down to impossible, exquisite clarity, the door to the baths slammed open and half-naked warrior charged into the room with a wild Otadini scream.

The black figure seemed to hunch in upon itself and then kicked once more at Artor’s prone body, before leaping away into the densest part of the mist. The sound of footsteps skidding on wet tiles drifted back as Taliesin threw himself towards the king’s prone body.

He turned him on to his back. Artor’s upturned face seemed unnaturally white and still. A great bruise marred the side of his brow, oozing a thin line of blood where the skin had broken. The king did not appear to be breathing.

Taliesin began to beat on Artor’s chest with the whole force of his body. The ribs of a lesser man could easily have broken, but a few gulps of air began to surge in and out of Artor’s lungs within a few moments. The ragged breaths were accompanied by a thin trickle of water.

The king’s breathing stopped.

‘Do something!’ Galahad screamed in panic, quite oblivious to his half-naked state. His drawn sword was pointed directly at Taliesin’s throat.

‘My father often breathed into the mouths of newly-born infants who weren’t able to breathe for themselves.’

‘In God’s name, do it then!’

With silent apologies to his king, Taliesin took a deep breath and, fixing his mouth to Artor’s lips, blew air deep into the lungs of the king.

Galahad dropped his sword, and expelled the air from Artor’s body by pushing down on his ribs in a duplication of Taliesin’s original actions.

With another mental apology to his king, Taliesin slapped Artor across the cheek with his open hand. Artor drew a short, involuntary breath and began to cough hoarsely and uncontrollably. Gouts of water gushed from his open mouth and nostrils.

Over several minutes, Artor began to breathe raggedly by himself, but he was still barely conscious. Taliesin sighed gratefully, and then was surprised as the room began to tilt violently.

‘You’re bleeding like a slaughtered hog,’ Galahad pointed out. ‘You’d best tie your wound off. The tiles are already slippery enough without your blood making them worse.’

‘Am I bleeding?’ Taliesin asked dully. Galahad began to tear a strip off the harpist’s robe to fashion a rough bandage.

‘I will need some help to return the king to his room,’ Galahad said, as he attempted to lift Artor’s bulk with a painful grunt.

‘I’ll join you shortly, Galahad,’ Taliesin replied. ‘The villa isn’t secured yet.’ His knees felt like jelly.

‘If you must go, take Artor’s knife with you. It’s over there, beside the brazier.’ Galahad’s keen eyes had sought out the dragon knife, kicked into a corner during the earlier struggle between Artor and his assailant.

Breathing deeply, and with his head slowly clearing, Taliesin ventured into the mist that he now realized came from the brazier and whatever rubbish was smouldering on it. Only the constant drip of water remained to intrude into the wet silence once Galahad had staggered away, half-dragging and half-carrying the king’s sodden body.

I’m hunting blind, Taliesin thought irrelevantly as he moved out of the mist and into a room where the bath was filled with cold water.

The spoor of several pairs of wet footprints skirted the pool and disappeared through a door beyond the bath. One set of prints was booted and one was bare.

Cautiously, Taliesin began to follow the footprints.

When he passed through the next doorway, he found a dressing room where a number of wet towels lay in puddles on the floor or had been tossed over rough wooden benches. The footprints continued onwards, although they were already beginning to dry.

Beyond this chamber, a door led to a narrow vestibule and an exit from the villa. A set of man-sized footprints led out on to the dewy grass. But the vestibule also contained a flight of stairs that coiled upwards. On the third step, a small puddle glinted like a blind eye.

At the threshold of the door to the gardens, a single black glove lay like the discarded skin of some diseased reptile.

Taliesin picked it up gingerly, conscious that a slow trickle of blood was still dripping from the fingers of his left hand. What to do? He cautiously mounted the stairs until he reached a round room at the top of the tower.

Lady Miryll lay beneath a fur coverlet on a bed-shaped block of stone. Her head turned as he entered and she looked directly at him with unfathomable eyes. He presented a strange sight with matted hair, wet and blood-soaked clothing, and his normally pale skin as white as the waning moon. But she remained composed and seemed unsurprised by his condition.

Wordlessly, she lifted the corner of the covers as if offering herself to him. Under the furs, the lady’s naked body was alabaster-pale and very beautiful but Taliesin was repulsed, as if he had been shown so much sacrificial meat. He rubbed his hand over his tired eyes and, when he looked at her again, Miryll had pulled the furs up to her pointed chin.

‘Has anyone come this way, my lady?’ Taliesin croaked.

‘No. I’ve seen nobody.’ She smiled endearingly at him. ‘May I help you? You seem unwell.’

‘Were you in the baths just now? I thought I saw you leaving.’ She lifted one black tress of hair to her lips as if to taste its wetness. ‘I was there about an hour ago. Why do you ask?’

‘Forgive me, my lady,’ he stared suspiciously at her, ‘but there’s been an attempt on the life of the king from inside your house.’

Miryll’s eyes flared, but Taliesin felt that she was surprised by his choice of words.

‘Does the king still live?’ Miryll asked softly as she reached for a small silver bell. ‘Surely no one here would wish to harm the High King of the Britons.’

‘The king lives,’ Taliesin responded carefully.

‘Then Fortuna may yet save us. You must excuse me, my lord, for I must dress.’

Once again, Miryll rang her small bell to summon her handmaidens, an action that surprised Taliesin for he hadn’t seen anyone as he was mounting the tower stairs.

Taliesin left the room and staggered down to ground level, pressing his body to the wall as a wide-eyed and terrified serving woman suddenly materialized and ran past him in the direction of the tower room. He made his way through the baths and along the corridors that were already boiling with servants and armed warriors until he reached the doorway that led to Artor’s room.

‘So there you are, Taliesin.’ Galahad pushed a disorientated Gareth out of the way and stripped off Artor’s sodden clothes. ‘I was about to send out a search party to find you.’ Although the tone of his voice was gruff, his relief at Taliesin’s safety was clear. ‘Can you help me with Artor? He’s not the lightest person to manhandle.’

As Taliesin moved forward to assist Galahad, Odin surged through the door, shaking his ursine head in confusion and rage. The huge Jutlander had bared his axe and his eyes glittered with the deep-red glow of madness.

‘Don’t touch the king!’ Odin roared.

Taliesin put one bloody hand on Odin’s chest.

‘You can put down your axe, Odin. Artor lives, largely because of Galahad’s efforts. Your master must be stripped, warmed and put to bed so that I can examine his head wound.’

‘And who’ll minister to you, harpist?’ Odin growled, but his eyes were returning to their usual faded shade of blue.

‘I will survive. I’ve managed to stop most of the bleeding.’ He turned to the still confused Gareth, slumped on a bench in a corner of the room. He looked deathly ill.

‘I suggest you go outside and put your fingers down your throat, Gareth,’ Taliesin ordered him. ‘It’ll serve to remove most of the poison from your blood.’

‘I failed our master, Odin,’ Gareth mumbled and rubbed his wounded face as if to rob it of the drug that continued to call him back towards sleep. ‘I left him in a position where he was vulnerable to attack.’

‘Get outside, Gareth,’ Taliesin repeated. ‘Throwing up can’t hurt you, and it’ll make you feel better.’

‘Who did this treason?’ Odin asked in a quiet voice so deadly that Taliesin felt a surge of pity for any unfortunate creature the Jutlander suspected of causing harm to his master.

‘One of the culprits managed to leave this glove behind him as he fled,’ Taliesin responded. He threw the black leather glove on to a chair where it lay deflated, like a severed hand. ‘Galahad was correct. This villa was the lair of the black warrior.’

Then, for the first time in his life, Taliesin fainted clean away.

CHAPTER VIII

BLOOD OATHS AND BATTLE BROTHERS

The song-master wasn’t unconscious for long. Someone had shoved a piece of soft, folded cloth under his head and another had stripped off his torn robe and exposed his smooth chest and shoulder. They were now hurting him a great deal by probing his wound.

‘Let me up,’ Taliesin hissed through his clenched teeth. ‘I’ll stitch myself together, thank you.’

‘You sound just like your father, Taliesin.’ The hoarse voice was Artor’s. ‘You must forgive Percivale, because I ordered him to discover the extent of your injuries. Shite, boy! If you die on me, I’ll never know exactly what happened tonight. Fact is, I don’t remember a thing after I entered the baths.’

Percivale flushed with embarrassment and handed Taliesin the damp cloth that he had been using to clean a deep slice across the muscle of Taliesin’s upper arm.

‘May I have my pack from my room, Percivale? And a spare robe. The wound seems clean, but it’s very deep and the edges need to be sewn together. My assailant retaliated with his blade after I hit him in the throat.’

‘Who was he?’ Artor’s voice seemed sharper and more focused than before.

Taliesin struggled to his feet, discarded the rags of his robe and saw a still-shaky Artor seated on the side of his sleeping couch.

‘I don’t know, but I saw the vague shape of a naked person running through the baths.’

Artor looked totally mystified. His brow was furrowed and he winced as a lance of pain ran through his head. ‘Some noise surely woke me, but it sounded like knocking at the door. I took my knife and almost fell over Gareth in the corridor. When he didn’t wake up, I knew that something was dangerously wrong. Fool that I am, I managed to set myself up like a tethered goat, rather than calling for the guard. I recall hearing a strange, gurgling laugh around the corner of the corridor, so I followed the sounds. And I seem to remember seeing a light,’ Artor murmured, as he stared off into the distance and struggled to recall the events of the early morning.

‘The light was in the baths,’ Taliesin told him. ‘That was how I found you. Do you recall hearing a scream?’

‘I remember a thick, foul-smelling mist as if something green had been thrown on the brazier. Gods, I couldn’t even see my own hands in front of me. But I heard something, so I struck out at it and then the roof seemed to fall in on my head.’

‘Then you must have managed to strike your attacker,’ Taliesin said. ‘Did you use your knife? Or your open hand?’

‘I used my fist.’

Galahad interrupted the conversation. ‘You heard the scream, Taliesin. Was it a man? Or a woman?’

‘I
think
it was a woman.’

‘So where, then, is Lady Miryll?’ All of Galahad’s prejudices were evident in his distrustful eyes.

‘She was dressing when I left her in the tower to return to your room, my lord’, Taliesin answered. ‘She should have joined us by now.’

‘Damn and shite!’ Artor cursed. ‘This is her villa. Who else would know best what is going on within these walls? I’ve waited long enough. Any innocent host would have been knocking at my door as soon as they heard of the attack.’ Artor seemed re-energized now that he had an enemy to pursue. ‘Odin! Galahad! Find this woman and bring her to the atrium. Search wherever you wish, and use whatever force is necessary. This villa is a snake pit.’

‘When I left her in her tower, I noticed that her hair was damp,’ Taliesin added slowly and with a degree of regret. Miryll was too young and too beautiful to die for the sin of treason.

‘I think we can accept that she’s involved in some way in this attempt on my life.’ Artor’s voice was silky and implacable.