Clash of Kings (26 page)

‘Plautenes? What . . .’ His voice trailed away as the steward lifted his face and the young healer saw the glistening snail tracks of tears running down his gaunt cheeks. He threw himself off the horse and climbed the wheel of the cart to look down at the wrapped shape that lay within it. With hands that were as tender and as deft as those of any young girl, he unwrapped the fine linen and exposed Olwyn’s sleeping face, with the lines of care smoothed away by the loss of all her personality and vividness of spirit.

‘Oh, Gran! Gran! How did you come to this pass? Why did you follow me?’

‘She couldn’t rest until she knew that you were safe, young master. My lord Eddius and I tried to dissuade her, but she wouldn’t listen. She was determined to bring you back, regardless of the cost. Well, it has cost her life. And I don’t know what we’ll do without her.’

‘How? What happened? How did she die?’ Myrddion’s voice was rising towards the edge of hysteria, although no tears had fallen. He climbed over the edge of the cart, laid himself down alongside his grandmother’s body, and pressed his face against her still shrouded breast.

‘Get up, Myrddion,’ Hengist ordered brusquely. ‘It’s not seemly. I will tell you everything that happened, if you must know about your grandmother’s death. But, first, you must rise and be seated beside Plautenes. Lady Olwyn showed great courage and we must honour her, not shame her with our weaknesses.’

‘You don’t understand, Hengist, the hole that her death leaves in my heart. I’m sure you’ve lost near kin in the past, but unless you are responsible for the death of the one person who has always protected you from the ills of the world . . . then you can’t know how I’d give everything to be a child in her arms again.’

The boy was weeping soundlessly and Hengist felt a little ashamed at the harsh words he had uttered, whether they were true or not.

‘I do know how you feel, Myrddion, but I don’t have the time to help you to understand how we Saxons and Frisians deal with our grief. Let me explain simply that we exact guilt in blood, gold or suffering to the full measure of our tears. I know you believe Saxon customs to be barbaric, and perhaps they are, but a man of our race who kills another, even by accident, is expected to care for his victim’s family or face the same punishment himself. A harsh land breeds a harsh, seemingly unfeeling response that eases our pain. But weep if you must, for I was wrong to try to chide you.’

‘Then tell me how Olwyn died. I’ll not stir a step until I know. And don’t spare me, for the guilt is already mine.’

Hengist mounted his horse and nodded to Plautenes to set the cart in motion. ‘We must be gone before full light and the sun will be rising soon. Vortigern will regret his magnanimity in letting you go free, Plautenes, and will wish that both you and Olwyn should disappear. He will not willingly antagonise the northern kings.’

The sky in the east was already lightening and a stain not unlike thinned blood touched the bottom of a thick bank of cloud. Rain threatened, and Myrddion almost welcomed it so that its wetness could hide the tears that he believed would never stop. As they moved in unison with the creaking and groaning of the old wagon and its huge wooden wheels, Hengist told Myrddion everything that had taken place at Dinas Emrys. No detail was too small or too painful to be overlooked, for Hengist understood that Myrddion must be made aware that it was Vortigern, and not the boy, who was responsible for what had occurred at the ruined fortress.

‘Saxons, Frisians and Jutes are stern peoples, but we aren’t complete barbarians, as you may believe. Queen Rowena provided your grandmother’s shroud because she couldn’t save the priestess. And I have Vortigern’s bribe, his foolish idea of a blood price, which was designed to separate my head from my shoulders when I gave it to the king of the Deceangli tribe. I give it to you, for it is Pictish and has no shadow of Vortigern upon it. Wear it, and remember her.’

At first, Myrddion would have thrown the circlet away, so great was his revulsion, but he almost heard Olwyn’s whisper in his ears urging common sense, so he changed his mind. It barely fitted his wrist, but he managed to snap it into place.

Hengist rode with them until the broad Roman track leading to the south came into view. Then, reluctantly, he explained that he would be leaving them.

Myrddion looked up at him, seeing him as a dark shape against the brilliance of the rising sun. The red in his tawny hair created a coronet around his head and touched his hands and fingers with golden flakes.

‘You’ll be a king before too long, Hengist,’ the boy murmured to his saviour. ‘But I doubt you’ll think it’s worth it.’

‘Is that a prophecy, Demon Seed?’ Hengist retorted with a grin that was a little uncertain at the edges.

‘No, thane, it’s an observation. Goodbye, noble Hengist. Were all of your countrymen like you, we’d have no quarrel between us.’

‘Ah, but they’re not, are they? Nor are all your countrymen like you and your steadfast grandmother, so it seems that we shall always remain enemies. Farewell, Demon Seed. I expect to hear great things of you in the years to come.’

Then Hengist was gone on his huge horse as if the earth had swallowed him, leaving Myrddion to grieve and rage in peace.

The journey to Segontium was long and hard, and with every turn of the iron-shod wheels Myrddion heard Olwyn’s voice whisper to him: ‘Wait, beloved! Wait, beloved! Wait, beloved!’

CHAPTER XII

WHEN EAGLES FLY WITH NIGHTINGALES

The mournful journey to the villa by the sea at Segontium took a long and wearying time, unbroken by the solace of speech. Myrddion’s eyes were red and puffy but dry, for his tears had ceased over the two long days of the journey. The small cavalcade paused rarely, to water the two horses, to rotate them in the traces of the wagon and to search for fodder. Plautenes and Myrddion had only a heel of hard cheese and some mouldy bread that remained in the steward’s pack, strung over the withers of his horse. They shared the meagre rations on the dawn of the second day in virtual silence.

Myrddion excluded Plautenes, not out of resentment or anger, but because the boy was deeply engrossed in thought. He understood the train of events that had led inexorably to Olwyn’s death, so he realised that many minds and hands had contributed to her murder, for so he believed her death to be. The boys who had stoned the dog, trivial as the incident had seemed at the time, had reminded Democritus that a way existed to lay his hands upon Annwynn’s scrolls by stealth. Horsa, Hengist and the Saxon troop had obeyed their king and searched for an elusive demon’s seed that had been predicted by charlatans who sought to cement their power with an autocratic ruler. The Saxons had meant no harm to Myrddion personally, but they followed orders as mercenaries invariably do, while the magicians understood their master’s ruthlessness and sought to avoid punishment. Myrddion had avoided death by chance and fear, while Hengist had organised his escape out of gratitude for his brother’s medical treatment. But, in this case, benevolent motives had meant that Myrddion had not been at Dinas Emrys to be found by his grandmother. Even Olwyn’s grief and anger had contributed to Vortigern’s intemperate actions.

‘Greed, fear, chance, gratitude, anger and grief killed her,’ Myrddion whispered, as he broke his self-imposed regimen of silence. ‘She was a white dove flying far from her dovecote and prey to eagles who cannot help what they are. She was a nightingale, bred for beauty.’

‘I don’t understand, young master,’ Plautenes whispered. ‘Vortigern sent us away without the slightest common decency or regret. To me, he’s a shrike rather than an eagle. At least the eagle possesses some nobility.’

Myrddion rested his head on his palm and moved easily with the shuddering motion of the death cart. His eyes were stoic and sad.

‘The Saxons are wild eagles, unused to training or the civilizing effects of man. They are noble, as you say, but theirs is a fierce honour and a savage pride. They don’t think as we do. If we are ever to drive them from our shores, then we must study them. Between Vortigern’s hunger, Saxon fierceness and the scribe’s greed, my grandmother was doomed weeks ago. Taken to its most extreme limit, my embittered mother sowed the seeds of Olwyn’s death when she named me a demon’s child. How strange are the tangled skeins of fate.’

Plautenes sighed wearily. In the steward’s tired, despairing mind, Vortigern was an egotistical murderer who had no redeeming features. The goddess Fortuna had no part in the death of his mistress, although Myrddion seemed to be one of the favoured few who was fated to rise on the goddess’s great golden wheel. But the boy thought too much, seeking to find patterns where none could exist.

In time, the cart creaked up the road to Olwyn’s villa, where the initial joy at seeing Myrddion perched up on the high seat changed to wailing when the body of the mistress was lifted out of the nest of dried grass in the bottom of the cart. Eddius was inconsolable, and because the children were still too young to give orders Myrddion coached two servants to take horse to Canovium and Tomen-y-mur with the memorised tale of Olwyn’s death. As it turned out, Melvig ap Melwy had already begun the journey to Segontium, which he was taking in slow stages, for he was now very old and his strength was failing. His curmudgeonly nature hadn’t improved with time, for the pain of arthritis made him unpredictable.

Between them, Plautenes, Crusus and Myrddion assuaged the grief of the bereft servants, for Olwyn had been truly loved during the twenty years that she had been mistress of the villa. Crusus drove the kitchen girls to begin preparing those funerary foods that could be made in advance, while Plautenes searched the markets for the very best game, fish and delicacies to honour his mistress. Every inch of the villa was scoured clean lest sand, dust or spiders’ webs should speak of poor housekeeping. Mistress Olwyn’s reputation must shine like purest gold.

Myrddion would have ordered fine woods to burn his beloved grandmother, but he knew that Melvig would never permit a mere woman to go to the flames. With Eddius’s distracted permission, he sought out a fine carpenter to build a box of great beauty that would house Olwyn’s perishable flesh while she lay in state in the villa. By the time Melvig arrived, with rheumy, red-rimmed eyes a little moist with regret, Myrddion had found a stone worker to build a bench tomb upon the cliff tops where the wild flowers grew in the spring, a site that was visible from the villa. Eddius’s only comfort was the knowledge that he could visit his love where sun, sea and sky met the earth, raising her frail flesh and bones towards the light.

Guests came slowly while Olwyn waited in her wooden box, which had been sweetened with herbs and tinctures of flowers distilled by Annwynn’s skilled hands. King Bryn ap Synnel came with his son, Llanwith, and laid several golden coins and a necklace of amber on the shroud of the princess.

King Bryn was one of Melvig’s most valued friends, as the two men shared uncompromising views on Celtic honour, Saxon settlers and Pict warriors. The Ordovice tribe ruled the largest part of Cymru, and had made useful treaties with the Cornovii tribe of the mountain spine, as well as the Deceangli. These two old kings could marshal a significant army of warriors between them that would be sufficient to rival the forces of Vortigern himself, but they were cautious men who never risked their alliance or their warriors capriciously. Bryn’s presence at Segontium, accompanied by his son and heir, was a powerful demonstration of the north’s disapproval of Vortigern’s part in Olwyn’s death.

Branwyn arrived with her new husband, Maelgwr, the brother of her late husband, and insisted on commandeering her old room, forcing Olwyn’s children to sleep on one pallet. She had brought apples, hazel nuts and oaten cakes for her mother’s journey to the shades, but Melvig snorted quietly at such miserly fare. Crusus had already made the tiny honey cakes that Olwyn had loved, while Plautenes had given a large piece of uncarved jet that he had cherished for many years. Jet was for death, and its precious, shining surface reflected the steward’s homely, lugubrious face. As the patriarch, Melvig had pressed gold coins into each of Olwyn’s palms and hadn’t begrudged the rope of river pearls that he laid across his daughter’s marbled throat.

Yes, Branwyn showed her lack of respect in the grave gifts she gave to her mother, but what did she feel, Myrddion wondered?

Like many unstable women who have been forced to live their days at the beck and call of an unloved husband and his kin, Branwyn was treating the death of her mother as something of a holiday, and was enjoying the comforts of her old home rather too enthusiastically. In the darkness of night she might look out of her window and over to Mona and weep for her innocent youth, but during the day her heart burned with anger and her eyes were almost blinded with her hate. Her mother had lost her life trying to save the cursed Demon Seed. Jealousy and curdled love that could never be put right poisoned Branwyn’s every waking thought. As usual, she was thinking only of herself.

Myrddion was scarcely eleven, a little younger than Llanwith pen Bryn, but the boys were the same height, although Myrddion was far more slender than the Ordovice prince. Melvig examined the bastard through eyes that held a grudging regard.

‘Damn all demons, but he is surely a beautiful boy,’ the king muttered, as he watched Myrddion offer honey and oatcakes to a visitor with heart-stopping grace. The boy’s face, hands and feet were so like those of Olwyn that the old man wanted to weep with latent sentimentality, but Olwyn had never possessed such confidence and elegance, as far as her father could remember. The Deceangli king watched several noble women, who were all old enough to know better, as their eyes followed Myrddion’s slender form with a quite unmaternal longing. Melvig snorted. His own great-nephew, Mark, although still very young, was also staring at Myrddion with slightly lustful, worshipping eyes.

‘At least he’ll not lack for lovers,’ Bryn whispered at his side. ‘He’s clever, graceful and tactful, but if you’ve set your heart on another warrior to guard your back, then you’re out of luck, my friend. Those shoulders of his will never lift anything heavier than a knife, and as for his hands? . . . hmf!’