Death of an Empire (65 page)

‘It’s a good thing that Rhedyn and Brangaine refused to unpack,’ Cadoc decided wryly when he heard the news that they would be fleeing Constantinople in the dawn. ‘It’s a pretty city, but it can never be home.’

‘No, Constantinople can never be home,’ Myrddion replied with a sob. No matter how he tried, Cadoc couldn’t find the words to comfort his master as the young man wept.

Finn, Cadoc and Myrddion leaned on the rails of el Kabir’s strange ship with its huge triangular sails as it beat its way out into the
Propontis. Below decks, the women slept after a night of frantic activity, while Praxiteles fussed over the disposition of his master’s possessions. Without asking questions, they had carried all their worldly goods to the forecourt of the inn, thanked Emilio and his still chattering wife, and started to load the wagons that Ali el Kabir conjured out of nowhere with a flourish of smiles.

Myrddion had sought out Praxiteles, who had been sleeping in the servants’ alcove, and tried to pay him for his services, but the Greek staunchly refused to accept any coin. Eventually, his face very sad, Praxiteles insisted on accompanying them on their travels and all Myrddion’s protestations couldn’t change his mind.

Now, as sunrise gilded the Golden Horn and turned the city into a floating mirage of silver gilt, Myrddion hoped he would never see the Eastern Empire again. Aspar dwelled here, and after the Fall of Rome a wall of tall barbarians would stand between him and Myrddion. This son would never repeat the sins of the father, even if he must travel on his journey through life as solitary and as trapped as Aspar’s merlin.

‘Are we truly going home, master?’ Finn asked hesitantly. ‘Will my son grow up on his own soil?’

‘Your child could well be a daughter, Truthteller,’ Cadoc joked. ‘For all your potions and lotions, you still cannot determine the sex of an unborn child.’

‘I don’t care what sex the babe is, as long as it’s healthy and strong,’ Finn retorted with stern seriousness as the morning sun gilded his face with a rime of light.

‘You’ll be a good father, Finn,’ Myrddion acknowledged with a sad face. ‘Your child may be born on the journey home, but he’ll be a Celt, and that’s everything.’

Cadoc kicked Finn on the shin with his booted foot – hard. Myrddion heard Truthteller wince, but he was too deeply immersed in regret over Flavia, his father and the whole, ill-advised
adventure that had absorbed six years of his youth to pay any attention.

‘It will be good to leave these huge skies, for I’ve missed the rains that fall at home,’ he whispered, almost to himself. ‘In Cymru, everything seems softer and gentler, and I think I’ll try to see Branwyn when I return. Perhaps, after all we have experienced, I can even try to heal her.’

Behind his back, Cadoc and Finn exchanged meaningful glances.

‘You’re not to blame, master, for whatever is making you so sad. It’s not that damned Flavia woman, is it?’ Cadoc asked angrily. Any blow to Myrddion was a major wound to Cadoc – and he’d never liked the flame-haired bitch. ‘Sooner or later, a good woman will come into your life and love you. She’ll be one of us rather than a Roman noblewoman who knows nothing of honour and decency. You’ll see, master! Everything will come right once we get home.’

No it won’t, Myrddion thought sadly. I’ll not marry because it hurts too damned much. Better to be alone. I’d not willingly pass on my father’s curse of casual cruelty.

But he couldn’t put a voice to those thoughts. He had pretended to be strong since he was very young, almost before he could remember, and now his pretence had become a second skin that hid his losses from the pity of others.

The city faded into the morning and the dhow, for so the black-bearded captain called it, fled before the wind into the Propontis as it took the healers on the first stage of the long journey back to Britain – and home.

‘I’d like to be called Myrddion Merlinus from this point onwards,’ Myrddion told Cadoc in the early morning, after the hours of silence that had weighed heavily on his heart. ‘Of all the wonders I saw in Constantinople, the one thing that I truly admired was Aspar’s merlin. It remained free, despite its captivity, and it convinced me that every man must learn his true nature.’

‘Of course, master,’ Cadoc replied quietly. ‘You may choose any name you wish. ‘But first you must eat, because I have no doubt that you need sustenance. Great events follow you closely, so we’ll need to keep up your strength.’

Myrddion chuckled softly. His heart might be breaking for a faithless lover and his father might have humiliated him beyond bearing, but Cadoc would continue to baby him, regardless of his age.

‘Why do you, Finn, and the women bother with me? I’ve dragged you into wars, to places so vile that I cannot bear to remember them, and then onwards into more pain and danger. Why do you travel with me?’

For a brief second, Cadoc looked thunderstruck and his mouth fell open in surprise. When he closed it, Myrddion heard the little snap as his teeth met. Then he repeated a response that Myrddion had heard before, in an earlier time of pain and death, and the young man’s heart began the healing process.

‘Ye gods, master! Surely you know by now? These things are done in the name of the love that we, at least, have long held for you. And ever will.’

Then Cadoc marched away towards the cabin below decks and Myrddion found that, suddenly, he was very hungry.

AUTHOR’S NOTES

I have always loved to write, but this novel was both the realisation of a dream and the hardest task I’ve ever attempted. Months of research, a very long journey over lands and seas, and hours of sweat and a bucket of tears went into the making of it.

The whole endeavour began when I started to wonder about the lost years of Merlin’s life. What I’m referring to are the years between his attempted sacrifice by Vortigern and his role as Uther Pendragon’s adviser. I looked at both Myrddion figures, namely the Merlin Sylvestris, or the Wild Man, and the Magician. I rejected the Merlin Sylvestris version, described in the Vita Merlini, as unlikely. I just couldn’t visualise my Merlin as a man driven mad by loss. Such a man wouldn’t be capable of guiding the destiny of such strong-willed kings as Uther Pendragon and his son, Arthur.

Once that decision was made, I was presented with a huge problem. Where was Merlin during his middle years, or at least a decade or so of that time? What would a clever, alienated and partially skilled healer be likely to do during this period? The Arthurian legends say nothing of these years, so I had no guiding lights to illuminate my path.

Eventually, after I had finished Book One of this trilogy, I puzzled over what I would do if I were in Merlin’s shoes – and my
answer came quickly. The ultimate, long-term goal would be to find his father, but in the short term he would be hungry for knowledge and would want to improve his medical skills.

So, where would he go? The answer to that question came quickly too. He would go to the world of the Middle Sea, literally the Mediterranean, as the source of all learning, but that empire was fragmentary and devouring itself. I knew virtually nothing about the finer details of that decay, so it was back to the drawing board for M. K. Hume. How fascinating it was to find that King Merovech, who gave his name to the Merovingian kings of France, was also reputed to be a supposed Demon Seed. This research result was surprising, to put it mildly. To trace the extraordinarily brutal and manipulative life of Flavius Aetius was historically fascinating. As I hunted for Flavius Petronius Maximus, Heraclius, Valentinian III and Flavius Ardabur Aspar, what struck me most was that the historical data was more violent and more bizarre than anything I could ever have invented.

And all of these men lived and died in the same period of time. The history of Europe was truly hanging in the balance. Attila the Hun and his murderous horde had the potential to change the face of Europe, so I wasn’t really surprised when I discovered that the Battle of the Catalaunian Plain is numbered among the fifteen most influential battles of all time. That Flavius Aetius won this battle, in one day, was a victory for muscle and desperation over the force of numbers in Attila’s massive army.

Then, after studying the ancient landscape of Rome and the politics that rendered it almost moribund, I tracked down lead poisoning and the terrible toll in human lives that the Roman sweet tooth took. Would a young man like Merlin have made the connection between a distilled grape sweetener and this debilitating illness with its wildly differing symptoms? Possibly, or perhaps not. The Romans never made that leap, but then again,
they never gave up their love of blood-soaked games either, even as Christians.

I travelled to Istanbul/Constantinople to see the Golden Horn and Hagia Sofia III. While I didn’t see Hagia Sofia II, which existed in Merlin’s time, I did see the basilica beside it that dated from a far earlier era. The land and the seas are unchanged and I embraced it, loved it and felt the past seep out of the walls and into my hands.

I make no apology for inserting Merlin into these fading days of glory. The Roman Empire saw strangers come and go by the many thousand. He could quite easily have been one of them. I had the opportunity to give him his modern name of Merlinus, or Merlin, and I bade farewell to the Middle Sea with regret.

I tampered with the truth as little as possible because there was really little need. I may have given Aspar an extra son and a rather fiendish, unspoken past, but historically we know little of him or the exact number of children he fathered. What is certain is that he could have become emperor on several occasions, simply by changing his branch of Christianity. Instead, he placed lesser men on the throne and remained a powerful, enigmatic figure that no one will ever be able to unravel. I invented his passion for hunting birds.

Incidentally, Flavius Aetius did indeed have a daughter who was married off to Thraustila, the Hungvari nobleman. The story of Valentinian’s murder is also historically accurate. My Flavia could easily have been given such a name, being the female form of the gens, but history doesn’t record the daughter’s name or her ultimate fate. My interpretation is thus as valid as any other and I confess I’ve been more generous with her than was likely to have been the case, given her father’s character and the way girls were raised in the days of the late Roman Empire. I hope the historical Flavia escaped Italia and built a new life with Thraustila’s gold, but I rather doubt it.

One last detail needs explanation. The prophet Muhammad had yet to be born so Islam, as we know it, did not exist in ad 456. The people of what would become the Crescent were followers of the Christian faith, the Hebrew faith or paganism, based on the beliefs of the Amalekites. This fact made me wonder why extremists from all three dominant religions in the Middle East are so intractably at war. What are we fighting over, as Myrddion would have said? So Ali el Kabir is an invention, but thousands like him traded with Constantinople and were believers in the Jewish faith. Still others were Christian, so members of that faith too moved freely within the world of the Middle East. Their love of horses, hounds and hunting birds were strong habits of the sons of the desert.

Just recently, a friend with a Celtic heritage talked to me about the physical differences that are so prevalent in my novels. I tried to explain that, in the bitter north, natural selection decided physical characteristics. Because of my own northern heritage, I am fair-skinned, blue-eyed and very long of leg for my height, which is short when compared with others in my family tree. My mother was six feet tall and my uncle was six feet seven inches. Only the tall survived as children of the snow. Conversely, kinder climes permitted shorter folk to live. So are legends made!

My friend also discussed the term Celt, and I admit that this word is a more modern description of the tribesmen who inhabited Britain between the eras of the Picts and the later invasions of the northerners. They called themselves by their tribal names but they were cohesive racial groups and, when attacked from outside, they put aside their tribal differences and united. Calling themselves the People, which most racial groups choose, wasn’t an option for me, so I use the name Celts, given to these tribesmen by later scholars and commentators.

So that’s it! I hope you enjoyed the journey we have travelled.

I was excited by it all because I fervently believe that when we
cease to learn, then we are dead. And I hope my Merlin learned a great deal that would give him strength in the trials that were to follow in his adventures with Arthur, King of the Britons.