The Bloody Cup (50 page)

The three searchers slogged through snow-drowned forests, resting frequently to save the horses. They were forced to sleep in a lean-to made from cut branches and they scraped the earth bare of snow inside so a fire could be lit. All in all, Bedwyr had chosen a miserable route for the trio to travel.

‘Where are we?’ Galahad panted as he attempted to drag his horse out of a snowdrift.

‘Just a little to the south-west of Bremetennacum.’ Bedwyr helped to push Galahad’s steed from behind.

Eventually, the horse escaped the clinging snow with an explosion of muscles, and Galahad and Bedwyr sprawled full length in the snow.

Galahad rose laughing, and Bedwyr could almost forgive the obsessive selfishness that impelled the prince.

‘So where is this village of which you speak?’ Galahad asked. He carefully checked the legs of his animal.

‘From what I was told, it’s situated on the Roman road leading to the west. The road travels to the sea and then heads north to Bravoniacum, within reach of the Wall.’

‘So we sneak up on this village, do we? What about Gronw?’

‘It’s not likely we can sneak up on the place,’ Bedwyr replied laconically, dusting snow off his leather breeches. ‘But I don’t think we’ll miss the village. Gronw’s followers will leave tracks in the snow. He has quite a following now, so it’s becoming more and more difficult for him to conceal himself.’

‘We must exercise caution from now on,’ Percivale warned.

‘Yes,’ Bedwyr agreed. ‘We’ll have to be extremely careful when and where we break cover. The Roman road is just beyond the tree line, so we must choose a route where we can ride parallel to it. And we can’t light any more fires, so there’s no more hot food. Let’s not give Gronw any advance warning. I expect enough opposition as it is.’

That night, the three men huddled together in the lee of an oak, while their horses were kept hobbled in places where their soft lips and sharp teeth could find a little dried grass or sweet bark to augment the grain they had been fed. The warriors were uncomfortable and slept little, although they needed healing rest. The Cup burned in each mind like a curse, although each of them desired it for a different reason.

Crazed with dreams of glory, Gronw presided over a growing body of followers. Three times he had passed judgement on spies that had resulted in summary execution, and his decisions created spectacles that brought more potential adherents to his cause. The tattooed Pict gloated over the deaths of his enemies as he sat wrapped in dirty furs in the only sound building remaining among a cluster of four rotting huts.

The traitors had been burned for their sins and their blackened bodies left where they died as an object lesson to those fools who still followed the new ways and religions.

Pebr, the phlegmatic, one-eyed warrior, had become Gronw’s guide and paymaster, and his link to their anonymous benefactor. Pebr was curt and monosyllabic, and Gronw doubted that this saturnine man believed one word of his injunctions to the people. Not that Gronw blamed him for his doubts, he didn’t believe his rantings himself. But any lie that brought harm to either Roman or Celt was acceptable. Revenge had a special taste, like dried blood mixed with salty tears, and Gronw fed on it addictively.

His eyes strayed to the rafter in the corner of the room where he had hidden the Cup. He could feel its power drawing him, even now when he could not physically see it. With his habitual suspicion, he had taken great pains to hide the Cup from Pebr, for Gronw trusted nobody.

Tonight, he would speak of rebellion. He would warn the curious and the true believers alike of the war to come, when Christianity would be cast out and the land would be cleansed of Artor and his kind. Then, tomorrow, he would move further north, to a new location that Pebr had prepared.

Word had spread and messages were passed from mouth to mouth.

Outside, in the forest that encroached upon the ruined village, the three searchers had located Gronw’s lair; it was clearly signposted by a wisp of smoke escaping from the conical roof of the hut. They could also smell the remains of the three executed spies. Bedwyr had been the first to recognize the smell of death, that sweet scent that no man or woman can forget once they have experienced it. He wanted to gag.

‘Dismount,’ he whispered. ‘Tether the horses so that they don’t shy away from the stink of corpses. Be careful where you put your feet and where you leave tracks in the snow, for we are in danger in this place.’

For once, Galahad did not argue.

Ever cautious, Bedwyr made them crawl through the snow. When they suddenly came upon three bodies, the first thing they saw was the remains of roasted feet.

The executed men, probably Trystan’s spies, had been tied to young oak trees that were little more than saplings, but strong enough to resist the frantic struggles of the victims. Oil-soaked wood had been piled around their feet and set alight, so only chalky bones remained of their legs, at least in those places where the animals had left the corpses in peace.

The blackened bellies of the bodies had split open, revealing how the birds, foxes and other carnivores had feasted on the cooked flesh. Even Bedwyr, who had seen the cruelties of the Saxons as well as the carnage of battle, was forced to turn away from this grisly sight. Now that the bodies had frozen solid, the scavengers came no more and the dead men hung stiffly.

‘Many feet have packed the snow down hard here around the bodies, and not just when these poor devils were put to death. See? Many gawpers have come, again and again, to view these remains.’ Bedwyr spat on to the packed snow.

‘That thought is more loathsome than their execution,’ Percivale muttered. His face was as white as the snow, except for his boyish freckles that stood out starkly against his pallor.

‘Gronw is near, and I’ll enjoy killing him,’ Galahad snarled. ‘These men died hard.’ His face showed no revulsion, but anger clenched his jaw.

‘Should we bury them?’ Percivale asked quietly.

Bedwyr watched as Percivale’s fingers traced the sign of the Cross.

‘No. I hate to leave the remains of good men to be desecrated, but nothing would advertise our presence more clearly. We must be invisible until we complete our task, and then we can consider the remains of these men.’

By a circuitous route, the three searchers contrived to crawl to the top of a low ridge line from where they could observe the ruined building which was still emitting smoke through the conical roof. They burrowed into the snow to await darkness.

At dusk, the malcontents began to gather. At first, they came in pairs, and their ragged clothes and filthy, cloth-wrapped hands and feet marked them as farm labourers or layabouts. As the gloom deepened, men began to arrive on horses, their armour clinking in the stillness. Still other men and women wore fur cloaks to conceal their fine woven robes that marked them as wealthy landowners. At least one hundred citizens had gathered by the time a tall, one-eyed warrior left the hut and set alight a large bonfire. The flames rose and danced, washing the faces of the crowd with blood-red colour.

Quiet descended over the assembled group of rebels.

Into this well of stillness, a chanting, unseen voice cut across the whispers of the crowd. Awkwardly, a black-robed form shouldered out of the hut and faced the rapt crowd.

By Galahad’s standards, Bedwyr was a pagan. But in recent years he had cleaved to the old religion and had found comfort in it. But if he had expected to hear familiar exhortations and the calm rhetoric of the Druids, then he was disappointed. Gronw spewed out a diatribe of hatred for all things Roman. In the process, he damned those Celts who tolerated Christianity, castigating the long peace of Artor as a coward’s concession to the Church of Rome. The crowd devoured his words.

‘The Cup!’ someone called from within the crowd.

‘The Cup! The Cup! The Cup!’

The cry rose out of one hundred throats as if that simple utensil, so jealously guarded by Lucius, was somehow embodied with powers that could crush all civilized life in the west.

Like the charlatan he was, Gronw conjured the Cup out of his sleeve and lifted the battered tin high.

‘Behold the Cup of Ceridwen, she who gives all blessings! Hence comes our victory, for the goddess will smite down the Christian gods. She will destroy all the works of Jesus and overthrow the reign of the murderous Artor. Death to Artor, usurper and bastard!’

‘Death!’ the crowd roared in response, oblivious to the apparent foolishness of worshipping a battered cup.

The ceremony continued.

Brutally, Pebr dragged an unfortunate man out of one of the half-collapsed buildings. The prisoner’s hands were tied behind his back and his eyes were mad with terror.

‘Ceridwen loves you all,’ Gronw screamed. ‘But this dog was heard to curse her, while still calling for the Romans to return and bring plenty to the west. He is a spy! He is a traitor! He is a Christian!’

‘No, I’m not a Christian.’ The man’s desperate voice rose in the cold air. ‘I was drunk!’

Gronw cast his eyes around the assembled group. ‘What penance shall this traitor pay? What does Mother Ceridwen demand of her loyal children?’

‘Death! Death! Death!’ the crowd screamed.

In any event, the unfortunate workman, for so his dress proclaimed him to be, was not burned alive. Whipped into frenzy, the crowd snatched the victim away from Pebr and began to pummel and punch him. The body was soon engulfed by the crowd and disappeared from view. Then it reappeared as it was tossed from group to group and torn at with nails, teeth and knives. The bloody meat that was left when the crowd tired of this sport could hardly be recognized as a human being.

Bedwyr shuddered as he watched a woman in a rich, grey hood lick ecstatically at the blood on her fingers. Men danced and spun, others prayed, and some, like Pebr, stood impassively and watched the blood lust boil within the crowd. Some crazed men would have turned on each other, so maddened was the mood of those present, had Gronw not raised his hands and demanded silence.

Eventually he was obeyed, but only because of the strength and authority of Pebr’s sword.

‘Ceridwen has feasted and has drunk deeply,’ Gronw called exultantly. ‘She will bless you in the days ahead. But you must be ready to rise up when you hear the call that the Cup has come again.’

The people cheered and stamped their feet in a shared frenzy.

‘When this crowd has departed’, Galahad vowed on the ridge line, ‘Gronw and whoever remains with him must die.’

‘Aye,’ Bedwyr whispered. ‘The quest for Lucius’s Cup may be our primary task, but murder and fomenting revolution are totally different matters.’

‘Have you seen men and women before who have done such vile acts as those we have just seen?’ Percivale asked Bedwyr.

‘Aye. When people lack a strong, guiding mind to lead them, they can easily revert to beastliness. But these animals aren’t worshippers of the old ways. They use religion to justify the vileness of their hatred for the cause of Artor and the west.’

‘Perhaps we would be beasts ourselves if we weren’t governed by civilized laws.’

‘God shouldn’t permit anyone to live who can participate in the degenerate deeds we have seen tonight,’ Percivale whispered. His face was stark with horror.

The three watchers waited for hours as the more respectable members of Gronw’s flock quietly slipped away and the hungers of those men and women who remained turned to sex and the wine they had brought with them. Later, when a light snow began to fall, and the bonfire began to splutter and die, the night returned to a semblance of stillness and the warriors checked their weapons.

Their swords would be needed with the coming of the dawn.

CHAPTER XIX

THE BLUE HAG

King Mark had been gone from the halls of Cadbury for more than a month when the fragile balance of the west began to teeter on a knife edge. On a perfect, early-spring day, when blue skies had finally defeated the grey storm clouds of late winter, one of Artor’s oldest enemies came to the citadel.

A retinue of warriors clad entirely in black approached Cadbury Town. The citizens stepped aside and covered their faces when they saw the woman who was carried in much state in a litter of midnight black.

Morgan had come to Cadbury Tor.

Word of her arrival spread through the township, over the dykes, up the spiral defences and into the king’s hall.

‘The Witch has come’, the cry rose, and many greybeards who remembered her name and her deeds prayed to their gods that she would die before she blighted their world with her killing stare.

Artor did not leave his hall to greet Morgan. He waited for her to come to him. The king sat on his throne with his nervous and unwilling wife beside him. No friendly face in the form of Elayne was there, nor was Percivale’s calm presence warm at his back.

Four members of Morgan’s guard carried her litter into the king’s hall. Artor could see that the figure on the litter was shrunken, tiny and was clothed in the deep black of mourning.

Artor rose, permitting no sign of weakness in his ageing body to show. Standing with his feet a little apart and his wide shoulders squared, his vigour must have stabbed his sister to the heart.

She was helped from her litter and moved towards the throne with the bent gait of an old woman. Artor’s hooded eyes watched her as she shuffled along, one blue-veined hand clutching a staff carved into the likeness of a serpent. Despite their long enmity, he felt a stab of pity for the loss of her beauty.

Then she drew back her hood with her free hand.

Morgan had endured the pain of tattooing from her hairline deep into the neckline of her robe. Serpents, demons, spiders and other vile creatures crawled in blue woad over her wizened skin so that her features appeared to writhe with unholy life even when she was still. Her white hair had yellowed with ill health, and her lips had thinned over what remained of her sharpened teeth.

‘Greetings, my brother,’ she rasped in a voice that had lost its musical power to seduce. ‘You’re still favoured by time, I see.’