Warrior of the West (66 page)

‘Why in Hades are we sitting here like three old women? I feel like a drink, or two, or more.’

 

Common men have easy lives by comparison with the great ones. While Gruffydd raised a toast to absent friends, Artor was congratulating Gawayne, whose son, the newly named Galahad, was cradled in the arms of the High King.

‘Your boy is large, lusty and strong, and he will try your patience,’ Artor said evenly. ‘Just as his father tries mine! You should accompany your wife back to the Otadini lands to spend some time with your parents. From there, you will proceed to the fortress of Verterae, for I have little trust in Brigante common sense.’

Gawayne was reminded of his unpleasant conversation with Myrddion on the night his son was born. Was Artor aware of his liaison with Wenhaver? The High King was looking at him very oddly.

‘If I have offended you, I’m sorry, Uncle. I’d never hurt you deliberately, any more than I’d harm Galahad.’

‘All is well between us, have no fear. Just travel to Verterae and ensure that young Rhys is behaving himself. ’

Artor handed over the babe who immediately started to wail. Gawayne held the babe awkwardly and his son took revenge by vomiting curdled milk on his fresh tunic. Gawayne swore pungently.

‘Such are the joys of fatherhood, Gawayne. But you can rest easy in the knowledge that you now have an heir.’

Gawayne could see the sadness in Artor’s eyes, and he felt a jolt under his breastbone that he recognized as guilt.

‘We shall leave within the week, my lord. Enid is recovering slowly, but she is eager to show Galahad to her parents and mine. You may not believe me, but I look forward to spending time with my wife and my new son during the hours left to us at Cadbury.’

Artor smiled, and wished him well. Am I forever to give careful warnings to Gawayne and disguise how I really feel? he wondered. And is this all that is left for me?

Seeking something, an argument perhaps, or even comfort in his loneliness, he visited the queen’s apartments.

‘What do you want, Artor?’

The queen had pinned up her hair in a coronet of plaits and was dressed in a serviceable sleeping robe that was comfortable rather than fashionable.

‘A promise,’ he replied with as much conciliation in his voice as he could manage.

Mystified, Wenhaver eyed him suspiciously and sent her ladies out of earshot.

‘What promise?’

‘I want you to stay away from Gawayne. If you are prepared to obey me, the whole affair will be forgotten.’

Wenhaver was suspicious. If Artor knew for certain that she had presented him with horns over her liaison with Gawayne, he’d be ready to tear her into very small pieces. That he was almost conciliatory seemed to suggest that he wasn’t sure. She reacted accordingly.

Wenhaver plastered an expression of outrage on her face. ‘How dare you accuse me of being a whore! I know you hate me, but do you truly believe me to be so vile?’ Artor cannot know for certain, she thought feverishly, or he would never be so calm and conciliatory.

Artor sighed. ‘Long before we were betrothed, Morgan le Fey warned that I should beware of a woman with yellow hair. She predicted that you would bring me, and all my works, to ruin. Do you want the west to fail and to find yourself forced to flee and hide?’

‘You’re just trying to frighten me. Besides, Myrddion Merlinus predicted I would die in a nunnery.’

Despite himself, Artor laughed. ‘You’re far too fond of your bodily delights to willingly enter a nunnery, wife. I think that Myrddion must have been drunk when he uttered those words.’

Wenhaver pursed her lips.

Artor seated himself on a delicate stool that seemed too insubstantial to take his weight. ‘I await your promise, Wenhaver. Come. It’s not a difficult vow to give.’

Confused and unsettled, she looked at her husband’s lined and haggard face, and felt afraid. If Artor should die, she would not be the High Queen.

‘I will promise what you ask’, she said, ‘although I don’t know why I need to make such a vow. I don’t want the kingdom to fall and it won’t happen anyway, because our warriors wouldn’t let the Saxons win.’

‘I used to believe that I could drive the Saxons out of our lands. I hoped that, with unification of the tribes and with a single, determined will to guide us, we could force the Saxons and Jutes out of the east, back into their boats and across the Litus Saxonicus to their erstwhile homes. I was wrong.’ Artor contemplated his large knuckles and scarred hands.

Wenhaver felt unaccustomed pity. Artor seemed so lifeless and so defeated. She almost stroked his head, but their long enmity stopped her fingers.

‘I don’t understand what’s wrong, Artor,’ she stated honestly.

Artor gave a great sigh that seemed to come from some black pit within him. Wenhaver shrank back from the finality of that sigh.

‘We cannot win,’ he said bleakly. ‘We can only maintain the borders as they are, with huge loss of life. Should our alliances fail, the Saxons will flood through the breach like the great tides that they brave to reach our lands. More and more of them come every day, across the Litus Saxonicus. In time, our whole world will be Saxon, and everything we have built and fought for will be forgotten.’

Wenhaver rose and knelt at the feet of her husband. There was nothing sexual or even sympathetic in her gesture, but her action caused the High King to raise his head.

‘Really, Artor. I don’t know why you’re trying to frighten us all, but what you are saying isn’t true. All my life, doom-mongerers have been moaning about the Saxon barbarians, but it hasn’t happened, has it? And you won’t let it happen, will you?’

The High King laughed. She was so serious, yet so lacking in understanding. How he longed to stride down to Targo’s room and discuss his bleak thoughts with the old Roman. Or seek out Myrddion, busy with his potions and his long, careful notes on all manner of subjects. Myrddion’s calm logic always eased Artor’s heart.

But Targo was dead and Myrddion had gone. Only Wenhaver, who had betrayed him and sickened him, was left to hear his self-doubts.

He bowed over her hand and kissed the plump little palm, causing Wenhaver to flush like a virgin at his simple mark of respect. He apologized for disturbing her rest and left her rooms.

He strode out on to the forecourt of Cadbury Tor and looked up at the cold, distant stars that he had known since he was a child. Why did they now seem to be so far away? The sound of men singing and laughing floated up to him from the stables, and he recognized Gruffydd’s distinctive voice. With a pang of jealousy, he wished he knew how to be so carefree and comfortable in the company of friends.

‘You’re crying for the moon and things that cannot be,’ a familiar, beloved voice seemed to whisper in his ear. ‘Do the best you can with what you have - that’s Targo’s law.’

Artor swore he heard a chuckle behind him, but he knew that his imagination was calling up the sound of his oldest friend.

‘But the dead are dead, Targo. And tomorrow I will still be alive, the Saxons will still hover near our borders and Saxon summers will continue to come, as they have since Hengist and Horsa were invited to these shores by Vortigern,’ he whispered softly into the night. ‘There’s no turning back and no point in whining about what is to be. I must go on, even if I can’t win.’

Then, because he was tired of his own fears, he shouted into the night at the Saxons and at Lady Fortuna herself, until the guards drew their weapons and searched for the approach of an enemy.

Silence settled once more, and the stars wheeled above Cadbury Tor, in immutable and ordained paths.

At Caer Gai, trees had invaded the Roman ruins and oak roots had broken the stones and heaved up the flagged floors. Yet there was shelter enough, and there were hill people who were prepared to exchange labour in payment for lanced boils or medications and cures for the fever.

Odin had the edges of the Sight, for around a great hollow oak, so old that it had first sprouted before the Druids saw the light of day, a series of rooms had been constructed out of salvaged Roman stone. Myrddion felt he needed the power of the ancient tree to fuel his faith in some reason for his long and difficult life. If the hill people thought his design was peculiar, they chose not to speak of it. They worshipped ancient trees and stones, and they held to the old ways within their hearts.

Myrddion’s house was neither large nor elegant, but the reed-covered roofs kept out rain, sleet and snow, and the tree formed a great protective shell.

Myrddion spent his days healing, reading, and writing down the chronicles of two kings, while Nimue broke the earth for a garden. In time, flowers grew in the old fortress, and herbs, and fresh fruit and vegetables flourished. As their needs were simple, they had all they desired.

A fresh spring was harnessed for irrigation, and Myrddion amused himself with the building of a fountain and a bathhouse although he lacked the skills of the old Romans.

In time, Myrddion and Nimue were loved for their wisdom, and were protected from the outside world, for the sturdy hill people would not let such provident lovers be taken from them.

While they were strange outlanders, Myrddion and Nimue were also gentle, for all that they bore weapons of bright iron. Women in labour knew that they would assist at the worst birth, and the wounds of the hunt that had once killed were now treated safely and successfully.

The villagers told no one of the great ones that had come among them, for fear they would vanish on the wind.

And in the fullness of time, Nimue bore Myrddion his first son, a strong boy with hair the colour of ebony, apart from a stripe of silver growing from the forehead. His eyes were midnight blue and were far older than any infant’s eyes should be.

They called him Taliesin.

While writing
Dragon’s Child
, I grew very fond of the young Artorex and it was only with the greatest reluctance that I let go of his character as he developed into a mature man. I fall in love, a little, with all my characters and hate to kill them off, but it’s an inevitable process in such a long chronicle. Targo, especially, captured my heart, and I have continued his tale into
Warrior of the West
. I was particularly sorry that Targo had to die and, if you found his death sentimental, then blame me, not him.

Poor Artor! As the novel progressed, and as the legend thickened and darkened, Artor was forced to become more pragmatic, accepting much of the violence and, it must be said, the wrongheadedness of his father. The difference between Artor and Uther Pendragon is that the son cared, profoundly and guiltily, that he sent Gaheris to die and that he knew that Caius (Kay) was likely to kill again. Uther would not have cared. Artor never succumbs to hubris, so he remains rather likeable, but also becomes more distant.

In several strands, I vary from the accepted, populist legends in this novel. For example, I was never comfortable with the wicked character of Nimue as portrayed in the medieval tales. Arthurian literature abounds with wicked women, a device that was fashionable when the various early accounts of the life of Arthur were written, and the strait-laced Victorians added to the old theme of woman as seducer. This is no longer a particular trend in the twenty-first century in which we live. Nor, to be fair, did Celts see women as inherently wicked creatures, as the position of Boedicca and females as low-caste Druids attest.

My Nimue is an outlander. To be truly alien in those times, it was necessary that she be a child of the great enemy, in this case a Jutlander. However, to become close to Myrddion, my Merlin, she had to be welcome at court, so she was raised in Celtic lands as a freeborn girl and was the foster-daughter of Gruffydd, Artor’s sword bearer. In this woman of lowly birth I have attempted to devise someone of acute intelligence who is capable of great devotion, and who possesses considerable practical leanings. This novel is largely hers, and she provides a counterpoint to the character of Wenhaver (Guenevere).

How appropriate then that Nimue fulfills my invented prophecy concerning her part in the tragedy of Artor. She steals away the mind of the kingdom by capturing the heart of Myrddion Merlinus. Essentially, when they leave Cadbury, they leave Artor to his fate.

I have never much liked the Guenevere of the legends, and I hated her relevance as a woman who could destroy Arthur’s kingdom for the love of another man, while still remaining likeable as a person. My Wenhaver has all the flaws of a spoiled beauty, and she is as different from the pliant and lovable Gallia as I could make her. At times, I am sorry for the queen, for I can understand her frustration at being a tool in great affairs of state, even though her sense of self-importance doesn’t allow her to feel any guilt. Wenhaver depends on her beauty to disguise her character flaws and, other than that trait, she is depicted as a profoundly stupid woman.

Gawayne (Gawain) was the original hero of the legends, for Lancelot was an invention of the French romances. I have returned to the older versions, so my Gawayne is brave, boneheaded, charming and feckless. I like Gawayne, as did Artor, but I wish the young man thought his actions through before he acted. He is perpetually prey to his libido, and is only rescued from venality by his willingness to accept his faults without argument.

When the time came to reconstruct the many battles that Arthur is reputed to have fought, I must admit to a great deal of scepticism in the locations championed by any number of sources throughout the British Isles. After many years of research, and access to countless documents, I have formed the opinion that the most accurate account of Arthur’s reign comes from
The Keys to Avalon: The True Location of Arthur’s Kingdom Revealed
, by Steve Blake and Scott Lloyd. It’s inarguable that Arthur was forced to stabilize his throne by fighting a series of wars that take place all through his virile years. I deal in depth mainly with the final war, one that I have set in the border country between present-day Wales and England, where, I believe, most of the Arthurian battles probably occurred, although my own wars range across Britain. The details of this battle are my own personal inventions. However, Vortigern did create a Saxon enclave in this part of Britain that, even today, flies the flag of the Red Dragon, derived perhaps from the Dracos Legion that was quartered in Wales in Roman times. I like to think that Artor smashed this enclave and established political stability.