A Fragile Peace Page 4

  I glanced up under lowered brows at the forger. He was as white as the doctored lambskin he had brought. My first thought was to decapitate him on the spot, but Guinevia stopped me with a meaningful glance.

  “Leave,” she told him. “we want no more martyrs.” She smiled at me. “If he had used papyrus and the usual ink made from soot and tree gum, he might have done better,” she said. “You can simply wash off that ink with rainwater, let the page dry and write in what you will.” She gave me a small smile at my wondering look. “Or so I have heard,” she said softly.

  I sank back and looked around, Myrddin, bright-eyed, seemed not to have ignored the whole small drama. He looked at me quizzically. “The charioteer sneezed on Sintea. I think he breathed the plague onto her,” he declared. The sorcerer raised an eyebrow and made the least movement of his head in the direction the slave had taken.

  “Perhaps he too inhaled the death fumes,” I said.

  “Then,” said Myrddin, “we should be breathing through vinegar until we can get well clear of others.” He soaked a cloth in the basin of sour wine and wrapped it across his nose and mouth. “Unpleasant stuff, but it negates all the ill humours,” he said in a muffled voice. He was demonstrating his knowledge with his usual annoying composure.

  “Better than giant boils and death,” I conceded.

  Guinevia spoke. I marveled at her calm, for she seemed as cool as if she had faced the possibility of pestilence sweeping the entire country many times before. “Wash everything in vinegar,” she said. “Wash the tables, wash anything anyone handles. Instruct people not to touch their eyes or mouths unless they have washed their hands. We will need barrels of vinegar, baths of it, and we should set up troughs of it for the folk to use.”

  Grabelius and Celvinus were in the chamber, masked and awaiting orders. “You,” I told the latter, “will take Guinevia and Myrddin to his house on Yr Wyddfa. Go as quickly as you can, take a squadron of horse and establish a cordon around the property at a good distance from it. Keep everyone else except the magician’s servants – if they show no signs of plague – outside that cordon for at least a moon unless they bring a message or specific orders from me under my personal cipher.”

  “Grabelius, you are to take a squadron of heavy cavalry and escort the prince Milo to Alba. When you arrive at the Vallum, have all gates closed. No traffic is to cross in either direction for at least a full moon. Present my condolences to King Kinadius over the tragic loss of our royal daughter. As soon as it is safe, I will travel north to consult with him. On your journey, use your swords if you must, to keep strangers at a distance from my son.”

  Kinadius, I knew, would isolate his court and my son from the pestilence and I considered that a month or two of quarantine should be enough to keep safe those who had not already contracted the disease.

  “Both of you,” I eyed my old friends with unjust harshness, “must do everything in your power to protect your charges, or you will feel my wrath.” Neither man blinked. They knew, as did I, that it was a totally unnecessary order. They would sacrifice themselves in an instant before they would risk the lives of Guinevia or Milo, although I knew with an inner certainty, that we none of us could be so sure about dying for Myrddin. Anyway, the necromancer was already a familiar of the dead, he could care for himself.

  As the thought flickered through my mind, the sorcerer himself entered the chamber. Without preamble, without deference to his monarch, I noted too, he declared: ”We have to placate the old gods. I shall go to the Standing Stones and give them the Torc of Caratacus. You, Arthur, must commission a special sword, one to contain the magic of the old gods, and also to hold the spirit of the Christians. It may not work, but we have to accept that for now, the Christian god is rising. Perhaps Britain’s own deities can accept him.”

  “And you suggest, what?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  “Have your master swordsmith, the fellow who created Exalter,” he said.

  “Gimflod the smith,” I murmured, thinking of the big man who had saved my boyhood self all those years before,

  “Yes, that fellow,” said Myrddin, impatient at being interrupted, “have him make another Exalter, but he should incorporate into the blade some of those iron nails that Candless brought back from Rome. Then, maybe in the pommel, he could include this elf gem.”

  Like a juggler or conjurer, he opened his palm to show a purple-yellow crystal in the form of an exquisite small pyramid. “This is from the mine where the Roman eagle was hidden,” he explained, speaking of the icon that had rallied Britain behind me when first I bade to become emperor. “It has powerful qualities and is a focus for energies not of this world.”

  I examined the elf gem where it sat on the outstretched palm of Myrddin’s hand. I made no motion to take it, and he did not give one, merely silently proffering the object for my view. It was about the size of the top joint of my thumb and looked as clean-cut as if it had been deliberately shaped into its perfect pyramidal form.

  Myrddin placed it gently on the sill of the window, where the sunlight fell on it. Immediately, on its opposite side was projected a letter ‘A.’ “This is no chance thing,” said the sorcerer. He said no more, and I did not speak. I knew as well as did Myrddin that the third thing the ancient gods wanted with their torc and sword was the blood of a royal.

  “I will commission the sword,” I said slowly. I raised my eyes to where my legate Grabelius stood, mouth slightly open. “Please see to that, my friend,“ I told him. “I want you now to escort Prince Milo as he takes the news of Sintea to her father. Both of you travel via Eboracum, and see the swordsmith there. Deliver this elf gem to him and commission the sword. It must be done swiftly, so send a courier today to Bishop Candless in Dun Pelder and obtain at least a piece of one of his holy nails from the crucifixion of the Christ god. Then get it delivered to Gimflod. You can instruct him on the manufacture of the sword when you see him with the elf gem.”

  “When that is done, continue on to Alba, but you, Grabelius, turn aside at Dun Pelder. The prince can safely travel the last part of the journey with our troopers while you take a private message to Bishop Candless from me. Return at once to Chester with the information I require from him. In fact, take pigeons with you and send a couple back at once with the news I will ask for.”

  Myrddin spoke. “The lady Guinevia should continue her plans to go to my house, for safety from the pestilence, but I am going now to the southern plain and the Standing Stones to dedicate the torc. “ The silence as he finished speaking hung heavy. The torc was in place, the sword would be commissioned. The third part of the price was royal blood. I had to decide how I was going to pay the gods with that. Then I shrugged. I turned my mind away from that decision. First, I had to travel my kingdom and rally it against Death.

  VII - Plague

  For a month, I travelled from settlement to settlement, visiting hamlets, small towns, lonely crofts, and the soldier-filled castra that kept the land safe from invaders. Every time I came close to habitation, I put on my vinegar-soaked mask, now made of leather, inhaled its stink and endured its small sting. The vinegar left the flesh on my cheekbones raw, pickled like an egg, and my arse was raw too, from the saddle. My bones ached from the long days of riding but most sore was my soul, beset by the sights we had seen. I may have been spared so far, but Britain was under punishment. I knew it was because we had turned our backs on the old gods and I blamed myself. I had needed the military power of the Jesus followers, and I had persuaded myself to outwardly adopt their faith so their soldiers would follow me against the Romans.

  It had worked, and we had inflicted enough damage on the legions in Gaul that the emperor had opted to leave us alone, but the gods had neither forgotten nor forgiven my treachery to them. Their wrath was to be seen on every street where putrid, shrouded bodies lay awaiting the death carts, in the open pits where lime-doused corpses were hastily tossed without ceremony and often, without even mourners because a whole family h
ad died.

  I saw it in village after empty village: the silence would be broken by the lowing of byre-fast cattle needing to be milked, here and there lay the bodies of dead animals, swine, rats, and the pathetic wool bundles that once were sheep. All were stinking, fetid carcasses that even the carrion crows would not touch. Then would appear the unburied corpse of a man, lying where he had died, his body spot-blackened and bloodied, with great boils oozing stench and pestilence into the air.

  The habitations were silent, too, as survivors locked themselves away or fled their homes, and the dead, lying where they died, made no noise. The fields, orchards and gardens were untended and animals roamed among the abandoned crops.

  Nuns and friars were among the few who would care for the sick, and they, too, soon succumbed to the plague, emptying the monasteries and convents as even the caregivers died. In the prisons and town jails, almost all died – the plague swept through closed communities like a swamping wave and only very few could escape it once it entered within their walls.

  The fugitive travellers we saw on the roads stayed away from us, and twice we came across hamlets where armed men waved us away, threatening us with their weapons. At the second of those settlements, I saw where the villagers had set up a place several hundred paces from their homes where they left coins for outsiders to take in exchange for food. One or two brave souls recognised that we were a party of some authority and cautiously came to converse, to obtain news or advice. They told how the fever had come, with sneezing, spitting of blood, coughing and heavy sweating.

  “The victims told us of feeling weak, then of aches and chills, lord,” one said. “My neighbour, a smith, was a strong man but in a single day he went from strong to dead. His tongue was coated white, he had boils bigger than eggs on his body, great black and red boils in his groin and armpits, at his throat, too. He pissed black, and he stank foully.”

  For some, death took mere hours, for others, they suffered four long days of blistering pain and a madman’s ‘Dance of Death’ from the agonizing torment that preceded their last breath. Some depraved souls, infected with the plague, threatened to enter houses and contaminate those within unless bribed with money or sex to leave. A few used their last hours and fading strength to prepare for death, and the Christian clergy, at my request, authorized even laymen to hear each other’s confessions.

  On my travels around the kingdom, where I could I addressed the aldermen and jarls. “Find which communities have the plague, order those infected to be confined to their houses, and mark the doors to notify all that this is a plague house,” I commanded. “Shut up all those houses for at least five weeks, then burn all bedding and clothes of the plague victims. If an infected man has to tend his beasts or crops, he must avoid all contact with others.

  “Appoint watchmen to enforce these laws, and imprison any who break them. Designate a burial place for plague victims and only bury them after nightfall. Burn rosemary or juniper, sage, bay or frankincense to cleanse the air in houses. Carry burning herbs from room to room to purify each, and heat flint stones in a fire then drop them into a bucket of vinegar so the solution gives off purifying odours.” Floors and food preparation surfaces, I instructed, should be washed with a solution of vinegar, mint and pennyroyal, and fires should be kept burning at all times to ward off the ill humours.

  Butter, I told them, was a good preventive against the plague, and a brew of linseed, chamomile, wheat and rose leaves devised by Myrddin would help strengthen resistance to the disease. And, above all, I told them, make prayerful obeisance to all the gods.

  I made that doomful speech dozens of times, then afterwards rejoined my troop, who would be watching from a safe distance, and we would travel on. We went across Britain’s springtime-green landscape, passing the heart-achingly beautiful blossoms on the fruit trees, white for the apple and pear orchards, pink for the cherries, and the glossy dark purple of the plum trees. We rode past daffodil banks and nodding crocus heads, saw the glinting wavelets of wind-ruffled lakes and meres and viewed the purple-hazed hills in the distance, and we all, hardened warriors, were both saddened and affrighted that the cloak of death was over all this loveliness.

  But we spread our message: fight this Great Pestilence with distance and cleanliness. It was all we could do, to combat a foul enemy with our few, small weapons. Then things changed, and we were confronted with a tangible opponent.

  Grimr, my sea lord, found him first, and dispatched two ships to carry the news. One came up the Thames, the other was still seeking me somewhere in the Severn, as the shrewd Suehan had guessed I would be in Britain’s southwest quadrant. The first crew found our troop in the valley of the Thames, a few days west of Londinium. Word had travelled before us because we were noticed, a rare group of horsemen moving across Britain at that time of death and stillness.

  Three of the sailors came into our camp shortly before dusk, causing a scatter of sentries to grab weapons, but one glance at the arrivals’ weathered faces and clear eyes showed us all they were no carriers of plague. “Tidings, king, from the sea lord Iacco Grimr,” said the first, breathlessly. “We were charged to find you as quickly as we could.”

  What the man outlined was not good news. A Saxon landing party was ashore west of Colchester and had looted that town. Grimr had sent for reserves and anticipated being able to deal with the invaders but he had word from several Saxon captives that this was merely the point of the spear. More Saxons would be coming as the spring progressed.

  I quizzed the three men. Grimr had three longships, with about 70 men. With my troop of 20, we could muster a formidable force against any landing party, especially as we were mounted on our heavy horses and could take on any ship-borne infantry. The thing to do would be to arrive quickly and neutralise this war band before more Saxons could reinforce them. “We’re on our way by wolf light,” I told our troopers. “Rest while you can.” The night passed quickly, and while the morning star was still bright in the sky, we were trotting east, towards our ancient enemy.

  VIII - Chelmer

  We found the Saxons by their firelight. It shone redly on the low clouds and gave us early warning of their presence. They were camped in a loop of the River Chelmer, their longships drawn up to the bank and to judge by the occasional screams of a woman in distress, they were tasting the fruits of their pillaging. I conferred with Grabelius and the three sailors, then I sent them and several of my horsemen in search of my sea commander Grimr, who, his sailors assured me, would be somewhere downstream of the Saxons, waiting for our contact.

  We set outposts around a small copse on a low hill a mile or so from the Saxons and the troopers settled themselves and their horses in it for a night’s rest. As I hoped, Grimr was not far away and by mid-morning my horsemen came back from him to report. They had given him my orders, which were to lie up concealed until first light, then to attack the Saxons from the river. I would bring my big horses into play from the land at the rear of the Saxons, once they were engaged with Grimr’s warriors. He had been joined by one more longship and crew, giving him about 90 men. My scouts reported that the Saxons had five ships tied up on the river bank, making that a roughly even contest. With surprise and my cavalry attack from the rear, I anticipated a slaughter.

  I called my troop around and set out the position to them. “We remain here in this wood for the day, under cover,” I said. “No fires, no noise. The enemy are not to know we’re here until we ride them down in the morning. Get some rest, sharpen your weapons and remember: blades down, shields up, and the point beats the edge!”

  Around noon, our outposts reported activity in the Saxon camp, which was a primitive thing of stretched sails for shelter and I crawled to the edge of the tree line to look. One ship was readying to move upstream and a dozen or so sea raiders were forming up, preparing to move out of the camp. “Probably scouting the land for the next couple of villages to raid,” I said. I noted 20 or so bedraggled prisoners, mostly women and a couple of ch
ildren, yoked and penned on the river bank.

  The longship began to pull upstream and I was considering how to trap her later when the file of Saxons who had been assembling their gear started to move out of camp. They crossed a water meadow, then angled abruptly onto firmer ground and began heading directly for our small wood. Our sentries slid back to hiss warnings and to silence the horses but I could see no way we could move away undetected. “Stay here,” I whispered. “Let them pass.”

  It had to happen and it did. A horse whickered at the scent of the Saxons, they came cautiously alert to investigate our hiding place and we were discovered. Four of them died at once under our arrows, two more went down under blades, several stood to fight, but two began running back towards their camp, shouting an alarm. I swung a leg over Corvus, my big black Frisian stallion. “Mount up!” I shouted. “Ride them down!” Then, pausing only to find one of the horsemen who had ridden to Grimr’s camp last night, I gestured at him. “Go to Grimr. Tell him to come now,” I commanded. He nodded and kicked his heels into his horse’s ribs and I turned to the action in front of me.

  The several Saxons who were still on the slope before the copse made good deaths, resolutely swinging their battle axes at us, killing one and wounding three of our troop, but they died, as did the two who tried to outrun our horses. We hacked them down as we thundered past, a spray of Saxon blood whipping across my face as Exalter claimed another soul. I wiped my eyes clear and gestured my troopers into a line. The Saxon camp was like a kicked-over wasps’ nest, swarming as they struggled into their war gear and hurried to form a shield wall.

  “Walk close,” I shouted. “Do not charge. Wait for my command.” The situation was tricky. We were well outnumbered, but we could certainly break the shield wall. However, the confined space inside the loop of the Chelmer loop worked against the big horses. We could hack through the wall, but then would have difficulty turning to gain impetus for a second charge from the other direction. We needed more infantry. We needed Grimr’s fighting men.