| |
14 December 537
Myrddin
––––––––
“HOW DID YOU KNOW THAT when we only found out today?” Nell said to Gareth in a hoarse whisper.
Myrddin was barely listening, and could hardly credit what Nell and Gareth were talking about anyway. It was absurd to think he was Ambrosius’s son. He glanced towards the churchyard in time to see Godric and six of his men rise out of the grass and fall upon the Saxon soldiers. Cursing under his breath, knowing he had taken far too passive a role in this adventure ever since he’d arrived at Wroxeter, he turned to the others, gesturing impatiently. “Enough. Tell me what is going on, in as few words as possible.”
Gareth’s expression turned smug. “After Ambrosius’s death, Juliana discovered that Seren, your mother, who’d been her maid and Ambrosius’s mistress, was with child. Juliana asked my mother to make arrangements for Seren to live with that Madog fellow in Powys. Neither Juliana nor my mother wanted to call the succession into question any more than it already was by introducing Ambrosius’s bastard into the mix. Later, Juliana told my mother that you’d died at birth, along with your mother.”
“She told King Arthur the same,” Huw said.
“Why would she do that?” Nell said.
Gareth shrugged. “What wife wants to raise the bastard son of her husband? She probably figured you’d die before the age of five anyway. Many children do.”
“And then Juliana died,” Nell said, “and there was nobody to say different, especially if Madog didn’t want to answer to anybody for Myrddin’s care.”
“How did you come to learn this?” Huw said to Gareth.
“My mother told me the story on her deathbed. She’d kept the secret, but it seemed a silly piece of information to take to her grave since the child had died.” As Gareth spoke, he looked very pleased with himself.
“Then why tell it at all?” Nell said.
“I think a small part of my mother never believed Juliana had told her the whole truth. It was too easy an end, and since Arthur was still without an heir, she thought she should tell someone.”
“And yet you failed ever to mention it,” Nell said.
“I was ten years old!” Gareth said with some heat in his voice.
“Why didn’t you tell the king?” Nell said.
“What was there to tell? Myrddin is ten years older than I and, until recently, we moved in different circles. I never questioned his origins, and it wasn’t until a few weeks ago when I met Deiniol, Myrddin’s foster brother, that it occurred to me that this unknown bastard of Ambrosius might be very much alive—and that he and Myrddin could be one and the same.”
It was an incredible story, but he heard truth in Gareth’s voice, and for all that the man could lie with the best of them, Gareth believed what he was saying.
“My father was a landless knight who’d died before I was born,” Myrddin said. “Or a pig keeper. That’s what Madog told me.”
Gareth scoffed. “That’s what he wanted you to believe. Maybe he believed it, though he wouldn’t have wanted you on the throne of Wales any more than Juliana did, seeing how he was loyal to Cai, who, as long as Arthur remained childless, was as much Arthur’s heir as Modred.”
“Why didn’t someone tell me?” The question sounded pitiful, even to Myrddin, but it rose out of him before he could stop it. “Why didn’t my mother tell someone before she died?”
Gareth barked a laugh. “Telling anyone—Madog included—that you were Ambrosius’s child would have marked you for death. At the very least everyone had much to gain by your ignorance, Myrddin. Until now, that is.”
Nell’s expression told him she understood the magnitude of the betrayal. “Until yesterday, King Arthur himself didn’t know the truth.”
“Of course he did,” Gareth said. “He kept you close, didn’t he? He knighted you, didn’t he?”
Nell pulled her necklace from within her bodice. “He saw this cross for the first time at Edgar’s manor. King Arthur wears an identical cross given to him by Ambrosius nine months before you were born.”
Myrddin stared at it. “Cedric had the same cross, given to him by his mother, who got it from Juliana.”
“As I said,” Gareth said, “this has been a long time coming.”
Laughter rose in Myrddin’s chest, dispelling his earlier anguish. He knew exactly why Arthur hadn’t told him—because he hadn’t been worthy of the throne—and he still wasn’t. “I can’t be Ambrosius’s son. I just can’t.”
“King Arthur says you are,” Nell said gently, “and he ought to know.”
Gareth made a chopping motion with his hand, in mimicry of Myrddin a moment before. “Myrddin, there’s no point in denying this truth, so I say we don’t. We have a job to do, and we should do it.”
“That’s the first thing you’ve said that makes sense,” Myrddin said.
And then Gareth ruined it by giving him a deep bow. “My lord.”
Thankfully, Myrddin was absolved from giving a response by a bird call that came from a spot nearer to the church. Godric signaled the all clear with a wave of his hand. The four Saxon soldiers were nowhere in sight.
“Stay here,” Myrddin said to Nell, and then he put a hand on Huw’s shoulder. “You too. Protect your mother.”
Without waiting to see if he was obeyed, Myrddin sprinted for the church door, Gareth a pace behind. He didn’t know where Edgar had gotten to, but revelation or no revelation, they did have a job that couldn’t wait any longer. Myrddin was loath to draw any weapon in church, so he left his sword in its sheath, but he didn’t dare enter unprotected. Once in the sheltering alcove by the door, Myrddin pulled out his belt knife.
After a glance at Gareth, who gave him a quick nod, Myrddin pushed at the door, which opened on silent hinges. A long nave lay before them, in the middle of which knelt the king. Archbishop Dafydd stood at the altar. Fifty candles flickered, lighting the space, though they almost went out because of the breeze wafting through the open door.
Myrddin walked towards the king, who didn’t stir. “Sire?”
Dafydd left his post, moving around the king, to meet Myrddin and Gareth halfway. “Do not befoul this sanctuary with your weapons.”
Gareth put away his knife. “We mean no harm. Our only concern is the king’s safety.”
Edgar’s voice echoed from the doorway. “Your grace, Modred has betrayed your trust. If you do not release King Arthur into our custody, Modred will see him dead before the sun sets.”
Archbishop Dafydd frowned. “Lord Modred swore to me—”
“He lied,” Edgar said flatly, his boots thudding dully on the large flagstones that made up the nave. “If Arthur makes Modred his heir before his death, all to the good, but Modred will not allow the king ever to return to his people. I heard these words from the man’s own lips.”
“He wouldn’t dare—” The archbishop was both affronted and disbelieving.
Nell and Huw hurtled through the doorway behind Edgar. “Men are coming. Modred’s men. They must have discovered our absence from the house.”
Arthur finally abandoned his prayers and rose to his feet. “I gave you my word that I would not escape, provided you saw to the safety of Huw and Nell. I will uphold that promise, even to my death, but you must also abide by yours.” Standing in the center of the nave, even without his sword or armor, Arthur looked every inch a king.
“We have to move now, sire, promise or no promise,” Myrddin said.
Such was Gareth’s agitation that he strode forward and caught Dafydd’s arm. “Why will you not see? You have before you Arthur, rightfully crowned King of Wales—and also Ambrosius’s own son, who has been kept hidden for his own safety all this time. You would sacrifice them for your own pride—because you refuse to admit that you were wrong to support Modred? No king should be coerced into naming an heir. Kings rule by the Grace of God. Could the Welsh have survived this long without it? God does not support Modred.”
The archbishop gaped at Gareth, not understanding—or maybe even not hearing—his meaning, and then he gasped as the sound of men shouting and the clashing of swords reached them through the open doorway. Godric’s men were already engaged with Modred’s.
Gareth still held the archbishop’s arm in a tight grip. “Is there any way out of this church other than through the front door?”
“I-I—”
“Is there?”
More shouts and clashes came from the front of the church. Edgar drew his sword and ran forward to help Godric and his men, followed by Gareth, who, after a disgusted snort, gave up on the archbishop. Through all this, Dafydd hadn’t moved, and therefore King Arthur hadn’t either.
Myrddin faced the archbishop. “Please allow me at least to see to the welfare of my wife and son.”
Archbishop Dafydd looked Myrddin up and down. “Are you truly Ambrosius’s son?”
“Yes.” King Arthur answered for him.
But Dafydd was still looking at Myrddin, who realized that he too had to answer. “It seems that I am. My mother was Seren, maidservant to Juliana and mistress to Ambrosius. I was conceived during the Christmas feast before Ambrosius died and born in September, seven months after his death. Seren died at my birth, and Queen Juliana told the few people who knew of me—King Arthur and Gareth’s mother—that I’d died too. That is why my identity has remained hidden until now.”
Myrddin paused. Listening to himself recite this story made his parentage suddenly far more real than it had been when Gareth had told him of it.
Dafydd looked Myrddin up and down, as if taking in his appearance and worth in one go, and finally nodded. “The church is built on top of the old public baths. The crypt connects with these and leads to a tunnel that empties into the Severn River.”
Myrddin understood what the archbishop was talking about in a way he wouldn’t have before tonight and went with Dafydd to the altar, hoping at the same time that these tunnels were better maintained than those on the other side of the city. With Huw’s help, he pushed at one corner of the altar to reveal steps leading down. When the altar was in place, nobody could tell what lay beneath.
Nell squeezed Myrddin’s hand once. “Defeat them quickly and join us.” Then she hurried down the steps into the dark.
Arthur gazed down at where she and Huw had gone and then looked to Archbishop Dafydd. “You would have me follow?”
“I would, sire.” The archbishop didn’t even stumble over the honorific.
King Arthur turned to Myrddin. “I will guard your wife and son with my life.”
The two men saluted each other, one cousin to another, and then the king disappeared down the stairs, leaving the archbishop at the top of the steps with Myrddin.
“Thank you.” Myrddin didn’t wait to see what the archbishop was going to do next. He ran for the door, reaching it in ten strides, and then he checked himself. A Saxon had broken through the defenders’ line and launched himself up the steps towards the church door.
Godric’s men were fighting in a half-circle in front of the church steps, so after thrusting his sword through the approaching Saxon’s gut, Myrddin filled the space the man had come through. As he fought, the dream of King Arthur’s death at the church by the Cam River rose before his eyes. This wasn’t a waking vision, but merely a memory, and Myrddin prayed that he hadn’t averted that future only to fall prey to an identical one two days later. That had been Nell’s fear too.
The original company of attackers consisted of upwards of thirty men. Myrddin didn’t know what had prompted them to come to the church. Perhaps they’d merely been on patrol or Modred’s men had discovered that the Roman house was empty. A town-wide alarm had not yet been raised, however—and while Godric’s men had been taken by surprise by the attack, they were a handpicked force and thus the better fighters.
The battle was brutal and yet, despite their greater numbers, within a quarter of an hour, most of the attackers had fallen. The remaining dozen or so retreated to regroup, and Myrddin took that moment to do the same. “Back! Into the church before the general alarm is raised!”
Myrddin wasn’t taking charge because he was Ambrosius’s son and heir to the throne of Wales—and his companions didn’t obey with alacrity because of his new station either. They moved because they could see as well as he that if Modred’s men returned in force, being outnumbered ten to one was not good odds.
They scrambled up the steps, closed the door, and the last man dropped the bar across it. The walls of the church were thick, but the windows were not, and through them Myrddin could hear—finally—the bonging of the warning bell at the top of the palisade tower. The alarm had been raised, and if they didn’t get out of the church and across the Severn as quickly as possible, they were dead men.
Archbishop Dafydd had remained at the entrance to the crypt and, as Myrddin reached him, he handed Myrddin one of the flaming brands that had lit the nave. “I followed after them most of the way to the Severn to make sure they were safe. They should be waiting for you on the bank.”
Myrddin allowed all his companions to file past him so he could bring up the rear. “Thank you again. I mistrusted your motives and judged you unfairly.”
Showing a sense of humor for the first time, Archbishop Dafydd gave a low snort. “I excommunicated your king.” Then he gave a slight jerk of his head. “I am sorry that Ambrosius did not live to acknowledge your birth. Illegitimate or not, any man would be proud to claim you as his son.”
A man was deemed legitimate in Wales as long as his father acknowledged him, which Myrddin’s had not and could not have done, since he’d been seven months dead by the time Myrddin was born. Still, Myrddin had royal blood, and with the succession hanging in the balance, it seemed that even Archbishop Dafydd was willing to overlook that failure.
“What will you tell Modred?” Myrddin said.
“The truth.” The archbishop bowed slightly. “You, not Modred, are the rightful heir to the throne of Wales.”
Myrddin gave a shake of his head, not understanding how Dafydd could have supported Modred all this time, but now that Myrddin had been named, he’d recanted. Myrddin didn’t have time to argue, however, and he didn’t think he’d waste his breath telling Dafydd that he should be fleeing with them. “What about his soldiers? They will batter down that door sooner rather than later.”
“I will open it for them before that happens and berate them for disturbing the peace of my church,” Dafydd said. “They will search the nave, but none of them would know about the crypt, and they will not learn of it from me. Most haven’t darkened the door of any church, much less this one, in years.”
Myrddin offered the archbishop his forearm, which Dafydd looked at for a moment before taking. Then he leaned forward and surprised Myrddin (and possibly himself) by embracing him. “God go with you.”
“And with you,” Myrddin said.
Once on the stairs, Myrddin assisted with the repositioning of the altar from below. It fell into place just in time too, as the first sounds of hammering on the door echoed through the stone church. As Myrddin loped along the low passage, he prayed that the archbishop could withstand the force of Modred’s rage without breaking—and that the Saxon soldiers wouldn’t expend their frustration on him rather than on the stones of the church. He estimated that they had a quarter of an hour—perhaps a half-hour at most—before it would occur to someone to send men outside of Wroxeter to look for them.
Fortunately for Myrddin, this tunnel was less like the maintenance tunnel he’d been unable to enter and more like the one under King Arthur’s seat at Garth Celyn. Still, even taken at a run, the distance to the end seemed endless, but as a light appeared, Myrddin realized that he’d come hardly more than a hundred yards and had taken no more than a hundred breaths.
Gareth met him twenty feet inside the door. “Your wife is the most sensible woman I’ve ever met.”
Myrddin allowed himself a momentary glow of pride before asking why Gareth would say such a thing.
“She sent Huw up the Severn looking for a boat, and he found one. They used it to cross safely to the far side, and then, once we appeared, Huw ferried Godric’s men. You and I are the last.”
Myrddin’s boots slipped in the grass that lined the bank, and he caught the branch of an overhanging tree above his head. He would have swum the Severn if he had to, but he was very glad that he wasn’t going to spend the rest of the night soaked from head to foot.
The boat was a typical Severn rowboat, flat-bottomed, eight feet by four. Myrddin accepted the hand of Heard, who was now manning the stern, and stepped over the side, wavering a little as the boat took his weight. He moved quickly to the front to allow Gareth room to climb aboard too.
“We could send the king, Nell, and Huw downstream in the boat while the rest of us cover the distance on foot,” Myrddin said. “South seems to me the best way to go.”
“We have very little time to decide, whatever we decide to do,” Gareth said. “Modred’s men will soon realize that we are not in the fort at all and will send out riders—whether or not he knows about the tunnel.”
“And that’s if Archbishop Dafydd can hold his tongue,” Myrddin said.
The boat hit the bank, and Edgar reached down to grasp Myrddin’s hand and haul him out of the boat. “I say we strike out west for my castle at Montgomery. It’s twenty-five miles as the crow flies, and the closest stronghold.”
“No,” Gareth said immediately. “We should go south, even retrace our steps to Buellt where we left our men. Modred will expect us to go west.” Still arguing, Gareth and Edgar came up the bank.
King Arthur stood with his hands on his hips, facing west, as if he could see any of the above-mentioned places from here if only he looked hard enough. He turned to Myrddin. “What say you?”
Gareth and Edgar immediately ceased speaking. A month ago, Myrddin would have stuttered out his reply, but Ambrosius’s paternity aside, Myrddin wasn’t the same man as he’d been then. “I say we make for Mt. Badon, if not Gaer Fawr a few miles further on, but even still not as far as Montgomery. The fort at Badon was destroyed and never rebuilt, but Gaer Fawr still stands and remains a formidable stronghold.” He turned to look at the others, and he could tell that his idea was being met with interest by their thoughtful expressions.
King Arthur nodded and without looking at Gareth or Edgar, he instead settled a hand on Myrddin’s shoulder. “I have been a foolish old man, but I have learned the error of my ways. No longer shall Wales be divided between king and heir. No longer shall we fear Modred’s wrath.” The king wore no sword himself, but he surprised Myrddin by pulling Myrddin’s own from its sheath. “Kneel!”
Myrddin obeyed on instinct, as he’d obeyed every command Arthur had given him since he was sixteen years old. They didn’t have time for this, but he didn’t have the voice to say as much to the king. Edgar and Gareth, Huw and Nell, Godric and all of his men also sank to one knee and bowed their heads.
King Arthur settled the flat of the sword on Myrddin’s right shoulder. “Ten years ago, it was my honor to knight you on the field of battle. Little did I know that I was knighting my own cousin.” He drew in a breath. “Myrddin ap Ambrosius, I name you as my heir!” King Arthur’s voice was exultant. “Rise, Myrddin, Prince of Wales.”
“Long live Myrddin ap Ambrosius! Long live King Arthur!” The echoing chorus rose into the air, a triumphant call despite the danger and the dark.
“And now,” King Arthur said, motioning with his hands that everyone should rise, “we run.”
––––––––
Thank you for reading The Lion of Wales series. The final installment in the series, Frost Against the Hilt, is available now at all retailers!
