A chapter a day: The Broken Kingdom – Chapter 9
This is the last chapter that I will be posting here from my Arthurian epic novel The Broken Kingdom. This chapter is completely free to read, and I have also published eight other free chapters on this website, and a prologue, if you want to start from the beginning. The story about the legendary hero Arthur, his mother Igraine and sister Morgan, the wizard Merlin, and all the rest of the familiar cast from the legends, plus a few additions. If you are enjoying the story, and want to read the whole thing, it is available as an eBook, paperback and audio book on Amazon. It’s a fantasy novel, technically, as it has a little magic and some very nasty dragons, but otherwise it is set in a real 5th-century Britain, after the Romans have left, which is riven by war. Only Arthur and his band of warriors, can hope to mend The Broken Kingdom . . .
Chapter Nine
Igraine wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her forearm. The wash house was filled with steam from the big copper cauldrons, which held the boiling linens of Caer Camlann, and the fires beneath them were always kept well stoked. She looked across the scrubbing-board at Hanna, who was rubbing lye soup into a large patch of rusty red on a fine white woollen cloak – and felt a cold jolt right through her heart.
She knew that cloak. She had worked on it. By rights, she should be doing what Hanna was. That stain was the life blood, the last earthly traces of her lover King Uthur, and Hanna was expunging it from the cloth with a stiff brush and some short, vigorous strokes. A part of her wanted to rip the sopping garment away from the younger girl and hug it to her breast, to keep it, treasure it. Another part of her knew this was nonsense. Uthur, big, strong, black-bearded Uthur was not in that fast-fading pink blood stain. He was with Christ and the Angels in Heaven. Or if the new religion turned out to be false, as she sometimes suspected, in the Otherworld with all his ancestors, feasting and watching the living through the thin, grey veil that separated them. One day she hoped she might join him there – and be at his side for ever.
She bent her head to the tunic she was washing, a warrior’s undergarment, badly stained with sweat under the arms. She knew the man who owned it. Talek of Elmet was his name, a swordsman, and she would merrily have strangled him with the tunic, or suffocated him with it in his sleep, if she truly thought she could achieve it.
But Talek slept with a dozen armed men around him, in the great hall of Caer Camlann, on the benches just outside the chamber occupied by Gorlois of Kernow.
Gorlois of Dumnonia, or King Gorlois, she was supposed to call him. Not that she would. He was Gorlois the Murderer to her, or Gorlois the Treacherous – the man who had slaughtered and usurped her true lord and love Uthur in that very same hall.
Since the massacre at the feast, all those who were loyal to Uthur had been hunted down and killed, or had fled Dumnonia for parts unknown, but a large number of Dumnonian warriors, many more than she had ever expected, had quickly bent the knee to Gorlois, and sworn a solemn oath to him as their lord and King. Igraine had not been asked to do that – oaths were for warriors, or other high-status men. She was a mere serving woman, tasked with cooking and serving the food from the kitchens.
Her first idea, when the shock and grief were still running strong in her, was to poison Gorlois. She knew an old cunning-man in a village nearby who made potions and she had planned to visit him and secure some powdered wolfsbane or mandrake root and feed it to Gorlois in his meat at the the high table. She cared not if any of his warriors died after eating from that tainted plate – nor very much if she must die herself, were she to be unmasked as the poisoner. She would set a little of the poison aside, make a swift end of herself and so be with her beloved Uthur once again.
However, Gorlois soon employed a skinny young Kernow servant to be his food taster, the son of a slave, and Igraine could not bear to kill an innocent in pursuit of her murderous goal. And so she had been frustrated in her lust for revenge for many days after the massacre in the hall, until one evening when she was returning from the woods where she had been picking wild garlic leaves for a pungent sauce she planned to make. She had seen Hanna slip out of the small gate at the rear of the caer palisade, and run down the slope and into the thick woods that Igraine was just emerging from.
She liked Hanna. The girl was hard-working and uncomplaining, and had an irrepressible bubbling joyfulness that not even the worst catastrophes could quench. But there was something furtive about her actions this evening, as if she had stolen something, or was a slave running away from a cruel master. Yet Hanna was no slave. She had no master but the King. So, for whatever reason, Igraine concealed herself at the edge of the wood, and when Hanna slipped into the shadows between the trees, she set down her basket of glossy leaves and followed the running girl into the wood.
After half a mile, she thought she had lost Hanna, and then she came to a small clearing in the woods, mist-filled and grey in the dusk, where Hanna was speaking most urgently to a man. Igraine did not recognise the fellow; he was dressed in a russet smock and loose muddy trews, like a ploughman, but with a green woodsman’s hood over his head. Igraine felt embarrassed. This was a tryst. Hanna and the man must be lovers. Igraine began to withdraw slowly into the wood so as not to intrude.
As she backed away into the trees, she expected to see an embrace but instead, the man clapped Hanna briskly on the shoulder, as if she were a warrior, and turned to walk away. It was such an odd exchange that Igraine could not get it out of her mind. Later that night, she approached Hanna behind the kitchens, where the girl was feeding scraps to the pigs, and asked her what she had been doing meeting this man.
Hanna’s reacted as if she had been struck. Her face went white and then pink. Her eyes became huge. “Did you tell anyone, Igraine. Did you tell anyone at all?”
Igraine said she had not. “Who was he?” she asked. “I have not seen him in the caer before. Nor in the fields around here? Is he a relative? A friend – who is he?”
“He is a Harrier,” Hanna whispered, looking nervously beyond Igraine to see if anyone else was listening.
“A what?”
“A Marsh Harrier?”
“A hunting bird?”
“No, that is what they call themselves, you see, because they live in the marshes and eat frogs and eels and such, in the Levels beyond Glastonbury. You know!”
Igraine was even more confused than before. “Tell me everything,” she said.
They were a group of men and a few women – several hundred Dumnonians – who had somehow escaped from the caer at the time of the hall massacre, or who had been absent when Gorlois had so despicably struck down his host the High King. Hanna told Igraine the story in a series of whispers, almost too quiet to be made out and eventually the older woman had grasped this situation. The Marsh Harriers were opposed to Gorlois, and would see the High King’s murder avenged, but they were also in fear of their lives because Gorlois had said that any warrior who did not come to Caer Camlann to make his oath would be outlawed. So the Marsh Harriers were all beyond the law and if they were captured they would immediately be put to death.
“But what have you to do with them?” Igraine asked.
“Wynn, that’s the man you saw me with, asked me if I would keep him informed of all the doings of the caer. Tell him what Gorlois is up to – how many warriors he has, that sort of thing. If he makes any plans to come hunting the folk of the Levels.”
“You are a spy?” Igraine realised that she had said this far too loudly. But she was suddenly filled with a new admiration for the girl.
“Shh! No, no, nothing like that. I’m just helping Wynn and his people stay safe.”
“If you ever need me for anything – just ask. Tell Wynn, I want to help him too.”
And that was how it started.
Igraine finished squeezing out the last drops of water from the tunic, winked at Hanna, and took the clean garment outside to the drying line. As she arranged it on the hemp rope strung between two poles behind the wash house, she looked around her casually, a full sun-wise circle, drying her red hands in her apron. There was no one watching her, as far as she could tell. Then she began to walk slowly towards the south side of the caer and the little gate that led down to the woods on that side, occasionally looking behind her. No one in the courtyard paid her any mind at all.
She stopped at her own little hut and collected a wide wicker basket, a flask of mead, a loaf of bread and a wedge of cheese, and sauntered on towards the little gate. Her blood was singing in her veins like a draught of strong wine; and her mind was tumbling and turning with all the things she had memorised for her meeting in the woods with Wynn: the names of all Gorlois’s captains – all twenty three of them, and the numbers of warriors each commanded – and the times of day when each captain took his turn to guard the gates of the caer with his men. She smiled gaily at the whole world, feigning carelessness, hiding her nerves, trying to be natural, which seemed an impossible task. But she felt a thrill of satisfaction bloom inside her heart.
She was striking a blow for Uthur. How she hoped his shade was watching her.
King Gorlois of Dumnonia threw the large ivory dice rattling into the high-sided tray, waited for them to settle, and scowled at the result. A Horse and a Rose. He glared at the little symbols on the upwards faces of the two dice, as if he could change them by the force of his will. They remained unchanged – a little white etching of a horse’s head on the black die and a swirling red twist depicting a crude flower on the white.
“You lose!” cackled Talek of Elmet, scooping a small pile of misshapen silver coins, old Roman denarii, towards him across the scarred wooden table.
Gorlois frowned, and scratched at his beard.
“Again!” said the King. “I will throw again.” He reached up to his neck with both hands and pulled off a beautiful torc of twisted silver with glowing amber finials. “I wager this against all of your winnings, Talek.” He gestured at the large pile of coins of various shapes and sizes that lay before the swordsman’s place.
“That is too much, Highness,” said Talek. “Your fine silver torc, given to you by Queen Bronwyn, is worth far more than these sad old coins. Were you to lose it . . .”
“I said I would throw again, Talek,” grated Gorlois. “My torc for your hoard.”
“Highness,” said another voice. Gorlois looked up at the nervous young servant hovering at his elbow. He was leaning in, his face close to the King’s. “Highness?”
“Not now. Go away. I am busy,” said Gorlois. He scooped up the two dice.
“Highness, Cathal of Gwent is at the caer gates, with his men. Do I admit him?”
Gorlois turned slightly on his stool, he swung his right arm very fast and slapped the servant hard around the face, sending the poor fellow sprawling away.
“I said – not now!” Gorlois turned back to the tray and threw the dice.
A Rose and Sword. He had lost again. Talek reached forwards and took the torc from its place beside the dice tray. “I take this as my winnings,” Talek said, holding up the silver object between them. “And now I make a gift to you, my King, an act of tribute. Please accept this fine torc from my hand as a mark of my regard for you.”
Gorlois stared at him. Then he grunted something unintelligible and snatched the torc from Talek’s hand. He fixed it back around his neck, then pushed back his stool and stood. The young servant was still on his knees, rubbing the red mark on his cheek. Gorlois loomed over him “Why are you grovelling down there, man? Collect yourself. Go and admit our royal visitor. How dare you leave King Cathal waiting!”
King Cathal of Gwent was a tall, lean fellow with sparse grey hair and a very high forehead, which was graced by a golden band, with a large ruby set in the metal above his long nose. He was in late middle age but he entered the hall with half a dozen warriors at his back and a long easy stride. He appeared to show no fear or hesitation about encountering the new King of Dumnonia – which might have been surprising given the murderous reputation of his host had it not been for the fact that Gorlois’s younger son, Tristan of Kernow, was presently being kept as a hostage in Gwent, in the King’s hall at Glevum, some seventy miles north of Caer Camlann.
“You are welcome, mighty King, to my humble hall,” said Gorlois insincerely, looking down on the older man from the throne, which had been set up on the dais.
“I am very lucky to be here, Gorlois,” said Cathal. “We were beset by a pack of brigands on the road and my men had the Devil of a time fighting them off. A gang of fifty or so desperate men. I have never known Dumnonia to be quite this lawless.”
Igraine came into the hall with a tray of cups filled with wine and a jug. As she passed the drinks round, she observed the King in his chair. He did not look happy to see his fellow king, nor had he relished the remark about the lawlessness of his realm.
“There are disgruntled men, outlaws, landless scum, infesting the countryside. I shall deal with them in due course. I shall have the ones of the road to Glevum flayed alive as an example to the others – but there are so many things to do first, I am sure you understand, Cathal – the burdens of state and so on. How fares my son Tristan?”
“Oh, he is well. He seems to be trying to tup all the pretty girls in Gwent. My wife’s maid Arwen had to repel his advances – forcefully. Time you married him off.”
“The boy’s too handsome to be chaste. One day a jealous husband will kill him.”
“Yes, well. See that his debauching doesn’t start a war with some touchy king.”
Gorlois cleared his throat. “Not with you, I hope. Now, to business, I think, my dear Cathal. Let us have no more talk of youthful debauch. Let us speak of marriage.”
“Yes, indeed, that most blessèd state of holy matrimony. The glue that binds kingdoms together, that unites kings and their people in amity. Your eldest son Mark is now the lord of Kernow, is he not? Your heir. He has seen twenty-one summers and is not yet wed. And then there is my daughter Iseult, who is a beauty at seventeen. Pale and bright as the moon. Good wide hips, good lineage, and a handsome dowry to come with her when she marries Mark. I have no son. Nor am I likely to have one at my age. I would see the foundation of a grand alliance, Gorlois, a bright and glorious future with Kernow, Dumnonia and Gwent united – who could stand against us?”
“Who indeed?” said Gorlois, a little sourly. “Is this the same bright and glorious future you discussed at great length with Uthur, if I may make so bold as to ask?”
“You may make so bold, and I shall boldly answer you: yes, it is; yes, indeed, I have long wished for Gwent and Dumnonia to be united under one royal house. We have been firm allies since my father’s time – and I see no reason why that happy state should not continue. I made Uthur the exact same offer that I now make you. My lovely daughter Iseult was to be married to Uthur’s eldest son Caius and my grandchildren and his were to rule the whole Island of Britain. I will not pretend otherwise. But Uthur is no more – you, King Gorlois, now rule in Dumnonia and in Kernow, and so I now offer the same daughter to your fine son Mark for the same strong alliance. Think on this: the whole south eventually united under one king in whose veins runs the blood of both of us. What say you Gorlois, King of Dumnonia?”
Igraine set down the tray and went round the hall with the wine jug, refilling cups, taking her time. Keeping one eye on the dais and the King’s sour expression.
Gorlois said nothing for a long time. He seemed to be weighing his options.
King Cathal said: “By the way, what happened to Caius? Is he in his grave?”
Gorlois looked at him sharply. “He fled, like a coward. He will be caught soon.”
“And there was another grown-up son, wasn’t there? Ythur . . . Orthur . . . A bastard, if I recall, got on a slave girl. What happened to him? Is he also a fugitive?”
Igraine froze, mid-pour. She mouthed the correct name . . . Arthur. Her beloved son Arthur. She’d heard nothing of his fate for weeks – since he went north with the princess to Rheged. She slowly poured the wine and waited to hear Gorlois’ answer.
“Arthur, that was the bastard’s name. He’s dead, most likely. I arranged for him to be taken in Rheged. King Urien obliged me. We shall not hear his name again.”
Igraine held back a sob and fled from the hall. Her son was dead. Arthur was dead. Her heart throbbed and settled into a dull ache. Uthur gone, Arthur gone, too. Perhaps it was time to prepare the poison. She would have her revenge, and take a good draught herself. She sniffed, wiped her eyes. And went to refill the wine jug.
But she must hear all that she could in the hall before she went to see the cunning-man. She would tell all she learned to Wynn and his Marsh Harriers. Then she would remove that monster Gorlois from this painful world once and for all.
The conversation had moved on from marriage by the time Igraine reappeared with the brimming jug. It was clear nothing had yet been agreed between the kings.
“Five hundred spearmen, Cathal. If you would lend me a five hundred – or better yet a thousand of your famous spearmen, I could scour Dumnonia clean of traitors. There is a pestilential nest of outlaws in the Levels, that I would dearly wish to flush out. But I have to keep a full legion in the east since the Stone Men are refusing to accept my rule – and I must be able to block them if they attack. And the Demetians have resumed their raids across the Severn Sea. Last week they sailed across and sacked a village on the coast near Porthbud and slew a score of my folk.”
King Cathal made a sympathetic noise and nodded his head wisely, as if to say, I do understand your troubles, great King, I truly do. Igraine came to stand close to him and silently refilled his wine cup, and he looked at her and smiled warmly in thanks.
“Let me be clear, Cathal: if you were to lend me a thousand spearmen – lend, mind, not give – I would look far more kindly on your matchmaking,” said Gorlois.
Cathal nodded sympathetically again. “I wish I could help you, my friend. I wish I had a thousand spearmen to give you. I wish I had even a spare five hundred to help you in your time of need. But I too have brigands in the hills who need to be hunted down, and the Estronwyr press on my borders with ever greater boldness. If the royal houses of Dumnonia and Gwent were united, say by a marriage between our heirs, perhaps it would be easier to allocate my troops to new tasks but until then . . .”
Gorlois’s annoyance was clear. He beckoned Igraine and thrust out his wine cup towards her. “Give me the spearmen first, then we’ll make the marriage,” he said.
“Alas,” said Cathal. “I cannot agree to that. If I gave you a trained army of my own men, the balance of power would alter considerably between us. I must say no.”
“Let us sleep on it and resume our discussions in the morning,” snapped Gorlois.
Three days later, King Cathal of Gwent and his retinue left the caer, and set off north back to Glevum in a driving rainstorm. There had been much feasting and a decent amount of gift-giving but neither issue had been resolved. Gorlois would not get his spearmen, Cathal would not get his marriage alliance. Both kings swore to meet again very soon to continue their discussions, and pledged eternal friendship.
Three days later, the soldiers came for Igraine: six legionaries under a captain.
“We have orders to bring you before the King immediately,” said the captain, a usually mild man that Igraine knew well, who now adopted a grim, menacing mien.
“King Gorlois means to put you to the question. And you must answer him!”
End of chapter nine.
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Angus Donald’s has also written an epic five-book Viking series, published by Canelo, which begins with The Last Berserker (Fire Born 1). He is the author of the Outlaw Chronicles, which kicks off with Outlaw, published by Little, Brown. He is currently writing the 11th Robin Hood novel in that bestselling series.