Part One
Venta Silurum
Merlin and Aurelia
“God’s teeth, Merlin! I hate this! I am sick to the soul with it.” Uther, fresh from the saddle and still wearing his swordbelt and helm, storms into the big leather campaign tent, throws down a glove and falls into the nearest chair. He smells of battle—sweat and earth and blood—and the scent takes me back to a time when I, too, rode with a warband at my back, and I am again reminded that we tread a bridge no wider than the edge of a sword.
“There must be a better way.” He glares at me and I mark the dark half-moons beneath those gray-green eyes. Our paths have only lately joined and I am still learning the measure of the man and his mighty moods—the passions that surge through him like the restless tide. And I ask myself, not for the first time: Can this man and his brother really be the ones to unite our fractured land and all its fractious peoples?
“Bear it just a little longer, Uther,” I tell him. “One more battle and the prize is ours. Just one more.”
“Liar!” His fist slams down on the board, making cups tip and spill. “That’s what you said last time!”
“Yes, well—”
Uther is right. I had spoken my best hope: a mistake, more often than not. I should have known better—especially when dealing with a host of petty potentates and would-be tyrants clawing like mad rats for the High King’s crown. Or, should I rather say mice mewling for a milksop? For, I swear, there is not a single lord of genuine stature or substance from Eboracum to Londinium. And those of the north who are worth their salt might be counted on the toes of one foot.
Yet, and yet, we had stood against the most powerful of those proud kings today. And this is the way of it:
Daybreak was still some way off as we labored up the hillside, thrashing our way in the dark by feel alone. Once we had gained the crest we formed the warhost, spreading out along the spine of the ridge. Then, we waited for the dawn. It was Uther’s plan to have the light at our back, forcing Morcant’s men to fight with the sun in their eyes. We waited, praying for cloudless skies—prayers heard and answered in full.
At the very moment the sun crested the hills, stretching its bright rays down the slopes and into the valley, Uther gave the command and the warband rose up, forming a single rank along the entire ridge. The warriors began beating their shields with spear shaft and sword hilt; they opened their throats to the battle cry: Britannia! Britannia! Coming in waves as a roar resounding from the hills: BRITANNIA! BRITANNIA! BRITANNIA!
Morcant’s warband was caught unawares. Still shaking off their night’s slumber, the first Morcant and his battlechiefs knew of the attack was when the clash of the shields and wails of the warriors rattled down slopes and echoed across the valley. Instantly, the camps were thrown into disarray as warriors scattered to arm themselves.
Uther did not linger to enjoy the sight of the enemy scurrying like ants dashed from a scalded hill. His upraised arm slashed down, the battered old battlehorn sounded, and the warhost flooded down the hillside, screaming to cry down the heavens. At the same time, Uther’s brother, Aurelius, and his cohort of mounted warriors—his alá, in the old Roman fashion—swept in from the flank. Having ridden through the early hours to get themselves into position, they closed upon Morcant’s forces before Uther and his troops on foot reached the camp.
The rebellious lord cried commands for his men to join battle. Some, only half-dressed, cut their horses from the picket lines, threw themselves into the saddle, and raced to meet the attack. Having severed the picket lines however, many suddenly free horses bolted and ran, stranding more warriors on foot than were mounted. Meanwhile, their swordbrothers ran to their lord and clustered around him to make their stand.
Aurelius’ men quickly surrounded the rebel king and his bodyguard but restrained the attack, allowing Morcant—wisely, I think—to feel the futility of struggling on. Several of the bolder defenders struck out: swords clashed, blood flowed, one man went down. Some among them shouted commands to rally and form the battleline, but it was already too late. In fact, the battle was over before the fight had properly begun.
The few skirmishes that had flourished when Uther’s forces reached the valley, flashed briefly and were extinguished. The fighting was brief, but even so three good men fell—all Morcant’s—and five horses were wounded and had to be relieved of their misery. The injured warriors would live, but whether they would ever fight again remained to be seen.
I watched all this from the top of the hill with Pelleas beside me. And, yes, there was a time when I would have been at the sharp end of the fighting, matching stroke for stroke with the fiercest foe. But no more. Oh, I know well the ways of war and men, how battles can best be ordered, and so on. Yet, believe me when I say that I am far more valuable as an advisor at the king’s right hand than merely another sweaty fist on a spear. That is not an over-proud opinion or idle boast, rather it is the work only I can do and I will embrace it as my duty with the fierce devotion of the most loyal warrior.
In all, the battle played out before us just now could easily have been far worse: the fighting more desperate, the losses greater. But Morcant’s heart wasn’t in it; he knew himself outsmarted and outmanned from the start. Until he saw those warriors swarming down the hillside to him, I don’t think he understood the true size of Aurelius and Uther’s warband, or their iron resolve; if he had, he might have waited for Gorlas or Dunaut or Coledac to join him and mass their troops together. If Morcant had been better prepared, the brothers’ simple maneuver would not have thrown his camp into such disorder and alarm. But arrogance is so often blind—and blinding.
Be that as it may, to pursue the conflict further would have been pure folly and not even Morcant, for all his haughty pride, was ever that much of a fool. When it became clear that Aurelius and Uther placed a higher price on victory than he was able to meet, Morcant quit the field and a contrite messenger was soon kneeling before Uther begging peace. Fortunately, the fight had not gone beyond recall. Indeed, other than a few inevitable wounds and injuries, I doubt either warband suffered any lasting hurt—which was a boon for all concerned. No mistake, we would need all the sound fighting men we could muster when we marched north to take the fight to the Saecsen invaders.
None of this prevents Uther from complaining about it, however. He is as irate as he would be had we lost.
“This is insane! How are we ever to trust these people?” Uther cries, his voice at once a challenge and a complaint. “Answer me that if you can!”
“What is all this shouting?” Another warrior has entered the tent. “You can hear it clear out to the tether line. You’re scaring the horses.”
I turn to see Aurelius stooping through the oxhide flap of the entrance. He sees me and then his glance slides to his brother. “What has Merlin said this time?” he asks, his voice a balm to soothe a heated temper. “Something utterly outrageous I’ll warrant. What is it now? That we should smelt our swords for toasting forks? Our spears for kindling?”
The reference cheers me strangely. If only his winsome ways could win over the haughty royals of the self-satisfied tribes of the Southern Midlands; proud in their ancient power seats, they fret and brood in their noisome lairs, fomenting rebellion and nursing their hopeless dreams of kingship and empire. But even Aurelius’ natural charisma, his fathomless charm, his manifold gifts of persuasion do not extend that far.
And so we must endure these heinous, pointless battles—maiming and killing, wasting the blood of men we would much rather welcome as swordbrothers in the fight against a superior and far more ruthless enemy. I swallow down the rebuke already leaping to my tongue, and instead tell Uther what I have told many another in the past. “Keep your eyes on the prize,” I say.
Uther answers with a snort of derision, snatches up his cup, and drains it in a gulp. “Aye, but is any prize worth the obscene price we are paying? Eh?”
“Never doubt it, Uther.” Another has entered—and with a softer voice, but a voice I will soon come to know quite well.
I turn again to the tent flap to see a tall, slender woman of advancing years, her dark hair swept back and greying at the temples, and a face firm and lightly lined. Her back is straight, her eyes quick and sharp, but there is a thinness about her face that gives her a somewhat hollow look which, I suddenly realize, makes her seem older than her years.
“Mother—” Aurelius and Uther speak as one, as they often do. Both start up from their chairs, almost spilling the cups. I rise, too.
So this is Aurelia, I muse. With her, and close as a shadow at her side, is a servant. Mairenn, I will later learn, is a near-mute Irish girl rescued from the hanging tree—a mere waif of a thing: plain-featured, inconspicuous, silent as snow. Mairenn is a ghostly presence, so easily overlooked as to be invisible. But, like her mistress, keen-eyed. I suspect she misses nothing.
With them is a brown-robed priest—a young man of decent stature and the broad shoulders and hands of a warrior; his quick dark eyes lend him the air of a fellow ready for a fight wherever it finds him. Moreover, there is a familiar look about him, and it makes me think I have seen him somewhere before.
But it is Aurelia who commands my attention—though, in the flesh, she is not at all the person I imagined. The way Aurelius and Uther had spoken of her, I pictured a much more imposing figure: a winged Rhiannon, silver spear in hand; or a Modron, queen of queens. Anything but this well-aged woman with skin like parchment and liver spots on her hands. Aurelius’ mention of the woman who raised him—much as one would speak of a she-wolf that ruled a pack of scrappy mongrels—does not at all match my mental image. Be that as it may, it is clear that both of these men are in complete thrall to her.
“I didn’t know you had arrived,” Aurelius says. “Did you know she was coming, Utha?”
“No. I did not.” Uther shakes his head. “You shouldn’t be here, mother. It isn’t safe.”
“Nonsense,” she scoffs, in a manner so much like her son that I see at once where he came by it. “Do you think an armed camp is anything to frighten me? I grew up in a Roman garrison, son of mine.”
“So did I,” Uther mutters under his breath.
She moves to her son and gives him a maternal kiss, then pats his cheek. “Your concern touches my heart,” she tells him, sarcasm edging her tone.
Aurelia’s presence has instantly transformed the two brothers. Both men, so used to wielding the power of command over others are no less used to being commanded by this woman.
I marvel at her effortless intimacy as she crosses to Aurelius, puts a loving hand to his face and gives him the same maternal kiss on the cheek. “Hello, my heart,” she tells him. “I don’t see your crown. Have you lost it already?”
“You cannot lose what you do not have,” he tells her with a laugh. “But my advisor assures me it is within my grasp.” He nods in my direction. “Isn’t that right, Merlin?”
The old woman straightens and turns to me. “Ah, the Wise Emrys,” she says, her glance at once appraising and approving. “I am happy to meet you at last.”
“The honor is mine,” I reply, lowering my head in respect. “Aurelius and Uther have told me much about you.”
“That I heartily doubt,” she scoffs again, giving her sons a sideways glance. “Well, I hope at least some of it was true. Please, sit—all of you. Sit.”
Though she betrays none of the deafness I am told she has endured the whole of her life, I mark that both Uther and Aurelius are mindful to face her when they speak and alter their tone accordingly. No doubt, Aurelia has become adept at hiding her impairment one way and another, either that or she actually hears more than she pretends. I do not know her well enough yet to say which.
“Uther is right,” Aurelius tells her, resuming his seat. “This is no place for you. Anyway, we’re moving camp in the morning and you’ll—”
She raises a hand to stop him. “You need not worry about me. I’ve been very well looked after by King Tewdrig—”
“Tewdrig? Here?” cries Uther. Now I understand his bluster: years of speaking loud to accommodate his mother have made shouting his usual form of address. “Where is he? What does he want?”
“Peace, Utha,” says Aurelius. “Let her speak.” Turning to his mother, he smiles. “You say friend Tewdrig is here?”
“Oh, indeed. We met on the road. He is just now making his camp nearby and asked me to tell you that he will join you very soon.”
“Why is he here?” wonders Uther, reaching for his cup. “Why now?”
“You will have to wait to ask him yourself,” replies Aurelia simply. “But, he said something about securing pledges from the southern lords—whoever they might be.”
“Humph,” grumps Uther. “We need men and horses, not vows and pledges.”
Bending over him, Aurelia strokes the back of his neck—a caring touch only a mother could perform with such practiced ease. How many times, I wonder, has she employed that same calming gesture over the years?
“Well, as I say, you can ask him yourself when he arrives, but from what I have gleaned, he is just as eager as you are to rid the land of Hengist and all his vile heathen brood—Tewdrig’s very words. Not so, Mairenn?” The maid nods gravely, watching everything.
“That’s all?” Uther sniffs, his anger and frustration abating somewhat. “He needn’t have come all this way for that. He could have sent a message. Better still, sent men and weapons.”
“Enough, Uther,” says Aurelius, breaking in. “We’ll speak to Tewdrig when he’s ready.” He reaches a hand to his mother and she takes it in her grasp. Seeing her hands in his—they appear small, fragile things in his powerful grip. “Pleasant as it is to see you,” he continues, “Uther is right. It is dangerous on the road just now. You should have stayed in Armorica. You’d be safe there.”
“It is always dangerous on the road, my son—as you never tire of reminding me. But if I’d stayed in Constantia, I wouldn’t have seen my boys.” She pats his hand and releases it. “You’ve been away so long I wanted to see for myself if you still stalk the land of the living.”
I feel a smile spreading across my face at this exchange: that these two battle-hardened chieftains, high-blooded and keen as new blades, kings in all but name, should bow before this aging woman who yet calls them her “boys” is both a delight and a wonder. I cannot remember when I last I witnessed such matter-of-fact familial affection, such motherly devotion. Oh, but it is joy itself to see it now and share in the warmth of the moment. It breaks upon me then that I know little about this remarkable woman who raised such champions. Yes, and even that little is, I fear, very much mistaken: scraps patched together as it is from various fragmented accounts, rumors, and tales gathered from ill-informed sources. But here the living woman stands before me. I vow then and there to know her better and learn the truth from the only one who has lived it; and this, if time and heaven allow, I will do.
Pelleas enters the tent just then, bearing a jar of mead in each hand. I direct him to pour the cups. Mairenn moves to assist him, and Aurelia joins us and I introduce him to them. “Ah, the mother of our next High King,” Pelleas replies, with a glance at me. As always, he knows more than he lets on, for little escapes his notice. “Your renown proceeds you.” She beams at the recognition. “It is an honor to meet you.” He indulges her in a little bow of acknowledgement and he and Mairenn carry the cups and jar to the board.
“You have Pelleas and I have Mairenn,” Aurelia confides. “We are fortunate to have found such devoted servants.”
I smile. “Indeed,” I agree. “But Pelleas is more to me than a servant. He is confidant and friend, and more.” I glance his way. “Truly, he is my guardian, my aide and advocate, my paraclete you might say.” She wonders at the word and I add, “I has borne my burdens more than once.” In truth, I have depended on his devotion more than once.
As Pelleas and Mairenn fill the cups, the others sit down to drink to the success of our fraught and worried cause, I turn to the silent priest standing nearby, greet him, and say, “I have the notion that I might know you, friend. Have we met?”
A ready mirth plays at the corners of his mouth. “No, Emrys, I confess I have not enjoyed that particular pleasure. But, I’m thinking you might have seen me at Caer Myrddin.”
“Ah, that would likely be it.”
“Though, I think it far more likely that it was my brother, Rónán, that you saw,” he quickly explains. “He is one of Lord Tewdrig’s men and we are enough alike that we are often confused one for the other.”
“Lucky, Tewdrig,” I reply, “with two staunch men—a priest and a warrior—to serve him.” I glance back at Aurelia, chatting happily with her two sons.
Ruan sees my glance and explains, “The king has asked me to accompany her and serve her while she is here—which I am happy to do as long as she needs me.”
A gift, of a sort, from a most generous and thoughtful man. “I can see that she is in good hands.”
We part then as he hurries off to fetch some food and drink for himself and Mairenn, the serving maid. Those gathered around the board begin to talk over the latest events, news and gossip; and, with cups in hand, gradually the heavy clouds of the day’s troubles lift and drift away.
Watching Aurelius chivvy his brother into a better mood, I lean close to my elderly companion and say, “You’ve cheered them greatly—our Good Lord’s own gift, I’m thinking.”
She smiles. “I don’t know about that. But I do know that I could not stay away another day longer. And if I had known Myrddin the Wise was riding with them, I would have come all the sooner.”
“I have not been with them all so very long myself,” I tell her. “Pelleas and I have been negotiating peace with the lords hereabouts, trying to prevent another battle.”
“It looks to me as if you’ve failed.”
“It looks that way to me, too.” I shake my head and dismiss the thought. Instead, I say, “But you, Aurelia, how are you?”
“Old and getting older—and not long for this world,” she says lightly. Despite her protests, she wears her age so loosely it seems to barely touch her—much as I do, though for very different reasons. She nods to the two warrior lords she calls her “boys” as they sit head to head with their warleaders, discussing the day’s triumphs and disappointments. Pelleas, Mairenn, and some other servants with cooking pots enter with bowls and plates and begin laying out the food. The hungry warriors fall to their meal.
“Behold!” I say, raising my cup to them. “All that stands between us and annihilation by the Hengist and his Saecsen warhost.”
We drink and she adds, “I hope and pray they are enough. I tell you the truth, Merlin, that has become my most fervent prayer.”
I agree with her and tell her I believe her sons are the leaders raised up for this moment, and that I have pledged my life to their support. We drink again, and I confess the grave error I made in the past and for which I must now make amends. “I was wrong about them, you know—very wrong.”
“How so?” she cocks her head to one side.
“I believed them to be sons of Constantine, the High King. I thought—”
“Oh! That old lie,” she huffs, “is almost as old as I am. I’ve heard it a thousand times if once.” Suddenly earnest, with a flutter of her hand she waves aside my assumption as if it was a bad smell. “You’ll do well to forget you ever heard that at all. My boys are no relation to that usurper,” she snaps. “But they are well-schooled, and that is an honest fact. The Good Lord knows their father and I did our best—despite what anyone says.”
The comment together with her abrupt change of demeanor intrigues me and makes me wonder what lies behind it. “People say many things,” I suggest. “You cannot prevent them talking.”
“No, but you don’t have to like it.”
The bitterness in her tone betrays a long-lingering hurt. Something in me urges me to probe the wound a little. “You should hear some of the things they say about me,” I tell her. “Most of it is fit only for the midden heap where it rightly belongs.”
“Yes, well, you are not the mother of the next High King of Britain—the Good Lord willing.” She turns her eyes from her sons and fixes me with a look both desperate and sincere. “Hear me, Wise Emrys, my sons are worthy of the throne they seek—never doubt it. There are those who would deny their claim because of me, but I will not have Aurelius and Uther defamed or dishonored because they lack royal pedigree. I will not have it, you hear? I will not see them slandered on my account.”
Ah, we have struck the heart of her grievance. She is not wrong in this. The question of Aurelius’ and Uther’s birthright has been much discussed in the halls of the kings, and debated with the lords and chieftains I have attempted to win to our side. Upstarts, they were called, low-born mongrels, half-blood Britons, not British at all. It was even suggested that, given the chance, these two sly devils would side with their foreign kin; they’d sooner sell us out for the gold of the Saecsen Shore, and so on and on.
Of course, these slurs and insults were voiced most often by those trying to advance their own vaunted interests. Great Light, I do freely confess that I have also viewed Aurelius’ and Uther’s claim in error. And now it seems that I, too, have been mistaken about their lineage—succumbing, I suppose, to easy rumor and sly gossip where facts were not forthcoming. But that was before I knew them.
Since entering the service of these two young firebrands, I have stopped my ears to all the mealy-mouthed complaints and self-serving protests of the small kings. If what their mother says is so and they are not in fact the sons of Constantine, they are still his heirs, so to speak. For, there is but one true path for Britain and no other. I see that clearly, and I will not be moved.
Be that as it may, I can also see that this question of birthright and noble pedigree weighs heavily on the old woman’s mind, perhaps obsesses her in a way I do not rightly understand—and, likely, will not understand until I hear the full story. So, I poke a little deeper.
“Is there something you would like to tell me, Aurelia?” I lean back in my chair, cradling my cup to my chest. “If so, there is nothing I would like better than to hear it.”
A sly smile curves her thin lips. “You may think otherwise when you hear what I have to say.”
I nod, accepting her caveat. “There is but one way to find out.”
Her eyes narrow as she favors me with that piercing gaze of hers and slowly makes up her mind.
Three of Uther’s battlechiefs, having settled their warbands, come clattering into the tent, loud in their greetings and keen to share the victory with their war leader and lord; four more follow on their heels. Aurelia, seeing the men enter, rises from her chair. “Come to my lodging and we will talk.” She bids good night to her sons, then she and Mairenn leave the warriors to their noisy celebration.
Later, as the camp slowly quiets for the night, I join Aurelia in the tent Uther has vacated for her. Mairenn has placed two camp chairs beside a small iron brazier and lit charcoal to chase away the chill that drifts in through the flaps and wind holes; rushlights burn in holders, casting a soft glow over us and scattering shadows everywhere. I have sent Pelleas to his rest in our tent across the way and I settle in to hear what Aurelia has to tell.
“Hear me, Myrddin, you will long outlast me and so I charge you to carry the truth of what I say. When I am ashes in my grave, I want it remembered.”
I occurs to me that what I am about to hear is the cleansing of a wound that has festered for many years. No doubt, she has prepared herself, carrying it with her, working it over in her mind, polishing it over time like a stone of contention. She has chosen now to lay down the burden, and I am to bear witness. I wonder why.
Nevertheless, I do what I can to reassure her. “So long as I have anything to do with it, you will not be forgotten. On that you have my promise.”
She takes up the tongs from the brazier and places another bit of charcoal in the embers. Then, having arranged her thoughts as she has arranged the fire, she turns her gaze on me. The rekindled light comes up in her eyes and she begins to speak:
“I want this known: I never was a slave. Never a captive, or tribe tribute, never a prize or trophy taken in battle, never a foundling abandoned at the garrison gate. God’s truth, I am not a mud-sucking Saescsen slut left behind in a failed raid, nor a Picti maid married out of pity. I am Briton-born. Noble blood flows in my veins. My great-grandfather was a prince of the Demetae, my grandmother a Silurian queen. My mother was the wife of a magistrate, and no mongrel Jute girl who sold goat cheese and duck eggs in some fly-blown cross-road dirt market as the gossips would have it.”
“People love a good lie,” I tell her. “I don’t know why. But fly to them they do—like crows on a carcass.”
She nods in agreement. “Aye,” she adds, “they devour all they can and squawk for more. The things said about me—wicked rumors spoken behind my back when they think I can’t hear. Falsehoods all—spun of pure malice and woven of jealousy.
“The cause of it? Nothing more than a hard fact they cannot stomach. And it is this: I was the wife of a titled official in the service of Rome. Great wealth and greater power lay within his command. My husband was Constantius Aridius Verica, Legate of Deva Vitrix and Legate Legionis of Flavia Gallicana. The simple truth is that he could have had the choosing of many another willing woman to take as wife—and many more beautiful, more desirable, come to that. But out of all the others he chose me. And it is this raw lump the envious crones chew endlessly and cannot swallow.
“Let the nags and scolds gaze on me in their envy and flick their poison tongues as they will. I did not set out to seduce a man. I did not steal a husband. And God knows I did not murder Helena, the legate’s first wife.
“Poor woman—she did not deserve her end. But I served her faithfully as handmaid, confidant, and friend. And I nursed her through those last bitter months. I was not forced. No bargains were struck for me. I served of my own accord, and I served her gladly. I was never under any bonds save those of friendship and affection.
“Hear me, and remember. I am Aurelia. Citizen by birth. Daughter of the Empire. Mother to the next High King of All Britain. My lineage is second to none, and I bow my head to no-one in this realm or any other.”