The Bloody Cup (31 page)

‘You may extract whatever meaning you can from this riddle,’ Simon said. ‘However, I’m certain of one fact. The Cup never belonged to the blue hag, Ceridwen, so the black warrior is a liar as well as a blasphemer and a murderer.’ Percivale had never learned to read so, through repetition, he committed the entire rhyme to memory.

‘I swear by my hope of heavenly redemption that I know nothing else,’ Simon told him.

Percivale bowed his head in gratitude and respect. ‘I won’t trouble you further, Brother Simon. You’ve aided me in every way that you can. I would only request that you don’t tell Otha, or anyone else, of the riddle.’

Simon chuckled, a sound that resembled nothing so much as the friction of rusty armour. ‘That’s one promise I’ll keep. The Cup of Lucius should have lain with its owner in his grave until Judgement Day. It has already been the cause of murder, distrust and cruelty. It’s my belief that only the hands of a saint are sufficiently sanctified to hold such a symbol.’

Percivale turned to go.

‘One more thing, before you go, young man’, Simon said. ‘Lucius asked me to ensure that the Cup was placed in his grave after his death. He swore to me that the Cup was perilous and to take every precaution, on pain of my mortal soul, to ensure that the vessel went into the earth with him. I did exactly what he asked of me but, within days, my hands began to grow steadily worse until they became as crippled as you now see them. I’ve searched through the words of Jesus for a message about a vessel such as the Cup, but my prayers have never been answered. In God’s name, Percivale, I beg you to take care, for I’m sure that the Cup is dangerous.’ He paused to add weight to his warning.

‘I’ve forsaken my race and the faith of my fathers to follow the teachings of Jesus. No child of mine will cover my eyes when I die, and no Jewish kin will sing the last song for me. So understand that when I beg you to forget the Cup and let it be, I have no ulterior motives. I do not wish to see Lucius’s curse again in this life. I’ve no doubt that it will kill any murderer who holds it, and it will madden even good men if they should lust after its insidious promises. If there is any fault in your heart, the Cup will discover it, as it found the blood that was still on my hands and ruined them forever.’

He smiled wistfully at Percivale.

‘I speak harshly because you are clean and good, Percivale, and I want no part of any ill that comes to you. Look into your heart before you reach out your hand to clutch this vessel to your breast. And pray that such an object never finds its way into King Artor’s court. It would destroy the king more certainly than any blade could. He is a good man, your Artor, for I saw the character in his face long before you were born. But a king must make compromises to rule as long as he has, and the Cup will find his weaknesses. As to his court, I haven’t been to Cadbury and I cannot imagine those men who surround him, but the Cup would discover every vile detail and every ambition in their natures.’ Brother Simon stared at his useless hands. ‘I would regret my assistance to you if it should bring harm to the High King or to any of his loyal subjects. Better I should be dead than be a traitor to the man who labours to preserve God’s church.’

Percivale could offer no comfort, other than to bow respectfully and then leave the old man to his regrets.

As Percivale left the room, Brother Simon turned back to the new mould and began to oil it with shaking hands that were mere clubs. Tears rolled down his leathery cheeks, not only in sorrow, but also in joy. Glastonbury would be the last home he would ever know; although the Cup may have taken his hands, God had given him Glastonbury. Simon’s faith was as strong as the metals he had once mastered. For good or for ill, the Cup was loose on the land, but Simon believed that God would prevail.

That night, Percivale dictated a written message to a priestly scribe, addressing it to Bishop Otha. Then, before first light and in secrecy, he took his leave from the religious enclave. Otha couldn’t be trusted so, as a precaution, Percivale had questioned all the older priests during the course of the one afternoon in order to divert suspicion away from Brother Simon.

In the letter delivered personally to Otha, Percivale pronounced himself defeated by the passage of time in his search to find the origins of the Cup.

Then, like the smoke from the kitchens he had once tended, Percivale disappeared into the welcoming darkness.

Four days away as the crow flies, Gronw tossed fitfully as he slept on a pile of filthy straw in a stone hut in Ordovice country. His dreams were filled with the many faces of Gernyr Raven-Hair, her lower lip gripped between her white teeth as she thought up devilry. Her dark eyes were agleam as she stroked his thighs, his groin and his lust-blinded eyes. The black warrior groaned as he remembered the texture of her white throat as it pulsed with fierce life under his kisses. Then he saw her beloved, fearsome face as it jetted blood from the severed arteries that fed the stuttering beat of her heart.

Her brilliant eyes still possessed him, body and soul.

He writhed in his sleep and wished that he could gaze on her remembered beauty for just one more moment. Even the unconscious release of orgasm couldn’t soothe him, as her eyes burned themselves into his brain as they had for a thousand nights before this one.

Eventually, exhausted and numbed, Gronw slept on dreamlessly in his malodorous hut.

Nimue woke from a dream of blood and murder, and felt the shade of Myrddion stretched comfortingly beside her.

‘Taliesin does well,’ she told her beloved. ‘My heart tells me he eases the king’s pain.’

In Nimue’s imagination, Myrddion’s voice gently answered her as he stroked her hair.

‘He’ll need to be stronger still. As will you, my beloved. The unseasonable winds from the south blow cold when they should be warm. Dire portents are coming and you must be ready to do your part. Those who live by the taint, smell and taste of spilled blood are growing stronger by the hour. You are one of the chosen few who can do what must be done.’

‘But do I have the strength to play my part in what must be?’ she asked, her eyes like deep pools of blue water as she looked out into the empty darkness.

‘You always have the strength to do what must be done, my lady.’

Her arms embraced the nothingness that lay beside her and she dreamed of Myrddion’s touch, uncaring of the wind from the south or the portents of evil that wailed on the dark air.

CHAPTER XI

DOGGEREL AND DREARY DAYS

Salinae Minor dreamed in the night wind, her breast pressed against the cold, dark waters of the river and her trees and roofs shrouded in a thin blanket of snow. Her statues were pale blurs in a landscape of charcoal trees and glistening, diamond-white gardens, and the villa seemed to hover over the silver drifts.

Inside, a roaring hypocaust heated the floors and every window was shuttered and the doors barred. The furniture and servants had scarcely changed, although Galahad’s personal guard had taken up residence with much noisy joking and young male sweat. Even the slow-falling snow that entered the atrium couldn’t chill the glowing braziers and warm tiles that resisted nature’s extremes. More long shutters sealed the atrium from the body of the house, dimming the light and containing a feeling of cosy contentment and safety.

Galahad had efficiently organized the good order and comfort of the villa, but even his energy could not hide the fact that the heart had been plucked out of Salinae Minor and had not yet been replaced with another. Already, in the cobwebs forming in corners and through the thin line of dust that was filtering down on to wooden surfaces, the absence of women spoke wordlessly of Miryll’s fate.

In the scriptorium, Galahad and Percivale stared glumly at a line of puzzling words that Galahad had written on the tabletop with a piece of charcoal.

‘I’m damned if I can understand the meaning of this sodding rhyme,’ Galahad muttered irritably. ‘Artor will skin me alive if we don’t decipher Lucius’s puzzle, so I’m doomed to become a pair of slippers for the High King’s feet.’

Percivale was about to grin in rueful companionship at Galahad’s little joke, but he realized that Galahad was serious. The young man’s abundant hair was tousled and untied, and even his normally perfect eyebrows seemed to be tangled. Under weary lids, his fine hazel eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep.

‘Can we explore this rhyme from another direction?’ Percivale suggested tentatively. ‘Perhaps we should determine exactly what we do know - and work outward from there.’

‘We know that Lucius brought the Cup to Glastonbury,’ Galahad stated. ‘He admitted that fact to anyone who asked.’

‘If that’s correct, the Cup has no history in this land,’ Percivale responded. ‘So it can’t be the Celtic relic that you thought was hidden at Salinae Minor.’

Galahad looked thoughtful.

‘I suppose not,’ he said. ‘So what was secreted away in the tower? It must have been something important for Miryll’s father to write of it, so we now have two mysteries to puzzle over. Shite, but I’d prefer to be doing something rather than sitting around trying to puzzle out silly rhymes and mysteries.’

Percivale was as humble as Galahad was arrogant, but Percivale saw no reason to ram his beliefs down the throats of his friends, unlike Galahad who saw conversion to the Church of Rome as his duty. However, their shared faith was proving to be an asset in their developing friendship, although Percivale had never spent so many hours on his knees, a practice that Galahad deemed necessary to support his spiritual health. Arrogant and difficult in character, as straight as a sword blade and as brutally direct, Galahad was the stereotype of a Christian warrior in the imaginations of those unfortunate men and women with whom he came into contact. Only close proximity and empathy revealed the uncertain, troubled man who was struggling to break the influence of an exotic and repellant family. Percivale understood that Galahad dreamed of lasting glory to wash away all memories of his famous libertine father, his grasping grandfather, his sorceress great-aunt and his hate-motivated grandmother.

‘Has anyone mentioned anything to you about the Salinae Minor relic except for what you discovered in the scrolls?’ Percivale asked.

‘During my visit to this place with my father, both Gronw and Lady Miryll avoided me as if I carried the plague.’ Galahad toyed with a reed pen. His fingers picked at the stem, splintering and ripping the delicate point until it was pulpy and useless.

‘Do you think that Lady Miryll might have revealed something to your father, even inadvertently? Both Miryll and Gronw seem to have treated Lord Gawayne like a pet hound, and she spent a whole day in his company. They must have talked about something.’

‘After we left Salinae Minor, Father complained incessantly all the way to Cadbury. The main topic of conversation was Salinae Minor and its past. He objected strenuously to my dislike of the place and, while I’m no longer sure what he said because I hardly listened, he mentioned the execution of Miryll’s mother by her husband, Miletus, without giving me her name. Father was adamant that Salinae Minor was a venerable place, and that I was being unreasonable in loathing the whole menagerie.’

‘Did your father give any reasons for his judgement? I’m certain you would have argued with him about it.’

Galahad laughed thinly. ‘He takes no notice of anything I say. He’s Gawayne, one of Artor’s immortals!’

Percivale waited, much as he had with Brother Simon at Glastonbury. He understood that even the cleverest and most manipulative of men hate silences and so they hasten to fill the void.

‘Have you heard the legend of an old man from another land who is reputed to have built the original church at Glastonbury?’ Galahad asked.

‘I vaguely recall the tale.’ Percivale shrugged, careful to hide his knowledge of Josephus until he knew the direction of Galahad’s thinking.

‘Father told me that the man who built the church was the same person who built the tower on this island. He’d already found Rufus’s notes on the old scrolls but Father was uninterested in the references to an old man.’

‘Perhaps the legend of the old man might be the link we’re searching for,’ Percivale said cautiously. He resisted the link between the tower on Salinae Minor and Glastonbury church. In his mind, Salinae Minor would always be pagan and drenched in blood.

‘Damnation! I can’t remember what Father was maundering on about. But if you give me a moment, I might remember.’ Galahad paced the room, and Percivale wondered how difficult it was to be sired by a legend such as Gawayne.

Visibly, Galahad wracked his brains. ‘Father just shrugged, and he agreed that he’d never heard of the trader of the scrolls . . . or another outlandish name like that.’

Percivale stared at Galahad in disbelief. For such a dedicated young man, and one who was a zealous Christian, the Otadini prince was occasionally remarkably obtuse.

‘Could the name he mentioned have been Arimathea?’

‘Possibly. I don’t remember.’

‘Do you recall the holy stories of the Church?’