Read The King's Cavalry Online
Authors: Paul Bannister
Myrddin and Guinevia had a disastrously slow trip from Eboracum. Twice, they had broken carriage wheels on the rugged gritstone approaches to the Pennine spine of Britain, delaying them for days. Then a late autumn storm blew in and swamped the land, forcing them to wait until the near-impassable flooded tracks had dried sufficiently for wheeled transport.
Next, Myrddin contracted a fever with an attendant high temperature, vomiting and gastric distress and Guinevia, alarmed, opted to lodge where they were, at a moorland sheep farmer’s long house. The pagan priestess was forced to send back most of their escort because there was no accommodation for them and, mindful of her kidnap, she confined everybody, including the shepherd and his family to the house and bothies to prevent word of their presence from spreading.
It took the sorcerer a fortnight to recover sufficiently to be able to travel again, and Guinevia heaved a sigh of relief when she could send back one of the two remaining guards to bring the others. Even that simple task took time. He lost his way, was delayed and finally blundered across his comrades after wasting more time, and then the party had to make the tiresome, sleet-chilled moorland trek all over again.
Myrddin, at the sheep farmer’s home, was alert and bright-eyed, if weak, and was spooning mutton broth into his mouth when he said casually:
“There was a huge battle in Rome a week or two ago, I saw it.” Guinevia looked up from her lettering.
“What battle?” she asked, more sharply than she meant.
“Arthur won a great victory for the emperor, I told you, I saw it,” the sorcerer said testily. Guinevia put down her pen.
“Tell me about it,” she said quietly.
“Oh,” said Myrddin airily, “all the usual nonsense of a battle, men and horses dying, confusion and blood everywhere. The ravens will be feasting now. They always go for the dead men’s eyes first, you know, I’ve seen it a number of times.”
“Is Arthur safe?” Guinevia demanded, mentally chiding herself for not sending out her mind to view matters. She had overlooked the activities of her son Milo in remote Pictland from time to time, but with caring for Myrddin and being preoccupied with this search for the
torc… “Is Arthur safe now?” she repeated.
“Oh, I’m sure he is fine,” said Myrddin, “I saw him with that emperor fellow, Constantine. He had blood splashed all over him, but he seemed unwounded for a change. I’d say they had just finished a battle, and I am fairly sure they were at Rome, or near the place. It was an important vision, I knew that. Look, is there any more of this rather good mutton?”
Guinevia rapped on the table and the scared-looking wife of the shepherd scurried in. “Give him more broth,” she said curtly, “and the minute you hear anything about the rest of our escort, tell me.”
Two days later, the soldiers straggled in, weatherbeaten, wet and cold, leading fresh carriage horses. Guinevia allowed them a night’s rest, and ordered the troop to be ready for a dawn start. She bought sheepskins from the shepherd and piled them on Myrddin in the carriage to protect him against the November chill. For herself, wrapped in her hooded cloak of fine wool, nothing mattered except ending this journey. She sat anxiously looking through a gap in the raeda’s leather curtains for hours as it descended the frosty hills and rumbled over the frozen plain towards Chester. Three times, the blood-red sun rose low and cheerless at their backs, and finally, late in the third afternoon, she saw their destination and sighed with relief.
Myrddin was sleeping as the carriage rolled under the red sandstone arch of the east gate and Guinevia slipped quietly out to give her maids instructions about caring for the exhausted sorcerer. Then she threw a palla cloak around her shoulders, pulled up the warm hood and went to look.
Her mind jangled with the prophecy: “
The
son
of
no
father
and
a
king
who
is
false
to
his
god
will
recover
a
Druid’s
treasure
to
mollify
Britain’s
deities
.
Seek
a
farmer’s
bull
in
his
floor
.”
“Well,” she thought, “the son of no father is Myrddin all right, and if Arthur has won a great battle for the Christians, that can’t be good for Mithras and the rest. Arthur has to placate Mithras by finding the
Druid’s treasure. I can do that for him.” She called for a bodyguard to accompany her, and set out to walk the old Roman walls, looking for an arrow slit and a grating.
*
Far to the north, Bishop Candless was also seeking treasure. The self-appointed cleric was back in his Pictish clan’s territory at Dunpelder, a hilltop fortress near Edyn’s Burh where he had safely delivered some splintered fragments of the True Cross and three long iron nails reputedly used in the Crucifixion of the Jesus god.
He had discreetly put away the painted banner whose miraculous
face of Christ had washed off in the rain just before the battle at Alesia. “It sairved its purpose and inspired the troops,” he had growled to his bodyguard captain, Bilic. “By a miracle, the face went away once its work was done.”
Now, from the altar of his new church, which stood close to the growing pile of a cathedral that would house the relics, he delivered another message. “The saint Cyriacus led the Empress Helena of Rome to the sanctuary in holy Jerusalem where these sacred objects were secretly kept,” Candless intoned almost weekly to his flock. “And the Empress entrusted our humble selves to be guardians of them. We must spread the word of their powers, for they will wash away sins and allow the faithful a place in heaven.”
As the most significant religious icons on the northern shores of Europe, they would also bring in thousands of pilgrims, the bishop reckoned, creating great wealth and power for his church. Life was good, and he had plans for a secret cellar under the cathedral that would act as his treasury.
The cellar would double as a private temple to Mithras, so he planned it to have raised platforms, a water supply and a drain, as well as ramp access so that a sacrificial animal could be led down into the place, as well as one or two other necessary additions. “The old gods are not powerless,” he muttered to Bilic, who carried on his bicep a tattoo of the Phrygian cap symbol of Mithras, “even if these Christians think they’re taking over.”
At the exact time Candless was planning his temple to maintain his bonds with Mithras, Guinevia was seeking the magical torc that could bring back Mithras and the other gods. She had walked the walls of Chester over and over, and had located a dozen arrow slits that seemed to match the one pictured in Agricola’s mosaic. The requirements seemed simple: the arrow slit should be keyhole shaped, and be on the eastern wall, so the rising sun would shine through it. There should be space inside the wall where a gridded well or cellar entrance should be, ruling out many more slits where the wall was shadowed by a building. But the sorceress could not make the match.
After several days’ search, she did what she did best: she went to the castrum library, where supply records, personnel lists, orders from Rome and a whole catalogue of scrolls was stored. “Find me a plan of the old castrum from the days of Agricola,” she told the clerks. “And hurry. It is important.”
The next afternoon, a slave brought a dusty, crackling scroll to the sorceress. “My master sends his apologies for the delay, it was difficult to find, but this, lady,” he said, “seems to be the original scheme of the fortress.” Guinevia nodded her thanks and unrolled the map. She scanned the eastern ramparts, there was the gate, there was a watch tower she knew from her search. What was inside the wall?
A small letter, an ‘f’, was inscribed to the south of the tower. Guinevia’s eyes scoured the map for an explanation. There was none, but other solitary ‘f’ markings were dotted seemingly at random in other places. She looked again at the tower and its nearby ‘f’ on the east wall. Nothing remarkable, there were 22 such towers about 60 paces apart, all around the walls. “Ogmia, goddess of powerful words,” she pleaded, “help me.”
The noun burst in Guinevia’s mind. “
Fons
.”
She physically started. “A spring!” she said aloud. Suddenly the thin line with ‘
aq’
written alongside that ran straight eastwards for about a mile meant something. It was an aqueduct from a sacred well, chief source of the camp’s water. But, she reasoned, a military camp needed a more protected water supply, hence the water wells, springs or fountains marked inside the walls. The Romans had dug their own emergency wells as an addition to the less-defensible main supply.
Guinevia hurried out, calling for a maid, and with the dusty scroll in hand, went quickly to the eastern wall. She counted off the guard towers, marked the arrow slits and searched the view inside the walls. There was no well there, but there was the blank wall of a brick and tile building. “Guard!” she summoned a sentry. “What building is that?”
“Officers’ club, lady,” he said briefly.
“It looks large,” she said.
“It is, lady,” agreed the sentry. “They have an exercise hall, three or four
thermae
bathing halls, hot and cold plunge baths, even a hypocaust to keep their feet warm. It’s for officers only.” Guinevia glanced at him, hearing the note of envy.
“It seems very big,” she said.
“It’s 85 paces per side,” said the sentry. “I know. I get guard duty there sometimes.”
“Thank you.” She turned away.
So, Guinevia mused, it looked like Agricola had chosen to hide the sacred treasure down a well, but he picked the wrong spot. Someone had built a vast baths on top of it. It could be under water or under the fires of the hypocaust…what other jokes do the Fates have in store, she wondered?
It was good to be on a ship again, especially one that was scudding along before a brisk wind. Sometimes I wished I’d stayed as a pirate-hunting admiral and left the land-soldiering to someone else. At the very least, as a sailor I didn’t have far to march on my mutilated foot, I thought sardonically. Plus, my monkey mind reminded me, sailors don’t have to dig a marching fort every afternoon, and sleep in a decent bed most nights.
A lookout interrupted my self-conversation, and I replayed his shout mentally to hear what he’d said: “A sail, a sail!” I began to sweep the horizon, following the direction off the steerboard bow in which the fellow was pointing, and caught a glimpse of blue canvas among the grey-green waves. We were through the Gates of Hercules, heading north towards Gaul along the Astorian coast. It was probably still a bit far south for pirates, but the blue told me it was likely a Roman warship. A small number of them were in pirate hands now, but we had no fear, ours was a genuine warship in which I was travelling at Constantine’s order.
He had wanted me, his newest ally, back in Britain as quickly as possible, as did I, to keep that northern frontier quiet. My cavalry would go back overland but I was given a galley and crew to whisk me across the Inland Sea and through the Atlanticus before the worst of the winter storms began.
And Manannan mac Lir had been kind to me. The sea god had kept his kingdom as quiet as I wished mine to be and we would soon be off the coast of Gaul, with only a few more days’ sail to Britain. The blue oblong ahead of us turned square, and I wondered. Whoever was captain of the strange ship knew from our own blue sails that we could be Roman or pirate but he was turning to investigate. The chances then, were that he was no pirate, but another military vessel.
And so it was. By a small miracle, it was not one but two of my own navy, the Suehan sea raider Grimr’s own new flagship Crestrider, and the old Minerva, patrolling outside the Narrow Sea, and our sea commander Grimr himself was hailing me as we sliced through the waters on our parallel course. “Guinevia sent me a magical message in a dream,” he shouted, “Told me to come here to find you.” Yes, I thought, she could do that, my witch woman. Grimr was shouting again. “Don’t put in at Dover. Go directly to Chester, you’re needed there. We’ll come with you.”
As I was a mere passenger and however much I wanted to command the ship, I had to make requests, so I politely asked the captain, a scowling Phoenician with a braided beard, if he could possibly alter course. He nodded a curt acquiescence, caught my hard gaze at his insolence, swallowed and said hastily that it would be his pleasure,
Lord.
I turned back to shout to Grimr, questioning him about the conditions of the Saxon Shore. “Lively,
Lord,” he yelled. “We are holding, but there is greater pressure than before. We have had our skirmishes and a month ago we killed a troublesome Frisian sea king and ran his fleet aground on the sands. We sailed some fake ship lights on a raft, and they followed to disaster, so matters should be quiet for a while, but they are coming. We’ve seen the Saxon and German fleets. I think they’re waiting for the spring.”
It was not the best news, but it would suffice, and I turned my mind to seeing Guinevia. So we voyaged across the Narrow Sea, past the Severn Sea and the mountains where Myrddin did his magic. Soon we were rounding the sacred isle of the
Druids and entering the estuary of the familiar Dee. Now we approached our mooring at the fine sandstone quay under the walls of my castrum. And I was going to Guinevia, in anticipation of meeting whom I had been running my fingers through my hair and beard so often and obviously that I caught crew members grinning. Until, that is, I stared at them.
And there she was. Guinevia, a slight, fair figure in grey scholar’s gown was standing at the quayside as we slid quietly through the pool. Then she was in my arms, warm and scented, soft lips at my ear. “I watched you as you sailed,” she whispered, “and I asked for Manannan’s protection and help. You must sacrifice to him soon.”
Yes, I nodded, asking: “And how is Milo? Is he well? Is the situation quiet?” She smiled up at me.
“He is thriving and I think he will be giving you a grandson soon.” The very idea went over my head. Incomprehensible.
A thought struck me. “Where is Myrddin?”
Guinevia gestured. “Sleeping. He has been fevered but is recovering. Come inside, and I will tell you about our search for treasure.” So I came back to Britain to learn the key to placating the ancient gods I had offended by winning a battle on behalf of the Christians.
Guinevia took me to Myrddin’s chamber, where he was sitting, thin and wan, bowed over and wrapped in a heavy wool cloak. “You have much to tell me,” he said, peremptorily.
“And you must tell me some secrets,” I retorted.
So we sat and talked. I told how the Emperor of Rome had offered us peace, how the gods had sent a fireball both to awe our enemies and to inspire us, and how our British cavalry had turned the tide of a critical battle. Then I told how that victory would displease the gods. “Constantine has declared Christianity the state religion,” I told Myrddin. “The old gods of Rome are overthrown.
“The emperor himself is not a true Christian, but he needs them to uphold his empire. The Jesus followers are stronger now than ever they have been, and I helped that to come about. I am afraid that it could mean our own gods will turn their backs on us and we will face dark days, unless…” and my voice trailed away.
Myrddin stood from his chair. His cloak fell away and his physical weakness vanished. His presence filled the room like an electric fog. To me, it seemed that his fingers crackled blue sparks. I glanced at Guinevia, who was also on her feet. Her pentagram ring was glowing and pulsing, the familiar magical cloud had formed above her head.
Myrddin’s voice seemed to vibrate and echo off the stone walls. “The gods of Britain do not ignore us, but we must show them that we are worthy of their help and guidance,” he pronounced. “You must produce that ancient symbol of power, the golden Torc of Caratacus and make certain ceremony with it. It has been sleeping, under its guardians of rock, fire and water, and new gods are trying to replace the old. You, Emperor Arthur the Pagan, have to use the
torc’s ancient powers to deny them.
“The treasure is here, in this fortress. Your task is to restore the pagan powers of your nation. You must find Caratacus’ gold and give it to the gods or see Britain fall to invaders once more. You handed the power to the Christians, now you alone must redress the balance.”
I felt as if I had been slammed in the chest with a broad axe. Until now, I had thought Myrddin would simply unearth the torc, mutter a few incantations and put matters right. Now I was being enlisted for magical matters. I could not depend on the strength of my sword arm or the speed of my reflexes, I was going into unknown worlds, and my kingdom was at stake. How I would succeed, I had no idea, but if I did not do it, or did it wrong, disaster would come on me and my country.
Exalter’s scabbarded hilt was under my hand. I gripped him, hard. I must have looked pathetic as I gazed at Guinevia. She smiled. “You’ll do well,” she said. And I was faced with my next challenge. Not Romans, not Saxons, not Gauls or Germans or Huns, but deities. So I started with a map.
Guinevia showed me the plan of the original castrum, and, if the thing was accurate, it gave me an excellent idea where the original well had been. It seemed to be about 20 paces from the southerly guard tower, 40 or so from its companion to the north and probably 20 or so paces in from the wall. The aqueduct which brought water from a sacred spring a mile east of the castrum was still there, of course, and entered the wall through a pair of heavy iron gratings. It would be useful in pinpointing the old well’s location.
I called for a tribune to find me a couple of the skinniest, most slender soldiers he could. We might need someone to wriggle into tight spaces if my guess was right. The
torc could well be protected as it should be, under the stone of the building, and under the fire and water of the baths. And so we went into the vast, echoing building.
This was a splendid structure, with a high, vaulted ceiling on tall pillars over the main bath, and two slightly smaller bathing halls off it. One, the
frigidarium
, was fed with cold water directly from the aqueduct, I suspected; while its hot water plunge bath companion received its warming waters from a tank over the furnace whose fire was maintained by slaves day and night.
Guinevia asked how it all worked. “The hypocaust is a system of heating from below a floor that is raised on pillars of tile and concrete,” I said. “Hot air from a furnace is circulated in the underfloor space, and the smoke is extracted through small chimneys built into the walls. It’s all generated from a separate furnace room, which here in Chester is coal-fired because coal is the best, most dense fuel, much better than wood or charcoal,” I added.
I’d been briefed by one of the tribunes, but I didn’t mention that. It was good for once to be able to explain something to my educated librarian Druid. I pointed to a bronze ventilator in the domed ceiling. “You can even adjust the temperature of the room by opening or closing that,” I said.
“So,” she asked, “how does the water get heated for those baths?”
“Ah,” I said. “The furnace room has a big concrete and brick tank of water above the fire and hot water is piped from that into the baths. The heat from the furnace also flows under the floors, so they are pleasant to walk on and so they heat the entire room.”
We were standing in the echoing exercise hall and could see one bath through an archway. Beyond it, I knew was a warm room, a
tepidarium
and the latrines. The complex had a steamy hot room next to the cold plunge, changing rooms, store rooms and an administrative office.
Slaves bustled about bringing refreshments and one walked through the public rooms at intervals, to announce the time of day. Others sat around gossiping, guarding their masters’ sandals and clothing while they bathed.
Guinevia had to stay in the exercise hall while we went into the tepidarium, no women were allowed in the changing areas, and I went to survey the wall through which the aqueduct’s water had to pass. “It’s about an arm’s length thick, Lord,” said the bath supervisor. “It’s concrete faced with stone, very well built.”
We examined the furnace room, peered into the smoky underfloor but could see nothing useful. I examined the channel and pipes of the aqueduct but I could find no trace of the old well. Finally, reluctantly, for I had no wish to give away a secret, I took the bath supervisor aside, impressed on him the importance of keeping this matter confidential, and asked him about any long-disused undercroft or well.
To my surprise, he nodded yes, he did know of something, and led me outside the building and into its courtyard. “Under those flagstones,” he said, “there was some old structure. It turned up 15 years ago when we repaved the place.”
By late afternoon, slaves had levered up the stones, dug away the rubble that filled the old well and had a ladder down into the five feet of water at its foot. “I’ll do this myself,” I said, feeling foolish, and I climbed ponderously down the ladder, only just able to fit down the shaft.
I found myself faced with a brick-lined vertical, neatly mortared, moderately mossy shaft that descended about four times the height of a man into the earth. With the help of a blazing pine-knot torch, the brickwork was illumined well, and I searched all parts of the circle as I descended. A foot or so below the well’s lip, someone had scratched a graffito. It looked like a legionary number: XXIII and was next to the crude symbol of a boar.
Something rang in my brain. There was no 23rd legion. And, the boar was the symbol of the 20th, Agricola’s legion which had been stationed at Chester. On an intuition, I counted the courses of brick, down from the top. At the 23rd, I pushed my torch closer. The mortar seemed a slightly lighter shade for several courses, although it was finished as smoothly as the layers that surrounded it.
Still standing on the ladder, holding the torch, I groped for my punching knife with my other hand. I could hardly fall, I was practically jammed in the well. With my knife, I scratched at the mortar, marking it deeply, then I climbed back out of the encircling bricks.
“Get me those two little fellows,” I said, and the small soldiers stepped forward. “And a short-hafted pick,” I added.
Twenty minutes later, the pair had removed three courses of brick at my mark directly below the graffito, and pulled out a slim leaden box. “Do not open it,” I warned them, watching carefully from above. “Just bring it to me.”
Guinevia was standing by, and I handed the box to her. “If there is magic, best you open it,” I said. She shook her head.
“The prophecy concerned ‘
a
king
who
is
false
to
his
god
,
’
” she replied. “It is for you to find it, for you to placate the gods of Britain.”
An unexpected voice cut in. “And you will,” said Myrddin, who had somehow learned of matters and left his sick bed to hobble across the castrum to the baths.
So, with the son of no father and the king false to his gods both present, I opened the casket and found the golden Torc of Caratacus. It lay gleaming dully on a bed of fine wool in the casket that had been its resting place for two centuries. This solid rope of gold with its bull heads was the symbol of the earliest British kings, the most powerful icon of our islands. The conquering Agricola had recognised that, and had hidden it from his rapacious masters.