To the entire Celtic population, the message from Artor was unmistakable. To harm any person under the protection of the High King would bring inevitable retribution and merciless justice would prevail.
‘Our people are fortunate that Artor’s loyalty extends across the whole of our nation, for the tribes would have disintegrated years ago without the enforcement of his commands,’ Myrddion said to Targo with great earnestness.
Targo’s eyes were hooded, and his old man’s mouth was pinched with regret.
‘When you make a weapon, friend Myrddion, it should serve your will,’ he said softly. ‘When you make a man, he should serve his own will. We were arrogant, my brother, for Artorex wasn’t meant to be any man’s weapon.’
Myrddion winced. ‘He was all we had. And I would use him again if the circumstances were the same.’
‘Would you?’ Targo asked earnestly. ‘Truly?’
‘Probably. Just as I believe you would batter Artor into unconsciousness a thousand times to prevent him from sharing Gallia’s fate at the Villa Poppinidii. Even now, you’d do the same to save him if you had the muscle for it.’
‘Aye,’ Targo whispered. ‘Nothing really changes where the heart is concerned.’
Or the mind, Myrddion thought dismally.
But changes in the fortunes of a nation, coupled with extremes in human ambitions, can bring years of bad luck that seem to have no ending, or so it appears to those suffering mortals who experience these travails.
Artor’s trials were just beginning.
CHAPTER XVI
CONTAGION
Later, no one could, or would, say who brought the contagion to the population of Cadbury. Traders were considered the most likely source of transmission of the disease, for their travels took them to a variety of locations, both clean and unclean, throughout the land. These men came to Artor’s western fortress because it had become a centre for the exchange of luxury goods, grain, mead, honey and the many varieties of pasture meats that were smoked and dried against the long sea voyages to the continent, and even to glittering Constantinople.
The disease found its way through every nook and cranny in stone, wood and thatch. It struck indiscriminately and without pity. When most of Gallia’s family had died of plague in Aquae Sulis so many years before, money and power were no protection against the steady and inexorable march of an illness that led to death or infirmity.
A fever was the first symptom suffered. In the early stages, it did not seem severe, but it proved to be debilitating. Then, within a few days, the patients found that their flesh was covered with sores, particularly under the arms and in the folds of the body. Then came delirium, and contagions of the lung, followed by death.
Even Myrddion, with all his learning, was powerless to halt this strange, alien disease that sapped the strength, and then the will, to survive.
Remembering Ector’s quarantine of the Villa Poppinidii, Artor sealed off the tor completely from the outside world.
Soldiers manned a series of barricades that prevented travellers, petitioners and pilgrims from climbing the hill leading to the palace on Cadbury Tor. The inhabitants of the tor were told that, if they journeyed outside of the quarantined area, they would not be readmitted.
In Cadbury town, the houses of those afflicted were locked up or, on some dire occasions, burned to the ground. The High King knew that new houses could be built, but the terminally ill had no magical route to return to the land of the living.
Insensitive as always, Wenhaver complained pointedly and publicly about the stink of funeral pyres and burning homes. She bewailed the boredom of her isolated life until Artor fled from her as if she was the source of the contagion. Then she began to regale anyone who cared to listen with tales of her husband’s abandonment.
Perhaps if Wenhaver had become pregnant, her selfish, childish ways would have passed as an aberration of her youth. But fate had rendered her sterile, a state in which she was secretly pleased, for she feared to lose her trim waist and soft round breasts in the birthing of new life. She remained obstinately uninterested when Artor spoke of the need for progeny, never considering for one moment that the High King could still dispose of her if she failed to provide an heir to the throne of the Britons. Her belief in her father’s influence over the High King remained irrationally strong. Inevitably, the situation created an argument of epic proportions between husband and wife in the first weeks of Cadbury’s baptism of fire with disease.
Wenhaver spoiled a relatively pleasant evening by complaining of her boredom after Artor had rolled away from her willing flesh and was considering whether or not to sleep in her over-soft bed.
‘There is absolutely nothing to do, Artor. I can’t go riding, and one can only sew a certain number of samplers before tedium sets in. You won’t permit strangers to visit us, and I can’t even call for my robe maker.’
Artor considered her flower-like face with hooded, untrusting eyes.
‘Would you prefer to catch a disease where you’d swell with festering sores, vomit up green slime and then choke to death?’ He lifted one of her hands and examined its pink perfection. ‘If not, I’d suggest you continue to weave or spin. Of course, you may well develop callouses on your beautiful hands with unaccustomed work.’
‘Don’t be horrid, Artor,’ Wenhaver snapped. ‘I just don’t like sitting here doing nothing day after dreary day, and I don’t want to slave like a peasant.’
‘Since you haven’t borne sons for me, then perhaps you could serve some usefulness by collecting worn or unused cloth or rags for those townsfolk who are dying. If you can’t become a mother, then perhaps you could become a queen.’
Artor’s comments took Wenhaver’s breath away, as well they might. Secretly, although she wanted no children to thicken her narrow waist or cover her clean flanks with stretch marks, the inability to bear a child was a wrench. She was used to being feted for her appearance, her style and her feminine perfection, and she was mortified that she had remained childless.
‘Don’t blame me, Artor,’ she snapped and bit hard on her thumbnail until it tore.
‘There are young men at Cadbury who have been sired by me, and several of my daughters are approaching marriageable age. I would seem to be potent. But before you accuse me of shaming you, I have refrained from bedding any willing women since I made my wedding vows.’
Artor’s bastards were the last straw for Wenhaver. She knew of Artor’s sexual prowess, of course, as did every person on Cadbury Tor, but to boast of his infidelity? She threw her silver brush at him, conveniently forgetting that an unmarried king may sow his seed wherever he chooses.
‘I hate you,’ she hissed, and Artor shrugged as he climbed out of her bed.
‘I take it you are choosing celibacy rather than further physical congress with me. After all, my efforts seem to bear little fruit in your eager body.’
Naturally, Wenhaver had meant no such thing. The pleasures of the bed were a great solace that bound two otherwise incompatible people together. And now her husband was offering an even greater insult than sneers at her childlessness. He was suggesting that he had only bedded her to get her with child in the first place.
How could she answer him, even if she had been able to control her rage? Wenhaver could never beg him to share her bed without admitting that she desired him. Worse still, how could she confess her mortification that she was unable to carry the son that Artor craved? She felt like a royal joke.
Wenhaver could have wept with misery.
Artor was ashamed of his cruel response to her childless condition. The queen was still under twenty and he understood her days had been wearisome in recent times. After chiding himself for the whole morning, he approached Wenhaver’s rooms to apologize.
What he found in her apartment made his blood boil.
Wenhaver had joined her ladies elsewhere in the king’s house but, as Artor turned to leave the disordered apartment, a rustle of clothing halted him in his tracks. In the belief that a thief had somehow penetrated the security of the tor, Artor drew his knife. Then Myrnia, who was curled into as small a ball as possible on the floor, screamed aloud when she saw his shadow.
‘What are you doing on the floor, Myrnia? Heavens, child! I could have stabbed you by accident.’ Then Artor’s eyes flared with shock. ‘Who has done this thing, Myrnia? I order you to tell me!’
Myrnia tried to cry but one eye was damaged, torn and bleeding sluggishly. The lid was almost ripped away, while her nose was raggedly sliced on the same side, and her nostril was torn in the outer corner. Her mouth had received a similar wound.
Even with the ministrations of a skilled healer, Artor knew that the girl was scarred for life.
‘Who did this, Myrnia? I swear that they will be punished.’
Her head turned carefully, for Myrnia was in obvious pain.
‘No, my lord, even you cannot save me.’ Her one good eye was full of tears, and her wounds were slowly oozing blood.
‘The queen did this terrible thing to you, didn’t she? Answer!’ Artor’s mouth twisted with shame, for he knew that he must share some of Wenhaver’s guilt, for he had provoked his wife to anger.
‘What did she use to cause these wounds?’
Myrnia opened her hand and a simple, elegant object lay on her palm, marked obscenely with a smear of the servant girl’s blood at the tip. A small, beautifully carved, bone handle held a very thin but sturdy length of silver as long as Myrnia’s palm. At its very tip was a simple, blunt hook. Myrnia had been attacked with a tool used for hooking and twisting strands of wool.
Artor winced, took the nasty little object from Myrnia’s unresisting hand and lifted her into his arms. She was absurdly light and trembling with shock. Protectively, the king carried her through the palace to Myrddion’s apartments.
Nimue fussed over the terrified, suffering girl who flinched away from her sympathetic hands. Myrddion took charge, his face unreadable.
‘Fetch the poppy juice, Nimue, in honey for sweetness, and then find my finest needles and narrowest thread.’ As Nimue ran to obey him, he laid Myrnia on a simple pallet, held her hands with both of his warm palms, and looked earnestly into her eyes.
‘I will make you feel so much better very, very soon, Myrnia. I’ll not promise that you won’t be scarred, because you will be, but I’ll try to keep that beautiful face as fair as I can. Unfortunately, you will probably lose the sight in your left eye.’
Nimue arrived with the poppy juice mixed into a golden paste with honey just as Myrnia screamed, shook her head and began to shake with pain and terror. Gently, master and apprentice coaxed her to swallow the potion, which began to work almost immediately. Her eyelids became heavy, but she struggled to hold up her head, fighting against the drug, and then mercifully slipped into unconsciousness.
‘Quickly, Nimue, the softest cloths you can find, clean water and the juice of lemons.’
‘Did you have to tell her the whole truth?’ Artor asked tetchily, although his heart wasn’t in any display of ill temper.
‘She deserves my honesty. If infection sets in, she could be blinded in both eyes. This sometimes happens when one eye is damaged. I can’t repair an eye where the pupil has been torn. No one could do it, not even the sons of Isaac or Ishmael, and they are the best in the world. I don’t even understand how the eye truly works, so I shall simply do the best I can. I’ll wash the wounds with clean water, again and again, until I’m sure that they are clean. Afterwards, I’ll apply the lemon juice to all but the eye itself. I’ve noticed that lime and lemon juice can clean metal, and I find that they clean wounds as well, where the use of apricot brandy would have a harsh effect on the flesh. Then I’ll try to stitch up any tears in the flesh as best I can. Perhaps I’ll ask Nimue to sew the most difficult parts - her eyes are better than mine. Then, we wait. And we wait.’ Myrddion looked at his king. ‘What created this hellish mess?’
Mutely, Artor showed Myrddion the innocent little tool.
‘A simple object to cause such devastation. What did poor Myrnia do to upset Wenhaver?’
Artor winced. ‘Is the guilty party so obvious then?’
‘Who would deliberately strike Wenhaver’s personal maidservant other than the mistress herself? Who else would dare? More to the point, Artor, what are you going to do about this atrocity?’
With Nimue close by his side, Myrddion began to clean the wounds with water, forcing the ragged edges of the skin open so that the torn flesh could be thoroughly cleansed. Once the healer was satisfied that the deep scores were free of dried blood, rust or any other pollutants, he took from Nimue a fine needle attached to a thin strand of flaxen thread. Carefully, and with such intense concentration that Artor scarcely dared to breathe, Myrddion drew the edges of the wounds together.
When he reached the thin, delicate skin of the eyelid, master and apprentice exchanged places, for Nimue’s eyes were young and acute. With stitches so tiny that the High King marvelled that Nimue could see what she was doing, she stitched the inside and the outside of the lid, right into the inner edge so that Myrnia would be able to blink and weep easily in the long years of life that still lay in front of her.
When he was sure that Myrnia was as safe as her wounds allowed, Artor returned to Wenhaver’s apartments, where he found his wife raging and sulking by turn as she tried to find her favourite peplum.
‘Where is that lazy bitch, Myrnia? This is what comes of treating her so well - she avoids her duties,’ Wenhaver grumbled.
Artor looked at her, dumbstruck, for the queen really had no idea what she had done.
‘Why are you looking at me like that? Where’s Myrnia? I suppose she’s been telling you tales about me.’
Artor felt his lips curl.
He held out the small tool in his right hand, and Wenhaver took it carefully, her eyes never leaving her husband’s rigid face.