Part 23 (1/2)
Recently, King Hoel had written, there had been disquieting reports from some of these forest enclaves to the north-east of his capital. Reports had filtered in of raids, robbery, violent attacks on householders, and, the most recent, a horrifying case of wholesale slaughter where a farmstead had been deliberately fired, and its inmates - eight people with some half-dozen children - burned to death, and their goods and animals stolen. Fear had spread in the forest, and it was being murmured that the raiders were Franks. There was no confirmation of this, but anger was rising, and Hoel feared blind reprisals and a casus belli, at the very moment when friends.h.i.+p with his Prankish neighbours was most necessary.
”Hoel's own men could doubtless deal with it,” said Arthur, ”but he suggests that my presence, with some of the Companions, and a show of strength, might be an advantage, not just in this, but in the graver matter that he writes of. But see for yourself.”
He handed Hoel's letter to Mordred. The latter, alone of the Orkney brothers, had, under the tuition of the priest who had taught them the mainland speech, taken the trouble to learn to read. Now he frowned his way slowly through the beautifully penned Latin of Hoel's scribe.
It seemed that King Hoel had recently received a message sent, not by the new emperor, but by an officer purporting to represent him. This was one Lucius Quintilia.n.u.s, called Hiberus, ”the Spaniard,” one of the recently styled consuls. Writing with a truly imperial arrogance, and quoting Rome as if she still bristled with eagles and legions, he had sent to Hoel demanding gold and a levy of troops - far more than he could ever raise - to ”help Rome protect Brittany from the Burgundians.” He did not state what the penalty would be for refusal; he did not need to.
”But the Franks? King Childebert?” asked Mordred.
”Like his brothers, a mere shadow of their father. Hoel believes they must have had the same demand, so it looks as if Rome must have strength enough to enforce it. Mordred, I am afraid of this emperor. The Celtic lands have not weathered Rome's desertion, and the threat of barbarian domination, to accept once again the collar and chain of Rome, whatever ”protection” she brings with her.”
The situation, Mordred reflected, was not without its ironies. Arthur, blamed at home by the Young Celts for his adherence to Roman forms of law and centralized government, was nevertheless prepared to resist a possible attempt to bring Celtic territories back within Rome's fold.
”Under her yoke, rather!” said Arthur, in reply to his son's wry comment. ”The times are long past when, in return for tribute, a king and his people were protected. Britain was taken by force, and thereafter forced to pay tribute to Rome. In return she enjoyed, after the settlement, a period of peace. Then Rome, self-seeking as always, lifted her s.h.i.+eld, and left her weakened dependencies open to the barbarians. We in these islands, and our cousins in their near-isle of Brittany, alone kept our nationhood and remained stable. We have achieved our own peace. Rome cannot expect now to reimpose debts we do not owe.
We have as much right to demand tribute from her for Roman territories which are now British again!”
Mordred said, startled: ”Are you saying that this new emperor - Justinian? - has demanded tribute of us?” us?”
”No. Not yet. But if he has asked it of Brittany, then sooner or later he will ask it of me.”
”When do you go, sir?”
”Preparations are already well forward. We go as soon as we may. Yes, I said ”we.” I want you with me.”
”But with Bedwyr away in Brittany - or will you leave Duke Constantine in charge here?”
Arthur shook his head. ”No need. It should not be a long visit. The immediate business is this trouble in the Perilous Forest, and that should not take us long to clear up.” He smiled. ”If we do see action there, you can call it re-training after your holiday in the Orkney isles! If the other matter becomes serious, then I shall send you home as my regent. Meanwhile I shall leave the Council in charge, with the Queen, and send a sop to Duke Constantine in the form of a letter charging him with the guardians.h.i.+p of the west.”
”A sop?”
”A comfort and a drug, maybe, for a violent and ambitious gentleman.” Arthur nodded at Mordred's quick lift of the brows. ”Yes. Too violent, I have long thought, for the country's need. His father Cador, to whom I promised the kingdoms in default of an heir of my body, was of different metal. This man is as good a fighter as his father, but I mislike some of the tales I have heard about him. So I give him a little favour, and when I return from Brittany, I will send for him here and come to an understanding.”
They were interrupted then by an urgent message relayed from the harbour on Ynys Witrin where the Sea Dragon Sea Dragon lay. She was equipped, provisioned, and ready to sail. So the King said no more, and he and Mordred parted to make ready for the journey into Brittany. lay. She was equipped, provisioned, and ready to sail. So the King said no more, and he and Mordred parted to make ready for the journey into Brittany.
2.
AS SO OFTEN HAPPENS, ONEtrouble breeds another. While Arthur and his Companions were still on the Narrow Sea, tragedy, this time real and immediate, struck at Brittany's royal house.
King Hoel's niece Elen, sixteen years old and a beauty, set out one day from her father's home towards Hoel's castle at Kerrec. The party never arrived. Her guards and servants were attacked and killed, and the girl and one of her women, her old nurse, Clemency, were carried off. The other woman in the party, though unhurt, was too shocked to give a coherent account of what had happened. The attack had taken place at dusk, almost within sight of the place where the party had proposed to lodge for the night, and she had not noticed what badge the attackers wore, or indeed anything about them, except that their leader, he who had dragged Elen up before him on his horse and spurred off into the forest, had been ”a giant of a man, with eyes like a wolf and a shock of hair like a bear's pelt, and an arm like an oak tree.”
Hoel, not unnaturally discounting most of this, jumped to the conclusion that the outrage was the work of the ruffians who had been terrorizing the Forest. Whether they were Bretons or Franks, his hand was forced. The women must be rescued, and the attackers punished. Even King Childebert would not blame the Breton king for avenging such an outrage. Arthur and his party sailed into Kerrec's harbour to find the place in a turmoil, and themselves just in time to lead the hastily mounted punitive expedition into the Forest. Hoel's chief captain, a trusted veteran, with a troop of Breton cavalry, accompanied Arthur and his Companions.
The party rode fast, and more or less in silence. According to what information could be gathered from the princess's surviving waiting-woman, the attack had taken place on a lonely stretch of road just where the way left the Forest and bordered a brackish lake. This was one of the sh.o.r.e lagoons, not quite an inlet of the sea, but moved by the tides, and in spring and autumn washed through by the sea itself.
They reached the lake sh.o.r.e soon after dusk, and halted short of the site of the abduction, to wait for daylight, and for Bedwyr to join them. There had been no rain for several days, so Arthur was hopeful that there would still be traces of the struggle, and tracks to show which way the marauders had gone.
Hoel's messenger had gone ahead already to Benoic, and now, just as orders were given for the night's halt, Bedwyr arrived out of the dark with a troop of men at his back.
Arthur greeted his friend with joy, and over supper they fell at once to talk and planning for the next move. No shadow of the past seemed to touch them; the only reference, and that oblique, to the events that had banished Bedwyr to Less Britain was when he greeted Mordred.
This was after supper, when the latter was on his way to the pickets to see that his horse had been properly cared for. Bedwyr fell in beside him, apparently bent on the same errand.
”They tell me that you, too, have been sojourning in the outer dark, Mordred. I am glad to see you back with the King. You are fully recovered now, I trust?”
”Small thanks to you, yes,” said Mordred, but smiling. He added: ”On second thoughts, all thanks to you. You could have killed me, and we both know it.”
”Not quite so easy. The decisions were not all mine, and I think we both know that, too. You're a bonny fighter, Mordred. Some day perhaps we may meet again... and in rather less earnest?”
”Why not? Meantime I am told I am to wish you happy. I gather you are lately wedded? Who is she?”
”Her father is Pelles, a king in Neustria whose land borders mine. Her name is Elen, too.”
The name jolted them back to the urgencies of the moment. As they inspected their horses Mordred said: ”You must know the ground hereabouts?”
”I know it well. It's barely a day's ride from my family's castle of Benoic. We used to hunt here, and fish the lake. Many's the time my cousins and I-”
He broke off, straightening.
”Look yonder, Mordred! What's that?”
”That” was a point of light, red, nickering with shadows. Another wavered below it.
”It's a fire. On the sh.o.r.e, or near it. You can see the reflection.”
”Not on the sh.o.r.e,” said Bedwyr. ”The sh.o.r.e is farther away. There's an island there, though. We used to land and make fire to cook the fish. It must be there.”
”No one lives there?”
”No. There's nothing there. That side of the lake is wild land, and the island itself nothing but a pile of rock with ferns and heather, and on the summit a grove of pine trees. If someone is there now it's worth our while to find out who it is.”
”An island?” said Mordred. ”It might well be. A good choice, one would think, for a night or so of undisturbed rape.”
”It has been known,” said the other, very dryly. He turned with the words, and the two men went swiftly back to Arthur.
The King had already seen the fire. He was giving orders, and men were hurrying to saddle up again. He turned quickly to Bedwyr.
”You saw? Well, it could be. It's worth looking at, anyway. How do we best get there? And without alarming them?”
”You can't surprise them with horses. It's an island.” Bedwyr repeated what he had told Mordred.
”There's a spit of land, rock and gravel, running out from the sh.o.r.e on the far side of the lake. That's about three miles from here. You can get half that distance by the sh.o.r.e road, then you must leave it and enter the forest. There's no path there along the sh.o.r.e; you would have to make a wide detour to skirt the thick trees. Bad going, and quite impossible in the dark. And the forest goes all the way to the sea.”
”Then it hardly seems likely that their horses are round there. If that's our rapist still on the island, then he got there by boat, and his horse will still be on the sh.o.r.e road. Right. We'll take a look, then picket the road in case he tries to make a break. Meanwhile we need a boat ourselves. Bedwyr?”
”There should be one not far away. This is oyster water. The beds are only a short way from here, and there may be a boat there-unless, of course, that's the one he took.”