The Stolen Bride Read online

  For

  ELIZABETH JANE HAYS

  November 30, 1980 to November 30, 1980

  The daughter I never knew, but whose memory has never been far from my thoughts.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  On April 12, 2011, I had a health crisis that, left unresolved, would have killed me. And with me would have died not just Malgwyn, but all the characters that I have created and breathed life into over the years. I want to thank those folks who have had an integral role in keeping me alive and healthy. Dr. Michael Smith, Lisa Smith, Cassie Robinson, Selena Dickey, Natisha Guthrie, Dawn Atherton, and Wanda Franks. Also, Ann Moseley, Christy Doyle, and Grace Brown. The emergency room folks at the Hardin Medical Center and the team at Air Evac. All the folks in the Surgical ICU unit of Jackson-Madison County Hospital, and as always, Red and Carrie Nell Shelby, who found me and saw that I got the assistance I needed.

  Right there with me, sending me their prayers and best wishes, were my editor, Claire Eddy, assistant editor, Kristin Sevick, and publicist, Aisha Cloud. And, of course, my agent, Frank Weimann, and his assistant, Elyse Tanzillo. I thank you all for the good vibes you sent me as I fought.

  TONY HAYS

  Savannah, Tennessee

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Map of Arthur’s Britannia

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Glossary and Gazetteer

  Author’s Note

  Forge Books by Tony Hays

  Copyright

  CELLIWIC

  In the Eighty-second Year from the Adventus Saxonum

  Ambition, lust, power. They are the deadliest things. In my ninety and more winters of life, I have seen them bring low both the great and the lesser. But so long as there are men and power, ambition will be a part of life. And as long as there are men and women, there will be lust, which is as strong a call as ambition. And when you compare the two, lust seems to be the strongest combatant. When you combine the two, the result is nearly unconquerable. And when the lust is fed by ambition for power, God help us all.

  I do not travel much anymore. The aches and burning in my joints make it too much a chore. Indeed, the furthest journey I make these days is from my hut at Glastonbury, near the abbey, to the abbot’s feasting hall. The young abbot pretends to need my advice, but I think he just pities me. Occasionally he will ask my thoughts on the Saxons, but he is a well-mannered man, for an abbot. Otherwise, I spend my days in contemplation, helping the monachi copy manuscripts when my one hand allows. The damp weather, and we have much, pains both it and the stump of my right arm.

  I am all that is left from the old consilium, that alliance of nobles that tried to govern Britannia after Vortigern betrayed us all.

  But when the messenger came from Celliwic, advising me that my first great-great-grandchild was to be born there, I knew that I must go, one last time.

  Celliwic. My favorite place in the far west. So much of my time was spent there in the years just after I entered the service of Arthur ap Uther, the Rigotamos, the high king of the Britons. He traveled there often, using the old fort as his base. From there, he could ride north to Tyntagel, as they now call it, to visit his mother, Igraine. Or he could ride southeast to Castellum Marcus to check on Lord Mark’s lands.

  I asked Arthur once why he did not use his lands at Tyntagel as his seat. “In my mother’s house, there is room for only one crown, her own.”

  “But she does not hold a title,” I had answered, still confused.

  Arthur smiled at me. “Exactly.”

  But Arthur is dead now, and my cousin Guinevere, and Kay and Bedevere and Merlin. Many lies are now being told of those long-ago days. Gildas, for one, twists the facts to fit his own agenda and understood little. So I have set myself the task of chronicling something of those times, when Arthur was king and we tried so hard to bring order to the chaos.

  But it was at Celliwic that I first met a lad who was to become very important to all of us—Culhwch, as it was spelled in the old way, Culhwch ap Cilydd. He was just a child then, and it was Cilydd that caused us much grief on that journey. And it was that journey that taught me what I know of Arthur’s birth. And that knowledge came to cause us all grief.

  Spring had arrived. I remember that. Arthur and I were at odds as we were so often. On that occasion, it was because beloved Ygerne was near her time to deliver my son, or so the fortune-teller told her. I wanted to be there, at Castellum Arturius, but there was unrest in the lands of the Dumnonii and Arthur’s mother was ailing at Tyntagel.

  The first flowers were blooming, and we had brought Morgan ap Tud, Arthur’s physician, to minister to Igraine. I remember because it was the first time he joined us on such a long journey. Yes, the flowers were blooming, and I thought it a good omen.…

  CHAPTER ONE

  My belly roiled and threatened to revolt. Bodies lay prostrate on the ground, in the lanes. Flies buzzed about them, feeding on the blood that reddened their wounds. The sickly sweet scent of death lay heavy in the air. For a moment, just the briefest of moments, I was not here, in this city of death, but staring instead at my own village, at my own cottage, at my beloved Gwyneth, freshly killed, freshly ravaged. I almost rushed into one of the silent huts to find my daughter, Mariam, but I knew that these raiders had been more thorough than the Saxons.

  I climbed down from my mount and walked a dozen steps up the lane into the village. A day, no more, had passed since this abomination. The cool night had staved off decay a bit, but the bodies would soon bloat in the sun.

  A pair of carcasses in front of one of the huts drew me. ’Twas a woman who had been nursing her baby. I knew because her breast was bare and the child lay a foot away, its skull crushed, the crimson of blood and yellow of old milk crusted on its cheek. The woman had been beheaded, and in a macabre twist of chance, her head, some three feet away, was turned toward her baby. But the eyes saw nothing.

  Behind me, a voice, as familiar as my own, broke the near rhythm of buzzing flies and snorting horses.

  “This is why I demanded that you come. This is why it is so important for you to be here.”

  I could hear the pain in his voice. The Rigotamos of all Britannia, Arthur ap Uther, was a compassionate man, though I had accused him of the opposite only the previous day when he ordered me to accompany him on this journey. My woman, Ygerne, was near to time to deliver our son, or so the fortune-teller said, and I wished more than anything to be there, not here.

  Arthur was still talking, but though I heard him, I did not hear him. My eyes were fixed on the images before me. Rubbing the aching stump of my half arm, I spoke. “This was a provisioning raid.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Do you see chickens or pigs or cattle, my lord?”

  “Surely the people would have surrendered those to an armed force,” my friend Bedevere said, “rather than be murdered trying to protect them.”

  “The killing was a message to all other villages these demons visit.”

  “Do you understand now, Malgwyn?” Pause. “Do you understand?”

  I nodded, my eyes unable to leave the dead. Nearly three years before, the thought of me, Malgwyn ap Cuneglas, follow
ing Lord Arthur’s banner would have seemed impossible. For I had hated him with every drop of blood coursing through my veins. And part of me still did. But to hate with that sort of passion means that once there was adoration. That part came before Tribuit, before I left one arm lying in a bloody field.

  And though Arthur had not left me to die on that field, as I longed for, but had condemned me to life as half a man, it was also Arthur who took a whoring drunk and made him his councilor.

  At that moment, my long grudge with Arthur was forgotten. All that I could see were the bodies of my fellow Britons, slaughtered. I squatted in the lane, took my one hand, and grasped a handful of dirt, letting it slowly drain from my fist. Arthur knew me well; he knew that my heart would not let this savagery continue, no matter how much I wished to be elsewhere.

  Behind me, I heard Arthur’s voice again, pulling me back to the present, back to this village.

  “Morgan, take two soldiers and see if any yet live.”

  I nodded; Morgan ap Tud was Arthur’s medicus, trained in Lord David’s lands by the famous doctor Melus, though I suspected that the short, neat little man was more spy than physician. I pushed those thoughts from my head.

  “Tell me again,” I said finally, “of what is happening in these lands.”

  * * *

  In another lifetime, I had been Malgwyn ap Cuneglas, the farmer son of another farmer. A wife, a baby daughter. A sturdy hut. Pig and chickens. Land to farm. It had been a good life.

  Arthur ap Uther was just a name to me then, a boy soldier praised by my father for his Romanitas and his talent as a commander. Our farmstead was far to the west of the fighting, near unto the old Roman town of Lindinis. Our lives had not been touched by the war with the Saxons.

  And then, one day, my neighbors and I were returning from market to find a scene much like that before me now. I found my wife, Gwyneth, spraddle-legged, ravaged until her womanly parts were red with blood, in our hut. She had succeeded in hiding our baby, Mariam, in a storage pit. I took the child to Castellum Arturius and gave her over to my brother, Cuneglas.

  The other men, there were ten, and I then rode off to find Lord Arthur, Dux Bellorum, general of battles, for the consilium of nobles that tried to govern our fractious land after Vortigern’s disgrace.

  And now I faced that young lord again, only this time there was gray creeping into his hair and beard. And now he was the Rigotamos, the High King of All Britannia, a title more fantasy than reality, as we were more a collection of feuding tribes than a united nation. But Arthur was trying, and much good could be said for that fact alone. We were tied by more than that, though. My cousin, Guinevere, was Arthur’s consort.

  “These are Lord Doged’s lands.”

  Doged was an old man, a contemporary of Lord Cadwy, who had been dead for many winters, and Ambrosius Aurelianus, the former Rigotamos, who had retired to his fortress in the north, Dinas Emrys. Doged held dominion over a sizable but poor territory in the far west, and he had no heir. But he did control our busiest ports at Trevelgue and Tyntagel. And now, in his last years, he was facing the very real threat of rebellion.

  “The two primary factions are led by brothers, Cilydd and Druce,” Arthur continued. “Though no one can be certain, this travesty is the work of one or both, I suspect. Doged has sent me word of provisioning raids made on his outlying villages and in the border villages with his neighbors. But until now there has been no killing, just theft.”

  “Until now,” I repeated, glancing back into the lane at the poor dead villagers. “And Doged has no heir, you said.”

  “No, and that is what has spawned these factions. Doged is old, nearly as old as Merlin. But Doged is not ready to give up his title, and he has recently taken a young wife to give him an heir.”

  Although the position of Rigotamos was one elected by the lords of the consilium, the nobles from the individual tribes held their rank and titles and land by birth.

  “Good fortune to him,” I said grimly. “And may it happen soon.”

  “Don’t wish him good luck yet,” Arthur countered. “He has married Ysbail, sister of Ysbadden Penkawr.”

  That spelled trouble. Ysbadden was a minor lord far to the south. Not of noble birth, he held his title by virtue of his sheer size and cruelty. Said to be the tallest man in our lands, taller even than Kay, Ysbadden had recruited his men from among the worst, including Scotti pirates. One day he walked boldly into the former lord’s chambers and cut his head off. Emerging, with his retinue of thugs at his back, he thrust the still-dripping head in the air. From that day forth, no one questioned his assumption of power.

  I felt a hand on my good arm. It was Arthur, guiding me to my feet. He jerked his head to the side of the lane and Bedevere joined us in the eaves of a roundhouse. Once out of earshot of Morgan and our soldiers, Arthur reached into the leather pouch he wore around his neck.

  “Malgwyn, we are in a difficult position here. Aye, a difficult position throughout our lands. That idiot, Lauhiir, set our tin-mining efforts back two years because of his greed. Aircol is a good ally to the north, but he is suffering border incursions from what he thinks are David’s men. The Saxons under Aelle have begun to claim the lands around Londinium. The cost of refortifying Castellum Arturius has been much higher than I expected, but it had to be done. Ambrosius has already abandoned his seat to the east of us. He has been urging me to construct a defensive ditch to better guard against the Saxons. And that will cost yet more.”

  “And what does Doged have to do with this?”

  Arthur reached into a pouch dangling at his side. He looked around quickly, motioned Bedevere in closer, and held his hand out.

  In his palm lay four rocks, three of which I knew immediately. One was, plain and simple, agaphite, highly prized for its use in jewelry but rare in our lands. A second was a brown ore of some sort, looking something like a tree turned to rock. I had not seen its like before. The other two needed no explanation; they were the sort of rocks one found near gold.

  “Doged sent me these by his fastest rider last night. They were found in his mines near Castellum Dinas.”

  “I heard no rider enter camp.” We had left on this journey the day before and camped on the road that evening.

  “You were asleep, and Merlin has told me how dangerous it is to awake you.” But Arthur’s joke did not ring true. Something beyond this business of Doged and his rocks was bothering the Rigotamos. I shrugged the jest aside.

  “Why did you not tell me of this in the morn?” It was not like Arthur to hold information away from his closest advisors.

  “I have scarcely had time, Malgwyn,” he snapped at me. “And I feared spreading the word that there might be gold in Doged’s land. I love my soldiers and trust them, but gold does things to a man’s thinking.”

  I could not argue with that. Men were unpredictable about two things—gold and women. But gold held no allure for me. Not two years before, I had refused a title, lands, and a seat on the consilium, a reward for my service during the recent rebellion. But something in Arthur’s manner told me that the temptation of gold was not the only reason for his reticence.

  We were interrupted by the diminutive Morgan ap Tud, running with his patrol to rejoin us. His tunic bore the colors of Arthur’s service, and his clipped, brown beard was of the old Greek style.

  “We found no one alive, Rigotamos,” Morgan reported.

  “How many dead?”

  Morgan paused for a second, pursing his lips. “Thirteen that we found, but there were a handful of blood trails leading off in different directions.”

  Arthur, Bedevere, and I exchanged swift glances. At least eight roundhouses marked this village. Thirteen souls were too few a number. But had the remainder fled in fear, or had they been taken captive? And, if so, for what purpose? To be sold? To be ransomed? None of these questions had to be voiced; all three of us were thinking them.

  “It smells of the Saxons or Scotti raiders,” I said finally, “bu
t that does not feel right to me. We are far to the east for such Scotti raids and far to the west for a Saxon party. If either the Saxons or Scotti are striking this deep into consilium lands, we will soon have more than a single, ravaged village to mourn. No, there is something else at work here.”

  From the corner of my eye, I glimpsed a shock of blond hair, painted with crimson, and I was swept away.

  I was no longer standing; I was walking, toward the door to the hut, toward the blood-soaked blond hair. Behind me, beyond me, I heard the screams of pain, of devastated lives, as my friends found their wives and children dead. Stepping in, I saw my Gwyneth, eyes open but unseeing, naked from her waist down, blood streaking her body. In a corner, at the back of the hut, I saw a simple wooden cover move. In a single movement, I swept the cover away with one hand and scooped up little Mariam with the other.

  “I have her, Gwyneth,” I said softly. “I have her.”

  “Malgwyn?”

  Arthur.

  I blinked and once again I saw the village, not of yesterday but of today.

  Storm clouds were already blackening the western sky, and I detested traveling at night in bad weather. But I knew that there was yet more for me to do here, to see here. “Leave four soldiers with me as an escort, Rigotamos. I will join you at Celliwic late tonight. I would send for Merlin. He knows about such things as these rocks.”

  “I agree. Very well. Sort this out, Malgwyn. There is something dark in the air. It troubles me. And I’ll have him bring Kay as well. We may need some field commanders.” Arthur’s face took on a bit of that darkness then, and we exchanged a look that needed no explanation. But Kay, Arthur’s chief steward, had been difficult to deal with of late. He felt that his value as a warrior was not appreciated. Perhaps this would help. “I am not a prophet or seer. But ever since I received Doged’s dispatch, this business has weighed heavily on me, and I did not know why. Now, I see that my concerns were justified. That Doged has troubles with insurrection and rebellion I knew. And I wished to take the role of mediator. But that the struggle had turned to this sort of bloodshed I did not know.”