The Killing Way Read online

  “I am content. Arthur has done the best for me that he can. Malgwyn is superior to most men. When he’s sober. Are you drunk, Malgwyn? If you are, I’ll take a stick of firewood and beat you sober.”

  From any other man, I would have taken it as a mortal insult, but from Merlin, who saw into men’s hearts with a surety I thought reserved for the gods, I could only bow my head in shame. “No, Merlin. Kay is with me to keep me from the mead and the wine.”

  “You will have questions,” he said, squatting on the ground. “Ask.”

  “When we spoke last night, you said that you were dragged out of bed. How long had you been abed?”

  “Not long. I had been in the great hall, showing the servants my new hat. I just finished it last eve. It must have been after the midnight. They were almost finished cleaning the hall.”

  “Eleonore did not help with that?”

  “No, she had already taken her leave by then. Arthur was in much an ill humor with her.”

  “Why so?”

  Merlin waved a hand as if it were of no great moment. “I love Arthur as a son, but he becomes like a small child when people do not do as he wishes.”

  “He is to be the Rigotamos,” I pointed out.

  “Aye, but the kind of lord that he wants to be relies on his subjects’ goodwill more than fear. You do not create goodwill by forcing people to leap whenever you command.”

  The old man made much sense. “But why, Merlin?” I pressed. “What was she doing that Arthur did not like?”

  He shrugged. “I do not know. I did not ask her.”

  I felt a tug at my sleeve and turned to see Kay at my shoulder. “The argument was about Tristan, Malgwyn. Arthur did not want her to permit his suit, but she was a willful girl and would not listen. They argued about it last eve and Eleonore took her leave early.”

  The vision of Arthur arguing anything with a serving girl was more than my poor old mind could comprehend and I said as much.

  “I’ve tried to explain it, Malgwyn,” Kay began. “She was more like his daughter than his servant.”

  “It is true,” Merlin agreed. “Arthur felt of her as he would his own child. And though I loved her dearly, she knew the place of honor she held in Arthur’s eye, and she used it to her advantage like a harpsman plays his harp.”

  “She could be as sweet as a lark, Malgwyn,” Kay hurried to say, but I waved him off.

  “Of course she was. All women can be willful at times and sweet as honey at others. So,” I said, retreating into my mind, “she left the hall after an argument with Arthur. She went home, stayed long enough to change her clothing, and then went out again. Accolon saw her at the gate on the Via Caedes about the midnight with a man. We know that she later went with someone or met someone beneath the tower. Either that man or another killed her there, took her heart, and with help carried her to Merlin’s house and left her in the lane.”

  “Took her heart?” Merlin asked, horrified.

  I remembered then that we had not told him about that. “Aye, ripped her open from neck to her legs and took her heart. We found it lying on your table.”

  The wrinkled old head nodded with understanding. “So, they sought to lay blame on me by using my theory on eating hearts.”

  “That is how I see it.”

  “They are not striking at me, Malgwyn. This you know well. It is Arthur at risk here. His love for fairness and justice are spreading across the lands. Should he be named the Rigotamos, he will hold tightly the reins of government, demanding that the nobles end many of their greedy ways, stealing from the people, taking bribes from the church. Even in Brittany, across the sea, they have heard of him. That rascal Sidonius, the one that is friends with Vortigern’s sons, is always writing Arthur and playing on his sense of equality.”

  I knew vaguely of Sidonius, the son-in-law of a one-time emperor in Rome. He fancied himself a poet, and he wrote letters to everybody, including the brothers at Ynys-witrin. They spoke of him with laughter in their voices, the laughter of ridicule.

  “So, you went home after the meal, Merlin?”

  “Yes, I went back and worked on some new ideas until sleep overcame me. I had not been abed long before they came and grabbed me.”

  “Who arrested you?”

  Merlin cocked his head, thinking. “It was just last eve, but I do not remember everyone. Bedevere, Paderic, Arthur’s cousin. Let me see . . . two of Mordred’s men.”

  “You were not among them?” I asked Kay.

  “No. I was . . . I was not feeling very well.”

  I could not blame him. My own reaction to seeing Eleonore’s body was too fresh in my mind. And Kay had known and loved her.

  “What sent them to Merlin, Kay? Other than the body lying outside his door.”

  “His knife lay beside her.”

  I remembered then. “You said last night, Merlin, that you had loaned the knife to someone. Do you now remember who?”

  “One of the vigiles, I think,” Merlin answered. “But I cannot be certain.”

  “Master Malgwyn.” A tentative, small voice sounded below me.

  I looked down and found Mariam, my daughter, staring up at me. Yet her face turned away with a mixture of fear and curiosity, so like my Gwyneth. I forgot about Merlin and Kay and knelt down. “And how may I help you, my lady?”

  “Mother says that you are to come to our house right now.” Her forthrightness was amusing. Her little mouth was shaped just like her mother’s, and now she held it in a straight line, serious and determined. I wished to reach down and hold her, hug her. I knew, though, that such an action would not be welcome.

  “And why is that?”

  “You are to attend the feasting at the great hall tonight. Mother says that you dress like a pig and that she will not have you eat at the Rigotamos’s table attired like one of the animals.” She said it as if she had committed it to memory and was repeating it just as Ygerne said it.

  “Was that all she said?” I asked, suppressing a smile, knowing that she carried her mother’s trait of sensitivity. You could laugh with and to Gwyneth, but you could not laugh at her. Her daughter was the same. “Your message seems rather brief.”

  “No, she said that you must bathe as well. You smell like a pig in a sty.”

  At that, even Kay and Merlin could not suppress their laughter.

  She rebuked them with a stern eye. “Laughing at other people is not nice.”

  “Thank you,” I said as gently as I could. She could not be more like her mother. She was a tiny Gwyneth.

  But she did not respond to my attempt at kindness. Her message delivered, she spun about and marched from the parade ground. I stared sadly at her departing figure, posture straight, a miniature of her mother.

  “She is your child, Malgwyn. Of that there is little doubt,” Merlin said. “What will you do now in this matter?”

  I was not certain. “Until we can find Accolon, I can think of nothing else to be done. I know that she was killed beneath the watchtower and taken later to Merlin’s house. I know that more than one man had a hand in it. Beyond that, I cannot say with certainty. Perhaps someone in one of the houses near that area heard or saw something. I should talk to Paderic again, but that can wait a while. As much as it grieves me to confess, my brother’s wife is right. I can hardly go to Arthur’s table dressed in this manner.” Placing my hand on Merlin’s shoulder, I squeezed it softly. “Be patient, old friend. I will do my best to resolve this affair quickly. You should concentrate on who you gave your knife to.”

  “More depends on this than my old bones,” he told me with those sharp eyes.

  I simply nodded. “Kay, after Merlin is settled in finer quarters, join the search for Accolon. He is the key to this whole matter. We must find him. I will meet you later at the feasting. If you find him, confine him somewhere safe, here at the barracks. Put double the normal guard around him. Let no one see him or go near him. Maybe a few hours alone will loosen his tongue.”

 
; “If he is to be found,” Kay pointed out.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I had old Vivienne sew you a fine tunic from imported linen. I want to see if the size is right,” Ygerne said, spinning me around and casting an appraising eye on me.

  “Why did you do that? Such linen is very expensive,” I protested. I had come straight to Cuneglas’s house from the barracks to find Ygerne waiting.

  “Yes, but you can afford it.”

  “Ygerne! You take liberties!”

  “For your own good, Malgwyn. Now, turn around again.” She was using needles to pin up the tunic where it bloused too freely. Mariam sat on the floor with the assessing eye of youth. I sensed a difference in her manner now. That same eye held curiosity, not reproach, and I mused for a moment at the change. She seemed to have lost her fear of me and I wasn’t sure why.

  Ygerne spoke the truth about my money, though. I had a pot of coins hidden in my hovel. Denarii of Honorius and even some of Valentinian. Few new coins graced our purses and those came from our far western shores where merchants from Rome still traded, but the people still valued the old coins. Otherwise, we traded services for goods. Though I was not rich, I had more than my share of coins, and they sat uselessly at home. Mead, beer, wine, and bread were cheap. Unfortunately, that was all I spent it on. And it had taken a heavy toll on my old body. Once I could work a field all day and still feel lively enough to dig a new storage pit for Gwyneth, or, in later days, ride half the night and fight all the next day. No longer. Even climbing the road into the castle left me winded.

  She took the cloth and with an “I’ll return,” left my daughter and myself alone.

  As I prepared to bathe, filling the tub with hot water, Mariam stood just inside the doorway, a great frown on her face. The air between us was frigid enough to freeze the river Cam.

  Finally, I could take it no longer. “May I be of assistance, my lady?”

  “Why did Father lie and say you were my father?”

  The severity of her question would have made me laugh had it not been a serious question. I stripped my shirt off, though such would have shocked a grown woman. It revealed the arm that a Saxon sword had severed, leaving the elbow red and scarred, in scars and cracks and crevices like those of the northern mountains, near the wall that Emperor Hadrian built. Mariam looked closely at the stump, but she asked no questions. ’Twas the first time I had ever revealed it to her.

  “He did not lie. But you were a babe; you needed a mother and a father, not half a man.”

  “But if that is true, you were not wounded when you left me with them,” she said crossly.

  “How do you know this?”

  “Mother told me.”

  My drinking was not going to convince her of anything. She would brush aside such an excuse as she would brush away a fly. “I was filled with hate, hate for the Saxons because they raided and killed.”

  “Why? It is their nature.”

  I looked at her face, so stern and serious. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Father. He says that Saxons are bound to conquer us because it is their nature. Ours is to farm and work the land.”

  “That is not true.”

  “How would you know?” she said haughtily. “If you truly are my father, why did you not return for me when the wars ended? Other fathers returned to their children. But, if I am to believe you and not my father, you abandoned me.” Her face closed down, like a shadow falls over the earth, darkening it, blurring its contours. She was so confused, two fathers yet only one truth and she didn’t know which to believe.

  By the gods! She was a child of keen mind! I was lost for words to explain, though I loved her with all my heart.

  “Never mind. I know why,” she said quietly, her tone clutching my heart and breaking it in half.

  “And why is that?”

  A tear streamed down her face, a tear that told me she did believe Cuneglas. “You don’t love me. You don’t want me.”

  I turned away. Those same tears flooded down my face as if the forbidden words had been a dam that held them back.

  “I am very busy at my work,” I said lamely, not knowing how to extricate myself from this quagmire.

  Ygerne entered then, took in the scene with a woman’s eye. “Go play with the other children. I must take this back to Vivienne, and Malgwyn must bathe.” Mariam trudged from the room and Ygerne sighed. “I am of two minds with that child. I would give anything that Cuneglas had told her the truth from the beginning. And I wish with all my heart that I had birthed her.” She started toward the door and then stopped. “Have you seen Cuneglas today? He did not come to the burying.”

  “No, not recently.”

  I noted with uneasiness the way that she eyed my chest. I turned my back to her.

  “Malgwyn? Have you a special woman?”

  I shrugged. “No, no one special. Why?”

  “It was just a thought.”

  Her tone of voice made me wonder if she was apt to stray from Cuneglas. Not that the lanes were not full of his straying. The town knew of Cuneglas’s appetite. But I would never do that to my brother. I did not think so, at least. With a glance over her shoulder, she slipped from the room. I shook my head. Were she to truly glance my way, I was not sure how loyal I would be to my brother. He and I shared a talent for choosing exceptional women and a weakness in resisting them.

  The hot water felt good against my skin. I took my time and delighted in it, bathing the wounds I had suffered that very morning. The water stung the cut on my temple. More had happened in the last few hours than had happened to me in the four years since I returned to Arthur’s castle. Though the weight of my newfound obligations were heavy upon me, I felt something I had not believed possible. I felt needed. I realized that it was a sensation that I had not felt in many, many years. Not since Gwyneth died.

  As I continued cleansing myself, I came finally to the stump of my arm, still strong in the shoulder, but weakening as I moved farther down to the hideous, puckered scar covering what had been my elbow. A part of me knew that I had been fortunate, but I could remember so well those first few days of consciousness when I realized my loss, and I cursed Arthur’s name as loudly as I cursed the Saxons that took my family and my limb.

  A quick knock sounded at the door, breaking me from my reverie, and Ygerne slid my clothes in and laid them carefully on the floor. She averted her eyes, at least partially. “I have sometimes wondered what it would be like to be with someone else.” She would not know. She had been a virgin when she married Cuneglas.

  “It depends on the reason,” I answered honestly. I felt her hand touch the skin of my back and experienced a man’s reaction. She rubbed across the skin, over the shoulder, and down to the nub that was once an arm. Her touch showed no revulsion, just an odd tenderness. I quickly covered myself, ashamed of the reaction her touch spurred in me.

  “I wondered, and I thought you might give me an honest answer.”

  “’Tis a difficult question,” I answered, my throat tightening. “There is love and lust. Your reason for being with someone defines the experience.”

  “You should not be ashamed of your arm. It is an honorable wound, and all the more handsome because of it.” She turned and left, and I felt longing and relief at the same time. Such a thing was more than I could bear at present. After my Gwyneth passed, Ygerne had always stirred thoughts in me; that glowing hair and those heavy breasts called to me like no other woman in the castle. But she was my brother’s wife, and I would never take that step.

  I dwelled on these thoughts as I donned the camisia, the undershirt of linen, and then my breeches and my tunic. Putting the arousal of moments ago from my mind, I turned to my new clothes. Strapping on my belt, with its row of iron studs, I realized that I had never, in my life, been dressed in such finery as Ygerne had laid out for me. What Gwyneth would have thought of me! She would have laughed in that deep, throaty way of hers and told me that I was a farmer no longer. For no farm
er, she would have chided me, would dress so well when there were hogs to slaughter and crops to be planted.

  Outside, I heard the thump of hogs banging against the wall. Most houses had a small yard in back where swine were kept. Even through the wall, I could smell the odor of the dung.

  A knock came at the door. “Are you clothed?” Ygerne asked.

  “Aye, and finer than I have ever been.”

  She slipped in and appraised me. “That is better, for certain. Now you look more like a king’s councillor and less like Mad Malgwyn.”

  “Has Cuneglas returned?”

  “No, but Kay is here and anxious to see you.”

  “He has news of Accolon?”

  “He did not say.”

  As she turned to leave, I touched her sleeve. “Ygerne, why are you so kind to me?” The question had been gnawing at me. “I have been nothing but a drunkard for years now. I pushed my own child off on you. I live but fifteen minutes walk away, yet I rarely darken your door.”

  She looked at me straight and true. “You are my husband’s brother and Mariam’s father. If I knew nothing else but that, I would know enough to treat you fairly, no matter how your life is lived. But you are more than that, Malgwyn. You are a man that others turn to when danger calls. You are trusted when others are not. Cuneglas told me once that men such as you are not common, and that you should be protected, sometimes even from yourselves. And I trust you, and respect you.”

  “Cuneglas is my brother, my younger brother, and it is not strange for him to think more of me than others. But I know too that I am also Mad Malgwyn the Drunken Fool, and he is worth little in this world.”

  “For tonight, leave Mad Malgwyn and his flaws abed and live up to your brother’s dream of you.” And with that, she whisked out of the shed.

  I finished lacing my leather shoes and followed her back to the house, where Kay was squirming impatiently in a chair, his mail shirt bunched at his hips and the tip of his sword digging a trench in the dirt floor.