Caesar's Sword (I): The Red Death Read online

  CAESAR’S SWORD

  Book One: The Red Death

  By David Pilling

  More Books by David Pilling

  Novels

  The Half-Hanged Man

  The White Hawk (I): Revenge

  The White Hawk (II): Rebellion

  The White Hawk (III): Restoration

  Robin Hood (I)

  Robin Hood (II): The Wrath of God

  Nowhere Was There Peace

  The Best Weapon (co-written with Martin Bolton)

  Sorrow

  The John Swale Chronicles

  Folville’s Law & 12 mini-sequels

  Follow David at his blogs at:

  www.pillingswritingcorner.blogspot.co.uk

  www.davidpillingauthor.com/

  http://www.boltonandpilling.com/

  Or contact him direct at:

  [email protected]

  “There is another wonder in the country called Ergyng. There is a tomb there by a spring, called Llygad Amhar; the name of the man buried in the tomb was Amhar. He was the son of the warrior Arthur, who killed him there and buried him.”

  - The Historia Brittonum

  Prologue

  Abbaye de Rhuys, Brittany, 568 AD

  I, Coel son of Amhar son of Arthur, am close to death. My sixty-sixth year on this earth looms, though I have no great desire to reach it. A man robbed of his strength and vigour is left only with his mental resources to fall back on. Lately these have ebbed. A strange mist encroaches on my mind, making me forgetful and indecisive.

  Abbot Gildas, that good man, is most understanding of my frailty, and does all he can to ensure my comfort. The monastery he founded here on the Isle of Rhuys is the finest in Brittany, a monument to Christ built in stone and glass. I will be happy to die here.

  My husk of a body, riddled with agues and rheumatic pains, confines me to my cell for much of the day, though I insist on hobbling to Vespers. With nothing to do but linger in idleness and prayers, I find my thoughts wandering back to the past.

  And such a past. I have witnessed the splendour and pity of the world, the rise and fall of great empires, and in my own small way contributed to the defence and salvation of the greatest. I have spilled my life’s blood on battlefields from the heartlands of Britain to the desert sands of Africa. There is barely a patch of my wrinkled skin that does not bear the scars of war, which the abbot once compared to the wounds of Christ.

  “Like our Lord, you have suffered greatly for the faith,” he told me, “you are blessed to live this long.”

  Blessed? Maybe. Privately I suspect my advanced years are a punishment. Age, disease and the sword have deprived me of all those I loved. Their souls have flown into darkness. I am left alone, a fragment of decaying flesh sustained by a little bone and sinew.

  My darkness is lit by the sputtering flame of a single candle. The abbot would gladly allow me more candles if I wished, enough to light my cell like the nave of a cathedral, but I refuse to be indulged.

  One last work remains. A heap of parchment lies on the lectern before me. My withered hand trembles as it grasps the quill, and my writing is a painful scrawl. Before the mists descend, extinguishing the last spark of my memory, I have taken a solemn vow to commit the story of my life to manuscript.

  I do this not to please my vanity, but to leave behind a history that will serve as a lesson to future generations in survival and redemption.

  I, Coel, once a soldier and now a poor man of God, write this.

  Chapter 1

  Unless you are some benighted savage with no knowledge of the world beyond your immediate ken, you will have heard of Arthur. His name resounds from the Island of Britain like a trumpet. The echoes have spread across the decaying corpse of the Western Empire, giving hope to those who dwell in darkness and ruin. He is remembered as more than a man: rather, a sort of god or deathless warrior-king who will rise from his unknown grave in Britain’s darkest hour and lead his people to victory.

  I am living proof that he was but a man. I do not mean to recount his life and career, only those details relevant to my history.

  Know, then, that I was born the only child of Amhar and Eliffer, five hundred and two years after the martyrdom of Christ. My father was one of Arthur’s five bastard sons, and my mother a direct descendent of Coel Hen, who was King in the North after the Roman legions abandoned Britain to its fate.

  Little is said of Arthur’s children these days. Many of the poets and storytellers omit them altogether. This is understandable. All of Arthur’s sons led sad lives, bent under the weight of their father’s gigantic shadow, and most came to bad ends. Only Cydfan, the eldest, achieved peace and long life by shaving his head and entering a monastery.

  My father, Amhar, came to the worst end of all. In the last days of Arthur’s Peace, when his teulu were split into factions and there was plague in Britain and Ireland, Amhar chose to desert Arthur and throw in his lot with the arch-traitor, Medraut.

  Some days before the strife of Camlann, Arthur and Amhar’s war-bands met in battle. Amhar’s men were routed, and he taken prisoner.

  My grandfather was as merciless in his wrath as any Roman Emperor. He cut his son’s throat and buried him under a cairn near a spring. I have heard that he dug the grave-pit and piled up the stones with his own hands, still reeking with Amhar’s blood.

  Arthur’s vengeance resembled that of Antonia, mother to the Emperor Claudius, when she sealed up her sinful daughter Livilla and listened to her cries as she starved to death. Amhar’s punishment was to die, while Arthur’s was to personally bury the child he had killed. My grandfather was a stark man. He spared no-one the consequences of their actions, least of all himself.

  I know all this from my mother. She, poor woman, also suffered for her husband’s treason. Arthur ordered her execution, and I, who was barely two years old at the time, to be ripped from her arms and brought to his llys at Caerleon. I believe he intended to spare my life, and have me raised as a warrior under his close supervision.

  Whatever his plans for me, they would never come to pass. A young warrior of Amhar’s teulu named Owain had escaped the slaughter of his lord’s host. He fled the battlefield and hastened to the palace of Caerwent, where Amhar had placed his wife and son for safe keeping.

  Owain had ever loved my mother from afar, which was why he rescued her from Arthur’s vengeance. I was too young to remember, but in later years she told me of the story of our flight from Britain.

  The young warrior came stumbling into her bower, exhausted and rank with the blood and filth of battle.

  “Your husband is defeated and slain, my lady,” he said, going down on one knee before her, “and his war-band scattered. Arthur has ordered your death. His men are close behind me. We must flee while there is still time.”

  “Flee? Where to?” demanded Eliffer, shocked his appearance and the dreadful news he brought. Word of Amhar’s death was already spreading through the palace. Fearful of being put to the sword by Arthur’s soldiers, most of the servants chose to abandon their mistress.

  “Nowhere in Britain will be safe for you,” he replied, “we must get to the coast and take ship for Frankia. You and your son can find refuge there.”

  There was no time to think of a better plan. My mother fled Caerwent with just Owain for a guard and two or three loyal servants who refused to abandon her. Owain perched me on the front of his saddle.

  The fugitives pushed on through the night, allowing their horses no rest as they headed south-west, following the coastline of Gwent in the hope of finding a ship before Arthur’s men caught up with them.

  They reached the settlement near the old Roman fortress of Isca. This ha
d become a poor and squalid place, much degraded since the legions had left, but it did at least possess a harbour. Here Eliffer bribed a fisherman with a handful of the gold coins she had snatched up before fleeing from Caerwent. He reluctantly agreed to put to sea at once, even though it was pitch-dark and the weather promised a storm.

  We owed our lives to the skill and courage of the fisherman and his crew. After three days at sea, through the midst of storms and ferocious waves that threatened to smash their vessel to splinters, they brought us safe to the coast. Not to Frankia, for the boat was blown off-course, but the western tip of the kingdom of Domnonia in Less Britain.

  There was no pursuit. We didn’t know it then, but soon after our flight from Caerwent the hosts of Arthur and Medraut destroyed each other in the valley of Camlann.

  The details of that dreadful battle, fought over several days in a haze of mist and blood, are vague and contradictory. It is known that Medraut perished and Arthur disappeared. Certainly his body was never found. His Legion, the elite company of horse-soldiers that had protected Britain from her many foes for over twenty years, was wiped out almost to a man. Of them all, only noble Bedwyr survived to live out his remaining days as a hermit, and perhaps a handful of others whose names are forgotten.

  While this catastrophe was unfolding, my mother and her tiny company struggled ashore on a deserted stretch of coast. Thunder boomed and lightning crackled overhead, tearing the clouds to shreds and whipping the foam-flecked breakers into a maelstrom.

  “I carried you through the shallows to the beach,” Eliffer was fond of telling me when I was older, “the waves were fierce, and at times threatened to engulf me, so I held you over my head.”

  At last the company reached dry land, and took refuge from the elements in a little cave just above the beach. There they crouched like frightened rats, miserable, soaked and half-starved. They had nothing to eat save some meagre portions of bread and biscuit, which Eliffer insisted on dividing equally.

  “I am no great lady now,” she declared, “and my descent from the kings of old counts for nothing on this storm-wracked shore.”

  It was here that Owain revealed the secret he carried on his person, and which was to prove the bane and blessing of my life. He drew from the scabbard at his belt a sword. Not any sword, but the half-legendary blade known to the Britons as Caledfwlch.

  Caledfwlch was Arthur’s sword. It had been knocked from his hand, so Owain claimed, during the battle against Amhar’s men.

  “I saw this lying on the ground,” said Owain, holding the sword up for the others to admire, “and snatched it while Arthur was busy defending himself with his shield. When all was over, and the broken bodies of my comrades lay scattered across the field, I stole away with the sword hidden under my cloak.”

  The blade of Caledfwlch shone, so my mother recalled, like a silver flame in the damp and darkness of the cave.

  “I was going to keep it for myself,” Owain went on, “but that is not right. It was Arthur’s, and should be carried by men of his blood.”

  He placed the hilt in my hand. I grasped it tightly and refused to let go, causing the wretched fugitives to laugh for the first time since their flight from Caerwent.

  I close my eyes a moment and picture the sword I carried for most of my life. It was an old Roman gladius, a short stabbing blade with a broad base and sharply tapering point. The bone grip was well-worn and inlaid with strips of gold.

  Arthur wielded Caledflwch in all his battles. It had once been the property of Nennius, an ancient British prince who fought the invading Romans. He won the sword in single combat with Julius Caesar himself. Nennius got little joy of his prize, for Caesar left it buried in his skull.

  Caledfwlch or Hard Hitter was Arthur’s name for the sword. It has gone under other names. The Romans called it Crocea Mors or the Yellow Death, and the British variants were Angau Coch (Red Death) or Agheu Glas (Grey Death).

  Said to be forged by Vulcan in the forges under Mount Olympus, some deadly magic was worked into the metal, ensuring that the blade never lost its edge and would cut through any armour, no matter how well-made. A wound inflicted by the Red Death, even if just a graze, would instantly slay the man it struck.

  The chief power of Caledfwlch, besides its keen cutting edge, was as a symbol. This was a weapon forged by a god and wielded by heroes. Whoever possessed it could claim to be the natural heir of such men. In Britain and Domnonia there was a lingering prophecy that whoever owned Caledfwlch would gain dominion over the Western Empire. Arthur wisely never tried to fulfil such an impossible dream, but there were many lesser men who dreamed of inheriting the throne of the Caesars.

  No human eyes shall see Caledfwlch again. I have taken care to hide it somewhere safe, secret, and well-guarded. The sword has fallen into the wrong hands too often (including mine) and must be hidden from men and their selfish ambitions.

  It took me many years to realise the necessity of putting Caledfwlch somewhere it could never be found. Poor Owain, whose intentions were honourable, thought he was presenting me with a gift beyond price when he placed the hilt in my hand. He would have saved many lives, and eased the course of mine, if he had thrown the thing into the sea.

  Chapter 2

  My mother had some notion of claiming sanctuary at the court of Rhiwal Mawr, the King of Domnonia, but Owain advised against it.

  “Rhiwal was Arthur’s ally,” he warned, “and Arthur will have sent envoys to Rennes to tell him of your escape. Rhiwal will not risk the alliance for your sake. He will either clap you in chains and send you back to Britain, or kill you out of hand.”

  His words put Eliffer at a loss, for as yet she had no knowledge of the slaughter at Camlann. Owain persuaded her to travel to Frankia on foot, where he planned to enlist in the armies of Clovis, the great warrior-king of the Franks.

  It was about this time that he made his love for Eliffer known to her, and begged her hand in marriage. He was rebuffed. My mother was still in mourning for Amhar, and not so forgetful of her high birth that she would consent to wed the son of a petty chieftain.

  Owain swallowed the pain of her refusal and stayed with us as we toiled through Domnonia on their way east to the Frankish border. Eliffer spent the last of her gold on food during the journey, bought from passing tradesmen and merchant caravans.

  Domnonia was a kingdom forged by British settlers fleeing from the incessant wars and disturbances of their homeland. Eliffer and her companions spoke the same tongue as most of those they met on the road, and learned of Camlann and its aftermath from a group of travelling wine merchants.

  “Who rules in Britain now?” he asked.

  “No-one,” was the reply, “all the petty kings have turned to fighting each other. Some say that Cador of Cornwall will prove the strongest. So he might, with King Rhiwal to help him. But for now the land is lit from sea to sea by the fires of burning towns, and there is no sanctuary to be found anywhere.”

  “What of the Saxons?”

  “Their chief Cerdic has broken loose from the treaty lands, and his war-bands are ravaging the west. There are few to stop them, now Arthur’s Legion is no more. Those who try are slaughtered.”

  The news could not be worse. Britain had lurched into war and chaos again, as though Arthur’s hard-won peace had never existed.

  “Domnonia will be overrun by refugees,” said one man, giving us a hard look, “all looking for work and food. There is none to be had. The wars with Clovis have drained us.”

  We moved on hurriedly, before the mood could turn sour and the merchants started asking awkward questions. Owain was careful to keep Caledfwlch in a plain wooden scabbard at his belt, and wrapped the hilt in leather to hide the gold decoration.

  “No-one must know we have it,” he said, “Cador of Cornwall would give much to have Arthur’s sword in his grasp.”

  “And Arthur’s grandson in his care,” added my mother. She was convinced that the squabbling kings of Britain regarded me a
s a prize worth having. In truth I was of no importance whatsoever. Having Arthur’s blood in my veins gave me no claim to kingship, for he had refused the High Kingship and ruled as Dux Bellorum, a purely military rank.

  Owain had a rather grander fate in mind for me. “He planned to raise you as a soldier in Clovis’s army,” she told me when I was old enough to understand, “and, when you were grown, to take you back to Britain with an army of Frankish mercenaries. You would fulfil the promise of Arthur’s return, and restore peace and order to our homeland.”

  I remember the sadness in her voice as she described Owain’s absurd plan. “He also imagined you doing what Arthur never dared to do, and claiming the High Kingship. In his mind, you were Coel Hen reborn.”

  Owain schemed and risked so much on my behalf. He loved me for my mother’s sake, and perhaps saw me as the son he never had. If I concentrate I can conjure up a vague image of the man, as though peering at him through an opaque screen. He was a powerful, thickset young warrior, with strong rather than handsome features, and a deep voice. He is one of those whose souls I pray for night and day.

  We got safely into Frankia, though it was a near-run thing, and a band of King Rhiwal’s horse-soldiers insisted on interrogating us near the border. Eliffer, who was still a great beauty, managed to charm them into letting us go, though her remaining servants were sufficiently frightened by the experience to abandon her.

  “You have nothing to pay us with, lady,” they told her, “and we are not prepared to share your dangers for nothing. God go with you.”

  Owain cursed them for cowards and traitors, and threatened them with Caledfwlch, but Eliffer stayed his hand.

  “They owe me nothing,” she said gently, “and I have no right to put them in danger. We must carry on alone.”

  And so they did, though how Eliffer kept me alive in the years that followed is little short of a miracle. She and Owain made their way to Paris, where Clovis had established his court. They were ragged and half-starved by the time they finally reached the city, and to look at my mother none could have suspected she was royalty.