Page 28 of The Dragon Ring

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He glanced down the Hall to where Merlin sat with Cei and a gaggle of other warriors in their evening finery, their heads turned away.

“Where is your mother?” I asked, to cover up my discomfiture. “Is she still living?” If she were here in Din Cadan, surely I’d have met her.

His face hardened and he released my hand. “She’s in Tintagel. Cei’s fortress.”

I put my hand in my lap, out of his reach. “Why isn’t she with your father?”

He frowned into his wine, and I looked away, down into the body of the Hall at the boisterous crowd, feeling as though I’d said the wrong thing.

Arthur set his goblet down. “I don’t speak of my mother. You weren’t to know.”

“My mother died when I was eight,” I said, to break the ice that had somehow formed between us.

He nodded. “Merlin told me. And your father is also dead.”

The flames in the hearth leapt toward the rafters, and sweat ran down the faces of the revelers nearest to it. The fug of hot humanity hung heavy in the smoky air.

My turn to nod. How my father would have loved this, though. Could he see me from wherever he was? Did he know I was living his dream? Even though it was hardly mine.

“And your father?” I asked, feeling more at ease now he was no longer touching me.

He gave a shrug. “He’s the High King. What more is there to say than that?”

Lots. I was going to have to draw this out of him. “Where’s his court?”

“Viroconium.” Wroxeter, near Shrewsbury, whose impressive bath house ruins I’d once visited with my father.

He pushed the food on his plate about absent-mindedly with his knife, those dark eyes veiled by enviably long lashes. “Capital of Powys. It’s been the seat of the Imperators and then the High Kings since the Romans left.”

I was instantly interested, and distracted from his physical presence. This might allow me to orient myself in time. I knew the Romans had withdrawn from Britain in AD 410.

“How long ago was that?”

His brow furrowed. “My grandfather was just a young man. And he died forty years ago, long before I was born. Poisoned, my grandmother swore. He was overthrown and exiled by the usurper Guorthegirn before my uncle and father were even born.”

I raised my hand. “Wait a moment. Poisoned? By whom? And where was your grandfather exiled to?”

He gave me a wry smile. “To Gaul. My great grandfather, his father, was the Imperator Constantine the third, killed there fighting to defend the Western Roman empire.”

“He was a Roman?”

He nodded. “His family–myfamily wore the purple. His son, my grandfather, Ambrosius the Elder, was named Imperator,lastImperator, when his father was killed. He was just a young man. Constantine had left him to rule Britain while he fought in Gaul for his empire.”

He picked up his wine goblet again but didn’t drink from it, swirling the contents about ruminatively instead. “Guorthegirn, the Usurper, served as my grandfather Ambrosius’ Magister Militum– and his friend. So my grandfather thought. But it was he who overthrew my grandfather and drove him across the southern sea to Gaul. He who abolished the title of Imperator and declared himself High King. My father and his brother were born in exile.”

Guorthegirn the Usurper, whose wise men had prophesied my arrival and my destiny.

“And the poisoning? What happened?”

“My grandfather was a determined man. He made every effort to seize back what was his by right, but Guorthegirn had bought himself a Saxon army, and my grandfather was defeated at the battle of Guoloppum, many miles to the east of here. He retreated to Armorica, in Gaul, a beaten man.”

Guoloppum? Nowhere I’d ever heard of. Somewhere to the east could be as far as Kent.

“He died in his bed, of a sickness no one could cure. My grandmother swore Guorthegirn had sent someone to poison him. She refused to eat anything not tasted by a slave beforehand, and made my father and uncle do the same.”

“So, what did your father and uncle do?”

He gave a shake of his head. “Do? Nothing. When they were grown they went to Guorthegirn and offered him their services.”