Page 38 of The Dragon Ring
“Milady,” she mumbled, tongue-tied with embarrassment.
Reluctantly, I dragged myself away from sleep.
The water was pleasantly warm, and the soap almost usable. Knowing that animal fat was often used in ancient soap making, I tried not to think about its possible ingredients. What I longed for was a soak in a hot Radox bath, but a stand-up wash was all I got. And another strange look for my underwear, which she took from me as though I were handing her a hot coal.
Dressed in one of the gowns Cottia had packed, minus my underwear, which the girl was washing, I was finally escorted to a dining room with couches arranged around a central table. It appeared that not only did Bassus dress like a Roman, but he also ate like one. I’d always thought eating while lying down would be difficult, and I was about to discover I was right.
Arthur, Cei, Merlin, Theodoric and I ate with Bassus and his wife, Antonia, a small, thin, middle-aged woman with curled and hennaed hair and a slight moustache. I was given the couch between Arthur and Antonia, and had some difficulty settling comfortably due to my long gown. As I propped myself on my left elbow, I had a nasty feeling I was going to get indigestion.
The food was excellent and far more elaborate than anything laid on at Din Cadan. There were little parcels of spiced meat, rissoles made of crayfish caught in the River Avon, mussels cooked in a sauce of celery seed, rue, honey and pepper, stuffed marrows, leeks wrapped in cabbage leaves and cooked in coals, olives imported from the Mediterranean, beets dressed with mustard oil and vinegar, pigeon breasts sliced in a rich sauce, and a suckling pig cooked whole and served on a decorated platter. The splendor of their table was in sharp contrast with the poverty I’d seen on the streets, but I’m ashamed to say that not even thoughts of those poor children diminished the appetite I’d worked up that day.
The wine was good, too.
“We have it brought in by ship from the Mediterranean,” Antonia told me with more than a hint of pride. “Our river here flows into the Sabrina Sea. Our wharves are quite cosmopolitan, you know.”
She followed this up with a whole host of other remarks that went right over my head. She talked non-stop about everything– about her children, who were angels, and her slaves, who were not, and her clothes, which she bemoaned were not the height of Roman fashion, and her food, which was not up to the standard she was used to, and her ailments, which were many.
I was so tired I had to limit myself to smiling and nodding when required. The small amount of wine I drank went straight to my head, and my eyelids soon grew heavy.
Beside me, Arthur ate little and drank even less, listening while Bassus waxed as loquaciously as his wife, although his diatribe was one long complaint about his posting here at Caer Baddan, and a request for Arthur to have him moved elsewhere. I stifled a yawn and fidgeted my aching legs. I would be glad to get to my bed that night.
At last, the interminable meal was finished. I made my polite goodnights to Antonia and Bassus, and Merlin led me back to my bedroom, while Arthur remained to talk to Bassus in his study. Cei and Theodoric went off jovially, arm in arm, presumably in search of the women Theodoric had paid a deposit for.
At my door, Merlin and I halted. Torches burned in brackets on the pillars of the porticoed veranda, smoke rising to the starry sky. Somewhere outside the walls a dog barked. The cold night air had given me a second wind, and now I was wide awake.
Merlin pushed open my door for me. “Sleep well. I’ll have you called at first light. We need to be off early. Today was an easy stage. We’ve a lot more ground to cover tomorrow.”
I had questions on the tip of my tongue. Questions I felt I couldn’t ask Arthur, but that I wanted answers to. I put my hand on his arm as he turned away. “Wait a minute.”
He turned to face me, his back to the torchlight, his face thrown into dark shadow.
“I want to know why Arthur and his father don’t get on. I want to know the reason why Theodoric had to sneak out of Viroconium to bring his news to Arthur. If I’m really who you think I am, then I deserve to be told. Tell me about Uthyr Pendragon.”
A dog, the same dog perhaps, howled out in the desolate city, and another dog joined in, their voices rising heavenwards.
Merlin tilted his head to one side. “What do you want to know?”
I hesitated. What to ask first? Verify the legends maybe?
“Did he– was Arthur brought up by his father? How is Cei his brother?” I was thinking of the legend that Arthur had been taken by Merlin as a baby to be brought up by Sir Ector with his son Sir Kay, away from his father and the court. I’d already met Cei, so had there been an Ector as well? Because if it was true, and Arthur had been brought up away from his parents, that might explain his indifference to them. Or was I just projecting twenty-first-century social mores onto Dark Age reality?
Merlin nodded. “Why would he not have been brought up by his parents? And as for Cei, Arthur’s mother is Queen Eigr. Her first husband was Gorlois of Tintagel. Cei is Gorlois’ son and Arthur’s milk brother. Gorlois being dead, both boys grew up in Viroconium at the court of Arthur’s father. Cadwy is Uthyr’s son by his first wife, so also Arthur’s brother.”
I drew my cloak more closely about me against the cold. It sounded like Arthur’s family was a bit of a soap opera.
“What sort of a relationship did he have with his father? I mean, does he have?” It was hard to think of the man we were headed to see as being in the present. In fact, it was hard to think of him as being real. To me, he was still a legend who’d lived and died hundreds of years ago.
He paused, and I could sense him mulling over what to tell me. “I taught all three of them as boys. Arthur was an apt pupil. The youngest, but the best of the three. Good at everything I taught him, and good at his battle training as well. As keen with a book in his hands as with a sword. His father was well pleased with him, as you would expect. And now he is a man…” He hesitated. “Arthur is a strong and brave warrior, a son to be proud of. But…there has always been dissent between father and son. Arthur and Cadwy do not get along, and Cadwy played his younger brother and their father against one another. He drove a wedge between them, as he’d always wanted. It’s long since we’ve been to Viroconium.”
“So, he fell out with his father?”
“Not quite. His father is very…autocratic. He’s the High King. Uthyr waited a long time in the shadow of his brother to gain that position. He’s held onto it now for more than twenty years. He tolerates no argument. Cadwy does as his father orders him. Or he appears to. Arthur never has.”
I wasn’t surprised. Arthur had the look of a rebel.
“That doesn’t explain why he seems not to like his father.”
Merlin shifted slightly. “That goes back to when he was a boy. The Queen, his mother, took it into her head that she wanted Arthur to enter the church. Second sons do that quite frequently. She wanted him to become a bishop.”
