Page 77 of The Dragon Ring
Arthur took the goblet and held it out to the old woman. “Here, drink this. You’ll feel better for a draught of good wine.” He spoke as though to a child. She wrapped her bony hands around the stem of the goblet. Wine ran down her chin as she took one gulp and then another, to quench her thirst.
“Tis indeed good wine,” she muttered, taking a third long pull, and smacking her lips together in appreciation. “From the king’s own cellars. Prince Cadwy brought it ’ere ’imself not an hour since. Fit for a king, ’e said. For ’is brother the king.” She looked up at Arthur. “Are ye the king ’e meant? If ye are, should be me pourin’ for you, not t’other way round.”
A moment of awful silence stretched between us as Arthur’s stricken eyes met mine over her head. Then Arthur snatched the goblet from her hands.
“Cadwy sent it? For me?”
She peered up at him. “Are ye his brother? Are ye a king?” Her rheumy old eyes held no recognition.
He sniffed the wine in the goblet. I stared at him. He went back to the table and, taking the pitcher, took another long sniff.
I followed him and did the same. It smelled like ordinary wine. I dipped my finger.
“Don’t.” He held my hand down, and the wine dripped from my fingertip. Our eyes met again; his brimmed with anguish.
On the bench, Breanna gave a cough. Together, we swung round to look at her. She coughed again, then hawked and spat onto the mosaic floor.
I ran to her. Her breath heaved in desperate wheezes, one hand up at her throat, terrified eyes appealing for help. I looked back at Arthur, but he still stood immobile beside the table, his face dark with anger.
“I can’t breathe,” she spluttered, her yellowed nails scratching at her convulsing throat, her eyes wide and staring.
“Arthur!” I cried out, terrified. “We have to help her. What shall I do?”
He came. Dropping to one knee in front of the old woman, he looked up into my eyes. “There’s nothing we can do. It’s too late.”
She slumped forward, and he caught her in his arms like a bundle of twigs. Around her mouth, wine-stained froth bubbled as she fought for breath.
Shock numbed me. She was dying in front of my eyes, and I could do nothing. But worse than that came the certainty that the poison she’d imbibed had been meant for Arthur…and me.
Even as I wrestled with my fear, her body stiffened and arched, her breath came in a bubbling rasp, and then faded to nothing. Silence fell. Slowly, her body relaxed, and Arthur was left holding just a bag of fragile bones.
He knelt motionless, his head bent over the tiny form. The silence stretched between us.
At last, he lifted her and laid her on the cushions as you would a sleeping baby in its cot. With life extinct, she seemed to have shrunk, as though her very soul had given substance to her frame. With a shaking hand, he closed her staring eyes and stood up, his head bowed. Tears streaked his cheeks. Was he praying?
I touched his arm. “Was that poison?” The evidence was clear. But I wanted to say the word out loud.
He nodded. For a moment longer, he stood in silence gazing down at her, and then he looked up at me sharply, brows knit in a heavy frown that gave him a sudden look of his brother. “This goes no further. Tip away the wine. She’s an old lady who died from the shock of her lord’s death, that’s all.”
“But Cadwy meant for us to die!” Gasping for breath that wouldn’t come, clawing at our throats the way Breanna had, last breaths bubbling out. Guilt washed over me– guilt for the relief I felt that the old woman had died and not us.
He nodded again, dark brows still knitted together, brooding. “He did indeed. But it’ll do no good to accuse him publicly. He’ll deny everything, and there’ll be no proof.” He sounded very certain. Did he speak from experience?
“There must be proof. There always is. She said he brought the wine himself. Someone will have seen him.”
“Who? This is his palace. The people here are his. Why d’you think he brought it himself? To involve no one else– no one who could give evidence against him. There’s no point in pursuing this. We’re not dead. Be thankful.”
My strong twenty-first-century sense of right and wrong came to the fore. No one, especially not Cadwy, whom I really didn’t like, should get away with murder. Anger rose in me.
“So you’ll just let him get away with this?”
He shook his head. “There are ways and means of taking revenge that don’t involve accusations of poisoning. I’ll bide my time. I should have realized this would force his hand, that he’d feel he had to act because of what happened yesterday at the Council. This is the way he works– nothing out in the open. I should have been more vigilant. It’s my fault Breanna’s dead. I should never have given her that wine.”
“You didn’t know.”
He frowned. “That’s no excuse. A king should know. I failed her.”
My voice trembled. “You failed her only because you don’t think the same way Cadwy does. Because you didn’t suspect him of doing something you would never do.”
