Page 72 of The Bear's Heart
That night in our bed I asked Arthur why he’d done it.
“A quick death is too good for him,” he said as I nestled close to his warm body. “I want him to suffer as those children did.”
I shifted, restless suddenly, not wanting to think of the dead children, but there was no getting away from it. I had to ask the question at the forefront of my mind, the question that had been nagging away at me the entire time Arthur had been away. “When you gave Kirwin his orders to do something about the poor children and the orphans,” I began, “did you ever think Melwas would do this?”
Arthur was silent for a long minute.
Then his chest rose in a deep sigh. “You think I could have condemned innocent children to death? You think me capable of that?” His voice rose in indignation, and I had to put a finger to his lips.
“Sshh, you’ll waken Amhar.”
He pushed my finger away, but his voice was lower when he spoke again. “Don’t you know me yet? Do you think I’d sacrificechildrento wreak my revenge on Melwas?”
The problem was, I did know him now. And a small part of me, the part that nearly a year ago had heard him suggest he’d poison his brother given the opportunity– that part thought he might indeed have done what I’d accused him of. I stayed silent.
“Well, I didn’t.” He was angry, not unreasonably, I supposed.
Did I believe him, though?
“Did you think he’d obey you?” I asked, in my heart knowing the answer couldn’t be a yes.
It was his turn to remain silent.
I pressed my point home. “What did you think he’d do?”
His whole body stiffened. I had him in a corner. “I thought he’d disobey me, for certain.” His voice was hardly more than a whisper. “But I never thought he’d kill them.”
I believed him. I had to, didn’t I? He’d been looking for a reason to go after Melwas for a long time and had thought giving this order about the orphan children of Caer Baddan would give him the opportunity he desired. However, it had backfired badly. I thought about Bretta again, the venom in her eyes, the hatred. And the words of her curse rang loudly in my ears.
*
Arthur let Melwasrot in the lock-up for a full week before he had him brought out for judgement. I’d never been inside the lock up, of course, but from the outside it was obviously small, with no sanitary arrangements. By the end of a week confined in a space where he could hardly stand up, and with only the floor to lie down on– a floor he’d had to use as his toilet– Melwas should have emerged a broken man.
He didn’t.
When the door was opened for the first time in a week, he stepped out and straightened up as though he’d spent a week in a London hotel. Yes, he stank, and he had the makings of a straggly grizzled beard coming, but he was unbowed by his sojourn in solitary confinement.
The guards, who’d come to let him out of the dark and noisome hole he’d been kept in, tied his hands behind him immediately, having been warned by both Arthur and Cei to watch out for his tricksy ways. Then they marched him up the hill toward the great hall where Arthur waited in front of the doors. His throne had been brought outside into the chill autumnal air so that everyone in the fortress could be present at the trial, and a crowd had gathered more than ten deep.
At the front of the press of people nearest to the throne I spotted Bretta, a savage expression on her haggard young face that rendered her old before her time. Not far from her stood the bent figure of Olwyn, no doubt come to see her wicked son face a punishment he’d deserved since he’d murdered his own brothers all those years ago.
I sat beside Arthur in my best gown, a golden circlet on my head. Wearing a crown gives one a certain air, but I’d fast realized why; in order not to lose my crown, I had to keep my chin haughtily in the air.
Melwas was deposited ten paces from us, his guards standing back, but not too far, drawn swords in their hands. There probably wasn’t a soul here who trusted him, and they weren’t taking any chances.
Cei, as Arthur’s seneschal, a post I’d never realized he held, stepped forward to read out the charges against Melwas. The crowd fell silent.
Cei took a deep breath, cleared his throat and began, his loud voice ringing out above the heads of the watching people.
“Melwas, King of the Isle of Frogs, held by the grace of Arthur, King of Dumnonia, your overlord. You are brought here to face the judgement of your liege lord.” He was reading from a lead tablet, the words scratched on it with a stylus. The literacy of the well-born had never been something I’d asked myself about before. I knew Arthur could read, and Merlin too, but somehow it had never occurred to me that Cei would be able to as well. Reading and writing and Dark Age Britain didn’t seem to go together.
Melwas stood ramrod straight, an air of mild interest on his sallow face, as though an observer of the petty happenings of people who didn’t matter to him, instead of being at their mercy. His coal black eyes roamed across his audience and came to rest on me. His lips curled again into that mirthless smile, implying, without a word, that something secret existed between us, binding us together in collaboration. I couldn’t suppress the shiver that ran through me. Arthur turned his head and for a moment our eyes met. His were unreadable.
Cei went on. “You are charged with the offence of unlawful killing, in direct contravention of the Sixth Commandment given to the prophet Moses by our Lord God Almighty in days of old.” Cei paused to let his words sink in on his audience. A rumble of approval passed through their ranks like the wind through barley. Cei continued. “You did not kill lawfully in battle, as is your right. Instead you took the lives of innocent children whom you should have protected. Not the children of your enemies, but the children of your own city. This is a crime punishable by death.”
This time the buzz was angrier. These people had children of their own. Probably every one of them could empathize with his victims. Their hostile faces darkened with disgust.
The wind blew across the hilltop, bringing with it snatches of smoke and the stench of rotting middens, but they were nothing compared to the reek of Melwas. His once fine tunic and braccae were soiled and filthy, his face grimy. He looked what he was, a villain through and through. A soft vegetable of indeterminate origin sailed through the air and hit him squarely on the shoulder, spreading its rotting insides across his clothing and then falling with a thud to the ground.
