The woman with my uncle was Morganna, and I gaped when I found out that he had brought her.
'It is rumoured she shares his bed too.' Cei told me enthusiastically. He was part of my uncle's retinue, and was excited at everything about Viroconium. Owain was not to be found, and so instead I had taken him with me to meet Aglovale, Dirandon and my friends at the brothel where a delicious red haired girl stroked his face with long nails making him shudder. It was amazing to see my old friend again, but it already felt like he was from another lifetime.
'But she was the lover of his son!' I protested.
'People say she's a witch.' Cei told me with a wicked grin. 'I can well believe it. Everybody seems to be terrified of her. People disappear...'
'People don't just disappear Cei.' I said sceptically.
'Exactly!' I had obviously missed the point. 'She's often blamed. They're exactly the kind of people who she and Mordred used to abuse, pretty young girls. Except they're now almost always blonde.'
I wondered about that. I thought about what Owain would say about that. He had this way of understanding the way people thought, about how their personalities reflected why they did the things they did. I thought of Morganna, so tall and strong that, if she were not beautiful, she would almost seem mannish. I thought of the darkness about her, from her raven black hair to her dark and pitiless eyes. I could see her spoiling the bright beauty of those fair haired girls.
I did not see much of Owain over those days of the council. I think he preferred the company of Lancelot in that time, for it was Lancelot who encouraged to be disdainful of the disapproval shown from his father. During the day Owain sat on the council though. He did not take part in it, and though I thought nothing of it at the time, used to being omitted and left out by then.
'Do you not see what this means?' Merlin asked me incredulously. He of course, sat on the council. If nothing else this spoke of his genius. The men who sat at the council table were the most important men in the country.
I knew the layout well enough. In the centre of the chamber, on top of a raised dais stood a large round table upon which sat the five kings, or rather four kings and one steward, with Ambrosius on the highest chair in the middle of them, to signify that he was the first among equals at their table. Each king had the option of one chair besides them, most chose to seat their eldest son on the chair, though a couple chose their most trusted advisor or most powerful lord. This was why Merlin sat at the table, he was the trusted advisor or Enniaun Girt. At each end of the table were the emissaries of Kernow and Gododdin.
Every man at the table was granted a voice in the council. They could raise their own parts, question others and argue over them. Mordred had once sat where Merlin did, though he had been told to keep his mouth shut and listen.
All around the dais upon which the round table stood were five other tables, these long and rectangular. These were filled with the most powerful men in each kingdom, noblemen, warlords, bishops and sometimes some younger sons. By right, I could have sat on the table of Gwynedd or Powys but chose not to. I had no wish to listen to a bunch of old men argue over nothing all day. 'Owain goes.' I shrugged at Merlin, 'He will tell me if anything of interest has come up. Or you will, you do love gossip.' I grinned at him.
Merlin scratched his head and smiled ruefully. 'You know Culhwch, sometimes I despair that I was ever your tutor.'
I had assumed that Owain was sitting on one of the lesser tables looking up, and my mouth dropped open when Merlin told me Owain had been sat upon Ambrosius' left hand side. The right-hand side reserved for the king of Dumnonia, the next powerful kingdom in Britain.
'Now do you understand what this means?' Merlin asked. I thought about it.
'It's about power.' I said carefully. 'Ambrosius has no son to marry off, so he is showing off his relationship with Owain. He wants to marry him off to tighten his alliances.' I racked my brains. 'The King of Gwent does not like Ambrosius, but he has brought his daughter with him. She is fourteen and now of an age to marry.'
'I certainly think marriage is at the heart of it.' Merlin did not give me a straight answer, and he left me with my curiosity.
I decided that I would attend the next day's council to see if I could make anything of it, but I could not bring myself to do it and instead found myself re-joining Aglovale. During the council Ambrosius had put every solider at his disposal on the street to try and quell the disturbances that always came with such a tumultuous gathering that seemed to be getting ever more volatile.
I have found that religion seems to be the catalyst to most of the problems in the world. I had never really had much in the way of belief, and it had fallen further away from me the more time I spent around Viroconioum. But it was around the time of this council that I lost the final remnants of my faith, as God's messengers cursed and demanded death for heresy, for nothing more than worshipping the same God but in a different way. With the influx of nobility, the rich and powerful, the merchants and the common folk came the priests also.
The city was already rife with people, with too many people. Almost all of Ambrosius' army were on the streets in an attempt to keep order but it was impossible. They were too few and there were just too many people.
Drunk men fought, and the fighting spread into the streets. Tavern keepers demanded recompense for broken furniture and claimed it with the fists of the big men hired for the time of the council to defend it. Knives were drawn and blood often spilled.
I was on the streets with Aglovale and half a dozen men. We knocked drunken heads together and sent them home. Others were dragged to the dungeons under the fortress or barracks, where they'd stay with the cold and the damp and the rats until the council was over and the Aglovale even hanged a couple of men who had killed when the knives were drawn. There was no trial. He simply put a noose around the guilty man's neck, threw the other end of the rope over the branch of a tree or a sign protruding from one of the buildings and a couple of the men would haul on it until the man was lifted high. I had seen many men executed before, but they had all been beheadings. Beheadings could be messy, but they were always quick. I had never seen a hanging before and I watched with a grisly fascination as the hanged men kicked desperately as they swung, and the way they pissed and shit themselves as they were slowly strangled by the rope and their own weight. Often a couple of soldiers would pull on a leg each to speed the man's journey to hell along.
The sight of a man kicking beneath the rope soon stilled any disturbance. If you ever see something kicking off that is threatening to spiral out of control, just grab someone, anyone, and hang him up for everyone to see. 'Seeing a hanging man and knowing they could be next soon takes the fight of them.' Aglovale grinned wolfishly.
'What if it just angers everyone more?' I asked.
'Well then you're buggered anyway.' Aglovale shrugged carelessly. 'Just keep your shield up and pray for rain.'
'Rain?' I thought I had misheard.
'Nothing kills a riot faster than rain.' Aglovale shrugged. 'Hard to stay in a frenzy when you're piss-wet through and freezing your bollocks off. The rain puts out the fires, the brands and in the belly.'
Over a score of people died by the quay when a warrior from Kernow discovered his sister amongst a Hibernian's score of slaves and attacked them in a bid to free her. The Hibernians, more numerous than the men from Kernow, killed him and his three companions easily enough but a crowd of men who had witnessed it, filled with those that hated the Hibernian raiders and those that smelled plunder in violence began to press at them, shouting angrily. The slaves strained to get away, to escape but an Hibernian slaver hit at them with a cudgel, only to be struck by a shard of tile that split his head open and knocked him down to lay in a puddle of blood.
Another Hibernian went down, and another. Their comrades managed to haul one back but were driven back by the thrown missiles from their second friend and people fell on the injured man with a vengeance, thrusting at him with knives and rocks to half stab and half batter the man to death. The Hibernians retreated back from the violence of the crowd, heading back towards where their boat was tied against the quay. Some slaves were being knocked down too, but nobody cared about them. They followed the Hibernians, baying for blood and as the Hibernian reached their ship, they found only more danger as two men used an abandoned shield to carry burning coals onto their boat. The Hibernians desperately tried to beat at the coals but they were pinned by the hailstorm of stones that rattled on the decks around them and another was knocked unconscious by a rock. Meanwhile the others dived into the water of the river as their ship began to smoke and catch alight. They left their unconscious companion there, unable to save him, and he awoke onto a blazing hull, his clothes alight. His screams were terrible, and the smell of burning flesh. People laughed at him and continued to throw stones at him, knocking him back down as he stumbled, screaming profusely until he fell over the side of the hull into the water. He did not remerge from the surface of the water.
On either side of the burning boat, sailors rushed to get their ships away from the flames. Fire is a sailor's worst fear, more so even than drowning. Soldiers arrived at last, and they used shields and cudgels to try and beat back the crowds but were beaten back by ever growing crowd of people.
Merchants were hastily packing their wears away before they could be swept up in the chaos. Slaves were attacking their owners in a bid for freedom, and in the middle of the crowd were men who screamed 'Pagans' at the Hibernians. The Hibernians were no pagans, they were more Christian than the Britons! A priest named Patrick had brought Christianity to Hibernia, and apparently driven both snakes and paganism from its shores. But the Hibernians were the enemies of the Britons, they raided the coastlines and they took slaves and people ignored the fact that the Britons raided the Hibernians just as much. Men from that green island were trying to carve out kingdoms on the British mainland, northwest of the wall and they raided deep into Rheged while trying to push the borders of the Votadini eastwards.
It was not just the Hibernians who were being attacked. 'Pagans.' Screamed the Catholic priests with shrill, piercing hatred. 'Heretics.'
The crowd was being whipped into a frenzy of hate and violence. Still it grew and still the priests urged it on. 'Though shall not kill.' said the Lord but not his representatives on this earth. 'Burn.' They howled.
Not everyone cared about religion or God but they smelled plunder. Merchants too slow to hide their wealth lost it, and some lost their lives too as men beat at them, breaking or cutting fingers to free the gold and silver rings. Buildings were burning. This riot may have started like a bushfire ignited from embers, but it was being given a direction and that direction was aimed at those Christians who followed Pelegian's teachings but on the way their establishments were hounded. Men broke down tavern doors and drank greedily from the barrels, slaying anyone foolish enough to protest.
Women were taken. They were prostitutes. Some of them accepted what was coming and lay there, telling themselves it was no different than any other night, there would just be no payment. They would be battered and torn after today, they might even be pregnant but they would be alive. Some spit and cursed and fought and the men beat the girls, breaking their beauty with their fists as they forced themselves upon them.
Meanwhile priests screamed at the girls. 'Hussy,' they snarled, many to those who had serviced them weekly. The women amongst the crowd cut jealously at the taken prostitutes. They slashed at them, sawing blades at their hair and slashing their faces, spoiling the girls' beauty forever, those that survived their wounds anyway.
They were approaching the huge church that was the principal place of worship for those followers in Viroconium, and thus all of Britain. The crowd was met by a man in simple, clean cloth before the building.
'Britons.' He was an old man. His hair was as white as his clothes, his face was heavily wrinkled so that it seemed to sag but he looked kindly, with soft eyes and a voice that was still surprising strong for someone so old, but it was strengthened from a lifetime of sermons that would carry his ringing, rich tones to every ear turned towards him. 'We are all Christians here. We are all one people. Why do you attack your countrymen? There are women and children here.'
The crowd that had beaten back soldiers who had dominated battlefields the length and breadth of the country were checked by this lone old man. They were stopped by his courage, the softness and vulnerability of him, and by the power with which he spoke to them. There was an aura of goodness about this man. He cared nothing for the rivalries of religion, only for the goodness of all people, be they Christians or not. He believed in the good of people, which was why I suppose he followed the teachings of Pelagius, for he believed that people were born inherently good and it is only evil actions that condemn us to the eternal torments of hell.
And now he held back the mob, alone, with nothing but the power of his personality.
But then a rock hit him in the face. He staggered back. Somehow he stayed on his feet and he raised his hands spreading them to hold the people back. Blood had split his forehead, running in a line down his face to stain the white robes but his spell was broken. 'Heretics.' The Catholic priests bayed in blood crazed fervour. 'Burn in hell.' And the mob of people surged forwards again in euphoric zealousness.
The wounded priest did not take a step backwards. Like Moses before the Red Sea he stood, lifting his arms as if to halt the rush but there was no stopping this tide. They swept by him to bang on the barricaded doors that would not break before them. On the other side of the doors some men desperately put their weight against them to add their support to the sturdy barricades. A press of women, children and elderly folk stood in the middle of the church, clutching at loved ones and flinching away from the rocks that were hurled through the high windows, thankfully too far above the ground for anyone to climb through. People prayed for God and their king to save them.
Outside the church the priest lay on the ground, his body broken. He had been knocked to the ground and trampled by the press. His ribs were cracked and his ankle was facing the wrong way. His nose had been flattened and bled from both nostrils and he had lost another two teeth. It was hard to see that his clothes had ever been white now, so stained were they with red and brown. Still he tried to rise, calling weakly through his breathlessness to try and calm the people but he was struck again. A priest, the wandering priest from Demetia who had been at the riot from the beginning hit him. 'Death to heretic.' He screamed fanatically, his eyes wild with excitement. 'Bring nails.'
The bloodlust of the crowd was up and men found the nails and despite his weak protests they dragged him towards the doors of his own church. 'Don't do this.' He called out, not to the men who would nail him to the doors, but to everyone. His voice was cracked but still kindly and somehow it still carried. 'This is blasphemy. It is actions like this that condemn us.'
But the Demetian priest spat in his face and nodded at the men and they hammered the first nail into his wrist. The scream was awful. You could hear it over the crowd.
He was only a couple of feet from the ground but the priest was nailed in Christ's pose against the doorway. But the crowd were not done yet. Men carried burning brands and now they threw them high. The church was Roman walled, but the tiles were mostly broken and had been replaced with thatch and almost immediately the flames began to catch and spread and burn.
At the rear of the riot we still tried to beat them back but we were so few. Soldiers were working desperately to stop the city from burning down and two hundred men were there to stop well over a thousand rioters. We crouched in line of three ranks as rocks battered against our shields.
'And forwards.' Aglovale roared and we pushed forwards again, holding our shields up against the rioters. I peaked over my shield and felt a rock glance from my helmet, seeming to ring my brain from the inside so that I had to shake my head. It was painful. 'Jesus bloody Christ!' I shouted in anger, pain, frustration and not a little fear.
Other men had been struck, and I saw there was a scattering of half a dozen men on the floor that were behind us. We were getting closer to the crowd now, so that they melted back from us, moving on again away. Ahead the church was burning, the flames reaching high into the sky. Smoke billowed thick and black. Rain, I thought. Let it rain.
Nothing kills a riot like rain, Aglovale had said, but the sun was shining and the fires raged.
There was a crash as the beams broke beneath the fire, and the screams in the church grew. The old stone walls seemed to glow with the heat, and the old mortar between them cracked and smoked. I felt my heart ache at the thought of the people in the church. My people. Britons who had sought sanctuary in the building of their faith, of the God they shared with the people persecuting them.
And suddenly a horn blew.
The note was long and loud, carrying over the maddened shouts of the mob, and the terrible cries of the trapped.
The storm of stones that rained upon our shields ceased for the moment and I lowered mine enough to see over the top of it to see people pointing beyond us. I risked a glance back and saw horsemen charging, and for a moment I thought that it was Lancelot but then I saw the banner and saw that it was much, much worse than that.
It was Enniaun Girt, and for the first time I understood the name Uther Pendragon.
He was terrifying, a vision of iron. His helmet was down, encasing most of his face but you could see the snarl of his mouth. Beneath the helm his eyes seemed to burn like the fire his badge of the dragon promised. There were no wooden cudgel in his hand either, nor that of his men. Instead their swords were held high, so that every man and woman in that crowd could see the naked blades. 'Get out the way.' Aglovale was shouting desperately, and I realised that we were as likely to be ridden down as the rioters. Fear hit me and I felt myself scrambling desperately for the edge of the street just in time to see the horsemen thunder past.
We had been two hundred men and we had not been able to even check the crowd. Now twenty men routed them.
The Votadini warriors rode in two tightly formed ranks that Lancelot's knights would have been proud of. Between the ranks rode three men, one of them with the huge banner of the dragon billowing in the wind behind them and death lay before the dragon. On either side of the man bearing the flag were men to protect him in the melee, to stop him being pulled from his horse and the banner taken.
Not that there would be a melee. People were already running. The anger was gone. Now there was just terror. Death was coming for them.
The riders showed no mercy to those fleeing them. They crashed their horses into the backs of the people, and the horses reared and kicked at people, crushing skulls.
Horses bucked and bit as they had been trained to do, and all the while the blades swept down as the men cut a road through the people that were fleeing, leaving broken and bleeding bodies behind them.
'Jesus bloody Christ.' I breathed. I had used those exact words only minutes before but now the context was completely changed. Before I had been afraid, in pain and confused to how we were ever meant to put down this riot. I had watched in horror as these people had nailed a priest to a door and had thrown burning brands onto the thatched roof. Now I was silently urging them to run faster, to get out of the way. To escape the vengeance that had come for them in the form of Uther Pendragon.
Aglovale was more ruthless though. 'Up.' He shouted at his men. 'Follow them.' We moved in a rough formation, sort of square that pushed into the devastation. From there Aglovale pushed out small sections of men to snatch people we had seen were ringleaders. 'Culhwch. There!" I heard Aglovale shout at me, pointing with his cudgel and I saw the Demetian priest stumbling away, his face streaked with blood from where a horse had bitten deep into the left side of his face. I led the small section of men under me and ran towards him. Some of his followers tried to defend him by blocking our way but I punched the rim of my shield into one's face and swung my cudgel with a mighty blow into the head of another that dropped him to the ground, probably cracking his skull in the process.
The priest tried to get away from us, but I swept his legs away from him with my cudgel and sank my boot deep into his ribs. A knife flashed at me but I swayed away from it, looking to see that it was a woman in a grubby shrift who slashed at me in wild cuts but one of my men punched her so hard she was lifted from her feet before she fell. 'Bloody bitch.' He spat on her as she shakily stirred on the ground,
'Grab his other side.' I said, motioning to the right arm of the priest. I had gripped my cudgel with my shield hand, and now I hefted under the armpit of the priest on one side. Waited for the other soldier to sling his shield over his back so that he could use his free arm to pull him and we began to pull him, covered by the other eight men back to the ring of our soldiers while behind us the priest still nailed to the church cried breathlessly to God for mercy as the door he was nailed to caught fire.