Gwyddon watched without comment.
"You've heard what happened?" she finally asked.
"Of course."
"Ill tidings travel quickly in Wales."
"In Wales is there any other kind of tiding?"
"What King Edward is doing makes no sense." She shook her head, as bewildered as she was still horror-stricken. "Does he expect to win people over when he appoints someone like Corotocus and gives him a free hand? How does he think he'll gain his subjects' love?"
"You are mistaken in thinking that he wants their love," Gwyddon said. "In these far reaches of Britain, he is content to have their fear."
"You don't seem disturbed by that."
"Why should I be? As you say, we are rats living in holes. And who drove us here? Not the English, not the Normans — the Welsh."
"Pah! In other countries you'd have been exterminated."
"We'd have been exterminated here had Christian monks had their way. Only the sympathies of certain noble families ensure our survival. Your family for instance, countess."
She stood up abruptly. "Don't mistake me for someone I'm not, Gwyddon. I don't sympathise with heathens."
"So why tolerate us in your domain?"
His voice was deep, melodious. He peered down at her, his eyes glinting. The emerald vapour writhed around his tall, enrobed form like a brood of ethereal vipers.
"I… I…" Countess Madalyn was briefly entranced by the vision. "I… don't believe in slaughter."
"You didn't believe in slaughter once," he corrected her. "Why else are you here now?"
"They've taken my daughter."
"I know."
The countess was even more bewildered. How could he know about that? How could he even know about Corotocus's deception? Word of the disaster would travel, but she had come straight here, walking stiff and lame like one dead, but tarrying neither to talk with folk nor to look back over her shoulder. She'd taken short routes through dark woods and hidden valleys that were known only to a chosen few. As her anger ebbed, the countess was increasingly aware of the mystery in this strange, subterranean realm. Its ceiling was speckled with a million tiny lights, like stars in a miniature cosmos. The images on the walls appeared to have moved or changed since she had first seen them. The air was heavy with intoxicating fragrance.
"M-my daughter is all that matters to me," she stammered. "I won't stand by and allow her to be abducted."
"And yet there's nothing you can do. Most of your own warriors went to serve Madog or Anwyl… and now lie slain."
"Can you help me?"
"Ahhh, so we get to the crux of it."
"Don't play games with me, Gwyddon! You know why I'm here."
"It will cost you."
"Cost me?"
"We have no country, Countess Madalyn. No sense of people. Your plight is unfortunate, but of no great concern to us. If your nation was driven en masse to the chopping block and beheaded one by one, my chief regret would be the waste of so much sacrificial blood."
"And how much will it cost me?" She appraised the gold moon-crescent pendant on his breast, the gem-encrusted rings on his fingers, the silver dragon-head pin clasping his robe. "I'd imagine the greater the supplicant, the higher the price?"
"How much do you offer, countess?"
"If you can guarantee the safe return of my daughter…" She faltered briefly, but steeled herself. "If you can guarantee the safe return of my daughter, and the destruction of Earl Corotocus… I will give you half my wealth, half my lands. And protection for you and your sect for as long as there's breath in my body."
He smiled thinly. "Not enough."
At first Countess Madalyn thought she'd misheard. Only in fables and folklore had such a reward been offered.
"Not nearly enough," he added.
"You ask me to beggar myself?"
"I ask nothing of the kind. You can keep your earthly goods, if they mean so much to you."
"In God's name, what do you want?"
He pursed his lips, which, now that she was close to him, looked redder than blood. "No more, countess, and no less than an equal share in the power your victory will bring."
"Power? I seek only the return of my daughter."
"And the destruction of an English marcher lord."
"I only ask that because I know I'll have no choice."
"Countess Madalyn, you will have no choice come what may. If Earl Corotocus dies they'll send someone else, and you'll need to destroy him as well. And the one after that. And the one after that."
"What are you asking… that I start a full-scale war?"
"How many more of your villages must they burn? How many people must they hang? Full-scale war is already upon you."
"The uprising has been crushed with horrendous loss of life. If I were to start another now, it would mean an apocalypse for Wales and its people."
"Your people need only a leader — a proper leader. Someone fearless and respected. You could fill that role, countess. Just as Boudicca did twelve centuries ago. The difference is that, unlike Boudicca, you will have me — and I will ensure that the apocalypse falls on England."
"How?" she asked.
"Allow me to show you."
CHAPTER FIVE
Doctor Zacharius was born the younger son of a wealthy merchant in Bristol.
Initially, he did not promise much, though this only lasted a short time. Despite an indolent youth and an alarming lack of interest in the family shipwright business, he soon showed an aptitude for learning. In response to this, his father sent him to a monastery, so that he could train for the priesthood. But, in various ways, Zacharius blotted his copybook with the holy fathers, and, after much soul-searching, his father took him out of the Lord's care and paid for him to attend the medical school of St. Gridewilde's at Oxford University.
The beneficiary of a generous stipend, Zacharius here became a renowned frequenter of taverns and brothels, but at the same time embarked, at last, on a serious course of study. He was fortunate in that his personal tutor, a Franciscan friar, who had once been a devoted student of Canon Grosseteste, taught medicine without mysticism and introduced Zacharius to a Latin translation of the Kitab al-Tasrif, an Islamic treatise dedicated to the science of surgery, an in-depth analysis of which, though he didn't realise it at the time, would raise the young medical student far above the level of the common garden barber-surgeons, whose butcher-shop clumsiness had given the surgical arts so bad a name for so many decades. Zacharius was so inspired by this venerable tome that, on completion of his studies, he paid from his own pocket to have a personal copy made.
His first position after graduation was with the Premonstratensian abbey-hospital at Titchfield, in Hampshire, where, though he was regarded as an all-round skilled practitioner, he particularly excelled with the surgeon's knife. When a novice at the abbey — a nephew of the abbot no less — was brought in from the fields with a severely broken leg, Zacharius, taking his cue from the Kitab al-Tasrif, performed a delicate invasive operation, opening the damaged limb cleanly, repairing the shattered bone, then sewing the wound up and applying splints, and all while the casualty was insensible through a herbal-induced anaesthesia. Within a few months, the novice had completely recovered, with almost no ill effects.
The abbot was so impressed that he spread the word, until it reached the ear of his cousin, Earl Corotocus of Clun, who was in search of a medical expert of his own. When Earl Corotocus offered him a post, Zacharius at first resisted. His cell at Titchfield Abbey was different from those of the monks, who were given to asceticism — he had a carpet, a divan, a roaring fire, tapestries on his walls, shelves lined with books. Compared with this luxury, life in a military environment was not so attractive. But, of course, there were still certain things that Zacharius could not have at Titchfield, which Earl Corotocus could provide in abundance, primarily wine, women and song.