Winter's Blossom: The Seasons of Arthur

Chapter 20

Crowds were gathered before the cleared marketplace of Viroconioum. Thousands of people were there, standing before the gallows to watch. There was a cowed feeling upon the city now as soldiers stood with sword and spear today instead of the cudgels. Now the Powysian knights, who had been cheered for so ecstatically two days before watched from horseback on either side of the gallows.

The gallows were a simple structure, hastily constructed overnight. They were essentially a long beam thirty yards across, held in place by a wooden frame on either side with a vertical support in the middle to stop the wood breaking in the middle. Beneath the gallows a platform had been erected on a loose frame upon which nineteen men stood, their hands bound behind them. They were not hooded, and they looked with terror at the people before them. Some had not been ringleaders of any sort, they had just been caught up in the violence and now they stared out at the people of Viroconium, many of whom they had rioted alongside the day before but who were now gathered to watch their execution.

Scores had died in the riots. Someone said as many as two hundred were hurt, many with horrid injuries that were likely to lead to a death as rot sent in. Others still were condemned to a life of begging as a cripple. I thought of the church. I thought of the road of dead and wounded that my uncle and his men had carved through. Cei had been crying when I found him. He was the bearer of my uncle's banner and he had spoken of a woman who had been slashed across the face so that her eyes had been taken. Of children trampled by horses, a boy no older than seven wailing as he stared at the stump of his arm where a hand should have been, and blood now spurted from. A little boy who had been found shaking his unmoving mother, who lay in a puddle of her own blood that leaked from the crushed skull in the back of her head. Cei's first battle had not met his expectation of glory and he buried his face in my shoulder, not caring that I saw his tears and I wondered if I should tell him of an Angle village east of Ratae.

I did not. Instead I thought about the people in the burning church and hardened my heart as I watched the gallows. I thought about how, as we had pulled the Demetian priest away the burning church doors had finally burst open and six people had escaped the inferno. They had not survived though. I had the memory of children in my head too, a memory that still haunts my dreams today, of a little girl who must have had a lot of grease in her hair for, for her hair was ablaze as she screamed. So too were her clothes and as we had tried to put out the flames, banging her, burning our hands as we did so until Aglovale had thrust his sword through her heart. Tears streamed down his face. He had daughters about this age I knew. I stared at the priest now. He was struggling to stay on his feet, and I was not surprised because we had hurt him. We had half killed him already. His face was crusty with blood from where he had been bitted, and a cudgel had broken his eye socket and his eyeball hung out of from it. It must have been agony. I hoped that it was. I still hope so.

A ripple went through the crowd as the clatter or horseshoes was audible, and a string of mounted men arrived. I saw Ambrosius at their head, Enniaun Girt with him and the king of Dumnonia too. His eldest son had died in the riots. I did not realise he had been among those Dumnonian troops with Aglovale and me by the church, had been one of those that had fallen with his head struck by a rock. He had not been wearing a helmet and his skull had cracked and he had died in the night. Now a grieving king would see retribution for his son carried out.

Owain rode with the horsemen. Ambrosius led them and he rode almost frighteningly close to Enniaun, not that he looked at or even acknowledged the existence of his son. Morganna rode with them too, and I saw that she rode next to Owain. She looked happy, excited even and I saw Owain making as much effort not to look at her as his father did to him. The difference being Morganna seemed to be getting a perverse pleasure from trying to engage with Owain. I could not help but wonder what was being said but then my attention was switched as they were left by the side of the platform as the three leaders rode to the front of the platform and faced the crowd. The father of one of the victims, the man who had punished them with death and destruction, and their king who promised more death. The rest of us were left to stand in our small party of onlookers to the side.