Warrior of the West by M. K. Hume Read Free Book Online Page B

than his tantrums, and he was a superb steward.
    After all the courtesies had been completed, Artor and his captains rode back through the darkening, cobbled streets to rejoin their troops. Women bowed low over their baskets, while small children and young boys ran parallel with the horsemen, whooping and shouting excitedly like savages, but the welcome wasn’t as warm as in the Celtic towns. The king understood. The people of Aquae Sulis were Roman in their thinking and, although Artor had been raised in the ancient traditions, his amber hair and his great height marked him forever as a sympathetic stranger. And so he cherished the bowed heads of the citizens, for such respect held more worth for him than the wild homage of the more volatile tribes. Artor knew that Roman Britain would never fail him.
    Aquae Sulis, queen of cities, Artor thought, as he dismounted and looked back in the direction from which he had come.
    Situated on a branch of the old Roman road, Aquae Sulis seemed awash with a multitude of contrasting pastel colours in the light of the afternoon sun. In its soft, fertile lowlands, the city glowed with old stonework, jetting water fountains, and painted walls that brought rainbows to tangible life. The delicate mosaic floors that were intertwined with dolphins, sea creatures and brilliant, tessellated fish seduced those Celts who had never seen the wonders of a Roman city, or experienced the delights of a Roman bath. The complicated rituals of hygiene, which many Celts had adopted in the time of their Roman conquerors, came as a sybaritic delight to the novices.
    The Celtic warriors weren’t excessively clean by habit. Britain was a cold country for the most part, and lacked the hot, sometimes steamy weather and disease-breeding humours of Rome. But the Roman invaders had prized personal hygiene, so public bathing was now enjoyed by all the citizens of the city. With oils to remove deeply ingrained grime, hot water to open the pores of the skin and cold water to close them, men and women could turn cleanliness into a luxurious experience. Wherever the Romans travelled in the world, they brought the notion of public bathing with them, along with the heated floors that were a by-product of the calidarium, so Roman towns such as Aquae Sulis, with its plentiful mineral springs, became thriving centres of sophistication.
    The pleasures of Aquae Sulis were only possible because Artor determined to rest his men for twenty-four hours, ostensibly to replenish their rations. In reality, Artor wished to pay a short social visit to Ector, his foster-father, at the Villa Poppinidii where his life had once been so simple and peaceful. Besides, the very fibre of his being demanded that he should gaze once more upon the lovely face of Licia, his beautiful daughter, who was being raised by Ector. The child was ignorant of her noble connections, for Artor had made the hard choice to relinquish his daughter for her protection. Frith’s great-grandson, Gareth, was her sworn bodyguard, and only those trusted intimates who had known the king’s first wife knew Artor’s deepest and most closely guarded secret.
    Artor had only to close his eyes and the faces of ancient, beloved Frith and his beautiful Gallia were there with him, faint and translucent with the passage of the years. Frith had fulfilled her oath to her dearly loved master, the boy Artorex, and died protecting his heavily pregnant wife. Regrets! Rage at his long dead father, Uther Pendragon, who had demanded their deaths, surfaced out of Artor’s repressed memories, with the same heat that he had felt before that old monster was dead.
    So, once the captains had been briefed on the behaviour expected of their warriors during their sojourn in Aquae Sulis, Artor rode out of the camp in company with Caius and Targo. The High King left his staff in no doubt that any infringements of discipline by his warriors were to be punished without mercy. Artor always insisted that