Morgana's Handmaid and the Creature of the Dungeon Page 5

  The room fell completely quiet now, with only the crackling embers and our sighs interrupting the silence. Was she deceased? If so when had she died? How long had he been down here alone? I felt compassion for the poor fellow and instinctively wanted to care for him. My life as I’d known it only a few hours before; was now over. Maybe this was to be my fate. Maybe I’d simply have to remain with this sad, lonely man. What’s more perhaps my very purpose in life was becoming clearer.

  We sat like that for several minutes, while Alguin dipped his head and sobbed quietly, which amazed me since I’d never seen such a big, virile man weep openly. My formerly menacing-looking jailer turned out to be a big strong man who missed his wife terribly. Either she was gone completely or perhaps she’d left him, I didn’t yet know. Yet the depth of his grief indicated he was quite more than just missing her back at home. She was no longer alive, I could tell.

  I stroked him and caressed his shoulders a bit, even got up and fixed us both a mug of ale from a barrel nearby. For a long while, and I’ll never know just how long, he sat there and sulked, mulling over his feelings and seemingly appreciating the new company he had. I remained silent too; sitting close to him and waiting for him to speak, and over a long period of time, he did begin to relax and feel comfortable sitting close to me. I, too, felt less dread and more and more compassion for my captor. Furthermore, my heart warmed at the thought that I was likely no longer in any sort of danger. I’d done what I could to calm the situation and save myself. I let him take all the time he needed to warm up to me.

  I wanted him to decide that I was a kind and sincere person that he could trust. That was my first goal you see. I wanted him to believe that he had a true friend now that he could talk to. After all, God only knew how many years he’d been suffering down here missing his wife; and with no one else to console him. Yet this is precisely what I knew how to do, having been through this already with first M’lady, then with Lorelei. And now here I found myself sitting with this very tall and very large, soot-covered, quite brokenhearted dungeon master. After a long period of silence and a few gulps of ale, he eventually opened up.

  In a low, growling sort of voice which occasionally cleared up as he got to use it more and more, he spoke emotionlessly while constantly having to clear his throat from phlegm that had built up from breathing sooty air. I patted his arm at times when he seemed to fall silent from having to choose his words carefully, or from simply not remembering how to say something in clear English. This was a man who’d not spoken to others in some time. His world was tragic, his existence very hermit-like, and his primary function as a dungeon master belied his kindly human disposition which became more and more revealed to me.

  A thought gradually came to me that I needed to be here; and that the circumstances of my arrival in this dismal cavern were perhaps orchestrated by something beyond human construction. Merlin had indeed saved me, but it seemed there was something even more wonderful going on in my life at that moment. I was going to be able to help this poor soul, way down here in this hellish cave.

  Over the course of that evening and for that matter throughout the night I assume—since there was no way to perceive the passage of time in that dank dungeon—Alguin went on to tell me about how his wife had died years ago of fever. She was childless when she passed away, and with her passing this had left him to toil away in the dungeon the rest of his life alone. He said he’d once been a soldier serving his feudal lord—a gallant “Man-at-Arms” as they were called.

  This made sense really, because the man I was seeing before me certainly had scars that I could detect on his body as my eyes became more accustomed to the fire-lit glow. He was such a big specimen too! The thought even occurred to me that I’d found the right man to avenge what had happened to me, if I could only befriend him and set him loose on the awful people who’d betrayed me. However, that idea passed quickly. I dismissed it and sought instead an even higher path of understanding and compassion for this human being in need. He’d been a soldier once, then a mercenary he said, and when his fighting days were over he’d tried to settle down with a wife.

  “But years ago,” he told me, “while stripped to the waist bathing myself in a pond, my curved back was noticed by a rather prickly monk who accused me of being marked by the devil with this afflicted vile deformity.” That’s how Alguin worded it, imitating the high-pitched voice of some long-dead monk who’d once turned his life upside down. The other tough men in his troop at first laughed and nicknamed him “Vile”; mimicking the Monk’s overly dramatic words. Yet the monk’s accusations later caused quite an uproar in the nearby village.

  “Maybe he wanted to draw attention to himself,” observed Alguin, “or maybe he was filled with religious zeal. At the time I was not sure which. But those peasants were easily swayed to fear and openly reject me.” He said he’d recently done the villagers a great service of some kind; but once accused of demonic possession due to his deformed back, his happy life was altered dramatically, much like mine had been. Soon, Alguin and his young wife were literally run right out of the village. They fled for their lives, becoming fugitives from society.

  “Up until that point,” Alguin explained, “we’d been nomads of a sort already, living together as lovers and traveling with a band of mercenaries looking for work.” But the monk’s accusations of being “marked by Satan,” meant they could no longer stay in that village where their unit was stationed—and for that matter not anywhere else it seemed. “We became outcasts,” he snarled; and in his almost permanently damaged voice from years of breathing foul air, Alguin described their plight.

  “We nearly starved. But I did my best to hunt and gather food for my young wife, whilst she in turn struggled to make a home for us in the woods. Repeatedly, we’d be discovered by villagers who’d heard we wast outcasts, and we’d move again. Yet soon the autumn was ending, winter was nearing, and we knew not what to do. We couldn’t go far, ’ere we’d hast to make camp. Though I of course was accustomed to living off the land, neither of us was so well adapt’d to living in the forest. Despairing for her safety, and not able to leave her for long while I look’d for food, I became desperate.” As Alguin said this, his face was pained with tortured memories.

  “Then, amazingly enough, we wast saved,” he continued, “and by a person who had the power to intervene.” When he said that, I knew in my heart who he meant! And sure enough it was Merlin the magician who came to Alguin’s aid and eventually created for him a brand-new identity as Vile, the dreaded Dungeon Keeper.

  To remain safe from suspicious peasants, Alguin and Allora then moved into a secret cottage deep in the woods, hollowed out from a cave in the hillside. They were led there by Merlin himself. Suddenly they had shelter and safety throughout the night; and the young couple soon began planning for a family.

  “The house—I mean cottage of course—was a filthy mess,” Alguin told me; and between the two of them they had to soldier all their combined domestic skills to make it into something resembling a home. But it was a joyful yet laborious process that drew the young couple even closer together. I could sense that in Alguin’s facial expressions. His eyes revealed more than his words and I felt like I could begin to understand what it must be like to finally have a companion. Someone to share a challenge with and see it through to completion.

  In the woods they were safe from detection, and yet they could still hunt small game, fish, and tend a garden; so they had plenty of food to get through the winter. Alguin would work in the dungeon at night while Allora awaited his return every morning right before dawn. Working throughout the night interrogating prisoners, Vile would return home to sleep most of the afternoon while Allora knitted and cooked and kept house for them. Alguin, with Merlin’s help, perfected this secret identity, and took full advantage of the deep caverns to create a dungeon that terrified prisoners accused of treason or religious heresy.

  “Merlin, for his part, whenever detecting a potential rival
to Arthur or someone who could threaten the peace of the kingdom, would simply recommend he send them to me, to extract a confession,” he told me. “It made sense, having me perform this task,” he confessed humbly.

  What an understatement! After all, he was a violent man with a past, and he knew things—terrible things. How to hurt, how to intimidate, how to terrorize, and best of all how to make prisoners abandon any shred of hope, until all they could possibly yearn for was to confess their guilt and beg for a quick death.

  “Allora never ask’d me for details of what I did to get those confessions of course,” he explained. “I did what I had to do, so to force prisoners to admit to whatever plot they were involved with or swear on their lives that they were indeed completely loyal to Arthur. Some were released, but many met their untimely end under the blade of my axe.”

  Alguin—dressed as Vile—would appear in public only to perform the actual executions and send the message to those who witnessed it, that justice had been served. Such was the price for treason. Allora meanwhile adapted to their new life in the woods. To perpetuate the image of Vile as a creature-like being, Allora knitted him robes to wear which disguised his identity, and the local tanner made him a hood and leather harness to wear when he was “working.” Therefore he looked every bit as terrifying as he needed to be, and his appearance instilled fear in everyone.

  It wasn’t a life they wanted to lead, mind you, but then again there was little to no danger of Alguin dying in combat far away in some foreign land fighting for Arthur or any of his royal successors. “Allora pointed this out to me many times” he said, “and I in turn appreciated her acceptance of my role in keeping order.” Months passed, and Alguin quickly succeeded in making his alter ego “Vile” into a recognizable figure in the kingdom. He could become Vile at work, then abandon the persona when morning came. That’s when he could go home to his loving wife as Alguin once again.

  Alguin said, “For the rest of the year we liv’d like this, in secret. I was Vile by night, Alguin by day…unless ’twas behoveful to perform an execution in the morning. Allora nev’r saw any of this, and remain’d at the cottage. I protect’d our identities fiercely, and in so doing we had a peaceful existence. Allora nev’r did become pregnant, but we lov’d each other and enjoy’d our quiet life in the woods. Time passed, and we wonder’d perhaps if it would only be the two of us the rest of our lives. But then unexpectedly, Allora fell very ill that following winter,” he said, with a frown forming on his sooty face. “At first, it was just a head cold, then it turned into a raspy cough, then she became bedridden.”

  Alguin tried desperately to care for her, and Merlin indeed helped as best he could. But it was no use. Allora got worse and worse; and within a month she had withered away. Alguin would return home in the morning from working all night in the dungeon to find the cottage freezing cold. Allora would be too weakened to get up and light a fire for herself. “Finally,” he revealed, “I returned home one morning and found to my despair that she had passed away in the night.”

  Alguin began to weep softly for a few moments. He then continued in a distressed tone, “For weeks, I’d tried to cope with the slow fading decline of my wife’s condition. And yet I couldst not seek a caregiv’r to watch over her, lest they find out my identity and once again be persecuted for witchcraft. Thither was no way to move her, nay any possible way to take her into town. Allora, too, had escaped from a previous life you see, and that’s how we’d met, so revealing her identity would cullion disaster. My identity had to remain completely concealed, and there was absolutely no way I couldst reveal where we liv’d. In my own mind, I was forced to let her die alone in that cottage. I regretted it, wish’s I’d risked exposure and yea even death to get help for her. But there was no way to treat her condition, and naïve peasants would surely shun and fear anyone who’d caught fever because they’d likely contract it themselves.”

  Finishing his story, he bowed his head and sobbed quietly for a while. I meanwhile embraced his big shoulders with my head resting against his thick arm and let him grieve for her—let him get it all out of his system, just like I did with Lorelei. No telling how many years he’d had this bitter anguish bottled up inside of him…

  Chapter 4

  Story of Alguin

  In the days and weeks after Allora’s death, even for several months following, Alguin said he wept bitterly night after night, wailing and moaning as he grieved in that awful dungeon. His terrifying and maddening cries could occasionally be heard from underneath the castle, too, as Alguin suffered and longed for his wife. And yet through it all he blamed that arrogant, nasty little monk; personifying his resentment and allowing the prickly fellow to serve as the target of his regular tirades. The effect it had on nearby villagers and later the builders of Castle Camelot, was quite effective in a different way though. The terrible screams were said to be those of the tormented souls of prisoners who’d been tortured and died in the dungeon below. In my two years working in Camelot, I’d also heard of this phenomenon, but now I knew the source behind it.

  Yet ironically enough—or perhaps as some bizarre twist of fate—that very same monk who’d accused him years earlier ended up being sent to Vile’s dungeon for interrogation. Alguin told me this with a menacing, almost unnerving grin; and this part of Alguin’s story fascinated me the most. I’d heard about it years before, but never knew the sordid details. It was a scandal that was certainly far more interesting than anything else going on that year; and the rumors that flew about failed to keep pace with the truth when it was finally revealed to me by my captor. It happened before I met Morgana and got recruited to come be her handmaid at Camelot. By then the story had made it around the whole county.

  What I’d originally heard was that a dishonest monk in a village near Camelot had been collecting indulgences on behalf of the Catholic Church and embezzling the valuables he’d acquired. It was found out eventually, and it caused quite a controversy. Indulgences were, in my opinion anyway, no more than bribes that villagers and noblemen could pay to a priest for forgiveness of their sins. The bigger the sin, the bigger the indulgence the priest might encourage—as a “donation” to the church of course. But this unscrupulous monk decided he’d like to keep his collected offerings for himself. This had been going on for some time, and only when suspicions arose within his monastery about pilfered tithings, did the monk figure he’d best beat a hasty exit.

  From the outset what he was doing was offering peasants an opportunity to trade indulgences for their time working the church’s barley fields. This was a common practice mind you, but when no workers showed up to harvest crops or till the soil, the fields suffered terribly from a lack of labor as peasants found they could simply pay off the monk and he’d mark their names on his roster. The peasants probably loved the arrangement, but over time the church began to notice the neglect.

  When the matter was investigated further, it was discovered that peasants had indeed been buying him off with donated valuables, and when the unscrupulous cleric couldn’t produce proof of this, it was his word against theirs. At the end of the day it was his job to keep and maintain the ledger of people showing up to do their field duty. In reality, he was fencing the acquired property through connections he’d made among what he’d thought were local thieves and black-market traders. That much I’d already heard about. But Alguin told me a lot more about the monk and the plot he was connected with.

  “He was facing inquiry within the church itself,” Alguin told me, in his gravelly voice which I was slowly getting used to, “and had only two clear choices: come forward with his stash of wealth and face the consequences, or try and make a run for it. He made the wrong decision unfortunately.” Thus began the rest of the story as told to me by Alguin—the part I never knew.

  “The little man had been planning on fleeing with all the loot you see?” explained my captor. “But soon he fell into working with a gang of thieves who turned out to be rebels supporting A
rthur’s enemies. What’s more they were plotting to arm a large band of brigands to ambush the royal bodyguard and assassinate King Arthur while he was hunting in the forest.” The monk had no idea of their dastardly plan to murder Arthur.

  “I personally hath no idea how the fool became associated with such scum in the first place,” observed Alguin, “however the deceitful crook was merely using them to help stash his horde and help him eventually flee with his plunder. Naturally he had to give them a share of his wealth to keep them quiet. Therefore, when the plot was detected the unfortunate fellow became suspected of financing their entire operation!”

  It most certainly could have looked that way since the thieves had been trading with those donated valuables to buy weapons and supplies for their operation. “Once the plot was exposed, he became associated with the conspiracy,” Alguin added.

  Now to be fair, the poor fellow certainly deserved to be exposed and defamed in public for his crimes of stealing tithings to the church; but he certainly was no traitor to the crown. That said, he found himself sitting in the docket with the entire gang, decrying the injustice of it throughout the proceedings and arrogantly professing his innocence when it came time for trial. He must have been quite shocked to see his words continuously falling upon deaf ears.

  “One by one they were led into the courtroom in chains to be tried for their crime of plotting against the king,” continued Alguin. “They would be convicted—Arthur fully believed—offered a chance to confess and summarily sentenced to death. If they didn’t confess, they would be sent to me for interrogation. Everyone assumed the conspirators would take the easiest path and accept a quick death. So it would have seemed anyway! Instead, that stubborn parson promptly refused, stubbornly believing the church would intervene on his behalf.”