Sword at Sunset

by Rosemary Sutcliff

A great wave of relief rose in me, with the next wave of pain, but the pain outstripped the relief so that for a while I could neither see nor think nor even feel save with the feeling of the flesh. Thank God it no longer comes like that – and when at last it ebbed again, the relief that I had known ebbed with it and grew small and thin. ‘How narrow?’

  ‘As when two hounds fight until their flanks are laid open and their throats in ribbons, and one breaks off and runs howling; and yet for both hounds alike, there is no more that they can do for a while and a while save crawl into a dark place and lick their wounds.’ He began to tell me how Connory of Deva had come in together with the Lords of Strathclyde, and were hounding the surviving Saxons and their allies through the reed country and back toward their southern settlements, while Marius was mustering the remains of the war host to regarrison Venta. I did not ask as to Cei and Flavian; I knew. But I asked after a while, ‘How many of the Company lived?’

  ‘Of those that remained with the main action, something under half,’ he said. ‘Of your own squadron, Alun Dryfed and little Hilarian’ – he told off two or three more names – ‘and myself.’

  ‘It is more than I expected,’ I said, ‘but then I did not expect to live myself long enough to hear the tally.’

  ‘Medraut’s men lost heart after he was dead. They ran. After that it was easy.’

  ‘And so we have won another lease of time,’ I said by and by. ‘A few more years, maybe.’

  ‘Do you remember saying, once, that every year we gained would mean that just so much more of Britain would survive when the flood overwhelms us at the last?’ Bedwyr put his face very near my own as though he were trying to reach me across a great distance, as once I had tried to reach him.

  ‘Did I say that? Pray God the truth is in it. I have labored hard to build a Britain strong and united, but it is in my heart that unless Constantine can hold them, the Tribes will have sprung apart once more before three harvests are gathered, and so presently the Saxons will walk in ... Yet maybe we have held the pass long enough for something to survive behind us. I don’t know – I don’t know—’

  And then another time, I think it was another time, I asked Bedwyr when we were alone together, ‘Bedwyr, does the war host know how it is with me?’

  ‘We have told them that you are wounded.’

  ‘Who knows that it is the death wound?’

  ‘Myself and Alun Dryfed, and maybe the reed cutter whom we borrowed with his boat, to bring you here by the swiftest way. The Council must know by now, and Constantine, of course. For the rest, we have let them believe that you are sore wounded and we have taken you up to the monastery for tending. A few may guess, but none will know anything more.’

  ‘That is good. Now listen, my dear; presently there will be more fighting; therefore, lest the Barbarians make a triumph out of my death, and our own soldiers lose heart in the knowledge of it, leave the matter there. Nobody save yourself and the brown Brothers here must see my body once the breath is out of it, and no one must know the place of my grave. So they will maybe fight on with a better heart. You understand?’

  ‘I understand,’ Bedwyr said. He was trying to feed me with warm salted milk all the while, like a woman with a sick child, but my belly would not hold it.

  ‘I think you do. It was for that reason that you brought me here instead of carrying me back to camp with the rest of the wounded, was it not?’

  ‘Try to sleep,’ he said.

  But there was still one thing that I must do. ‘Constantine, send for Constantine.’

  He came, and stood in the doorway until I called him closer; a dark square-set man with his father’s windy fires sunk to a steadier glow in him.

  ‘Constantine, son of Cador, you know that I have no son to hold Britain after me?’

  ‘That I know,’ he said, ‘and I am sorry.’

  ‘Are you? Did the women often tell you how Maximus’s great seal sprang from my sword hilt into your nest of skins beside you, when you were a babe lying at your mother’s feet?’

  ‘The women always tell such things.’

  But he knew as well as I did, why I had sent for him.

  ‘Sometimes they may be worth listening to. Now listen to me. Long since, I set my sealed word in the Council’s keeping, naming you, who are the last of the royal blood, as my heir to come after me. But that will scarcely serve now.’

  He shook his head.

  So I sent for the Father Abbot and his Senior Brethren; Bedwyr I needed not to send for, for he was already there; and with a clerk to make a written record, I called them to witness that Constantine, son of Cador of Dumnonia, is to be High King of Britain after me, and added: ‘Until I come again.’

  And held Constantine’s gaze with my own, until he bowed his head, saying, ‘I am not Artos the Bear, but I will hold Britain as best I may, or may God turn His face away from me.’

  I bade Bedwyr take the great dragon arm ring from above my elbow, and spring it onto Constantine’s arm, and he stood looking down at it, as though he waited. I think he half expected me to add my sword to the gift, until he remembered that it would be taken as certain proof of my death by all who saw him wear it. And yet I knew that in some way I must give it to him; it was his, the Sword of Britain, and carried the High Kingship with it.

  After a long pause, he said, ‘How shall I know when I am in truth the High King?’

  ‘You will not have long to wait,’ I said, thinking only that he was impatient. ‘The death smell has been in the wound for days, now. Does it signify?’

  ‘Because the people will not know? It signifies to me, to know whether I am but Regent or have in truth the right to my sacring.’

  And by his use of the word, I knew that he understood and accepted all that the kingship carried with it.

  And so I knew what I must do with my sword.

  ‘There is a wildfowl mere only a few miles north of this place, and eastward of it the land rises somewhat. Set a watcher there among the alder woods – one that you can trust – and when I am dead, Bedwyr shall bring my sword and throw it into the mere. That shall be your sign. Will it serve?’

  ‘It will serve,’ he said.

  In the red sunset light I can see Bedwyr’s face that is darkened when the lamps are lit, and the angry crusted wound that has laid it open from jaw to temple and drawn out that devil’s eyebrow into a yet wilder flare. And when I fumble up my hand to touch it, it is wet with tears like a woman’s – but I do not think I ever knew Guenhumara weep.

  But there is something changed about him; something lacking ...

  ‘What has happened to your harp, Bedwyr? I have scarcely ever seen you without your harp in all these years.’

  ‘It was torn apart in the fighting. No matter; there will be no more songs.’ His head is low so that I cannot see his face any more; his sound arm under my head, a better pillow than a saddle – as good as a hound’s flank when you sleep beside the watch fire with the apple tree branches overhead.

  But he is wrong. Suddenly I know he is wrong. We have held the Pass long enough – something will remain.

  ‘There will be more songs – more songs tomorrow, though it is not we who shall sing them.’

  Glossary

  Abus River

  Humber

  Anderida

  Pevensey

  Aquae Sulis

  Bath

  Bodotria Estuary

  Firth of Forth

  Burdigala

  Bordeaux

  Calleva

  Silchester

  Castra Cunetium*

  Castledykes

  Cluta

  Clyde

  Combretovium

  Baylam House (Suffolk)

  Corinium

  Cirencester

  Corstopitum

  Corbridge

  Cunetio

  Mildenhall

  Deva

  Chester

  Dubris

  Dover

  Durocobrivae
>
  Dunstable

  Eburacum

  York

  Garumna

  Garonne

  Gaul

  France

  Glevum

  Gloucester

  Isca Dumnoniorum

  Exeter

  Island of Apples

  Glastonbury

  Lindinis

  Ilchester

  Lindum

  Lincoln

  Londinium

  London

  Luguvallium

  Carlisle

  Metaris Estuary

  The Wash

  Môn

  Anglesey

  Narbo Martius

  Narbonne

  Portus Adurni

  Portchester

  Sabrina Sea

  Bristol Channel

  Segedunum

  Wallsend

  Segontium

  Caernarvon

  Sorviodunum

  Old Sarum

  Tamesis

  Thames

  Tolosa

  Toulouse

  Trimontium

  Newstead

  Vectis Water

  The Solent

  Venta Belgarum

  Winchester

  Vindocladia

  Badbury

  Viroconium

  Wroxeter

  Yr Widdfa

  Snowdon

  *Latin name of author’s own invention

  Note on the Author

  Rosemary Sutcliff was a British novelist, best known for her classic million-copy selling ‘The Eagle of the Ninth’ series. Although primarily a children’s author, the quality and depth of her work also appeals to adults – Sutcliff once commented that she ‘wrote for children of all ages, from eight to eighty-eight’. She died in 1992.