by J A Cummings
The sun was beginning to set when the army stopped to make camp. Arthur was relieved and grateful for the reprieve from the road, and he happily set about setting up his own tent. He was waved off the task by Griflet, who took over with two porters named Petrus and Aoden. It took a good deal of effort, but the pavilion was erected in good order before he fell onto his face.
As king, his tent was the grandest, made of two round sections joined by a flat roof. One of the round sections had been turned into a sort of sitting room with a folding desk and chairs. His camp bed was erected in the other round, and it was covered with silk, furs and linen. Griflet loaded his saddlebags into the back of the tent by the desk and set up an armor form nearby. Aoden brought in a cauldron of hot water and left with a bow. Griflet followed him to the tent flap, and he tied it shut.
“Off with it,” he said. “You stink and you need to have that scrubbed before the blood makes it rust. And you probably need your dressing changed on that gut wound of yours.”
Arthur was more than happy to divest himself of his armor and the padded tunic beneath it. The armor was covered in dried Saxon blood and the tunic was saturated with his own blood, sweat and grime. He grimaced when the fabric passed before his nose.
“Oh, God...”
“I know.” Griflet went to the cauldron and dipped a cloth into the water. “Stand still and let me wash you for both our sakes.”
The king stood, too tired to be embarrassed. Griflet scrubbed him from head to foot, careful to be gentle with the healing wound in his abdomen, using soaps that smelled slightly of moss and vervain. “Druid made?” Arthur asked.
“Of course.”
“Enchanted?”
His chamberlain smirked. “Maybe a little.”
“To do what?”
“To ease muscle aches and to give you dreamless sleep.” He knelt before Arthur to wash his feet and he looked up into his eyes. “I know you don’t sleep well most nights, so I spoke to Merlin. He had his grove make this as a gift to you.” He finished bathing Arthur, then re-bound his wound with fresh bandages. Satisfied with his handiwork, he said, “Now sit down before you fall down.”
The king obeyed, sitting on the camp bed in the nude. Griflet dunked his tunic into the soapy water and scrubbed it with a polished stick while Arthur stared, watching the motions without truly seeing them. The knight looked up at him and snorted.
“Sleeping is done from a supine position. Lie down.”
Arthur did as he was told, meekly obedient in his fatigue. It had been days since he’d last slept in a bed. “Talk to me.”
“About what?”
“About you. You never tell me anything about yourself.”
Griflet smiled and continued scrubbing the king’s clothes to chase the sweat smell away. “What’s to tell? I’m Sir Bedivere’s sister-son, and I served as a squire to a knight who died on the road. My service was transferred to you, and you know the rest.”
“Do I?”
“What else could there be?” He wrung out the garment he had been washing.
“When we first met, you said that you were told to share my pallet if I wanted you to, to help me through my grief.”
The young man nodded, his green eyes guarded. “I remember.”
“Who told you to do that? Your uncle?”
“Yes.”
“And you said that you had experience with such things after traveling with Sir Maridoc, the knight you used to serve.”
“Good memory,” he complimented. He hung the clothes over the folding chairs. “What of it? Are you accepting the offer now that you’re too tired to do anything about it?”
Arthur smiled, but he was on the trail of a question he had wanted to ask for a long while. “You didn’t seem too troubled by Maridoc’s death.”
“I wasn’t.” He crossed his arms. “He was a good knight, but not much of a person.”
He looked into Griflet’s eyes. “Did he force you?”
The younger man hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. But only the first time.”
“After that?”
“I learned the benefit of cooperation.” He smiled crookedly. “It’s all long past, and I’m not the first squire who’s been a bedmate to his knight, willing or otherwise, and I won’t be the last.”
“You know that everybody thinks we’re having sex,” Arthur said.
Griflet chuckled. “They think you’re having sex. They think I’m lying still and letting you have your way.”
“It isn’t true.”
“No.”
“Doesn’t it bother you?”
“Not a whit.”
“Why not?”
He came closer, standing an arm’s length away. “Because it would be true if you only said the word.”
Arthur’s mouth was dry. “By your choice?”
“By your order, sir.”
The king winced and looked away. “I would never do that to you. I would never order you.” His tone turned waspish. “What is wrong with Bedivere? Every time I turn around, he’s prostituting some boy…”
“There are many ways to make a fortune and garner influence, and that’s just one of them. My uncle is very good at looking after himself.” He went to a trunk and took out a sleeping robe, which he handed to Arthur. The king pulled it on over his head while Griflet said, “He started with the slave trade before my mother was married, and he continued with … specialty entertainments… for his rich friends.”
“Like Catigern.”
“Yes.”
“Did he ever -”
“Sell me to his friends? No. But Amren…”
Arthur’s heart tightened in his chest. “I know about that.”
Griflet nodded. “I suppose he would have told you.”
“I saw first-hand.”
“Awkward.”
“Infuriating.” He lay back on the bed, his nakedness covered in the light white garment. “How can I respect Bedivere if he’s a flesh peddler? He says he wants to atone for his past…”
Griflet sat beside the king. “He might. Or he might be saying what he thinks you want to hear. Who knows? My uncle is canny and shrewd, and he’ll adopt morals if he thinks morals are the fashion of the day.” He sighed. “Do you know how my mother died?”
“No,” Arthur admitted, confused by the question. He sat up again, and the wound in his gut caught. He pressed his lips together to keep from crying out. “I thought it was an illness.”
“If a person can be made sick with steel.”
“What do you mean?”
“My father found my mother in bed with another man, and he took her to my uncle for judgment. Bedivere struck her head from her neck with his sword.”
“My God!”
“In Roman law, it was his right. She dishonored his house by playing the whore. That’s what he said, anyway.” He looked down at his hands. “Rich, don’t you think? Of all people to object to whoring…”
“Who was her lover? Was he killed, too?”
“I don’t know who he was. He was run out of Viroconium. I think he ran to Cornwall, but I can’t be sure.” He shrugged. “I don’t know and I don’t care. I wasn’t there, and I barely knew her. I’ve only heard the stories. You might say I’m a somewhat disinterested party.”
“But...she was your mother,” Arthur said, aghast.
“Yes. But she was in the wrong, and that’s what Roman law says has to happen.”
The king frowned. “We are no longer a part of Rome, and I will not abide by Roman law. That is an outrage.”
“If you say so. The outrage was her adultery.”
He shook his head. “You truly don’t care?”
“No,” he admitted. “I truly don’t. It’s like hearing a story about a stranger. She meant that little to me… I had been parted from her for so long.” He brightened. “But, now, why that long face? And why this bitter talk before bed? You need your sleep, and you need good dreams, and this sort of conversation won’t help that a
t all.”
He admitted, “No. It won’t.”
Truthfully, he was too tired to pursue his anger with Bedivere further than this discussion, so it was best to set it aside until he could consider the matter with a clearer head. He sighed and lay back down with a frustrated sigh.
Griflet leaned toward him and kissed him on the lips. It was a gentle kiss, but devoid of feeling, and everything about it felt wrong. Arthur pulled away.
“Don’t.”
“You don’t want me?”
“It’s the other way around, I think. Don’t ever do that just because you think I want you to. I would never be able to forgive myself for using you.”
Griflet chuckled. “You’re not using me if I put myself in your hands.”
“I don’t want…” A thousand words and ideas formed a bottleneck in his brain, and he asked, “Do you even enjoy lying with other men?”
He shrugged. “It has a certain physical pleasure, I suppose, once you get past the pain.”
“But you prefer ladies.”
“Well, yes.”
Arthur turned away. “Then never touch me like that again. I need a friend, Griflet, not a body slave. Please don’t do that.” He rolled onto his side, lying with his back to the young knight, his hand cupping his aching wound. “Besides, even if I wanted to make love with you tonight, I would probably fall asleep halfway through.”
Griflet chuckled again and patted his back. “Then sleep, Arthur. The morning will be here soon enough.”
Colgren set his siege around the walls of Lindum, making certain that his men bridged the place where the River Witham flowed east toward the sea. Lindum was settled into a gap in a long, steep cliff that ran from the north to the south. The river flowed from west to east through the city, dividing it into two halves, one uphill, one down. It was his intention to take the city one half at a time. The castle and the basilica were in the uphill half, and he presumed that this would be where the riches lay. It would also be where the defense would be stoutest, and so he concentrated his attention on the lower part of the city.
Although he hated to admit it, he had learned much about sieges from the Roman Empire and its destruction of his homeland. Their methods, their aggression, even their ballistae had been emblazoned in his mind from a very young age. He learned the lessons that the Romans taught, and he took tactics from his enemy and made them his own, as the battering rams and siege towers his people were building could attest.
Colgren looked up at the walls of the city, and he saw a pair of helmeted heads above the parapet. He whistled to his archers and pointed out the onlookers. An archer smiled and nocked an arrow in his bow. The Saxon leader looked back at the wall as the archer loosed his missile, and he, too, smiled in satisfaction at the sight of one of those heads jerking back, then vanishing all together. He hoped that they kept looking over the edge.
“If you see any more,” he told his archers, “shoot them.”
“Yes, my lord.”
He went to his tent, where Ganile was lounging on his bed, reading a thick black book. She looked up as he came in, as if he was the one invading her privacy and not the other way around.
“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” he asked, sitting in his camp chair.
“No.” She flipped one of the pages, heavily inscribed with tiny symbols and colorful pictures and diagrams.
“Don’t you have your own tent?”
“Why do I need one when yours is so large?”
He looked at her in irritation, then pulled a set of slates closer to him. Charcoal sketches covered the smooth faces, and he examined them carefully. He had seen the objects drawn here before, and he had seen how well they worked. He was uncertain if they could be built by his men, but he was willing to take the chance.
“What do you think?” he asked, holding up one of the pictures.
Ganile looked over. “Ballista. Very nice.”
“For throwing fireballs into the city.”
“I know how ballista are used.” She turned another page. “You don’t have a siege engineer, though. How are you going to build one that works?”
He leaned back. “A siege engineer?”
“Yes. A man trained and experienced in the building of those mechanical beasts.” She stopped to read something on the page in front of her and snorted lightly at what she saw.
“Who has siege engineers?”
“The Gauls. There is a Frankish king named Claudas who is invading Armorica. He has a very talented siege engineer in his employ, a man named Gaius.”
“A Roman.”
“Yes.”
Colgren nodded. “Bring me this Gaius. If he builds my siege engines, I will allow him to live and return to his king.”
“And if he doesn’t build them?”
“Then we will build them ourselves, and he will set his body alight and send him into the city first of all.”
She closed the book and rose. “Seems like a waste of a good mind, but if that’s how you want to handle it, who am I to judge?”
“Exactly.”
Ganile wrapped her cloak around herself and scribed a tall, wide oval in the air. A gnarled forest appeared within the gate she had created, and Colgren tried to conceal his discomfort. She looked back at him and smiled. He knew she was well aware of how nervous he was around her magic, and she reveled in his anxiety. Still smiling, she stepped through and was gone.
The Britons struck camp and resumed their northward march as soon as the first light tinged the sky a pale orange. Arthur was physically much refreshed, having enjoyed the best night of sleep he could remember thanks to Merlin’s magic, and his body was full of energy and ready for whatever the day might bring. First, though, he had old business that needed his attention and a mind that was weary with unpleasant thoughts.
He beckoned to Sir Bedivere. “Ride with me,” he said.
“Gladly, sir.”
Arthur cantered a good distance ahead of the column, still in sight but well out of earshot. Bedivere looked at him in curiosity as they rode.
“Tell me,” the young king said at last. “How did you come by the wealth that you enjoy in Viroconium?”
The knight looked surprised by the question, but he said, “As you know, I come from a noble family. My father and my grandfather were once rulers in their land, before they were driven out. Before we came to Britannia.”
“I’ve heard this. You’re a Roman Gaul by blood, I believe.”
“Sir, I am as much a Briton as any man in this army.”
Arthur nodded. “And after you came to Britannia?”
“I made my fortune with my sword. King Uther recognized my service by giving me Viroconium as my land. He allowed me to collect the rents from the tenants there and keep a goodly share for myself, in gratitude for the fighting I had done in his name.”
“What else?”
Bedivere laughed. “There needs to be something else?” When Arthur fixed him with a serious look, he reeled in his merriment and said, “I have raised and sold livestock. Horses, mostly, as you know.”
“What other ‘livestock’?”
“If you have something you wish to say to me, Your Majesty, I beg you, speak it plain.”
Arthur stopped his horse and faced his knight. “I don’t know what sort of thing my predecessor allowed, but know this: under my rule, slavery will be punishable by death. Humans are not chattel and will not be bought and sold.”
The knight stiffened. “I -”
“And anyone who participates in the whoremongering of children will be punished the same way.”
Bedivere clenched his jaws. “It may behoove Your Majesty to consolidate your grip on your crown and ensure that you have a kingdom before you begin making threats and rules about the running of it.”
Arthur’s eyes were cold. “Do not doubt me, Sir Bedivere. Never, ever doubt me.”
“And do not make the mistake of thinking that you can affirm your rule without my friendship,
” the knight said. “You need me. Do not doubt that.”
“Are you threatening me?”
Arthur stared at the other man with steely resolve, and Bedivere blinked first. He looked away. “No, my lord.”
“Good,” Arthur said. “It would go badly for us all if you were.”
“I told you that I’m trying to atone for the sins of my past. This warning is unnecessary and unkind. What makes you say this now? Is it Griflet, talking behind my back and turning you against me?”
“I am clever enough to form my own opinions, Sir Bedivere, and Griflet has little to nothing to do with this. He has never betrayed you.” He hesitated, then said, “I am no priest to offer you atonement or forgiveness. I will allow you the opportunity to redeem yourself in your own eyes and in mine. Until then, remember what I’ve said. There are many good reasons for you to amend your course.”
He nudged his horse in the flanks and trotted further ahead, leading his army to Lindum. Behind him, Bedivere seethed.
Kay was in bitter misery.
He never would have believed until now that an ankle injury could cause his whole body to ache, but the longer he rode, the more his ankle swelled, and the pain spread up his leg all the way into his back. He could feel the edges of his boot digging into his flesh, and his toes were numb from the pressure. He wanted nothing more than to stop riding and to strip his boot away, along with the thrice-cursed wrappings that Merlin had placed upon him.
If he stopped to attend to his ankle, he would slow the column, and they would not arrive at Lindum in time to raise the siege. If he did not attend to his ankle, he could lose his foot and his entire life would be as good as over. It was a hard choice, and he groaned in pain and frustration.
Sir Ector, who rode not far away, turned to look at him as soon as the sound left his throat. He took one look at Kay’s pale and sweat-sheened face and grabbed his son’s reins. “Stop,” he commanded. The mount obeyed. “Kay, what is it?”
