Morgan, as usual, had had no trouble following either my gaze or my thought.
"Someone full fit to wear the Lady Cathelin’s jewels after me, I think," she murmured, and to my astonishment I found that the thought did not jar me in the slightest; indeed, I very much liked the prospect.
"Aye, well, any lass the Cup thinks worthy is worthy enough in my book," I said, and meant it. "And Artos and Gwen seem to like her well—"
This last was a not unimportant consideration, since the Crown must give consent to all marriages of the righ-domhna; and in this instance, both Arthur and Gweniver, as High King and High Queen, must approve. Even more importantly here, as Gerrans (and any future children of his) could well end up heir-presumptive to the Copper Crown after young Arawn. Of the other young royals, Donah was ineligible, as half-gallain and being destined in any case for the crown of Aojun; while Mordryth was most like to be declared unfit for the succession, after his actions at Caervanogue, for which Marguessan his mother was already banned. Gwain, the only other firstcousin surviving, was older than Gerrans, but would give him precedence. Of course Gwena and Artos might well produce further offspring, and by grace of the gods Arawn would succeed safely in good time; but the chance was there all the same.
Matters came to the point even more swiftly than we had thought: Only a fortnight later, Gerrans came to Morgan and me, most formal, terribly nervous, to ask our blessing and grace to wed Cristant at the stones. By that time, we had taken pains to ken her, to speak with her on every possible occasion—I blush to admit I had also verified her pedigree in the bardic libraries, and had had several long cozy ale-chats with my old friend Therrian, the Ban-draoi Reverend Mother who had taught Cristant at Scartanore on Erinna—and we were well satisfied with the report of the lass, and with what we ourselves had learned. She was a most skilled sorceress—her preceptresses spoke naught but praise of her—which would make her right at home among the Pendreic kindred; a competent warrior too, and came of a blotless family line. Oddly, and endearingly, she was also a champion lacemaker and a very able smith.
So Morgan and I gladly gave our consent and approval, and Gerrans made his asking, and was of course accepted; and after that the thing became a matter for the marriage brehons and family jurisconsults to hammer out among them—contracts and tinnscra portions and titles and settlements and dowers on both sides. When it was finally arranged to everyone’s liking, Gerrans and Cristant together, with Morgan and me standing proudly behind them next to her own parents, knelt before the Ard-rian and Ard-righ in aireachtas presiding, and formally petitioned them for permission to wed.
And Their Keltic Majesties most graciously and joyously consenting to the marriage of their trusty and well-beloved cousin—as the traditional wording of the public announcement had it—the Lord Geraint Pendreic ac Glyndour ap Taliesin and Mistress Cristant Kendalc’hen nighean Dahal were wedded at Ni-maen the royal nemeton, on the last day of the Otter-moon, at the end of a famously hot summer. Grehan Aoibhell, the bride’s cousin, gave his clann’s leave for Cristant to marry, and Arthur himself gave ours for Gerrans. The rite was conducted, as was fitting for a royal wedding, by the Mathr’achtaran Therrian and the Archdruid Ultagh Casnar, which last we were not best pleased with, as he was still Irian Locryn’s loyal liegeman (and hence Marguessan’s); but there was no help for it, the man was Archdruid… Gerrans had, with stupendous if perhaps unconscious irony, chosen his cousin Gwain for groomsman, while Cristant had her sister Lorrha as her brideswoman. For tinnol, she gave her new-wed mate a huge sapphire, and hers from him was an emerald roughly the size of Erinna. A year later were born to them twin sons, like as two castauns, Sgilti and Anghaud; two years after that came a daughter, whom they named to my everlasting joy Cathelin.
They were young for the cares of a family; but perhaps they already sensed there was need of haste.
* * *
Chapter Seventeen
The next years were for us the peace that comes after pain, the calm coasts after the wildness of the open ocean; and we had well merited what we now received.
Arthur and Gweniver had settled down in earnest to their reforms; so long hampered by dramatic detours, they were free now to work out their vision for Keltia as they had yearned to do. And they began to work it in their own inimitable style.
The treaty with Fomor was but the first step, but it would prove to be the most fated. Our trade, never robust since the days of Edeyrn, had blossomed almost overnight since the signing of the trade contracts; our agents on Clero were well pleased, and the wealth that came flooding into the Keltic treasury was put to good and imaginative use across the realm.
During the Theocracy, the fabric of Keltia itself, as well as that of Keltic society, had been allowed to grow sorely threadbare. Edeyrn had not troubled himself with such mundane (and benevolent) matters as road repairs or healing-houses or the stocking of granaries against lean times to come—his bent had been for the training of yet more Ravens to further crush the Counterinsurgency, which of course responded by refusing to be crushed, necessitating more Ravens still, you know how it goes. And so there was, even all these years after our final victory at Nandruidion, much to be done to improve things for the folk.
Schools needed to be built and re-established, and the trained bards to staff them must be found; various institutions needed forming, the Druid Order not least of those (and we were still encountering, every now and again, the odd unregenerate spoiled Druid still loyal to his Marbh-draoi); a standing army needed to be built up against the ever-present threat of alien invasion (we were weak just now, vulnerable from the outside), and for that we needed loyal Fians to do the training. The planetary governing bodies which had been among the first agencies to be restored needed continuing guidance and support, as did the Senate, Assembly and House of Peers. In short, just about every corner of Keltic life that had been left unswept and unattended for the last two hundred years…
Gweniver and Arthur worked like gaurans, and they were neither slow nor shy to press the kindred and the Companions into like service. We were glad to help, to be sure, if only to lessen the burden those two must carry; and at the table Rhodaur in the chamber of Gwahanlen, the talk these days was less of high matters of the spirit and more of such humbler topics as the price of grain stocks and what could be done with available monies to improve the bruidean system on Erinna and Powys.
It made for a shift of focus, right enough; but as the years went on, and things grew first a bit better and then very much better, soon a new complaint began to be muttered in the market squares and drapers’ shops and victuallers’. And it was this: that Keltia, in pursuit of improved and easeful living, had begun to lose its soul.
According to this fell thought, which crept like some swamp-miasm, never seen, only sensed, too much effort and energy and resource had been spent on reform and rebuilding, and not enough attention paid to restoring the edifices of the Keltic spirit. This line of thinking, I need not point out, conveniently ignored the entire Graal search—which had been about nothing but the Keltic spirit—not to mention the great endeavors of the Ban-draoi and the true Druids both during the wars and in all the years since.
Yet those who spread this sort of rot, as well as those who lapped it up unthinking, could never be pinned down as to precisely what, if aught, they would alter or have done in other wise. Nay, they could not tell you, it was all more a feeling they had, or a word they had heard, something someone had said… very like you know the phenomenon well.
But I found myself deeply troubled, and I thought long about it, and at last one night I took it to the Table; and what I found there was even more troubling than I had thought.
"They are saying WHAT?" For one brief blinding moment of white and purest rage, I could not believe, simply, what I had just heard Alannagh Ruthven tell us.
"It is the sort of muck that is being spread about," said Alannagh quietly. "I cannot say if it is being believed."
"And if it
is?" snapped Betwyr. "And if so, what are we here to do about it? The Companions, if anyone, must move to scotch this before it spews itself more widely than it has; say you not so?"
A murmur of agreement went round Gwahanlen like summer thunder, but I could see that many of my fellow Companions were having difficulties with problem and solution all alike.
I myself was one of them, to some extent, despite my initial fury. Although we had no formal plan for these fortnightly assemblies, the usual way of them was this: The Companions would gather in Gwahanlen at the new and full of the moon Argialla, for addressing of any matter any one of us found good or ill or needing of attention. Arthur or Gweniver would preside, which of them depending on the press of other matters upon them; and in the rare instance neither could be spared from other duties, some one of the old-line Companions—Daronwy or Tanwen or Ferdia or Betwyr or Tryffin when he came in from Kernow—would run the meeting along such sketchy lines as we were wont to follow.
Tonight, I was presiding from my chair of Gwencathra, over a turnout not over-large but extremely contentious even for us. And this night we had good and grave cause to be. For no matter my own misgivings as to the general temper of the realm, what Alannagh had just reported to us struck harder and deeper than all: that rumor whispered that Arthur the King had not only married his cousin but had slept with his sister.
"It is but the names, do you see," said my old teacher Elphin Carannoc, his bard-voice rising above the general stour, but his tone one of uttermost disgust. "Gweniver, Guenna, Gwenar for Gwenwynbar—it must be that the general run of folk are too stupid or too slovenly of pronouncing to trouble themselves in distinguishing among them."
"Too stupid to live, you mean!" snarled Tarian Douglas. "If they cannot tell the differ after all these years between three very differing people—"
I hid an undiplomatic grin. Nay, twenty-odd years as Keltia’s Taoiseach had mellowed Tari not one jot; still she did not only not suffer fools gladly, but did not suffer them at all. But she had seen my mouth twitch, and turned on me.
"Well, Talyn, what then is your thought on this? Since it is your wife and your matebrother who are being slandered here—what do you recommend?"
I sighed and sank back into the depths of my chair. "There is no way to counter this sort of lie, as all you know very well. The more energy you give to it, the more the liars feed on you and the stronger it grows. Best to ignore it, and so let it starve. It is hard to do, but it is best. Besides," I added, stretching casually, "I already know what source it springs from."
Consternation and shock. I watched carefully, noting how the currents of both did run, for I had said that quite deliberately, and I did indeed know the source of the poison. What I wished to see here and now was how many minds even among our own Companions—and my heart broke to think there were some—believed the lying tale, or shared my knowledge of its origin. My sorrow to say, I was disappointed on neither count…
"Well then," said Tarian in a deadly quiet voice which I knew well from of old (and she was not one of those I had been watching for), "if you know, Talyn, best it were you tell us."
I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, not wishing to see any more, and said a single word.
"Marguessan."
Over the years since the return of the Cup and the apparent thwarting of her aims and plans at Beckery, Marguessan Pendreic had kept a very low sail against the skies. Indeed, for quite a long time we had not even known for sure of her whereabouts; she had not slunk back to Oeth-Anoeth, for constant watch was kept on it, nor had she gone to ground in her old familiar earths elsewhere. Irian Locryn, her dullard lord, denied all knowledge of her comings and goings, and claimed he had had no complicity in any of her actions. What he thought of the death of his daughter Galeron, or the near-death of his son Gwain, could only be guessed at.
So when the rumors and sly snipings and contumely began to crawl round Keltia like nasty animalcula out from under stones, I did not need a house to fall on me to let me to know whence the horridness had origin. But even now in my anger and revulsion I found crossing my mind the possibly significant thought that no one in all her life had ever thought to give Marguessan a shortname or byname, either out of affection or out of hatred. Arthur was universally Artos; Gweniver was Gwennach or Gwennol or Gweni or Gwen, at least to those who loved her; I had ever been Tal, Talyn, Talynno; while Morgan had been Morgan so long and so exclusively that nearly everyone was surprised to be reminded from time to time that she had been born Morguenna. Yet Marguessan had remained Marguessan, defiantly and aridly unshortened…
But there was a problem here, and not only the one Alannagh had pointed out to the Table. I sat up and raked the room with my eyes, and there was sudden quiet.
"This is not to come to the ears of either Gwen or Artos, do you hear me? True enough it is that all are equal around the Table, and no Companion gives orders to any, save the High King or the High Queen alone. But I give this order tonight, and I will be obeyed in this."
There was general profession of obedience and acceptance, for nearly all who sat at Rhodaur were of my mind and heart, and would spare our rulers whatever they might. Yet, gods, there is always someone who cannot resist being a stone in the boot…
"Well enough," came the mocking voice from across the room. "But since what time do bards think they may call all tunes, not merely the ones they harp to? And since what time more are commands given in Gwahanlen?"
I found myself considering quite another use for that metaphorical boot I had just now thought of, for I knew the voice. One Morholt, a comparatively recent addition to the Company’s ranks, who loved naught more than to flaunt his standing in the faces of his seniors, the tiresome little pest… But though I heard the civilized little breath-catches round the room that are the polite person’s disguise for a horrified gasp, I would not play to my cue, and a long moment passed before I spoke in answer.
"Since tonight, when the bard is a prince who outranks all here," I said, and I edged my voice with the word-whip as a reminder. Bards can kill with words, have they a mind and a cause to—and, aye, I have done so in my time, if you must know—but worse still to some ways of thinking, they can blotch faces and reputations alike with well-placed aers of satire. And I knew enough about Morholt to raise a fine crop of blotches indeed.
He took the point, and had blotched himself a dull ugly stain of red before I spoke again, soothers in my voice now, to give him the grace of escape.
"And also, more so, when the bard is a man who would protect his wife and his foster-brother; none here, I think, can find fault with that?"
Morholt had the wit to shake his head, and said no word more. Tarian, after a glance at first me and then him, stood up and tallied Gwahanlen with her eyes, as if she had been at a Council meeting.
"We are agreed, then?"
Murmurous assent, even from Morholt. But Alannagh held back, still troubled.
"Agreed, aye, to be sure," she said, shooting me a long unhappy unquiet glance. "But, Talyn, who—
I raised a hand to cut her off, but tempered it with a smile, for she was a dearly loved friend; it had cost her something, moreover, to raise this issue here at the Table tonight, and I was grateful she had found it in her to do so.
"No fear, Lann-fach. It will be attended to. You shall see. All of us shall see."
And we did. The nasty mournings went on a brief while longer, and then suddenly they were gone, to be heard no more, the lascivious perversions blown away as if by a great clean scouring wind.
"No lasting harm done, I think," I said hopefully to Morgan, who had not been present that night in Gwahanlen only by sheerest chance. Just as well, too, for never in all our life together had I seen Morguenna Pendreic possessed of such an anger as that which had, well, possessed her the moment she learned that rumor was saying she had slept with her halfbrother.
But she had cooled enough by now to content herself with a grim laugh. "Nay? They have no idea
how near they came to the lasting harm I had dealt them…"
The hazel eyes still flickered pure green behind, and I reflected very privately that the cooling had gone not so very deep after all. And indeed, why not? If I, a mere bard, had been provoked to none-too-subtle reminders of what I could do by power of my words given cause, what greater cause did not Morgan have, who had been lied about in so loathsome and frustratingly unfightable away? What terror might not she have struck even round our own Table, had the Companions seen her eyes as I saw them now—let alone the muckmongers themselves, to be on the receiving end of that emerald-lasra stare?
Well, I had been wed long enough by now to know when to speak and when to be silent… After a while Morgan’s familiar elbow found its place among my ribs, and I squirmed out of digging distance and turned on the pillows to face her.
"It is not my sister only, is it?" she asked quietly, and I goggled in my startlement before I could master myself. She laughed in my face. "Well, cariad, you may have been able to pull the hoods over the others’ eyes, but only recollect that I know your little ways rather better. Now. Tell me."
"It is Marguessan, right enough," I said, a trifle sullenly. "But also it is Mordryth. And more than that, it is Malgan Rheged ap Owein as well. So."
"Ah." She mused on that awhile, and I was myself surprised to see how little surprised she was to hear those names I had thought would shock her. "Well," she said at last, "we have long expected that union, have we not?"
"Nay, cariad, no more we have!" I said, honestly angry now. "What but weal have any of us ever done to Malgan Rheged, that he should so repay us in such wise?"
"We killed his mother. You were there. I was there. Arthur was there."
"And richly she deserved it! My sorrow, but that is no excuse! Nay, Guenna, by the gods it is not!"
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