But Gweniver only smiled at her, with the smile of a lifetime’s friendship that understood, and shared. "No madness, Ronwyn," she said quietly. "Indeed, it was you and Talyn and Feradach and the others who returned that gave me leave and license to declare so…" When we said naught but only stared our question: "None of you saw my lord perish. That is no fiction for the common hearing but plain truth. Or is that too a lie?"
She challenged us with her eyes, and we could do naught but shake our heads; she had the right of it. We had not seen Arthur die; we had merely known it. Nor had we scrupled to employ this useful fiction for our own purposes heretofore; but now to find it employed on us in our turn, and by our friend and our Queen—nay, that we could not have been expected to foresee. Our lie was used against us: We had been outfoxed and outfought, and the bout was over before ever we had known it was fior-comlainn.
"And they all said you were not the strategist Artos was—" I muttered, and Gweniver grinned.
"Ah well," she said lightly. "Down the years my lord must have given me a hint or two… But you are not to think yourselves outsworded here. That is not the issue."
Morgan, who had been silent all this while, suddenly cut her glance up and over to her cousin.
"Then, Gwennach, tell us what is. I think we all know it; but pray you tell us just the same."
The gray eyes of the Queen turned to findruinna-color. "Then if you will have it so," said Gweniver evenly, "I have never lost my anger at what this realm displayed to me, and how it ‘haved to me, and spoke of me, and thought of me, what time I stood accused and challenged; and never have I forgiven them for the slaying of Keils. They think I have forgotten their perfidy, that I absolve them for believing the lies they mouthed of me. Well, once you had a queen, and fine she put it in like case; and as she said once so I say now: I do not forget and I do not forgive."
Now those words were Athyn’s, and historically they had presaged retribution; and before more such words could be forthcoming (or indeed a sample of their intended sequel) I said hastily, "Not Keltia, Ard-rian; Marguessan only. More truly, her Coranian vermin, Tembrual and Granumas and the rest, whom I slew at Barrendown. They were the ones—not Kelts, not entirely—who first planted those lies and saw them to ripeness; they also the ones who murdered Keils."
"And I thank you again for the dispatching of them." Gweniver made me a little bow from her chair. "And that may be so, but still it was Keltia, and Kelts, who believed the lying vomitous poison they spewed; indeed, I have no doubt some part of Keltia believes it still—many hateful folk love to think the worst in the teeth of truth to the contrary. Nay; the lies and spite and malevolences were what forced my need of a champion: because Kelts believed them, Kelts too stupid to live, who would be better sent to join the others of your outfrenne bag, a good day’s hunting. Yet if only those stupidities had been rejected, if Keltia had kept its eyes and mind and heart open and its mingeing little mouth shut on what it did not know, Keils—aye, and my lord also—might still be with us."
The passion in her voice silenced us all; I had known Gwen held resentment for the ill treatment and lying gossip, and rightly, to my way of thinking; but I had not known it went so deep. What she had just now told us was a truth we had never wished to hear, had studied to dismiss and ignore because it was easier on us to do so. We had not thought of her.
But Gweniver was right to feel so. She had been betrayed by folk only too willing to think ill of her. All that she had done, for Keltia, for Artos, down the years, all that had been set aside, counted less than naught, so that stupid mean cruel folk could mouth obscene lies about something of which they stood in utter ignorance, set on by creatures who sought only to batten on it for profit to themselves.
Well—they had been paid now in their own bloody coinage, and I was pleased the payment had been made out of my own pouch, as it might be. But Gweniver was owed a debt that could never be made up to her, and she would have scorned to accept their reparations even if offered. She wanted vengeance, and justice, which in this case, as happens sometimes, were one and the same; and this she now proposed—to remove herself from Keltia—was the only just vengeance she could take: to refuse to continue giving them a matchless gift that they did not deserve.
And she was right. She was right. It was insult unforgivable and unforgettable, and this was her eraic for it. Oh, Artos’s death had much to do with it too, make no mistake: It was grief as much as wrath that fueled this, and so Grehan had meant when he said earlier that more crops than one were in it. And I had to admire it all, we all did: The thing had been brilliantly brought off. Artos himself would be proud and amused to see it—as doubtless he was…
Gweniver met my eyes then, and we looked at one another as we had not done for long. No need for us two to exchange words or even mindspeech: We had known each other too long and too well for that. I knew her heart on this, and she knew mine; and of all those at that Council table, not saving even Ygrawn or Morgan, we two were the ones whose hearts and knowing mattered most.
"Let it be so," I said aloud, and from the corner of my eye saw the other faces turn to me in wonder, like pale surprised flowers. "Does any here need the judgment of the Chief Brehon in this matter of the will of the Queen?" I glanced round. "Nay, I thought not…" I rose in my place, thinking with an inner pang of my seat Gwencathra at the now all but empty Table. Gwencathra, White Stanchion of Truth. But truth could be a stanchion here as well.
"Then so say I, Taliesin Glyndour ac Pendreic gan Morguenna, Pen-bardd of Keltia: that the wish of the Ard-rian be the will of the Council and the law of the land. Arthur Ard-righ is King of Kelts, once, now, for always. Let it be so set down."
And so it was. The folk were bewildered at first, a little frightened; many were thoroughly shamed by the Queen’s declaration of her reasons for renouncing the throne—Gweniver, like another before her, was never one to hold back an explanation. But in the end they came to accept her will; indeed, there was little else they could do. Yet it was wise of them; for had it fallen out other wise I think Gweniver’s actions in such event would have made even Athyn seem a model of restraint.
So on the first observable-day of Arthur’s passing—his year’s-mind, one full year gone (of which fact the folk yet remained in ignorance, of course, as they should do forever; or so at least I hope), for which somber anniversary Majanah and Donah returned from far Aojun—Gweniver Pendreic resigned the Ard-tiarnas of Keltia and the title of Ard-rian, and became instead Regent, for Arawn her son, with Morgan and Ygrawn.
After the fearful legal documents were all signed and sealed and settled (for this was unprecedented in all our history; never before had a monarch resigned for a regency’s establishing, and the mechanics had all to be invented specially for this occasion), and the Councillors and brehons and representatives of the various orders had gone, a knot of the inner Companion-kindred remained. Gweniver, tired but triumphant, had a smile and a word and an embrace for each, until at last there were two only left in the Council hall—Gweniver and myself. We looked at each other down the length of the great basalt table, and then we smiled.
"You still have not heard my real reason, Talynno," she said.
I nodded. "I know I have not. But it is for you to choose the time of telling."
"Aye so? Yet I think you know already…"
My smile warmed and widened. "I think so too. But I need to hear you speak it. I think you too need to hear yourself speak it, and perhaps another also has need—
At that Gweniver laughed in real amusement. "Oh, I wager you he has known from the start! But though all those other most sapient and mighty reasons I gave out just before were true enough, the deep truth is other wise."
She paused, and her gaze went down the table, past me, to the high-backed chair that Arthur had used to occupy in Council; I watched her face closely, and presently she smiled, though she spoke to the empty seat, it seemed, and not to me at all. And perhaps that seat was not so empty either…
"I did not wish to reign with him; but I did and I grew glad of it. And now I do not wish to reign without him; and I shall not and I am glad of that already. No more. But no less also."
I left my place and walked down the length of the room to her, took her hand and kissed it, raising it to my lips in the ancient gesture of fealty and honor.
"It is enough—Ard-rian."
And Gweniver gave me the gentlest of smiles, and as gently withdrew her hand.
That night saw a small, fiercely private ceremony up at Ni-maen, the royal nemeton tucked away high above and behind Caerdroia, in the tiny valley between the peaks of Eagle that is called Galon Eryri. Just family, in the truest and realest sense: the royal clann of Pendreic-Penarvon-Tregaron, now rather sadly lessened by events, augmented by the linked blood of Mancheden of Aojun; the few remaining original Companions, whom Arthur had bidden stay behind while he and the others sailed off into legend; the seven of us who had been denied that sailing; later friends and comrades—soul-kin all.
The sending ritual we did here, led by Gweniver and myself, who were both closest kin and ranking clergy, was by no means for Artos alone; nor was it the only one that had been performed. There had been an even smaller and more private one held immediately upon our return from Kholco, not to mention the one I had conducted aboard the sloop bound homeward. But this, tonight, this was the true sending: Even though they were long gone, and well gone, our dear ones, this would catch them up, like an errander riding hard after with tidings from those left behind.
As the rite progressed, I found myself drawing away within myself, separating into several various Taliesins: the bard, the priest, the prince, the brother. I had half thought to see others honoring this place and ritual: But cast round though I might, I had no othersense of the presences I sought. Strange that the Sidhe who took to themselves the name of friend to Arthur have not troubled to ride to his sending… But the Shining Folk did all things in their own way, and perhaps there was a reason I knew not, or would later learn. Still, I was hurt obscurely; though whether more on Arthur’s behalf or my own I am sure I could not tell you.
Yet a stranger thing came out of that time than anyone could have guessed… Though Gwen was Ard-rian no more, the style of Queen still clung to her; and of course Ygrawn as Uthyr’s widow had never ceased to be so addressed. Which was fine and good. But suddenly my Morgan, no queen ever in this life save queen of my being, now found herself being called so, and deferred to as such, by the vast run of folk.
There seemed no reason for this, and Morgan found it most distressing, and discouraged it all she could. But I thought I knew a reason all the same: We have ever loved triads in Keltia, and this one was too tempting to let pass—the Three Queens of Keltia’s Regenting. The commonalty saw them so, and so did they become; for more, I think, than mere convenience’s sake—if it be not blasphemous even to suggest it, that Triunity of the Mother Herself…
But I recalled a vision I had had, oh, long since: some battlefield Seeing or other, of three queens round a bier upon which lay a dead king. It came to me that never had I beheld the faces of the mourning queens, for they were veiled beneath their crowns; but the face of the king had been the face of Arthur.
How strange when Seeings become seen. And how sufficient also.
* * *
Chapter Thirty-one
And, it seemed, scarce breathing-time allowed, I went straight from that rite at Ni-maen into the blackest despair I had ever known.
It was not unexpected, nor yet unthought of, that it should come down upon me, so, now, after a full moonyear had passed and I had held clawing to my dignity and my masks through all haps and moods. I mourned, I grieved, I raged, I wept; for so do we all in time of bereavement. But I had not thought how much I would miss him, simply miss him, my brother and my friend; I ached with it sometimes, grew still and let the pain roll over me—for him, for all of them.
All the same, though, I had reserved myself from something, I know not what—life? Feeling? Admitting that this was real, that this had in truth happened? It is hard to explain. But I paid full price now, if grief was the coinage; and I did not know how to save myself from this accounting.
Most all else went well in Keltia. After a less than smooth start to it, the new Regency was working now most smoothly indeed; in fact, it had settled out rather predictably like the Ard-rian Gweniver running things as ever with the frequent assistance of the Queen-dowager Ygrawn, and the sometime opinions of the Duchess Morguenna of Ys. It seemed to suit them all three; and Keltia was prospering again after the brief check and halt of the invasion and rout.
Arthur was never forgotten, not for the smallest moment of time; indeed, it sometimes seemed that he was more here, more present, more beloved, in his mysterious vanishing not-death, than ever he had been in his living self. That is often so, with figures larger than life, as I have noticed down the years. Alive, such persons are too strong and vital and, well, alive for us; they have wills and wishes of their own, they can thwart us and deny us and change on us. But dead (or gone—we must keep up that lie now!), these folk become fair game for admirers and detractors alike unfairly to pursue with the intent of alteration. Their lives and realities are blithely ignored, so that needy admirers can bend them to their own use; or half-truths are flung out like rotten wheat, allowing envious cowardly detractors, who would never in a thousand lifetimes have enough courage to live as their victims had done, to raise crops of malice and spite. And the ones they use for these evil practices cannot defend themselves; and if those who know the truth are brave enough or angry enough to speak out against all this, they themselves are denounced, and the sham goes on.
So I had cause, then, for my despair. But elsewhere in my life, things went well: Morgan, Gerrans and Cristant, my two grandsons (who had recovered from their ordeal at Kholco with all the resilience of youth, and, it must be said, the not deeply imaginative). Even my granddaughter Cathelin, now in fosterage with Tarian Douglas’s own grandchildren, gave no cause for fret.
So what then was it? And, more importantly, what could I do to heal? The answer came in surprising fashion.
I was up in my music-room, that round room overlooking the City and the sea. Over the past months I had begun spending more and more time here—even going so far as to have a shut-bed built in one corner, so that there were many nights, perhaps too many, when Morgan slept alone. Naught to do with her; it was all me, and now I had taken to passing the days here as well, apart from everyone who loved me, everyone I loved. It hurt abominably, it ached and gnawed worse than I hope you ever know; but it was all I wished to do, and by all gods I would do it…
I was lying disconsolate upon the shut-bed one afternoon when of a sudden came in the air around me the sound of bells. Seven small strikings upon a bell of silver, so small and clear and fine of tone the notes.
I said unthinking, "Enter then and welcome," adding hastily and prudently, "sith that you be of good intent." Well, you never know, do you; and besides, Marguessan was still roving round unleashed.
"Are you yet unwearied of your theme?" came a deep and familiar voice out of the air. Not Gwyn, but—
I leaped from the bed, looked wildly around; the speaker had not yet chosen that he should be seen, but there was in the chamber no sense of evil, only benison, and my heart began to slow its pounding.
"If you mean my grief at his going, I could harp upon that theme from now to Nevermas, and perhaps I shall," I said with the angry desperation of honesty that cares not how the hearer may take it. "From now until Rocabarra rises, until the Black Ox treads upon your toes… Whatever futurity you like by way of metaphor. It is all one; and nay, lord, I am not yet wearied. Not three years after, not three hundred."
Allyn son of Midna was between me and the windows; he seemed to have stepped out of the air or the shadows, or perhaps he had been here all along and I had been too dull or too doltish to perceive him.
"Then that is both wel
l and ill," he said, in that Sidhe-voice which is like to no mortal voice there ever was, and smiled on me. "Well for that such resolution is needed for the task you have ahead; ill—"
"Aye?" I asked in a challenging tone. Strange to say now, but just then it astonished me not a whit that a lord of the Shining Folk should have all at once turned up in my music-room. What brought out the note of defiance was the certain fearing dread that Allyn was here to make me do something—a something that might mean letting go of my sulks—or my sorrow—and I was by no means ready yet to give over. And maybe I never would be, but that was my affair, it seemed to me, and no concern of his or any other’s…
"Ill for that it has taken you off the path," said Allyn at last. "And all that you have gained till now be at risk unless you act to keep it. Taliesin—I know well that you blame my people for what befell Arthur and the others who went with him. And that is to be expected, though in this we are tools as much as you or he or any mortal—though I have no hope of your believing this. Nay," he said warningly, as he saw me gearing up for protest and denial, "it is so; nor need you blame yourself, call hard on yourself, for leaving them behind. You did not leave him, Talyn; he left you."
All the breath went out of me as if he had driven a spear-butt into my guts, and I stared at the fair face in white gaping astonishment.
"How did you know that?" I whispered at last, trembling as with a sudden chill. "I have told no one—no one!—of that fear, not even Morgan or Gwen… How could you know?"
"I admit you might have seen it coming," he temporized, passing over my question. "But Arthur was a master at such moves, and that you know very well. Nay; you were tricked by him, supremely, and now you are angry that you let him do so, to his death. Talyn, be easy: Never would it have been elseways. He would still have stayed, and you would still have gone. You but did his will as you had a thousand thousand times before; and as you shall again."
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