Shadow of the King

by Helen Hollick

  Gwenhwyfar muttered a few profanities. The evening that had been tolerably enjoyable had of a sudden turned most disagreeable.

  “Send word, Arthur, that she is to take lodging at the tavern, our gates are closed to visitors.”

  A wry smile twitched Arthur’s wind-browned face, crinkling the lines around his dark eyes deeper. Gwenhwyfar was talking to him again. “I wonder what the bitch wants this time?” He spoke his thoughts aloud, pouring more wine for himself and his wife.

  “To stir trouble. What does she ever want?” Gwenhwyfar laid her hand on his arm. “Send her away. I have no stomach for her this night.”

  Closing his fingers around her hand, Arthur shook his head. “Na, best listen to the Saex-bred sow. On occasion her information – for all her intention of dung-spreading – has proved of use to me.” He nodded to his gatekeeper, “Go fetch her up, but keep your distance – her venom is more potent than that of a disturbed adder!” Those in the Hall, Arthur’s men and their wives, the people of the Caer – Arthur’s people – laughed, sharing his humour. Aye, they all knew Winifred’s reputation.

  Winifred. An infected thorn in Arthur’s backside. He ought never have taken her as wife, but at the time it had been a decision beyond choice. He had not been a king then, only a raw youth, and Gwenhwyfar had been betrothed to another. Admitted, it was against her will and had been torn aside through the brutal murder of her youngest brother, but all that had happened too quickly to stop his marriage to the Princess Winifred, only daughter of a Saex-born bitch and the tyrant who had then ruled as King – Vortigern.

  Talk resumed, muted, eyes and heads turning frequently to the door to look for the lady’s coming, though it would take a while for Glewlwyd to walk the distance back to the main gate, for her to ride through and up the track, to dismount. The door opened, thrown wide, admitted a woman alone, although the shadows of her escort were beyond in the new-lit flickering torchlight. She stepped through, walked with calm dignity along the central aisle, walked straight to where the King sat. She wore no jewels against the plain black of her Christian woman’s garb, her sun-gold hair tucked firmly away beneath the gleaming white linen of her veil. Only a gold-and-silver crucifix dangled from a chain at her waist, its glint catching the flaming light of torches and candles.

  She stopped a few paces before the King’s table and sank to her knees. From the Hall came a few gasps. Never had Winifred submitted herself in homage before – even Gwenhwyfar caught her breath. Arthur alone, unimpressed, kept his expression masked. Too many times had Winifred tossed her tricks of humble innocence at him.

  The gasps grew stronger, more audible, as the black-clad woman prostrated herself, laying flat as if she were doing penance before God. Gwenhwyfar’s fingers tightened in Arthur’s hand, her eyes flicking him a puzzled question. What was Winifred about?

  Impatient, slightly embarrassed, Arthur admonished, “Get up, woman. You are impressing my guests but irritating me. Oh for Mithras’ sake, get up!” He stood himself, strode around the table and hauled his ex-wife to her feet. And then he did feel surprise, for Winifred’s eyes held real, distressed tears, nothing fake, nothing planned. Tears that had been falling for some while, for her eyes were puffed and red, her cheeks sore. He had never felt compassion for Winifred. Too often had she brought him pain and anger, but this once, just this once, and only passing briefly, did he feel the great weal of sadness that was pouring from her. A dozen thoughts of tragedy swirled through his mind. What had happened? The foremost conclusion: that her estate on the south coast had been raided. Pirates obeyed their own law of kill or be killed and gave no respect for peaceful agreement reached between Saex and British. The sea wolves would as easily raid their own kind, the English, if the lure of gain was enough to entice their greed, and Winifred’s steading south of Venta Bulgarium was as enticing as a bee’s nest crammed with sweet honey.

  Arthur took her arm, motioned for a slave to bring a stool for her to sit upon, said, concerned, in the softest tone he had ever used with her, “What is it? What is wrong?”

  IV

  The Pendragon hunkered down to his heels beside the distressed woman, casting a quick glance above her shoulder at Gwenhwyfar, sitting at the table. She shook her head, a slight gesture, indicating her own concern. Gwenhwyfar thought like Arthur, a warrior woman, his Cymraes, his British woman. She understood the dangers, the threats, the possibilities, as much as he. Returning that glance, she lifted her hand, palm uppermost. Ask, she was saying, what is wrong.

  A few others had gathered around, Enid among them, Geraint’s new wife, the woman who had for so long cared for Gwenhwyfar’s sons. She offered Winifred a fine-woven linen square to dry her tears; someone else, more wine. Winifred took both, smiled a wan thank you. Took also a breath, said with quavering voice, her steady gaze holding her ex-husband’s; “I need your help, my Lord.” She looked up and stared, only slightly defiant, at Gwenhwyfar, before returning her attention to Arthur. “You know the agony of losing a son.”

  Gods, Arthur thought with a sudden lurch to his heartbeat, is Cerdic dead? The strangest thing, he did not feel the gloat of pleasure he would have expected. Neither was there sadness or pain, for that would not be there for Cerdic, merely a flickering of sorrow for another’s grieving, a bitter memory of his own losses, that was all. It might have been that she was telling him of a valued dog’s passing, not the death of his son by her.

  Cerdic, conceived in the last months before Arthur had found legal cause to set the Saex-bred princess aside in divorce. Winifred’s persistence in claiming that the child was Arthur’s only legitimate-born heir had been as annoying as flies constantly buzzing on a hot day. Beyond that irritation, and then only as an indistinct shadow for the future, Arthur rarely considered the boy. But then, he had once had other sons; sons born to Gwenhwyfar, the woman he had always loved, would always love.

  Amr. Gwydre. Llacheu.

  Amr, drowned when he was but two years old. Gwydre killed by the bloodied tusks of a boar at his first hunt, at eight years old. And Llacheu. Llacheu the eldest, Arthur’s firstborn, conceived while Winifred was still his legal wife, started while Arthur loved with his Gwenhwyfar. Llacheu, killed by the spear of traitorous rebels. Rebels who had since paid the blood price for that killing of Arthur’s most loved son. Llacheu, who had been on the verge of young manhood. First born, last dead.

  And then Cerdic, a pestilence whom Arthur had, on more than one occasion, threatened with the punishment of death. A boy Arthur detested, but had eventually acknowledged to silence the malicious threats of the mother. The enforced acknowledging of one son serving to conceal another: a secret child born in shadow, illegitimate, to a girl he had barely known, but could, perhaps, in another time, another world, have loved.

  Winifred knew of this child, the boy, Medraut. Gwenhwyfar did not.

  Such thoughts, rapid come-and-gone thoughts skimmed through Arthur’s mind, and more… where was Medraut now? He would be two, three years of age – and where was his mother, Morgaine? The lady who had once dwelt by the lake of Yns Witrin. Another thought of sudden-roused alarm: Winifred was an accomplished actress, knew how to turn the sympathy of the crowd. Was this something to do with that secret-born son? Arthur thrust the disquiet aside. Surely it could be nothing along Medraut’s path? This distress was genuine; Winifred would not weep over a bastard brat of the Pendragon’s. Na, this was for Cerdic, her own-born.

  And so he answered, calm, with inner assurance, “We have seen the newborn with life that could not take hold, and have watched our other sons learn to talk and walk and run, only to see the light go out from the laughter of their young eyes.” He paused, the hurt returning as he remembered. “Aye, we know the pain of a son’s death.”

  “Then help me!” she said urgently, taking his hand between her own, clinging tight as if he were her last link to life. “Find our son! He has gone, I know not where! More than two weeks since he took a horse and left me with no word of where or why
he was going! I do not know what to do.” Her rush of words slowed; with awkwardness, added, “In my desperation, I came to you.”

  Arthur was staggered, angered. He stood, stepped back a pace, a roar of outrage building in his chest. Tragedy? Killing? Death? He had thought there was some enormity of wrongdoing, some powerful darkness or dread that would need facing – and all it involved was this? Her damned, insolent brat running off!

  “By the Bull’s Blood,” he bellowed, “you try my patience!” He stormed back around his table, reaching for a wine goblet as he passed; drank, in an effort to control his temper. The strategy failed. “Your son,” he sneered, “I dislike intensely. Nothing would please me more than to know he has been tidily dispatched into Hades. You were careless enough to lose him. You find him!”

  Winifred’s anger was rising to equal his. The Hall was in uproar, voices mingling in mixed reaction, most agreeing with the King, others, women, mothers, calling for the boy to be found.

  Linking her arm through Arthur’s, Gwenhwyfar grasped a chance to snipe at the other woman. Once, long ago it seemed now, Gwenhwyfar had pledged to see an end to Winifred for the murder of a dear and much-loved cousin. One day she would find the opportunity to see her revenge. Not yet, not now. It would come, the right time in the right place.

  To Arthur she said, “The boy has developed sense at last! He has discarded his mother’s cloying skirts and gone in search of more pleasant pastures.” To Winifred, with a sweet, sickly smile, “He is nigh on three and ten, have you tried the local whorehouse?” Triumph! Winifred’s face had suffused red and her eyes had narrowed. Gwenhwyfar’s idly tossed spear had thrust home at first casting.

  Ignoring the woman at Arthur’s side, Winifred taunted her former husband with bitter words. “Call yourself King? Protector? Lord? By Christ, you cannot even give compassion to your own wife and child!”

  “Ex-wife,” the Pendragon corrected tartly. “And I care not a… ”

  But Gwenhwyfar interrupted his anger, silencing him with her upraised hand. “It is not a matter of compassion, Winifred. My lord Arthur cannot search for your son, he leaves within the month for Gaul. A king cannot turn his back on public necessity to pursue personal need. His people are his family, they must come first.” She smiled, at Winifred, at Arthur, the one returning a glare of hatred, the other a stare of pleased astonishment. It seemed Gwenhwyfar had given her blessing to Gaul.

  He spread his hands, helpless, palms uppermost. “As much as I would like to help you, Winifred, I cannot, yet… ” He rubbed his chin, thoughtful, with his fingers. “Yet, if he has not run home to you with his tail tucked a’tween his legs by the time I get back, I will see what I can do. We all know what mischief boys get up to.” Men in the Hall chuckled, joined by their womenfolk. Aye, they all knew the whims of boys!

  Bedwyr, sitting at Gwenhwyfar’s left hand, laughed loudest. “Have no fear, Madam,” he called, “I ran away. Admitted, I was older and circumstances were different, but I was gone some time, travelling to Rome and further. Look at me now!” He patted his spreading stomach, full of Arthur’s good food. The Hall laughed even louder.

  Cold, her face a mask of stone, Winifred turned on her heel and strode for the door. Why had she come? Why had she sought Arthur? She should have known he would show no concern, no fears. Cerdic could lay dead for all he cared – no, no she would not consider that. Cerdic must become King after Arthur. He must. She paused before going out, hurled at him, “If you will not help, then I will seek the aid of my mother’s brother. Unlike you, Aesc is faithful to his kindred. He sees the importance of the spear side of the family – it is he who is nurturing Vitolinus, my brother. He will find Cerdic and have him at his hearth as well. Two to destroy you, Pendragon, two of my blood to bring about your end!” She left, sweeping out into the night, calling for the horses to be brought up.

  The mixture of chatter swelled higher, incredulous, excited, indignant.

  Arthur seated himself, motioned for the Hall to sit also, to resume their meal. Gwenhwyfar selected a portion of duck, lifted her goblet for a slave to pour more wine.

  “You go to Gaul, but know this, I do not like it.”

  “Na,” Arthur spoke through a mouthful of best beef.

  “It is a foolish quest.”

  “Aye.”

  “You are beginning to annoy me, Arthur.”

  He looked at her. Grinned. “Only beginning to?”

  “Fool.”

  The meal continued, the food finished. Dishes were cleared, wine and ale served and served again. The King’s harper tuned his fine instrument in readiness to entertain.

  “Her spies, it seems,” Arthur said to Gwenhwyfar, as if he were talking merely of the vagaries of the weather, “are not as efficient as mine.” He took Gwenhwyfar’s hand in his own, their arms twining together, thighs close beneath the table. They would seal the declaration of pax tonight in the privacy of their chamber. Loving, a good way to end the storms of disagreement.

  “You know something Winifred does not?” she asked.

  He retrieved his hand to join in the applause for the harper taking his place of honour by the hearth. Along with a chorus of demanding and cajoling voices, the Pendragon called his own suggestions for a song.

  “I have heard talk of where Cerdic is.” He smiled impishly at his wife, relieved they were friends again. “And if what I have heard is the truth, he can stay where he is, as far as I am concerned, until the four winds forget to blow.”

  V

  Cerdic knew his mother would be angry with him, but cared not a cracked pot for it. Her screeching, those last few days before he plucked the courage to leave, had been like a fox-chased, panicked hen. That, added to her incessant scolding – by Woden, anyone would think he had murdered the bishop, not merely lain with a whore!

  God’s breath, but he would soon be ten and three years of age – was it not time he became experienced in the matter of intimacies? He had started with the youngest daughter of his mother’s falconer. A year older, as ignorant in these things as he – but those first few embarrassed fumblings were soon behind him, and by the third time in the cow-byre with her, he had mastered the way of it. Well enough to mount his pony and ride with confidence into Venta Bulgarium – Winifred’s Castra they sometimes called it – to visit the whores’ place on the east side of the town’s walls.

  Unfortunate that on coming out he had run slap into one of the priests, who had marched him straight to the Bishop, who in turn had vigorously informed Winifred. The subsequent whipping might have been less harsh had Cerdic not insisted on demanding to know why the priest had been intending to enter the place also.

  The punishment he could have tolerated, regarding it as justified for being caught – he would not make that mistake a second time – but the constant recriminations, the tight, straight lips, the fuss! He was not a child.

  His mother irritated him. She was thirty and one years and as soured as last week’s milk. She had aged these past two years since taking the Saxon Leofric as a second husband. Cerdic had liked him, wanted him as his father, preferring him over the man who already officially held that title. Cerdic hated Arthur, wanted to kill him. Knew that one day that wanting would come about. One day, when he was a man full grown.

  Leofric was not to become a father though, for the marriage was short, over before it had begun. It was the shellfish, they said around the settlement, over-eating of tainted shellfish that had brought on a bloody flux, which had emptied his bowels and his life one short, sharp night but two weeks after the marriage. A few, a very few – and only people from a distance beyond his mother’s place – had whispered of poison.

  In those two short weeks, Leofric had been a man of his word. He had taken Cerdic as his adopted son, insisting a boy needed to know the ways of a man, promising to teach him properly how to use a sword and shield. Promising they would sail together to his lands along the Elbe River, he had talked about sailing further, up to the North Way and
even, if the Gods saw fit, beyond. Cerdic loved the thrill of the sea – though he had never stepped foot aboard a boat. It was in his blood, his spirit; the deck moving beneath his feet, the smell and feel of salt-spray... Ah, Cerdic had loved Leofric!

  But Leofric had died and Winifred was again a woman alone. Within a week of the burial, she had resumed her first married title. Lady Pendragon, she claimed, carried more weight than that of wife to a Saxon. Her father’s name was still spat upon; that of her mother and grandfather, the great Hengest, even more so. It was an empty title, of course, Lady Pendragon, for it was no longer hers, belonging rightly to that other woman of Arthur’s. But then, Winifred had never been one to care what was right or wrong, unless the rules should happen to suit her own need.

  Those few rumours of poison had been softly whispered, soon hushed, but Cerdic believed them. For no other reason than it was obvious that his mother’s second marriage had been a mistake. She would be angry, he knew, for his leaving without word of asking. And angered too, at the brief, final message he had sent her. From spite? From revenge for all those years of her domination? For proof of freedom?

  I have gone, he had written on a wooden tablet, purchased and sent from Llongborth, to use my manhood as I wish. Not as you order. He had laughed as he had boarded a Saex ship, paying his way with a generous bribe. Laughed aloud, not caring about his mother’s anger, enjoying it. The message he had sent deliberately, to provoke.

  Let her weep or wail, shout and scream. He was gone to the River Elbe. Gone to claim as his own all that had once been his legal stepfather’s; the ships, the land, the wealth and the trade; claim it as Leofric had requested. As the father Cerdic had so wanted, had written, signed and had witnessed in his will: it was all to be Cerdic’s now. Some of the wealth was to be divided with a niece, a woman who had disappeared in Gaul during the time of the Saxon killings, but she was dead, no doubt, and would not be coming again to her birth-home. A niece? She could be forgotten… or dealt with.