In Winter's Shadow

by Gillian Bradshaw

  I sighed. “I left the storerooms to visit Rhuawn—yes, another quarrel. With Cei!”

  “Ach! And will Rhuawn apologize?”

  “Yes. As will Cei. But God knows how long it will last.” And I thought again of Rhuawn’s eyes slipping aside from mine, the distrust, the suspicion.

  Bedwyr looked at me another moment, then said, “And?”

  “And? And I am concerned for the future. Soon I will be able to coax no more apologies from Rhuawn or from any of…his party. But for the quarrel itself, it was no worse than the other quarrels.”

  “Well. And yet you look troubled, my lady, more than by the other quarrels.”

  I walked on a few steps before looking at him. His eyes were on my face, waiting, “I am troubled, yes,” I told him. “But it is a personal matter.”

  His expression cleared. “Your father. Forgive me. I should have remembered and kept silent.”

  “Even you cannot remember everything, noble lord. There is nothing to forgive.”

  “You have heard from your clan since?”

  He was trying to ease the grief of the death by reminding me that I had other family, trying to be kind, and I confused him when I stopped abruptly and clenched my hands together, struggling with myself. I was tired, I thought, or I would not weaken like this, not be so subject to my grief and anger. There had been too much to do in the past month, and the mood of the fortress had been so embittered that often I had been too tense to sleep.

  “My lady?” Bedwyr had stopped, facing me, and was watching me with concern.

  I waved him back. “I had a letter from my cousin Menw. He…we quarreled, years ago. He is now clan chieftain. He…” I stopped, because I was ashamed that Menw had demanded what he had, and ashamed to accuse him, my own cousin. I did not want to talk of that letter.

  Bedwyr’s jaw set. He turned and began to walk on, not looking at me, and I joined him. “You should not allow small-minded men to distress you, my lady,” he said.

  “More easily advised than done, Lord Bedwyr. Like most philosophic advice.”

  He looked at me again, not smiling, not distracted by my attempt to divert him. Half unwilling, I began to tell him about the letter.

  We arrived at my house before I finished. The spring sun was still high, although the afternoon was drawing on, and it fell warm and heavy upon our heads and sides. Inside the house someone was playing a harp, and the soft sound carried clear and liquid into the silence when we stopped and I hurriedly ended my account. Bedwyr and I looked at each other.

  “It was bravely done, lady,” he said softly. “It was no doubt a most bitter thing, to accept exile from your home, but it was bravely done. If there were time—but our lord is waiting.”

  Arthur was indeed waiting, sitting and staring into the fire with his feet propped against the grate. Lord Gwalchmai ap Lot, who was to be the emissary to Less Britain, was also there: it was he who had been playing the harp. Arthur could not play, for harping is a noble skill not taught at monasteries such as the one where he was raised—but he loved to listen. When Gwalchmai saw us, however, he at once set the harp down and stood to greet us, and Arthur straightened, took his feet off the grate, and waved to us to be seated.

  “My lady,” said Gwalchmai, bowing his head; then took my hand and smiled, at me, at Bedwyr. “And Bedwyr; we thought you must have ridden clear to Ynys Witrin, so long have you been in arriving.”

  “Lady Gwynhwyfar was resolving a quarrel between Rhuawn and Cei,” Bedwyr said quietly, taking his seat on Arthur’s right.

  The corners of Arthur’s mouth drew down in pain and he looked at me. “Another quarrel?”

  I nodded and settled wearily into my own place at the desk, opposite Arthur. Gwalchmai resumed his seat, all smiles gone, and stared at the fire. He knew whom the quarrel must have concerned. I watched him for a moment as he sat very dark and still in his crimson cloak with his jeweled sword, his black eyes seeming to look through the flames into another world, as they always did when he was troubled. He had lost weight recently. Part of that had been in traveling—he had returned from Less Britain only the week before, and neither that embassy nor the voyage had been an easy one. But the situation at Camlann must have been almost unbearable for him. I longed to reach past that withdrawal and unearthliness and ease the hurt, to mother him. But it was impossible. He was only four years younger than I and difficult to mother. As Cei had said, he was too courteous. I must watch him suffer the enmity his brother had raised against him, and say nothing.

  And it is only enmity to him, now, something in the back of my mind added. Someday it will be enmity to me and even to Arthur. Medraut will turn the fortress against us. And soon, it will be soon.

  I looked at my husband, who was waiting for me to give an account of the quarrel. Already it hurt him as much as it hurt Gwalchmai, for he loved the Family even more than he loved his Empire, if such a thing were possible, and the division in it was a constant torment to him.

  “Cei overheard a comment Rhuawn made to one of his friends,” I told Arthur, “and he called Rhuawn a fool because of it. Rhuawn returned the insult. But there were no swords drawn and no blows given, and they have agreed to be reconciled.”

  Arthur nodded, but his eyes were cold and bitter. “What was the comment?”

  I hesitated, looking at Gwalchmai.

  “We will agree that I am not here,” Gwalchmai said, giving an ironic half smile. “I never heard the comment and need fight no one because of it.”

  I hesitated again—but, after all, it did concern the very problem we had come together to discuss. “He accused you of deliberately obstructing the negotiations with Less Britain. I am sorry.”

  Gwalchmai shook his head. He touched the hilt of his sword briefly, for reassurance rather than in anger, then locked his hands together on his knees, staring once more into the fire. He felt responsible for the quarrels and had once asked Arthur to send him away from the Family to avoid them. Arthur had refused.

  “There is nothing more we can do to disprove that,” Arthur said, looking at his warrior. “We are already sending you back to Less Britain. No one can say that I mistrust you.” Gwalchmai nodded, looking no happier.

  “And the accusation will be the more firmly refuted if we can achieve a settlement with Macsen. So, to the matter at hand.” He fixed his eyes on Gwalchmai until the warrior looked up, smiled ruefully, and bowed his head in agreement. “Tell us again what Macsen claims.”

  Macsen was the king of Less Britain, in Gaul. His kingdom was originally colonized from Britain and was closely bound to it, subject to the same laws and enjoying the same privileges. While Macsen’s younger brother Bran was king, all had been peaceful, for Bran was Arthur’s ally, joining with him against most of the kings of Britain when Arthur first claimed the purple. But Bran and his brother Macsen had long been rivals, and had nearly come to armed conflict when their father died. Only Bran’s alliance with Arthur and Arthur’s power had prevented that war, and won Bran the election to the kingship which Macsen thought ought to be his. Now Bran was dead, killed in a border skirmish with the Franks the previous autumn, and Macsen had been chosen king in his place by the royal clan of Less Britain. He was understandably hostile to Arthur, and the whole web of law and custom that bound Britain and Less Britain together was all under challenge.

  We had sent Gwalchmai as an emissary to Macsen as soon as the weather permitted the voyage, and he had listened to Macsen’s claims and justifications for two weeks before sailing back to consult us on the responses we were willing to make. Gwalchmai was invaluable as an emissary: he was of royal birth, and so must be received honorably anywhere; he had been brought up at a scheming court and could find his way through any maze of political intrigue without difficulty; he was literate and could speak good Latin, as well as British, Irish, and Saxon, and he was an eloquent advocate in all four languages. None of this had been of any use with Macsen, and I could not help suspecting, as we again plodded over
Macsen’s claims and our possible responses, that on this mission as well Gwalchmai would achieve a limited success at best. Macsen was unlikely to risk war with us, but he would undoubtedly try every trick short of it to have his way. And if Gwalchmai was forced to return for more consultations, the accusation against him would grow and gain strength, and with it the question: “Why does Arthur do nothing?” and its insidious answer: “Arthur is deceived, a fool; Arthur is partial and blind.” I shivered.

  The conference ended. It was agreed that Gwalchmai would leave again for Less Britain in two days’ time, and he and Bedwyr took their leave, allowing Arthur and me to prepare for that night’s feast. I began to take my hair down, as it was to be a formal feast for which I must look impressive and tie my hair up with gold. Arthur looked at me wearily.

  “So much for King Macsen,” he said. “Though, indeed, I think we have no more seen the end of our troubles with him than we have of our troubles with that fox King Maelgwn of Gwynedd. Gwynhwyfar, my heart, I am sick to death of these kings.”

  I looked for my comb, found it. “Unfortunately, these kings cannot be abolished.”

  He snorted. “Any attempt would abolish us instead. And they have their rights to their kingdoms.” He stood and moved restlessly about the room, then stopped, leaning his hands on the table, and asked the air, “What am I to do?”

  I knew that he was no longer thinking of Macsen of Less Britain, or of any king. I had heard that note of pain before. More and more often over the past year he had woken at night rigid and soaked with sweat, crying “Morgawse!” It was always Morgawse, always his dead half-sister who filled his nightmares, and never the waking cause of them, her son Medraut. But there was a reason for that, and he had told it to me the night he had heard that Morgawse was dead. He had told no one else, not even Bedwyr. Gwalchmai knew, but that was because Morgawse had been his mother as well, and Arthur had once assumed that he knew already.

  “What am I to do?” Arthur asked again, turning from the wall. “I must prove things which ought to be obvious, prove that I trust Gwalchmai, whom the worst tyrant would not suspect of disloyalty. And if I can disprove one lie by some public gesture, disprove it without giving it the substance that acknowledging it would give it, I am no better off, for ten more have sprung up. And yet I cannot charge the source of them with anything, for he speaks no treason, and denies originating the rumors with a face of perfect innocence. He uses even my questions against me. If I could sentence him with exile! But on what charge?”

  “I thought we had decided to weather the storm as well as we could,” I said.

  “I decided. Bedwyr agreed with me, you and Gwalchmai disagreed. Send him to the Islands, you said, even if it does seem a criminal breach of hospitality. But it is too late for that now. He has friends.”

  “He has friends.” I set the comb down; it felt very heavy in my hand. “Nor would it be safe to send him to the Islands. His brother is…ill.”

  The eldest son of Morgawse, Agravain ap Lot, king of the Orcades since his father’s death, was in fact a broken man. His act of matricide had destroyed him, and now, by all accounts, he was drinking himself to death. His father had had a large degree of control over Pictland and the Western Islands as well as the Orcades, but this was slipping through Agravain’s lax fingers, and his clan and countrymen were not pleased. To send Medraut to the Islands when they were so ripe for intrigue would be at once dangerous to ourselves and cruel to Agravain, who had, after all, followed Arthur and fought bravely for him for many years, and who had suffered enough already.

  “Even if it were safe, I could not exile him. I have nothing to charge him with. Gwynhwyfar, how did you know that this would happen? You warned me, the first night that he came.”

  I thought of Medraut on that first night, sitting at the high table during the feast we had given to welcome his brother, the new king Agravain. He had worn a saffron cloak, and the torchlight caught and glowed in his fair hair. He was a beautiful young man—of average height, like his brother Gwalchmai, strong, graceful, a fine horseman and a skilled warrior. Most of his features were like Gwalchmai’s—or, I suppose, like Morgawse’s—the straight nose and finely molded cheekbones, the same narrow long-fingered hands. But his wide-set gray eyes and square jaw were like Arthur’s, and I had sensed in him the same passionate dedication I knew so well in my husband. But the dedication, I had been sure, had been to a very different end. And even when Medraut smiled I had been afraid.

  I shook my head, then rose, went over to my husband and put my arms around him. He did not move; only his heart beat steadily against mine. “I did not know,” I whispered into his shoulder, “I was merely afraid. I do not know why. You and Bedwyr wanted reasons, and you were right. It would have been unjust to have condemned him untried.”

  “You had reasons.” Arthur pulled away from me and sank into the chair. “You have dealt with people enough; I ought to trust you when you say that someone is lying. And I should have listened to Gwalchmai—he knows Medraut better than any living. But I thought he was too close to his mother’s death to think clearly yet, and I thought you were being over-cautious and perhaps jealous, and I determined to take the risk. I should not have. The stakes are too high.”

  “You couldn’t simply have rejected him. He is your son.”

  Arthur flinched and looked away from me, leaning against the table and staring at the smoke stain left by the lamp upon the wall. Medraut was his son, born of incest committed twenty-six years before with his sister Morgawse. He had not known, then, that she was his sister; he had not known who his father was. She was a married woman, staying with her father the emperor while her husband fought a war in the north of Britain. He was one of her father’s warriors, a bastard raised at a monastery, who by skill and good luck had found himself a place in the imperial warband. She had paid attention to him, pursued him, told him that her husband was cruel, and eventually seduced him one night after a feast given in honor of his first victory. He had been eighteen at the time. Shortly afterward, he had discovered that Uther was his father, and discovered from Morgawse that she had known all along. The black horror of that discovery had ridden him ever since.

  Arthur had told me this when he heard that she was dead, speaking as though he tore the story from himself like a monstrous growth buried in his flesh. I had wept, but he had been dry-eyed, brutal with himself. “I knew what she intended when I came out of the Hall and saw her waiting in the shadow,” he said, “and I agreed to it. I agreed only to adultery, but that was enough, and that one instant of agreeing will extend for the whole of my life, and, if God is just, endure for all eternity. And she is dead, now, and I cannot confront her, cannot…escape from her.” He picked up the letter that contained the news, stared at it, and said, quietly, so quietly I barely heard him, “Her son—our son—adored her.”

  And yet, when Medraut had appeared at Camlann, he had seemed more confused than hostile. We knew from Gwalchmai that Morgawse had told Medraut the secret of his birth, and Gwalchmai had insisted that his brother was now Arthur’s deadly enemy. But Medraut seemed more bewildered than anything else: very bitter against his brothers, but uncertain what to do now that his adored mother was dead. This had given Arthur hope that we might win him over. Gwalchmai had told us that Medraut had once been a sweet-natured child, and that they had been very close. Gwalchmai himself had once worshipped Morgawse, but afterward broken free of her hold on him. Arthur had hoped that Medraut might do the same. Perhaps he had even hoped to confront and escape the shadow of Morgawse through her son. At any rate, he had given Medraut a place at Camlann. And I could not blame him for hungering for this child of his enemy, this golden youth. I had given him no son, no child at all. There might even be some truth in his idea that I had feared Medraut because I was jealous of him. I could not believe it was so, but on such a matter I might easily lie to myself. Arthur’s enemy had given him a son out of hatred, while I, who would have given up my eyes and hearing to b
ear a child, I was barren.

  I sat on the edge of the table and caught Arthur’s hand, held it in both of mine. My heart ached again for him, and I was very weary. “My own,” I said, “we have decided to try to weather this storm. We have endured worse. Do not torture yourself with it.”

  “There will be fights soon. My men may begin to kill each other over Medraut. What am I to do then?”

  I did not know. I could only hold his hand and press it until his dark reverie was troubled and he turned to look at me again. Then I kissed his hand, and kissed the ring on his finger, the signet carved with the imperial dragon.

  He gave a deep sigh, and the tense muscles relaxed a little. He reached out and stroked my hair back from my face. “My white hart,” he said. “Yes, we may yet survive it. All may yet be well.” He rose, kissed me, and added, “But now there is that feast for the emissaries. We must prepare for it.”

  I nodded and went back to combing my hair. I felt as exhausted as though I had spent the entire day journeying, and that on bad roads.

  The feast glittered with splendor, and the emissaries of the kings of Elmet and Powys were entertained as magnificently as befitted an imperial court. Our seven hundred warriors filled only half the Feast Hall, and the rest of the places were taken by the wives of the married men—we relaxed the custom which bars women from the Hall, on some occasions—by the entourage of the emissaries, and by priests and potentates and petitioners from all of Britain. Torches in brackets down the walls lit the Hall, and the two great fire pits, one at either end, cast light and heat up to the high roof. The whitewashed shields along the wall shone, and the tables were full of the glitter of jewelery and arms and embroidered cloaks, while the collars of sleek war-hounds here and there caught the light even under the tables. There was beef and venison, pork and lamb and wild birds to eat, and mead and wine imported from Less Britain to drink till the Hall seemed to whirl in circles. And there was music, songs by Arthur’s chief bard Taliesin, who was called the finest poet in Britain, and by other singers as well, till the tables seemed to float in the strains of the harp.