In Winter's Shadow

by Gillian Bradshaw

  I took a deep breath, feeling the wooden upper rampart of the wall warm and real beneath my hand. Too much poetry, too much listening to tales, I told myself. And yet, I was answered. Even dead, Morgawse’s influence surrounded us; and perhaps I understood something of the reason. Perhaps I had known it for a long time.

  “We must get Medraut away from Camlann,” I said, aloud, and Gwalchmai, turning to meet my eyes, nodded.

  The immediate attempt to push the pace, however, failed. Gwalchmai brought up the subject of the negotiations in the Hall that night, and did all he could to rub it in the faces of Rhuawn and the rest of Medraut’s faction, but they said nothing whatever to him in reply, merely whispered among themselves afterward. And the next day Gwalchmai left for Gaul. He was the center of the dispute, and we did not dare use anyone else to push the pace.

  That same day I visited the wife of Gwalchmai’s servant, Rhys, bringing a gold charm for her new baby. I found Eivlin already on her feet again, with the ever-present Maire attending her. Maire had her own baby with her, but the rest of her children were not there, and had presumably been left in the care of her eldest, a girl of ten. Both women made me welcome, and showed me the new baby with great pride, as well they might, for she was a fine, healthy little girl.

  “We named her Teleri, after a nun who was kind to us,” Eivlin explained, while I offered the baby my finger to clutch. “Though, indeed, I hope this one will not be a nun, nor so strong-willed as her namesake—or as you, you good-for-nothing little fox!”—this to her son, her first child, who stuck his fingers in his mouth complacently, and smiled at her through them. “Och, look at him! As though he had not drunk all the cream from the milk this morning, and then refused his dinner! Well, Sion, Mama is too tired to thrash you for it, but do you know what your father will say when he comes home?”

  “He’ll give me some nuts,” predicted the boy through his fingers. “He promised.”

  “Indeed he will, for he’s a fool and spoils the boy,” said Eivlin sorrowfully, “as I do as well, more’s the pity.”

  Maire laughed. “Ach, he’s not spoiled; are you spoiled, Sion?”

  Sion shook his head.

  “You must be a good boy, and look after your little sister.”

  Sion beamed at her, and nodded.

  “He has been longing for a sister,” Eivlin explained. “He would have preferred a brother, but now he only wants to play with Teleri. Indeed, it will be a task and a labor and a hard trouble to stop him strangling her with embraces.”

  “Who did you name Sion after?” I asked, feeling clumsy and uncertain with these women. Most of my work had to do with administering Camlann, and with affairs of state, and hence with men; Eivlin and Maire inhabited a different world. I often found I had little to say to other women.

  “Sion? He is named for Rhys’s father, of course. Rhys is a Rhys ap Sion, and his father is a Sion ap Rhys, and his father was Rhys ap Sion.”

  “Who was his father, then?”

  “A Sion ap Huw,” she said regretfully. “Still, that Huw’s brother was called Rhys, so the name is old enough, and a good name, too. Hush, my love,” to the baby. “See the pretty thing the gracious lady has brought you?” The baby’s blank, unfocused gaze took no notice of the golden charm Eivlin suspended above her head. Eivlin set it in her hand, and the small red fingers half-folded around it, feebly, the way they clutched any object that touched them; then the blurred eyes closed and the child went back to sleep.

  “You must be tired,” I said to Eivlin. “I will go, and let you rest.”

  “You are most gracious, most noble lady; indeed, it is fine, to receive visits from an empress! I thank you.”

  I made myself smile and excused myself, declining Maire’s offers of wine-cakes and new cheese, just made, which she would be delighted to present to the Empress. I walked back up the hill struggling with my soul. I did not want to be an empress, gracious and strong for her husband’s subjects. I wanted at that moment, desperately, to be a plain man’s wife and to have children of my own.

  As I walked past the stables I saw Bedwyr training a horse, a two-year-old brown gelding he had been working on the lead rein. When he saw me he lopped the rein around one of the fence posts and came toward me. I forced myself to smile.

  “My lady! A fine day,” he called, coming up, the warmth of a smile in his eyes.

  “A beautiful day,” I returned. I smiled again and began to walk off. I did not want to talk to anyone.

  “What is the matter?” he asked, the warmth disappearing from his look and concern taking its place.

  “Nothing, Lord Bedwyr; I am in a hurry, that is all. Will I see you in the Hall tonight?”

  But he had reached me and caught my arm, looking at my face carefully. “You are nearly in tears, my lady,” he observed, in the same tone he would have used to say, “Your gown has a thread loose on the sleeve.” “Lady Gwynhwyfar, can I be of any help?”

  I shook my head, pulled my arm free, and began to walk up the hill again. He came after me. “If I can be of aid to you, do not hesitate to ask it,” he told me. “If it is your cousin, if you should want help…my lady, I could beg my lord Arthur’s leave, ride north, and speak to him for you. I promise you, if it came to fighting in your name, I would not kill him.”

  I stopped, astonished. “Merciful Heaven, no! Lord Bedwyr, you are most generous, but…indeed, I thank you, it is kind, it is more than kind! But do not bring up this matter of my cousin, I beg you, before Arthur and the world! And for you to speak for me…it is noble, but not wise, for how could I speak to my kin after? I…” I paused, overcome. “I thank you. But it was not my cousin’s letter that troubled me, lord. It was…something else.”

  “Come and have some wine,” he offered. “You are weary, and it will be better if you rest a moment.”

  I went with him to his house, and he poured me a cup of wine, adding an equal measure of water. His house was on the west side of the Feast Hall, near mine. Because he was warleader he had all three rooms to himself. It was much like my house, but plainer, suiting his taste. The only decoration was a rack of books on the desk, at which I sat while I drank the wine. He sat by the fireplace and looked at me.

  “Thank you,” I said, managing to keep my voice even again. “It was a foolish matter. I should never have allowed it to distress me.” I intended to say nothing more, to turn the conversation to the books or to politics, but under his calm, concerned eyes I suddenly found myself saying, “Oh, Bedwyr, I wish to God I could have children!”

  He jumped up, started toward me, then stopped, looking at me. I pressed my hands against my face, drew them down under my eyes to ease the pressure there. “It is only that I am tired,” I said. “One feels it, sometimes: all the wars and consultations and factions. And sometimes I wish I could be an ordinary woman—ach, I know, no doubt I would hate it if I were. Only…if I had a child, if Arthur had a son…he would never have trusted Medraut, if he had a son by me, and we would have a future, someone to inherit the Empire when we are gone…and I would so love to have a baby, my own child…”

  “Hush,” he said, and then did cross the room to me and stooped clumsily over me, patting me awkwardly on the back with the stump of his shield arm. I burst into tears, and he put his arms around me while I leaned against his shoulder and sobbed, bitterly ashamed of myself all the time.

  After a while I pulled away from Bedwyr and dried my eyes. He leaned back against the desk, his arm still around my shoulder, still watching me with concern. I fumbled for the wine glass, took another sip of wine, and managed to smile. “Forgive me,” I said. “It is very weak and foolish of me.”

  “My lady!” he protested. “God knows, you bear the weight of Camlann: is it strange that you grow weary now and then? I am honored that you should choose me to speak to.” I laughed a little, wiping my eyes again. “Truly, I am honored!” he said, with some vehemence. “Do not blame yourself, noble lady. There is not one of us who is not borne
down by cares sometimes, and few who have as many cares as you.”

  “But not all of us imitate a fountain because of it,” I replied.

  “True. Most warriors asked to endure what you do would take a sword to one of their comrades over a trivial word or a joke. Fountains are safer.”

  I laughed, wiped my face once more, and rubbed my hands dry on my gown. “But not for your cloak, noble lord; I can see that I have drenched it as well as any rainstorm.”

  He glanced at the damp patch on his shoulder, then smiled, the smile that lit his face from the inside. I returned the smile, then rose shakily to my feet.

  “I must be going, lord,” I told him. “I am supposed to discuss next year’s tribute with the emissary from Elmet this afternoon, and I have some petitioners to hear before then. So we must weep a while and part, like lovers in a ballad. I thank you for the wine and for the use of your shoulder.”

  “I am your servant, my lady,” he returned seriously. He opened the door for me. As I paused outside it to take my leave he added, “my lady, you should demand less of yourself, and work less hard.”

  “More easily advised than done, Lord Bedwyr. Strange that that saying should apply to so much of your good advice! But I thank you. Truly.”

  I felt his concerned gaze follow me all the way to the Hall. I was ashamed that I had broken before him. And yet, I felt better for it. It is useful to weep, sometimes: it frees one to concentrate on other things afterward. And, as they say, a grief shared is a burden halved. But I wished I could have spoken to Arthur about it. Yet he had burdens enough and more than enough of his own; and I could never quite mention my childlessness to him. That, while it must be his grief as well as mine, was plainly my failure. In that at least Medraut gave true evidence.

  The next day there was another almost-duel, but after that Camlann became comparatively quiet. This was not because anything was resolved, however, but because Arthur managed to send some of the most quarrelsome warriors off in opposite directions: one party escorting a supply train to the work on the dike repairs in the Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, and the other to Dyfed, to enforce a settlement of some debated lands. Medraut himself was kept at Camlann. We could not trust him to leave it, either with his friends or with his enemies.

  Gwalchmai returned from Less Britain in the second week of May, looking ill and worn to the bone. The negotiations with Macsen had gone exactly as I had expected: one or two claims were resolved, but five more had been raised in their place. Moreover, Gwalchmai had had to use all of his skill to prevent himself from becoming entangled in a duel with some of Macsen’s warband, who had been deliberately provocative. If he had fought them, and won—and he would not have lost—Macsen would have had a legal charge against him, and through him, against us, which he could have used to block future negotiations. Arthur was angered by this, and, instead of sending Gwalchmai back, wrote Macsen a courteous letter requesting that he send an emissary of his own to negotiate the points which remained to be settled. He also commanded Gwalchmai to remain in Camlann and avoided giving him any work. He wanted to give the warrior a rest, but he wanted even more to bring out the smoldering tension in Camlann and resolve it. The plan worked, too, after a fashion, for the conflict burst into open fire soon after the quarrelsome parties returned from Dyfed and East Anglia: and yet still little was resolved.

  I was taking an inventory of wool in the storerooms when Medraut came in to find me.

  I had been walking along the stacked bales of different weights and dyes, checking them, while my clerk Gwyn trailed along behind me and noted down the amount of each kind on a wax tablet. The sheep of the region had been recently shorn, and I needed to know how much more wool I should buy for the fortress, and so needed to update my inventory. The storeroom was a long, narrow building, windowless, with the wool bales stacked up to the roof, and the sunlight coming through the eaves in dusty streaks. Many of the older bales had been sitting in storage for a long while, and were close-packed, compressed, and thick with dust; I had to stoop over and prod them to find out what they were, and they covered my hands with their grease and filled my lungs with the dust. Then the door at the far end of the storeroom opened, letting in a flood of blinding sunlight, and Medraut paused in it like a statue of a Roman god. I stopped counting the bales and straightened.

  “Noble lord?” I said, trying not to cough.

  He strolled leisurely through the door, out of the sunlight, down the narrow building, and stopped before me. He gave a slight bow, then stood looking at me with Arthur’s gray stare and the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth. He was, as always, impeccably dressed, his short beard neatly trimmed, graceful, controlled, invulnerable. “My lady,” he said, a dutiful concern in his soft, pleasant voice. “The lord Goronwy has been hurt in a duel, and the emperor wishes you to join him in attendance on him at once.”

  “Oh God,” I said. I rubbed my filthy hands on the apron I was wearing, then pulled the thing off and tossed it onto one of the bales. Medraut glanced down, not quite quickly enough for me to miss the look of satisfaction in his eyes. “How badly hurt? Who was he fighting?”

  “Most noble lady, how would I know how badly he is hurt? I was not there. I was told he has been taken to the house of Gruffydd the surgeon; I pray he is not much hurt, for he is my friend.” He paused another moment, then added, “The warleader, Lord Bedwyr, was the one that hurt him.”

  “Bedwyr?” I asked, staring at him. I could not imagine Bedwyr embroiled in a duel. Yet Medraut would not fabricate such a thing. He nodded now, still with that faint hint of a smile. Goronwy was one of his followers, his supposed friends; but he was pleased that there was bloodshed, if I judged him right, and did not mind whose the blood—though no doubt he would have preferred Bedwyr’s to Goronwy’s. “Where is Arthur?” I asked, suppressing my sudden loathing of him.

  “With Goronwy, at Gruffydd the surgeon’s house, noble queen. May I have the honor of attending you there?”

  “I thank you, no. Undoubtedly the lord Goronwy should not be disturbed by many visitors. Gwyn, leave that now. Lord Medraut, your pardon.” I gave him a slight curtsy, the politest way I knew of saying, “I want no more of your company,” and hurried from the room. Gwyn gave one frightened look at Medraut and ran after me.

  “You don’t have to come,” I told the boy as we hurried through the hot, sullen afternoon sun. “I won’t need you again this afternoon. You can go to weapons practice—or is it riding this afternoon?”

  “Riding, noble lady,” he said. He sounded utterly wretched.

  “Why, what’s the matter?” I asked him, registering his distress for the first time.

  He stopped, fixing me with his oddly dark eyes. I had grown very fond of him in the short time he had been at Camlann. He was a sweet-tempered boy, with a great deal of courage. He suffered the dislike or cruelty of the other boys at Camlann with patient persistence, and worked at his weapons with unflagging determination. I had once found him weeping in a corner of the stables, but he had at once dried his eyes and denied that he had cause to weep.

  “Noble lady…” he said, then, in a rush, “I know I am no one, no one at all, but you should not trust Lord Medraut. It is his fault that Bedwyr fought Goronwy.”

  I looked at him in surprise. “You seem very certain of that.”

  “Everyone knows it,” he replied. “Goronwy is the lord Medraut’s friend, and the lord Bedwyr is the lord Gwalchmai’s friend; why else would they fight?”

  I put my hand on his shoulder, feeling the bones through the plain tunic. He had learned very quickly. But he was an intelligent boy. “Why do you hate Medraut so?” I asked gently.

  “He…once he hit my mother.”

  “What? How could he? Was he on some expedition?”

  “It was at the convent, in Gwynedd. I had nightmares about it for years.”

  “But you said that your mother was at a convent in Elmet.”

  He blushed. “Oh.” He looked at
his feet. “I didn’t want to say it was in Gwynedd because the monasteries there are so full of sedition. I was afraid you would not accept me here if I said I came from Gwynedd. Please, noble lady, don’t tell anyone that it is really Gwynedd. The others will say…you won’t tell them?”

  “Of course not. But what happened?”

  “He came to the convent, with some of his followers to…to take something which he had no right to. My mother tried to shame him out of it, but he hit her with the side of his sword and rode off without looking back. He hit her, and knocked her down, and she was bleeding. I saw that he had no honor and no shame, and I swore that one day I would become a warrior and challenge him. But when I came here, I found him, proud and powerful, and many of the warriors following after him like…like dogs looking for tidbits. And he does nothing but engender quarrels and slander his brother Gwalchmai. I have heard people talking…my lady, people talk in front of me because they think, ‘He is just a servant; he must be a fool.’ I know what Medraut says to his followers, and it is all lies. The lord Gwalchmai,” with a plain and desperate intensity, “the lord Gwalchmai is a great and good warrior. He is the best, the very greatest warrior in Camlann. If I could be like any of them I would like to be like him. You must not believe what the lord Medraut says of him. I know that I am only a nun’s bastard, as the lord Cei says, but please, please believe me, my lady. You must not trust Medraut.”

  I thought over what Gwyn had said, and regretfully decided that there was nothing that would be useful. “Hush,” I told him. “We do not believe what Medraut says of Gwalchmai.” I turned and began to walk up the hill again.

  “Then why do you let him stay here?” Gwyn cried out, running after me. “He says that you would send him away if what he says was false, and many people believe him. And he says that the emperor is set about with flatterers, and does not know whom to trust, and he says that you, most noble lady, are the worst of the flatterers—oh, forgive me! I did not mean…”