In Winter's Shadow

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “Where would you have him sent? He can write letters wherever he is.”

  “They will have less effect if he is far away. Send him back to the Islands.”

  I stared down at the wall. “Arthur also wished to have him gone from Camlann. But he will not send him anywhere. He suspects that Medraut is ready to tell that story.”

  “He suspects? How can he?”

  I shook my head. “His feelings for that tale are more sensitive than the horns of a snail, or the tentacles of the sea anemone. And the time is ripe. Medraut could easily lose ground after this duel, for Arthur has refuted the grounds which Goronwy was defending. Medraut needs something new. But he does not dare tell his tale openly, in the Family, or he will be disbelieved. Hence he will tell it first outside Camlann. How could we send him back to the Islands? To sentence him to exile when he is charged with no crime, and without warning, would open a rift in the Family which we might well be unable ever to close again.”

  “I don’t know,” said Gwalchmai, wearily. “I have no answers. I merely know that I am afraid for us all if Medraut continues as he has begun. Let him go back to Dun Fionn and see what has become of Agravain. Perhaps it will trouble him; it troubles me.”

  Gwalchmai had sailed to the Orcades after completing an embassy in the North the summer before, and had returned to Camlann still brooding over his elder brother’s fate. It seemed that Agravain was drunk most of the time, had fearful nightmares if he went to bed sober, and had aged rapidly in the few years since Morgawse’s death. He was becoming a figure of derision to the northern kings, and bitter with the knowledge of it. Now Gwalchmai looked up again, saw the expression on my face, and shook his head.

  “Do not mind it,” he told me. “There is nothing anyone can do. I knew when he killed her that it would happen.” Again he looked out over the fields, speaking in a low voice. “As I knew that Medraut would be driven by her to destroy those who had been her enemies. Strange how her shadow endures among us. Agravain and Medraut, both devoured by it…and Arthur. And now it lives in the midst of Camlann and feeds on us all. How I wish…” his words trailed off, and he continued to brood over the field like the hawk of his name.

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “Wish what?” I asked softly.

  He smiled ruefully, breaking from his abstraction. “I wish that I had married my lady Elidan, and that there was something more to my life than battles and embassies. I wish I had even a little of ordinary life to turn to, to rest in. I swear the oath of my people, I envy Rhys and Cei their children.”

  “And I,” I replied in a low tone. He looked at me sharply, then took my hand from his shoulder and kissed it.

  “Forgive me, my lady. I know that you endure more than I, and I intended no complaint.”

  “My brother,” I said, “you complain less than a saint, and certainly less than I do.”

  In fact, he suddenly made me feel ashamed. His relationship to his clan had long been as tense as mine, first because he served their traditional enemy Arthur, and secondly because four years before he had been forced to kill one of his cousins who had fought for Queen Morgawse. That was a crime for which he could be disowned by his clan, kin-wrecked, but since his brother Agravain was king the matter had been passed over with a few expiatory rites. But he was never welcome in the Islands. For the rest—I had Arthur, at least. Gwalchmai had had one passionate love affair with the sister of a northern king: the girl’s brother rebelled against Arthur and Gwalchmai killed him. The lady Elidan, daughter of Caw, was of royal birth: she would never forgive her brother’s murderer, and told him so. Even years after her brother’s death, when Gwalchmai had sought her out at the convent in Gwynedd which she had joined, she had held resolutely to her word and refused either to pardon Gwalchmai or to have anything more to do with him. He blamed himself bitterly for what had happened, and in fact he had been to blame: he had lain with her while he was her brother’s guest and Arthur’s emissary, and he had sworn her an oath not to hurt her brother and broken it. But he had been very young, and quite desperately in love; her brother had been killed in battle; and he loved her still. I think most women would have pardoned him. Unforgiven, he paid little attention to other women’s attempts to attract him. It was not only that he still loved Elidan, but that he had hurt her, and was afraid of hurting someone else. So he was left with nothing: no parents, no clan, no wife, no children, and even his comrades in the Family quarreling about whether he was mad and treacherous. In comparison, I was lucky, very lucky.

  “It would be better if you complained more,” I told him, still ashamed of my own weakness. “We have worked you too hard, my friend. You have more than deserved this rest we are giving you.”

  He smiled, gently and ironically. “So then, I am a worn-out charger, put out to pasture before my time. Well, I cannot say that it is not sweet to have little to do now, even with the fortress on a sword-edge, and half of those who were my friends…” he checked himself from another “complaint” about the effects of Medraut’s slanders, and instead concluded, “Enough of that. I wished to tell Arthur what Medraut had said, but I found him sitting in one of the gate-towers, staring into the west, and I thought it better not to disturb him. And if he suspects already what Medraut will do, it is not surprising that he is lost in thought. But you can tell my lord Arthur what I have told you, and tell him that I am willing to serve him in any way, if he should wish to send me to watch Medraut, either in the Islands or anywhere else. And I am sorry to have spoken so grimly on so sweet a morning.”

  “Gwalchmai my friend, you know that it was necessary, so do not trouble to apologize for it. I will tell Arthur when he is free. And now, lord, weren’t you going to train a horse?”

  There was nothing much for me to do that afternoon: the spring planting and trading was largely done with, and the summer’s business had not yet properly begun. Gwalchmai walked me back up the hill to the Hall, trying to discuss neutral matters, then left to find something to eat before working with his horse. I was not hungry. I wandered restlessly about the fortress, giving unnecessary advice to the servants, then visited a friend. This was one of my few women friends, Enid, Gereint ab Erbin’s wife. There were so few women I could talk to that I usually enjoyed our conversations. But now she was in one of her duller moods, able to do nothing but gossip, and I was tense and sharp-tongued. We were both relieved when I excused myself.

  I went back to my own house, into the bedroom to be private, and sat on the bed. Camlann is strong, I had thought that morning, before Gwalchmai had given me his news. But the day before I had told Bedwyr that it was only a thorn brake against the wind, a fragile protection for the weak little fire we had set alight: and that image held the greater truth. Twenty years before, what had Camlann been? The fortress of the emperor of Britain, a man emperor in name only, with only a shadow more authority than any petty king. And a hundred years before?

  A hill overgrown with the grasses, inhabited by foxes and the bright-eyed rabbits and hares. The great cities of the area then were Baddon and Searisbyrig—Aquae Sulis and Sorviodunum. Young men and women still would have been able to remember the Roman legions departing finally from the south, and perhaps they had believed that Rome was still strong. It had still stood, then. Rome, “the eternal city,” as its lovers had called it, not knowing how close they were to the dark. I thought of the ruined Wall in the North, and bare hills behind it. That wall had been the reality: Camlann was only its shadow, attempting to protect the few small fragments that remained. It was not strong. Medraut was raising a storm that would tear it to fragments.

  We were trapped. Medraut had set snares for us on every side, and Time pressed close behind us like a huntsman with his dogs. I could see no way out, any more than could Arthur, with his wide stare into the unyielding future, or Bedwyr with his call for courage and another blind battle. No way but one—and that one was not something I could admit. I had thought of it several times over the four years since Medraut had c
ome to Camlann, and always I had thrust the thought from me in disgust, knowing that it was wrong.

  And yet, I thought, this cannot go on. Medraut would destroy us with these quarrels. He had brought about bloodshed within the Family, and only Bedwyr’s quick action prevented killing. What he planned was more: strife between my husband and his realm. Dishonor for Arthur, disaffection in the Family, and rebellion and civil war throughout Britain. The bloodiest kind of war, and the cruelest. Perhaps we could live down the slanders; perhaps we could force Medraut into some mistake—but that possibility grew more remote with every day that passed. Medraut had facts, and knew how to persuade, and to win followers. I was afraid, as I had been since first he came to Camlann. All of us, we were all worn out by the strife, the tension, the constant plotting to protect our future. And it could all end so simply, so easily, if Medraut should quietly die.

  I remembered with uncomfortable vividness an incident years before, when I had been helping Gruffydd the surgeon tend a man with a fever. Gruffydd had been keeping that man in his own house, as he kept Goronwy now. I remembered him stooping over the man, taking his pulse and muttering in discontent. He went to his medicine cabinet and took down from the shelf one jar, a blue-glazed earthenware jar with a ragged “H” scratched onto it. He poured some of the dark liquid it contained into a cup of water and gave it to the patient, explaining meanwhile to me that it would slow the heart and lower the fever.

  “What is it, then?” I had asked.

  “Hemlock,” he replied shortly.

  “But that is a poison!”

  He nodded, snorting. “So are many things: so is mead, in large quantities. But this much,” he laid one finger sideways against the jar, “this much is a fit dose for a large man stricken with fever, like our friend here, and can save lives. Half of that amount for a small man or a woman. This much, now,” and he laid a second finger beside the first, “brings sleep, and even death, to some. More than that,” he picked up the jar and set it back on the shelf, “four or more measures, at any rate, will kill anyone, and many have died by it. But those that have used it subtly have to smother it in mead or strong wine, for it has a bitter taste.”

  “How cheerful,” I said. “What about toad’s blood, then, if one wishes to poison someone subtly?”

  He snorted again, smothering a laugh, and replied, “An old wives’ tale. Toad’s blood will poison no one, and I think it must have spoiled the taste of many a dinner.”

  I would have to visit Goronwy soon, to see how well he was recovering, and to show a just concern for him. I could be as free of Gruffydd’s house as of my own. It would be easy, so easy, to slip that jar from the shelf, and pour out four finger-measures into a flask—a flask like the empty scent jar of Italian glass I kept under the bed. Then, the next time I poured for the high table at a feast, I could mix it with a skin of mead and give it to Medraut. No, not a skin of mead. I would have to throw the rest out, and that would be dangerously obvious. Better to wait until there was only enough mead left in the pitcher for one person, and then add the drug and pour for Medraut. When it was late in the evening, and he had drunk well enough not to notice the taste. When the fires were low, and the torches flickering, and the others also had drunk well and would not notice if I had to pour in the wrong order. No one would suspect poisoning, if everyone had drunk mead at the feast. And Medraut would go home as though he had drunk too much, staggering a little, and next morning would be found to have died—in his sleep, painlessly. And no one would be able to say whether he had simply drunk too much mead for a hot night, or died from a sudden failure of the heart (as can happen, even to young men), or from some rapid disease. He would have a magnificent funeral, with all the fortress in mourning, and never trouble anyone again. His tale would rest forever untold, and his faction and his slanders at last would be stilled. We could heal the breach in the Family; we could restore the Empire. It would be the pitch of foolish absurdity to let all that we had suffered and bled for, the one last light of the dark West, won with toil and anguish from the collapse of our civilization, to allow all this to slip bloodily away into nothingness because of one sole man.

  I jumped up, pressing my hands to my mouth. “That is damnation,” I whispered through them, hearing the distorted sound of the words in the still air of the empty room. Damned. It was evil. “You shall not commit murder. No murderer has eternal life,” proclaimed the scriptures.

  Arthur called murder “the tyrants’ trick.” Bedwyr said that no expediency, or even necessity, could justify the commission of a mortal sin. Both of them, and Gwalchmai as well, sometimes doubted whether it was justified to kill even in battle. Yet they had all killed…but no, none of them would ever poison a man at a feast. Such an action would not only carry eternal damnation, but temporal condemnation from all those whom I loved most, whose opinions I most valued. And they were right. How could anyone—how could I—poison a man under the cloak of hospitality, charging him with no crime, giving him no warning, no chance for self-defense or for repentance? It was base, cruel, dishonorable, treacherous, abominable: how could I?

  And yet…what other course was there?

  It was the vulnerability of what I loved that tortured me. My husband, my friends were suffering now, and it was only beginning. And that was not the worst; it was not only that we would suffer, but that the future would suffer as well. Or did my fears exaggerate the danger? What did Medraut want? Power for himself? Probably. He had wanted to be king of the Orcades, and resented his brother’s election. No doubt he would like to be emperor instead. That bleak stare I had noticed in him when he thought no one was watching sometimes fixed itself on the gold dragon standard in the Hall. But no, that was not what I feared. There were many others in Britain who would like to be emperor. What I feared from Medraut was something more, something that I had at first been unable to name, even to myself. It was the wind out of the darkness, the pure power of destruction undertaken for destruction’s sake. I had never seen Queen Morgawse of Orcade, but I knew what she had done to the lives of those she touched. And I was certain that Medraut was still devoted to her, and loyal to her hatred. One understands who and what a man is in many ways, and few of them have to do with what he says. There are actions—small actions of little consequence, often as trivial as a harsh word to a servant; there are friendships and ways of pursuing friendships; and choices of words, gestures, looks: all things unimportant in themselves but which taken together create suspicion and eventually certainty. I was certain that Medraut meant to break us, to destroy us, in vengeance for his mother. And I knew that his hold on us was strong, and we could not render him either friendly or harmless.

  I was sick of carefully weighed reasons and precise justice. Our position was not reasonable, nor was Medraut’s. And the need I had to protect was not reasonable, but I knew that my horror of murder would not stand against its force. Whether or not it was right, whether or not I would suffer for it, I knew with cold certainty that I would do it: I would try to destroy Medraut.

  ***

  How I managed to continue to work, continue to smile during the next three weeks I do not know. Only the force of long habit kept me upright: my heart cowered within me, like a hare when the hounds are searching for it. My intention to murder was a cold, black weight within me. I stole the poison, but then tried to pretend to myself that I would not use it—yet I could not throw it away. As for Bedwyr, it hurt me to look at him, and I avoided him as much as I could. After the first few days, his look of puzzlement vanished and he began to avoid me as well. He understood. How long, I wondered, had he known what he felt? I suspected that it was longer than I had known. I wanted him to talk to, many times; kept thinking of things to say to him, and then remembering that I must say nothing, so that my thoughts were tormented. Arthur would have noticed, but had other concerns. Goronwy, recovering from the duel, wavered in his allegiance, and some other warriors with him. Arthur saw much of them, hoping to restore their loyalty, and f
or a time thought he had won Goronwy at least. Then we were unable to keep Medraut from seeing him, and found him once again uneasy, once again listening to the rumors. And there were more rumors than ever, now linking Gwalchmai, Bedwyr, and me in a conspiracy against Medraut, slandering him to Arthur and trying to murder Goronwy. Arthur decided to send Medraut to Less Britain as part of an escort for Macsen’s emissary when he returned to his lord.

  This emissary arrived in Camlann in the third week of June. He was a low-ranking, ignobly born warrior of the king’s warband, whose status was almost as direct an insult to Arthur as his words and manner. Nonetheless, we played our part correctly and feasted this emissary with the usual magnificence. It was to that feast that I carried my flask of stolen hemlock.

  Macsen’s emissary, such as he was, had the place on Arthur’s left (it would have been an excess of courtesy to put him on Arthur’s right; he was embarrassed enough as it was) and Medraut sat beside him. The emissary called for wine during the second course, it was a formal feast, and there were no women present in the Hall, so I entered only then, and poured wine for the high table. I sat down next to Arthur, on his right. I had bound the glass phial of hemlock under my belt, which was a wide, high one, and stitched with gold. The poison was quite invisible. But I could feel it against my side like a piece of ice, slowly chilling me through. I had a savage headache.

  “You are pale, my lady,” Bedwyr said, moving over to let me sit down.

  “It is my head,” I told him. “It feels near to splitting.”