In Winter's Shadow

by Gillian Bradshaw

  At that time I was able to sit up in bed, and in fact felt recovered, though I did not dare go out for fear of bringing the fever on again. But I had dressed, and even had the bed moved so as to get the best light for reading. I was checking through some accounts Gwyn had left for me when I heard the muffled sound of a knock at the outer door. I called “Come in,” and, after the inevitable pause, “in here!” But I was surprised when it was Bedwyr who opened the inner door and stood in the threshold, pausing to allow his eyes to adjust to the light.

  “Noble lord,” I said in greeting. Despite my desire to avoid him I was glad to see him standing there, looking as he always did, plain and somber. He looked away from my gaze, however, and at this I became embarrassed as well, tense, uncertain how to receive him.

  He turned the sideways look to a bow an instant too late for it to be convincing, and closed the door behind him. “My lady. I am sorry to trouble you while you are ill, but no one else seems able to tell me how much grain we are likely to have this winter, or how many horses we can feed on it.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Oh yes.” I fumbled through the accounts, hoping to find the answer and be rid of him, then realized that I did not have any of the necessary lists by me, and struggled to remember what they said.

  Bedwyr noticed my confusion and added quickly, “It is not urgent. I need to know soon, for next week I wish to send the horses we will not keep here up to the winter pasturage. But I do not have to know today.”

  “I think we will have enough for two thousand horses,” I told him. “Or a little more: say, three horses for each member of the warband. But I cannot be more specific than that just now. I can probably send you some slightly better estimate by tomorrow afternoon.”

  He nodded, but, instead of taking his leave, stood looking at me. “God speed your recovery, my lady,” he said after a moment. “You are much missed.”

  “I am nearly recovered now,” I said, trying to smile. But the smile was a failure. Bedwyr was not a stranger, not someone to be easily fooled by tensing a few muscles in the face. Indeed, it was easier to conceal a grief from Arthur than from his steady eyes. I felt worn and wretched, and I could see that he knew it, and felt my face growing hot for shame at my lies, my many lies. But I could not bear speaking with him honestly, tasting his anger and bitterness as well as Arthur’s. “I may be up and about tomorrow,” I finished hurriedly.

  “Do not press yourself too hard, my lady. Much depends on you.”

  There was another minute of silence while we looked at each other and I wished desperately that he would go and leave me to my misery. Then he added, deliberately, “Our lord Arthur misses your help.”

  I looked away hastily. This gentleness where I had expected scorn confused me. “Does he?” I asked, trying for a tone of uninterested inquiry but sounding merely flat and bitter. This additional piece of stupidity, my lack of self-control, disgusted me. I bit my lip, having to blink at tears: they come far too easily after a sickness.

  At this Bedwyr took two rapid strides toward me and caught my hand. “Lady Gwynhwyfar.” He dropped to his knees so as not to stoop over me, “Forgive my presumption in speaking thus to you, but I must speak. Your husband loves you deeply, even if now he is bitter against you. We have spoken together since Medraut’s exile, and it is as plain to see as the wide heavens. He longs for some words which would reconcile him to you again, but he does not know what to say. I beg you, my lady, do not grieve yourself so. Speak to him, make the reconciliation. You have more skill at such things then he does, and it will console you both.”

  I pulled my hand away, biting my lip until I tasted blood.

  “Why are you saying this to me? I have broken all the laws that you and Arthur live by in the name of your own goal, and thus betrayed you. And I can repent neither to Arthur nor even to God, because I still wish I had succeeded and that Medraut were safe in Hell. So how can I make a reconciliation with Arthur? And you, you must despise me as well. Do not lie to me, Bedwyr. I am sick of lies; I would prefer your hatred to more of them.”

  He met my eyes a moment with an expression of shock, then bowed his head almost to the bed. “My lady,” he whispered, “how could I hate or despise you? If what you had done had been a hundred times worse, still your grace and goodness would force me to love you, even against my will, and…” he broke off abruptly, staring at the coverlet, his hand clenching among its folds. I touched his shoulder in wonder and he looked up, and my heart came into my throat at that look.

  “Do not,” he resumed after a pause, “do not believe that your lord despises you. He is the more troubled because he so loves and honors you—and because he fears Medraut, and is himself ashamed because he begot Medraut and now wishes him dead. He is as bitter with himself as with you. Believe me, for I would not lie about this even to please you.”

  I began to cry in earnest at this, and then sneezed and had a coughing fit, for my fever had left me with a cold. Bedwyr handed me one of the cloths by the bedside, sitting down on the bed as he did so. I wiped my face and blew my nose, managed to check the tears.

  “I am sorry, Bedwyr. I always seem to cry when you are kind to me. If Arthur feels as you say he does, why doesn’t he tell me so himself? No, you said that he hopes for some miracle to reconcile us. To console us both. And I am to produce this reconciliation? Lord God of Heaven, must I really lie to him, and say that I repent when I have not, and tell him I am glad that Medraut lives?” I called on God, but I was looking at Bedwyr, at his dark, compassionate eyes.

  “You need only say that it would have been wrong, my lady. That I know you do believe. He cares more to have you back than to prove the rights and wrongs of the case.”

  I laughed bitterly, coughed, found another cloth. “Ah, is that all? And do you think it will be that simple, that I can simply say a few words and make all well again? No, I am sorry. Your advice is, as always, good, true, and difficult to follow. My friend, my heart, I thank you. But can you justify even to yourself this crime I have attempted—although you treat me with such kindness?”

  His face was tense and strained, but his eyes were alight, intense, very warming to me after so much cold misery. “I do not much care for such justifications. You acted from excess of love, to protect the realm at all costs. How can I say you were wrong? To be sure, I know it is evil to poison a man. But to justify or to condemn you—that is beyond me. And the thing was not done. Moreover, it has been bitter to me to watch you, seeing you conceal your grief and knowing that it devours you within.” He reached out for my hand again, touched it to his lips. “Gwynhwyfar, I know that you have condemned yourself, but no one has the right to condemn but God, who alone can weigh the heart. Sweet lady, be merciful to yourself also.”

  “Go on as though I had done nothing, as though it were unimportant, complacently awaiting the Last Judgment?”

  “What else is there to do, except die? We must live with our sins. One chooses between evils and endures that choice. I…I once decided that it was evil to kill, even in battle. Arthur showed me that it can be evil not to act, when action might save something of value, even if the action includes killing. I agreed. But they are still there, all those deaths; I can clean the blood from my sword, but from my heart, never. All those men I have killed for the sake of the Empire, for the sake of the Light, are as dead as if I had killed only for hatred or to prove myself a better warrior than them. But you have never killed anyone.”

  I shook my head, staring at him. His soberness was gone. For once the passion was on the surface, and with it the pain. He leaned forward, clutching my hand hard, leaning upon the stump of his shield hand. “It is easier than you would expect. It makes little impression, at the time. Afterward…afterward, one remembers it and feels differently about it. But the only alternative we have had is to allow others to be killed, and if that leaves no blood on a sword, it must leave more on the soul before God. What you have done—what you meant to do—must count for less in Heaven than the
crimes I know I have committed, the deaths and the maimings and pain, the widows and children starving after their men’s deaths, the burned fields and plundered towns—all done with this hand.” He pulled it from my fingers and held it before me: his sword hand, calloused from the sword, the spear, and the reins, scarred on the back from practice matches and the hazards of war. He regarded it with a degree of pain and horror that tore my heart. I caught the hand and kissed it. He looked at me as though he had forgotten I was there, as though he had never seen me before. He drew his fingers along my lips, touched the tears that were still on my cheek, smoothed back my hair, caught hold of my shoulder. He leaned forward and kissed me.

  I meant, at every moment of the next hour, to stop it: to say, “No more.” But I did not. It was sweet, so very sweet that I wished always just one more minute of it, before returning to the cold and the loneliness and the futile longing for Arthur, the shame and tension and approaching dark. No doubt Bedwyr meant to stop it, also, but he too said nothing. Neither of us said anything until it was over and we lay side by side, knowing we had betrayed Arthur and everything we lived for. Then I turned toward the wall and began to weep again.

  Bedwyr raised himself on his elbow and stroked my hair and shoulder, whispering, “Hush. It is my fault, all my fault. Hush.”

  “No, no. Mine. Oh, why did we?”

  “My lady, my most sweet lady, I love you. I have always loved you. I told myself otherwise when I saw that my lord also loved you, but I could not believe that forever. I have wanted this for such a long time…I should never have come here. You were sick and grieving and could not help it. It is my fault.” The gentle hand slipped lower and I shivered. I sat up abruptly and looked at him.

  “It does not matter whose fault it was. Arthur must not know. It would hurt him too much. And we must never do this again.”

  He stared at me for a moment, then turned away. He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “You are right. Oh, Heavenly God!” He bent over with pain, clasping the stump of his shield arm. “What have I done? My lord’s wife, in his own bed…”

  “We must not do it again!” I said, more urgently. “You must go somewhere far away, until we have forgotten this a little, and until I am reconciled with Arthur.”

  He nodded, keeping his back to me, still bent over double. The gray light through the eaves fell along his back, picking out a long scar which ran up from his right side. Arthur had similar scars. All cavalry fighters have them; they cannot fight and defend themselves at the same time.

  “It is my fault, too,” I told Bedwyr.

  He shook his head, still without looking round.

  “I love you,” I said. The words seemed meaningless. “I love Arthur, but you, as well.”

  He reached down, fumbled about for the breeches thrown aside not long before. He pulled them on, then, standing again, turned and looked at me. He had to hold them up because he could not fasten his belt with one hand; in a tale it would have made me laugh. But his eyes were very dark with the pain, and the skin drawn tight around his mouth.

  “You must go to Arthur,” I said, thinking desperately. “Ask him to send you to Less Britain, to talk to King Macsen. He needs to send someone, and he is determined not to send Gwalchmai again.”

  Some of the pain ebbed. “Yes,” he said, after a minute. “I knew Macsen when I served his brother Bran; I could talk to him. Though my lord might be reluctant to allow me to leave for any length of time…but I could urge business, a desire to see my family and look to the estates. He will certainly give me leave to spend time on that.” He looked around for his tunic, picked it up, pulled it over his head with his shield arm. I got up and fastened his belt for him, then tied the fastenings of his tunic, carefully repeating the knots his servant customarily used. He let me finish, then caught my wrist.

  “Gwynhwyfar.” His voice was resuming its usual quiet tone, but shock and confusion gave it still an edge of harshness. “My lady, you know now that I love you, and am ruined. I have betrayed my lord. I do not even know that I can repent, for I still desire you—but enough of that. If ever this should be discovered, let me suffer for it. It would be a plain case of treason, but my lord would probably commute the sentence from death to exile. I could endure that. I could not endure it if you were made to suffer for my crime, for it is my fault—no, it is true! I swear I would feel your disgrace more than my own. I know that if this is ever discovered you will not escape punishment altogether, but you might escape lightly, if you did not try to intercede for me or shift the blame onto yourself. We would both suffer more if you did. And do not grieve yourself for it; it is my fault.” His struggle for calm failed for an instant and he kissed me once more, hard.

  When he released me I said nothing, merely found his sword for him and buckled it on, and helped him on with his boots. Only when he stood in the doorway did I whisper, “God keep you.” He bowed his head and was gone. I looked at the door for a long minute, then collapsed back onto the bed. I crawled under the blanket and lay there, trembling, remembering, until evening when I fell asleep.

  Bedwyr spoke with Arthur that same evening, and set out for Less Britain within the week, despite the fact that he had, by then, come down with my cold. I stayed in the house until he had gone, and by then was recovered enough to get back to work on the harvest.

  I worked also on reconciling myself with Arthur. Despite what had happened afterward, I decided, Bedwyr had been right. I was punishing my husband as well as myself by continuing to wallow in guilt and grief. And it did no one any good at all. A few days after Bedwyr left, I came back from supervising the disposal of a feast’s remnants, resolved to speak.

  The house was dark when I entered it, carrying the dim rushlight that had shown me the path round the Hall. When I entered the bedroom I saw that Arthur was already in bed, but he flinched as the light fell across him and I knew he was still awake, though he lay with his back to me and did not otherwise move. I knew that he was trying to avoid the pain of the silence between us, and was afraid. I set the light in its holder beside the bed and undressed in silence, wondering what to say, wishing to put it off. Almost, I extinguished the light without speaking. But I sat on the bed a moment, looking at Arthur, and touched his shoulder. “I am sorry,” I managed to say, hearing how rough and uncertain my voice was. “It was an evil intention. I am very sorry.” And suddenly I was not thinking of Medraut, but of Bedwyr, lying where Arthur lay now: of the betrayal that was greater than Arthur knew.

  He turned, looking up at me strangely—not coldly, but in puzzlement. He caught my hand from his shoulder and looked at it, studying the carving on the signet ring, then looked back at my face. The room was dark, for the rushlight was flickering, almost out. Arthur sighed.

  “I am sorry.” I whispered again.

  “I know,” he replied. “But don’t you see that it needs more than that? This thing…Medraut has crippled us.”

  “I wanted us to escape from him.”

  He touched my hand to his lips, his eyes seeking mine. “Oh, my white hart, if only we could! But that, that degrades you. I know you would accept that, for the Empire, but I cannot. And he is mine, my son, my fault.”

  “Please,” I said. I could not reason with him; reason meant nothing to what was between us.

  He touched my face and stroked back my hair. “You are cold,” he said, after a moment. “Here, get into bed and go to sleep.”

  He put his arms round me when I was under the coverlet, and I lay very still, not daring to move. My heart was crying for him, but it was a beginning.

  The silence vanished slowly. But the harvest is a busy season, and, with Bedwyr away, Arthur and I had to consult each other more than usual. We had first learned to trust each other from the affairs of the Empire: from tribute received and dispatched, from the supplying of a warband, from the plans of kings. These restored our trust. Eventually, even in private, we could speak to each other freely, and even laugh. The last barrier
dropped early in December, when Cei returned from the Orcades with the news of Agravain’s death.

  Perhaps we should have expected it. We had long known that Agravain was unwell, and in my heart I had always been afraid of what Medraut might do in the Islands. Nonetheless, the news came as a shock. Cei brought it fresh: he had sailed from the Islands with the first tide the day Agravain died, and posted from Ebrauc at a pace that must have left a trail of foundered horses behind him. The winds were from the north, very good for the voyage, and so he had made the whole journey in a week and six days. He arrived about midnight on a cold December Saturday and burst into our house at once, shouting that it was urgent. It was snowing a little outside, wet flakes mixed with rain. Cei had ridden from Caer Ceri that morning, changing horses at Baddon, and he was gray-faced with exhaustion and shivering with cold. As soon as Arthur had thrown his over-tunic and cloak on he began building up the fire in the conference room, while I poured Cei some wine and put more on to heat. Cei, however, did not wait to take off his wet cloak or take more than one swallow from the cup before he burst out, “Agravain is dead. He murdered him. That honey-mouthed bastard murdered his brother.”

  I almost dropped the pitcher of wine. Arthur froze for a moment, kneeling by the hearth, a piece of firewood in his hand. I know that the fire must have been roaring, the water dripping from the thatch: there must have been sound, but I can remember none, only a great stillness. Then Arthur set the piece of wood on the fire, stood, and pulled a chair closer to it, gesturing for Cei to sit down. Cei did so, unfastening his cloak and hanging it over the back of the chair to dry.

  “Now, what happened?” Arthur asked quietly. “Agravain ap Lot is dead?”

  “Near two weeks ago. He was found cold in his bed one morning, with no mark on him. But Medraut had been drinking with him the night before, and Medraut is a devil and a follower of devils, and knows ways of killing men which leave no mark. I’m not the only one that thinks so, my lord: the royal warband of the Islands has always thought as much. They’re dogs, those Irish warriors, a pack of curs that will lick the hand of any man that can beat them. They began cringing up to Medraut the moment he arrived, though when Agravain was present they pretended differently.”