In Winter's Shadow

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “Ach, it’s no use barricading the harbors,” the warleader Lenleawc insisted. “There are beaches enough, if he uses curraghs, and we cannot patrol the whole coast.”

  “But if he uses small curraghs and beaches them he will have to make more trips to bring the army over,” replied Macsen, “And then we would have warning and more time to move.”

  “He will not bring a peasant army,” said Bedwyr.

  “Why not?”

  Bedwyr realized what he was saying, and hesitated.

  “Come, this is not secret information! If you are as opposed to our war for independence as that, as disloyal to your own land as to scruple to give information at your host’s table—if so, you should ride back to Camlann tomorrow.”

  “Arthur will probably attack during the harvest time,” Bedwyr said, after another moment’s silence. “You will have difficulty in raising your own army at that time, and Arthur’s advantage in trained warriors will be more effective. He will probably take a force of picked men, not more than a thousand in number, and strike directly at your fortress here, hoping to end the war quickly.”

  I stared at Bedwyr angrily, and Macsen noticed this, smiling to himself, but ignored me and put another question to Bedwyr. Bedwyr’s reluctance to speak faded slowly as he became engrossed in Arthur’s strategies, and I sat silent at his side, listening, and grew colder and colder at heart.

  Macsen continued to consult Bedwyr in the days that followed, and the amount that Bedwyr yielded to him grew steadily greater. He knew now that his position was false. He had returned Macsen no answer, and Macsen had taken that silence for consent. Bedwyr could not accept the protection which Macsen had provided for us, which was the direct cause of the war, and still refuse to give Macsen any assistance. In a way he did believe that Less Britain was a separate kingdom from Britain, and that Macsen might do as he pleased in it. But the main reason he agreed to help Macsen in rebellion was the numb despair for which he seemed never to be free. He seemed no longer capable of making any moral decision, and Macsen continually pushed his indecision into agreement with himself. So, from giving advice, Bedwyr moved to setting up a system by which the army could be raised quickly, to helping to establish the coastal defenses—barricading the harbors and proclaiming a reward to any peasant who reported a landing on the beaches—to helping to train the warband, and then, finally, in September, to officially accepting a military post under Macsen.

  I argued with Bedwyr at each step. He would agree with my arguments, then say that he knew that this or that was wrong, but there was no way to be right, and he could not back out now. Eventually, since my arguments only deepened his despair, I gave them up. I tried to cheer Bedwyr, hoping to bring him to his senses that way. But he would not be cheered. His only escape seemed to be to throw himself into his work for Macsen, and I saw less and less of him as the days went by.

  The restrictions we lived under were gradually relaxed as Bedwyr became cooperative. Presently even I was allowed to ride about the town when I pleased, though I was constantly watched in case I should attempt to leave the city. If fine gowns and jewelery had been a source of pleasure to me I would have been delighted, for these were showered on me. Macsen wished me to appear beautiful and valuable, so that his followers would be the more impressed by Bedwyr’s having stolen me, and cheered by Arthur’s disgrace. He also wanted me to keep Bedwyr happy. He soon realized that for my own part I was in complete opposition to him, but he was content that I had no power against him.

  Well, I was at least glad to be able to ride my horse again, to go out into the open air, or ride under guard into the countryside and to the edge of the great forest. And I managed to find some books. But still the hours were wearisome and heartbreaking. Things were as they had been in Bresta, but worse. Sometimes when I walked along the walls of Car Aës I wanted to throw myself off. It was not even the desire to die, but only the soul-deep longing for freedom. Sometimes in dreams I could fly from the walls, but always the flight failed, even in sleep, and I would fall from the steep air into the darkness.

  It was worse in late August, when Macsen and Bedwyr rode off to inspect the coastal defenses. I was not allowed to leave the city, and two warriors followed me whenever I left Macsen’s house. Macsen’s steward approached me and suggested that he take Bedwyr’s place while Bedwyr was gone. I had left my husband and was therefore shameless, he thought, and I must be eager for a man since my lover was absent. I struck the man and he grinned and tried to kiss me. I only shook him off by threatening to tell Bedwyr of his suggestion when the warleader returned. But of course I could not do that, when Bedwyr actually did return. It would simply have made more trouble for him, since he would undoubtedly have challenged the man. And it would have amused Macsen and his warband.

  I grew angry and depressed, and could speak to no one without losing my temper. I spent hours on the wall near the town gates, looking out into the west and wondering when Arthur would come from Britain. From the gate-tower one could just see the end of the cultivated lands that surrounded Car Aës, and the edge of the great forest. The Bretons were afraid of the forest. They said that if you became lost in it you might never find your way back to the human earth, but wander in it forever. All that was wonderful and terrible was said to inhabit the forest, devils and gods, castles of glass and enchanted springs, the finding of which meant the loss of all else. I wanted to visit the forest, but I was never allowed to ride so far.

  ***

  Arthur came in September. He had known of the coastal defenses—we had always had spies in Less Britain, and Bedwyr had not gone so far as to reveal their names to Macsen. Instead of trying to overcome the defenses Arthur had chosen to avoid them. Some of his Saxon subjects had treaties of friendship with the prankish kingdom to the northeast of Less Britain, and Arthur had agreed with the king of this land to pay a certain sum in gold for the right to use one of his ports and to cross his land into Less Britain. The Frankish king was probably pleased that Less Britain was to be invaded, for the sum was quite moderate and he caused no trouble for Arthur. The Saxons and the Franks had been enemies of the British for so long that not even Bedwyr had expected this, and the invasion took him and Macsen by surprise after all. However, Macsen’s warband was in readiness by the coast, and most of Macsen’s nobles, with their warriors, had already been persuaded to join the King. With these forces Bedwyr and Macsen hurried from the coast, and managed to reach Car Aës before Arthur had done much more than cross the border. They had, of course, the advantage over Arthur in that they could requisition supplies from the country, while Arthur had to send out foraging parties or drag along baggage trains, which slowed him.

  On reaching Car Aës from the coast, Macsen wished to remain in the fortress and allow Arthur to lay siege to it as much as he wished while Macsen called up his army. Bedwyr, however, persuaded him to abandon this plan and instead set out again from Car Aës the day after reaching it. Arthur, he said, would not waste his time in siege works, but instead would turn about and plunder the country, burning the grain which still stood unharvested in the fields. If Macsen sat securely in his fortress while this was being done, much of his army would not respond to his call to arms, and there was danger that he would be cut off from the rest of it. So instead they hurried north, planning to set an ambush for Arthur, then retreat toward the fortress, using delaying tactics to keep Arthur occupied until the harvest was in and the peasant army had joined them.

  Arthur had crossed the border into Less Britain in late September. His forces first encountered Macsen’s in the first week of October, and arrived before Car Aës by the end of that month. The delaying tactics Bedwyr had recommended had been partially successful: the harvest was in, with sufficient supplies stored in the fortress to last the winter, while the country people had hidden their goods and could feel secure that they would not starve that winter if they answered the king’s summons. A part of the army had been raised. But the numbers Macsen had hoped for had
never materialized. It seemed that the call to arms had been disrupted in the southeast by false reports (doubtless circulated by Arthur’s spies) saying that the war had already ended. In Cernw and the northwest there was considerable reluctance to go to war against Arthur. If Less Britain had never been properly a part of the Empire of Britain, it had always been bound to it by the strongest ties, and many Bretons felt that Macsen’s rebellion was undertaken only to gratify his own ambition and to support a notorious criminal. Many of the older warriors had come with Macsen’s younger brother Bran, when he led them to Britain to aid Arthur when he first claimed the purple, and these supporters of Bran’s had always disliked Macsen.

  On the other hand, attempts to foment a counter-rebellion met with little success. The people were proud of Bedwyr, and respected Macsen’s name and ancestry. Macsen therefore returned to Car Aës with the forces he had had in September—his own warband of four hundred men and another four hundred warriors from among his nobles—and an additional army of about a thousand ill-armed and ill-disciplined peasants, with vague hopes of a thousand more. Arthur had brought, as Bedwyr had predicted, about a thousand men: most of the Family and men from the warbands of King Constantius of British Dumnonia, of King Urien of Rheged, and of King Ergyriad ap Caw of Ebrauc. Though in numbers less than Macsen’s forces, this was in fact a more dangerous power than Macsen’s and, as was customary for Arthur, had an overwhelming advantage in cavalry. Macsen would have been soundly defeated within a week if he had not had Bedwyr. Arthur set half a hundred traps which Bedwyr foresaw or recognized and escaped. I think that for both Arthur and Bedwyr the campaign was like fighting with a mirror. Each knew the other’s mind nearly as well as he knew his own.

  Macsen and his forces rode into Car Aës one night at the end of October, entering the gates by torchlight. Behind them on the plain I could see other flecks of fire which brought my heart into my throat, for I knew the lights to be Arthur’s.

  Bedwyr saw me standing on the wall and watching when he rode in beside Macsen, and he raised his hand in salute, but was soon busied with seeing to the men—with the army and the warriors together there were more numbers than the town could easily hold. So I went back to Macsen’s house alone—or rather, trailing my two guards—and Bedwyr came back to the room late, and lay down exhausted without taking off more than his boots and his mail shirt, only kissing me briefly in greeting. The following day, however, we went together onto the walls. We looked out over the bare fields and saw the Family encamped between us and the forest. My heart rose like an eagle on the wind when I saw the tents there, and caught, distant and heart-piercingly beautiful, the golden gleam of Arthur’s standard.

  “He cannot devastate the country now,” Bedwyr told me. “But he can probably forage foodstuffs enough to support himself. Yet he dare not send parties out too widely, for fear that we should make a foray. It is a matter of time now, and he has the most to lose by waiting.”

  I looked at Bedwyr as he said this, standing there in the early November sunlight. Something in his face had grown hard, and there were new lines of bitterness about his eyes and at the corners of his mouth. He is destroying himself, I thought. I remembered what he had said about damnation and looked away.

  “It was bitter fighting,” he told me. “We have lost many men.”

  “And Arthur?”

  “I do not know how many he has lost.” Something in the tone made me look at him again, and I saw that the new lines were not just from this new hardness, but from suffering, self-loathing, and despair.

  Arthur did send foraging parties out a few days later, and Bedwyr did lead a foray of Macsen’s cavalry out against the camp. Again, I watched from the walls.

  Arthur’s camp had plenty of time to see Bedwyr coming, and long before the force from the city reached them another column of horsemen was leaving the camp at a gallop, spreading out to weave across the plain. I stood straining my eyes, listening to the comments the guards around me made in their alien accents. I felt an agony of division. It was the first time I actually saw the war with my own eyes, actually witnessed my lovers setting out to kill one another, from despair and for justice.

  The lines of cavalry met, and at once became indistinguishable from one another. I wondered how anyone could tell their own side from the enemy’s in battle. Of course, it would be easier with Saxons, who tended to wear helmets and use a different style of dress; but when one blood makes war with itself, how can the beholder know where to strike? This war was like a madman in convulsions, beating himself and the bystanders without distinction, possessed solely by the violence itself. Madness, this, all madness: the divine madness that is sent on those doomed to destruction.

  The line wavered back toward the camp. I thought I saw Gwalchmai, dreamed that I could pick out Arthur, Bedwyr, any of a hundred familiar forms. But the forces were small with distance, nothing but a glitter of arms and galloping of horses to and fro. Even the sounds were drowned by the wind along the plain, until they could not be heard above the comments of the guards around me. I sank to my knees, leaning my head against the wall, and wept bitterly. Then the guards came and took me back to my room.

  I had to escape. I realized that as soon as I was alone again. This was my fault, my fault for being unfaithful, for putting my own happiness above the demands of the Empire. Other women might commit adultery and be guilty only of that, but I had committed treason as well, and I had known it. Perhaps others were also guilty, but I knew my own fault, knew it as I would know a rotting sore, which eats upon the whole flesh and consumes it away. I must die of this: only so could my life end free of that spreading corruption. Somehow I must escape, return to Arthur, and accept my sentence—which, after this rebellion, would have to be death.

  In that case, it was no use sitting and weeping; I had done more than enough of that already. I must make plans.

  I went to the silver mirror Macsen had provided and looked at my face. I had lost weight over the past months, and I looked pale, hollow-cheeked and sunken-eyed, old. Now my eyes were red as well. Abruptly, I felt ashamed at myself, for the long months of passive misery, for indecision, for weeping in front of Macsen’s men. Enough, too much of that. Could I disguise myself and give my guards the slip? I washed my face and went to see if I could find some cosmetics, or a wig.

  I had to humiliate myself before the steward to get the cosmetics. He had resented his rebuff, and took advantage of my request to sneer at me for “losing my looks” and to wonder pointedly if Bedwyr no longer wanted me. My position had taught me some patience, and I made no reply to him. Eventually I managed to extract from the stores some kohl, white lead, and carmine. When I came back to the room the door was locked. While I was unlocking it I heard, briefly, a sound of hammering. Bedwyr must be back.

  When I opened the door I found Bedwyr standing near it with his back to it; he started violently and whirled about when I came in. He had taken off his mail coat and tunic, and his eyes as they met mine were guilty and alarmed. Some flash of insight told me what he had been doing before I realized it consciously, before I turned my eyes to the bed and saw his sword there, wedged carefully upright, ready to fall on.

  “Gwynhwyfar,” Bedwyr said, idiotically apologetic, “I did not expect…”

  I went over to the bed and touched the sword. He had thrown the mattress off, wedged the weapon into the frame, and used one of the supporting leather thongs to bind it down, hammering the strip of leather back to the frame to secure it: that had been the hammering sound I had heard. I began to unfasten the piece of leather. My hands were quite steady; I felt a remote wonder that I felt so little, but that was all.

  “Why did you think to do it this way?” I asked, without looking at him. “Arthur might not have believed it when Macsen told him you fell on your own sword.”

  “I did not think of that.” His voice was quiet, ordinary.

  I had the sword free. I picked it up, holding the hilt with both hands. Though it was a cava
lry sword, a cutting rather than a thrusting weapon, it still had a good point on it; it would have done what Bedwyr had meant it to do. I looked from it to Bedwyr, who still stood by the door, bare-chested, silent, ashamed. Out of the calmness, the ordinary words we used, I had suddenly a vision of him lying across the bed with the sword through him, twisting on it; I could almost smell the blood on the thick scarlet carpet. My hands did begin to shake. “Why?” I asked.

  Bedwyr began to turn away; saw the door; carefully closed it again and locked it. He came over to the bed and began to pick up the mattress. I set the sword down on the floor and helped him. When it was back in place he picked his tunic up off the floor and pulled it on—he was shivering a little, for the fire had burned low and the room was cold. Then he sat down on the bed and picked up the sword. He held it point upward, looking at it. “If I had two hands,” he said in an undertone, “I could have held it firmly, and would already be dead.” He looked about, and I picked the baldric off the floor and handed it to him. He sheathed the sword.

  “Why?” I asked again. “Why now?”

  He looked at me as though behind me he saw the gulf of death, as though that darkness were reflected and founded within him. “I have killed Gwalchmai,” he whispered, and turned his head away.

  For a moment the words meant nothing. I looked at him. Tentatively, I touched his shoulder. Then the meaning of what he had said washed over me. I remembered Gwyn and Gwalchmai bending together over the back of the roan mare, smiling; remembered Gwyn’s astonished face, his blood on the road from Caer Ceri. And now? I leaned against Bedwyr, trembling. He put his arms around me.