In Winter's Shadow

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “You once swore an oath to Arthur,” I told him, my voice also low. “You once told him that you would raid Yffern itself if he wished it. Now Medraut is your friend, your lord, and you are willing to make war against your friends and your comrades of many battles, to support a usurper to your sworn lord’s kingdom, and stand by while his wife is raped in his own fortress. What real cause did Arthur give you, Rhuawn, for you to betray him? Do not tell me of those rumors and subtly devised slights Medraut has crammed your ears with. Did Arthur ever harm any of your clan or kindred, or stand by and fail to aid you when another injured them? Did he cheat you of your share of plunder? Did he steal your goods, or let them be stolen? Did he ask more of you in battle than he asked of himself?”—Rhuawn said nothing. “What cause has Arthur given you to perjure yourself and forsake him?”

  “None,” Rhuawn returned in a whisper. “My lady, I did not believe them when they said Medraut intended this…this crime against you. I did not believe it when they said he sought the purple. And now…now I no longer know what to believe. But Medraut was wronged, and he is my friend.”

  I brushed my hair back from my face. The serving girl stared at us in fear, and I struggled to remember her, to try to determine whether she would report this conversation to Medraut. But even if she would repeat every word, I had nothing to lose by speaking.

  “Why?” I demanded. “What good has Medraut ever done for you? So, he told you that he did not desire the purple? Now you have learned that that was a lie.”

  “He says that the emperor would have him killed if he did not seize power to defend himself.”

  “Arthur would do that? Arthur, who bore so patiently with the crime Bedwyr and I committed against him, and would still wish to spare us both, if he could? You know Arthur better than that, Rhuawn. Let me speak plainly. I did try to poison your friend and your lord Medraut, because I feared this very thing that has now come to pass, this civil war, and would rather be damned myself than see the Empire broken by Medraut. But I did not tell my husband, and when he discovered it, he was very angry.” Rhuawn watched me, white-faced, shaken. “Medraut has lied to you all along. He always wanted power—think! Remember him when first he came here! And now that he has power, does he use it justly, mercifully? Does he even tell you his mind? You are afraid of him now, for yourself and for others.”

  Rhuawn’s face showed me plainly that I was right, and a desperate, almost overpowering hope leapt in me. I had never thought him evil, only greatly deceived. “Rhuawn,” I whispered. “Help me to escape.”

  Abruptly the door opened, and another warrior stood in it, looking at Rhuawn grimly. Rhuawn’s face at once became blank, guarded.

  “Lord Rhuawn, you should not be here,” said the other.

  “The lord Medraut wished the lady seen to,” Rhuawn stated. “And Mabon on the earlier shift knew of no objections to my seeing to her.”

  “You mean ‘the emperor’ wished her seen to,” the guard corrected, giving me a brief glare.

  “The Emperor Medraut. I am just going to see him, to speak of her to him.” Rhuawn gave me one more unreadable glance, then left, leaving the other warrior to tie me up again.

  The day passed with agonizing slowness. I was brought some food at midmorning, and allowed to stand and wash myself. I welcomed the chance to stand, to tie together as best I might the tears in my gown and wash in the clean water, but had no appetite.

  Some while after noon, more food was brought, but this I could not so much as look at, and none was brought that evening. I tried to work my hands free of the ropes, but could not get at the knots, though I twisted my hands about fumbling at them until my wrists bled. The bed frame was all too solidly made, and could not be wrenched apart.

  It grew dark. Rhuawn had not returned, and my brief hope seemed senseless. The fear and misery had grown so that I could no longer feel them, but only sit, leaning against the bedstead, forcing a numbed mind to think.

  I was sitting like this when I heard voices at the door, and I looked away from the fire to that dark corner of the room which opened on the world.

  “I have Medraut’s permission to see her,” Rhuawn’s voice said, protesting.

  “The emperor has said nothing about allowing you through,” one of the guards replied.

  “I don’t need permission. I have been his friend from the beginning.”

  “An increasingly cold friend, Rhuawn ap Dorath, ever since he took the purple. Go away.”

  “Very well.” There was a strange grunt.

  “What?” came another voice—the other guard. “Hueil—ai!” There was a brief clash of metal on metal, and a gasp. The door burst open and Rhuawn came in, his sword bare, but not shining in the firelight. There was blood on it. He hurried over to me and swung the sword hard against the rope around the bedstead, then caught my hands and dragged me to my feet. “My lady,” he said, “we must hurry.”

  “Cut these,” I told him, for my wrists were still bound. He stared at me, and I put my hands against the sword. He saw what I wanted, jerked the blade down between my wrists. The cords parted. I turned back to the room, found the rope of blankets I had made the day before, then followed Rhuawn from the house.

  The guards lay by the door, one sprawled across the threshold, staring upward, face twisted in a grimace of pain. His open eyes stared into the darkness of the night, the few wet flakes of snow that drifted from the low sky. Rhuawn stared at him and shook his head. I hesitated, then stopped and unfastened the heavy winter cloak of the one who stared and pulled it loose. I would need it, and he would not feel the cold.

  “Yes…good,” Rhuawn said, shaking himself. “And the armlets, take those too. Here, take mine as well: you will need money. I must get your horse.”

  “I could not ride her out of the gate, and you could not take her from the stables. But will they let you through the gate? Then take a horse—not mine—and say…say you have a message to Caer Uisc, and are taking a spare mount. Bring the horses round to Llary’s field, on the other side of the wall, to the far end of it. I can climb over the wall there.”

  “Yes. I will bring your horse…a horse.” Rhuawn drew a deep breath.

  “And yours—do you have time, can you ride out through the gates?” I asked, for he seemed in such confusion that I was not sure he understood me.

  “They will not stop me,” he replied.

  “Then meet me at the far end of Llary’s field, as soon as you can. At Llary’s field.”

  “Yes, yes…I will…fetch the horses.” He shook his head again, and said nothing as I pulled up the hood of my cloak and ran into the darkness.

  The fortress was quiet at that time of night, and the few who were about saw me only as a figure hunched against the wind. The snow was falling thicker when I reached the grove where once I had trysted with Bedwyr. I stopped and watched. After a little while a sentry passed on the wall above, and, as soon as he was gone, I hurried over to the storage hut, clambered from the woodpile beside it onto the roof, and from there scrambled up onto the causeway that ran along the side of the wall. I paused, panting from the effort, then fastened my blanket rope to an embrasure, struggled over the top of the wall, climbed a little way down the rope, then fell—my hands were still too numb to grip properly. I twisted my ankle in the fall and sprawled in the mud of the field, but jumped up again and tried to shake the rope loose. It was no use; it would not come. I would simply have to hope that, in the snow, the sentry would not notice it. I stumbled away from the wall, down the ditch and up the bank, and started for the far end of the field, hoping that Rhuawn would manage to get the horses through the gate. I did not think I could walk very far.

  I had not gone far when I saw the sentry outlined against the sky again, and I dropped to my knees in the mud of the plowed field, huddled in my cloak, praying that he would not see the rope. He passed without giving me a glance: I was simply a dark patch in the black and white of the field and the snow. When I was certain he had gone, I
jumped up, fell over again as my ankle gave under me. I sat up, feeling the tears of exhaustion in my eyes and wishing that I had eaten something that day after all. But I had no option but to stumble over to the far end of the field and wait. There I sat leaning against the fence. The wet snow fell from the heavy sky, and everything was very, very quiet.

  After a dark age I heard hooves and the jingle of harness, and stood up. The sound became more distinct: two horses. I hobbled forward.

  They loomed out of the dark, an indistinct figure on a dark mount, leading another horse. I called Rhuawn’s name and they stopped.

  “My lady?”

  “Here,” I said. He came over, dismounted, and helped me into the saddle. I was ashamed to need his help.

  “Yours is Constans’s horse, Sword-dancer,” Rhuawn said. “He is a war horse, and well trained.” I nodded, gathering up the reins and patting the horse’s neck. The animal flicked his ears back restlessly, uncertain about leaving his stall on such a night.

  “My lady,” Rhuawn continued, speaking in a low voice. “You recall Eivlin, the wife of Gwalchmai’s servant?” I looked up at him, trying to make out his face in the dark. “Medraut wished to kill her and her children, but I thought it dishonorable to make war on servants, women, and children. I said nothing of it to Medraut, but I warned the woman when Medraut first seized power, and helped her to leave Camlann. Her husband’s clan lives near Mor Hafren, and have a holding on a river called the Fromm: it is reached by the second turning east from the main road from Baddon to Caer Ceri. The chieftain of the clan is called…is called.”

  “Sion ap Rhys,” I said, remembering.

  “Yes. If you go there, my lady, I am certain that the woman will remember you, and see that you are concealed and kept safe from Medraut.”

  Yes. Medraut would never know or remember a servant’s clan.

  “Good,” I said. “But you will come with me, I hope.”

  He laughed strangely. “I think I will soon find a hiding place, my lady, if one not altogether to my liking. But perhaps not. My lady, by now they will know that you are gone. We must hurry, and hope that the snow hides our trail.”

  He turned his horse, spurring it to a gallop, and I followed. Constans’s horse Sword-dancer ran swiftly enough, though I had to set my teeth to stay on against the jolting.

  We galloped a long way, until the horses were sweating heavily even in the cold; then trotted; then galloped again. The wind was bitter, and I bent low in the saddle, riding blind, content from the feeling of his gait that my horse kept to the road. The snow froze in my eyelashes.

  Rhuawn’s horse shied suddenly across my path, and I drew rein, saw, looking up at last, that the saddle was empty. I stared blankly for a moment, then guided my mount over to Rhuawn’s, caught its bridle—not difficult to do, for the horses were both tired—and turned back down the road. We were on the main road by then, the north road; it was about midnight, and we might have come sixteen or seventeen miles from Camlann.

  I found Rhuawn a few paces down the road, kneeling in the center of it and vomiting convulsively. I jumped from my saddle. “Rhuawn!” I said, and he looked up, his face a pale shadow in the dark. “What has happened?”

  Silence, “I am sorry. It is so hot.”

  The wind whipped the wet snow into our faces. The reins over my arm seemed frozen there. I went to Rhuawn, caught his arm, touched his forehead. Though the collar of his cloak was glazed with ice, his skin was burning hot. “What has happened?” I whispered, suddenly very much afraid.

  Rhuawn laughed, a laugh that ended in a sob. “I went to Medraut this morning and pleaded for you. He asked me to dine with him that night, to discuss the matter. But he said nothing of it at table. Only…he looked at me. I remember that he looked at Constantius with those eyes, the last night that he dined with him. They say Constantius died in a burning fever. Medraut said it was a fever.” There was a long silence. The tired horses breathed heavily, champed their bits loudly in the stillness. “It must have been in the wine,” Rhuawn said. “I thought it tasted bitter. But Medraut complained of it and said it was because of the war with Less Britain that we had no good wine. So I did not suspect.”

  “You should have told me!” I began—but what could I have done if he had? Perhaps a surgeon might have helped Rhuawn if he acted at once, but no surgeon in Camlann would have been permitted to. And now it might be too late. “You must have water,” I said, thinking rapidly. “Eat some snow.”

  “I will lose it.”

  “That is the point. The poison makes you sick; if you lose enough of it, and if you can wash enough of it from your body, what is left may not be enough to kill you. Here.” I scooped up handfuls of the snow, and he took them, vomited again and again, began shaking. I helped him to his horse, managed somehow to get him into the saddle, and took some leather straps from the harness and tied Rhuawn in. “We must hurry,” I told him. “Perhaps we can find a place to stop.”

  “No! We cannot risk stopping. Medraut will find us.”

  I did not have anything to say to that, so only shook my head and spurred my horse to a gallop. Perhaps the whole flight was pointless. Medraut had many ways of learning things, by spies and by his private sorceries. I could only pray that neither means would serve him this time, and pray that Rhuawn had lost enough of the poison, and would recover.

  The journey became a nightmare. The horses were now too tired to gallop, and we trotted and walked and trotted and walked, while the snow fell harder, and the world narrowed to the road directly before us, and to my horse and Rhuawn’s. Presently Rhuawn’s mount began to wander from side to side of the road and fall behind. I went over to it and took the reins from Rhuawn’s hands. He was delirious and did not reply to my questions, merely muttering incoherently. I looked about for lights, for a place to stop, but there was no light. It was too late for that, and the snow swallowed everything into a white darkness.

  Perhaps three hours after we stopped the first time, Rhuawn went into convulsions. I turned off the road, dragging the horse—which was terrified, despite its tiredness—and began to cross a field. The wind stopped, and I found that we had reached a patch of woodland. I followed the edge of this until I found a hollow of the ground, sheltered from the wind and clear of snow. Here I dragged Rhuawn from his horse, hobbled the animals, and collected some wood for a fire. Rhuawn had a tinderbox and a blanket in the pack behind his saddle, and by some miracle I managed to kindle some wood that was not too damp. I then moved Rhuawn closer to the fire, wrapping him in the blanket. I tried to feed him more snow, but his teeth were set and his body torn by the convulsions, and he could not take it. His face in the firelight was almost unrecognizable: twisted, flecked with foam and vomit. The pupils of his eyes had dilated until it seemed that a living darkness boiled within his skull. I touched his forehead again, and still it was burning and dry. Standing by that fire off a road in Dumnonia, I remembered suddenly, as from another world, a conversation I had had with Gruffydd the surgeon, about, of all things, cosmetics. “Nightshade,” he had said, “is a deadly poison, but if you put it in your eyes it will make them bright. Dilates the pupils. Also causes fever, vomiting, delirium and convulsions. My lady, why do women tamper with such things? No sane man would employ them.” “Men like bright eyes,” I had replied, “but do not complain to me; I do not use nightshade. Can it even kill?” “In the right dosage,” he said, snorting with disgust. “Too much and it is lost in the vomiting. Not a poison for amateurs.”

  But Medraut was not an amateur.

  We could ride no further that night. The horses were nearly spent as it was. But I doubt that anyone could find us in the snow. I built the fire up, unharnessed the horses, and tried to construct some kind of shelter for Rhuawn.

  Rhuawn died some two hours before dawn. He said nothing that whole while and did not regain consciousness. I realized, when he no longer breathed, that I had not thanked him for saving me. Well, I told myself, it is an evil world. May G
od reward him.

  I sat for a long while looking at his body, then, because the night was cold though the snow had now stopped, I pulled the blanket from over him and wrapped it round me.

  I had no way to bury him. I had neither the tools nor the strength to dig a grave. Nor could I load his horse with his body and continue down the road. It would attract too much attention. Alone, in my muddied peasant dress, I might pass unremarked as a farmer’s wife who happened to have a fine horse, but leading another horse burdened with a warrior’s body I would be noticed, remembered, found, and the whole escape would go for nothing. But I could not simply leave the body lying there for the scavengers: besides, Medraut’s men, if they followed, might find it or hear of its finding, and know that I had taken this road. Moreover I had neither food for myself nor fodder for the horses, and could not travel another day without them.

  I huddled near the fire, and must have drowsed a little, for when I looked up again the sun was above the fields. The snow glittered brightly, and the trees stood above fields slashed with their long blue shadows. Northeastward, and quite near, a plume of smoke rose white and thick into the morning air.

  I rose, caught and saddled Rhuawn’s horse, and managed to drag the body over and tie it there. Then I saddled my own horse, mounted, and rode toward the smoke, leading the other animal.

  It was a small holding: a barn and two houses. When I rode into the yard a woman was crossing from the barn to one of the houses carrying two pails of milk. She looked at me, shrieked, dropped one of the pails, just caught the other one and clutched it to her.

  “I mean you no harm,” I told her, as men ran out of the barn and the nearest house. “Does your holding want a horse?”

  It was a risk, but not too great a one. I knew that the countryside of Dumnonia was very hostile to Medraut—he had killed their king and unleashed a struggle which would certainly harm their lands. And it was likely that they would be pleased with the gift of a fine horse like Rhuawn’s and, if they took it, would fear to lose it by informing.