In Winter's Shadow

by Gillian Bradshaw

  The men of the holding clustered around the woman, staring at me. I had a sudden vision of what I must look like, my face pinched and red with cold, blotched with bruises, my hair down in matted tangles, covered from head to foot with mud, riding a spent high-bred horse and leading another horse burdened with a corpse.

  “Eeeeh,” said one of the men, then, “You are from Camlann?”

  “Yes.”

  He came over to Rhuawn’s horse, staring at the body. He touched it gingerly and felt that it was cold. He looked back at me. “Your husband? Did the witch’s bastard kill him?”

  “Yes,” I replied, feeling too far removed from the world to add to either lie or truth. “I will give you the horse if you will take care of the body, and give me some grain for my own horse. I still have far to ride.”

  The man could, of course, take from me whatever he wished without bothering to pay me. But this was a Dumnonian holding, and near the road. Law ought to rule here if anywhere—and it did. The man nodded. “It is a fine horse. And probably he was a fine man, as well. I am sorry for you, lady. Here, come inside and rest. I will see that your horse is cared for.”

  “I must hurry.”

  “Leave whenever you wish. But do not fear that we will betray you. Indeed, I think it would cost us our souls, to betray a lady to a sorcerer born out of incest.”

  I stayed at the holding until the evening. I was lucky to have found the place: had I tried to ride on to Mor Hafren without pausing for food or rest, I believe I might have died. It was bitter weather, and I was already much weakened.

  The people of the holding were cautiously friendly. They had heard tales of what had happened at Camlann, heard of executions, of their king’s death; knew of a few servants who had fled the place. They treated my horse well and, at my request exchanged its silver-adorned, enameled harness for one of inconspicuous plain leather, and gave me some clothing to make up the difference in value. They gave me hot food, hot water to wash in, exchanged my muddy clothing for clean, and gave me a warm bed to sleep in. They woke me in the late afternoon, saying that they were ready to bury “my husband.” They laid Rhuawn in a grave behind their barn with a mingling of old superstitions and Christian prayers, and gave me his jewelery and his dagger—I told them to leave him his sword. I was grateful to them. But I knew that they believed me only a warrior’s widow. What they might have done if they had known who I really was I did not know and did not wish to discover, so, when the burial was done with, I took my leave.

  “But it will be cold tonight,” the head of the holding told me. “You should not travel. And there have been many bandits about since the news came of the king’s death and the emperor’s absence. It is not safe for a woman to travel alone.”

  “It has never been safe for a woman to travel alone,” I replied. “But it is not safe for me here, or for you while I am here, and it will be better if I travel at night. There are fewer bandits and…other dangers about.”

  At this he nodded.

  The previous night’s rapid pace had brought me almost as far as Baddon, despite the snow. Now the snow was largely gone again, and I made good time, reaching the city wall of Baddon while it was still dusk. I circled this, not entering the gates, as Medraut had probably sent men there to watch for me. It was fully dark when I rejoined the road, the north road, and spurred my horse to a fast trot.

  The second turning east on the road from Baddon to Caer Ceri, Rhuawn had said. I was afraid that either I remembered his directions wrongly or that he had been mistaken in them, and that I would find the wrong holding. And beyond that, I feared Medraut’s sorceries, that he would somehow contrive to find me, and that death followed me, ready to strike down all from whom I hoped protection. But I had nowhere else to go.

  The night was clear, and there was a bright half moon. The second turning which might be called a road came some seventeen miles from Baddon. My horse was still tired from the exhausting night before, and I let him slow to a walk, following the rutted, muddy path through the pasturelands. There were a number of holdings in the area, for at several points I saw smoke rising in the clear moonlight. But I judged that the holding I looked for, if it lay near the river Fromm, must be further east.

  The stars wheeled about toward the dawn, and, half asleep, I came upon a holding very near the road. I hesitated, then turned and rode toward it.

  When I drew nearer dogs began barking loudly, so I did not dismount, but rode close to the door of the largest house and there waited. The door opened a crack, and I could see lights being lit within. A man came out, carrying a hunting spear, and several others came out behind him, one hastily pulling on a tunic, the others bare-chested under their cloaks.

  “Who are you and what do you want?” the leader demanded sharply.

  “Is this the holding of Sion ap Rhys?” I asked.

  “It’s a woman!” one of the men exclaimed—as I was muffled in my cloak, they had been unable to tell this before. Now they visibly relaxed.

  “I am Sion ap Rhys, of the clan of Huy ap Celyn,” said the leader. He was an older man, stocky, with a wide, strong-featured face: looking at him more closely I realized that I knew his son, who bore the same features, and I caught my breath.

  “I seek Eivlin, the wife of Rhys ap Sion. I am a friend of hers.”

  They looked at me a moment in silence. “Are there no others with you?”

  “I am alone.”

  Sion ap Rhys sighed, handed his spear to one of the others, ran a hand through his hair. “Dafydd, take her horse and look after it. Huw, check down the road that there is really no one else. Will you come in—is it ‘lady’?”

  “Thank you,” I said, dismounting. I staggered and felt dizzy when my weight came onto my feet again, and I had to lean against the horse, but I recovered myself. The clan chieftain offered me his arm for support, I took it, and we went together into the house.

  “She is looking for Eivlin,” Sion told the family, which was massed inside the door. There seemed to be a lot of them, and, almost at once, there were more, for Eivlin herself burst into the room.

  “Most noble lady!” she cried. “King of Heaven! What has happened to you?”

  I tried to speak and began coughing. I was helped to the hearth and collapsed on a stool there, badly wanting to cry. Eivlin pulled my cloak from my shoulders, then saw the bruises on my face. She exclaimed again. “What have they done to you, the murdering savages? Morfudd, fetch some water, the poor lady is ill. My lady, what has happened? Is Macsen dead? Is the emperor back? Is my husband safe?”

  “Rhys…was safe and well when last I saw him,” I said. “I do not know the rest. I came to Camlann…was it four days ago? I had not heard of what Medraut had done. Rhuawn helped me to escape. He is dead. Medraut poisoned him—it was nightshade, I think. Medraut is seeking me. Rhuawn told me you might hide me.”

  “And indeed we will. Och, Sion, my father, this is the Lady Gwynhwyfar, the emperor’s wife. Look how they have treated her! Medraut is a wolf, without shame or pity and not a man at all!”

  I began to laugh, weakly, while Sion and his clan stared at me in shock. Eivlin knew nothing of how bad it had really been.

  But at least for the present I was safe.

  ELEVEN

  I stayed at Sion’s holding for more than two weeks. Whether Medraut’s sorceries did not work or whether he had no time or opportunity to employ them, I do not know, but I was not discovered.

  From Eivlin I learned that Medraut had seized power a week and four days before I arrived in Camlann. The thing had happened much as I had guessed: there had been a feast, before which Medraut had advised his followers, in hints, to drink sparingly. That night Constantius came down with a “fever,” and Medraut told his followers that he would—most unfairly, of course—be suspected of poisoning. His men, alert and awakened, fell on Constantius’s followers before the news reached them, and killed half of them. Some of the rest managed to escape in the confusion, and the remainder
were locked into the storerooms. Constantius died the next day.

  “Rhuawn came to me before morning, just after they had done murdering the king’s followers,” Eivlin told me. “He said that Medraut was to be emperor, and that I must flee. And I was bewildered near to madness, for how could I flee, with the baby, and little Teleri not yet three? But Rhuawn said that Medraut had not yet made sure of the gates, and that there was great confusion, and he had seen some carts being harnessed by the stables. So I dragged the children out into the dark, with Sion and Teleri crying, and ran down to the gates, and God be praised, there was a cart there. Rhuawn helped me, carrying some goods to pay for the journey. I had wronged him in my thoughts, my lady, for I hated him as a traitor. Och ai, indeed no, not all Constantius’s men were killed. I have heard that those that escaped rode across the country into the Saxon kingdoms, and from there took ship to Less Britain. It will not be long before the High King returns and peace will be restored again.”

  I said nothing to that. I doubted, though, that anything could restore what had been broken. One might go some way toward piecing together a broken pot or a broom handle, but an Empire is a living thing, made of the hearts of men, and when it is broken, even if set well it may never grow straight again. The Family was at war with itself, and Britain divided in civil war as it had been twenty years before when Arthur seized power. Medraut apparently had had allies in the north: Ergyriad ap Caw, king of Ebrauc, had been forced by his own clan to abdicate and cede his title to his half-brother Hueil, one or two days before Medraut seized power in the south. Hueil was a troublemaker, and hated Arthur, whom he blamed for the deaths of his father Caw and his brother Bran, and under his leadership Ebrauc rose in rebellion. Our ally, Urien of Rheged, had called up his army, and, with such of his warband as was left—the rest being in Gaul with Arthur—was trying to quell the rebellion. We could be grateful for that, for the timing clearly showed that Hueil was in league with Medraut, but, on the other hand, Urien had been our greatest hope of support on Arthur’s return. Now I was not sure that Arthur could defeat Medraut and Maelgwn with the forces he had available to him.

  For Maelgwn was, indeed, fighting beside Medraut. Two days after I arrived at the holding we heard that Maelgwn’s army had crossed the Saefern river to our north and was hurrying southward to Camlann, and there was no united opposition to him. The middle kingdoms of Britain would fight for neither Arthur nor Medraut. Old differences and new rumors combined to make them unwilling to support their emperor, though if Arthur died they would doubtless cry out against Medraut and go to war with him and with each other, trying to gain what advantage they could from anarchy. Only Dumnonia, of all the southern kingdoms, might have helped us, but Dumnonia was leaderless and powerless, her king dead, half the royal warband in Gaul with Arthur, and the rest dead or starving slowly in the storerooms at Camlann.

  If this were not bad enough, there was another cause of fear. Medraut’s forces were growing steadily. Discontented noblemen, warriors tired of peace and hoping for profit and glory, debtors and criminals looking for a solution to their own problems in the collapse of the realm, all flocked to join Medraut. And Medraut was able to prevent a similar rally on Arthur’s behalf. Almost every day there came some report of a nobleman of Arthur’s party arrested or executed, of hostages taken from others, of goods confiscated and fortresses lost.

  Yet the countryside about Mor Hafren, at least, seemed to support Arthur. A member of Sion’s clan—usually his second son, Dafydd—went every day to Baddon, to learn the news in the market there. When the market was closed down by Medraut’s order, there were gatherings at various places in the countryside where news and rumors circulated. And we had news from Baddon occasionally as well, for it seemed that Cei’s mistress Maire had settled with some of her cousins there, escaping like Eivlin in the confusion that followed the taking of Camlann. One of these cousins came to the gathering places and gave mournful recitations of bad news, which Dafydd reported back to us. All the clans seemed to await the news that Arthur was back, that they could raise the peasant army and join him. Hunting spears were sharpened, and old war spears, daggers, and swords brought from barns or hollows under the eaves, or even from graves; cleaned and polished and clumsily practiced with for hours. Arthur had ruled long enough and well enough that the people trusted him and feared what his defeat might mean. They always had more to lose by civil war and anarchy than did the nobles, safe in their fortresses.

  Twelve days after I arrived at the holding, Dafydd returned from news-gathering to say that Medraut and Maelgwn and their forces had left Camlann and were riding cast. “Echel Big-hip of Naf’s clan says it is because the emperor has landed in the east, and they ride to fight him,” he told us. “But Cas ap Saidi says it is because they have made an alliance with the Saxons, and go to join them.”

  Everyone in the clan looked at me, but I could only shake my head. I could not say which account might be the true one. I had not heard that the Saxons had taken sides, and had been uncertain that they would. Some of the Saxon leaders, as I believed, liked and respected Arthur. On the other hand, I knew that they resented their position as tributaries and wanted more land. If Medraut had promised them lands, they might have agreed to support him. But would they be willing to trust Medraut? But, again, could Arthur trust them, trust them well enough to risk landing at one of their ports after they knew that his people had risen in rebellion? He must know that the thing the Saxons were most likely to do under such circumstances was to entrap him by some trick, kill him, and then fight Medraut.

  “I do not know,” I told Sion’s clan wearily. “We must wait.”

  We waited. I could not sleep nights, and the days seemed an endless succession of gray minutes, all exactly alike. It was difficult for me to stay in that smoky little holding. It was not fitting, the clan agreed unanimously, for the Empress of Britain to lift a finger toward housework; and it would have been discourteous of me to engage in the kind of work I was best used to, and run the holding. In the end I could only play with the children and pray for nightfall, and then pray for morning. Sion’s clan was very good to me, and I owed them my life, but I longed for nothing more than to ride away from that holding and never see it again.

  Three days later we had another piece of news: Sandde, the young lord of the fortress of Ynys Witrin, had risen in rebellion against Medraut, and declared himself for Arthur. I remembered Sandde from my many visits to Ynys Witrin: a tall, thin youth with the face of an angel and the manners of a frightened hare. His father had always followed the policy of the monastery of Ynys Witrin and been mildly hostile to Arthur; Sandde had become lord of the fortress on his father’s death only three months before, and had had no reputation for supporting either side, and so had escaped Medraut’s attention. He now sent men out throughout the Dumnonian countryside, a day’s hard riding in all directions, announcing his rebellion and claiming that the rumor that Arthur had landed in the Saxon lands was true.

  “Do we leave for Ynys Witrin tomorrow?” Dafydd asked eagerly, after delivering this news.

  “Give it a few more days,” returned his father. “This may be a trick.”

  “Who would trick us into fighting for Arthur?” Dafydd demanded angrily.

  “Sandde—or Medraut,” I told him, feeling very tired. “Sandde may have no news about Arthur, and may be trying to win confidence in his cause by pretending to. But if that’s the case, he has no chance of defeating Medraut and Maelgwn on his own—he has only thirty warriors at Ynys Witrin, only his own cousins. It would be better to wait for Arthur. And it might be Medraut’s plan to draw Arthur’s followers into the open so that he can deal with them before Arthur arrives. We must wait until we know for certain that Arthur has come.” And, I added to myself, that might take a long time. The good sailing weather was now over. Arthur might have to wait until the spring before he could make the crossing from Gaul.

  And yet, three days later Dafydd rode back early in the aftern
oon, his horse foam-flecked and sweating from a hard gallop, and rushed into the house shouting that it was true, Arthur was back, and in league with Cerdic, king of the West Saxons. He had landed at Hamwih a week before, ridden north, and met Cerdic, who was riding south with his warband and some of his army to encounter him. He had spoken with Cerdic and instead of fighting him the Saxon king had agreed to support him as long as Arthur was in the boundaries of his kingdom. But there was more: Cerdic and Arthur had ridden west, and met Medraut and Maelgwn with their forces just west of the fortress of Sorviodunum, which the Saxons call Searisbyrig. There had been a fight between outriders of the two armies, developing into a cavalry skirmish which Arthur’s cavalry, predictably, had won, forcing Medraut’s to withdraw. That night, Medraut had sent a messenger to Cerdic. “They say Medraut offered him half Dumnonia and a third of Elmet, and no tribute ever, if he would betray Arthur,” Dafydd said. “Some say even more than that. But Cerdic offered a parley the next morning, and when Medraut rode up to it, he said, ‘Whatever enmity I may have borne the Emperor Arthur, and whatever grievances I may have yet, I will not betray him to a sorcerous, perjured, tyrannous bastard. If you come further east, Medraut son of No one, you will be invading my kingdom and you will suffer for it.’ And they say that Medraut is withdrawing!”

  Sion ap Rhys began nodding, and Dafydd looked at him eagerly. “Very well,” said Sion slowly. “The army will be needed. We leave for Ynys Witrin tomorrow—and may God defend us!”

  It was then the last week of December, but, after some snows, the weather had turned mild, and the roads were choked with mud. Sion had planned to take an oxcart full of supplies, but decided not to bring this because of the state of the roads, and instead loaded the two horses and the mule owned by the holding. There were nine men going, all the younger men of the clan, led by Sion himself; and there were also myself and Eivlin. Eivlin had been under some pressure to stay with her children, but in the end had decided not to. “The noble lady will need an attendant,” she told Sion, “and the emperor’s forces will doubtless be needing servants. And I wish to be with my husband.” So the children stayed with their grandmother and their aunts, and Eivlin walked in the mud beside the mule. Sion insisted that I ride the war horse I had brought from Camlann, as befitted a woman of my rank, but after the first few miles I dismounted and made him and Eivlin take turns with me. Sion was an old man, and Eivlin a young mother who had had no cause to walk far for years.