TWELVE
Gwalchmai had told us that Arthur planned to reach the Saefern three days after leaving Searisbyrig—two days after he himself came to Ynys Witrin. Arthur would turn and ride for Camlann very rapidly for the main part of a night, then proceed more slowly through the various assembly points, collecting his men, and arrive near Ynys Witrin about noon on the second day from the Saefern, four days after we received his message. It was on the evening of the day before this that we had our second letter from him. It was very brief, and obviously written in haste. It acknowledged the receipt of my letter, and said that some of the supplies had indeed reached him. It agreed to the place Sandde had recommended for the ambush, and told Sandde to leave Ynys Witrin before dawn the following day, and conceal his forces at that ambush, as Arthur hoped to arrive there about an hour before noon.
“Medraut and Maelgwn are no more than five miles behind me,” he wrote. “I hope to keep them at that distance tomorrow. May you prosper!” then, written small, “Gwynhwyfar, my heart, do not go with the army. We will have no camp, and I could not risk you if we should lose the battle. But if all goes well, I will see you tomorrow in the evening. If it goes ill, remember always that I loved you.”
I read all but the last lines to Sandde, then remained seated, staring at the lines I had not read aloud. I thought that the lamp was flickering, but when I looked up I saw that it was only the trembling of my hand.
Tomorrow,” breathed Sandde. He took the letter from me and stared at it, as though he could wrestle out the meaning by looking at it hard enough. “Tomorrow, before dawn! And by tomorrow evening, it will all be over.” He jumped up and strode across the room, stood on one foot looking at the fire, twisting his fingers in his baldric. “How…how many men do we have now?” he asked.
“An army of two thousand, one hundred and seventeen,” I told him. I did not need to check the figures: they ran constantly through my mind. “And ninety-eight warriors, Including those we sent with the messages.”
“And Medraut and Maelgwn have how many?”
“Their army probably amounts to three thousand men. Their warbands, combined, and including those who have joined them since the beginning of the rebellion, probably amount to about a thousand trained warriors.”
“And the emperor has a thousand.”
“Something less than that now. There were men lost in Gaul.”
“But won’t some Saxons have joined him?” Sandde turned and studied my face anxiously. I shook my head: the Saxons would not trust the British in a British kingdom.
“We are outnumbered, then,” said Sandde; then earnestly, forcing cheerfulness, “Still, the numbers of trained warriors are evenly balanced, aren’t they? And the emperor, I have heard, is so accustomed to fighting against worse odds than this that this must seem nearly equal to him.”
“Arthur has fought against the Saxons at far worse odds, that is true,” I said, meeting his eyes. “But Saxons usually rely more heavily on half-trained peasants, and almost never have any cavalry. Part of Medraut’s army were members of the Family, and most of the other warriors will have profited by Arthur’s example, and have training that nearly equals that of his men. This will not be the same as fighting the Saxons. The enemy’s numbers will count.”
“Oh.” Sandde bit his lip, then came over and sat on the desk, still looking at me earnestly, his eyes very blue in the lamplight. “I have never been in a battle,” he told me. “I didn’t know what I was doing when I raised this rebellion against Medraut. It was simply that…that Medraut had a friend of mine put to death for treason, and that I admired Arthur, and no one else was doing anything. But now everyone expects me to tell them what to do, and I do not know what to do. Most noble lady…” He clutched my hand suddenly, “I know it is cowardly to speak this way, but you are like my mother, who understood. Please excuse it.”
I took his other hand. He was too young for it, I thought, far too young. I was indeed old enough to be his mother. “Don’t be afraid,” I told him, as quietly as I dared. “You have not failed your men once, and you will not fail them tomorrow. Our numbers are nearly even with the enemy, our cause is more just, and, moreover, we will have the advantage of surprise. Trust to God for the victory.”
He kissed my hands and pressed his forehead against them. “Lady Empress,” he whispered, then broke away, stood suddenly, fingering his sword. He straightened his shoulders and tried to smile. “It will go well!” he announced.
“It will, as God is just,” I returned. “And for you, at least, I need not fear, Lord Sandde. Indeed, I think that all in the battle will mistake you for an angel assisting the souls of the dead, and not a spear will be cast at you.” He tried to smile at this, feeble as the joke was. “Here,” I went on, “who shall we wake first tomorrow?”
I wondered, watching him as he settled to work at the business of moving the army, whether he would be living when the sun next set, and, if he lived, whether he would be able to stand so straight: whether he would come back blind, missing an arm, a leg, screaming on a stretcher. There would be plenty that would do so, and they would be brought to Ynys Witrin, for it was the nearest town to the battle where we had some control. I thought of my husband, wondering if he would come to me, and how.
***
Most of the army rose three hours after midnight, and marched out before dawn. Sandde went first, followed by the noble warriors who had joined him—a group which Medraut’s oppression had made small—then by the common army, roughly grouped in clans. Eivlin had already said farewell to her husband and his kin, and now stood beside me at the gate, huddled silently in her cloak. When the last pair of feet had tramped past the walls we remained staring after the force a while, watching as they wound down the pale road into the town at the hill’s foot, vanishing in the shadows of the dark marshes. Already the stars were pale, and the night air heavy with dew. When a cock crowed in the fortress I turned back and looked at the crowd of women, old men, children, scattered monks, and servants, who all waited expectantly for my orders. I wondered briefly why the authority had fallen so plainly to me, and not to Sandde’s clerk Cuall, who was waiting with the others. But I knew the reason. Cuall himself was bewildered with events, and no one else was willing and able to exercise the authority. In this crisis, no one cared what I had done, how much I might be to blame for what had happened. All that mattered was that I was the emperor’s wife, and used to riding the storm.
“Nothing will happen until noon,” I told them. “Go back and rest while you can. When it is time to send out parties to help with the wounded, I will have you called—but you will have to hurry then, and hopefully most of you won’t be needed.” And I smiled, trying to look as though I feared only that the victory would be too swift for us to get the carts out in time. It won a few smiles, a ragged cheer; an old man took my hand to his forehead as I walked back through the crowd, and exclaimed that I’d soon be Empress in Camlann again. I laughed, and said that he would soon be back on his farm. When I was back in my own house, and alone again, it was, of course, another matter. I sat on the bed waiting and waiting for the morning, twisting my hands together, rubbing the finger where once I wore the ring carved with the imperial dragon.
That morning seemed to have sprung free from the wheel of time, and hung off apart by itself, unmoving, unending. I had every vessel and water trough in the fortress filled with water, took inventory of our food supplies again and again, arranged again with the surgeons which of them would go to the battlefield and which stay in Ynys Witrin to treat those who were brought back; I went over the places we had cleared for the wounded, I found wood for the fires, and still the sun waited eastward of the zenith. The site of the ambush, I knew, was just by the turning of the main road onto the west road that led to Camlann. Arthur hoped that Medraut would think he was making for the fortress itself, and perhaps expect Sandde to meet him there. He could not help but know that Arthur meant to meet Sandde, and, since he had left Camlann under
only a light guard, it might be expected that the emperor would try to take the fortress itself, and meet his ally there. But still, Medraut might expect and be prepared for an ambush. But even if he did, there was no way of imposing formations on Maelgwn’s peasant army, and the precise place and time would be unknown to him. He would have to hurry to catch Arthur before he could reach Camlann, so Arthur’s plan should have some effect.
At noon I sent the carts out, with the surgeons and servants who could provide emergency treatment on the battlefield, and with some water, food, and fuel. Winter is a bad time for a war. The casualties are higher, for the wounded die quickly unless they can be brought to shelter and kept warm. It would be very difficult for us to care for them properly, ten miles from the site of the battle, short of horses for the carts, and, assuming that Medraut’s forces took the main road, with an enemy army between us and the battle. But we hoped that Arthur had brought some extra carts with supplies from the assembly points, and that some of those who were injured could be dragged free and sent off to us.
In the midafternoon a cart did arrive, not one of those we had sent out, but one of Arthur’s. It was driven by a peasant with a crippling leg wound and filled with men mostly from Sandde’s army, one of them dead, the rest needing attention. I saw to it that the cart was unloaded, and questioned the driver.
“Indeed, we reached the place in good time, noble lady,” he told me. He seemed to be in no pain, though his eyes were dark with shock. “We had time to build the fires and warm ourselves, have a bite to eat and a rest, before the emperor came and told us to put the fires out. The enemy came up before noon, soon after the emperor. We ran at them.”
“Did they march into the ambush?” I asked. “Did Arthur stay with you, or go up the road? Where were the cavalry?”
“I…I don’t know. We ran at them, and when we reached them it was all shoving and shouting. They were Maelgwn’s men, farmers like me, not warriors. One of them stabbed me, and I fell down, and my cousin Gwilym jumped over me and went on at them.”
“Where were the warriors, then?”
He waved his right hand vaguely. “At the side. It was very confusing, noble lady, with the whole air shining with spears, and shouting on all sides, and men killing and screaming. I did not know what was happening. After I was hurt, I crawled away, in case the rest came and trampled me. When I got back to where the fires were, there were other hurt men there, and one or two cowards who had run away and sat crying, and someone told me to drive the cart here. I can drive the cart back, if you wish, my lady. I can’t walk, but I can still drive.”
“You have done well,” I told him, despairing of learning more. “Rest first; we have plenty who can see to the cart, and you must have your leg looked after.” And I doubted that he would be able to drive the cart after his leg was seen to, for he had bound it up so tightly and at such an angle that I suspected it would have to come off.
As he was being helped into the house we had prepared for the wounded, another cart drove up, this time one we had sent out earlier.
I had little time to question the men it carried, for they brought an urgent demand for fuel. It was beginning to snow, and the battle had still been raging when they left, and some of the men needed to rest and were freezing. I ran off to make arrangements to have the returning carts reloaded with fuel, and when I returned to the sick houses, yet another cart had arrived. This one contained a trained warrior, a member of the Family, who lay quietly among the peasants, looking at them contemptuously if they moaned. When they moved him from the cart he flinched, clenching his teeth together, but made no noise. He was so covered in blood that it was hard to see where he had been hurt.
“Goronwy,” I said, and he looked up at me. His set face relaxed a little.
“They said you were here,” he told me. “Good. I’ll be well treated, then.”
“As well as we can manage. What is happening in the war? No, tell me when you are inside.”
Inside the house, we waited for a surgeon to finish with the others. Goronwy kissed my hand. “Wise lady, who always knew that Medraut was treacherous,” he muttered. “The lying dog, the weasel…to think that I once trusted him.”
“He was good at lying,” I said. “But what has happened? Did he enter the ambush?”
“No. We had no such good fortune. No, he stopped at the turning of the road, and began preparing his men in a hurry. He had his—Maelgwn’s—army in the fore, to take the first onslaught, and all the trained men behind, and the cavalry behind them. He knew what he was doing. We…have you heard it? No? We’d sent our cavalry back northward, some distance, so that they were behind Medraut, and sent our infantry down the road toward Camlann, round the turn, so that they would not be seen until Medraut was into the ambush. Sandde’s army was in the hills, just by the turning itself. When Lord Sandde saw that Medraut had realized we were there, he told his men to charge at once, and galloped down the hills straight into Medraut’s army. A fine man, Sandde. I hope he lives through the day.”
“So do I. Did his charge carry, then?”
Goronwy began to shake his head, winced. “No. They went deep into Maelgwn’s army, with heavy losses on both sides, and then Medraut sent his infantry in, and Sandde’s peasants were chased up the road, straight into the Family.” He smiled grimly. “And that was the last I saw of them, for Medraut had ordered his cavalry about, suspecting that we were in the hills somewhere near, and we had to ride quickly to prevent their encircling our infantry. Oh, we met them, sure enough, and we were winning. It was a fierce fight; I’m sorry to be missing it.”
I clasped his hand briefly. “What more is there? Is Arthur safe?”
“He was when…when that traitor Constans put his sword through me. A man that had been my friend, my brother…well, he is paid for it. The emperor was with the cavalry. I tried to fight on, after Constans, but…I am going to die, my lady.”
“You don’t know that. Ah, here is the surgeon.”
I stayed with Goronwy for a little while, as he was stripped and brought under the knife. But when he fainted I rushed off with a servant to see that another house was ready, for another cart had arrived, and there was no more room in the first house. From that time, for a long time, I had little opportunity to question or worry.
I was used to wounded men, but not in numbers like this. Partly this was simply because Arthur’s battles had mostly in the past been fought in distant places: I had not seen such numbers brought directly from the slaughter before. But the battle of Camlann was the cruelest battle of the age, and the casualties were very high. When the two peasant armies met in that first onslaught, perhaps a thousand men were killed, and by the later afternoon the road must have been running with blood. The first carts brought only men who could crawl back to safety. By the later afternoon, the battle had moved up the road toward Camlann, and the carts could pick up the casualties of the first meeting, and carried as many new corpses as living men. The reports they also carried varied like the sea: Medraut, Maelgwn, Arthur, or Sandde were dead; Maelgwn had fled; Maelgwn was taken prisoner; Medraut had killed Arthur in single combat; Arthur had killed Medraut—uncertain victory hovered over both. I had no time to be afraid for my husband or my friends. I was needed by the surgeons, by the dying, by the servants; needed to find fresh horses for the carts when there were no fresh horses; needed to say where the corpses should be piled, and whom the surgeons should treat first, and what use should be made of fuel, and who should rest. I was Empress, and I could not be a human woman.
Night came, and still there was no official report. The carts that arrived now had left the struggle in the last hour of daylight, and reported that still some fighting was going on, but that the forces had moved back down the road to the turning, and most of the peasants on both sides had fled or stopped fighting. I wished someone could be spared to bring me a message—for a horseman with a fresh horse it would only be an hour, perhaps less. But it seemed that all was complete confusio
n.
“Maelgwn is retreating,” I was told, again. “The emperor has won.” But how could anyone know?
“Where is the emperor?” I asked at random, as one cart pulled up before the stables, where we were now bringing the wounded. It was a big cart, and full of indistinct forms.
“He is with the cavalry,” came one voice.
“He is dead,” a different one said.
“No, it was his horse; his horse was killed under him, but he got up again.”
“Was that a gray horse?”
“No, he was riding a bay.”
“That was the second horse, after the bay was killed.”
“He was alive…before that last cavalry charge,” came a strangely familiar voice from the back of the cart. I peered into it, trying to make out the face, and could not.
Then men unloading the cart dropped someone who screamed horribly and began to sob. “Be quiet!” shouted someone else savagely, “I can’t bear it. Do you think you’re any worse off than the rest of us?”
“Can your horses make it back to the battlefield?” I asked the driver of the cart.
“No,” he said in a hoarse voice. He loomed over me, only his face visible as a pale shadow in the darkness, with the gleam of his eyes in the distant torchlight. “The poor brutes could hardly climb this last hill.”
In Winter's Shadow Page 34
