And still I waited.
About a week and a half later, Sandde sent me a messenger from Camlann, bringing more supplies and some trivial news. The news did not surprise me, but the messenger did, for he was Taliesin, who had been Arthur’s chief bard and a sometime cavalry fighter, and of whom I had neither seen nor heard anything during the whole of this last war. When he arrived and presented me with a list of the supplies he brought, I asked him up to my house and, when he was there, poured him some mead.
“I am glad to see you well,” I told him as he sipped the mead. “I had assumed that you were dead.”
He made a face and shook his head. “No. I was merely away from Camlann.”
He offered no further explanation; he never did. He was a mysterious man whom no one knew much about, and he rather enjoyed making himself yet more mysterious. Gwalchmai at least had been firmly convinced that Taliesin was from the Otherworld, and only stayed upon the Earth for some unknown purpose of his own. But many people had thought much the same about Gwalchmai himself.
“Oh?” I asked, impatient with mysteries. “Where?”
Taliesin smiled, a quick acceptance of my impatience, amusement that became sad. “Arthur sent me north to Urien, king of Rheged, when he left for Gaul, first as a messenger, and afterward to reconcile Urien to the absence of half his warriors. The war between Rheged and Ebrauc broke out while I was there, so I stayed in the North until I heard that Arthur was back. I arrived at Camlann two days ago.”
“So you were in the North—when? Two weeks ago? What is happening there?”
He shrugged. “Rheged raids Ebrauc, and Ebrauc raids Rheged and shouts forth bold defiance at the idea of being subject to an emperor. There were no pitched battles and it is unlikely that there will be any, and neither side can take any clear advantage. If Arthur is indeed dead, and there is no emperor for Ebrauc to rebel against, there may be a truce declared again—for a time.”
“If Arthur is dead,” I said. It was the first time anyone had spoken those words to me. “What would you do then?”
He looked down at the desk and traced a pattern idly on its polished surface. “What I have always done, my lady: make songs. I can play in the court of any king in Britain, even that of Maelgwn Gwynedd, and be welcome.”
“Songs about the fall of the Empire?” I asked, before I could stop myself.
He looked up. He had gray eyes, like Arthur or Medraut, but of a lighter shade. In the dim house they looked almost silver. “Songs about the fall of the Empire, yes, and songs about the emperor. There will be no more emperors now, not in the West. No one will claim the title, because everyone now is too weak for it, and none has a better claim than another. There will be many eager for songs about the Emperor Arthur and the Family.” He looked down again and hummed a bar of music softly; one of his new tunes, no doubt, for I did not recognize it as an old one. I felt a slow tide of anger and bitterness rising within me. “The glory will not fade, my lady, because it will have no successors. And my songs will be remembered. The times that come will remember us. Something of you, and something of what we fought for, will survive.”
“Do you think,” I demanded, “that we fought for songs?” He looked up again, mildly surprised, calm and unmoved, and the anger, the blind wild loss suddenly took possession of me. I jumped up, swept my hand over the desk, and the jug of mead crashed to the floor and broke. The serving girl came rushing in from the next room, but I waved her back. “Do you think songs feed the hungry, or administer justice, or keep peace between kingdoms, or restore the ruins of the Empire of the Romans? Go and sing your songs to the Saxons; I am sure they will pay great attention to your melodies sung in an unknown tongue. Songs! They are no remedy. Glory is not a consolation. It’s lost, don’t you understand? It is all lost. The Light has gone, and the Darkness covers Britain as closely as the air, and there is nothing left of what we once dreamed and suffered for.
“And if you sing your songs, and if they are the greatest of songs, and able to move men to believe in an ideal, what sort of ideal will it become in a few years? An emperor commits incest with his sister, and begets his own ruin in the person of a treacherous, malicious son; and an Empress divides the realm at the critical time by playing whore with the emperor’s best friend! What a beautiful story! What a theme for songs! Not only is it all lost, it was we who lost it, we who by our own stupidity and weakness allowed ourselves to be divided, and break like a pot flawed in the firing, that spills everything put into it. It is gone like smoke into the air, like mist before the wind. There is nothing left of the Empire, and nothing remaining from which we could build again, and nothing to show for our lives’ effort but guilt, shame, and a few lying songs!”
My voice had grown shriller and shriller as I spoke, and at last I screamed at Taliesin, who sat watching me silently. I had begun shaking, and tried to cover my face. The serving maid rushed out of the doorway again and caught my arm. “My lady, my lady, sit down,” she said, and, to Taliesin, “she is overtired, poor lady, she works so hard. Here, noble lady, I will fetch some water and some more mead. Don’t you fear, your husband will come back.”
I laughed, but sat down on the bed. “My husband is dead,” I told the girl.
“Ach, noble lady, they never found his body; he cannot be dead.”
“He was lost in the cavalry charge,” I said, finally admitting what I had known for some time. “I never recognized the body because the charge went over it, and it was mutilated beyond recognition. Arthur is dead, and even dead I cannot see him again, or bury him. I wish to the God of Heaven that I were dead as well.”
“Do not say such things!” exclaimed the girl. “Here, here is some water.”
I drank a little, looked at the girl’s shocked, miserable face. The anger was leaving me. “Don’t worry,” I told her. “It is merely weariness.”
The girl smiled hesitantly and left to fetch the mead.
“I am sorry, noble lady,” said Taliesin. “I did not mean to offend you.”
I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes, feeling how the sobs were again locked within me. “No, I am sorry,” I said. “Forgive me. It is only that there has been too much death and, as the girl said, I am tired. You spoke to comfort me.”
Taliesin stood, took my hand, kissed it, and touched it to his forehead. “You have endured too much, noble lady.”
“Everyone endures too much.” I wiped my eyes, and the serving girl came back with the mead and gave me some. It was fresh from a storeroom, bitterly cold, and hurt in my tight throat. “Thank you,” I said to the girl, trying to control my shaking. Then I thought of another thing, and added, “Can you fetch me some fresh ink and some parchment, Olwen? Thank you.” She bobbed her head and left again, and I turned back to Taliesin.
“You say you can go to any king’s court and be welcomed,” I said. It was true, of course: no British king will harm a bard. Law and custom do not permit it—and Taliesin was famous. “Could you journey through Less Britain as well?”
He nodded, warily. “You wish me to take a letter to the lord Bedwyr.”
“Two letters. One the lord Gwalchmai dictated to me as he was dying, and one I will write myself. It will only tell Bedwyr of the battle, and say that Arthur is dead and I will join a convent. You can read it first, if you like. You will compromise no one’s honor by bearing it for me.”
“A convent?”
“What else does a noble widow do? It is that, or remarry, and I will not remarry.”
“Lord Sandde…”
“I am old enough to be his mother.”
“He would be willing to be your client king, not a husband. He admires you very greatly. He means to establish you in Camlann as Empress.”
“I would not last a year. We do not have the warband to enforce such a rule, and the kings of Britain would not permit the unfaithful wife of a usurper to claim the purple. You yourself said that there will be no more emperors. There is no longer an empire.” I felt a
s though I had been saying nothing else for a long time. “To pretend that there is, when we have no real power, will only create more wars and factions than there are already. Let Sandde be king of Dumnonia—there is little doubt he will be recognized as that. I will go north and join a convent.” I rose and picked up one of the fragments of the broken mead jar. “As a girl, I knew a girl who is now abbess of a convent near Caer Lugualid. I know I would be welcome there—perhaps I should write to her as well. If there is a truce proclaimed in the North, I will go there in the spring. I am sure that Sandde will give me some kind of escort.”
Taliesin bowed, and when he straightened again I saw to my astonishment that he was weeping. I had never seen him weep. “Noble lady,” he said in a rough voice, “I will carry your letters.” He bowed again and started from the room, then paused in the doorway and looked at me again. “I dreamed, or foresaw in a vision, years and years ago, that this Empire would fall. I expected it, and watched, and waited, setting it out in my heart for a song. I had not thought to find such bitterness in seeing it. Even my songs seem nothing more than the wind in the reeds, hollow and without life. I am paid for…” He stopped, staring at me, his face working. “For trying not to care. Have me called, lady, when you are done with the letters.” He gave one more bow and slipped out.
I picked up a few more pieces of the mead jug and weighed them in my hand. They were sticky, and the room was full of the sweet honey scent of the mead. I had already composed the letter to Bedwyr in thought, and it would not take long to write it. I cared enough still, I supposed, to want to let him know—but my heart was numb, and my only awareness of him was as another responsibility, another thing to mark off on some interminable list.
I set the broken fragments down, wiped my hands, and waited for the servant to come back with the ink and parchment.
EPILOGUE
It has now been some weeks since I finished this account of the past, set down my pen, and wondered what to do next. I began because one day I found that when I thought of the past only three things stood clear in my mind: the hour, with the water dripping from the thatch and sputtering in the torches, when Sandde told me that Arthur was gone; Bedwyr’s face, dark-eyed, calm beyond any more anguish, when he said farewell; and Gwalchmai innocent, dying in my arms in that hideous room at Ynys Witrin. And all these memories were bright and hard with such pain and bitterness that I grew afraid.
I am old now. If I see my reflection, in water or a cup of wine—there are no mirrors in the convent, I can scarcely believe that I am that same Gwynhwyfar whom Arthur and Bedwyr loved. The face I see is an old woman’s, lined with use. Much use: many tears, hour upon hour of a grief which can never be eradicated, never be forgotten. Lined with laughter, too. I have laughed in my life, thank God. But the laughter does not weigh even in the balance with the grief. My hair is white, and growing thin. My bones are stiff these days, and they ache deep within, the way the heart aches and is stiff after irreparable loss. Only my eyes still look as I remember them from the past: brown and steady. It is a terrible thing to have worked the ruin of all one loved best, but it is worse to survive that ruin, and grow old, forgetting.
I am abbess of this convent in the North, now, responsible for the well-being of nearly a hundred people, and I am—incredible word—respected again. The local people come to me with their problems, the sisters copy books and look after orphaned children, the world goes on. Bedwyr, I have heard, became a monk after hearing of Arthur’s death. When Arthur lifted the siege of Car Aës to come to the aid of Britain, Macsen proclaimed it victory, and at the victory feast offered Bedwyr the title of warleader and various lands and powers as well, which Bedwyr refused. Despite the refusal, Macsen’s old warleader was not pleased, and partly because of his displeasure Macsen acceded to Bedwyr’s demand for release when the warrior received the news I sent him later that year. A few years ago I heard from an itinerant priest that Bedwyr has become famous throughout Less Britain for his asceticism—scourging himself and fasting, kneeling in icy streams before daybreak and reciting the psalms, and so on. The Breton monastics believe him very holy. Myself, I know he believes the opposite. Bedwyr would not believe he could persuade God to forgive him by torturing himself. And I do not think he will succeed in punishing his body enough to win his own forgiveness, either. But perhaps God is more merciful than Bedwyr. Perhaps.
Sandde became king of Dumnonia and ruled from its new capital, Camlann, until a few years after I left the South, when he died in one of the new wars against the Saxons. There are many wars now, small ones, and there is great uncertainty everywhere. The ships that used to come from Less Britain are more infrequent now, and they no longer bring news from the distant parts of the Empire. Rome now seems as distant and mysterious as Constantinople did in my youth. People live in the moment and are afraid for tomorrow, for the world grows steadily more dark.
A bard passed through this abbey not too long ago, and sang a new song about the death of a minor king, and the song has kept running through my head ever since. They say it was made by the dead man’s sister.
Cynddylan’s Hall is dark tonight,
Without a fire or bed for sleep:
I will be silent after the hour I weep.
Cynddylan’s Hall is dark tonight,
Without a fire or candle’s shine:
But God, what force will hold my mind?
Cynddylan’s Hall is dark tonight,
With him who owned it gone away:
Cruel death, why do you let me stay?
From Gorwynnion’s mound I looked upon
A land lovely in summer ease.
The sun’s course is very long
But longer are my memories.
My memories are long, but they will die with me, and soon no one living will remember our Empire. What remains, then, for all that blood and all that sorrow?
Sometimes I think that nothing remains. For a very long time I thought that the end of Camlann was the end of everything, and the bitterness swelled in me until I grew afraid, for it is not good, when one is old and shortly to come before God and answer to him for one’s deeds, to be filled with a wordless bitterness. I began to tell myself that I ought to forget.
But I could not wish to forget, arid the more I remembered, the less I wished to forget. I could not lose the memory of Camlann in the morning, the sun shining from the snow on the roof of the Feast Hall, the smoke of the morning fires; the feasts in the great dim building, the glitter of much gold, the strains of the harp. Whatever the bitterness that mingles with the memories, what we had in Camlann was the dream that the hearts of all men have ever longed for. “O Oriens, splendor lucis aeterna,” “O Dayspring, splendor of eternal Light and Sun of Justice, come, illumine those who sit in darkness and the shadow of Death.” We tasted on Earth the wine of the New Jerusalem that is forever to come. Of course the loss of that is bitter; more bitter than the loss of all the world. But I cannot wish to forget that it was there, for a few years. No, I wish to forget none of it: Arthur’s smile and clear eyes, Bedwyr’s warm gaze, the friendships and the loves and the astounding beauty of the world we were making anew.
I have digressed, and begun speaking like an abbess. Well, that is what I am, and it will color my speech. We failed in Camlann; nothing of what we struggled to build remains, except the longing that drove us in the first place. But it was worth it, to have possessed that joy for a few years, and I cannot regret that we tried. And perhaps though we failed, God has not. Perhaps it is not the end.
Last year a new monastery was founded on an island to our north—founded by, of all people, the Irish. There is nothing so remarkable in that. The head of that settlement sent a few monks here, looking for books: that is remarkable. No one travels miles to look for books, in this age; I had begun to fear that the ability to read would die out and the world would truly be confined to the present. But this Irish abbot is wild for books; his reason for coming to Britain is trouble over one he stole. And t
hese monks are setting about converting the Saxons; they have converted a king, and their influence already spreads like fire in the grass. Arthur and I always wanted the Saxons converted, brought into the Empire, but the British Church would neither undertake this task itself nor permit us to subsidize anyone to undertake it.
A handful of monks on a little island called Iona: it is not much. And they are not Roman, have no understanding of what Rome was and meant. Yet they are as set to change the world as I was when I rode south to Camlann many years ago. Perhaps I am mad to hope that they can achieve anything, succeed where Arthur and I failed. And yet everywhere in Britain the longing is there, the soul-deep desire, waiting for someone to touch it and shape it anew, it is as Taliesin predicted: Britain has not forgotten our Empire, and longs to hear more songs about it, because it is gone and its absence leaves a hole in the world which even its former enemies can feel. I have heard tales recently that Arthur did not die, but sleeps under some magic, to one day wake again. When first I heard these, I loathed them for their blind, deluding hope. But the hopes remain in this realm, more powerful than the spring when the sun circles round from the dark winter. Our failure cannot put out the sun. If someone were willing to offer light to those than sit in darkness and the shadow of death…if, if, if.
Those monks were very eager to.
Was I wrong to cling so tightly to the memory of Rome? Perhaps the lightning strikes not from the East and the old Empire, but from the West, the limit of the world. Who knows? Do I dare to believe that life indeed goes on, to trust God and human desires, and die in hope?
Today is Easter Sunday. While I write the birds are loud outside my window, and the sun pours clean gold over the margins of the page, like those intricate designs the Irish paint in their gospels. Outside the early apple trees and the hawthorn are in blossom, and the woods are carpeted with primroses and harebells. Strange how the Earth renews herself, like a snake shedding a skin stiff and dusty with age, and polishing its shining new coils over a sun-warmed path.
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