Pendragon's Banner

by Helen Hollick

  “I believe is not good enough Decurion!” Arthur’s bark ripped across the clearing with the force of a hurled hunting spear. “I want him alive – if he does not already lie dead.”

  “Sir!” The Decurion brought his arm smartly across his chest, his fist striking the breast of his tunic in the traditional Roman salute, and turned aside, halted as Arthur said:

  “Decurion, apart from that one, shall we say, oversight, I am proud of you and the men this day.” He took a slow breath, fought the pain and rising nausea, glared through squinting eyes at the boy, Gweir, hovering anxiously at his side. “And you, boy, will receive your manumission. After Ider has tanned your backside raw.”

  XXXVIII

  Faces floated, hovering through a feverish mist of red pain. Faces coming and going, sometimes the same face, sometimes a different one. Once he thought he heard someone scream a long way off, another time he lay half-awake drowning in the swirl of clinging fog, listening to the sound of a woman’s tears.

  Arthur jeered at himself, conscious even in that half-life between dream and reality that no woman would sit crying over him. Laugh happen, aye, there was many a woman who would laugh at his death, but na, never cry. Strange, this semi-conscious existence between the real and unreal, where sense mixed with the ridiculous.

  And beside him, whenever the dark pain-mist cleared, someone lifting his head, coaxing that bitter tasting liquid down his throat. Next time, when he woke next time, he would tell this medical orderly how like a woman’s hands his were. He swallowed the mixture gratefully, for it brought sleep that eased the pain. The sleep he welcomed, but not the dreams.

  Why did they always drift into dreams of Gwenhwyfar? Summer days. A breeze sighing through the trees; rivers, cool and rippling. Gwenhwyfar beside him laughing and teasing. Walking together; riding. Her copper hair cascading on a pillow as they made love. Gwenhwyfar… he opened his eyes. Had he heard a voice? Was that movement? The tent was dim, almost dark; light flared suddenly, casting a grotesque, leaping shadow as someone adjusted the lamp’s wick. He was still dreaming then, a strange dream though, this one. Arthur moved, caught his breath, an audible hiss clenching sharp in his teeth. The figure turned and walked to him, her tread rustling on the rush-strewn floor.

  “You are awake?” She bent over him, touched his cheek. Behind the smile her face was taut and drawn, dark circles bruised beneath her eyes. Her hair, unbound and hanging loose, swung forward, its fragrance of summer-scented flowers sweeping away the sickly smell of fever from his nostrils. She lifted his hand into hers, seated herself on the cot.

  “I’m not sure,” he answered, drowsily, slightly confused. “Am I?”

  His hair was damp from his own sweat, she smoothed it back from his forehead. Her fingers were cool on his skin. He squeezed the hand holding his. “For a dream, you seem solid enough.” He laughed weakly. “But you must be a dream, why else would the Lady Gwenhwyfar be sitting on my bed? She is at Caer Luel. She made it plain she had no wish to be at my side.”

  Gwenhwyfar, looking tired and strained, made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “That Lady Gwenhwyfar was a fool. This Lady Gwenhwyfar is where she ought to be, beside her husband, who has courted death these past weeks.”

  “Ah.” Arthur closed his eyes. Gods, but his arm ached! “So my wife comes out of duty. I am a fool to have expected anything else.”

  His eyes were closed. Gwenhwyfar leant forward, placed her lips on his, her kiss lingering an instant. As if embarrassed, she made to move hastily back, but Arthur twined his uninjured arm around her waist, keeping her to him.

  “Did you come from duty then? Or love?” He opened his eyes, holding her gaze. Bitterly, he added, “Or was it to witness my death, to know the exact moment of receiving your manumission, your freedom, from me?”

  She made no attempt to answer. She was shaking, though, and her face had the paleness of a winter’s moon. She had let go his hand, was toying with the ruby ring that he had given her for their marriage. There were tears on her cheeks when she looked up, looked back at him. “Day and night I have fought to keep you from death, Arthur.”

  “How long have you been here?” The heavy sarcasm in his voice had altered, changing to quiet apology.

  “Enniaun himself rode hard to fetch me. We nigh on killed the horses on the ride back.” She added, staring at her hands, “It was feared you would not live.”

  With a slight sigh, she flexed her aching neck and shoulder muscles. “Your medics and officers were all frightened, preferred to place the responsibility of whether you lived or died in my lap. I have been beside you for almost two weeks. I told them you are too stubborn to die. When they said it may be God’s wish, I told them you would never allow His wish to override your own narrow-minded views.”

  Arthur managed a feeble grin. “I think there was some sort of a compliment hidden in there somewhere.”

  A smile creased Gwenhwyfar’s face. “There was.” The smile broadened, “Except, of course, without me here you would have had to fight alone and would have lost the battle.”

  “My medical staff are capable men.”

  “They have many wounded also to take care of.”

  “I am glad you came.” Arthur sucked his bottom lip, his lowered eyes staring at the blanket covering his naked body. He glanced up and away to a vacant point along the tent’s ceiling. “I do not deserve you, do I?”

  “No,” Gwenhwyfar said. “You don’t.”

  July 462

  XXXIX

  Winifred was still smouldering with fury at not being appointed Abbess. It was unreasonable to suppose Arthur had been responsible for blocking her being awarded the position – but nothing that man did would surprise her. Once a bastard, always a bastard.

  Graciously, politely, she served wine to the man, a Saxon, seated beside her. As always, she showed welcome to her guests, especially to those men who were of use in her political games. Only a rather tight, straight mouth betrayed her anger.

  Had she become Abbess, Winifred would have achieved a respected position of authority and her financial assets would have increased dramatically, not that she was lacking in that direction. But a woman alone – a handsome woman and a wealthy one – attracted the attention of men. Young, old, landowners, ambition-holders, sharing a common factor of an eagerness to get their hands on her wealth, and her body. As an abbess, although still entitled to marry, she would have legitimate reason to be protected from the more outrageous advances and propositions. She did not want a new husband. Were she to commit herself to another man then Arthur would be lost to her, and she would have to admit his divorce.

  She missed a man in her bed – but it was Arthur she wanted, no other. Arthur, because he was the father of her son and because when he set her aside he had torn her pride into ruins. And she loved him. For all the hurt he had caused her, she loved him. She was not going to get him back, she suspected, but she still had to try, had to hope that one day… ah, but if that were not possible she must make him acknowledge their son. Cerdic as his heir would go a long way to mending that shattered pride. And, of course, as mother to a king, Winifred would again have an elevated position of authority, like the one she had enjoyed as daughter to Vortigern. A discarded wife of the Pendragon did not create the same air of importance outside her own little domain where she ruled, although she generated enough interest for the menfolk. Bees around the honeypot. Leofric, seated beside her, was one of them.

  Leofric was more than a trader – a merchant adventurer, he styled himself. The British would call him a pirate. With his family connections to one of the highest ranking royal Saxon houses, he was wealthy in his own right: he held a hidage of land that would put even the Pendragon to shame and owned a fleet of longships, all of which plied ambitious trade – some legitimate. He was sitting sprawled on the short grass beneath the shade of a wide-spread oak tree, drinking Winifred’s best wine and trying, again, to tempt her with marriage. It was his fourth visit, his third pro
posal. Winifred was flattered, but refused him.

  “I am not seeking a husband,” she stated, slightly amused at his persistence. A handsome man of thirty or so years, Leofric would make a good husband, but not for Winifred. She did not want another husband. She wanted Arthur.

  “Your son needs a father.” Leofric had already realised Cerdic might be the key to success but it was the wrong thing to say, for although Winifred laughed, there was ice in her reply.

  “Cerdic has a father.” She offered more wine, he accepted.

  “But he thinks nothing of the boy, nor, as I hear it, of his other sons.”

  He sipped his wine. How much, how little, should he tell? He wanted Winifred as wife, could not afford to anger her. “They say,” he began, tentative, “that the Pendragon was wounded, courted death.” He noted how Winifred’s eyes widened slightly, saw the tremble to her hand – this was news to her then. “There are many,” he added, “who would welcome such an ending to Arthur.”

  Winifred made no reply, busied herself with arranging the fall of her skirt more tidily. She did not want Arthur dead. Death was too final. God love her, why did she not want him dead? There were reasons; Cerdic must be acclaimed, he was yet too young to fight for his own rights. Many reasons, all convenient excuses.

  The Saxon was telling of how Lot and his witch-wife were not yet beaten, that there would need to be another battle. Winifred closed her eyes, only half listening. Aye, all excuses. She fought Arthur, trying to plot and scheme his downfall, his public humiliation, but beneath the bitterness that cloyed for revenge, she did not want him dead. She loved him, wanted him back as her own, wanted him too much for the finality of death.

  Leofric knew little of this British Pendragon beyond reputation and gossip. He could not see Winifred’s obsession with wanting revenge. Have the whoreson killed and claim his title for the son, that is what he would do – intended to do, once he had Winifred as wife. A man who was father to a boy king could be a powerful and wealthy man.

  “For all that he is a king, a man who kills his own son and murders his whores when he has finished with them does not seem worthy of being a father.” He said it with a shrug, meaning no offence, and was astounded when Winifred angrily rounded on him, defending the Pendragon.

  “That is ugly rumour. I heard it that the girl fell.” Serve the silly bitch right! The pity was that his other slut, the one he called wife, did not as conveniently fall and break her neck!

  Leofric lifted his hands in surrender. That was not as he understood, but why waste breath arguing when he had other more important matters to pursue?

  XL

  It would soon be time for harvest and the muttered, discontented grumbling was growing. The British militiamen – those few left after the decimation beneath the trees above the Great River – saw the war as ended. They had a victory under their belt, Lot was beaten and they chafed to sing about it around their own hearths, crow about it to their women. From knowledge and experience, Arthur and his men knew better.

  Lot, managing to escape by the narrowest of Fortuna’s intervention must have realised how close he had come to destroying Arthur. Had it not been for the eager ferocity of Cei’s and Enniaun’s joint attack from the rear, then it would have been Arthur fleeing through those woods, dodging death or slavery; it would have been Arthur stripped of clothing and weapons and cast without a second glance on to the mounded pyres.

  With someone as hungry for power as Morgause, all could not be settled within the fighting of a single battle. Her husband had lost the advantage and was now on the defensive, he had to prove he was worthy to be her king. And the northmen knew they had come so close to annihilating the Pendragon’s Cymry. There was many a warrior of Lot’s out there who nursed a grievance of humiliation and shame or bitter regret. Emotions that did not lend themselves to a war-hosting going peaceably home to their womenfolk. That Lot and his witch-wife would rally to fight another day was more than probable; the only uncertainty was when.

  For Arthur, movement was an effort. They had carried him, when the fever had gone, on a litter to the derelict old Roman fortress that had once been Trimontium, made him a bed in the only serviceable stone-built storeroom and got on with urgent rebuilding. The defence walls were to be restored to full height, the outer ditch redug deeper, into a sharper V; grain and supply stores were soon erected and filled with supplies brought up from the south, and timber-framed huts rapidly replaced leather tents. The Pendragon’s northern stronghold took on an air of permanency.

  June’s alternated days of brilliant sunshine, drizzling rain and drifting mist shuffled into a slightly warmer July, and the grumblings became more than growled talk across the night fires.

  The building work was finished and they began the waiting game. Bored, restless, the British chieftains came to Arthur. He dragged himself from his bed to meet them, cajoled, argued, flattered and fawned. Tried anger and derision, but in the end, let them go. The Artoriani would fight without them. At least Enniaun and his men of Gwynedd stayed, but they were not many. Not against the forces Lot could muster.

  Summer gave way to the tawny browns and gleaming golds of a sparkling autumn and the first frosts whitened the withering bracken and heather. Arthur’s arm was almost healed and a cold wind, blustering in from the north-east, chivvied the last remaining leaves from the trees, stripping branches and huddling men into the warmth of their cloaks.

  Winter stalked over the hills, and word came that many days’ march to the north, Lot was again gathering men to his thistle banner.

  December 462

  XLI

  Her head resting on her propping hand, Gwenhwyfar ran a finger down the length of the scar that snaked from Arthur’s collarbone to wrist. In places the angry redness was paling to white, but the viciousness of the wound still knotted her stomach whenever she looked at it. The memory of when he had lain saturated with his own sweat and tossing in fever was not fully thrust aside; that awful night when the Medical Optio had stood shaking his head, convinced the arm would have to be amputated. If Gwenhwyfar had not been there to protest, to beg for just twenty-four more hours… She shuddered.

  “Does it continue to pain you?” she asked, retracing the disfigurement a second time.

  “Occasionally. A soldier learns to put up with the memory of old wounds.” Arthur turned his head on the pillow and smiled at her. “Though there are certain places where a man dreads a sword thrust more than any other.”

  Gwenhwyfar fingered another faded scar, which ran beneath the dark hairs covering his nipples and chest, “Your body is not the one I knew nine years ago.”

  “I’ve ridden many miles through those years, Cymraes.” He lay on his back, drowsing in the warm comfort that hangs between wakefulness and sleep, his right arm curled beneath his head. Outside, the wind was roaring, buffeting against the timber and wattle-daubing, swirling the first fall of light snow; its jagged breath finding a way beneath the wooden door, making the flames of the hearth-fire contort and leap.

  A while ago, they had made love, her passion as fierce as his, their enjoyment leaving them breathless and damp with sweat. The touch of her fingers exploring the scars on his chest and arms was arousing him again. He guided her hand beneath the fur bed coverings, placed it over a raised scar on his inner thigh. “Remember this one?”

  “I remember! Those weeks while you recovered at your mother’s villa were happy ones. We were young and we were lovers; nothing stood between us, not even Winifred’s hot breath on our necks – and she was then your taken wife.” She paused, moved her hand intimately higher. “I should have realised then, shouldn’t I?”

  He regarded her with a questioning frown. “Realised what?”

  “That I am a fool to love you.” She stroked the fine soft hairs of his belly, letting her fingers wander lower.

  Arthur’s breath caught, his stomach twisting with the thrill of desire, responding to her kiss as she leant over him, covering his mouth with hers. He
slid his hands up her back, delighting in the smooth silk of her warm skin.

  “A fool eh?” he murmured as he twined his hand in the thickness of her copper-gold hair, holding her to him. “That you might be, but you are also the most beautiful, and I love you.” Their lovemaking was softer this time, not so impetuous, the giving and receiving of intimate loving.

  A while after, Gwenhwyfar lay watching the dim shadows skittering across the walls. Into the semi-darkness of their small, private chamber, said, “Arthur?”

  “Mmm?” He was almost asleep.

  “What will you do when you eventually capture Morgause?”

  His eyes snapped open but he remained still. What would he do? Have her flogged, throw her to the men for their pleasure – take her himself? Throw her to drown in the peat bogs, bury her alive? He had ideas of a hundred and more cruel and humiliating ways to avenge his childhood.

  “Hang her,” he said simply. And he shut his eyes and went to sleep feeling for once, that he had spoken the truth. She was not worth anything more. To be hanged like a common criminal was enough. He would not waste time and energy or emotion doing more.

  The fire burned low and the wind continued its buffeting of the world outside. They slept with his arm around her waist. The snow-sprinkled night wheeled slowly through the dark hours, turned to meet the coming new day.

  An urgent thumping on the closed door startled Arthur awake.

  “Mithras, what now?” he groaned and burrowed deeper below the bed-furs, wriggling his body closer to his wife. He shut his eyes tight, opened them again as the knocking persisted. Letting his breath slide from him in a long, low moan he rolled away from Gwenhwyfar and sat up stiffly. He yawned, rubbed his face. “Come!” he bellowed, angry at the intrusion, “What is it?”