Pendragon's Banner

by Helen Hollick

His father had been gone several days, buying horses in Dumnonia. Always they needed horses. The breeding and training of a war-horse did not happen overnight, and illness or injury accounted for many a beast being put out to pasture or destroyed. Constantly, the stock had to be kept up to number. There were men Arthur had especially appointed as horse buyers, horse traders who knew their job. Men like Madoc the Horseman, wounded at Trimontium, whom Arthur paid well; but occasionally the Pendragon liked to go out for himself to barter and haggle, to see the bad against the good. And to be seen among the people of Britain.

  He had returned to Caer Cadan to be told his wife and son were somewhere down by the river, had ridden to find them. Tethering Lamerei among the trees, Arthur had crept beneath the cool shadows, intending to leap out and startle the both of them, but Llacheu had turned his head, spotted his father. Arthur motioned him to stay quiet, grinned back at the boy as Llacheu joined the game.

  Gwenhwyfar had her back propped against a tree, was bent over a wax tablet lying against her knees. The stylus was between her teeth as she decided what to write next. So difficult, trying to be friendly yet formal. She added a few more words into the soft wax, yelped as two hands dug into her waist, the stylus scoring across the wax face, scratching through the handwriting.

  “You turd!” she chided, leaping to her feet, the stylus dropping from her fingers, falling into the grass. “You’re more the child than our son!”

  Arthur grinned at her, then across to Llacheu. “I’m a better fisherman though – you’d do better in the shade, lad, it’s too hot out here.”

  Gwenhwyfar was standing with her hands spread on her hips. With her copper-gold hair braided and wound about her head and wearing a thin-woven, sleeveless tunic, she looked cool, summery. Her cross expression did not fool her husband, he knew she was pleased to see him. He tweaked a shoulder strap aside, kissed the flesh beneath, then her neck.

  “Missed me?” he murmured.

  “Not in the slightest,” she replied, sliding her arms about his waist and offering a more intimate kiss of greeting.

  “Can I see to Lamerei?” Llacheu asked, all interest in fish disappearing now his father was home.

  “Aye, lad, I’ve watered her but you could take her up to the Caer and rub her down.” Arthur mischievously pulled a pin from Gwenhwyfar’s hair, loosening the wind of braiding so that one side slid down. She batted his hand, tried to refasten it as her husband walked with their son into the trees towards the patiently waiting mare.

  Boosting his son into the saddle, Arthur handed him the reins. “No cantering, it’s too hot and she’s come a long way today.”

  Llacheu nodded his head. “I’ll only walk her.” He did not feel like doing more, even though this was a rare chance to ride his da’s horse. His head ached, and his throat felt scratchy and dry. He headed the mare for the roadway leading up into the Caer, found he was not much enjoying the ride.

  Arthur, wearing riding gear, felt hot and uncomfortable under the mail and leather. The river beckoned cool and inviting. Returning to Gwenhwyfar he began to strip, dumped his clothes in a pile beside her and plunged naked into the river, sending a spray of water across the bank and over his wife.

  Gwenhwyfar squealed and called him a colourfully expressive name. He laughed and deliberately splashed her again before diving under and swimming a few yards upstream. The world below the surface was deliciously cool and green. Arthur smiled to himself as a few fish swam busily out of his way: Llacheu needed some tips in fishing it seemed! He surfaced, rolled onto his back and let the current float him back downstream, until, opposite Gwenhwyfar again, he sat in the shallows, enjoying the coolness lap around his body.

  “Who do you write to?” he asked, pillowing his head on the bank, closing his eyes against the fierce glare of the sun.

  “Ider. He sent word he is healing well. I write to tell him we are thinking of him and wish him with us.”

  Silence. Arthur stirred his feet, sending rippling waves lapping at the reeds. “If you were free of me, would you take another as husband?” He let his legs float before him, the muscles taut, keeping them straight against the flow of the river.

  “I have no wish to be free of you.” Gwenhwyfar smiled adding with a jest, “At least not most of the time. When you are in full flood with some raging anger, then I might occasionally be tempted.”

  The water swirled as Arthur began climbing out and up the bank. “Na, I am serious here. It is a good wager I shall not live to old age. How many soldiers do you see with grey hair and wrinkled skin?”

  Folding the two wooden halves of the tablet together, Gwenhwyfar secured the stylus safely and cradled her up-drawn knees, watching Arthur rub himself dry with his under-tunic.

  “There’s many a good soldier who has received his retirement discharge.” With a defiant tilt to her chin, she added, “As you well know.” It was an uncomfortable subject, talking of this was tempting the Fates. The old stories came to mind, how the three Goddesses wove the threaded patterns of life. The shuttles could so easily become snared, tangled – it was never known when one of them could be listening, and to talk of something unpleasant might just amuse the Goddess to weave it onto her loom.

  “Would you?”

  “Would I what?”

  He stood with his back to the river, bent over, drying his legs. “Take another as husband.”

  “What is this?” She took a breath, answered patiently but with finality, “No, I would not.”

  He looked up, tossed his damp tunic to dry in the sun. “Not even Ider?”

  For a moment Gwenhwyfar thought he was still teasing, realised he was not. She had to think carefully before answering. It was in her mind to storm to her feet, slap his face and stamp off in a temper, but that would not be the right reaction. If he was deliberately goading her then he could play this nonsense game by himself. “I am writing to Ider for the reasons I told you. Because he is Artoriani, and lying wounded in some far-off place away from his friends whom he regards as family. Ider is a good lad, he does his duty to the best of his ability, and he makes me laugh. For all that, I would not wed with him because I happen to love the man I already have as husband and no other could replace him.”

  “But if I were dead.”

  “Oh shut up!” She came quickly to her feet, covered the few yards between them her hands coming out, pushed his shoulders, sending him reeling into the water. Only he had moved as fast. His own hand caught her flailing arm, his fingers clamping around her wrist, and she fell with him, screaming laughter, the wave of water swooshing up the grass bank as he rolled her over in the shallows and made up for the few days they had been apart.

  Llacheu was worse by the coming of night. The ache in his head had become more intense; he was hot and restless, thrashing about on his pallet, calling out in his sleep. He curled with the boys at the far end of the King’s Hall, companionable with the grooms and the shield bearers of the Artoriani. Arthur’s young servant Gweir was near Llacheu and heard him moaning. When he put out a hand to shake the lad from what he supposed to be a bad dream and felt the heat standing out like fire from his body, he ran as if the hounds of the gods were after him to wake Gwenhwyfar.

  XVI

  For three days Llacheu’s fever raged, and then a harsh, racking cough developed. Gwenhwyfar gave him what herbal medicines she could to lower his body heat and ease the pain in his chest, but nothing seemed to work, not even the infusions made from the wild garlic. The boy’s hair was plastered wet to his forehead, the linen on the bed beneath him damp. Sometimes he slept, his breathing rattling in his throat, or he tossed, arms flinging wide, his tired voice moaning with the pain of the coughing, his aching limbs and tight, constricted chest. By the morning of the fourth day Arthur could take no more of watching his last surviving son fight for life.

  The daily routine in and around the complex of buildings at Caer Cadan was muted, the men and women grim-faced, their laughter absent. Eyes would turn to the chamber at
the rear of the King’s Hall. Father Cethrwm lodged himself on his knees within the square-crossed stone-built chapel. Some of the non-Christian men sacrificed a lamb one night, down below the ramparts where their ceremony could be private, away from any possible disapproval by Christian officers.

  Enid put the idea into Arthur’s head. She was coming from the dim-lit chamber, carrying a bundle of bed-linen, soiled and damp, as he was approaching from outside. Arthur took a step back to allow her to pass through the door. She shook her head slowly, her face blotched by weeping.

  “Only the Mother can help him now. God bless ‘im,” and she shifted the bundle beneath one arm to make the sign of the holy cross.

  Arthur entered the room as Llacheu eased from a bout of coughing, stood a long while within the doorway watching Gwenhwyfar bathing the boy’s face and body, her own appearance taut and bedraggled. Only the Mother. Enid had meant the Holy Mother, the Virgin Mary, Mother of God. But there was another, older Mother and she had a servant who had a reputation – aye, even among the Christian kind – as having the gift of healing.

  “Cymraes, I am going to Yns Witrin.”

  Gwenhwyfar looked across the room at Arthur, saw his haggard expression through the haze of her own red-tired eyes. She nodded once, said merely, “Take care.”

  She doubted the healing woman who lived there now, the Lady, would know of any different medicines, but accepted her husband had to try for something. And mayhap the Goddess would listen, and smile her blessing on their son.

  Arthur swung away from the chamber, strode down the slope towards the stabling at the far side of the Caer. He would take Onager, for the stallion was faster than his mare. Eleven miles, as the black raven could fly. Further, on horseback. For there were dykes and ditches, rivers. Marsh ground that even in the height of the hottest summer was boggy underfoot, with hollows and pits that could trap a man and a horse and claim them for a watery grave. Arthur had made forced marches on many occasions, swinging into the steady jog trot stride of cavalry on the move, but this ride was nothing like any march he had ever experienced. Onager had a long stride, and for all his faults of temper, a stamina and willingness that surpassed any horse Arthur had known. Where the hill of Caer Cadan levelled onto the Summer Land, he gave the animal his head and the stallion responded, ears back, tail carried banner-like, typical of the desert-bred horses of Arabia. His legs stretched into a gallop that took him faster than the wind – and he would have gone on until he dropped had Arthur let him, but no horse could sustain such a pace over a distance. Jog trot, drop to a walk, jog trot again. The stride was long, comfortable, the horse balanced, head lowered, not fighting the bit. A horse corn-fed and as fit as Onager could travel for several days, thirty, forty miles a day, at such a pace. Eleven or so miles, and Arthur covered the distance in little more than an hour.

  The last time he had come he had felt the superstitious fear of this place, the quivering, skin-prickling uncertainty of the unknown. This time he simply needed to do something for his son, exactly what, he did not know. He just had to be doing something, anything. He set Onager at where Morgaine had told him to look for the path through the waters; the places where the reeds grew taller, where a stone showed here and there, one marker, a slender tree stump. As he followed it, the birds took flight. She had told him of that mystery too, of how they warned of someone’s approach. “The magic,” she had said, “comes in making the natural things appear as magic.”

  Would she be there on the far shore, waiting for him? Arthur called; no sign of her. He dismounted, let Onager graze, searched her hut; empty, called again.

  There was a silence about this place that crept into the bones, surrounding the soul like invisible threads, round and round, pulling tighter. An emptiness of silence as deep and as towering as the lake and the Tor reflected in it. Arthur could feel it, stretching into a past where the Goddess had ruled, when Rome had been nothing more than a sheep-herd’s hut.

  He began to climb the Tor, the steep side that went up from behind Morgaine’s hut. It was a breathless climb that had the backs of his legs aching and chest heaving, but he did not stop, went straight up, digging his boots into the grass, using his hands occasionally to pull himself higher.

  Suddenly he was at the top. There had been no wind as he had crossed the lake and climbed, not even a breeze on this warm, sun-bright day, but as he stepped from the shelter of the high Tor, the wind hit him with the force of a shield blow, slamming into him, taking the last of his panting breath. His cloak whipped around him like some magical garment taken sudden life, his hair billowed about his face, the strength of the wind stinging his eyes, slamming up his nostrils to batter at his brain. And she was there, standing with her back to him, standing, one hand laid on the largest granite Stone that topped the highest point of the Tor, her hair unbound, flying in the wind. She was naked, her skin bare to the raw bite of the world, looking out across the Levels at the hills where Caer Cadan would be – had she seen him coming? She must have seen Onager, a chestnut horse coming fast, jumping streams and ditches. She must have seen the birds rise too, but she had not turned. Happen she did not expect others to come up here, to the Goddess’s sacred place.

  He said her name, the wind tore his voice and ran off with it across the Levels, but he had a feeling she knew he was there. She turned, said without surprise, “I knew you would come to me again. It is fitting you make it this day, for it is the Solstice, the day of life and giving.”

  She was very slender, her woman-curved body sun-browned beneath the writhe of serpents and creatures tattooed across her thighs and belly and around her breasts. The ritual-made marks of a priestess. She came up to Arthur, stood very close, and kissed him, light upon the lips. He wanted her, for no other reason than that she was a woman and he a man, but not now, not here – he could not, not while his son lay so close to death. He dared not touch her, for the feel of her skin might fan the flame of want; instead, he took a step back, noticed how his shadow in the late-afternoon sun stretched before him, lay atop hers, as close as a lover.

  He explained quickly in a few short words why he had come. Morgaine listened, her head cocked slightly to one side like a small bird listening for worms, then she took his hand, led him with her, following a foot-worn path that dipped abruptly down from this great height to the narrower length of the hill. They were suddenly out of the wind and into a localised silence more total than Arthur had ever experienced. He could see the rippling of water on the lake, the two swans gliding across its surface, geese foraging among the shallows and Onager grazing; fancied he could hear him chewing, the jingle of his bit, the creak of leather. Hear the swish of stirred leaves among the trees that trundled in their full summer glory below, and the birds, busy about their young. Could hear the wind rushing by above, behind, up there on the height, but here, where he walked a pace behind Morgaine, nothing. Not even the grass whispered.

  She stopped, turned to him, her face troubled, one hand gesturing in helplessness. “I must do as my mother commands, for she will bring a terrible revenge on us if I do not.”

  Misunderstanding, thinking she was talking of the Goddess, Arthur urgently took her hand. “I will do anything if it will help my son.”

  Morgaine sought his gaze. There were tears in hers as she said, “Would you lie with me? It is that she demands.”

  He still had her hand. He turned it over, studied her palm, there was a faint scar of a burn running across the flesh, age-old. Slowly he lifted the hand, placed his lips on the pale mark. “Was that not the Old Way?”

  Shy, the tears still there, Morgaine answered, “A maiden of the Goddess and a king would join to ensure life and fertility for the land. Before the Romans came and took away those kings, and replaced our Goddess with gods of their own doing.”

  “Will it help my son?”

  She had realised his misunderstanding, used it, seizing on it to do what she had to do. “In one way, it might.” Her answer had a different meaning fr
om the question he had asked, but for all her deliberate twisting, she believed she spoke the truth.

  He considered the answer ambiguous, but accepted it. “Then is her command so terrible? Am I so terrible?”

  The sun dipped into a blaze of evening sunset as they lay cradled together, skin against skin, under the warmth of Arthur’s cloak. He dozed; Morgaine, her head on his chest, lay with her eyes open, awake. She had tricked him and felt miserable for it, but the loving he had given her was so wonderful that, by the triple guise of the Goddess, she would willingly trick him again!

  It had been her mother, Morgause, she had talked of, not the Goddess. Morgause, who had sent word only two days past from where she was kept prisoner, that if Morgaine did not engineer some way of meeting with Arthur, then she would unleash an army to come against the Pendragon. For I will be free of him, daughter, one way or another. Morgaine believed her, for Morgause was a woman of power, who thrust fear into the bellies of all who were beneath her command. And Morgaine would not have Arthur dead, not for want of doing as her mother ordered.

  At least she had not lied to him. Morgause would be content now, now this thing was done, and Arthur would be safe from her wickedness, for a while – and the son too, should he survive this fever, for Morgause would certainly have had the boy killed had she carried out her threat of an army.

  Poor Morgaine, in her innocence, had no realistic knowledge of the world or the way her evil-hearted mother manipulated people into doing her bidding for her own ends.

  Gwenhwyfar never asked what had happened at Yns Witrin, or whether Arthur had found the Lady, and if he had, what had been her price of payment. It was a thing best not to ask, for she knew of the old laws and customs, happen better than Arthur. And she knew too, unlike her husband, whose daughter Morgaine of the Lake was. She knew these things but did not ask, for it did not matter. Whatever the payment Arthur had made to the Goddess, whatever the future might make of it, the price was worth it, for when Arthur returned, quiet and afraid of what he might find, Llacheu was sleeping the natural sleep of a child who had suffered an illness, but was safe through it, and set on the road to recovering.