Pendragon's Banner

by Helen Hollick

  XLIV

  As the mist cleared, the women could see; indistinctly, but enough to watch what was happening, for their camp was pitched on ground higher than the flat river plain. The view spread in a panoramic scene, the great arch of sky, the mist-hazed, incoming sea; acres of marsh grass and reeds dotted with the occasional wind-bent tree. And beyond, the dark, smudged line that was the beginning of the northern forests. Gwenhwyfar did not sit with the women. She stayed by the ringed protective fence of staves of the camp palisade, stood watching, one step beyond the palings, her position setting her that one step nearer to the war-game. Her fingers were curled tight around the pommel of her sword, clutching tighter until the knuckles turned white, her eyes never leaving the blur of movement spread across that wide, wide expanse of grassland, where moved, like a played board game, the battle pieces: the banners, the standards; bright coloured, glinting in the diffused light of reflected sea dazzle. The great squared formation that was Hueil, his banners ranged tight in the centre. Ambrosius’s Chi Rho to the western boundary, Meriaun’s at the east, Bedwyr north, and the Dragon, bold, emblazoned, proclaiming its lord to the south. Mixed with them the colours and emblems of the individual turmae. Red, Blue, Yellow. Their effigies silver-gold in the occasional glimpse of sun. A boar, a bear. The Sea-Goat, the Ram.

  Ider was watching also, standing on the opposite side of the unshuttered gateway, standing, much as Gwenhwyfar, watching the sway and shift of battle. His was the command of the camp, this rag-tag of boys and women, a command he had accepted reluctantly, half angered, mumbling and muttering against it. Until Arthur himself had told him the reason for it.

  “I need someone to see to my son and my woman.” Ider accepted the reason, but resented it. To stand and watch, helpless, while his comrades fought and died; oh to be down there, to be using his shield and his spears! Gwenhwyfar’s scream cut across his thoughts, he saw her pointing, saw her sword coming into her hand, and watched horrified as she began running, hair and cloak flying, screaming something, some wordless sound of brutal anguish.

  Ider stood, his throat clamped, body frozen. “My God!” The words repeating over and over, “My God! My God!”

  That last charge, the horses had not veered away, but had pressed closer, the men fighting their way through the spears and swords and axes of Hueil’s men, and then Arthur was down! They saw, watching from this slight hill, saw his banner waver as his men crowded close to where their Lord should be – and then suddenly, inexplicably, they were running, galloping, fleeing the battlefield. The Artoriani, Meriaun, Bedwyr, all of them, streaming away southward, with Ambrosius plunging from the west, his men thigh deep in swirling incoming tide.

  “My God,” Ider gasped again, “we’re defeated!”

  A boy dashed past, carrying sword and shield, legs pounding as he raced after the figure of his mother slithering down the slight incline. Sense returned to the stunned Ider with a startling thump. He yelled orders for his men, those few of the turma left as guard, and plunged after Gwenhwyfar and Llacheu. Leaping at the running woman as he closed on her, he brought her down in a rough tumble of cloak, legs and hair, his arms tight around her as they rolled. Spitting and lashing out, she was cursing him, calling him all the names she knew. Llacheu was on him, astride his back, beating with his fist, the flat of his sword.

  “Leave my mother be! Leave her!”

  Ider shrugged him off, pinned Gwenhwyfar beneath him, holding her hands, knees on her legs. “What can you do? You can’t help, you can’t save him! One woman, one child? Where is your sense?”

  Tears were streaming down her face as she tried to push him from her, then surrendered, his sense at last reaching her. He released her, helped her to her feet, embarrassed at his action. She put her hand to his chest, leant against him, only a moment, her eyes shut, controlling the tears and the fear.

  “If we are to help, we must do so clear-headed,” Ider explained, his arm around her, holding her close, his chin against her hair. How many, many times had he wanted to hold her against him, feel her body beneath his hands – but not like this, not like this! He let her go, moving her gently from him, turned her around to take a look again at their men fleeing the battlefield. The Artoriani defeated, running.

  “We need to prepare for when Hueil’s rabble come this way.” Ider stated it as fact, for they would come. The northern army would come looking for the women, the provisions, weapons. They would not find Gwenhwyfar or the boy. For that also was Ider’s orders, given personally by Arthur. Were I to lose, Ider, make them safe. Either way, make them safe.

  Unconsciously, as they barred the gate and began issuing orders to those who could to arm themselves, Ider touched his dagger. The blade was sharper than a winter’s midnight frost. Either way, make them safe! The Pendragon had not said specifically, had no need, for Ider had understood his meaning, had bowed his head and accepted the orders to stay with Gwenhwyfar and the boy. With nowhere to run, a quick, sharp blade wielded by one who cared could be the only assurance of safety. Ider watched Gwenhwyfar organising the women, bit his lips as he fingered that dagger. Could he do it though? Could he take her life? He took a large breath, set himself to placing the boys, armed with whatever they could find along the palisade. Aye, he could do that for her.

  The marshlands were emptying, abandoned to the birds and the litter of corpses and wounded. The Artoriani were going to the south, fleeing for the narrow stretch of shallow ford across the river, horses and men bunching, desperate to reach safety. Hueil’s army was closing, their screams of rabid triumph drowning the cries of the gulls. At least they had passed by the camp, drawing the mob away. But they would be back when the killing at the river’s crossing was ended.

  It was just visible, that crossing, just. Gwenhwyfar paused, isolating her panic, to watch the inevitable ending, her brows drawing into a depression of concentration, of quick, rapid thinking. Gwenhwyfar knew the tactics of war as well as any officer, probably better than some, for she had the unique privilege of an insight into the thoughts and ideas of a warlord gifted in the achievement of fighting. She had shared Arthur’s dreams, his plans, victories and losses. Gwenhwyfar alone knew what lay behind the austere blank expression that Arthur wore as a mask. Her sudden smile startled Ider, who had come up beside her, intending to offer comfort. She spun around, clapping her hands, realised he was there, flung her arms about him, kissed him, a resounding smack on his lips, was whirling away, laughing.

  Astonished, Ider looked to where she had been watching, shook his head. Some madness of grief? She laughed louder at his intense puzzlement, pointed to the ford, spelling out for him what was happening.

  “See? There’s Onager to the left, some way from the banner, I’d recognise that brute even from several miles distant.” Pointed to the right. “And there’s Meriaun, his flaxen-maned chestnut is as distinctive as Onager. They are not withdrawing, Ider! They are luring Hueil into a trap. See,” she swept her hand to the far side of the river, “they are not crossing the river!”

  Ider studied the spread of land. Saw indeed that the Artoriani were drawing into ranks, lining along the banks to this side. Hueil’s men were plunging forward, unaware, expecting to finish the massacre while their enemy struggled to cross the narrow confine of the fording place. “Jesu’s love!” he exclaimed, “Ambrosius has taken a wider track west – has come behind Hueil’s men, the northern bastards are trapped, they’ll be slaughtered like pigs come the autumn feast!” And then he yelled a screech of battle triumph, taking Gwenhwyfar’s hands and dancing her round, the both of them laughing, wide-mouthed, victorious, hugging and kissing.

  Llacheu’s shout of alarm broke the euphoria. He lifted his sword, indicated the knot of men heading up the rise direct for them led by a horse whose rider carried a banner that cracked and belched in the wind of their passing. The raven banner, and behind it a woman whose gold-sun hair tossed and streamed, her mouth open, screaming encouragement.

  “Get to the horse
s,” Gwenhwyfar bellowed at her turma of personal guards, running herself for her saddled stallion, Ider fast at her side. “You,” she pointed towards a group of bewildered women, “open enough of the gate to let us out – replace it as soon as we are through.” She swung around to others. “For the rest, you must look to your own defence.”

  The fear that had already been skittering through the camp, wreaking its stagnant breath, had staggered a moment with the swift charge of hope, flung itself back in all its triumph now that actual horror was rapidly approaching. One woman lunged forward, her face contorted, a weeping girl-child clinging to her ragged skirt. “We do not know how to fight!”

  Gwenhwyfar shook herself free of the clawing fingers. “Every woman knows how to fight. You have your own weapons, your nails and teeth and knees and feet. Use what you have if you cannot use a billet of wood or the flat of a spade.”

  Taking up a light war spear and mounting her horse, she swung towards the gate, where women and some of the boys were hauling down the hastily erected barricades. Llacheu was suddenly beside her, mounted on the horse his father had given him. He stared hard at his mother, challenging her to send him back. Her heart, the mothering part of her, had the words on her lips, Stay! The warrior part, the recess of her that had come down through the women of the tribe, the spirits of the past who had fought and died alongside their men, parried her natural fears, took them square on the boss of the shield and thrust them aside.

  The word stay came, but not as Llacheu had expected. “Stay with Ider. Whatever happens, Llacheu, stay near Ider.”

  Smiling her pride at him, Gwenhwyfar handed her son the spear she carried, drew for herself her sword, a lighter weapon than a man’s, more suited to a woman’s hand, but none the less as deadly. And they were cantering for the gateway, not yet quite cleared, jumping their horses over the last of the logs and branches, turning sharp on landing, heading down the rise of ground. A turma of Artoriani galloping to meet the hurl of northmen, who thought they had the victory of battle safe on their backs.

  Thirty men, one woman and a boy against eighty – a hundred? Eighty or so men who had eagerly anticipated the reward of first pickings, who had believed the words of the witch-woman riding among them; that there would be plenty of value to be found in Arthur’s camp. Men who floundered to a ragged halt as horses thundered down from the palisade fence ahead, necks stretched, teeth bared, their riders screaming the war cry of the Pendragon. Men who would rather have turned tail to flee, but found they had no choice but to fight. Forgotten, their hope of finding women, riches and food. And as enemy spears thudded into shield or flesh, and hooves trampled their fallen, forgot also, Morgause, the woman who had encouraged them here.

  She found herself alone, no shield, sword or spear to protect her. Alarmed, she drew her horse aside to a distance of safety, the idiot animal was excited at the sounds and smells. Snorting and prancing it refused to stand still, tried to turn and bolt. Sawing at its mouth to keep it under control, Morgause watched with fascinated horror the ferocity of this counter-attack. Her breath quickened, eyes and mouth widened, enjoying this gluttony of blood-spilling, this exciting, macabre dance of kill or be killed.

  They were so few, Gwenhwyfar and her small army of Arthur’s men, but desperation and experience leant them strength; and these northern whelps were frightened, unwilling to fight. Only a few of Gwenhwyfar’s men were down after the first rush, fallen among the many of the enemy. Her sword blade was bloodied, her horse lathered and panting from the burst of exertion, she hauled the stallion around, ready to kill again, chanced a quick glance towards where Ider rode beside her son, felt the swell of pride as the boy cast his spear, began, almost in the same movement, to draw his sword.

  But her smile faltered, draining to a silent scream as she saw Llacheu pitch from his horse, the bay gushing blood as its body buckled, a spear thrust deep into its chest. Ider was leaping from his own mount, was running to help the boy who was falling, tumbling arms flailing, as the dying horse slithered a few yards on its knees, its rear hooves scrabbling for a foothold. Llacheu sprawled, unprotected, undefended, on the ground; tried to move, twist away as an axe, red-stained, came scything downward. He saw only the northman’s muddied boots standing over him, heard Ider’s sobbing shout, and the man’s grunt of effort with the death-song of the blade. Felt, extraordinarily, very little. Kill or be killed. That was always how it had been.

  A raw, naked, mother’s scream, high and long and never-ending, cut through the air, echoed by another exultant, high pitched laugh, a cackling of triumph.

  She was no fighting woman, Morgause, she persuaded others to do the killing for her. Her talents lay with malevolent plotting and scheming, the deliberate twisting of a mind to do her will, her satisfaction swelling with the gaining of each achievement.

  “I will see your sons dead, Pendragon!” Morgause threw back her head and laughed. An idle boast, hurled as an anger-bound curse that she had held small hope of fulfilling. Her laugh shrilled across the noise of fighting, her gaze raised to the grey skies as she gloried in her unexpected success; failed to see the woman with unbound, copper-coloured hair riding with grief-snarled fury from the melee of fighting.

  Morgause’s delight faltered as she saw the sword, held firm in a grasp between both hands, saw that other woman’s anger-distorted, tear-streamed face; even saw the honed perfection of that gleaming blade as it swung into its arc of death. Thought, incongruously, before it spat through her neck, that Gwenhwyfar was more beautiful than she had realised – and that all the northmen had fled, leaving her alone.

  Gwenhwyfar’s horse thundered past, ears flattened, breath hot. Morgause’s animal, the cruel hold on its mouth suddenly gone, reared and bolted as the warm blood cascaded down its shoulders.

  And a woman’s head bounced and rolled, leaving a crazy, bloodied trail across the spring-green hill grass.

  On the marshes, the birds returned. The waders and the geese, settling to the salt-tanged, wind-whispering grass, waiting patient for the tide to turn and expose the mud flats and sand bars. With them, the ravens came, circling and fluttering, to begin their gruesome feeding.

  A curlew stalked ponderously from the tall reed-grass, then took sudden flight out over the flooding, returning water. Its wild cry, broken voiced, and so, so, unbearably sad.

  June

  Some evenings, the sunsets were beautiful. The western skies blazed with a glory of red and gold that burst in brilliance against the clear, purple blueness of the fading day. Gwenhwyfar stood with Arthur behind her, watching the yellow-gold turn to a vivid, burning red of blazing splendour. Caer Cadan was home, was peace. Arthur threaded his arms about her waist stood companionably, sharing this celebration of nature with her, his cheek resting on her soft hair. The summer air smelt of flowers and ripening corn, sun-warmed earth, and a lazy welcome of the cool night that was to come at the end of this day’s heat.

  A screech of swifts tumbled by, one bird skimming above Arthur’s head as it darted and twisted. He heard the swish of its passing wings, felt the faint waft of moved air. Smiled at its wondrous performance.

  “It’s strange,” Gwenhwyfar said. “I do not mind so much, not now.”

  For Arthur, there was a moment of disorientated confusion as he tried to understand to what she was referring. He gave up, asked with a bewildered shake of his head, a slight frown, “What don’t you mind?”

  In her turn, Gwenhwyfar did not answer immediately, instead, she nestled herself closer into him, pulling his arms tighter, protectively around the swelling of the child growing within her. “Llacheu, Gwydre and Amr. Almost… ” she took a breath, scalding back the tears, “almost, I feel relieved. For the thing that had to happen has been done. For them, I have no more need to fear.”

  Except for you, she thought, except I still fear for you, the one I love, even more than my dead sons and this coming child. She twisted around, smiled up at him, a man strong, confident. Not easy, to think that Arth
ur would one day also be gone. One day. The future. Tomorrow.

  The sun, a huge red ball, sank behind a bank of dark night clouds, the golden rays shooting from behind like spear shafts marking the way to eternity. Who knew what the rising of tomorrow would bring? Laughter, pain, sorrow or happiness? Life and death. The way of the world as it was, as it is, as it will be.

  Gwenhwyfar cupped Arthur’s face in her hand and kissed him, then laughed, and pulled away. It was time for gathering in the King’s Hall, the smell of cooking meat was becoming richer, reaching her hungry stomach. Taking his arm, threading hers through his, she walked with him up the slight rise towards the open Hall doors, glanced as they passed, at the banner fluttering occasionally as the wind caught at the cloth. It was not so white as it had once been, when first she had taken it from the loom. The Pendragon’s banner was becoming ragged at the edges, and a brown stain of dried blood spilt between the raised claws of the Dragon. Yet, for all its spoiling, it was still something good and proud and beautiful.

  Gwenhwyfar smiled up at Arthur, who, with his other hand, took hers and squeezed her fingers as they walked towards the evening noise and bustle of the Caer’s busy Hall. Life too, became grimed at the edges and stained and was sometimes torn beyond repair. In the old days, before the coming of the Christ God, people believed that the pattern of things was created by three goddesses, whose task it was to weave the thread of fate on the loom of life.

  Gwenhwyfar hoped this child she carried would be born a girl. She could not watch another son grow towards his death. And Arthur too, although he said nothing, had prayed silently to whatever God was listening, that he should have next, a daughter. For there were already two other sons who would one day be waiting with sword and shield to fight for what could be theirs. At least some of the fears were gone: Morgause and her boasted curse. Arthur had feared her, but what was she now? A mouldering corpse left for the ravens and the wind and the rain. For Arthur, there was now only Morgaine and Winifred, and Gwenhwyfar. One, with her infant son Medraut, he had almost loved; one, with the boy Cerdic, he had never loved, and the other? He squeezed Gwenhwyfar’s hand. Gwenhwyfar.