by Simon Lister
‘I’ll take the message because if we don’t all defend the Causeway then the Adren will destroy both our lands.’ Ruraidh then turned to Gwyna and added, ‘I’ll see you at the Causeway.’
All through the hall the word was spreading as the various captains tried to organise their drunken warriors. It was another four hours before they were ready to ride out of Caer Sulis. By then the Uathach had already departed for Ablach’s base at Dalchiaran where he claimed the rest of his warriors were already gathering. The Wessex warriors were still unsure whether or not the Uathach would honour the treaty and even Arthur had no definite sense about Ablach’s intentions. It seemed to him that Ablach had not yet chosen which course best served his own purposes and he was right; Ablach had indeed not yet decided if he and his warriors should make for the Causeway or leave the southern tribes to their fate and make instead for the North. As Ablach rode for Dalchiaran pondering his options and weighing the alternatives, Arthur led two hundred and fifty warriors out of Caer Sulis and onto the Westway, once again riding east.
The relay messengers had gone via Whitehorse Hill where Mar’h was collecting the latest production of weapons for his new army. He and the others at the hilltop fort knew that Arthur would soon be coming east and they rode down to the Westway to wait for them.
The rolling hills of Wessex were cast in the unique quality of light that exists just before sunrise. It always seemed to Mar’h that the dawn light was somehow colder and clearer than its counterpart was in autumn when the sun would eventually set in the East. With the spring sun still below the western horizon, the shadowless hills, valleys and woods were lit only by the indirect sunlight that was reflected down from the pale blue sky. The wind from the West was keen and cold but lacked the freezing grasp of the gales that usually blew from the still ice-locked Shadow Lands of the East. Isolated grey clouds hurried eastward as if fleeing the sunrise. They were too low to be lit by the coming sun and they looked heavy and purposeful. They reminded him of the dark smoke that pillared the skies in the aftermath of Uathach raids.
Mar’h waited with the ten other warriors who had been chosen to help him with the training. They were all a good fifteen or twenty years older than him, old enough to be beyond their fighting prime but each with the experience brought by decades of battling the Uathach, experience they would now use to help turn villagers and farmers into an army capable of facing the Adren.
Eventually they could make out the approaching line of horsemen on the Westway. They were still several miles away but Mar’h could see the three flags of the southern tribes flying at the front of the column. They watched and waited as the mounted warriors of Britain closed the distance at a steady canter. When they drew level Arthur stopped briefly and passed on some last orders to him and Mar’h exchanged a few words with his friends who rode behind Arthur and then he pulled his horse back off the track-way and watched as the combined war bands of the South rode by. The older warriors around him were all thinking the same thing; two hundred and fifty were riding to reinforce the eighty already at the Gates and there was reputed to be over twenty thousand Adren across the Causeway. When the warriors had passed they rode back to Caer Cadarn in silence.
*
Several hours ahead of Arthur’s war band Captain Terrill and Fin Seren were approaching the Winter Wood. They also rode in silence. Although neither knew it they were both wondering what they would say to Lord Venning. When Seren’s immediate anguish had exhausted itself she had forced herself to confide in Terrill that she was pregnant with Arthur’s child. He was appalled by the revelation for many different reasons but he instinctively realised the enormous effort it must have taken for Seren to reveal her burden to him and he hid his shock and revulsion as best as he could. How she could have kept it secret from everyone for so long amazed him. Either she had been blindly optimistic about the future or supremely confident in her ability to control it. In either case her world had clearly come crashing down in ruins about her. He recognised the extent of her desperation by her decision to tell him about the child. The implications were overwhelming. Despite having known her all his life and having been her childhood friend he was at a loss to understand how she could have formed a union with an outsider and how she could have managed to conceal the result from everyone for so long.
Children were a rare blessing for the Cithol. It was one of the few things they still had in common with the outsiders. For centuries they had been so removed from those outside the Veiled City that they did not even have a collective name for them. Recently they had taken to referring to them as the ‘barbarians’, ‘outsiders’ or simply as ‘the others’ and they used the terms as Arthur’s people used ‘Uathach’ to describe the northern tribes. To the Cithol those that lived above ground and beyond the Winter Wood were simply barbaric and Terrill was struggling with Seren’s revelation and its implications. He had thought the two peoples so different that a childbearing union would not be possible. Apparently he was wrong and he was having great difficulty coming to terms with that fact. It certainly explained why not a single one of his people had sensed that Seren was pregnant. Usually they would be able to discern it simply by meeting the expecting mother, even at the early stages of pregnancy, but this unborn child was a product of something entirely different and it confused and scared him. Seren had entrusted him with an enormous confidence and he was debating within himself whether or not to tell Lord Venning as soon as they arrived in the Veiled City.
Seren was debating the same issue but for her it was a well-rehearsed debate. She knew the arguments for and against telling her father. She had rehashed and replayed them over and over until they had first robbed her of her sleep and then her appetite. No matter how much she thought the argument through she could see no way in which it could end well. Her final conclusion to herself had always been that she had Arthur’s love and that was all that mattered to her in the end. Now, it seemed to her, all she had was his unborn child and that conclusion was far less comforting.
She had adjusted her clothing to conceal the outward signs of her pregnancy but the time was fast approaching when no amount of concealment would hide what would soon be apparent to everyone.
She had thought about refusing to name the father but that was only a short-term plan for she felt sure that her child would be clear evidence that the father was not Cithol. Nothing was working out as she had foreseen it. With Arthur to stand beside her she would have proudly faced her father and mother and anyone else in the Veiled City, even Commander Kane who was responsible for the security of the city and for ensuring that the population followed its laws. Either they would have accepted the unchangeable or she would have left with Arthur to live among his people but without Arthur her confidence and surety had vanished. She was utterly miserable and completely lost. Her tears began to flow freely again.
Captain Terrill had no idea what to say to her so he just took her hand and held it. They rode on in silence with the horse drawn cart they travelled on rocking from side to side as they left the Westway and made for the Winter Wood.
They made their way through the well-spaced trees on the western fringes of the Wood with the pale dawn sky growing lighter above them until they came to a newly constructed stabling area. It was from here that the Cithol supplies were loaded onto the carts and wains and taken west to Caer Cadarn or on to Caer Sulis.
They climbed stiffly off the cart and Terrill exchanged a few words with those who had journeyed in the wains behind them before leading Seren down the paths that led deeper into the Winter Wood and to the Veiled City. He escorted her all the way down to the lakeshore Palace of her father and neither said a word until they stood by the entrance to her home. Seren turned to him and rested a hand on his chest, her eyes imploring him.
‘Please don’t say anything to anyone yet. Give me a chance to tell my father first.’
Captain Terrill nodded and left her at the entrance. He was still undecided and she knew it. Whatever she
decided to do she realised she best do it quickly. Terrill had been a good friend to her for as long as she could remember but his obedience to Lord Venning and Commander Kane was beyond question. It was only a matter of time until he told one or the other, if not both, and however badly they reacted it would be worse if it did not come from her.
She entered her room and saw that a fire had been lit by one of her maids and some food put to one side for her on a small table. All her short life everything had been done for her and she was only just beginning to realise it. She had never had to worry about anything either great or small so nothing had prepared her for the agonising indecision she now felt and she sat by the fire without taking off her winter cloak and ignoring the food laid out for her. Her mind darted from choice to choice and settled on none. She realised she was twisting her hands together and that she still wore her fur gloves. She peeled them off and cast them to one side then brushed her wet cheeks with the palm of her hand.
For the next hour she paced across the floor of her room, alternating between the pain and humiliation of seeing Arthur with the Uathach girl and the fear of telling her father that she carried Arthur’s child. All the time she was keenly conscious that Terrill would be holding his own private debate and she knew that his innate loyalty would soon force him to do what she could not bring herself to do.
She crossed to the door and rested a hand on the metal ring trying to force herself to open it and leave the room but her hand slipped away and fell limply by her side. She hung her head and cried with her forehead resting against the cold door. Her tears fell on the stone floor until the back of her throat stung with the taste of salt and she had to wipe her dripping nose with the back of her hand.
Behind her a side door opened into her room and one of her maids came into the room. It was Hannah, the woman who had tended to her every need all of her life. The woman who had been more of a mother to her than her real mother had been. Seren turned away from her as if she could conceal her distress simply by turning her back to her.
Hannah put down the clothes she had been carrying and walked across to the stricken girl and took her in her arms. Seren buried her face in the old woman’s shoulder and blurted out her problems as shuddering sobs racked her. Hannah could understand nothing of what the girl was saying but soothed her as if she were her child. She sat Seren on the bed and sat beside her with a comforting arm around her.
When her tears had abated Seren looked into the old woman’s face and took her wrinkled but strong hands in her own.
‘You won’t abandon me will you, Hannah?’
‘Of course not, child.’
‘No matter what happens?’
‘There is nothing that could make me leave you. What’s the matter? Why all the tears?’ Hannah had been alarmed by Seren’s crying, she had not seen her weep like this since she was a young child but it was more the tone of her voice, the desperate need to know that she was not alone that truly frightened her. Seren did not answer her but gradually regained her composure in silence, swallowing back the taste of her tears and blowing her nose on one of the clean shirts Hannah had brought in.
‘That will look nice on you when you wear it,’ Hannah said, shaking her head.
Seren burst out laughing and the tears threatened to overwhelm her again but she held them at bay and stood up.
‘I’m sorry Hannah. Sorry for everything I’ve put you through over the years.’
‘You make it sound like decades girl. And you make it sound like a goodbye. What’s wrong? Tell me.’ There was an urgency to Hannah’s voice that betrayed her concern.
Seren shook her head and managed what she thought was a brave and reassuring smile. It was neither and it made the old woman’s heart constrict in fear and love for the young girl before her.
‘Where’s my father?’
‘He’s in some meeting or other but what is it, Seren? Who’s upset you this much? Is it Captain Terrill?’ Or worse, she thought, Commander Kane.
‘Is he in the council room?’
‘No. I think he’s in the smaller chamber up at the back of the valley. Must you see him now?’
‘Yes. Yes, I think I must,’ Seren answered and going to the basin in the far corner of the room she splashed water over her face in an effort to erase the evidence of her tears. She changed from her travelling clothes and turned to Hannah before leaving, ‘Wait for me here Hannah, please. I don’t think I will be long.’ But she would never again see the old woman who had raised her.
Terrill watched her leave the Palace by a side gate and took a deep breath of relief. He had not wanted to betray her confidence but he had been on the point of going to Lord Venning himself with the terrible information. As he watched her make her way up the steeply sloping stone path he studied her trying to see any sign of her already advanced pregnancy. He thought how ironic it was that the pregnancy of Lord Venning’s daughter should be such bad news. Normally being with child was a cause for celebration especially if it was one of the ruling family who was going to have a child, but this child was in direct contradiction of the strict rules of the Cithol society.
They had lived for centuries in this underground valley and while their city was large it was still enclosed. They had needed rules and customs to keep their society running smoothly and without problems and so it had; trouble was rare and never serious. For Fin Seren to have lain with anyone outside of a formal union would have been unthinkable to Terrill; unthinkable but ultimately forgivable. For her to have been with an outsider, a barbarian, stupefied him. For it to have been Arthur, a leader of the outsiders, and for the union to have borne a child was just plainly disastrous in Terrill’s estimation. Not for the first time he asked himself if that would make Arthur the protector of the future ruler of the Veiled City, and yet Arthur had married one of his own kind so where did that leave Seren and her child? His thoughts and questions echoed back and forth and as he watched the young girl trudge up the pathway between the stone dwellings; he did not envy her the task ahead.
Seren felt more confident now that she was committed to a course of action. Her actions, decisions and emotions had led her to this current situation and she was prepared to stand by them. She realised that in truth she had little other option but having finally accepted her situation she had found a new determination and courage.
The narrow path wound its way up the steep side of the underground valley as it turned and twisted between the terraced dwellings and Seren felt herself tiring. She wondered if it was because of her condition and stopped to regain her breath. She turned and looked out on the section of the lake that she could see between the stone houses that lined the path and that fell away below her. The lake was completely still and its dark smooth surface reflected the lights from the houses on the far shore. Seren did not think of it as a cavern with a rock-hewn ceiling somewhere above her in the darkness. It was her home, her people, her Veiled City and she felt a momentary panic that events might force her to leave it forever behind.
She sighed heavily and gathered up her long grey dress at the knees to start the final climb to Lord Venning’s lesser council chamber. It was the last house on the valley side and was situated where the slope met the almost vertical wall of the cavern. Indeed half of it was built into the rock of the wall so that only a portion of the whole house was visible from the outside.
As Seren approached she could see that more of Commander Kane’s guards were stationed at the front gate than was usual and this puzzled her. The only person from outside who could possibly be here was Brunroth, Merdynn as Arthur called him. She quickened her pace despite the steep steps feeling that in Merdynn she may well have an ally or at least a friend who could intercede on her behalf with her father.
To her amazement the guards barred her way at the gates to the small house. She stared at them in bewilderment and they looked at her uncomfortably. Lord Venning only had a few dozen guards because safety in the Veiled City was hardly an issue and Seren kn
ew both of those who barred her way.
‘Rowse? Lowry?’ She said looking from one to the other.
‘I’m sorry, Seren. Commander Kane’s orders. Absolutely no one is to enter. I’m sure he had no idea that you would come this way but, well, there you are. Orders I’m afraid,’ Rowse answered her and he did indeed look apologetic.
Seren could see that they meant to follow their orders. Clearly her displeasure was a lot more bearable than the displeasure of Commander Kane. She shrugged as if it was not important one way or the other and smiled at them both.
‘Strange days indeed that a daughter cannot enter her father’s house. Perhaps I should insist on you both having to escort the next supply train to the barbarian town of Caer Sulis?’
She laughed at their sudden discomfort and told them she was merely teasing. She smiled brightly at them both again and turned to take the path that ran away from the house and along the smooth rock of the cavern wall. Once her back was turned she allowed the puzzlement and anger to show on her face. Surely the gates would not be barred if it was just Brunroth visiting her father, she thought to herself. It crossed her mind that perhaps Arthur was here too and her heart leapt at the thought before the likelihood of his never returning to the Veiled City settled over her with a depressing certainty.
Like most of the children of the city she had played and explored throughout the whole valley but few children had such friends as Terrill. His father had been the captain before him and so the young Terrill had known about the lesser trodden passageways and tunnels of the Veiled City and together the two children had delved into all the known tunnels and even discovered more ancient ones known only to themselves.
It was one of the official yet secretive passageways that Seren was now thinking about taking. Her father’s second council chamber had been built into the rock face for a good reason; a passage led up from there to the Winter Wood above. Seren knew a series of tunnels that could take her onto the one that led down to the house. She had waited there numerous times when Brunroth had visited always hoping to catch another glance of the warrior who sometimes accompanied him. The warrior whose child she now carried.
