by Simon Lister
At first she had thought that her father would be unable to contain his anger at her union with Arthur and that he would summon her quickly to deny or explain what was being said by Terrill and Commander Kane but no summons had arrived. She was unable to think of Terrill without wanting to break something in the spartan room and she was unable to think of Kane without wanting to slowly strangle him. As she was unable to do either she forced away the thoughts of them by concentrating on other matters. There was much to ponder on but without any outside input her thoughts and feelings chased themselves in ever tightening and fruitless circles. Her moods swung from anger, at being locked away, to fear, for her unborn child, and underlying each waking moment was the burning frustration that she could get no word to Arthur and the Britons about the peril they unknowingly faced.
In solitude she fretted, cried and raged at the betrayals surrounding her. She felt betrayed by Arthur’s marriage to the barbarian red-haired girl whose name she did not even know. She felt betrayed by her father’s choice to ally himself with Lazure and the Adren over Merdynn and the Britons. She felt betrayed by Terrill who had told Kane that she was pregnant with Arthur’s child and who had led him to her hiding place. She even felt that time was betraying her as it remorselessly slid from hour to hour as she paced the room powerless to affect anything that was happening in the world outside her cell. If Commander Kane had thought to torture her he could not have devised a better rack with which to stretch her emotions but for every painstaking minute she spent locked in her timeless purgatory a resolve began to grow deep inside her. It centred on her child and every question she put to herself became subject to the same simple query; what was best for her child? Once she could answer that question then each course would become clear and absolute.
When two guards finally came to bring her to the council room she just turned her back, mistakenly thinking that they had come to bring her more tasteless food and to empty the pail, which she had to humiliatingly use to relieve herself. When they just stood in the doorway she turned to them, ‘Well?’ she demanded.
‘Lord Venning wishes to see you,’ one of the guards answered, clearly uncomfortable about the whole situation.
Seren snorted in sarcasm, ‘My father sends an invitation for dinner does he? How convivial. Perhaps I’ll wear the clothes I’ve had to use for the last eternity. Do you think these will please him?’ And she twirled once in front of them.
The guards could not look her in the eye and they stepped aside as she walked between them.
‘You’d both better pray I never come to power in this city,’ she said quietly to them and with no trace of levity as she left her cell.
She made her way to the main council rooms with the two guards trailing along in her wake. They looked and felt more like an escort than guards as they hurried to catch up with her. Seren entered the lakeside Palace and swept into the council chamber and stopped dead.
She had been expecting her father, Lord Venning, and Commander Kane to be there with perhaps Terrill present to give his treacherous testament but the long table was full with every member of the Cithol High Council. They were already seated and they stared at her as she came to a stop before them. She immediately became conscious of both her dishevelled appearance and the ever-increasing visual evidence of her pregnancy. She clasped her hands instinctively over the slight swelling and many eyes in the room followed the movement of her hands.
One end of the table had been left unoccupied and Commander Kane stood and indicated that she should sit there. Her green eyes flashed hatred at him as she took her seat and she took the initiative by launching an attack on her father seated at the far end of the table, ‘Why have you kept me confined in a bare room?’
The table was silent as daughter glared at father. Lord Venning cleared his throat and his deep voice filled the room, ‘Do you carry the child of Arthur of the Britons?’
‘How long have you kept me confined?’
‘Answer your Lord’s question!’ Kane commanded her.
‘Answer mine!’ she spat back at him but her mind was reeling. She had not expected her father to make her pregnancy known so publicly before she had the chance to deny or confirm the accusations. But he had and that could only mean that he believed Kane and Terrill. It also meant that he had already decided what was to be done with her. She was suddenly certain that the council had already discussed her actions and reached an agreement before she even had the chance to defend herself. Her ignorance of what had already passed made her feel more vulnerable and she fought to keep her face impassive and her hands from shaking. Lord Venning’s voice carried through the room again. ‘Do you carry Arthur’s child?’
‘I carry my child and your grandchild. How long have you kept me imprisoned?’
‘You must answer the Lord’s question!’ Kane shot from his chair as he shouted at her.
‘Quiet, dog. Remember your place and whom you address. Sit.’ Seren pointed for him to retake his seat and one or two around the table lowered their heads and smiled. A twitch flicked across Kane’s face as he slowly sat back down with his malevolent eyes fixed upon her.
‘I am with child. And how does my father greet this joyous news? Throws me in a prison for days on end. The mother and the unborn future leader of the Cithol imprisoned and brought before a High Council who have already judged and decreed punishment before any defence is brought before them. Is this our justice then?’
‘Neither you nor your child will have any place at the Cithol Council if Arthur is the father. Indeed, neither you nor your child will have any place in the Veiled City if Arthur is the father of your child.’
Seren stared in disbelief at her father and did not see the small smile of triumph on Kane’s face. Her mind raced as this judgement sunk in. Her father was prepared to exile her if she admitted that she had lain with Arthur. She could refute the claim but it would be obvious once the child was born that the father was not Cithol so even if she denied it now it would only delay the inevitable. If the exile was to take effect immediately then she would accept it and flee to the Causeway to warn Arthur but she knew that Lord Venning would keep her here until she could no longer endanger the new alliance with Lazure Ulan. She could see that denial was pointless now that Terrill had revealed her secret to them.
All in the room were silently watching her and she lifted her chin in defiance as she spoke.
‘Yes. Arthur is the father of the child I carry. I am proud of my child and I am proud of the father.’
Those in the room who had not believed the accusation looked on Seren with horror and disgust.
‘Proud of the barbarian warrior who would bring down the Veiled City?’ Kane asked, wanting her to damn herself entirely in front of the council.
‘Proud of the Briton who defends his land and seeks to protect his people. Yes, I am proud, for Arthur stands against the Adren and their master. I could wish for no better father. Who here is prepared to defend our city and way of life? I’ll tell you who, no one! Not a single one of you! Arthur defends the Causeway even as you squabble amongst yourselves like gossipmongers about who is or is not the father of my child. The fate of our future lies balanced on the fortunes of a battle that you hide away from like spineless worms burrowing deeper underground!’
‘Curb your tongue girl, this is the High Council,’ Kane retorted, delighting in her self-damnation.
Seren stood up in disgust her ivory pale cheeks now flushed in anger. ‘High Council! High treason more like! You’ve betrayed Merdynn, you’ve betrayed the Britons and you’ve betrayed your own people. How could you treat with Lazure Ulan? With the Adren Master? How stupid can you possibly be? He’ll enslave and destroy us once your treachery leads to the Britons’ defeat!’ She looked at the faces around the table before continuing, ‘They’ve made a deal with the Adren Master, the Britons’ destruction in exchange for assurances of safety for the Veiled City!’
Many of those around the table refused to look at
her but none of them looked surprised and Seren realised with a sickening feeling that the council already knew about, and had agreed to, the betrayal of Arthur’s warriors.
‘What? All of you? You’ve agreed to this? Was our friendship with Merdynn so shallow? He and Arthur are the only ones who can defend us from the Adren, why betray them?’
It was Lord Venning who rose to answer her. ‘Arthur and Merdynn are doomed. The Adren army was always going to defeat them. They and their people never stood any chance of resisting the Adren for long. To have supported them in this war would only have led to our own downfall. Lazure promises us safety. The people of his Shadow Land City are the same as us and he only wants to unite the power that each city has. Together we can truly begin to bring back into the world some of the glory of the last Age. With our power united we can one day resurrect the civilisation that once crowned this world.’
‘You fools. Lazure won’t unite our power with his, he’ll take it for himself and you’ll be no more than his slaves!’
‘Fin Seren. You have broken the codes and laws of our city. You have formed a union with an outsider. By doing so you have negated any authority you have as my daughter and heir. You are no longer my daughter and no longer my heir. You shall be confined here in the Veiled City until you give birth. Your off-spring will be taken from you and then you shall be exiled from here.’
Having delivered the council’s verdict Lord Venning sat back down looking both frail and weary. He raised his eyes from the table and watched with great sadness as his daughter was led back to her cell.
Seren left the room in shocked silence. She paid no heed to the guards flanking her and she was oblivious to her surroundings until she found herself once more in her hateful cell. She sat down heavily on the small bed feeling numb as the guards closed and locked the door behind them. Of all the possible outcomes that she had played out in her mind before the meeting she had never once considered that her father would take her child away from her. She had expected exile or imprisonment but always with her child, never without. It seemed impossible and for one unreal moment she thought she must be in the grip of some terrible but truly realistic nightmare.
The moment passed and she felt empty and sick. Her heart pumped a slow painful tattoo inside her chest and she suddenly dropped to her knees scrabbling for the empty basin by the bed. She vomited in great heaving retches until there was no more left in her stomach. She spat into the basin attempting to take the acidic taste from her mouth and sat back on her heels wiping the cold sweat from her pale face.
She climbed back onto the bed and sat on the edge with her head in her hands not at all sure that she was not going to be sick again. Her mind was replaying the brief and uncompromising meeting over and over as she tried to explain to herself how her father could be so cold and cruel. For a moment her bewilderment turned to anger at Commander Kane, thinking that he must have somehow poisoned her father’s mind against her, but she knew that Lord Venning was too strong to be so easily led. He was the leader of the Cithol and no one could sway his opinion or guide his judgement against what he thought was best for his people. Kane could only have presented a face to reflect and reinforce her father’s own arguments and beliefs.
She leaned over and spat once more into the basin thinking that she may not be able to save the Britons from Lazure’s trap or the Cithol from their inevitable enslavement; ultimately she might not even be able to save herself but she had to find a way to save her child. If nothing else could be salvaged from the wreckage, she had to save her child, no matter what it took and no matter what it cost.
*
Ceinwen had so far taken no part in the battle for the Causeway. She could remember nothing about the first couple of days after being knocked out by the horse that had reared up in its death throes. She had finally come to her senses back in the main fortification of the Gates and had spent the weeks since tending to the steady stream of wounded who were carried in or who had made their own way back from the fighting further along the Causeway.
She had treated her own injuries as best she could and although she still found speaking or eating painful her jaw was already healing. Her smile would be missing a few teeth from now on but any sense of feeling sorry for herself was soon put into perspective by tending to the more seriously wounded. She found her injured pride harder to treat; she had thought to be standing alongside the warriors in their defence of the Causeway and to have been so stupidly injured before the first attack had even properly begun made her feel foolish and inadequate. It wasn’t long before she realised that while she was not the hardiest of warriors she was the most skilled healer on the Causeway. Clearly her strength lay in treating injuries rather than creating them and she threw herself wholeheartedly into doing just that.
The fog was still clamped over the marshland and the sun rising over the cliffs to the West was only evidenced by a brighter whiteness in the surrounding mists. The days passed with the distant sounds of battle gradually drawing closer as the Adren fought their way ever nearer to the Gates and Ceinwen watched as exhausted Wessex, Anglian and Mercian warriors returned in alternating bands to collapse and sleep within the safety of the fort. She found herself organising the groups of warriors making sure that there was food available for them and then letting them sleep for a few hours before sending them back up the Causeway to rejoin the battle and relieve others on the defensive lines.
Each band had its own tales to tell; strident tales of heroic acts and the quieter stories of how friends and comrades had fallen. Each tale told of the same dogged defence and the same fighting retreats. The warriors from the three tribes would leapfrog each other as they gradually gave ground before the Adren onslaught. Mercian warriors would cover the retreat of an Anglian band while a Wessex contingent would prepare for a counter-attack and then their roles would be reversed as the battle surged back and forth along the Causeway. Ceinwen listened to the different reports from the nearing frontline and while each told a separate tale they all held to the same story of retreat and defence and retreat again. The warriors of Briton were doing exactly as Arthur asked of them; making the Adren pay an appallingly high price for every yard they gained but still they came on, throwing themselves at every defended line until the Britons had no choice but to retreat or be overwhelmed.
It seemed to Ceinwen that every group of warriors who stood around a table eating a hurried meal had fought with Arthur on the frontline. Ceinwen doubted that Arthur could have been in every single fight as the battle for the Causeway had been raging now for weeks but in all that time he had not returned to the Gates. She assumed and hoped that he took his rest never far from where the battle was concentrated; even in the summer daylight everyone still needed some sleep and fatigue would only lead to a mistake and death.
She had sent a handful of badly injured warriors back to Caer Sulis in the hope that they would recover and be able to rejoin the war at a later stage but some of the injured had refused to go. As she watched another shattered band enter through the main gate she remembered one particular Mercian who Glore, Gereint’s brother, had brought in a few days ago. His lower leg had been mangled by an Adren weapon and her only option had been to amputate it below the knee. Once her coma-inducing drugs had worn off he had refused to return to Caer Sulis ‘to wait, maimed, for the Adren to turn up there too,’ as he had put it. Instead he had insisted on being allowed to defend the Gates should the Adren get this far. His only compromise was to exchange his longbow for a shorter one and he stumped around the compound berating any of the wounded he thought were able to return to the fighting.
Ceinwen had just finished bandaging an Anglian warrior’s arm when she looked up to see the last of the current group of warriors coming in through the main gate. Morgund was at the head of the band and with him were Balor, Morveren, Cael and Gwyna. It had been a few days since they had returned to the Gates and she was relieved to see them again. They all looked desperately tired and many of th
em had minor injuries that needed treating. She went to meet the recently arrived group and after a quick greeting she directed the more seriously wounded to the dressing station before joining the others as they slumped around a fire.
‘It’s good to see you all,’ she said trying to keep her teeth clenched.
‘How’s your jaw?’ Morveren asked as she massaged her arm and shoulder.
‘It’ll heal. Fewer teeth.’ She shrugged then asked, ‘Have you seen Ruadan?’
‘He’s at the front now with Hengest and the Anglians,’ Morgund answered.
‘What’s happening out there?’ Ceinwen asked through her clamped teeth.
‘We’re killing thousands of them,’ Gwyna replied tiredly.
‘And thousands more of the bastards keep coming at us,’ Balor added.
They stopped speaking as wooden trays of food were laid around the fire. They reached hungrily for the fresh bread, roasted meat and pitchers of goat milk.
‘Fresh bread?’ Morveren asked, staring at the loaf in her hand.
‘Yes. They make it over there,’ Ceinwen said, pointing to where the makeshift kitchens were set up.
‘Just seems strange. It’s like coming out of the fog into another world. A world where fresh bread is baked.’ She shook her head and bit off a mouthful quickly following it with a long swig of milk.
‘Arthur?’ Ceinwen asked.
‘Still commanding at the front.’
‘I think he wants to kill every Adren himself.’
‘He’s having a good go at it then. Did you hear about the last counter attack...’
