by Simon Lister
Ruraidh hesitated as they entered the grove, ‘It looks like a burial mound.’
‘Afraid of the dead?’ Gwyna answered with a sneer.
Ruraidh relaxed, glad to hear the more familiar tone and thinking he must have imagined her immediate reaction to her stumble, but he could not entirely shake the thought that there was something wrong with her and had been ever since she returned from the Winter Wood. They sat in the shade of the trees and looked out over the fields.
‘It’s good country here,’ Gwyna said quietly.
‘Do you think Arthur will keep his word and let our people settle down here?’
‘He will if he’s able to. But not here, too close to Caer Cadarn.’
‘You don’t think the other chieftains will overrule him once the Adren are no longer a threat?’
Gwyna laughed scornfully, ‘Arthur will be the king of the southern tribes so it won’t matter what the chieftains think or say. Either that or there won’t be anything to be king of.’
‘Which do you think is more likely?’ Ruraidh asked carefully.
‘If it was anyone but Arthur I’d say we were as good as dead. We may have a chance but then I’ve seen their leader too and he’s worse than Merdynn. Far worse. And I’ve seen his shadow guard too. Steer clear of them both, Ruraidh. Steer well clear.’
Again Ruraidh was troubled; it was unlike Gwyna to give cautions or act as if she were intimidated by someone. He decided not to explore yet why she was acting in such a strange manner.
‘You still have your aim set on being the queen of the southern tribes?’ he asked her in an attempt to bring back the more familiar, avaricious Gwyna that he knew and could trust.
‘Of course. And Arthur won’t live forever, he’s more than twice my age so the time will come when I will rule the North and South. If not directly then through our children. Gods give us children!’
Ruraidh stared off into the distance weighing up whether he should tell Gwyna what he and Ablach had found out about the Cithol girl. He needed the old Gwyna back, the Gwyna who had taken control of the tribe by killing her father. More importantly the northern warriors needed the old Gwyna back so he decided to push her.
‘He has bastards strewn across southern Britain if half the stories are true,’ Ruraidh said, testing the water.
‘They’re true all right but he cares nothing for them or their mothers. None of them could claim to be an heir before our children. If we have any.’
‘The Cithol witch, the one with the green eyes, she survived the carnage of the Veiled City.’
‘The one who was at the cliffs?’ she asked, slightly puzzled as to why Ruraidh would mention her.
‘Yes.’
Gwyna stared at him and asked after a moment’s pause, ‘The pregnant one?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why do you talk of her, Ruraidh?’ she asked with narrowed eyes.
‘Arthur met her at Caer Cadarn. He took her to his chamber, the one off the main hall. Your chamber.’
‘Arthur knows her?’
‘He detailed Ceinwen and Elwyn to bring her and a few of the others out of the Veiled City.’
‘Why did he do that, Ruraidh?’ she asked in a studied level tone.
Ruraidh shrugged half wanting her to come to the obvious conclusion and half wanting to be the one to tell her. He was relieved to see that her aloofness of the last few days had entirely dissipated; so much so that he prepared himself in case she should launch herself at him. He found himself unable to resist one further taunt, ‘Perhaps he cares for her.’
He was not prepared well enough. No sooner had he finished speaking then Gwyna had flung herself at him, grabbing his hair with one hand and forcing his head back into the turf while whipping her knife free and placing it beneath his chin with the other hand.
‘This Cithol girl is pregnant, he saves her and he cares for her. Why don’t you say what’s on your mind?’ Her snarling face was inches from his and as he tried to free himself he felt the knife draw blood.
‘Well?’
‘Seren is carrying Arthur’s child!’
Gwyna slowly withdrew the knife and released her grip on his hair. He burst free from under her and put a few feet between them as quickly as he could. Gwyna was still toying with her knife; still contemplating murder.
‘Gods Gwyna, I thought you were going to kill me!’
‘Perhaps I should have done. The next time you choose to test my patience with taunts I will kill you. And I’ll do it patiently with taunts.’
‘You’ve been around Arthur too long!’ Ruraidh said rubbing the trickle of blood from his throat.
‘You forget that I killed people long before I met Arthur and long before I became your chieftain, which is something you also seemed to have forgotten. Best not to forget these things. Best not to forget anything.’
Gwyna stood up and slipped her knife back into her belt. Ruraidh could see the stark difference in her; whatever dark cave her thoughts had been roaming in had been left behind now and despite the risks it had carried he was relieved he had brought her back to her old self.
‘This Cithol witch carries his child, does she? When is she due to give birth to this bastard?’
‘I don’t know but it can’t be more than a month or two away.’
‘She probably means nothing to him. What use is a Cithol witch to him? Probably nothing now that the Veiled City is destroyed. Still, these are dark times and no one is safe from harm, are they Ruraidh?’ she said, turning her eyes to him. He rubbed his throat again and silently agreed that indeed they were not.
*
Arthur was asleep in his private chamber. The normal routine for the summer months in Caer Cadarn was for most of the camp to sleep for the four hours following the twentieth bell. This was the usual practice throughout the southern tribes and during these hours a restrained peace would fall over the villages and towns as people slept in the coolest places they could find. In contrast the winter months were far more conducive to sleep and most settlements would remain quiet for up to twelve hours following the twelfth bell. The arrival of the legion from the Haven had thrown any such semblance of order to the four winds and the constant activity around the camp made it almost impossible to get any proper rest.
Gwyna looked across at Arthur and wondered how he could possibly sleep with so much noise in the hall and outside in the compound; the door and shutters gave them some privacy from the eyes of others but no protection whatsoever against the barrage of noise that was being created.
She shook her head in disbelief and went back to rubbing the ointment she had got from Ceinwen into the bruises on her abdomen and thighs. Ceinwen had given her a small pot of the colourless paste to treat the weal that still marked the side of her face but she had other bruises that needed soothing too. Arthur had said nothing about the marks on her body and she had not volunteered any explanations. She felt fairly certain that Arthur knew anyway as the signs were all obvious enough but as long as neither of them talked about it then she did not have to confront the truth again and with it the accompanying shame and humiliation.
She looked up as someone knocked on the door. She waited a moment thinking it was probably just someone knocking against the wooden door by mistake as they carted things back and forth from the hall but the same knock came again. She scowled and eased her trousers back over her hips and tucked her tunic back in as she crossed to the door and opened it.
Morveren was standing there and they stared at one another both surprised to see the other. Gwyna recovered the quickest and glared at the intruder who was the very last person she wanted to see.
‘What do you want?’
‘Is Arthur here?’
‘Yes, he’s sleeping. Come back later,’ Gwyna said and began closing the door on her. Morveren held out a hand and stopped the door. They stared at each other and Morveren felt herself recoiling from the loathing on Gwyna’s face.
Nonetheless she held the door open an
d said in a steady voice, ‘I don’t think this can wait. There’s something he needs to know.’
Gwyna looked beyond Morveren for the first time and saw three men standing behind her. Two were both in their mid to late thirties and the other looked about ten years older; they all looked very much like the nervous villagers they were.
‘Are these the messengers?’ Gwyna asked indicating the three behind her with clear disdain.
‘Yes. It’s important.’
‘Village news is never important. Come back later,’ Gwyna replied and again started to close the door. To her surprise Morveren pushed back and placed herself inside the doorway.
‘These are my brothers and they have news for Arthur.’
‘Oh, your brothers? Yes, I can see the resemblance now that you mention it. Well, if your pig’s sick then you better see him straight away. But you can have the pleasure of waking him.’ Gwyna opened the door wide with sneering courtesy and once Morveren was inside the room she barged her way between the three nerve-stricken brothers and went out into the hall thinking she was leaving behind some overblown domestic village squabble.
Morveren glared after her, furious that she should be so contemptuous of her brothers. ‘You weren’t so high and bloody mighty with your face in the dirt were you?’ she muttered under her breath at the departing figure then added in a louder voice, ‘You three stay here for a moment.’
She closed the door quietly and looked around at Arthur who still lay on the bed dead to the world. She was surprised he was still asleep even though both she and Gwyna had kept their voices down during their brief exchange. She took a step towards the bed but, now that it came to it, she was uncertain how to wake him. She moved around the room hoping that he would just wake up by himself but he did not stir. Seeing a beaker of water she had a mad impulse to throw it in his face but she quickly buried the suicidal idea and decided to open the shutters instead and let the light stream into the room.
She turned to see if it had woken him and started when she saw his blank eyes staring right at her. The same sightless gaze that had so unnerved Caja several months ago back in Branque had the same effect on her and she took a step backwards, clattering into the small table and sending the beaker of water skittering across the surface and rolling onto the floor. She quickly glanced back to Arthur and was relieved to see his eyes blink and the life come back into them as he raised himself on one elbow.
‘What are you doing here, Morveren?’ he asked yawning.
‘Oh. It’s my brothers, they have a message for you.’
Arthur swung his legs off the bed and stood up. ‘Your brothers?’ he asked through another cavernous yawn.
She looked up at him feeling dwarfed by his height in such a small room. ‘Yes. A message, a message from Merdynn.’
Suddenly the atmosphere in the room changed as Arthur came abruptly and fully awake. He took her by the elbows and almost lifted her from the floor. ‘A message from Merdynn? When? What message?’
‘I, I don’t know. My brothers are outside, they just said they had a message for you from Merdynn. They wouldn’t tell me more so I brought them straight here.’
Arthur wrenched the door open and Morveren’s brothers jumped back in comic unison. They were not timid men and each of them carried in their faces the evidence of a hard life spent at sea but standing before the warlord in his hall in Caer Cadarn they found themselves truly out of their depth for the first time in their lives.
Arthur stepped back from the doorway for the three men to enter but they stood outside hesitating and only shuffled forward when Morveren told them to come in. She introduced them as they filed into the small room and Arthur indicated for two of them to sit on the bed and for the third to take the only chair. Morveren leaned against the wall feeling claustrophobic in the suddenly crowded room while Arthur stood by the open shutters his expression unreadable with the bright sunlight behind him. The fishermen were unwilling to speak first and the silence stretched as Arthur studied each one in turn.
‘You’ve seen Merdynn?’ he finally said, directing the question at the eldest brother who sat in the chair. He immediately got up to answer and Arthur told him to sit back down.
‘Just answer the warlord’s questions directly, Sal,’ Morveren gently said trying to calm his nerves.
‘We saw him at our village, Lord.’
‘Arthur will do. When was this?’
‘Dawn, at the time of Imbolc. Not that we got to celebrate...’
‘Imbolc! Why have you waited so long before bringing the message?’ Morveren cried, aghast that so much time had passed.
‘Well, we had to sail our boats from the village round to the Haven and then we got caught up in this war business and joined Mar’h’s legion. That was your order that was, Lord, taking the boats to the Haven. We’ve been puzzling about that. If you don’t mind me asking, why would you want our boats there and not at the village?’
Morveren brought her hands to her head in anguish. Arthur remained unmoved beside the open shutters.
‘Was there no way you could bring the message to us quicker?’ Morveren asked once she had regained her voice.
‘Didn’t seem to be much of a hurry what with us being too late to save the others and Merdynn dead and all.’
The room became absolutely silent and the din from outside suddenly seemed very far away. Morveren felt sick. Sal was squinting at Arthur wondering why the questions had stopped and thinking that perhaps he should fill the silence.
‘Tell me exactly what happened from the first moment you saw Merdynn to the last,’ Arthur said without any trace of emotion.
‘Well, it was little Kea, Keir’s daughter.’ Sal started gesturing to one of his brothers, ‘She was playing down by the breakwater when she heard a commotion out in the shallow water. She clambered across to investigate and saw a man with a staff held in one hand splashing through the water like the Uathach raiders were after him.’
‘Merdynn?’ Morveren asked hastily.
‘Morveren,’ Arthur curtly admonished her for interrupting.
‘No, it weren’t Merdynn. Don’t know who that was.’ Sal frowned for a few seconds then looked up, ‘Where was I?’
‘Kea,’ Arthur prompted him.
‘Kea, yes, she heard a wail from the boat and went and fetched Keir here.’ Sal gestured unnecessarily to his brother again who nodded his agreement with the story so far. ‘Keir fetched us two, that’s me and Garwin here.’ Again Sal gestured to indicate who he meant and Morveren suppressed a groan, sure that Arthur’s impatience would break upon her brothers.
‘I know who you all are. We’ve met before and I remember you well,’ Arthur said evenly.
‘Right. Of course,’ Sal said, thinking back to the times that Arthur had visited their village, and more particularly their mother. He hadn’t expected him to remember them though.
‘Go on,’ Arthur prompted him.
‘Well, we fetched the boat into shore, it was only a skiff really. Wouldn’t catch me making a journey like that in a boat like that. Merdynn was lying in the boat in a bad way but not as bad as the other poor bugger though. He was deader than King Maldred. If you don’t mind me putting it like that...’ he added hurriedly having momentarily forgotten just who he was talking to.
‘Who was deader than, ah, dead?’ Morveren asked shooting a quick glance towards Arthur. She had heard the expression recently but was unsure if Arthur had and she was equally unsure how he might take it.
‘Anglian warrior. Cythwin or something like that, Merdynn did tell us. What was the bugger’s name?’ Sal asked turning to his brothers for enlightenment.
‘Cuthwin?’ Garwin offered.
‘That’s it. Anyway he was dead. Blood everywhere. Recently butchered too. No sight for young Kea to see at any rate. We took Merdynn inside and we treated his stomach wound as best as we could, which weren’t much. Though we wasn’t sure it was Merdynn until he woke up a couple of days later. He put us straig
ht about who he was and demanded that we take him to the Breton coast where the others were trapped by some army or other. None of us took much to that plan as we didn’t have any idea where this Breton place was and we certainly weren’t keener for going if there was an army there. He convinced us it would be for the best and that you’d be thankful if we took one of our boats across there,’ Sal stopped and looked at Arthur as if expecting that gratitude. Arthur just stared at him. After another moment’s pause Sal continued, ‘Well, we thought that if they could make the journey in that little skiff then we could do it in one of our boats easily enough and if there was an army there and it all looked a bit nasty then we didn’t have to put in to shore. Not that we told Merdynn that.
‘But we needn’t have worried though. The battle was over by the time we got there. We searched around the headland but there weren’t any bodies or anything so we decided to head back to the village. Merdynn wouldn’t come with us. We pleaded with him but he just flatly refused to leave the place. We made him comfortable and left him to die as peacefully as he could.’
‘You saw him die?’ Morveren asked quietly.
‘Can’t say that we did but no one gets up and walks away in that state.’
‘Cei, Trevenna, the others?’ she asked, unable to keep the despair from her voice.
‘I don’t know them but there weren’t any bodies on the headland or by the wall,’ Sal replied gently, understanding at last that they were his sister’s friends that he was talking about.
‘You said Merdynn had given you a message?’ Arthur asked from his place by the open window.
‘Yes. He said it was important that I remember it exactly but it was some time ago now and, well, we’ve been caught up in this legion thing. It was along the lines of tasks being unfinished, that they all died and that someone called Ethain was to blame for it all.’ Sal finished and shrugged as if to suggest that was as close as he was ever going to remember it.
