The Kingmaking

by Helen Hollick

Alarmed, she responded quickly. “Arthur, you must! You promised he could hold those lands until his death.”

  “You are over-protective of Vortigern’s former friends all of a sudden? A moment since, you were condemning him as an odious parasite. That is politics: setting one loyalty against another to gain the upper hand. How else am I to gain support? Men must learn to see me as more powerful and more dangerous than Vortimer. How think you your brother Enniaun survives as Prince of Gwynedd?”

  She kicked his boot, not hard, but enough to show displeasure. “Because he keeps promises.”

  Arthur’s mouth twitched. “Not many of them, Cymraes – and only the ones that serve his purpose. I pledged Meirchion’s security – and I intend to honour that pledge, so long as it suits me and he keeps his word. The winner, love, is the man who can smile and promise the sun and moon, knowing he has only mountain mist to give.”

  Placing his hands on her shoulders, he turned her round to face the shore rushing to meet them. “If Meirchion remains loyal then I shall leave well alone. That I can promise.”

  Rich-clad people stood to the forefront of the crowd gathered at the wharfside. The realisation that her father would not be among them bringing tears to her eyes, that she swiftly brushed aside. The living must, at least for now, take her attention.

  Gwenhwyfar sighted two brothers who still remained at the Caer, the twins Rumaun and Dunaut. With them, various nephews, nieces and cousins. The dark-haired young woman beside her brother Enniaun she guessed to be his wife, Teleri, a princess of the northern Picti people.

  A wave of unexpected alarm swept through her. She had been away so long. So many things had changed; she had changed. She clung to Arthur’s arm, trembling slightly, whether from excitement or fear she could not tell. A little of both?

  “How can I face them?” she asked.

  Shrewdly, Arthur replied, “As boldly as I face the Lion’s son in his den.”

  The ship bumped, ropes were flung, caught by eager hands. A plank was run out. Gwenhwyfar found herself engulfed in enthusiastic greetings and tears of welcome. She could not control her own brimming eyes, clung to her eldest living brother smiling, laughing and crying all at once; her emotions tumbling together like fleeting rain showers on a bright sunny day.

  Teleri touched Gwenhwyfar’s cheek with her own, not quite a kiss, an uncertain greeting, more polite than friendly.

  Rumaun pushed forward before the two women could exchange further conversation, swept his sister to him with a yell of delight.

  “How round you are, Gwen!” He poked gently at her protruding bulk, added, “I trust there is only one in there.” He winked at his twin brother and they all laughed, Gwenhwyfar saying, “One is quite sufficient. Do you not agree, Teleri?”

  Off guard, the woman muttered a shy and embarrassed reply.

  Enniaun held his wife fondly at his side, smiling down at her.

  “You have another niece,” he told Gwenhwyfar. “A bonny lass. She will be a good playmate for your child as they grow.”

  A sharp retort almost left Gwenhwyfar’s lips. Her child would play with no daughter of this Picti crab! She bit it back – that was unfair. “Happen she will,” she said.

  Teleri trailed silently behind as they walked up the incline to the Hall. She was a shy person, awkward and often clumsy in her eagerness to please. She tried so hard to do the right thing, aware the Picti were resented here in Gwynedd, usually ended by making herself look a fool. Gwenhwyfar’s coming worried her. She had heard so much about her husband’s sister – how could she survive beneath such an eclipsing sun?

  Seeing Enniaun’s easy laughter with Gwenhwyfar, Teleri felt a stab of sharp envy. For all the kindness shown her she still felt like an outsider. Head down, hands clasped tight together she followed at the rear of the crowd of happy people, wishing Gwenhwyfar had not come, would go soon.

  At the doorway to the Hall, servants and slaves waited, eager to give greetings. Gwenhwyfar embraced some of them, a special hug for Brenna who was as old as the hills and as dependable.

  Teleri took up the cup of welcome and carried it in both hands towards the Pendragon.

  The confusion and jostling was great. People were pushing forward, reaching out hands in greeting. Hounds milled about, barking, tails wagging. One, a great brindle, a favourite of Enniaun’s, launched himself at his master. Annoyed, he kicked him aside and the dog tumbled, yelping to fall awkwardly against Teleri. She was of small height and build, like a sparrow she seemed. The enormous dog knocked her off balance and she stumbled to her knees, spilling red wine over herself and those gathered at the threshold. Some laughed; more grumbled.

  Arthur had assessed her at first sight. He always had an eye for a pretty girl, and found this one’s slight form and shyness attractive. Had she not been wife to Enniaun, well, who knew how much more he might have decided to learn of her? He stepped forward, gallantly helping her to her feet. He kept hold of her hand, grasping it tightly in his own as he swept his gaze over her, raising a deep flush on her face.

  She felt disconcertingly naked before him, knowing his look for what it was, a measuring of the body beneath her gown. The wine, where it clung to her bodice, highlighted the round curve of her breast.

  “You need spill only a token gesture to appease the gods.” His voice was as smooth as the rich wine.

  Teleri met his gaze and felt her legs begin to shake. He lifted her hand and kissed the white skin. She withdrew it sharply and mopped ineffectually at her sodden dress, attempting to conceal her embarrassment.

  Someone hastily refilled the cup and handed it to Arthur to drink first. He gave his blessing on the household then spilt the customary small drop on the floor, adding to the accidental spillage.

  Unexpectedly, Gwenhwyfar remembered another such cup, when Cunedda had returned after Uthr’s death. She could see herself there again, a leggy girl with cherry buds for breasts, scrawny and impatient for the excitement of womanhood. How young she had been!

  Arthur handed the golden cup to her. For a moment she held it between both hands, staring into the dark pool of liquid. She had not expected Enniaun’s wife to be quite so young and pretty. Nor had she missed that look of keen interest from Arthur. Beside Teleri, Gwenhwyfar felt like an ungainly lump with swollen feet and puffed ankles, waddling like a land-bound duck.

  How does he see me? As I was in Less Britain, a girl breathless for his loving, living in the dream days of sunshine? Or as I am now – irritable, often crying for no reason, with sharp words always on my tongue?

  “Welcome home, sister,” her brother was saying, his voice distant among her thoughts.

  Home, Gwenhwyfar thought with a start. She looked about her, at the Hall stretching wide and grand beneath soaring rafters, at the happy faces and welcoming smiles. Family, friends.

  Caer Arfon had been the only home she had known. There were other, more modest strongholds scattered throughout this vast territory of Gwynedd, some in which they lived for months at a time, depending on the season, the availability of game and the pressing calls of justice and law. None were ‘home’, save Caer Arfon.

  Gwenhwyfar sipped the wine. For so long had she wanted this, to come back to Caer Arfon. Now she was here, she found the pink glow had faded, leaving only smudged grey edges. With startling clarity she realised the truth. Now her father was gone, and she had Arthur for her own and a child coming, Caer Arfon was no longer her home.

  She swallowed a gulp of wine and its strength burnt her throat with a stinging warmth, sending her head spinning a moment, leaving her thoughts suddenly settled and clear. She had never wanted to be headwoman here; that status belonged to Teleri, the new prince’s wife. Caer Arfon was the place of childhood and those days were gone, for she was a woman grown with a child restless to be born. Straightening her shoulders Gwenhwyfar tipped the remaining liquid to the floor. A hard lesson to learn, but there could be no going back, only forward.

  They were waiting, feet shuffling, some
coughing, impatient. Those memories of childhood were distant, but there all the same, and the future lay ahead with who knew what changes? Well, so must it be!

  Gwenhwyfar looked at Arthur eye to eye, gave him a dazzling smile, which he returned from his heart. It shone from him, a radiance, every part of his body smiling his pride in her and love for her. She placed her hand confidently in his and stepped across the pool of wine lying on the threshold.

  She was coming to Caer Arfon, not as daughter of Gwynedd but as wife to the Pendragon and mother to his child. She had outfaced the dark dreams and set aside the shadows that lurked among the haunting echoes of fear.

  XXXVII

  A frosted night, with a crisp scent in the air and a sharp bite to cheeks and fingers. The white touch of winter was beginning to shoulder aside the mellow golds and reds of autumn. Gwenhwyfar stood gazing at the snow-tipped mountains, rising silent-shadowed against a star-scattered sky. Old friends, the mountains.

  In the Hall, heat from crowding people and glowing fires had flushed her face, wine and food warming her from within. She shivered, pulled her cloak tighter. The cold had soon chased away that drowsy, complacent glow, filling her nose and lungs with brittle wakefulness. The mountains would always be there, and the stars. The river still ran into the sea, and the tide washed against the shore. Reliable, dependable things.

  The Stone stood before her, a black pillar pointing like a finger up towards the four corner stars of Orion and the brilliance that was the eye of his faithful hound following at heel. Gwenhwyfar walked forward, boots crunching on the white spangled ground. Her hand touched the cold hardness of the Stone her fingers caressing its familiar rough surface. How many other clear nights such as this had she stood here, hoping to set free confused emotions?

  What scenes the spirit of this carved rock must have witnessed. Warriors gathered for a hosting, hopes and hearts edging as high as Yr Wyddfa as they honed an edge to their weapons, talking among themselves, confessing fears or boasting bravado. Daily comings and goings to and from the Hall. Spring lambs, born calves; summer harvest; autumn gather and slaughter; winter cold. The pledging of loyalties and swearing of oaths. Arthur had stood here as a boy, when he became Pendragon. Uthr, before he left to meet his death. Osmail, Etern. Her father.

  A step crunched on the frost-hardened ground.

  “Gwenhwyfar?”

  Without turning she said, “The mountains are so ageless, Enniaun.”

  He came up beside her, his eyes lifting towards the hills. “With the coming and passing of seasons they wear different cloaks, but it is good to know beneath those mantles of green, brown or white they remain as always. They were here when we were born, will be here when we die. ‘Tis a sobering thought.” He seated himself beside the Stone, his back leaning against it. Tipped his head to watch the stars.

  “They shone as bright two nights past, for Samhain. We lit a fire to welcome our Da and brothers, should their spirits decide to come,” he said.

  “I thought you might.”

  “It is a pity you were not here.”

  “It is a pity they are dead.”

  Enniaun stretched his legs, shuffled himself more comfortable. “We must all die, sister.”

  She rounded on him. “That we must, but do we need to walk into death’s embrace? Da ought not have gone; he was not so young, nor so agile.”

  Enniaun lifted his hands, palm open. “Nor was he in his dotage and crippled. His was the death every warrior seeks, Gwen. Triumphant in battle, not suffering age or the bone ache, not waiting for death to remember you.”

  An owl glided silent above the thatch of the Hall, his wings ghost white under the light of the stars. Gwenhwyfar watched his passing, said, “I thought I had accepted their deaths. But now I am here, where I can see and hear and smell them, the ache of grief has returned.”

  “It never leaves, not with someone we love. Their presence burns too vivid in our memories. Happen that is as it should be, for otherwise we would too easy forget.”

  Gwenhwyfar squatted beside her brother, shifted herself close for warmth. He draped the swirled length of his cloak around her shoulders.

  “So much has changed,” she said.

  “Change has to come for life to struggle forward. We none of us can ever stand still.” He smiled, took his sister’s hand between his own. “We are not the mountains or stars, sweetheart. Would we not grow bored waiting for nothing to happen?”

  She smiled at that and squeezed his hand. “Bored, aye, but much safer.”

  He thought a moment, rubbing the cold of her hands with his fingers. “I heard a story once. A man was told by a wise woman that in five days he was going to be crushed to death. Well, at first he didn’t believe her, but as the fifth day approached he began to get nervous. Come the dawn, he was so frightened he decided to stay all the day in his bed.”

  “And so he cheated the wise woman’s prediction?”

  Enniaun laughed. “Na. The roof fell in on top of him.”

  Gwenhwyfar swiped at her brother’s head with the back of her hand. “Idiot,” she said, but she was laughing, the black mood lifting.

  “Did he die easy, my Da? No one ever wrote me the full details, only that he had been killed.”

  “I was not here either. I was away to the north agreeing trade and alliance with old Necthan.” He sighed, clasping his hands together. “Had I been here, then happen Da would not have gone.” He looked down, said quietly, “I mourn him too, sister, for I have had to replace him, and no one can ever fill that vast emptiness left by the Lion Lord Cunedda.”

  For a while and a while they sat together, silent, watching the stars tread their endless dance, until Gwenhwyfar at last said, “It is forgetting that troubles me. So desperately am I trying not to forget Da’s face, Etern’s laugh or even Osmail’s scowl. But they are all slipping away, fading as a rainbow does after its brief shine of glory. And then, the things I so need to wipe from my mind – Melwas, and what he did to me, Ceridwen’s death of agony, Iawn… all those horrid things, not one tiny detail, not one, will leave me.”

  “They will, Gwen. When your child is born you will have new things to think on. Change, you see.” Enniaun kissed her cheek then stood, stamping his feet and clapping his hands to his sides. “I tell you one thing that must change – me out here for me in there!” He laughed as he nodded up the hill towards the Hall. “Are you coming?”

  She stood also, stretching an ache from the pit of her back. “I am tired. I think I will go to my bed.”

  Giving his sister an affectionate hug, Enniaun began to walk away, but stopped and faced her again as she called out, “I believe, brother, that lion cubs are often as strong as their sire, the lion.”

  He grinned. “I have heard that also.” About to resume his walk back to the Hall, he halted again, said into the darkness, “I can tell you one other thing, Gwen. Our father’s death shall be avenged. I have vowed to rid Gwynedd of all the poxed sea raiders who have taken it upon themselves to dirty our soil.” He looked at her across the few feet separating them, his expression so reminiscent of his father’s. “And that vow shall not change until it is completed.”

  XXXVIII

  The complex of buildings behind the Hall beckoned cheerfully; servants had lit night torches which burnt in friendly welcome. Caer Arfon had always seemed grand to Gwenhwyfar as a child, but then she had seen nothing else save her Da’s other strongholds, all smaller than this one. For the first time she saw it for what it was, a hotch-potch mixture of Brythonic and Roman. Thatched roofs among slate, daub and timber walls running alongside stone built. Round, traditional dwelling places and the family’s impressively Roman chambers. All this, ranged around a rectangular chieftain’s Hall. Compared to Ygrainne’s grand villa, the buildings, even those in the Roman style, were primitive.

  Gwenhwyfar paused before entering her chamber, aware that never again would she share a room with chattering girls. Her position of wife, especially wife to the Pend
ragon, afforded her the luxury of privacy, but with that came solitude and loneliness. She swung away from the door, headed instead for the darkness of the walled garden.

  So many memories, bad and good. So much truth to be faced. She walked slowly, head bent, lost within her own world. The sound had been there, but remained unnoticed until it ceased abruptly with a stifled exclamation.

  Gwenhwyfar’s head snapped up. “Who is there?” Servants up to some mischief? No answer. There was no moon and the stars gave little light here in the shadows. She said again, commanding, “I know you are there. My Lord Enniaun will not tolerate illicit coupling within his private grounds – get you gone!”

  A vague movement, a rustle, like wind rummaging through fallen leaves. Then silence. Angrily Gwenhwyfar strode forward, gasped as a single cowled shape appeared before her. A woman. The star silvered light fell on her face – Teleri.

  Gwenhwyfar was about to say something harsh, but compassion stopped her. Instead, “You are shivering, have you no thicker cloak? Here, take mine.” She unpinned the brooch at her left shoulder and swung the woollen garment from her. Teleri hunched herself into the warmth, stumbled a thank you through chattering teeth.

  “Why are you out here?” Gwenhwyfar asked.

  “The garden is a good place to be alone,” Teleri answered, with a catch of despair in her voice. Standing so much closer now, Gwenhwyfar could see the tracks of tears on her cheeks. She took Teleri’s hand impulsively in her own.

  “You and I, Teleri, are two lost souls, weeping for everything and nothing.”

  Taken aback, all Teleri could think to say was, “I thank you for the cloak.”

  The misjudged dislike Gwenhwyfar had felt for her brother’s wife evaporated as she saw her for what she was, a lonely girl far from home. Someone lost and afraid.

  Gwenhwyfar could understand that.

  “We are strangers you and I, Teleri. We should not be, for we are both women of Gwynedd.”

  “You may be, not I. I am an alliance, a surety between a husband and a father.”