The Kingmaking

by Helen Hollick

  It was quite dark when she drifted awake; the lamps were out. The sound of spattering rain had ceased and all was quiet. What had woken her? An arm slid around her waist, cold feet touched her warm legs. She shivered. “I did not intend to wake you,” Arthur said.

  Gwenhwyfar nestled into his arms, burrowing her head into his shoulder. “I am glad you did. I tried to stay awake for you. I think,” she smiled up at him, though neither could see in the blackness, “I think something was put in my drink.”

  He cuddled her closer. “It was.”

  “I was tricked!” she protested, tickling his ribs with her fingers, causing him to squirm. As he tickled her back his hand touched the swell of a breast beneath her night shift and he ceased the teasing. His lips brushed hers, half expecting her to stiffen and pull away, the rise of pleasure all the more acute when she did not. He lay back, still holding her, settling his head on the rolled-blanket pillow.

  Into the blackness she said, “Your coming upon us was no accident, was it, Arthur?”

  “You have been watched since leaving Ceredig’s land.”

  Gwenhwyfar caught her breath. “The Watchers! You?”

  “Watchers?” Arthur snorted with amusement. “I sent men to keep a close eye on you.” He chuckled at her start of indignation, laid a finger on her lips to silence her. “I know what you are about to squawk. They had my orders to stay out of sight.”

  She pouted. “Why? You made us uneasy for no reason.”

  “Why?” He jerked half upright. “Enniaun sent a galloper to tell me you were coming with the horses – Mithras, I was furious! Though whether I was angrier with you, or with him for allowing it, I know not. My wife,” he paused to lean over and kiss her, “my wife and son are more precious to me than damned horses!”

  “I came because of our son.” She too sat up, lying back grudgingly as Arthur pulled her down with him below the warmth of the blankets.

  “I know it, Meriaun has told me.”

  Gwenhwyfar snuggled closer to Arthur, twining her arms around him, tucking her feet under his legs. Drowsy, she must have dozed a minute, for he was near asleep when she realised he had not answered her question. She kicked him. He only grunted so she kicked him again, harder.

  “Arthur! Why did you set men to spy on us?”

  Through a yawn he answered, “Because it occurred to me, once I had calmed down enough to look at the thing rationally, these newly trained men might not need a wet-nurse.” He moved his hand more comfortably around her waist, “but I was not prepared to entrust raw soldiers with the safety of my wife and son.” He did not add the shambles of this night had proved him right. “We were riding to meet you when – what did you call my men? Watchers? Warned us a raiding party from Brychan’s rat nest was abroad. We came up as fast as we could.” His voice turned cold. “Just as well we did.” He said no more. The entire valley had cringed at his explosion of rage, once he had been assured his wife slept. One out of every ten men, selected by drawing a short blade of grass, lay buried in shallow graves this night, bludgeoned to death by their disgraced comrades. Decimation in the Roman way. A serious thing to disobey orders, to take matters into their own hands or desert their post – to leave a camp undefended.

  Arthur demanded strict discipline; each man was to work with the other as a team, one welded body. Punishment needed to be severe, for men’s lives could be put at risk by those who recklessly disobeyed orders; haphazard enthusiasm left themselves and their comrades open to death. The lesson of Arthur’s wrath had sunk in. It was the first and last time men of the Artoriani so disgraced themselves.

  To cover his sudden silence, Arthur said to Gwenhwyfar, “Brychan will think twice about harassing what is mine in future. He will not be pleased at the gift I have sent him.”

  Gwenhwyfar made no comment. She guessed his meaning, cared little for details.

  He was right. Brychan bellowed and cursed for days after his men found a heap of dismembered bodies flung some yards inside his border.

  “How is the arm?” Arthur asked, changing the uneasy subject.

  “It aches.” Shyly she added, “But not as much as I ache for you. We have been apart too long a while.”

  Thinking of several pert answers, Arthur cast them aside. Instead he brought her closer to kiss her, savouring the delight of her taste, smell and feel. He stroked the inside of her bare arm, mindful of her wound; moving on to her neck and face, enjoying her softness. He broke away as Gwenhwyfar buried her head in his shoulder and, clasping him tight, said urgently, “I was so afraid when I learnt of Winifred’s son. I still am.”

  Holding her with one hand, Arthur stroked her hair with the other.

  She lifted her head and said determined, “I will fight for my son, Arthur. I realise to you they are both sons, but Llacheu is mine and he is a Briton, not some half-Saex…”

  He placed his lips over hers, silencing her. “Winifred was born a bitch and shall die a bitch, Cymraes. I also intend to fight for our son, for I have no illusions about the power a Saex cur may try to wield. Especially not one raised by her hand.”

  He spoke so vehemently, Gwenhwyfar moved a little away from him. This was a side of him that frightened her. Arthur angered was a man to be avoided. She knew the punishment the men had faced, knew Arthur would have watched its execution dispassionately. She thrust such thoughts aside. Arthur was a soldier; there was no room for soft words and a gentle touch on the battlefield, or from a king who intended to demand discipline and respect.

  Taking her hand and kissing the tip of each finger one by one, he whispered, “For this night, can we forget the harsh realities? I know a place where there is only pleasure and love. I will take you there, if you want me to. “

  “Is that a promise?”

  “Aye.”

  A rare thing for Arthur, he kept his promise.

  April 457

  XLVI

  A mood of guarded anticipation breathed through camp, blending with an unspoken expectancy. Some who were there, sitting around campfires or curling under blankets to snatch a few hours’ precious sleep, remembered the carnage they had encountered when Vortimer had been so horribly slain. They nursed mixed feelings of revenge and fear. All of them awaiting the coming of dawn, and battle.

  Few of those huddled men denied that by the morrow’s setting sun they too could be the victims of Hengest’s thirst for British blood.

  Only one man instilled courage.

  Arthur, son of Uthr Pendragon, toured the camp as dusk fell, pausing to talk or laugh with men who idled away the last remnants of the day. Exchanging a jest with one man, admiring another’s new spear, asking after the healed lameness of another’s horse. Small things, intimacies, making each man feel as though he were a personal friend. Arthur had made it his business to know the names and characters of all his mounted Artoriani, to know some small thing of each and every one of his nine hundred cavalrymen.

  The march from the fortifications at Durobrivae had been an anxious one; the awareness of hidden shadows and the constant edge of alertness had been wearing. They were in hostile territory, pushing resolutely deeper into Hengest’s claimed kingdom, advancing along the sweeping heights of the northern downs, which commanded a view over thick forest, grassy plain and river meadows that mingled with the salt-crusted coast.

  Scouts had routed several set ambushes, vain attempts at harrying Arthur’s mounted army. Even so, some ten and three of their cavalry had been seriously wounded from Saex spears.

  Three more were dead. Arthur considered the toll a light one, less than he expected. His men knew full well these attacks were designed to slow them down, to annoy and irritate, like flies constantly buzzing. Tactics aimed at goading them further on, to walk into the spider’s sticky web. Arthur had complied, had pushed forward with his cavalry, ever watchful, aware the way back could be closing despite the vigilance of a rear guard of infantry.

  Before returning to his own tent, Arthur walked to the edge of the rise
to stand quiet, surveying the darkening land below. Cei and Gwenhwyfar’s nephew, Meriaun, came up behind and stood flanking him. Three men watching and thinking their own thoughts.

  The first few stars were showing, glimmering like diamonds between drifting clouds. A heady smell of damp earth hung in the air. Rain was coming. A man who ate, slept, lived, fought and died under the open sky, interpreted the signs, could read the approaching weather with as much ease as the literate read words written on a parchment.

  Cei broke the silence. “We have ridden many miles for this.”

  For answer, Arthur swept his hand across the horizon, to the clearings and farms scattered below. His finger came to a halt, indicated the walled town nestling in the hollow a mile away.

  “There are a few people, Romano-British people, left in that town, which was once a thriving centre of trade and wealth. Look at it now. In this light you cannot see clearly, but I know ‘tis nothing but shacks and crumbling buildings occupied by a handful of die-hard, stubborn folk who refuse to be intimidated.” He let his arm fall to his side. “This Cantii territory has always been the first prize.‘ They came to plunder and make war… and later to settle down to till the soil.’ Caesar, before the birth of the Christ, wrote that. Only he was not describing the Saex kind, he wrote of the people we now defend, people who, even before Rome invaded, came themselves from across the sea and settled here. They called themselves ‘Belgae’, a tribe soon to be lost amid the enveloping nationality of Romano-British.” He glanced at his companions, took a slow breath. “Names and tribes, even loyalties change, but still the land of Cantii is the prize.”

  “A prize to be won or lost.”

  “Or given.”

  Cei frowned at Arthur’s soft-spoken reply. “Given?”

  “A prize won must be held. A prize lost must be fought for another time, to save pride. A prize given, exchanged, can be the settling of an amicable arrangement. Vortigern had the right of it there, though he gave for the wrong reasons, to barter time, to save face, and demanded nought in return.”

  Meriaun too had been studying the evening sweep of land dotted with homesteads. Good grazing land for cattle, rich soil for crops and fruit orchards. He said, with a curl to his lip as if he were talking of some unpleasant waste product, “Many down there are of Saex descent.”

  Arthur answered swiftly with heat. “Their blood may be Saex, but their hearts are Roman. As I said, names and tribes change. Those settlers are the children’s children of men who fought to defend Rome’s empire; men who garrisoned the Shore Forts, who kept pirates from breaching the curtain wall. They have earned their right to our land, earned a right to pledge loyalty to Britain, to be one with us.”

  Cei snorted. “And for how long shall that pledge survive? Already they are welcoming Hengest, allowing him his absurd whim of leadership, paying tribute to him.”

  “Do you blame them? They are farmers, the families of veterans, old servicemen no longer active. The grandfathers down there fought for Rome. Not the fathers, not the sons. All they want is to plough and sow and harvest in peace. As long as they have peace they care little who oversees them. It happened before, when the Belgae came from across the sea a handful of years before Caesar. They settled, eventually dominated. Life went on. The Cantii mixed with the Belgae, became one. Then Rome came, settled, dominated. Life went on, the people became one. Romano-British. Romano-Saex.”

  “What you are trying to say, my foster brother,” Cei cut in with a hint of irritation, “is that eventually these Saex swine will dominate?”

  Arthur, standing with his weight on his sound leg, considered a reply. His left hand rested against the reassuring feel of his sword. The evening had darkened. The distant outer edges of the great Forest-Where-No-One-Lives was darker still, black against blackening sky. A dog-fox barked, answered by the yip of his vixen. An owl drifted from a tree to their right, flapped its wings once and gave a piercing cry. Arthur’s thigh, injured it seemed, aeons past, ached. It always ached when rain was coming.

  Into the gathering cloak of darkness he said, “For the Cantii the Saex will dominate. Who can hold back the tide or command a thunder cloud to roll aside?” He lifted his shoulders, shrugged. ‘Tis no use scowling, the both of you. It is so. Hengest knows it, I know it.” He jerked his head back at the camp. “Most of those men know it. I should imagine the settlers on their farms down there know it also, and accept the inevitable.”

  “Then why, in God’s name,” snapped Cei, exasperated, “are we here?”

  Arthur grinned, his face lighting with a glint of enthusiasm. “Because, for the prize to be given, it first has to be won.”

  Cei flung up his arms. “Holy Jesu, Arthur, you could ride rings round the Great Henge and not get dizzy!”

  XLVII

  Gwenhwyfar propped herself up on one elbow. The pallet was not uncomfortable, but the night air was cold and the flickering lamps denied her sleep. She watched her husband, sitting at the table studying written reports and rough-drawn maps. His face was crinkled with tiredness, eyes hollowed but burning with a brightness of determination that belied the restlessness of his fingers, twitching at the corner of the map he held.

  “Come to bed.”

  Arthur answered without looking up. “Na, sleep would not come.”

  “Without trying, how do you know?” she replied simply. She gathered a rough-woven blanket around her and padded barefoot across to stand behind him, regarding the map. She pointed to the marks he had made. “This is where you intend to make for, before dawn light?”

  He nodded. “I know Hengest waits at Rutupiae. Here.” He pointed to the Shore Fort on the mainland across the narrow channel beside the isle of Tanatus. “Rutupiae was built by the first Romans to set foot on these shores, Cymraes. Their bridgehead. When the Emperor Claudius came in the wake of the victorious soldiers, he landed there and proclaimed Britain as his.”

  Looking at the ink marks on the spread parchment, Gwenhwyfar began absently kneading the taut muscles of her husband’s shoulders. He arched himself into the feel of her fingers and closed his eyes a moment.

  “I have no doubt Hengest is familiar with that knowledge also. The great white monument to Claudius no longer stands, but it is the legend, the spirit of Rutupiae, that counts. It is Britain’s gateway. By drawing his army up within sight of those walls Hengest is proclaiming what is his, just as Claudius did.” His eyes snapped open, his hand caught hers and pulled her round to sit across his lap. “Except when Rome came, they were the mightier power – and we still carry that legacy of Rome. Hengest does not. I wish you had remained at Durobrivae with Llacheu.”

  Looping her arms around his neck, Gwenhwyfar kissed the tip of his nose. “Liar. You wish I had remained with him at Caer Leon.”

  Arthur laughed, kissed her with a warmth that betrayed his need. “Part of me, the sensible part, should have ordered you to stay in safety. The male part of me demands otherwise.”

  She nestled closer to him. His hands slid beneath the heavy blanket, feeling the soft excitement of her skin.

  “The male part of you, eh?” she said, hiding her amusement. Her hands ran over his back, sending a shiver down his spine. Then she was touching his thigh, her fingers moving to a more intimate area of his body. She giggled; his response had been immediate. “Do you refer to this part of you, by chance?”

  For reply, Arthur scooped her up in his arms and carried her over to their bed. Still silent, he stripped with haste, tossing tunic, boots and bracae aside.

  Their lovemaking was fervent, leaving them breathless, skin prickling with sweat and hearts pounding. Arthur sought the blankets and cradled his wife close, her head resting on his shoulder, her copper hair tumbling over his chest. He twisted a strand of it about his fingers, toying with its silkiness.

  “How do you keep this mane of yours so soft?” he asked.

  “By keeping it clean and rinsing it with herbal infusions – camomile, things like that.”

 
; He brought the strand up to his nose, savoured the fresh, clean smell. “Is that what gives it such a perfume? One of the things I have always remembered about you, Cymraes, is your hair.” He ran his fingers through its lush thickness, tugging gently at a tangle. “I can remember the sun shining on it when you were a girl, remember seeing it whirl about you as you rode or ran.” He kissed the end of the strand and then kissed her, a bruising possessive kiss which rekindled his desire.

  Gwenhwyfar laughed as he began caressing her body, with less urgency this time, content to savour her scent and feel. “And you did not wish to come to bed?”

  Arthur lay quiet afterwards, sleep eluding him as he had known it would. Gwenhwyfar, a look of satisfied contentment on her face, slept peacefully, her hand entwined in his. He lay watching her as her lashes flickered and her mouth twitched into a smile. He wondered of what she was dreaming. For all the delights his body had received, he knew he was taking a dreadful risk. Like his men, he was well aware they could be marching into a trap. One that might not hold a bolthole. And he had allowed Gwenhwyfar to enter it with him.

  He placed a butterfly’s touch of a kiss on her forehead. Her clasping hand tightened and she turned in her sleep to snuggle nearer, her body moulding compatibly with his own. What could he have done? Chained her to the wall at Durobrivae? Ordered the rearguard posted there to confine her in the cells? No other method would have kept her there. Gwenhwyfar had stated she would ride with him. He had begun to realise her statements were not to be taken lightly, were fact.

  Cei had argued heatedly against the wisdom of having her with them, yet even he could not deny her determination, and had been forced to admit grudgingly that, contrary to expectation, the men loved her presence.

  Gwenhwyfar had felt rather disgusted when she discovered they regarded her almost as a mascot, but had wit enough to use their amusement to her advantage, turning it rapidly into respect. Word had spread of her ability to fight and defend herself. Arthur’s mounted Artoriani admired her courage. The casual infantry – farmers, traders, men and boys who had responded to Arthur’s call to arms – would tell of Gwenhwyfar, riding beautiful at the Pendragon’s side.