Hawk of May

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “Be careful,” snapped Morgawse. “The alliances will be unsettled, and one can never rely on any alliance in Britain. There will be other claimants to the title before this war is ended, and too many kingdoms have not yet declared themselves.”

  Lot nodded, without breaking his step. “Of course. And we must separate the kings as much as possible; and see that we divide the spoils evenly with our allies—Diuran can help with that, and Aidan. And then there must be time and a blind eye to blood feuds, at intervals, but we cannot let the Ui Niaill begin fighting or there’ll be no stopping it.” He fell silent, considering how to control blood feuds. In the end, he would ask Morgawse, and she would tell him what she had long before thought out, and it would work.

  Feeling very nervous, I managed to stammer, “W-what about Arthur?”

  Lot scarcely glanced at me, though Morgawse gave me a sharp look. Arthur had been Uther’s war-leader and, if half the stories told were true, the High King’s warband would follow him, Uther or no Uther. Because of this Arthur had power, although he was only one of Uther’s bastards and a clanless man. He could have no claim to the Pendragonship himself, but he was certainly in a position to make a High King.

  “Arthur?” Lot shrugged, still thinking of blood feuds. “He will support no one. He will continue to fight the Saxons, with the royal warband—or as much of it as he can support.”

  “Be careful,” Morgawse warned again, even more sharply. “The lord Arthur is dangerous. He is the finest war-leader in Britain, and he will not remain neutral if he is provoked.”

  “Oh, have no fear.” Lot was still casual. “I will be very careful of your precious half-brother. I’ve seen him command.”

  “So have I.” Her voice was soft, but Lot stopped, meeting her eyes for a moment. He was silent, looking at her. It seemed for a moment as though the sunlight paled, and the dust hung frozen in the air, and some chasm opened behind the world. I shivered. I recognized that dark light in her eyes. Hate, the black tide that had drowned Uther, turning his friends to enemies, stirring up foreign invasion and civil dissension, until at last that chasm had swallowed him, perhaps…and now Morgawse’s hatred turned towards Arthur. I wondered again how Uther had died.

  Agravain shifted slightly. He had stood silently during the talk, his eyes glowing with excitement. He knew that, with his fifteenth birthday in another month, he was old enough to be taken along on the campaign. Now, in the stillness, he burst in with “Am I coming?”

  My father remembered us, spun about, grinning again. He crossed the room to my brother and slapped him on the shoulder. “Of course. Why do you think I called you? We leave next month, in March. I am giving Diuran charge of half the warband and the auxiliaries from the Hebrides, and I will give him charge of you as well. Pay attention, and he will show you how a warband is run.”

  Agravain ignored the question of how to run warbands and plunged into what excited him. “Can I fight in the battles?”

  Lot grinned even more, resting his hand on Agravain’s shoulder. “So eager? You are not to fight until I am certain you know how—but no one learns to fight by casting spears at targets. You will go into the battles.”

  Agravain seized Lot’s hand, kissed it, ablaze with delight. “Thank you, Father!”

  Lot threw his arms about his first-born son, gave him a rough hug, shook him, laughing. “It is well. You will receive arms tomorrow, early, you and the others who are of age. Go and tell Orlamh that he is to prepare you for the ceremony.”

  Agravain left the room to tell Orlamh, my father’s chief druid, and was nearly jumping with delight at each step. I turned to follow him, but my father said, “Gwalchmai. Wait.”

  The room seemed to shrink into a trap. I turned back and waited.

  When Agravain was gone, Lot went to the lamp table and picked up his goblet, poured some wine into it. The sunlight struck it, bringing out a deep red fire as he poured it. He sat down on the bed and stared at me, weighing me up. I had felt that stare often enough before, but still I shifted uneasily and avoided his eyes. My father sighed.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “What?” I looked at the bedspread.

  My father’s voice went on: “Your brother is very excited about this war, and eager to prove himself and win honor for himself and for our clan. What of you?”

  “I’m not old enough for the war,” I said nervously. “I still have at least two more years in the Boys’ House. And everyone knows that I’m a poor warrior.” I glanced up at Lot.

  The corners of his mouth drew down. “Yes, everyone knows that.” He drank some more of the wine. The sunlight caught on his gold collar and brooch, glittered on his hair, making him look more like Lugh the sun god than ever. He looked over to my mother. “I don’t understand it.”

  I became angry. Another thing that everyone knew was that my younger brother Medraut was not Lot’s son, though no one knew whose he was, and Lot suspected something similar of me. I certainly do not look like my father, as Agravain does. I resemble my mother enough to disguise any other inheritance. Though I sometimes doubted myself whether I was Lot’s son, I didn’t like Lot to do it.

  He caught my anger. “Oh? What is it now?”

  Afraid again, I forced myself to relax. “Nothing.”

  Lot sighed deeply and rubbed his forehead. “I am going away next month. It is to a war, which means I may not come back. I do not think that I shall die this time, but one must be prepared. So, since I will have other things to think of until I leave, I want to know, now…” he dropped his hand and stared at me fiercely, his hot eyes full of energy and arrogance and harsh brightness. “I wish to know, Gwalchmai, what you are going to become.”

  Paralysed, I fumbled for an answer, finally replied, “I don’t know,” simply, and met his eyes. I held them for an instant.

  He slammed his fist against the lamp table and swore softly. “By the wind, by the Hounds of Hell, you don’t know! I will tell you: I don’t know either. But I wonder. You are a member of a kingly clan, son of a king and a High King’s daughter. I am a war-leader, your mother a planner of wars. And what can you do but ride horses and play songs on the harp? Oh, to be sure, to be a bard is an honorable profession—but not for the sons of kings. And now we go off to war, Agravain and the clan and I. If Agravain is killed, or should our ally Gwlgawd prove a traitor, do you know what will become of you?”

  “I could not be king!” I said, shocked. “You can choose anyone in our clan as your successor, Diuran or Aidan or anyone, and all of them better suited than me.”

  “But they are not my sons. I want one of my sons to be king after me.” Lot stared a little while longer. “But I would not choose you.”

  “You could not,” I said.

  “And it does not even make you angry?” asked my father, bitterly.

  “Why should it? I don’t want to be king.”

  “Then what do you want to be?”

  I dropped my eyes again. “I don’t know.”

  Lot stood, violently. “You must! I want to know what you will become while I am away at war!”

  I shook my head. Desperation loosened my tongue. “I’m sorry, Father. I don’t know. Only…not a king, or a bard, or…I don’t know. I want something, something else. I don’t know what it is. I can’t be a proper warrior, I’ve no talent for it. But one day…nothing is important enough now, but sometimes I have dreams and…and there is something in songs. And once I dreamt about a sword, burning, with a lot of red around it, and the sun and the sea…”I lost myself in my thoughts, trying to name what it was that moved within me. “I can’t understand it yet. But it is important that I wait for it, because it is more important to fight for this than for anything—only I don’t understand what it is…” I trailed off weakly, met my father’s eyes again, and again looked away.

  Lot waited for more, realized there was none, and sho
ok his head. “I do not understand you. You speak like a druid, pretending to prophesy. Do you want to be a druid? I thought not. What, then?”

  “I don’t know,” I said wretchedly, and stared at the floor. I could feel his eyes still on me, but I did not look up again. After a bit the rushes sounded as he walked back to the bed.

  “Well, I expected as much.” His voice was cold and brisk. “You don’t even know what you are speaking of, and you can’t fight. When a quarrel begins, instead of standing up you run off. Agravain and your teachers say that you are afraid. Afraid. A coward. That’s what they call you in the Boys’ House, I hear. One without honor.”

  I bit my lip to hold back the angry shout. I cared something for my honor, but I didn’t look on it as others looked on theirs. Perhaps, I thought, it is not the same thing.

  “Stay here at Dun Fionn, then,” said Lot. “Go and play your harp and ride your horses. Now get out of here.”

  I turned to leave, but just as I reached the door I felt my mother’s eyes on me and looked back. I realized suddenly that she had been watching me ever since I had spoken of my dreams. Her eyes were darker than night and more beautiful than stars. When they met mine she smiled, a slow, secret, wonderful smile that was mine alone.

  As I left the room, my misery lightened by her notice, I felt her eyes following me into the open air. And, even though I worshipped her, even though I could set her smile in the balance with my father’s anger and be contented, still I wondered again how her father Uther had died, and was uneasy.

  Two

  My father sent out the call to the kings of the Orcades, telling them to gather their warbands, the rest of their men and their ships and supplies and come to Dun Fionn. Slowly they began arriving, tall men in brightly colored cloaks, warriors glittering with jewelry, their sharp long-bladed thrusting spears glinting, short throwing spears in quivers and swords on baldrics flashing by their sides. Their whitewashed shields were flung over their shoulders, and often painted or enamelled with bright colors. The kings and finest warriors wore chain mail, imported from northern Britain or from Gaul, shining like fish scales. Lesser men had leather jerkins sewn with metal. The warriors brought their war-hounds, great grey beasts whose collars shone with silver, and hawks sat on the shoulders of the kings, ruffling sharp-edged feathers and glaring with brilliant eyes. They came and encamped about Dun Fionn, a camp from each island that was subject to my father, and more from the Picts and Dalriada to the south as well as the men from our own tribe. All told, there were more than a thousand professional warriors, and some three thousand other men. Going southeast of Dun Fionn one could see their ships, row upon row of great twenty-oared curraghs, sails furled against their masts. There was a constant coming and going of these ships: going to fetch more supplies or to send messages from Dun Fionn to our allies in Gododdin; coming in with the supplies and messages and more men. About and within Dun Fionn itself was a great hustle and bustle as my father organized and planned and prepared, my mother always beside him. Not only did he have to feed his great host, but to mediate the quarrels between his various under-kings, prevent blood feuds between rival clans, and arrange details of the alliance with Gwlgawd king of Goddodin. I saw little of either him or Morgawse.

  I hung about the fringe of things, staring and wondering. It was the first time I saw my father marshal his power, and I was astounded at the strength displayed before me. I understood, even then, that it could not be supported long in one place without a war. The cost was tremendous. But the bright colors, the splendor, the glitter of arms, the loud, laughing confidence of the warriors and their ready fellowship—these all impressed me immensely and filled me with vague yearnings I did my best to smother. I was no warrior whom any great lord would wish to have in his warband. And yet, and yet, and yet…

  It was glorious. I sometimes wished fiercely, like any other boy on the island, that I was going too, to win honor and fame for myself, my clan and my lord.

  Agravain had no doubts that he would do well in the war. He received his weapons with the other fourteen—and fifteen-year-olds, and strutted and boasted more and louder than any of them. He picked fights with me even more frequently than usual, being so stiff with tension and eagerness that his temper snapped, as they say, at a footfall.

  In mid-March the army sailed for Gododdin. They would make their way about the coast of southern Pictland by sail or oar, as the wind held, then follow the estuary which halves Manau Gododdin, and beach their ships near Gododdin’s royal fortress, Din Eidyn, and fortify a camp there. My father had been sending letters to various of the kings, including those in alliance with Docmail of Gwynedd, the rival of our ally Gwlgawd in the contest for the High Kingship. As a result, one member of that alliance, Vortipor of Dyfed, was now wavering in his allegiance and likely to desert Docmail at any moment. But it was uncertain whether Vortipor would join my father or claim the Pendragonship for himself. Vortipor was more crafty than a fox, and could not be trusted any more than a viper. He was almost more trouble as an ally than as an enemy. Almost: Dyfed is a strong, rich land, and the men there learned their way of fighting from the Romans. Vortipor himself kept the title of “Protector,” to remind Britain of the days when his province had sheltered the whole island from Irish raiders. Vortipor was himself of Irish descent, but his ways were as Roman as his fighting, and he had support, too much to be ignored. My father and mother had debated for hours over what course he would take and what to do when he took it. From the Boys’ House I could see the light in my father’s room late at night. It was strange to see it dark when the army sailed and Dun Fionn was left with only a token guard. All the lights seemed to have gone with the army, leaving only some torn and yellow patches in the grass, and the black spots where the camp fires had burned.

  Still, from my point of view, the time became a pleasant one. Without Agravain or my father about, I had more freedom than at any time in my life. In the Boys’ House, the training and competition became less rigorous and intense. There were no older boys to bully us, and no more late feasts for the men who trained us to ache from or quarrel about the next day. Most of the boys used the free time to play hurley. I occasionally joined them, but as I am a bad player, spent more of my time at Llyn Gwalch, or in riding about the island.

  The Orcades are very beautiful islands, and gentle ones, despite their British name of Ynysoedd Erch, “Frightful Islands.” The climate is mild, varying only a little throughout the year: in winter it is warmer at Dun Fionn than at Camlann far to the south. The land rolls in low, stony hills covered with short grass and heather which provide pasture for sheep and cattle and a good living for farmers. The wide grey sea, full of fish, pounds eternally at the shore, which is rocky and steep, especially at the west coast of my home island, and sea-birds of all kinds nest in the cliffs. The sound of the sea is always present at Dun Fionn, so much so that it becomes a sound like the beating of one’s heart, too continual to notice. The puffins clamor on the cliff sides, and the gulls wail over the grey-green of the waves, calling to each other across their flashing white wings. The sound of their voices seems almost as beautiful, sometimes, as the voices of the skylarks inland, who on sunny days seem to drip music from the sky like honey from a comb. They say that the land one lives in when young becomes a part of one. I believe this, for even today, the sea and the mourning of the seagulls bring back to me Llyn Gwalch in the mist, with the mist wetness dripping from the heather.

  That spring the islands were particularly beautiful.

  I sometimes rode out with my younger brother Medraut beside me, sharing with him all my thoughts and telling him stories. He thought me a better story-teller than my father’s bard Orlamh and, though this was only because he was unused to the bardic style, it delighted me.

  Medraut was seven at the time, a beautiful child. Whoever his father was, I was sure he must be noble. Medraut had fair hair of a paler shade than Lot’s, and wide grey eye
s. His complexion was our mother’s, his features his unknown father’s. But his spirit was closer to Lot’s. He wanted to be a warrior, and had no doubts that he would be. His favorite tales were those of CuChulainn, the hero of Ulster. He was very brave, being altogether unafraid of tall horses and weapons and bulls and other such things most children fear. Once, when we were climbing down the cliff to look for gulls’ eggs, he slipped and hung by his hands from a narrow ledge until I could come and help him. When I asked him if he had not been afraid (and I was shaking with fear) he stared at me in surprise and answered no, why should he have been? He had known, he said, that I would save him. Not only was he brave (and generous as a High King and fierce as a wildcat: qualities of a great warrior) but he also loved and admired me. I could not understand both of these existing together, but I accepted them joyfully and gave to him all I had, save what would bewilder him. Though precocious, he was only seven, and that is too young to care for dreams properly.

  At times, though, instead of playing at Llyn Gwalch or with Medraut or riding about the island, I practiced with my weapons on my own. Until that time I had been the despair of my teachers, who were all aging members of the royal clan, men who had fought for my father and for his father before him, and who could not understand why, when they had finished giving their set lessons to me and the other noble boys, I should spend my time playing the harp or disappearing into unknown parts of the island. I needed more practice, they told me; I ought to spend my time with spears, not harps and horses. And in the past I had always said nothing, and vanished as soon as their backs were turned. But now the sight of the great host had moved something in me, and I strove to improve myself in the arts of war. To my surprise, I discovered that I was doing better, and not only because I was practicing more. Without Agravain at my elbow with every spear I threw, without his friends and our cousins taunting me when I practiced with spear or sword, I could throw or thrust straighter and more strongly.