Warriors of Camlann

by N. M. Browne

  Dan nodded at Bryn who washed his hands in the bowl of holy water Frontalis kept for his ministrations. Brother Frontalis either did not notice or did not think it inappropriate, because he said nothing.

  Dan could not help but admire the self-control with which the young boy set about his task. He was trembling when he first took the harp from its case, but by the time he had carefully tuned the strings he had regained his composure.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  Now that he was faced with the reality of the small boy, the harp and the unmoving figure of Taliesin, Dan was not at all sure. ‘Is there something special that Taliesin taught you?’

  ‘Everything Taliesin taught me was special – he is Taliesin.’

  Fortunately, Bryn seemed to understand what Dan meant. Concentrating very hard, he began to play. The first two notes were tentative, the phrasing clumsy, but despite that the incredibly sweet tone of Taliesin’s harp triumphed. Bryn continued and as he grew in confidence Dan could feel himself enraptured by the sound of the harp as if it were itself magical. When Bryn started to sing, all the hairs on Dan’s neck rose at the unearthly purity of his soprano voice. His voice took a more complex melody than the simple accompaniment of the harp. It was a song Dan had not heard before, about hearth and home and longing, and the boy put all his experience of loss and loneliness into the melody which soared with such loveliness that Dan suddenly ached for home. He held the song in his mind, imagined he was broadcasting it through the night, calling out to the lost bard.

  ‘Come, Taliesin, come back! We need you!’

  Dan kept repeating the thought like a homing beacon to bring Taliesin home. For a moment, Dan saw the barracks from another vantage point high above the city, flying by moonlight in an unfamiliar night. He could see the warm light of lanterns, bright in the blackness, and abruptly he was back in the room, listening to Bryn end his song. There was a fluttering of wings and for a fraction of an instant he thought he saw the image of a small bird hovering over the prone body of Taliesin.

  Dan did not know what to say.

  Luckily Brother Frontalis did. ‘God has blessed you, Bryn, with the voice an angel would sell his soul for. I have not heard you sing before. You have a gift that you should offer to God.’

  ‘It was a beacon of light in the darkness, and he didn’t do so badly on my harp.’ The voice that croaked so dryly was Taliesin’s own.

  ‘My thanks to all of you, for you have brought me home.’

  Dan rushed to Taliesin’s side. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I will be. It was no more than an old man’s arrogance overestimating my strength. Did Arturus get the message?’

  ‘We are mobilising at dawn.’

  ‘Good. I will sleep now. Mind how you put the harp away, Bryn – you did it justice tonight.’

  Bryn was stunned into silence by the compliment.

  Dan patted him on the shoulder. ‘I wish I’d known you had such talent. Bryn, you should not be a warrior but a bard!’

  ‘I chose the way of the warrior when my father was killed, when you saved me and I laid my sword at your service. I don’t think I chose badly.’ Bryn spoke pointedly, reminding Dan of his own obligations to his sworn man.

  ‘Don’t you?’ Dan asked, sadly.

  ‘A song cannot destroy the Aengliscs and give us peace.’

  ‘No, but a voice like yours can be a torch of beauty and hope and the promise of joy in men’s darkest hours. It is part of what we fight for and hope to attain – a glimpse of heaven on Earth.’ Brother Frontalis stood and looked at Bryn with his frank gaze. ‘If I could sing like that I would never speak again!’

  Bryn looked embarrassed.

  ‘It’s late, Bryn. Do you want to sleep in the stables or would you rather I arranged for you to have a bed at the inn again?’

  ‘Why – because I can sing?’

  ‘No, because I should have asked you that before. You are my squire and I have not treated you with enough respect.’

  Bryn smiled. ‘Thank you. I would have liked that before, but now I think I’d rather stay with Braveheart. I help to keep him warm and make sure nobody bothers him in the night. He’d miss me.’

  Dan’s smile of response was strained. ‘Come on, I’ll walk you back there. You have done good work tonight.’

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Ursula waited with the Sarmatians at the city gate. It was shortly after dawn and in the thin grey light five hundred horses and as many armoured men waited to ride out to battle. The cobbled city street echoed to the sounds of the low murmurs of men steadying horses too tightly packed together, and of well-trained mounts showing their discomfort in the tossing of manes and pawing of cobbles. She leant forward to pat Dan’s hound. Though as a war dog he was well used to horses, he did not like to be so close to so many and showed his uncertainty in the flattening of his ears against his huge, wolfish head. He growled a low rumble of warning for anyone foolish enough to stray too close. Although there was a lot of noise it was curiously muted. Everyone was waiting. Everyone was anxious to be gone.

  Ursula had seen Arturus before he left at the head of the command column. His manner had been unexpectedly warm. He had looked more like a king than she had ever seen him, his eyes bright and blazing with a kind of certainty. She found, rather to her surprise, that she trusted him. He had briefed her swiftly but clearly. She was to stay with the heavy cavalry and if trouble should arise be ready to ride back to warn and defend the baggage train. The journey would take three days for Arturus’s army. It did not help at all for Ursula to reflect that the journey could have been covered within hours in an ordinary family car.

  The air was still damp and cool. The feeble light did little to warm up the morning. In the unforgiving dawn light the assembled men looked haggard and strained, creased by sleep and the stress of action promised but not yet begun. Ursula shivered with cold and with a kind of fear. She was grateful for the many layers of clothing she wore to protect her from the chafing of her mail shirt. Her upper body was warm but, even though she had quite well-fitting leather boots, and what passed for socks, her feet were far from warm. It didn’t seem to bother anybody else – it was one of the disadvantages of her soft twenty-first-century upbringing. The horse’s breath steamed in the air making a kind of mist around the Cataphracts. Someone blew a horn loud and shrill, sending a shiver through the waiting company. As they passed through the city gates she briefly saw the distant banners of the light cavalry far away down the straight Roman road. They were off. Men reined in their mounts to let her and the giant war dog, Braveheart, pass to join the head of the column. The scent of damp horse flesh, dung and leather and the complex stench of stale sweat and oiled weapons, ale-flavoured breath, and men’s hair made for a heady mixture, pungent and unfamiliar. It reminded Ursula, should such a reminder be necessary, that she was far from home. The rhythmic sound of so many horses on the stone cobbles, the jangle of harnesses, the creak of leather armour and saddles, and a hundred other noises which she could not identify made the experience of riding with these men indescribably alien to Ursula – yet some atavistic instinct made her blood sing to its strange music. A light wind lifted her hair and brought with it the powerful cocktail of smells that was an army on the move. She felt invulnerable. So many competent horsemen, well armed and trained; so many powerful horses, strong and fast, and she was part of it. She rode to the living rhythm and yet common sense told her there was risk in the tight formation, the rolling tide of horsepower. There was little room to manoeuvre should there be trouble. The road was narrow and they rode three abreast, a metre maybe more between ranks. She turned in her saddle to see the breathtaking sight of fully armoured, Sarmatian horsemen riding to war in a column that stretched half a kilometre back from where she rode with Cynfach at the head. Directly behind her in scarlet-lacquered leather and gleaming silver helmets rode the standard bearer with the crimson and golden draco, fully inflated as he rode. Next to him came the two
horn blowers, one with the long bronze lituus and the other a tuba. They, like many of the cavalry, carried full face masks over their shoulders, which they would use only when they charged in battle. The masks bounced at their shoulders like a second silver face. The effect was disconcerting.

  Cynfach smiled at Ursula’s obvious awe. He could not know how primitive, how barbaric and yet how frighteningly powerful it all seemed to her and she did not explain. Cynfach was enormously proud of the unbroken tradition of which he was a part and she encouraged him to talk about it. She had always preferred to listen rather than talk. When Ursula had first begun training with them, Cynfach had explained about the various musical signals used for commanding troops in the field and delivering instructions at camp. Now, he was anxious to tell her how that complexity had been distilled or debased down to a very limited number of blasts, to which his troops were trained to respond. Ursula knew the ones that related to charge, retreat, and turn, but was interested in the others which in the camp would mark the hours of the watch. Even that was a less scientific task than in the glory days of Rome, as no one had contrived to preserve a working water clock to mark the night hours.

  She was interested in what he had to say at first, but found her mind drifting as he warmed to his lecture. It was a relief when Larcius, having galloped along the fields beside the roads, unexpectedly caught up with them.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ Cynfach’s tone was only just polite – he disapproved of Larcius.

  Ambrosius Larcius looked magnificent in a short red cloak and polished metal scale armour. His handsome face glowed with health and vigour under the shining bronze and gold of his helmet. He smiled, flashing unusually good teeth, unbroken and white.

  ‘Not at all. Everything is going according to plan. It’s just that I was delayed persuading Gwynefa that she ought not ride with us against the High King’s orders – that took a while. She was determined to ride with her father’s Sarmatians.’

  ‘I did not know that she had an interest in war,’ said Cynfach coldly.

  ‘It is wholly due to the inspiration of Lady Ursa,’ Larcius continued, apparently impervious to the chilliness of Cynfach’s response. ‘I think the Queen aspires to be a great war leader, since her father’s troops are surely the best in Britannia.’

  Cynfach remained stony despite the compliment.

  ‘You are to ride with us, Larcius?’ Ursula asked.

  ‘The High King asked me to escort you, Lady Ursa, to ensure no harm comes to you.’

  ‘Are you sure it was not the other way around?’ Cynfach asked pointedly, but before Larcius could reply he added, ‘I will check my men. Excuse me.’

  Larcius and Ursula rode in uncomfortable silence until Ursula asked, ‘Why did you not let Gwynefa ride with the men – surely it would have done no harm?’

  ‘She is a young girl – the Sarmatians may not always mind their language in her company. Moreover, this is not a festival ride – we could be attacked.’

  ‘I would have thought she would be as safe in the middle of five hundred heavy cavalry as in the keep of any fortress and I don’t think she’s going to die if she hears a rude word is she?’

  Ursula found herself quite irritated by Larcius’s attitude. From the little she’d seen of Gwynefa she seemed entirely able to handle herself in any company. Half of her own Latin vocabulary would probably never be taught in school.

  ‘Gwynefa is not like you, Lady Ursa. She has been raised more or less as a Roman lady. She is used to the comforts due to a princess of Rheged and now those due to a queen.’

  Ursula bit back a retort that she herself was used to central heating, electric light, the internal combustion engine, and warm feet.

  ‘Lady Ursa, you seem annoyed – have I offended you with talk of the Queen? I fear she is too much on my mind.’

  Ursula was about to launch into a diatribe about his patronising attitude to women when she became aware that Larcius was trying to tell her something quite different. Larcius so contorted the Latin language to emulate what he considered to be good archaic Latin that she often had trouble making sense of his mangled syntax. This time she really did think he was trying to be direct. She responded more cautiously.

  ‘And why is that, Larcius, why is Gwynefa on your mind?’

  ‘I told you we knew each other when we were young. Well, it was a bit more than that. We were at one time informally betrothed – while my father lived and before I went to live in Armorica. King Meirchion wanted an alliance with my father. It was always assumed that I would be his successor.’

  ‘Oh!’ Ursula flushed, uncertain why Larcius was confiding in her and equally unsure as to how to respond.

  ‘Did Gwynefa not object to marrying someone else?’

  Larcius looked at her oddly. ‘Gwynefa was a princess of Rheged – she was always going to marry to cement a political alliance.’

  Ursula said nothing but remembered that Rhonwen was a princess, too, and she had kicked up quite a fuss when told who she might marry.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I wish I had not gone to Armorica. Things would have been different. There would not have been a rift with my father and—’

  ‘You would have been High King?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Larcius smiled at her and she felt a sudden weakness in her legs. He was so much more attractive when he stopped trying to turn everything into a compliment. He had the most beautifully expressive eyes, which turned her sinews to water. She was not used to feeling that way.

  ‘You could help me if you chose, Lady Ursa. You are so beautiful and different – I know that if you would accept my courtship, I would more easily forget my past.’ He sounded earnest and Ursula was ambushed by conflicting emotions – a larger part of her than she had expected was thrilled that he thought her beautiful and wanted to ‘court’ her. He was the most handsome and desirable man she had ever met, but the Ursula who had spent her life being mocked and excluded because of her appearance felt a resurgence of all her old stubborn pride. It was that Ursula who responded.

  ‘Where I come from, Larcius, being second best is not a compliment.’

  There was nowhere to go on the narrow road. She wanted to spur her horse forward and gallop away from him and the hot flush of embarrassment she could feel on her face.

  ‘I meant no insult, Lady Ursa, I have the greatest respect for you – for your beauty and your skill.’

  The unspoken ‘but’ angered her more. ‘As we have already established, Larcius, I am not of gentle birth, the bad language of the Sarmatians is perfectly suitable for my ears and I could kill you in combat without breaking sweat. Your respect for me is very different from your respect for Gwynefa – I won’t be second choice, a kind of consolation prize.’

  ‘My what?’

  Inadvertently, Ursula had resorted to an English expression for which she could find no equivalent. She had run out of words to express her own confusion. She did not want to be treated like Gwynefa, she could not stand the fawning compliments, the constraints under which she was forced to live. On the other hand, she did not want to be seen as some kind of exotic animal, a wilder, freer woman whom Larcius might want for reasons she didn’t want to explore. She was aware of the contradiction but could not possibly explain it.

  ‘I am sorry if I have caused you offence, Lady Ursa.’ Larcius spoke with more sincerity than she had expected. ‘Ursa, you saved my life, I don’t want your ill will. You are not like the other women I know, I thought I could be blunter with you. I see now that I have erred.’

  She was moved in spite of herself by his apparent honesty. ‘I’m sorry, Larcius. I find you very attractive but I don’t want to be used as a distraction from the love of your life. I want to be the love of your life – or nothing.’

  She choked on the last word. Ursula could hardly believe she was saying this stuff. She never used the word ‘love’. She squirmed in her seat and shrank away from the words as if to disown them almost
as soon as she uttered them. She dropped her eyes and began to be fascinated by the fineness of her horse’s mane, the texture of his glossy coat.

  ‘We are not so different then,’ said Larcius softly. ‘Two romantics in an unromantic world.’

  A denial was almost on Ursula’s lips, but it was true. She had never realised it before. She was a romantic. She wished she’d kept her mouth shut. She did not want that to get around the Sarmatians, it was not the image she fought so hard to project.

  Fortunately, further conversation was avoided by the return of Cynfach.

  ‘All is in good order.’ He gave a terse smile of relief.

  Ursula remembered that for all his knowledge and apparent confidence he was an untried commander of Arturus’s best troops. She smiled too. ‘How long to camp?’

  ‘We will eat in the saddle and make full camp tonight.’ His anxious excitement was scarcely suppressed. ‘We’re on our way now. The Aenglisc won’t know what’s hit them!’

  Taliesin sipped soup cautiously, struggling to control his shaking limbs.

  ‘I think you might be able to help me, Dan. What you’ve got, this empathy thing is one part of a wider gift. I think you could lend my merlin form more strength and power so that I could scout longer and further without this happening. It would be of huge use to Arturus.’

  Dan, picking at his own meal of bread and soup, looked uncertain. ‘I don’t know. You’re not exactly an advert for it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I mean the state you’re in does not encourage me to follow your example, but I suppose we have to try it.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Brother Frontalis firmly, ‘the High King has asked for the three of us to follow on to the fortress. We’re to travel in one of the wagons. Arturus wasn’t sure Taliesin would be in any state to ride. I think, Gawain, that you should wear your armour under your cloak – just in case.’

  ‘Just in case of what?’

  ‘Oh, ambush, insurrection, armed confrontation, that kind of thing.’