Hawk of May (31 page)

By the time I reached Arthur's camp the fires had burned down to embers. My leg ached violently, I was soaked and frozen by the rain, and I wanted nothing so much as some warm, strong mead. I was stopped briefly by a sentry, who, recognizing me, welcomed me warmly and inquired about my leg. I told him that it had healed, and also how the other wounded were, and passed through. I left Ceincaled, rubbed down and munching grain, at the picket lines, then limped up to the main fire.

The welcome the warriors gave me was everything I could wish for. They jumped up, crowded around me, welcoming me and asking about my leg and why I came in so late. Agravain gave me one of his bear-hugs saying, “Indeed, so you finally decided
to come back and earn your mead. Welcome! A hundred thousand welcomes home.”

I answered the questions and was given a place next to the fire, some mead, and some food. I settled down gratefully, worn out. Only then did I notice Arthur sitting across the fire from me, unreal in the heat shimmer and watching all of it coldly. I saluted him with the mead horn and took a deep swallow.

Arthur nodded. “So. You have come back to claim my promise.”

I did not feel like stating my decision and having the inevitable argument, but it seemed that I had to. I saw Agravain and several of his party stiffen, saw the rest watch them tensely. Yes, it was definitely right that I leave.

“No, Lord,” I answered quietly. “I have come back only to say farewell. Tomorrow I will ride north, to see if I can return to the Orcades this winter.”

Agravain drew in his breath with a hiss. “Gwalchmai, what do you…”

“What are you saying?” demanded Arthur.

“What do you think you are doing?” asked Cei angrily.

“But the lord Arthur has said that he will accept you,” said Agravain. “You have earned it; you have won.”

“Arthur will accept me because he has no other choice, in honor.” I looked at the High King steadily.

He nodded, “I do not deny it. I used your sword, because I had to, and you were wounded in my service. What do you hope to gain by this talk?”

“Nothing. Not now.” I wished that I could have told them in the morning.

“You have earned acceptance a thousand times over,” said Agravain. “What are you saying, you're going north?”

“I do not wish to be accepted because Arthur is bound in honor to accept me,” I answered. “Call me too proud for it, if you wish.”

“This I do not understand,” said Cei loudly, his voice high with indignation. “All summer you hang about, waiting for an offer from Arthur and turning down half the kings in Britain, and now that you have it, you will not accept it, like a falcon that goes to great trouble to catch a bird it will not eat. By the Hounds of Yffern, the Family is not to be turned aside so lightly!”

“Do you wish me to join, then? If so, you are like that same falcon, trying all summer to make me leave, and then, when…”

Cei glared. “You insult us all, and me most of all. I have a fair mind to…”

“What would that solve?” I asked wearily. “If we fought on foot, you would win; if we fought on horseback, I would win. Everyone knows that, so it would prove nothing. And I have never intended to insult you. You are a noble and courageous man, and I'd be a fool to try.”

Cei blinked as though I had struck him. “You are mad.”

I shrugged. “In battle, yes. No man could think that I want to leave the Family to find a better warband. There are none.”

“Then why will you go?” demanded Agravain.

“What else, in honor, can I do?”

“What do you hope to gain?” Arthur asked again. “Or have you gained it already? Will you return to the Orcades now, and tell your mother that the High King of Britain offered you a place, and you turned him down, like a farmer refusing bad eggs?” His voice was level, but edged with cold fury.

I remembered all of his greatness, and his anger hurt. That, coupled with my pain and weariness, made me speak more plainly than I would have. “Lord,” I said slowly, “I am not the servant of the Queen of Darkness. I will go because I have acted as though I were, because I have divided your Family, on which the fate of Britain rests, even as Morgawse would wish. Lord, I cannot say that I understand these things, but I will not betray them or my lord the Light. It is simpler, Lord, if I go. You have offered now, and I have refused. No one can say that you have wronged me, for it is my own will. The Family will be healed.”

“But you are the best horseman in the Family!” said Agravain. “You cannot go.”

“I can, and will be the best horseman somewhere else.” I swallowed some more mead and rubbed my face with my free hand. “I will go, and that is all. Let us speak of something else.”

Everyone sat silently for a long, long minute, staring at me. I began to eat, trying not to look back at them.

Then the sound of a harp broke the silence. I looked up, and Taliesin smiled at me, then bent his head to his work, bringing the same pure, high notes like a silver thread across the air. It was CuChulainn's song, I realized, and it was also the song in Lugh's Hall, the strong, clear song of renunciation rising about the strains of battle. The rain fell down out of the night and hissed in the embers of the fire. I listened to the music, and, for the first time, understood it.

The song gave me a strength which sustained me the next day when I saddled Ceincaled to ride on. The Family clustered about me, urging me not to go, wishing me a good journey, and giving me gifts. Arthur watched, his face unreadable. I had a pack horse which I loaded with supplies and the gifts, wrapped in a blanket. It hurt to look at the warriors, and there was a tightness in my throat as I knotted the pack on to the bay pack-mare and straightened, holding the lead rope.

At this point, Gruffydd the surgeon came through the crowd, followed, to my surprise, by the woman of the previous night.

“Doctors receive no farewells, is it?” he asked. “Or is it that you are afraid I will look at your leg and tell you to stay down for another week.”

I smiled, dropped the lead rein, came over and took his hand. “Even if you told me to stay down, I would go.”

“And your leg will give you trouble all the way to the Ynysoedd Erch,” he said, nodding. “Well, go berserk and you will not feel it.” He paused and added in a low tone, “Why are you going?”

“Because I must.”

The woman, who had been staring about her, said, “Great lord, I did not understand. Had I known who you were, I would not have stopped you.”

I looked at her curiously, hoping that she did not have a wounded son.

She drew herself up. “My clan is poor, Chieftain, but we have honor. We do not let those who do us kindnesses leave thankless and without reward.” She flushed “Payment I…you would not need. But you have my thanks, Gwalchmai of the Ynysoedd Erch, and the thanks of my clan.”

“But I could not help your man,” I said, much moved.

She shrugged, pushed the heels of her hands against her eyes a moment before replying. “You came, and you tried. It is much.”

Gruffydd looked from her to me. “She came in just now asking for a dark warrior with a limp, who wore a red cloak and had a white stallion. I think I remember her from last night—isn't her husband…”

“He is dead now,” I said.

“Spear through the lungs, she said. I remember now. And you tried to help? That was foolish. Even I could do no good with such a case as that.”

“She didn't tell me that; and there was a chance.” I turned to the woman. “You honor me over-much with your thanks, good woman. I did nothing, and your husband is dead.”

She shrugged again, blinking very quickly. “You came,” she repeated quietly. “A blessing on your road, Chieftain.” She curtseyed awkwardly and turned, still blinking at the tears, and walked through the warriors without looking at them, beginning the long walk home.

“What was all that?” asked Agravain.

“You heard it.”

“Just that? A beggarly fanner's woman, and a farmer himself who was surely dead?”

“She is an honorable woman,” Arthur said sharply, “to come miles into an armed camp to return thanks for an attempt at healing: a noble and brave woman!”

Agravain stared at him in surprise. “My lord?” Then he put the woman from his mind altogether. “Gwalchmai. I do not understand it, but…by the sun.” He looked away. “Take care, my brother.
Slán lead
.”

“God go with you,” said Bedwyr softly.

“A blessing on your road,” said Gruffydd.

I nodded to all of them, turned to Ceincaled. He bowed his proud head, blew at me softly, nibbled at my hair. It
made me smile. I stroked his neck and caught up the reins.

“No,” said Arthur suddenly, in a strained voice. “Wait.”

I dropped the reins, turned back. The High King stood behind the others, his face pale. “Wait,” he repeated. I wondered if he would wish me a good journey as well.

He shook his head violently as if to clear it. “Gwalchmai. I wish to speak to you a moment first. Alone.”

I paused, staring at him, then handed Ceincaled's reins to Agravain. Arthur had already set off for his own tent, and I followed, again in complete confusion. I did not see what there could be to talk about. Perhaps he still felt that he was in honor bound to do something for me. Yes, that was likely.

In the tent he caught up a jug of wine, slowly poured two glasses and offered me one. After a moment of hesitation I took it and stood with it in my hand, staring at him.

“Be seated,” he said, waving to a chair at one side of the tent. I sat, and he himself sank on to his bed. He took a swallow of his wine, then met my eyes.

“I am sorry,” he said, flatly and quietly.

I stared at him in bewilderment. “Lord, there is no need to think that your honor binds you…”

“Forget that,” he said sharply. “Ach, Yffern…” he stood, paced a few steps towards the door, stopped and turned to me again. “I have misjudged you. Badly. And if it can be that you still desire a place in my Family, it is yours.”

I felt as though the sky were caving in. “I do not understand,” I said at last.

“On the banks of the Wir, you asked me whether I was altogether in Darkness,” he replied quietly. “And I was. An old Darkness, and one which I cannot shake off, try as I will.” He turned and began to pace the floor of the tent, looking at nothing with a wide grey stare. “From the beginning, I fought with myself about you. I had heard of you, your reputation, and saw no surprising new reason to trust you, but that was not the thing which decided me against you. No: I knew that you had been close to my sister, deep in her secret counsels, and, by Heaven, you look like her. That was all that was needed. Everything which you did after that I twisted to fit in with my own ideas, twisted to keep you in the Darkness with my sister, and kept myself in the Darkness instead. For which now I say that I am sorry. And yet all of it, the killing, the way you are in battle, the division you caused, the horse which I thought you had captured by spells—all of it was secondary and mattered less to me than the single thought, ‘He knows.' It was that that angered me, and filled me with such horror that I could not…”

“But know what, Lord?”

“Know about your brother, of course.”

“Agravain? I don't see. Why…”

“Not Agravain; of course not. The other one. Medraut.”

Our eyes met again, his hard and tortured, mine confused, and he stood suddenly still as the hardness ebbed out of his and they widened, a straight, grey stare of realization. Medraut's stare.

Arthur sank down on the bed again and began to laugh, horrible choking noises almost like sobs, then pressed his head into his hands. “You do not know. You never did. She never told you.”

I felt coldness in the pit of my stomach, and a sudden black terror. Morgawse, Arthur's sister, and Medraut who looked like Arthur (why hadn't I seen it before?)—and then, laden with horror, the words of Morgawse's curse returning to me: “May the earth swallow me, may the sky fall on me, may the sea overwhelm me if you do not die by your son's hand!”

“Oh, by the Light,” I said.

Arthur straightened and stilled. “And now you do know.”

I jumped to my feet. “My lord, how? I thought she must have touched you, somehow, but this…”

“I consented to it,” he said in a harsh voice. Again we stared at each other for a long moment, and then he said, “I did not know, then, who my father was. I swear it by all that's holy, I did not know she was my sister. She…she…” he stopped again. “She came to me, outside the feast Hall, when first I won fame in the warband of her father Uther. She was staying in Camlann while her husband, Lot, campaigned in the north of Britain. She had singled me out, before then, but then…I was drunk, and happy, and she was more beautiful than a goddess; I consented only to adultery, but I consented to it. And later, Uther asked me about my parentage. I had not talked about it; one doesn't. But I told him, and he remembered my mother, and was pleased that I was his son. When he had gone to tell the others, I remembered her, rushed to warn her—and she…” He stood again, not looking at me, looking back in remembered agony and horror on the moment when he discovered that he had been seduced into incest. “She had known, all along she had known, and greeted me as Arthur ab Uther, and called me brother, and laughed, saying that she bore my child. And ever since I have not been able to so much as think of her without remembering that moment; and the thought that another knew, her son, and perhaps had planned with her—I could not endure it and felt that I must rid myself of you at any cost.”

“My lord,” I said, still staring in horror and pity. “My lord.”

“Oh, indeed. Only you were innocent, and did not even know.” He took another deep drink of the wine, and set the cup down. The grey eyes focused on me again. “You never knew, until I told you.”