In Winter's Shadow (23 page)

“You must tell Arthur, of course,” I said, then swallowed and cleared my throat, for my voice was rough.

“I could not betray you.”

This surprised me, and I stared at him, saw that he meant it. It hurt. “You must,” I repeated. “It is your plain duty to your sworn lord. And it is better that Arthur learns of it from you than from Medraut and his friends, and better that he learns privately, and can take steps to ease the effect the news will have.” He continued to look at me without agreeing. “Gwalchmai, the thing is certain to come out somehow, eventually, if not by you than by some other. You could not betray us any more than we have already betrayed ourselves.”

He shook his head. “I have been your friend, I hope, and your friendship has meant much to me. My son adores you above the Blessed Virgin. And Bedwyr has been a brother to me since first I came to Camlann, for all that he has been afraid to speak with me these past months. How can I betray you to disgrace, to exile or death? And how could I tell my lord that his wife and his closest friend are unfaithful to him? If this thing will be discovered anyway, let it be discovered without treachery from me. But I beg you, my lady, as you love your husband, your friends, and the kingdom, end this thing. I would plead with Bedwyr, but when you scarcely hear me, I know that he would not.”

He was so desperate, so caught with love for all of us, that I said, “I will try,” and half believed I would. I wished that I were dead. In a way, I supposed it would be better if I were; it would certainly be a better end to our problems than discovery. But there were blind hopes and immediate needs to meet me every day, and I did not want to kill myself. Bedwyr and I might yet successfully deceive everyone, or the situation in Camlann might improve and we might end our relationship.

I finished the wine, trying to compose myself, then walked with Gwalchmai back to the Hall.

I had arranged a tryst with Bedwyr that afternoon. Camlann was large, and much land was enclosed within its walls. Some of this had not been built on, and a few stray trees, young oak, birch, and alder, straggled up the slope on the east. I knew that no one was taking their pigs or cattle there that afternoon, and there was a storage shed built against the wall where I had arranged to meet Bedwyr. He was there before me. I heard him humming the tune Gwalchmai had played as I came down the hill, and my heart leapt.

Bedwyr was sitting on a tree-stump before the shed, holding in his hand the white wing-feather of some bird, turning it this way and that. He heard my feet among the remnant of last year’s leaves, and stood, his face lighting with that warm smile. The wind was among the trees, and the sun danced through the branches, and I knew that it was hopeless: that I could not tell him that it was over, and go.

“Gwalchmai knows,” I said, coming up to him. “But he will tell no one. He is unwilling to betray us. But he begs us to make an end of it.”

Bedwyr’s smile vanished, but he had already put his arms around me. I leaned my hand against his shoulder, feeling the sun warm against my back, longing for a moment of light and joy among the shadows. “We must end it,” I whispered.

“We must,” he returned, but neither of us moved.

Early in June Arthur left Camlann to visit the king of Elmet, who was quarreling with the king of the East Angles but did not wish to bring the dispute to us for our official judgment. Bedwyr and I were once again left in charge of the fortress and, more surprisingly, Gwalchmai remained there as well. Arthur wished to give the warrior a rest, and hoped that Gwalchmai could keep an eye on his brother.

The tension in the fortress became very great. Some of Medraut’s followers may even have suspected Bedwyr and me of meaning to seize power while Arthur was away. At any rate, there was a duel shortly after he left, and one of our faction was killed. His opponent was badly injured, and when we had him sent to Gruffydd for healing, further violence almost erupted. Gruffydd’s sympathies were well known, and many of the men believed he would either poison the wounded man or let him die of neglect. In the end Bedwyr and I managed to settle the matter without more fighting—we announced that Arthur would sentence the man on his return; we forbade Medraut’s faction’s setting up a guard; and we allowed the man’s friends to stay by him unofficially until he was well enough to be moved to a friend’s house. At least we did not have to keep him a prisoner: he was far too sick to escape. But still there was muttering in the fortress, and comments of “cunning whore” and “upstart foreigner” behind our backs. There were no more duels, but this was largely because the tension had grown so great that the two factions no longer insulted each other by ones and twos. The next quarrel, I felt, would risk not a duel but armed conflict throughout the fortress. But this was something I did not think Medraut was quite ready for, so I waited, as he did, in silence.

Some two weeks after Arthur left, shortly before he was due to return, I ordered a feast. The tension had ebbed a little, and I thought that a feast, full of songs about the old war, might bring back some memory of the old comradeship, and ease things further. Moreover, since it was a private feast, the women could share the tables with their men, and they unquestionably eased the tension.

It went very well, at first. Cei had asked my permission to bring his mistress Maire up to sit beside him, and she duly appeared in her best gown and some borrowed jewelery, as excited as a young child and laughing delightedly at the slightest excuse. Nearly everyone at the high table began laughing as well, and by the time the meal was over and we had heard several old eulogies from Taliesin, it seemed almost as though Medraut had never come to Camlann, even though he was sitting silent in our midst. The lower tables were full of laughter and joking and old battles refought. Taliesin came and sat at the end of the high table and smiling, passed his harp to Gwalchmai, saying that he was tired of singing and that it was someone else’s turn. Gwalchmai laughed and played some Irish song about the spring which he had put into British some while before, then offered the harp to Bedwyr. Bedwyr was in an exceptionally good mood: he took it, smiling, and said, “So I am to play first after you, and look a fool? Why don’t you give it to Cei, and make him look a fool? But if I must…” and he played a one-handed setting of a Latin poem I was fond of. He did not have a fine voice, but his harping was excellent: sparse, difficult, powerful. When he finished he offered the harp to me. But harping was one of the things I had neglected in favor of reading when I was young, so I declined to play, and instead offered the harp to Medraut, who sat on my left.

Medraut took it, smiling with all courtesy, and began to play the prelude to the tale of Blodeuwedd—a song about an adulteress. He ostentatiously caught my eye before he actually began to sing, however, looked disconcerted, paused just long enough for it to be noticeable to anyone who was listening—then began to play something else. It was very neatly done, an insinuation made perfectly plain without a word spoken, and all I could do was look calm, smile, and pretend that I was too innocent even to notice it.

But when Medraut finished his song and offered the harp to Gwyn, who sat next to him, Gwyn accepted it with a very grave look. He pulled at a few of the strings hesitantly, as though they were out of tune, then looked up resolutely. “I do not see why you did not finish the first song you played,” he told Medraut in a clear, carrying voice. “Was the harp tuned to the wrong mode?”

Medraut’s smile was unchanged, but his eyes glittered. He had hated Gwyn passionately from the moment he learned that the youth was his brother’s son, and so merited hatred rather than contempt. Dissembler as he was, he had obvious difficulty in disguising that hatred. Gwyn, of course, made no futile attempts to hide his loathing for Medraut, and a peculiar honesty prevailed between them.

“No,” said Medraut. “But I thought the tale too long, and not suitable for the present company.”

Gwyn smiled, pulling a few more of the strings. “Indeed, it would have bored us all—it has been sung so often that everyone knows it by heart. Nor is it suitable because of any great truth in it—I was talking to a priest, a learned man, the other week, and he said it is a pagan tale about the old gods, and is altogether false and wicked.” Maire giggled at this, and an instant later there was another ripple of laughter from everyone who had been following the talk. Gwyn looked at me, his smile changing into a look of wonderful and secret delight, sharing his pleasure at Medraut’s discomfiture.

I smiled back, loving the boy. “Play that song you were playing in the Hall the other day,” I suggested. “It had a lovely tune, but I couldn’t hear the words clearly.”

Gwyn flushed slightly. “Oh, that song. It is of little value—but since it is you who ask for it, my lady, I will sing it.”

From this I gathered that the song was of his own composing, and tried to look serious and attentive again. Gwyn played a short prelude and sang,

Where are you going? The whitethorn quickens

Up on the hill where the blackbird’s singing,

While down the stream beds water wakens

As fresh from the sea the wind comes, bringing

The black-backed swallows from the blue south shaken:

Where are you going?

I ride to the east where the streams are flowing

White with the snows and the haste of waters

Over the bright rocks and green weeds going

Into the swirl of the swollen river

That over the cloud-shadowed fields goes rolling

Off to the eastward.

I ride east to war, and no more linger

For life is brief, gone sooner than springtime,

Sooner than sun-glint goes from the river:

Why, then, delay till the coming of noon-tide

Or complain about death in the face of the winter?

Soon comes the cold, and no spring stays forever.

It was, indeed, a lovely melody, with a curious lilt that ran through the mind unexpectedly when one thought it forgotten. Cei, however, who was sitting next to Gwyn, took the harp with a snort when the youth finished.

“You are a fine one to be singing about death, puppy,” he said. “You’ve never ridden east to face the Saxons, and God send you’ll never need to. It would be a cruel shame for a maker of sweet songs to die on a Saxon sword.”

Gwyn smiled. “I hope that the Saxon would die, not me. Sing a sweet song yourself, most noble Cei.”

Just before Cei could strike up, Medraut leant forward across the table and interposed. “There would be no fear of your being killed by a Saxon, nephew. I do not think you would see much of a battle.”

Cei responded to this before Gwyn could. “What do you mean?” he asked, in the tone of polite inquiry which meant he wished a fight.

Medraut smiled contemptuously. “Even if our young hero went to the battle, or took up some quarrel in a duel, do you think his father would allow him to risk his tender limbs among hostile swords? Oh no! Even in the grip of his famous battle madness, my brother would tremble with paternal fear, and chase glory from the field.”

Gwyn went pale and his eyes glinted, and Gwalchmai interrupted at once: “You are much mistaken, brother. Neither would I command my son to be a coward, nor would he be so commanded if I did. I have seen my friends killed in battle, and know well enough that some griefs must be borne.” There was a pause, and Medraut and Gwalchmai watched each other in apparent calm but with a dark undercurrent of total understanding and irreconcilable opposition. “Of course,” Gwalchmai went on in a tone too casual for the tension, “if my son were forced or tricked into some quarrel, or murdered by treachery, that would be altogether different. Death in an equal contention must be borne as one bears death by flood or fever, but the laws promote justice to those who have been wronged, and to obtain justice in such a cause I would go to the ends of the earth; I would take no blood-price, and spare no life in the world for pleading or claims upon me. And such is only right in cases of deceit or treachery—but in battle one must trust to one’s own skill and the mercy of God.”

Medraut dropped his eyes, but Gwalchmai continued to stare unwaveringly. Gwyn also watched, uneasy, his hand looped through his baldric and resting beside the hilt of his sword. “Of course,” Medraut said in a low voice. “Everyone knows your passion for justice—even justice for an imagined evil, brother. And, of course, your son is able to defend himself. He takes after you in that—as in other things.” He looked up again, his pale eyes malignant.

“In what other things?” demanded Gwyn.

Medraut smiled cruelly. “Why, you both abandoned your homes and kin, scorned your mothers as though they were strangers, and left them to die.”

Gwyn’s hand closed about his sword, and he began to jump up. Medraut added at once, “But, of course, I know nothing about that. And the law does not permit me to quarrel with my kinsmen, or fight duels with my own blood. My lords and lady, and I am grown unaccountably weary; I hope you will forgive any rough words that I may have spoken, and excuse me the rest of the feast. Good night.”

He stood and left the Hall. As he did so a number of other warriors rose, looking confused and surprised, and hurried out after him. Cei, still holding the harp, spat at their retreat. “Lost his temper for once,” he observed of Medraut. “We’re well rid of them.” He struck up a harsh marching song. Gwyn sat looking after Medraut, clenching and unclenching his grip on the hilt of his sword; then turned his head away. Gwalchmai watched him silently with concern.

When the feast was over, I was not at peace with Cei’s conclusion that Medraut had simply lost his temper when he came so near to offering to fight Gwyn. To be sure, he hated the youth, and could not conceal his hatred, but Medraut rarely did or said anything not dictated by policy. I could not quite believe this; I had never seen the face behind that gold mask, and I did not think I had seen it yet. If Arthur had been there we would have discussed what had happened for hours. In a way, I was glad he was absent and I did not have to talk about it, but the sheer habit of conversation kept me up. The house seemed very cold and empty, without my husband sitting at the desk waiting for me to come in. What with the tension and the extra work I had not spent much time in it recently, and the servant who had cleaned it had been the last person there, and had left it wiped clean of all character, like a guest house. I sat on the bed, took down my hair and combed it out, then found that I was too tense, and missed Arthur too much, to be able to lie down and rest. I went into the conference room and looked through some business at the desk, but could not concentrate. I sat and stared at the lamp until everything was black around the blue of its flame, and I thought upon the scene that had just passed, and on other scenes, and came to no conclusions. I put the lamp out, then went to the door. Outside the Hall loomed black and tall beside the house, blotting out the moon. Beyond its shadow the grass, the paths, the hunched shapes of the houses lay clear and plain, bleached colorless by the wan moonlight. But from Bedwyr’s house came a warmer glow, the buttercup yellow light of a lamp. Bedwyr’s servant would be asleep in his own house, at this hour, and no one else was about. I stood a moment, looking, then went out, closing the door behind me.

Bedwyr was sitting on the threshold of his house, staring at the moon and singing, very softly,

My pulse and my secret is she

The scented flower of the apple tree…

He saw me and stopped singing. He rose, stepped forward from the lamplight into the moonlight, and the moon made him pale as death. “I wondered whether you would come,” he said. “Welcome.”

The moon had laid a chill on my heart, and I pulled him from the cold light into the house. He closed the door. The fire was burning brightly on the hearth, and the lamp cast a warm dim light over the plain room, over the rack of books and the silver wine pitcher with the two cups set on the table. Bedwyr smiled at me and poured some wine, saying, as he handed me the cup. “I thought you might come, my lady. Your hair is very beautiful like that.”