In Winter's Shadow (36 page)

“Let me go!” I said. “You cannot do this!”

He laughed again, tightened his grip, dragging my hands up so that the tears of pain leapt to my eyes. “I can, as you will see. I am going to have you, just as my father had my mother—by force.” He dragged me over to the bed, kicked my legs from under me, fell on top of me. I screamed as loudly as I could, got one of my hands free, found Medraut’s knife in his belt. Medraut swore. I struck out, blindly, found his hand on my wrist again, smelled blood. My hand was forced back, and I could not hold the knife. It fell to the bed, slid onto the floor with a soft clunk. Medraut pressed against me, our breath mingling, trapping my arms with his right hand. His left hand moved slowly down my body, tearing apart the fastenings of my gown. His eyes stared directly into mine, savage, bitter, with a strange, agonized loneliness.

“He did not rape your mother!” I said, using the only weapon left to me—words. “She seduced him. She did it deliberately, because she wished to bear you for his destruction. You are her tool, no more than a tool! Think of her! Oh God, God, help me!”

Medraut’s body went slack against mine. “Lies!” he screamed—screamed like a hurt child. Beneath the horror and the outrage, a little hope stirred in me. Everything Gwalchmai had ever said about his brother returned to me with burning clarity.

“She never loved you,” I told Medraut. “She only loved destruction. Gwalchmai loves you, Arthur wanted to love you, but
she
never loved you. She…she only wanted to devour you. She has devoured your father, she devoured Lot, and Agravain, she devours everything. She has eaten away your soul, and left you alone in the night.”

“Lies!” he cried. He slid off the bed, kneeling beside it and struck out at me. I tried to cover my head and he struck frantic, hysterical blows at my head and shoulders without aiming them. “She loved me! I will kill you…you witch! You proud whore! I…I will…”

He was sobbing. The blows stopped. I shook my head, lowered my hands, and looked at him. His chest was laboring with the sobs, and his face was streaked with tears. When our eyes met he fell silent.

“She is dead,” I said. “And she destroyed you as well.”

He moaned like a man in delirium when his wound is searched. He raised his hands to his face, then brought them down wet with tears. He stared at the tears for a moment uncomprehendingly, then looked up at me, anger growing behind his eyes. He wiped his face, turned, and without another word left the room.

“Tie her so that she cannot reach the fire,” I heard him order the guard as he left, and there was in his voice no trace of smoothness. I collapsed against the wall, trembling and weeping with relief. Thank God.

But would it work again? If he got himself drunk would he care how much I spoke to him of Morgawse? And if he gagged me—I must escape. I must escape from Camlann, if it was by death.

One of the guards came into the house with a strong rope, bound my wrists again, then tied them tightly to the outer post of the bedstead. As he turned to leave he paused, picked something up from the floor, and stood a moment turning it in the firelight. It was Medraut’s knife, and it was streaked with blood. He looked directly at me for the first time, then spat on me deliberately. “Murdering whore,” he said, and strode out.

I lay still, resting my head against my arms. Tied like that I could sit against the bedstead or lie flat with my arms above my head, but could neither stand straight nor move about. I could not have hurt Medraut badly with the knife. My blow had been wild and had not struck anything solid. It must have grazed him somewhere. He would come back and, bound like this, it would be very difficult to work free; difficult even to kill myself.

My thoughts leapt and ran among impossible escapes which grew wilder still as sleep came over me—one can sleep anywhere, if exhausted enough—till I lay moaning in a nightmare. I remember one dream in which I flew from Camlann on the back of the dragon of our standard, while Medraut, transformed to an eagle, flew behind me, drawing nearer and nearer. He reached me and I woke, screaming, feeling the cruel talons on my wrists—but the room was still and empty, and I had only twisted my burned hands against the rope. The gray dawn fell through the smoke-hole, and I lay motionless, staring at it while it brightened slowly into day.

***

I must have fallen asleep again, for when next I opened my eyes there were people in the room. I tried to sit up, caught my wrists against the rope, struggled about until I could swing my legs to the floor and sit leaning wearily against the bedstead. I could not see clearly. One of Medraut’s blows had swollen an eye shut. My bruises ached, my wrists burned again, and my tongue seemed swollen in a scraped, dry mouth. I shook my head, trying to toss my hair out of my eyes, and managed to focus on the others in the room. One was the servant girl who had come the day before, and the other was Medraut’s friend Rhuawn. He was staring at me, in horror or loathing, I could not tell which.

“Rhuawn,” I said, my voice reduced to a croaking whisper.

He gestured to the girl, and she hurried over and untied my wrists, fumbling with the stiff knots. “Do you want some water, noble lady?” she asked in whisper.

“Thank you,” I replied. She had brought a jug of water, and she held it to my lips—my hands were too numb to grip anything, and there were, anyway, no cups in the room. The water was bitterly cold, and stung the raw places in my mouth, so that I could drink only a little of it. The girl set the jug down and built the fire up, then put the rest of the water on to heat.

“Noble lady…” Rhuawn began in a hoarse voice, then trailed off, still staring at me.

“What is it?” I asked coldly.

“I had heard that the lord Medraut meant to…marry you.”

I stared blankly for a moment, then shook my head. “What Medraut told me of his intentions was rather less gentle than matrimony.” Though it might even be true; it would be an impressive public gesture for him to marry the Empress.

“He has beaten you!” Rhuawn’s voice was suddenly loud again. The girl glanced up at him, terrified.

“I was fortunate to escape so.” I said evenly, then bit my lip, for the expression on Rhuawn’s face was now plainly not loathing, but shock and horror. “You do not support him in this!”

He looked away from me at once, and one hand fell to his sword, tightened about its hilt until the bones stood out. “Medraut is my friend and my lord,” he whispered.

“You once swore an oath to Arthur,” I told him, my voice also low. “You once told him that you would raid Yffern itself if he wished it. Now Medraut is your friend, your lord, and you are willing to make war against your friends and your comrades of many battles, to support a usurper to your sworn lord’s kingdom, and stand by while his wife is raped in his own fortress. What real cause did Arthur give you, Rhuawn, for you to betray him? Do not tell me of those rumors and subtly devised slights Medraut has crammed your ears with. Did Arthur ever harm any of your clan or kindred, or stand by and fail to aid you when another injured them? Did he cheat you of your share of plunder? Did he steal your goods, or let them be stolen? Did he ask more of you in battle than he asked of himself?”—Rhuawn said nothing. “What cause has Arthur given you to perjure yourself and forsake him?”

“None,” Rhuawn returned in a whisper. “My lady, I did not believe them when they said Medraut intended this…this crime against you. I did not believe it when they said he sought the purple. And now…now I no longer know what to believe. But Medraut was wronged, and he is my friend.”

I brushed my hair back from my face. The serving girl stared at us in fear, and I struggled to remember her, to try to determine whether she would report this conversation to Medraut. But even if she would repeat every word, I had nothing to lose by speaking.

“Why?” I demanded. “What good has Medraut ever done for you? So, he told you that he did not desire the purple? Now you have learned that that was a lie.”

“He says that the emperor would have him killed if he did not seize power to defend himself.”

“Arthur would do that? Arthur, who bore so patiently with the crime Bedwyr and I committed against him, and would still wish to spare us both, if he could? You know Arthur better than that, Rhuawn. Let me speak plainly. I did try to poison your friend and your lord Medraut, because I feared this very thing that has now come to pass, this civil war, and would rather be damned myself than see the Empire broken by Medraut. But I did not tell my husband, and when he discovered it, he was very angry.” Rhuawn watched me, white-faced, shaken. “Medraut has lied to you all along. He always wanted power—think! Remember him when first he came here! And now that he has power, does he use it justly, mercifully? Does he even tell you his mind? You are afraid of him now, for yourself and for others.”

Rhuawn’s face showed me plainly that I was right, and a desperate, almost overpowering hope leapt in me. I had never thought him evil, only greatly deceived. “Rhuawn,” I whispered. “Help me to escape.”

Abruptly the door opened, and another warrior stood in it, looking at Rhuawn grimly. Rhuawn’s face at once became blank, guarded.

“Lord Rhuawn, you should not be here,” said the other.

“The lord Medraut wished the lady seen to,” Rhuawn stated. “And Mabon on the earlier shift knew of no objections to my seeing to her.”

“You mean ‘the emperor’ wished her seen to,” the guard corrected, giving me a brief glare.

“The Emperor Medraut. I am just going to see him, to speak of her to him.” Rhuawn gave me one more unreadable glance, then left, leaving the other warrior to tie me up again.

The day passed with agonizing slowness. I was brought some food at midmorning, and allowed to stand and wash myself. I welcomed the chance to stand, to tie together as best I might the tears in my gown and wash in the clean water, but had no appetite.

Some while after noon, more food was brought, but this I could not so much as look at, and none was brought that evening. I tried to work my hands free of the ropes, but could not get at the knots, though I twisted my hands about fumbling at them until my wrists bled. The bed frame was all too solidly made, and could not be wrenched apart.

It grew dark. Rhuawn had not returned, and my brief hope seemed senseless. The fear and misery had grown so that I could no longer feel them, but only sit, leaning against the bedstead, forcing a numbed mind to think.

I was sitting like this when I heard voices at the door, and I looked away from the fire to that dark corner of the room which opened on the world.

“I have Medraut’s permission to see her,” Rhuawn’s voice said, protesting.

“The emperor has said nothing about allowing you through,” one of the guards replied.

“I don’t need permission. I have been his friend from the beginning.”

“An increasingly cold friend, Rhuawn ap Dorath, ever since he took the purple. Go away.”

“Very well.” There was a strange grunt.

“What?” came another voice—the other guard. “Hueil—ai!” There was a brief clash of metal on metal, and a gasp. The door burst open and Rhuawn came in, his sword bare, but not shining in the firelight. There was blood on it. He hurried over to me and swung the sword hard against the rope around the bedstead, then caught my hands and dragged me to my feet. “My lady,” he said, “we must hurry.”

“Cut these,” I told him, for my wrists were still bound. He stared at me, and I put my hands against the sword. He saw what I wanted, jerked the blade down between my wrists. The cords parted. I turned back to the room, found the rope of blankets I had made the day before, then followed Rhuawn from the house.

The guards lay by the door, one sprawled across the threshold, staring upward, face twisted in a grimace of pain. His open eyes stared into the darkness of the night, the few wet flakes of snow that drifted from the low sky. Rhuawn stared at him and shook his head. I hesitated, then stopped and unfastened the heavy winter cloak of the one who stared and pulled it loose. I would need it, and he would not feel the cold.

“Yes…good,” Rhuawn said, shaking himself. “And the armlets, take those too. Here, take mine as well: you will need money. I must get your horse.”

“I could not ride her out of the gate, and you could not take her from the stables. But will they let you through the gate? Then take a horse—not mine—and say…say you have a message to Caer Uisc, and are taking a spare mount. Bring the horses round to Llary’s field, on the other side of the wall, to the far end of it. I can climb over the wall there.”

“Yes. I will bring your horse…a horse.” Rhuawn drew a deep breath.

“And yours—do you have time, can you ride out through the gates?” I asked, for he seemed in such confusion that I was not sure he understood me.

“They will not stop me,” he replied.

“Then meet me at the far end of Llary’s field, as soon as you can. At Llary’s field.”

“Yes, yes…I will…fetch the horses.” He shook his head again, and said nothing as I pulled up the hood of my cloak and ran into the darkness.

The fortress was quiet at that time of night, and the few who were about saw me only as a figure hunched against the wind. The snow was falling thicker when I reached the grove where once I had trysted with Bedwyr. I stopped and watched. After a little while a sentry passed on the wall above, and, as soon as he was gone, I hurried over to the storage hut, clambered from the woodpile beside it onto the roof, and from there scrambled up onto the causeway that ran along the side of the wall. I paused, panting from the effort, then fastened my blanket rope to an embrasure, struggled over the top of the wall, climbed a little way down the rope, then fell—my hands were still too numb to grip properly. I twisted my ankle in the fall and sprawled in the mud of the field, but jumped up again and tried to shake the rope loose. It was no use; it would not come. I would simply have to hope that, in the snow, the sentry would not notice it. I stumbled away from the wall, down the ditch and up the bank, and started for the far end of the field, hoping that Rhuawn would manage to get the horses through the gate. I did not think I could walk very far.