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Inside,
they were met by a half-hearted hail of reluctant greeting. The vaulted
entrance hall was filled with men, most
doggedly
wearing the formal white toga, the status symbol of a free Roman citizen. A
stark reminder of where the majority still
laid their loyalty.

His own face wearing a bright smile that cleverly masked
his
annoyance, Arthur surveyed the nearest expressions. He
had
not
wanted to come, but even a king must occasionally bear witness before a
summoning of the Council of All Britain. Unfortunately.

He
raised his hand, broadened his placid smile. ‘Peace be upon you, my most
learned and wise men!’
A few muttered,
polite responses. Someone stepped forward;
Patricius, the recently appointed Archbishop of Southern
Britain. ‘We expected you yester eve,’ he said
curtly,
accusingly.

Did
you?’ Arthur’s hand moved casually to his sword, his
fingers toying with its familiar feel. ‘It is most pleasing that you
grieve
at missing my company for twenty and four hours!’
From away to the left came a ripple of deep laughter, two men
pushed
their way through the crowd. Gwenhwyfar squealed,
and darting past Arthur, ran to meet them, her arms out
stretched.
She was hugging each of the men in turn, her joy at
seeing them immense. ‘My brothers! Ceredig and Enniaun!’
She took a step backwards, her hands resting
lightly on
Ceredig’s arm, her eyes
roaming, pleased, over the both of
them. ‘How well you both look!’ Arthur,
smiling broad welcome, embraced the two men with strong affection, clasping
Enniaun’s large hand in his own. He
said, ‘For
reasons best not recalled, it has been a long while
since Gwynedd last
joined with the Council of Britain. It is good that you have come.’ He slapped
his hand on the man’s shoulder, ‘Most good. Welcome, my Lord Enniaun, welcome!’
From the time before Enniaun had become Lord, when his father, Cunedda, had
been the Lion Lord of Gwynedd,
representatives
from that mountainous corner had been
deliberately
absent from Council. Vortigern had been King
then, not Arthur, and it
had been the King’s own nephew who
had
butchered Cunedda’s youngest son and violated
Gwenhwyfar, his only
daughter. It had been a bad time of
darkness
and bloodshed, and because of it, Gwynedd had taken
herself away from
the destruction of Britain and claimed independence. Enniaun called himself
prince, though many
others of his thinking
were claiming the right to title of king, as
it had been in the Old Ways, before the coming of Rome. Ah, the differences between the men who had grown fat
from the
authority of Rome, and those who
had found that her
dominance left them lean and trodden under heel! A
voice from somewhere near the back of the crowd carried an insult: ‘So the wasps
gather around the rotting fruit!’
Embarrassed
silence. Men shuffled, dared not look at the
next man or at Arthur.
Enniaun broke the acute discomfort by suddenly laughing, his great voice
booming up to the vaulted ceiling and hanging there a moment before echoing
along the
walls. He hugged his sister,
grinned at Arthur, and said clearly,
‘I would rather say bees! Worker
bees constant to their hive!’ A few ripples of laughter, mostly false.

Lindum’s Governor hastily motioned slaves forward to
serve
refreshment. Fine wine, pastries and fruits. The awkward
moment of
tension passed, people relaxed, began to eat and drink.

The
Governor dabbed sweat from his forehead. He did not
welcome Arthur, wished him gone — wished him dead — but it
would
not do to have the Supreme King and the great Council
of Britain at each other’s throats and brawling within the
entrance
hall to his basilica.

Time
enough for that in its rightful place; on the morrow,
within the confine of the Council Chamber; when they
intended to
curb the arrogance of the royal whelp.

§ XIV

Arthur
slept poorly that night, tossing and turning beside Gwenhwyfar, mumbling
through restless dreams. Some time during the long hours before dawn,
Gwenhwyfar slid yawning
from the bed to
pour a generous goblet of wine for each of them.

‘
Sorry, Cymraes,’ Arthur apologised as
he took the offered
drink. ‘I am unused to
sleeping within doors, the noises of night
filtering through my tent is
preferable to the heavy silence of
stone
walls.’ A thing from childhood, not easily shaken, this
fear of
confinement, but for all that, this was an excuse.

‘It
has never bothered you before,’ she replied, sliding back into bed beside him.
Her feet had become chilled even during the short while she had been out from
under the warmth of the
furs. She sipped her
wine, the warmth of its rich redness
trickling
down her throat and into her belly. ‘Does the calling of
this Council
worry you so much?’ she asked.

A
rthur took several gulps of his wine before
swinging his legs
from the bed, letting his bare feet dangle. He played
with the
goblet a moment, finished the
contents, then with sudden
irritation
flung it across the room to clang against the stone
walls and land, dented, on the floor, where it
bounced twice
and rolled beneath a stool.

Gwenhwyfar
remained still, sipped her drink. ‘Since we left Winta’s village you have
favoured a public image of good humour. The pretence does not fool me, husband.’
He half turned to her with a sheepish smile. ‘Am I so easily read?’ Gwenhwyfar
placed her goblet on the floor and, wriggling across the bed, took his face
between her palms and kissed his
lips. ‘I
know what you are thinking as surely as I know my own
thoughts. I hurt
when you hurt, laugh when you laugh. That is part of loving the man who is as
important as the sun, moon, earth and sky to me.’

‘Unfortunately,’
he said, returning her kiss, ‘you are not my Council.’
She laughed, playfully ruffled his
untidy hair. ‘Glad I am then, that I am not!’ She eased her legs more
comfortably.

‘
Mithras, you look forward to meeting with your Council
with as much enthusiasm as you would give to entering a plague-infested
slave-pen!’ He saw her point, and laughing with her, swept her close to him,
burying his head among her tumbled mass of copper-gold hair. Muffled, his voice
said, ‘I almost wept for joy when I saw your two brothers. Gwynedd in her
independence has grown strong. She is a power to be reckoned with.’ Gwenhwyfar
rubbed her hand down his back, her fingers kneading at the tense muscles in his
shoulders. ‘I wrote to
Enniaun asking him for
support,’ she confessed into the dim
light of the night-lit chamber. She
faltered. Hard to decide
between Arthur’s
great need and the horror and blackness of
the past. Those times, as Arthur had said, were best not
recalled,
but too, must never be forgotten. Etern had been her beloved brother. From
early childhood they had run together.
Even
now, after the passing of years she could not wholly
believe his cruel murder, expected one day to see
him walk with
his jaunty swagger
through a door, or hear his favourite whistled
tune.

With a noticeable catch of sad memory, Gwenhwyfar said, ‘It
is time that the wounds were healed.’ She forced a
lighter note.
‘I thought allies for you would not come amiss given the
black mood of your Council.’ Arthur kissed her again in gratitude, once,
gently, on the forehead, then stood, plunging forward with frustrated energy,
slapping the wall with his palm. ‘I ought to
disband Council, do
away with them,
rule alone with no piddling little fat men
trailing their whines and
grumbles between my feet!’ Reaching again for her drink, Gwenhwyfar paused, her
eyes widening. ‘Could you do that?’ He stretched, reaching towards the low
ceiling, muscles
bulging and rippling along
arms, naked back and shoulders. He
yawned, admitted, ‘I doubt it.’

‘
Yet there are some in Council you trust. Loyal
friends, such
as the Governor of Viroconium. Emrys ...’
Arthur snorted. ‘Do the words friend
and Emrys belong together in the same sentence?’
She acknowledged his half-serious jest with a
quick smile and
inclination of her head. ‘He is your uncle.’

‘
He was my father’s brother, but still he did not
support Uthr
against the tyrant,
Vortigern. Brothers, or fathers and sons,
have killed for less disagreement than I and Emrys have
regarding
the ending of Roman authority.’ Gwenhwyfar frowned. ‘Yet he is loyal to you?’
Arthur puffed his cheeks, sat beside her, rubbed
the cold
from his arms with his
hands. ‘Emrys believes in Rome — Rome
as it is remembered, not as it is
now. He claims I am hastening the fragmentation of the Province with my setting
up of client kingdoms and tribal territories. We are caretakers, he says, we
ought to be holding Britain in trust until the Emperor is free to
return.’ He placed one hand on her shoulder,
touched and
enjoyed the smoothness of her skin a moment, let his fingers
drift across her neck, lie above the beat
of her pulse. ‘He would not back my father because Uthr was stirring war and he
would
not take part in a squabble
concerning the parcelling out of
goods
unlawfully taken.’ His fingers rambled lower, touched the
swell of his
wife’s breast. ‘Though for all his difference of opinion, Emrys has one
quality. Never will he go back on an
oath —
and as appointed Governor of Caer Gloui, he has sworn
allegiance to me. Whatever Council argue, I expect
Uncle
Emrys to stand firm for me.’
His lips kissed where his fingers had
lain. It sounded convincing enough
when spoken, but was it
truth? If Council
intended to replace him with one of their own
choosing ... Would they choose Emrys? He spoke another
thought
aloud, his lips hovering above a second caress. ‘Trust Emrys as a friend? Na,
Gwenhwyfar, never that.’ He moved from her, searched with his eyes for his
goblet,
went to retrieve it and fetched a
jar of wine. His back to the bed,
he
said, ‘Until the day I can turn Hasta loose to graze peacefully
in the
summer sun, I need to put faith in Mithras’s protection, and pray that men like
Emrys see sense above personal belief.’ He drained the goblet, placed it with
exaggerated care on the table next to the wine jug. He lifted his arms,
stretched, and let them fall with a slap to his bare thighs. He turned to face
Gwenhwyfar. ‘I have little faith in prayer, my Cymraes.’ Returning to the bed,
he flopped down, lay on his back with
hands
flung behind his head. ‘Why can they not see that if they
were to leave
defence and security to me, then I would be only
too happy to leave alone their irritating little domestic worries?
A king is as strong as his army — and although our
numbers are
not great, I command the best. The best ever.’

‘They
feel threatened, Arthur. Frightened. They see you
as
a mighty and
powerful man who could crush them at the drop of
your hand. Some of those men in Council saw Vortigern rise from poverty
to supreme authority — those who did not see it with their
own eyes, heard from the lips of their fathers.
They saw hideous
things happening
with Vortigern’s blessings — and they fear that
worse may come with yours. Look what happened when Vortigern
hired
Hengest to fight for him! The bloodshed and enmity that followed! They see you
doing the same. You show trust in the
Saex,
giving more to them than to the British. They see the Saex
are your friends — as they were friends and
kindred to Vortigern. Hengest’s daughter was Vortigern’s wife, their daughter
once your
wife. I also strongly
doubted the wisdom of treating with them.’
He turned his head to her. ‘Ah, but you were prepared to
listen
to me, to go see the results of a treaty for yourself.’ Gwenhwyfar conceded a
smile, laid herself on top of her
husband,
her body moulding to his. ‘Not at first. I protested
loud, as I recall,
at being forced to go among them.’ His sword- and rein-calloused hands stroked
the softness of
her back, running over the
curve of her buttocks. ‘Changed
your mind though, didn’t you?’
She answered, contrite, ‘They are men and women
who wish
to grow their crops and raise their children in peace.’
Wickedly teasing he replied, ‘That’s not what you
said as we
rode north one year since. "Heathen, uncouth
savages" you called them.’