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Watching
the pea-sized balls of ice a moment, Cei stared, fascinated as the ground
turned white – then the sudden-come storm ceased. The wind whipped up the dark
clouds and sent them scurrying from a dazzling blue sky. Beyond the tent,
everything dripped and gleamed, the white ice melted into
fairy-sized diamond-drops. ‘For Hengest,’ Cei
continued as if he
had not ceased talking, ‘Council could see reason
behind the
giving of territory. Wrong or
right, he had been originally
invited here to fight on our side by
Vortigern – God rot his mouldering soul.’

‘I
did not give,’ Arthur interrupted. ‘I rent Hengest those
Cantii lands, rent for a large payment of taxation.
He rules
under my gaze and is
ultimately answerable to me. As Icel shall
be, when he edges around to
seeing reason.’

‘Pah!’
Cei swarmed to his feet, toppling his stool backward. ‘Reason? It is already
reasonable that he still has his head and
balls,
it is already reasonable that those who follow him are
alive, not
dangling at the end of ropes!’ Quietly, Arthur finished the mending of the
strap, fixed it
back to the bridle. ‘So I
have Icel executed? And then one day,
one
day very soon, these Anglian settlers will find for
themselves another
cock-proud young princeling to follow and
we
will then need to fight them.’ He stood, hung the bridle on a
nail
jutting from the tent pole, faced his cousin and second-in-
command with outspread hands. ‘I have
shadow-chased this
Anglian leader from the
Treanta river to the coast, from the
Fosse
Way down to the forests. If I grant a legitimate holding of
land then
Icel is beholden to me. And whenever a new cub decides he wants more than a
ploughed field to crow over, he will first have to square that wanting with
Icel, not with me.’
Pouting, Cei answered with, ‘Too
much is being given to these damn Saex. The Council of Britain do not like it.’ His thoughts added
Neither do I.

Arthur grinned, irritatingly friendly, knowing full well
those
unspoken
thoughts. ‘Ah, but then I am the King; a king is
expected to do things that are not liked.’ His grin broadened. ‘A
prerequisite
of the position. The ability to annoy.’ Cei grunted. ‘Oh aye, you have a talent
for rubbing people the wrong way. Always have done, even as a child.’ Arthur
laughed to hide the bitter memory of his unpleasant childhood. The difference
between being a boy and a man was
acute. As a
child, thought to be the bastard brat of a serving girl, Arthur had nothing to
call his own save a battered gold
ring, a dream and a hope of better
things to come. Ill-treated, shunned and tormented by all adults except the man
who later proved to be his true father, childhood had been miserable and
corrupted by fear. He accepted, now that he was grown, that
Uthr Pendragon had to keep his only son hidden from
Vortigern’s ugly malice. Accepted
that, but not the cruelties his
real mother had deliberately turned her
eyes from. Cei’s idle comment hurt. He had tried to please, tried to do right,
but still
received cuffs and kicks, was
still called bastard. Well, it was his
turn now to do the kicking, and
if men called him a bastard, it was for the other meaning of the word.

He poured wine for himself and Cei, said nothing more of
the
subject.
Cei had always been the jealous one. Understandably. The one thing that had
made life tolerable for Arthur as a child
was
the interest Uthr had shown in him – he had not known
why, then. Why Uthr himself taught a bastard-born
to use
shield and spear and sword. Why Uthr himself had taught a
supposed serving girl’s brat how to ride a horse and plan for battle. Why Uthr
had loved a fatherless whore’s cub above theolder boy, Cei, his brother’s son.
He handed the goblet to his cousin. ‘I intend to squeeze everything I can from
Icel. Gold, leather, grain. Hostages. He will find submission hard.’
Righting the stool, Cei seated himself again. ‘What
if he does
not agree to your demands, eh? He might not.’ Arthur sat
also, pushing his booted feet nearer the fluctuating warmth of the brazier. Two
nights until Samhain, the night the dead walked. He would rather be tucked
within the warmth
of Gwenhwyfar’s bed at
Lindum by then. Icel was a proud man,
would welcome death; even the
threat of the living death of
blinding and
male mutilation would not daunt him. There would have to be something more,
some promise of what
Arthur would do if the Anglian did not offer total
submission. The Pendragon had once made such a thing clear to Hengest, and then
not so long since, to Winta of the Humbrenses. ‘Your
people and your family shall pay for
defeat.
The men will lose
their
hands and
eyes, the women
and
children will
be taken
into slavery,
used as whores.
Until
natural
death releases
them, they
will face great
misery and
suffering. Your
settlements will be
burnt, and your
cattle
slaughtered.
Not
you. You
will be taken to a fortress far away. You
will be guarded, but you
will have
light
and warmth and the
best
food;
a
comfortable bed,
even a
woman
to share that
bed
with. On fine
days you
will
be allowed to ride and
hunt,
you
will
be treated as an
honoured guest
with no
privilege spared, save that of
your
freedom to
leave.
And
while you live
in
this
luxury,
you
can
think
of
your wife
and your
children.
Of their
distress
and pain’.

Winta
had seen the sense in not trying his luck against this
British lord who meant every word he said, for Winta was not full
of greed and wanting as Hengest had been, and was
older and wiser
than the young
cox-comb Icel. He valued too highly all that could
be lost were victory not to come his way, and so
had not even tried
for the winning
of it. By joining with the Pendragon his reward
had proved great and welcome. Winta was already a wealthy man,
and by uniting with the British, trade that was
already flourishing,
would increase
– double, treble. Soon he would be able to extend
his held land, amicably, with Arthur’s consent and
permission, for
Winta was wily enough to realise that there was more
than one way to obtain a title of king.

Arthur’s
servant came to light the lamps. Soon it would be time for the officers to
gather again around the fire, laid in the space beyond this tent, between the
sacred place where the
standards of the
Turmae and the Pendragon’s own banner
stood. Time to have Icel brought
before them, and watch his eyes as the King declared his final word.

Arthur
leant sidewards and reached for the wine, refilled his goblet, passed the jug
across to Cei. ‘Icel’s wife and children?’ he asked, ‘although he knew the
answer.

‘
Are held two mile from here.’

‘
Have them fetched up after dark has fallen. Bring them
in, bound and chained.’ Cei scowled displeasure. The youngest is a girl child
of four summers. Even her?’
The Pendragon
sipped his wine. Four summers, the age of his
own son. He shrugged. War was a bloody, distasteful business.
‘Especially her.’ He regarded Cei with the
expression that was a
part of Arthur
as much as his long nose and golden torque — one
eyebrow raised, the other eye half closed; a look of warning. He
would
be obeyed. "Tis you who says I must obtain results. I cannot afford to be
squeamish, Cei. Have men who are not of the Christian faith bring them, who
will not balk should I need to order Icel’s family stripped and passed around
the tents this
night.’ He raised one finger,
stopped the comment rising on
Cei’s
lips. ‘And again, aye, the youngest as well. Icel must bow
to me. Or pay
the price.’

November 459

§
IV

Removing
her foot from the cradle’s rocker, Gwenhwyfar laid aside her distaff, mindful
of the unspun wool, It was cheap, coarse stuff, full of snags; of little use
for weaving anything of quality – it would suffice for the coming baby. Beyond
the
unshuttered windows daylight was fading
into a murky evening.
Night seemed to
fall slowly here above the fenlands, descending
ponderous like a flock
of uncertain wild geese, circling and
circling
those vast, empty skies before finally plucking courage
to land. She
sighed, long and slow, and walked to the window,
easing the ache in her back. A boring, dull, landscape spreading
beyond the enclosing walls of Lindum. Empty
marshland,
empty sky. Empty houses and empty-minded people.

She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. Arthur
had been
gone so long! Moving back to the cradle where her second son slept, she wrapped
her arms around herself and
rocked it
absently with her foot. Gwydre was getting too big for
a cradle, would need to move to a bed when the
new babe came.
Glancing again out of the window, she watched a heron
flap
lazily against the backdrop of
blue-grey, rain-spattered sky. The
year
before, and for years before that, she had accompanied the
Artoriani,
making herself useful among the wounded, for
wherever
there was fighting there would always be the
wounded. This year she was here in this town, an unwilling and
unwelcome
guest.

Lindum
Colonia stood, a defiant bastion of Roman culture,
caught between the people of the Humbrenses to the north, and
persistent
harassing from the Anglians of the south-east. There had been sporadic fighting
between British and Saxon in and around this marshy corner of Britain for years – even before
Rome
had pulled out her Legions to fight her own death
struggle.
Skirmishes and ambushes, farmsteadings and villas looted and burnt, men
slaughtered, women and children
taken as slaves. Atrocities committed and suffered on
both
sides.

Arthur had been forced to prove himself against these
Saex —
aye, and the British — that he was, and would remain,
supreme.
Prove that he was a worthwhile
king. Gwenhwyfar stayed with her husband until the sickness and discomfort of
this pregnancy
became over-much
to bear, then, reluctant, Arthur had
brought her away from his army to
leave her here in Lindum.

From
her second-floor window she could see two of the
narrow, cobbled streets, and a small part of an intersecting
third.
Dark, gloomy places at the best of times, sinister at the
moment, with the onset of this half-light of
evening. There
were people down
there, angry people, milling around the
palace walls, filling those
dark, narrow streets with their ugly shouting and malicious presence. A mob
hammering on the gates, demanding their grievance be heard. Where in the Bull’s
name was Arthur! It was against him they jeered, cursing his name and yelling
disgusting ways to bring about his end. The mistrust of the previous uneasy
days had overspilled into rage and derision,
fuelled
by fear. For rumours had come, brought by traders from
the south,
mischief-makers. There had been a battle they said, a great battle, for they
had seen the churned battlefield and the mounds of the dead. They knew nothing
more, save that Icel was returning to his homesteading, gloating that he now
had
land to call his own. And what of Arthur,
Lindum asked.
Where was he? Why had no official word come to confirm or
deny the tale? There could only be one reason why; a reason Gwenhwyfar would
not, could not contemplate.

She
thought back to the day Arthur had departed, that sun-bright August morning,
through the north gate, escorted by his personal guard with their padded tunics
white-brilliant beneath their scarlet-red, woollen cloaks. A bustling eastern
sea-wind had spilled through the gaping mouth of the tubular, red and gold
Dragon, causing it to leap and writhe as if it were alive. Gwenhwyfar had
watched them leave from the defence wall walkway, watched as her husband rode
away, weeks ago, to fight. She sighed. Ah, but it seemed years! Word had come
ten days past that Icel had summoned his men together, and the two armies had
met. Ten days, with no
more word, save rumours
fanning like wind-whipped fire across
dry grass, and the mood in Lindum
growing as ugly as those
rumours. Arthur had
lost, they said, the Pendragon had failed
to turn Icel’s army. Yet there had come no confirmation of
British failure and death. Where in all the gods’
names was he?
Gwenhwyfar again eased
the incredible ache in her back,
bending her spine to stretch the
discomfort. The babe had his legs pressed there, so Enid told her. What did she
know about
the birthing of babes? She was a
child’s nursemaid, and a
maiden still!
The
two boys, Gwenhwyfar had carried easily — disregarding
those first few
weeks of intermittent nausea, but with this pregnancy, the sickness had barely
stopped. She felt dizzy, her hands and feet were puffed and swollen — she wanted
another son, but, by the Goddess of Wisdom, not this constant illness.