Shadow of the King (106 page)

side of the hearth. Mostly girl-children, a few boys.

“Why so many gone, Bechan?” Archfedd asked, spooning the delicious

venison broth. The ride had been long, and she was hungry.

Medraut added, “My father, to my knowledge, has never before drained so

many Artoriani from the Caer. Always, he left a minimum of three turmae.”

One hundred men, plus those who could not, for various reasons, report for

duty. Caer Cadan was a place of great importance, the symbol of a king, its

6 4 2 H e l e n H o l l i c k

defence as strategic as any border. Only when Arthur had been thought dead

had it fallen this silent, this unused.

“More broth?” Bechan asked Archfedd.

“I understand from the gatekeeper the senior command here is placed with

a man named Marcus Alexios.” Medraut persisted with his questioning, aware

she was reluctant to speak with him. “I do not know him.”

“I believe I do,” Archfedd interjected. “A big man, with hair as red as a

fox’s brush?”

“A competent man,” Bechan confirmed, offering her wine. “Decurion of

Blue Turma. He is out with a hunting party.”

Archfedd nodded. Aye, Marcus Alexios, as Bechan said, a competent man.

But not one of her father’s best, certainly not the one she would have expected

her father to leave in command here. Bechan poured wine for Medraut, her

lips pressed closed; busied herself with her youngest a while, seeing to soiled

clothing, his feeding. Medraut exchanged a glance with his half-sister. There

was something here Bechan was not willing to speak of. It shouted at them

with the clarion of the war horns.

“My father,” Medraut began, trying again, “has been warring with Cerdic

the Saxon since the day of his son’s birthing.”

“You would know much of that matter.” It was not quite spoken with

hostility, but there was a sharpness there, a distinct rebuttal.

“They have met in battle before.” He forced Bechan to meet his eyes,

momentarily only, for the woman dipped her head, concentrated on suckling

her babe. “In the name of God, Bechan,” Medraut insisted, “what is happening?

What is different about this confrontation?”

“You need ask?” she responded with a quick hiss of anger. “You, who served

with Cerdic? Accepted shelter within his Hal .” Annoyed, Medraut was about to

snap an answer when Archfedd set her hand on his arm, a brief shake of her head.

“That was in the past, Bechan. We heard our father was il . That is why we have

come here. Surely…” She paused, regarded the woman with a look that showed

al too plain whose daughter she was, her head dipped to one side, one eyebrow

raised, the other eye slight closed. “Surely,” she repeated, “he is now well?”

Bechan had started to rock her child backwards and forwards, the slow,

rhythmical movement of a mother with her babe, a comfort from grief. She

lifted the child to beneath her chin, held him close, protective. She was silently

weeping, her face buried in the bundle that was the child. Her eldest boy

climbed to his feet, went behind her, placed his hands on her shoulders.

S h a d o w o f t h e k i n g 6 4 3

“
Na
,” she said, through her tears. “
Na
, he is well enough but…” She lifted

her head, wiped at her face, “but would you expect a man of his years, who

is still weakened by the fever, to go into battle? That,” she said with sudden

venom lashing at Medraut, “ought be for a loyal son to do!”

Medraut was shocked. Her hatred so virulent.

“My father says you are a traitor,” the lad behind Bechan sniped. “He says,

if you were a son worthy of his father, you would not have turned against him,

would not have taken up with the Saxons.”

Startled at the attack, Archfedd defended her brother, who sat stunned, mute.

“My brother is no traitor, else I would not be with him! What happened in the

past has been misconstrued—and he was with Cerdic to spy for us, the British.

His life was daily at risk.”

The boy spat saliva into the fire, sending sparks hissing, showing he did not

believe her. The woman had not attempted to reprimand her son, to silence him.

“Is this how others think?” Archfedd snapped, jumping to her feet, her fists

resting on her hips. “Is this why we have been greeted by hostility and lack of

manners? I remind you of who I am. Of who my brother is.”

Medraut dropped his head into the cup of his hands. Would the mistakes of

the past never leave? Had they all, then, assumed the worst of him this while?

The letters he had sent these years to his father and Gwenhwyfar, the gifts.

Had they not been recognised for what they were, a willingness to apologise,

to ask forgiveness? Gwenhwyfar had answered him—once or twice only, he

admitted—but surely with Arthur’s approval? Now he was not so sure. Had he

left it too long to come back? Twelve years too long.

“Aye,” Bechan said to Archfedd, her nose wrinkling as if there were some

foul smell in the place. “We know who your brother is. A Saex-loving cur who

deserted his father. Who tore Lord Arthur’s heart, and cared not he had done so.”

She said no more, but the words in her eyes were as plain as any spoken.
Desertion
,

the worst crime a soldier could commit, worse even than murder or rape.

Again, Archfedd hotly spoke up. “My brother is no deserter. He is here—we

are here—to join our father. We ride again within the hour.”

Medraut lifted his head from his hands, caught at her arm. “You must stay

here, I will go.”

“Aye,” Bechan sneered her contempt. “You will go. To the Pendragon? Or

are you to run to Cerdic, tell him what you now know? That no lord cared

to answer your father’s summons. That after Cerdic had threatened the king

here at his own hearth, the lords melted back to their own lands like mist on a

6 4 4 H e l e n H o l l i c k

summer’s morn. Is that why you are here? To confirm to the Saex the British

lords are like you, cowards and unwhelped pups who will not fight with their

king because they know he cannot win?”

“My father does not need the help of the lords,” Archfedd boasted. “He has

fought often enough with Artoriani alone. He does not make use of mercenary

force unless it is necessary.” She spun on her heel, flounced for the open door,

calling Medraut to follow.

Slowly, he stood. He brought a dagger into his hand, a slim-bladed, beau-

tifully crafted thing. The battered, misshapen gold ring on his hand glinted.

How, as a child, he had wanted that dagger as his own! How heavy it had been

to carry since the day his father had given it.

He lifted his eyes, regarded the woman who was also standing, the babe,

full-fed, draped over her shoulder, her son, arms folded in attitude of defiance,

beside her.

“I am no traitor,” he said. “I left my father because I knew how it pained him

to see, daily, that I was, as you rightly say, a cowardly, unwhelped pup. I have

never fought, I have never seen battle.” Medraut swallowed. “In all my miser-

able life, I have never held the courage to harm another man.” He could hear

Archfedd outside, making her way up towards the stables, bellowing orders to

have fresh horses immediately saddled. He turned to go, but at the door-place

retraced his steps, back again to the hearth-fire.

“To take all the Artoriani with him and leave so few here, I am thinking it

must be, this time then, necessary?”

The woman nodded. A single, jerked movement of confirmation.

Five

Cerdicesford, the English called it later, when the mess of battle

was cleared away, when the ravens had glutted their bellies on the carnage

and the bones had began to bleach as the sun rode with blazing heat for most

of that summer, across the sky.

Where the sloping hills came down to the marsh river, Cerdic waited for

his father, and there took stand against the Artoriani. Ready, this time, with

a thousand men behind his banner, ready to withstand the fear of the horses,

ready to fight until an end should take one of them.

They rode, as ever, the Artoriani; wearing red cloaks and white tunics, their

hearts high, large with courage. They rode with pride behind the Pendragon’s

Banner, knowing they faced an opponent who, this time, would not run.

The officers, the Decurions. One of them husband to Bechan, a woman who

had a brood of children to care for at Caer Cadan, who would be, within the

first hour of fighting, a widow. The turmae, red, blue, green, all the others,

thirty men to each; bold, fearless men who loved their lord above all else. Even

life itself.

Many, too many, almost all, put that love to the ultimate test that day at

Cerdicesford.

Beside the Pendragon, his kindred, those he loved. To his left, his wife,

Gwenhwyfar, her hair tied in a single braid for battle, in her hand her sword,

the one he had given her, oh, so long, long ago. Next to her, Archfedd. She

had never fought before in battle and Arthur had ordered her away, but she

had too much of him and her mother bred within her. Too damned stubborn.

Bedwyr would have preferred to have ridden with them, to have been beside

Gwenhwyfar, for to die with her would be better than dying without her, but

he had the left to command, his task it was to stop the Saex crossing the river,

from coming behind. He failed. There were not enough of the British. Too

many of the English.

6 4 6 H e l e n H o l l i c k

To Arthur’s right, his son, pale-faced and fearful. Not of the Saxons, even

though there were so many. So many!
Na
, he was afraid he might again fail

his father.

“
Take heart,
”
Arthur had said to him as they waited, the horses fretful, wanting

to be released, to run, to charge that shield-wall of Saxons that prickled death

over there, beside the rush of the river. “
Dying is not so bad. It can only happen

to you the
once.
”

He had smiled at his son. And Medraut knew, then, whatever else might

happen, he would do his best for his father, the Pendragon.

The stars. Uncountable, scattered as if some great, godly hand had recklessly

tossed them there against the beauty of that vast, unending expanse of darkness.

The land stretched quiet in sleep, with only the creatures of the night scut-

tling between the pockets of shadow. The air smelt deliciously warm and damp,

a heady, pleasant, earthy scent of summer. The streams chattered as they rushed;

the wider, slower rivers bumbling along, while the night-calm water of the lake

beneath Yns Witrin shimmered gracefully under the caress of a light, teasing,

night breeze. A few waves lapped dreamily against the rushes. A frog plopped

below the surface; a nesting waterbird rustled, agitated.

Gwenhwyfar, the protective height of the Tor at her back, knelt beside her

lord, the fold of her bloodied and torn cloak draping over him. The night was

mild, but he was cold, his hands, his face, without warmth. Her head was up,

her green eyes gazing, unseeing, over the spread of the star-silvered Summer

Land. An immense feeling of unbearable loneliness was tightening about her

shoulders, heavy, weighted, like an ill-made cloak.

They had brought him here—she, Archfedd, and Bedwyr—a difficult

journey, knowing what they left behind and what they faced. But it was best

to travel quickly and in secret, to seem no more than any landowner with a

horse-drawn cart travelling away from the great victory of the Saxons, and

the revenge that would be Cerdic’s. Alhough that word would not, yet, have

spread. It would. Very soon, it would.

Archfedd was sleeping, curled beneath her cloak, the tears dried on her

cheeks streaked against the smatter of blood. She would return to Llawfrodedd,

raise her sons into manhood, but for Archfedd, for all the years she was still to

live, she would never laugh again, nor flinch at the cruelties one man could

inflict upon another. For Camlann, as the British named it—the battle that

finally ended Roman Britain and made Cerdic into the first king of the dynasty

of Wessex—Camlann would never be superseded by anything, anything at all.

S h a d o w o f t h e k i n g 6 4 7

Bedwyr was nearby, somewhere beside the lake, cleaning the wound to his

arm, Gwenhwyfar thought. They would put Arthur’s sword there soon, give it

into the waters so none might find it and use it for their own. So Cerdic would

never, even by chance, have it.

At least Cynric had not been there among the Saxons, at least he had not

fought against his grandsire—his father? Once, Gwenhwyfar had heard Cynric

was said to have been Arthur’s son. Had heard it from that Saxon of Mathild’s.

It was nonsense of course…and yet…ah, it would have been well to know

Arthur’s seed would one day rule the English with honour and respect.

A sigh, falling as quiet as an autumn-curled leaf escaped Arthur’s breath.

Gwenhwyfar’s head dropped to look at him, her fingers tightening, with such

love, around his.