Read Shadow of the King Online
Authors: Helen Hollick
Tags: #Contemporary, #British, #9781402218903, #Historical, #Genre Fiction, #Literature & Fiction
words. His father was ageing, though he was barely forty and two years. Grey
was flecking his hair, his skin was drawn, tense. He looked ill. Sympathy
lurched into the son. He made to step forward, to offer his hand to his father.
The crutch tapped on the stone floor, and the man, Ambrosius, involuntarily
recoiled. The brief moment of reconciliation was lost, tossed away.
Some half-heard rumour that would hurt his father turned from thought to
words and Cadwy snarled, “I would almost think this was a planned scheme of
Lady Winifred’s, were I only to see her purpose.” His father’s face had drained
paler, he plunged on, determined to ram the knife deeper. “She needs to be rid
of her brother Vitolinus, needs also to ensure Arthur never returns, the both to
make way for her son. And she has always used you for her purpose. Is that how
it is this time also, father? Save she would not want me back with you, would
want to continue the further soiling of Lady Gwenhwyfar’s name.”
Cadwy froze when his father said, with a tone of ice hatred, “On the
contrary. The Lady Winifred wants you as far as possible from the queen’s bed.
In her own, in fact. I am considering agreeing to her suggestion of alliance. Of
marriage with you.”
1 0 4 H e l e n H o l l i c k
Stunned, speechless. Cadwy stared at his father; then the anger came, the
outrage. “I’ll not be ordered into such a marriage. You shame me, Sir, shame
me!” The path was narrow, on a steep incline and wet from the rain. Cadwy
could not, leaning on his crutch so, walk fast away, but he made an effort at it.
“It would be a way of showing you were with me, boy, not the Pendragon,”
Ambrosius called.
Cadwy stabbed his free hand into the air, an obscene gesture.
“You will obey me, boy!”
Cadwy halted, spun around, his crutch skidding, flying out. “I am no boy. I
am a man grown and I choose my own life. My own wife.”
Ambrosius strode up to him, pushed past, sneered into his face, “You prove
you can be a man, then happen I will treat you as one.” He stalked away, angry
that he had lost his temper, angry that he had mentioned this idiocy about
Winifred. Damn the woman, this was her doing, putting the fool idea into his
head. Never would he want her as a daughter-by-law. Yet, yet, it would mark
Cadwy in his place to enforce such a thing. He marched on, his body screaming
from the pains shooting up and down his legs and spine. Marched on, angry.
Try as he might, he could not find love for his son.
Twenty-Nine
Unfortunate that it need be this night that the Lady Branwen,
haughty abbess of the Glass Isle, discovered to where Ragnall so
often disappeared.
Chance brought events colliding together on a course set for harsh words.
Lady Branwen arose from her bed shortly before dawn with a headache
thumping as if all the horses of hell were pounding across her forehead. These
past days had been full of distress for her—the Isle in turmoil with the influx
of so many come for this Council; and in consequence a few too many of her
women turning attention to the lure of the outside world rather than God’s
pure Word. And her own memories, long forgotten, had re-surged, unbidden,
unwelcome. Heavy with lack of sleep, she splashed cold water on her face,
dressed, elected to walk a while. The freshness of a new day might chase the
weariness from her. She would welcome time, alone, to think.
Without making disturbance, she let herself out of her private chamber,
slipped past the little building that housed the sleeping nuns. Her boots scuffed
the dew-wet grass, leaving silvered tracks. To her left, among the thicket of ash
and alder, a few birds were tuning their morning song. Ahead, the Tor rose
devil-black against the paling grey of early dawn. You could never escape the
presence of the Tor, for it glowered there, a constant reminder of the Heathen,
God’s cursed. Trying to ignore it, to pretend it was not there, she walked up
the rain-muddied lane, setting a good pace despite the soft footing.
It was Gwenhwyfar who had aroused these memories, she who had brought
these troubles flooding back into mind. Always, in the past, it had been
Gwenhwyfar who vexed Branwen so. She breathed deep as she walked, filling
her lungs with the crisp air. She had known Gwenhwyfar from childhood, for
she, Branwen, had been wife to one of her brothers, the second eldest-born
of Cunedda’s large brood. Ah, so many of them dead now. Cunedda himself,
her husband, Osmail; their second-born son. Why had Gwenhwyfar come
1 0 6 H e l e n H o l l i c k
here to haunt her with the past? Stirring those things that ought to have been
buried deep.
Branwen halted, tossed her face up to the swift-lightening sky. Eyes closed,
head back, arms spread wide, she pleaded in her mind for God to give her
comfort, to ease the ache in her heart. It had been His will her man had been
taken, that she should remain here, in this mist-bound place. His decree she
ought raise His word above the old beliefs that so obstinately would not die.
But why, why did these wretched memories have to return?
She opened her tired eyes, looked up, straight at the ancient miz-maze
path that descended from the Tor and her head cleared, her brows furrowed,
lips thinned. Hussy! Heathen-spawned whore! An anger more bitter than
any poisoned berry poured through Branwen, a choking, all-grasping, all-
consuming rage.
Ragnall, making her way carefully down the dew-wet steepness of the slope,
saw the abbess standing in the mud-rutted lane. She stopped, fear gripping her.
Here, on the slope of the Tor, there was nowhere to hide, to run. She searched
frantically back up the path behind her, up to the summit where the Stone was
showing clearer, blacker, against the sky. Had Gwenhwyfar gone, descended
on the other side? Alone, she had to face the wrath of Lady Branwen.
The girl had known that one day she would be discovered, knew the conse-
quences. Until this morning, she had taken such great care never to be seen,
never to walk on these slopes unless the safety of darkness cloaked her, for the
Tor was forbidden to the Holy Sisters. It was a place of evil, and it had many
times been made clear that harsh punishment would be meted to any who
flaunted a preference for the darkness of the devil. Only one, to Ragnall’s
knowledge, had broken that rule. A girl, much of her own age, three years
past…Ragnall shuddered, tried hard to blot out the fearful memory of what
had happened to that girl.
The abbess hurried up to her, her face contorted with the indignation of one
defied and disobeyed, her breath hot, eyes wide, blazing disgust and anger. Her
fingers clamped around Ragnall’s wrist, dragged her without pity or care away
from the place of the Goddess.
The girl wanted to scream, wanted to plead for forgiveness, to defend herself,
but no words would come as she slithered and fell, dragged behind the enraged
woman. A scream, so terrified, so engulfing, was lodged in her throat. If she
opened her mouth it would be let out, never to stop, for too clearly, far too
clearly, could she see that other girl’s death.
S h a d o w o f t h e k i n g 1 0 7
As a child, Ragnall had fallen into the flames of the hearth-fire of her father’s
Hall. The terrible scars on her body were nothing to those that remained in her
mind, nothing to the screams that still choked her in the dark hours of night
when her hand and face and body throbbed from the remembered pain of that
terrible day. Ragnall knew the pain of fire and could see before her eyes, as
the Abbess Branwen took her back to the holy place of the Mother Mary, that
other girl’s tortured death by burning.
Thirty
Gwenhwyfar elected to stay a while longer, savouring the unique,
comforting solitude the Tor offered. She was in no hurry to make her
way back down to the Christian settlement—was in no hurry to be further
humiliated and angered by the arrogance and ambition of men who were plot-
ting to destroy her husband.
Although many came to the Glass Isle for the benefit of their soul, earthly
curiosity still sat with a greater need on their shoulders. This calling of Council
had attracted an unusual amount of visitors to the holy place, some of whom,
it had to be admitted, were more interested in the ramifications of politics
than the peace and blessings of the Christian God. The settlement was a small,
clustered town of taverns, dwellings, and trading stalls, set cheek by jowl
against the timber-built abbey with its attendant chapels and buildings. They
slept where they could find space, crowding the taverns or guest places within
the monastery; word had spread that this Council met with an intention to
overthrow the Pendragon. They gathered with a morbid interest in the verbal
murder of their king.
Gwenhwyfar sat looking eastward, her back comfortable against the granite
of the Stone, watching as the sky paled, the light spreading like an army on the
march across the Summer Land. Darker clouds were gathering in the distance.
It would rain again soon. Once she thought she heard a girl’s scream, but the
wind was powerful up here; it could as easily have been some small animal
taken by an owl. She felt weary, with no energy or spirit. Was it her recent
illness that caused such languor? Or an inner failing? Arthur was losing his
kingdom and there was nothing—nothing—she could do to stop it save wait
and watch. And hope he would come home again, soon.
The sun was rising, a red-golden, warming orb. A rain-laden mist rose,
coming from nowhere, covering the sunken lands that nestled lower than the
high-tide level away over at the coast. It was a mist that swelled with the onrush
S h a d o w o f t h e k i n g 1 0 9
of day, breathing over the willow and alder-pocked grassland that even in the
hottest days of summer held soggy, bog-bound areas of waterlogged marsh.
The birds were busy at this first coming of the day: the cries of the lapwing,
the piping of plovers mixing with the harsh calls of rooks and the shrill chat-
tering of starlings. Gwenhwyfar closed her eyes, rested her head on the Stone.
She was so tired, so bone-weary, heartachingly tired.
The mist had gone when she next looked; she must have slept. Day had
begun in earnest and she was of a sudden hungry. Raking a hand through
her tousled hair, she came to her feet, took one last, long gaze around the
panorama of land that belonged to her husband. This was Arthur’s own held
dominion, these marshes of the Severn Rivers. And over there, where the hills
were smudged against the skyline, lay Dumnonia, also his, and beyond that,
Comovii—and the Land’s End, a few, wave-tossed islands…and the sea. The
sea over which he had gone. Gwenhwyfar fancied she could hear it, hear the
swoosh and rush of waves darting on a shingle shore, smell its salt tang. Maybe
it was only the sound of the gulls that brought the fancy, those birds that, even
in these finer days, preferred to ramble for food among the dykes and marshes.
Slowly, she picked her way down from the Tor, ambled along the lane,
idling here and there to admire a plant, watch a bird. This day would need be
faced, and the next. And the next. It was how she was surviving this vast, empty
loneliness, staggering from one day through to the next.
“My Lady! Lady Gwenhwyfar!”
She stopped, startled, as she lifted the latch that would open the door into the
tavern where she lodged. Turned her head at the urgent calling of her name, saw
Cadwy running, as best he might, up the narrow street that sneaked between
the outer wall and this row of higgle-piggle traders’ shops and dwellings.
She stood, waiting for him, took his arm to steady him as he came up to
her, panting, red-faced, distressed: He gasped a few incoherent words, none,
save the name of the girl Ragnall, making sense. Firm, a little irritable, she
commanded him to regain breath, start where things made sense.
He shook his head, waved his hand, urgent. There was no time! No time!
“Ragnall,” he gasped again. “Caught coming from Tor.” He had his hand
on his chest, trying to ease the pounding of his heart and the burning of his
lungs. “You were up there. You told me you were going there. Did you meet
her? Ragnall? You must do something!” His frantic eyes sought Gwenhwyfar’s,
willing her to understand the urgency, the importance. He swallowed, tried
again. “I have been looking for you. You must stop this!”
1 1 0 H e l e n H o l l i c k
Something was terribly wrong with the girl Ragnall, that much she realised.
“Stop what?” she asked, calmly.
“They intend to burn her. They accuse her of being a devil child!”
Irritation flashed into Gwenhwyfar’s mind and expression. She was tired,