In Winter's Shadow (17 page)

“Och,
Ard Rígh Mor
, I know, I know, but where is he?”

“What is the matter?” I demanded, for Gwalchmai was as agitated as I had ever seen him.

He flourished a roll of parchment. “This letter…for the love of God, my lady, if you know where he is, tell me!”

This frightened me. I don’t know what I thought—perhaps that the letter being sent to someone else was a sign to Gwyn that his mother had not, after all, forgiven him for leaving her, and that he might do something dreadful in his despair, and that his mother knew it—I do not know. “He…he sometimes goes to a place in the stables…here, I will show you.”

Gwalchmai at once leapt off his horse, helped me up, and jumped up behind me. He touched his heels to the beast and we went flying up the hill, leaving the other warriors, and Father Gilla, gaping after us.

We slid off the horse in the middle of the stables, and Gwalchmai caught the stallion’s bridle, then paused and unrolled the letter again. He stared at it, reading a few lines under his breath, then lowered it and looked up at nothing. His horse snorted and nuzzled his hair, and he patted the sleek neck absently.

“What is the matter?” I asked again, less frightened now that I had time to think.

He shook his head. “This letter…my lady, I am glad of your company.” His agitation was less, but he seemed almost afraid. “For he might hate me, and it might not be true, after all, and almost I fear to ask the question. Where do you think Gwyn is?”

I took the other side of the stallion’s bridle and led the horse toward its own stall. Gwalchmai released his hold and followed, clutching the letter. The horse had a box by the west wall of the stables, by one of the ladders that led up into the hay loft, and I opened the door of the stall and let the horse go in and investigate its manger. Gwalchmai closed the door and leaned over the top of it, looking at me expectantly.

“Gwyn comes here, sometimes,” I said in an undertone. “I’ve had him summoned from the hayloft, once or twice. Gwyn! Gwyn, are you here?”

There was a rustling noise above us.

“I must speak with you,” Gwalchmai said loudly.

Another rustling, and then Gwyn climbed down the ladder from the loft and stood at its foot. His eyes were red and swollen, and he looked at us with a wordless resentment. I was very glad to see him.

“Please, noble lady, noble lord,” he said, “I would rather be alone now. It is very kind of you, but I would.”

Gwalchmai stared at him as though fascinated. “Gwyn,” he said, in a hurried, breathless fashion, “This letter…” he took a few steps toward the boy and stopped, extending the roll of parchment.

“Does she ask you to protect me?” asked Gwyn. “I am sorry, lord, I know it is presumptuous, and I know I am only a bastard, but I wrote to her about how kind you have been to me, and she must have thought…do you mind, then? It is only that she wants someone powerful to protect me. Mothers want that.”

Gwalchmai flushed. “Yes. Of course. She…Gwyn, what was your mother’s name?”

“Elidan. Doesn’t she sign the letter? She is—was—abbess of St. Elena’s.”

I heard my own breath catch with a gasp as I at last understood what was happening.

Gwalchmai’s hand closed on the parchment, crushed it. He closed his eyes a moment; opened them, looked at the letter. He smoothed it again carefully, as though afraid the parchment would dissolve into the air. “And she came from the North,” he whispered.

“Yes. Does she say that?”

“Not here. She was the daughter of Caw, sister of King Bran of Ebrauc. I knew that she had settled in an abbey in Gwynedd. I saw her there, once, and begged her forgiveness, which she refused me. I saw you as well, I think, but I did not realize that you were her son. Why did you tell me that your mother lived in Elmet?”

Gwyn stared back, thoroughly startled now. “Because the monasteries in Gwynedd are so seditious, and I didn’t want people to know. But my mother wasn’t a king’s sister.”

“She was. I…knew her, then. She has written to me. She wrote this, when she was dying. She forgives me. She says she regrets any pain she gave me—me! who lied to her, and murdered her brother!—and she commends…her son to me.” He stopped, his voice breaking on the last phrase. “She never told me she had a son. I never knew that. Gwyn. You must know, I…loved your mother once. It was dishonorably, shamefully: I was sent on an embassy and seduced the sister of my host. Afterward, when her brother rebelled against my lord, I swore to her that I would not harm him, and then killed him. And I asked her to marry me, but after that she could not. But she never told me that she…that we had a son. I am your father. Can you forgive me?”

Gwyn went as pale as the crumpled parchment. He stared at Gwalchmai. Gwalchmai returned the stare for a long moment, then dropped to one knee and lifted his hands in a slight, helpless gesture.

“Most noble lord! Don’t!” Gwyn cried. He ran to Gwalchmai, and tried to pull him to his feet. “Not to me, noble lord!”

Gwalchmai shook his head and stayed as he was. “You have the right to forgive or condemn me.”

Gwyn fell back a pace, blinking, then said, in a newly calm voice, “Let me see the letter.”

Gwalchmai handed it to him. The boy stood very straight in the gray light of the stable, reading the letter in a low, clear voice:

Elidan, daughter of Caw and Abbess of St. Elena’s, to Gwalchmai, son of Lot. I am dying, it seems, and things which once seemed great to me seem less now. It will not matter to God that I am a noblewoman or that I was strong enough to be unforgiving. I forgive you now for the way in which you wronged me; forgive me also for the pain I have caused you. It would have been better if I had yielded before, and married you—but it is an ill world, and what might have been is only a torment. I commend to you now the child I bore, your son. He was christened after you Gwalchaved, but has all his life been called Gwyn. I wished him to be a priest, but Fate is stronger than I, and it is a year since he went to Camlann, and, so I know from his letters, met you and grows already to love you…

Gwyn faltered, flushing, then struggled on,

Care for him and protect him with a peaceful heart, for I swear before the God I must soon meet that he is your own son and mine, and no one else’s. And at last I can be glad that he went to you, for it is right that he know his father, and that you should know him. God’s blessing be with you both. Believe that I loved you. Farewell.

The boy lowered the letter and looked back at Gwalchmai. “You?” he cried, the forced calm gone, passionate and disbelieving.

Gwalchmai nodded.

“But…
you
! Anyone else…did you love her?”

For the first time that I could remember, Gwalchmai’s face was open and totally unguarded, vulnerable: drawn with pain and fear, with the bruised look about the eyes that comes from sudden grief. “I loved her,” he said. “When I loved her, I did not know how much I loved her. But it was shameful for all that.”

Gwyn looked again at the letter. He bit his lip and began to roll it up. It took a long time; his hands were shaking. “You,” he said as he did so. “I never dared even to dream that it might be you. I knew—well, for a long time, I guessed—that she loved…my father. I remember her saying dreadful things about him when I was little, but she cried sometimes at night, and the other sisters used to whisper about it and say she was still in love. But she would never tell me anything about my father, even when I was older and asked her. I never understood why anyone would leave her. And yet, you didn’t marry her.”

“She couldn’t marry her brother’s murderer. When it was too late I wished to marry her, and she said she would kill herself if I came near her again. And I never knew she had a son.” Silence. “By the High King of Heaven, can you forgive me?”

Gwyn looked back at him furiously. “Of
course
. I could forgive
you
anything; I would still forgive you if you hadn’t really loved her, if you had done it all on purpose. I’ve thought you were like St. Michael in the missals, treading down the dragons; don’t you know that? Only this…and she is dead, my mother is dead, and I was not there. I abandoned her to be a warrior, and now she blesses and forgives me, but doesn’t write to me. To you, she wrote to you, because…because it was you…” he broke off, panting for breath and trying to choke off the sobs. Gwalchmai jumped up and caught the boy, and Gwyn began to weep, leaning against his father. Gwalchmai also was in tears. I finally remembered myself, turned, and ran out. The gray outside blurred around me and I raised my hand to find my own face wet. It was wonderful, it was terrible, and still (selfish misery!) Gwalchmai had a son, and I was barren.

***

Gwalchmai quickly took steps to have Gwyn legitimatized. Unfortunately, his position in his own clan was more precarious than ever. The old charge of kin-murder, which had lain dormant while Agravain was king and chieftain of the royal clan of the Islands, might now at any moment be revived by Medraut. There had been no mention of it in the brief months since Medraut became king, but Gwalchmai could not try to have his son given royal status without risking, and probably losing, his own. However, since he was unmarried, he could declare Gwyn to be his legitimate heir under the laws of the Empire, and thus give him the legal position of his son and Arthur’s grandnephew. Accordingly, a few days after receiving the letter, Gwalchmai formally presented Gwyn to Arthur at a feast, swearing that this was his son, christened Gwalchaved by the mother, Elidan daughter of Caw, and petitioning Arthur to acknowledge him as Gwalchmai’s legal son and heir. Arthur asked if any gainsaid this and, when no one did, called the Family to witness that Gwalchaved ap Gwalchmai was henceforward to be considered a nobleman and his own kinsman. In token of this last he cut some of Gwyn’s hair, as a godfather would, then told the boy to sit beside his father at the high table. Father and son took their places amid cheers from Gwalchmai’s friends, and I poured wine for all the high table. Arthur smiled during this ceremony, as I did, but Gwyn looked very grave. Gwalchmai appeared calm, but watched Gwyn as though afraid that the boy were one of the People of the Hills, and would vanish at cock-crow. Gwyn took a swallow of wine, which he was not used to, and began coughing. He set the glass down, going red, but when he saw how we smiled at him, suddenly smiled back, his whole face flooding with pure joy. He lifted his glass to Arthur and to me.

“He is the sort of son any man would want,” Arthur said that night when we were alone together in our house. “Gwalchmai is fortunate.”

“Indeed,” I said, sitting by the fire and letting down my hair. “I shall miss Gwyn’s help.”

Arthur smiled, watching me. “You mean you will miss his company. It will be easy enough to find you another clerk. Children are less easily come by.”

I stopped combing and twisted a lock of my hair about my fingers as though I had found a tangle in it. There were still not many strands of gray there, but a few. Children were certainly less easy to come by. And I suppose to a man a child lost in the sixth month is not really a child. I once felt my son move under my heart, before I lost him, and I knew it was real. But Arthur had been away on campaign then; he had come back as soon as he could afterward, when I was still very sick, and had tried to comfort me, but even then I could see that he had not understood. Only now, did he understand now?

“Arthur,” I said, “have you thought of taking another wife?”

He smiled at me. “Have you died, my white hart? I thought even I would be likely to notice such an event as that.”

“I am not joking. There are other separations than death, and if the Church does not approve of them, still they are well known in custom and law. Many nobles divorce each other. And you are not too old to have a child.”

The smile had vanished altogether. He jumped up, came over and caught my shoulders, crouching so as to look into my face. “Do not be foolish,” he said harshly. “Do you want to divorce me?”

I knew his face better than my own: the wide-set gray eyes, the beak of a nose, thin lips in the gray-streaked short beard, the strong lines of it, the rapid changes of expression. I could not meet his eyes as honestly as he met mine, and I lowered my gaze, touching his hands with my own. The depth of thirteen years was between us, the weight of habit, of long trust, fulfilled and betrayed and forgiven; a thousand tiny things, unimportant memories, the customary expectation of what the other would think, say, do, dream. “No,” I said at last. “No, of course not. But if there was any hope that I should bear you a son, after the war, there is none left, and has been none for a long while. And you need an heir. Another woman might give you one.”

“And what would you do? For that matter, what would I do? Do you think another woman could take your place? I am not lord of this fortress: it is you who rule it. I swear by the God of Heaven, that if any man had served me as you have done, and I set him aside as you would have me do to you, I would straightaway be called the most ungrateful king in all of Britain, and my men would all leave me to seek some other lord who would reward them better.”

“They would not say that, or do that, if you divorced me.”

“They would not, for a woman. But I would. And for that matter, what…Gwynhwyfar, I do not want any other woman. I have not since I first came to love you. Would you have me marry some empty-headed king’s daughter of seventeen, and be content with her, while you did…what? Joined a convent? Married one of my warriors? I would kill any warrior who offered himself!” He was beginning to smile again, again beginning to treat the subject as a joke. I abruptly thought of Bedwyr and shivered.