In Winter's Shadow (19 page)

This successful campaign won Medraut more support within the Orcades, for his people admired his military prowess, and were pleased to have reclaimed the Western Islands and the fear of their neighbors. In August he wrote to us again, saying that he was now free to make his deferred visit, and that he would set out in September, after he had returned to his fortress of Dun Fionn and set it in order. But he sent this letter from the shipyard of Eoghan in northern Pictland, and added a note which disturbed us.

“The troubles engendered by the laxity of poor Agravain’s reign are widely spread,” he wrote, “in this very shipyard I found a clerk, one Padraig Mac Febail, probably the only lettered man in Pictland, who had used this very skill in aid of treachery. I had the man brought to me and, on questioning him, found that besides aiding my enemies he had left his monastery in Erin, doubtless for some crime. I therefore had him put to death, seeing that his viciousness was of long standing. Why do I recount this to your grace? Merely as an example of how I am placed: I am certain that you will understand my position, and forgive my long delay in coming to swear my oath to you.”

It troubled me to think of this clerk, who had carefully copied out the messages which the noblemen of the Orcades must have sent him by word of mouth, and put them into his clumsy Latin. He himself was an exile, yet had somehow managed to support Diuran after the shipwreck, and had sent back the gold without even using any to pay for the burial. I could imagine him discovered, dragged before Medraut by the king’s warriors, questioned under that cool contemptuous smile, and finally put to death with a casual command intended not so much to punish him as to display to Arthur the extent of Medraut’s knowledge.

“My mother ruled in this fashion,” Gwalchmai said, when he returned from Gaul and Arthur gave him this letter to read. “The Islands were afraid when my father went away on campaigns, for her rule was heavy on them then. But she was more skilled. She had a sense of what could and could not be done, and the people were more afraid of her than they will ever be of Medraut.” He looked again at the letter from his brother, and lifted his eyes to us, frowning. “This will not be the end of Medraut’s troubles.”

Nor, I thought, of ours.

At the beginning of October Medraut sailed into Caer Gwent with two ships and fifty men. Because he came peacefully and in the emperor’s name, he was offered hospitality by Cynyr, Lord of Caer Gwent, while he sent Arthur notice that he had arrived and requested an escort so as not to alarm the countryside by the size of his bodyguard. Arthur himself rode west to meet him and escort him to Camlann, also taking fifty men. He left me and Bedwyr together to keep the fortress.

It had grown difficult for me to avoid Bedwyr even before Arthur left. When the warleader first returned from Gaul he had tried as hard to avoid me as I him, but this effort had lapsed. By September he was actually looking for opportunities to see me. I reproached him for it, once; he looked away from me and whispered, “I do not mean to,” then, slowly his eyes moved back to meet mine and he added, “I cannot help it.” It made me ashamed. Bedwyr was serious by nature, not easily moved to love but faithful and constant after he had committed himself, and because of this he was suffering. Men suffer so in the songs all the time, but in reality most of them forget love more easily. But Bedwyr was really almost sick from it. He had returned from Less Britain looking thin and exhausted, and thin and exhausted he remained. He no longer spoke freely with Arthur, which puzzled my husband. “I do not know what is the matter with Bedwyr,” he confided to me one night. “Ever since he returned from Gaul he has been as grim and silent as a memorial column. Does he think I am angry because he failed, or because Macsen tried to persuade him to desert me? He ought to know better.”

I said nothing. I knew well enough that Bedwyr was tortured with guilt before Arthur, and perhaps by jealousy as well. But I could say nothing, even when Arthur grew angry. Every time I saw Bedwyr I remembered that sweet and terrible afternoon, and sometimes I lay awake at night, listening to Arthur’s quiet breath beside me, aching and ashamed. Sometimes at a feast my eyes would meet Bedwyr’s, and we would understand without a word spoken where our thoughts had turned, and I would feel my face grow hot, and would turn and pretend to talk to someone else, but feel his presence like a bright light which cast shadows all about me. So I tried to meet the warleader only in public. I was afraid when Arthur announced that he would meet Medraut at Caer Gwent, and urged him to send Bedwyr instead.

“You rush off to meet him as though you were champions out to fight single combat,” I said. “But you are emperor, and he is only ruler of a few islands on the edge of the world. Moreover, he is officially your subject ally. You have the position of greater strength. Let him feel that, and the rest of the world see it; let him come to you.”

But Arthur only stood in the doorway of the conference room, keeping his back to me, gazing into the west and fingering the hilt of his sword. “Why should I allow Medraut to act the part of subject and ally when we both know that he is my competitor in Empire?” he demanded bitterly. “Let him, and let the Family and all the rest of Britain, see that I am matching myself against him, and let them realize that it is a question of choosing. Besides, I wish to see for myself how he conducts himself with my subject lords. Perhaps he has told his tale to Cynyr of Caer Gwent now. I can see what Cynyr makes of it, and of me.”

“My dear lord, if he has told Cynyr we will know soon enough from our other sources. In seeing for yourself you will only hurt yourself.”

“I wish to know! In God’s name, am I to remain here like a statue in a niche, smiling at all comers while they whisper, “Ah, he looks fine, but really is a bastard, a begetter of bastards on his own sister, and a usurper? No!”

“But Arthur…”

He whirled about and looked at me. “I am leaving tomorrow for Caer Gwent, and that is the end of it.”

I looked away from the cold eyes and nodded.

I could feel the hardness leave the stare, and looked up again when I thought it was gone. He flinched, seemed to begin an apology, then stopped, awkwardly. He shrugged. “I must arrange it, then. In a few hours…” he turned, looked again out over the walls westward, then started down the hill, his purple cloak flapping and his hand on his sword.

He was, in fact, impatient. All the summer he had been bracing himself for Medraut’s arrival, for the gradual onset of the rumors that would disgrace and discredit him, and reveal his most painfully held secret to the scorn and hatred of the world. He could bear it, just, and hope to hold onto power long enough to find a suitable successor. But Medraut’s constant deferral of his arrival, the postponing from week to week of the anticipated struggle, were wearing him out with expectation and fear. He gave little public sign of it; he could not afford to. But he grew increasingly hard to reach and irritable. Sometimes he even uncharacteristically lost his temper, usually with me. I was the one who knew him best, the one he could afford to be honest with. But after he had broken and shouted at me, it was always harder still to draw near to him. Ashamed, he recoiled from me. And I wanted him more and more as the autumn continued. The harvest is always exhausting, always demands more than it seems possible to give. I would wake in the morning, feeling that I could scarcely muster enough energy to rise, and my husband would look at me wearily, not daring to apologize for some scene the night before and not touching me. And most of the day would be utter madness, dashing wildly about the fortress checking and making inventories of goods stored for the winter, arranging payments, receiving tribute, hearing petitions, organizing, ordering accounts, paying attention—and feeling Bedwyr’s gaze now and then like a searing fire.

Tell me, oh you learned ones,

From what is Longing made?

And what cloth is it woven from

That with use, it never fades?

Gold wears out and silver,

Silks and velvets tear,

All adornment ages:

Longing never wears.

Longing, Longing, back a pace,

Do not weigh on my breast so heavily,

But move over from the bedside

And let a brief sleep come to me.

It’s a common song, but it ran through my brain for weeks on end, until I was heartily sick of it.

Oh, after Arthur left it happened in a way that was as obvious as the course of flood waters down a dry stream bed, and as irresistible. For two days Bedwyr and I held stiffly aloof, speaking to each other with stilted formality, hoping, making one last effort against the humiliating treachery we both knew was near. Then, on the third day, we were in the conference room, alone together. We were discussing what to do with the tribute.

“I can send another three hundred head of cattle, under guard, to the holding near Llefelys’s Stone,” Bedwyr said, “but we will be short then, will we not, noble lady? Maelgwn Gwynedd sent us fifty fewer cows than he gave his word for.”

“I calculated that he would send us seventy fewer cows, noble lord, so we have a good margin of safety.”

He looked at me in surprise.

“Well, what is wonderful in that?” I asked. “Maelgwn tries to cheat us on the tribute every year; it would be amazing if he did not. During the war, he often succeeded. In the spring we’ll send him the usual party to correct his ‘unfortunate mistake’—and perhaps this time we’ll make him pay their traveling expenses.”

“But you can calculate by how much he will cheat us?”

“Of course. We set the tribute by the size of the harvest. Maelgwn’s tribute is the size of the harvest less 15 or 20 percent, and plus a factor of how difficult he’s been that year. If he’s guilty of too many other incidents, he grows nervous, and a trifle more honest.”

Bedwyr laughed, and I laughed as well. Then I saw that he was looking at me with that particular light in his eyes and I stopped laughing. He grew very serious, reached out, and caught my hand. I turned away.

“But…but we must have another two hundred head of cattle nearby…” I began uncertainly. His hand against mine was like the warmth of a fire to a blind man, something more real than the vision of the eyes.

“My lady…” he whispered.

“You must have the sheep moved from the south pastures, with a guard or two over them to see that they reach…”

“Gwynhwyfar.”

I stopped trying, and looked at him. The pulse of my blood dizzied me: I could feel it over every inch of my body. “We must not,” I said. “It is treachery, and that is the worst of all sins.”

“Please,” he whispered. “Just this once more.” He moved closer to me, his hand sliding up my arm.

I closed my eyes, trying to pray. “But think what would happen if Medraut discovered this. Think how he could use it.”

“Just once more, only once. Please. I cannot live like this. I cannot think for thinking of you; I cannot sleep or rest. My most sweet lady, I cannot bear it.” He was beside me now, his arm around me, touching my breast.

I meant to stand up. Instead, I only said faintly, “But you must bear it.”

“Please. Only once more.” He kissed me. I could not think after that; when he pulled away and looked at me, I held to him and nodded, weeping.

When it was over with we again vowed that this was the end, that it must not happen again. But when one has twice been unable to keep a resolve, one begins to expect failure, and that expectation breeds failure. We held our resolve for less than a month, before breaking it in a new crisis and losing ourselves once again. After that we began to hope that desire would be satisfied by much loving, but only succeeded in becoming necessary to each other. And with repeated sins, the conscience, which is at first tender, grows gradually numbed, finds excuses, ceases much to be moved. After a time it was even possible to behave naturally to Arthur. But that came later; at first he might have noticed something, if he had not been himself too tense, too depressed, to speak naturally to his friends.

Arthur returned, with Medraut, on a golden October morning the week after he set out. One of the guards came from the gates an hour or so before noon to tell me that the party had been seen approaching, and I went with him back to the gate, and climbed the gate tower to watch. Bedwyr was at the gate already, but stayed before them, mounted on his horse and waiting to welcome Arthur and relinquish the military command Arthur had temporarily given him. He nodded to me when I arrived, but no more. We could hold our resolve that long, at least.

The sky was cloudless and had a hard glow like blue enamel, and the trees at the edges of the fields seemed cast in bronze by sunlight. The fields themselves, though, were drab, for the harvest was in and the earth was stubble-marked and gray, or black from the annual burning, and hazed over with smoke from the fires. In the distance, Ynys Witrin rose tall and green over the dark marshes, seeming to float above the main road where a long column of horsemen trotted steadily forward. They were already near enough, when I climbed the tower, for me to pick out a few individual figures, and I saw that Arthur’s fifty warriors were interspersed with Medraut’s for greater safety. Two figures rode side by side at the head of the column, one wearing a purple cloak, riding a familiar gray horse, the other in a cloak dyed with saffron and a gold collar, riding a fine bay: Arthur and Medraut. As they came nearer, I waited for the line to increase its speed, to sweep up to the gates at a canter with a jingle of harness and glitter of weapons and jewelery, as Arthur always did in the gladness of coming home. But the column maintained its slow, jolting trot, and, as it drew nearer still, I saw that Arthur’s shoulders were hunched as though against the cold, while Medraut rode with his cloak tossed back over one shoulder, sitting his horse with easy grace. Already the shadow had fallen on us; already Medraut had set some chill upon the heart.

I climbed down from the tower and went back up the hill to the Hall. I had no extraordinary power in Arthur’s absence, nothing to hand over at the gates, and no one would expect me to welcome Medraut to Camlann, not after the way he had left it. And I wished to postpone, even for a few hours, the inevitable grief.

I saw Medraut in the Hall for the midday meal, of course. He bowed stiffly, and I nodded my head, equally stiffly. But I could see that his kingship agreed with him. He looked sleeker than ever, graceful and regal in the saffron cloak, gold about his neck, fastening his cloak, on his arms and fingers. He had the same easy, ingratiating smile as well; the smile I had long before been disturbed by, and which I had grown to hate. But he also looked more like Arthur than he had done, and I realized that he had cut his beard and hair in the same fashion that Arthur customarily used.

After the meal, while ostensibly resting from his journey, Arthur told me what had happened at Caer Gwent. “Medraut has begun to spread his story, as I thought,” he said, very quietly. He looked older than his forty-three years, and hunched over the fire like an old man whose blood has grown thin. “Cynyr of Caer Gwent has certainly heard it. No, he said nothing—but he looked at me, and looked at Medraut, and looked at me again, all the time I was there. And he was very quiet. Ordinarily he gossips like a barber, but this time he was quiet. And also—you know I was in Caer Gwent for Sunday? When we went to Mass, Cynyr made some excuse, and would not take communion. He looked at me then, as well. He is afraid of being tainted in God’s eyes by taking communion after a man who slept with his sister.” Arthur laughed, very bitterly. “And his men had heard, and my men will have heard it from them. And I could not tell whether Medraut has simply started the rumor there, now, or whether he has been spreading it for months and our spies simply have not heard it. But it is established, now, and he need not say anything, not himself, not directly. He can merely wait until someone asks him questions. Did you notice the way he has cut his hair? He is ready to begin the battle in earnest. But still he will not admit as much to me: when I met him he was all smiles and bows and courtesies. There is no winning through to anything real in him. I do not know how to fight him any more than I did before.” Arthur rubbed his hands, held them out to the fire. His signet ring gleamed. “If the kings of Britain believe this rumor, they will have an excuse for a rebellion. A bastard emperor is bad enough, but an emperor guilty of incest—that will pollute the land, and draw down the wrath of God, or so my enemies and the Church will say. How long can we hold on?”