In Winter's Shadow (3 page)

I had no time to sit staring at a letter. This very afternoon I must buy grain to feed the fortress—undoubtedly the grain-sellers were waiting for me to come and bargain with them. I had to arrange a feast for the emissaries from the kings of Elmet and Powys. I must allot some wool from the stores to the weavers of the fortress, if all the Family were to have their winter cloaks in time. Soon, if not today, I must find a new supply of iron for the smiths, as we had bought none for some time, and there might be a shortage soon. There would doubtless be some petitioners asking for a hearing. And there was the question of what our emissary must say to the king of Less Britain.

Yet I sat staring at the letter, reread it.
If you prefer the imperial purple to your own blood, you must suffer for it.
It was typical of Menw to phrase it that way, I thought bitterly. An extreme sentence and a violent one.

I had never expected to go home. Even when I knew that I would never give Arthur a child, an heir, I knew that he would not divorce me. He had relied upon me in the long war with the Saxons, often for his very life. We had seen each other rarely while the war continued, and since the peace we had generally been too busy to talk of anything but the concerns of the Empire, but the bond between us went as deep as life itself. Arthur and I knew each other as only those who together have spent themselves to their limits can, and he would as soon cut out his heart as divorce me.

No, I had never expected to go home. But I had always had my home behind me, forever a possibility: the house and the hills, the Roman Wall leaping off into the west, the patterned tiles around the fire pit. Though I had preferred the purple to my blood, and suffered for it, in a way it was my blood, my home, all that I had been, which had chosen the purple. To be cut off from it all was to have my father die all over again.

And if I refused Menw’s demand I could never go home. I would be as good as kin-wrecked, exiled from my clan. Most of the clan agreed with Menw, and thought I ought to do more for them. Moreover, I had been gone a long time. They would not oppose him to support me.

Best to get it over with. I picked the letter up, rose from the desk, and dropped it in the fire. It uncurled slowly, wrapping itself around the coals, and the ink darkened even as the parchment went brown, standing out sharp, clear, and absolute. Then the coals ate through, here and there, and it darkened to illegibility, while the air was full of its burnt leather stink.

My eyes stung and I wiped them with the back of my hand, finding that my hand shook. But it was over now, and the only thing I could do, done. I must get back to work, and not brood over it.

I picked up the light spring cloak which I had draped over a chair when I sat down to read the letter, then picked up my mirror to check that I appeared dignified and composed, as befitted an empress. I saw instead that I was crying. “It’s the smoke,” I told myself, aloud, but I had to set the mirror down and stand a moment, wrestling with myself. I went into the adjoining room, found the water pitcher, and washed my face. The cold water was soothing against my hot eyes, and I felt calmer when I went back and checked the mirror again. Better. I could not afford to show weakness, not when Camlann was as tense as it was at present.

There was more white in my hair, I noted absently, when I looked to see that it had not come down when I washed my face. Well, red hair does not suit purple cloaks. I turned the purple border of my own cloak inward so that it would not clash as much. If my hair were white I could stop worrying about that, at least. There, there was the picture of the woman I had to be: still looking younger than thirty-four, thick hair pulled back severely and piled behind her head, gold necklace proclaiming wealth; poised, controlled. My eyes were red, and I could not smooth the lines of tension on my face, though I smiled at the reflection, trying to lie to it. But probably no one would notice, if I acted assured. I took a deep breath and went out.

The house Arthur and I shared was next to the feast hall of Camlann, on its west. It had three rooms: an outer room for conferences, with a fire pit; a bedroom, and a washroom. The servants who looked after it lived down the hill to the north, so that, though we had to fetch our own wood and water at night, we had privacy. The house faced north, looking over the most crowded part of the fortress: the road from the gates past the stables to the Feast Hall. The hall covered the crown of the hill, set east of the center of the walled enclosure. The hill slopes very steeply on the east, and the houses on that side cling to the slope at an angle. Standing in the door of the house I looked out at the huddled houses along the side of the road, with their chickens scratching in the dust around them; at the stables sprawling along the north slope, and some horses, being worked on a lead rein, circling in the sun of a practice yard.

The green patches between the houses grew larger further down the slope, and then the great gray bulk of the walls broke the pattern, firmly set stone with a wooden rampart above them. The gates were guarded by a single watch tower, but, because it was a time of peace, were left open. Beyond them the road stretched away, turning eastward across the patchwork of fields, fallow and pasture and plowed land. It was April, and the swallows, returning from the remote south, were beginning to wing circles about the eaves of the Feast Hall, while dandelions flowered in the grass, and apple trees scattered here and there were budding. That morning it had rained, but now the sun was out, and everything glittered, the light so sharp it seemed to cut into the soul. Here was Camlann, here was my fortress, the strong heart of the visionary Empire. I took another deep breath, then turned from the view and walked along the west wall of the Hall to the south, where the storerooms were.

The fortress was generally short of grain by the end of the winter, and many farmers, finding that they had some surplus left, took advantage of this to sell the old grain at a high price. A number of them had arrived that morning, and I was expected to bargain with them for their produce. The steward could have done it, but he was a bad bargainer, and could make no use of the information we could obtain from them about the state of things in the countryside, which was invaluable to me. When it came to buying large amounts of goods, later in the year, the price paid by Camlann set prices for all the South, and the amount taken by Camlann checked availability everywhere, so it was very important for me to understand what was happening outside the fortress as well as what was happening within it.

There were half a dozen carts drawn up before the main storeroom, with their owners, all tight-lipped, independent clansmen, sitting in the carts in a row, looking sour because I was late. Normally I enjoyed bargaining with them because they enjoyed bargaining, and practiced it as a great art. Now I found it maddening, and wished I could simply impose a reasonable price and have done with it. Instead, we worked through the preliminary stages of the poorness/richness of the previous harvest; the amount of seed corn available to the farmers; the amount the grain would sell for in an ordinary market; the relative scarcity/surplus of grain at Camlann and in the countryside; the value of the goods Camlann offered in return for the grain; the relative scarcity and value of these, and their cost in terms of products other than grain. We were finally approaching the vital question of whether the farmers wanted payment in cattle, woolen goods, or metal, and how much, when the Family’s infantry commander, Cei ap Cynryr, came storming along the wall of the Hall, saw me, and made his way toward us. Cei was a very big man, the largest in the Family. He had a great mass of sandy red hair, and wore large quantities of garish jewelery and brightly colored clothing so that even when he was in a quiet mood it was impossible to overlook him. Now he was plainly in a temper. I braced myself.

“That golden-tongued, oily-mannered bastard!” he exclaimed, pushing aside a farmer. “My lady, you must speak to Rhuawn and make him offer me an apology, or I will fight him, I swear it by my sword, and not spare him. And yet it is not his fault, but the fault of that weasel from the Ynysoedd Erch.”

I took his arm and hurried him aside. I knew who “that weasel” was, but it would be better not to let the farmers, outsiders, know the details of quarrels within the Family—although by now most of Britain must be aware that Arthur’s invincible, formerly indivisible force was torn in half by violent factions. The quarrel had been going on long enough to become notorious. Almost since “that weasel” arrived in Camlann.

“What has Medraut done now?” I asked.

Cei spat. “Ach, he has done nothing, not directly. Would you expect it of him? No, he will never confront a man to his face. He will leave some lying story behind his back, and let someone else fight for it.”

The farmers looked very interested at this, and I made hushing motions. Medraut ap Lot was the youngest son of Queen Morgawse of the Orcades Islands, which in British are called the Ynysoedd Erch, the “Islands of Fear.” His mother was the legitimate daughter of the Emperor Uther, and Arthur’s half-sister. Medraut had adored his mother, who had intended him to become king of the Islands on her husband’s death, though it was widely believed that he was not her husband’s son, but born of an adulterous love affair. However, Morgawse was dead, murdered by her eldest son Agravain in revenge for another of her affairs and for a rumored connection with her husband’s death; and the royal clan of the Islands had chosen Agravain as its new king, despite the murder. The queen had been reputed a witch and the clan had not loved her, though they were too much afraid of her to deny her anything. They were not so afraid of Medraut, and he had come to Camlann, while the new king, his brother, who had long fought for Arthur, returned and ruled in the Islands. Medraut was very bitter against Agravain. But the immediate cause of quarrels was generally his other brother, Gwalchmai, who was also at Camlann, and was one of Arthur’s most trusted and valued followers. Gwalchmai seemed to be hated by Medraut even more than Agravain was, though he had had no part in the murder, and most of the quarrels were between his friends, of whom Cei was one, and Medraut’s.

Cei glanced at the farmers and lowered his voice. “Rhuawn has taken to blaming Gwalchmai for the death of that witch from the Ynysoedd Erch. He has been repeating that tale for years now, like a catechism, so that half the Family thinks that Gwalchmai murdered his mother—as though the witch deserved to live in the first place! Whose tale is that but Medraut’s? Ach, but it is an old story; so old that I must listen to it in silence and say nothing. But when Rhuawn dared to say that Gwalchmai is hindering the negotiations with Less Britain, and deliberately obstructing the conclusion of a peace there, because of some imagined weak-mindedness—when I heard Rhuawn saying this to his friends, I went to him as he spoke and told him that it was he who was weak-minded, to believe such ravings. And Rhuawn leapt up with his hand on his sword, and called me a blind, stubborn fool who could not see what was before his eyes, and accused me of flattering the emperor into believing falsehoods—and this in the presence of four others! My lady, I could ask Arthur to demand that Rhuawn apologize to me, but I do not wish to humiliate the man. You can persuade him to offer it: do so, for God’s sake, or I will fight him tomorrow, and, though he is a fool, I do not wish to harm him.”

I nodded, feeling sick. The quarrel was typical. I had had to wheedle too many warriors into offering apologies, and I could not disguise the fact that my sympathies were entirely with Gwalchmai, which meant that it grew increasingly difficult for me to win over members of Medraut’s party, which included Rhuawn.

Warriors tend to quarrel in the best of years. They are taught to regard an insult, or an admission of weakness, as a dishonor, and the only remedy for dishonor as the sword. They quarrel most in the winter, when they are kept in a narrow space together—the three hundred men who slept in our Hall had more space than most—and have little to do. In the summer they can go to war if there are any wars to be fought, or else fight bandits and form escorts, or, at the least, go hunting; and then they tend to be good-natured. But the quarrels at Camlann were more serious. They were not easing with the warm weather. For years they had been growing steadily worse, and the ordinary methods of soothing them—flattery and pleas on both sides—were working less and less well. I was afraid for the future.

“If Rhuawn apologizes,” I told Cei, “you must beg his pardon for calling him weak-minded.”

“Must I, by God? He is weak-minded, to believe such slander!”

“The slander is Gwalchmai’s affair. If anyone accuses him to his face, he can demand an apology, and we can see to it that he receives it, at least as far as the negotiations with Less Britain are concerned. But it is not your affair to fight Rhuawn on his behalf, noble lord. Let Gwalchmai guard his own honor. He is not exactly helpless.”

“He is too courteous. And no one will accuse him to his face if they must fight him: he either escapes the insults or turns them.”

“It is still his affair. And if you do not wish to fight Rhuawn, noble lord, you will have to apologize.” I said it more sharply than I meant, for I was growing impatient.

Cei again began to protest, but one of the farmers, also impatient, came over and suggested a price for his grain, asking if it was acceptable. It was too much, and I knew it, but I snapped “Perhaps,” and went back to make arrangements. Cei hung about behind me like a large red thunder cloud, waiting for me to finish.

When we had fixed on a price—and the price was still too high, since I was in no mood to bargain patiently, and these southern farmers are not to be out-bargained at the best of times—I was further distracted by a petitioner. A boy who had been sitting in one of the carts jumped out and knelt before me.