In Winter's Shadow (30 page)

Cei stopped and took a deep drink of Macsen’s wine.

“So,” said Macsen. “It is Gwalchmai ap Lot who has stirred up this anger against me, on this private quarrel of his.”

“The emperor is asking nothing more than due justice from one of his subject kings, who is bound by oath to render it,” Cei returned at once.

“But this Gwalchmai ap Lot is not even British, not from any part of the Empire. He is an Irish wolf, howling for vengeance.” Macsen spoke loudly, wanting his followers to hear him.

Cei slammed his glass down, glaring. “Gwalchmai is a member of the royal clan, the emperor’s kinsman, and one of his finest and most loyal warriors! What king could ignore so just a plea, from such a servant? Certainly not my lord Arthur—as you will learn to your cost if you try to withhold what Arthur has demanded.”

“Which amounts to the life of this man, Bedwyr ap Brendan,” Macsen said. He looked at Cei for another long moment, and Cei looked uneasy and embarrassed. Macsen then looked beyond Cei to Bedwyr, but Bedwyr sat staring at his plate and said nothing.

“But what was the state of things when you left?” I asked Cei, to change the subject. I did not want to see the warrior involved in a quarrel here in Less Britain. Cei was an unusual choice for an emissary because he would gladly quarrel with anyone hostile to Arthur or to the Empire. Presumably Arthur had sent him to intimidate Macsen, and to put the ultimatum in the plainest terms.

Cei shrugged. “Much the same. Arthur deals with the business of the Empire, the Family mutters and sharpens its swords, and Gwalchmai sits in the house and broods, or rides his horse halfway to Baddon for a day’s exercise. Our servant Rhys and myself are the only ones who dare to talk to him, but he says little enough to us. He once spoke with Medraut for hours, but what they said no one knows.” Cei paused, glanced at Macsen again, and added, “Medraut is as he usually is”—an uncustomary and rather late attempt at discretion.

“A very pretty report,” said Macsen sardonically. “And that is enough of Camlann and intended vengeance for tonight. Come, let us have something more lively!” and he clapped his hands to summon his bards to sing for him. Presently some of his men began a sword dance.

Cei left the feast early, and Bedwyr requested leave to go shortly after Cei. I went back with him to our room, but he wished to speak neither of Cei’s news nor of Macsen’s offer, but only wished to hold me, and after lie still on the bed, awake and motionless, like a man dying of a fever.

The next morning I asked him what answer he would give to Macsen.

“None,” he replied.

“None? But he said that you must reply.”

“My lady, I have been trying to make up my mind to refuse his offer. Life is too dearly bought by treachery, especially after one has so injured one’s friends. But I cannot simply refuse, I cannot. To stand trial by those I have injured, to see you punished—perhaps flogged, or even killed—to be so broken before my friends and before men I have commanded—I cannot do it. But how can I accept Macsen’s offer, and commit yet further crimes against my comrades and my own lord? No, I will return no answer, and let Macsen choose for himself. In all probability he will choose to send us back with Cei, and that will be the end of it, without my choosing.”

However, that was precisely what Macsen did not do. He summoned Bedwyr that morning and asked him what he had decided, and Bedwyr told him that he could not decide. So, after a time, he sent Bedwyr back, summoned Cei, and commanded him to leave Less Britain as soon as possible, and to tell Arthur that he did not acknowledge Arthur’s Empire over him, and would not accept Arthur’s dictates respecting a man who was born his subject and not Arthur’s. I only learned of this afterward, or I would have written Arthur another letter for Cei to take with him to Camlann.

Macsen said nothing to us that day or the next, and we did not see him during all this time. We were closely kept, not allowed even to leave our room. I bribed one of the serving girls to find us some books, which helped to pass the time, but there is a limit to how much time one can spend reading.

On the third day after Cei left, Macsen again asked us to a feast. He seated Bedwyr on his right and me beside Bedwyr, and spoke graciously and casually about unimportant things, as though nothing had happened. Later in the evening he began to speak of Arthur’s prospective invasion, but with his own warleader—a dour, thin man with prematurely gray hair—and not with Bedwyr. It was only when the meal was done and we were sitting drinking Macsen’s excellent wine while one of Macsen’s bards sang, that Macsen turned to Bedwyr and asked him about the subject he had just discussed with his warleader. “What do you think?” he asked. “Should we barricade the harbors?”

“Ach, it’s no use barricading the harbors,” the warleader Lenleawc insisted. “There are beaches enough, if he uses curraghs, and we cannot patrol the whole coast.”

“But if he uses small curraghs and beaches them he will have to make more trips to bring the army over,” replied Macsen, “And then we would have warning and more time to move.”

“He will not bring a peasant army,” said Bedwyr.

“Why not?”

Bedwyr realized what he was saying, and hesitated.

“Come, this is not secret information! If you are as opposed to our war for independence as that, as disloyal to your own land as to scruple to give information at your host’s table—if so, you should ride back to Camlann tomorrow.”

“Arthur will probably attack during the harvest time,” Bedwyr said, after another moment’s silence. “You will have difficulty in raising your own army at that time, and Arthur’s advantage in trained warriors will be more effective. He will probably take a force of picked men, not more than a thousand in number, and strike directly at your fortress here, hoping to end the war quickly.”

I stared at Bedwyr angrily, and Macsen noticed this, smiling to himself, but ignored me and put another question to Bedwyr. Bedwyr’s reluctance to speak faded slowly as he became engrossed in Arthur’s strategies, and I sat silent at his side, listening, and grew colder and colder at heart.

Macsen continued to consult Bedwyr in the days that followed, and the amount that Bedwyr yielded to him grew steadily greater. He knew now that his position was false. He had returned Macsen no answer, and Macsen had taken that silence for consent. Bedwyr could not accept the protection which Macsen had provided for us, which was the direct cause of the war, and still refuse to give Macsen any assistance. In a way he did believe that Less Britain was a separate kingdom from Britain, and that Macsen might do as he pleased in it. But the main reason he agreed to help Macsen in rebellion was the numb despair for which he seemed never to be free. He seemed no longer capable of making any moral decision, and Macsen continually pushed his indecision into agreement with himself. So, from giving advice, Bedwyr moved to setting up a system by which the army could be raised quickly, to helping to establish the coastal defenses—barricading the harbors and proclaiming a reward to any peasant who reported a landing on the beaches—to helping to train the warband, and then, finally, in September, to officially accepting a military post under Macsen.

I argued with Bedwyr at each step. He would agree with my arguments, then say that he knew that this or that was wrong, but there was no way to be right, and he could not back out now. Eventually, since my arguments only deepened his despair, I gave them up. I tried to cheer Bedwyr, hoping to bring him to his senses that way. But he would not be cheered. His only escape seemed to be to throw himself into his work for Macsen, and I saw less and less of him as the days went by.

The restrictions we lived under were gradually relaxed as Bedwyr became cooperative. Presently even I was allowed to ride about the town when I pleased, though I was constantly watched in case I should attempt to leave the city. If fine gowns and jewelery had been a source of pleasure to me I would have been delighted, for these were showered on me. Macsen wished me to appear beautiful and valuable, so that his followers would be the more impressed by Bedwyr’s having stolen me, and cheered by Arthur’s disgrace. He also wanted me to keep Bedwyr happy. He soon realized that for my own part I was in complete opposition to him, but he was content that I had no power against him.

Well, I was at least glad to be able to ride my horse again, to go out into the open air, or ride under guard into the countryside and to the edge of the great forest. And I managed to find some books. But still the hours were wearisome and heartbreaking. Things were as they had been in Bresta, but worse. Sometimes when I walked along the walls of Car Aës I wanted to throw myself off. It was not even the desire to die, but only the soul-deep longing for freedom. Sometimes in dreams I could fly from the walls, but always the flight failed, even in sleep, and I would fall from the steep air into the darkness.

It was worse in late August, when Macsen and Bedwyr rode off to inspect the coastal defenses. I was not allowed to leave the city, and two warriors followed me whenever I left Macsen’s house. Macsen’s steward approached me and suggested that he take Bedwyr’s place while Bedwyr was gone. I had left my husband and was therefore shameless, he thought, and I must be eager for a man since my lover was absent. I struck the man and he grinned and tried to kiss me. I only shook him off by threatening to tell Bedwyr of his suggestion when the warleader returned. But of course I could not do that, when Bedwyr actually did return. It would simply have made more trouble for him, since he would undoubtedly have challenged the man. And it would have amused Macsen and his warband.

I grew angry and depressed, and could speak to no one without losing my temper. I spent hours on the wall near the town gates, looking out into the west and wondering when Arthur would come from Britain. From the gate-tower one could just see the end of the cultivated lands that surrounded Car Aës, and the edge of the great forest. The Bretons were afraid of the forest. They said that if you became lost in it you might never find your way back to the human earth, but wander in it forever. All that was wonderful and terrible was said to inhabit the forest, devils and gods, castles of glass and enchanted springs, the finding of which meant the loss of all else. I wanted to visit the forest, but I was never allowed to ride so far.

***

Arthur came in September. He had known of the coastal defenses—we had always had spies in Less Britain, and Bedwyr had not gone so far as to reveal their names to Macsen. Instead of trying to overcome the defenses Arthur had chosen to avoid them. Some of his Saxon subjects had treaties of friendship with the prankish kingdom to the northeast of Less Britain, and Arthur had agreed with the king of this land to pay a certain sum in gold for the right to use one of his ports and to cross his land into Less Britain. The Frankish king was probably pleased that Less Britain was to be invaded, for the sum was quite moderate and he caused no trouble for Arthur. The Saxons and the Franks had been enemies of the British for so long that not even Bedwyr had expected this, and the invasion took him and Macsen by surprise after all. However, Macsen’s warband was in readiness by the coast, and most of Macsen’s nobles, with their warriors, had already been persuaded to join the King. With these forces Bedwyr and Macsen hurried from the coast, and managed to reach Car Aës before Arthur had done much more than cross the border. They had, of course, the advantage over Arthur in that they could requisition supplies from the country, while Arthur had to send out foraging parties or drag along baggage trains, which slowed him.

On reaching Car Aës from the coast, Macsen wished to remain in the fortress and allow Arthur to lay siege to it as much as he wished while Macsen called up his army. Bedwyr, however, persuaded him to abandon this plan and instead set out again from Car Aës the day after reaching it. Arthur, he said, would not waste his time in siege works, but instead would turn about and plunder the country, burning the grain which still stood unharvested in the fields. If Macsen sat securely in his fortress while this was being done, much of his army would not respond to his call to arms, and there was danger that he would be cut off from the rest of it. So instead they hurried north, planning to set an ambush for Arthur, then retreat toward the fortress, using delaying tactics to keep Arthur occupied until the harvest was in and the peasant army had joined them.

Arthur had crossed the border into Less Britain in late September. His forces first encountered Macsen’s in the first week of October, and arrived before Car Aës by the end of that month. The delaying tactics Bedwyr had recommended had been partially successful: the harvest was in, with sufficient supplies stored in the fortress to last the winter, while the country people had hidden their goods and could feel secure that they would not starve that winter if they answered the king’s summons. A part of the army had been raised. But the numbers Macsen had hoped for had never materialized. It seemed that the call to arms had been disrupted in the southeast by false reports (doubtless circulated by Arthur’s spies) saying that the war had already ended. In Cernw and the northwest there was considerable reluctance to go to war against Arthur. If Less Britain had never been properly a part of the Empire of Britain, it had always been bound to it by the strongest ties, and many Bretons felt that Macsen’s rebellion was undertaken only to gratify his own ambition and to support a notorious criminal. Many of the older warriors had come with Macsen’s younger brother Bran, when he led them to Britain to aid Arthur when he first claimed the purple, and these supporters of Bran’s had always disliked Macsen.

On the other hand, attempts to foment a counter-rebellion met with little success. The people were proud of Bedwyr, and respected Macsen’s name and ancestry. Macsen therefore returned to Car Aës with the forces he had had in September—his own warband of four hundred men and another four hundred warriors from among his nobles—and an additional army of about a thousand ill-armed and ill-disciplined peasants, with vague hopes of a thousand more. Arthur had brought, as Bedwyr had predicted, about a thousand men: most of the Family and men from the warbands of King Constantius of British Dumnonia, of King Urien of Rheged, and of King Ergyriad ap Caw of Ebrauc. Though in numbers less than Macsen’s forces, this was in fact a more dangerous power than Macsen’s and, as was customary for Arthur, had an overwhelming advantage in cavalry. Macsen would have been soundly defeated within a week if he had not had Bedwyr. Arthur set half a hundred traps which Bedwyr foresaw or recognized and escaped. I think that for both Arthur and Bedwyr the campaign was like fighting with a mirror. Each knew the other’s mind nearly as well as he knew his own.