In Winter's Shadow (42 page)

I clasped his hand briefly. “What more is there? Is Arthur safe?”

“He was when…when that traitor Constans put his sword through me. A man that had been my friend, my brother…well, he is paid for it. The emperor was with the cavalry. I tried to fight on, after Constans, but…I am going to die, my lady.”

“You don’t know that. Ah, here is the surgeon.”

I stayed with Goronwy for a little while, as he was stripped and brought under the knife. But when he fainted I rushed off with a servant to see that another house was ready, for another cart had arrived, and there was no more room in the first house. From that time, for a long time, I had little opportunity to question or worry.

I was used to wounded men, but not in numbers like this. Partly this was simply because Arthur’s battles had mostly in the past been fought in distant places: I had not seen such numbers brought directly from the slaughter before. But the battle of Camlann was the cruelest battle of the age, and the casualties were very high. When the two peasant armies met in that first onslaught, perhaps a thousand men were killed, and by the later afternoon the road must have been running with blood. The first carts brought only men who could crawl back to safety. By the later afternoon, the battle had moved up the road toward Camlann, and the carts could pick up the casualties of the first meeting, and carried as many new corpses as living men. The reports they also carried varied like the sea: Medraut, Maelgwn, Arthur, or Sandde were dead; Maelgwn had fled; Maelgwn was taken prisoner; Medraut had killed Arthur in single combat; Arthur had killed Medraut—uncertain victory hovered over both. I had no time to be afraid for my husband or my friends. I was needed by the surgeons, by the dying, by the servants; needed to find fresh horses for the carts when there were no fresh horses; needed to say where the corpses should be piled, and whom the surgeons should treat first, and what use should be made of fuel, and who should rest. I was Empress, and I could not be a human woman.

Night came, and still there was no official report. The carts that arrived now had left the struggle in the last hour of daylight, and reported that still some fighting was going on, but that the forces had moved back down the road to the turning, and most of the peasants on both sides had fled or stopped fighting. I wished someone could be spared to bring me a message—for a horseman with a fresh horse it would only be an hour, perhaps less. But it seemed that all was complete confusion.

“Maelgwn is retreating,” I was told, again. “The emperor has won.” But how could anyone know?

“Where is the emperor?” I asked at random, as one cart pulled up before the stables, where we were now bringing the wounded. It was a big cart, and full of indistinct forms.

“He is with the cavalry,” came one voice.

“He is dead,” a different one said.

“No, it was his horse; his horse was killed under him, but he got up again.”

“Was that a gray horse?”

“No, he was riding a bay.”

“That was the second horse, after the bay was killed.”

“He was alive…before that last cavalry charge,” came a strangely familiar voice from the back of the cart. I peered into it, trying to make out the face, and could not.

Then men unloading the cart dropped someone who screamed horribly and began to sob. “Be quiet!” shouted someone else savagely, “I can’t bear it. Do you think you’re any worse off than the rest of us?”

“Can your horses make it back to the battlefield?” I asked the driver of the cart.

“No,” he said in a hoarse voice. He loomed over me, only his face visible as a pale shadow in the darkness, with the gleam of his eyes in the distant torchlight. “The poor brutes could hardly climb this last hill.”

“Wait here, then. Yours is a fine big cart. I will try to find fresh beasts for you.” I summoned another servant over and told him to unharness the sweating team, and give the cart priority if any fresh horses, mules, or oxen could be found. Then I went into the stable to check on the wounded. It seemed to me that inventories had become the substance of my life; always I was writing out lists of supplies, of suppliers, and now, of dying and dead. Perhaps I would one day keep inventories of the damned, forever writing out lists of names that my stupidity had helped to kill. But we would have to know who of our followers were yet living, and be able to tell friends and kinsmen what had become of our army.

Names: three peasants who could give them, two who could not, one dead. Gwythyr ap Greidawl, one of the Family. A northerner who had followed Arthur to Gaul. And the voice that had been familiar, but unexpectedly familiar, not associated with these others?

I remembered it, placed it, just before I saw him lying in the far corner of the stable. No one else had recognized him, and he had been brought back in the cart with our own wounded—there had been others from the enemy’s forces taken up so already, for friend and enemy lay together on the battlefield with nothing to distinguish between them. But I had never expected to see Medraut so.

I finished with my list and went over to him. He had been watching me from the time I entered, watching with cold contemptuous eyes.

I stared down at him for a long time. He was lying flat on his back and did not move under my stare. Someone must have stolen his purple cloak and golden jewelery, but there seemed to be little wrong with him.

“You need not concern yourself with how to finish me off, noble lady,” he said at last. “I will be dead within the hour. But it was not your precious husband and his men that did it; that honor they do not have.” He smiled savagely. “When my loyal ally Maelgwn saw that my forces were defeated and my father’s decimated, he took a dagger I had given him, a pretty thing steeped in poison, and put it in my back while I was trying to see where my men were. Thus, he has inherited my following, and become the strongest contender for the purple. I should have realized that I could never turn my back on him…yet at least I am spared having my father gloat over me.”

I went down on my knees beside him and looked at him. “Are you pleased with what you have done?” I asked, hearing my voice very low and shaking.

He smiled, the gray eyes unfathomable with hatred. “Yes. I am only sorry not to see it all fulfilled. My mother is revenged. And even if my father survives this ruin, your Empire is broken like glass. Maelgwn is going home to Gwynedd, but he will be back. The North is already tearing itself apart with war. Dumnonia is a wasteland. Whether it is my father or Maelgwn who ends up with a few purple rags, doesn’t matter: the end result will be the same. Desolation. Think on it, noble lady. Tell my father to make songs about it at his victory feast, and tell my brother.”

“Your brother is dead,” I said sharply. “He died here at Ynys Witrin four—no, five days ago.”

Medraut’s eyes widened, and the stare changed from one of deep hatred to puzzlement. “Gwalchmai? Dead?”

“From the wound he got from Bedwyr in Gaul, and from his own neglect of it. He never wanted to live after his son’s death…I heard that you smiled when you told him of that.” Medraut continued to stare at me, and I wished to strike him as he lay there helpless, wished to give him pain. But I remembered what Gwalchmai had said and clenched my hands behind my back, forcing out the words like brittle ice, “When Gwalchmai died, almost his last words were, ‘If you can, tell my brother I loved him.’”

Medraut looked away. His right hand clenched into a fist, loosened, clenched and struck the ground violently. “No,” he said, and gave a sob that seemed wrenched up from the heart. “Not him, och,
mo brathair
…” I had never before heard him cry out in his father’s tongue, and I stared—at him in amazement. He struck the ground again, shouted aloud, in anger now, and heaved himself up so that he was sitting. His back was soaked with blood. I jumped back as he tried to crawl onto his knees, but he fell over onto his face and began to sob. A servant girl hurried over.

“Is he delirious?” she asked me in a whisper. “Shall I help tie him down?”

“No,” I replied. I went back and knelt beside Medraut, in great confusion. For all that Gwalchmai had said about his brother, I had never expected that under his hatred and his many masks Medraut might still love anyone. But there could be no mistaking the look with which he had greeted my news.

The pale eyes saw me again as I knelt, fixed on me, and he opened his mouth to speak, but only brought out blood. He had injured himself in that attempt to rise. He shuddered violently, coughed, went very still. After a moment I touched the side of his neck, just under the jaw, and found that the beat of blood had ceased. Arthur’s son, his only child, was dead. I took my hand away and looked up at the servant.

“This was the enemy’s leader, Medraut ap Lot,” I told her. “You can put the body outside by the south wall as soon as we need the space in here.” The girl’s eyes widened and she bobbed her head, staring at the corpse that lay there quiet and bloody, with the torchlight caught in its hair. I pressed my hands to my face a moment, brought them down, saw that they were stained with blood. Medraut’s, or someone else’s? I couldn’t tell. And I had another list of names to make, and needed to find fresh horses.

About midnight, Cuall, Sandde’s clerk, came and found me. By that time we had been worrying for some while where to put the unscathed survivors of the battle, who had been returning in steadily growing numbers for some time, and were badly in need of warm places to rest, warm food, and drink. We were also almost entirely without transport. If there were any more wounded on the battlefield they would die of the cold before morning. Oh yes, by that time it was certain that Maelgwn Gwynedd had withdrawn with his warband and the remnants of his army—all that had not scattered on their own account. And still I could get no clear report of Arthur.

“Noble lady,” said Cuall, as I tried to discover what a casualty’s name had been, “Lord Sandde has returned with the army. He begs you to come and speak with him.”

“Sandde?” I asked, straightening and brushing back my hair. “What of my husband?”

But the clerk shook his head, “I do not know.”

I closed my inventory book and followed Cuall up the hill from the stables. I was numb and blind with weariness of soul and body. Everything seemed a great distance away, and I little part of it.

We had filled all of Sandde’s own rooms with the wounded, and the Lord of Ynys Witrin was sleeping in the Hall with his men. He was inside when I came up, and Cuall with an absurd sense of propriety stopped me from going into the Hall where the men were sleeping, and himself went in and fetched his master.

Sandde had taken off his mail coat and was wearing a torn and bloodstained cloak over his under-tunic. He had taken his boots off, and kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other because of the cold. He had that blank, stunned expression that I had seen repeated endlessly, mindlessly, on every face returning to the fortress; but he tried to smile, and took my hand. It was snowing, thick, wet snow which melted in the thatch and dripped hissing into the torches he had brought out beside the Hall door.

“Lord Sandde,” I said, “I am very glad you are unharmed.”

He patted my hand stupidly. “It was as you said, my lady. Not a spear…oh God of Heaven, I am glad to see you, glad to be back!” He put his arms around me and clung, like a child, hurt, demanding comfort.

“Have you brought many men back?” I said after a few moments. “How much more space do we need?”

He pulled away, nodded. “I…I have been trying to make a list, with Cuall, of those we have. We have most of the emperor’s men…those that can still fight, that is. Maelgwn has withdrawn northward. We don’t know where Medraut is.”

“He is by the south wall of your stable, dead,” I said levelly. “They brought him in with our own wounded.”

He stared at me in disbelief, then smiled, hesitantly. “We have won, then?”

I closed my eyes, wanting to scream, to wail out grief and weep until I was blind and voiceless. “If anyone has won, we have,” I said. “But, noble lord…”

“Oh. Yes. The emperor.”

I opened my eyes again, fixing them on Sandde’s face. It was terribly still after the heat and madness of the sick rooms. Sandde’s left cheek was smeared with blood. The dripping of the water in the torches behind me was very loud. “Is my husband dead?” I asked.

Sandde shook his head. “I don’t know.”

I turned away, and he reached out after me, touched my shoulder. “My lady, he had three horses killed under him today, and yet he lived. I…I met him, near the end. The enemy were on the road eastward, and in the hills. The emperor was trying to gather and rally all the cavalry he had left. He was galloping up and down and shouting. He was so hoarse from shouting that no one could understand what he was saying. But we did rally, and made one last cavalry charge. After that Maelgwn began to retreat. We pursued them northward for perhaps a mile, and then I called the men back, because it was dark, and snowing, and they were so tired that any bandit or pillager could finish them off, if the cold didn’t, should they get lost. And then I realized that no one knew where the emperor was. I had them all gather at one point, and sound horns to draw in the stragglers. We drew in a lot of men. But there was no more news of the emperor. I…I took some men and went about, looking. Many men had seen him at the beginning of the charge, but none afterward. We…perhaps he is wounded. Perhaps he took a party of his men after Maelgwn, and will come in later. We can search in the morning.”