The Winter King: A Novel of Arthur

by Bernard Cornwell

  Ceinwyn was pleased by Arthur’s words and Cuneglas, ever gracious, ordered the gates opened and Arthur, like a man released from an ordeal, galloped Llamrei madly out of Caer Sws and through the Severn’s deep ford. We guards followed on foot to find a spray of may lying on the river’s far bank. Agravain plucked the may from the ground so that Ceinwyn should not find it.

  Sansum came with us. His presence was not explained, though Agravain surmised that Tewdric had ordered the priest to counsel Arthur against his madness, a madness we all prayed was passing, but we were wrong. The madness had been hopeless from the very first moment Arthur had looked down Gorfyddyd’s hall and seen Guinevere’s red hair. Sagramor used to tell us an ancient tale of a battle in the old world; a battle over a great city of towers and palaces and temples, and the whole sorry thing was all started because of a woman, and for that woman ten thousand bronze-clad warriors died in the dust.

  The story was not so ancient after all.

  For just two hours after we had left Caer Sws, in a stretch of lonely woodland where no farms stood, but only steep-sided hills and fast streams and thick, heavy trees, we found Leodegan of Henis Wyren waiting beside the track. He led us without a word down a path that twisted between the roots of great oaks to a clearing beside a pool made by a beaver-dammed stream. The woods were thick with dog mercury and lilies while the last bluebells made a dancing shimmer in the shadows. Sunlight fell on the grass where primroses, cuckoo pints and dog violets grew and where, shining brighter than any flower, Guinevere waited in a robe of cream linen. She had cowslips woven into her red hair. She wore Arthur’s golden torque, bracelets of silver and a cape of lilac-coloured wool. The sight of her was enough to catch a man’s throat. Agravain cursed quietly.

  Arthur threw himself off his horse and ran to Guinevere. He caught her in his arms and we heard her laugh as he whirled her about. ‘My flowers!’ she cried, putting a hand to her head, and Arthur let her gently down, then knelt to kiss the hem of her robe.

  Then he stood and turned. ‘Sansum!’

  ‘Lord?’

  ‘You can marry us now.’

  Sansum refused. He folded his arms over his dirty black robe and tilted up his stubborn mouse face. ‘You are betrothed, Lord,’ he insisted nervously.

  I thought Sansum was being noble, but in truth it had all been arranged. Sansum had not come with us at Tewdric’s bidding, but at Arthur’s, and now Arthur’s face turned angry at the priest’s stubborn change of heart. ‘We agreed!’ Arthur said, and when Sansum just shook his tonsured head, Arthur touched the hilt of Excalibur. ‘I could take the skull off your shoulders, priest.’

  ‘Martyrs are ever made by tyrants, Lord,’ Sansum said, dropping to his knees in the flowery grass where he bent his head to bare the grubby nape of his neck. ‘I’m coming to you, O Lord,’ he bawled towards the grass, ‘Thy servant! Coming to Thy glory, oh praise Thee! I see the gates of heaven open! I see the angels waiting for me! Receive me, Lord Jesus, into Thy blessed bosom! I’m coming! I’m coming!’

  ‘Be quiet and get up,’ Arthur said tiredly.

  Sansum squinted slyly up at Arthur. ‘You won’t give me the bliss of heaven, Lord?’

  ‘Last night,’ Arthur said, ‘you agreed to marry us. Why do you refuse now?’

  Sansum shrugged. ‘I have wrestled with my conscience, Lord.’

  Arthur understood and sighed. ‘So what is your price, priest?’

  ‘A bishopric,’ Sansum said hurriedly, struggling to his feet.

  ‘I thought you had a Pope who grants bishoprics,’ Arthur said. ‘Simplicius? Isn’t that his name?’

  ‘The most blessed and holy Simplicius, may he still live in health,’ Sansum agreed, ‘but give me a church, Lord, and a throne in the church, and men will call me bishop.’

  ‘A church and a chair?’ Arthur asked. ‘Nothing more?’

  ‘And the appointment to be King Mordred’s chaplain. I must have that! His sole and personal chaplain, you understand? With an allowance from the treasury sufficient for me to keep my own steward, doorkeeper, cook and candleman.’ He brushed grass off his black gown. ‘And a laundress,’ he added hastily.

  ‘Is that all?’ Arthur asked sarcastically.

  ‘A place on Dumnonia’s council,’ Sansum said as though it were trivial. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Granted,’ Arthur said carelessly. ‘So what do we do to get married?’

  While these negotiations were being consummated I was watching Guinevere. There was a look of triumph on her face, and no wonder for she was marrying far above her poor father’s hopes. Her father, slack mouth trembling, was watching in abject terror in case Sansum should refuse to perform the ceremony, while behind Leodegan stood a dumpy wee girl who seemed to be in charge of Guinevere’s quartet of leashed deerhounds and what little baggage the exiled royal family possessed. The dumpy girl, it turned out, was Gwenhwyvach, Guinevere’s younger sister. There was a brother, too, though he had long since retired to a monastery on the wild coast of Strath Clota where strange Christian hermits competed to grow their hair, starve on berries and preach salvation to the seals.

  There was little enough ceremony to the marriage. Arthur and Guinevere stood beneath his banner while Sansum spread his arms to say some prayers in the Greek tongue, then Leodegan drew his sword and touched his daughter’s back with the blade before handing the weapon to Arthur as a sign that Guinevere had passed from her father’s authority to her husband’s. Sansum then scooped some water from the stream and sprinkled it over Arthur and Guinevere, saying that thereby he was cleansing them of sin and receiving them into the family of the Holy Church that hereby recognized their union as one and indissoluble, sacred before God and dedicated to the procreation of children. Then he stared at each of us guards in turn and demanded that we declare that we had witnessed the solemn ceremony. We all made the declaration and Arthur was so happy that he did not hear the reluctance in our voices, though Guinevere did. Nothing escaped Guinevere. ‘There,’ Sansum said when the paltry ritual was done, ‘you’re married, Lord.’

  Guinevere laughed. Arthur kissed her. She was as tall as he was, maybe a finger’s breadth taller, and I confess as I watched them that they looked a splendid pair. More than splendid, for Guinevere was truly striking. Ceinwyn was beautiful, but Guinevere dulled the sun with her presence. We guards were in shock. There was nothing we could have done to stop this consummation of our Lord’s madness, but the haste of it seemed as indecent as it was deceitful. Arthur, we knew, was a man of impulse and enthusiasm, but he had taken our breath away by the speed of this decision. Leodegan, though, was jubilant, babbling to his younger daughter how the family finances would now recover and how, sooner than anyone knew, Arthur’s warriors would sweep the Irish usurper Diwrnach out of Henis Wyren. Arthur heard the boast and turned quickly. ‘I doubt that’s possible, Father,’ he said.

  ‘Possible! Of course it’s possible!’ Guinevere intervened. ‘You shall make it my wedding gift, Lord, the return of my dear father’s kingdom.’

  Agravain spat his disapproval. Guinevere chose to ignore the gesture, and instead walked along the row of guards and gave us each a cowslip from the diadem she had worn in her hair. Then, like criminals fleeing a lord’s justice, we hurried south to leave the kingdom of Powys before Gorfyddyd’s retribution followed.

  Fate, Merlin always said, is inexorable. So much followed from that hurried ceremony in the flower-speckled clearing beside the stream. So many died. There was so much heartache, so much blood and so many tears that they would have made a great river; yet, in time, the eddies smoothed, new rivers joined, and the tears went down to the great wide sea and some people forgot how it ever began. The time of glory did come, yet what might have been never did, and of all those who were hurt by that moment in the sun, Arthur was hurt the most.

  But on that day he was happy. We hurried home.

  The news of the marriage rang in Britain like a God’s spear clanging against a shield. At first the so
und stunned, and in that calm period, while men tried to understand the consequences, an embassy came from Powys. One of that embassy was Valerin, the chief who had been betrothed to Guinevere. He challenged Arthur to a fight, but Arthur refused, and when Valerin tried to draw his sword we guards had to drive him out of Lindinis. Valerin was a tall, vigorous man with black hair and a black beard, deep-set eyes and a broken nose. His pain was terrible, his anger worse and his attempt at revenge thwarted.

  Iorweth the Druid was chief of Powys’s delegation, which had been sent by Cuneglas rather than Gorfyddyd. Gorfyddyd was drunk with mead and rage, while his son still hoped there was a chance to retrieve peace from the disaster. The Druid Iorweth was a grave and sensible man and he talked long with Arthur. The marriage, the Druid said, was not valid for it had been conducted by a Christian priest and the Gods of Britain did not recognize the new religion. Take Guinevere for your lover, Iorweth urged Arthur, and Ceinwyn for your wife.

  ‘Guinevere is my wife.’ We all heard Arthur shout that statement.

  Bishop Bedwin added his support to Iorweth, but Bedwin could not change Arthur’s mind. Not even the prospect of war would change Arthur’s mind. Iorweth raised that possibility, saying that Dumnonia had insulted Powys and the insult would needs be washed clean with blood if Arthur did not change his mind. Tewdric of Gwent had sent Bishop Conrad to plead for peace, begging Arthur to renounce Guinevere and marry Ceinwyn, and Conrad even threatened that Tewdric might make a separate peace with Powys. ‘My Lord King will not fight against Dumnonia,’ I heard Conrad reassure Bedwin as the two bishops paced up and down on the terrace in front of Lindinis’s villa, ‘but nor will he fight for that whore of Henis Wyren.’

  ‘Whore?’ Bedwin asked, alarmed and shocked by the word.

  ‘Maybe not,’ Conrad allowed. ‘But I tell you one thing, my brother, Guinevere’s never had a whip taken to her. Never!’

  Bedwin shook his head at such laxity on Leodegan’s part, then the two men walked out of my earshot. Next day both Bishop Conrad and the Powysian embassy left for their homes and took no good news with them.

  But Arthur believed the time of his happiness had come. There would be no war, he insisted, for Gorfyddyd had already lost one arm and would not risk the other. Cuneglas’s good sense, Arthur claimed, would ensure peace. For a time, he said, there would be grudges and mistrust, but it would all pass. He thought his happiness must embrace the world.

  Labourers were hired to extend and repair Lindinis’s villa to make it into a palace fit for a princess. Arthur sent a messenger to Ban of Benoic, beseeching his former lord to send him masons and plasterers who knew how to restore Roman buildings. He wanted an orchard, a garden, a pool of fish; he wanted a bath with heated water; he wanted a courtyard where harpists would play. Arthur wanted a heaven on earth for his bride, but other men wanted revenge and that summer we heard that Tewdric of Gwent had met with Cuneglas and made a treaty of peace, and part of that treaty was an agreement that Powys’s armies could march freely across the Roman roads that crossed Gwent. Those roads led only to Dumnonia.

  Yet, as that summer passed, no attack came. Sagramor held Aelle’s Saxons at bay while Arthur spent a summer in love. I was a member of his guard, so I was with him day in and day out. I should have carried a sword, shield and spear, but as often as not I was burdened with flasks of wine and hampers of food for Guinevere liked to take her meals in hidden glades and by secret streams and we spearmen were required to carry silver plate, horn cups, food and wine to the designated spot. She gathered a company of ladies to be her court and, so help me, my Lunete was one of them. Lunete had grumbled bitterly at having to abandon her brick house in Corinium, but it took her only a few days to decide that a better future lay with Guinevere. Lunete was beautiful and Guinevere declared that she would only be surrounded by people and objects that were pretty, and so she and her ladies dressed in the finest linens decorated with gold, silver, jet and amber, and she paid harpists, singers, dancers and poets to amuse her court. They played games in the woods where they chased each other, hid and paid forfeits if they broke one of the elaborate rules that Guinevere devised. The money for these games, like the money being spent on Lindinis’s villa, was provided by Leodegan who had been appointed the treasurer of Arthur’s household. Leodegan swore the money all came from back rents and maybe Arthur believed his father-in-law, though the rest of us heard dark tales of Mordred’s treasury being lightened of gold and filled with Leodegan’s worthless promises of repayment. Arthur seemed not to care. That summer was his foretaste of Britain at peace, but for the rest of us it was a fool’s heaven.

  Amhar and Loholt were brought to Lindinis, though their mother Ailleann was not summoned. The twins were presented to Guinevere, and Arthur, I think, hoped they would live in the pillared palace that was rising around the heart of the old villa. Guinevere kept the twins company for one day, then said their presence upset her. They were not amusing. They were not pretty, she said, just as her sister Gwenhwyvach was not pretty, and if they were not pretty, nor amusing, they had no place in Guinevere’s life. Besides, she said, the twins belonged to Arthur’s old life, and that was dead. She did not want them, nor did she care that she made that announcement publicly. She touched Arthur’s cheek. ‘If we want children, my Prince, we shall make our own.’

  Guinevere always called Arthur a prince. At first Arthur claimed he was no prince, but Guinevere insisted he was Uther’s son and therefore royal. Arthur, to humour her, allowed her to call him by the title, but soon the rest of us were ordered to use it too. Guinevere ordered it and we obeyed.

  No one had ever challenged Arthur about Amhar and Loholt and won the argument, but Guinevere did and so the twins were sent back to their mother in Corinium. The harvest was poor that year for the crops were blighted by late rain that left them blackened and wilting. Rumour claimed that the Saxon harvest had been better, for the rains had spared their lands and so Arthur led a war-band east beyond Durocobrivis to find and capture their stores of grain. He was happy, I think, to escape the songs and dances of Caer Cadarn, and we were happy that he was at our head again and that we were carrying spears instead of feasting cloths. It was a successful raid, filling Dumnonia with captured grain, plundered gold and Saxon slaves. Leodegan, now a member of Dumnonia’s council, was given the task of distributing the free grain to every part of the kingdom, but there were horrid rumours that much of it was being sold instead and that the resultant gold found its way to the new house Leodegan was building across the stream from Guinevere’s damp-plastered palace.

  Madness ends sometimes. The Gods decree it, not man. Arthur had been mad for love all summer, and it was a good summer despite our menial occupations, for a happy Arthur was a beguiling and generous Lord, but as autumn swept the land with wind, rain and golden leaves, he seemed to wake from his summer dream. He was still in love – indeed I do not think he was ever out of love with Guinevere – but that autumn he saw the damage he had done to Britain. Instead of peace there was a sullen truce, and he knew it could not last.

  We cut ash pollards for spears and the blacksmiths’ huts rang with the sound of hammer on anvil. Sagramor was called back from the Saxon frontier to be nearer to the kingdom’s heart. Arthur sent a messenger to King Gorfyddyd, acknowledging the hurt he had done to the King and to his daughter, apologizing for it, but pleading that there must be peace in Britain. He sent a necklace of pearls and gold to Ceinwyn, but Gorfyddyd returned the necklace draped about the messenger’s severed head. We heard that Gorfyddyd had stopped drinking and taken his kingdom’s reins back from his son, Cuneglas. That news confirmed that there would never be peace until the insult done to Ceinwyn had been avenged by Powys’s long spears.

  Travellers brought tales of doom from everywhere. The Lords Across the Sea were bringing new Irish warriors into their coastal kingdoms. The Franks were massing war-bands on the edge of Brittany. Powys’s harvest was stored and its levies were being trained to fight with spears inst
ead of cutting corn with sickles. Cuneglas had married Helledd of Elmet and men of that northern country were now coming to swell the ranks of Powys’s army. Gundleus, restored in Siluria, was forging swords and spears in the deep valleys of his kingdom, while to the east, more Saxon boats were grounding on their captured shores.

  Arthur donned his scale armour, only the third time I had seen it since his arrival in Britain, and then, with two score of his armoured horsemen, he rode in progress around Dumnonia. He wanted to show the kingdom his power, and he wanted the travellers who carried their goods across the kingdoms’ frontiers to carry a tale of his prowess. Then he came back to Lindinis where Hygwydd, his servant, scoured the new rust from the armour’s scales.

  The first defeat came that autumn. There had been a plague in Venta, weakening King Melwas’s men, and Cerdic, the new Saxon leader, defeated the Belgic war-band and captured a great swathe of good river land. King Melwas pleaded for reinforcements, but Arthur knew Cerdic to be the least of his problems. The war drums were beating throughout the Saxon-held Lloegyr and throughout the northern British kingdoms and no spears could be spared for Melwas. Besides, Cerdic seemed fully occupied with his new holdings and did not threaten Dumnonia further, so Arthur would let the Saxon stay for the time being. ‘We’ll give peace a chance,’ Arthur told the council.

  But there was no peace.

  In late autumn, when most armies are thinking of greasing their weapons and storing them through the cold months, the might of Powys marched. Britain was at war.

  PART THREE

  The Return of Merlin

  IGRAINE TALKS TO ME of love. It is spring here in Dinnewrac and the sun infuses the monastery with a feeble warmth. There are lambs on the southern slopes, though yesterday a wolf killed three of them and left a blood trail past our gate. Beggars gather at the gate for food and hold out their diseased hands when Igraine comes to visit. One of the beggars stole the maggoty remains of a lamb carcass from the scavenging ravens and sat there gnawing at the pelt as Igraine arrived this morning.