The Hawk's Gray Feather

by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  Standing a little to one side of Arthur and Gwenwynbar, I confess I was myself surprised at Grehan and Tari; usually their manners were far better than that, and whatever their inner feelings might have been, they would sooner have perished on their own swords than allowed those feelings to show on their faces. But as I casually scanned the faces of the Companions behind them, I could see that the same control and the same appallment prevailed, and by no means the same skill exercised to hide any of it: Kei, furious and uncaring who knew it; Tryffin, Arthur's own cousin, who came forward to give Gwenwynbar a kinsman's greeting and his relation a troubled glance; Betwyr, coolly correct; Daronwy, hot-faced and hostile; Ferdia, puzzled but resigned to courtesy; Elen, smiling slightly, as if she had weighed Gwenwynbar in some arcane balance of her own and found her distinctly wanting. The faces of the others read anything from annoyance to disgust, variously—or indifferently—concealed.

  Arthur, of course, was unaware of none of this: As he had presented his wife to his Companions he had run that swift raking glance of his down over the ranks of mutinous faces, and only his raised brows betokened that he had taken note. But he made no comment, then or later, and if anything his air of chivalrous protectiveness toward Gwenwynbar grew only more pronounced.

  Yet, even against my strong inclinations otherwise—and too, you will recall, after suffering her company on the long, long road here—I must commend Gwenwynbar for how she carried herself, for the most part, that day.

  It can hardly have been easy for her, being flung will she or nill she into a throng of sullen strangers and an ember-bed of rebellion. Presumably she shared her husband's views and dreams on that last—certainly her parents were among the most loyal of loyalists—but still it must have been difficult suddenly to find herself as much a fugitive and outlaw as all the rest of us. Yet she had stepped forward bravely as Arthur presented her, head high, her whole posture daring us to fault her, challenging all or any to deny her place.

  But if the displeasure of the Companions was easily seen, so too, behind the defiant courage, was Gwenwynbar's jealousy: that all of us had more share in and claim on Arthur than ever she would have, no matter his love—and even I must grudgingly admit that it was love—that the Companions and what they stood for would ever take place before her in Arthur's heart, and she the outsider forever.

  It need not have been so, truly: We were not set against her from the start, and gave her a fairer chance—and more than one chance—than she gave us. If she had worked to make any kind of place and position for herself among us save only that of 'Arthur's wife'—But she did not see it so, or did not think it needful, or held it beneath her new, supposed, royal dignity; and by then not even Arthur's direct command could have won her what she had scorned to earn for herself.

  Still, it is their problem now, I found myself thinking, with a strange mixture of sorrow and relief, watching them move off through the ranks, accepting the subdued felicitations offered them, to Arthur's hastily refurbished rooms deep within. Rooms that, refurbished or not, Gwenwynbar would doubtless find too small, too bare, too poor and shabby for a prince of the blood—and that prince's wife.

  Yet furnishings would be but first and least of the things at Llwynarth with which Gwenwynbar would come to find fault.

  Much-loved though I knew I was by my foster-brother, I knew also that just now I was not his chiefest priority. I would have felt less put-upon had I known that concern of his to be someone of greater merit, but that too was his problem and not mine. I was only happy and grateful to be, for whatever cause and for the first time in many years, in the same place as Arthur; and Llwynarth, the Bear's Grove, was as fascinating a place as I had always imagined it.

  Like Coldgates, like Tinnavardan, like so many other of the strong places of the Counterinsurgency, Llwynarth was built of the bones of Gwynedd: and yet not so much built as formed, for it was in origin a series of natural caverns, vast and interconnected, lying deep beneath the Arvon hills. They were scarcely plain holes in the rock, but rather places of unbelievable natural beauty: stone columns and curtains, dripstone veils and flowstone screens, all gloriously colored; massively intricate calcite pillars, ice-white and ice-cold; cascades of stone layering like melted candlewax—of all the caves it has been my lot to dwell in, quite the grandest.

  However lovely the caverns were, though, our need had been paramount, working upon them to enlarge and fortify them, to extend them and shield them, until at last Llwynarth, at capacity, could shelter comfortably and safely upwards of a thousand inhabitants. All those were never there at the same time, or very rarely; always some were out on reivings, or scouting expeditions, or spying, or on circuit to Coldgates and the other shielings, training up new Companions against the day of their need—for needed they would surely be.

  And as I had at Daars, as I had at Coldgates, I felt at once very much at home at Llwynarth. I was given two small chambers not far from Arthur's, most pleasant, with Tarian's rooms to one side of mine and Betwyr's to the other; given place at the high table beside my foster-brother, as not even Gwenwynbar could deny was my right by law; admitted to Arthur's councils as a valued and trusted advisor.

  As the weeks wore by, I went out with Kei and Elen on reivings, putting to good use at last some of my hard-won swordcraft, learned so long since, and at such pains, from Daronwy and Ferdia; and once my confidence grew in my mastery of lands and townships roundabouts, I even ventured alone, or with at most one companion—usually Daronwy, who loved this sort of thing as much as I was swiftly growing to enjoy it, and whose company enabled us to pass for a travelling couple, and so be less suspect than either would have been alone—into the towns themselves.

  There I would meet with other bards, to pass along by means of my own Hanes information that might mean life or death to many, or to receive news of Uthyr or Edeyrn or Owein, or to glean for myself, as I strummed upon Frame of Harmony and Daronwy sang in that bell-voice of hers, knowledge that those who imparted it—seduced by ale or by Ronwyn's singing—never even knew they gave.

  So did weeks become months, and at the end of that first year Llwynarth received a royal visitor; and though most others in our campment were surprised indeed to see her, my only surprise was that she had so long managed to restrain herself, and stay away.

  The reason outwardly given for Gweniver's journeying to Llwynarth was predictably commonplace: some message or other to Arthur from the King, that could not be entrusted to a lesser messenger; but I was not alone in suspecting Ygrawn's hand—as well as her own curiosity—in the Princess's coming.

  So I was there to witness the first meeting of Gweniver Arthur's cousin and Gwenwynbar Arthur's wife. It was on the evening of the Princess's arrival: Gweniver had pleaded travel-weariness, and had met with only Arthur and Tarian and myself before withdrawing to the guest-rooms prepared for her, the grandest we could offer, to rest and ready herself for the nightmeal.

  Not that we kept much state in Llwynarth, but one of the traditions we made a real effort to maintain was that of the nightly gathering in hall—or what passed for hall here at the Bear's Grove—for the evening meal and mild revelry after.

  We Kymry have a strange and bardic bent for triads, the grouping of things in threes for poetic purpose: the Three Sacred this, or the Three Miraculous that, or the Three Astonishing whatevers. Were I to make a triad of the Three Fateful Suppers of my life, that night's meal would stand among them, along with a banquet I have yet to speak of, and that feast which followed Arthur's naming as Prince of the House of Don.

  This unpleasant and most strainful supper began with Gwenwynbar's fury as Arthur led in Gweniver instead of her—as lord of the camp and Prince of the Name both, he scarce could have avoided the duty—and her mood did not improve when, on being presented, Gwenwynbar realized she must curtsy to the Princess as her superior in rank. She did so, if one can call a flick of skirt and a barely bent knee due and proper reverence to the next High Queen of Keltia; but Gweniver for h
er part displayed a lack of courtesy fully the match of it, looking on Gwenwynbar with a face of stone and thunder—a face that would take no prisoners—and muttering a few words that barely passed for civil greeting to a kinswoman by marriage.

  Had it been any other folk than these three, I would have been shrieking with inward laughter at the utter absurdity of the thing; but far too much depended on smooth dealings and lack of discord among them for me, or anyone else, to be amused. So as I took my place beside Gweniver—as Arthur's foster-brother I shared his duties of host on such occasions—I summoned up all my bard's tricks to help ease the moment along.

  Gweniver seemed strangely grateful for my attentions, babbling on most uncharacteristically of Uthyr and Ygrawn, and of Marguessan who was still at home—though already marriage-talk was in the wind of a union between Uthyr's elder daughter and the dashing heir of a staunch loyalist family, one Irian by name; of Morgan there was little news save that she was well and happy, and still at Collimare. But though the Princess discharged her guest-duty of tabletalk to me and to Grehan and all the rest at that end of the board, her customary courtesy seemed not to run to her hostess, and not once did Gweniver address herself to Gwenwynbar who sat palpably seething at Arthur's left.

  In my distraction I did not see it straightway, but bit by bit it dawned on me that Gweniver was behaving so out of jealousy, and Gwenwynbar likewise, though her conduct was sadly more obvious. Ignored by the Princess, Gwenwynbar was determined not to be treated so by the Prince her husband, and by now she was all but seducing him in front of the hall, kissing him, fussing with his food and drink, thrusting herself against him—most trying and tiresome, and, as any could see, utterly in vain. Arthur sat there cold and unmoving, his face as remote as the moon—his usual demeanor when he was angry and embarrassed and wished not to show it—and was as attentive to his guest as he was dismissive of his wife.

  Which only made her the more desperately demanding; and at last even Arthur could no longer ignore her, and turned on her.—though perhaps 'rounded on her' would be more correct a description of his attitude—and in a quietly furious tone delivered a tongue-lashing that swiftly sobered her, if it did little to correct her mood. But at least she ceased her frantic bid for Arthur's attention, and I took the moment to address myself to Gweniver.

  To my astonishment, I surprised upon her face an expression of bleakness such as I had never before seen her wear—or perhaps once only, that time in Coldgates, when I had found her weeping in the watchpost—and my heart went out to her.

  "Why do you look so?" I murmured, under cover of refilling her winecup. "She is not worth a thousandth part of you."

  Gweniver's mobile face quivered and shifted into laughter, and she drank off in one draught the cup I had just filled.

  "Say you so? My thanks to Lord Taliesin ap Gwyddno—or is it rather the master-bard whom I must thank? Well, it might be, what you say, and again it might not… She is very beautiful," she added, toying with the empty cup.

  I made the usual courteous protestations, as to how her own beauty was such as to eclipse Gwenwynbar's—to which Gweniver listened with a faint smile and a raised brow—but as I looked at Gweniver's face glowing scarce three feet from my own, my words that had been honestly spoken took on new meaning.

  Gweniver was one of those women who grow lovelier with their years, like late-blooming autumn flowers: Weedlike through summer days when all round them riot in splendor, when the showy summer blooms are blown they burst into a strong shining beauty that outlasts the snows. Tonight she seemed on the edge of that blooming: hair like a soft dark mist, gray eyes silvery in the sconcelight, creamy skin set off by a collar of rubies and a ruby-colored guna.

  And it must have been the wine—I am sure it was the wine—but it seemed that the same thought and need were set alight in both our minds, for when, in the deep quiet owl-hours past middlenight, a faint tiny tapping came at my chamber door, I did not find it surprising nor yet unwelcome; and, by emberlight alone, and no word spoken, drew Gweniver in, and so we stayed till morning.

  When that morning came a new ease came with it: If wine and jealousy and hurt and loneliness and long curiosity had all conspired to put Gweniver and me into each other's arms that night just past, that same night's intimacies had seemingly contrived a conspiracy of their own, bringing about not only the ending of all those reasons and rationalizations but the beginnings of a strange and splendid freedom.

  We had been friends, Gweniver and I, and we had been lovers for a night, and now we were friends again in this morning, but we awakened as altogether a different sort of friend: It was as if the act of physical love, delightful as it had undoubtedly been for us both, was also for both of us a seal we had placed on something of much greater permanence and worth; that the sharing of our bodies was all the same incidental to what we truly shared between us, and would ever share. Though this night was not to be repeated, and never to be regretted, it was something we had needed to do, and now we had done so.

  Indeed, its most immediate effect was felt as soon as we opened our eyes: We turned to look at each other, and our smiles of morning greeting, that had been frank and open and carried neither shyness nor shame, suddenly flared into laughter. "Ah me," said Gweniver, when she was able to speak again, leaning her forehead against my shoulder as if in helpless apology. "No offense, Talyn—it was a most pleasant night—but I think now we know this is not for us, not with each other. I had thought once that it might be, do you know."

  "And I had thought the same," I answered, still smiling, and taking her hand kissed the cool fingers. "And therefore no offense taken—pleasant indeed though it was, and something that we needed to learn." I sat up, pulling her with me. "And before all Llwynarth learns alike—

  She looked amused and mock-alarmed. "Oh aye." Slipping from the warm huddle of furs, Gweniver padded across the floor to scoop up her scattered garments, then turned round to face me clad only in her ruby collar and her streaming hair, a smile that seemed perfectly to express our new openness and understanding lighting her face.

  I paused in my own dressing to look at her—a sight that it must be said well repaid the looking—and felt my smile answering hers. My smile only, however; not any other part of me, though she was no less desirable that moment than she had been at the banquet-board beside me all last evening, or in the bed beside me all last night. She had had the right of it, of course: This formed no part of the bond that was between us; was in fact rather a distraction from the reality of our friendship, and it was good it should be put by early on.

  Yet though neither of us felt shame or secrecy for what had been last night—and there was no reason in all the worlds why we should have felt either—the same thought stood now in both our awarenesses, though we did not speak it aloud: What we had shared was our concern alone, and not even Arthur would hear of it from either Gweniver or myself.

  But though he did not hear, Gwenwynbar did; how, precisely, she contrived to do so forever remains a mystery. Perhaps it was simply the same sort of uncomplicated kenning that had told Gweniver and me that we needed each other just that once; or perhaps it might have been that mean probing certainty that can come into play when jealousy is afoot—man or woman, it makes no differ; that hot green emotion is all one, and indifferent to gender.

  Whatever, clearly Gwenwynbar had learned by some means of our night together, for the glance she shot at Gweniver and me when we came in to the morning meal—together, I admit, but we had scorned to dissemble, or stage some charade of mock encounter—spoke volumes. Why it should so enrage her that we had shared ourselves I had not the smallest idea, and Gweniver seemed equally bewildered; unless it was simply that Gwenwynbar hated me and hated Gweniver and detested the thought that we should have turned to each other for brief loving comfort. And why, knowing this, Gwenwynbar did not tell Arthur, baffles me still.

  Not that Arthur would have minded; for he minded not at all, when in time he came to learn of it�
��but Gwenwynbar perhaps thought he might mind very much indeed, and so chose to save it, to keep the knowledge as a weapon in time of need, to use against Arthur what time she should have naught else to hurl against him. Yet when it came to that moment, years later, she proved only how little she did know her own lord…

  But as I say, that was years away, though after that time those years did seem to take wing alarmingly, in that speeding way they will do the older one grows. In childhood it seems time moves at less than footpace: A week passes like a month, a summer like a year, a year is a century; while in youth and mid-age the pace picks up, until at life's end the years hurtle by like weeks—turn, and it is Beltain; turn again, Samhain two years hence… No wonder old folk sometimes forget where they are, and when; hard it is to mount time galloping.

  Yet time went all the same: I stayed at Llwynarth, and the Companions grew closer, and there were a few more of them; while far away in Coldgates Uthyr and Ygrawn stayed safe and well, and farther still in Collimare Morgan grew and learned. It was a quiet time of consolidation and growth in turns: We kept up the raids and reivings that had become such a thorn to Owein—still a small thorn, by compare to what would come later, but sharp enough for all that. And most astonishing of all, Arthur and Gwenwynbar stayed wedded, for near full seven years, renewing their brehon promises every Midsummer, dashing the hopes of Llwynarth.

  For by now Arthur's wife was openly detested by most of the campment; at first it had been simply a general disliking, on her part as much as on ours. But as time went on, and not only did she make no effort to be of Llwynarth rather than merely in Llwynarth, but began actively to throw caltraps in our path and speak ill of us to her husband whatever chance she could, our disliking flamed into hatred, and hers blazed backfire against us, and only our obedience to—and love for—Arthur himself kept our hands from violence.