Shadow of the King

by Helen Hollick

  “There will be a great battle in these parts soon,” Arthur stated, making the man pause, turn reluctantly around. “If I do not have sufficient men to fight it with me, then you’ll not need workers for your farm.”

  Arthur was turning away, reaching for other letters on his table, said, his back to the tent entrance, “Euric, if I cannot stop him, when he comes, will take more than your slaves.”

  Bedwyr, peering through the open flap, one arm resting on the tent pole watched the man go tottering down through the lines, head ducked, face red against the trail of laughter that cantered after him. He only hoped those Saxon slaves had the sense to keep their skinny carcasses hidden for a while.

  “That was neatly done,” he chuckled, turning back into the tent and sauntering over to stand behind his cousin. “Of course, he knew you lied.”

  “He had no means to prove it though.” Arthur sighed, handed his second-in-command the parchment he had been scanning. “It came this morning.”

  Quickly Bedwyr read, his expression altering from brief amusement to disbelief, dismay. “They are as near as that?”

  Resigned, Arthur nodded. Euric and his Goth army were less than sixty miles distant.

  “And Syagrius?” Bedwyr queried. “Where is his promised army? The men we were expected to join with, the men who are supposedly to meet us here, to be at the forefront of this fight?”

  The Pendragon laughed, a harsh, mocking sound. “Still encamped at Lutetia. Apparently they like the climate better there. It is not so… ” he laughed again, wilder, desperate, “not so potentially deadly.”

  XXXIII

  Mathild signed with her hand to the small group of Saxons hunkered to the south side of her personal tent. The six men acknowledged the ‘all clear’ with appreciative grins and trotted off, chattering amiably, returning about their business. It had been a close-run thing. If they had been spotted by their former master… Mathild smiled to herself as she watched them go, good men, good Saxon men. No Saxon deserved the fate of being taken as slave. She was certain Arthur would not have turned them over to that greasy-looking Gaulish peasant, he needed them too much for himself. But had they been seen, well, it would have created a nasty incident. Sensible to lie low a while.

  She considered returning to the Pendragon’s tent, decided against. He was in no mood for women, for her, these past two weeks. Not since that messenger had come from Britain, from the man Ambrosius, telling him Gwenhwyfar was dying. Arthur grieved for her, his conviction he ought not have come here to Gaul and stayed so long, magnified that grief. He needed no reminder that he had also betrayed his love by taking a whore to his bed. Could she as easily cease her needing for him?

  Mathild did not share Bedwyr’s optimism that Gwenhwyfar might yet live. The messenger had spoken of an illness, of the expectation she would not survive – had said that further news would follow. But nothing had come, no word, nothing. Did she secretly feel gladdened at that? If Arthur no longer had a wife, he would have need of another, one day.

  Shaking her head, Mathild lengthened her stride more purposefully towards the women’s corner, the whores’ tents. She had found friends there and a chance to share women’s gossip. A chance to ascend to her true-born status also, for the army whores treated her for who she was by birth, and what she was, the daughter of a noble-born and the mistress of a king. His mistress ja, but his wife? As much as she loved Arthur, that she did not truly want, not in her heart. She wanted to go home, to her own kindred along the Elbe River, to claim her rights of land and wealth. As wife to the Pendragon she could have more success in claiming it, but Arthur would never help her. Not now. Never again would he leave his own Britain. If ever he was able to return to it.

  She was greeted with smiles of welcome by the women. Sharing a few passing comments, a brief exchange of idle chatter, she was invited within Marared’s tent where a whirlwind of young children were tumbling and playing. A vivacious, pretty girl, Marared was among the favourites of the whore camp, her tent always a beacon to those who were looking for a warm bed. The children were a gaggle of varying-coloured hair, different-shaped faces, skin tones. All hers, none with the same father. The eldest, ten years old, shook his brothers and sisters from him, emerged from the heaving pile with a red, laughing, face. The mock-fight had been fast and furious with all seven of them against himself.

  “There are times,” he declared, “when I discover how it must be to fight many times your own number in battle!”

  Mathild agreed, helping him out of the melee. “These ruffians need the discipline of a Decurion’s drilling!” She patted the nearest on his backside as he swarmed past with the others. “Get you gone so I can talk with your mother and be able to hear my own voice!” Squawking and shrieking, they ran out to join other children. They would find employment around the camp, carrying, cleaning, chopping wood, mending clothes. The whores’ army, they were called, the brats who marched with their mothers behind the men. Often never knowing which man had sired them, not caring. One father was as good as another.

  The eldest, last to leave, tossed a query at Mathild as he passed. “Be there news?” he asked. “Are we to fight soon?”

  “What? Am I one of Arthur’s officers to have the knowing of such?”

  “Nay,” the boy jested, “but you be his whore and that makes you know all that goes on!” Indignant, Mathild swiped at his ear. He ducked, ran, giggling, to join his siblings.

  “That lad will be the end of me!” His mother laughed proudly. “Come you in, m’dear and we’ll share this jug of wine I’ve acquired. ‘Tis good stuff.” Her eyes twinkling, added, “Comes from an officer pleased with his night’s sport.”

  Mathild sat, accepted the wine. It was indeed good quality. They talked of women’s things, of the youngest babe, the next that was on the way, of Mathild’s new gown, fashioned from fine-woven wool, a present from the King some weeks before. Shared amusement over the morning’s trickery, their laughter growing the louder as Mathild impersonated the farmer, mocking his predicament.

  They fell silent, lying back on the ragged bedding that served for eight children. The wine was strong.

  “Will he let you go, think you? When the fighting comes?”

  Mathild did not answer immediately. Would he grant her freedom? “I think,” she confided, “he would let me go now, were I to ask… but,” she lifted one hand, emphasising her uncertainty, “but I think also, I would not ask. He is so lost, so empty. He will soon again need the comfort only a woman can offer. I would be here for him when that need comes.” Remembering her own past pain, she added, “It is hard to accept the loss of the one you love, and Arthur loved Gwenhwyfar, for certain.”

  She lay a moment, staring up at the stained, ragged ceiling of the patched, worn tent. He loved his wife as much as Mathild had come to love him. “I think,” she whispered, saying her floating thoughts aloud, “should he want me again, I will not wear my amulet or use the secret things that stop a child from forming.” She turned her head, “What think you?” But the other woman had her eyes closed, her mouth open. A gentle snore emanated into the room.

  Mathild regarded the ceiling again, watched it swirl and blur. Ja, the wine was good. Too good.

  XXXIV

  Arthur was standing, his fingers hooked through the leather baldric that carried his sword, watching the distant, glittering light of the first stars. A calm, quiet evening, the coolness most welcome after the heat of the day. He was thinking of nothing in particular, a myriad of thoughts come and gone as sudden as that bat flickering in and out of the trees and between the tents. He had never known a time when he had felt so miserable, so utterly despondent and alone. As a boy, when he had learnt of Uthr’s death his grief had felt like a weight crushing him. He had not even known Uthr to be his father, then, but he had loved him, and the losing of that man had come hard. And then, some time after, he thought he had lost Gwenhwyfar, thought she had been taken, butchered by the Saxons, by Hengest and his rabbl
e when they had turned rebellious against Vortigern. His feelings then had been those of horror and distress – but he had had the comfort, however slight, of hope. And it had proved right, for he had found her alive and well, carrying their first child. Llacheu, his first-born son, the son who had been killed… Arthur tore his mind from those cruel thoughts. What point this aimless dwelling on the dead? Gwenhwyfar was gone. Dead. Finished. Ah, love of the gods, how could he exist without her?

  Movement behind, the gentle swish of a woman’s robes and aroma of subtle perfume, the tent flap lifting, a wedge of light flooding out into the darkness. Mathild. He was grateful to her, for she was one of those rare women who knew when a man needed the solitude of silence or the companionship of talk.

  She came to stand beside him, with sincere fondness, slid her arm around his waist, stood looking as he did, up at the stars pricking the darkening sky, sharing his reverie. Absently, he laid his hand over hers, his fingers twining with her own. She would never love him as deeply as she had once loved her husband, but Arthur, despite his sudden tempers, was capable of being a kind and loving man. You had to know him, know the man, the reality that lay hidden beneath the hard exterior.

  “What will you do?” she asked, knowing he would understand to what she referred.

  “Stop him from coming further north.” He sighed, squeezed her fingers again. “That is all I can do. There is no choice in the matter.”

  “Is there much hope of being successful?” She did not add any more. They all knew the answer. Without Syagrius, without his substantial, promised reinforcements, knew the answer too clearly.

  “Hope?” Arthur said, with a sardonic laugh. “Hope took a swift horse an hour or so since, and is heeling hard for home.” He turned to her. “You are a good woman, Mathild, you will make someone a good wife. Choose your next husband wisely.”

  She smiled back at him, her feelings for him plain in the unwitting shine of her eyes. “I will find it hard to meet with another man like you.” He smiled. “I hope so. There are, fortunately in some eyes, few like me!”

  The camp was settling for the night to sleep, or to gather in comrades’ tents for dice or board games. For the sharing of ale and wine, or the exchange of tales of bravado and boasted prowess. A congenial, high-hearted camp, even with the knowing that soon they were to meet with Euric.

  “Come with me.” Arthur led her back inside the tent, stood her in the centre, strode to the table where he rummaged through the scattered pile of letters, wax tablets and documents, lists, petitions, correspondence. Took up two scrolls, both rolled and sealed, one larger than the other. He crossed back to Mathild, handed her both. “Open the smaller one.” He pointed to it, took a step backward, stood watching as, curious, she glanced from him to the things in her hand. Encouraging, he nodded his head.

  Puzzlement increasing, she wandered to the bed, sat, put the larger scroll down, broke the seal of the smaller, read. When she looked up, tears glistened on her cheeks. Her voice was tight, the words coming in a quivering whisper. “It is my freedom.”

  Arthur shrugged, as if this were but some light, inconsequential matter. “Have you ever felt anything but free? You are too independent a woman.”

  She bit her lip to stem the great flood of emotion. Looked up at him, more tears coming. “I can go home?”

  He nodded.

  “Now?”

  He shrugged again with one shoulder. “If you wish.”

  She re-read her manumission, signed with Arthur’s flourished signature, Arthur Pendragon, Riothamus. Sat, feeling limp, awash with such a mixture of feelings, not knowing what to say, do.

  Casually, aware of her consternation, Arthur crossed to the wine, poured for himself and her. “I would like it were you to stay this one last night, but that would be for you to choose, not me to demand.”

  A third time she looked up at him, her face and heart glowing with a happiness so great she thought she might burst open, like a seed head that was overfull of pollen.

  Embarrassed, Arthur indicated the second scroll. “Why not open that one also?”

  Almost reluctant – for what further happiness could he give her – she did so. She read quickly, abandoned her restraint of tears, let them fall freely as she hurried across the tent to hold him, to bury her head in his shoulder as she wept. The second contained legal freedom for all the Saxon slaves currently enlisted in Arthur’s force of the Cymry.

  Feeling a little awkward, Arthur slid his arm around her. “Well,” he mocked, “had I known it would upset you so much, I’d not have written the document!”

  She pulled away, wiped at her tears with her fingers, laughing aloud. “I am not upset. I am,” she fumbled for words, admitted, “I know not what I am.”

  Drinking his wine in gulps that betrayed his own mixed feelings, Arthur half-turned away from her, said, “They too, the men, may leave when they wish.”

  Incredulous, her laughter faded. “But you are already too short of men.”

  He gestured acceptance of the inevitable. “A dozen or so less will not make much difference.” He drank again, finished the goblet. It would, but he was beyond caring.

  Mathild crossed to him, threaded her arm through his again, sought his eyes so he might see her earnestness. “Most of the men here are from my own people, kindred of those who have their homes along the Elbe. Most are loyal to me, for I am the daughter of a nobleman, a warrior lord. They will do as I do, say as I say.”

  Arthur patted her hand. “I had counted on that. They will see you safe home.”

  She dipped her head in agreement. “But so too will they serve me here. Free men fight the better for knowing they do so out of choice, not desperation.”

  Aye, that was true enough.

  She had to stand on toe-tip to reach up and kiss him, for Arthur was tall and she slight. “I will stay these next few days, see this through. After… whichever way it may go… after, I will return to my home.”

  They lay quiet as the stars trod their ancient path across the arch of black sky. Together, warm, she nestled between his arms, her head pillowed on his chest, hair fanned in a tumble of golden spray. Arthur was awake, staring at the darkness inside the tent. Awake and thinking again of all those unwanted, unbearably sad memories. An owl called somewhere, mournful, desolate and haunting. An owl, the spirit bird. Did Gwenhwyfar come, riding astride its back? Or Llacheu? Gwydre? Amr? Or was it his own spirit, come to make ready to take him to the beyond?

  Mathild stirred in her sleep, mumbling some unintelligible word. In his sorrow he needed comfort, could not have borne it had she gone from him also.

  XXXV

  Someone else lay awake twenty or so miles from the Pendragon’s encampment. She lay with her three-year-old son huddled close, deep asleep. They were curled beneath her cloak, for the night was chill after the warmth of the day. The stars had blazed so bright, and crisp, a thousand silver fires burning in the vault of the sky. She had watched the constellations in their slow wheel, watched a star fall with the blaze of brief but magnificent glory, seen a planet rise, and wander its path.

  Morgaine had come with her son, she knew not why. Some inner urging or instinct? Come to see him again, the father of this boy, the man she loved. But having come, her courage had left her. He would have no wish to see her; have no wish to see for himself the child spawned from his seed. The journey to Less Britain had been long and arduous for both mother and child, had been dangerous for a woman with only her wits and indefinable aura of mystery to keep her safe. An aura that made men look, uneasy, away and mutter prayers to their gods, or cross themselves in the Christian way, when she cast her haughty gaze at them.

  Medraut was much like his father, brown, slight curled hair, though lighter in shade; intense eyes that seemed as if they could see right through to your soul. The same nose, long, straight. As she had set out from the place that had become her home, Morgaine had told the boy of Arthur, the Pendragon, the one they called Riothamus. Told him of
his strength and courage, his wisdom and laughter, speaking aloud all the memories that lay so vivid in her mind.

  They were so close now, two, three more days would bring them to the place where the army camped, waiting for Euric the Goth to come further north; but the closeness was bringing its own terror, feelings that drowned her expectant hopes. Only the once had they lain together, her and Arthur, although he had come to her place at Yns Witrin more times than that. Only the once had she known him intimately, yet she had loved him, loved him with an intensity as bright as the brightest star, from as far distant as girlhood. Five years of age she had been when first she had seen him. The only man – only other being – to be kind to her, to have smiled on her. For that, if nothing else, her love had been seeded.

  Why had she come? She ought not have come! Those days, that time, when she had been the last priestess of the Goddess, the Lady by the Lake, was different. She had held a cloak of mystery and pagan sanctity around her then. For that reason alone he had come to her. Why would he be wanting her now, when he knew that she was nothing more than the illegitimate mother of a bastard child?

  She lay, looking up at the stars. “If another one falls before I count to the number of one hundred,” she whispered to herself, “I will turn around on the morrow and return to Yns Witrin.”

  A star fell. It had been a pointless promise. Morgaine knew she could not go anywhere without seeing him, seeing his face, hearing his voice just one more, one more, last time.

  July 469

  XXXVI

  Gwenhwyfar was enjoying the wedding celebrations. Her strength was improving daily, the vitality returning, like the welcome spread of spring sunshine, through her limbs and body. Her face was filling out again, the skin a glowing colour of pink health, not the sallow yellow of illness, and her eyes had that familiar sparkle returning, the glint of tempered fire and vivacious laughter. Caer Cadan was the natural choice for the marriage of Cadwy and Ragnall, for neither of their respective fathers had inclination to offer hospitality. Arthur’s stronghold held adequate room to house many guests, warranted the prestige and facilities for a splendid feasting – and would be an opportunity to remind those who were on the verge of forgetting that they still had an acclaimed King. Aye indeed, Gwenhwyfar was enjoying herself.