Shadow of the King

by Helen Hollick

  Cerdic thrust Mathild’s hand from his arm, took one menacing step nearer his mother. “And if I were a king, what would there be for you?” His laughter sounded hollow, with almost a madness thrusting through the hard sound of it. “You failed to become a king’s wife; a king’s mother is your next hope.” He had stepped closer to her, stood over her, his breath foul on her face. “It is not for me that you urge this thing, but for your own glory. The mother of a king can wield great power should she so wish.” His lips drew back in a sneer, “And if the son would let her.” Slowly, he shook his head. “I do not want Britain. I will not take it, not for your benefit.”

  Eye for eye, Winifred returned her son’s stare. Her answer came, domineering, as from a woman used to being obeyed. “And I say, Cerdic, that you will.”

  He swung away, slammed his fist against the wattle wall a small puff of plaster trickling to the floor. The fine tapestries quivered.

  Mathild felt compelled to challenge the other woman, to salvage some of her own authority as mistress of this Hall, this settlement. “I too am a mother. I think of my son, Lady Winifred, as you do yours. His birthing-place is as mine, this river, the Elbe, not Britain, not some foreign country where the Wealas-breed live. He shall inherit wealth and power from his father when he is grown to manhood, without the need to spill his blood for it on some distant, hostile shore.” She indicated the child’s cradle to the far side of the room, where the boy lay curled tight in sleep. “It is for Cynric’s future that I and my husband must think. Not for our own.”

  Her hand shaking with derision, Winifred pointed at the child. “You think of the child before your husband. Why is that, I wonder? Because you think also of his shameful siring?”

  Mathild caught her breath, her fist going to clasp the material of her gown at her throat. Cerdic’s head snapped from watching his mother to scowl at his wife, then back to Winifred as she spoke again.

  “She has deceived you, Cerdic. From the very first she has tricked and used you for her own gain.” Winifred leant back in the chair, her shoulders pressing against the wickerwork, her fingers loose, relaxed, along the carved armrests. “A mother’s power behind her son can be great indeed, depending on the status of that child’s father. Mathild has never had love for you, Cerdic. Her loyalty sits elsewhere, with what her son may get her when you are gone. For he has as much claim to Britain as have you, has he not, Mathild?” Winifred’s gaze burnt into Mathild, rousing a rage that burnt putrid in the younger woman’s stomach, but she allowed no time for answer. “Her loyalty has rested all this while with the man who planted the seed in her belly of that boy asleep over there.” Abrupt, she stood. “You fool, Cerdic! Do you believe you sired the child? Arthur had the doing of it. Your own father bedded this whore before you took her to your bed.” She held open her hand, emphasising the obvious. “You have not the manhood in you to sire a child, nor the balls to take what by right ought be yours! Arthur was always so much the better than you!”

  Like thunder erupting from a black sky, Cerdic hurled the table next to him over, smashing the pots and tankards that stood upon it, scattering fruit and wine. The dogs leapt to their feet, barking; he hurled over a stool, a chest, roaring his hurt pride and rage.

  Mathild, stifling a scream, tried to run for the child, frightened that harm might befall him. Cerdic lunged in her path, grasped her shoulder, spun her around, struck his knuckles across her mouth, sending her staggering against the wall, blood welling from her nose and a split lip. She fell to her knees, tears coming with the blood, pain, and sudden fear.

  “You bitch!” she stabbed at Winifred, who stood superfluous, watching, mildly amused. “You lying bitch!” she hurled again, holding fingers to the blood, her other hand stretched towards Cerdic, pleading. He stood, panting, trembling, eyes widened and breathing hot with fury. Mathild clambered, unsteady, upright. “She lies, husband! Cynric is your son. Your child. Do not listen to her. She has, since first you wed me, tried to prise us apart, to dirty my name and my honour for she knows I would dissuade you to leave this place, our territory, our home.”

  Haughtily, Winifred protested. “I act only in your interest, son.”

  Cerdic caught his mother’s smug expression, turned on her. “For me?” he snarled, “My interest? When have you ever acted for me, Mother? For anyone other than yourself?” He stalked through the debris scattered over the rushes, kicked aside one of the dogs ferreting for food among the spillage. “All you have ever done is to make my life a misery.” Cerdic drew back his hand with the intention of striking her also, but Mathild was behind him, seized his wrist.

  “She is not worth your anger, my Lord! Send her from here, be rid of her. We have no need of her spite and her barbed, dung-stirring tongue.”

  Twisting from her grasp, Cerdic swung around, viciously pushed her from him. “You disgust me, woman! Think you I have not heard before this of how you lay with the bastard who was my father? Think you I have not heard the tongue whispering that Cynric may not be of my seed?” His foot sent another stool hurtling across the chamber. “I have ears to hear with, eyes to see and a brain to reckon the months!”

  Mathild’s anger was rising as high, she realised the need to fight for herself and for her son. To belittle Winifred. “Ja, I laid with Arthur. I was his bought slave, what choice had I? I was ill-used by him, as he ill-used all women.” Her lip was sore, already swelling, her head swam, fuzzy, dizzy, she fought the swaying faintness. “Cynric is your child. The rumours are lies; lies spread after she last came here.” Mathild thrust her pointing finger at Winifred. “She has stained the innocence of truth with her black heart and evil mind. Set rumour running for her own gain.” Unsteady, Mathild stood before her husband. “Who would you believe in this? Ugly, rattling tongues wagging after the drink has slurred the senses? Her? Your bitch mother who has no worth save her own arrogance? Or I, your loving wife?” Mathild spat bloodstained saliva onto the floor at Winifred’s feet. “Have I lied to you as she has? Have I ordered or demanded of you, as she does?”

  Cerdic nursed the flesh of his hand. Where he had struck out, the knuckles were bruised and grazed. His breathing was fast, his eyes darting. Truth? Lies? He had never known the difference, for his mother held no value for either. He would not recognise truth even if it were sworn on any oath named. He wanted to believe Mathild, so wanted to, but how could he judge? How could he know the truth from a lie?

  Attempting to regain calm, Mathild brushed rushes and straw from her woollen gown, pushed a fallen pin back into her hair.

  Momentarily, Winifred had been alarmed, fearing Cerdic would strike her also, but the moment had passed. She was again in control. “I swear, on your father’s grave,” she said to him, “that on this, I do not lie.”

  Mathild swung around, her eyes flashing rash, unchecked triumph. “Then your oath is false! To my certain knowledge, Arthur the Pendragon has not, yet, need of a grave.”

  XVII

  Winifred’s skin drained white. Cerdic stared at his wife, his mouth open.

  Mathild swallowed. Gods! What had she done? She nodded once, slowly, her split lip twitching into a slight, mocking smile. “The truth? I will tell you the truth. When last I saw Arthur he was clinging to life. By a narrow thread, I grant, but he was not, as the others believed, dead. I know he is alive.”

  Winifred’s hand lifted to cover her mouth, her breathing almost stopped. She mastered the panic, the uprush of disquiet, forced herself to move, slowly, back to the chair, to sit. This could not be true – yet she knew it was, knew this to be no fool jest. It was the sort of bloody-minded thing Arthur would do to her, cheat her of his death.

  “My father is alive?” Cerdic said, through a long, snarled breath. “You have known, all this while, he is not dead?”

  That brief glow of triumph faded from Mathild. This was not knowledge that ought have been made public. Not to these two.

  “Have I then, been bedding his whore while he still lived?”

>   “What difference does that make?” Mathild quavered, with false bravado. “Whether he be in this world or the next, what I once was to him… ”

  But she never finished. In senseless jealousy, unreasonable rage, Cerdic smashed his fist into her face. She fell, but his fists, his feet, kept battering at her, kept pounding into the body that had been touched, soiled, by the man he hated above all else. Nor was it Mathild he kicked and punished, but Arthur. His father, his bloody bastard of a father!

  His mother pulled at him, desperate, tugging at his arm, her voice crying in her throat. “Leave her, Cerdic! We must know where he is! Do you not see? She must tell us, we must know!”

  The child had woken, was wailing, frightened and confused at the noise.

  Hammering at the closed door, shouting. It burst inward, men coming in, swords drawn, anxious, alarmed. Mathild’s men, Saxons. A maidservant in the open doorway, hand to her mouth at the blood and the mess began to scream.

  Cerdic swung towards them. “Get out!” he bellowed. “Get out of here!” He pushed at them, lunged with his fist, booted with his foot, driving them from his private chamber, slammed the door shut, stood, breathing hard. Shaking.

  She was dead, Mathild, he knew that. No woman could survive such brutal treatment.

  “You fool!” Winifred snarled. “Will they follow you now without question? Without glancing at you with thoughts of murder in their minds? She was their kindred by blood.” With difficulty, she was attempting to control her own shaking body, swallow down the rise of vomit that had come into her throat. She fetched a cloak, threw it over the body, hiding it from sight, then wine from the far side of the chamber; with trembling hands, poured, drank a few, quick gulps, poured for Cerdic, handed him the tankard.

  “You have one chance to survive beyond this night, Cerdic, to live into the next dawn and the dawn after that.” Her hand went to his arm, gripped it tight, urgent. “You must say some madness took possession of her, that she tried to murder your son – I will be witness to it – to protect him you acted as only you could.” Her other hand took hold of his chin, her fingers biting into his jowled cheeks, forcing his head to turn, to look at her. “They will follow the boy! Without question, they will follow him.” She slowed her breathing, becoming calmer now she knew how to deal with this madness. “You must be his father. And I must discover, and ensure, somehow, that yours is truly dead.”

  Cerdic pushed her grasping hand from his face. Bitter, he laughed. “And what of Britain? Do you still command me to take Britain?”

  She moved away from him, turning her eye from the heap on the floor that had once been his wife. “If I do not manage to win over or destroy those men who have loyalty for Mathild above you – or her son – then Britain may be the only safe place for you.”

  Her smile allowed a sliver of triumph to settle into it. She knew who most of those men were, she had made it her business to know. They were the ones who had come north with Mathild from Gaul. The ones who had fought with Arthur. Easy enough to pay the right people with the right gold. Winifred laughed, low, to herself. Ah no, Mathild would not be going into the Otherworld alone. She would have her men with her for company. And by chance, one of them might talk of Arthur before he died.

  XVIII

  Another spring come and gone, with the days rapidly sprinting towards the full heat of summer.

  The man stood beside the palisade wall looking down into the valley that ran, almost as a second defensive barrier, around this side of the decaying Roman town. Avallon had once been a busy, important place, bustling with the trade that had come from the road that trundled north-west through Gaul, passing below its high citadel walls. No more. Few used the Roman road now Rome’s influence was waning. There was no safety in travel, no profit in trading along an obsolete route. Avallon too, was dying. Once a proud town, its buildings were beginning to crumble, becoming shabby; where the many taverns had swelled with laughter only one sold wine now. Where the young had set their market stalls, opened shops, sold pottery, skins and cloth, now only broken shutters swung aimlessly in the wind and few cared to visit Avallon.

  He, this man, was one of the few. Of dishevelled appearance, hair in need of cleaning and combing, simply dressed in rough-spun, woollen tunic and plaid bracae. He was watching a woman and child make their way along the track. They seemed small from up here, overshadowed by the tumble of trees cluttering the far hill, dwarfed by the steepness of Avallon’s own imposing height.

  He could hear their voices floating up to him on the clear, still air; hear her chiding the boy for idling. He ought to call out, show them he was watching, but he did not.

  Unchecked, a single, despairing tear wavered down his cheek. He closed his eyes, seeing in his mind not the woman walking down that narrow, steep-sided valley with her son, but another, one who had green eyes and unruly copper-coloured hair, not Morgaine’s dyed, red hair.

  He could see her, the other woman, her shape, her size, her hair tossing and cascading around her shoulders. But he could not image her face, or recall her voice. It was there, on the edge of memory, hanging like a half-awake dream, always just beyond his reach, never near enough to see clearly, to touch.

  He ought to be grateful to Morgaine, for she had so patiently healed him of his terrible wounds, brought him back from the edge of the Otherworld. Her nursing, skill and love through those long, long months when he had lain so ill, so weak and so helpless, ought to be appreciated, rewarded. She loved him, he knew that, but for her he felt nothing. Nothing at all.

  After the passing of these long, long, seasons, the hardship of winter, the glory of spring, surely he ought feel some stirring, some lift of caring feeling? But Arthur felt nothing. Nothing save the gaping emptiness that surrounded and swallowed him. His Gwenhwyfar was gone, gone ahead to the Otherworld without him, and he had lost everything that had once been his, in this. His men, his kingdom, his courage and hope.

  Morgaine happened to glance up, saw him standing there behind the timber palisade wall, waved, encouraged her son to wave also, but Arthur did not return the acknowledgement. She could heal deep inflicted wounds from spear, sword or axe, could ease away the ravings of a fever, nourish the weakness and return strength to a body so sorely punished. Nothing could she do for the inner hurts, the bruising and lacerations to the heart and soul. Arthur was her life, her being, her meaning, yet she was daily, almost by the hour, aware he had no feeling for her.

  Arthur stood, his mind not registering the blueness of the sky, the gold of the sun or the fresh green of the trees. When the others had gone, believing him dead, Morgaine had stayed with him. Cared for him in the hovel of a deserted goatherd’s hut she had found tumbled beside the river. Fought for many weeks against the spirit of death that had so determinedly courted him. She had cooled his fever, warmed him when he lay shivering and cold. When those immediate dangers were passed, struggled with his weak and feeble body to bring him here into the safe territory of the Burgundians; to the place where she lived, a few miles outside Avallon, within the dedicated, discreet community of pagan women who served the Mother Goddess.

  All this she had done for him out of love. He ought feel something of gratitude to her, not this damning darkness of resentment. He could not fight it though. Had not the strength or inclination.

  Better it would have been, for Morgaine, for himself, to have died there in that stinking goatherd’s hut. For, without reason to live it was all, all of it, so pointless.

  XIX

  Although Ambrosius Aurelianus wore the impressive title Supreme Governor of All Britain, it was a hollow decoration, or at least, the element ‘All Britain’ was exaggeration. By the factor of his strength and popularity among the northern and western tribes, Arthur had been the only man, since the extinction of Roman influence, to rule as unquestionably supreme. Save, perhaps, in the extreme north, above the line of the old Antonine Wall where not even Rome had survived for more than a handful of years. To the Pendragon the Bri
tish tribes had acknowledged their homage, claiming lesser titles of king or prince beneath his seniority. To Arthur, the English had also knelt, either willingly or forced through defeat. By right of inheritance, he had been lord over his own Dumnonia and the Summer Land. Aye, Arthur had been a warlord who commanded much power and respect.

  Only the territory of Ambrosius had not bowed to him. Centred around the wealthy and well-to-do towns of Aquae Sulis, Venta Bulgarium, Caer Gloui and Corinium – Londinium having been shamefully lost to the Saxons through the tyrant Vortigern’s incompetence – the populace preferred one of their own kind to lead them. Someone who valued Rome and the Empire. Someone who would restore that same stability of law and order. Who would reintroduce the hierarchy’s necessary status and wealth and reduce unreasonable taxation.

  Arthur had veered towards the old, pre-Roman way, to the independence and tradition of the British tribesman. Ambrosius Aurelianus advocated the opposite, the rights and privileges of the citizen. Naturally, with its deep-rooted sense of pomp and grandiosity, southern Britain came down heavily weighted in the latter’s favour. As naturally, the wilder lands of Britain would have nothing to do with him.

  With Arthur’s going, that gradually splitting rift had fragmented even further, Britain was no longer a single island state. With no steady hand firm on the steer-board, the tribespeople were returning to how it had been before the Roman Eagles had marched up from Rutupiae way back in Claudius’s time, in Anno Domini Forty-three. Gwynedd, Powys, Rheged and their sister lands; the wild hills above the Wall – all were now independent, forming themselves into rough-hewn embryonic kingdoms, answerable to none save their own lord. The ending of Arthur had escalated the ending of Britain as a united province. Only the one enclave, Ambrosius’s held lands, remained steadfastly Roman.