Shadow of the King

by Helen Hollick

  Medraut was only a child. Morgaine, his mother, would have caught the rise of inflection in Arthur’s voice, would have heard the catch in his throat and seen the quick rise of breath on his chest. Being a boy, Medraut had no reason to doubt his father’s answer.

  LIII

  The horse held his head out stiffly, easing the discomfort of the swollen, misshapen glands beneath his jaw. Onager was ill. He was off his feed, his body slumped; eyes dull and disinterested. The nasal discharge had altered from a clear trickle to the thick, opaque flux common to the strangling disease, an illness that spread from horse to horse with rapacious speed – the young were the most vulnerable, together with the unfit and the old. Onager was a good horse, in his prime, well-fed, well-groomed, but as a colt he had not contracted a dose of this wretched illness, was paying for that earlier escape now.

  The jaw abscess was hardening, was ready to burst, the danger being that it would burst internally, would drain inward. Gwenhwyfar stroked her hand sympathetically along his neck, his coat harsh and rough beneath her finger-touch; her misery compounded by a combination of lack of sleep, profound disappointment and anxiety. She was regretting the impulsive decision to bring Onager. Was regretting coming at all. What a fool she had been!

  To know he was alive. Is that what she had told herself all these weeks, these months? Just to know he was alive? Was she a fool, born under the madness of a red moon? She wanted him back – had assumed he would come back to her, with her. Fool! Her soothing fingers had wandered to the hard lump beneath Onager’s jaw. It would need lancing to ensure the pus drained away correctly, a task she detested. A foul, messy job. Do it now, or leave it another day?

  Two days past Gweir had ridden out of the valley, had said little on his return.

  “Did you see him?” Gwenhwyfar had asked, flushed, breathless.

  “I saw him.”

  “And?”

  “And I left his sword with him, as you asked.”

  That first night had passed slowly, hot and airless, with Gwenhwyfar unable to sleep. She had prowled her room, lain down, got up. Told herself the agitation was for Onager, ill in the stables. Knew it for the excuse it was. Tomorrow Arthur would come, they would wait for Onager to recover and then go home. Oh, would tomorrow never come?

  The day came, but Arthur did not. Another dawn. Sun-up, midday. Evening, a haze of dark clouds gathering into another grumbling storm.

  “You told him I was here?” She had asked Gweir several times.

  He had bitten his lip, tried to avoid meeting her eyes. He had nodded. “I told him.” But how could he tell her Arthur’s last words? “I have for myself another life, another home.”

  The stables were lit by only two lamps for the night. More were unnecessary. The men had gone to their beds, although Ider would not be far away, probably having a last drink with the tavern-keeper. The gates to the convent would have been locked more than two hours past. She would sleep near Onager this night. Rain pattered lightly on the stable roof. Again, Gwenhwyfar fingered that ripening swelling.

  Footsteps beyond the door. Ider had said he would come to see all was well before he slept. The lamps flickered briefly as it opened and closed, chivvying a draught. “We must make decision on this tomorrow,” Gwenhwyfar said, her head tilted, peering closely at the abscess. “We cannot afford to leave its lancing over-late.”

  The aisle between the stalls was long and narrow, much of it in darkness. The man’s boots clattered on the cobbling, a smell of a rain-wet cloak. He lifted the lighted lamp as he came abreast of it, carrying it high, stretched forward, felt the hard lump, ran his hand affectionately down the horse’s neck. The animal lifted his head, ears pricking, attempted a soft whicker of greeting.

  “Ah, my handsome lad, I can see you are not well, but we will get you better.”

  Gwenhwyfar stood very still, her fingers remaining on Onager’s crest, her heart pounding, mouth dry, lost for the right words to say.

  Arthur set the lamp safe into a niche high in the wall, placed his fingers lightly over hers. His hand was cold, the skin sun-browned. He was thinner than she remembered, his cheeks hollowed, eyes tired. His hair needed cleaning and combing, a shave too, for the stubble was thick on his face. An uneasy, embarrassed silence. “You would have been thinking I was not going to come,” he said, his voice so familiar.

  “I was starting to think that.”

  For want of something more to say, he touched Onager again. “This needs lancing. Tonight.”

  “It will go another day.”

  “No, it will not!” he said it wildly, with more aggression than he had intended. His mind was a muddled jumble. His stomach knotted into an ache of disbelief and elation and fear, mixing and tumbling with uncertainties and doubts. Churning with a need that was so great its shout was deafening his senses. He had thought her dead, gone! But here she was, standing before him, green eyes, copper hair, lovely. His Gwenhwyfar.

  She spun around, fury blazing on her face. “What do you know of it? What do you care?” She too was sun-browned and her face thin. She knocked his hand away from the horse, snarled, “What right have you to tell me what to do?”

  “I have every right, he is my horse.”

  “You forfeited that right when you elected to stay with your whore!”

  “Morgaine is not my whore.”

  Gwenhwyfar laughed contempt. “Do you expect me to believe that?”

  “I do not know what I expected!” Arthur drew in his breath, fought to swallow this stupid rise of anger sparking between them. He lowered his gaze from her flashing eyes, his fingers fiddling with a buckle on his belt, nervously raised his eyes again, half-smiled. “I did not expect us to fight.”

  She snorted, made to push past him, to move away, to put a distance between them; her heart was hammering, her breathing rapid. He grasped her arm. With great effort he said, as calmly as he could, “I thought you to be dead. Until Gweir came, I had no way of knowing different.”

  “And you never cared to make sure? Forgot your daughter, your country, your kingdom – and for what? For the by-blown daughter of Morgause, the woman who caused our son’s murder!” Nostrils flaring, she removed his clasping fingers from her arm. “You disgust me!” With quick steps, she stalked away, going into the darkness so he might not see how her hands, her body, shook.

  “How could I go back?” Arthur shouted. “For months I lay close enough to death to remember nothing of it.” He spoke to her retreating shadow, made no attempt to follow. Cried, “Would Britain have taken me back? After I had been directly responsible for all those dead? I had lost everything. My men, my pride!” He spread his hands, let them fall. Said very quietly, “So too, I thought, you.”

  She had stopped.

  “I could not go back, Cymraes.” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug that told more of the grief, of the defeat that had tormented him these last three years, than any words could express. Arthur had always held the reputation of never quite telling the truth. It was an image he had specifically nurtured, along with the implacable, ruthless exterior. Only Gwenhwyfar had known him for what he was, a man with so many doubts and fears. “I could not, Cymraes,” he said again. “Without you there to help me, I had not the courage.”

  Gwenhwyfar closed her eyes, her fists at her sides clenched, her shoulders taut. “The tears I have cried for you. The loneliness!” Her own grief was there, her pain. “All those tears,” she said as she slowly turned around to look at him, “And you were with another woman.”

  He shook his head, hesitantly stepped to her. “No, there is nothing between me and Morgaine. In another life, happen there might have been, but not in this. I lay with her once. I did not know then what… ” he took a deep, steadying breath, confided, “what I later realised. There cannot be anything between us.”

  “You ask me to believe you have no love for her?”

  “I loved you. Only you. And I thought you were dead.”

  The trembling reached he
r voice. “You also. I believed you dead, also.” They stood a pace or two apart, eyes not meeting, not daring to look one upon the other.

  Arthur nodded, so Gweir had told him in the sun-shadowed stillness of the byre. All morning he had waited, he had told Arthur, patient, beneath the shade of the woods, waiting for a time when the woman and the child might not notice him. They had left, together, walking up the incline, had disappeared over the brow of the hill, and Gweir had ridden down from his hiding place.

  “You and I have both suffered,” Arthur attempted. “Unnecessarily, it seems.”

  Gwenhwyfar was weakening, the anger caused by alarm and the flutter of unease going out of her. “You ought to have come home.”

  “Aye.” He stretched out his hand, his smile widening. “I was wrong.” He took those last few steps, took her hand. “But I am not wrong about my horse.”

  Gwenhwyfar’s answering smile was shy, guilty. “I know you are not.”

  He touched her cheek, caressing her lightly with his fingers and thumb, remembering so clearly her scent, how her body felt within his arms. He would have kissed her, but Onager moved, restless, in his stall. The animal was in discomfort, needed tending.

  Businesslike, feeling his feet on safe ground for the first time in many months, Arthur’s dagger came into his hand. Unnecessarily, he tested the blade although he knew it to be honed to keen sharpness. The kiss could come later. Perhaps more than a kiss.

  LIV

  The rain was easing, the clouds breaking up into ragged streamers blown by a freshening wind. Soon, the new day would steal in. Beneath the mantle of darkness the world lay at peace, asleep. Gwenhwyfar, curled on a bed of dried bracken in an empty stall, mumbled incoherently in her sleep.

  Arthur had been outside to sluice a bucket of its foul contents – the wound beneath Onager’s jaw still seeped yellow pus, but the draining stuff had eased. He stopped at the doorway to the stall where Gwenhwyfar slept; stood, one hand resting on the shoulder-high post. He had thought he would never see her again, never hear her voice, feel her touch. In one sense he had died, for he had been nothing but an empty, dead husk these past years. A part of him could not believe, accept, that he was standing here looking at her, watching her breathe, alive. This was all some cruel dream. He would wake soon, would wake to face, over again, the misery of knowing she was gone from him for ever. He stepped further into the stall, his hand – it was shaking – stretching out to touch the delicate skin along the inside of her arm. Leapt back, snatching away with a muted gasp. She was cold! Ice-cold, death-cold! Teeth biting into a forefinger, Arthur steadied his uneven breathing. Fool! Of course she would be cold. Was it not cold in here? Stalls for twenty horses, with only eight filled and a draught whistling like an ice-dragon’s breath flurrying through every conceivable gap? He unfastened his cloak, laid it across her body, tucking it beneath her exposed arm. Gwenhwyfar. His Gwenhwyfar.

  Leaning his head against the partitioning wall, he closed his eyes, sank down to his heels and bowed his face into cupped hands. She was alive and he had not known of it! She had come for him, still cared for him, expected him to go back with her to Britain. To do what? To lead men, to be King again? How could he? How could he command men to fight, when he had not even the courage to wear his own sword? He had stayed here, hidden away, rather than make that long journey back to Britain, stayed here because it was easier to let them believe him dead rather than let them see him for the weak, cowering failure of the man he had become.

  He dozed where he sat, hunkered on his heels. The outer door opening with a crash as a gust of the rising wind caught it, woke him and Gwenhwyfar together.

  Startled, they both jolted awake Arthur hurriedly scrabbling to his feet, his dagger coming automatically into his hand. Gwenhwyfar slower, sleep-tangled beneath his covering cloak.

  It was Ider coming in, unshaven and sleep-tousled, coming, as Arthur had ordered, to wake him. Behind him, the faint light of first dawn seeped through the open door-place. Ider lifted his hands, palms outermost to show he held no weapon. “Whoa!” he soothed, “‘tis only I. How is the horse this morning?”

  Arthur tucked his dagger safe into its sheath, grinned to hide that sudden-come jolt of alarm as he stepped forward hand outstretched to greet his old friend. It had been dark last night, raining, with little light to see by clearly outside the tavern. Only briefly had they spoken then, Arthur asking where he would find Gwenhwyfar, Ider awkwardly expressing his joy at seeing again his King alive and well.

  “Mithras, Ider,” he teased, seeing the man in better light, “if you put much more bulk around that belly of yours, you will break your horse’s back!”

  “Bulk!” Ider chortled, his broad hands patting the ample bulge around his midriff, “This is solid muscle!”

  “Solid flab!”

  Gwenhwyfar, straw bedding caught in her hair, the cloak folded over her arm, came to Arthur’s side. Her eyes were bright, gold flecks dancing against the green. She prodded Ider’s prolific weight with her finger. “This,” she said, “is an ale pot. It has wondrous powers for it renders its wearer senseless at night and has the ability to fill faster than it empties.”

  The two men roared their laughter, Ider’s face flushing a modest red, Arthur’s arm going around Gwenhwyfar’s shoulders to stand as often they had stood, close, companionably together. She did not move away, turned her head to look at him, green eyes meeting brown. The laughter left his face as he returned that solemn gaze. He had kissed her, after they had dressed the lanced wound with a pad soaked in oil and vinegar, after they were sure Onager was safe enough for the remainder of the night. One kiss, his lips lightly on hers, but it had been almost a chaste, tentative thing like two people who did not yet know each other well enough for intimacy, fumbling around politely in a darkness of uncertainty.

  Ider cleared his throat, squeezed past, intent on inspecting Onager. The horse’s ears were cold, although Arthur had covered him with a blanket. He busied himself with changing the dressing, tried not to let his eyes or ears stray to the two people who stood a few yards away. They were all in turmoil! Lives turned topside-out.

  Gwenhwyfar brought her fingers up, touched them lightly to Arthur’s chin, slid her palm across his cheek, held his face in her hand, her eyes taking in his features, looking for all those half-forgotten familiarities: the flop of hair that tumbled over his forehead; his nose, long and straight; firm, determined jaw. Those dark eyes that so well kept all thoughts, secrets and fears tucked behind. Of what was he thinking now? Of her, of them? Of the past, the future?

  “It is you,” she said. “I dreamt you were only a memory. I called you, but you did not come.”

  He placed his hand over hers, pressing the palm firmer to his skin. “If I did not come it was because I could not… ” And then he said, “And if I do not return with you, it is because I cannot.”

  Her eyes widened, then darted, flashed, realising what he had said, meant. “You are staying with her? Choosing her over me? Christ and all the gods in heaven!” She hurled away from him, tossing his cloak from her, “And I believed you! Last night, Mithras help me, I damned well believed you!”

  He answered with the first, stupid thought that came into his head. “I only came to see Onager.”

  “You bastard!” She spat. “You toad-spawned, whoring bastard!” Gwenhwyfar could move quickly, for she had always been lithe and quick on her feet. Before he could defend himself, take a step back or raise his hands, her palm flashed out, struck him across his cheek, reeling his head backward, leaving a red streak across the flesh.

  “Take your bloody horse!” she screamed, “Take him and go! I hope you both rot!” She whirled, a flurry of brown skirt and copper hair, was gone, running from the stables, up the hill through the gate into the sanctity of the woman’s place, the Place of the Lady.

  Ider stroked his broad hand down the softness of Onager’s nose, stood blindly, torn between his devotion to Gwenhwyfar and his love for the Pend
ragon. Arthur was aware he was there, unsure and uncertain. As confused as he was himself.

  “What do I do, Ider? How do you tell such a woman the man she once knew is no longer living?” He turned his eyes to seek some form of guidance from the big man standing by the chestnut horse. “I am Arthur, but I am no more the Pendragon. I forfeited the right to that title when I left the remainder of my men to die without me. Left those already dead for the crows.”

  Ider disagreed, but how was it his place to say so?

  A fool thing to do, for the horse was ill, needed rest and quiet to recover, but Arthur took his halter rope. “Sometimes,” he tried, explained, as he went towards the open door leading the horse, “sometimes, there can be no going back.”

  He would have his horse, at least, to remind him of what he had once loved. And had lost a second time over.

  LV

  When Arthur did not return, Morgaine was not unduly worried, it would not be the first time he had stayed drinking himself into a stupor at the Wild Boar tavern in Avallon. He would find his way home eventually, come staggering through the door with boots muddied and clothes rain-sodden, wearing a sore head and a poor temper.

  She had company, for old Livia had arrived, seemed set to stay a while. A well-intentioned woman, but a nuisance on occasion for she was not one to notice subtle hints.

  “Arthur not here?” she had queried, in her high, old-age creaking tone, stumping through the always-open door, setting herself firmly in the only chair. “Part of my roof is off. That storm did much damage the other night.” Impossible to say no to Livia, she asked as a command, but then, no one would say no to an old woman who had no man or son of her own.

  “I will send him over tomorrow.” Morgaine knew Arthur would be annoyed at the offer, but Livia could hardly be expected to repair such damage herself, and they were her nearest neighbours. The two women drifted into other, varying conversations, Morgaine taking up her distaff and spindle, Livia, enjoying the companionship of idle gossip. Medraut busied himself with his third attempt at carving a pony. Da made shaping the wood appear so simple, but the blade never seemed to obey his fingers as neatly. It was an odd-looking pony, with stumped, uneven legs and too square a head, but Medraut was pleased with his efforts. Morgaine chided him for the mess of shavings on the floor. Medraut ignored her.