Shadow of the King

by Helen Hollick

  “That is a sound of deep regret, my friend! What troubles you so?”

  Ambrosius looked up sharply, saw a tall, tall man, red hair grizzled and streaked with grey, eyes merry, lips firm. For that brief, quick-glimpsed moment, he thought he was seeing Cunedda, the Lion Lord of Gwynedd, but he was dead, gone these many long years…

  “Enniaun! My dear Lord Enniaun, I did not hear you enter!” Ambrosius was on his feet, pleasure lighting his solemn expression, hand outstretched, greeting Cunedda’s eldest surviving son, aware the Hall was filling with newcomers, men, cloaks drenched, dripping puddles on the floor, their accompanying dogs trading aggression with those of the Hall.

  “Your reverie was certainly deep!” Enniaun laughed, straddling himself before the brazier. “Guilt of conscience or musing for the future?” His laughter resonated through the Hall, raising smiles from those within hearing. For a moment the gloom of the place lifted, colour returned, life seeped through the walls, drifted among the roof-beams.

  “My uncle knows no guilt, he is a man of God.”

  Ambrosius swung around, startled at the sarcastic remark, a faint gasp issuing from his lips. Arthur! Arthur, here? In this place? “I was thinking of Hueil.” The words sprang from his mouth unchecked, unbidden.

  Arthur swung his heavy, rain-sodden cloak from his shoulders, handed it to his body-servant, moved to the poor, insufficient warmth of the brazier.

  “It would be difficult not to, I suppose,” he said after a short while. “It was to here he forced his father to flee; it was to here he later came, seeking safety for himself.” Arthur was the only man to have entered who retained his weapons. He was the Supreme King, he would not shed sword or dagger, leave them on the threshold. As he spoke, he rested his hand on the hilt of his sword, aware of the silence, the rabid course of mixed feelings; on some faces, barely veiled hostility.

  A woman was threading her way through the crowd of newcomers, copper-haired, although that too was bearing streaks of silver. Her features, eyes, nose, similar to those of Enniaun. Her green eyes were sparking, forcing down the huddled press of animosity.

  “Hueil,” she said, loud so all heard, “was rightly executed by the King for the traitor and murderer he was.” Gwenhwyfar stood beside Arthur, the gold of the torque at her throat gleaming as vivid, as royal, as her eyes. “We have come to pay our respects to his father, the man Hueil would have also murdered, had he not taken the wisdom to flee into the safe protection of my brother, Lord Enniaun.”

  Low murmurings as the rise of aggression faded, the Hall went back about its business of welcoming those new-arrived. None could dispute the truth of what Gwenhwyfar said.

  Only one kept the steady clench of hatred in her jaw. Cywyllog was chivvying the younger children out from their corner. Her father’s Hall was small, of no size to accommodate so many comfortably. Those who had no reason to remain must leave, find for themselves some other place out of the rain. She steered her brother before her, taking him through a side door, directing him to the dwelling of Christen, his nurse. He was reluctant to go, for he wanted to see the splendid men and the King, Arthur.

  “You ought have no wish to see him! He murdered our brother, there, over there on that rock, he threw Hueil against it and struck off his head!” The boy looked from the shelter of the doorway to the grey slab of limestone, watched the rain heave and bounce against it, pictured his brother’s blood streaming down its sides instead of the shiny wet of the rain. “I know what happened,” Cywyllog hissed in his ear, “for I was here, I saw. It is Arthur who is the murderer, not our brother Hueil. Now be off with you, I have much to do.”

  The boy wrenched his gaze from the rock – he would go nowhere near it by night, skirted it by day, for it scared him. It had been used as a savage execution block and he feared he might see the blood, hear the scream. His sister had told him of it all often, of how one day she would take revenge on Arthur for the death of their brother.

  “Will you kill him?” the boy asked her. “Will you do as you have said you will one day do? Take a dagger and cut out his heart, or blacken his belly with poison or… ”

  Cywyllog slapped her hand around her three-year-old brother’s mouth. “Hush, child! Do you want him to hack your head off also? He will do if he hears such unguarded talk!”

  Fearful, Gildas glanced through the open door into the crowded room, caught a glimpse of the Pendragon; tall, powerful, austere. He ran, hurtling through the rain to the safety of his nurse’s warm lap.

  V

  “Does it not make you feel,” Ambrosius searched for a tactful word, “uncomfortable? Being here at Caer Rhuthun?” They were walking back from Caw’s burial in the family plot a mile beyond the stronghold’s walls, were lingering, politely, to the rear of the family. It had been a reasonable ceremony, efficient, correct, with a suitable number of mourners. Ambrosius had made a fine eulogy. Enniaun had spoken a few words. Arthur had assumed it wise to be silent, remained on the edge, faded into the background. Thankfully, the rain had stopped although the day was dark and sombre, and with the mountains swathed in low, dull wreaths of cloud, the prospect of it staying dry was not promising.

  “No. Should it?” The Pendragon would not have, ordinarily, come here – at this time or any other – but he and Gwenhwyfar had been visiting Enniaun, essentially to re-draft old treaties of alliance, additionally to greet old friends. When Enniaun decided to pay his respects to Caw’s grieving kindred, Arthur opted to travel with him. It would have been churlish, even taken as a slight against them had he not, and for practicality, it was the same road home. Company was always welcome to ease the tedium of travelling.

  Clearing his throat at Arthur’s unembarrassed, matter-of-fact reply, Ambrosius regretted asking the question, but felt he need add something relevant. “It was a nasty business, the family took it hard.”

  They had reached steeper ground, the path beginning to rise, churned, wet and muddied, walking made difficult by the slush. Ambrosius’s boot slithered. He lost balance, almost toppled, but Arthur was a man used to quick reaction, urgent movement. He seized his uncle’s arm, steadied him, said, as bluntly as before, “Aye, it was a nasty business. The consequence of war always is.”

  Arthur dropped the hold on the arm, continued walking. “I took it hard. Hueil was responsible for more than starting a civil war. He caused the murder of my son. Remember?”

  Oh, Ambrosius remembered! He had been there, fighting that war with Arthur. They had been almost friends then, for a short while when they shared a common ground: the sorting of Hueil and his wanting more than just a ragged cluster of settlements and a decaying stronghold. Few would doubt the ultimate necessity of ending Hueil’s life, taken for that of the boy’s. It had been the manner of the doing: an execution without trial while Hueil had sought the forgiveness of God.

  Arthur had pulled ahead, striding out to catch up with his wife and her brother, Enniaun. Ambrosius remained behind walking slower, mindful of the precarious ground and the grumbling discomfort of his stomach. A nasty business? Aye indeed. All of it.

  Linking arms with Gwenhwyfar, Arthur grinned at her eldest brother. “Somewhat poor condition this stronghold of yours, Enniaun!” he teased. “Ever heard of cobbles?”

  “Not my stronghold, Pendragon! I freely gave it to Caw, it was his to do with as he pleased.” Enniaun grunted as his boot sunk ankle deep in a mud rut. “Cobbles cost coin to buy, labour to lay. Not wishing to speak ill of the dead, but my Lord Caw was a – how shall I put it? – a frugal man.”

  Tight-arsed bastard, Arthur thought the words, prudently kept them to himself.

  Enniaun, glancing at him, guessed the thought. He laughed. “Oh I agree!”

  “Who will hold Rhuthun now then, brother?” Gwenhwyfar asked, her other arm linked through his, so they walked three-abreast, herself secure from slipping between the solidity of two men. “Or are you to take it back?”

  “Various surviving sons.” Enniaun nodded at the backs
of those of the family walking ahead, “are already squabbling over it, with a few daughters adding their shuttleworth.” He tossed a gruff laugh at Arthur. “I ought to give it to you, Pendragon, that would set things hopping! Jesu, it would start another war.”

  “Gods, no! I have enough trouble brewing down south, without facing additional storms up here among your ball-freezing mountains!”

  They had reached the gate, a narrow and gloomy construction; were forced to stop, wait their turn to pass through, respect necessitating that the grieving family go first. Their public show of grief, loud and evident with raised, wailing voices, doubled into reverberating echoes as they filed through the low, dank, tunnel.

  Low, confidential in Arthur’s ear, Enniaun whispered, “Were you not pleased at one event down your way?”

  “Winifred, you mean? Aye, in some aspects it is a relief to be rid of her.” Shifting a skimming, sideways glance at Gwenhwyfar, Arthur added with what seemed a careless shrug, “But even Winifred did not deserve to die in that way.”

  Gwenhwyfar, who had been inspecting the amount of mud plastered around the hem of her robe, snorted in a manner that conveyed distinct disagreement. From which Enniaun, knowing his sister well, deduced there had passed angry words between husband and wife.

  “She ought to have been hacked to pieces long before!”

  “She was once my wife.”

  “She murdered. She lied, she cheated.”

  “I agree, but she was also, once, my wife.”

  Arthur had not understood the unexpected, disturbing feelings that had seeped into him after hearing of Winifred’s murder. He should have rejoiced, as Gwenhwyfar had, exclaimed his delight that he was, at last, rid of her meddling interferences. Yet he had gone off quietly by himself, riding out onto the lake-shimmering Summer Land Levels, felt the raw exposure of an inexplicable sadness. Guilt, he assumed, for never loving – liking – her, for treating her so badly. Ah, guilt. The repercussions that emotion could rouse after the dead had departed!

  Predictably, Gwenhwyfar had greeted the news with favour. For so long had she loathed Winifred, an odious woman who had set herself so determinedly as a rival. Her only regret that she was not the one to be responsible for her ending. In retrospect, the satisfaction was as rewarding, but at that first hearing of the news she had felt cheated. The bitch was done with, that was what mattered. For all Arthur’s inexplicable disquiet over her passing, she was, finally, firmly, thankfully, done with.

  “And the son?” Enniaun asked, as he motioned for Arthur and Gwenhwyfar to proceed before him under the archway. They had touched on the matter of Cerdic only briefly during the few days together, never quite pursuing the subject in its entirety, for Arthur had steered away from it. For that, too, was laying on his mind, heavy and weighted. He was responsible for many things, had, by necessity made unpleasant, harsh – often cruel – decisions. For himself, personally, for his life outside that of being the Supreme, the King, he had not always made the right choice. Inadvertently, occasionally deliberately, he had hurt people, even those he loved. On his orders, men lived or died, faced the bloodlust of war or the benevolence of forgiving mercy. But that was part of living, the choice-making, the decision-taking. Cerdic was a force let loose into the world, started by Arthur’s seed. Started unintentionally, yet was that not the ultimate reason for lying with a wife, to procure children?

  “My son,” Arthur’s answer was poignant, “took an axe and used it to hack his own mother’s skull into two pieces. He made petition to me that he was defending himself, had killed her for her inciting of war between Saxon and British. We know it is all bullshit, but legally I cannot act against him.” He paused, added, “He is a murderer, and I sired him – what does that make me?”

  Where once the apparition of death, for all its ugliness, would not have clung to Arthur, its dark foreboding now worried him, lingering like a malignant presence gnawing at his stomach. Gaul had changed him. He had met fear, and fear, once encountered became a shadow that followed like a starving stray dog. Kick it, shout at it, but it was always there, sniffing at heel. One day he would die. There was never the cheating of the inevitable, but it was the manner of it that clutched black and unforgiving at him. To be killed by an axe-blade in the security of your own chamber and by one of your own blood, your own creation. The thought filled him with dread.

  They were walking under the long and narrow arch of the stone-built gateway, their conversation reverberating, the words took an axe, took an axe seeming to echo louder than the others, obscene and ominous.

  “For all the declaration of his innocence, you ought to have had an end to him, I say!” Gwenhwyfar announced with finality as they emerged.

  Ambrosius had almost caught them up, had heard her declaration.

  “As I have so urged,” he said vehemently. The group, Arthur, Enniaun and Gwenhwyfar turned to look at him, waited for him breathlessly to come up to them.

  “What of the murdered priest? And the repeated rape of the girl, Winifred’s handmaid? It was a disgraceful business, and it has been overlooked, set aside!”

  “English, too, were butchered, Uncle, do not forget them,” Arthur added, knowing Ambrosius would dismiss their killing as nothing of consequence.

  Ambrosius waved his hand fastidiously. “What the Saex do between themselves is their business, not mine.”

  Arthur sighed. He had already argued through this conversation with Ambrosius at Council. “I will not commit my men to a war in order to bring about the murder of my own son. If he meets me in battle, then that is his doing, not mine.”

  Cerdic had been clever – had more wisdom than Arthur would have given him credit for. By sending immediate petition of his innocence, and declaring that his mother had acted treasonably against the Supreme King, there was little, legally, that Arthur could do. The sending of the heads of three of Cerdic’s own Saxons had, of course, helped to sway Council’s mind in Cerdic’s favour, a decision bustled along by an eloquent representative attending Council in Cerdic’s stead – a merchantman, paid well, no doubt, to lie as efficiently as he had. The men responsible for those other, shameful killings executed; Winifred’s affluent steading a few miles outside Venta to be given by Cerdic to the Bishop of that same town; other possessions of his mother’s promised with flourished generosity to notable men of influence who sat on the Council. Oh aye, Council had voted for Cerdic. Had agreed that what was his mother’s should by right pass to him, to do with as he pleased; that her death had been unfortunate but unavoidable.

  They had all known Winifred for what she was, and here, Arthur could not disagree with them, had cast his vote with those who proclaimed aye – silencing Ambrosius’s protests. He knew Cerdic to be lying, but there was that small element of doubt. For how often had Winifred boasted, threatened, it would be she who made Cerdic into King in Arthur’s stead?

  Ahead was the timber-built Hall, low, rectangular, the reed-thatch of its roof sodden from the rain, the courtyard squelching with mud and rain-ruts. The mourners were making their way across, through the open doors into the welcome of dry warmth. To the left, the Stone, brooding, leering its stark reminder of the past.

  It had once functioned as a foundation for a taller, phallic, man-height shaped stone, the Stone, the ritual symbol of the warrior, the sacred Stone on which oaths were sworn, allegiances made. Caw had ordered its removal, despising its heathen connection, but the base had proven beyond him, a rock, part of the structure of the stronghold, impossible to remove or destroy.

  A small boy was standing a few yards inside the gate, momentarily alone, dejected, the streak of shed tears marking his cheeks. He watched the King emerge from the darkness of the tunnel, saw, hanging at his side, the scabbard, the sword pommel… the sword. The Pendragon’s sword. A sheathed blade that had been drawn, glinting, in the afternoon sunlight, here, in this very courtyard. The boy screamed, ran, slithered in the mud, fell, tumbled back to his feet, ran on.

  He wa
s barely noticed; Gwenhwyfar was discussing Cerdic with her brother, the nonsense, in her opinion, of Council’s decision to allow him to settle in peace along the south coast. “There will be war,” she said. “My husband has been the fool in this.”

  Arthur saw the boy. Heard his strangled, fear-ridden cry. Wondered. I hate you! I hate you! Did hatred run so deeply putrid through the line of kindred then? Eldest born to youngest. Father to son?

  Cerdic. His son, grown to manhood, grown up with so much stark, twisted hatred. What was he to do about Cerdic? He did not chastise Gwenhwyfar for her scolding tongue, how could he when she had the right of it? There would come war between father and son, and there was always this other question, hanging, insidious, in Arthur’s mind. What did Cerdic intend to do about his father?

  The boy had gone. Gildas. Ambrosius was to take him back to Ambrosium, to the school flourishing there. Arthur’s other son, Medraut, wanted to be a student there also. Medraut, who seemed more suited to book-learning than the wielding of sword and shield. A safer occupation, book-learning. Safer for whom? For the son or for the father?

  The boy, Gildas, would be better off there, where he could forget about the darkness of execution, of blood and war. Forget about the past and the necessary, cruel ending of elder brothers.

  A pity Cerdic could not be so easily dealt with.

  September 476

  VI

  “What’s that?” Gwenhwyfar knelt on the bed, her arms going, automatically around Arthur’s waist, her chin resting on his shoulder as she peered over his shoulder at the document he was reading. “Anything interesting?”