In Winter's Shadow

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “It was a foul lie, noble lady, and no one of any sense believed it,” he told me fiercely. “And everyone expects that Medraut will be charged with defaming the imperial majesty and exiled. Is he going to be exiled?”

  “The emperor will probably dismiss him from Camlann,” I said stolidly, then, forcing a rather wan smile, “thank you, Gwyn.”

  He pressed my hand to his forehead, then again walked off, swinging his wax tablet and scowling savagely. I felt worse than ever at his misplaced trust. It deepened the shame. And yet the words of false comfort were echoed by others. Goronwy, now recovered from the duel, came up to me at the midday meal on some pretext and explained in a loud voice how nasty the joke was and how he hoped that Medraut would be charged with treason. I was glad that he seemed finally to have broken from Medraut and his faction, but I wished he’d had better cause.

  But in the afternoon I saw Gwalchmai, and the conversation was a rather different one.

  I wished to check the amounts of grain which Gwyn had noted down that morning against some other accounts, and discovered that the boy had not finished his fair copy. I went in search of him to get from him the original wax tablets, and found him in the yard behind the stables. He and Gwalchmai were teaching Gwalchmai’s roan mare how to behave in battle and Gwalchmai was teaching Gwyn the same. This had somehow become a regular pattern of affairs, and seemed to give a great deal of pleasure to both Gwalchmai and Gwyn, though some of the other boys in the fortress objected to Gwyn all the more strongly for having a friend among the great warriors. Nonetheless Gereint as a riding master and the mule-like chestnut gelding as mount had gradually been superseded for Gwyn by Gwalchmai and the roan mare. When I came up, Gwyn was standing in the middle of the yard holding a whip, while Gwalchmai rode the mare around him in a wide circle. They had finally arrived at the stage of picking up the ring.

  “Now,” Gwalchmai was saying, “this time I will keep her at the canter. If she falters while I’m out of the saddle, don’t use the whip unless you have to. Shout at her first: she knows now what that means.”

  Gwyn nodded gravely, and Gwalchmai touched the horse to a canter. She was a beautiful animal, the offspring of one of Gereint’s horses by Gwalchmai’s war stallion Ceincaled, and she could run as lightly as a deer. Gwalchmai rode her about the circle once, Gwyn turning on his heel to follow them, then dropped his head down beside the mare’s neck, his weight shifting to his right side, one hand clasping at once the reins and her mane. Her ears flicked back as he whispered something to her, but she did not break her pace. Gwalchmai drew his left leg up, hooking his knee around the cantle of the saddle, and seemed abruptly to fall. The mare faltered; Gwyn shouted and she recovered. Gwalchmai, suspended upside-down, snatched at the ground with his right arm, his fingers trailing a moment in the grass, then, somehow, miraculously, he was upright in the saddle again, laughing and holding between thumb and middle finger a gold ring. He tossed it in the air, checked the mare, and rode over to Gwyn at a trot.

  “So much for what my brother Agravain used to call a trick fit only for tumblers at a fair.”

  “My lord, it is beautiful!” Gwyn said warmly. “Gereint has to try two or three times at the least, and he can’t do it so…so…”

  “Can’t he? He must be growing old. He used to do better than that. Here, you try it now.” He jumped from the saddle, taking the bridle and handing Gwyn the ring. Gwyn took it, stood a moment patting the mare’s shoulder and whispering to her, then vaulted into the saddle. He gathered the reins and looked about, and only then saw me. His face fell.

  “Noble lady,” he called. “Do you want me now?”

  I hesitated. I did not want to stand about telling lies to Gwalchmai, but I could not find it in myself to drag Gwyn away at that moment. “You can come when you’ve finished with the ring,” I returned. “It’s only the list of crops.”

  Gwyn nodded, happy again, but Gwalchmai looked at me seriously. “My lady,” he said, “perhaps you would care to stay a moment and watch?”

  Again I hesitated, then, because the uncertainty looked ill, came across the yard and joined them, though I wished I could put off the lying until tomorrow or the next day or week. “Will I be in your way here?” I asked.

  “Indeed not,” replied Gwalchmai, “but stand on my left, for I may need to use the whip if Seagull here forgets to keep her pace steady.” He clucked his tongue to the horse, who pricked her ears forward, then flicked them back again to listen to Gwyn. The boy smiled proudly and turned the horse, walking her to the circle already worn into the grass of the yard.

  “Shall I put the ring down here?” he called to us.

  “Even so. But take your time, and be certain that it is the most comfortable distance.”

  Gwyn nodded, and, after a moment’s solemn concentration, turned the mare and walked her around the circle to see if the distance was indeed agreeable.

  “My lady,” said Gwalchmai in a low voice, “Last night…” he hesitated, looking at me, his dark eyes unreadable.

  “It was a vicious joke,” I said, steeling myself.

  He looked away again quickly. “So Medraut himself now says, and so the fortress repeats, if uncertainly. Medraut hints at deeper things even while he denies them. And yet Arthur drank the cup and is unharmed, though some claim it for a miracle that he is so.”

  “Medraut among them?”

  “No, my lady.” Gwalchmai looked back to me. “I heard that from Gruffydd the surgeon. He said it in secrecy, to me only.”

  “Gruffydd? But he…I thought him Medraut’s enemy.” I stopped myself, turning away and struggling for composure. Gwyn had completed the circle, and now was hooking his knee about the cantle and carefully practicing the first stages of the drop, the ring clasped in his hand.

  “He is Medraut’s enemy. He thinks that to poison my brother would be an honorable, even a heroic action. He told me that if such had indeed been your plan, it was a sensible and a courageous one, and he wished it had succeeded. And he told me that he’d noticed some hemlock missing from his stores. All this was in strict privacy, of course. Gruffydd knows how to hold his tongue.”

  Gwyn made the drop from the saddle, set the ring down on the grass, then rose again in a movement already filed smooth by practice. He turned to Gwalchmai, beaming, and Gwalchmai nodded. Gwyn touched the mare to a trot.

  “Take your time,” Gwalchmai shouted to him. “If you hurry or hesitate from uncertainty the move is ruined.” Gwyn nodded.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I asked in a whisper.

  “My lady…my lady, I pity my brother Medraut. Once…once he was something like Gwyn. It has cut deep to see him so twisted, and living in such hatred. If I knew that one of my friends had felt compelled to poison him, I would…it would grieve me. And yet, I can understand it. Perhaps it is even what Gruffydd said, sensible and courageous. I am not a ruler: I cannot say.”

  “Gwalchmai…” I began, and could think of nothing to add. He looked at me, waiting, the same grave look in his eyes, and finally I recognized the expression as compassion.

  “My lady, I know that you would not resolve on such a thing lightly, or without anguish, or desire it from any but the purest motives. Now that it has failed…Hai! Back, there!”—for Gwyn had tried the move, and the mare had slowed to a trot when he dropped from the saddle. She broke into a canter again, and the boy struggled upright, looking glum.

  “I didn’t get the ring,” he told Gwalchmai.

  “On the first try. You yourself, cousin, said that Gereint must try two and three times at the least, and would you, scarcely more than a puppy, be a finer rider than he? Come, try again…my lady,” lowering his voice again, “whatever has happened, I am your friend and servant, as ever.”

  “My brother and lord,” I replied, “Gwalchmai, that I am not Medraut’s murderess is due only to your brother’s foreknowledge and Arthur’s quick thinking, for the one refused the cup and the other poured it down his sleeve. But at hear
t I am as guilty as I would be if I had succeeded in killing your brother, and still, I wish I had. I am sorry. I deserve nothing from you, not your friendship or your service, and certainly not this kindness.”

  “You have deserved my love and obedience for many years and many things done. And I said that I understood why you should wish it. I do not bear the responsibility of Empire, so it is not mine to judge whether the plan was just. I would have opposed it if I had known of it, even to warning Medraut—though probably he has inherited sorcery enough to have foreseen it on his own. And he is well acquainted with poisons, able to protect himself from them. As it is, the attempt failed, and you do not bear the guilt of it.” He stopped, watching, as Gwyn again dropped for the ring, got his timing wrong and snatched at it too late, almost fell as he twisted around reaching for it, and rose unsteadily back into the saddle empty-handed. “No matter, cousin,” Gwalchmai called. “She is running better now. Try again!”—then, in the low voice, “My lady, do not feed on the darkness and grief. Your strength is needed now. The very greatest of rulers have planned worse things, and carried them out as well. Think of the Roman High Kings our lord Arthur so admires…what does Arthur say of this?”

  “He knew nothing of it,” I said quietly. “I never dared to tell him. I knew he would oppose it.”

  He looked at me evenly for a moment, and I had to continue, “I have hurt him. Perhaps he will never love me again.”

  He still looked at me, in open disbelief.

  “He has reason! I plotted murder behind his back. I betrayed him—I betrayed his trust in my honor. And I have dishonored him in his own eyes, forcing him into lies and empty gestures, trying to carry out something he half wished done but would never have attempted.”

  “I cannot believe he hates you. His first thought was to protect your name.”

  “No,” I replied, wearily, my dry eyes aching again at the thought. “He wished to refute Medraut and to preserve us—Camlann, the Empire. Not me. And that is as it should be.”

  “I do not think…och, well done, mo chara!” for Gwyn had dropped triumphantly upon the ring, and now turned the mare back holding it glowing and victorious in his hand. He slid from the sweating horse and gave it to Gwalchmai with a bow.

  “Did you see me, noble lady?” Gwyn asked hopefully.

  “Indeed I did. It was beautifully done, Gwyn.”

  He smiled with delight, stood for a moment as though bursting with something to say or shout, then restrained himself and asked, “Shall I fetch the lists now, noble lady, and the account books?”

  He had his eyes fastened on me, and Gwalchmai gave me the same questioning look, one hand on the mare’s bridle; the two sets of eyes equally dark.

  “You can stable the horse first,” I told Gwyn, knowing that this was what they wanted. “Even I know that is a rider’s first concern. When you’re finished, bring the list and the books to my room.”

  Gwalchmai smiled very gently, then took my hand and touched it to his forehead, the same gesture that Gwyn had used, but used far differently, filling me with a terror of it: knowing what he knew, and still subjecting himself to me. That he knew set me free, that he remained my friend…but I had never had any right to friendship, his or anyone else’s; no one can have. That was freedom too, if a bitter freedom where I ceased to matter and existed only in another’s nobility. I was grateful, more than I could say.

  “Many thanks for your kindness, lady,” said Gwalchmai. “If you wish to speak further, I am your servant, as ever.”

  I nodded and left the two of them to discuss the mare and Gwyn’s riding, the fair head and the dark bent over the horse’s sleek back.

  Arthur that day gave Medraut the command to leave Camlann. He did not charge him with anything, but simply wrote out a letter to the effect that Medraut was relegated to the Orcades, and that all persons reading this letter were to offer him assistance in his journey. Arthur then took Bedwyr and Cei to Medraut at his house and presented him with this document. Medraut greeted them with smiling courtesy, unrolled and read the letter, and pretended astonishment. Cei told me of it afterward.

  He said, “For what crime am I being exiled?” as though he’d never heard of such a sentence and couldn’t think of anything he might have done, except perhaps it was throwing stones at cattle. But our lord would have none of it. “Because of your royal blood and your position,” he says, “you have not been charged with any crime, although you have read enough history to remember that defaming the majesty of the emperor is a capital charge, and that offering deliberate insult to the emperor’s wife is defaming the imperial majesty. However, I am bringing no charges. Moreover, you are not being exiled, but relegated: your property and your rank in Britain are secure, together with all your rights and privileges except that of staying here. You may leave tomorrow. Take as many horses as you want, and if you need fresh mounts, you can request them from the kings of Britain.” Medraut began to protest his shining innocence, but our lord Arthur went on and said, “Cei will go with you,” and I grinned at him, and he went quiet. My lord Arthur had just told me the same, my lady, and much as I dislike that eel Medraut, I’ll be glad enough to be able to keep my eye on him. And it will be good to see Agravain again, however much he has changed these last years. But, my lady, you should see to it that Medraut cannot take all that Arthur has offered him for traveling expenses. He has poured out the gold as though Medraut were an allied king, and not the next thing to a criminal.”

  “Of course,” I replied, “Medraut’s friends are angry enough that their leader is sent away without a trial. If he has been obviously well treated, he can claim less indignation from them and from the kings of Britain. And with you beside him, he cannot use the journey to further his intrigues.”

  Cei grunted.

  The two did indeed leave the next morning, with an escort of three others who would accompany them as far as Ebrauc, where Medraut and Cei would take ship for the Islands. I worried continuously until we heard that they had actually arrived: worried whether Medraut would start some trouble along the way; whether he would goad Cei into a fighting a duel; whether Cei would start a duel on his own—he was a lover of fighting—and, killing some northern nobleman, be killed by some northern king. But the journey passed apparently without incident, and a short note in Cei’s own laborious lettering informed us that the pair had reached Dun Fionn in the Islands. By then, though, I had other things to worry about.

  The first few weeks after the attempted murder were even worse than the weeks before it. Arthur, though in public as attentive to me as ever, in private could not bring himself even to speak with me. Silence grew between us; at night in bed we lay side by side as though we had the full half of the world parting us. In the morning I would wake and find Arthur watching me with a set, haggard face, and when I sat down at my mirror I would find the answering expression of guilt and misery still fixed on me. I had to smooth it away carefully before I could face the world.

  I hated the pretense of innocence, hated it more and more as the days went by and the wild speculations of the fortress gradually gave way to fresh affairs and new gossip. At first, of course, every possible explanation was put forward by someone or other: I had poisoned the cup, but Arthur was miraculously preserved; Medraut had poisoned the cup, to incriminate me, but Arthur either cunningly disposed of the poison or was miraculously—and so on; or the cup was unpoisoned, but I, or Medraut, had been deceived into thinking otherwise by Arthur, or Medraut, or some other party. Some people even believed our official explanation, that it was a joke with treasonous overtones. Some friends of Medraut’s even guessed the truth. And all the interpretations of what had happened were endlessly discussed and argued, while I went about my business, trying to appear unconscious of it all, as though nothing whatever had happened. At times I wanted to stand up in the Hall and shout the truth at them, simply to be free of the endless, unspoken questions. But eventually all possible explanations had been searched out and f
ound, and the frenzied questioning calmed.

  Medraut’s departure had lessened much of the tension. Without his presence there to inspire them, many of his former followers began to think for themselves, and to decide that he had gone beyond the limit. This became apparent when, despite all the initial questioning and arguing, there were no more duels, and fewer quarrels. I worked very hard at convincing some of Medraut’s waverers to distrust their exiled leader, and the more successful I was, the more I hated myself afterward. My life was a lie, like my smiles, and I wished heartily that I had never come to Camlann, but married instead some fat farmer in the North and died bearing him fat babies. The heroines of songs are fortunate, able to die from grief or shame. In reality one is able to bear much more misery and suffering than would seem even likely. When one cares nothing for life, when all the world seems one great, corrupting falsehood, and even love seems shallow and pointless—still the hours grind steadily on and one continues to arrange their details. The most I could manage was a fever.

  ***

  We had heavy rains in July, but at the end of the month a period of hot, sunny weather, which filled the air with fevers. I came down with one, lay in bed for a day or so, then, feeling better, got up and tried to begin the preparations for the harvest. This, of course, brought the fever on again, and more fiercely, and I was forced to go back to bed. As soon as I was able I had Gwyn called and dictated letters and accounts to him—the harvest season takes no account of human infirmity. Near the end of the second week of August Bedwyr came, asking what supplies of grain would be available for feeding the cavalry horses that winter.

  I had not spoken to him since that feast. I had learned from Gwalchmai that Bedwyr knew the true story. He had been close enough to notice Arthur’s trick with the cup, and had afterward spoken to Arthur about it. What Arthur had said to him and he to Arthur was something I did not like to think about: it made me ashamed before both of them. I wished, more than ever, to avoid Bedwyr, but as warleader his responsibilities overlapped with mine in many areas, and I could not avoid him forever.