In Winter's Shadow

by Gillian Bradshaw

  Tell me, oh you learned ones,

  From what is Longing made?

  And what cloth is it woven from

  That with use, it never fades?

  Gold wears out and silver,

  Silks and velvets tear,

  All adornment ages:

  Longing never wears.

  Longing, Longing, back a pace,

  Do not weigh on my breast so heavily,

  But move over from the bedside

  And let a brief sleep come to me.

  It’s a common song, but it ran through my brain for weeks on end, until I was heartily sick of it.

  Oh, after Arthur left it happened in a way that was as obvious as the course of flood waters down a dry stream bed, and as irresistible. For two days Bedwyr and I held stiffly aloof, speaking to each other with stilted formality, hoping, making one last effort against the humiliating treachery we both knew was near. Then, on the third day, we were in the conference room, alone together. We were discussing what to do with the tribute.

  “I can send another three hundred head of cattle, under guard, to the holding near Llefelys’s Stone,” Bedwyr said, “but we will be short then, will we not, noble lady? Maelgwn Gwynedd sent us fifty fewer cows than he gave his word for.”

  “I calculated that he would send us seventy fewer cows, noble lord, so we have a good margin of safety.”

  He looked at me in surprise.

  “Well, what is wonderful in that?” I asked. “Maelgwn tries to cheat us on the tribute every year; it would be amazing if he did not. During the war, he often succeeded. In the spring we’ll send him the usual party to correct his ‘unfortunate mistake’—and perhaps this time we’ll make him pay their traveling expenses.”

  “But you can calculate by how much he will cheat us?”

  “Of course. We set the tribute by the size of the harvest. Maelgwn’s tribute is the size of the harvest less 15 or 20 percent, and plus a factor of how difficult he’s been that year. If he’s guilty of too many other incidents, he grows nervous, and a trifle more honest.”

  Bedwyr laughed, and I laughed as well. Then I saw that he was looking at me with that particular light in his eyes and I stopped laughing. He grew very serious, reached out, and caught my hand. I turned away.

  “But…but we must have another two hundred head of cattle nearby…” I began uncertainly. His hand against mine was like the warmth of a fire to a blind man, something more real than the vision of the eyes.

  “My lady…” he whispered.

  “You must have the sheep moved from the south pastures, with a guard or two over them to see that they reach…”

  “Gwynhwyfar.”

  I stopped trying, and looked at him. The pulse of my blood dizzied me: I could feel it over every inch of my body. “We must not,” I said. “It is treachery, and that is the worst of all sins.”

  “Please,” he whispered. “Just this once more.” He moved closer to me, his hand sliding up my arm.

  I closed my eyes, trying to pray. “But think what would happen if Medraut discovered this. Think how he could use it.”

  “Just once more, only once. Please. I cannot live like this. I cannot think for thinking of you; I cannot sleep or rest. My most sweet lady, I cannot bear it.” He was beside me now, his arm around me, touching my breast.

  I meant to stand up. Instead, I only said faintly, “But you must bear it.”

  “Please. Only once more.” He kissed me. I could not think after that; when he pulled away and looked at me, I held to him and nodded, weeping.

  When it was over with we again vowed that this was the end, that it must not happen again. But when one has twice been unable to keep a resolve, one begins to expect failure, and that expectation breeds failure. We held our resolve for less than a month, before breaking it in a new crisis and losing ourselves once again. After that we began to hope that desire would be satisfied by much loving, but only succeeded in becoming necessary to each other. And with repeated sins, the conscience, which is at first tender, grows gradually numbed, finds excuses, ceases much to be moved. After a time it was even possible to behave naturally to Arthur. But that came later; at first he might have noticed something, if he had not been himself too tense, too depressed, to speak naturally to his friends.

  Arthur returned, with Medraut, on a golden October morning the week after he set out. One of the guards came from the gates an hour or so before noon to tell me that the party had been seen approaching, and I went with him back to the gate, and climbed the gate tower to watch. Bedwyr was at the gate already, but stayed before them, mounted on his horse and waiting to welcome Arthur and relinquish the military command Arthur had temporarily given him. He nodded to me when I arrived, but no more. We could hold our resolve that long, at least.

  The sky was cloudless and had a hard glow like blue enamel, and the trees at the edges of the fields seemed cast in bronze by sunlight. The fields themselves, though, were drab, for the harvest was in and the earth was stubble-marked and gray, or black from the annual burning, and hazed over with smoke from the fires. In the distance, Ynys Witrin rose tall and green over the dark marshes, seeming to float above the main road where a long column of horsemen trotted steadily forward. They were already near enough, when I climbed the tower, for me to pick out a few individual figures, and I saw that Arthur’s fifty warriors were interspersed with Medraut’s for greater safety. Two figures rode side by side at the head of the column, one wearing a purple cloak, riding a familiar gray horse, the other in a cloak dyed with saffron and a gold collar, riding a fine bay: Arthur and Medraut. As they came nearer, I waited for the line to increase its speed, to sweep up to the gates at a canter with a jingle of harness and glitter of weapons and jewelery, as Arthur always did in the gladness of coming home. But the column maintained its slow, jolting trot, and, as it drew nearer still, I saw that Arthur’s shoulders were hunched as though against the cold, while Medraut rode with his cloak tossed back over one shoulder, sitting his horse with easy grace. Already the shadow had fallen on us; already Medraut had set some chill upon the heart.

  I climbed down from the tower and went back up the hill to the Hall. I had no extraordinary power in Arthur’s absence, nothing to hand over at the gates, and no one would expect me to welcome Medraut to Camlann, not after the way he had left it. And I wished to postpone, even for a few hours, the inevitable grief.

  I saw Medraut in the Hall for the midday meal, of course. He bowed stiffly, and I nodded my head, equally stiffly. But I could see that his kingship agreed with him. He looked sleeker than ever, graceful and regal in the saffron cloak, gold about his neck, fastening his cloak, on his arms and fingers. He had the same easy, ingratiating smile as well; the smile I had long before been disturbed by, and which I had grown to hate. But he also looked more like Arthur than he had done, and I realized that he had cut his beard and hair in the same fashion that Arthur customarily used.

  After the meal, while ostensibly resting from his journey, Arthur told me what had happened at Caer Gwent. “Medraut has begun to spread his story, as I thought,” he said, very quietly. He looked older than his forty-three years, and hunched over the fire like an old man whose blood has grown thin. “Cynyr of Caer Gwent has certainly heard it. No, he said nothing—but he looked at me, and looked at Medraut, and looked at me again, all the time I was there. And he was very quiet. Ordinarily he gossips like a barber, but this time he was quiet. And also—you know I was in Caer Gwent for Sunday? When we went to Mass, Cynyr made some excuse, and would not take communion. He looked at me then, as well. He is afraid of being tainted in God’s eyes by taking communion after a man who slept with his sister.” Arthur laughed, very bitterly. “And his men had heard, and my men will have heard it from them. And I could not tell whether Medraut has simply started the rumor there, now, or whether he has been spreading it for months and our spies simply have not heard it. But it is established, now, and he need not say anything, not himself, not directly. He can
merely wait until someone asks him questions. Did you notice the way he has cut his hair? He is ready to begin the battle in earnest. But still he will not admit as much to me: when I met him he was all smiles and bows and courtesies. There is no winning through to anything real in him. I do not know how to fight him any more than I did before.” Arthur rubbed his hands, held them out to the fire. His signet ring gleamed. “If the kings of Britain believe this rumor, they will have an excuse for a rebellion. A bastard emperor is bad enough, but an emperor guilty of incest—that will pollute the land, and draw down the wrath of God, or so my enemies and the Church will say. How long can we hold on?”

  I shook my head. “Medraut still cannot prove anything. We can still deny it, perhaps successfully. We might hold power till our lives end.”

  He looked up and smiled, a little half-smile of ironic amusement. “Might we? Come, my white hart, you are wiser than that. Medraut is no fool, and has no lack of skill. Perhaps when actually in power he is too heavy-handed, but he can play upon the discontents of Britain as skillfully as his brother does on the harp. And he has strings enough to hand: dissatisfied and revengeful kings, like Maelgwn Gwynedd; the enmity of the Church; the boredom of my own warriors. Our wars with the invaders are finished, but the Empire is not entirely restored, as we promised, and the frustration of that is burning in Britain, like a stubble fire, waiting for fuel to blaze up. It only needs a skillful leader to direct it. Medraut can break us—or make us pay such a price for power that we would be better off dead. It’s not worth ruling if one has to be a tyrant to do so, or if one has to destroy one’s own people. No, we must hold on as long as we safely can, and then abdicate. The problem is still to find a man to give the power to, one I could trust to rule justly, who would be strong enough to hold his own against Medraut. And still, there is no one.”

  “It would be very dangerous to abdicate,” I pointed out.

  He gave the same tired smile. “‘For this Empire which we have acquired is a kind of tyranny,’” he quoted—it was one of a collection of sayings of famous men, most of whom I had never heard of, which Arthur had brought from the monastery where he was raised—“‘which it may be wrong to have taken up, but which it is certainly hazardous to let go.’ But what does that have to do with either of us? We did not take it up to be safe, and have risked death for it often enough.”

  “I meant it would be dangerous for the Empire. The kings of Britain know you, and if they do not believe in your justice, they at least believe you are a skilled warleader. They might be willing to fight a successor of yours, especially if he was young, where they would not fight you.”

  He sighed and rested his head on his hands. “You are right, of course. It might come to war before I could afford to abdicate. And if I were to be defeated, and if Medraut seized power—no, I must trust God that that, at least, he will not permit.” He looked into the fire again, and continued in a voice so low I could barely hear it. “And yet, this darkness was of my getting. I myself am responsible for Medraut. The unrest in the kingdom, too, is my fault, for I got my power by strength of arms and contrary to the law, and it is not surprising that I have enemies. I thought I was doing right at the time, but perhaps, in God’s eyes, it was as grave a sin as incest.”

  “No,” I said, laying my hand on his.

  He shook it off. “The destruction is coming from within us, and from within me. The Saxons could not defeat us, but we ourselves are destroying the Empire; the faction in the Family, the flaw within. Once I thought that merely the shame and dishonor of being known to have loved my sister would be intolerable. Now that seems unimportant. That only affects me, while this, this is the ruin of the West, the Darkness coming upon us. Why must we love the Light so much when we are bound to work its destruction?” He looked up at me as he asked this, raising his voice, as though I might have the answer. The fire crackled softly on the hearth.

  “My dearest, we have not lost yet,” I said at last. “And you yourself said we must trust God: surely he will not permit the Darkness to conquer. We have too much to fight for to give way to despair.”

  He sighed, “I am tired.” He rubbed his face, “I have been fighting for the better part of thirty years, and I begin not to believe even in victory. And to be responsible for it…but you are right. We have a great deal to fight for. Indeed, we are fortunate to have so much, to be able to love it and fight for it. It would be cowardly and ungracious to surrender before the battle is under way.” He rose and kissed me, then stood, holding me against him. He was still wearing his mail coat, and I could feel the links under his tunic and feel the strength of his body under that. I thought of Bedwyr, and of my own desire to be weak, and was bitterly ashamed.

  “Gwynhwyfar,” said Arthur, “I do not deserve you. Forgive me that I have been angry with you—and that I undoubtedly will be again, for I am very tired, and most bitterly grieved at heart.”

  “Oh, my heart’s dearest,” I said, and could not think of anything more. But words were not really necessary.

  That night, at the welcoming feast, Medraut swore the Threefold Oath to an alliance with Arthur. He knelt in the center of the Hall, under the roof-tree with its golden dragon standard, offering his sword hilt-first to Arthur and swearing in a clear voice, with apparent solemnity, to hold his kingdom at peace with Arthur, to make no wars against him or his subjects and allies, to respect the laws of the Empire, and to offer no refuge to enemies of Britain. Arthur took the sword and vowed to keep peace with the kingdom of the Orcades, and so on. The Family cheered as Medraut rose again and, smiling, sheathed his sword, but Medraut’s own men, brought from the Orcades, watched Arthur with a grim, unblinking stare.

  Neither they nor Medraut ever returned to the Islands. Medraut had stayed at Camlann two weeks, and was preparing to leave again—after engendering the old tension in the Family—when a messenger came from the Orcades to say that the royal clan was deposed, and that the Islands would henceforth be ruled by a branch of that O’Niall family who ruled most of Erin. There had always been hostility between the O’Niall and the royal clan of the Islands: King Lot had originally left Erin when his clan lost its position in Ulaid to the O’Niall. The O’Niall had now been invited to Dun Fionn by one of the noble clans that Medraut had injured: this clan, and its allies, on a day previously arranged, took the port on the largest of the islands. A fleet from Erin put in, and the combined forces marched across the island to Dun Fionn. If Medraut had been present, the fortress would undoubtedly have been able to resist, but, as it was, half the inhabitants mutinied and opened the gates to the invaders. All the male members of the royal clan, with its staunchest allies, were then put to death, and the women distributed among the invaders in marriage or concubinage, usually the latter. All this had happened shortly after Medraut left the Orcades, probably before he even reached Caer Gwent; it had undoubtedly been arranged months before.

  We gave this messenger—who was a member of the injured, revenging clan—an audience in the Hall. He had arrived in the middle of the afternoon, and there were not many people about when he took his place under the roof-tree and began to speak—we had had to send for Medraut. But more people came hurrying in as the man continued, telling his story with evident pleasure, coloring the details in favor of his new masters, the O’Niall. The Hall began to fill with whispers, explanations to newcomers, exclamations of horrors, demands to know what would be done, but the messenger did not look around, but faced Arthur steadily. When he had finished his narration of the events in the Islands he drew himself up, laid a hand on his sword, and addressed Arthur proudly in conclusion.

  “Do not think,” he declared in his excellent British, “that it will still be possible for you to have an unjustified and ruinous influence on our Islands. We are Irish, not British, and now—rightly!—are bound to Erin. We will swear no further peace with you, High King of Britain. The accursed line of Lot did so, and all our evils sprang from that, from his marriage with a British witch for yo
ur thrice-damned alliance, and from his sons—the drunkard and the sorcerous traitor, and the last and worst, the one not of his getting, that shamefully begotten bastard, the witch’s son and curse of his people. If you, Pendragon, mean to send this tyrant back to rule us, there will be a thousand spears to meet you, and a thousand swords, and not easily will you win through them, nor easily hold the Islands if you do. This we have sworn by the sun and the wind, by the oath of our people and by the new God of Erin and the O’Niall, now our God. But if you,” and he spat this at Medraut, who had stood silent and unmoving on Arthur’s right, “presume to return to the Islands, know that you are sentenced to death, and no matter how many guards and warriors you set about yourself, or how many men you sorcerously seek out and kill, still someone, one day, will find a way through to you and make you pay for your tyranny. This also we have sworn.”

  Medraut stared at him, his eyes bleak, frozen with hatred, though his face was still, unmoved. “And perhaps,” he said, in a smooth, conversational tone, “you also are sentenced to death, overly boastful messenger.”

  The messenger laughed. “You killed my father, though no one could prove it, though he was charged with nothing and no blood-price was paid for his death. My cousin you had publicly butchered in your Hall. I asked for this mission, Medraut son of no one, so that I could see you when you heard this message; and having seen, I am not afraid of death. Lennavair, daughter of Durtacht, whom you had contracted to marry, sleeps with Laeghaire of the O’Niall as his concubine, and is glad to be a true man’s woman and not a bastard’s wife.”