In Winter's Shadow

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “Wait here, then. Yours is a fine big cart. I will try to find fresh beasts for you.” I summoned another servant over and told him to unharness the sweating team, and give the cart priority if any fresh horses, mules, or oxen could be found. Then I went into the stable to check on the wounded. It seemed to me that inventories had become the substance of my life; always I was writing out lists of supplies, of suppliers, and now, of dying and dead. Perhaps I would one day keep inventories of the damned, forever writing out lists of names that my stupidity had helped to kill. But we would have to know who of our followers were yet living, and be able to tell friends and kinsmen what had become of our army.

  Names: three peasants who could give them, two who could not, one dead. Gwythyr ap Greidawl, one of the Family. A northerner who had followed Arthur to Gaul. And the voice that had been familiar, but unexpectedly familiar, not associated with these others?

  I remembered it, placed it, just before I saw him lying in the far corner of the stable. No one else had recognized him, and he had been brought back in the cart with our own wounded—there had been others from the enemy’s forces taken up so already, for friend and enemy lay together on the battlefield with nothing to distinguish between them. But I had never expected to see Medraut so.

  I finished with my list and went over to him. He had been watching me from the time I entered, watching with cold contemptuous eyes.

  I stared down at him for a long time. He was lying flat on his back and did not move under my stare. Someone must have stolen his purple cloak and golden jewelery, but there seemed to be little wrong with him.

  “You need not concern yourself with how to finish me off, noble lady,” he said at last. “I will be dead within the hour. But it was not your precious husband and his men that did it; that honor they do not have.” He smiled savagely. “When my loyal ally Maelgwn saw that my forces were defeated and my father’s decimated, he took a dagger I had given him, a pretty thing steeped in poison, and put it in my back while I was trying to see where my men were. Thus, he has inherited my following, and become the strongest contender for the purple. I should have realized that I could never turn my back on him…yet at least I am spared having my father gloat over me.”

  I went down on my knees beside him and looked at him. “Are you pleased with what you have done?” I asked, hearing my voice very low and shaking.

  He smiled, the gray eyes unfathomable with hatred. “Yes. I am only sorry not to see it all fulfilled. My mother is revenged. And even if my father survives this ruin, your Empire is broken like glass. Maelgwn is going home to Gwynedd, but he will be back. The North is already tearing itself apart with war. Dumnonia is a wasteland. Whether it is my father or Maelgwn who ends up with a few purple rags, doesn’t matter: the end result will be the same. Desolation. Think on it, noble lady. Tell my father to make songs about it at his victory feast, and tell my brother.”

  “Your brother is dead,” I said sharply. “He died here at Ynys Witrin four—no, five days ago.”

  Medraut’s eyes widened, and the stare changed from one of deep hatred to puzzlement. “Gwalchmai? Dead?”

  “From the wound he got from Bedwyr in Gaul, and from his own neglect of it. He never wanted to live after his son’s death…I heard that you smiled when you told him of that.” Medraut continued to stare at me, and I wished to strike him as he lay there helpless, wished to give him pain. But I remembered what Gwalchmai had said and clenched my hands behind my back, forcing out the words like brittle ice, “When Gwalchmai died, almost his last words were, ‘If you can, tell my brother I loved him.’”

  Medraut looked away. His right hand clenched into a fist, loosened, clenched and struck the ground violently. “No,” he said, and gave a sob that seemed wrenched up from the heart. “Not him, och, mo brathair…” I had never before heard him cry out in his father’s tongue, and I stared—at him in amazement. He struck the ground again, shouted aloud, in anger now, and heaved himself up so that he was sitting. His back was soaked with blood. I jumped back as he tried to crawl onto his knees, but he fell over onto his face and began to sob. A servant girl hurried over.

  “Is he delirious?” she asked me in a whisper. “Shall I help tie him down?”

  “No,” I replied. I went back and knelt beside Medraut, in great confusion. For all that Gwalchmai had said about his brother, I had never expected that under his hatred and his many masks Medraut might still love anyone. But there could be no mistaking the look with which he had greeted my news.

  The pale eyes saw me again as I knelt, fixed on me, and he opened his mouth to speak, but only brought out blood. He had injured himself in that attempt to rise. He shuddered violently, coughed, went very still. After a moment I touched the side of his neck, just under the jaw, and found that the beat of blood had ceased. Arthur’s son, his only child, was dead. I took my hand away and looked up at the servant.

  “This was the enemy’s leader, Medraut ap Lot,” I told her. “You can put the body outside by the south wall as soon as we need the space in here.” The girl’s eyes widened and she bobbed her head, staring at the corpse that lay there quiet and bloody, with the torchlight caught in its hair. I pressed my hands to my face a moment, brought them down, saw that they were stained with blood. Medraut’s, or someone else’s? I couldn’t tell. And I had another list of names to make, and needed to find fresh horses.

  About midnight, Cuall, Sandde’s clerk, came and found me. By that time we had been worrying for some while where to put the unscathed survivors of the battle, who had been returning in steadily growing numbers for some time, and were badly in need of warm places to rest, warm food, and drink. We were also almost entirely without transport. If there were any more wounded on the battlefield they would die of the cold before morning. Oh yes, by that time it was certain that Maelgwn Gwynedd had withdrawn with his warband and the remnants of his army—all that had not scattered on their own account. And still I could get no clear report of Arthur.

  “Noble lady,” said Cuall, as I tried to discover what a casualty’s name had been, “Lord Sandde has returned with the army. He begs you to come and speak with him.”

  “Sandde?” I asked, straightening and brushing back my hair. “What of my husband?”

  But the clerk shook his head, “I do not know.”

  I closed my inventory book and followed Cuall up the hill from the stables. I was numb and blind with weariness of soul and body. Everything seemed a great distance away, and I little part of it.

  We had filled all of Sandde’s own rooms with the wounded, and the Lord of Ynys Witrin was sleeping in the Hall with his men. He was inside when I came up, and Cuall with an absurd sense of propriety stopped me from going into the Hall where the men were sleeping, and himself went in and fetched his master.

  Sandde had taken off his mail coat and was wearing a torn and bloodstained cloak over his under-tunic. He had taken his boots off, and kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other because of the cold. He had that blank, stunned expression that I had seen repeated endlessly, mindlessly, on every face returning to the fortress; but he tried to smile, and took my hand. It was snowing, thick, wet snow which melted in the thatch and dripped hissing into the torches he had brought out beside the Hall door.

  “Lord Sandde,” I said, “I am very glad you are unharmed.”

  He patted my hand stupidly. “It was as you said, my lady. Not a spear…oh God of Heaven, I am glad to see you, glad to be back!” He put his arms around me and clung, like a child, hurt, demanding comfort.

  “Have you brought many men back?” I said after a few moments. “How much more space do we need?”

  He pulled away, nodded. “I…I have been trying to make a list, with Cuall, of those we have. We have most of the emperor’s men…those that can still fight, that is. Maelgwn has withdrawn northward. We don’t know where Medraut is.”

  “He is by the south wall of your stable, dead,” I said levelly. “They brought him in with our own
wounded.”

  He stared at me in disbelief, then smiled, hesitantly. “We have won, then?”

  I closed my eyes, wanting to scream, to wail out grief and weep until I was blind and voiceless. “If anyone has won, we have,” I said. “But, noble lord…”

  “Oh. Yes. The emperor.”

  I opened my eyes again, fixing them on Sandde’s face. It was terribly still after the heat and madness of the sick rooms. Sandde’s left cheek was smeared with blood. The dripping of the water in the torches behind me was very loud. “Is my husband dead?” I asked.

  Sandde shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  I turned away, and he reached out after me, touched my shoulder. “My lady, he had three horses killed under him today, and yet he lived. I…I met him, near the end. The enemy were on the road eastward, and in the hills. The emperor was trying to gather and rally all the cavalry he had left. He was galloping up and down and shouting. He was so hoarse from shouting that no one could understand what he was saying. But we did rally, and made one last cavalry charge. After that Maelgwn began to retreat. We pursued them northward for perhaps a mile, and then I called the men back, because it was dark, and snowing, and they were so tired that any bandit or pillager could finish them off, if the cold didn’t, should they get lost. And then I realized that no one knew where the emperor was. I had them all gather at one point, and sound horns to draw in the stragglers. We drew in a lot of men. But there was no more news of the emperor. I…I took some men and went about, looking. Many men had seen him at the beginning of the charge, but none afterward. We…perhaps he is wounded. Perhaps he took a party of his men after Maelgwn, and will come in later. We can search in the morning.”

  “Yes,” I said, after a moment. “Lord Sandde, do you have any horses that might be useful for drawing carts? There must be many on the battlefield who will die before the morning, and if my husband is there…”

  “The horses are foundered,” Cuall told me. “Not one in fifty could gallop to save its life. But what we have, we will send off.”

  “Don’t despair, noble lady,” said Sandde. “He may well be unharmed.”

  “He may be,” I agreed stupidly.

  After a long silence, Cuall said, “We do not have enough space for all the men, my lady. Which of the wounded can be moved?”

  I bit my lip, trying to think, then realized from the expression of helplessness and confusion on Sandde’s face that I must be weeping. I wiped my face, not caring if my hands smeared more blood onto it. “I will show you who to move,” I said. “Can you give orders about the horses?”

  ***

  The labor, and the counting of names, went on all the night. When the sun rose pink and lovely over the snow-covered land next morning, the dead lay in tall stacks by the wall. By then some of the horses were rested enough to be harnessed again to the bloodstained carts and sent back down the road toward Camlann to pick up what remained.

  Our scouts reported that Maelgwn had camped a few miles to the northward, and was burying some of his own dead, who were many. We sent him a messenger requesting an official truce for the burial of the dead, and he at once agreed to this. We also sent a messenger to Camlann, telling the men whom Medraut had left there to guard the fortress that we would permit them to follow Maelgwn home to Gwynedd if they would surrender Camlann without a struggle; they asked to be allowed to send to Maelgwn, which we permitted.

  The carts began returning heavy laden with the dead, leading baffled war horses behind them like so many oxen. The horses, like the bodies of their masters, had already been mysteriously stripped of rich harness and ornament, either by pillagers during the night or by the salvage parties themselves. Men and beasts seemed reduced to something unimportant, ordinary, broken, and dishonored. I had the corpses laid out in long lines by the wall for people to claim, and always I looked for one particular body, but never saw it.

  “Perhaps he took shelter at some holding for the night,” said Sandde. I nodded wearily and made inventories.

  Names. Some of them were Medraut’s followers, the traitors from the Family, men I had known, whose loyalty we had struggled to win: Iddawg and Constans and Cadarn and the rest. There were warriors from the North, who once had followed Urien of Rheged or Ergyriad of Ebrauc, and who now would never return to their masters and the other war. There were Constantius’s men, who died leaving a kingdom kingless and in ruins. And there were members of the Family, many of them, too many, for they had borne the brunt of the battle. Cilydd and Cynddylig; Gwrhyr and Gwythyr ap Greidawl; Gereint ab Erbin, the skilled horseman with the patient smile. Goronwy, who had been called “the Strong,” had died from his wound in the night, unobserved. And Cei, stubborn, quarrelsome, loyal, and courageous, was found lying at the far end of the field, where he had stood firm in resistance when Maelgwn’s forces were about to break through. He was enormous in death, his features locked into a snarling mask, and his red hair was thickly caked with blood. Of that Family which six years before had numbered seven hundred of the finest warriors in the West, scarcely fifty were left alive.

  There were many peasants dead as well, but their numbers were hard to determine. Many must have returned directly to their clan holdings after the battle, and many more left Ynys Witrin without waiting to be counted, as soon as they had collected their dead. Thus we were not certain who was dead and who was merely missing. Only one name among them, one still form, remained cut into my heart like the shape carved into a seal: Rhys ap Sion, found dead among the others at the road’s turning, where he had fallen in the first onslaught, to be heaped anonymously with the other dead in the night following the battle, and only recognized the next morning by his wife. Dead, dead, dead: the whole of Ynys Witrin stank of death, and everything I touched, everything I saw, heard, felt, the air I breathed and the food I ate, seemed heavy with it.

  In the afternoon Maelgwn Gwynedd sent us a messenger who bore an offer to extend the truce until the spring, and to return to his own kingdom for the time being. We agreed to this. The enemy garrison at Camlann also sent in a message, in which they agreed to our terms and promised to be gone from the fortress the following day, going north with Maelgwn.

  “Good,” said Sandde, relieved. “There is more space at Camlann. If we had this kind of crowding much longer we would have to fear the fever.”

  And still there was no sign of Arthur.

  The next day Maelgwn started north again, and Sandde sent men to all the cities of Dumnonia, proclaiming that we had a victory, peace was restored, and the markets were open again. I had wished in my heart to proclaim a reward to anyone with news of Arthur, or of his body, but I knew that it was unwise to tell the whole countryside that we also did not know if he were living or dead. There might be more risings, or Maelgwn might break his word and come back, and so much of our army was gone that we could risk no further struggle.

  Sandde sent the men off to Camlann, where there was both space and supplies enough for them. On the first day he sent off all the uninjured men, then all the less severely wounded. I offered to stay at Ynys Witrin with the more severely injured until they could be moved without risk and, after some hesitation, Sandde agreed, and left me in charge of Ynys Witrin while he went to Camlann.

  I waited. The peasant army did not trouble itself with moving to the imperial fortress, but went home in the days after the truce—those that had not gone before it. Sion ap Rhys and his kinsmen left five days after the battle. They would have gone sooner, but they had to send one of their number back to the holding to fetch the ox cart, for another of their number was wounded and could neither walk nor ride. They also wished to bury Rhys in the clan’s lands. I guiltily gave them a few gifts, small return for their kindness to me, and perhaps shamefully like a payment for their kinsman’s life, which was beyond price—yet the things might be useful. And I went down to the gates with them that morning to see them off.

  Eivlin went with the others, leaving only one serving girl at my house. She h
ad not said much to me or anyone else since her husband’s death, but went about red-eyed, hard-faced, with the kind of callousness that springs from great grief.

  “I am sorry,” I said to her, and to all of them.

  Sion ap Rhys shrugged, staring at the long bundle in the back of the cart that had been his eldest son. “We all knew we might die if we went to this war, my lady. We thought it worth the risk.” He picked up the ox goad. “And Rhys believed in your Empire more than any of us, and set much of his life on it. Perhaps it is for the best that he does not see it now. We must all die some time.”

  “It is not for the best!” Eivlin cried out sharply, “indeed, how can you say such things, a man to leave his three children fatherless, and they thinking him a finer man than the emperor of Britain, and waiting yet for him to come home and bring them presents? Best? That such a man as my husband should…och, ochone!”

  Sion set down the goad and covered his face a moment, then lowered his hands, ran one through his hair with a gesture that had been his son’s also. “The children still have their clan, daughter. And they have a mother. And she has them.”

  “Indeed,” said Eivlin, more quietly, but looking at the bundle in the back of the cart. She looked up at me again, and saw something on my face I—I do not know what—that made her jump off the cart suddenly and put her arms around me. Something in my heart gave way and I embraced her, biting my tongue so as not to cry out. For a moment I forgot that I was Empress and ruler of the fortress, and we were only two women who had lost the men they loved. Then Eivlin drew away, “I must look to my children, my lady,” she whispered, “or I might stay, for you have not deceived me into thinking you do not feel it and need nothing, whatever the others may believe. God bless you, my lady.”

  “And you, my cousin, and your children.”

  Eivlin let go of me, nodded, bit her lip, climbed back into the cart, and sat beside her father-in-law. Sion goaded the sullen oxen, and the cart lurched slowly out and down the hill, vanishing into the quiet Farmland of Dumnonia. I never saw them again.