Kingdom of Summer

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “Eivlin!” I said, and she opened her eyes, looked over the sword and the other two, and saw me.

  “Rhys!” she answered, and pushed away the sword to sit up. The light flashed out, and Gwalchmai bowed his head, letting the blade drop to the floor. He held the hilt limply with both hands.

  “Rhys,” repeated Eivlin, and got out of the bed. “What is all this? You should not be up like this, with your head. What have you done with the pony?”

  “Eivlin.” It was all I could say.

  “‘Eivlin, Eivlin,’ he says. But what has happened? Where are we? I have had a nightmare and a sweet dream, and then you wake me from the second with your ‘Eivlin,’ and we are nowhere. Ach, how is your poor head?”

  Teleri laughed, and Eivlin looked at her for the first time, then let her eyes slip to Gwalchmai. They widened, very blue, and she looked back to me. “It was not a nightmare, was it?” she said. She began to shake a little, and I got up and put my arm around her. “My lady sent a…but I am alive! We are alive, and it is gone! Did you work that Christian sorcery of yours?”

  “Well, I did,” I replied.

  Teleri gave me a very dubious look, and stood up briskly. “The man says that he baptized you. In a most irregular fashion, near drowning the both of you, which is not required. And you have slept for two days, and would have slept for ever, if this lord had not woken you.”

  Eivlin looked to Gwalchmai again and turned crimson. “I thank you, lord Gwalchmai ap Lot.”

  Gwalchmai looked up, then slowly stood, sheathing his sword. “Any service I have rendered you is slight in comparison with the great gift you have given to me and to my servant Rhys, in risking your life to oppose the Queen my mother.”

  She flushed an even deeper red. “I did not save him for you, but for myself.”

  “I know. He has already told me that you plan to marry.”

  She whirled on me, and I felt my face grow hot. “Indeed, Rhys ap Sean? And when did you ask me if I would marry you?”

  “I…well, it merely came out so, when I was speaking to my lord.”

  “You should not be saying such things without asking first. It is I that you would marry, not your lord.”

  “I—I…does that mean you won’t?”

  “Now, did I say that?” She looked proudly at the wall, crossing her arms. “Think yourself, though, how it is to be told that you are going to be married, and not knowing it. Indeed!”

  “Forgive me. Will you, then?” I had not meant to ask her so bluntly, but I had to, to appease her.

  She gave me a very bright look. “It may be so.” And then she threw her arms around me and said, “Och, Rhys, Rhys mo chroidh ban, I am alive!” She began to cry. I stroked her hair and patted her on the back carefully, not looking at Teleri or Gwalchmai.

  Teleri coughed. “The girl should have something to eat.” Eivlin did not move. I didn’t want her to, either. Teleri sighed. “Well, then, I will find Elidan, and we will bring her something.”

  “Elidan,” said Gwalchmai. Without looking up, I could sense how his eyes fixed on Teleri.

  “Yes, your lady, Elidan,” Teleri said, then, rather sadly, “you may speak to her, but I do not think she will wish to speak long.”

  “If all she will give me is a short while, it will be enough.”

  Teleri’s light steps lingered in the doorway, and I knew she nodded; and then they passed on down the passageway. I glanced up. Gwalchmai moved over to the doorway and leaned there, looking out, and I could turn my attention back to Eivlin.

  Eivlin stopped crying and began to demand to know where we were and what had happened. I got as far as telling her about Medraut, when Gwalchmai stiffened, moved aside, and Teleri returned with a tray of food. Elidan entered, slowly, behind her.

  Teleri set the food down by the bed. Elidan merely stood, calm, straight, looking at Gwalchmai.

  He dropped sweepingly to one knee. “My lady.”

  She faced him, eyes narrowing a trifle. “Lord Gwalchmai.” She glanced over to us. “I am glad you succeeded in healing this girl.”

  “It is cause enough for gladness. But, my lady, I have searched for you over all Britain. Allow me the favor of speaking what I have long desired to say to you.”

  Her face did not change. “You wish to ask my forgiveness—or so your servant says.”

  “Yes.” He bowed his head, his hand tightening on his sword hilt.

  Eivlin, staring in astonishment, glanced quickly at me. I shook my head. I did not want to stir; we were quite outside any of this, and I think all of us sensed it.

  “Lady,” Gwalchmai began, when Elidan’s silence became too heavy to bear, “I know that I wronged you. I treated your love, which was beyond price, as a thing of little value, and I brought dishonor upon you before your clan and your kingdom. I swore you an oath, and broke it, and I killed your brother, disregarding both you and my own lord’s command. These things are true, and surely they give me need of repentance. They have grieved me, since first I realized what I had done, more bitterly than any wound. And because you did not know this, I felt I must say it to you, that I know it was wrong, and that…” he stopped.

  “You would say?” asked Elidan.

  “That I loved you then, and love you now, and I beg that you, of your own nobility, pardon the wrong.”

  “That is not nobility,” said Elidan. Her voice was even, but rough with strain. She clenched her hands by her sides, unclenched them, drew a deep breath. “I never thought to see you again, after you left Caer Ebrauc. I never believed you regretted your crime. I believe you now, that you regret it, and…it helps. And yet…” She turned from him, braced herself against the wall. “When first I knew that you had betrayed me, I thought I would go to my brother Hueil and ask him for vengeance. But I knew that that request would destroy him, as the desire for vengeance had destroyed Bran; and I could not do that. Against my own desire, I bore the wrong without striking back, accepted dishonor, and left Caer Ebrauc. Slowly I came to accept the shame as my own penance for assenting to sleep with my .brother’s murderer, and I accepted the helplessness. You must accept the same.”

  “My lady…”

  “No!” she turned back to him, and there were tears on her face now. “No! I once said I would kill myself before I would let you come near me again; and though I have bent that oath for this, I have not broken it, nor will I break it. I am not your lady; I am Elidan of St. Elena’s Abbey, and nothing to do with you.”

  He looked up at her then, and her face did move. She bit her lip, as in pain, jerking her hands up as though she would press them against her face, forcing them down again. “No,” she repeated, in a whisper this time. “The sight of you is like a knife to my heart, and makes me remember things I would rather forget: love, too much love; and betrayal and callousness and murder and dishonor. Go away.”

  “I know the truth of my own will in this,” Gwalchmai replied in a low voice. “I will go, if you desire it. But can you not be merciful?”

  She shook her head. “I cannot be weak. I will not believe you and accept you again. I trusted you once, and was betrayed, and I will not be made a fool of again. It is a lie. The world is a lie, its beauty a deceit. I trusted it once, and I will not do so again. Such honor as I have, I will keep, here, and so let the rest perish, miserably as it is evil. I must be strong; I am the sister of a king, daughter of kings…” She gave a long sob, looking at him desperately. “For God’s sake, go!”

  Gwalchmai bowed his head once more. “As you will.” He stood, and said quietly, “Rhys, I will wait for you by the horses. When you and Eivlin have decided when you wish to leave, come and tell me, and we will arrange the travelling. Elidan…” He lifted one hand towards her, then dropped it. “I wish you joy.” He gave a bow which included all in the room, and left. The quiet was heavier than a
tombstone.

  Elidan sat on the bed and buried her face in her hands, shoulders shaking again.

  “You’re a fool,” said Teleri.

  The other shook her head.

  “Child, you love him yet, and he loves you to doting. What are you wanting, to refuse to forgive him?”

  “I love him,” Elidan said in a muffled voice. “I had not thought I did. I thought it was all dead within me and yet…but oh God, God, how can one trust the world? What would my clan say?”

  “Your clan!” That brought an edge of contempt in Teleri’s voice. “What does that matter?”

  Elidan looked up, her face wet, eyes terribly steady. “They would be right. One cannot make peace with the world.”

  “If one cannot forgive evils, how is anyone to live?”

  “I must be strong,” Elidan said to herself, ignoring Teleri. “Thank God I was strong…The world’s evils are the truth of the world. Let it fall back into the night it came from!”

  Her words suddenly recalled another voice, a thin, cold, inhuman voice saying “All must fall back to the Darkness…Light is illusion, Darkness is true and strong.” The memory made me shake. “Lady,” I said, slowly, “that is not a very Christian thing to say.”

  She stood, eyes chilling, still wet with tears. “Be quiet!” she said, her tone that of a king’s daughter. “Let me alone!” And she fled the room, slamming the door behind her.

  Teleri looked at the closed door, her face worn and old and very sad. “And what have you shut yourself away from in honor, I wonder,” she whispered, to herself. “You know, poor lady, but you will not yield for all that. You want to shut it all out, but you’ve only shut yourself in, and oh, child, will you ever get out again?” She shook her head, then turned to Eivlin with a shadow of her usual briskness. “Come. I’ve brought you some sausages, and oat cakes with honey. You must eat them all, for you’re sadly in need of food and drink.”

  Eivlin shook her head, still staring at the closed door.

  “Eat your oat cakes, and have some of this milk,” Teleri ordered. “There’s no point in talking about it.”

  The milk was drunk and the oat cakes consumed in silence. Once she had begun eating, Eivlin discovered that she was hungry. Teleri noticed me eyeing the food, sighed, and departed to return with more, and with a little package. “For your lord,” she said, handing the latter to me. I thanked her, wanting to say more to her than I was able, and started eating. For all the strong feelings and high commitments on earth, one still has to eat, and that bread and cheese at daybreak seemed a long way off.

  When Eivlin was scraping the last of the honey off the plate with a fragment of oat cake, I finally asked her when she wanted to leave.

  “Now.” She popped the crumb into her mouth and dusted her hands off.

  “Ach, don’t be silly,” said Teleri. “You were near to death an hour ago.”

  “Indeed, and perhaps I was, but now, thanks to your god and Rhys’s lord Gwalchmai, I am fine again and ready to leave.”

  Teleri shook her head. “You would faint on the road.”

  “I will not. I have just eaten, and I will ride a horse, and there is nothing the matter with me, since the curse is done with. I feel better than I have for long and long, and Rhys wants to leave now.”

  “I didn’t say anything,” I objected.

  “And why should you need to, what with mooning at the door like a cow about to bellow for her calf? You’ve no wish to stay here with me and see your lord ride off alone.”

  “I’m concerned for him,” I admitted. “He deserved better than that.”

  Eivlin looked at me evenly a moment, then shrugged. “I think he did. He must be a fine man.”

  I bit my lip and stood up. “Eivlin, it’s only for a while. If you want it, in a month or so we can go back to my clan’s. farm and settle there. You will have my whole clan there, and the finest holding near the Mor Hafren, and all manner of things will be well.”

  Her eyes lit up. “A sweet thing, that, to have a clan, to be no outcast and have no curse. But now. To be sure, I do not know all that has happened yet: you say it has been days, you say he freed you from Medraut and defeated my lady—a great thing that!—and now he will ride off on an unknown course. But I know enough to know that you will follow him, the more so because he has been hurt. And I will not be left behind. If I must steal a horse and ride after secretly, I will. If you are going to travel into a hostile land, with no certainty of coming back alive and whole, I swear by the sun and the wind—no, I swear by Christ—I am coming with you. We will leave now.”

  Teleri shook her head. “Neither of you should leave. Rhys ap Sion, I have not forgotten your head injury. You need the rest as much as she.”

  “And Gwalchmai?” I asked. “And if I stay here, what must I say to Elidan?”

  Teleri frowned. “There is that.”

  “I do not think I am likely to be tactful to her; I think she is being a fool.”

  “I do not think you are a great one for tact,” she agreed drily. “Well, but this girl?”

  “I am coming. I am not to be gotten rid of so easily. “

  Teleri crossed her arms and frowned at Eivlin. Eivlin stared insolently back, and crossed her arms with an identical air. Teleri’s lips quivered, and she fought for a moment to stop herself, but finally yielded and smiled. She sat down on the bed beside Eivlin and patted her arm. “Less sick by far than you are willful, my girl. But ach, I was willful myself at your age, joining the sisters with my whole family howling at me no; and there’s no harm to willfulness in the right place. Go then, and when you’ve married this man of yours, be sure that the two of you aren’t stubborn at the same time, for I think you and he could make the North Sea in February look like a quiet lake. Rhys, go tell your lord that we’ll be out when I’ve found some things for Eivlin.” When I gaped, she snorted and snapped, “Go along.”

  I left, wondering. If I had looked at Teleri that way, I felt sure, I would not have convinced her of anything, but all Eivlin did was look insolent, and all was smooth sailing. The North Sea in February?

  Gwalchmai was, as he had promised, waiting by the horses. He stood leaning against the abbey wall, idly stroking Ceincaled’s neck while the stallion nibbled at his hair. When he saw me coming, though, he straightened, gave the horse a slap on the withers, and limped across to meet me.

  “We can all leave together now—or as soon as Eivlin comes out with Teleri,” I told him.

  “But she was near to death. She cannot be ready to travel.”

  “She will leave now, she says, if she must steal a horse to do so. I think she will be well enough. Any weakness she had was from hunger and weariness, and the hunger should be much better now. And, since we speak of hunger, Teleri gave me this for you.” I held out the package.

  He blinked at it vaguely and made no move to take it. “But you should wait here a few days. I can go back to Degannwy alone, and rejoin you later.”

  “To Degannwy?” I stared at him. “I thought we decided that that would be too dangerous.”

  “And it would have been, arriving on the tail of Ronan’s friends. Considerations of policy matter little to warbands when some of their number are newly dead. But it should be calmer now. Maelgwn should have less reason to wish for my death, with my mother defeated, and Agravain is there to calm down the warriors. I must go back to see Agravain. He knew I might be a few days, but he will not be peaceful until I am back, and I fear what he might say to Maelgwn.”

  It was reasonable. Degannwy sounded safe enough. In fact…“Very well then, we can all go to Degannwy,” I said.

  He looked dubious.

  “My lord, it is not far, and Eivlin can ride with me. If your elder brother has a following in Degannwy, it’s safer than St. Elena’s here. Medraut knows where this place
is, and, if he’s still alive, he might track us here again.”

  Gwalchmai shook his head. “He wouldn’t. I doubt he will care for anything for long and long. The image of his god was broken with my mother’s power.”

  “As you say, then. But we will leave, regardless. Eivlin and Teleri will be out in a minute.”

  Gwalchmai shook his head tiredly, tried to object again, then suddenly smiled a slight, almost apologetic smile and threw up his hands in surrender. I wanted to clasp his shoulder, talk to him as I would have talked to my brother or my cousins, and get him to talk the pain out. But I knew he wouldn’t, that he would only retreat into attentive courtesy; so I nodded and went to put Teleri’s package of oat cakes into the saddle-bags of Ronan’s warhorse.

  Teleri and Eivlin took their time. I had an uneasy feeling that Teleri was supplying provisions for any conditions of weather or the roads, and I could picture Eivlin cheerfully packing it all. Well, Gwalchmai certainly wouldn’t want to stay at Degannwy very long, and if we traveled with him we’d need anything Teleri could think of to give. Eventually the two emerged from the building carrying, as I had anticipated, a huge pack. After some struggle, Gwalchmai managed to tie this onto Ceincaled in such a way that it did not render it impossible for him to pull out his spears.

  Teleri watched him check those spears, then snapped her fingers and turned to me. “We still have that spear you brought when you first came here,” she said. “Do you want it back now?”

  I looked at her blankly.

  “Come, the spear you gave Gwyn to carry!”

  “Oh! That is his spear. He didn’t want anyone to know he owned one, though, and so said it was mine. Perhaps you could give it back to him—secretly.”

  Teleri compressed her lips, but her eyes glinted, and she nodded. I explained to Gwalchmai, carefully casual, “Gwyn is the boy who showed me the path here. He’s one of the children the abbey raises out of charity. He’s marked out to be a priest, so naturally they don’t want him to play with spears.”