by Sarah Zettel
Despite this, all heard him when he spoke. “It is true. I was there. It was Arthur’s men who invited Fyrsil to eat with them. It was in Arthur’s name he was slain by stealth.”
The hall erupted. Men leapt to their feet. Benches toppled over, thudding hard against the floor. A hundred questions were shouted, fingers pointing, fists shaking. Kynon’s hands had curled to fists, their knuckles white, and he was speaking to Bedivere, who grew more pale with each word. Sir Geraint pushed his chair away from the table, his attention no longer on Urien’s face, but on his huge hands.
Urien stood stock still in the midst of this chaos, smiling.
“Silence!” The single word thundered through the hall, and the men froze in their places.
Mother did not have to stand to command attention. Everyone’s gaze was on her where she sat, cold and straight as any queen.
“Penaig Urien, how dare you bring this claim to my board, and in such a fashion.” Her voice was low and hard. It seemed to Elen it could crack the stone walls around them. “This is a matter for the council table. You will offer apology to my guests.”
No one moved. Elen’s heart thumped madly in her chest. Urien’s eyes slid from Adara to Kynon and Bedivere.
“No,” he said. “I offer no apology. What I say is truth.”
Muttering voices rose in the air, and they were dark now and ugly. The retinue of Camelot moved more closely together. The men of the cantrev straightened themselves. Elen could hold her place no longer and hurried to stand by her mother and Yestin.
Kynon spoke again, and his voice was quiet and deadly. “Do you say the High King is a false man?”
Urien did not flinch, much less relent. “I do, and I will say more. I say his aim is conquest, by flattery of women where that can be done, and by the slaughter of true men where it cannot.”
“Urien!” shouted Adara. “You will be silent or you will leave this house!”
Urien showed no sign of doing either, instead he spoke to the whole of the hall. “It is known that Arthur lusts to be as the old Roman emperors. He apes their ways and their laws, and their hunger for the conquest of our lands. He works hand and glove with sorcerers and cunning-men, and,” and he turned his hard eyes back to Adara. “Women in other ways wise who would turn witch and poisoner for the prizes he gives.”
Which was at last too much for Yestin and now he was on his feet. “Do you speak this way of my mother in her house?”
“I speak truth,” said Urien again, and again he was smiling as if this were another small triumph for him.
Yestin flushed red. Elen could tell he wished for his knife or better, the new sword waiting in its chest. “You came here to bring this quarrel. You are no man.”
Urien snorted, folding his smith’s arms. “This from a boy peeping out from behind his mother’s skirts.”
Too much. Yestin raised his hand. Sir Kynon and Sir Bedivere fell back a little. Sir Geraint tensed, ready to move. Yestin’s going to strike Urien. He’s going to fight him. thought Elen wildly.
He’s going to die.
“Yestin,” said mother, firmly, quietly. “Hold.”
Yestin bridled, then obeyed, lowering his hand, and then, when Mother’s gaze did not leave him, he resumed his seat. Sir Bedivere nodded to Sir Kynon and they too sat down. Sir Geraint alone did not move, nor did he take his eyes from Urien’s hands.
Mother rose, standing before Urien, white-faced in her anger. “Urien, you have brought a quarrel to my house. You have broken hospitality and faith. You will go at once from here, or my son and his men have leave to do as they must to make you go.”
For a moment, Urien stayed where he was. Something flickered behind his eyes, but Elen could not say what it meant. “Your ears are not so long as they once were, Adara. You had best think twice about what I say.”
Mother’s hands shook with the effort of her self-restraint. “Had I ears long enough to reach to the sea’s shore, I still would not hear you,” she barely spoke above a whisper, but Elen knew Urien understood each word. “Leave this house.”
Urien held his place one heartbeat longer, then he nodded, as if in acknowledgement, or satisfaction. He turned on his heel and strode down the centre of the hall, his cloak billowing out behind him. His two men fell in behind him. As they strode through the door, Rob leapt forward and slammed it shut.
As the crash reverberated through the hall and Adara turned to the men from Camelot.
“Honoured guests, I beg of you accept my apology. It was by my doing that Urien was here, and I am deeply ashamed at his actions.” She bowed her head, and Elen saw the way her hands still trembled.
It’s not your fault, Elen wanted to say. This was Urien’s doing from the beginning. But to speak, to lessen mother’s apology, would be to add to the shame. She could only bow her head despite the anger burning in her, as Yestin did.
Sir Kynon spoke to Sir Bedivere, and Bedivere murmured a reply. “My Lady Adara,” Sir Kynon said for his captain. “Sir Bedivere is sorry he has not the words to speak thus much for himself, but he bids me say this is no reflection on your house. You have done us great honour here, and we are grateful. The High King has many who speak against him in these lands, but, we learn by breaking bread with you that he also has many friends who show great honour and courtesy in all their ways.”
Bedivere took up his wine cup in his one hand and drank.
That act broke the tension in the hall. Beven struck up his harp again. Benches were righted. Carys had the presence of mind to send the women scurrying around with more beer and cider. Elen caught up the wine jar again to refill her family’s cups, and those of the men of Camelot.
She caught Yestin’s eye. Well done, she tried to say with her glance.
Yestin’s shrug said, But what have we done? and Elen found she could not help but look toward the great door, closed fast against Urien’s return.
What have we done?
Outside, the rain began.
Chapter Two
Elen dreamed.
She dreamed a hawk soared free in the wild blue sky. She stood high on a green hill, watching the bird’s flight, marvelling at its beauty. But then, the hawk wheeled on its wingtip and dove toward her, its hooked beak open, the curving knives of its talons extended. Elen could not move, could not even struggle, as the hawk plunged its talons into her flesh. She felt skin, bone and sinew tear and screamed aloud. The hawk soared up again, Elen’s blood pouring as red rain from its wings.
Elen stood mute and stunned in her pain, her fresh blood staining her dress and cloak. The thunder of hoofbeats shook the ground and the shimmering air. A rider appeared over the crest of the hill, his cloak flapping behind him. A spear was in his hand and he hurled it impossibly high into the blinding blue sky. It pierced the hawk like an arrow and the blood-stained bird dropped to the earth at Elen’s feet. It clutched her heart in its talons and the horseman’s spear had split her heart and the bird’s in two.
Elen looked at the horseman, and saw under his helm he had eyes the color of the evening sky. She spread her hands, now covered with her own blood.
“You have slain me,” said Elen, and she fell into darkness.
Thunder boomed.
Elen shot upright. Sweat drenched her and her heart pounded frantically against her ribs. A draft curled damp and heavy around her throat, and she shivered hard. All about her, sleeping women snored, sighed, and muttered to themselves, turning and reshuffling beneath their blankets, pulling closer together for warmth, but none woke, save Elen.
Elen wrapped her arms around herself, trying to stop her shudders. She could still see the blood raining from the hawk’s feathers, and the eyes of the rider who looked at her so steadily.
What does it mean? Elen shivered again and outside the wind whistled under the eaves, calling out the souls of the sleepers to come and play.
Elen tossed her blankets aside and found her shoes and woolen over-dress by touch. Shuffling her feet, she threaded h
er way carefully through the maze of beds and pallets, earning a grunt and a sleepy curse here and there as her toes prodded backs and hands. At last, her hand found the threshold and the door and Elen made her way into the great hall.
In the center of the hall, a few embers had been uncovered in the central firepit. In their orange glow, Elen saw her mother sitting on her stool wrapped in her grey, fur-lined cloak. She looked up as Elen came forward.
“So. You feel it too, my daughter?” She looked towards the doors as the rain knocked hard against them. “There is more than wind and thunder out there tonight. I fear your brother will be drowned, but he insisted he be allowed to go out to the sentries, just to make sure none of Urien’s men come back to try more mischief.”
Elen knelt at her mother’s feet, huddling between the woman and the fire for her warmth. Adara lifted her chapped and swollen hand and stroked her daughter’s hair in a gesture Elen had known since she was a child. “I dreamed, Mother,” she said.
Adara nodded, as if she already knew. “Tell me your dream.”
Elen told her of the hawk and the blood, the horseman and the spear.
“Mother, It think it was Geraint, Arthur’s man.”
“Are you certain?”
Elen thought carefully, searching her feelings. “No, but it was very like him.”
Adara blew out a sigh. “Bad to worse. Very well, daughter.”
Elen bit her lip to silence a curse, against Urien, against Camelot, against prophecy and dreams. Why could they not be left in peace? It was all their father had wanted, all their whole family had ever wanted. “What do we do?”
“Tonight, nothing. Tomorrow … it may be we must call on a tie of blood to settle the truth of these things.”
“Blood?” The word sat Elen up straight.
Mother nodded. “You know of Arthur’s cunning-man, Merlin?”
Elen frowned. “The one they call No Man’s Son?”
“Yes.” Mother’s gaze grew distant, watching memories much more than the glowing coals before her. “He may have no father, but he had a mother, and she and my grandmother were kin.”
There were as many tales of Merlin as there were of Arthur, and like Arthur, not all those tales were of honor and triumph. “That is a weak tie, Mother,” Elen said uncertainly.
“But better than none.” Mother’s hands fell back into her lap. She looked at them, and scowled at their weakness. “There are other reasons I might trust him more than his master, but I did not want to have to call on that trust until I had to. Now I think I must.” She raised her eyes, staring at the stout stone walls of their home, but not seeing them. “Unless we want our men to question any alliance we might make, we need proof of Urien’s lies.”
Elen heard those words, but in her mind she also heard them spoken differently. In her mind she heard, we must have proof that Urien lies.
Elen shifted herself until she was on her knees. Gently, she took Adara’s hands in hers. They were ice cold. “Mother …”
Let me help. Teach me what to do next. Yestin’s out there in the rain and the dark with that shiny new sword … let me also be of use to our family.
Before she could speak her thoughts, a mad pounding sounded against the door, as if someone were trying to batter it down with bare fists alone.
“By all the gods, what is this now?” Mother got to her feet and strode to the doors.
“Mother …” Elen scrambled to follow. Don’t, something inside her tried to say. It’s a bad night. Leave whatever, whoever, that is outside. Don’t …
“Help me with this, Elen.” Mother laid a hand on the bar.
Elen bit back her fear and obeyed. What if it was Yestin? What if something had happened? She wrestled the bar aside and grasped the iron ring and pulled the door open.
There in the rain crouched three people. Their sodden cloaks seemed to weigh them down. One of them carried a pierced lantern. The rain hissed and spat as it fell against the hot sides. They all looked pinched and starved and their eyes were too large for their faces. Elen thought they were all three men, but she found she could not be certain.
“We seek Adara,” said one.
“Our lady’s time has come and it goes hard with her,” said the second.
“She must have a midwife,” said the third.
They had small voices, like frightened birds. They huddled together in a tight knot, shaking, from cold, from effort, or from fear. Perhaps from all at once.
Elen thought mother would invite them in, but she made no move. She only stared at the three strangers huddled there
“I cannot come,” Adara said quietly. “I cannot midwife anymore.” She held up her misshapen hands.
“Our lady’s time has come and it goes hard with her,” said the second.
“She must have a midwife,” said the third.
The wind blew, whipping a curtain of rain through the door. The strangers shivered and drew closer together, and still mother did not invite them in. Elen wondered how they had come past the sentries, and past Yestin.
“I’m most truly sorry,” said Mother. “It is beyond my power to aid your lady in this.”
But they still did not move, and the third one only said doggedly. “She must have a midwife.”
All at once, Elen knew. She knew who she was seeing, and why they were so small and so brown, and why they came this night, of all nights, and her heart went cold and still inside her.
Mother nodded. “Very well.”
Elen drew her mother aside at once, out of the light of the tin lantern and the glow of the fire. “Mother! You cannot!”
“No, I cannot.” Adara laid her hand over Elen’s. “But you can.”
Elen’s heart thumped once. “No, Mother, I have not the skill.”
“You do,” said Adara steadily. “You have all the skill you need. It will be as any other birth. You know the ways in which you must take care. Be escpecially certain not not to eat or drink anything until you return to our lands again.”
“But … this could take … days.” Don’t think of the other chance. Don’t think it. “How can I leave you and Yestin now?”
Don’t think how those such as stand at the door take men underhill for seven times seven years, or longer.
Adara looked deeply into her daughters eyes. “They have come to us for help and we cannot turn such a plea away, daughter. No matter who they are.”
Elen swallowed, and tried to pull herself together, to stand as tall and proud as her mother did. “Of course. Forgive me. Let me get my cloak.”
This time Elen did not bother with caution as she waded through the women’s quarters. Curses rose in the darkness, as did worried queries.
“Baby’s coming,” was all that Elen answered, pulling on her cloak and boots. Everyone would think it was Nia.
Her hands shook. It took her four tries to fasten her cloak pin. It was as well it was dark. She didn’t think she could see clearly anyway.
Once, when she was very small, Mother went to midwife a birth and she returned at twilight the next day. There was nothing strange about this, save that when mother returned she was usually full of stories; of the family, of the birth and how it went, of the child and how well it was likely to thrive. This time, she said only, “The babe lives and it is strong.”
The next morning, there was a new sow in the pen. None of the swineherds could say how it came to be there. She was milk white and she bore litter after litter of strong, healthy piglets, all as white as their mother. She never savaged them as other sows might, and they never took sick no matter how cold the winter or how scarce the feed. Their pigs became famous throughout the cantrevs, and were much prized at markets and for any trade they might make.
When the sow finally died, mother forbade its flesh to be eaten. Instead, she ordered it buried by the bridge.
Everyone knew that sow had been her midwife’s fee for the birth she never spoke of. What everyone did not know was what Elen overheard Mother say
to Father in the darkness and quiet.
“They wanted me to stay with them. It was only the thought of my children that brought me home.”
It was only the thought of my children. Elen had no such anchor. If these wanted her to stay, would she be able to say no?
Elen grit her teeth tightly together and hurried back to the hall. The scene there was as it had been. The rain, the flickering light of lantern and fire, the small brown folk cringing beneath their sodden cloaks. The looked so miserable, Elen could not help but feel pity for them.
Mother took Elen’s hand and held it as tightly as she was able. She looked directly into Elen’s eyes, trying, Elen thought, to impart some of her strength and calm. “Our good neighbors here promise you will be returned to your family, safe and whole when your work is finished.”
The three little people looked up at her, blinking their sunken, over-large eyes. Elen’s throat was as dry as dust, but she managed to say. “Very well. I am ready.”
Mother released her hand and stepped back. “You do our house proud my daughter.”
Elen drew her hood over her head and stepped out into the rain. She did not look back as the door to her house closed behind her.
The rain was cold as winter and relentless as fury. The little men (were they men? by the flickering lantern light she was even less sure than she had been in the hall) clustered silently around her, herding more than leading her to a little cart. It was a rickety thing with a pair of soaked and dispirited donkies in its harness. Silently, the one with the lantern held it high so she could step into the cart and find a place to sit among sodden straw that smelled strongly of donkey. All three of her … guides climbed onto the seat. One touched up the donkies and the cart lurched forward. Elen tried to wrap her cloak more closely around her to fend off the rain, and tried not to feel like a calf being delivered to market.
Or to slaughter. Elen closed her eyes against that thought. Home safe. They promised I would come home safe.
The cart bounced, creaked and jolted. The donkies’ hooves squelched in the mud. The rain pounded down until she was soaked through her cloak and her hands fell numb. The little men said nothing, nothing at all.