Pendragon's Banner

by Helen Hollick

  Pendragon’s Banner

  Helen Hollick

  BOOK TWO OF THE PENDRAGON'S BANNER TRILOGY

  SilverWood Books

  Published in paperback and eBook 2011 by SilverWood Books

  www.silverwoodbooks.co.uk

  Text copyright © Helen Hollick 2011

  Genealogy © Avalon Graphics 2011

  eBook by www.bristolebooks.co.uk

  The right of Helen Hollick to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the copyright holder.

  Paperback ISBN 978-1-906236-65-6

  ePub eBook ISBN 978-1-906236-95-3

  To my dearest Ron.

  Part One

  The Sewing

  October 459

  I

  With an exhausted grunt of effort, Arthur, the Pendragon, raised his sword and with a deep intake of breath brought it down through the full force of weight and momentum into the skull of an Anglian thegn. Another battle. Arthur was four and twenty years of age, had been proclaimed Supreme King over Greater and Less Britain three years past by the army of the British – and had been fighting to keep the royal torque secure around his neck ever since.

  The man crumpled, instantly dead. Arthur wrenched his blade from shattered bone and tissue with a sucking squelch, a sickening sound, one he would never grow used to. Oh, the harpers told of the glories of battle, the victory, the brave daring and skill – but they never told of the stench that assaulted your nostrils, bringing choking vomit to your throat. Nor of the screams that scalded your ears, nor the blood that clung foul and sticky and slippery to hands and fingers, or spattered face and clothing.

  He turned, anxious, aware that a cavalryman was vulnerable on the ground. His stallion was somewhere to the left, a hind leg injured. The horses. Hah! No harper, no matter how skilled, could ever describe the sound of a horse screaming its death agony. There was no glory in battle, only the great relief that you were still alive when it was all over.

  Sword ready to strike again, Arthur found with a jolt of surprise there was no one before him, no one to fight. Eyebrows raised, breathless, he watched the final scenes of fighting with the dispassionate indifference of an uninvolved spectator. No more slopping and wading through these muddied, sucking water-meadows; the Angli were finished, beaten. The rebellion, this snatching of British land that was not theirs for the taking, was over.

  The Anglian leader, Icel, had wanted to be more than a petty chieftain over a scatter of huddled, backwater settlements, and that wanting had plunged deep – deep enough for him to unite the English war bands. Fighting against the British had been sporadic at first, skirmishes, night raids and isolated killings. Arthur had not been King then, when Icel began making a nuisance of himself, but when the Pendragon bested Hengest the Saxon, away down to the south of Londinium, the army of Britain had acclaimed him as Supreme. And Icel sent word across the sea for his kinsmen to come with the next spring, to come and fight this new-made King of the British who rode at the head of an elite cavalry force; to come and fight, for surely the victory over such a warlord would be worth the winning! The damn thing had grumbled on through the roll of seasons ever since.

  Those Anglians able to run or walk or crawl were escaping, running away to die or survive within the safe, enveloping darkness of evening. It was over. After all these long, weary months, over. Until the next uprush of the Saex-kind tried for the taking of more land, or some upstart son of a British chieftain fancied for himself the command of supreme rule.

  With slow-expelled breath the Pendragon lowered his sword and unbuckled the straps of his helmet, let them dangle free, his face stinging from the release of the tight, chaffing leather. He was tired. By the Bull of Mithras, was he tired! Arthur stabbed his sword-blade into the churned grass and sank to his knees. His fingers clasped the sword’s pommel as he dropped his forehead to rest on his hands, conscious suddenly of the great weariness in his arms and legs and across his neck and shoulders. It had been a long day, a long season. He was bone tired of fighting and this stink of death. He had a wife, two sons born, another child on the way; he needed to be with them, establishing a secure stronghold fit for a king and his queen; making laws and passing judgements – raising his sons to follow after him. A king needed sons. Llacheu would reach his fourth birthday next month… Arthur had hardly seen his growing; the occasional few days, a passing week. He needed Gwenhwyfar, but she was to the north more than a day’s ride away at Lindum Colonia, uncomfortable in her bulk of child-bearing. Love of Mithras, let it be a third son!

  Movement. Arthur opened his eyes but did not lift his head. Two booted feet appeared in his lowered line of vision, the leather scratched and spotted with the staining of blood. He would recognise those fine-made boots anywhere; the intricate patterning around the heel, the paler inlet of doe-hide. He looked up with a spreading grin of triumph into the face of his cousin and second-in-command. Cei, wiping sweat and the spatter of other men’s blood from his cheeks grinned back, his teeth gleaming white behind the darkness of his stubble-bearded face. For a while and a while the two men stood, grinning at each other like inane moon-calves.

  “That is it then,” Arthur said, climbing slowly to his feet and pulling his sword from the ground. It felt heavy to his hand now the fighting was done. “Happen we can think about going home to our women and families.”

  Cei shrugged a non-committal answer. If God was willing they could go home soon. When the dead were buried and the wounded tended, the submissions concluded, hostages taken and the King’s supremacy over these Saex scum endorsed. When the grumbling and muttering from the British, discontent with Arthur’s objectives were silenced. Aye, happen then, they could.

  Arthur bent to wipe his blade against the tunic of a dead Anglian lying face down in the blood-puddled, muddied grass. He gazed at the man’s back a moment then with his foot turned over the body. A boy, not a man, with only the faint shadow of hair on chin and upper lip. A boy who had listened to the harper’s tales of battle and had felt his heart quicken for the excitement and honour. Who knew nothing of the reality of this goddamned mess! Sons were needed to fight with their fathers. And to die alongside them. The harpers ought to sing of that! Sing of the cruelty of losing a beloved son; the pain of wounds that were beyond healing. Arthur sighed. So many sons and fathers dead. So much spilt blood.

  He pulled the spear that had killed the boy from the body. Said with regret, “We ought to live together in peace, Cei. Angli, Jute and Saxon in peace aside us British. Surely there is enough land for us all to build our dwelling places, enough grass to graze our cattle?”

  He bent to close the boy’s staring, frightened eyes. “Why must strength be shown by the blade of a sword? Why not through discussion and wise talk?”

  A voice answered from behind, the accent guttural, the words formed in hesitant Latin. “Because you and I were born to different ideas and beliefs, my Lord King. Differences breed mistrust and suspicions, which spread like weeds in a neglected cornfield. Fear – and greed – grows unchecked until eventually it rots into swollen lies and black untruths. Overspills onto a battlefield.”

  Arthur wiped his hand across his face, fingers firm against his nose, across cheeks, down to the stubble on his chin; wiped away this seeping mood of bleak depression and jerked upright. Turning to clap his hand to the newcomer’s shoulder, he announced with a smile as broad as a sow’s belly, “But you and I, Winta of the Humbrenses, you and I think di
fferent!”

  The answering smile was as friendly, as it was astute. “If we did not, my Lord, then would I fight beneath your Dragon against English kinsmen?”

  Sliding his arm full around the man’s shoulders, Arthur began to steer the tall, fair-haired man towards the northern end of the battlefield, to where, beyond a clump of wind-moulded trees, the British had set their camp. To where the Saxon prisoners would soon be herded and forced to kneel before a British king.

  “Some of us,” Arthur said, walking with long strides, keeping Winta close by the grip of his hand on the man’s arm, “have found enough sight and wisdom to see beyond the differences, to learn of them with interest and intelligence. Some of us,” he repeated, patting the man’s shoulder for good measure, “are shrewd enough to go into the fields and hoe the weeds. We, my friend, prefer to see the gold of ripening corn.”

  Arthur halted, beckoned his cousin to walk at his other side. “Some weeds though, can be cultivated, used for good purpose. Can they not, Cei?”

  Cei was scowling slightly, saying nothing. To his mind all weeds ought to be pulled up and burnt. He shrugged non-committed. He disliked – no – mistrusted Winta, a petty lord over a scattering of Saex settlements along the southern shore of the Abus river. Weeds were weeds, whatever their brilliance of flower or healing use. Angli? Jute? Ally, enemy?

  “Saex are Saex, whatever their given title and declared promises,” he muttered beneath his breath.

  II

  Although the water was not as warm as she would have liked, Gwenhwyfar elected to stay a while longer in the main pool of Lindum’s only remaining bath-house. Enid was already out, wrapping a linen towel around her body before seeing to Llacheu. The boy was crying, standing beside the nurse his little face scrunched up, pathetically unhappy. He wanted to stay in longer too, wanted to stay in the water with his mam. Enid though, was a no-nonsense young woman, more than capable of dealing with recalcitrant children. Briskly, efficiently, she swept a towel around the boy, scooped him under her arm and bore him away to the changing room, his protesting wail trailing in their wake.

  Gwenhwyfar laughed to herself, swam a few strokes from the pool edge then turned on her back, arms outstretched, head back, her copper-gold hair floating about her like the tresses of legendary sea-maids. She had the place to herself at this fresh hour of the morning, a trick she had learned early on in her stay in this inhospitable, dilapidated Roman town. Her belly rippled, the child within moving, the great bulge of late pregnancy standing like a whale-hump from the water; she felt like a whale too. A beached, blubber-weighted whale. Voices were approaching, the patter of bare feet slapping on tiled flooring, the rise and fall of female gossip. One voice in particular stood out, speaking in tidy, correct Latin, with a nasal twang and a laugh like a sow’s grunt. Swimming to the steps, the luxury of solitude receding, Gwenhwyfar ascended, draped rough woven linen towelling about her shoulders and marched through the approaching group of women, ignoring their sudden cessation of chatter and disapproving looks, aware that one of them would make comment.

  “Bathing naked in your condition, Madam, is indecent. There should be modesty at all times in a public place.” The Governor’s matronly wife wore a thigh-length tunic, her hair bound tight about her head. The other women were dressed similarly, or wore breast-bands and loincloths. The woman, a self-opinionated bore, wrinkled her nose, disgusted, at the swell of Gwenhwyfar’s belly and breasts.

  Several scathing retorts flooded Gwenhwyfar’s mind but she swallowed them. As Queen she could do something to silence the more offensive remarks, but Arthur had expressed an explicit plea:

  “I leave you in Lindum to play the part of diplomacy. Where the Queen is, they are reminded of the King. And I do not want them reminded of the wrong things.”

  “I have to be civil to them then?”

  “Very civil.”

  “Even to the Governor’s wife?”

  “Especially to the Governor’s wife.”

  Damn the Governor’s wife – and damn Arthur! It was all right for him, he had stayed but one night and then ridden off with his men, the proud cavalry of the Artoriani. Gwenhwyfar had no choice in the matter. The coming babe forced her to stay in this decaying town with its crumbling, grumbling citizens. And so today she remarked pleasantly, and with her hand on her bulge, “Yet pregnancy is such a wondrous miracle. Should we hide the generous blessings of God?”

  She managed to hide a broadening smile of triumph as she pushed through the group of women and made her way to the changing rooms where Llacheu was still fitfully wailing.

  Vigorous, angrily, she towelled herself dry, rubbed her hair, shaking it, fluffing the curls with her fingers. Dressed, she suggested to Llacheu, who had ceased his crying now she was also out of the pool, that they stop at the bath-house shop to purchase a pastry before going back to the Governor’s palace. It was the last place she truly wanted to go – but then she wanted to go nowhere in this damned town. The lad crowed his delight and swarmed into her arms for an extravagant cuddle. Ah, what did those foul women matter when she had her sons with her? And Arthur would be back soon. She hoped.

  Until the tenth hour, the bath-house was for women to use, the morning was gathering stride, and more customers were entering. Most at least nodded a courteous greeting to their King’s wife, a few gazed past her, but none would dare be as outwardly rude as the Governor’s wife. This growing ripple of hostility towards Gwenhwyfar was permeating through Lindum as powerfully as the stench that rose from the disintegrating main sewer. Narrow-eyed glares, a refusal to meet Gwenhwyfar’s eyes, men and women who crossed the roads to the far pavement rather than meet her; that she was not welcome – within the public bath-house, in this town – had been made more than plain since the day of her arrival. That Arthur was mistrusted to the point of dislike, as evident. And these as yet unspoken feelings were maturing and swelling like a water-bloated corpse.

  The entrance to the baths had lost the opulence of its former glory. The colonnades were cracking, the once vivid mosaic flooring faded and with pieces, large patches in places, missing. Few people noticed. The whole town was in a like state. Houses falling down, shops empty and shuttered, weeds growing through the cracked pavements and roads. Gwenhwyfar bought Llacheu his pastry, and one for herself and Enid. They were hungry, having left their rooms in the palace before breaking their fast.

  They walked obliquely across the square from the baths, Gwenhwyfar stopped, as was her habit, to admire the statue at the centre. It was bronze, life-size, of a rider sitting proud astride a prancing horse. The white marble inlaid eyes had gone, and the inscription was too faded to read – Gwenhwyfar had made enquiries, but no one knew who the rider was. A Caesar certainly, for he wore a circlet of laurel around his head and looked a noble man, very wise. Too perfectly beautiful to be real. Arthur was more rugged, with his long, straight nose, dark eyes and slight-curled hair that often looked as if it needed a comb tugged through it. The horse, though, was glorious, a well-bred animal of desert stock, its quality made obvious by the arched neck, concave face, small pricked ears and high-arched tail. Gwenhwyfar could almost imagine the horse leaping from the marble plinth and galloping off across the square and out, under the north gate… ah, but she would like to gallop, escape with him! Where would they go? South, to join Arthur? Or west to the land of her birth? To Gwynedd, where the mountains would be green, cloud-wraithed and beautiful? There was nowhere of her own to go, no home, no settled Hall or stronghold. Arthur had not had the time to find a good place, to build, to establish himself. Always, there was fighting, this incessant fighting!

  Llacheu wanted to pat the horse, Enid lifted him up. The square was filling now, traders setting up their stalls for the day, shops opening their shutters, the smell of cooking from the inns strong in the air. People were starting their day, hurrying about their tasks; shopping, business. A group of boys swaggered past calling loudly to each other, their slates tucked beneath their arms on their
way to the school-tutor.

  Gwenhwyfar sighed, indicating to Enid that they must rejoin her bodyguard who waited patiently in the early-morning pale-fringed sunshine for their lady. She hated Lindum Colonia. And, on occasion, hated Arthur for leaving her here. She reached up to touch the bronze muzzle of the horse, and caught her breath as something whistled past her ear, struck the statue with a resounding thwack and fell to the ground. She moved away, without fuss, beckoned her men to draw nearer. With dignity she left the square and made her way back to the safe confines of the palace.

  Enid knew there was something wrong, but then Enid knew her mistress well, and had also heard the thrown stone, had seen it land on the worn paving.

  III

  “Council will not like it.”

  “I do not ask for, nor want, Council’s opinion.”

  Cei sighed; three years as King, and already Arthur and his Council were squabbling like dogs after the same bone.

  “There are those,” Cei tried again, “who say that to spend more than a week discussing treaties of alliance with a defeated enemy is not good judgement.”

  Arthur, mending a broken bridle strap, made no answering comment. The hail that had sputtered on and off all day drummed a tattoo on the roofing of the leather tent and bounced like tossed pebbles on the worn, hollowed patch of mud-packed turf by the open entrance flap.

  Watching the pea-sized balls of ice a moment, Cei stared, fascinated, as the ground turned white – then the sudden-come storm ceased. The wind whipped up the dark clouds and sent them scurrying away and the sun came out again. Everything dripped and gleamed and sparkled as the white ice rapidly melted.