“Will you sit?” she asked finally, setting the scroll she had been pretending to read aside. “The nights are still chilly. I will ask Fulvia to bring us some chamomile tea.”
“Let me call her—” There was a hint of indulgence in Medraut’s smile. He indicated the table covered with scrolls and wax tablets. “You have labored enough this evening already.” He rose and went to the door.
Guendivar kept her face still. In the past six years she had learned to recognize the subtle tension of manipulation. It was unusual to find such skill in a man so young, but she thought that constant practice had made her even more skillful at it than he.
“The Goth, Theodoric, brought letters from the king,” she said when Medraut had taken his seat once more.
“—my father,” he completed her sentence.
Guendivar lifted an eyebrow. Was that the way he wanted it? “The king your father has left it to me to decide whether to keep you here or to send you elsewhere.” She watched Medraut carefully, uncertain whether the tightening she thought she saw in his face came from the flicker of the lamp-flame or from unease.
But if she had worried him, he covered it quickly—when he lifted his head she saw the skin stretched across the strong, graceful bones of his face as smoothly as a mask.
“Since he has abandoned both kith and kingdom, it is fitting that his son, like Britannia, should be in the keeping of his queen. . . .”
“Say, rather, that he has left both in a mother’s care . . .” she corrected blandly.
“Oh, pray do not!” Medraut’s tone was sardonic, but she could see that she had shaken him. “You forget—my mother is Morgause!”
Guendivar blinked. She was only too aware how Morgause had damaged Artor—for the first time it occurred to her to wonder how she might have warped her son. She thought, I will be the good mother Medraut never had, and suppressed the anguished resentment that Artor had never allowed her to be the wife she should have been.
Medraut was still watching her, and Guendivar gave him a gentle smile. “Has your mother turned you against all women, then?”
He shook his head, lamplight sending ripples of flame along the smooth waves of auburn hair. The grey gaze that was so like Artor’s held her own. But as she met his eyes, she realized that the expression there was nothing like Artor’s at all.
“And has my father turned you against all men, leaving you to lie in an empty bed for so many years?”
Guendivar stiffened. Medraut’s voice was very soft, his eyes hidden now by the sweep of downturned lashes so that she could not tell whether sympathy or irony glimmered there.
“That is not a question you may ask of me!”
“Then who can?” He straightened, and now it was she who could not look away. “Who has a better right to question what happens in King Artor’s bed than you and I? We have a unique relationship,” he said bitterly. “It was you, my lady, who chose to begin this conversation—you cannot take refuge in the ordinary courtesies now!”
Guendivar struggled to keep her composure. “It is clear,” she said tightly, “that you do not want another mother.”
“A mother?” He shuddered. “For that, you would have had to take me when I was born. But you were only six years old. Did you realize, my lady, how nearly of an age we are?” He reached out to her.
“What do you want, Medraut? What am I to do with you?” she said desperately, trying to forget that for a moment she had wanted to take his hand.
“Use me! Let me show what I can do, not as Artor’s mistake or the tool of Morgause, but as myself, a prince of the line of Maximian!” he exclaimed. “Send me to the Anglians! Who else do you have who can understand them? They will not care about my birth, except to recognize that it is royal. There are stories of such matings in their own lore. With thirty men, or sixty, well-mounted, I could show them that the arm of Britannia is still long, even when her king is away!”
Guendivar could not fault his reasoning. But even as she agreed, she realized that it was not for his sake that she wanted him away, but for her own.
* * *
Medraut coughed as a shift in the wind brought the acrid reek of burning thatch. The black horse tossed its head uneasily and he jerked on the rein. The British had joined forces with Icel’s men at Camulodunum and followed the trail of burnt farmsteads northward. And now, it would appear they had found the enemy. That same wind carried a singsong gabble of northern voices. He lifted his hand, a swift glance catching the attention of the British who rode behind him and the Anglian spearmen who marched with Creoda, a broad-built young man with ashy brown hair who was Icel’s youngest son.
Creoda was the only one of Icel’s children born in Britannia. He had been a boy during Artor’s Anglian wars, brought up on his elder brother’s tales of vanished glories. Medraut had not found it difficult to get him talking—he was much like the sons of the chieftains in Cynric’s hall, enjoying the benefits of peace, but chafing because they had been born too late to be heroes. It was only when fending off marauders like these Northmen that they got the chance to fight at all.
Carefully they moved forward, the British on the road, the Anglians spreading out through the tangle of second-growth woodland where the old Roman fields were going back to the wild. Then the road curved, and suddenly the trees were gone. Beyond the young barley that the Anglian settler had planted in his home field they could see the burning farmstead.
Medraut yelled and bent forward, digging his heels into the black’s sides. As the horse lurched into a gallop, he dropped the knotted reins on its neck, shrugged his shield onto his arm and plucked his spear from its rest at his side. He noted the bodies of the farmfolk without emotion, attention fixed on the foe. The raiders were dropping their booty and snatching up the weapons they had laid aside, but he had caught them by surprise. They were still scattered when the British hit them, stabbing and slashing with spear and sword.
The buildings were still smouldering when the fighting ended. Medraut drew a deep breath, grinning, exulting in the rush of blood through his veins. It had been like this when he had ridden with Cynric to break up a fight between two feuding clans of Saxons—the tension before the conflict and the exaltation after, as if he were drunk on a dark mead of war. Growing up in the hulking shadows of his brothers, he had sometimes despaired of ever becoming a warrior—but Cynric had trained him well. Though he did not have Goriat’s height or Aggarban’s heavy muscles, he had learned to make full use of the swift flexibility of his lean frame.
A dozen northern bodies sprawled in the farmyard, blood and mud darkening their fair hair. The rest, near forty in number, stood together by the well, their weapons heaped before them, glaring at the circle of Anglian spearmen who had caught those who tried to flee. Two of Creoda’s men had been killed and several wounded; one of the British had broken a leg when he was pulled from his horse. But Medraut himself had not a mark on him, while three of the fallen had died at his hand. He was good at fighting—a gift he owed neither to father nor mother, but to Cynric’s teaching and his own hard-won skill.
He grinned savagely, surveying his prisoners.
“Does one of you have the Roman tongue?” he asked.
A young man with hair so pale it seemed white in the spring sunlight straightened. Medraut had already guessed him to be the leader from the gold armring he wore.
“Appeto Galliam—” he said in rough Latin, using a verb which could mean either traveling to a place or attacking it, to indicate that he had been to Gallia.
“That I can believe!” murmured one of the British.
“Mercator—” the Northman continued. As a merchant—
“And that, I do not believe at all!”
“Gippus, filius Gauthagastus regulus.” The prisoner touched his chest. Gipp son of Gauthagast. . . .
“Medrautus filius Artorius.” He tapped his own breast, ignoring the little murmur of reaction from his men. “So, we have a king’s son to ransom,” he added in the
Saxon tongue.
“A second son only,” said Gipp in the same language. “You will not get much for me.”
“Oh, I will get something—” Medraut smiled sweetly. “Where are the others?”
“The rest of you swine!” snarled Creoda when the prisoner did not answer.
“Gone by now, full-laden—” The Northman grinned. “They left us six days ago, but we were still hungry.”
“This time, you have bit off more than you can chew,” said Creoda, but the news had clearly relieved him.
Medraut nodded. “Who are your best seamen? They shall take your ship back to the North with word to your people. The rest of you will come with us to Camulodunum. Creoda, will you set up a rotation of guards?”
“Gladly! And send a messenger to my father.” He favored Medraut with an approving smile. “You fight like one of our own, son of the Bear. We have done good work today!”
The Britons and their Anglian allies moved slowly southward, for some of the Northmen were wounded and could not go fast. But the weather had cleared and the roads were beginning to dry. With all their enemies accounted for, they could afford to relax.
On the third evening, knowing that the next day’s march would bring them to Camulodunum, Medraut took a skin of ale and sat down beside his prisoner.
“Tomorrow we will come to Camulodunum,” he said, offering the ale.
“A Roman town—who now lives there?” Gipp answered in the same tone. If he harbored fears for his future, he was doing well at hiding them.
“Anglians. The town was falling into ruin. Icel sent one of his chieftains to hold the place by the terms of his treaty with King Artor.”
Gipp lifted an eyebrow. “I thought the Anglians conquered this land.” He drank, and passed the skin of ale back again.
“Then why do I ride with them?” asked Medraut. “Artor defeated Icel’s army twenty years ago. But by then, all the Britons had fled and there was no one to till the land. So Artor took the Anglians into his kingdom, to protect it from raiders.”
“Like me. . . .” Gipp grinned. “They do not do so well, eh?”
“They have mostly settled the richer lands inland, not the coasts. Is this land much like your own?”
Gipp laughed. “It would be hard for a place to be more different. Halogaland is all mountains, with little pockets of pasture clinging above the narrow fjords. This land—so flat—” He gestured at the mixed marsh and woodland around them. “Seems very strange. But there are no rocks. A man could grow anything in this soil.”
“Have you seen many lands?” Medraut wiped his mouth and passed the ale-skin back again.
“Oh, there are always kings who look for good fighting men. I marched with Ela when he attacked the Geats, after they took in the banished sons of his brother. He killed Heardred, the Geatish king, but Adgils and Admund escaped him. They say Beowulf rules there now, and he is a hero of whom there are already many tales. I think there would be little profit in following Ela now.”
“It is profit you look for, not glory?” Medraut rested his forearms on his knees, considering the other man.
Gipp’s high-boned face creased in a smile. “They say in my country that cattle and kinsmen will die, and only a man’s fame live after. But I have won my name in battle, and it seems to me that so long as I live in this world I will need the cattle and the kin. I would not be sorry to settle down with a plump wife and a good farm. But at home there is little land.”
“And that is why you think your father will not ransom you?
Gipp shrugged. “A man cannot escape his wyrd.”
“Well—” Medraut got to his feet, motioning to the Northman to keep the ale-skin. “Perhaps we will find some other use for you.”
The bright, hot weather of June was smiling on the land when Medraut came back to Camalot. The fortress was full of men and horses—Guendivar had called the princes of Britannia to council, and their retinues sat drinking and dicing in stable and ramparts and hall.
He had stayed with the Anglians long enough to get Icel’s agreement to settle Gipp at the mouth of the Arwe, north of Camulodunum, to hold the place for the Anglians as they held the whole of Anglia for Artor. But the Northman knew whom he had to thank for his good fortune. Medraut had not decided what use he might make of the warrior, but it never hurt to have the gratitude of a good fighting man.
Medraut was twenty-six years old. At his age, his father had already been king for ten years. He himself had spent the equivalent years with Cynric, and what had they gotten him?
The sons of the Saxons are not the only ones who dream of glory, he thought ruefully as he gazed at the grizzled locks of the princes who sat at council in the great roundhouse with their sons behind them. Where, in this empire Artor is building, is there a place for me?
The queen had summoned the assembly to set the levies for this year’s taxes. It was not going well.
“Ten years! Next year it will be ten years since the king was sailing oversea!” exclaimed Cunobelinus, his northern accent striking with a painful familiarity in Medraut’s ear. “ ‘Tis as long, surely, as it took the Greeks to take the city of Troy!”
“And will that be the end of it? Or will Artor, like Ulysses, be another ten years returning home?” Peretur echoed him.
“The seas that separate our shores from Gallia are neither so great nor so treacherous as the Mare Internum,” the queen said tartly, “but even if it were so, when Artor returns he will find me as faithful as Penelope.”
“My lady—no one doubts your fidelity,” Eldaul of Glevum said gently, “only the need for it. The king of Britannia belongs at home.”
“Oh, he may bide abroad for another ten years with my good will and conquer all the way to the gates of Roma,” put in Paulinus of Viroconium, “so long as he does not require my taxes! Let the men of Gallia support his army if they desire his presence so greatly.”
There was a murmur of agreement from many of the others.
“We have done well enough without him, these past years!” said someone at the other end of the hall. Medraut peered through the shadows and recognized the prince of Guenet.
Cunobelinus turned towards him, glaring. “But without the king, how long will the Pax Artoria be lasting? Drest Gurthinmoch has honored his treaty, but a new generation of warriors is growing up on tales of the riches of Britannia. How long will he be able to hold them? If he thinks that Artor has abandoned us, how long will he try?”
“The king has not abandoned us!” exclaimed Guendivar, two spots of color burning in her cheeks.
Perhaps not, my lady, thought Medraut, but he certainly appears to have abandoned you! She was very beautiful in her anger. He thought with distaste of his mother, who had also had to rule alone when Leodonus began to fail. But Morgause had lusted after power.
What do you lust for, Guendivar, he wondered, gazing at her, or do you even know? Last night he had dreamed of Kea, the Pictish slave who had been his first woman. Like the queen, she had been sweetly rounded, with hair like amber in the sun. At the time, he had thought her beautiful, but compared to Guendivar’s radiance, her light was only an oil-lamp’s flame.
“Artor asks for our taxes—for gold and for grain—” Peretur of Eburacum was speaking now. “And for the defense of Britannia we have never denied him—” His grim gaze swept the assembly, as if tallying those who had sometimes refused their support, even during the Saxon wars. “But I am loathe to give up resources which, if the Picts break the Border, we will need ourselves!”
The babble of response was like the roar of a distant sea. Guendivar surveyed the assembly, cheeks flaming with anger, and rose to her feet, staring them down until silence fell once more. But when she spoke, her voice was calm.
“Clearly, there are many factors here to be considered, and we have sat long at our debate. Hunger is not the best counselor. Let us go out to the meal that my cooks have been preparing, and meet again when the sun begins its descent once more.”
As he followed the others from the roundhouse, Medraut continued to watch the queen. Though her women had come out to escort her, she seemed very much alone, her brow furrowed with the anxiety she had been too proud to show in the hall.
Britannia may be able to endure without Artor, he thought then, but if he does not return, what will happen to the queen? His gaze followed her as she entered her own quarters, and he blinked, his vision for a moment overlaid with memory of the dream in which little Kea had lain in his arms.
“Medraut!”
At the shout, he turned, and saw the heir to Viroconium hurrying towards him. Martinus was a puppy, with an open face and eager eyes, but he might have his uses. Medraut paused, arranging his features in a pleasant expression.
“I hear that you fought wild savages from Lochlann last spring. What were they like? How many did you kill?”
With some effort, Medraut maintained his smile. Martinus’ voice was both penetrating and loud; others were turning, younger men for the most part, second sons and chieftains’ heirs. He saw Caninus of Glevum, who was a good fighter already, and the two cousins from Guenet, Cunoglassus and Maglocun. In another moment, a group was gathering, and Medraut grinned.
“They are fierce fighters indeed, but no monsters. If you like, I will tell you the tale. . . .”
Whatever he might say was bound to be more interesting than the political debates of their elders, thought Medraut as he led his audience to the shade below the palisade.
“You all know that we defeated the Anglians twenty years ago, and gave them lands in the east that our own people had abandoned; on condition that they should defend them.”
“My grandfather says the king betrayed his own people, making that treaty—” said Marc’h, a lanky thirteen-year-old who was the son of Constantine. “He should have killed them all.”
“Huh— your grandfather started the last Saxon war!” someone else replied.
“Perhaps—” Medraut cut in once more, “but then the land would have been empty, and these same Northmen you call savages might have come instead, and been much harder to deal with. The Saxons, and the Anglians, are not bad people— I have lived among them, and I know. They become more like us the longer they live in our land.”
The Hallowed Isle Book Four Page 11