The Kingmaking

by Helen Hollick

  “Ah, your child.” Morgause seated herself on the grass a few feet from Gwenhwyfar, querying with her hand and a raised eyebrow whether Gwenhwyfar minded. It was not for Gwenhwyfar to say – the Tor belonged to all.

  Morgause leant her head back, letting the warmth of a sudden burst of sunshine on her face. To the grey-blue sky she said, “Why are you here, Gwenhwyfar of Gwynedd?”

  “I could ask the same of you.”

  Smiling at the neat answer, Morgause indicated Gwenhwyfar’s swollen belly and said, “Except I can guess your reason. Now the great Cunedda has gone you fear Gwynedd might throw you out for breeding a fatherless bastard?”

  She liked hurting, Morgause, enjoyed the pleasure of another’s pain, would poke and stab at vulnerable places and watch her victim squirm under her torture. Animals, children, unprotected adults – few were safe from torment at Morgause’s hand. If she had intended to hurt Gwenhwyfar with this one, though, she failed. Gwenhwyfar had long accepted her father’s death – liked it not, but accepted it. And her brothers would not reject her when she became ready to contact them.

  Morgause sat forward, hugging her knees. “As I recall, Cunedda had a fondness for fatherless bastards.”

  Gwenhwyfar did not miss the inference, said with a lifted eyebrow, “He had a father, though, didn’t he – Arthur?”

  Several thoughts wandered through Morgause’s mind: Uthr, and his son; the love she held for the one, the hatred for the other. The son should have been hers. If she had borne Uthr a son, then… then what? Would Uthr still be alive, would she now be Queen? The thread of Fate would never weave so smooth a pattern. Even had she borne a son, Uthr would still be dead, she would still have come here to seek shelter with the Ladies, become one of them. It suited her to be here. For now, until the time came to move on.

  “So,” she said to Gwenhwyfar, pleasantly, “you come to the kingdom of Avallach and the garden of the Goddess to bide your time before dropping your child.”

  “I come to share the peace of the Holy Sisters.”

  “Hah!” Morgause snorted with amusement. “That pathetic bunch of nanny-goats! What would they know of bastard brats? It is in my mind you hide away here lest your brothers discover your condition. You ought to have had it aborted.” Morgause ran her hands across her own flat belly. “We of the Goddess know how to keep a womb empty.” She giggled, a crude sound full of suggestive pleasure. “Though men try hard to fill it.” Scornfully she added, “I doubt your Sisters know anything of such matters. Would scream ‘rape’ should a man dare catch a glimpse of an ankle beneath that drab garb they encase themselves in.”

  “The nuns are good, kind women – do not mock them.”

  “What, all of them? Even that other one from Gwynedd? Branwen.” Morgause was massaging her toes, wriggling each one between her fingers.

  Gwenhwyfar answered affably, “I see little of her, she has private lodgings.” Thought, Thank all God’s goodness!

  The little girl had wandered some way off, was absorbed in picking daisies and threading them into a joined chain.

  Gwenhwyfar had no wish to talk to, or of, Branwen. Disagreeable woman! She said instead, “She is a pretty child, your daughter.”

  “What makes you assume she is my daughter?” Morgause laughed.

  Cocking her head to one side, Gwenhwyfar watched the little girl. She was dressed in a rough-spun tunic, sleeveless, reaching a little below her knees. A shabby bandage was bound about her right hand. There were bruises, Gwenhwyfar noticed, on her arms and legs. A lot of angry bruises, but then children were always falling and hurting themselves.

  “I say it because twice now I have seen her trotting at your heels and because, although she has not your delicate skin, she is very like you.” And someone else?

  Lifting her shoulders Morgause made light of it. “So she is mine. The Goddess smiles that she has another to follow her path.” She gathered up her skirt, folding the cloth back to her thighs, and stretched her bare legs to the sun. She threw Gwenhwyfar a sly sidelong look; eyeing her bulge, assessing how far the babe had grown. “Who is the father? Or can you not name him for fear of decrying his wife?”

  Gwenhwyfar replied, indifferent to the taunting, “I have no intention of fighting with you, Morgause. It is no business of yours to know. I could as well ask who fathered your girl.” She added with a twist of returned spite, “Or do you not know?”

  Morgause watched the child a moment through slit eyes. A stupid girl who answered questions in a mumble and had downcast eyes, a runny nose, a bottom lip that trembled most of the time and clumsy hands that dropped everything. She still wetted the bedding. Punishment seemed to have no effect, even though it was becoming more severe.

  Take this morning. The idiot child had spilt scalding porridge all over Morgause’s gown. She had immediately plunged the girl’s hand into water boiling in the cooking pot; doubted whether even that punishment would have any effect. The child would be as clumsy some other time, some other way. A tiresome, disappointing weed of a brat.

  With a sigh, “She is nothing like her father.” Morgause scratched at an itch along her inner thigh and lay back, her hands tucked behind her head. “It is as well he does not know of her. He would be disappointed.”

  “I think my man will be pleased with mine.”

  Morgause learnt much from that. The father, whoever he was, knew nothing of the coming child. Also, Gwenhwyfar was not certain of him. She took that to mean there had been some passing affair, torrid meetings of a night, a sharing of lust, and now the man had gone. Back to his wife? Probably. It usually went that way.

  “That is just as well,” Morgause said, climbing to her feet and straightening her skirt. The sun was becoming blanketed by a thick bank of cloud. It was darkening in the west, more rain coming. It was time she went. She looked north across the flood plain, north to where, somewhere, the Goddess was still held in awe, where this Christian God had trod no lasting footprint. The Ladies were revered in the far north, were welcomed. A gifted Lady could soar high among the Picti people. Could, if canny, fly as high as a queen.

  Aye, it was time she went from Yns Witrin.

  In passing she said with unexpected good intention, “The Goddess has a place for girl-children should yours be born female. She does not need to know a father’s name, would welcome yours to her bosom.”

  “As would the Christian Virgin.”

  The kindness disappeared. “Hah! That is not how I heard it.” Brushing at a grass stain, Morgause came to stand before Gwenhwyfar. “You would fare better under the Goddess, she is in need of new servants.”

  So that was why Morgause was being so friendly this day. Gwenhwyfar had wondered. She held her tongue, for Morgause spoke the truth of it. The nuns were kind-hearted, well-meaning and loving, but a few had tutted and mumbled over her condition.

  When Gwenhwyfar first came there had been guarded questions, met with a polite silence. They knew her name, that was all, but of her parentage, her home, and the father of the child Gwenhwyfar had said nothing.

  All that had changed several days past when Branwen and Osmail arrived. This was a small community where word, especially scandal, spread faster than a winter flood, and Branwen had within a day made it her business to give full detail of Gwenhwyfar’s history. But, not even Branwen could discover who had fathered the child.

  Was that something moving out there on the plain?

  He was dead of course, Osmail. He would never have survived a battle, she knew it as surely as that distant muddle of movement was forming into a turma of horse.

  She had entered the community chapel one afternoon and had seen a man sitting there. “Osmail? Osmail!” She had dropped the gathered flowers intended for the altar and run to him, throwing her arms about him, tears of joy and laughter mingling with his own. He had come, he said, to leave Branwen and his sons with the Sisters while he rode to join Vortimer, driven by some crazed need to prove he was his brothers’ equal. Proving nothing,
Gwenhwyfar had retorted, except that he was a fool and could die as easily as anyone else. But he had gone all the same, riding out the next morning.

  One other part of their conversation came back to her as she sat in the cloud-patched sunshine up here on the wind-whispered Tor. “They are searching for you,” he had said. “Our brothers and Arthur.” He was alive then. But of course, she would have known if he was dead.

  She had deliberately not informed anyone of her whereabouts. That they would be suffering pain she realised, but it would be a short, soon mended hurt. Her own hurt, for the time being, came more important. She was not ready for the harassment of the outside world, was not ready for the sympathy and swamping affection that, however well intentioned, would drown her severely cracked spirit. The Sisters gave her those things, but in a distant, impersonal way.

  “Soon,” she had promised Osmail, “I will send a messenger soon. When I am ready to take up my cloak and go out into the world again; but for now I need time for my wounds to heal, here within the peace and privacy of Yns Witrin.”

  And suddenly she received the welcome knowing that ‘soon’ had come. She was ready to turn aside from tranquillity and face reality.

  “I must be getting back,” Gwenhwyfar said, rising to her feet. She took a few paces down the slope, stopped to say, “I shall tell the Pendragon when I see him that you are here, Morgause.”

  Morgause laughed, hands on hips, head tossed back. “So he may avoid the place? Do not bother yourself, I am leaving. I need somewhere more…” She paused, smiled – wicked, Morgause’s smile could be – “Beneficial,” she finished.

  She watched Gwenhwyfar go; watched, too, the horsemen, for that knot of clouded shapes was definitely horsemen. The girl had come up, was standing a few inches from her mother.

  “I met with Gwenhwyfar when I had the Pendragon,” Morgause said to the wind. “Not this Pendragon, I speak of the father.” She clasped her arms about herself. The wind was growing chill. “He was a man worth the having.” She looked down at the child who stood wide-eyed with fear, thumb stuck in her mouth. A patch had spread on her skirt where she had wet herself.

  “Love of the Mother!” Morgause snarled. “Uthr was worth the having, but by the pleasure he gave, were you?”

  XXXV

  Tired horses, steaming from a fine spatter of rain on hot coats filled the rutted courtyard of the small tavern built alongside the outer wall of the Holy Sisters’ compound. The keeper welcomed the arrivals graciously, if somewhat doubtfully, making rapid calculations for sleeping arrangements.

  Cei slapped him on the back, almost toppling the little man. “No panic, we stay but the one night to rest horse and man.”

  Two men had remained mounted, the officer in charge and another man – a civilian, for all he was dressed in war gear. They talked briefly but earnestly out beyond the arched gateway.

  It had surprised Arthur that Emrys had joined them after all – although, as he had been quick to explain, only to ride as far as Yns Witrin. “I have a fancy to reside a while with the holy Brothers.”

  Put out by Emrys’s rebuff, Arthur had said he could suit himself what he did. They had ridden in silence for the first few miles.

  Emrys was saying he did not care to stay at the tavern with Arthur and his men, was all for seeking a more suitable bed within the Brothers’ monastery, away to the left of the road.

  Arthur took that as another slight. Said, “Go where you will, Uncle. It is nothing to me where you sleep.” Thought, We do not need your solemn face casting disapproval on our drinking and whoring this night.

  He swung Eira aside, intending to trot into the courtyard – halted. For a long, long, moment he sat there staring up the muddied lane, unable to take in what he was looking at.

  Gwenhwyfar had walked slowly back, taking her time to amble down the slope of the Tor, coming the long way round to avoid the Lady’s lake. Then she had stopped to drink from the women’s spring. It was good water, red-tinged, bubbling from the ground even in the hottest of summers, so she was told. It was healing, folk said, and indeed she always felt a surge of energy after drinking there, no matter how tired she had been before.

  Then it had started raining; a fine, warm drizzle. She had walked on along the narrow track, stopping to listen to a bird trilling a bursting chorus of glorious sound. Stooped to peer, fascinated, at a webbed nest of new-hatched spiders, the little things weaving their way from the massed clump of siblings, climbing hesitantly out along leaf stems and grass stalks – a minute, busy little world. Further on, a beetle lay in her path, its legs waving frantically in the air as it struggled to right itself.

  She flipped it over, watched as it scuttled away, shiny black. She could hear voices ahead, and horses. The rain was falling harder now. She had no wish to meet with riders, not yet, so she ducked her head against the wet and walked a little faster, aiming for the rear door into the Sisters’ garden.

  Suddenly Arthur was off Eira’s back and running up the lane.

  She looked up, faltered, her veil slipping back from wet hair.

  His arms swept around her, lifted her off her feet, swinging her round and around. Then he put her down, gazed at her, still unbelieving, thinking this was some dream; he would wake any moment and find her gone. Finally, almost choking with happiness and relief, he kissed her.

  He was aware, as his breathing calmed and his heart eased its wild hammering, of men gathered down the lane, faces grinning, voices raising a cheer. Cei had come up behind, was saying with a broad grin, “Can we expect a more amenable mood now, lad?”

  Emrys too had wandered up the lane, was regarding the woman in Arthur’s arms with interest. He had heard from sources other than Arthur of Gwenhwyfar ferch Cunedda.

  They were very different, Emrys and his brother Uthr. Eldest and youngest, with fifteen years between them. Emrys had been a babe in his mother’s womb when their father died, was a child when Uthr fled into exile. He was no soldier, Emrys; had lived a quiet life of learning, of books and study. With his elder siblings gone about their own lives and his father dead, he was left in the care of his mother. A good, pious woman who brought up her last son in the way she had been taught; to honour God and Rome, the one almost blending with the other – but then, her father had come from Rome, was the son of a Senator. He had served a while as Duke of Britain, governor of the entire north – until Rome had recalled the legions and he had gone marching away with them. Emrys’s mother had stayed in Britain, with her husband.

  Emrys had met Cunedda and disliked him for all the reasons his elder brother had liked the man. Cunedda was ambitious, had a liking for war, was brash and lewd and cherished a love for an independent Britain and a return to the Tribe. Uthr and Cunedda were glad to see the back of Rome. Emrys had never trusted Cunedda, nor Uthr. And Arthur was too much his father’s son. Did this daughter too take after her father?

  He stepped forward to greet her. Recoiled, for as Arthur let her go her cloak flapped open, revealing her swollen figure. “My God, she carries a child!” The shocked exclamation left Emrys’s lips before he could halt it.

  No one spoke.

  It had not occurred to Gwenhwyfar to wonder how Arthur would react to the discovery. She had always assumed he would be pleased, but seeing Emrys’s horrified disapproval she was suddenly afraid.

  Arthur must have seen the panic scuttle across her face, for he took her hand in his, said to Cei, “Settle the men and horses and escort my uncle to his chosen lodging. I have unfinished business to attend.” He slid his arm around Gwenhwyfar, drew her close to his side, clearly dismissing his audience.

  To her he said, “Where can we talk?”

  She indicated an open doorway in the convent wall through which herb and vegetable gardens were visible. He led her there, shut the door, looked about. Beneath a drooping willow he saw a crude bench, took her to it and seated her. Was not sure of the words he wanted to say to her.

  They both spoke at once. “Gwenhwyfar
…”

  “Arthur…”

  Laughed.

  “Let me speak, Cymraes.”

  She bent her head, her hands folded in her lap. He was not going to want her now – now she bore a child which only her word said was his.

  Arthur had not dared to hope he would find her again, and now he had did not know what to say. This child she carried – he had gone over and over all the things that could have happened to her these past weeks, had not thought of this one possibility. It must be his. Wasn’t she too far advanced for it to be Melwas’s – or had there been someone else? Mithras, how to ask without giving offence? Ask – he had to. He started clumsily.

  “I did not expect you to be with child.”

  “I did not expect to be with child. It is a thing that seems to happen when two people lie together.” Her answer came out harsh, too flippant.

  “Na, I meant…” he fumbled for words, decided to leave it a moment. “Winifred has gone. I know not where, nor do I particularly care. She may be drowned or have reached her mother’s people – I hope the former. Either way, officially, legally documented, she is no longer my wife.”

  He sat beside her, sharing his cloak, covering her shoulders with its ample width. Awkwardly he took her hand in his own, found it cold to the touch. “I have much to do, Gwenhwyfar. Vortigern is no more and Vortimer is unfit to lead. It is almost time for me to take the kingdom as my own.” He glanced apprehensively into her green eyes, watched, fascinated, the swirl of gold at the centre. “For the next months, years, I must gather all I can to me, will have to fight those who stand in my way.” He studied her hands. Slender fingers, smooth skin. “I would that there might be a loving woman at my side.” He brought her hand to his lips, kissed it. “I have a thousand dreams spinning in my head, Cymraes. I need desperately to share them with a woman who has the heart to see them with me.”

  Wistfully she answered, “We had so many dreams as children. Where do they go when we grow? Are they swallowed up by the mundane things of everyday life? Or do we lose them, leave them behind us in the dust, for new children to find and take up?”