The Road to Avalon (Rediscovered Classics)

by Joan Wolf

Gwenhwyfar transferred her gaze to her husband, riding so unconcernedly in the center of the ring. “I did not realize he was so closely involved with the training,” she said. “I thought he . . .”

  Her voice ran out as Bedwyr gave a deep, rich chuckle. “You thought he just gave orders.”

  Gwenhwyfar looked at his amused face and smiled. “Yes, I suppose I did”

  “This army is Arthur’s,” Bedwyr said emphatically. “From the bottom up. And there isn’t a man in it who doesn’t know that.”

  Gawain made a small sound and Bedwyr looked at him. “I’m so sorry, Gawain,” Gwenhwyfar said contritely. “Bedwyr, this is Prince Gawain of Lothian. He arrived in Venta only an hour ago.”

  “Gawain?” Bedwyr’s blue eyes sharpened. “Lot’s son?”

  “Yes.” Clearly Gawain saw nothing amiss in being Lot’s son. “I have come, Prince Bedwyr,” he announced proudly, “to join the army.”

  Bedwyr was surprised. “Does Pellinore know about this?”

  The ready color flushed into Gawain’s cheeks. “Yes. In fact, I have a letter from him to the king.”

  Bedwyr made up his mind. “The king will want to see you,” he said and, turning, trotted his stallion over to Arthur. The two men conferred for a moment, and then Arthur moved in their direction while Bedwyr stayed to supervise the recruits.

  “Morgan told me I might expect to see you one day,” Arthur said as soon as he reached the fence. “Welcome to Venta, cousin.” And he gave the boy his rare, warm smile.

  Gawain’s eyes were wide and startled as he took in the king’s face at close range. Some of the warmth left Arthur’s eyes. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  The light dappling of freckles on Gawain’s cheeks vanished in a flood of red. “No, my lord,” he stammered. “It’s just . . . just . . . you look exactly like my brother Mordred!”

  “Oh.” Arthur’s smile returned. “I look very like my mother,” he explained. “I expect Mordred looks like her too. After all, my mother and your mother were sisters.”

  The confusion lifted from Gawain’s eyes. “Of course,” he said. “That must be the reason.”

  “Bedwyr tells me you have a letter from Pellinore to me?”

  “Yes, my lord. It is with my things at the praetorium.”

  Arthur turned to his wife. “I’ll ride back with you now, if you like.”

  “All right,” she replied slowly, and Arthur began to walk the chestnut around the rope fence. Once he joined them on the other side, they all three turned and began to retrace the way to Venta. “So you have come to join my army?” Arthur asked Gawain, and his cousin grinned in delighted response.

  Gwenhwyfar urged her mare to keep pace with Arthur’s biggerstriding horse and watched her husband’s profile out of the side of her eye. He was clearly delighted to see Gawain. Just as clearly, his cousin’s arrival had not been the shock to him it had been to Bedwyr.

  “Morgan told me I might expect to see you. . . . ” Gwenhwyfar had been under the impression that Arthur was not on speaking terms with his aunt. Obviously she had been mistaken. There was the faintest of lines between her perfect brows as she rode in silence beside the two men and listened to them talk.

  Chapter 23

  IT was a time of waiting. The king waited for news of the Saxons, which came in sporadically and was ambiguous in nature. Messengers were going back and forth among the three bretwaldas, and in March Offa, Cynewulf, and Cerdic met for two days in Sussex.

  “They might be meeting about the treaty, or they might be planning something else,” Arthur said to Bedwyr when this piece of news came in from one of Lionel’s spies.

  “Wouldn’t it be ironic if our peace proposals were the very thing needed to make them unite in opposition to us,” Bedwyr said.

  Arthur’s straight black brows rose faintly. “Very ironic.” His tone was extremely dry.

  Bedwyr grinned.

  The two men were returning to the praetorium from the cavalry schooling ring. Bedwyr was riding Sluan and Arthur was on the chestnut, Ruadh, he had first ridden during the training session that Gwenhwyfar and Gawain had witnessed a few months ago. Arthur liked the horse and was using him as a second mount. The horses walked slowly side by side and Bedwyr looked again at Arthur’s lean, dark face. “You think they’re coming, don’t you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said the king, “I do.” There was no irony now in his voice.

  “If Kent and Sussex and Anglia combine,” Bedwyr said soberly, “they will come against Dumnonia.”

  “Yes.”

  Bedwyr drew a long breath. “Ambrosius’ wall has held them before.” The wall he referred to was one built by Arthur’s uncle, Constantine’s oldest son, in order to protect Dumnonia’s vulnerable east from attack from the Saxon shore. The rest of Dumnonia was effectively guarded by natural obstacles: the south and west by the sea, the north by the Aildon hills. Ambrosius’ wall, a fifty-mile-long bank with a ditch, had done for Dumnonia what Hadrian’s wall had done for several centuries in the north—held back the barbarian invaders.

  “They will have to come over the wall,” Bedwyr went on. “It is the only feasible access into the southwest from the Thames valley. We shall have to concentrate our defense there. We’ve held them before. We can do it again”

  Ruadh shied at something on the side of the road and Arthur absently patted his neck. He stared in silence for a moment at his own hand on the horse’s bright coat, then said, “Actually there are two ways into Dumnonia from the Thames valley.”

  “Two ways?” Bedwyr looked at him in puzzlement. “Do you mean by sea?”

  “No. One way is the way you have named, the Roman road to Calleva. In order to get through to Calleva, however, they would first have to breach Ambrosius’ wall and the forts that guard it. Not an impossible task, but difficult.”

  “And the second way?”

  “The Roman road to Corinium.”

  Bedwyr continued to look puzzled. “The Aildon hills are between the Corinium road and Dumnonia. And they are high in the west, up to a thousand feet. No army could get through there.”

  “They could if they took the Badon pass.” He looked from his hand to Bedwyr’s face. “Cut off the Corinium road, break south through the pass, and you’d find yourself right on the Roman road to Venta.”

  “Gods,” said Bedwyr. “So you would.”

  “If we were all at the wall, facing east, Offa could come in behind us. We would be between the Saxons and the wall, with more Saxons beyond.”

  Bedwyr’s blue eyes blazed. “Gods,” he said. “I never gave a thought to that pass.”

  “I want to look at it,” Arthur said.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “Very well, but I don’t want anyone to know where we are going, Bedwyr.”

  Bedwyr nodded. “When do you want to leave?”

  “In two days. I’m not going to bother to call Cai in from Camelot.” This was the name they had chosen for Arthur’s new capital. “Gwen-hwyfar is perfectly capable of seeing to things in Venta in my absence.”

  There was a short silence. Then Bedwyr said slowly, “Why do you want to keep where we are going a secret? Surely the one way to keep Offa from using the pass is to let him know we are aware of it.”

  “But I don’t want to keep Offa from using the pass,” came the prompt reply.

  Bedwyr stared at the king. “The sides of the Badon pass are very steep, Arthur. You cannot use cavalry there.”

  “I don’t need the cavalry.”

  “What! Your whole success against the Saxons has been based on the use of cavalry.”

  Arthur gave him a level gray look. “Bedwyr, an army caught in the Badon pass, if it is as I remember, is an army caught in a death trap. If I can lure Offa into Badon, we won’t need cavalry. All we will need are shovels to bury the dead.” And as Bedwyr stared, the king put his horse into a trot up the main street of Venta.

  The queen’s wait was far more personal than the king’s. She
waited from month to month, hoping desperately that this time there would be no blood, that this was the month she would have conceived a child.

  It was most cruel when she was late, when her hopes had begun to rise, when she had begun to imagine that she felt unwell in the mornings . . . and then, there it would be, the hated sign of failure.

  A barren woman was always tragic, she thought despairingly, but at least her tragedy belonged to herself and her husband alone. When a queen was barren, the tragedy belonged to a nation.

  Arthur was always reassuring. Every month, when she had to report to him she was not yet with child, he would tell her not to worry, that she would conceive eventually. But Gwenhwyfar was beginning to fear that she would not. More, she was beginning to fear that, in his heart, Arthur was not as confident as he made himself appear to her.

  He had married her in order to get heirs for Britain. What would he do, she wondered, if she could never have a child? Would he put her away? Take another wife?

  No. That would not happen. It could not happen. Surely God would not be so cruel.

  Mary, she prayed. Mother of Our Savior. Help me. Let me conceive a child.

  “You are not taking a bodyguard?” Gwenhwyfar asked Arthur worriedly. He had just informed her that he and Bedwyr were going to visit Camelot for a few days to see what progress had been made in the last month. He was not telling anyone at all about the Badon pass. “Is that wise, Arthur?” his wife continued. “Surely it wouldn’t hurt to take an escort of cavalry.”

  Arthur’s face lit with real amusement. “Bedwyr would be extremely insulted if he could hear you, Gwenhwyfar. He considers himself the equal of a whole troop of cavalry. And what’s more, he is. We shall be perfectly safe, I promise you.”

  She sighed. “Very well. It’s no use arguing, I can see.”

  His amusement deepened. “No use at all.”

  “Who is going to be in command here while you are gone? Valerius?”

  “Valerius will see to the army, of course. But I am leaving you in charge of the praetorium.” She looked pleased. “I don’t think anything unusual will arise,” he added. “Prince Meliagrance is supposed to be coming to Venta to talk with me, and he could possibly arrive in my absence. If he does, just entertain him until I get back.”

  “Meliagrance,” said Gwenhwyfar thoughtfully. “Isn’t he the new chief of the Verica Tribe?”

  “Since his father died in January. Old Col was never much use to me, but I think Meliagrance might have a different point of view.”

  Gwenhwyfar gave him a long green look. “He might provide some soldiers for you, you mean.”

  Arthur’s reply was cheerful. “Precisely.”

  There was no answering humor on Gwenhwyfar’s lovely face. “You think they are coming, don’t you?” she asked, echoing Bedwyr’s earlier words.

  He gave her the same reply he had given to Bedwyr. “Yes, I do.”

  She nodded, trying to conceal the shiver of fear that ran up her spine. “All right,” she said. “I will look after things here for you and entertain your prince should he arrive.”

  “That’s my girl.” He gave her an approving smile and a comradely pat on the shoulder before he left to see to other things.

  The dark storms rose within her. She did not want his approval. She did not want to be his comrade. She wanted to be his love. But she had learned to tread carefully with him, not to show him too clearly how she felt. The few times she had tried to step across the invisible line he had drawn between them, he had withdrawn so quickly he had frightened her.

  She had his confidence. She had his friendship. She had his passion. She did not have his love.

  If only she could have a child! That was what was standing between them, she was certain of it. He could not commit himself to her completely, because if she were barren . . . if she were barren . . . he might have to put her away.

  Surely this month, she prayed. Surely this month she would conceive.

  Meliagrance came to Venta while Arthur was gone and Gwenhwyfar kept him entertained until the king returned. In the process, the young chief of the Verica fell madly in love with her, but Gwenhwyfar was so accustomed to men falling in love with her that she scarcely noticed.

  It was early evening when Arthur and Bedwyr rode into Venta three days after their departure. Arthur spent an hour with Meliagrance and then went to seek out his wife. She had retired early, he was told, as she was not feeling well. The guard at her door opened it for him and he entered the private reception salon that had at one time belonged to Igraine.

  He was surprised to find Gwenhwyfar alone. She was sitting on a stool by the brazier. No, he thought, she was huddled by the brazier. “What is wrong?” he asked sharply as he crossed the floor to her side. “Are you ill? Where are your women?”

  “I sent them away,” she replied dully.

  “Are you all right?” He had reached her now and he sank on his heels to look into her face.

  She avoided his eyes. “Yes.” There was unmistakable bitterness in her voice. “I’m perfectly fine.”

  He knew then what was the matter. She had found out once again that she was not with child.

  Arthur closed his eyes, blocking out the sight of his suffering wife. He had not wanted to have to deal with this, but now it seemed he would have to.

  The irony of it was almost too much for him to bear. Morgan had refused to marry him because she could not have children, and now it seemed that Gwenhwyfar . . . He opened his eyes and looked at his wife’s averted profile. She needed comfort from him. The problem was, he did not know if he had it in him to give to her. There was too much emptiness in him. He managed in his role as king. He could even find it within himself to return friendship. But what Gwenhwyfar needed from him . . . wanted from him . . . he did not have.

  He would have to try. It would be cruel to leave her like this.

  “Gwenhwyfar,” he said very gently. “My dear. Don’t. Don’t. I can’t bear to see you so unhappy”.

  She raised her head, looked at him, and then she was in his arms. They sat on the floor together before the brazier and she buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed—deep, wrenching sobs that hurt him to hear. He held her lightly and stroked the beautiful hair that drifted across his chest and shoulder, and made inarticulate sounds of comfort.

  When the force of her grief had been spent, she lay exhausted against his shoulder and listened to the quiet beat of his heart. “I’m not pregnant. Again.” Her voice was still thick with tears.

  He smoothed the hair back from her hot forehead. “Next month,” he said.

  But she shook her head. “What if it’s not next month, Arthur?” She had been so afraid to say this, but now, with the comfort of his arms around her, she found the courage. “What if I am barren?” He didn’t answer and she pressed her face against him. “I don’t think I could bear it if you put me away,” she whispered.

  She could feel the surprise that ran through him. “Put you away? Who said anything about putting you away?”

  His white wool tunic was wet from her tears. She huddled close and said in a small fearful voice, “You must have a son. Everyone knows that. It’s why you married me. And if I cannot . . . if I cannot . . . perhaps you should take another wife.”

  He put his hands on her shoulders and held her away so he could look at her. This, at least, was one point on which he could reassure her. “Yow are my wife.” Even when it was swollen with crying, her face was beautiful. “Nothing can change that. I have no intention, now or ever, of putting you away.”

  It was as if twin candles lit behind her eyes. “Do you mean that? I have been so afraid.”

  “Of course I mean it. And it takes two to make a child. The fault could as easily be mine as it is yours.”

  That thought had never occurred to her. Her eyes widened.

  He smiled and gently touched her wet cheek. “You are the Queen of Britain. No one will ever take that away from you.”

&nbs
p; “Oh, Arthur.” She burrowed back into his arms. “I don’t care about being queen. I only care about losing you.”

  Arthur stared at the beautiful red-gold hair that clung to his arm and hand, and the expression on his face was bleak. He should have foreseen this happening, he thought. She was young. He was the man who had awakened her body, had taught her the meaning of passion. And he was the high king, the most powerful man in Britain. Of course she would fancy herself in love with him.

  He liked her. He was grateful to her. She was honest and passionate, and she had helped to relieve some of the terrible tension in his body, even if she had been unable to fill the emptiness in his soul.

  He supposed he had been a fool to think he could be just friends with her, as he was friends with Bedwyr and Cai. The dynamics between a man and a woman did not allow for uncomplicated friendship. He, of all people, should have known that.

  The problem was, friendship was the best he could offer her. And loyalty. He owed her that and he would keep to his word. Besides, the last thing he needed was another wife.

  And perhaps, in time, friendship and loyalty would be enough. She hero-worshiped him, really, like so many of his men. She couldn’t love him. She did not know him well enough to love him. Only one person knew him well enough for that.

  Gwenhwyfar felt the shudder that ran all through him. “What is it?” she asked, raising her head.

  His face wore the remote, austere look she dreaded. “Nothing,” he answered. His mouth smiled at her, but his eyes remained aloof. “Are you as hungry as I am?” he asked.

  An absurdly surprised expression crossed her face. “Yes,” she said in astonishment. “I believe I am.”

  His smile became more natural. “Good. Why don’t you send for some food and we’ll have supper here together?”

  She smiled back, radiantly beautiful. “All right,” she said. “I will.”

  Chapter 24

  BY the end of May it was clear that a Saxon army was gathering in Sussex. For the first time in history, the three Saxon bretwaldas were combining forces for a concentrated attack against Dumnonia, the heartland of Romano-Celtic rule in Britain. This was not going to be like the campaigns of the past; that was clear too. This time, instead of a spread-out action fought on many fronts, the two armies were heading for a single confrontation, strength against strength, with the reward for the winner to be Britain itself.