by Lisa Cach
Mordred himself had put the sword to Ambrosius. The old hero had died in his bed, dreaming of the morning and of seeing his lifelong ambition come to fruition.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, and knew by the feel of his touch that it was Maerlin. “You should sleep,” he said.
I put my hand over his and looked up at him; his face was sunken, hollowed out with shadows. “No more than you.”
Everyone had been up all night. Everyone was still in shock over what had happened, so much happiness and hope turning in such a short time to despair and grief.
“Go, rest. Arthur may yet need all your energy and wits. I’ll send someone to wake you if there’s any change.”
I nodded, knowing he was right. On the way to my room Terix found me, and walked with me. We’d already talked about Brenn, and the atrocities of the night.
“Wynnetha has been captured alive,” Terix told me. “Una tracked her into the forest and took her prisoner.”
“Una! Then I’m surprised Wynnetha’s still breathing.”
“She won’t be for long. The Britons are calling for her head on a pike.”
“I can’t think of a nicer place for it,” I said.
“You should have seen it when Una arrived with Wynnetha; for once, everyone saw her, and they acted like a four-headed basilisk had suddenly appeared in the middle of the dining table, between the stuffed figs and the roasted boar. Una had the sense scared out of Wynnetha, too—she jumped at every prod Una gave her, like she was being herded by Death himself. Everyone thinks of Death as a skeletal man cloaked in black, but I tell you, after seeing Una with her blue eyes glowing out of those crazy black tattoos on her face . . .” He shook his head. “I think a tiny girl with white hair is more frightening. She didn’t look of this world.”
I smiled to myself, pleased for Una. “She must have been proud of herself, if she let everyone see her.” I took Terix’s arm. “And you? Are you all right with what happened with Uern? You’ve never killed anyone before, much less someone you knew, and the brother of a friend.”
“And you’ve never smashed someone’s head in with a mortar.”
“I wasn’t thinking. All I saw was that he was killing Brenn.”
“All I saw was that Daella was screaming and fighting, and Uern was dragging her off. I didn’t care who Uern was; all I knew was that he was taking one of us. I couldn’t let him. And you know what’s truly strange? I was terrified of what was happening, the fighting all around me, blood spraying and men falling. I’d trained with some of those men, but never felt like one of them; I was fighting beside them, all the while wondering what in Hades I thought I was doing and how long I could possibly last before getting cut down. Then I saw Daella and Uern, and all that fear . . . didn’t go away, but it didn’t matter anymore. All I cared about was killing—no, destroying that threat to one of our own. I hated battle, but I could have happily kept chopping at Uern until he looked more like chunks of meat in a butcher’s stall than a human being.” He made a low, rueful sound. “I probably would have, too, except I finally remembered that Daella was watching. I know she didn’t care for him, but still. It seemed like bad manners to keep chopping.”
I leaned my head on his shoulder, chuckling. “Oh, Terix. At least you didn’t make a joke of it.”
“I thought of a few, but kept those to myself, too. See how wise I’m growing in my old age?”
“You’re a veritable sage.”
“I should write a book of my wisdom. ‘Part One: When you’ve killed the brother of your friend, don’t laughingly point out the corpse’s look of surprise to her.’ ”
“Very good advice,” I said.
“Hard to remember in the heat of the moment.”
“I have faith you’ll master it. Given enough practice.”
“You don’t have any brothers, do you? Since I need the practice.”
“If I find any spare ones lying around, I’ll send them your way.”
We reached my room, and I wrapped my arms around Terix’s waist and laid my head on his chest. He hugged me back, his cheek resting atop my head. We put a good face on it with our bantering, but we’d both been shaken by what had happened, and were shaking still.
“We can’t leave yet, can we?” Terix asked softly.
I shook my head. “They need us.” I wouldn’t mention the promise I’d made to Maerlin in the throes of passion, to stay with him for a year and a day. Time enough to debate that point, when the Briton world had settled back onto an even keel.
Neither did I want to think too closely about what that promise meant, now that the marriage of Wynnetha and Arthur was most definitely over. If Arthur survived . . .
I couldn’t think about it.
We parted and I flopped down onto my old bed and pulled a fur over my fully clothed self. Dried blood crusted the hem and the sleeves of my gown, but I was too tired to do anything about it, and all my other clothes were up in Maerlin’s workshop.
I shut my eyes and willed a dreamless sleep to come.
10
“Wake up. He’s asking for you.”
Someone had her hand on my shoulder, shaking me out of a dream whose details fragmented and floated away as I opened my eyes, though it left me with a single unsettling image in my mind.
A horrific image, and a knowing that it would come to pass. That it must come to pass.
“My lady Nimia, Arthur wants to talk to you,” a servant said.
I nodded and sat up, everything bleary and strange, the image still floating before me as if insisting I bring it into existence.
“There’s fresh water, and someone is fetching a clean gown.”
I submitted to her quick, efficient help, and felt better for having a washed face, hair that had been combed, and then clothes free of sweat and gore. She made me eat a slice of cold meat and bread, and drink watered wine, and although I had no appetite I felt better for having something in my stomach.
I thanked her and made to leave, my thoughts all on Arthur, but she halted me.
“My lady?”
I paused in the doorway, anxious to be on my way. “Yes?”
“There are whispers that only you can save him. That only you have the power. Is it so?” She looked at me with a fear for the future in her eyes, the same fear that everyone in Corinium must be feeling with Ambrosius dead and their great war leader wounded. There was no obvious choice of who should lead this tribe if Arthur died. All that Ambrosius had built was in danger of crumbling—or worse, if there was a fight for who should lead.
“I . . . I’m not certain.”
“You’ll try, though?”
“With everything I have.”
She nodded, and small as the hope was in her eyes, I felt its weight on me as I hurried through the villa. Her hope was the hope of the entire city, and of every tribe who had in good faith come to swear allegiance to Ambrosius’s united Britannia.
At the door to Arthur’s room I signaled to Maerlin, and when he joined me I told him in low tones the image from my dream. His face, already ashen, paled further.
“We can’t let Arthur know,” he said.
I shook my head. “He’d never agree, despite everything.” I told Maerlin what I thought we’d need, and he promised to make all ready. I felt sick at the thought of what was to come . . . and had every intention of following through with it, anyway.
The crowd in Arthur’s room had thinned to just the physician and a few of his men, their arms at the ready in case there should be a further attempt on his life. The physician gestured me toward the bed when I came in, then stood back at a discreet distance, as did the others. Arthur’s eyes were closed, but opened as I sat on the stool near the head of the bed and took one of his damp, cold hands in my own.
“Nimia,” he said, his voice a weak echo of what it should be. “You were right
.”
“Was I? I can’t think about what, I’m wrong so often.”
A faint grin pulled at his lips. “Don’t make me laugh; it hurts when I do. Not that there’s been much to laugh about, with these grim faces staring down at me. They remind me of those carvings in that rotten Celtic temple I found you in, outside of Calleva. Remember?”
“I’m not likely to forget.”
“Nor shall I forget that afternoon on the bridge in the woods. You gave me the one pure moment of joy I’ll be taking from this life of sorrows.”
“I’m not going to let you die.”
“I told you not to make me laugh! You and Maerlin, so certain you can think your way past the obstacles of this world. Maybe you can, in most cases—neither of you is like the rest of us sad mortals. But not in this case. She cut my innards, and the infection will have me in a day if I’m lucky, or two or three if I’m not. There’s no stopping it.”
“I’ve survived worse.”
He brushed his thumb over the back of my hand in a light caress. “I see this fate as my punishment. I should have listened to you, that day in the woods. You said the highest duty was to love; you were right.”
“I was wrong! Look what Wynnetha did for love of Mordred. How could that have been good and right?”
“I knew she preferred him. Marriage is meant for the love between two people, not as a tool for politics. To use it in such a way, while claiming to be serving the greater love of one’s tribe . . . You see what it has brought.”
“You wouldn’t have felt so, if she had been of a stable mind and made an effort to be a decent wife. No sane woman does this.”
“But isn’t love a form of insanity? I should have had the courage to be as deranged as her. If I had, it would have been you and I who had wed, and none of these evils would have come to pass.”
“You couldn’t have known. None of us could have known,” I said, though I felt in my bones that I should have known. Maerlin and I both, it should have been clear to us. We’d had a vision of Wynnetha walking over blood and bones to take Arthur’s hand. How much clearer did we need it?
Even if we’d understood what we’d seen, though, would we have been able to change it?
I went on, “And you don’t know how you would have liked being wed to me. It may have been worse than this.”
He did chuckle at that, the laugh quickly dying in a grimace of pain.
I squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that as a joke. You know better now what I am, what I do. What it is for me to be Phanne.” I swallowed, gathering my courage. If I couldn’t say any of this now, then when could I? “You saw me with Maerlin. You couldn’t be happy with such a wife. It would injure you, every time I touched another man.”
“I know why you did it now. I don’t wholly understand it, but I know it was not a common lust, or a faithlessness on your part. It was to call the magic. Maerlin tried to explain it to me, what you both are; he said I would never be able to accept you. He said I couldn’t claim to love you when I truly didn’t know you. I thought that my love was neither so ignorant nor so small-hearted. When he challenged me to watch you call the wind with him, I thought to prove him wrong. I thought to see and accept. But when I saw the two of you . . .”
A ringing had started in my ears, growing louder and louder, my senses flooding with a heat I dimly recognized as rage. I could barely hear what Arthur was saying, barely see his lips moving.
Maerlin dared him to watch us in the tree. Maerlin had wanted Arthur to see us together, and to reject me for it. It had been deliberate.
Why? Why?
For the good of Arthur’s future happiness?
No. Maerlin never understood others’ happiness.
He’d wanted me. He’d said that he didn’t always know how he felt until his actions revealed it. No action could be clearer than arranging for his brother to see him fucking me, laying his claim in the most primitive way man knew how.
I forced myself back to the present, blinking back the sting of tears. “So much that could have been . . .” I said softly, my gut aching at all that had gone wrong, and at the future so narrowly missed. Aching, too, at what I could only see as Maerlin’s betrayal of me, and his selfish lies.
Arthur was tiring and didn’t seem to have heard me, although his gaze was fixed upon me. His voice was so soft that I had to lean forward to hear it, and he sounded as if he were talking as much to himself as to me. “When I saw you as the Lady of the Lake, when I saw the water glow, and then when I felt Skalibur land in my palm . . . The world shifted around me, and I could see as if through new eyes.” He paused to breathe, the air rattling in his chest. “My blindness fell away, and with it the anger that had persuaded me I married for duty, when in truth it was for revenge against you.” He rolled his head against the pillow, a slight movement that drained his strength and spoke of his distress. “So wrong, to treat love so cheaply. It wasn’t too late, even then . . . but I didn’t think you’d have me, and I hadn’t the courage to ask for you, after all I’d done.”
“You’d already given your promise to another. You could not have lived with yourself if you’d done otherwise.”
“She would have released me from it.” He grimaced in pain, and his eyes drifted shut. “She has released me from it. May Mordred have joy of her . . .” He trailed off.
My lips parted and I flicked my gaze to the men in the room. They were too far away to have heard the softly spoken words, but their meaning was clear enough. Arthur didn’t know Wynnetha had been captured; they hadn’t told him. Nor had Maerlin, the one person that people might be looking to for some hint of authority.
I could guess at their reasons. Murderess Wynnetha might be, but she was still his wife. They must fear that his sense of duty would have him be merciful toward her, while they wanted to be anything but. The last thing they wanted to hear was Arthur saying to spare her.
I stood, still holding Arthur’s hand. Reaching within him, I could feel the encroaching death. Half a day? A day? It was moving quickly, filling him with its nothingness, devouring the life in him bite by bite.
Wynnetha had done this. Arthur’s men needn’t fear: I would see to it that she wouldn’t be spared.
Arthur had thought to trade his life for the good of his people.
I would trade Wynnetha’s life for his. His people would have their vengeance, and their leader would rise again.
11
I was still floundering in a raging sea of emotions when I stepped out from under the peristyle gallery into the courtyard garden of the villa. The noon sun diffused its light through a flat layer of white-gray, giving the sky an eerie, formless look, as if we had stepped out of time and into some Otherworld. In the center of the courtyard full of Roman gods rose a great timber, the trunk of an oak tree hastily chopped down, peeled of its bark, and set upright in the earth. An iron ring had been set into its top, through which had been threaded a long rope. Against that uncanny sky, it looked as ominous in purpose as it was.
People had begun to gather: soldiers, servants, the Britons of the other tribes. All of Corinium would pack itself into this garden if it could, to witness what was to come.
I didn’t know what was going on outside the villa, what order had or had not been brought, what political discussions were being held, nor what prisoners had been taken. None of that mattered to me. All that mattered was saving Arthur.
“Everything’s almost ready,” Maerlin said, coming over to me.
“Not quite,” I said, my new perspective on him making his look of open innocence an infuriating taunt.
Maerlin ran a visual inspection of the items on the table that had been dragged outdoors, and then ran his eyes over me. I’d changed into the dark blue silk gown that Tanwen had given me, and let my hair flow loose. He smiled, a gleam of appreciation in his eyes. “I see nothing amiss,”
he said, reaching out to touch me.
I sidled away from his hand, and spoke in Phannic, for his ears only. “I don’t want you taking part.”
His smile faltered. “It’s more certain to work if we use both our powers, together.”
“I’m convinced it will fail, with you involved.”
“Because I’m male?”
I led him back into the gallery, down to a quiet, shadowed corner between statues of Mars and Venus. When we were hidden from observing eyes I turned to him. “You might sabotage it.”
He gaped at me. “Are you mad?”
“Not on purpose; not with any awareness of what you did.”
“I would never! Why would I? What insanity is this?”
“Love,” I said. “The most noble insanity of them all.”
“I don’t understand. My love for Arthur would have me lay down my life for him, not take his from him.”
“But would you give me up, to save him?”
“You and I, that has nothing to do with saving his life,” he said.
“You’re a man of logic: what does that mean, when you look at saving Arthur’s life? If Arthur lives, he is free from Wynnetha, and you know that he and I will be together. If he dies, then I might stay with you.”
“I would never harm Arthur, for any reason.”
“You told me yourself that you didn’t know your own feelings until your actions showed them to you. I know you told Arthur to watch us call the wind. You wanted him to give me up, so you could have me.”
His face flushed and he turned his gaze out to the courtyard, avoiding mine. “It was for both your goods. He would never understand your need to touch other men, and you would smother your gifts for fear of hurting him.”
“It was for your good, not ours. You did it because you wanted me for yourself.”
“No! Arthur would never understand infidelity, and you would be helpless to resist it.”
“How do you know that I need other men? Might not one, if he’s the right man, be enough?”