The Oak above the Kings

by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  When I continued silent, Malgan with immense dignity rose up from his chair, bowed to me and bent his head.

  "My sorrow to have troubled you, Prince Taliesin,—I thank you for your courtesy."

  I let him turn to go before I spoke. "Malgan." He halted but did not turn back to face me. "That was a hard thing for you to say, and a brave thing. I served your father for five years in Caer Dathyl, and though he was the enemy of all Arthur stood for still I served him with respect; even, sometimes, with liking. Sit and share some wine, and we will talk."

  At that he came round on his heel, and I saw that he bit back tears. And I felt a stinging in my own eyes,—was this the first time that anyone here had spoken anything but unkindness to the boy? If so, I was shamed for us all; and felt, even so, that some balance had been tipped, and that this was good. So we sat and drank our wine, and spoke.

  That was not the only thing, nor yet the greatest by far, that had changed since our return from self-imposed exile—well, Arthur-imposed exile. The change that had all Keltia mouthing in secret, and, sometimes, not so secretly, was how Arthur and Gweniver had changed with one another.

  Oh, mistake me not, Keils Rathen was still very much part of the picture—and what outworlders may find it difficult to countenance or credit was that he continued a close friend of Arthur, as well as Gwennach's lennaun—and most of Turusachan knew that Arthur spent hours in composing communications to Majanah or choosing gifts to send to Donah. But somehow, somewhere along this track of tricky footing, Gweniver and Artos had begun to learn how to pull in double harness, as Ard-rian and Ard-righ; and this, be very sure, was no small triumph.

  And, as time began to lengthen—a year, seven, twelve—other triumphs came along as well: Morgan and I became parents—a son, Geraint Pendreic ac Glyndour, never to be called anything else but Gerrans.

  He was a droll, obstreperous infant—Morgan called him her hedgepig, for the way his hair grew spikily around his fat little face, and for the prickliness of his disposition. But by the time he came to faunthood, he had turned into a placid, sturdy, handsome lad, who seemed, most distressingly, to have interest in neither music nor magic. But Morgan was unconcerned, saying that very often gifts show late, and no doubt our son's would make itself known in good time.

  She was a casual, though loving, mother, giving Gerrans the kind of affection more often seen in men to their children than in women. When I questioned her on it one day, she shrugged.

  "I never told you this, Talyn, but if ever it came to a choice between you and the bairn, I would choose you every time, without hesitation and without regret." I must have looked shocked, for she smiled. "I have ever known I was a woman for my mate before I was a woman for a child. Oh, I love Gerrans well, do not mistake me, but more for that he is yours than that he is mine. I am too jealous of you, want you to myself again, want us to be each other's and none between, not even our son."

  And she proved a woman of her word: sent Gerrans off to his fostering with scarce a tear and turned to ourselves again with a kind of hunger and relief. So my son was brought up chiefly by, of all folk, my sister Tegau and her lord Eidier, with their own brood of five; and I think he grew up all the better by that than had we had the raising of him. Morgan was more right than she said, or maybe even knew: She and I were man and woman for each other, first, last, ever, before we were parents for a child; and she at least had had the courage to admit it to herself and to me. Perhaps we should never have bred him at all; but things would have been very different had Geraint never been…

  Still, he thrived in the happy household of his aunt and uncle. Tegau and Eidier, once peace had been restored, had gone back to Gwynedd, and built a maenor on the shores of the Western Sea, as near the ocean as could be contrived. As near to Gwaelod… I called vividly to mind my first meeting with my sister after returning home from our long sojourn away: I had caught her up in a bearhug of an embrace, still faintly surprised to find myself so much taller, still in my mind the slight fourteen-year-old who had come to her at Coldgates after the flight from Daars… Then I had seized her by the shoulders, and held her away a little, and stared both of us smiling. For the breast of gold from which she had taken a name of legend was gone now,—both her breasts were soft and warm again, she had fulfilled her vow to Keltia and to herself—and though it may sound strange to say so, it was by that one thing I knew at last that we had had in truth the victory.

  Any road, my son was growing up amongst kinfolk, in a place not unlike to my own calf-country, with cousins to play with and fight with, for all that he was royal. In Keltia children take the status and style of their higher-ranking parent: I was, after all, but the youngest child of a minor lord, a provincial chieftain; while my son's mother was a princess, a royal duchess, who would in time pass those titles on to her only offspring.

  And what of that highest title of all, you ask? Well you may: Despite their new peace and ease and friendship, Arthur and Gweniver—to put it as delicately as I might—had not yet seen their way to securing the direct succession, and all Keltia was wondering.

  For that deficiency left Mordryth, Marguessan's eldest brat, as heir of line after his mother, followed by his brother Gwain and sister Galeron, and they by our Gerrans. Enough heirs to ensure a throne, you would think; well, perhaps, and the royal line had hung on slenderer threads than this. But we had that dreadful memory ever present, of Edeyrn's all-but-destruction of this very House,—and though the Marbh-draoi was gone, still the fear remained.

  Besides, it was natural and human enough to want an heir of Gweniver and Arthur to rule Keltia after them; no one was pleased when the Crown was passed sidewise, as it were. In truth, had they not come to power after the Theocracy's interregnum, even Gwen and Artos might have faced some grumbling displeasure—for you will recall neither was direct heir to their immediate predecessor. But folk were so glad and grateful to have the Doniaid restored, they cared not a whit how the descent was reckoned.

  I diminish them in so saying: The folk were well pleased to have the rulers they had been given, and let not that be discounted, ever. Gweniver was Leowyn's daughter, and the people had loved him well, the Sun-lord; while Arthur was Amris's son and if anything he had been loved even better, not least for the breathtaking romance of his union with the Lady Ygrawn. That these two scions had become heirs to Uthyr, first monarch of the Restoration, and had wed each other, too: Well, it seemed a miracle of dan, and what wonder that the folk wished the miracle, and, indeed, the dan, to continue?

  They were luckier than they ever knew. For Keltia could not, in this time of change and chance, have done better for rulers than Gweniver and Arthur. We who knew them and loved them had long known this would be so, once things had settled down and they came into their lordship; but the great run of Kelts had had no idea. Only now, as the years drew on, and the reality of peace began to make itself felt even by those who had been wounded deepest, did the people come to see and trust and believe, and to thank all gods for what they had been given.

  If Arthur had won the war, it was Gwennach who had won the peace; she had managed magnificently while we were away, and it may well have been due to her alone that Arthur had a kingdom waiting for him, and a kingdom in such good order too, when he deigned at last to return. To speak in military metaphor, she had held the center, while Arthur had done the flanking work he had deemed necessary; and though Ygrawn had been a powerful symbol of continuity with the past, and Morgan an equally inspiring image of continuity to the future, and Companions and Councillors together had turned hands and minds and souls alike to the tremendous task, still it had been Gweniver who at the end of the day had been Queen and King to Keltia, until such time as the King returned.

  But once he did return, that King brought to his kingship all the old verve and flair and force that once he had brought to our desperate campaignings. Nor was the one so very different from the other in the end: To restore a nation to its former state and station, to restore t
o it its own self and soul—this was the task before Arthur now, and he took it on in the old way.

  All the same, I do not think any of us, not even Arthur and Gwen, had had any real idea of just how much was in need of healing. Uthyr had had some inkling, but he had been called upon to heal Keltia in a different way, and to his imperishable glory he had risen to the task. But what had to be done now was very different, and though Gweniver had made a heroic start, it would take an Arthur—it would take our Arthur—to bring it to completion.

  Nor was it to be done overnight, nor even in a matter of a few years. It was an ongoing process, and it took decades. It began with Arthur's re-establishing the ancient houses of government, as Brendan had originally ordained should be for all Kelts for all time: the Senate and the Assembly. The House of Peers, as the most easily reconstituted, had already been convened by Gweniver during Arthur's absence, and it had been governing conjointly with the Ard-rian and the Council until the elected bodies could once more be called to Turusachan, as they had not been for many hundreds of years; aye, even before Edeyrn had they been abolished, most unwise. But both Arthur and Gweniver thought it crucial to Keltia's survival as a lawful kingdom that the common folk should have representatives to defend and advance their interests,—and so Brendan's ancient system was revived. And, very like, not a moment too soon.

  For the rest of us, our lives had changed with Keltia. Peace meant many things, some great and eternal, others little and small, unnoticed save by those to whom the difference was made… It meant that Elphin and I and the other master-bards could now wear the star of ollaveship openly, the mark of our calling and accomplishment. It meant that Ban-draoi and Fians, too, and true Druids, could go about in openness without fear. It meant that the brehons returned, bringing the law with them, that most honored glory of our folk.

  Grimmer realities too: A standing army was established, such as we had not had since the days of Athyn Cahanagh; and, perhaps, the lack of which had led to Edeyrn's rise to power. If Alawn Ard-righ had had a loyal force behind him, it might have been that the Marbh-draoi could not have suborned so many to work his evil will, and the Theocracy might never have been… But to think in the way of what-ifs is to court madness: It went as it went, and goes as it goes, and is for us to deal with; then, now, evermore.

  It was not just Arthur and Gwennach, though, who were caught up in the Keltia rising out of Edeyrn's ashes: All we of the Companions suddenly found ourselves honored and exalted above all others, our deeds extolled and 'broidered upon, made into legend even while we lived who could discount it, falsified in a way we loved not at all. To be idolized for what looks like courage and daring to those not present, and what was, in plainest fact, merely common integrity and love of our leader beyond our own lives: Well, it sat strangely upon us. We passed it off, for the most part; none who had been down the roads we went with Artos could succumb to easy adoration; we were all too well-seasoned for that, too tempered in the real.

  But the romance, the glamourie, even, that the folk insisted on clothing us in—those persisted, and endured, my sorrow to say. We were Companions, of the Company; that was our prime identity. We had been with Arthur, and all the rest had not. We would never be able to escape it; and in the end we gave over trying. For there are worse fates by far, than to be known to Keltia forever as one who rode with Arthur the King. But it would breed evil even so, and that not small…

  My sorrow to have gone on so; but needful it is that you see the actors in this play against their proper backdrop. As bard, I would be remiss in my art and duty did I not set it out for you: It is my job to put the truth into the tale, and it is yours to find it; that is the bargain between bard and hearer. Nowhere is it written that I must make it easy for you, or that I must do all the work! Let us take that as sung, then, and go on with the story.

  So almost thirteen years had passed since our return from Aojun, near twenty since the downfall of Edeyrn. Things were much of a sameness: Arthur and Gweniver still in their old dance, counterpoint if not harmony; the Companions still seated around our old table of friendship and storms weathered; Morgan and I still caught up in each other and in our arts. Malgan ap Owein was still at Court, now grown to young manhood; he had made himself quietly liked and respected, and if any still wondered about his paternity they never spoke of it aloud. Arthur himself treated him as a deminephew, which was just about his true and correct status in brehon law, as the son of a deceased former wife; but not even the most avidly curious could have said that Malgan was favored as the High King's own son.

  I myself liked him well, and we had come to be friends our dealings almost those of an elder brother to a younger, even. It may seem perverse to you, that I should so care for the son of one who had caused so much death that had touched me so nearly,—but the son was not the father, and even that father… I had served Owein myself, those five years of spying for Arthur at Caer Dathyl, and had seen a different man than merely Edeyrn's tool. If that inner Owein had ever been allowed to rule in place of the other, if he had met Arthur young, say, and they had become friends—well, again, what-ifs are no fit pursuit for anyone. But, all the same, even if only sometimes, I could sorrow for what might have been; and did.

  Of Marguessan, the heir presumptive to the Copper Crown, we heard little and were glad of it. She and her lord and their children kept very much to themselves, on their lands in Gwynedd's Old North; and though we kept a certain discreet eye on her, as I had long ago promised Uthyr Ard-righ, not a breath of scandal or treason or even dubious politics seemed to be stirring. Perhaps she was aware that we were watching—I for one had not forgotten my vision under the cathbarr, nor yet my long-ago intervention at Coldgates—but for the moment she was putting on a good masque as the country lady busy with her husband and children and lands, with no thought at all of the throne that might one day be hers, or theirs.

  And, should you have wondered, Tryffin and Ysild wed not long after our return from Tyntagel; Arthur confirmed them as Duke and Duchess of Kernow, and indeed gave to Tryff the rank he had denied Marc'h, that of viceroy over the planet, the seat in the ring of the Fainne that the elder Tregaron had coveted enough to bring his planet to the brink of civil strife. Their child, a boy called Loherin, was born the year after our Gerrans, and the two became friends. But for the rest, all was well; so that when Gweniver summoned me to her office one summer afternoon, I racked my brain to think what I might have done of late to annoy her. As a rule, close as we were, Gwennach and I did not consult officially. We saved our policy discussions for informal sessions, as we had done since our days at Coldgates, and held it best that it should be so. But it was not so today.

  She was standing behind her desk when I came in, and was reading—for what seemed not the first time—a message diptych bound in silver and sealed in gold, such as monarchs are used to send one another on matters of state.

  I made her the brief salute I always made my rulers—not that either of them insisted on it, ever, but I insisted; it was a thing I felt both they and I did need to be minded of, whenever possible, and I never neglected to do so—and sat down without waiting to be asked. Gweniver started, as if only then noticing my presence, and without hesitation handed me the diptych.

  "Advise me, Pen-bardd."

  I scanned the message, and was already shaking my head and lifting a hand in denial and protest before she had spoken.

  "Not I, by gods!"

  "Talyn—"

  "Ard-rian." I took a deep breath; she waited me out.

  "You knew her well, Tal-bach. I need to know."

  I ran my hands over my face. Well, we had all known this day would sometime come, I expect even you have been awaiting it—we who had been on Aojun with Arthur. We who had known Majanah…

  "I have already sent back by the courier who brought this my invitation to her, that she should come here. And bring the child with her."

  Ah Goddess, why me… "Perhaps Daronwy or Tanwen can better serve you in
this, they are women themselves—or Roric, even, he is of the Aojunni." Though maybe not so much, not these days: Daronwy's lord, who had accompanied her home to Tara, had chosen to stay, becoming, as we called it, more Keltic than the Kelts.

  But Gweniver only laughed. "This is I you speak to, Talyn," she reminded me derisively. "We have nothing hid between us—nay, how could we?"

  I blushed at the reminder of our onetime, long-ago bedding; which I remind you had been more out of curiosity and mutual comforting and need than out of any real passion—though it had been the door to the long and loving and utterly honest friendship we had shared from then on. I muttered something lame and excusing.

  "Not good enough! What must I do to get it out of you—ask Morgan?"

  In the end, I got through it by pretending it was a tale I was telling her as bard: that Majanah, and Arthur, and the child Donah, and all the rest of it, were but part of a chaunt like any other. And the High Queen listened, and heard; and when I had finished she sighed and straightened in her chair and looked anywhere but at me.

  "Well. That is what I needed to know. Thank you, Tal-bach. As ever, thank you."

  I stood up, uncertain if I was being dismissed; but she waved me back into my seat again.

  "There is no reason why she should not come, you know. We—Keltia, that is—have been friends and allies with the Yamazai of Aojun since, oh, before Athyn's day,—indeed, she was the one who brought our folk closest. And the child is Arthur's; he will want to see her."

  "Are you not curious, Gwennach?" I asked quietly.

  She laughed a real laugh this time. "You mean am I jealous? Well, aye and nay to that, if you must know. Artos and I have been wedded all these years; we share each other's rank and power and thoughts and goals, and, sometime beds. So nay, I am not jealous of this outfrenne queen. But aye, for that she has had with Arthur a thing I have not had, and maybe never will: love, and a child out of that love. I am not sure, even, that I wish it; but I think I wish to wish it, and sometimes that makes me—"