A Novel

by Signe Pike

  “He loves me!” she shouted. “You canna understand. He loves me! An’ Lord Cathan meant to send ’im away, ’im an our Mungo!”

  “Who loves you? Whom do you speak of?” I demanded.

  “Brother Anguen,” she cried. Brodyn released her abruptly and Desdemona fell to her knees, rubbing her neck.

  “Brother Anguen?” I took a step back. “Explain yourself.”

  “It’s th’ truth: we’ve lain together.” She said it with an air of satisfaction, but pain also lurked in the depths of her eyes. It brought to mind the way I’d seen her look at Lailoken all this time.

  “You’ve always admired Lailoken,” I said, half-astonished. “And what? He spurned you? Yes, he would have. So you went straight to our enemies. They took you in readily, no doubt, once you’d told them where you’d come from. Which family you served.”

  “Nay, it wasn’a like that! I mean, I did go to ’em once Lailoken sent me away. But then I listened t’ Mungo, and what he spoke—like a caring da he was. The stories Brother Anguen would tell, ’bout women like me, servants, slaves. We’ve a place wi’ Lord Christ in the afterlife. I am just as equal as you. We’re all beloved in the eyes of God!”

  “Are you not equal and beloved in the eyes of our gods? The gods who saw you delivered out from under Angle spears and the wolves of the Caledonian Forest into the safekeeping of our family? Where you were fed and nourished, clothed and sheltered, always considered a part of our community? Has your life among us been such a trial, Desdemona?” I reached to steady myself on my dressing cabinet. “No. Do not speak to me of love. You could have joined Telleyr and his followers had you truly chosen the way of Christ. Instead you acted in spite. You offered up Telleyr to Mungo. You betrayed my trust and caused the murder of my most beloved friend.”

  I looked at her. “You think you control these men but they have used you—used you to their ends. I have heard of Brother Anguen and his charms. You are not the first woman in Strathclyde to claim them. You have been a fool, Desdemona, and I am doubly sorry for it. For now you must pay a fool’s price.”

  “No, m’lady! Please . . .”

  “Enough.” I looked at my husband. “I have heard enough.”

  Rhydderch nodded. “If the matter is decided, you should not make her wait.”

  Now? It was to happen now? My heart pounded between my ears as Desdemona’s dark eyes went wild.

  “Morken should be here,” I said. “If only to see justice served.”

  “He comes this way already,” Brodyn said. “He’ll be here shortly.”

  “Then take her outside.”

  Brodyn nodded, gripping her arms as she kicked and sank again to her knees.

  “No. No! M’lady! Languoreth!” She used my familiar name, as she had when we were girls, and my stomach pitched. I closed my eyes a moment, unable to look. Then I grabbed my cloak and made for the door.

  Crowan met me on the stair, her hazel eyes frantic and the babe tucked in her arms.

  “Keep him here,” I instructed. “Keep him away.”

  “Desdemona?” she asked. “Was it truly her, dove? You’ve known her since she was a child . . .”

  I held up my hand. “Know her? No, I do not know her. She’s betrayed us all, and she will die for it.”

  We crowded onto the porch as Desdemona’s screams brought the servants gawking and stumbling from the kitchens. Rhydderch’s men fell into line between us, watchful, but they trailed our procession at a distance, as if Desdemona were plagued. Rhydderch had slipped his sword in its baldric over his shoulder and strode now through the grassy plot behind the hall, toward the old stump where our servants split wood.

  So be it.

  Desdemona was weeping. I prayed for her sake my father would not make us wait. Then, as if in answer, we heard the sound of horses.

  My father had come to see my child, but would witness an execution.

  In a moment I recognized Father, Brant, and Father’s man Oren slowing their mounts by the gate. Father bent to speak with Rhydderch’s guard. Then across the expanse of the yard I saw him straighten and kick his horse into a run. His dark eyes were fixed upon Desdemona.

  I raised my hand in greeting as he drew close, and the crowd of soldiers and servants parted. Father dismounted heavily and placed his hand warmly on my shoulder, but his brown eyes would not look into mine.

  “My daughter. Are you well?”

  I had not seen him since he appeared to claim Cathan’s body in the wood. He was angry with me. I could not blame him.

  “I am sorry, Father. I am so sorry. Neither Cathan nor I was willing to sully your hands.” He nodded, studying the ground a moment before lifting his face.

  “I do not thank you for your protection, but all is forgiven,” he said. “Now tell me.”

  I leaned my forehead against his cheek and told him what had transpired. He looked to Rhydderch.

  “Will you do it, then?”

  Rhydderch nodded. “Unless you command otherwise.”

  My husband’s voice was even, but I knew he was not eager to bring his sword down upon a woman’s neck. He would do it for me. For Cathan. For my Father.

  “Nay.” Father shook his head. “Let it be you.”

  Rhydderch spoke quickly. “Desdemona, you have admitted freely to acting a spy, betraying the confidences of your household and your lady. Your actions have brought about the murders of Brother Telleyr, priest of Partick, and of Lord Cathan, head Wisdom Keeper of Strathclyde and counsellor to Morken King. Have you anything to say before justice is done?”

  She looked up at me, panicked.

  “I’m sorry, m’lady,” she said. But her voice held a fragile hope. A question. The horror of the moment displaced me. I shook my head. Desdemona’s weeping became feral and strange, like a wounded deer’s. I stood outside my own body as her hands were bound behind her back, as she was guided to her knees in the grass. The wind picked up and the air smelled suddenly of rain, and for a moment I stood once more in the slickened mud of Cadzow’s courtyard, clutching the hand of a dying boy. I stood beside Desdemona in the barn, eyeing her dirt-streaked face and her soiled doll.

  I could lift a finger and put a stop to all this madness.

  The blood for blood for blood that this action would beget. But all leadership was blood. Cathan had said as much. Now I knew it to be true.

  “Languoreth.”

  Rhydderch’s voice brought me back to my body. I looked up. Behind me, servants were crying. Rhydderch stood, blade drawn, waiting.

  “Do it,” I said.

  I did not flinch as he brought down his sword.

  IV.

  Swiftly came Maelgwn’s men

  Warriors ready for battle, for slaughter armed.

  For this battle, Arderydd, they have made

  A lifetime of preparation.

  —The Black Book of Carmarthen

  CHAPTER 41

  * * *

  Cadzow Fortress

  Kingdom of Strathclyde

  Late Summer, AD 572

  Seasons rose and fell to the earth. I learned that horses, loved ones—even heroes—cannot live forever. I lay in the hay beside Fallah, my head on her snowy flank as her beautiful dark eyes went sightless. I held Crowan’s frail hand in mine as she wasted away to nothing in her bed, until her chest had ceased its rattle in a sigh that felt like summer. I cradled my father’s head in my lap as his disease finally took him; I felt the moment his body became a shell. We buried him among the oaks at Cadzow, close to Mother’s healing hut. Cadzow was under my care now, and we spent summers there. Time passed and Mungo remained in exile. I became wise at court. I watched and I listened upon the arm of Rhydderch, at the elbow of Elufed.

  But I did not forget.

  With Father passed, my cousin Brant rode to join Pendragon’s cause in the Borderlands. Not long after I received word that Lord Emrys, too, was dead. Lailoken had returned home from his training in the mountains of the north only days before he answer
ed Emrys and Gwenddolau’s summons to be their counsellor at the Wall. Lailoken was thickly bearded and thought long before he spoke. His time in the mountains had changed him. But perhaps Elufed had been right about twisting hands: even my brother’s newfound wisdom could not stay Emrys’s fate. Gwenddolau and Emrys were battling advances in separate parts of their kingdom when the mighty Pendragon fell sick. In a distant town he found refuge at an inn. A healer was called for. He wore the robes of a Keeper and spoke like a Briton, but a slow-acting poison was his remedy. By the time Pendragon’s convulsions began, the assassin had long disappeared into the forest. Maelgwn went on the hunt, and though he could not turn up the man himself, he discovered he was an Angle named Octa, skilled in the knowledge of deadly plants.

  And so Gwenddolau succeeded Lord Emrys as head of the Dragon Warriors. As word traveled throughout the kingdom of his bravery and strength, the people loved him and they called him by a new name.

  Uther Pendragon.

  The Other Pendragon. Now more than ever, Gwenddolau wore a target on his back.

  To the east, the Angles had dug their iron roots deep and a new kingdom had risen. The lands once known as Bryneich were now called Bernicia.

  Lailoken visited as often as he could. But now his presence was urgently needed at Gwenddolau’s side, and for me his absence tingled like a missing limb.

  But my world was not made only of longing and loss; there was such joy in it, too.

  With Mungo in exile, peace had come at last to Partick. My body swelled thrice more with child: a scholarly boy named Cyan, a sensitive girl called Gladys, and last came Angharad, a girl all fire and grit, with reddish hair like mine and a smile that could melt the sun. My eldest, Rhys, grew tall and muscular, with nimble hands and eyes the color of leaves in summer. He was a good boy, kind to his brother and gentle with his sisters, even when they hung in peals of laughter from his elbows or clung to his legs like caterpillars on a tree. But within Rhys the heart of a warrior pounded its deafening beat. When he practiced, I watched the shadow overtake him. Already his skill with sword and spear was nearly beyond Brodyn’s teaching. Sometimes I would catch a glimpse of him training in the yard and my breath would catch as if Maelgwn himself stood before me once more.

  It had been seventeen years since I had seen Rhys’s true father. And yet each summer when we packed our trunks to stay at Cadzow for the season, I remembered him everywhere.

  I looked now to where my boys stood, sparring in the long grass of Cadzow’s pasture. Cyan, still a lanky tangle of limbs at twelve; Rhys, a strong young man of sixteen. It was the time to gather yarrow before autumn came, and my arms were full of their golden sprays. The breeze off the Avon was thick with the green smell of summer. Gladys and Angharad chased each other in circles, breathing it in with exaggerated sighs like two forest nymphs drunk on honey.

  “Ow!” I startled at the sound of Cyan’s cry and turned to see him cradling his side.

  “Mother, he struck too hard.” Cyan glared at his elder brother.

  “Cyan, my love, you cannot cry to me every time you get a good whacking. Keep your shield arm up as your brother has shown you.”

  Cyan would rather have his head buried in some ancient text, but Tutgual King was growing old. Soon my children, too, would ride with targets on their backs, and because of this, Cyan must learn how to fight.

  Rhys lowered his practice blade. “Cyan, you cannot think a Westman or a Pict would be any kinder. Come, now. You must try again.”

  I shook my head. Hadn’t I been standing just there, a girl of ten, when Brant told me the same? I looked to the empty patch of grass where my girls had been playing. Gladys had given up the chase and now sat close by with her feet tucked beneath her, weaving a crown out of yarrow. Across the field, Angharad was circling the same tree she always seemed drawn to, her tawny head bent as if she were listening.

  “Angharad, come away,” I called out. “It’s bad luck there. Come away, now. Quickly.”

  She looked up, her gray eyes questioning, and for a moment I felt as if she were peering straight through me.

  Gladys wrinkled her delicate nose and balanced the yarrow wreath atop her dark head.

  “I don’t know why she likes it there. It’s just a thorn tree, after all.”

  “Gladys, you’re meant to be minding your little sister,” I said. “You know I don’t like her playing just there.”

  “But why do you say it’s bad luck, Mother?”

  I glanced at the place where so long ago the little boy named Drustan had clutched at my arm and I had looked down to see him bleeding in the mud. A thorn grew there now, just at that spot. And sometimes, on a summer night, when it bent in the wind, I could swear I heard the soft sound of weeping.

  “Sometimes events happen that people can forget, but the landscape does not” was all I said. “Now, go and fetch your sister.”

  Gladys sighed, stood, then squinted. “Mother. I think Aela is waving at you.”

  I shielded my eyes and spotted my fair-haired servant lifting her skirts to make her way through the tall grass, her freckled face anxious.

  “Aela, what is it?”

  “A messenger’s come, my lady. It’s Uther Pendragon! He rides this way even now, toward Cadzow!”

  I dropped the yarrow in a heap at my feet. “Here? To Cadzow?”

  “Even now!” she exclaimed. “The messenger says Pendragon comes to treat with your husband.”

  I brushed back the wisps of my hair that had come loose from my plait and glanced back at the hall, my chest a cage full of birds. “Do my brother and— Do all Gwenddolau’s men ride with his retinue?”

  “I imagine so, my lady, but our man did not say.”

  “Sweet Gods.” I threw up my hands. “Of this Lailoken could not have sent notice? And they will plan to spend at least two nights. We must ready the guest rooms. Fetch the spare sheepskins from the loft and sweep out the warriors’ chambers. My husband’s men will sleep in the great room whilst they are here. We’ll need to slaughter more meat and set it up to roast right away. Go tell Cook. Bid her see to it.”

  Suddenly the singsong of my girls chasing in circles rose to a nerve-clattering pitch and I rounded on them, shouting.

  “Angharad! Gladys! Enough of that noise. Get inside and get cleaned up. Guests are coming. Important guests.” My hand flew to my throat, fingers drumming against my collarbone.

  “Who is it?” Rhys sheathed his sword. “Who’s coming?”

  “Your uncles ride this way,” I said carefully, so that I would not say the one name circling round and round my brain.

  Maelgwn Maelgwn.

  “Lailoken comes? Truly?” Rhys had been so serious of late. His smile now was bright with sun, and it soothed me a little.

  “Yes, even so. He rides with Uther Pendragon to speak with your father.”

  “The Dragon Warriors.” Rhys’s tone was one reserved for miracles and acts of witchery. Perhaps I was to blame, raising my children on stories of Gwenddolau and his bird, indulging Rhys when he bade me recount endless times the moment I’d first seen the Dragon Warriors riding full tilt across the fields of Cadzow.

  The first moment I’d seen his real father.

  But Rhys belonged to Rhydderch now, in spirit if not in body. It was Rhydderch who’d bounced him on his knee and told him stories. It was Rhydderch who’d first watched him stand on fat, wobbly legs, who first showed him how to spar, to strike, and to parry.

  I tried to smile. “Do not be so awestruck. The Dragon Warriors are men, just like you.”

  “If Pendragon is our uncle, too, why has he not come before now to meet us?” Cyan asked. He swung his shield idly now, his wavy brown hair all tousled.

  “It is no fault of his. War has kept him away too long.”

  “Not war. Not exactly, Mother.” Rhys looked at me. “Cyan should know the truth of it.”

  “Very well.” I bowed my head.

  “Gwrgi and Peredur are raiding Uther Pendragon’
s lands as of late,” Rhys said. “Pendragon dared not leave his fiefdom. Perhaps Gwrgi and Peredur intended this. Their raiding keeps Pendragon from Partick. It is difficult to make allies when you cannot even visit their courts.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Perhaps it is so.”

  “Even so, I think they are fools provoking Pendragon and his men,” Rhys said.

  “Gwrgi and Peredur are not at all foolish,” I said. “They are blackhearted men, and clever in the ways they seek revenge, and you would do well not to forget it.”

  Rhys frowned at my tone, but Angharad had come racing over, breathless, and smiled.

  “Lailoken is coming? Mother, do you think he will take me for walks in the forest again?”

  I bent to pluck a leaf from her hair. “Do you not enjoy our walks in the wood?”

  “Of course,” she said. “But Lailoken knows such stories. He tells me the story of every tree and plant and wonder we see . . .” Her voice trailed off. She did not want to say how forgetful her mother had become. Tutgual had long declared now that priests were the only sanctioned healers at court. It was a bitter decree and I had been forced to swallow it. At first I had strived ever harder to retain my skills, but with four children, the running of Father’s lands, and no tutor to question me, my knowledge was slipping.

  “You must be patient, my dove. We know not what brings him here. His time with us may not be his own.”

  “But why does Uther Pendragon ride here to speak with Father?” Cyan asked. “Why would he not treat with King Tutgual instead?”

  “I cannot say. That will be between Pendragon and your father. Enough questions, now. Go and ready yourselves.” I shooed them toward the hall. “And whilst they are here, you must not speak out of turn or place yourself in matters above your standing.”

  “But I will treat with the warriors,” Rhys said quickly. “I’ve discussed it with Father.”

  “You will not. You are yet children, all of you, and you are to watch. Is that understood? To watch and to listen.”