Sign of the White Foal

by Chris Thorndycroft

  “I loved him deeply once,” she said. “And he loved me too, I have no doubt as to that, despite all the people who called me his whore.”

  Arthur winced. His mother’s bitterness for her accusers far outweighed any bitterness she may have had for his father. It had been sixteen years since the High-king Enniaun Yrth had sent his pregnant mistress away. Arthur had suspected that he had promised to make her his queen although his mother had never admitted as much.

  Eigyr was the daughter of Anblaud; a nobleman who had supported Vertigernus in the old days. When they had met, Enniaun had been in his forty-seventh year and Cadwallon and Owain’s mother had been dead two years. Anblaud and his family were visiting the court of the Pendraig on Ynys Mon and few failed to notice the coy looks and idle chat that passed between the king and Anblaud’s young daughter. Old Anblaud must have been giddy at the prospect of marrying his daughter to the king of Venedotia and Arthur imagined him encouraging the flirtations, giving his daughter tips on the best way to arouse an old man’s cock.

  Something blossomed between them – love, according to Eigyr but mere lust to everybody else – and Eigyr fell pregnant. She was already back in her father’s lands in the south when it became known and Anblaud had accompanied her back to Ynys Mon, her belly swelling by the day, hoping that the impending scandal would hasten the marriage plans.

  Enniaun did not make her his queen. He sent her to carry the babe to term in the farthest fringes of his domain. He had found another woman of higher stock and, although he would not deny the child was his, he would not acknowledge it either. It was an act of charity, many considered, to accommodate her at all but to Eigyr it was a cruel dismissal. She bore the insults with her head held high. People called her the king’s whore but she knew that she had been the king’s great love, denied a place at his side by mere circumstance while within her womb, royal blood quickened.

  Arthur was born at Din Arth from whence he took his name. In his fifth year, Eigyr moved him to Cair Cunor where he was to be fostered and trained as a warrior in the Teulu of the Red Dragon as Arthur mab Eigyr. His very name left no ambiguity about his parentage. Such was the lot of a bastard.

  Arthur had never been bothered by the fact that he had no father. Life at Cair Cunor consisted of drills, lessons in sword and spear and horsemanship alongside hard-bitten veterans who cared less about a youth’s ancestry than they did in his ability to fight and ride. And Arthur was good at both. He had always been aware of who his father was but it was something he had never dwelt on. In fact, he had thought more about his father today than he had in the past sixteen years.

  His father was dead and it felt like a chapter of his life had been closed. Of course, he had never been formally recognised by him so thought of any inheritance had never occurred to him. But now that his father could never recognise him it felt, in a way, as if a great burden that had rested on his shoulders all his life had suddenly been lifted.

  “What are you thinking?” his mother asked.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not as if I knew the man. I wasn’t even a son to him.”

  “Don’t ever believe that!” she snapped. “Bastard or no, you are as much his son as Owain and Cadwallon!”

  He had forgotten his mother’s fierce pride in her son’s heritage; a pride that occasionally bordered on the delusional. “I didn’t mean that,” he said. “But you can’t deny that he never acknowledged me. I was nothing to him.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” she persisted. “You have the blood of Cunedag in you. Nobody can take that away from you. Even if they abandon you, send you to live far away in some remote fortress like they did me and your sister Anna.”

  He was shocked. He had never heard his mother talk of his long-lost half-sister Anna. She was several years older than him and, like him, she had been a bastard. But her pathway into this world had been nothing so innocent as a silly affair.

  It happened just as Cunedag and his sons were celebrating their final victory over the Gaels. Meriaun, at the tender age of eighteen, had slain the Gaelic war-leader Beli mac Benlli in single combat and his followers had taken to their hide-covered boats and sailed back to Erin. Venedotia was won and the foundations of a dynasty were being laid.

  The celebrations took place on Ynys Mon where Cunedag planned to build his lys – his great court. Upon the island lived a community of priestesses, nine in number, who were called the Morgens – the sea born. They had worshiped the Great Mother since before the Romans had come, keeping to their sacred lakes and groves, custodians of the land’s ancient knowledge.

  The priestesses came to bless Venedotia’s new rulers and rituals of kingship and sovereignty were carried out that were as ancient as the hills of Albion itself. What followed was an evening of drunken debauchery that shamed the house of Cunedag for a generation.

  Enniaun was always a volatile and headstrong youth hence his nickname ‘Yrth’; ‘the impetuous’. At the age of twenty-eight he was a seasoned warrior and a virile one at that, renowned for brawling, drinking and womanising. On that night, one of the young priestesses caught his eye and, the drink and his own inflated sense of self-worth getting the better of him, he pursued this priestess into a secluded spot and raped her.

  Such a thing was unheard of for the priestesses of the Great Mother were sacred in their own right. The Morgens cried their outrage and Cunedag roared at his insolent son for his blasphemous trespassing. The Morgens departed back to their dwellings in the wilderness and the sons of Cunedag were left to sober themselves in the cold light of dawn, wondering what they had done.

  Nine months passed before the priestess came knocking at the door of Cunedag’s lys which was little more than scaffolding in those early days. She bore a babe in her robes, a girl she claimed was the result of Enniaun’s sacrilege. She had been cast out of her order for the Morgens valued maidenhood as essential to their service to the Great Mother. Feeling the eyes of his father and brothers upon him, Enniaun felt ashamed and took the woman and her child in.

  The girl was named Anna and was placed in the care of wetnurses while her mother, who said that she could not abide to live in a fortress after spending all her life under the open sky, returned to the wilderness to live as a hermit.

  By the time Anna had reached her twelfth year, old Cunedag had died and Enniaun ruled as Pendraig. He soon found a use for his bastard daughter. Since Cunedag and his sons had left their old seat at Din Eidyn in the far north, the wild Pictish tribes had united under their king, Talorc mab Aniel and had taken the lands of the Votadini. A lord from the south called Leudon had fought hard to drive the Picts back north and had succeeded in recapturing Din Eidyn. To secure his claim over the area, he wished to marry into the line of Cunedag whose ancestral home he now ruled. The young Anna presented such a chance.

  Anna, at twelve years old, was sent north to become King Leudon’s queen and all thought it a good way to rid themselves of the embarrassment caused by Enniaun’s drunkenness on that fateful night. But Anna was a reluctant bride and she ran away no less than a week after the wedding to die in the wild heather and peat bogs of her new kingdom.

  Another unwitting casualty of the family he had been born into, Arthur reflected bitterly. But he did not care for such trivial things as family, at least not in the sense of blood relations. Cei was as good as a brother to him and Cunor, distant yet kind, was the only father he had ever needed. Let his mother pine for what might have been. His family was the teulu and war was coming.

  Meddyf

  They waited in the dining hall of the praetorium while the messenger approached. Meddyf glanced at her husband sitting at the head of the hall. His face was impassive, exuding strength but also fairness. He looked every inch the king and a far better one than his father had been. If only he could see himself the way others do, she mused. If only he could overcome his doubts.

  It wasn’t the brewing war that had kept him awake every night since they had arrived at Cair Cunor. Cad
wallon was a veteran of the Gaelic Wars and was no coward in the face of battle. But he was no longer a young prince seeking glory, he was a king; a king of kings. And all Venedotia looked to him for leadership. That was the task which occupied his mind as they lay in each other’s arms until the small hours. That, and the unnameable horror that had been unleashed upon them at Cair Dugannu.

  He had forbidden them all from mentioning the skull-faced warriors who had made such short work of his men to anybody at Cair Cunor. It would damage morale, he said, and he was absolutely right. She shuddered to think of those mad, howling things and knew she was not alone in suspecting that some pagan sorcery had been at work. It was best not to incite gossip until allies had been procured and the teulu was strong.

  The messenger had been one of six dispatched to all the sub-kings of Venedotia. All but one of them had borne Cadwallon’s plea to support him against Meriaun the Usurper. The messenger to Meriaun had merely carried Cadwallon’s terms of surrender.

  Being the closest kingdom, Eternion had been the first to yield its answer and it was an answer that did not please the gathered bannermen in the hall of Cair Cunor.

  “King Etern, having received the address of the lord Cadwallon mab Enniaun relating to his cousin Meriaun mab Tybiaun, has sought fit to return this answer,” said Cadyreith, reading from a scroll, its wax seal broken and dangling precariously. “That he chooses to decline to enter into an alliance with Cadwallon. That he does not find the grounds sufficient to induce him to remove Meriaun from the throne which would have passed to his father had not Tybiaun mab Cunedag fallen before his time.”

  Cadyreith lowered the scroll and the messenger looked up at Cadwallon, nervously awaiting his reaction.

  “He refuses!” cried Owain in a fit of indignation. “Our own uncle chooses that… that swineherd over you!”

  “Aye, our own uncle,” said Cadwallon. “But then, our uncle is the last of the generation who begrudged our father the throne. It does not surprise me that he chooses to support Meriaun merely to spite me.”

  “Have any other messengers returned, lord?” asked a bannerman from Rhos.

  “No, none,” Cadwallon replied. It is still early. We must not let ourselves be disheartened. Etern was always going to be the first to answer and his answer does not surprise me overmuch. Others will rally to our cause, I have no doubt of it.”

  Good! Thought Meddyf. Good, husband. Show no fear. Save your fear for the dark nights when I can hold you and we can fight your worries together.

  “Others may rally,” said Cunor, “but this fortress has always been within easy striking distance of Eternion. Etern could take it in a day if his loyalty to Meriaun stretched that far.”

  “We do not know if he would go so far as to enter into hostilities against me,” said Cadwallon.

  “If he does then we do not have enough spears to defend ourselves. The teulu is only as strong as the number of warriors provided by each kingdom. And none have arrived…”

  “They will come,” Cadwallon said. “They will come.”

  The council dispersed and Meddyf went out to the gardens. It was a generous term for the rough vegetable plots that had been dug over the old Roman flower beds and ornamental bushes of the fort commander’s residence. Lord Cunor put little stock in such things as flowers. Instead the ground was given up to the growing of turnips, peas and cabbages. Even herbs were considered a waste of space it seemed, for there was none of the thyme, mint and celery seed that grew in the kitchen gardens at Cair Dugannu or Din Arth. Cair Cunor was a military fortification and everything within its walls was geared to the feeding and quartering of a warband.

  She found Elen sunning herself on a stone bench as a nurse dandled little Cunlas between her knees. Guidno played at little wooden soldiers on the cracked paving while Maelcon looked on, bored. He was sulking after having been admonished for getting into a fight with the baker’s son. Meddyf didn’t know what the scuffle had been about but it had ended with a bloody-nose for the baker’s son who had been too frightened to strike the young prince. Cadwallon had given Maelcon a stern lecture on the importance of humility.

  “I thought you would be making a name for yourself in the training yard, Maelcon,” she said. “I’m sure Cair Cunor boasts the best martial tutors in all Venedotia.”

  “What’s the point?” Maelcon answered with a surly frown. “Father would never let me ride with him anyway. Why bother getting myself sweaty and dusty for no good reason?”

  Maelcon had never shown much interest in the martial arts. He learned his lessons as was demanded of him but his instructors often despaired at his lack of interest. He would much rather spend his time reading old texts. Guidno on the other hand, showed more promise but he was still very young. Gods, they are both still so young, she thought. That war should come now, before they are ready!

  “Your son is right to be bored, Meddyf,” said Elen. “It is so dreadfully dull here. While our husbands talk endlessly of war, we are doomed to tedium in this ghastly place. Do you know, they started training right outside our window before the sun was up this morning? I couldn’t sleep a wink. And we are all squeezed into these ghastly Roman lodgings where there is a constant draught through the cracked plaster. Not to mention the food!”

  “This is the teulu’s headquarters, Elen,” said Meddyf. “They have little room for luxuries here.” She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Elen had done nothing but complain since they had arrived at Cair Cunor. It wasn’t as if any of them had a choice. Just as Meddyf’s own home at Cair Dugannu was now occupied by Meriaun and his Gaels, so too was Din Arth. They had managed to get away before the Gaels fell on them, narrowly avoiding a siege. They were now a family without a home, moving from fort to fort, one pace ahead of the enemy.

  Meddyf was struggling to keep her own spirits up. She did not like forts and drills and turnip stew any more than Elen did. She had been born beneath open skies on the wide moors where grassy expanses circled the shores of Lin Conui. It was from that lake that the Afon Conui flowed north to the sea and it was that river’s current that had carried Meddyf when she had been little more than a girl, ferried by her family’s ambitions, into the arms of Cadwallon.

  Her father, Maeldaf, was a bannerman who had held a commote for Enniaun Yrth. It had been a match the like of which a minor noble could only dream of and Meddyf had been happy with it too for her part. The young prince was handsome, true, but he was kind and intelligent and nothing at all like his father who was a blustering old bear of a man, rarely out of his cups.

  Cadwallon was occupied with his lords for most of the afternoon and Meddyf did not see him until it was nearly time to take their seats in the praetorium for meat. He was in a rage when she found him in the colonnaded atrium.

  “Someone’s been talking!” he grumbled.

  “Who’s been talking?” It wasn’t just rage in his voice. She detected a fear there too.

  “There are mutterings in the teulu that we face otherworldly enemies. That the dead march against us. I specifically forbade you all from talking about what we saw the night of the attack.”

  Meddyf suppressed a flashback to those skull-faced monstrosities who had known neither fear nor pain in their mad slaughter. “Does Owain know?”

  “Yes, I told him because he is my brother and I trust him. And you needn’t think it was his big mouth for it was he who brought me news of this tongue-wagging about the fort.”

  “Well, don’t look at me husband. I have respected your wishes and agree with their necessity. The last thing we need is fear demoralizing the warriors.”

  “Somebody doesn’t share your discretion. Besides you, Owain and the boys, only young Gobrui knows and I am loath to upbraid the one who aided our escape.”

  They entered the dining hall together and, once the meal was over, Cadwallon called in a series of warriors who had been overheard talking about dead Gaels marching to war. Each of them was grilled separately and finally, by following the
line of whispers like a hunter tracking the spoor of a deer, the source of the rumours was revealed.

  It was the young son of the baker who had come running to his father with gruesome tales. The baker, having no more sense than an empty bucket or so Cadwallon admonished him, had gone on to tell the fish trader’s wife who had told a blacksmith’s apprentice and so the rumour had spread. And who, Cadwallon demanded of the trembling baker’s boy, had given him such wild flights of fancy?

  Some adults would not have told Cadwallon the truth for fear of being accused of insolence but children have no such inhibitions when the truth is demanded of them and the baker’s boy spoke the name of Cadwallon’s eldest son.

  Maelcon, resentful of the ticking off he had received for bloodying the baker’s son’s nose, had taken his revenge by filling his head with the most frightening images he could think of; of rotting corpses, their skulls pecked clean of flesh and gleaming white in the moonlight, lurching and shambling across the straits. These dead men, Maelcon had claimed, were in league with King Meriaun and were hell-bent on devouring everybody within Cair Cunor’s walls.

  All were dismissed and Cadwallon summoned his son, his face a mask of controlled rage. Meddyf left with the others, recognising the need for a father and son to be alone together. She hoped Cadwallon wouldn’t beat the boy. He wasn’t a particularly strict father but he had every right to be enraged. With so many enemies and so few allies, the last thing they needed was rumour spreading like wildfire.

  She passed Maelcon on his way into the hall. He looked frightened, knowing that he was for it, whatever he had done, but still held his head high and proud, every bit the prince. Despite his foolishness, Meddyf’s heart soared with love for him.

  Later, when Maelcon had been sent to bed, Meddyf sat with Cadwallon at the head table. The servants had finished clearing away and were laying down fresh rushes on the floor.

  “I hope you weren’t too hard on him,” she said.