Creiddylad’s smile was indulgent and astute. A smile that permitted Gwenhwyfar the first real freedom of her life: the freedom from what other people might think of her. She now understood the reflected radiance of her mother in the magic mirror: Creiddylad did not have one guilty bone in her body.
‘Edern!’ Creiddylad called in a low, husky voice. ‘Go and see your father! Leave me and my daughter to talk in peace.’ Yder lazily flung a chamber gown about his nakedness, stroked her foot with promise of future embraces and left them alone together.
‘Fear not, daughter, he’ll come back later! Abductor’s privilege lasts at least as long as the lady desires here!’ Creiddylad gave a delighted laugh and flung herself down on the bed to have the conversation of a lifetime with her lost daughter.
*
Morning came very noisily in Caerleon. It was the royal stronghold and everyone was obliged to stir when the king did. Since it had been his wedding night the night before, everyone had been reasonably expecting a good lie-in and was most disappointed in not getting it, hence the extra noise of annoyance. Arthur had called for his horse in mighty good humour, counselling his wife’s ladies to let their mistress sleep as long as she wanted. So although cocks crowed and pipers droned, despite armourers clanging and shrill-voiced hen-wives clacking their gossip, despite the whole panoply of cumulative din, Enid slept late.
Last night had not been at all bad. She was her mother’s daughter after all. She had pleased the King; that much was clear. He had clasped her to his massive, war-torn chest, and kissed her on the nose with much good humour. It was a shame that the game couldn’t last, Enid mused. She wandered down to breakfast, expecting the leavings of the previous night’s feast. Instead there were freshly coddled eggs and eighteen different little dishes for her to pick at, all served with the most delicious sweet wine. Enid had a bit of everything, determined to live well while she lived at all. She still had horrible premonitions about the outcome of the game, but the luxury of her surroundings were a considerable help in putting these to the back of her mind.
She asked after her husband’s whereabouts. The king, she was informed, had gone hunting. If her highness wished to ride out and join him . . .? She wandered to the stables and asked for a mount, determined not to lose out on the fun. Her groom saddled up the strawberry roan and accompanied the queen and her ladies at a respectful distance. Enid had a better seat than Gwenhwyfar, since she had been allowed more often to ride abroad. She let the women do the talking, which she found advantageous in the circumstances, merely nodding and agreeing from time to time. This is exactly what Gwenhwyfar would have done in any case, ignoring the chatter and insisting upon her own opinion. Having lived with her foster sister for so many years, Enid knew exactly how to behave. Gwenhwyfar would also have ridden out on the morning after her wedding night to surprise her husband’s return home by loitering in some leafy arbour.
It was therefore unfortunate that they did not meet Arthur, but a solitary lord instead. He was yawning uncontrollably, as though dragged untimely from bed, his horse meandering where it would, the reins slipping from his slack grasp. One of the ladies called out, cattily, ‘Who were you with last night, Gereint, that you set out so late after the king?’
Enid looked as severe as possible as the second lady nudged the catty one in the ribs.
Gereint immediately snapped into wakefulness and concerned attention. ‘My lady – my sovereign lady, I mean! You should not be riding unattended in these woods: they are dangerous. My lord King has gone hunting the White Hart and no one can say what might befall a lady alone!’
Enid looked warmly upon Gereint. Although his air of lordly responsibility was endearing, he was scarcely much older than herself. He was, moreover, the epitome of every handsome lordling with whom she had ever solaced her unhappy hours. Now, as a married woman, she also divined exactly what she would most like to do with him.
She was framing a fittingly queenly response and disclaimer to his words when there shot into the clearing a silver, glistening animal whose speed and beauty took her breath away. Its antlers were wound with golden chains and its eyes appealed to her with total understanding and pity, so it seemed to her.
‘Christ defend us!’ breathed the groom at Enid’s shoulder, signing himself. ‘The White Hart – and none of us with a spear!’
Gereint forthrightly spurred his horse between Enid and beast. Before her mystic colloquy had ended, she realised that the stag had been transfixed by a cruel sword blow through the neck.
The tears leaped to her eyes with pity at its torment and loss for the communion that had been between them. It stumbled and fell to its knees, a stream of blood cascading down the white neck, its lambent brown eyes turning up in the glaze of death. Beads of blood flecked Enid’s skirts. She wept and shuddered still even as Arthur crashed into the clearing. Enfolded in his embrace, Enid wept on; her tears accountable to the shock of the incident, but a great relief to her nonetheless.
Back at court, a solemn assembly of hunters was held. Enid sat quivering with the after-shock on her carven royal chair next to Arthur’s, the mud of the hunt still splashed upon him. The king’s poet, Taliesin was speaking and everyone was very quiet, so as not to disturb the harmony and skill and depth of his eloquence.
‘Whoever wins the White Hart shall kiss the sovereign lady – the ancient custom is clear. So it was in your father, Uther’s, time and so it descends and falls upon you, O King, to take up the obligation of the custom of Uther. Bardic memory holds no precedent that anyone other than the king himself should win the White Hart. However, the royal lady’s life might well have been forfeit had the sword of Gereint not stayed the beast.’
The king absorbed these words, though he clearly did not care for them. ‘On this matter of honour that touches me dearly, what pronouncement can there be, Chief Bard of the Island?’
‘The judgment hangs upon a hair, sovereign lord . . . Since the custom of Uther weighs heavily upon you, and since Gereint ap Erbin has saved her life, you should permit him to kiss the Queen. However, since the dishonour caused to your manhood is likewise great, let Gereint be banished from the Island of Britain for a space of seven years, and let him return to his father’s kingdom in Armorica.’
Taliesin had rendered his judgement and, as he laid aside his golden branch of office, everyone breathed again and dared to look at Arthur.
Though the king was dark with jealous anger, he bore the bardic judgement bravely, ‘Let the kiss be taken.’ He gestured roughly to Enid who found herself receiving the kiss she most desired, but in circumstances least appropriate to lovers. Gereint’s lips upon hers made the most perfect round upon her lips that a woman could know. They would never again make another since, sundered on another shore, he would never know that Enid had been consigned to the pyre deserved by a woman who had dared impersonate a queen.
‘And now, begone!’ cried Arthur, and flung him out of the hall.
*
Gwenhwyfar eventually emerged from her mother’s secret bower a changed woman. For so long she had laboured under the misapprehension of Creiddylad’s culpability that it was a relief to know the truth. She now stepped, vindicated, into the hall of Gwyn ap Nudd, warm with the love of Yder – whom she must now learn to call Edern – and triumph at her mother’s solution to a loveless marriage.
‘I never loved Gwythyr,’ Creiddylad had related frankly, ‘It was called a love match, but that was just my inexperience and his persistence. It was Gwyn who really interested me. After you were born, he came for me, as I’d always known he would, and I never really looked back. Of course, I couldn’t have taken you with me; you were Gwythyr’s true-born child. I had shorn him of his manhood, his self-respect. I had to leave him something.’
Gwenhwyfar, revelling in the rediscovery of her mother, felt no pang of betrayal at having been left motherless. She rightly recognised the self-same bra
nd of ruthlessness that ran through her own veins. Now she stood before her mother’s lover without a shred of timidity. The ogre of her childhood, the rapist of her mother, was a charming, intent and slightly older version of Edern. It was now obvious to her that Gwyn and his son were both of otherworldly stock and that the realm in which she stood was the enchanted and much-wished-for world where dreams came true.
As Gwyn received his stepdaughter with joy, a swarm of multicoloured faery inhabitants sang their welcome. The feeling of family reunion encompassed her. Gwenhwyfar was home at last.
*
Enid was not enjoying being queen of Britain. The tedium of courtly affairs now hit her with full force. The interminable ceremonies, the long and often indigestible banquets, the ubiquity of her expected appearance at every minor function were all very irksome. She understood exactly why a queen had so many serving women and ladies attendant upon her: she would never have time to remember to sew torn hems, or pare her own nails or recall who was who among Arthur’s battle-companions if it weren’t for the troop of women surrounding her. Consequently, Enid was never left in private. Nor were her thoughts exposable. Though the women vied to become her confidant, trying to sound out their mostly silent queen, she dared not engage one in anything more dangerous than the time of day or the weather. She relied on them solely to inform her about complex familial relationships and state functions, of which she was totally ignorant. And if her women thought her singularly lacking in conversation, none were bold enough to say so, putting down her taciturnity to an excess of piety.
Since there was no one else to talk to, Enid found herself dropping in to chat more and more often with her confessor. Not that she dared confess the thing that preyed most upon her soul, but she found the ceremonies of the Church most consoling, especially the licence to talk at length with the humble and discerning priest who had been allotted to her service, so different from the monk who had instructed Gwenhwyfar.
Father Beuno had been more than a little suspicious about Brother Gildas’ sudden desire for martyrdom in the Dark Forest, but had said nothing out of deference for the modest piety of the queen. Brother Gildas’ zeal for conversion had always been somewhat fierce and it might well have irritated Gwythyr or one of his followers sufficiently for him to encounter ‘a little accident.’ Such things happened, he knew. He was sure that the queen had had no part in it. Her inarticulate, rambling and inconsequential confessions, in his opinion, betokened a sensitive and retiring soul in search of the truth – and not a little measure of loneliness.
Enid enjoyed their little chats, but though she respected Father Beuno, she did not dare voice anything of her torment to another human being. She reserved her disclosures for the severe and calm-faced Virgin in the basilica crypt. This dark-cheeked and loose-bodied figure with its carven child perched on one knee clearly had earlier, non-Christian origins, and was not publicly venerated in any great ceremony. However, a good many common folk came here to offer flowers and tokens of propitiation, as well as to ask for help.
It was while in prayer – in actuality, a deep, urgent colloquy to the Virgin – that Enid encountered Arthur’s battle-mistress, Morrigan. There were a great many rumours concerning Morrigan and Arthur: that she had been his foster mother or lover. (No one ever guessed that she had been both, as well as his teacher in arms.) She was out of Ireland: a warrior-woman of the old school, skilled in initiating youths into the passage of arms – in every sense. It was she who had gifted him with his great sword, Caledfwlch – a blade that many of the ancient kindred of the land recognised as the empowering, kingly weapon out of the otherworldly treasuries. Enid knew nothing of this.
Morrigan had been absent from the wedding, busy quelling a Pictish raid with her usual efficiency. Though she was at least fifty, the perpetual practice of her craft, or some deeper faery power, kept her lithe and beautiful. She was regarded with utmost superstition and dread about court, because she had the second sight and was said to have faery blood. Whatever she uttered in her tranced seership always came to pass. But Arthur relied on her abilities to keep the realm secure from invasion and so she was reluctantly tolerated.
Morrigan showed no qualms at entering a Christian basilica, contrary to popular expectation that pagans and especially faeries who stepped onto consecrated ground would burst into flames and fly shrieking out of the window. She marched straight to the crypt to bring an offering to the image of Modron, the Mother, in thanks for her protection during the last campaign. So it was that she came upon the kneeling and suppliant Enid. With the aid of her sight, Morrigan saw immediately that, though the marks of sovereignty were upon the Queen, that she was not actually Gwenhwyfar. Morrighan now realised exactly why she had felt such a strong compulsion to return to court across the seas.
‘May your prayer be granted!’ she said, her words booming resonantly about the crypt.
Enid started violently. She had been discussing with the Virgin the relative merits of confessing the deception to Arthur or of running away; her prayer had been that a solution be found – whatever and however. Morrigan’s salutation had sounded like divine and miraculous concurrence with her desire. She arose and looked upon the small, dark woman about whom so many stories circulated. She saw a broad-faced, determined warrior-woman, her hair bound tightly into hundreds of plaits that spilled like snakes from an iron-bound cap onto strong shoulders. Her hands were gauntletted, a sword girdled her waist. From the state of her trews and boots, she had evidently ridden in recently. Her eyes, dark and opaque, were watchful and not unfriendly.
Enid was about to go into a studied semblance of Gwenhwyfar when she caught the shake of the other woman’s head, ‘No, it won’t work forever, will it? What are you going to do?’
Enid’s relief at being found out was immense. Through her tears she implored, ‘I really don’t know. What can I do?’
‘Well, I think we had better find some other, more private place for such avowals, don’t you?’ And Morrigan marched Enid up to the main basilica and out onto the steps. The queen’s ladies surged forward and made the necessary, but rather sketchy courtesies to Morrigan, before attending their mistress. They were all rather tired of her propensity for prayer.
Morrigan brushed them aside with a peremptory gesture, ‘We will ride a little.’
‘But . . . Lady Morrigan, the queen must be attended—’ began Sibli.
Giving a great laugh, Morrigan cried, ‘Oh, by the raven, girl! The queen will be safe enough with me!’
They rode to the shore of the estuary and let their horses nibble the salty grasses as Enid told all.
‘And what is your desire in all this?’ asked Morrigan, when the tale was done.
‘To go to Gereint,’ Enid said simply, daring to voice her desire for the first time.
‘Even though he hates you?’
‘Does he?’
‘Wouldn’t you? I mean, you were responsible for his banishment, albeit reluctantly. He goes home in disgrace to his father’s house, away from the favour and preferment of his kinsman . . .’
With an inner certainty, she said, ‘I would find a way . . . I love him . . . I mean, well . . . Arthur’s very good to me, but it isn’t right, is it?’
Morrigan sighed gustily, ‘No it isn’t – though not in the way you mean.’ She had long ago looked into the waters and seen how things would be with her fosterling and had already made such provision as she knew how for the best government and peace of Britain. But such measures stood outside love and its vagaries: Arthur was not meant for Enid.
‘Why are you listening to me?’ Enid asked.
Morrigan turned her horse’s head towards the sea, not looking at the queen. Gazing into the ocean, she spoke clearly, ‘What passed between you and the White Hart, and between you and Gereint . . . that is how Arthur looks towards the land of Britain. If this had been any other time and you, Gereint and Arthur any othe
r kind of people, none of this would matter to me. But I am a protector of the realm, and so I must help you and not the king now.’
Enid didn’t really understand, though she felt herself suddenly at the heart of a great thing beyond her destiny to know. She no longer worried about what would be done to her, now that she was in the strangely reassuring presence of Morrigan. She lifted her head and breathed in the sharp tang of the sea, saying, ‘For the sake of the White Hart, and for Gereint, and even for Arthur, I have to go.’
‘Exactly!’ said Morrigan, and a wry smile creased her broad cheeks. ‘The question is – how?’
*
News came to the otherworldly realms, like everywhere else, on the lips of poets and wandering storytellers. The fact that Gwyn ap Nudd had emissaries everywhere also helped. The very leaves and streams spoke to him and his kind, as well as the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth and the fish in the waters. There was always, gratifyingly, never a shortage of guests who brought their own news.
Creiddylad announced one morning at breakfast, ‘Giant Gogfran is coming with his family next week.’
Gwyn and Edern made pleasurable noises through the business of munching. The pig’s feet had been particularly well-spiced and everyone was very greasy as a result. Under cover of wiping her fingers, Gwenhwyfar cast an appalled glance at her mother, Creiddylad, who ignored her daughter and went on eating. Later, Gwenhwyfar seized her arm, urgently demanding, ‘Who on earth is Giant Gogfran?’
‘Well, for one thing, dear, he’s not on Earth. He’s like Gwyn and Edern – he . . . comes and goes. It’s only people like me and you who make do. Gogfran is a perfectly charming giant and his family is splendid company. You’ve never heard anything like the bitchy gossip I had to suffer when I first came here. All the other neighbouring mounds were insufferably rude to me – they were all hoping that Gwyn would marry one of their own daughters. Only Gogfran and his wife were kind enough to call . . . Just be civil to them, dear – but do be careful not to leave anything delicate lying about – the whole family have very uncouth feet!’
The Jo Fletcher Books Anthology Page 25