In Winter's Shadow (27 page)

There was a hasty knock, the door opened, and Bedwyr came in. I set the pen down.

He stood with his hand on the latch of the door, staring at me, at my sheet of vellum. “You are writing to Arthur?” he asked, in a hoarse, uncertain voice.

I nodded. “I thought we could leave the letter with the port officials.”

“Yes.” He came away from the door, stopped, staring at me hungrily. “Say…say that I did not mean to kill Gwyn.”

I took up the pen and wrote the superscription: “
Guinivara Artorio Augusto Imperatori domino salutatem vellit
.” I stared at it a moment, then continued, reading out what I wrote. The sharp marks on the Latin writing looked colder and more remote as I went on.

My dearest lord, I beg you to believe that I knew nothing of the ambush, and neither planned nor desired that rescue. The lord Bedwyr, however, knowing that there was enmity between myself and the cousin to whose protection you committed me, met us on the road and asked Medraut to deliver me up. He himself used no violence until the lord Medraut attacked him. The lord Gwyn [I crossed the name out and wrote “Gwalchaved”] endeavored to make peace, and was killed by a spear cast by Bedwyr…

“It was an accident,” said Bedwyr, coming nearer.

I looked up, putting the pen aside again. “You saw him before you cast the spear. I know that you saw him.”

“No! That is…my arm moved quicker than my thoughts. Can you understand that? My lady, you must. One must move quickly in battle: if one pauses to consider whether or not to kill a man, one will die in his stead. I looked up, I saw a man who had left himself unprotected, and I threw the spear. Even as I threw I thought, ‘That is Gwyn; he is trying to make peace,’ but I could not stop my hand, or deflect the spear which I had already put into motion. I knew what I was doing, but still, my arm did it. I could scarcely believe that it had happened. My lady, I would rather that I had died than he! My worth is nothing, it has been nothing since first I betrayed my lord.” He paused, caught his breath, then insisted, “You must believe me, my lady. I could not endure it if you also should think me a murderer.”

“I believe you,” I said after a moment. “But when the escort arrives back in Camlann, they will say that you attacked us on the road, that Gwyn threw away his shield, and that you killed him. It will not sound well.”

“I know.” He sat on the floor at my feet, picked up the letter, and looked at it. I touched his shoulder and he turned, caught me, hid his face against my thigh, shaking.

He suffered yes, certainly, but the image of Gwyn’s astonished face rose between us, and I sat cold and silent. After a little while I said, “Arthur had hoped that Gwyn would grow into a man he could appoint as his successor.”

Bedwyr moved his head from side to side in pain.

“And if Gwalchmai believes the story which the escort tells, he will plead for justice against you with any king on earth.”

Bedwyr lifted his head. “Macsen has still not agreed to return fugitives. We should be safe in Less Britain.”

“Safe! We will be safe! Why did you ever plan such a mad ambush?”

“I did not think it would come to blows. My friends had resolved to follow me, and I thought that your escort would be unwilling to fight its comrades, men accused of no crime. I thought they might be half eager to release you. I could not bear the thought of what you might suffer from your cousin. I thought that even Arthur would not object, once he understood what you faced in Ebrauc. He is never vindictive, even when much injured. And I would not have fought, even with Medraut—only he struck you.”

“A meaningless blow, such as a woman might have given her husband with a broom handle! No, no, I believe you; never fear. And I believe you did not mean to kill Gwyn. Only there was so much that he might have done and been. He might have changed the world. There was no one else like him. And to die, at fifteen, by accident…by your hand…”

“He is well out of a bitter world.”

“Oh, doubtless he is; but the world now is bitterer yet. Very bitter. And your men fought my escort, and two of them are dead, with who knows how many of the escort. They were friends, comrades of many years, and they had barely a notion of why they were fighting!”

“I know. Once I led all of them. Gwynhwyfar, my life, do not thrust me deeper into my dishonor. I am nearly drowned in it already. I can scarcely endure myself, when I think of what I have meant to be, and have been, and then of what I am now—a traitor, false, perjured and murderous. Dear God, I had rather die than live so disfigured! But I fear damnation. I am afraid, afraid and in confusion. I cannot think. Nothing I have seen, or thought, or read; nothing I have hoped for or believed in; no philosophy or clarity is left to me, to heart or to mind. I am not myself. My lady, as you hope for salvation, be merciful to me! I did it for love of you, and if you turn against me all the world is drowned and empty.”

“Oh, dear heart,” I said, feeling something within me break, something too deep to overflow into tears, “how can I turn against you? But I would rather we had both died before seeing this day, and what will come of it.”

He said nothing, only rose and put his arms around me, and I could not be cold to him still. For a little while we again inhabited a world confined to the two of us, where there was no past and no future. But afterward we lay side by side in the dark, listening with open eyes to the creaking of the ship and the lapping of the waves, waiting for a morning endlessly deferred.

***

The next day I finished the letter to Arthur, sealed it carefully, and Bedwyr gave it to the port official, explaining that it was important information and must be sent directly to the emperor or given only to one of the emperor’s known messengers. This request was not so unusual, for some of our agents had sent messages through Caer Gloeu before, and Bedwyr and I both knew the proper procedures.

While Bedwyr was off on this errand, the ship was checked over for sailing—the horses of our party tied tightly in their stalls, and the cargo of woolen and iron goods bound down. As soon as Bedwyr returned, the crew cast loose the moorings and the ship slipped out into the wide Saefern, starting down the river under a cloudy sky.

We followed the current of the Saefern through Mor Hafren, then made slow progress along the north coast of Dumnonia, working against unfavorable winds. I had never traveled by ship before, and was sick, which at least meant I was prevented from worrying. But when we reached the end of the Dumnonian peninsula and turned southward the wind was behind us, and the ship ran smoothly. By the time we arrived at Bresta, in the northwest of Less Britain, I was beginning to believe that sea travel was a reasonable proposition after all. And in spite of all that had happened, I was still excited when we caught sight of the coast of Gaul before us. In fact, it looked very much like the coast of Dumnonia, and had even been named after that part of Britain. But Bresta itself was a fine Roman town, with its lofty stone fortifications still intact, and a number of other ships moored in its harbor giving it a busy look.

We had intended to set out for Bedwyr’s home as soon as we landed in Gaul, taking our horses out onto the southeast road and buying supplies along the way. But when our ship put in, and we disembarked onto the rain-soaked quay, we discovered that King Macsen had appointed harbor commissioners. This gave us a great deal of trouble. Macsen had been forced to rescind the high tax he had imposed on goods shipped to Britain, and was now apparently determined to lose nothing from the ordinary harbor dues—not for the flea on the cow’s tail, as they say. Our ship’s captain reported that he carried passengers, and accordingly two cold gray townsmen came up to us while our party was unloading the horses onto the dock, and demanded that we all come to the customs house. This was a Roman building, once very fine, but now half-ruined, and half-repaired in the British style. The conflict between the modes of building had made it uncomfortable: originally it must have had a Roman hypocaust for heating, but now had a hearth without the proper ventilation for one. It was filled with thick gray smoke from the damp wood fire, and filled also with confiscated British goods—sacks of tin ore, bundles of hides, wool, and woolen cloths—piled nearly to the roof and threatening to collapse if one brushed against them, which it was hard to avoid doing. The two townsmen ushered us over to the fire, where they sat and kept us standing. They stared at us, peering through the smoke. One coughed, and the other asked Bedwyr, “You are the leader of this party?”

Bedwyr nodded.

“You did not give your name to the captain of the ship you sailed in. You booked eight places; where are the other two?”

“They could not come.”

“What is your purpose in coming here?”

“I do not see,” Bedwyr said in his calm, level voice, “why the purposes of private citizens coming into another province are of official concern.”

They blinked at him. The one who had spoken coughed and the one who had coughed said, “We cannot have armed parties roving about wherever they please. We have bandits enough without importing more from Britain.”

“We are not bandits, but nobly born Bretons.”

“He speaks like a Breton,” one of the officials conceded to the other. “What is your purpose in coming here?”

We had no particular necessity to conceal our status. Arthur had written to King Macsen, informing him that Bedwyr had been exiled to Less Britain, though it was unlikely that the king had yet received the letter. Nonetheless, because the fight on the road had probably changed our situation, Bedwyr had thought it best to come unofficially and to avoid the king’s notice as much as possible. Thus Macsen could truthfully tell Arthur that he did not know our whereabouts, which might ease any tension which might develop if another trial were demanded. Moreover, Bedwyr had not forgotten that Macsen had once attempted to persuade him to join his own warband, and been angry when Bedwyr refused. “I do not think he would be angry enough to force us to return to Britain,” he had told me, “but he might put obstacles between us and my home.”

Now Bedwyr tapped his sword’s hilt idly, studying the two officials. “I do not see that you have any right to question us so,” he said, at last, “but I will tell you that I hope to return to my family’s estates, and there settle peacefully. I trust that, if this does not violate any of your laws or your orders, you will permit us to continue our journey?”

One of the officials whispered to the other. I drew Bedwyr aside, and also whispered. “If they press us, will you tell them who we are?”

He hesitated before answering. “Macsen will discover soon that I am in Less Britain, and may send to me when he does. If I am found to have lied it will be the worse for us; I must tell the truth. But they have no right to act in this way, as though we were crossing the frontier into some land outside the Empire.”

One of the officials coughed again. “You may be criminals,” he said. “Tell us your names and your purpose in coming here.”

The other official pulled out a wax tablet and a stylus and sat, smug and confident, ready to take the information down.

Bedwyr sighed, took the letter Arthur had given him from his belt. It stated simply his name, the sentence, and a request that the reader render any assistance necessary in finding Bedwyr a ship and means of obeying the sentence. He gave the letter to the officials. They stared at the dragon on the seal, started, then broke the seal and unrolled it, holding it near the smoky fire so as to be able to read it in the dim light. Murmurs of astonishment; they glanced up at Bedwyr, at the rest of us, read on. They whispered together, and one rose and rapidly left the customs house.

“Noble lord,” said the other, “your name is well known here. For what crime did Arthur of Britain exile his warleader?”

“For defaming the imperial majesty. I trust that we may go now?”

“Ah. Ah.” Coughing. “Noble lord, perhaps you should stay here for the night. I know that Lord Hywel, lord of this city, would welcome a guest as famous as yourself.”

“I thank you, but I wish to comply with the sentence my lord the emperor has decreed for me, and return to the estates of my family.”

“But you have already complied with that sentence, noble lord. See,” he tapped the letter. “This says that you are exiled to the province of Less Britain: it does not specify a city.”

“Again, I thank you, but I have no wish to lengthen my journey. I feel my disgrace too keenly to take pleasure in the hospitality even of my countrymen.”

More coughing. “Noble lord, the king will be offended if you ride south without first visiting his court and explaining yourself to him.”

Bedwyr was silent a moment, then bowed slightly. “So be it. I would not wish to offend the king.”

Presently the other official returned, bringing with him some nine warriors and a plump middle-aged nobleman in a scarlet cloak covered with gold embroidery, whom the official welcomed, with a bow, as “Lord Hywel.”

“Most noble lord,” this man said to Bedwyr, “I am most honored that you should come here, though, of course, deeply grieved that it should be on such an occasion as exile. Surely, it is an undeserved ruin, a tyrant’s caprice. I beg you, accept my hospitality.”

Confronted by Hywel’s warriors we were plainly to be either guests or prisoners, so we gave way as graciously as we could, collected our horses and luggage from the quay, and followed Hywel up through the town to the buildings he used to house his warband and himself. Hywel’s own house was winged by the others, Roman-built, well preserved, and luxuriously furnished—finer, in fact, than anything at Camlann. Here our horses were taken from us, while servants carried away our luggage, and Hywel directed other servants to prepare the best guest room for Bedwyr. He then asked politely, “And whose wife is the lady?”