In Winter's Shadow (31 page)

Macsen and his forces rode into Car Aës one night at the end of October, entering the gates by torchlight. Behind them on the plain I could see other flecks of fire which brought my heart into my throat, for I knew the lights to be Arthur’s.

Bedwyr saw me standing on the wall and watching when he rode in beside Macsen, and he raised his hand in salute, but was soon busied with seeing to the men—with the army and the warriors together there were more numbers than the town could easily hold. So I went back to Macsen’s house alone—or rather, trailing my two guards—and Bedwyr came back to the room late, and lay down exhausted without taking off more than his boots and his mail shirt, only kissing me briefly in greeting. The following day, however, we went together onto the walls. We looked out over the bare fields and saw the Family encamped between us and the forest. My heart rose like an eagle on the wind when I saw the tents there, and caught, distant and heart-piercingly beautiful, the golden gleam of Arthur’s standard.

“He cannot devastate the country now,” Bedwyr told me. “But he can probably forage foodstuffs enough to support himself. Yet he dare not send parties out too widely, for fear that we should make a foray. It is a matter of time now, and he has the most to lose by waiting.”

I looked at Bedwyr as he said this, standing there in the early November sunlight. Something in his face had grown hard, and there were new lines of bitterness about his eyes and at the corners of his mouth.
He is destroying himself
, I thought. I remembered what he had said about damnation and looked away.

“It was bitter fighting,” he told me. “We have lost many men.”

“And Arthur?”

“I do not know how many he has lost.” Something in the tone made me look at him again, and I saw that the new lines were not just from this new hardness, but from suffering, self-loathing, and despair.

Arthur did send foraging parties out a few days later, and Bedwyr did lead a foray of Macsen’s cavalry out against the camp. Again, I watched from the walls.

Arthur’s camp had plenty of time to see Bedwyr coming, and long before the force from the city reached them another column of horsemen was leaving the camp at a gallop, spreading out to weave across the plain. I stood straining my eyes, listening to the comments the guards around me made in their alien accents. I felt an agony of division. It was the first time I actually saw the war with my own eyes, actually witnessed my lovers setting out to kill one another, from despair and for justice.

The lines of cavalry met, and at once became indistinguishable from one another. I wondered how anyone could tell their own side from the enemy’s in battle. Of course, it would be easier with Saxons, who tended to wear helmets and use a different style of dress; but when one blood makes war with itself, how can the beholder know where to strike? This war was like a madman in convulsions, beating himself and the bystanders without distinction, possessed solely by the violence itself. Madness, this, all madness: the divine madness that is sent on those doomed to destruction.

The line wavered back toward the camp. I thought I saw Gwalchmai, dreamed that I could pick out Arthur, Bedwyr, any of a hundred familiar forms. But the forces were small with distance, nothing but a glitter of arms and galloping of horses to and fro. Even the sounds were drowned by the wind along the plain, until they could not be heard above the comments of the guards around me. I sank to my knees, leaning my head against the wall, and wept bitterly. Then the guards came and took me back to my room.

I had to escape. I realized that as soon as I was alone again. This was my fault, my fault for being unfaithful, for putting my own happiness above the demands of the Empire. Other women might commit adultery and be guilty only of that, but I had committed treason as well, and I had known it. Perhaps others were also guilty, but I knew my own fault, knew it as I would know a rotting sore, which eats upon the whole flesh and consumes it away. I must die of this: only so could my life end free of that spreading corruption. Somehow I must escape, return to Arthur, and accept my sentence—which, after this rebellion, would have to be death.

In that case, it was no use sitting and weeping; I had done more than enough of that already. I must make plans.

I went to the silver mirror Macsen had provided and looked at my face. I had lost weight over the past months, and I looked pale, hollow-cheeked and sunken-eyed, old. Now my eyes were red as well. Abruptly, I felt ashamed at myself, for the long months of passive misery, for indecision, for weeping in front of Macsen’s men. Enough, too much of that. Could I disguise myself and give my guards the slip? I washed my face and went to see if I could find some cosmetics, or a wig.

I had to humiliate myself before the steward to get the cosmetics. He had resented his rebuff, and took advantage of my request to sneer at me for “losing my looks” and to wonder pointedly if Bedwyr no longer wanted me. My position had taught me some patience, and I made no reply to him. Eventually I managed to extract from the stores some kohl, white lead, and carmine. When I came back to the room the door was locked. While I was unlocking it I heard, briefly, a sound of hammering. Bedwyr must be back.

When I opened the door I found Bedwyr standing near it with his back to it; he started violently and whirled about when I came in. He had taken off his mail coat and tunic, and his eyes as they met mine were guilty and alarmed. Some flash of insight told me what he had been doing before I realized it consciously, before I turned my eyes to the bed and saw his sword there, wedged carefully upright, ready to fall on.

“Gwynhwyfar,” Bedwyr said, idiotically apologetic, “I did not expect…”

I went over to the bed and touched the sword. He had thrown the mattress off, wedged the weapon into the frame, and used one of the supporting leather thongs to bind it down, hammering the strip of leather back to the frame to secure it: that had been the hammering sound I had heard. I began to unfasten the piece of leather. My hands were quite steady; I felt a remote wonder that I felt so little, but that was all.

“Why did you think to do it this way?” I asked, without looking at him. “Arthur might not have believed it when Macsen told him you fell on your own sword.”

“I did not think of that.” His voice was quiet, ordinary.

I had the sword free. I picked it up, holding the hilt with both hands. Though it was a cavalry sword, a cutting rather than a thrusting weapon, it still had a good point on it; it would have done what Bedwyr had meant it to do. I looked from it to Bedwyr, who still stood by the door, bare-chested, silent, ashamed. Out of the calmness, the ordinary words we used, I had suddenly a vision of him lying across the bed with the sword through him, twisting on it; I could almost smell the blood on the thick scarlet carpet. My hands did begin to shake. “Why?” I asked.

Bedwyr began to turn away; saw the door; carefully closed it again and locked it. He came over to the bed and began to pick up the mattress. I set the sword down on the floor and helped him. When it was back in place he picked his tunic up off the floor and pulled it on—he was shivering a little, for the fire had burned low and the room was cold. Then he sat down on the bed and picked up the sword. He held it point upward, looking at it. “If I had two hands,” he said in an undertone, “I could have held it firmly, and would already be dead.” He looked about, and I picked the baldric off the floor and handed it to him. He sheathed the sword.

“Why?” I asked again. “Why now?”

He looked at me as though behind me he saw the gulf of death, as though that darkness were reflected and founded within him. “I have killed Gwalchmai,” he whispered, and turned his head away.

For a moment the words meant nothing. I looked at him. Tentatively, I touched his shoulder. Then the meaning of what he had said washed over me. I remembered Gwyn and Gwalchmai bending together over the back of the roan mare, smiling; remembered Gwyn’s astonished face, his blood on the road from Caer Ceri. And now? I leaned against Bedwyr, trembling. He put his arms around me.

“He…I sought him out,” he said, talking quickly now in a stammering, broken voice. “I thought that he would kill me, and that would end it. I know I am no match for him on horseback. But when I rode up to him…he paid no attention. At first he paid no attention. Then I engaged him, but he held his hand. At the last minute he looked…he looked directly at me. He was in the grip of battle madness; probably he did not even recognize me. I was sure he would kill me then; he had his sword ready. I aimed a blow at his head, it would have been deflected, had he used his sword, but he would not, he did not, he only sat there, looking at me. My sword struck him and knocked him from his horse, and the horse reared and lashed out at me with its hooves. I had to turn and lead my men back, for the Family was too strong for us. Why didn’t he strike? I meant him to. Oh God, God, I have lived too long!”

“We must go back,” I said.

He seemed to grow calm at once. He put his hand to the side of my face and looked at me, silent.

“We must go back,” I repeated. “We have both lived too long. But it will do more good to put our lives in Arthur’s hand than to take them with our own. If we are killed by the law we will give Gwalchmai what he wanted.”

Still he said nothing. I pulled away from him and stood. “Listen, my heart. I decided that I would go after seeing you fighting this morning, and I will go. What is the watchword at the gates?”

“You…you cannot simply ride out through the gates.”

“You have put double watches on the walls to keep the men occupied and out of trouble at night. We cannot escape except through the gates.” I went to the cupboard, found my dark green dress and cut a wide strip off the hem with my own small knife.
I
cannot ride out. But two men on horseback who know the watchword could. I know you have been sending men out to raise the army; you have sent messengers to every corner of the kingdom. If we give the watchword at the gates and leave at night there should be no questions asked.”

“No one would question two men, but a man and a woman would be questioned.”

“Look,” I said. I went back to the mirror and twined the strip of cloth over my head, under my chin and around my neck. It made my face look even thinner, and my hair would not stay under it neatly—but I could braid that and fasten it so that it would not be noticeable. “I will wear this,” I told Bedwyr, “and a cloak with the hood up. And I will paint my face so that, in the shadow, I will seem to have a beard. It would not do for daylight, I know, but at night it should pass.” In the mirror, I saw that he was looking at me dubiously. “You have an armored jerkin as well as your mail shirt, haven’t you?” I asked his reflection. “Well, I will wear that, and boots, and leggings. And I can ride well enough not to give myself away. Ach, I know it is a wild plan, but, if it comes to the worst they will think we are deserters and kill us if we resist arrest at the gates. They would not expect a woman and so would not see one.”

“If they killed us for deserters they would be right. I would be one,” said Bedwyr slowly.

I turned from the mirror, set it down. “You would be returning to your true lord.”

“I have sworn an oath to Macsen as well.”

I stared at him, and he explained, “You know he has appointed me cavalry commander; do you think I could escape swearing him an oath after such an appointment? I will not break that oath as well.”

“If you return to Arthur you will cancel out the first treachery.”

“No. Nothing can cancel that out. I have killed my friends.”

“And therefore you should return and suffer justice for them.”

He shook his head. “Gwynhwyfar, I was born in this land, I was once sworn to serve its king—Macsen’s brother. I was released from that oath to serve Arthur. But I have betrayed Arthur and perjured myself. Macsen may take reprisals against my family if I betray him also; and even if he did not, I will not twice perjure myself.”

“Yet you were willing to commit another mortal sin and die on your own sword, rather than continue to fight the Family.”

“That is different.” He looked at the sword he was still holding, put it down and clasped the stump of one hand with the other. “I will not twice forswear myself. I would prefer to have died before being once a traitor, but I would rather be once a traitor than twice.”

“Oh, very fine! You would rather serve the devil, once fallen, than return to God!”

“Macsen is not the devil.”

I sat down, angrily untied the piece of cloth. I began to put my hair up again, plaiting it.

“But can you not see that it is worse to be a traitor twice than once?” asked Bedwyr, greatly distressed.

“All I see is that we have done evil to our lord, and more evil has come of it. We ought to go back and suffer the penalty for our crime, not skulk about like dogs that expect a whipping and wish to avoid it.”

“Gwynhwyfar, it is not your homeland, and you have not sworn an oath!”

“And I wish you had not, either. And though you have I do not see why you should weigh your oath to Macsen heavier than your oath to Arthur!”

“Because I have already broken my oath to Arthur.”

“Ach, damn your philosophy! Oaths are meaningless; it is the heart that swears, that binds itself to what a man is and what he stands for. You never meant in your heart to serve Macsen.”