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‘You are awake?’ She bent over him, touched
his cheek. Behind the smile, her face was taut and drawn, dark circles
bruised beneath her eyes. Her hair, unbound and
hanging
loose, swung forward, its
fragrance of summer-scented flowers
sweeping away the sickly smell of
fever from his nostrils. She lifted his hand into hers, seated herself on the
cot.

‘I’m not sure,’ he answered, drowsily,
slightly confused. ‘Am I?’
His hair was
damp from his own sweat, she smoothed it back
from his forehead. Her fingers were cool on his skin. He
squeezed
the hand holding his. ‘For a dream, you seem solidenough.’ He laughed weakly. ‘But
you must be a dream, why
else would the
Lady Gwenhwyfar be sitting on my bed? She is at
Caer Luel.’
She looked tired and strained, made a dismissive
gesture with
her hand. ‘The Lady Gwenhwyfar is where she ought to be,
beside her husband, who has courted death these past weeks.’

‘
Ah.’
Arthur closed his eyes. Gods, but his arm ached! ‘So my
wife comes out
of duty. I am a fool to have expected anything else.’
His eyes were closed. Gwenhwyfar leant forward, placed her
lips
on his, her kiss lingering an instant. As if embarrassed, she
made to move hastily back, but Arthur twined his
uninjured
arm around her waist, keeping her to him.

‘
Did you
come from duty then? Or love?’ He opened his eyes,
holding her gaze.
Bitterly, he added, ‘Or was it to witness my
death,
to know the exact moment of receiving your manu
mission from me?’ She
made no attempt to answer. She was shaking, though,
and her face had the paleness of a winter’s moon. She had let go
his hand, was toying with the ruby ring that he
had given her for
their marriage.
There were tears on her cheeks when she looked
up, looked back at him. ‘Day and night I have fought to keep
you
from death, Arthur.’

‘How long have you been here?’ The heavy
sarcasm in his voice had altered, changing to quiet apology.

‘
Enniaun
himself rode hard to fetch me. We nigh on killed
the horses on the ride
back.’ She added, staring at her hands, ‘lt was feared you would not live.’ With
a slight sigh she flexed her aching neck and shoulder
muscles. ‘Your medics and officers were all frightened, preferred
to
place the responsibility of whether you lived or died in my lap. I have been
beside you for almost two weeks. I told them
that
you are too stubborn to die. When they said it may be
God’s wish, I told them that you would never
allow His wish to
override your own narrow-minded views.’
Arthur managed a feeble grin. ‘I think there was
some sort of
a compliment hidden in there somewhere.’
A smile creased Gwenhwyfar’s face. ‘There
was.’ The smile
broadened, ‘Except, of course, without me here you would
have
had
to fight alone and would have lost the battle.’

‘My medical staff are capable men.’

‘They have many wounded also to take care of.’

‘
I’m glad
you came.’ Arthur sucked his bottom lip, his
lowered eyes staring at the blanket covering his naked body. He glanced
up and away to a vacant point along the tent’s ceiling. ‘I
do not
deserve you, do I?’

‘No,’ Gwenhwyfar said. No, you don’t.’

July 462

§ XXXIX

Winifred was still
smouldering with fury at not being appointed
Abbess.
It was unreasonable to suppose that Arthur had been responsible for blocking
her being awarded the position – but
nothing
that man did would surprise her. Once a bastard,
always a bastard.

Graciously, politely, she served wine to the
man, a Saxon,
seated beside her. As always
she showed welcome to her guests,
especially
to those men who were of use in her political games.
Only a rather
tight, straight mouth betrayed her anger.

Had she become Abbess, Winifred would have
achieved a respected position of authority, and her financial assets would have
increased dramatically, not that she was lacking in that
direction. But a woman alone – a handsome woman and
a
wealthy one – attracted the attention of men. Young, old, landowners,
ambition-holders, sharing a common factor of an eagerness to get their hands on
her wealth – and her. As an
abbess, although
still entitled to marry she would have
legitimate reason to be protected
from the more outrageous advances and propositions. She did not want another
husband. Were she to commit herself to another man then Arthur would be lost to
her, and she would have to admit his divorce.

She missed a man in her
bed – but it was Arthur she wanted,
no other. Arthur,
because he was the father of her son, and because when he set her aside he had
torn her pride into ruins.
And she loved
him still. For all the hurt and pain he had caused
her, she loved him.
She was not going to get him back, she suspected, but she still had to try,
still had to hope that one day
... ah, but
if that were not possible she must make him
acknowledge their son. Cerdic as his heir would go a long way to
mending that shattered pride. And of course, as
mother to a
king, Winifred would again
have an elevated position of
authority, like the one she had enjoyed as
daughter to
Vortigern. A discarded wife of
the Pendragon did not create the same air of importance outside her own little
domain where she
ruled, although she generated enough interest for the
menfolk. Bees around the honeypot. Leofric, seated beside her, was one of them.

Leofric was more than a trader – a merchant
adventurer, he styled himself. The British would call him a pirate. With his
family connections to one of the highest ranking royal Saxon
houses he was wealthy in his own right, he held a
hidage of land
that would put even
the Pendragon to shame and owned a fleet of
longships, all of which plied ambitious trade – some legitimate. He
was
sitting sprawled on the short grass beneath the shade of a
wide-spread oak tree, drinking Winifred’s best
wine and trying,
again, to tempt her
with marriage. It was his fourth visit, his third
proposal. Winifred was
flattered, but refused him.

‘I am not seeking a husband,’ she stated,
slightly amused at
his persistence. A
handsome man of thirty or so years, he would
make a good husband, but
not for Winifred, she did not want another husband. She wanted Arthur, father
of her son.

‘
Your son
needs a father.’ Leofric had already realised Cerdic
might be the key to success but it was the wrong
thing to say, for
although Winifred laughed, there was ice in her reply.

‘Cerdic has a father.’ She offered more wine,
he accepted.

‘
But he
thinks nothing of the boy, nor, as I hear it, of his
other sons.’
He sipped his wine. How much, how little, should
he tell?
He wanted Winifred as wife,
could not afford to anger her.
‘They
say,’ he began, tentative, ‘that the Pendragon was
wounded, courted death.’ He noted how Winifred’s
eyes
widened slightly, saw the
tremble to her hand – this was news to
her
then! ‘There are many,’ he added, ‘who would welcome
such an ending to
Arthur.’
Winifred made no reply, busied
herself with arranging the
fall of her
skirt more tidily. She did not want Arthur dead.
Death was too final.
God love her, why did she not want him dead? There were reasons, Cerdic must be
acclaimed, he was yet too young to fight for his own rights; many reasons, all
convenient excuses.

The Saxon was still talking, telling of how Lot and his
witch-wife were not yet beaten, that there
would need be
another battle. Winifred closed her eyes, only half listening.
Aye, all excuses. She fought Arthur, trying to plot and scheme his downfall,
his public humiliation, but beneath the bitterness that cloyed for revenge, she
did not want him dead. She still loved him, wanted him back as her own, wanted
him too much for the finality of death.

Leofric knew little of this British Pendragon
beyond reputation and gossip. He could not see Winifred’s obsession with
wanting revenge. Have the whore-son killed and claim his title for the son,
that is what he would do – intended to do, once he
had Winifred as wife. A man who was father to a boy king could
be
a powerful and wealthy man.

‘For all that he is a king, a man who kills
his own son and murders his whores when he has finished with them does not
seem worthy of being a father.’ He said it with a
shrug, meaning
no offence, and was astounded when Winifred angrily
rounded on him, defending the Pendragon.

‘
That is
ugly rumour. I heard it that the girl fell.’ Serve the
silly bitch
right! The pity was that his other slut, the one he called wife, did not as
conveniently fall and break her neck! Leofric lifted his hands in surrender.
That was not as he understood, but why waste the breath in arguing when he had
other more important matters to pursue?

§ XL

It would soon be time for
harvest and the muttered, dis
contented grumbling
was growing. The British militiamen – those few left after the decimation
beneath the trees above the Great River – saw the war as ended. They had a
victory under
their belt, Lot was beaten and
they chafed to sing about it
around their own hearths, crow about it to
their women. From knowledge and experience, Arthur and his men knew better.

Lot
, managing to escape by the narrowest
of Fortuna’s intervention, must have realised how close he had come to destroying
Arthur. Had it not been for the eager ferocity of Cei
and Enniaun’s joint attack from the rear, then it would have
been
Arthur fleeing through those woods, dodging death or slavery; it would have
been Arthur stripped of clothing and weapons and cast without a second glance
onto the mounded pyres.

With someone as hungry
for power as Morgause, all could not
be
settled within the fighting of a single battle. Her husband
had lost the advantage and was now on the defensive, he
had to
prove that he was worthy to be her king. And
the Northmen knew they had come so close to annihilating the Pendragon’s
Cymry! There was many a warrior of Lot’s out there who nursed
a grievance of
humiliation and shame or bitter regret. Emotions
that did not lend
themselves to a war-hosting going peaceably home to their womenfolk. That Lot and his witch-wife would rally to fight another day was more than probable; the only
uncertainty, when.

For Arthur, movement was an effort. They had
carried him, when the fever had gone, on a litter to the derelict old Roman
fortress that had once been Trimontium, made him a bed in the only serviceable
stone-built store-room and got on with urgent
rebuilding.
The defence walls were to be restored to full height, the outer ditch redug
deeper, into a sharper V; grain and supply
stores were soon erected and
filled with supplies brought up
from the
South, and timber-framed huts rapidly replaced
leather tents. The
Pendragon’s northern stronghold took on an air of permanency.

June’s alternated days
of brilliant sunshine, drizzling rain and
drifting
mist shuffled into a slightly warmer July, and the
grumblings became more than growled talk across the night fires.

The building work was finished and they began
the waiting
game. Bored, restless, the
British chieftains came to Arthur. He
dragged himself from his bed to
meet them, cajoled, argued, flattered and fawned. Tried anger and derision, but
in the end, let them go. The Artoriani would fight without them. At least
Enniaun and his men of Gwynedd stayed, but they were not many. Not against the
forces Lot could muster.

Summer gave way to the
tawny browns and gleaming golds of
a sparkling autumn and
the first frosts whitened the withering
bracken
and heather. Arthur’s arm was almost healed and a
cold wind, blustering
in from the north-east, chivvied the last
remaining
leaves from the trees, stripping branches and
huddling men into the
warmth of their cloaks.