Pendragon 02 Pendragon Banner (81 page)

Thirty men, one woman
and a boy against eighty, a hundred? Eighty or so men who had eagerly
anticipated the reward of first
pickings,
who had believed the words of the witch-woman
riding
among them – that there would be plenty of value to be
found in Arthur’s camp. Men who floundered to a ragged halt as
horses
thundered down from the palisade fence ahead, necks
stretched, teeth bared, their riders screaming the war-cry of the
Pendragon.
Men who would rather have turned tail to flee, but found they had no choice but
to fight. Forgotten, their hope of finding women, riches and food. And as enemy
spears thudded
into shield or flesh, and
hooves trampled their fallen, forgot
also, Morgause, the woman who had
encouraged them here.

She found herself alone, no shield, sword or
spear to protect her. Alarmed, she drew her horse aside to a distance of
safety, the idiot animal was excited at the sounds and smells. Snorting and
prancing it refused to stand still, tried to turn and bolt.
Sawing at its mouth to keep it under control,
Morgause
watched with fascinated
horror the ferocity of this counter
attack.
Her breath quickened, eyes and mouth widened,
enjoying this gluttony of
blood-spilling, this exciting, macabre dance of kill or be killed.

They were so few,
Gwenhwyfar and her small army of Arthur’s men, but desperation and experience
leant them
strength – and these
Northern whelps were frightened, un
willing
to fight. Only a few of her men were down after the first
rush, fallen among the many of the enemy. Her sword
blade was
bloodied, her horse lathered and panting
from the burst of exertion, she hauled the stallion around, ready to kill
again,
chanced a quick glance towards where
Ider rode beside her son,
felt the
swell of pride as the boy cast his spear, begin, almost in the same movement,
to draw his sword. But her smile faltered,
draining to a silent scream
as she saw Llacheu pitch from his
horse,
the bay gushing blood as its body buckled, a spear thrust
deep into its
chest. Ider was leaping from his own horse, was
running to help the boy, who was falling, tumbling arms
flailing, as the dying horse slithered a few yards
on its knees, its
rear hooves scrabbling for a foothold. Llacheu
sprawled, unprotected, undefended, on the ground tried to move, twist away as
an axe, double-bladed and red-stained, came scything
downward. He saw only the Northman’s muddied boots
standing over
him, heard Ider’s sobbing shout, and the man’s grunt of effort with the
death-song of the blade ... felt, extraordinarily, very little. Kill or be
killed. That was always how it had been.

A raw, naked, mother’s scream, high and long
and never-ending, cut through the air, echoed by another exultant, high pitched
laugh, a cackling of triumph.

She was no fighting
woman, Morgause, she persuaded others
to do the killing for her. Her talents lay with
malevolent
plotting and scheming, the deliberate
twisting of a mind to do her will, her satisfaction swelling with the gaining
of each achievement. ‘I will
see
your sons
dead, Pendragon!’
Morgause
threw back her head and laughed. An idle boast, hurled as an anger-bound curse
that she had held small hope of fulfilling.
Her
laugh shrilled across the noise of fighting, her eyes raised to the grey skies
as she gloried in her unexpected success, failed to
see the woman with unbound, copper-coloured hair
riding with
grief-snarled fury from the mêlée of fighting.

Morgause’s delight
faltered as she saw the sword, held firm in
a
grasp between both hands, saw that other woman’s anger-distorted, tear-streamed
face; even saw the honed perfection of that gleaming blade as it swung into its
arc of death. Thought, incongruously, before it spat through her neck, that Gwenhwyfar
was more beautiful than she had realised.

Gwenhwyfar’s horse, guided by leg-aids alone,
as were all
Arthur’s war horses during
battle, thundered past, ears
flattened
back, breath hot. Morgause’s animal, the cruel hold
on its mouth
suddenly gone, reared and bolted as the spatter of
blood cascaded down its shoulders. And a woman’s head
bounced and
rolled, leaving a crazy, bloodied trail across the spring-green hill grass.

On the marshes, the birds returned. The waders
and the geese,
settling to the salt-tanged,
wind whispering grass, waiting
patient for the tide to turn and expose
the mud flats and sand bars. With them, the ravens came, circling and
fluttering, to begin their gruesome feeding.

A curlew
stalked ponderously from the tall reed-grass, then took sudden flight out over
the flooding, returning water. Its wild cry, broken voiced, and so unbearably
sad.

§ JUNE

Some evenings, the sunsets were beautiful.
The western skies
blazed with a glory of red
and gold that burst in brilliance
against
the clear, purple blueness of the fading day.
Gwenhwyfar stood, with
Arthur behind her, watching the yellow-gold turn to a vivid, burning red of
blazing splendour. Caer Cadan was home, was peace. Arthur threaded his arms about
her waist, stood companionably, sharing this celebration
of nature with her, his cheek resting on her soft
hair. The
summer air smelt of flowers and ripening corn, sun-warmed
earth, and a lazy welcome of the cool night that
was to come at
the end of this day’s heat.

A screech of swifts tumbled by, one bird
skimming almost
above Arthur’s head as it
darted and twisted. He heard the
swish of its passing wings, felt the
faint waft of moved air. Laughed at its wondrous performance.

‘It’s strange,’ Gwenhwyfar said. ‘I don’t
mind so much, not now.’
For Arthur, there
was a moment of disorientated confusion as
he tried to understand to
what she was referring. He gave up,
asked
with a bewildered shake of his head, a slight frown, ‘What
don’t you
mind?’
In her turn, Gwenhwyfar did not
answer immediately,
instead, she nestled herself closer into him,
pulling his arms tighter, protectively around the swelling of the child growing
within her. ‘Llacheu, Gwydre and Amr. Almost,’ she took a breath, scalding back
the tears, ‘almost, I feel relieved. For the thing that had to happen has been
done. For them, I have no more need to fear.’ Except for you, she thought,
except
I still fear
for
you,
the one I love, even more
than my
dead
sons and this coming
child.
She twisted her head around,
smiled up at him, a man
strong, confident.
Not easy, to think that Arthur would one
day also be gone. One day. The
future, tomorrow.

The sun, a huge red ball, sank behind a bank
of dark night clouds, the golden rays shooting from behind like spear shafts
marking the way to eternity. Who knew what the rising of tomorrow would bring?
Laughter, pain, sorrow or happiness?
Life
and death. The way of the world as it was, as it is, as it will
be.

Gwenhwyfar cupped Arthur’s
face in her hand and kissed
him, then laughed, and
pulled away. It was time for gathering in the King’s Hall, the smell of cooking
meat was becoming
richer, reaching her
hungry stomach. Taking his arm, thread
ing hers through his, she walked
with him up the slight rise towards the open Hall doors, glanced as they
passed, at the
banner fluttering
occasionally as the wind caught at the cloth.
It was not so white as it had once been, when first she had taken it
from the loom. The Pendragon’s banner was becoming ragged at the edges, and a
dried, brown stain of blood spilt between the
raised claws of the
Dragon. Yet, for all its spoiling, it was still something good and proud and
beautiful.

Gwenhwyfar smiled up at Arthur, who, with his
other hand, took hers and squeezed her fingers as they walked towards the
evening noise and bustle of the Caer’s busy Hall. Life too, became grimed at
the edges and stained, and was sometimes torn beyond repair. In the old days,
before the coming of the
Christ God, people
believed that the pattern of things was
created by three goddesses,
whose task it was to weave the thread of fate on the loom of life.

Gwenhwyfar hoped this
child she carried would be born a
girl. She could not
watch another son grow towards his death. And Arthur too, though he said
nothing, had prayed silently to
whatever God
was listening, that he should have next, a
daughter. For there were already two other sons who would one
day be waiting with sword and shield to fight for
what could be
theirs. At least some of the fears were gone: Morgause and
her
boasted curse. Arthur had feared her,
but what was she now? A
mouldering
corpse, left for the ravens and the wind and the
rain. For Arthur, there
was now only Morgaine and Winifred, and Gwenhwyfar. One, with her infant son
Medraut, he had almost loved; one, with the boy Cerdic, he had never loved,
and the other? He squeezed Gwenhwyfar’s hand.
Gwenhwyfar.
Whatever great fears and hopes lay ahead for tomorrow and
tomorrow, Gwenhwyfar, he would always love. Beyond that, only the Goddesses,
the Three would know what patterns were to be woven upon the great loom of life
for child, mother, and king.

Author’s Note

Arthur Pendragon, to those people who study
him, is a very personal and passionately viewed character. We all have our
own ideas, insist ours is the correct one, and
argue like mad with
anyone who
disagrees! I have tried, to the best of my ability, to
be as accurate as possible over background
details, but the why,
when, how and where of Arthur himself is
individual. I am not
expecting anyone
necessarily to agree with my telling, but
then, this is only an imaginative story. A new retelling of an
old,
familiar tale.

Arthur, the chivalric king of the Medieval
story, is not the same Arthur who appears in some of the tales that we have of
him. In these, we hear of his anger at a woman who was trying to seduce one of
his men, and the consequent attack on her; he is often portrayed as someone who
steals from the Church. Almost, it seems, this Arthur was condemned by the
Christian
priests, not revered as the man
who, in the stories of five
hundred
or so years later, initiates the finding of the Holy Grail
and who
carried the portrait of the Virgin on his shoulder or shield. For that
particular episode, I am satisfied that my explanation is reasonable. There are
many instances of the old, pagan beliefs becoming intertwined with the new,
embryonic Christianity. The Mother Goddess most certainly metamorphosised into
the Virgin Mary.

The people of the Middle Ages created Arthur
in their own image, dressed him in Medieval armour, set him in a turreted
castle and made him fight for the holy cause.
This was the age of
the crusades and knights in armour, and when women
were
regarded as little more than chattels
and the bearers of sons. I do
not see my Arthur or Gwenhwyfar in this
setting. Arthur is a
soldier, a strong
dedicated leader. Gwenhwyfar is no sub
servient, blushing maiden. There
is no Lancelot for her in my stories; she remains loyal to her Lord.

Hueil is fact – stories
tell of a feud with Arthur. Those of Ider
relate
how the young man sets out to prove himself by slaying
the three giants of Brent Knoll; in some stories he kills the
giants
but dies himself, in others, he survives. My version is a deviation, but is
based on these early tales. Arthur’s jealousy
against
Ider is also part of that old telling, as are the episodes of
the bear in Gwenhwyfar’s tent and Arthur
questioning her
about whom she would marry after his death.

Amlawdd was probably a factual character, but
through the passing of time we have lost his real identity. I have used his
name and existence to fit with my story but admit
my usage may
not be accurate. So very little of this long-past, dark age
of our
history is known to us as fact. A
novelist’s dream, for we have a
free rein of imaginative invention!
Legend has it that the King’s and Queen’s Crags
near
Hadrian’s Wall are so called because Arthur and Gwenhwyfar
quarrelled there – even the throwing of the comb is part of that
story. Apparently, you can see the mark on a rock
where it fell!
There are so many hills and stones named after Arthur,
and I have used those few that seemed appropriate, those that tied in with my
ideas.