The Hallowed Isle Book Four (10 page)

Then they were passing beneath the gate, and the entire population of the fortress surged around him, obliterating thought in an ecstasy of welcome.

It was late that night before Artor and his queen were alone. He found himself grateful that the day had left him physically exhausted. Without the distracting demands of the body, it would be easier to remember the things he had to say.

Guendivar sat in her sleeping shift on the chest at the foot of their bed, combing out her hair. Long habit had taught him not to think of her with desire, but there were times when her beauty broke through his defenses.

She is a woman
, he thought, his gaze lingering on the firm curves of breast and thigh,
no longer the green girl I took from her father's hall A woman
, the thought went on,
who deserves better than I have been able to give. . . .

He paused in his pacing and turned. “My lady, we need to talk—”

She picked up the comb again, features still half-veiled by the golden fall of her hair, but he sensed her attention. Her movement made the lamp flame flicker, sending a flurry of shadows across the woven hangings on the wall.

He cleared his throat. “I told you once that I had a son, but not by whom. I begot him on my sister, when I lay with her, all unknowing, at the rites of Lughnasa.”

There was a charged silence, then the comb began to move once more.

“If you did not know, there was no sin—” Guendivar said slowly, then paused, thinking. “It is that boy Medraut, isn't it? The youngest son of Morgause who came to you last winter.”

Artor nodded. “I hoped to keep his birth hidden, but the word has gotten around. It may be that he himself told someone the secret. Medraut can be. . . . strange.”

“Do you wish to make him your heir?” she asked, frowning.

“Were he as good a man as Gualchmai, still the priests would never stand for it. Medraut cannot inherit, but men are saying . . . that his existence proves my fertility. Some of the chieftains came to me, suggesting that I should take another queen.”

“Do you wish to divorce me?” Guendivar set down the comb and faced him, her eyes huge in a face drained of color.

“Guendivar—” Despite his will he could hear his voice shaking. “You know better than anyone that the fault lies in me. But it has come to me that by holding you to a barren bed I have wronged you. I thought things might have
changed—in the North, I tried to take a girl, but I could do nothing. Morgause has repented, but she cannot alter the past. If you wish it, I will release you from the marriage, free you to find a man who can be a husband to you in fact as well as name.”

She turned away and began once more, very slowly, to pull the ivory comb through her hair. “And if I do, and my new husband gets me with child, and men begin to say that the king has lost his manhood?”

“Be damned to them, so long as you are happy!” What was she thinking? He wished he could see her eyes!

“Then be damned to those who say that I am sterile. I wish no other husband than you.”

Artor had not known he was holding his breath until it rushed out of him in a long sigh. Guendivar set down the comb and began to braid the golden silk of her hair. Her gaze was on the long strands, but he could see the smooth curve of cheek and brow, and her beauty smote him like a sword. The leather straps that supported the mattress creaked as he sat down.

“And I . . . no other queen. . . .” He forced the words past a thickened throat.

Guendivar tied off her braid, blew out the lamp on her side of the bed, and climbed in.

“You have guarded my honor,” he said then. “Now I ask you to guard Britannia. Except for Cataur, I have spoken with all of the princes. I will go to Dumnonia to gather ships, and my army will make the journey to Gallia. When I cross the sea, I want you to rule. I think my treaties will hold, but if they do not, I will leave you Gualchmai to lead the warriors, and Cai to handle the administration. Someone must make our proud princes work together. You have power over men, my queen. The authority will be yours.”

Guendivar raised herself on one elbow. The light of the remaining lamp seemed to dance in her eyes. “You have given me those two Saxon cubs to raise already, and now you will give me a kingdom to rule?”

“I know of none other to whom I would entrust it,” he said
slowly, shrugging off his chamber robe and tossing it to the foot of the bed.

“Then I will be the mother of many,” she said softly, “and watch over the land until you return. But while you are still here, come to bed.” She paused, and for a moment he thought she would say something more, but her gaze slid away from his, and she lay back down.

At the beginning of summer the Isca flowed calmly past the old capital of the Dumnonii. In the riverside meadow where the feasting tables had been arranged, a fresh wind was blowing up off the water, and though Artor could not see it, he thought he could smell the sea. He leaned back in the carved chair that once had graced the home of a Roman magistrate and took a deep breath, seeking the current of fresh air above the heavy scents of roasting meat and ale.

This campaign had been too long in the planning, but this summer, surely, he would see Gallia. On the plain above Portus Adurni his army was gathering even now. He had made all secure behind him. Only Dumnonia remained to settle, and the king was beginning to think that Cataur's country would be more trouble than the rest of Britannia combined.

“Do not be telling me that this campaign has nothing to do with you!” exclaimed Betiver, who had come back from Gallia to help with the final preparations. “In the North they provided men and horses, as I have heard, and they have far less reason to fear the Frankish power. I have been in Armorica, my friends, and I know well that half the country is ruled by princes from Dumnonia and Kernow. It is your own lands and kin we will be fighting for! The king expects you be to generous with ships and men.”

Artor eyed Cataur, who sat at the other end of the long table, with a grim smile. The northerners might well think it worth the price to be out from under the king's eye for awhile, whereas the Dumnonians were unwilling to give up the independence they enjoyed across the sea. But that freedom from royal control was a luxury that they could no longer afford.

Cataur was shaking his head, complaining about bad harvests and hard times.

“The seasons have been no worse here than elsewhere,” Artor put in suddenly, “and you never suffered from the Saxons. Even here in Isca you have found folk from Demetia to repopulate the town. You have the ships, and men who sail to Armorica every moon to steer them. And you shall have them back again once they have made a few voyages for me.”

“Very well, that is fair enough.” Abruptly Cataur capitulated, grinning through teeth gone bad with age. He had never really recovered from the wound he took in the last Saxon revolt, and his sons led his armies now.

“I will not ask you for more than a company of men,” the king went on, “and your son Constantine to lead them. Together, we will raise more troops among your cousins in Armorica.”

Cataur scowled at that, but Constantine was smiling. Not quite old enough to fight at Mons Badonicus, he had grown up on tales of the heroes of the Saxon wars. Artor suspected he regretted never having had a chance to win his own glory. Long ago Cataur had been a contender for the kingship, and Constantine, who came of the same blood as Uthir, was a potential heir. Let him come and show what he was made of in this war.

“And from the Church,” Artor went on, “I will ask only a tithe of grain—”

The abbot of Saint Germanus, who was also bishop for Dumnonia, sat up suddenly.

“It is for men to tithe to the Church, not the Church to men!”

Cups and platters jumped as Artor's fist struck the table, impatience getting the better of him at last, and everyone sat up and paid attention.

“Do you wish your brethren in Gallia to pay in blood instead? The Frankish king may call himself a Christian, but his warriors have little respect for churchmen. The murdered monks win a martyr's crown, but that does little good to the souls for whom they cared!”

In the silence that followed he sensed movement under the
table. He had drawn back his foot to kick, thinking it a dog, when he heard a giggle. Frowning, he pushed back his chair, reached down, and hauled up by the neck of his tunic the small, dark-haired boy who had been hiding there.

“And whose pup are you?” Artor tried to gentle his tone as he set the boy on his knee.

The color that had left the child's face flooded back again. “Marc'h . . . son of Constantine. . . .”

The king shook his head, smiling. “I think you are Cunomorus, a great hunting dog who is waiting to steal the bones! Here's one for you, with the meat still on—” He took a pork rib from his platter, put it in the boy's grubby hand, and set him down. “Run off now and gnaw it!”

Flushing again at the men's laughter, the child scampered away.

“My lord, I am sorry—” Constantine's face was nearly as red as his son's.

“He's a fine lad, and does you credit,” answered Artor, with a momentary twinge of regret because he had not known his own son's childhood. “Enjoy him while you can.” Perhaps, when his army was assembling at Portus Adurni, he would have the time to visit Medraut in Venta and say farewell.

He looked down the table, his expression sobering, and the Dumnonians sighed and prepared to take up the argument once more. If they fought in battle as hard as they were fighting in council, Artor thought ruefully, this campaign was certain to go well.

Medraut walked with his father along the bank of the Icene, where some forgotten Roman had planted apple trees. Long untended, they had grown tall and twisted; the ground between them littered with branches brought down by storms. But the trees had survived, and on their branches the green apples were beginning to swell.

I am like those apples
, thought Medraut.
Wild and untended, still I grow, and no power can keep me from fulfilling my destiny.

Just over the hill, three thousand men were camped in tents of hide; the meadows behind them were full of horses, but
here in the old orchard they might have been in a land deserted since the last legion sailed over the sea. To Medraut, Britannia still held a world of wonders. Why did the king want to go away?

Artor was gazing across the marshes, his eyes clouded by memory.

“I fought a battle here, when I was a little younger than you . . .” said the king. “The man I loved best in the world was killed, and I took Oesc, who became my friend, as a hostage.”

“And now I am hostage to Ceretic's son—” observed Medraut. “How history repeats itself!”

Artor gave him a quick look, and Medraut realized he had not entirely kept the bitterness out of his tone. Since they had last met he had gotten taller, and he no longer had to look up to meet his father's eyes.

“They are not treating you well?” There was an edge to the king's reply that made Medraut smile.

For a moment he considered telling Artor that Cynric had been harsh to him just to see what his father would do. But whether or not Artor believed him, the consequences would not serve his purpose. He shook his head, scooped up a little green apple that had fallen untimely, and began to toss it from hand to hand.

“Oh they have been kind enough. Indeed, they remind me of my own tribesmen in the North. No doubt I fit better here than I would among the cultured magnates of Demetia. That, if anything, is my complaint. I left my mother's dun because I wanted to learn about my father's world.”

“Would you rather I sent you to Londinium?” Artor asked, frowning. “I suppose I could arrange for you to be tutored there. Or perhaps one of the monasteries . . .”

“Father!”
Medraut did not try to keep the mockery from his laugh. “You cannot imagine that the good monks would welcome
me
! Nor do I wish a tutor! If you want me to learn the ways of the Romans, take me with you to Gallia! You have just told me—at my age, you were fighting battles. Do you want the Saxons to be your son's instructors in the arts of war?”

He watched as anger flushed and faded in the king's face, or was it shame?
He grows uncomfortable when I remind him
, Medraut noted,
but he is too honest to deny it.
It had occurred to him, some months into his exile, that Artor could easily deny their relationship and brand him a deluded child. He realized now that it would be against the king's nature to do that—it was a useful thing to know.

“I wish they did not teach their own!” came the muttered reply. “But you must learn from them what you can. You are getting your growth, but if you were with me there would still be danger. In Gallia the priests have great influence. I will have a hard enough time getting them to accept
me. . . .
”

And your incestuous bastard would be a burden you do not want to bear!
It would have been different if his father had loved him. But why should he? Medraut knew well that his begetting had been an accident, and his birth a revenge. He should count himself lucky that the king felt any responsibility towards him at all.

It did not occur to him to wonder why he should want Artor's love. There was only the pain of realization, and an anger he did not even try to understand.

“So you will not take me with you?”

“I cannot—” Artor spread his hands, then let them fall to his side. He turned and began to walk once more. “I am leaving the government of Britannia in the hands of my queen. If there is trouble here, you must go to Guendivar.”

Medraut nodded, then, realizing his father could not see him, mumbled something the king could take as agreement. His eyes were stinging, and he told himself it was the wind. But as anguish welled up within him, he threw the apple in his hand with all his strength. It arched up and out, then fell into the river with a splash. Together he and Artor watched as the current caught and carried it towards the sea.