Under Camelot's Banner (5 page)

“Another war,” amended Colan bitterly.

Lynet could not bring herself to answer that. She looked out to the hall below where the folk — those who had not collapsed under the weight of too much beer — laid out their blankets and pallets. Nearly all were women and girls. There were too few men, even when you counted the tinners who stretched out by the fires among the dogs and the little boys bedding down beside their mothers. More wives than their husbands had been up to their knees in the stream this morning, heaving out the great baskets of earth. If things went on much longer, it was they who would be doing the planting, and either the stream or the fields would not have enough hands.

Another war, and the steward of Cambryn gone again.

Gone still.

“You should have made them wait for father, Colan,” she whispered.

“How could I, Lynet?” Colan asked her softly. “Father will not live forever. Today or tomorrow, it is we who will rule. Our neighbors and our people must come to trust us.”

Trust you, you mean. I am beyond such trust.

“We rule nothing,” she murmured, taking refuge in dutiful piety. “We hold all in trust of the queen.”

“Aye,” said Colan sourly, setting his cup carefully down on the table. “And where is she, our good queen, Guinevere?”

Lynet understood it. If in the minds of Cambryn and its neighbors Queen Iseult had been too much present, Queen Guinevere who had inherited Cambryn from her father was too long absent. “Queen Guinevere is where she has ever been, my brother. She is at Camelot.”

“And here we wait on her pleasure, in all things. I tell you, Lynet, she should have come back to us before this.” He spoke not to her, but to the hall. “These yearly poundings from the raiders, the outrage against King Mark … we are battered enough we may soon break. None of the wounds made by her marriage have healed clean in this place.”

Lynet nodded. In the early days of Arthur's rise, before the battle of Badon, few had believed his claim that he was the son of the great Uther Pendragon. One who did though was, King Leodegan of Cambryn. As part of his support to the young warrior, he gave Arthur his only living child in marriage. His decision nearly split Cambryn in two, and this new feud between Kynhoem and Treanhal was but one outgrowth of that old choice. But Lynet was not so foolish as to know it was most surely urged on by a matter much closer to hand. The fact that Queen Iseult had deceived her lord with a man from Camelot had torn open poorly healed breaks in Cambryn, causing the gall to flow afresh.

None of this was aided by the fact that Iseult's betrayal and what came afterwards had clearly altered King Mark's reason. For nearly two years he had locked himself into Tintagel like a monk in his cell, riding out hardly ever, speaking even less. Queen Iseult's body had been sent back to her father, and since then the raids of the coast had begun again, and worsened for now they were interlevened with those the Saxons made. This was why Father had gone to Tintagel along with the other lords of the Dumonii. They went to plead with Mark to take a new wife, to get an heir, to rally himself and his men to the protection of his land. They were desperate. They knew, all of them, that if this went on, Mark would fall, and if Mark fell, the Dumonii would dissolve into squabbling cantrevs and chiefdoms, and the Eirans and the Saxons would pick them off at their leisure. Even Arthur might not be able to stop that work once started.

If Arthur moved at all. Lynet's jaw tightened. There was doubt. Even she had heard it. After all, what recompense did Arthur give Mark for the damage Sir Tristan had wrought? None. Which some said was only to be expected, as Arthur's own mother had also cuckolded her husband at Tintagel. Some now called it “the place of horns,” since so many men had been deceived there. Lynet bore her guilt and she accepted the price. But she could not help wondering if the high king did the same.

“We are of the queen's blood, and she knows it is our father who keeps her peace and faith, and Arthur's,” said Lynet softly. “And Laurel says she is an honorable woman.” While Lynet had been fostered Queen Iseult, Laurel had been sent to Camelot to wait upon Queen Guinevere, and to tie the family that much more closely to the high king and his court.

“So Laurel says, but what did she see of the queen?” Colan's eyes narrowed, seeing only his own thoughts. “A woman ruling in a foreign country in a court of riches, surrounded by an army to keep her safe and tribute to keep her well fed. While we here cling to the coast and fight off the Saxons and the Eirans and shiver and starve in the winter and watch our wealth whittled away year by year.”

Lynet shrugged, suddenly irritated. She did not want to be reminded of troubles about which she could do nothing. She was tired. Her feet and hands ached. She wanted her bed and the oblivion of sleep. “Surely the chieftains have brought new troubles enough without bringing old ones up with them.”

“Because, Lynet, our father will be home soon. I mean to confront him at last. This accusation of murder is the final sign. We cannot wait any longer or Cambryn will crumble apart,” his words dropped to the barest whisper.

Lynet swallowed, her throat suddenly dry and tight. “What do you want from me?”

Colan reached out and grasped her hand, a gesture he seldom made. “Your support, sister,” he said. “You are the one who is closest to our father. You know his heart. If you stand beside me, I might be able to make him hear. If you do not …” he shook his head. “I do not know what will happen to us.”

Lynet swallowed again, and looked at her brother's hand holding hers. To be needed, to be wanted and reminded that she was still loved by her father, it made her weary heart want to sing. But, at the same time, he was talking about forcing a confrontation that could do nothing but bring more division to Cambryn.

She drew her hand away. “Get to your bed, brother. Let the morning take to care of itself.”

Colan stood. “Will you think on what I have said?”

“Yes,” she answered, turning away so she saw only the stones of the wall. “Yes.”

She did not turn back, but she felt him leave. Lynet bowed her head, all the weariness of the sleepless night and turbulent day washing over her. She swayed a little. She could not stay here. She could not speak of small matters with so much filling thought and heart. Meg and the others could manage very well without her. She lifted the trailing hems of her skirt, and she left the great hall as quickly as she could without running.

By the time she reached the room she shared with Laurel, Lynet was shaking yet again. She sat on their broad, low bed and wrapped her arms tightly around herself. Drafts crept beneath the shutters, wrapping around her neck and finding their way into her slippers to chill her swollen, painful feet. Angrily, she shuffled to the hearth and poked at the fire, smashing at the coals to set loose the gouts of flame. She tossed on bricks of turf and watched smoke and flame rise together, and then sat down again. Slowly, carefully, she peeled off her soft slippers and eased down her stockings.

The feet beneath belonged to a much older woman. They were scarred and knobbled with the toes twisted and splayed. Any change in the weather made them ache. At the end of a usual day they were so tender and swollen, she usually had to soak them in cold water and spirits before she could sleep. She did her best to bear it without complaint, for her broken feet were the constant reminder of her penance and her sin.

So many memories, crowding so fast, but before them all, the look on her father's face when she came weeping to him having risen at last from her sick bed, after her exile from Tintagel. She threw herself at his feet and begged him to let her enter the convent, to take the veil and spend her life in repentance.

“No,” he said, laying his great hand on her cheek. “For then all men would believe that I blame you for this thing. You were ill used by a careless man and a heedless woman, and I will not have you hidden for shame. Go to Bishop Austell for a penance if you must, but when it is done, you will take up your life here.”

It had been a hard penance. She had been charged to walk barefoot fifteen miles to the well of St. Menefreda, and her wounded feet were the result, although it could have been far worse. She still wondered almost daily at the miracle that let her live through that journey. But even more than the pain, it was the absolution from her beloved father was the hardest burden to bear. Both because she did not believe what he said, and because she must act as if she did. He meant what he said. He forgave her, he believed her innocent. He had not changed toward her, nor had Laurel.

Colan, though. Colan did not give the appearance of being one who kept his council close, but he did. He hid much behind a smile and a courtesy or jest. Lynet had always thought this understandable. After all, Colan would inherit the title of steward and rule the land in the queen's name. He was right when he said he must be trusted by the chiefs and lords of all of Dumonii.

But now Colan, wanted her to stand with him to sway their father's mind.

Behind Lynet, the door opened, sending a fresh draft curling around ankles and neck.

“Here you are,” said Laurel. She paused. “Are you well, Sister?”

“No.” Lynet leaned the poker against the wall and stared at the ash smeared iron. “No, I am not.”

“Tell me.”

Lynet turned to face her sister. Laurel stood before her waiting, cool and patient as she ever was. Of them all, it was Laurel who bore the strongest resemblance to their mother. Laurel's hair had been white-gold from birth and her pale green eyes all but shone in the dark.

“I fear …” Lynet twisted her hands. “I fear our brother is planning something. Against Queen Guinevere. Perhaps against Father.”

Laurel's eyes widened, but only a little. Anyone who did not know her well would have been hard pressed to detect any reaction at all.

Suddenly unable to stand, Lynet collapsed onto the low bed. While her hands twisted together in her lap, she told Laurel all that Colan had said to her.

“Perhaps I have grown too suspicious,” she whispered when she finished her story. “Perhaps I see conspiracy where there is none. After all, the wise say we judge each other by the measure of ourselves.”

Laurel sat down beside her. “I think you are right.”

Laurel shook her head, her fair face tightening with frustration. “I barely know. But it is in my heart that Colan knows more of this quarrel between Mesek and Peran than he has said. It may be he and Mesek are not strangers.”

“And Peran?”

“Of him I am less sure.” Laurel frowned. Her gaze was distant, looking within to reexamine every memory. “He grieves, deeply. If his son was not murdered, he believes that it was so …” She set that aside. “And he hates Mesek. I had not chance to ask what had happened between them, though. That must come with the morning.”

“But of Colan and Mesek?”

“That too must wait.”

Suddenly, Laurel's calm was too much to bear. Lynet shoved herself to her feet again, anger washing away the day's weariness. “This is pathetic.” She hobbled across the room. “I will not wait here in silence while he plots some idiocy.”

“Lynet, no.” Laurel's words stopped her as she laid her hand on the door. “You will only make matters worse.”

Lynet faced her sister. “Then I will make matters worse, but I will bring it into the light where it can be seen and dealt with.”
I have had enough of plots and shadows in my life. I will have no more.

Laurel made no immediate answer to this. Instead, she took a rushlight from the basket by the fire. She thrust it into the flame until it kindled and brought it to Lynet.

“Thank you, sister,” replied Lynet. Her hand closed around the rush stalk, brushing her sister's for the span of a breath. They met each other's eyes but said nothing, and Lynet left her there.

The corridor was both dark and frigid. Lynet could see her breath. She tucked her free hand up into her sleeve, knotting the cloth around her fingers. Where to go? She could not wander aimlessly.

When Colan's chamber proved to be empty, she turned her steps back to the old hall. The chamber still smelled heavily of the beer and meats. Beds and pallets had been grouped around the banked fires and the folk clustered around them, trying to get warm and beginning to drowse. She saw Lean Meg hastening by with a leather jack and stopped her.

“Meg, have you seen Lord Colan?”

She frowned. “I did. He was out by the ovens. Needed to clear his head from the drinking, was what he told me.”

“Thank you.” That could very well be. Colan had been matching Mesek and Peran drink for drink all night. Despite this, worry ground against suspicion, sharpening both.

Outside, the half-moon hung low over the horizon. Clouds scudded across the darkening sky, carrying the smell and sense of hard rain to come. She looked ahead to the black mounds of the ovens, dark and cold beneath the deepening night. Between them, she saw a man's form, pacing back and forth, trying to keep warm. She recognized Colan's stance, with one hand on his hip and his head thrown back, lord of all he surveyed. She had been right. He was not simply idling there. He was waiting for something, or for someone.

Lynet ducked sideways, putting the bulk of the nearest oven between her and him. She thrust her light into the icy mud, grinding it out. Colan did not check his pacing or make any motion indicating he had seen her. She dropped back into the shadows of the wall and pressed her back against the stones, a shadow in the shadows, lost in the darkness. She dragged her sleeves down over both hands now and grit her teeth to keep them from chattering.

Ridiculous. Hiding from my own brother. Why don't I go ask him what he is doing out here?

She had no answer for her own question, but neither did she move.

Boots trod the frost-hardened ground, and a second man stumped out between the ovens, his square cloak wrapped tight around his shoulders and his tunic hems flapping around his knees.