Here Lies Arthur Read online

  “Dress,” was all he said. “Bring the girls and your women. We’re leaving.”

  The storm tore eastward. It went away to throw its spears of light at Saxon men, and left us quiet upon our lakeside, my mistress and me. The moon came out, like a startled eye. She rolled dazedly through the wrecks of cloud. Stars showed. The wind grew gentle again.

  All this time, and all this way, my lady Gwenhwyfar had said nothing. I began to think she’d left her wits behind. But in the grey before dawn, when the black shapes of the stooping trees were starting to show against the sky, she started talking. The creel of her ribs heaved and she retched out words. I wasn’t in a mood to answer, but she didn’t care. She was that wrapped up in herself she could hold a whole conversation without any need for me to say a thing.

  She said, “It wasn’t my fault.”

  She said, “Why did God let it happen?”

  She said, “But I loved him so badly.”

  She said, “He needed me. I never thought anyone would need me.”

  She said, “Love made us mad.” (Like it was something to be proud of.)

  She said, “I will go to Hell.”

  She said, “I don’t care. He was my man. Not Arthur.”

  She said, “He was so young! He was still a boy!”

  She said, “Oh, what am I to do?”

  She said, “Where am I to go?”

  She said, “I cannot live in this world.”

  Myself, I thought she should maybe say “Thank you, Gwyna,” or “You did well, Gwyna,” or “God bless and protect you, sweet Gwyna, for saving my scrawny neck.” But she didn’t. Didn’t even know I was there, I reckon. Didn’t think I was grieving over Bedwyr too. Didn’t think people like me felt things as hard as a lady like her. Selfish, she was. What else had it been but selfishness that made her take Bedwyr as her lover? She must have known how it would end.

  After a while I got so tired of her talk that I went off into a kind of sleep, cold and footsore and scared as I was.

  When I woke I found Bedwyr’s cloak laid over me. The cloak was as wet as me, and as wet as the turf beneath me, but I was glad of the thought. I looked sleepy-eyed at the tree I was lying under, and saw how the moss on its trunk had been combed all one way by the wind and the rain. But the rain was gone now. The sun was coming up, a brightness behind the early-morning mist. Down on the edge of the mere we’d settled by a heron stood in the shallows. It heard me stirring and took off, flapping away on its big grey wings, neck curled like a snake, legs trailing like winter sticks. I watched it go.

  “We’ll head south, lady,” I said. “Maelwas ought to show you kindness, being your kin and all.”

  No answer. I sat up, and saw I’d been talking to nobody. Gwenhwyfar was gone, and not even a footprint in the soggy earth to show me where. All I could hear was the water drip-drip-dripping off the trees. “Not even a goodbye,” I thought.

  A hand rose from the mere, white, sequined with water-droplets. Pale fingers uncurled from their own reflections and seemed to beckon me.

  At Aquae Sulis, rainwater and rumours gurgled in the streets. All round the town and for as far about as anyone had ridden trees were down, roofs gone, houses fallen, bridges washed away.

  In Arthur’s hall, in the dim, stunned dawn, Arthur and his captains meet. He looks at their faces, ringed round him in half-light, and sees doubt in them. For the first time they aren’t sure where he’s leading them, nor whether they want to follow. Even his own half-brother. Even Cei.

  He spreads his big hands. “You saw how it was. You think I wanted to kill the boy? My own kinsman? My sister’s son? But he betrayed me. When a man steals your own wife, what are you to do?”

  The others shift uneasily, and won’t meet his eye.

  “What are you to do? Bedwyr and Gwenhwyfar. They were together. You saw them, Gwri…” He thumps the arm of the man beside him, urging him to tell the others, the ones who reached the spring too late to see more than the spilled blood and the boy’s butchered body.

  Myrddin, behind him, says, “I saw her. She was there. They were together.”

  Cei says miserably, “He was my kinsman too, Arthur. He brought death on himself, I know that. There’s not a man in the world who’d blame you for killing him, after what he did. But it was the manner of it. You threw Bedwyr’s head in the spring. Think how it looks…”

  “I was angry!” shouts Arthur, growing angry again. “He betrayed me! My own kinsman! Do you stop to think when a red rage is upon you?”

  Cei keeps talking, head down, like a man walking into a gale. “Think how it looks. As if you’re some old heathen hill-chieftain who throws the heads of his enemies in a sacred well.”

  Owain says, “Bishop Bedwin and his priests are putting it about that you promised the old gods sacrifice in return for your victories in the north. They say Bedwyr was your gift to them, and the storm was the true God’s tempest, sent to show us his displeasure.”

  Arthur curses. “Who holds this town? Me or Bedwin? And the storm had started already by the time I killed the boy.”

  “God’s tempest makes a better story,” says Cei. “That’s what God-fearing men will believe.”

  Arthur strikes him across his doleful face with the back of his right hand. “Do you mean to stand here all morning moaning and drizzling like a woman? Get after Medrawt. Find him and finish him, before I have a blood-feud on my hands.”

  Cei’s face is very pale in the smudgy shadows. One of Arthur’s rings has gashed his cheek, and beads of blood show there. Arthur breathes hard, watchful. Some of the men who stand beside Cei, men who were Arthur’s when he left them in Sulis at the summer’s start, reached for their swords when that blow was struck. Just quick movements, quickly stilled when they saw that Cei was not going to fight. But they’d have been ready to back him, if he’d chosen different.

  “I’ll not go after Medrawt,” Cei says carefully. “We don’t know which road he took. And whichever it was, the bridges are gone, the rivers have broken their banks. My men are needed here, in their homes, in Sulis.”

  Arthur’s nostrils flare. He’s not used to disobedience. What Cei says has truth in it, but is it his only reason? Can it be that he’s on Medrawt’s side now, not Arthur’s?

  Myrddin says, “What of Gwenhwyfar?”

  Arthur looks round. “What?”

  “What of Gwenhwyfar?” asks Myrddin again. “What has become of her?”

  “I don’t know,” says Arthur impatiently. “How could I know? That girl of hers spirited her away. Lucky for her, or I’d’ve had her head too.”

  “She is Maelwas’s kin.”

  “Would Maelwas blame me for punishing an unfaithful wife?”

  “Of course not,” says Myrddin. “But it must be done properly, a high-born woman like her, your ally’s kin. You cannot simply kill her. Maybe you should send her to Maelwas, and ask him to do with her as he sees fit. Show him you are merciful, and you respect his judgement. But first you must find her. Her and that girl of hers.”

  And I sat on the wet grass and watched that hand beckon to me from the shining middle of the mere. White as a stripped twig.

  I was already wet as I could be, so I went down to the shallows and waded in. My torn skirts flowered out round me. The water was clear. There was grass on the bottom, neat and green and standing up on end, like it was startled to find itself under water.

  Gwenhwyfar lay on the drowned grass. She had torn a strip off Bedwyr’s cloak and used it to knot an old sodden log around her waist, to weight her down. She was on her side, and one arm had drifted upward, lazily, so her hand broke the bright surface. Her stained shift billowed. In the ruff of hair under her arm tiny bubbles were trapped.

  Funny thing was, I didn’t feel anything. I just stood there looking at her, and I couldn’t find a feeling anywhere in me.

  I sloshed back to the shore. What now? I asked myself. If I went back to Sulis, Arthur would likely kill me. He’d say I’d helped her betray h
im. I had helped her. There was no life for me any more with Arthur’s band. So maybe I’d try for Maelwas’s country myself, I decided. My feet felt as if I’d come twenty miles through the rain and the tempest the night before. I reckoned I must be already halfway to Ynys Wydryn.

  I clambered up a hill that chuckled and shone with little streams. I looked out from the top, where the gorse grew thick. And I saw Aquae Sulis, not two miles away. Smoke was going up from the cooking fires as if nothing had happened. Closer, where the woods crowded down to the floody pasture-land, the roofs of Myrddin’s house shone in the sunlight.

  I was too tired to think. Too tired for sure to start out again for the Summer Country. So I went instead down the steep, slippery sheep-tracks to beg the mercy of my old master.

  XXXVII

  Myrddin wasn’t there. The curly-headed boy – his name was Cadwy – was alone in the place. He was looking for eggs out where the chickens scratched. When he saw me squelching towards him he knew who I was, and let me inside. Said his master was still in Aquae Sulis. I asked for dry clothes, and he found me some to wear while he washed my soiled, soaked dress. I sat by the fire in his own spare tunic and a pair of old trews, eating bread which I smeared with sooty white fat from a skillet that stood on the hearth. The boy watched me like I was a spirit sprung out of the flames. Even with my hair grown I looked boyish in those clothes. Whatever I’d learned of grace and girlishness, the night had wrung it out of me. Cadwy couldn’t tell what I was.

  Later, he showed me a bed to lie down on. And I slept there till that day was near gone.

  Myrddin was back when I woke. I heard his voice outside, talking to Cadwy, and went out to find him climbing down off his old black horse. My own pony Dewi came across the paddock to nuzzle me, and I hugged him and laid my face against his and wished there was a human being in the world who loved me as well as he did.

  Myrddin looked strange when he saw me standing there. I’d have said he felt shy, if I’d not known him better. He came towards me cautiously, watching my face.

  “You told Arthur,” I said.

  Myrddin reached out towards me, but didn’t touch. He said, “Stories were going about, that Gwenhwyfar had a lover. I had to put an end to it. It would have been bad for Arthur’s reputation.”

  “You knew she’d go to Bedwyr last night,” I said. “You sent word and told Arthur to ride home quick, and where to find them.”

  “Something had to be done,” said Myrddin. “The kings of Britain will never let Arthur lead them against the Saxons if they are laughing behind his back about his wife.” He looked old, I thought, and ill. Kept kneading at his arm, as if it had gone numb. He said, “You should have come with me last night.”

  “My mistress needed me,” I said, to make him understand I wasn’t his any more. I don’t know if he did. The mention of my mistress distracted him. “You know where Gwenhwyfar is?” he asked.

  “Dead,” I said.

  That made him curse. Not because he cared about Gwenhwyfar, of course. “I told Arthur he must spare her,” he said.

  “Wasn’t Arthur’s doing,” I said. “She drowned herself.”

  Myrddin’s eyes went past me to the hills, the steaming woods, looking for ways to make a story of it. “That might work. She tempted Bedwyr, betrayed Arthur, and then, in guilt and remorse – but that makes Arthur seem weak. And will Maelwas believe it?”

  Cadwy was leading the horse away, with Dewi following. I went after Myrddin into the house.

  By Myrddin’s fire I heard the news from Sulis. How Medrawt had fled in the storm’s confusion, and how the slaves he left behind said he’d been making for Ynys Wydryn, to lay his sword at Maelwas’s feet. The story was spreading of how Arthur had made sacrifice of Bedwyr and given his head to the old gods at their sacred spring. Bishop Bedwin had preached to a crowd in the forum, saying the tempest had been punishment for Arthur’s sins, and warning the people to throw down their tyrant before God sent worse punishments. Arthur had him beaten, and let his warriors help themselves to the treasures in his church.

  “And that has made those who hate him hate him more,” said Myrddin, not talking to me really, just letting his thoughts pour out in words. “And there is Cei. The trust that was between them has soured. Cei may be Arthur’s half-brother, but he’s uncle to Bedwyr and Medrawt too, and a friend to Bishop Bedwin, and he had a liking for Gwenhwyfar. He’s still loyal, but it’s a grudging loyalty now. Arthur’s afraid that there are men in the war-band who will try to throw him down and set Cei up in his place.”

  “Cei would never betray Arthur,” I said.

  Myrddin glowered, ignoring me. “And Cei knows about every trick I’ve pulled. What if he tells people the truth about Caliburn, or the other tales I’ve built Arthur’s power upon? What if he tells them about you?”

  “Why not help Cei throw him down?” I said. “Cei’d be a better lord. Or do you love Arthur so bad you can’t see that?”

  “Oh, Cei’d be a good lord,” said Myrddin sourly. “He’d keep Aquae Sulis fat and calm and prosperous, right up until the day the Saxon hordes come west and burn it. Cei means nothing. Arthur’s the one. He has to be. All those stories that I’ve sent out into the world – do you think I can just whistle and they’ll come running home to me like hounds? Arthur is our hope. He is the hope of all Britain. One day the other kings will rally to him and he’ll lead them in a war that will…”

  “…drive the Saxons out of this island for ever,” I said wearily. I’d heard that tune before. Believed it once. Now it sounded staler every time.

  Myrddin wasn’t listening to me. He said, “Cei’s a problem. Can’t be trusted. I was a fool to let him in upon my secrets. The one thing worse than an enemy is a friend turned false.” He set down the cup he’d been drinking from and rubbed his arm. “I must find a way to be rid of him, before more blood is spilled. Send him away so there is time for all this to blow over. Yes. But how? What reason could there be?”

  And he looked at me as if he was expecting me to tell him, but he wasn’t. He’d have looked at the wall for an answer if I’d not been in the way.

  Next day when I woke he’d gone again. It was just me and Cadwy, and Cadwy was so nervous of me that he left me well alone, and I had time to think. I wondered if Medrawt and his family had made it to Ynys Wydryn, and what sort of welcome he would get from old Maelwas. The storm had washed away many things, and made others clearer. I saw now that Maelwas had never honestly meant to give Arthur command over his warbands. He’d just been playing for time, afraid of this arrogant bandit who’d set up camp in his borderlands. He would be glad of the news Medrawt would bring, of strife in Arthur’s gang, and God’s displeasure. He would maybe think the time was right to move against Arthur, and give the holding of Aquae Sulis to a better man.

  Myrddin came home in the late afternoon, while I was tending to Dewi in the paddock. If he had been thinking about Maelwas it did not show in his face. As he let Cadwy help him down from his horse he was smiling the old, sly smile that I’d first seen when he showed me Caliburn all those years before. A smile of simple delight at his own cleverness. “Well, Myrddin has mended it, as Myrddin always does,” he said. “I had Arthur gather all his men on the steps outside the church. Had him remind them how the Irishman who is our ally has been insulted by Cunomorus. Now we’ve humbled Calchvynydd we must ride to the Irishman’s aid and help him punish Cunomorus before he grows still more ambitious and land-hungry.”

  I blinked. So much had happened those past few days that it seemed an age since the Irishman had ridden in to ask for Arthur’s help. “I’d forgotten Cunomorus…”

  Myrddin chuckled. “So had they. So had Arthur. But I remember. A leader should always keep a few spare enemies to hand. You never know when you might need a good, far-away war to take men’s minds off troubles close to home. If we let Cunomorus get away with the Irishman’s cattle today, what will he try tomorrow? He must be humbled before he grows any bolder. That’s wha
t I had Arthur tell them. Some of our warriors must ride west at once, to join with the Irishman’s band. Of course, Arthur can’t lead them. He and his riders are war-weary, travel-sore. Cei and his followers will go in their place. By the time they return all this trouble will be behind us. And some may not return at all.”

  “What if they won’t go?”

  Myrddin scowled at me. “Have you forgotten all you learned about the lives of men? Of course they’ll go. They would look like cowards, else. Anyway, Arthur promised them a good fight, and a share of the booty. Said he wished he could go in their place, but he must stay and guard their homes for them against the traitor Medrawt. And I told them about all the treasures they will take from Cunomorus’s hall. A herd of red cattle. A golden shield. A miraculous cauldron, which is never empty – a drink from it can heal all wounds…”

  “And does Cunomorus really have those things?”

  Myrddin shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe. I made it up. But the promise of plunder will cheer Cei’s men on their way west. They leave at dawn.”

  I could see why Myrddin was so pleased with himself. Cei’s men were those who’d been left in Aquae Sulis while Arthur was off fighting that summer. For the most part they were men that Arthur couldn’t quite trust; Valerius’s former comrades, the sons of the old ordo, men not linked to him by blood or long companionship. The very men who might rather have his brother as their leader. Now, thanks to Myrddin’s cunning, they were all to be sent out of the way for a month or more. They’d return weighed down with plunder, with coin and cattle and magic cauldrons maybe. Plenty of reasons to like Arthur better.

  Later, when we’d eaten, and the boy was outside cleaning the plates, and I was thinking about my bed again, another thought came to me.