Gwenhwyfar Page 18

  This wasn’t a huge force or a huge encampment, not like the big Roman ones, which had held tens of thousands. Only a couple of hundred—just enough to for hit-and-run delaying tactics in case there had been a Saxon army actually marching across the border. It looked very peaceful, with the horses picketed neatly, the stacks of hay brought from the nearby village, each man with his cook fire going. Almost like a village in itself. But peace was not what they were here for, and she knew the others were chafing for some fighting just as much as she was. Strange thing about winter—some people nearly went mad with inactivity, and some just contentedly drowsed the dark days away. She, it seemed, was one of the former. The ambush of the scouting party had only whetted her appetite for more.

  But her good humor came plummeting down when the first person she met—aside from the sentry who challenged them—was Peder, who greeted her with those warning words.

  Medraut. Son of Lot of Orkney, now eighteen years old. The only person she wanted to see less than Medraut was the woman he had married, her sister Gwenhwyfach.

  Which, of course, utterly ruined her mood. She pulled her horse up; he was not happy about being halted so close to his picket and that lovely, lovely hay, and he curveted restlessly despite his weariness. Peder stepped back from him; this was her warhorse, Rhys, one of her father’s famed grays; it was not safe to be too near those hooves and teeth if a mood was on him. “What is he doing here?” she demanded sharply. There was no need to mince words with Peder; her old mentor knew exactly how she felt about the little pest. She had good reason for her dislike.

  It had all begun five years after Anna Morgause had taken Little Gwen off to foster. The Queen of Lothian and the Orkneys had been making a state visit to the High King, which was a politic thing to do every so often, and had made sure to include in the journey a long pause at Castell y Cnwclas so that Little Gwen “could be with her family.” And it had been unpleasant enough to have Gwenhwyfach swanning about, trying to lord it over Gynath, doing not a bit of work but making plenty. But that was not the end of the unpleasantness, for Anna Morgause had brought Medraut with her.

  Now, when this planned visit had been announced, Gwen had thought that her worst difficulty was going to be with the queen herself again and attempts to work magic on King Lleudd. After all, this visit might just have been another excuse to lure her father into marrying Morgana again. Morgana was five years older now and still unwed; Pywll was four times the size it had been. King Lleudd had been a tempting prize before; now he was a brilliant one.

  But she made no attempt to work magic, and old Bronwyn was watching her like a cat at a mousehole. Not only Bronwyn but also Gynath and just about every other woman that had been involved in thwarting the queen the last time.

  It was not Anna Morgause that caused any difficulty; it was Gwenhwyfach, and that was merely petty. Gwen managed to avoid everything but feelings of irritation, and if had only been that, the visit might have been inconsequential enough.

  Except for Medraut. It was absurd that a five-year-old child should trouble Gwen—yet trouble her he did.

  Gwen had disliked him as an infant, and in her opinion, five years had not improved him. He was simply nothing like a normal child. He was thin, preternaturally agile; he looked more like an adult who had somehow been shrunk to a miniature size than like a child. He didn’t play with other children. He didn’t play at all. He was either somewhere doing secret things or . . . well, not underfoot exactly, but always there, nonetheless. His mother seemed to allow him to go where he wished and do as he pleased without supervision. And for some reason, he decided that what he wanted was to attach himself to Gwen.

  He followed her about as much as he could, always watching her; he’d have followed her everywhere if she hadn’t figured out that there were places he wasn’t welcome, like the stable and the practice grounds. Horses disliked him, as did dogs, and a small child was forbidden from being on the practice grounds; it was too dangerous. There, at least, she could escape him.

  She could not account for how he made her feel, since no one else seemed to have that strong a reaction to him. She couldn’t help herself. With his smooth cap of black hair, his thin little face, and those flat gray eyes that seemed to be looking for secrets, he made her skin crawl.

  She couldn’t escape him at meals, though, nor any other place where he knew she was supposed to be serving as page or squire. He never said anything to her, never interrupted her. He would simply be there, tucked into a corner, staying out of the way. And he just kept staring at her.

  That is, that was what he did right up to the point where the queen’s party was due to leave. That night, as she was serving the men and had gone to refill her ale jug, she felt a grip on her elbow and looked down into his flat gray eyes.

  “I am going to marry you,” he announced. A command. A princely command, from a prince to a servant. It was not the way a normal child would have said such a thing, with the silly baby-love some little boys got with a pretty woman, or in the manner of a joke, or even as if it were something he had overheard his mother discussing and was parroting. It was . . . imperious. It sounded as if it was something he had decided for himself without any coaching from Anna Morgause. And he spoke the words as if he, and they, were very, very certain. It made her skin crawl.

  She stared at him, then laughed uneasily. She decided that the best way to deal with him was to treat him as . . . well . . . a child. Even if he wasn’t acting like one. “Go away, infant,” she replied, with a lift of her lip. “Or I will tell your mama that you have gotten into the mead, and you are making up lies and silly tales. You are too young to think of marriage, and even if you were not, I am not for your marrying.”

  She pushed past him and went back to her serving . . . but she could not help the strange chill that went up her back. The relief she felt when they were all gone on their way was so intense it seemed to brighten everything around her for days.

  The next time she saw him, he was ten, and the years had not changed him, except to make him taller and even more uncanny. At ten, he was a full two heads taller than any other child his age—and he seemed more like a miniature man than a boy. He was Gwenhwyfach’s great pet and Anna Morgause’s pride. By this time, Cataruna was back, established as the Lady of Lleudd’s lands, and the queen sought her out on all possible occasions in order to discuss matters of magic. For the most part, Gwen had very little to do with that, but it was impossible to avoid some of it. Anna Morgause expected great things from her youngest child, and she went on at great length about how powerful, magically, the boy was.

  “If I have no daughters, the gods have chosen to give me a son as gifted as any girl,” she asserted. And Cataruna (somewhat reluctantly, Gwen thought) agreed. At the time, Gwen wondered if that was what made her so uneasy around him. Men’s Magic was that of the Druids, who did have to do with the warriors . . . maybe it was that unpredictable vision of hers that was trying to tell her that the child was strong in such things.

  But after only a day, she knew it was not that. It was that Medraut was obsessed, unnaturally obsessed, with her.

  At least this time he did not follow her about, but every time she was near him, she was acutely conscious of his eyes on her. More than once, she suspected he was trying to work some sort of magic on her—as mad as it would have been in anyone else, she had more than a suspicion that he had not given up his idea of marrying her. But if he was trying to bespell her in anyway, it didn’t work.

  Horses still disliked him, and she had every reason to be with her horses now. She was training her new warhorses, two of the best grays from her father’s herd—Rhys and Pryderi. They were her sole care at the moment, for she was about to join the ranks of the real fighters and would need her warhorses.

  Anna Morgause was there for more than just a familial visit. This time, however, her designs were not on King Lleudd, and Morgana had not come with her. No, she had other plans entirely, although they did involve ma
rriage within the king’s family. By the time she left, Gwenhwyfach had been handfasted to the repellent boy; they would be formally betrothed in a year and married when he was fourteen, and Gwen had strong hopes she would never have to see him again. After all, Orkney was far from Pywll, the boy was anything but a warrior, and he was to be married to her sister, which should put an end to his uncomfortable obsession with her.

  No such luck, it seemed.

  And once she reported in, it seemed her luck was out even further. “Prince Medraut wishes to have speech of you,” she was told by the war chief, in a tone of voice that said and you had best go see him now. Evidently, Prince Medraut was considered a Personage of Importance now. Reluctantly, she made her bow to her commander, and went to find him.

  It wasn’t hard. All she had to do was look for the showiest pavilion. It stood out in the encampment, with its decorations of red and black leather, its banners, and its utter new perfection. No one else had such things. The tents here had weathered many campaigns in all conditions and seasons, and they showed it.

  And, of course, there he was. He was wearing all black: black cloak, black trews, black boots, black tunic. The only relief to the black was the silver penannular brooch holding the cloak closed at his throat. It was expensive, all that black. Black faded and needed to be redyed often. His was perfect. He was making sure he would be noticed. He invited her in, as his bodyguards stood one on either side of the tent entrance. The very idea of going into his tent made her want to turn and find her horse and ride as far away from him as she could. She demurred, politely, though. He was a Prince of Lothian and the Orkney Isles, and she was a Princess of Pywll. “I would not inflict my person on you at this moment. I’m straight from the field, and I stink of horse, Prince Medraut. And blood,” she added, though she was rather sure that it wasn’t the blood that would bother him.

  Sure enough. “You do smell of horse, a bit,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “I wanted to tell you of the news from my court in a more private surrounding, but . . .” His flat gray eyes did not warm with humor, or with anything else. “Well, everyone will learn this soon enough, from my servants if nothing else, so no harm if we’re overheard, I suppose. First of all, my mother is dead.”

  He announced this in the same matter-of-fact tone that she would have associated with “I’ve killed a deer,” or “one of the watchdogs died,” so for a moment, she was so utterly taken aback that it took her a while to stammer out, “My condolences, Prince—”

  “Oh, don’t bother, the cow got what she deserved,” he said, his eyes finally glinting with cruelty, which took her so by surprise that she actually lost her breath. “Two of my brothers, Gwalchmai and Agrwn, found her with a lover. Somehow, they were all too thick to realize she’s had more lovers than a queen bee, but this time they caught her in the middle of making the two-backed beast. They killed her and him.” He shrugged. “He was the son of one of the High King’s allies, so there will be trouble over it, I expect. But it was the price of stupidity, and she was getting more stupid every year. Eventually someone was going to catch her, and if it had not been my brothers, it would have been someone else that King Lot could not ignore. Even if it was him that was her pander more than half the time. She had the appetite of a cat in season. My Aunt Morgana has more sense than the lot of them put together.”

  Gwen was so shocked, all she could do was stare at him.

  “But that’s not why I’m here,” he continued. “I’m going to my father’s court to present myself to him now that she’s gone, and you should hear that from me.”

  She blinked, unable to understand. “Haven’t you just come from there?”

  He curled his lip again, and gave her a look of disgust. “Not Lot’s court. My father’s court. My blood father.” When she failed to understand, he heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Arthur.”

  Her jaw dropped. “Arthur?” she repeated, stupidly.

  He nodded with some satisfaction at her shock. “And now that there’re no little princes in the way, I expect my dear blood father will be pleased to see me. He has no obvious heir, after all. His other sons also seem to have had tragically short lives. So I need you to promise me some things. Morgana gave me some good advice, and I am going to take it. First, I don’t want Arthur to know I’m wedded to your sister. At least, not just yet.”

  Not that she was going to get anywhere near the High King to tell him, but—“Why not?” she managed.

  “I’m trying to replace his sons. I’d rather he thought of me as a helpless little lad whose mother has just been rent from him. Someone in need of pity, comfort, and guidance from someone other than King Lot.” Somehow, in that moment, Medraut . . . changed. In an instant, his face seemed to grow rounder and softer, his eyes larger and brighter and infinitely sad. His lower lip quivered ever so slightly.

  In the next moment, he was back to his normal self, as always, looking like a man far older than his years, with eyes that belonged in the hardened face of someone like Peder. If Peder had no conscience at all.

  “You can see how being married would interfere with that,” he pointed out.

  She nodded, finding herself agreeing with him, although she really did not want to.

  “Second, don’t tell anyone I have the Gifts.” His eyes bored into hers. “That’s something no one at the court needs to know. Ever. I don’t want the Merlin to know, nor the Ladies. I’ve had good training at Morgana’s hands, she has promised me more as I need it, and I don’t feel as if I need to undergo it all over again.”

  Again, she nodded.

  “Good. Thank you, fair sister.” He smirked. “Fair indeed. I hear they have taken to calling you ‘White Ghost.’ That you frighten the Saxons. That they think you are some uncanny creature out of the spirit world or the realms of the elves.”

  She had felt so proud of that, but it felt so . . . foolish when she heard him say it. “There’s no accounting for what soldiers will say,” she replied harshly. “The Saxons don’t believe that a woman can be a warrior, so they have to have some foolish explanation about why and how I can best them. It doesn’t matter to me what they think I am. I do my job, and I am good at it.”

  “So you are,” he replied, somehow making it sound as if he meant the opposite. “And, of course, there is nothing magical about you at all. Now remember. Keep my secrets.”

  “I will,” she replied, and he turned and went rudely back into his pavilion, dismissing her as if she had been a churl and he—

  Well, he was a prince. Rather more than just any prince, if he hadn’t been lying. Arthur’s son . . .

  She didn’t put it past him to lie . . . but somehow she didn’t think he had this time. She turned her back on his tent and went off to her own tent and the single camp servant she shared with her troop, intending to get something to eat. Most of the men did their own cooking over their own fires; she had always found it better to forego some of the duties her servant would have done in order to make sure that everyone under her command was properly fed. And it was only as she was sitting with her troop, alternating bites of hard camp bread soaked in the gravy of the ever-present stew with bites of the stew itself, that many things she had already known suddenly fell together into a pattern.

  That Medraut, as a baby, had looked as if he had been born before his time because he was born before his time. That he should have been born at the same time as the High King’s twin sons.

  At the same time as Eleri’s son . . . she thought, and hastily shoved the thought away.

  But . . . that meant he had been conceived at the time of the Great Rite. At the very wedding, the celebration that Lot and Anna Morgause had traveled to in order to pledge their fealty.

  And that was when the world went to white about her, as it had not for many, many years. The bowl and bread fell from her nerveless fingers, and she heard, as if from a great distance, Owain and Aeron shouting, and felt hands catching her. But that was of no matter, because of what she was seeing . .
.

  Anna Morgause, alone in a luxurious tent, lit by a dozen candles, and much younger than when Gwen had last seen her, working . . . well, magic.

  Some sort of magic.

  Impossible to mistake it when the whole tent glowed with power, when there was a knife of white bone in her left hand and one of black flint in her right. When there was a tiny cauldron steaming over a charcoal brazier at her feet, and when there was a litter of small objects around that cauldron. Most of what she was doing was hidden by the woman’s body. The woman’s nude body. But when she turned, Gwen could see that she was written all over with signs and symbols in what could only be the blood of the black cat that lay dead on the floor of the tent beside her. And she had turned because a man had come into her tent.

  He was tall, handsome, with a warrior’s body. He was somewhere between dark and fair, with a young man’s beard. He moved as if he was walking in his sleep. Anna Morgause smiled and drew him to her. The High King. It must be he, though Gwen had never seen him.

  Then there was a moment of darkness. When it cleared, it was Anna Morgause surrounded by women, now in a stone-walled room, another brazier burning brightly, crying out in the throes of giving birth. And at the same time, overlaid onto Anna Morgause, Gwen saw another woman, a second woman, in another stone-walled room, fair-haired as Gwen herself, and even in the middle of her travail, beautiful, also giving birth . . .

  Darkness passed across her eyes again. Again it cleared.

  And then . . . she saw a new scene, a single bright space in the midst of the darkness. In the center of that, the same enormous serpent she had seen fighting the bear, striking at two handsome young man-boys, who must have been Medraut’s age. They fell dead without a cry.

  And then she found herself lying on the snow with men around her, anxiously looking her over for some sign of sickness or a hidden wound, patting her face, putting snow to her forehead. It was Aeron who saw the sense in her eyes.