Gwenhwyfar (41 page)

He had looked at her with a raised eyebrow. Opened his mouth. Closed it again.

“There are things that the Ladies cleave to that I find . . . wrong,” she admitted. “I will never believe that the gods and the land require blood be spilled so that both can prosper. Think of all the blood spilled in war—if it were merely blood that was required, the lands that were battlefields should forever be waist deep in lush grasses and yielding four times the corn of others for all eternity. Yet I have never seen that. The first year after a battle, yes, but that is just logic, since you could get as goodly a harvest spreading manure. But not after.”

“And neither have I!” he began, eagerly.

“Wait,” she had said, holding up a hand to forestall him from yet another attempt to persuade her to his way of belief. “Aside from that, now I must look to the followers of both our gods. Your own god has said that one knows the tree by the fruit it bears. Those people that heed the Druids and the Ladies, I see to be not much different from those that follow Christ. There are liars and thieves among both, kindly, honorable and wise among both, virtuous and vile in equal measure. Can you refute that?”

He had looked as if he would have liked to, but he admitted that he could not.

“So our peoples are not so very different. Their hearts are not so different. So—” she shrugged. “Since it is the gods that rule men’s hearts, it follows that your gods and mine are not so different. It seems to me that the faces we put on them have more to do with ourselves than with them.”

He had looked at her with such astonishment on his face that she’d had to laugh. Eventually so did he, and gracefully he had turned the talk to more questions about the Folk of Annwn, about whom he was as curious as an eager child.

But now he was gone, and there was nothing to make one day different from the next. She rose after sunrise. She ate. She heard what the cook would be making. She approved it. She came to the solar, to be surrounded by these fatuous women, and tried not to die of boredom. She ate. Then back to the solar. Or every other day, a bath.

And not the efficient sort of bath she was used to, no indeed. This was a bath that took up an entire afternoon. First, she was ushered into an even warmer room, a bath in the Roman style but reserved for her and her women. This was, she was told, almost atop the furnaces that put warmth beneath the floors, and it was full of steam. There she put up with being washed with soap and cloths—as if she could not even wash herself!—and rinsed with jugs of warm water, which ran away into a drain in the floor. Then her hair was pinned up on the top of her head, and she was led like a dotard into a second room, where there was a pool—a pool!—of steaming hot water. All the ladies soaked in it together, occasionally going to a tub of cooler water, only to return to the hot one. And there they would gossip, gossip, gossip and talk of nothing but trivialities. She heard nothing of what was going on in the greater world, only endless details of dresses and love affairs. The few times she actually heard anything that
did
sound worth listening to, it turned out to be so distorted as to be incredible. Then, when she was sure she was going to fall asleep from boredom or the heat, came the drying, the massaging with lotions and scented oils, and at last, dressing and going to dinner. Dinner was generally in the company of the King and his Companions, but
they
never discussed anything worth listening to either! Oh, no, it was all pretty compliments and talk of hunts and weather—not a word of the Saxons, or King March, or anything else actually worth hearing about.

The whole tedious business happened every other day. And she was certain that at least some of her ladies would do this
every
day if they could.

This was not a bath day, so there would be no dinner with the King either. And finally fed up past bearing with the boredom, today she had ordered a servant to bring her the fletching materials from the armory. He hadn’t wanted to, but there was no reason why he shouldn’t, so at last she bullied him into it.

At least she was getting something constructive done. She had not seen one single arrow in Arthur’s forces that was any better than hers. None of these women had ever seen fletching done, much less put feathers to arrows themselves, so there would be no undoing what she had done.

Arthur finally had something to say to her besides a curt greeting when he turned up that night and the doors closed behind him. He looked at her, as she was waiting patiently in the far-too-luxurious bed, and frowned slightly. The bedroom was—like everything else—in the Roman style. It was long and narrow, with the bed under a vaulted ceiling at the far end. The floors were warm enough to go barefooted on them, but the alcove with the bed was a little drafty, and she pulled the fur up around her shoulders. Every night her women put her naked into this bed; every night the King turned up to perform like a bored stallion and depart.

“I heard an odd thing from Kai, my lady,” he said, carefully, making no move to disrobe, although she was already naked beneath the covers. “This afternoon, he said, you ordered certain materials brought to you. You were . . . fletching?”

She nodded and wondered how much of her expression he could read in the light from the single oil lamp at the bedside. “I was.”

He paused. “I should like to know why. It seems . . . an odd occupation.”

“Because—” she took a deep breath. “Because it was better to make arrows than to pick up small objects and begin flinging them at the heads of those vacuous, simpering, gossiping idiots that I am supposed to be polite to.”

His mouth dropped open, and he looked at her in astonishment.

“Husband, I am
not
one of these women!” she exclaimed passionately. “I was not made, nor trained, for idleness! I am a warrior, trained from childhood to be a warrior. I have not one thing in common with them. I do not believe that any of them has done a single piece of simple, practical work in all her life! They have no thoughts beyond dress and gossip. I do not find gossip to be entertaining!
I am a warrior!
And being caged up in these rooms, hour after hour, day after day, doing nothing with any meaning to it, hearing nothing but trivialities discussed as if they were matters of the realm, is driving me mad!”

“I—see—” he said. Finally he walked heavily to the bedside and sat down on the foot of it.

“Husband, I am stifled. I cannot breathe here. My clothing weighs upon me, heavier than any armor; the rooms are too warm, the food so rich it makes me ill. I feel that if I do not see the sun and feel the wind, I will lose the few wits I have left to me.” She looked at him with pleading. “Surely you can see now what is wrong.”

And then she saw understanding dawn on him, and he smiled a little. “Yes, wife, I do see!” He picked up her hand and squeezed it. “I understand. I shall leave orders I think will please you, and I expect after such a stressful day, you will want some sleep. I shall leave you to your rest.”

And with no other words than that, he left her. This time,
without
the . . . the “servicing” that was so automatic that it felt like nothing more than a tedious chore for both of them.

Relief suffused her like the warmth from the floor. Finally, he realized what kind of a person he had taken to wife. And he was truly as good and kind a man as she had seen him be with others. She blew out the lamp and pulled the covers about her, thinking happily of the hunting she would do tomorrow and of being, at last, part of his councils.

She awoke to silence.

Her first thought was gleeful. He had sent those awful chattering women away! Or at least, told them to take their unwelcome company elsewhere. The servant that slept in the chamber attached to hers woke up as soon as she heard Gwen moving about and tried to put her into those maddening drapes, but Gwen sternly ordered her to find her old clothing, the tunic and trews and good sturdy boots, and though the servant protested, she obeyed. A glance while she was dressing at the light coming from the tiny window up near the top of the ceiling—after waving the servant away—told her that she had slept well past midmorning. Another sign that the gaggle of ninnies was elsewhere! She quickly tied on her boots with a happy heart.

Silently thanking the goddesses, Epona in particular, Gwen strode cheerfully into her solar and headed for the doorway to the outer corridor, intent on getting to the stables and finding Rhys. She hadn’t seen either of her horses since she had arrived here, and of the two, Rhys was the one most inclined to be lazy when he got the chance.
Probably stuffing himself on hay and congratulating himself on escaping exercise, the slothful beast,
she thought happily.
Time to wake him—

She pushed open the door, and at once was stopped by a bar to her exit. “Halt!” the guard at the door said, “Boy! What are you—”

“Boy?” Gwen slapped at the spear that had been lowered to stop her from going any further. “Alun ap Grwn, are you blind? I’m no more a boy than you are. Now enough with your nonsense. I’m going to the stables.”

The guard gaped at her, then snapped the spear back up. His usually stolid expression was gone, replaced with utter confusion. “Queen Gwenhwyfar, I—didn’t recognize—”

She waved the apology off. “Never mind. I’m going for a ride, and I suppose I will need an escort. Send for whoever of the Companions isn’t busy, will you, and direct him to the stable. Or better yet, go yourself.”

“Ride?” the man replied, looking dazed. “Stable? But, Queen Gwenhwyfar, you can’t—”

“I most certainly can,” she said sharply. “and I am going to. Now get one of the Companions to—”

“But—there’s no one here but Kai and Medraut,” the man stammered. “And I’m under orders from the King himself. You’re not to be disturbed, and on no account I am not to let you leave—”

The first part of his sentence was lost in the slap to the face that the second part was. She whirled on him.
“What?”
she exclaimed in outrage.

“I’m not to—let you leave—your rooms?” he faltered, as she put one hand to her belt knife and stared at him, eyes blazing with rage.

“We’ll see about that!” And with that, she headed off at an angry trot, outpacing him, as he tried to follow her, protesting every step of the way.

She was so angry that she just shut his words out. She headed straight for the King’s privy chambers, since it wasn’t yet time for the usual audiences, nor for the Companions to gather about that famous round table. Her blood boiled. He had
said
that he understood! How could he—how dared he—

Her chambers were separated from his by the courtyard; she passed along one side of it, the first time she had actually seen the sun and the open sky in days. Her breath steamed in the cold air; it felt good and clean after all the heat and perfume.

She stormed past the startled guards on his doors, the protesting Alun right behind. The first room, where he would usually have been, sitting at a desk, was empty. There were no maps on the desk, no discarded cloak, and the mosaic floor that imitated the pool of the courtyard outside had been swept immaculately clean.

The second room, where he usually lounged with Kai or others he considered close as kin, was also empty. The cushions were placed neatly on the Roman-style couches. There were no cups and horns waiting on the side table to be collected, no litter of food from breaking fast. And the small council chamber, with the frescos of Hercules defeating a lion, was just as empty. And his bedroom, as small as hers, was not only empty, but cold. Very empty, even of servants.

She turned on the guards, who had followed her in.
“Where is he?”
she shouted.

“G-g-gone, Queen Gw—l”

“I can see that!
Where?”
If he and the Companions had gone off hunting and left before she was awake so he had an excuse to leave her behind—

“Roughly half a day from here, more or less southwards, dear sister.”