Here Lies Arthur (14 page)

XXX

 

That was a summer of small wars. Arthur meant to teach Calchvynydd he was a man they should respect. Stories are all well and good, he told Myrddin, but if you want men to respect you, you have to show them strength. They burn one of your holdings, you burn two of theirs. Most days that summer, if you stood on the hill-tops above Sulis and looked northward, you’d see the smoke of torched thatch on the sky.

The cattle driven off in that first raid came home again, along with Arthur and his riders, flushed with revenge and carrying the heads of three dead raiders on spears. I saw Peredur ride in with them, still looking bewildered by it all. I think the world of men was not turning out to be quite as he’d expected. He was not quite what they’d expected, either. He didn’t speak the language of men. He didn’t know the rules I’d learned in my time among the boys. Cei and Medrawt and the rest treated him now as a simpleton; a sort of mascot. Medrawt made him the butt of the same half-friendly
jokes he’d had flung at himself when he was younger. Peredur didn’t ride with them again that summer, but stayed with the garrison in Sulis.

It wasn’t that he was cracked, I tried telling Celemon and the rest. Just he’d been raised different, and come to things by his own road. He’d not grown up around fighting men, the way we had. That was why he stared so much at them, and took such a delight in polishing the fittings of the old shield they gave him till it shone, and thought it looked splendid to fit jays’ feathers in his helmet and strut around the town like a dunghill cock. But the girls just teased him more, and laughed at the way he followed Celemon with his eyes, as if she was a lady out of one of Myrddin’s tales that he listened to in the fire-hall of a night.

Peredur didn’t seem to feel their cruelty. He forgave them everything. He was God’s fool. He liked everyone. Well, almost.

When he’d first come my heart jumped up inside me. I remembered how glad I’d been of him when I first found him, just the gladness of knowing there was someone else in the world like me. I thought he’d be a friend to me, and one day soon I’d tell him (if he didn’t guess) that that boy he’d met at his mother’s hall that time was me.

I’d never told anyone my old secret, see. Even Celemon, who was my friend, would have been sure to think it strange or wicked that I’d been a boy, and she’d have told the other girls, and it would have spread all round Aquae Sulis, how Myrddin had disguised me. But telling Peredur would be different. We’d keep each
other’s secrets, and laugh about our strange pasts, my boyhood and his gowns. It would lead to deeper friendship and – who knows? I was so alone in my life. For a while I woke up every morning vowing that today would be the day I’d go to him. “Don’t you remember how we scared old Saint Porroc?” I’d say. “Didn’t you look a treasure, in your shift?” In my mind, I could already see his brown eyes widening, and his slow smile.

But it turned out Peredur, who liked everybody, didn’t like me. I frightened him, maybe, or the sight of my face reminded him of his first and only fight; how scared and startled he’d been, and how doubtful his victory was. When he saw me his hand always went to the hilt of the red man’s sword, which he wore on his belt, as if he thought I might take it away from him. When he saw me coming towards him in the town he’d go some other way.

Well Gwyna, you fool, I thought, what did you expect? And after a while I stopped trying to find excuses to talk to him. And sometimes, when the other girls were laughing about him, I’d join in.

Life in Sulis was good with Arthur off about his wars. The old buildings gave sighs of relief and let their shoulders sag, basking in the summer sun. Outside the walls, riders patrolled the margins of the ripening wheat. Cei, who ruled in Arthur’s absence, made an easy lord. Nights in the feast-hall were full of laughter and stories of the old days, and sometimes he’d come to pay his respects to Gwenhwyfar, which was more than Arthur ever did.

He was a good man, Cei. In the stories Myrddin told
he was quick-tempered, violent and clumsy, but in truth he was none of those things. I think Myrddin made him that way in the stories because he was afraid that men might prefer him to Arthur if they knew what he was really like. Cei laughed off the slanders. “They’re only stories,” he would say. “What do stories matter?” But he wasn’t stupid. He knew as well as Myrddin that in the end stories are
all
that matter. I think Myrddin’s stories hurt him, and had led to a dying away of the friendship between them. At any rate, I never heard of him going to visit Myrddin at his new place outside the town. He visited Gwenhwyfar instead, and Gwenhwyfar liked him, and kept him talking often late into the evening, while we girls sat round yawning and dozing and wondering how they found so much to talk about, our fine lady and this rough old soldier.

Cei must have known who I was. He can’t have forgotten the night he’d helped Myrddin turn me into a boy. But he never spoke of it, nor gave any sign that he knew, nor treated me different from the other girls. He was a good man.

Meanwhile, Bedwyr mended slowly. His sickroom was one of Gwenhwyfar’s own chambers, which had doors that folded open to reveal a terrace and a tangled summer garden. A trickle of water fell endlessly into a cistern. There were foxgloves.

Bedwyr’s fever left him pale and bony as his brother. The pain and shame of his bust leg left him bitter. He didn’t think he’d ride again, or fight, and what good was a man who couldn’t ride or fight? He snapped at the girls Gwenhwyfar sent to tend to him, until we hated
going. He had a girl of his own he’d got in some raid the year before and grown fond of and given gifts and good clothes to, and she came into the house to be near him when he was first hurt, but he sent her away, as if it made the shame worse to have her there weeping for him. He cast her off, and after a while another of Arthur’s men took her. After that it was just Medrawt, who would call in when he was not riding with Arthur.

We’d got off to a wrong start, me and Medrawt. You’ll remember that business in the burning wood, how he waved his sword at me and sent me to seek shelter in the river. I’d never liked him since. But the way he was with Bedwyr changed my mind about him. He was a prideful man, and cold, and hard to like, but he wasn’t all cruel, not by miles. He sat by his brother’s bed, talking about old times with him and telling him he’d be up and running by fall-of-leaf, while I stood waiting, forgotten, clutching fresh sheets or the jug of watered wine they’d asked for, and saw a different Medrawt, a loving brother, a man who talked fondly about his wife and his children. I wondered if they were all like that, when you stripped the armour and the pride off them.

By summer’s height, in the bright, bee-buzzing, flower-f days, Bedwyr was trying to walk. Gwenhwyfar went one afternoon to see how he was faring, and she took me with her. She had to take someone, I suppose, for Arthur’s wife couldn’t ever be alone with another man, even a poor cripple young enough nearly to be her own son, and I was about the only girl who would go near his room by then, he’d been so fearsome to the others.

While I spread fresh sheets on the bed, and smoothed the pillows, Bedwyr went leaning on a staff across the terrace, into the bobbing pinkness of the foxglove-filled garden. Each step tore a grunt of pain from him as he set his weight on his twisted leg. Watching him go, it was all I could do not to run and give him my arm to lean on. But I wasn’t his friend Gwyn any more, and he was a man now. It would shame him if a girl offered him help.

“That’s good!” said Gwenhwyfar kindly, from the terrace-edge. “That’s good!” But she was lying. Bedwyr was as wobbly as a baby and as slow as an old, old man. Halfway to the cistern he fell, and knelt there, sobbing.

And Gwenhwyfar went to him without a word, and put her arms around him, and rested his head against her shoulder, and stroked his hair. And I stood in the shadows behind the folded-back doors, and watched, and didn’t move or speak, because Bedwyr would hate it if he knew someone had seen him crying like a child. But I felt different about Gwenhwyfar ever after. I don’t remember my mother, but the way she held him, the way she cuddled him close, that was the way I’d have wanted my mother to hold me if I’d had one and I was sad about something.

And after a little time Bedwyr’s sobs stopped and he went still. And Gwenhwyfar kept her white hand moving on the red-gold of his hair. And there was something strange and new in her face when she looked up at me. And she said, “Gwyna – fetch us a little sweet wine, and some of those barley-cakes.”

When Arthur came home for a few days, my mistress grew pale and thoughtful, and called Celemon and me to her chambers. We spent a long time dressing her in different gowns and mantles, and folding them away again when she thought something about them was wrong. When she was finally ready, she went alone to Arthur’s hall.

I can see how it must have gone, that meeting, although I wasn’t there.

Arthur is sprawled on a chair in his bedchamber, soaking his feet in a basin of water. He’s just back from a fight. The cheek-pieces of his helmet have bruised the corners of his face.

He sends his slaves and servants scurrying away when Gwenhwyfar lifts the door-curtain. He would never admit it, but she unsettles him, his tall, quiet wife. She has a grace that speaks to him of old ways that he will never have, no matter how much land and treasure he can grab. In the first months of their marriage, when she was so cold towards him, he used to hit her. He would make the blood of the Aureliani bloom under her skin in purple bruises. She is his wife, after all, so he’s a right to bend her to his will. But the more he hit her, the worse he felt. That’s why he keeps his distance. Let her have her own life, her own household, her own women, so long as she’s there to be displayed when allies and rivals come visiting. She’s just one of the things that a powerful man needs.

She kneels before him. Bows low, and hopes he’s well. Praises God for sending him safely home. He signals with his hand for her to rise.

“I have something to ask of you, husband.”

“What’s that?”

“The boy Bedwyr…”

Arthur twists his mouth sideways. Young men maimed make for bitter thoughts. Bedwyr had been a favourite of his once. He’d had high hopes. “It’s evil luck. My own sister’s son. He would have been one of my captains. But now…” He shrugs. “Myrddin says he’ll die.”

“He’ll not die.”

“Live crippled then, and what’s the difference? But you needn’t fear for him. He’ll be looked after. His brother Medrawt will take him in. And I’ll make sure he’s got no need to beg. I don’t forget my companions.”

“He’s a proud boy,” says Gwenhwyfar. “He won’t want to sit by his brother’s hearth all his life, watching the women work.”

Arthur’s face darkens. He doesn’t like to talk of things like this. Wishes Bedwyr had been killed outright. What’s God playing at, sparing the boy’s life but not his leg? Better a dead hero than a living cripple. “What else can he do?” he demands.

“He can guard me,” says Gwenhwyfar, treading careful now. She knows how thin her husband’s patience is. She feels like she’s walking out across ice, with cold deeps of drowning-water under her. “He can guard me. Let him keep his sword and his place in the feast-hall, but instead of riding with you he can stay here to protect me and my ladies. It will give him a meaning. That’s all he needs.”

Arthur is surprised. Who’d have thought she’d understand so well what goes on in men’s hearts? He
looks at her, there in the rush-light dusk, and she’s not unbeautiful. For a moment he wishes he loved her. Good, it would be, to ride home from battle to a wife like that. A woman his own age, instead of some chit like Cunaide who’s just vanity and giggles and nothing but air between her pretty ears. He grins at Gwenhwyfar, suddenly shy and wanting to please her.

“All right, you can have Bedwyr for your bodyguard. Get a couple of those girls of yours to help him stand up if there’s a fight.”

“Thank you, my lord.” Gwenhwyfar bows, showing him the top of her head, her neat white parting. She stands and turns to go.

“Gwenhwyfar…”

Looks back at him, a hand already on the door-curtain. Wary as a doe. “What, my lord?”

Nothing. He waves her away. Doesn’t know what he was thinking of. What would his men say of him if he went soft over the old heron? “Go, go,” he says, and takes his feet out of the basin, and starts shouting for his slaves and Cunaide.

Well, it must have been something like that. Because next day, she went to Bedwyr and told him he was to be her bodyguard – “Captain of my guards,” was how she put it, though I don’t know who those guards he was to captain were, unless it was us girls or the spearmen on the town wall. But it was as good as medicine to Bedwyr. He set about learning to walk again, and this time he would not give up. It wasn’t long before you’d see him in the town, striding along stiff-legged, his face
stone-white with pain and determination, using an old spear-handle for a crutch.

When I next met Myrddin he said, “Your friend has mended well. I didn’t think he’d walk again on that leg. Your mistress has done good for him.”

“They have done good for each other,” I said. Gwenhwyfar was happier that summer than I’d ever seen her. Saving Bedwyr had made her feel useful, I thought. When she was with him, she was in a state of grace.

My old master scratched his nose thoughtfully. “It may be,” he said. “Sometimes, on our way through the world, we meet someone who touches our heart in a way others don’t.”

He looked at me like he was going to say something more, but then he shook his head, and turned, and went away. He’d got a curly-headed boy of eight or nine who carried his bags and belongings for him. I think the boy was the son of that couple who’d made his house ready for him the year I came back to Sulis as a girl. For a moment, as I watched him follow Myrddin away, I felt envious. Gwenhwyfar’s hall felt empty now with Bedwyr gone, and the emptiness reminded me again how thin the lives of women were beside the lives of boys and men.