The Hallowed Isle Book Three (11 page)

“Would you then keep your wife like a jewel in a golden setting?” Guendivar's voice was very soft.

There was another charged silence, then Artor sighed. “Your brother tells me that you are a great rider, and can stay out all day, ranging the hills. I would not cage you, Guendivar, even in gold. If you wish it, I would be glad to have you riding at my side.”

She straightened, trying to see his face. She was a tall girl, but still she had to look up at him. “From what Gualchmai says, you are never more than a moon in the same place. I think I will have to—”

“It is a bargain, then?” Relief made his voice unsteady as he set his hands on her shoulders.

“It is—” She had feared this marriage as a prison, but now she was beginning to think it might be an adventure. The pressure of his hands felt warm and secure.

“In the spring, then—” He stopped suddenly. “How old are you?”

“At the beginning of April I will be fifteen.” She strove for dignity.

His hands dropped suddenly and he shook his head. “Sweet Goddess! And yet, if I was old enough to be king at that age, I suppose that you can be a queen.”

Her assurance left her suddenly. “I will try—”

Artor eased back her hood. He took her face between his hands, gentle as if he were touching a butterfly, and kissed her on the brow.

A.D.
496

T
HAT YEAR SPRING CAME EARLY TO BRITANNIA, AS IF THE LAND
were adorning itself to celebrate the wedding of the High King. Every dell was scattered with creamy primroses; the woodland rides were flooded with bluebells, and in the hedges the starry white of hawthorn veiled each bough.

As the bridal procession left the Summer Country and made its slow way towards Londinium, folk thronged from tiled villas and thatched Celtic roundhouses, from shepherds' lonely huts and half-ruined towns to hail the bride whose marriage would set a seal of peace upon the land. Surely, they sang, the wars were truly ended, if the High King was at last giving them a queen. Where Guendivar passed, the road was strewn with flowers.

To Merlin, making his way southward from the Caledonian forest, the rumor of her progress was like a warm breath of wind from some fruitful southern land. He found himself hastening, moved by a hope he had not dared to feel for far too long. He had been born to serve the Defender of Britannia and set him on his throne, and he had succeeded in that task. None of them had dared to think about what might come afterward.

But now the land itself was providing the answer. After winter came the spring, after sorrow, this joy, after the death of the Britannia that had been ruled by Rome, a new nation in which all the gathered greatness of the peoples who had settled here could flower.

Igierne, riding south with Ceincair and Morut, could not help but contrast this wedding with her marriage to Uthir, that hurried, makeshift ceremony held in the dead of winter and the aftermath of a civil war to legitimize the child she was already carrying. Guendivar would come to her marriage a virgin, with neither memories of the past nor fears for the future to shadow the day. If the queen mother had not been so profoundly relieved at the prospect of passing on a part of the burden she had carried for so long, she would have envied her son's bride.

For Artor's sister, riding swiftly southward with her escort of Votadini tribesmen, each milestone on the old Roman road was a reminder of her own dilemma. For so long she had told herself that the freedom of a queen in Alba suited her far better than any title dying Britannia had to offer. Now she was about to find out if she really believed it. If Artor had never been born, her own descent from the House of Maximus might have given her husband a claim to torque and diadem. Yet the closer she got to Londinium, the more clearly Morgause understood that it was not Guendivar whom she envied, but Artor himself. She did not desire to be a consort, but the ruling queen.

Even in decline, the Romanized Britons for whom Boudicca was still a name with which to frighten children would never have accepted her. Artor's son would inherit his imperium. The only question was whether that son would be the child of her womb, or Guendivar's.

Artor himself, struggling with questions of personality and precedence, remembered the bright face of the girl he had met at midwinter and wondered if he had the right to plunge any woman into the political morass this wedding had become. Even the choice of a place to hold the ceremony had provoked a battle. Bishop Dubricius had offered his own church in Isca, but to marry there would have insulted the Dumnonians, already on the defensive because they were blamed for provoking the last Saxon war.

Artor could have been married in the bride's home, but Lindinis was only a secondary tribal civitas, and had no edifice large enough to hold all those who would want to come. Calleva or Sorviodunum were central, but too closely associated with the wars. At least Londinium had once been the country's undisputed capital, and in the basilica and the Palace of the Governors there would be room for all.

But as the first of May drew closer Artor would have been glad of an excuse to send some of them home again. Planning battles was much easier. He was beginning to think that the ancient custom of marriage by capture had a lot to recommend it. Guendivar had said she liked to ride—perhaps she would prefer being carried off. But when the king tried this theory out on his companions, they only laughed. Gualchmai, who had more experience with women than any three of the rest of them, assured him that women
liked
ceremonies with flowers and candles and uncomfortable new clothes.

As for Guendivar herself, she rode through the blossoming landscape in a haze of delight, accepting the gifts men brought her and the homage they paid her beauty; exulting in the movement of the horse beneath her, the brightness of the sunlight and the sweetness of the flowers. Focused on the excitement of each moment, she scarcely thought about the wedding towards which this journey was leading her.

“Old Oesc used to say these walls were like the work of etins—titans . ..” said Betiver, gesturing at the ruins of the gatehouse that had once guarded the Calleva Road. The rubble had been cleared away, but the gate had never been repaired.

Guendivar gazed around her with interest as they passed. “It looks old, and sad. Will Artor rebuild it?”

“Why should he trouble himself,” asked Gualchmai, laughing, “when the walls are as full of holes as a cloak when the moths have been making free? Walls!” He made a rude gesture. “No good are they without brave men and sharp spears behind them!”

“Oh, indeed,” said his brother Gwyhir, who rode just behind him, “and you yourself are as good as an army!”

Guendivar laughed. After three weeks on the road, she had taken their measure. Artor had sent the youngest and liveliest of his Companions to be her escort, and they had preened and pranced for her from Lindinis to Londinium. They reminded her of puppies showing off, even Betiver, who was said to have a permanent mistress in the town and a nine-year-old son.

“The high roof you see belongs to the basilica,” he told her. “That is where the wedding feast will be—I think it is the only building in Britannia large enough to hold all the people Cai has invited. The church is nearer the river.”

“And the palace?”

“Beyond the basilica, on the other side of the square. Of course only the main wing is still usable, but with luck, we'll be able to find enough sound roofs in Londinium to keep everyone dry!” He sent a suspicious glance skyward, but the overcast did not look as if it were going to deepen into rain.

Guendivar sighed. She had looked forward to staying in a palace, but this vast city, its old buildings leprous with decay, held little of the splendour of her dreams. Ghosts might dwell here, but not the folk of faerie. She thought wistully of the fields through which they had passed to come here, adorned more richly than any work of the Romans with spring flowers.

But she must not let her escort sense her unease. “Is Artor here already?” she asked brightly. “Will he come to greet me?”

The Votadini brothers turned to Betiver, who replied with a wry smile, “I am sure that so soon as he knows you have arrived he will come to you—but as for where he is now—well, you will learn soon enough that Artor is not one for sitting still.”

But the High King was not working. Igierne had arrived the previous day and, finding her son in the old office of the procurator, surrounded by scraps of paper, had carried him off to the river. As a boy he had learned the difficult art of paddling a coracle; she pressed him into service now as her boatman and ordered him to take her upstream.

High clouds had spread a silver veil partway across the heavens. Each stroke of the paddle set reflections rippling like pearl. From time to time some other craft, coming downstream, would pass them. Igierne lifted a hand to answer their hails, but Artor had not the breath to reply.

She watched him with a critical eye, noting the flex and stretch of muscle in his arms and back as he drove the round skin-covered craft against the current. Sometimes an eddy would spin them, and Artor needed all of his strength as well as skill to get them back on course. He was sweating freely by the time she told him to stop.

The coracle spun round once more, then began to drift gently back towards the city whose smoke hazed the river below them like a shadow of the clouds. Artor rested the paddle on his knees, still breathing hard.

“Do you feel better?” she asked.

For a moment he stared; then his exasperation gave way to wonder.

“In fact, I do .. . .”

“There is nothing like vigorous action to relieve strain, and you have been under a great deal, my child.” He spent much time outdoors and his color was good, but she noticed more than one thread of silver in the brown hair, and there were new shadows around his eyes.

“I have never been required to plan a campaign of peace before,” he said apologetically. “In war it is easy. If a man has a sword at your throat, he is an enemy. Here, I have only allies, who think they know what is needed better than I. I might believe them—if they could only all agree!”

Igierne laughed. “It is not so different among my priestesses on the Isle of Maidens.” For a few moments they were silent, watching the ducks dive into the reedbeds as they passed. Then she spoke once more. “Tell me, is it easier to move the boat upstream or down?”

“Down, of course,” he answered, one brow lifting in enquiry.

“Just so. Think—is not everything easier when you move with the current instead of fighting it?”

He nodded. “Like charging downhill.”

“Like this wedding—” she said then. “Guendivar is the woman whom the fates have ordained for you. To make her your wife you don't have to fight the world. Let it be. Relax and allow her to come to you.” She stopped suddenly. “Or are you afraid?”

He knew how to govern his face, but she saw his knuckles whiten as he gripped the oar.

“She is so young, Mother. She has never heard the ravens singing on a battlefield, or seen the life ebb from the face of a man you love. She has never known how fury can seize you and make you do terrible things, conscious of nothing until you come to yourself and see the blood on your hands. What can I say to her? What kind of a life can we have?”

“A life of peace,” answered his mother, “though you will not have done with battles entirely while the Picts still ride southward and Eriu sends warriors across the sea. It is because she is innocent that you need this girl. You need say nothing—let her talk to you.. . . She will be Tigernissa, High Queen. Men fight for land, but the life of the land is in the waters that flow through it. The power of the waters belongs to the queen. It is for her to initiate you into its mysteries.”

A gull swooped low, yammering, and when it saw they had no food, soared away. They could smell woodsmoke now, and on the shore the wharves of Londinium were beginning to come into view.

“The river has great power. See how swiftly we have returned? Beneath all the eddies, all the flotsam that rides its surface and the ruffling of the wind, the deep current of the river rolls. It is the same with the squabbles of humankind. Worship as you must for Britannia's peace, but never forget how strong these waters are as they move so steadily toward the sea.. . .”

The night before the wedding it rained. At dawn, clouds still covered the sky, but as they thinned, they admitted a little watery sunshine. When Guendivar came out of the palace, the wet stones of the pavement were shining. She gazed around her, blinking at the brightness. At that moment, even this place of wood and stone was beautiful. Her escort was already formed up and waiting. When they saw her, they began to cheer, drowning out the clamor that marked the progress of the groom's procession, already two streets away.

Her mother twitched at the hawthorn wreath that held the bridal veil. Its fiery silk had been embroidered with golden flowers. More flowers were woven into the crimson damask of her dalmatic and worked into its golden borders in pearls. Jewels weighted the wide neckband and the strip of gold that ran from throat to hem. It was a magnificent garment, fit for an empress of the eastern lands from which it had come—everyone said so. But it was so heavy Guendivar could hardly move.

Her mother gripped her elbow, pulling her forward. For a moment Guendivar resisted, filled with a wild desire to strip down to her linen undergown and make a dash for the open fields. How could they praise her beauty when her body was encased in jewels like a relic and her face curtained by this veil? It was an image they shouted for, like the icon of the Virgin that was carried in procession at festivals.

But she had given her word to Artor.

“She comes! She comes—” cried the crowd “—the Flower Bride!”

Stiff as a jointed puppet, Guendivar mounted the cart, its railings wound with primroses and violets and its sides garlanded with eglantine. As it passed through the streets, people strewed the road with all the blooms of May. They brightened the way, but could not soften the rough stones. Guendivar gripped the rail, swaying as the cart jolted forward.