Shadow of the King (54 page)

intended. His mind was a muddled jumble. His stomach knotted into an ache

of disbelief and elation and fear, mixing and tumbling with uncertainties and

doubts. Churning with a need that was so great its shout was deafening his

senses. He had thought her dead, gone! But here she was, standing before him,

green eyes, copper hair, lovely. His Gwenhwyfar.

She span around, fury blazing on her face. “What do you know of it? What

do you care?” She too was sun-browned and her face thin. She knocked his

hand away from the horse, snarled, “What right have you to tell me what

to do?”

“I have every right, he is my horse.”

“You forfeited that right when you elected to stay with your whore!”

“Morgaine is not my whore.”

Gwenhwyfar laughed contempt. “Do you expect me to believe that?”

“I do not know what I expected!” Arthur drew in his breath, fought to

swallow this stupid rise of anger sparking between them. He lowered his gaze

from her flashing eyes, his fingers fiddling with a buckle on his belt, nervously

raised his eyes again half-smiled. “I did not expect us to fight.”

She snorted, made to push past him, to move away, to put a distance between

them; her heart was hammering, her breathing rapid. He grasped her arm. With

great effort, he said, as calmly as he could, “I thought you to be dead. Until

Gweir came, I had no way of knowing different.”

“And you never cared to make sure? Forgot your daughter, your country,

your kingdom—and for what? For the by-blown daughter of the woman who

caused your son’s murder!” Nostrils flaring, she removed his clasping fingers

from her arm. “You disgust me!” With quick steps, she stalked away, going

into the darkness so he might not see how her hands, her body, shook.

“How could I go back?” Arthur shouted. “For months I lay close enough

to death to remember nothing of it.” He spoke to her retreating shadow,

made no attempt to follow. Cried. “Would Britain have taken me back? After

I had been directly responsible for all those dead? I had lost everything. My

men, my pride!” He spread his hands, let them fall. Said very quietly, “So I

thought, you.”

She had stopped.

“I could not go back, Cymraes.” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug that told

more of the grief, of the defeat that had tormented him these last three years

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than any words could express. Arthur had always held the reputation of never

quite telling the truth. It was an image he had specifically nurtured, along with

the implacable, ruthless exterior. Only Gwenhwyfar had known him for what

he was, a man with so many doubts and fears. “I could not, Cymraes,” he said

again. “Without you there to help me, I had not the courage.”

Gwenhwyfar closed her eyes, her fists at her sides clenched, her shoulders

taut. “The tears I have cried for you. The loneliness!” Her own grief was there,

her pain. “All those tears,” she said as she slowly turned around to look at him,

“And you were with another woman.”

He shook his head, hesitantly stepped to her. “No, there is nothing between

me and Morgaine. In another life, happen there might have been, but not in

this. I lay with her once. I did not know then, what,” he took a deep, steadying

breath, confided, “what I later realised. There cannot be anything between us.”

“You ask me to believe you have no love for her?”

“I love you. And I thought you were dead.”

The trembling reached her voice. “You also. I believed you dead, also.”

They stood a pace or two apart, eyes not meeting, not daring to look one upon

the other.

Arthur nodded, so Gweir had told him in the sun-shadowed stillness of the

byre. All morning he had waited, he had told Arthur, patient, beneath the shade

of the woods, waiting for a time when the woman and the child might not

notice him. They had left, together, walking up the incline, had disappeared

over the brow of the hill, and Gweir had ridden down from his hiding place.

“You and I have both suffered,” Arthur attempted. “Unnecessarily, it seems.”

Gwenhwyfar was weakening, the anger caused by alarm and the flutter of

unease going out of her. “You ought to have come home.”

“Aye.” He stretched out his hand, his smile widening. “I was wrong.” He took

those last few steps, took her hand. “But I am not wrong about my horse.”

Gwenhwyfar’s answering smile was shy, guilty. “I know you are not.”

He touched her cheek, caressing her lightly with his fingers and thumb. He

would have kissed her, but Onager moved, restless, in his stall. The animal was

in discomfort, needed tending.

Businesslike, feeling his feet on safe ground for the first time in many months,

Arthur’s dagger came into his hand. Unnecessarily, he tested the blade although

he knew it to be honed to keen sharpness. The kiss could come later. Perhaps

more than a kiss.

Fifty-Four

The rain was easing, the clouds breaking up into ragged streamers

blown by a freshening wind. Soon, the new day would steal in. Beneath

the mantle of darkness the world lay at peace, asleep. Gwenhwyfar, curled on a

bed of dried bracken in an empty stall, mumbled incoherently in her sleep.

Arthur had been outside to sluice a bucket of its foul contents—the wound

beneath Onager’s jaw still seeped yellow pus, but the draining stuff had eased.

He stopped at the doorway to the stall where Gwenhwyfar slept; he stood, one

hand resting on the shoulder-high post. He had thought he would never see

her again, never hear her voice, feel her touch. In one sense he had died, for he

had been nothing but an empty, dead husk these past years. A part of him could

not believe, accept, he was standing here looking at her, watching her breathe,

live. This was all some cruel dream. He would wake soon, would wake to face,

over again, the misery of knowing she was gone from him forever. He stepped

further into the stall, his hand—it was shaking—stretching out to touch the

delicate skin along the inside of her arm. Leapt back, snatching away with a

muted gasp. She was cold! Ice-cold, death-cold! Teeth biting into a forefinger,

Arthur steadied his uneven breathing. Fool! Of course she would be cold. Was

it not cold in here? Stalls for twenty horses, with only eight filled and a draught

whistling like an ice-dragon’s breath flurrying through every conceivable gap?

He unfastened his cloak, laid it across her body, tucking it beneath her exposed

arm. Gwenhwyfar. His Gwenhwyfar.

Leaning his head against the partitioning wall, he closed his eyes, sank down

to his heels, and bowed his face into cupped hands. She was alive and he had

not known of it! She had come for him, still cared for him, expected him to

go back with her to Britain. To do what? To lead men, to be king again? How

could he? How could he command men to fight, when he had not even the

courage to wear his own sword? He had stayed here, hidden away, rather than

make that long journey back to Britain, stayed here because it was easier to let

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them believe him dead rather than let them see him for the weak, cowering

failure of a man he had become.

He dozed where he sat, hunkered on his heels. The outer door opening

with a crash as a gust of the rising wind caught it and woke him and

Gwenhwyfar together.

Startled, they both jolted awake, Arthur hurriedly scrabbling to his feet, his

dagger coming automatically into his hand, Gwenhwyfar slower, sleep-tangled

beneath his covering cloak.

It was Ider coming in, unshaven and sleep-tousled, coming, as Arthur had

ordered, to wake him. Behind him, the faint light of first dawn seeped through

the open door-place. Ider lifted his hands, palms outermost to show he held no

weapon. “Whoa!” he soothed. “’Tis only I. How is the horse this morning?”

Arthur tucked his dagger safe into its sheath, grinned to hide that sudden-

come jolt of alarm as he stepped forward, hand outstretched, to greet his old

friend. It had been dark last night, raining, with little light to see clearly by

outside the tavern. Only briefly had they spoken then, Arthur asking where he

would find Gwenhwyfar, Ider awkwardly expressing his joy at seeing again his

king alive and well.

“Mithras, Ider,” he teased, seeing the man in better light, “if you put much

more bulk around that belly of yours, you will break your horse’s back!”

“Bulk!” Ider chortled, his broad hands patting the ample bulge around his

midriff, “This is solid muscle!”

“Solid flab!”

Gwenhwyfar, bedding caught in her hair, the cloak folded over her arm,

came to Arthur’s side. Her eyes were bright, gold flecks dancing against the

green. She prodded Ider’s prolific weight with her finger. “This,” she said, “is

an ale pot. It has wondrous powers, for it renders its wearer senseless at night

and has the ability to fill faster than it empties.”

The two men roared their laughter, Ider’s face flushing a modest red, Arthur’s

arm going around Gwenhwyfar’s shoulders to stand as often they had stood,

close, companionably together. She did not move away, turned her head to look

at him, green eyes meeting brown. The laughter left his face as he returned that

solemn gaze. He had kissed her, after they had dressed the lanced wound with

a pad soaked in oil and vinegar, after they were sure Onager was safe enough

for the remainder of the night. One kiss, his lips lightly on hers, but it had been

almost a chaste, tentative thing like two people who did not yet know each other

well enough for intimacy, fumbling around politely in a darkness of uncertainty.

S h a d o w o f t h e k i n g 3 3 1

Ider cleared his throat, squeezed past, intent on inspecting Onager. The

horse’s ears were cold, although Arthur had covered him with a blanket. He

busied himself with changing the dressing, tried not to let his eyes or ears stray

to the two people who stood a few yards away. They were all in turmoil! Lives

turned topside-out.

Gwenhwyfar brought her fingers up, touched them lightly to Arthur’s chin,

slid her palm across his cheek, held his face in her hand, her eyes taking in his

features, looking for all those half-forgotten familiarities. The flop of hair that

tumbled over his forehead, his nose, long and straight. Firm, determined jaw.

Those dark eyes that so well kept all thoughts, secrets, and fears tucked behind.

Of what was he thinking now? Of her, of them? Of the past, the future?

“It is you,” she said. “I dreamt you were only a memory. I called you, but

you did not come.”

He placed his hand over hers, pressing the palm firmer to his skin. “If I did

not come it was because I could not.” And then he said, “And if I do not return

with you, it is because I cannot.”

Her eyes widened, then darted, flashed, realising what he had said, meant.

“You are staying with her? Choosing her over me? Christ and all the gods

in heaven!” She hurled away from him, tossing his cloak from her, “And I

believed you! Last night, Mithras help me, I damned well believed you!”

He answered with the first, stupid thought that came into his head. “I only

came to see Onager.”

“You bastard!” She spat. “You toad-spawned, whoring bastard!” Gwenhwyfar

could move quickly, for she had always been lithe and quick on her feet. Before

he could defend himself, take a step back or raise his hands, her palm flashed

out, struck him across his cheek, reeling his head backward, leaving a red streak

across the flesh.

“Take your bloody horse!” she screamed, “Take him and go! I hope you

both rot!” She whirled, a flurry of brown skirt and copper hair, was gone,

running from the stables, up the hill through the gate into the sanctity of the

woman’s place, the Place of the Lady.

Ider stroked his broad hand down the softness of Onager’s nose, stood

blindly torn between his devotion to Gwenhwyfar and his love for the

Pendragon. Arthur was aware he was there, unsure and uncertain. As

confused as he was himself.

“What do I do, Ider? How do you tell such a woman the man she once knew

is no longer living?” He turned his eyes to seek some form of guidance from

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the big man standing by the chestnut horse. “I am Arthur, but I am no more

the Pendragon. I forfeited the right to that title when I left the remainder of my

men to die without me. Left those already dead for the crows.”

Ider disagreed, but how was it his place to say so?

A fool thing to do, for the horse was ill, needed rest and quiet to recover, but

Arthur took his halter rope. “Sometimes,” he tried, explained, as he went towards

the open door leading the horse, “Sometimes, there can be no going back.”

He would have his horse, at least, to remind him of what he had once loved.

And had lost a second time over.

Fifty-Five

When Arthur did not return, Morgaine was not unduly worried;

it would not be the first time he had stayed drinking himself into

a stupor at the Wild Boar tavern in Avallon. He would find his way home