“When my husband found out, he flew into a rage, then fell into despair. He died in the next battle. Some say he didn’t defend himself.” Her brow furrowed. She pointed to the divan. I could see it quite well in the mirror now. It seemed the mantle hid completely whatever it covered.
“Sit down and eat your breakfast,” she said. She must have noticed I was munching the bread even while we were talking. I walked over, put down the tray, and began eating.
“Nine months later, I bore a child,” she said almost sadly. “Since Gerlos and I hadn’t lain together in some time, there was no question about whose child it was. Uther married me and added Cornwall to his considerable possessions, along with me. But still I have never been happy with Uther. Indeed, we hardly know each other. I remain here while he occupies himself with his numerous concubines; and once I was happy with Gerlos, before he was bitten by the bug of greed and ambition. But my advisers told me the country could not stand too much more war.”
I understood perfectly what she was talking about, and I understood that it was the reason I was here. You see, that is why my distinguished ancestress raised the standard of revolt among a conquered and resigned people. When the Roman came to her to claim her husband’s kingdom at her lord’s death, she understood it was her duty to lie with him. But when he and his men polluted her two daughters, he committed sacrilege. Not simply sacrilege, but sacrilege of the worst kind. The Roman was greedy. All he could think of was how great a man he could become if he took the Iceni gold to Rome. As it was, it cost him his life.
Folly and willful blindness overcame his judgment, for even the Romans know women bring sovereignty to a ruler and put weapons in a man’s hands. As they say, a woman is a temple; and so, they must understand, it has always been so and always will.
I ate, drank the wine—for I resolved to cultivate a taste for it, since it was the mark of a noble house among the Britons—and listened politely to Igrane’s instructions about how a well brought up girl should behave at the banquet they were having tonight to celebrate my betrothal to Arthur. You see, among them it was a foregone conclusion that I would become one of his concubines. I wondered who Uther, Igrane, and Merlin had picked out to become Arthur’s wife and queen, but my acceptance of him would please the ruling families of Ireland, Dalraida, Somerset. I was marked by magic, as Igrane was.
“Most of the women among the ruling families have something of this sort,” she said, indicating the scarf. “I imagine the distinguished ancestress and foundress of your line had something that simply reeked of raw power, as this does. Some treasure that helped her to succeed against the Romans.”
“I wonder what it was?” I asked.
“Who knows?” Igrane answered, shaking her head. “Whatever it might have been, it was lost in the savage bloodletting surrounding her when she died, as was entirely proper, by her own hand.”
I knew Arthur would be coming, so I finished my food and then hurried back to my bed to put on my shoes. Igrane gave a start when she saw them, for they were greatly changed from the battered, dark leather foot covering they had been the night before. Now they were white, soft, pliable, sporting gold trim and long laces that I wrapped on my legs to below the knee.
He remembers mt, I thought, my friend, for we became friends, the servant of Dis. Then I saw Arthur come up the stairs. By day, he was even more handsome than he had been by torchlight. He was accompanied by two of his friends. He introduced them to me.
“This is my brother, Cai.”
The boy smiled. He looked a year or two older than Arthur. He was dark, with rather fine brown hair. He had an otherworldly look, and I realized why when he took my hand—I felt the sea.
“I was fostered with his people,” Arthur explained. “The quiet filled me the way a goblet is filled with wine.”
Yes, the Seal people. If he were not shape strong, he had ancestors close, ancestors who were. He reminded me of the Gray Watcher and his son Black Leg. I think at first he only meant to touch my hand, but he liked whatever energies he felt in me and carried it to his lips.
Like the Gray Watcher, honesty was a strong trait in his character, because a sadness crossed his face like a cloud shadow crossing a valley, and I knew he knew Arthur meant to deceive me. But he was too loyal to say so, and only murmured a greeting. Then he stepped away to speak with Igrane.
Then Arthur introduced Gawain, and when he took my hand, I felt myself shiver. Merlin had surrounded his young king with them. This one was not fully human, either. He was fair, as I am, and with more than human beauty. He was male, so male that maleness screamed at me, and yet…
I pulled my hand back from his as quickly as possible. He eyed me the way a connoisseur studies a work of art, then turned to Arthur.
“Magnificent,” he said. “She will need some time to ripen, but then”—he made a very Italian gesture—“she will yield a thousand pleasures to a practiced hand.”
I noticed he was dressed as a Roman. No leggings or trousers—only tunic and toga. I later learned he had been fostered in Rome. He gave Arthur a wicked grin, then turned away and joined Cai. They sat together next to Igrane’s reclined figure, on a cushion near her feet.
Arthur took my hand. I was trying to hide the fact that I nearly melted when he did, so I didn’t notice where we were going until we reached the garden overlooking the sea. The roses against the walls were in bloom, and the masses of herbs in separate beds, rosemary and fennel, perfumed the air. Vines I didn’t recognize grew down from above and over the marble rail we leaned on. Each gust of wind shook the white roses and drenched the air around us with a mixture of fragrances that murmured wordlessly of intoxicating desire.
He was standing behind me, his right hand on my shoulder, holding my left hand with his. I was having a lot of trouble thinking at all, and I decided that was probably the idea.
“I told you I would make you an offer,” he murmured into my ear.
I sighed. No problem about that. He was right; I was smitten.
“Your rank, virtue, and beauty all deserve my affection and profound respect.”
I made approving noises—also not difficult.
“My mother,” he purred, “owns extensive estates in Cornwall. A particularly beautiful one lies in a valley near here. It has its own villa, an ancient beauty built not long after the Romans came.”
I noticed he didn’t say conquest. That’s what it was, and a bloody one, too.
He had me drooling. I could practically see the place. No doubt exquisite and also completely impractical, built before they understood the climate of Albion was utterly different from that of Italy. Magnificent entryway, mosaic floors, peristyle garden with an entrancing colonnade. Commodious reception rooms, heated by a hypocaust. And a bath, probably heated by the same hypocaust. Wonderful! And excruciatingly expensive to maintain.
One could sit in the peristyle on a cool spring day, smell the flowers, and convince yourself that the Pax Romana still held, stretching from Arabia to Hadrian’s wall; legions stood well organized and strong, holding back the barbarian tide. Instead of the mess we were in now with Britons, Saxons, Jutes, Franks, and for God’s sake, God alone knew how many others all at one another’s throats, clawing savagely for power with the one hand while with the other they raped, murdered, stole, enslaved, betrayed, and destroyed as many of their fellow humans as they possibly and profitably could.
“How much land, what kind, and how many people are there to work it?” I asked.
“Hmm,” he answered. His ardor seemed somewhat diminished, but I got a crisp, clear answer.
“About ten thousand acres, heavy black soil that holds water like a jug. About four villages, not overburdened with taxes or tribute. In addition, it’s on the coast and fishing rights go with the property. It has five walled gardens, three orchards—apple, cherry, and peach—a fish stew, poultry yard, and a dovecote. It needs a firmer hand than my mother’s to make it really pay, but I’m betting you’ll develop one. As it is, she realizes considerable revenue from it, and careful attention would probably double that.”
“Cattle, sheep, goats, pasture for same, foundry and forge?” I asked.
“Cattle and sheep, yes. Goats, I don’t care for. Mountain pasture with a long grazing season in summer. Foundry and forge you would have to attract, or go to the considerable expense of purchasing a smith, but the space and equipment are present.”
“Tannery and—” I began.
“Enough,” he said firmly, then eased away from the marble rail.
We stood facing each other, several feet apart. He looked amused and a little surprised. He had beautiful eyes, and his mouth was simply wonderful. I wanted desperately to taste those curved, smooth lips on mine, but I kept the conversation on matters mundane.
“When would I take possession of this very attractive property?”
“Immediately,” he replied blandly. “This is, immediately on the signing of the marriage contract.”
I nodded and pointed to myself. “And when would you take possession of this attractive property?”
This was too much for him. He began laughing. When he got his mirth under control, he answered, “Not for several years. My mother would have to pronounce you ready to be… a wife,” he added delicately.
“My,” I said. “You have my life all planned for me. All I have to do is live it.”
“Yes, I suppose it must look that way to you.” He sounded almost sad. “But it’s not a bad life. In fact, it’s a somewhat better one than most people ever achieve. Certainly a better one than living in the wilderness with a broken down, exiled druid and his god knows what sort of friends and a Pictish slave.”
“That hurts,” I said. “I love Dugald, and the Gray Watcher is shape strong, kind, loving, and very wise. As for Kyra, she is not a slave. Neither Dugald nor the Gray Watcher would keep a slave. Neither of them believes in it. Dugald told me once that the first, last, and best gift God gave to men and women was freedom. He lives by this precept and so do I. Besides, signing the contract may present grave difficulties. I have no kin here to look out for my interests, and I am not yet of an age to act for myself. And were I of such an age, my answer would be—”
I didn’t get to finish. His hand shot out and covered my mouth. “Don’t say any more.” There was a steely warning in his gaze. “And whatever you do, don’t say no. My mother and Merlin would take it very much amiss if you did, and they are very powerful people—both of them.”
His hand moved from my lips and cupped my chin. “I beg you, don’t say no. They could break you—the two of them—and it would…” His eyes wandered away from my face, and he looked into the distance, out over the sea. “It would,” he continued, and for the first time he looked like he was sixteen, “it would not be a thing that I would enjoy seeing. No, I wouldn’t like it at all.”
I’ll give it to him, I thought after he left. He’d managed to say what he wanted me to do without ever being explicit about it. Stall—stall! Stall for time. I did have one misgiving about him. He was too good at seeming to be on both sides of an issue, sympathizing with your plight while subtly twisting your arm to get you to fall in with whatever plan the powerful saw fit to impose on you. But here we both were, and they were determined to marry me off—and to him. I couldn’t help but wonder why.
Then I remembered Igrane’s tirade about the oracles, and I knew my name must have come up in them once too often. So I was here, and the simplest way to dispose of me was to plant me in the countryside like a tree. I could run an important estate, give him pleasure, and bear him children before I aged too much to be interesting. And that’s how it would go, I knew. Oh, we would be deliriously happy for—what? Three years? Four? Five, even? But then the bloom would be off the rose. I would have had children by then, and that changes a woman’s body— coarsens her skin, thickens her waist, weighs down her breasts. But above all, it preoccupies her, and often as not wearies her. Not to mention that he sees his place in her affections slowly grow less and less as theirs grows.
And it is not like his investment would be all in me and our family, the way a poor man’s is. A chief may have as many women as he cares to, as he can afford. Quickly I would be relegated to the background. Sweet Guynifar, snug in her pretty Cornish nest with the brood growing up around her knees, while he ruled, he married for political advantage, he dallied with the fresh, soft young flesh I was sure Igrane and Merlin would procure for his amusement.
In a pig’s eye!
I was thinking these things over when Igrane returned. She had accompanied Arthur and his friends back to whatever place they were lodged. As she glided up the stairs, I saw she had an expression of fixed disapproval on her face. Arthur must have confided my expressions of reluctance to her.
“I hope,” she began, “you will not be difficult about this.”
“Difficult?” I asked sweetly. “Why, whatever do you mean?”
I think my mimicry might have been a bit too blatant, because her eyes hardened and the lines around her mouth deepened into something approaching a scowl.
“Watch out,” I taunted. “Sorceress or not, you’re showing your age.” I had hoped to get a rise out of her, and I succeeded almost too well.
Those slender, long nailed fingers closed on my hair. Pain, savage and all encompassing, paralyzing, lashed me, culminating in a rush of agony in my right arm and hand. I didn’t scream, or at least, I don’t think I did. But I did make a mewing sound and went to my knees before her. But in the last glimpse of her face, I saw the serpent, because that is what she reminded me of—a serpent. Strong, cold, secretive, and able only too well to blend into its surroundings so you don’t see it until it is too late. But my taunt pushed her into revealing herself. She knew she’d been out maneuvered, and by a mere child, and was all the more enraged. I knew I could expect no mercy from her when the time came to—as my lord Arthur put it—to break me.
I had some powers of my own, but now was not the time to force a duel. She might not win, but even if I succeeded in escaping her, there was Merlin to consider. No, Arthur suggested the best tactic: to adopt a delaying action. All this fleeted through my mind when I landed on my knees. So I began to weep.