The Road to Avalon (35 page)

Finally he came to her side. “Things will go better in the morning,” he said comfortingly. “I’ll put a crew of men at your disposal, and you can do what you want with the house.” She gave him a shadowy smile and he bent and kissed her gently on the mouth. “Good night, my dear.”

“Good night.” She watched him walk out of the room, bowed her head into her hands, and cried.

The following day the sun shone, Gwenhwyfar’s women began to unpack, and Bedwyr arrived back at Camelot. He looked in on the queen late in the afternoon as she was having furniture moved into her private salon.

He seemed to bring the sunshine with him.

“Bedwyr!” Gwenhwyfar greeted him with a warm smile.

He looked from her to the men who were busily moving tables, to Olwen, who was telling them where to put the tables, and said, “Come out with me for a while. The sky is beautiful.”

The sun would set within the hour. “A little air would do me good,” Gwenhwyfar agreed. “Olwen, get me my cloak.”

They walked slowly around the side of the palace, where the gardens would go in the spring. The ground was muddy but Gwenhwyfar did not seem to notice. The sky was streaked with rosy fire and the setting sun was like a great red ball of flame hanging just above the horizon. Gwenhwyfar looked at the sky and let out her breath in a long, melancholy sigh. The beauty of the dying sun made her feel suddenly very lonely, and ineffably sad.

From just behind her shoulder came Bedwyr’s soft voice. “Tell me”

She answered, her eyes still on the sky, “Do you remember when you came to Gwynedd to fetch me for my wedding, and I asked you questions about Arthur?”

“Yes.”

“You said to me then, ‘He is a king’ And you said also, ‘He is a very private man’ Well, it was not until just recently that I finally realized what you meant.”

Bedwyr did not answer and she turned to look at him. “I cannot reach him, Bedwyr. He keeps a space around himself, always, and if you try to walk into that space, he puts up a wall. I used to think that if I could have a child, then he would change. But I don’t think even that would make a difference now.”

“It’s not you, little bird.” His voice was very quiet. “It’s the way he is with everyone.”

She stared at the sky once more. “He was not that way with Morgan.”

Bedwyr felt as if he had just stepped onto treacherous ground. Gwenhwyfar’s profile was rigid. “He and Morgan were children together,” he said at last. “That makes a difference.”

A picture flashed before her eyes: Arthur, helpless with laughter, watching Morgan tussle with Cabal.

“I have brothers, but they are not the only people I can be happy with,” she said bitterly.

He reached out and turned her to face him. “You weren’t abandoned and brutalized when you were a child, either,” he said. “You’ve seen the scars he carries. He got those before he was nine years old, Gwenhwyfar. Avalon must have seemed like heaven to him after that. Morgan was probably the first person he could ever trust.”

There was silence. Then: “I didn’t know.” Her voice was muffled. “He never would tell me about the scars.” Bedwyr’s face was as harsh as his voice, his eyes the deep blue that strong emotion always turned them. She had spoken angrily because it hurt so much, that picture of Arthur and Morgan. And now here was Bedwyr, the only person who cared about her, staring at her with those hard blue eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

The eyes softened. “I didn’t mean to shout. And he would never tell me about the scars either. I got it from Cai.”

Arthur had grown up with Cai as well as with Morgan, but he did not look at Cai the way he did . . . She wouldn’t think of it. “You love Arthur very much, don’t you?” she said instead.

“Yes,” came the simple reply. “I do.”

He was so blessedly uncomplicated, she thought. So easy to understand. “I know you do. That is why I expected you to be appalled by what happened between us at Clust. But you weren’t. At first, I couldn’t understand it. But now I do.” She looked up, meeting his eyes, not letting him look away. “You knew it would not matter to Arthur,” she said.

“Gwenhwyfar . . . ” The admission was in his eyes, in the helplessness of his voice.

She buried her face in his shoulder. “Bedwyr.” It was a cry of pain. “Oh, God, Bedwyr. I am so lonely!”

His arms came around her, warm, strong, loving. “Don’t, little bird. Don’t. He does love you, you know. But his way is the way of a king. Mine is just the way of a man.” At that she took her head away from his shoulder and looked up. His eyes were like sapphires.

The words, the look, fell like balm on her scalded heart. When he bent his head to kiss her, she reached up in instant, desperate response.

They thought they were sheltered from the house, and they were. Neither of them saw the figure of the king silhouetted against the hill behind them. Arthur too had come out to watch the sunset.

He stood for perhaps five seconds, motionless. Then he turned and walked quietly back to the palace.

Two days later he left for Avalon.

This time it was Morgan who came to meet him. She stood beside Dun’s shoulder while he slid to the ground. Then he was beside her, his gray eyes looking down into the face that he loved. “Welcome to Avalon, Arthur,” she said, and smiled. “Welcome home.”

III
MORDRED (467–470)

Chapter 29

T
HE
morning air was clear when Arthur left Avalon, with a fresh wind blowing white clouds across the blue summer sky. He took his time, ambling along the familiar track that led through the fields and back to Camelot. The larks trilled high in the sky and the breeze ruffled the hair on his brow, and he was happy.

His mood had been quite different two days earlier when he had ridden through the gathering dusk in the opposite direction. The memory of what had precipitated his hasty visit to Morgan crossed his mind and he frowned, the serenity of his mood marred by the thought.

Urien, Prince of Rheged, had asked him for permission to marry Morgan. Urien had spent the previous month at Avalon because of a case of boils that Drusus could not cure. Morgan had cured the boils, and Urien wanted to marry her.

There had been nothing wrong with the request. Urien was Morgan’s equal in birth. He was young, younger than she, handsome, stalwart, a perfectly acceptable candidate for the hand of any princess in Britain.

Arthur had wanted to kill him.

He hoped now, in retrospect, that he had not made an enemy. He was afraid he had been brutally rude to the boy. He had not been thinking of prudence; he had been thinking of how he would like to get his hands around Urien’s neck for even daring to . . .

He had ridden to Avalon at a pace that was too fast for his beloved old stallion. Morgan had been quite cross with him. But she had made it perfectly clear that she had no intention of marrying Urien, or anyone else.

Arthur patted Dun’s neck. The birds sang louder. In five minutes the walls of Camelot became visible in the distance and the king regarded them with pleased proprietorship. A great flag bearing the red dragon of his house was flying over the gate, brilliant in the bright sunshine. Gwenhwyfar had made that flag for him, surprising him with it one day early this spring. He remembered that she had asked him where he was going when she saw him leaving the palace two days ago. He was afraid he had been rude to her as well. He would make it up to her, he thought. On a morning like this, he was at peace with the whole world.

There were permanent shops inside the city gates, but a sort of bazaar had sprung up outside the gates as well, with everything being sold, from food to jewelry, weapons, cloth, eyeglasses, pottery, and fortunes. As Dun threaded his way through the colorful confusion of booths and wagons and merchandise, the word went round: The king is here! The king is here!

Arthur acknowledged the cheers with a nod and a raised hand, and then he was at the gate, which was kept open during the day. The guards on duty saluted and the king rode through.

The road that led from the gate to the plateau and palace at the top of the hill had been graveled last spring. Grass had been planted as well, and Arthur’s eye was gratified by the rolling green landscape that fell away from him on all sides. He and Dun topped the steepest part of the hill and the road branched off in three directions. Arthur continued on the path that would take him to the palace, but he could hear the sound of muffled shouts and the clash of steel coming from the left path, which led to the training grounds for the foot.

Good, Arthur thought. The men were working. The cavalry quarters were off to the right, out of view and out of hearing, but he was certain there was as much activity there as in the foot camp. Bedwyr had been driving his men relentlessly these last few weeks. Arthur had planned a great festival to show off his new capital, and the army was to present several demonstrations to the guests.

He continued up the hill to the level plateau at the top. There, at the end of the road, fronted by a wide graveled courtyard, was the palace of Camelot. There were flags flying from the roof, made also by the queen and her women. The glazed windows, with all their shutters wide open, gleamed in the bright summer sun. Arthur checked Dun for a moment and regarded his home with pleasure. If he had not been a king he would have liked to be an architect, he thought, and laughed at his own self-satisfaction.

He had reason for pride, however. The palace was a brilliant example of Roman architecture adapted to the harsher British climate. Arthur and Cai had spent many hours poring over Merlin’s copy of Vitruvius’
De Architectura,
looking at floor plans, discussing theory, trying to decide what would be functional for Arthur’s needs and what would not.

They had ended by keeping the basic Roman floor plan which utilized a peristyle, or central court, with most of the main rooms arrayed around it. The Roman peristyle, however, was an open courtyard surrounded by a colonnade. This feature, so pleasant in a southern house, was not practical for a colder, wetter climate, and so the peristyle had become a great hall, and the colonnade a series of decorated wooden pillars. One more British addition had been made to the basic Roman plan: hearth places for burning wood were built into most of the rooms. The charcoal brazier was inadequate to heat rooms of the size they had constructed, and a Roman-style hypocaust was beyond their means.

Arthur handed Dun over to one of the guards on duty in the courtyard and entered the palace through the main door. The door led into a vestibule, with another guardroom off it, and from the vestibule Arthur passed into the main public room of the palace: the great hall. This room was always busy with traffic: servants passing through on errands, people waiting to see the king, or Cai, or the queen. The floor of the great hall was tiled and it was decorated with some of the best statues from the praetorium in Venta. It was a huge room, with a floor space of five-thousand square feet, and most of the public reception rooms of the palace opened off it. Behind the pillars of the indoor colonnade were the doors to the dining room, the council room, the king’s office, Cai’s office, and several reception salons.

Arthur walked through the hall unhurriedly, scarcely noticing the groups of people gathered there. At the far side of the great hall was a corridor which led to the second part of the palace, the little or private hall, which was the center of the family part of the house. The little hall was only three-thousand square feet in size, and off it were three separate suites of rooms. One belonged to the king, one to the queen, and the other was shared by Bedwyr and Cai. Extra bedrooms opened off the corridor, and these were used as guestrooms for important visitors. Corridors ran off to the left and the right between the two parts of the house, and these led to other rooms and to the kitchens. The servants, of which there were many, slept in various places. Personal servants slept near their masters and mistresses; most other servants slept in the attics.

The little hall was as crowded as the great hall, but mainly with women. Arthur went directly to the anteroom that led to the queen’s suite, down a small corridor, and into her office. It was in this room that Gwenhwyfar interviewed her staff, and in general ran the complicated mechanism of the palace’s private functions. Most public functions were delegated to Cai, but both of them had been working together on the upcoming festival.

Gwenhwyfar was seated behind her desk, a stylus in hand, frowning thoughtfully at the scroll before her, when Arthur came into the room. “Working on the festival?” he asked lightly as he crossed to the chair opposite hers. He sat down. “There’s ink on your chin,” he added.

Gwenhwyfar stared at her husband. “You’re back early,” she said. He had ridden out of Camelot two days ago in an ill-concealed fury. Now he was making jokes about ink on her chin.

“The abbot from Glastonbury is coming to see me this morning,” he reminded her.

“Oh, yes.” She looked down at her scroll. “I’ve been trying to sketch out the field for the games.”

“Let me see.” He came around the desk to stand behind her, leaning forward over her shoulder to see the paper spread on her desk. “What is wrong?” he asked after a minute “It looks perfect to me.”

She could feel the heat from his body, smell the faint male aroma of sweat and leather and horse. “I don’t know if there is enough seating,” she said. “I was wondering if perhaps I could squeeze some more benches in here.” She pointed.

“No.” His answer was quick, decisive. “That would make the entry to the field too small. It wouldn’t be safe, not with the horses.” He straightened. “If we’re short of seats, some people will have to stand.”

“There are just so many people!”

He laughed. “Is anyone in Britain staying at home?”

“I don’t think so.” She watched as he returned to his seat. “It’s what you wanted, after all. You can’t impress the country with the splendor of your new capital if no one comes to see it.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “True.”