“Well, even God had the prophets to nag Him.”
“Or so it’s said.” I reined out of the column. “Take them to the stables. Make sure the horses are looked to before anyone puts a bite of meat in his own mouth, clear?”
“Did I join the army yesterday?” he snorted. “Where will you be?”
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“Demoting Peredur.”
I found Cador’s son emerging from the church adjacent to the palace. Peredur was draped in scaie armor, buckling on his sword. His stint as cohort commander seemed at least to have put some determination into his bearing.
“Greetings, Peredur. I hear you were tribune in my place.”
With his usual detachment: “You seemed to be absent, my lord. With the emperor’s approval, I took command.”
“That was farsighted of you. However, I’ve just brought in the command from which you seemed inconveniently absent, though as ranking tribune, I’d be honored to have you as second-in-command.” I saw him stiffen slightly and said less formally, “Peredur, the cohort has accepted me home. Though I see they’ve lost no edge under you, this is no time for vanity in
either of us.”
“Well, then.” He relaxed a little. “What matter, anyway?” he said, and his slim hand indicated the church. “It was only courtesy to Ambrosius that I took up arms. There is my home,.”
Tactfully: “Amen. Tribune, please inform your father we’ll take up position outside the city awaiting his orders. Where are the Lady Guenevere and her women?”
“Father told them to keep close within the palace.” Peredur’s composure bent a little in something like a real smile. “Gwen doesn’t like it at all. Spitting nails.”
I thought of fierce little Morgana. “And why not? I know one woman who’d take on Cerdic with a bronze knife and probably win. And Guenevere? A woman who paupers herself to support her men is not going to twiddle her thumbs while those men fight. Find me with the cohort.”
The palace chamber of state swirled and eddied with agitation. No soldiers about, but a throng of court women—daughters and wives of officials—and a few priests. Guenevere stood alone on the throne dais, trying to restore some sort of order in the gaggle of them, and a little exasperated. I edged through the women— excuse me, pardon me, by your leave—and knelt before Cador’s daughter. “Lady Guenevere.”
She seemed extraordinarily glad to greet me. “Lord Arthur, welcome home. You—”
Guenevere broke off. Her expression changed as she studied me. For a moment, the cool reserve that characterized her family faded. “Wherever you have been, you seem to bear the marks of experience.”
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“I’ve come to ask your help and that of your ladies,” I told her. “May i address them?”
“By all means.” She took my hand and drew me up onto the dais. The last of my energy deserted me then; I must have reeled a little. Quickly, Guenevere said, “Or perhaps you would care to sit. Be still now!” she commanded the others sharply. “Gather round and Lord Arthur will have answers to your silly questions.”
With royal disregard for protocol, she seated herself on the edge of the dais and invited me down beside her. “Come round us.” She might have been instructing children. It was the right move at the right moment. Seeing her so calm, the women quieted, curious to hear us. “Lord Arthur says he has need of us. Listen to him.”
They hushed expectantly, moving in closer to the dais. I spoke very casually. “You’ve been told to stay out of the way, and no doubt that rankles.”
“So it does,” one elderly woman grumbled. “The women of Eburacum are not cowards.”
“We’ve just ridden in,” I went on. “Who here will give support to my men?”
A buzzing among the women and priests. They looked to Guenevere to speak first. Without hesitation, she asked, “What can we do?”
“When we’re in position, it would cheer the men if you all went out to greet them.”
Guenevere considered. “That makes sense.” Then, in a low voice meant only for me: “They’ve never been in battle, most of them, and never as a cohort. They’ll be uncertain. And we’ll feel better busy than just sitting and stewing.”
“And your fattier?” I asked.
“Will disapprove,” she laughed. It surprised me how intuitively she grasped the situation, but this was a woman full of surprises. She raised her voice again. “I will go! Who is with me?”
“Me!”
“And me!”
“I, too.” A young priest thrust up his hand. “1 was not always tonsured.”
“And I!”
Guenevere spread her arms to all of them. “We’ll all go together.”
“Thank you.” I bowed my head to them. “Thank you all. If our spirit is half of yours, how can we lose? Go among the men,
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talk to them, sing to them, let them see they matter to you. After the battle, there will be men who can’t be moved but must be treated where they lie. Every lady here, every priest could help by bringing the infirmary supplies to the field then. Will you do
it?”
“My lord.” A very young woman, very pale, plucked at my sleeve. “Could the Saxons get through to the city?”
“Not at all.” I hoped it sounded more convincing than it felt. “They’ve never faced massed alae before, and one man on horse is worth five on foot.”
“Of course.” Guenevere jumped in staunchly. “Didn’t Lord Arthur himself and two others stand against a hundred in
Cornwall?”
“We’ll go out to the men!” The young priest shouldered his way through the press to confront me, grinning. “I’ll carry the great cross from the church and the Host to say mass with.”
“I’ll bring my harp,” one woman volunteered.
“And I my lute,” trilled another.
“We’ll give them such a welcome!”
“I’ve got to change.”
“I won’t-go out in this kirtle, it’s old as I am.”
“That old? I thought it quite your best. Is my hair all right?”
“Out to the darling Sixth alae1.”
Patriotism is catching as plague. The room seethed with their excitement as the women chattered with preparations, happy to have some direction and purpose. Forgotten for the moment, a small island of calm in a sea of fervor, Guenevere sat quietly on the dais. She offered me a gold cup of fruit wine. I toasted the
women.
“Live a hundred years, none of them will ever be as beautiful
as they are this day.” Guenevere looked closely at me. “By God’s holy eyes, are
you crying, Arthur?”
“Just—these people pull at my heart. They make a lot of
things worthwhile.”
“An improvement,” she said, “i wondered if you had a heart outside of duty. I thought they wound you up each morning, something like a catapult.”
I took a drink. “That was before.”
“Before what, Arthur?”
“Before. Was I all that pompous?”
“Oh, at times.”
“It was only eighty men in Cornwall.”
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She pretended surprise. “So few? The Cornish already have it at a hundred.”
“Stay a while. Next year it’ll be doubled.”
Guenevere laughed. “Good to know you while you’re still mortal,” she countered with mock gravity. “Gods aren’t very interesting.” She was teasing me again in that cool way of hers, a subtle and tender challenge I wouldn’t have fully understood less than a year ago. “Arthur, won’t you offer me a drink?”
“From this cup?”
“Why not?” She took it from me and drank. “We’re in the same battle. The rest of the set was sold for Peredur. Cerdic doesn’t know what beggars he comes to rob.”
I realized and said with conviction, “Lady Guenevere, if you set your mind to it, you could be formidable.”
She hid her smile behind the wine cup. “For whom, Arthur?”
“Tribune!” Stubby little Gareth hurried through the crowd, knelt clumsily to Guenevere and saluted me. “Messenger, sir.”
“From where?”
“The coast near Humber. He’s ridden all day.” Gareth paused for breath; he’d evidently run the length of the long hall. Like many superb horsemen, he didn’t manage his own legs all that well. “This morning at dawn, it was. Some fishermen were working their nets off Humber mouth when they spied longships. They ran inshore straight to report.”
“Did they say how many ships, Gareth?” . “They were far out but the messenger said fifteen, probably more. They were almost over the horizon, he said.” . “Moving?”
Gareth shook his head. “The sails were reefed.” ‘
I felt a weary satisfaction. Cerdic was waiting, doing what I expected of him. It’s worth the leaving, Morgana. It has to be. We’ll be ready.
Ready or not, he still surprised me.
I should say something about this man Cerdic who haunted the outskirts of my life, as I his, for so many years. Church scribes are a biased lot with their own cutlery to grind, and you never know who’s going to rummage your life with a goose quill and a viewpoint. Tacitus used the relative monogamy of the Germans to scold Rome for its vice, and I hear that young Gildas is writing of my early reign as if it were a lost golden age. Suffice to say, we were not always inspired or the weather that good.
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On their side, the Saxons have embroidered Cerdic with die usual gods and heroes for ancestors, claiming that his familiar spirit appeared to herald his birth as a king. Some have sworn that, to this end, Cerdic was bom with a sword in his hand. Symbolic of course, but awkward for his mother. God help a king without a sense of humor. He may stand close to his legend, but he should never lean on it.
His father Ossa came to Britain with grim old Hengist, one of the first mercenaries hired against the Picts. When Vortigern gave them Wight, Ossa settled down to farm and, as no Saxon women came with the first ships, he took a British wife. Cerdic could boast as much Belgae blood as Bedivere. They are an energetic, aggressive tribe. As much of Cerdic’s ambition came from his mother as from Ossa.
He grew up in two languages, British and Jute, read and wrote passable Latin. He founded the West Saxon kingdom and well deserved the crown, possessing several indispensable qualities for kingship: a quick grasp of complex situations and the ability to make decision and act one fluid sequence. Probably not cruel by nature, he could nevertheless use cruelty as a tool, a necessary example, repugnant though it might be. So have I. And he did have a wonderful way with words, a trick of charging them with immediacy and fate, something that should be graven on Sinai, He could stir men. I heard him exhort them that day at Badon.