“The whore is mine,” Owain said harshly. Ladwys shook her head and moved closer to Gundleus.
“She is my wife!” Gundleus protested to Arthur, thereby confirming the old rumour that he had indeed married his low-born lover. Which also meant that he had married Norwenna falsely, though that sin, considering what else he did to her, was small indeed.
“Wife or whatever,” Owain insisted, 'she is mine.“ He saw Arthur's hesitation. ”Until the council decides otherwise,“ he added in a deliberate echo of Arthur's invocation of that higher authority. Arthur seemed troubled by Owain's claim, but his position in Dumnonia was still uncertain, for though he had been named as Mordred's protector and one of the kingdom's warlords, that only gave him an authority equal to Owain's. All of us had noted how, in the wake of the Silurian rout, Arthur had taken charge, but Owain, by demanding Ladwys as his slave, was reminding Arthur that he held equal power. The moment was awkward until Arthur sacrificed Ladwys to Dumnonian unity. ”Owain has decided the matter,“ he said to Gundleus, then turned away so he would not have to witness the effect of his words on the lovers. Ladwys screamed her protest, then went silent as one of Owain's men dragged her away. Tanaburs laughed at Ladwys's distress. He was a Druid, so no harm would be done to him. He was no prisoner, but free to go, though he would have to leave the field without food, blessing or company. Yet, emboldened by the day's events, I could not let him go without speaking and so I followed him across the pasture that was littered with the Silurian dead. ”Tanaburs!“ I called after him. The Druid turned and watched me draw my sword. ”Careful, boy," he said and made a sign of warning with his moon-tipped staff.
I should have felt fear, but a new warrior spirit filled me as I stepped close to him and placed the sword in the tangled white hairs of his beard. His head jerked back at the touch of the steel, rattling the yellow bones tied to his hair. His old face was lined, brown and blotchy, his eyes red and his nose twisted. “I ought to kill you,” I said.
He laughed. “And the curse of Britain will follow you. Your soul will never reach the Otherworld, you will have torments unknown and unnumbered, and I will be their author.” He spat towards me, then tried to push the sword blade out of his beard, but I tightened my grip on the hilt and he suddenly looked alarmed as he realized my strength.
A few curious onlookers had followed me and some tried to warn me of the dreadful fate that would torment me if I killed a Druid, but I had no intention of killing the old man. I just wanted to frighten him.
“Ten or more years ago,” I said, 'you came to Madog's holding." Madog was the man who had enslaved my mother, and whose homestead the young Gundleus had raided.
Tanaburs nodded as he remembered the raid. “So we did, so we did. A good day! We took much gold,” he said, 'and many slaves!"
“And you made a death-pit,” I said.
“So?” He. shrugged, then leered at me. “The Gods must be thanked for good fortune.” I smiled and let the sword point tickle his scrawny throat. “So I lived, Druid. I lived.” It took Tanaburs a few seconds to understand just what I had said, but then he blanched and trembled, for he knew that I, alone of all in Britain, possessed the power to kill him. He had sacrificed me to the Gods, but his carelessness in not making sure of his gift meant that the Gods had granted the power of his life into my keeping. He screamed in terror, thinking my blade was about to lunge into his gullet, but instead I pulled the steel away from his ragged beard and laughed at him as he turned and stumbled away across the field. He was desperate to escape me, but just before he reached the woodland into which the handful of Silurian survivors had fled, he turned and pointed a bony hand towards me. “Your mother lives, boy!” he shouted. “She lives!” Then he was gone. I stood there with my mouth open and my sword hanging in my hand. It was not that I was overcome by any particular emotion for
I could hardly remember my mother and had no real recollection of any love between us, but the very thought that she lived wrenched my whole world as violently as that morning's destruction of Merlin's hall. Then I shook my head. How could Tanaburs remember one slave among so many? His claim was surely false, mere words to unsettle me, nothing more, and so I sheathed the sword and walked slowly back towards the fortress.
Gundleus was placed under guard in a chamber off the great hall at Caer Cadarn. There was a feast of sorts that night, though because so many people were in the fortress the helpings of meat were small and hastily cooked. Much of the night was spent by old friends exchanging news of Britain and Brittany, for many of Arthur's followers had originally come from Dumnonia or from the other British kingdoms. The names of Arthur's men blurred in my mind, for there were over seventy horsemen in his band, as well as grooms, servants, women and a tribe of children. In time the names of Arthur's warriors became so familiar, but that night they meant nothing: Dagonet, Aglaval, Cei, Lanval, the brothers Balan and Balin, Gawain and Agravain, Blaise, Illtyd, Eiddilig, Bedwyr. I did notice Morfans, for he was the ugliest man I ever saw, so ugly that he took pride in his twisted looks, goitred neck, hare lip and misshapen jaw. I also noticed Sagramor, for he was black and I had never seen, let alone believed in, such men. He was a tall, thin and sourly laconic man, though when he could be persuaded to tell a story in his horribly accented British he could put a whole hall under his spell.
And, of course, I noticed Ailleann. She was a slender, black-haired woman, a few years older than Arthur, with a thin, grave and gentle face that gave her a look of great wisdom. She was dressed in royal finery that night. Her robe was of linen dyed a rusty red with iron-soil, girdled by a heavy silver chain, and had long loose sleeves that were fringed with otter fur. She wore a gleaming torque of heavy gold about her long neck, bracelets of gold around her wrists and an enamelled brooch showing Arthur's symbol of the bear at her breast. She moved gracefully, spoke little and watched Arthur protectively. I thought she had to be a queen, or at least a princess, except that she was carrying bowls of food and flasks of mead like any common servant.
“Ailleann's a slave, lad,” Morfans the Ugly said. He was squatting opposite me on the hall floor and had seen me watching the tall woman as she moved from the patches of firelight into the hall's flickering shadows.
“Whose slave?” I asked.
“Whose do you think?” he asked, then put a rib of pork in his mouth and used his two remaining teeth to strip the bone of its succulent flesh. “Arthur's,” he said after he had tossed the bone to one of the many dogs in the hall. “And she's his lover as well as his slave, of course.” He belched, then drank from a horn cup. “She was given to him by his brother-in-law, King Budic. That was a long time ago. She's a good few years older than Arthur and I don't suppose Budic thought he'd keep her long, but once Arthur takes a fancy to someone they seem to stay for ever. Those are her twin boys.” He jerked a greasy beard towards the back of the hall where a pair of sullen boys of about nine squatted in the dirt with their bowls of food.
“Arthur's sons?” I asked.
“No one else's,” Morfans said derisively. “Amhar and Loholt, they're called, and their father worships them. Nothing's too good for those little bastards, and that's exactly what they are, lad, bastards. Real good-for-nothing little bastards.” There was a genuine hatred in his voice. “I tell you, son, Arthur ap Uther is a great man. He's the best soldier I've ever known, the most generous man and the most fair lord, but when it comes to breeding children I could do better with a sow for a mother.” I looked back to Ailleann. “Are they married?”
Morfans laughed. “Of course not! But she's kept him happy these ten years. Mind you, the day will come when he'll send her away just like his father sent his mother away. Arthur will marry something royal and she won't be half as gentle as Ailleann, but that's what men like Arthur have to do. They have to marry well. Not like you and me, boy. We can marry what we want, so long as it isn't royal. Listen to that!” He grinned as a woman screamed in the night outside the hall.