Page 5 of Warrior Queen

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I reached across and touched his arm, partly to jog him into continuing with his explanation, partly just because I wanted to touch him. Sometimes, even now, I had to pinch myself to believe the life I was living as King Arthur’s Queen. “Go on. I want to know.”

His fingers brushed mine, his touch warm and promising. A glow started somewhere near my navel and descended. Even after nearly three years together, he still had the power to render me breathless, like a teenager suffering from her first serious crush. Annoying, sometimes, especially when I wanted to be cross with him, but the rest of the time…most enjoyable.

Alezan, my skittish chestnut mare, interrupted where my thoughts were taking me as she curvetted sideways, and I had to put both hands on the reins to control her. “Steady, girl.” Laughter escaped me.

He chuckled again, probably aware of the way he’d made me feel. “Alezan’s jealous. She wants you to herself.”

There was definitely something about the Pendragons that drew people to them like bees to a honeypot. Morgana possessed the obvious magic, but Arthur had something more– a charm, an attractiveness that not only drew women, for obvious reasons, but also men, who just wanted to offer him their allegiance and service.

Tapping Alezan with my left leg, I pushed her closer to Llamrei, Arthur’s gray. She laid her ears back in threat, but I had her under control. She was a very mareish mare. “Keep going. I want to know more.”

“It goes back to when my great-grandfather, Constantine, declared himself western Emperor from Britain. If he’d stayed safely here and held onto the power he already had, he’d have survived. But he didn’t. Greed took over. He gathered all the legions under his command and sailed off to Gaul to expand his share of the empire. For a while, he succeeded, and was even made joint Emperor with Honorius.” He paused, thoughtful. “He truly wore the purple of his rank.”

Ahead, a gangly boy clutching a long stick herded a gaggle of geese across the road toward the gates of a farmstead, probably afraid we’d want to steal them. Wise boy. Roast goose would be delicious, and there were a lot of us.

Arthur watched him for a moment or two before turning back to me. “He left his son, my grandfather, in charge here. When Constantine fell from power and was executed, my grandfather took the title Emperor in his turn. But he was wise enough to remain in Britain. An overlord was needed here, not an absentee Emperor. The people accepted him. And what had not long before been one Roman province, devolved in just a few years into many smaller kingdoms with him at their head– High King in all but name.”

He watched the boy as he closed the farm gate behind his rescued geese, and tipped him a mock salute. The boy gave him the finger and ran away.

“I knew that bit,” I said, preventing Alezan taking a sideways swipe at Llamrei with her teeth.

Arthur chuckled. “She’s in a bad mood today. Where was I? Oh, yes. Merlin told me the tribes that still existed, from before the legions arrived, had already begun reassembling themselves into the kingdoms you see today, long before the legions left. In Dumnonia, we’d never lost our noble families– always been next best thing to a separate entity from the Roman ruled province. But the newly formed kingdoms still needed an overall leader. A hand to guide the ship.”

“And that was your grandfather?”

He nodded. “For a while, before he was overthrown. Britain was as insecure then and as rife with rivalries as it is now. I can’t say how good he’d have been at it– better than the man who took his place, I’d swear. Guorthegirn the Usurper shunned the title ‘Emperor’ and styled himself the first High King. He told the people the days of the Empire were well and truly over. They wanted to hear that. The Empire had let them down time and time again. Even the ones who saw themselves as Romans had lost faith in help ever coming from Rome. They preferred a leader with a British title– not a Roman one.”

I knew about Guorthegirn. He’d exiled Arthur’s grandfather to Armorica, modern Brittany, where Arthur’s father, Uthyr, and his older brother, Ambrosius, had been born. They returned to serve Guorthegirn as young men, long after their father died– probably poisoned on Guorthegirn’s orders.

Arthur grinned. “When my Uncle Ambrosius overthrew Guorthegirn in his turn, and burnt him to a crisp in his stronghold, he kept the title the Usurper had made for himself. Having a High King fitted a Britain now separated from the old Empire, which was crumbling. We were independent, but we needed the structure the legions had given us. Far better to work together against a common enemy, rather than warring amongst ourselves.”

That sounded the sort of policy that worked better on paper than it did in practice, but I didn’t say so.

Instead, I squinted into the distance, where the dark shadow of forest clung to rolling hills, and modified my reply. “That doesn’t always work though, does it? Look at Caw of Alt Clut. He put his own greed above his duty to Britain as a whole.”

Arthur nodded. “There’ll always be men like him. But think how many of the kingdoms have sent me their young warriors. They did that because they agree with me, at least in principle. My men are like the legions– ready to fight for any kingdom, not just one. And when we’ve lost men, the kings have sent replacements. That shows their will to work together. To defeat the Saxons.”

Optimist.

“But what if our kings have Saxon lineage and mixed loyalties? You still have the men Natanleod sent you, but if one of them is killed, will Cerdic replace him? Send his men to fight against his mother’s people? What if he sends you Saxons?”

He inhaled deeply, his voice taking on a discernible bitterness. “It remains to be seen where his loyalties lie.”

“He bent the knee to you. The first to do so.”

A scowl crept across his face. “I know. That had me puzzled. I don’t know what he meant by that. He’s not a man I’d trust. He fought side-by-side with his mother’s people to win Natanleod’s kingdom. They raised him. Despite his appearance, he’s more a Saxon than a man of Caer Guinntguic. The people tolerate him because he’s old Elafius’s son and all they’ve got since Natanleod left no heir.”

My lips made a thin line. The temptation to reveal what I knew of Cerdic welled up inside me. Living in the Dark Ages had already presented me with multiple occasions where I’d been tempted to reveal my somewhat dubious foreknowledge. However, after the mistake of telling Merlin about the sword in the stone, I’d learned to hold my tongue. Most of the time. But that didn’t stop me wanting to spill all. It was like having a huge, exciting secret that could never be revealed to your friends– multiplied by about a thousand.

Supposedly, Cerdic would establish the kingdom of Wessex, and as such become the legendary ancestor of the English royal family. The key word there, though, was “supposedly.” Of course, as with so much of the history of the time I now lived in, nothing was certain. Yet here he was, ruling a British kingdom, plonk in the middle of where Wessex would one day lie. The more I saw of the fifth century, the more I recognized the truths that lay behind many of the legends in my old world.

“Might it be a good idea to make him an ally rather than an enemy?” I asked. “He seemed to want that when he bent the knee.”

“Never trust a man with Saxon blood in his veins,” Arthur snapped. “I’ve made that my policy and so far, I’ve seen no reason to change it.”

Considering plenty of Saxon blood probably ran in my veins, I chose not to comment on that.

Probably his relationship with his older half-brother, Cadwy, had prompted his reaction, though. Cadwy’s mother had been a Saxon princess, married to Uthyr in a wedding arranged between Guorthegirn and Hengest, the Saxon leader who’d been Guorthegirn’s magister militum– battle leader. For battle leader, read controller. In his later years Guorthegirn had fallen ever more deeply under the influence of the Saxons he’d first brought in as foederati– mercenaries– and who’d bit by bit taken ever more land in the east for themselves.