Page 4 of The Bear's Heart

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But what lay in the future? Not the events of Mallory’sMorte D’Arthuror stories about Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight and Lancelot du Lac, that was for sure. Yet most of the legendary players seemed to litter this world, with a few extras thrown in for good measure. Morgana, with her possible magical powers, held the post of advisor to Arthur’s jealous half-brother, Cadwy. Their younger sister Morgawse, wife to Arthur’s friend and ally, Theodoric, had not long ago given birth to Medraut who, in the future that was no longer my present, would be known as Mordred, a man perhaps destined to betray his uncle. Merlin, with his magic and mystery, had ranged himself on Arthur’s team beside the legendary names of Cei and Bedwyr and Gwalchmei.

Merlin’s gaze flicked to Arthur, deep in conversation with Cei a couple of horse’s lengths ahead of us. The rest of the warriors were the same distance behind our horses. “You don’t understand my gifts,” he said, the frown returning. “Because neither do I. They come and go, and I’m rarely privy to a clear view of what’s to come.” He paused. “Althoughyoucould tell me.”

I’d already thought of that. “I can’t,” I said, without any tinge of regret, because even if it were possible, it couldn’t happen. “I don’t know myself what’s true and what isn’t. I told you about the sword in the stone and you made it happen. Together we made a story into real history. Who knows what we’ve changed. That can’t happen again.”

Standing in the old Roman forum in far-off Viroconium, Arthur’s half-brother Cadwy’s capital city, was an enormous rock with a sword sticking out of it– a sword that almost everyone, bar Arthur himself, had tried to wrench out. Unsuccessfully. The writing on the stone proclaimed that the sword could be drawn only when it was needed. Merlin had set it there, and now that old myth from the future had become present-day fact.

Merlin’s brow furrowed. “Why don’t you know what’s true?”

Our horses were nearing the pathway up the side of the hill. The scent of wood smoke and middens hung in the cold air, a scent that had come to mean home to me. “Because my time is fifteen hundred years into the future,” I said. “By then, we know almost nothing about your time– about now. The only things we have are a few bits written long after you’re all dead, hundreds of years from now. No one even knows if Arthur was a real person. Or you. To us, you’re just stories from a time when history wasn’t written down. Because we know so little, we call this time the Dark Ages.”

“But it is written down. At the abbey they keep records of everything– of births and deaths, of battles fought, of crops and trade and judgements made. They have lists of the warriors from other kingdoms who’ve come to fight for Arthur now he’s Dux Britanniarum. The monks keep good records.”

I sighed. “Well, by my time, all their records have disappeared. Most likely, they were lost or destroyed somehow in the century or so after they were made. Nothing exists in my time.” Wouldn’t professors of medieval history tear their hair to think of those lost documents.

Might the invading Saxons have destroyed them in the chaos after the loss of Arthur at fateful Camlann? I couldn’t tell Merlin that, or share the looming tragedy of that final battle. I didn’t even know how many years into the future Camlann lay, although if Medraut were to fight there, he’d have to be a man grown. As he was just a baby now, that should give us many years of safety.

Our horses began the climb up the hill, as in the west the sun dipped beneath the horizon, and darkness crept over the land. I’d come home. For the first time ever, the fortress felt like just that. At the stables, servants came to attend to our horses, and Arthur and I managed to break away from Merlin and Cei and escape to the great hall and our private chamber.

As soon as the door closed behind us, Arthur turned to me, and I stepped into his arms. I’d been wanting to do this ever since we’d left Nial at the Lake Village.

He held me close, his mouth against my hair, his breath hot on my scalp. I breathed in the smell of horses on his clothes, of musky maleness, of wintry air and wood smoke, taking deep lungfuls in, as though wanting to steep myself in him. Earlier today I’d thought I’d never stand like this again, inhaling his primitive, masculine smell, as different to my modern boyfriend Nathan’s aroma of aftershave and shower gel as the smell of a wild horse to a domesticated one.

“I love you.” His words were muffled by my hair, his arms holding me pressed tight against him. It seemed that having once given voice to his feelings, it was easy for him to repeat them.

I lifted my head to look up into his deep brown eyes, their flecks of gold shimmering in the torchlight. “And I love you.” Now that I’d put it into words, I wanted to keep on saying it. Linking my hands around his neck, I pulled him down to kiss me, my fingers in his long dark hair, my eyes closed. For a long moment we lost ourselves in the oneness of our being, as though we’d never kissed before. The Tor had made new people of us.

Cottia, Arthur’s maidservant and childhood nurse, came bustling in through one of the other doors.

She had no compunction about breaking us up.

“I’ve brought ’ot water,” she said matter-of-factly, setting two still-steaming buckets down on the flagstoned floor near the brazier. “Though cold might’ve bin better. And come to ’elp the queen with ’er dress.” She gave Arthur, who’d released my mouth but not my body, a firm look that clearly said that sort of thing should wait for later.

Like a naughty child caught in the act of mischief, he released me and went obediently to his chest of clean clothes, unbuckling his belt. With Cottia present, we would have to wait.

*

The great hallthronged with men whose faces were slowly becoming familiar to me. Some were easy to recognize, like Drustans, the rebellious son of King March of Caer Dore. He’d stood up at the Council of Kings and defied his father to enlist in Arthur’s army– the army of the newly elected Dux Britanniarum drawn from the many kingdoms of Britain. A handsome boy, with red-brown curls that reached his shoulders and a faint fuzz on his upper lip and chin, he was young yet, but big and strong, and a good swordsman.

Girls sat on either side of him, giggling in appreciation at what he said. I recognized Abria, the pretty oldest daughter of one of Arthur’s warriors, and Eirin, a plump and cheery teenager no older than Drustans himself, grand-daughter of Cottia. Drustans had already acquired a bit of a reputation with the girls, and I could see Abria’s father watching him from the next table, a frown etched on his face. Eirin’s father was dead, but Cottia and the girl’s mother were also eyeballing Drustans with mistrust.

By custom, we ate in the great hall almost every evening. It wasn’t always full, but now it felt crowded and hot, with all the extra warriors who’d come to us after the Council of Kings, and who laid out their bedrolls in the hall after the meal had been cleared away. Arthur and I presided over an extended High Table on a little dais at the top of the Hall, close to the doorway into our private chambers. Cei, Theodoric, Merlin, and Cei’s wife, Coventina, whom I was slowly getting to know, shared it with us.

Coventina was an exceptionally tall, dark-haired woman hardly any older than I was, who’d produced Rhiwallon for Cei several years before he’d married her. But married they now were, and to her surprise, she’d gained the title of Lady of Din Tagel by the act, although she’d told me she’d been born only a humble farmer’s daughter. I liked her. She always thought carefully before she gave her opinion and said what she thought. I’d found her a good source of advice as to how a queen should behave.

Behind the high table stood the two guards Merlin had insisted should always be posted on the door to Arthur’s chambers. You couldn’t be too careful when there were so many foreign warriors sleeping in your hall, he’d advised. Although Arthur retorted somewhat over-confidently that as they werehiswarriors now, they’d vowed their allegiance to him alone and not to the kings of the lands they’d come from. I didn’t feel so sure myself, not after my experiences at the Council of Kings, when Arthur’s brother Cadwy had tried to poison us both. I was glad of the human barrier between us and the warriors in the hall when we slept.

Tonight, the Hall had been decked in greenery because, according to Arthur, this evening marked the start of the Christmas celebrations. During the day, the women had brought in evergreen branches, bunches of berried holly, and sprigs of mistletoe, and these festooned the rafters and pillars in opulent abandon, daring the guttering torches to set them alight.

My historian father had told me the Romans had celebrated both the Saturnalia and the Festival of Sol Invictus, the birthday of the unconquered sun, at about the same time as we celebrated the Christian Christmas. It didn’t surprise me to find a queer mixture of all three celebrations going on, still echoing down from the days of the Roman occupation only eighty years earlier.

Beer, mead and wine flowed freely, and in no time everyone became very merry. Beside me, Arthur, who usually partook with caution, had just had his goblet filled for the third time. I hurried to put my hand over my own half-full goblet as the servant leaned over me with his jug.

Arthur took a long draught of his wine and turned to me with a smile. Beneath the table, his hand rested on my thigh, his touch hot and full of promise. Not for the first time, I reflected on his animal attraction. Long, dark hair reached his shoulders, swept back from a high forehead to reveal solemn black brows over brown eyes. A haze of dark stubble shadowed his firm chin. Even the pale scar on his cheek added to his looks. I couldn’t help but smile back.

He covered my hand with his, fingers lacing themselves between mine, and my breath caught in my throat at the look of desire in his eyes.

Thrown together from the start by Merlin’s machinations, it had taken all this time for us to acknowledge how we’d come to feel about one another. Although, perhaps it had been Merlin’s interfering that had made me so determined from the start not to accept Arthur or anything he could offer.