One of the serving women was going round the tables with a large sprig of mistletoe and holding it over the heads of the women regardless of their marital status. Coventina good-naturedly had to kiss both her husband and Theodoric. The serving woman herself kissed Merlin. Now she came to the high table and brandished it over my head. Arthur needed no other encouragement to lean toward me and plant a kiss on my lips. A cheer of approval went up from the body of the Hall, and heat rushed to my cheeks. Unabashed, he raised his goblet to his people in salute.
Bedtime came all too slowly, but at last we could reasonably retire from the Hall and into the privacy of our chamber.
The servants had cleared the tables, and the warriors were already moving them aside so beds could be rolled out, as Arthur and I finally retreated into our chamber. Closing the door behind us, which shut out most of the hubbub of noise, Arthur pulled me roughly into his arms.
I went more than willingly. I’d been waiting for this moment since we’d walked back down the Tor together that afternoon, and the interruption earlier by Cottia had only served to heat my desire. My hands were on his belt, tugging the buckle undone. The heavy bronze clasp clattered to the flagstones and my hands slid up under his tunic to the soft linen of his undershirt and the hard, well-toned muscles beneath.
His mouth came down on mine and his hands tugged at my dress. Nothing gave. It was firmly laced down the back. Releasing my mouth, he swung me around, and with unsteady fingers began to fumble with the laces.
Cottia, or Maia, my maid, could have done it in minutes, but whether because of his impatience or the amount of wine he’d drunk, he made heavy weather of it, swearing under his breath.
“Jupiter, what do you women fasten yourselves up like this for?”
This made me giggle, and in turn that made him laugh, too.
“I prefer you in your boys’ clothes– they’re easier to get you out of. Let me put my knife to these laces.”
The dress loosened on my shoulders a little and suddenly fell away, the laces all cut through. I turned back to him in just my undershirt, my whole body on fire. Dropping the knife, he lifted me off my feet and carried me to the bed in a few long strides. Masterful felt good.
In the hall beyond the dividing wall, someone began to sing a lilting song, the words softly rising to the arching roof, and the murmured voices of the warriors joined in with the lullaby refrain. To the sound of what might have been a very early Christmas carol, I put my arms around my husband and pulled him down on top of me.
Chapter Three
The Christmas festivitiesrushed by in a whirl of torch-lit feasts in a smoky hall hung with greenery. Endless cider and wine flowed, beef and pork roasted whole over a blazing fire, and jugglers, singers, and storytellers amused the hot and overcrowded revelers. To honor the New Year, a bonfire was lit in the courtyard. Everything about those days between Christmas and New Year so blossomed with enjoyment that I didn’t have a moment to think of what I’d turned my back on.
Just after New Year, heavy snow blanketed the fortress and the plain below in a shroud of white. Icicles formed on the thatch, and water troughs froze overnight and had to be hacked free of ice with axes. Llacheu, Arthur’s seven-year-old son, rushed out to make grubby snowmen and have snowball fights with his friends. Children here found the same pleasure in snow as they did in my old world.
The snow clung on with determination, eventually turning to filthy slush within the fortress walls and making life difficult for everyone. Even the children at last grew fed up.
It was already fifteen days into January when Arthur declared it was time for the ritual first hunt of the New Year. Over the festive period we’d been feasting on farm animals culled for the winter, and it was time to supplement this with some game.
“Do I get to come?” I asked as we pulled on our warm boots in the comfort of our bedchamber that morning. “I’ve never been hunting.” What I didn’t tell him was that in my previous life, in my student days, I’d actually been a keen member of the anti-hunting lobby. However, this was different– this was hunting for food, not sport. When we killed an animal, it was going to feed the people who depended on us. Its death would have a purpose, and if I were going to eat it, I should be prepared to hunt for it, as well.
“Of course. If you want to.” Arthur finished fastening his broad leather belt and tucked a long dagger into the ornate scabbard that sat on his hip. It was the knife he’d shown me the first day I met him– the one he’d taken from the Saxon he killed near Caer Durnac. How far we’d come since then. He smiled. “Not many women do, but my mother always used to ride out with the hunt. Morgana as well. I daresay she still does. No reason why you shouldn’t.”
We were both dressed in close-fitting woolen braccae. On top of our thick linen undershirts we had warm tunics topped off with jackets made by sandwiching a layer of raw wool between two pieces of cloth and then quilting it. The wool stayed pretty waterproof because it still contained most of the natural lanolin and was an excellent insulator, even if it did smell strongly of sheep. I didn’t miss my waterproof twenty-first-century jacket at all.
Beneath my braccae, I wore the new underwear Cottia’s older daughter, a seamstress, had stitched for me. Lacking elastic, I’d resorted to a tie-string waist, but the silk knickers she’d produced were not unlike boxer shorts and very comfortable. Silk, she informed me with pride, which had been brought to Din Tagel by ships from the Middle Sea. That name made my ears prick– modern Tintagel was where legend said Arthur was born, and where Arthur’s mother now ruled in his half-brother Cei’s stead. It was a place, and she a woman, I would very much like to see.
The underwear fascinated Arthur. Cottia’s daughter was now working on knickers for some of the other women. Coventina, for one, was most satisfied with her pairs. Luckily, my bra was still soldiering on, although I was busy with a design to recreate one.
Having breakfasted on thick porridge sweetened with honey, Arthur and I went into the great hall. Merlin, in his outside clothes, was sitting on one of the trestle tables near the hearth fire, chatting with Cei. Morgawse’s husband, Theodoric the Goth, who usually made up their number, had departed to join his ships at Caer Legeion several days ago, as soon as the snow melted enough for him to travel.
The hunting party consisted of a couple of warriors from each of the many British kingdoms who’d so far provided men for Arthur’s Dux Britanniarum army, as well as half as many again of his original Dumnonians. So it was a numerous and mixed bunch that clattered out of the fortress gates and down toward the plain that morning.
I rode the chestnut mare, Alezan, that Arthur had gifted me at Christmas. She was an altogether flightier animal than the sturdy bay who’d carried me to Viroconium and back, and today she was bouncing with excitement after her enforced inactivity due to the snow. Slung from her saddle was a short stabbing spear, and a dagger hung from my belt beneath my traveling cloak. Both Llacheu and Arthur had been giving me lessons in how to use the spear so I didn’t feel completely out of my depth. Although I had no intention of getting near enough to any prey to use it.
It was good to be out in the fresh air after the stuffy, smoke-filled confines of the hall. I was as much in need of exercise as Alezan.
Descending the curving track, Arthur headed the hunting party, talking volubly to Cei and young Drustans, pointing toward the dark shadow of forest that lay to the west. Bowyn the huntsman, accompanied by three lanky teenage boys in his employ, had gone out first with the pack of slavering, brindled hounds. Their eager barks and howls already echoed up from the plain below. Behind us rumbled the carts that would bring home whatever game we killed. The cheerful voices of men who’d just been released after being housebound for weeks rose into the crisp winter air.
Merlin fell in beside me, his horse’s already hot flanks rubbing against my leg. Alezan side-stepped and tossed her head, sending foam spraying. Merlin reined back as his own excited horse tried to get ahead. Our mounts were all a bit of a handful today.
I’d been avoiding him over the holiday period by making sure I was always with someone else whenever he approached. I didn’t want him asking me any more awkward questions about the future. Now, on the narrow path down the side of the hill, there was no escape.
“Are you glad you chose to stay?” he asked, when he had his horse back under control.
I weighed up whether to be truthful or not. “Most of the time.”