Page 62 of The Bear's Heart
I knelt in front of him and pulled his boots off. “Tell me what happened.”
The story came in fits and starts at first, that I had to piece together. He was too drunk and maudlin to tell it properly, but as he spoke his story became clearer. He’d taken his thirty men to the island fort, across the narrow causeway that countless years ago long-forgotten men had made with stones and earth and wood.
“I was there first,” he said, stretching his long legs. “Cadwy arrived not long after. We faced one another. I had my warriors ranged behind me. He had his. I didn’t trust him and he didn’t trust me.”
I wasn’t surprised.
Drustans had reached the main body of Arthur’s army just in time, and under cover of the forest they moved around until their scouts picked out where Cadwy’s men were waiting, managing to kill a few of his scouts as they did so.
“What happened next?” I wanted to put my arms around him and hold him close, but something told me not to. Not yet. He needed to get this story off his chest.
“Cadwy feigned giving up his prisoners to me. Said it was a ‘clerical error’, said he knew now they’d not been complicit in Euddolen’s supposed guilt. He smiled his treachery at me.” Arthur dropped his head into his hands. “As though the losing of a man’s life was nothing to him. He swore he’d give back Euddolen’s womenfolk. And I knew it was a lie. A monstrous lie, like everything else that comes out of his mouth.”
I was reminded of Hamlet’s lines about his murderous uncle, who could “smile and smile and be a villain.” I doubted neither Arthur nor Cadwy had been fooled by the other.
“And then?” I prompted.
“We came to leave. He stood back to allow me to lead my men off the island first. Of course, I suspected treachery, and expecting it made me wary. As we crossed, his army emerged from the treeline. But so did mine.” He raised his head, staring out at nothing, perhaps seeing the battle in his mind’s eye. “I led the charge off the causeway. Cadwy’s men attacked us from behind, but we outran them. Battle was joined.”
With the wetlands to their left and the forest to the right, the battle had been fought in a narrow strip of land that made cavalry charges nearly impossible. But Arthur’s warriors, although outnumbered by Cadwy’s home-bred soldiers and hired Saxon foederati, had the advantage of height and stirrups. Instead of having to dismount to fight, the new stirrups enabled them to lean left or right and bend low to attack their enemies, using their swords to far greater effect.
“It was difficult at first. With his foederati, Cadwy had more men than we did. But we have horses, and eventually we gained the upper hand.” Arthur’s voice was curiously calm. As though he were recounting the action in a film, not something he’d been part of.
“A battle seems to take forever and yet no time at all. Suddenly, Cadwy’s men were in retreat. My men would have given chase, but the day was late, and they were exhausted. If we’d pursued them it would have become a siege. We aren’t equipped for that. The battle was won. Drustans found me and I knew the women were safe. There’ll come a time to mete out due punishment to Cadwy. It isn’t now.” He paused. “The battlefield was strewn with the dead– our men, his men, horses. Flies everywhere. Clouds of flies on everything.”
In the humid warmth of the evening, they had tended to their wounded and made a pyre to burn the dead. The news that I should be safely at Caswallan’s villa with the other women had brought relief to Arthur. So that night they made their camp at the forest edge, away from the charnel house that was the battlefield.
The next day they made their slow way back to us.
His voice died away, and he sat in front of me, silent and still.
“Lie down,” I said, unable to think of anything else to say. “Lie down, and let me hold you.”
I thought he’d refuse, but to my surprise, he complied, lying back on the bed, his arms by his side. I got up off the floor rather stiffly as I’d been kneeling there so long, and lying down next to him, put my arms around him and held him close. After a minute or two his body relaxed and he turned his head toward me, burying it in my shoulder. I held him close, and his arm reached over my body to hold me in return. It was a long time before either of us slept.
*
The morning broughta different man. He was up before me, despite what must have been a killer of a hangover, and when I woke, the bedroom was devoid of any sign of his overnight presence. Wondering where he’d gone, I slipped out of bed, washed in the bowl of clean water someone had left for me, and dressed in the light gown Melvina had supplied.
I found Arthur with his men, his mood and theirs entirely changed. Much cleaning of weapons and horses was going on, as well as bathing in the nearby river, as I discovered when I walked down to it in the morning sunshine. Apparently one night was long enough to mourn the “casualties of war” as Cei had named them. Or at least, they’d shut away the thoughts of the battle dead and the women.
The men were splashing, naked and joyful, in the cold water of the river, seemingly recovered from the day before. Arthur and Merlin were with them, and none of them showed any embarrassment at my arrival. Naked men didn’t bother me, so I sat on a rock waiting for Arthur to finish, and watching them wash away the aches and pains accrued in battle, and the sorrow for the needless deaths of those three women.
In only his braccae, feet bare, and wet hair slicked back from his face, Arthur walked me back up to the camp amongst the apple trees. Bedwyr had the wounded men all in one spot, where he was tending to their injuries. So leaving Arthur to find himself clean clothes, I went to help him.
The wounded were in a sorry state. Sword wounds abounded, but also crushing injuries from the axes wielded by the Saxon foederati. I washed and bandaged and comforted as best I could, but there were at least two men whom I didn’t think would make it back to Din Cadan. With a heavy heart, I at last returned to the garden courtyard, tired and dirty from working so long in the warm sun.
I found Arthur there, fully dressed now, with Morgana and Morgawse. Caswallan stood a little back from the three siblings, fidgeting nervously. It was the first time I’d seen all three of them standing so close together, and I was struck anew by how similar they were. Arthur and Morgana were tall and slim, whereas Morgawse was petite and slight, but their bond of common blood was clear.
Morgana’s dark eyes fixed on me as I walked up the path to join them, and I hesitated, that feeling of unease rising in me again, of her knowing what I was thinking. I forced myself to keep going, though, and came and stood beside Arthur, staring back at her in defiance.
“She has to go back to her brother,” Caswallan said, as I touched my fingertips to Arthur’s in support.
Arthur was glaring at her, exasperation on his face. She was his sister after all, but the fact that she was now his prisoner hadn’t escaped any of them. And from what Morgawse had told me, she’d had quite a hand in plotting the fate of Euddolen’s women at the ringfort of Bassas.
Morgana flicked her eyes from me to Arthur, a half-smile playing on her full lips. Someone, Melvina, I suspected, had provided her with a clean gown and she looked every inch the powerful princess. “He’s right. You cannot keep me here,” she said, her voice deep and resonant, almost caressing. Not the voice of someone who feared for her safety.
By now, Cadwy would know she’d been captured, and that Morgawse, too, was in our hands. The thought that we could kill Morgana here and now tumbled into my head, kill her and pretend she’d been slain in the chaos after the battle. After all, Ummidia and her girls were dead, whom she’d intended to have executed on the battlefield. Why not her?
