Page 11 of The Quest for Excalibur
“Everyone who’s anyone knows how to speak Latin,” Coventina said, a woman who’d had to learn it from scratch herself once she married Cei.
“Tospeakit,” Medraut scoffed. “Not write it and read it.”
Amhar nodded, ever keen to back up his cousin.
“I like reading Latin,” Archfedd piped up from where she sat cross-legged on the floor with Reaghan, dressing her ragdoll. “And I like reading all those stories from long ago.I’dlike to go to Rome one day. It sounds wonderful. All those big buildings made ofstone. Merlin’s told me all about them.”
Had he now? Curiosity kindled in me. How could Merlin know about the “big buildings” unless he’d been there himself at some point? I filed that away to ask him about when I could get him alone. An unlikely possibility at the moment, with the hall chock full of warriors and their families.
The side door to our chamber opened and Arthur and Cei came in on a blast of colder air. Muffled from head to toe in furs against the cold, they closely resembled a pair of yeti. Not that they’d have known what that was.
“Papa!” cried Archfedd, leaping to her feet, her doll forgotten.
Arthur held up a restraining hand, stamping his feet on the rush mat by the door to dislodge the snow from his boots. “Let me get out of these clothes first. I’ve got icicles in my hair.”
“Can I see?” Amhar asked, getting to his feet. “Real icicles?”
“I’ve got some up my nose,” Cei said, chuckling. “It’s cold enough out there to freeze my b—”
“Cei.” Coventina, anticipating what was coming next, held up her hand as well. “Children present.”
“I know what bollocks are,” Medraut said, loud and clear.
Archfedd’s head swiveled so she could stare at him. “I don’t. What are they?”
Amhar snorted in derision. “They’re—”
“Silence, all of you,” Arthur boomed, his voice filling the suddenly much smaller space of the chamber. “Polite language, please. Ladies present. This is not the barracks room.”
“I wish it was,” Medraut muttered. “Might be more fun.” For some time, now, he’d been itching to move his sleeping quarters to the barracks so he could be with the older boys he so liked.
Arthur and Cei began taking off their outer clothes and hanging them on the hooks near the door, shaking off the snow as they did so.
“Nothing going on out there,” Cei said, as he hung up the thick sheepskin jacket he’d been wearing. “Quiet as the grave. And dark with it.” He rubbed his ginger eyebrows to rid them of crusted snow. “Still snowing.”
Arthur came to stand by the brazier, holding red hands out. “Snow as far as the eye can see.”
“Can I come with you tomorrow night, when you do your rounds?” Medraut asked. “I’d like to see the snow in the dark.”
Arthur shrugged. “If you wrap up warm. It’s bitter, and tonight there’s a wind making it worse, whipping the loose snow up off the ground and making a storm out of it.” He wiped a hand across his forehead where his own eyebrow snow was beginning to melt and run into his eyes.
Archfedd, who’d followed him to the fire, tugged his sleeve. “Can I come too?”
He looked down at her, a gentle smile softening his face. “If it’s not too windy. You’re still so little the wind might pick you up and carry you off, and I don’t want that. Who knows where my little chick might end up?”
“Annwfn’s gates,” Medraut said, giving her a spiteful, narrow-eyed look. “The fairies’d snatch you for sure before anyone could rescue you.”
Archfedd’s lower lip began to jut. Forestalling the threat of tears, Arthur swept her up in his arms and carried her to the table where he sat down next to me, cuddling her on his knee. “Don’t you worry, my little chick. I’ll keep you safe.”
Beaming, she threw her arms around his neck and planted a damp kiss on his bristly cheek. “I love you, Papa.”
Setting down my pen, I smiled at the picture they made. If I could have captured this moment in my book, I would have, but there were no cameras here, and I’d never had any skill at drawing. My heart swelled with love: for the tall, handsome man I’d given up my old life to be with; for the little girl nestling on his knee; for big, bluff Cei adding logs to the brazier to try to keep the cold from creeping inside the chamber; for my handsome little son, still sulking over his game of chess; for my kind friend Coventina, keeping her sorrow for the loss of her own son locked in her broken heart; even for young Medraut, who, now free from being spoiled by his mother, might gradually be improving.
Arthur’s dark hair fell forward across his face as he bent over Archfedd’s lighter chestnut curls, his strong arm holding her close, and I felt a sudden upsurge of longing for him I knew I couldn’t slake, sharing our room with so many as we were. I’d have to wait to feel his naked body against mine for some other reason than to keep warm. A little sigh of anticipation escaped my lips, and with a shake of my head, I picked up my pen again, not really in the right mood for writing.
*
The spring thawcame gradually, leaving deep, icy drifts still lurking in sheltered spots, capable of supporting a man’s or even a horse’s weight. As soon as the snow on the road down from the main gates had almost gone, our men rode out hunting. Not that they found a lot to hunt. The deer were thin, and the canny old boars had hidden themselves deep inside the forest, leaving only their cloven hoofprints behind them in the morass of mud brought about by the melting snow.
