Page 5 of The Quest for Excalibur
Botheration.
“That’s not a word little girls are allowed to use,” Coventina said, keeping her voice gentle. “So don’t repeat it again, please.”
Archfedd shot her a narrow-eyed, speculative look. She’d be saving that word up to use when we weren’t within earshot, for sure. “I won’t,” she lied.
I was just about to try another stitch, when someone knocked on the hall door. Setting my sewing down in relief, I got to my feet.
Young Peredur of Gwent, cloaked and booted against the weather, stood dripping onto the rushes on the hall floor. A big grin split his face despite the rain running from his wet hair.
He bobbed a bow. “Milady, you’ve a visitor.”
Raising my eyebrows, I shot a quick glance back at the others, glad for an excuse to get away from my haphazard sewing. “I’ll just be in the hall.” I stepped through the doorway and closed the door behind myself with a little more firmness than was strictly necessary. Phew. Maybe every time I sewed, I needed to organize someone to call me away.
This early in the day, gloom enveloped most of the usually brightly lit hall. Only a couple of torches burned in the iron wall brackets– just enough to illuminate the high table on its dais. In the body of the hall, close by the smoldering fire pit, a slight figure stood, holding his hands out to the glowing embers. A boy.
Instead of mounting the dais, as I would have done to receive a messenger from another kingdom, or a plaintiff come for judgement, I walked down the hall to where the boy stood huddled over the heat, his clothes dripping onto the thick carpet of rushes underfoot. Peredur followed close behind, but probably not from suspicion of the boy.
I stopped. “Hello?”
The boy straightened proudly, throwing the wet and ragged cloak that gave him the look of a peasant, back over his thin shoulders. I stared. Something about him seemed familiar. His brown hair hung in wet rats’ tails, and anxious dark eyes looked back at me from a pale, rain-washed face, as though he were waiting for something. For recognition, perhaps. After a moment, he remembered himself and made a clumsy bow. “Milady.”
“Do I know you?” I couldn’t keep the curiosity out of my voice, sure I recognized him from somewhere.
A faint smile lit the boy’s thin face and he nodded with vigor. A hand went to his tunic front, fumbling for something. When his hand emerged, he held it out, grubby palm uppermost. On his palm sat an oval gold brooch, a dragon embossed on it. The dragon emblem of Dumnonia.
Recognition dawned and I groped in my memory for his name. “Llaw… Llawfrodedd?” My voice rose in surprise. I’d never thought to see this boy again. “I remember you. The boy who found my horse for me at Breguoin, when I thought she was long gone– stolen by the man who knocked me out.”
Llawfrodedd bowed again, with a little more panache, a smile lending his pinched features and red-with-cold nose the hint of a healthy glow. He straightened, puffing out his chest. “I did come ’ere to train to be a warrior, like you said. I did keep the brooch you gived me so’s I could buy myself an ’orse and sword– jus’ like you said. But our priest, he did say as not to buy un till I got here. Lest I were diddled out o’ the brooch by dishonest men.”
I couldn’t help but return his open smile. “A good piece of advice, Llawfrodedd. There are many men out there who would have parted you from your gold and given you nothing in return but perhaps a lump on the head or even a dagger in the ribs.” I paused, remembering the day I’d met this boy, in the aftermath of the bloody battle we’d saved his people from. “But how did you get here, if you have no horse? We’re a long way from Breguoin, and this isn’t the time of year for traveling.”
The boy shivered. How stupid of me. He must be frozen, despite his proximity to the fire. “No, tell me your story later. Go with Peredur, to the house he shares with his friends, and see if they can find you something warm to wear. And food to eat. And something to drink. Only then may you return to the hall.”
The boy, wide-eyed, bobbed another bow. “Thank’ee, Milady, for bein’ so kind.”
With a grin, Peredur flung a protective arm about his protégé’s narrow shoulders, and led him off as instructed. He might well feel proprietorial, as it had been he who all those years ago had said to the boy that he should aim to one day become a warrior for the High King. Something he himself had only been aspiring to at the time.
With a smile, I went back to my chamber to tell Coventina and Maia about our new recruit.
Chapter Four
Peredur returned withyoung Llawfrodedd in an hour. The clothes he and his friends had found the boy hung loosely about such a slight and skinny frame, emphasizing his extreme youth. But I’d long since learned that youth was no barrier to becoming a warrior in the Dark Ages.
On my invitation, Peredur brought the boy into my chamber, which served as far more than just a bedroom, being a place where Arthur often held meetings, where the children played, where I socialized with Coventina and the other women of the fortress, and of course, where I worked on my book whenever I had the time.
From just inside the door, Llawfrodedd stared around himself in awe, and for a moment I saw the room through his eyes. With rafters reaching into the lofty and gloomy thatched roof, and lit by the glow of the brazier and a few torches on the walls, it must have been the largest and best lit room he’d ever seen. Thick rugs festooned the flagstones and walls– furs, and a few heavily embroidered pieces that had arrived via Din Tagel’s port from the distant Middle Sea, perhaps from as far afield as the country I’d call Turkey back in my old world.
Arthur’s spare shields decorated one wall, each of them round and painted white with a ferocious black bear rearing up on them, their surfaces dented and pocked by the blows of the warriors he’d fought. My own shield, smaller, lighter, easier for me to handle, and painted blue with a gold ring emblazoned on its surface, hung beside them.
Between the shields, an array of the weapons Arthur had left behind when he’d ridden south had been attached: a couple of long spears, a lance, an unstrung bow and a quiver of finely fletched arrows. And my own sword, the object of my fierce pride.
Nudging the wall opposite the door stood our big, fur-covered bed, flanked by the two massive wooden chests that held mine and Arthur’s clothing. On the far side of the brazier stood our table, its worn surface topped by my precious book.
I gestured to the chairs I’d placed ready at the table. “Peredur. Llawfrodedd. Welcome. Please sit down.”
Coventina glanced up in curiosity from where she still sat sewing but didn’t move, her industrious fingers stitching away at her embroidery. Reaghan kept her auburn head bent over her doll, but Archfedd watched the newcomer, her half-dressed doll discarded in her lap and her mouth slightly open.
I’d ordered a jug of hot spiced wine, and now I poured it into horn beakers. “Drink.”
