Page 7 of The Quest for Excalibur
I stayed silent, watching him. At thirty-five, my husband still had the appearance of youth about him, muted a little by the few lines around his eyes and mouth. No hint of gray marred his thick mane of almost black hair, and his only sign of stiffness was from where he’d been wounded in the thigh over eight years ago. After more than a week on the march, he looked, and smelled, much in need of a bath and a change of clothes.
“Well,” he said, heaving a deep sigh. “Too late now to stop him. If the swordsmiths were laboring for him this autumn, then he’ll have all the weapons he needs by now. What does he think he’s doing? Arming his peasantry? His townspeople?” His voice rose in incredulity. “I need word from my spies in Viroconium.”
I put a hand on his arm. “We’ve no way of knowing, and your spies might not even be of any help. But you’re soaked. Let’s get you out of these things. You’ll catch your death if you don’t get dry.”
He raised his eyes to look into my face, and gave me a rueful smile. “Ever the mother hen. I’ve been in these wet clothes for the last three days, so I don’t see what difference it’ll make.” He sighed. “But all right. You win. I’ll take them off.”
I smiled. “I could tell that from the smell of you.”
Rising, he discarded his sodden cloak in a heap at his feet, then unbuckled the heavy leather belt that held his sword.
My gaze lingered for a moment on the plain hilt and the worn, dark-leather grip as, with more care than he’d had for his cloak, he laid sword and belt on the table. This was the sword he’d drawn from the stone nine years before, in the forum at Viroconium. The sword I suspected his brother, Cadwy, had never forgiven him for taking. He’d made his peace with Cadwy two years after that, after the latter’s botched attempt at assassination during the Council of Kings. Back then I’d not been sure the peace would last, and now it seemed it might not have.
I helped him out of the heavy mail shirt and laid that on the table as well, careful to keep the wet items away from my precious book. His padded tunic came off next, leaving him in his damp undershirt and leather braccae.
I wrinkled my nose at the stink of sweat and horses, but it didn’t offend me nearly as much as it once would have. “I ordered the bath house made ready, thinking you’d all need a soak in hot water.”
Our bath house was nothing like its Roman antecedent, being just a small building provided with wooden bath tubs that laboring servants had to fill with hot water, but it was better than nothing.
He grinned, the boyish look I loved returning. “Thank you. If I didn’t have to share with my men, I’d have you come as well, to scrub my aching back for me.”
That brought a chuckle. “I think your men might object if I invaded the bath-house when it’s in use, even though I’ve seen them naked before.” On the march, they often bathed in rivers, and I’d grown used to their lack of modesty. “Come back here when you’re clean and warm, and I’ll rub your back. That’s a promise.”
I rummaged in his clothes chest to find him a clean shirt, braccae and tunic, and made a neat pile of them. He fastened a fresh cloak against the rain, tucked the clean clothing under it to keep it dry, and left.
His going left a palpable hole in the room. His was such a vital presence that when he’d been with me and had gone, I felt as though a part of the life of the room had departed with him. I picked up his mail shirt and hung it on its regular hook. He could oil it later, or get a boy to do it for him, to stop it from rusting. Amhar might be pleased to help with that. Gathering his discarded cloak, I hung it over the back of two chairs as close to the brazier as I dared, and it began at once to steam.
Back at the table, I studied his sword for a moment or two. Innocuous and bland, it lay like any other sword, and I’d seen plenty of them in my time. I even had my own, hanging on the wall. The question that had so often puzzled me rose again in my heart. Could this plain, warrior’s sword be the famous Excalibur? Arthur had drawn it from the stone where Merlin had set it, proving himself to be the true High King, and, facing the scrutiny of all the other kings, had repeated the feat in front of them.
No one had ever attempted to bestow on this plain warrior’s sword any kind of name– other than ‘the sword of destiny’ which wasn’t a name that had survived to the twenty-first century. I touched the hilt with the tips of my fingers. The brown leather hand grip had worn smooth with use, blackened a little from the hands that regularly held it and weren’t always clean.
Excalibur. A name to conjure with. But maybe this sword wasn’t it. More than one sword legend had attached itself to Arthur’s name– not just the story of the fabled sword in the stone, but also that of the Lady of the Lake, and her strange weapon. As far as I could remember, the name Excalibur applied to the one supplied by the mysterious watery hand. I smiled. It seemed unlikely we were ever going to seethathappen.
I shook my head at myself for even considering some magical creature with the capability of breathing under water might stick out an arm to offer her sword to Arthur. Plain silly. And yet…
My ruminations on the sword legends were rudely interrupted as the door from the children’s room burst open, and Amhar and Medraut catapulted into the room. Were my children incapable of coming through a door any other way?
“Father’s home!” Amhar announced, possibly in case I hadn’t noticed, his face alight with excitement. “We were in our lessons and didn’t hear him come back. Peredur told us.”
For once, Medraut was hanging back, a diffidence in his eyes I didn’t often see. I had to feel sorry for him. He was only twelve, after all, and practically parentless now, but luckier than Llawfrodedd, who’d had no one to care for him. Medraut did at least have his extended family, and we were nothing if not rich and influential. He was never going to be abandoned to manage on his own, however far away his real parents wandered.
I smiled at the boys. “He is indeed. In the bath house right now, getting clean and hopefully having a shave.” I wagged my finger. “Let this be a lesson to you boys– we ladies do not like men with beards.”
“Eww,” Medraut exclaimed, back to his usual self. “I don’t want to know that, thank you very much. I’m never kissing a girl. They’re gross.”
Amhar pulled a similarly disgusted expression. “Me neither.” He rubbed his baby-soft chin. “If I grow a beard, then maybe I’ll never have to.”
I chuckled. It felt like only the other day his half-brother Llacheu had been saying just the same things. Now eighteen, however, he’d changed his tune. I’d spotted him more than once with the very pretty Ariana, daughter of Anwyll, heads together as though no one else in the world mattered.
I’d been considering asking Arthur if he’d noticed. A father to son talk might well be needed here, before something serious happened between them. Theywereteenagers, after all. Memories of young Drustans at much the same age, and his illicit liaison with Princess Essylt of Linnuis, surfaced.
“Can we eat with you and Father tonight?” Amhar asked. “Instead of with Maia and Archfedd? She’s such a baby still, and me and Medraut are nearly old enough to be warriors.”
How I hated it when he reminded me of that. Even seven years on from the Battle of the City of the Legion, I still couldn’t bear to think of how Cei and Coventina’s son, Rhiwallon, had died in his first year as a warrior. Barely fourteen years old, a Saxon warrior had disembowelled him. Arthur and I never spoke of it, but it didn’t take any sixth sense on my part to tell me he’d not forgotten his own part in the boy’s death, and never would. To end the suffering of his brother’s son, he’d had to slide a knife under the boy’s ribs and into his heart.
I shivered at the memory and forced myself back into the present. “You’ll have to ask your father. But Archfedd will be jealous if he says yes.”
“Who cares?” sneered Medraut. “She’s only a girl and doesn’t matter.”
