Page 18 of The Road to Avalon
Drustans hustled his horse to the front of our column of warriors, edging her in between Arthur and me, his face flushed with eagerness and excitement. I didn’t need Merlin’s Sight to guess he must be thinking of Essylt, and cold fingers of unease tightened around my heart.
“How does it feel to be coming home at last?” I asked, pushing away those thoughts.
He beamed. No love lost here for a father who’d married the girl he loved, even though it had been unknowingly done. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted,” he said, the happiness in his voice palpable. “I’ve longed for this day for nearly twenty years. Well, for nineteen, I suppose. I never thought it would finally arrive.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “And I know in my heart she’s been waiting for me just as I’ve waited for her.”
He’d claimed the kingship to Arthur, but did it perhaps mean little to him? Was Essylt the thing he wanted from this? I could read the hunger for her in his every lovesick word and from the almost manic expression on his face. A shiver ran down my spine. The nineteen years his beloved had been married to his aged father were sure to stretch like a chasm between them– nineteen years in which the pretty, excitable girl he remembered could have changed immeasurably. Did he expect her to be the same girl who’d taken him to her bed with such passionate abandon in her father’s palace at Caer Lind Colun?
We passed between the village’s clustered buildings, what road there was twisting and turning around pigpens, barns and newly thatched hayricks sitting on their thick mat of insulating bracken. Chickens scuttled, squawking, out of our way, and from his position on the ridge of one of the thatched roofs, a lone cockerel crowed.
Most of the people would be inside their houses by now, after a long day in the fields. Here and there a curious face appeared in a doorway, watching us in suspicion as we rode by, but showing no fear. They must have known we’d come for the funeral.
On the far side of the village, the outer fortifications of Caer Dore rose up high and grassy. We passed through the narrow gap in the banks and a set of substantial towers came into view, sheltering inside the outer embankment, the gates themselves standing wide open.
The two guards on duty stamped the butts of their spears on the bare ground with a thud. Probably, they wouldn’t recognize Drustans as their returning king. After all, he’d left as a boy nearly twenty years ago and now was returning as one of the High King’s mightiest warriors.
He gazed around, eyes wide with wonder, and once again it struck me how returning home had slid the years from him and remade him as the innocent boy I’d first met. Perhaps Caer Dore seemed smaller to him than before, something that so often happens on return to a childhood home.
The inner ramparts enclosed only the royal buildings: a hall, small by Din Cadan’s standards, separate kitchens, storage barns, stables and a few barracks houses for the king’s warriors, all clustered tightly around the central cobbled courtyard into which we rode.
So, this was where protocol had forced me to let old King Manogan send his daughter. This was the home in which poor, beautiful, lively Essylt had spent more than half her life, married to a cantankerous old man. I felt an overwhelming surge of gladness for everything I had at Din Cadan. How hard must it have been to come here after being brought up at the enormous court in Caer Lind Colun, and to swap her handsome, virile young lover for an old man.
We halted our horses in front of the hall, which had a thatched porch halfway down one side to shelter the single, closed door. Arthur swung down from the saddle and the rest of us followed suit. For a moment we stood in silence, the awkward feeling of having intruded where we were not wanted, strong. Then the door of the hall opened, and a woman stepped out.
Essylt had left the softness of girlhood far behind. Gone was the slender, sweet-faced girl who’d helped herself to my breakfast the first time I met her. In her place stood a mature woman with a face hardened by time and circumstance, and a waist thickened by childbearing. She wore a plain, dark brown gown that did nothing to enhance her pale skin and lovely auburn hair, which she’d scraped back from her face and fixed in a single tight braid that hung to below her waist.
From the shadows behind her stepped a young man.
I couldn’t help but stare.
Superficially, he resembled Drustans as a boy, being tall and slender, with a mass of dark chestnut curls about his solemn face, but Essylt’s genes were in there too, and those of his father, March, showed in his hooked nose. For this had to be his and Essylt’s son.
Arthur stepped up to Essylt and held out his hands. “My Lady the Queen. We’re here to witness the laying to rest of your husband, as requested.”
She looked up at him out of cold, blank eyes devoid of all emotion. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she took his hands. “My Lord the High King. I am honored. As is my son.” Yes, this was the voice of the Essylt I remembered. She glanced at the young man beside her. “Seleu, step forward and present yourself.” Gone was the irrepressible joy, the laughter, and the childlike innocence. Had March knocked all that out of her? Nineteen years must have felt like a life sentence.
The young man took a step forward. “My Lord.” He made a deep bow to Arthur, who returned a slightly lesser one.
Essylt’s gaze moved to take me in, but no sign of recognition touched her cold eyes. “My Lady the Queen. You are most welcome.” Had she perhaps never forgotten the part I’d played in keeping her lover from her in the days before her father had dispatched her south to wed her betrothed? Until now, it hadn’t occurred to me that she might feel resentment.
From behind me came the sound of someone catching their breath. I glanced over my shoulder. Drustans, who’d hung back as we approached his old home, now stood half-hidden behind Cei and Merlin, one hand covering his mouth, as though he couldn’t believe his eyes. Wise of him to hang back and not crowd her. She was a queen in mourning, after all, and surely no declaration of undying love would be welcome.
For a moment, Essylt’s gaze fixed on Drustans’ face, but she gave nothing away. Then it returned to her son, and her face softened. “This is my oldest son, Seleu.” She touched the boy’s shoulder with a hint of pride. “My husband’sheir.” The last word came out like a challenge, but perhaps I was the only one who saw her eyes dart back to Drustans for the tiniest moment.
I twisted to look at him. His face had blanched, and his chest heaved as though he fought for breath, but he didn’t move. His hand had dropped from his mouth and now both fists had clenched. Had his father bypassed him and named his half-brother king? Could you even do that? But this was the Dark Ages, so most likely yes. Drustans hadn’t seen his father anywhere but at the Council of Kings in nineteen years. He wouldn’t have been at the forefront of the old man’s mind when he lay dying. No wonder the old man had chosen the son, already old enough to rule, of his young second wife.
Arthur was doing a good job at not looking shocked. Showing admirable equanimity, he clasped forearms with the new young king, who must have been barely seventeen, as though nothing had just happened, and he didn’t have the man who’d thought the throne was his standing behind him with the horses. “My congratulations to you, King Seleu,” he said. “And my sympathy for the death of your father.”
“You are most welcome here, my lord,” the boy said, his voice deep and pleasant, reminding me even more of Drustans at the same age. A lump rose in my throat for what had been lost here. If only this boy were the child of Essylt and Drustans, here to honor the man who should have been his grandfather, not his father.
Essylt touched her son’s arm. “Our guests will need to prepare themselves for our evening meal. I have had rooms readied.” She snapped her fingers.
From nowhere, servants arrived to take our horses, and others to escort us to what I’d taken to be nothing but simple barracks houses. Instead, the first one at least turned out to be reasonable guest accommodation. I tried to see where Drustans went but failed, as Arthur and I were shepherded to the best room Caer Dore had to offer.
As soon as the servant had gone and we were alone, I turned to Arthur. “He’s made that boy his heir?” My words came out with more than usual vehemence. “Instead of Drustans. Can he even do that?”
Arthur threw his saddlebags on the large, fur-covered bed. “It’s within his rights to have done so.”
I added my saddlebags to his. “Drustans thought he was to be king. You know he did. Is it right his father should have chosen a striplingboyto rule instead of a man grown?” My indignation for the slight given to our warrior kept on rising. “Is it even wise? What experience can a boy like that have?”
