Page 21 of The Road to Avalon
“I amnotyour bride,” Essylt said, enunciating every word clearly. “And this is notyour throne.”
Drustans didn’t take his eyes from her, the pain written across his face for all to see in letters a mile high. He shifted his weight, clearly nonplused by her reaction, and the crowd pressed in against our restraining warriors as though they’d like to take a hand in this. He cleared his throat. “Iam my father’s oldest son. This ismykingdom…” He paused, swallowed, and tried again, his voice cracking. “Andyouare the woman I have loved since boyhood.”
I glanced at Arthur, but he remained silent. Not his place to interfere, not even as High King.
“You presume too much,” Essylt said, her tone emotionless. “Caer Dore is not yours to come back to after so long away. You cannot claim it as though it were your right.” But tension quivered through her body, and the hand not holding her angry son in place had fisted by her side.
Her own warriors and the ordinary village folk hung on her every word, the tension zinging around the hall rafters. She was their queen, wife of their dead king. And this? Could this man be the boy some of them remembered? And why was he trying to claim her as his wife? A muttering arose. I didn’t need to possess Merlin’s Sight to read the thoughts passing through their minds as they stared in angry confusion from Drustans to Essylt and back again.
Even our own men knew nothing of Drustans’ illicit liaison with his father’s betrothed.
Drustans took a step closer, his hand on the hilt of his sword, emotions flashing across his handsome face: disappointment, puzzlement, shock. “As king, I shall make this boy of yours my heir,” he said, seizing perhaps upon the only thing he could offer. Did he feel hatred for Seleu as the son Essylt had given his father– perhaps been forced to give? When she’d left Caer Lind Colun, perhaps he’d hoped she was with child, and that the son she’d give his father would really have been his. She hadn’t been.
Seleu at last shook his mother’s hand from his shoulder and rose to his feet, stepping to stand beside Arthur and face his brother. He looked him up and down out of eyes as cold and calculating as his father’s. “Who is this man?” He glanced at Arthur. “Someone tell me.”
Pulling Archfedd with me, I edged forward in order to see better. She came willingly, her mouth still hanging open in shock.
Drustans’ hand tightened on the hilt of his sword, the knuckles whitening. He stared his brother in the eye. “Has no one told you? Did my fathernevermention me?” His voice filled with scarce concealed hurt. “Didyour mothernever tell you who I was and what I meant to her?”
Like she would have done with March around.
Seleu’s gaze slid to his mother’s face for a moment, incomprehension in his eyes. “Whoishe, Mother? How does he claim to be my father’s son?”
Understandable that Essylt had never mentioned Drustans once she’d arrived here. She must have had to shut away that part of her life and never think of it again, or her life with March would have been intolerable. Perhaps it had been intolerable anyway. Perhaps she’d hated him. But remembering her lusty young lover and what she’d lost would not have made her life any easier.
But why had March himself never told his younger son about Drustans? Maybe he’d been so angry at his oldest son joining Arthur’s army that he’d written him out of his life. A proud, autocratic and bad-tempered old man, an old man with a new wife and new sons. No wonder he’d forgotten his firstborn when the time came to choose a successor. The boy who’d never left him, of course.
Essylt licked her lips, her eyes hostile still. “Before your father married me, he had another wife, and by her he had another son.” She paused, never taking her eyes from Drustans’ face. “This man is that son.”
Seleu’s eyes narrowed as he glared at Drustans with no shred of brotherly love. “And he is back now, thisprodigal, thinking to steal what my father meant for me?” His hand also went to the hilt of his sword. “Interrupting my rightful coronation.”
Damn it. Why were they all fully armed at a funeral?
“The coronation you have stolen from me,” Drustans snapped, eyes dark with fury.
Seleu already had his sword half out of its sheath as Essylt caught his arm above the elbow. “No,” she hissed, loud in the laden silence of the hall. “Youare the king, and this would-be usurper will not succeed. He’s not wanted here.”
Drustans staggered back a step as though she’d slapped him. “Essylt.” His voice cracked again. “I’m here because of ourlove. I’m here to make you mine, that we may rule together…betogether. As I’ve yearned for throughout these long years.” His hand went to his head. “As I’ve dreamed of every day since we parted.”
Essylt’s eyes flashed with anger, her calm exterior falling away. “I amnoman’s,” she spat. “Youlet my father send me away from Caer Lind Colun to be the bride of an old man youknewwas hard and cold. And you didnothing. You left me here for nigh ontwenty years. You knew what he was, and yet you lived your life and left me here– withhim.”
Seleu’s eyes widened at his mother’s words.
Drustans took a step closer. “I could do nothing else,” he pleaded. “You were betrothed to my father when we parted in your father’s palace. What would you have had me do? Seize you and run away? Where to and to what life? You would have been unhappy as a poor man’s wife.”
Her knuckles whitened where she had hold of her son’s arm. “And you think I was happy here? Married to… thatmonster.”
Archfedd stared at me wide-eyed with shock. Her sheltered upbringing had done nothing to prepare her for this first foray into the society of another kingdom. Essylt’s other three children had shrunk back into the shadows, also wide-eyed, their maid’s mouth hanging open.
That Seleu had made no move to contradict his mother seemed significant. Whatever kind of a monster March had been, I’d have laid odds on his children having experienced it for themselves.
Drustans held out his hands to Essylt, palms uppermost in supplication. “I’m here now, aren’t I? I’ve come to claim you, Essylt. To make you mine. Just as we always wanted.”
“Notmyalways,” she retorted, spit bubbling at the corner of her mouth and making her look mad. Maybe she was. “I’ve had enough of being used like a chattel. I’llneverbelong to any man again.” She spat on the floor between them. “You come here thinking you can pick up where you left off, that I’ll still be the little Essylt you remember. Fool. Fool of a boy, because that’sallyou are.” She released her son’s arm and his sword slid back into its sheath.
Phew.
Arthur took a step away from them, his eyes alert and wary, closer to me and Archfedd, maybe thinking we might need protecting.
