Page 68 of The Road to Avalon
Oh no. For a moment my heart sank, and then I remembered I didn’t care any longer. Let him get drunk if he wanted to. Let him drink himself into oblivion. Maybe that was what I needed to do. Good idea. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? “Can you fetch me some wine, please?”
She hurried off, but it wasn’t her that brought it back. Archfedd came creeping in clutching a pitcher of wine and two goblets. “I said I’d bring them,” she said as she sat down on the bed beside me. “Here.” She passed me the goblets and filled them. Golden Falernian– only the best to mourn her brother.
I took a long pull of the wine, not even tasting it as it went down. The goblet drained, I held it out for more. Could you really drown your sorrows? I might try it and see if it helped. Arthur seemed to swear by it.
With a reluctant glance up at me, Archfedd refilled my goblet. “I’ve been in the Hall,” she whispered, moving closer. “Father has named Medraut as his heir.”
My goblet crashed to the floor, the wine soaking into the rug to be swallowed by the cracks between the flagstones. “What?” My voice came out a husky whisper. “He’s donewhat?”
She bent and picked up the goblet, a mutinous scowl on her face. “Just what I said. Medraut is Father’s heir now. Father announced it outside the Hall to everyone who was there– a big crowd. All come up to nose about.”
The feeling of déjà vu swept over me. I might not have lived this moment before, but I’d read about it in so many books. How Arthur’s heir was his sister’s son, how this son rose against him by turning some of the warriors to his own faction. How they met at Camlann and Medraut was killed, and Arthur mortally wounded. That Arthur had lived on asleep in mystical Avalon waiting to return in Britain’s hour of need. Only that last bit was all rubbish– I knew all too well that once you were dead, you stayed dead.
“How? Why?” I couldn’t find any other words.
“He said he has to have an heir. He’s going to train Medraut for kingship.”
I would have swallowed but my mouth had gone paper dry. The pieces on the chessboard were gathering, the king was threatened, but I was the queen. I could move whichever way I wanted, and I could yet save the king and force a check, or if I were lucky, a checkmate. But where was Merlin when I needed him? He was the more devious player. He’d know what to do.
Archfedd gulped down her own wine like a seasoned alcoholic. “There’s more.”
What more could there be? A shiver of foreboding shook my body. What had I not predicted?
Archfedd squared her shoulders. “I’m to be betrothed to Medraut.”
“What?” This time my single word shot out so loud we both jumped. “He can’t marry you. You’re cousins. Too closely related. You told him no, didn’t you?”
Her stricken face gave me my answer. “Since when do we women get to agree about who we marry?”
So true. I’d had no choice myself in marrying Arthur, but I’d been lucky… or had I? If I’d truly been lucky would my son not still be alive? I put my hand over hers. “I’ll speak to him.”
A glimmer of hope flickered in her desperate eyes. “Can you? Will he listen?”
A good question. We weren’t exactly on speaking terms. And even though we’d been married nearly twenty years, his outlook was still all Dark Age king. If I thought about it, I could even understand why he’d reacted this way and in part excuse him. Both his sons lay dead, leaving him with only a daughter. With me now unlikely to provide him with another son, he had two living nephews to choose between as his heir. Why would he choose Custennin, miles away and with a kingdom of his own, when he could mold the future king himself, here in his own stronghold? Of course he’d choose Medraut. And what more sensible thing to do to continue his own line than to marry his own daughter to his new heir.
I foresaw a nigh on impossible job of persuading him not to do this.
“I can try,” I said, but without conviction. “At least I can try.”
She gazed into my eyes in an abject plea. “I can’t marry him, Mami. I love Llawfrodedd. It’s him I want to marry, not that creep Medraut. It isn’t that I don’t love him, although I don’t– it’s that he makes my skin crawl.” She shivered from head to toe. “I can’t bear to think of him touching me– of having to share his bed– beintimate.” No need to explain sex to her. A girl of her time had seen it enough amongst the animals surrounding her. She had no illusions about what would happen if Medraut married her.
I nodded. “I understand. I feel the same way about him. I don’t want you to be married to him any more than you do. I promise you, I’ll do my utmost to make your father change his mind.”
Easier said than done.
With the men getting drunk in the hall, I asked Maia to bring Archfedd and me a tray of food to my room. We sat and picked at it with little enthusiasm while the noise from over the partition wall grew ever louder. I felt sick to my stomach and nothing on the tray appealed.
When we finally gave up the pretense of eating, Maia, a party to our plan by now, gathered up our plates. “Come along-a me now,” she said, holding out a hand to my daughter. “We’ll have to let yer ma sort this out by herself. We’d best be gone before yer pa gets in here.”
With a final, pleading backward glance at me, Archfedd rose from the table and followed Maia into the room they shared. The door closed behind them, and I was alone with my thoughts.
I used the bucket in the corner and prepared for bed, brushing my teeth with the charcoal paste and mint leaves, and having as thorough a wash as possible in the cold water in my bowl. I’d have liked a bath, but it was too late now. Having blown out most of the oil lamps and one of the candles on the table, I slipped into our bed and waited to see what the night would bring.
It brought nothing.
I stayed awake as long as I could, but the exhaustion of so many nights of broken sleep finally caught up with me and my head nodded.
The next thing I knew, light was streaming in through the open windows. Light and the sound of a cockerel crowing his greeting to the day.
