Book ONE:
THE FOX and THE BEAR
Copyright L.A. Wilson APRIL 15 2012
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
SMASHWORDS edition
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‘Honorary Mention’ in the London Book Festival 2007
15. Bedwyr takes what’s coming to Him
20. The Red Dragon learns to Fly
21. Artorius, S.C. in Britannia
22. Arthur's first Campaign Begins
24. Throwing out the Pledge-Breaker
28. Bedwyr’s Father says Goodbye
29. Meeting the King of the Selgovae
30. The Fox finds a Pictish Dagger
33. Medraut, Beautiful Assassin
36. The Fox and The Bear before Battle
“On second thoughts, let’s not go to Camelot; tis a silly place.”
King Arthur, Monty Python and the Holy Grail
CHAPTER 1: The Wonder-Boy
Crows gathered in great flocks overhead as we searched the battlefield through the dead and dying. Some of the birds landed on bodies and I slashed my sword at them, trying to send them back from where they came. I watched them scream up again into the sky before I turned to look for my brothers.
All around me men were dying, their voices dying, already dead men, telling the crows they were ready to leave their bodies for the Otherworld. And as I waited for Cai and Medraut to reach me, as I watched them stepping over these dying men, I shook, and trembled. I was afraid, my heart wouldn’t stop thrashing, and I thought I was crying…this was a terrible battle, our first as new warriors to the field, and I had never seen anything like it before. The horror of it, and I stood waiting in terror…for Arthur was missing. He was out there somewhere amongst the bodies, and so far, we had not been able to find him. And so I stood where I was, shaking, frozen in fear…I could not go on if Arthur was dead, if he had been killed in this terrible clash of arms, where the dead smelled like blood and not men…I swallowed hard and began walking my way towards Medraut and Cai. When I reached them, me and Medraut fell on each other and held on tight.
I sobbed at him, “Where is he? Please don’t say he’s dead. I’m begging the Goddess of War! Medraut, please say he’s not dead…”
“I know, Fox…I know…we will find him…”
“Not dead!” I cried at him.
“Na, not dead, not Arthur. He’s too young, too clever…this was his battle, he won it, how can he be dead, he won it, Bedwyr! Look at me…this is his doing…”
We fell on each other again, trying to still our torment.
Cai joined us.
He said, “Aye, Arthur’s doing and he will have to pay for it…”
We looked around us, everywhere, bodies of the dead and the screaming of those still alive.
Medraut said, “We should put some of these men out of their suffering. I will do it,” and he walked off to put his spear through the chest of a Saxon under his feet. And as he did, he turned back to us and cried, “You know, I saw him earlier, somewhere over that way, he lost his horse too. Fox, come with me.”
Again, the three of us began searching for Arthur. We would not give up till we found him, and as we walked over the dead, with Medraut killing more wounded Saxons on the way, with the sky turning black above us and the bloody crows screeching, I thought I was dying.
I walked like a dead man, for if this was battle, then it had broken my mind, my heart, my reason, and my love. Arthur…I began to lose my temper. It was naught but fear and horror inside me, and I wanted no part of it. For I trod on the severed arm of a man lying under me, and I almost spewed up my guts to see it. I cried out in horror, a wail to the crows, and Medraut held me up as the sky darkened even more. Black rain-clouds above…it was turning to winter already! And I felt tears of fear fall down my face. I still held my sword, gripped so hard it chafed the palm of my hand. So many dead, I could smell them, the dead. And the carrion crows of the Dark Goddess, Morgan…she sent clouds of ravens, wheeling and cawing over our heads, making my skin crawl, their wings black like the sky. I sank to the ground in despair.
A day of destruction and despair was this battle…
The sun was going down and the bitter wind snapped at my cloak. If Arthur was dead, then this day would also be my last in this dark world. For I would impale myself on my own sword and follow him, I would. There was no doubt in me that I would, for I would not let him go alone across the divide, alone to Avalon. I would go with him. He would wait for me on the shore, and we would cross the water together. For we were brothers, bound together forever…my foster-brother, my life. A sour taste from inside came up into my mouth and gagged me. I spat on the ground and came back to my feet.
Medraut with me, and we carried on searching, and every step we made, he cursed, “Piss on their filthy Saxon blood! Saxon bastards!”
And he kicked one of their dead, a dead Saxon under our feet.
I looked down at the man, and there he was, Arthur. Lying next to the Saxon Medraut had just kicked. I dropped to my knees, dropped my sword and turned him towards me, saw his face covered in blood. I lowered to feel for his breath, touching his chest to see if he still lived. I felt a beat, a soft beat of his heart, steady but slow.
“He’s alive!” I cried to the ravens that were waiting to pick at his flesh. “You cannot have this one, he’s mine and he’s alive!”
His helmet was split in half and lying on the ground, his head was split too, but it seemed his helmet had taken most of the blow.
Medraut called out for help and men came running. One of them shoved me out of his way as he fell on his knees at Arthur’s side. I watched helpless and in pain as the man tended him, one of our troop doctors, now ordering him taken off the field at once. More men came. They lifted him, his body was limp, and they carried him towards the wains on the edge of the battleground. I jumped up and followed. Medraut and Cai came with me, both of them protesting in anguish when their troop captain found them, and ordered them out to their horses. It was time to evacuate the field, but I had to stay with Arthur.
The men carried him roughly and this I did not like.
I cried at them, “Be easy with him!”
But he did not wake even when they dumped him in the back of a wain.
I climbed up inside with him; put a hand against his face and called, “Arthur? Are you going to wake up now? Come on, don’t do this to me, wake up!” And I felt confused, why was he not waking up? I looked out of the open carriage doors; saw Medraut and Cai with the rest of their unit running for their horses.
Lord Darfod, our druid and Ambrosius’ chief physician, rode up to join me.
He said, “Bedwyr, does he live?”
It was so good to see him!
Lord Darfod was the best doctor in Britain.
I answered him, “Alive, but why isn’t he waking?”
The war-horns were blowing the signal to move out, and all the warriors began wheeling off the field.
“By the Old Gods, I do not know why he isn’t waking,” Darfod answered me as he pulled closer alongside our wain on his horse.
He trotted behind, saying, “If it is a head wound, it will bleed heavily, but he should have woken by now. The Greek doctors are whispering about a koma, the long un-waking sleep. If this happens, he may never recover his senses.”
“But that’s impossible,” I said to him. I was more afraid than ever. Arthur was too young for this! He was only fifteen…I was only sixteen, and I could not even speak well because my mouth was so dry with thirst.
“How can a man sleep and never wake without dying, Lord Darfod? This is madness. Please make him wake.” But despair took me, and I broke open and cried. Lord Darfod saw me crying, and I did not want to cry in front of our druid. But I gave myself away and cried like the boy I was, for Arthur, he was my life, my foster-brother. I cried for him because he was everything in the world to me.
Darfod said, “Boys your age should never be allowed to lead battles. This will cause problems for you, Bedwyr, with your father. And Lord Ambrosius should be ashamed for letting both you and Arthur take this field. You are too young to fight against Saxons like Hengist, and as a noble entrusted to his care by your clan, this will lose Ambrosius the support of your father.”
Nothing Lord Darfod said made sense to me. All that mattered was Arthur and here the druid was, babbling at me about my father! I looked back at Arthur; he was half asleep, half awake, he was in a dream, sleeping with blood on his face…and no matter how much the wain bounced and rocked, he did not wake up. A groom rode over with his horse, bringing my own with him. All around, I was crowded by warriors, smelled them like I had smelled the dead on the field. There was blood still on my boots.
Lord Darfod rode off somewhere and left me. I felt sick. I began to shake. I could not believe we had survived this battle. If this was what battle was really like, it was naught but hell-fire on land, and I sat and trembled, for the fear of it was still in me. But I had survived and I knew I had fought well, despite my youth and inexperience. I had fought as well as any other man around me. For this I should feel proud, and I did, but I was still afraid, for one battle always led to another, and others we would fight, if only Arthur would wake up!
I put a hand on his sweaty brow, he moaned when I touched him, and I knew he was struggling to come back to me.
Another medicus came running.
He climbed into the carriage with me and began binding Arthur’s wound, a deep gash there on the left side of his head. We were now off the battlefield altogether and moving from east to west with all our surviving host and our wounded. We had battled in the country south of the great Arbus-water, where the Germani were again trying to take our lands, where the terrible Hengist had joined alliance with the Angli, their forces cut to pieces by a fifteen-year-old boy.
I laughed about it to myself, thinking, Arthur, what have you done now? It was not as if he had never done anything extraordinary before in his life. Once, when he was twelve and I was thirteen, he rescued seven of our men from Saxons who had taken them captives and put them to work as slaves, and even before that, he had been amazing his elders, and angering his father.
Arthur was starting to rouse himself now, and I made sure I kept close at his side as we made our way back home, victorious. I stayed with him all the way, looking into his face. Blood was dried and smeared down into his lips, and I tried to wipe it away, touching his face with my fingers wetted with my spit. I did it gently, so as not to hurt him.
I wanted to lift him up into my arms and cradle him to my heart, to wrap my arms around him and tell him that I needed him…what if he died? Could he still die? I cried. I had cried for him before in my life, for the way his father had abused him when we were boys, and I had cradled him through all of his pain, for if I lost him, my life would end with his…
And the going did not get any better till we made a course south on the Roman road to Viroconium, and for most of the time Arthur slept, though he woke often, opening his dark eyes and looking at me as if I was a stranger to him.
I sat next to him. I told him over and over, “We’re nearly home…hold up, brother, we are nearly home…”
He looked at me, he said, “So glad they didn’t kill you…”
Three long days.
And by the time we finally got him back to barracks, the orderlies wasted no time in bundling him away into a warm room with a fire and women to fuss and feed him. Aye, this was good and I began to feel better myself, as they fed me too.
Often, I would stop eating when I worried, and other times, I fell into a black sorrow of despair for no reason I could find, but now, with Arthur beginning to recover his senses, or so I thought, everyone important in Viroconium came to see him. Ambrosius the Supreme Commander of Armies in Britain came and looked down at him, as he lay still in bed.
“Now Arthur, how is your head?” the Commander asked him.
“It’s still there, my Lord,” Arthur answered.
“Still sharp-mouthed, I see. This is a good sign. I have written to your father about this, and yours too, Prince Bedwyr. I hope your fathers will fathom the reasons for putting you both to battle on the front-line. How else will you ever learn?”
“The Fox need not have gone,” Arthur told him. “Lord Pedrawg will not like his son being used for front-line battle. I warned you of this, my lord.”
“Then he should not have put Bedwyr into my army, boy. Be quiet now and get some rest.”
Lord Ambrosius put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder; looked at me with a hard eye, and then went marching out of our room.
But Arthur did not pay attention to the old man’s words; he only looked at me and said, “It’s a good thing you were not killed in that battle. Your entire clan would rise against him if you had. Not least having me kill him myself if you were killed.”
“He’s angry at you for taking that battle off him. You bested him in war, Arthur! You bested the Supreme Commander himself, you took control and you are only fifteen, do you think he will stand for this? When you get better, he will knock you down to a foot-soldier.”
“He trained me for this himself, right?”
“You are too brilliant for him, you outshone him. And your first battle. And I curse the rotten gods for making you brilliant and then splitting open your head. What were you doing? You don’t fight Saxons in single combat! You were almost killed, you bloody fool. Do you think I can stand it if you die, if you die and leave me?”
He laughed a little. “I did go wild, aye? I thought I saw Hengist himself, but it wasn’t him. I didn’t kill that Saxon who brained me, someone else did, I don’t know who it was. I fell in a swoon.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter now; just do what you are told and get some rest.” I was still angry with him for almost getting himself killed. He was too brilliant to get himself killed. He needed a rein around his neck, or else, have me at his side so I could always protect him on the battlefield.
He would take me to war whether I wanted it or not, just so I could protect his disobedient hide. He would take me to war and force me to fight and watch men die. Oh aye, I could see all of this coming—sons put to battle in the wars of our fathers, and where Arthur went, so did I, and he would get himself killed, and kill me along with him. I did not fathom why I loved him so much…
I said to him, “You deserve to shine, not die at age fifteen…”
“I won’t…Fox, stop looking at me like that. Bugger off looking at me like that, or I’ll throw you out! I’m not going to die yet.”
“I’ll let you sleep, you prick…”
So he slept. Over the days that followed, he slept a lot more, and his skin grew pale. Even though his skin is Silurian dark, he grew ashen pale, and I was sure he was going to die. It was not unusual for men to die long after taking their battle-wounds. This was my fear…that death would claim him before he could fly…that wicked wound on his head…it began doing things to him none of us could have foreseen. He was not healing right, as the very next morning when we were alone together, when our woman healer had gone to make us some porridge, I saw his body shaking as he slept. Not all of him, only his right arm and right leg.
He started convulsing on the bed before me, like a man felled in battle and dying. He began moaning. I did not know what to do, so I stayed with him till the convulsion stopped. And when it stopped, he slowly opened his eyes, unfocused, like a baby just squeezed out of his mother’s body and born. I knew he couldn’t see me, because even though he gazed right at me, he looked as if he did not know me.
But he said, “I was looking for you…”
He was all pale and groggy like a man drunk. His lips were so dry I lifted his head for a drink. He sipped it, and said again, “I was looking for you…Fox…”
“I’m here, where do you think I was?” I gripped tight to his hand and started to shiver too because it was so bloody cold in this room.
I told him, “I’m going to light the fire then get the doctors…lie still, don’t try to get up.”
I pulled out of his grip and began at once to build up the fire. My hands were shaking when I put the logs on the flames.
I said, “What do you mean, looking for me?”
“My head is pounding!”
I stood up and went to him, looked at him. He seemed half asleep again and I leant down and shook him. He opened his eyes.
He moaned again and said under his breath, “Let me go…” and he went suddenly quiet and still.
“Arthur…”
I dropped down beside him, shook him again, but he would not respond. I would not lose him, not ever!
So I got up and ran from the room. I could not find anyone in charge, so I ran to Caan, our drill-master, and told him to send help, then ran back and was on my knees again at Arthur’s side. Some of the wives of the camp had come in to help nurse him, one of them was already there when I got back. She was trying to rouse him, to feed him with her hot broths, but he was limp in her strong hands.
She said, “He is starved. Once he eats and drinks he will feel better. He is suffering, poor lad.” She spooned beef broth between his lips and he tried to swallow. I told the woman, “That blow to his head has knocked him brainless…I’m scared.”
As I spoke, a crowd of men came rushing into the room. Master Caan and Lord Darfod, after them, two Greek doctors with their orderlies, also Ambrosius’ personal favourite kinsman, Cynan Aurelius, sent everywhere as the Commander’s representative whenever Ambrosius did not want to make himself seen. I wondered if the old man was feeling guilty about Arthur’s wound, for he had not come to see him since that first visit of his. All of these men wanted to throw me out so they could work, but the woman healer stopped them.
“Can you not see the bond between these two boys?” she cried at them. “See how Arthur needs this boy? Leave him alone!”
I loved her for saying this, though it failed to make Arthur any better.
The doctors doctored, but his illness went on for another fortnight, though he was well enough to sit up and drink and eat again. He ate everything the women put in front of him, because he was so savage for life that food went right in and never came out again, or so I believed; for this friend of mine did not shit but twice a week…if ever.
So he was allowed only barley-water to drink and blood-sausage to eat, and he did eat, starved like a wolf. He held on to every nourishing morsel, growing like a light, forcing everyone around to love him. Men, women, boys and girls, and even the dogs loved him to madness. He did this to everyone who met him.
Relief came when Master Caan said I could leave off duties till Arthur was up and running around again, because like the woman said, me being with him seemed to help make him get better. And he did that too. Finally. He got so better he started telling me all about the battle he had won. He seemed to believe it had only just happened, as if I had not even been there myself.
Told me all about it in rapid speech, barking like a dog, his mouth always working at a full-charge gallop, “I won that battle, didn’t I? It was me, wasn’t it? This means big things. It means I can go all the way, it means all the captains—”
“It means that wound on your head is no good,” I warned him. “No good at all. It’s going to keep making you sick, I know it.”
“Fox…shut up, will you? Don’t you want to hear the rest of my story?”
I laughed and he went quiet. So quiet I had to make him get out of bed and start walking. I needed to help him stand and walk, and I felt the heat of his body, felt his limbs trembling with the effort, yet he persisted and persisted till he dropped. He dropped onto the bed and his eyes closed and he stopped breathing. He started to shake in his right arm and right leg. Again I had to run for the doctors. But it was Lord Darfod, our brilliant druid who made the diagnosis of the falling-sickness.
“And there is nothing we can do about it,” he told us. “This is the Will of the Old Gods, something that will always happen for the rest of his life. He will slip away from us and go somewhere else, until he drops and falls and shakes. It is the falling-sickness. That ridiculous Romani-priest of Ambrosius’ said he has a demon in him, but it is not what that idiot man said, but from the wound he took to his head, and it will always be so.”
Darfod put a hand over Arthur’s and squeezed his fingers…said to him, “It does not hurt us, save only to stand here helpless and watch you suffer. How do you feel now, boy?”
“I’m having visions,” Arthur told him. “And colours, and I can fly. So why are you fretting over me? Have you all gone feckless?”
Everyone laughed, except me. I was stunned by the changes in him. He was still himself, of course, but ever since he won that battle and took that blow to his head, something inside him had been unleashed, and I was afraid of where he would lead us next. Surely he would lead us all somewhere unknowable, and all we could do was follow…
CHAPTER 2: Rejecting the Son
Another seven months went by and Arthur fully recovered, though he still had terrible bouts of falling-sickness. And as the world was harsh and violent, our moments of happiness and joy were rare. Everything soon went dark again, for when Arthur was about to turn sixteen years of age, his father, Lord Uthyr Pendragon arrived in Viroconium for a war-council with our Commander. On a crisp cool spring morning, he came with a band of followers. With him came Lot, his brother and Medraut’s father, at his side. Lord Uthyr had sent letters to say he wanted a private meeting concerning his son in the presence of Lord Ambrosius Aurelianus, and my father, King Pedrawg ap Bedrydant, king of Dogfeiling in Gwynedd. My father being high chieftain of the Stag Clan, my kinsmen, we were all of us kinsmen-allies to Uthyr Pendragon of Rheged. And as my father was Arthur’s foster-father, he rightfully belonged at all meetings concerning him. Even I was to be there, called in as Prince Bedwyr of Dogfeiling, as I was, though always I preferred to be called the Fox, the name Arthur had given me when we were boys. I was the Fox and he was the Bear.
Yet as we dressed for our meeting, the Bear was so uncomfortable about seeing his father again that I saw his hands shaking when he was doing up his belt.
He said to me, “He’s going to hurt me. I can sense it. I can always sense when Uthyr’s going to hurt me. This is his final cut.” And he made a cutting sign across his throat. “He’s going to try and break me in front of everyone here, in front of you, my foster-father and Lord Ambrosius, even Medraut. All of you.”
“Why?” I said.
“Because of the battle I won, why else? Uthyr will see this as a threat to his own power, that me, his only son, is a greater warrior than he is. Now he fears me, he will reject me outright so he can fight me legally. You watch, I bet you, Fox, he will reject me today.”
A hard look came into his eyes when he said this, but I knew him well enough to know his look was one of sheer pain. Uthyr did not love him. Uthyr was waiting for his chance to reject him, and I thought he was right. The time had come for Uthyr Pendragon to cast out his own son for fear of his growing power.
Crows were cawing over in the trees when we left together to go and join the meeting in Ambrosius’ campaign room in his private villa. And when we walked in, everyone was already gathered. Uthyr and Lot both seated behind a long-table, facing Ambrosius and his attendants. Behind Uthyr stood his own warriors on guard, his Gododdin Guard of the Clan Lothian, powerful and hardened warriors from north over the great Wall, from the land of the Votadini, our forefathers.
With us was Medraut ap Lot, and in the background as a witness stood Ambrosius’ priest of Christ, Calros Clement of Eburacum. Next to him stood Lord Darfod ap Luca, our own mediator between Uthyr and Ambrosius’ opposing camps.
And dominating the room was Uthyr’s old Red Dragon banner, hung up on the wall behind him as a challenge to Ambrosius of the Cornovii, whose banner was Roman—the Roman Aquila. Still the Pendragon banner was taken with Uthyr wherever he went; so beautifully embroidered…hand-stitched by Arthur’s mother, Igrain, herself.
And there in the middle of the room waited a single chair, facing the table. I knew at once this single chair was meant for Arthur. No one needed to tell him to go and sit on it, which is what he did without comment. He sat staring not at his father, but at the banner, the Red Dragon there on the wall in front of him.
The room was dark, just one small window above to his left. Arthur sat in a shaft of light, while all the rest of us waited in shadow. And even though he sat in a shaft of light, he looked darker than any of us, with his thick straight black hair and ebony-black eyes, his skin a deep honey-brown when he got out into the sun, and his hair had grown since his illness and he wore a band around his forehead, holding back his fringe. Handsome, even more so than his blond-haired angel of a cousin, Medraut, the son of Lot. For all of us, it was easy to see Uthyr had eyes only for his son. Arthur, sitting before him with his legs splayed open, arrogant, staring back at his father. While in the shadows and against the wall I stood next to Medraut, as we boys were not allowed to sit.
Medraut nudged my arm and went to say something to me, but his father stopped him, “Do not speak, Medraut, or I will throw you out.”
Medraut fell silent, and Uthyr glared at us, then began it.
“I see, Ambrosius, you have failed to keep this—this black-dog son of mine under control. Did I tell you to let him go to battle, and win them? Why did you let this happen?”
Ambrosius replied at once, “I am the Supreme Commander of Armies in Britain, my friend, and you were the one who put your son in my army. I knew you did not expect Arthur to become so brilliant at war. I suspect, Uthyr, that you were hoping he would be killed in my battles, and not your own. You are a devious ally to have. What I do with my enlisted men is my own to command, not yours.”
Uthyr smarted at this truth.
No, he had not expected his son to be so brilliant at war.
He said, “Well, that may be so, but I asked for this meeting so I can give you all a formal declaration…and have your lawyers note this down. I no longer recognise Arthur here as my son, born of my loins. He is Silurian born, born on Silurian soil of a Silurian mother of Silurian descent, aye, his Silurian bloodline is noble, but even so, he is no longer a member of my nation, but his mother’s and her Clan of the Bear. To her side he is legally bound. I reject him. And in exchange for my son, I want my nephew, Medraut. He will come back with me today to Luguvalos.”
Medraut jumped forward, crying, “No! I want to stay with Arthur; fight with him! And I cannot do this from the north! Please, uncle, let me stay here with Lord Ambrosius’ army.”
Uthyr growled back at him, “No, lad, Lot and I want to train you to fight the Picts, not Saxons. Leave fighting the Germani to the southerners here. To Arthur, the Silurian, and Aurelianus of the Cornovi. We Gododdin stay in defence of the North where we belong. So, Medraut, you will come back with us when we leave here, boy, and so should you, Bedwyr. Are you not also Gododdin?”
I glanced at my father when the Pendragon spoke to me.
My father stepped forward on my behalf and said, “My son will stay where I put him, Uthyr.”
My father then glanced at Ambrosius when he said this, and I sensed something between them, an unspoken conflict.
Ambrosius nodded to Uthyr, “Prince Bedwyr will stay with his foster-brother and they will both continue to fight in my army. They are both enlisted men: sons who you yourselves gave to me for training, for war and leadership. But if you want to reject your son from your own clan, Uthyr, what is this to do with me?”
“Nothing, other than I wish you to keep my son here under your full control. Keep him under control, and do not give him a command. Let him be a soldier and nothing else.”
All the time as the men debated, Arthur sat restless in his chair, biting his jaw closed, dying to have his own say, but keeping still till the right moment.
“So be it,” Ambrosius said.
And this was when Arthur finally broke.
He jumped out of his chair and advanced on his father, who sat behind his table, saying to his face, “You don’t know what you have just done by rejecting me! You don’t know what you have done to yourself.” He glanced at the Red Dragon on the wall. He said, “I want that banner. And I will take it from you one day soon. My mother made it, and I want it. It should be mine.” His hand clutched into a fist, and he burned his father with his black-eyed stare, so that the great Uthyr Pendragon paled.
“Medraut, in exchange for you,” Uthyr replied. “And you will never take Igrain’s Red Dragon from me.”
Arthur seemed unable to breathe when his father said these words, but he answered, “I am Igrain’s son…I am hers, you just said so yourself, and what she makes is rightfully mine, my inheritance as a Silurian. She made me. She made the Red Dragon and one day it will be mine.”
Uthyr turned white with rage.
He answered, “When I went to Igrain after she had given birth to you, all I saw was blood. You had split her open and blood was everywhere! You, Silurian, you split her open. You came out the wrong way! You came out feet first, as if you dared to stand on your own two feet from the very moment you were first born. So bright, so clever, so different from the rest of us. You split her open and killed her. You will take nothing of hers because you killed her.”
“The Red Dragon, Father, it’s mine,” and Arthur turned away and walked out of the room, leaving us all standing, with Uthyr breathing hard like a bull in a charge. Ambrosius was forced to dismiss us before more trouble could come. And when we filed outside…we found Arthur gone down in another of his terrible falling-sickness seizures. And Uthyr just had to come out of the villa right at that moment and see his son convulsing on the ground.
He cried, “Aye! He’s got a demon in him all right. Punishment for being so arrogant and killing his mother, my lover…have him, Ambrosius, and let us see what you can do with a monster like him. No more leading battles for him. Or better still, put him out with your dogs. Even wolfhounds love him more than I do.”
Uthyr turned then and walked away, taking his followers with him.
I moved forward and lifted Arthur from the ground when his seizure stopped. Together we saw Medraut being dragged away, held between his father and uncle.
Medraut called back, “Arthur! Don’t forget me! Come for me! You hear me! Come for me!”
So Medraut was suddenly gone, and we helped Arthur to walk. We tried to put him back to bed for the rest of the day, where he complained of a headache. Lord Darfod gave him a drink with some potion in it to ease his pain, and he drank it down in one gulp and almost choked himself doing it.
“Ambrosius said for you boys to take a full day off,” Darfod told us. “Said why not go out riding later for some air and exercise. But he wants you back on duty tomorrow. But wait till this drink clears your head, Arthur, before you get on a horse. I do not want you dropping off if the sickness comes on you again.”
“It won’t,” he answered. And he looked at me with a veiled smile.
Go riding? Riding was freedom to us. The two of us alone and away from barracks, just us, the Fox and the Bear. Out into the wilds, where I saw the fire inside him burning. There was a fire inside him. I believed his heart was made of flames and his blood of molten steel. He rode his horse harder and faster than any other barrack-boy, and grown men stood back when they spoke to him, because to touch him would set afire to a man’s skin. But on that day’s ride together, Arthur kept his flames to himself.
All day we stayed out. And when evening came, still we did not go straight home, but picked up our horses to a run, racing each other over the flats towards the Wrekin, chasing in circles, tighter and tighter till our horses were almost up each other’s arses. We laughed and laughed, going around and around till we were giddy.
I stopped, breathing hard. Arthur looked at me.
“What?” I said. But he kept on looking deep inside me.
He said, “I think, one day…I will die in your arms…one day.”
And it turned unbearably cold. Mist began rising over the fields.
He said, “Let’s not go back tonight. Let’s stay out all night, out here.”
“We cannot,” I warned him. “The old man will flog us, and we will get broken to foot-soldiers again. We haven’t got any blankets, we’ll freeze.”
“What if we go after Medraut like he said? My father will take him to Deva before going home. We can sneak up there and steal the Snake back again.”
“Don’t act mad, Deva is leagues away. You’re feeling wild tonight because of what happened today. I know what you’re like when you get like this, so dangerous.” I moved my horse closer to him. I said, “What do you mean, die in my arms?”
“You know we are going to die in battle one day, don’t you?”
He leant towards me and whispered, “I dreamt it. You are going to hold me while I die.”
He shocked me, like a knife cutting deep and I answered, low, “No death can separate us, you know that.”
And we were so alone in the world, so cold in the air. Cold over the ground. Cold under the trees and it was dark.
I was shot through with fear.
“There’s no meaning in the world,” I found myself saying. It came out of my heart. “No meaning if you die. It would be worse than this black sky over us now. I would feel as if I was that empty blackness. If I had life and you did not, I would hate it. Don’t say these things to me.”
Somewhere in the forest a dog-fox barked and a black shape of an owl flew over the treetops. Our horses hung their heads and we sat on in the night. We were afraid.
A moment later, he said, “You saw what my father did to me. It hurts so bloody deep inside me, my mind…Fox, I dreamt I died in your arms.”
“Listen to me,” I whispered. “You took a bad wound on your head. Ever since then you have been having weird dreams, and now you have falling-sickness. When you went down from that blow, you were probably only dreaming of dying. But I was there next to you. It was just a dream. Come with me, let’s go home. We are in shit-heap deep now.”
I turned and took the reins of his horse, just so he would follow me and not linger in the night-time cold.
The gates were closed by the time we got back to barracks. The gatekeeper snorted, and wouldn’t open on purpose to spite us.
But Arthur turned on him, “Open the gates, now!”
And damn his manky bones, the man did as he was ordered.
We rode in, and Caan, our drill-master, broke us immediately, though he did allow us some supper. I was put on all-night guard duty. And sometime when I was about to fall over asleep, holding onto my spear as a prop, I felt Arthur come and take hold of me and lift me back on my feet. We were both rugged up with heavy cloaks and he stood grinning at me in the dark.
“Look at the stars!” he said, cold breath on the air. “Sky full of stars.” He was amazed. He said, “You know what Caan did to me? He’s making me sleep with the new boys in the barrack dorm instead of my own cell. He knows how I hate that. Those little brats won’t let me get any sleep, and tomorrow I have to polish every bloody horse-harness in town before noon. Then I have to polish his boots, but I’m going to put shit in them instead,” and he burst out laughing at the top of his voice in the middle of the night.
“Be quiet will you? I’m supposed to be on guard and you’ll get me broken worse than I am now!”
“I cannot sleep.”
“Oh, and no one else can either?”
“No, those little runts keep jumping on my bed and asking me to tell them stories, so I told them about the haunted forest back home, when we used to see the water-monster from the lake, walking through the trees at night. It scared the living lights out of them, poor little lads. I should not have done that, now they won’t sleep, and neither will I.”
He fell quiet, ashamed of himself for telling the new boys in our care naught but ghost stories.
I said, “I’ll give you a hand, polishing tomorrow.”
He said, “No, you’ll be asleep all day, get some sleep.”
“Go back. You can shove the boys off back to bed now. Get some sleep yourself.”
“No, every time I sleep I have dreams in fabulous colours, dreams of a far distant place. Fox…I think I’m dreaming of the future.”
“Sweet Jupiter’s hairy balls! Don’t start that nonsense again. You know I do not like prophecy and superstitious lies. It’s all dark and eerie out here. Look at those shadows; they could be full of Saxons…”
He went quiet, then said, “Saxons…” He hesitated a moment before saying, “See you tomorrow,” and walked back to the barrack dorm.
CHAPTER 3: Arthur Grows
A few days later, we were suddenly released from barracks, for a message had come from my father asking to have me and Arthur sent home at once. My mother was dying. Well, my mother had been dying for a long while now, so slowly it was a snail-crawl to her grave. So my father’s request to call us home for mother’s death-day did not come as a great shock to me. Lord Ambrosius gave us unlimited leave.
And once we were home again in my villa in the mountains of Dogfeiling in Gwynedd, we spent all of our time in with my mother. All of her sisters were already home, with my uncle and his wife, and my two cousins, Lucan and Manos. The villa filled up and no one could move. Everyone came to see her die, my mother. It was harsh.
We sat at her bedside, me and Arthur, and watched her dying. She never moved. She seemed deep asleep, breathing as if asleep. Her sisters washed her body even as she was still alive, preparing her for death. Watching this made me cry. Washing her body like they did, softly, gently, lovingly, it meant she was soon to pass over and I cried. We all sat and sat. Everyone wept.
I…I looked at Arthur and he looked at me, the tears on his face were like my own. I looked at my father. He was not crying. As king of the Stag Clan, he would not cry…and when it grew very late in the night, my father told us boys to go to bed.
Arthur got up and kissed my mother’s cheek, then I kissed her. But Arthur was feeling her death deeper than I was. Her death was going to break him. Another mother he would see to the grave…for his own mother had gone to her grave so young…only nineteen years when Igrain died. And this time, it was my mother, his foster-mother, and by the time we came out of her sleeping-room, Arthur was ashen white. We said goodnight to my father, who said that tomorrow, Medraut was coming over to be Uthyr and Lot’s representative at my mother’s funeral, for it was certain she would die this night…
So when it was very late, when Arthur and I were alone in our outhouse room, I looked over at the big pallet-bed where we used to sleep as little boys. Still there and covered with deerskins and blankets of spun wool, so warm in the freezing mountain night. We would have to share it again. The first time since leaving home as thirteen-year olds to go into Ambrosius’ army. We were the lucky ones though, because our room had a large brazier and it was warm enough to sleep naked.
Arthur slept. I did not.
I lay awake, listening to him breathing, asleep at my side. I watched the low light from the fire over the walls and ceiling, the room quiet, though I heard the soft wind outside, the spit of burning wood. My mother ill and dying…Arthur slept naked, facing the fire, away from me, though he threw his right leg against my left. He was sixteen. I was seventeen.
Sometime in the night, he turned over to face me, and all I could feel was the heat of his naked body, flushed as a forge as he moved closer to me, and I gasped when I felt his body roll against mine. My heart thrashed in my throat. We were too old now to sleep together in such a way. We were not little boys any more.
I turned away from him, and darkness fell in the room as I heard his breathing stop. He stayed this way for a moment, till I thought he had died, but he gave out a sharp breath and started shaking on his right side. I turned back to him and put my hands on his shoulders and gently held him down till his shaking stopped. He disappeared into sleep, immovable sleep.
And as I watched him rest, I felt again an old trouble inside me rise up to choke me. I felt a hard lock form in my throat and a heaviness in my chest. I looked at his face, and thought about his life…more pain in his life than whatever I had known, even with the misery of the coming death of my mother. And as I watched him sleeping, I thought of him being rejected by his father, the punches he had taken from Uthyr’s fists when he was only eight-years old, and this falling-sickness that gave him visions only he could see and sounds only he could hear. He slept on at my side and I watched him, feeling strange things as I stroked the hair out of his eyes. And as I looked at him, I knew I needed him more than my own life, and yet he tortured me, confused me, drove a great wedge into my mind and a sweet spike into my heart. I stroked his hair; I looked down at his face. He was so fast asleep nothing could wake him, not even the owl that suddenly went screeching outside our tiny window, an omen of coming death and I was afraid. I pulled back from him and tried to sleep…
…and when morning came, it was a horrible morning, lashing with rain, and the cold went into my mother’s heart later in the day and killed her. We all gathered together by her deathbed, and when she passed, I saw a look of peace touch her face. A smile touched her lips as I fell at her side and took her cold hand and wept. I cried and cried on my knees, listening to the keening of her sisters, a banshee wail.
I cried and Arthur stood at my side. His hand came down on my shoulder, but he did not move and he did not speak. Not even when Medraut arrived did he speak, but went out and sat before the fire in the main room while the rest of us cried on at mother’s bedside, mourning. The rain came down all day. A day that was a lifetime to me. Finally when I came out of my mother’s death-room, I found Arthur sitting still and staring at nothing, with Medraut standing at his side, watching him. But Arthur said nothing.
He stayed silent for another three days, till we took him outside to my mother’s funeral. It was still raining; the hillsides ran with water, the rivers full, the streams gushing, the lake misty. The ground under our feet had churned to mud, and when she went down into her grave, only then did Arthur break. Rain in his face as he went down on his knees at her graveside. We stood watching him. Watching as he pushed his hands into the soil of her grave. But still he did not cry. My father picked him up and we all walked home, bolted inside to change out of our wet clothes, to find something to eat and wait for the sun to come back. And this was just what happened.
The next day was like heaven on earth. The sun blazing out of a clear rain-washed sky, the air so clear and fresh my sorrow lifted, and I knew somehow that my mother would be happy to lie under the soft soil of Britain on such a glorious morning. I felt sad about it, but happy, and going outside, I found Arthur and Medraut sitting together on the log-seat, eating porridge. The horrible sadness seemed gone from Arthur this morn. I found him and Medraut smiling about some private jest. The Snake was telling him about the goings on in Uthyr’s camp, and when I sat down to join them, they told me they were going hunting.
I swore at them, “You bastards! I have to go with my father today to visit some ol’ mad relative of his. Why can you not wait till another day? I want to go with you.”
Medraut said, “It has to be today. I have to go back to Luguvalos tomorrow. Sorry, Fox.” He shrugged, and a smile came on his lips as Arthur looked at me with a cock-sure grin. I thought, bugger you two with sharp sticks…
They took up their pig-spears, got up and left me sitting alone. They went away up into the hills over my villa.
I did not see them again till the following afternoon.
Over the time they were away, I worried. I worried and fell into the black sorrow that came on me whenever I worried. My mother had just died, my father was black and bitter, my clan was brooding: they were soon to go to battle again against the Gaels, and I was grieving and Arthur and Medraut were so bloody good together they shook the ground they walked on, I knew this. I hurt inside, a kind of jealous pain, and I never once took a bite of food while they were gone. Together, they were the light and the dark, bound together forever. Though it was the blond and beautiful green-eyed Snake who was the dark one.
And my sorrow, a terrible aching black sorrow came again when I thought about the brilliance of Arthur and Medraut together, how they worked the army to perfection, while I hated every stinking moment of army life. Hated it from the very first day I had been sent through the gates of the military city of Viroconium, south of Deva, at age thirteen.
Why had my father put me to Ambrosius’ army in the first place? I was old enough now, I thought, to be suspicious of the actions of battle-chieftains, and my father was king of the Stag Clan of Gwynedd, ally to Lord Uthyr Pendragon, allied to Lord Ambrosius Aurelianus, and my father had put me in his stinking army, contracted and enlisted, legally. For wherever Arthur went, I went as well. And I was beginning to rebel. Ambrosius had put me on the front-line! That man surely did not care for the lives of the sons of nobles, and Arthur and Medraut had left me to rot in this feeling as I grieved for the loss of my mother.
And just as I was about to go and look for them late the following afternoon, I saw them chasing down from the hills, out of the trees, shouting and yelling, brandishing their pig-spears at me. They came running up to meet me, wild as painted Picts.
My father came out of our house at that moment, and stood with me, ready to pounce on them, as I could see he was now as mad as all bloody hell-fire for them staying out all night, without permission. They came running home, all sweet and full of themselves. These two cousins, who were under my father’s care, had not come home the night before, so again Arthur was in trouble, and I did not care, because I had stayed awake all night fretting about him, starving myself for him. Bastard!
We stood waiting as they came running up to us, filthy with sprayed pig-blood, and I could tell straight away from Arthur’s look that something had gone on between him and Medraut overnight. It was all there in his smile, the enigmatic smile he always used.
And the first thing that happened was my father stepped forward and clouted Arthur hard across the side of his head. The side where he had taken his battle-wound. Arthur staggered back from the blow and almost fell. I jumped to help him, but he righted himself and brought up his spear and dived its point at my father’s chest.
He stopped within inches and warned in a savage voice, “Do not ever hit me again, Pedrawg! That is the last time I will ever let any man hit me. I am not for hitting any longer, and whether you acknowledge it or not, my lord, I am still the son of Lord Uthyr Pendragon, your ally.”
“He rejected you, boy.”
They both stood in silence, eyeing each other. The moment was black. All around us the world had stopped. Arthur standing before my father, immovable.
My father relented first.
He moved aside, saying, “Arthur, you know well enough you were supposed to have come home last night, but you disobeyed me. Medraut, there is a horseman waiting to escort you back to Luguvalos.”
He then turned away, back into the house.
After the door slammed shut, Arthur cursed, “Jupiter’s balls, that hurt!”
Medraut put a hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right, cousin? What a bastard for hitting you like that. I can tell your father if you want, when I get back. Uthyr will not like—”
“Leave it,” Arthur told him.
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