Norwenna screamed again.
I have never seen a child’s birth, nor, God willing, will I ever see one. I have seen a mare foal and watched calves slither into the world, and I have heard the soft whining of a whelping bitch and felt the writhing of a birthing cat, but never have I seen the blood and mucus that accompanies a woman’s screams. And how Norwenna screamed, even though she was trying not to, or so the women said afterwards. Sometimes the shrieking would suddenly stop and leave a silence hanging over the whole high fort and the High King would lift his great head from among the furs and he would listen as carefully as though he were in a thicket and the Saxons were close by, only now he was listening in hope that the sudden silence marked the moment of birth when his kingdom would have an heir again. He would listen, and in the stillness across the frozen compound we would hear the harsh noise of his daughter-in-law’s terrible breathing and once, just once, there was a pathetic whimper, and the High King half turned as though to say something, but then the screams began again and his head sank down into the heavy pelts so that only his eyes could be seen glinting in the shadowed cave formed by the heavy fur hood and collar.
“You should not be on the ramparts, High Lord,” Bishop Bedwin said.
Uther waved a gloved hand as if to suggest that Bedwin was welcome to go inside where the fires burned, but High King Uther, the Pendragon of Britain, would not move. He wanted to be on
Caer Cadarn’s ramparts so he could gaze across the icy land and up into the middle air where the demons lurked, but Bedwin was right, the High King should not have been standing guard against demons on this hard night. Uther was old and sick, yet the kingdom’s safety depended on his bloated body and on his slow, sad mind. He had been vigorous only six months before, but then had come the news of his heir’s death. Mordred, the most beloved of his sons and the only one of those born to his bride still living, had been cut down by a Saxon broad-axe and had then bled to death beneath the hill of the White Horse. That death had left the kingdom without an heir, and a kingdom without an heir is a cursed kingdom, but this night, if the Gods willed, Uther’s heir would be born to Mordred’s widow. Unless the child was a girl, of course, in which case all the pain was for nothing and the kingdom doomed.
Uther’s great head raised itself from the pelts that were crusted with ice where his breath had settled on the fur. “All is being done, Bedwin?” Uther asked.
“All, High Lord, all,” Bishop Bedwin said. He was the King’s most trusted counsellor and, like the Princess Norwenna, a Christian. Norwenna, protesting at being moved from the warm Roman villa in nearby Lindinis, had screamed at her father-in-law that she would only go to Caer Cadarn if he promised to keep the old Gods’ witches away. She had insisted on a Christian birth, and Uther, desperate for an heir, had agreed to her demands. Now Bed win’s priests were chanting their prayers in a chamber beside the hall where holy water had been sprinkled, a cross had been hung over the birth bed and another put beneath Norwenna’s body. “We are praying to the blessed Virgin Mary,” Bedwin explained, ‘who, without soiling her sacred body by any carnal knowledge, became Christ’s holy mother and’
“Enough,” Uther growled. The High King was no Christian and did not like any man attempting to make him one, though he did accept that the Christian God probably had as much power as most other Gods. The events of this night were testing that toleration to the limit.
Which was why I was there. I was a child on the edge of manhood, a beardless errand-runner who crouched frozen beside the King’s chair on the ramparts of Caer Cadarn. I had come from Ynys Wydryn, Merlin’s hall, which lay on the northern horizon.