Gundleus was placed under guard in a chamber off the great hall at Caer Cadarn. There was a feast of sorts that night, though because so many people were in the fortress the helpings of meat were small and hastily cooked. Much of the night was spent by old friends exchanging news of Britain and Brittany, for many of Arthur’s followers had originally come from Dumnonia or from the other British kingdoms. The names of Arthur’s men blurred in my mind, for there were over seventy horsemen in his band, as well as grooms, servants, women and a tribe of children. In time the names of Arthur’s warriors became so familiar, but that night they meant nothing: Dagonet, Aglaval, Cei, Lanval, the brothers Balan and Balin, Gawain and Agravain, Blaise, Illtyd, Eiddilig, Bedwyr. I did notice Morfans, for he was the ugliest man I ever saw, so ugly that he took pride in his twisted looks, goitred neck, hare lip and misshapen jaw. I also noticed Sagramor, for he was black and I had never seen, let alone believed in, such men. He was a tall, thin and sourly laconic man, though when he could be persuaded to tell a story in his horribly accented British he could put a whole hall under his spell.
And, of course, I noticed Ailleann. She was a slender, black-haired woman, a few years older than Arthur, with a thin, grave and gentle face that gave her a look of great wisdom. She was dressed in royal finery that night. Her robe was of linen dyed a rusty red with iron-soil, girdled by a heavy silver chain, and had long loose sleeves that were fringed with otter fur. She wore a gleaming torque of heavy gold about her long neck, bracelets of gold around her wrists and an enamelled brooch showing Arthur’s symbol of the bear at her breast. She moved gracefully, spoke little and watched Arthur protectively. I thought she had to be a queen, or at least a princess, except that she was carrying bowls of food and flasks of mead like any common servant.
“Ailleann’s a slave, lad,” Morfans the Ugly said. He was squatting opposite me on the hall floor and had seen me watching the tall woman as she moved from the patches of firelight into the hall’s flickering shadows.
“Whose slave?” I asked.
“Whose do you think?” he asked, then put a rib of pork in his mouth and used his two remaining teeth to strip the bone of its succulent flesh. “Arthur’s,” he said after he had tossed the bone to one of the many dogs in the hall. “And she’s his lover as well as his slave, of course.” He belched, then drank from a horn cup. “She was given to him by his brother-in-law, King Budic. That was a long time ago. She’s a good few years older than Arthur and I don’t suppose Budic thought he’d keep her long, but once Arthur takes a fancy to someone they seem to stay for ever. Those are her twin boys.” He jerked a greasy beard towards the back of the hall where a pair of sullen boys of about nine squatted in the dirt with their bowls of food.
“Arthur’s sons?” I asked.
“No one else’s,” Morfans said derisively. “Amhar and Loholt, they’re called, and their father worships them. Nothing’s too good for those little bastards, and that’s exactly what they are, lad, bastards. Real good-for-nothing little bastards.” There was a genuine hatred in his voice. “I tell you, son, Arthur ap Uther is a great man. He’s the best soldier I’ve ever known, the most generous man and the most fair lord, but when it comes to breeding children I could do better with a sow for a mother.”
I looked back to Ailleann. “Are they married?”
Morfans laughed. “Of course not! But she’s kept him happy these ten years. Mind you, the day will come when he’ll send her away just like his father sent his mother away. Arthur will marry something royal and she won’t be half as gentle as Ailleann, but that’s what men like Arthur have to do. They have to marry well. Not like you and me, boy. We can marry what we want, so long as it isn’t royal. Listen to that!” He grinned as a woman screamed in the night outside the hall.