“So you can humiliate me further?” Ladwys asked. Owain, for all his brutality, had never managed to break her spirit.
Arthur frowned at her hostile tone. “So you can be with him, Lady,” he said gently. “Your husband’s imprisonment is not harsh, he has a house like this, though admittedly it is guarded. But you may live with him in privacy and peace, if that is what you want.”
Tears showed at Ladwys’s eyes. “He may not want me. I’ve been soiled.”
Arthur shrugged. “I can’t speak for Gundleus, I just want your decision. If you choose to stay here then you may. Owain’s death means you are free.”
She seemed bemused by Arthur’s generosity, but managed to nod. “I will come, Lord.”
“Good!” Arthur stood and carried his chair to the side of the room where he courteously invited Ladwys to sit. Then he faced the assembled counsellors, spearmen and chiefs. “I have one thing to say, just one, but you must all understand this one thing and you must repeat it to your men, your families, your tribes and your septs. Our King is Mordred, no one but Mordred, and it is to Mordred we owe our allegiance and our swords. But in the next years the kingdom will face enemies, as all kingdoms do, and there will be a need, as there always is, for strong decisions, and when those decisions are taken there will be men among you who will whisper that I am usurping the King’s power. You will even be tempted to think I want the King’s power. So in front of you now, and in front of our friends from Gwent and Kernow’ here Arthur gestured courteously towards Agricola and Tristan ‘let me swear upon whatever oath you hold most dear that I shall use the power you give me for one end only, and that one end is to see Mordred take his kingdom from me when he is of age. That I swear.” He stopped abruptly.
There was a stir in the room. Until that moment no one had fully understood how swiftly Arthur had taken power in Dumnonia. The fact that he sat at the table with Bedwin and Prince Gereint suggested that the three men were equals in power, but Arthur’s speech proclaimed that there was only one man in charge, and Bedwin and Gereint, by their silence, gave support to Arthur’s claim. Neither Bedwin nor Gereint were stripped of their power, but rather they now exercised it at Arthur’s pleasure and his pleasure decreed that Bedwin would stay to be the arbiter of disputes within the kingdom, Gereint would guard the Saxon frontier while Arthur went north to face the forces of Powys. I knew, and maybe Bedwin knew, that Arthur had high hopes of peace with Gorfyddyd’s kingdom, but until that peace was agreed he would continue a posture of war.
A large party went north that afternoon. Arthur, with his two warriors and his servant Hygwydd, rode ahead with Agricola and his men. Morgan, Ladwys and Lunete rode in a cart while I walked with Nimue. Lunete was subdued, overwhelmed by Nimue’s anger. We spent the night at the Tor where I saw the good work Gwlyddyn was doing. The new stockade was in place and a new tower rising on the foundations of the old. Ralla was pregnant. Pellinore did not know me, but just walked about his new cage as though he was on guard and barked orders at unseen spearmen. Druidan ogled Ladwys. Gudovan, the clerk, showed me Hywel’s grave north of the Tor, then took Arthur to the shrine of the Holy Thorn where Saint Norwenna was buried close beside the miraculous tree.
Next morning I said farewell to Morgan and to Nimue. The sky was blue again, the wind was cold, and I went north with Arthur.
In the spring my son was born. He died three days later. For days afterwards I would see that small wrinkled red face and tears would come to my eyes at the memory. He had seemed healthy, but one morning, hung in his swaddling clothes on the wall of the kitchen so he would be out of the way of the dogs and piglets, he simply died. Lunete, like me, wept, but she also blamed me for her baby’s death, saying the air at Corinium was pestilential, though she was, in fact, happy enough in the town. She liked the clean Roman buildings and her small brick house that faced on to a stone-paved street, and she had struck up an unlikely friendship with Ailleann, Arthur’s lover, and with Ailleann’s twin sons, Amhar and Loholt. I liked Ailleann well enough, but the two boys were fiends. Arthur indulged them, perhaps because he felt guilty that they, like him, were not proper sons born to inherit, but bastards who would need to make their own way in a hard world. They received no discipline that I ever saw, except once when I found them prying at a puppy’s eyes with a knife and I struck them both hard. The puppy was blinded and I did the merciful thing of killing it quickly. Arthur sympathized with me, but said it was not my place to strike his boys. His warriors applauded me, and Ailleann, I think, approved.