Arturus’s mood darkened as the day wore on. Gwynefa had gone somewhere with Larcius and returned late. When she finally arrived elaborately dressed and imperious, Dan was shocked at the change in her. He had heard from Bryn that her union with Arturus had been childless. She had miscarried some nine times and it was evident to Dan, if to no one else, that she carried the pain of every one of those lost potential children like a stone in her heart. Her whole being was rooted in grief and bitterness. Dan found it hard to look at her. She was bravely dressed in a Roman chiton of scarlet wool that clung to her voluptuous curves, and a long, floor-length cloak of deep blue interwoven with threads of gold. She was festooned with gold jewellery and wore her jet-black hair in a complicated style, pinned with glittering combs and clips that Dan’s sister would have loved. The dark skin of her face was still smooth and plump, and her startling, pale green eyes were accentuated by dark make-up so that they seemed to glitter maniacally. She must have been in her late thirties and had retained a far more youthful appearance than either Arturus or Larcius, yet to Dan she seemed old and world-weary. Her still charming smile did not reach her eyes.
It was obvious to Dan that Arturus still loved and desired her. It was also apparent in her every gesture towards him, that she accepted both emotions as her due – but shared neither. She seemed scarcely warmer towards Larcius, while the sentiments he exuded defied Dan’s limited powers of emotional description: not envy, not hate, not irritation, not respect, not quite love, but somehow all of them together. It was more than Dan could grasp.
It all became easier when Gwynefa left early from the dinner Larcius had arranged in Arturus’s honour. Arturus explained that she intended to ride out before dawn the next day to negotiate the purchase of some horses from a well-known horse breeder a day’s ride away and that she intended to meet him back at his fort at Cado. It seemed to Dan that Arturus was both pleased and irritated by her independence, while Larcius was both excited and disturbed by her plans. Dan was merely bemused. Something was going on but he did not know what. He tried to reduce his sensitivity to the emotional ambience, and following Bryn’s example, concentrated on his meal – it was hot and tasty and richly filling, a simple, satisfying pleasure.
Frontalis soothed Ursula with kindness, consideration, and dinner. Taliesin had the good sense to leave aside the tricky topic of Ursula’s allegiance until she had finished her supper, cared for the animals, bathed in the nearby river, divested herself of her riding boots and chain mail and was drinking some hot sweet herbal concoction of Frontalis’s as she dried her hair by the fire. However, once he did broach it Taliesin leapt straight to the point.
‘What did you mean, Ursula, about not helping? I thought you were Combrogi now.’
Ursula sipped her drink and watched the flames dance and destroy a large log of sweet apple wood. It was so good to drink something hot that was not wine or mead or even warm ale. Frontalis had a gift for hospitality. She felt warm and safe and clean and somehow loved. She did not much want to have to justify herself to the old druid.
‘Taliesin – why can’t you let me be and sing a song or do something soothing? I have only had one night’s rest since I fought at Baddon. I still ache from that and from the ride. You have no right to bully me.’
Unexpectedly, Taliesin did pick up his harp from where it was carefully stowed and began to play. He did not choose the melody he’d played at Baddon, as she thought he might, or even the saga of Boar Skull and the Bear Sark. He played instead the tune he’d played the night she’d given her warrior’s oath to King Macsen, the Combrogi leader. It was a clever choice. That night she had been accepted into a select and much-valued band, a girl who had not often been accepted. She found her eyes watering from more than the sweet smoke.
‘Taliesin, you are a manipulative old goat,’ she said when he had finished. ‘Arturus isn’t Macsen and you know it.’
‘He’s not as tall or as handsome.’
‘Don’t patronise me,’ Ursula snapped. ‘He is not a worthy leader. He tricked me into bearing his shield at Baddon, then he claimed that he’d led the battle charge and killed my friends who might have contradicted him. Why in God’s name should I lift a finger to help him?’
‘You are very well informed.’
‘I also heard that you pretended that Dan and I had never existed. Thanks, Taliesin. Haven’t you messed with our lives enough?’ Ursula felt ashamed to have lost her temper again in front of Frontalis. She sipped her drink and tried to calm down in the long silence before Taliesin spoke again.
‘After Baddon – it was confused. Arturus thought you were dead. Cynfach saw you ride out with Dan and we couldn’t find you. A small Aenglisc war band survived the charge down Baddon Hill – they were the Bretwalde’s men, Aelle’s hand-picked warriors, they set up an ambush. They picked up various Combrogi shields and helms that were lost in battle and scattered them round some Aenglisc bodies and when our men went to check that none of ours were fallen or injured, they killed them. We lost twenty men that way and somehow your helmet and faceplate got mixed up with them.’
‘I tied it to my horse’s bridle.’
‘Well, it must have come loose and fallen and in all the celebration it was some time before Cynfach noticed that you had not returned. When Arturus saw his own face-mask that he’d given you at the ambush site – we all assumed the worst. Then some of the Sarmatians seeing him with the face-mask assumed it was he that had led the charge along with you.’
‘And he did not deny it?’
‘He is High King of a contentious, territorial, ambitious, self-serving, envious, power-hungry group of men. Would you deny you were a hero if it would help you keep that lot united?’
‘What about Cynfach?’
‘I don’t believe Arturus killed him. I don’t think Arturus set out to lie either, but he did not discourage the lies and neither did I, Ursula. Arturus’s position was not completely secure – Cerdic, Larcius and Medraut all had claims on the title and so I too just stopped talking about you. You were only with us a short time. You were remembered, but many of those who fought at Baddon are dead now, it’s been twenty years.’
‘And this is good – this is a reason to help Arturus?’
‘He is “the Bear”, Ursula – I do believe it, though I don’t believe he would have come into his own without your help. I justify what I have done with that thought, Ursula. “The Bear” is on the hillside and you helped put him there.’ He touched her hand, demanding that she look at him, and she saw in the firelight that his face was damp with tears.
‘Ursula, my dear, brave friend, I have been to many worlds, seen many atrocities, the tribes are not perfect but they are my people, they are Macsen’s people, your people. Would you see all that they are, die for ever? Would you let all the songs die for ever?’
As he spoke he started to play again, a song of home. Ursula could not prevent the tears from running silently down her own cheeks, but it was not Macsen’s people that she cried for but her own: her mother and her classmates and the lost heart’s ease of her own home.