Morning's Journey (21 page)

Under normal circumstances, Arthur wouldn’t have minded bedding down with his men. In fact, he would have preferred it, but his wife’s presence hardly could be considered normal.

As she knelt beside their saddle packs, questing for rations, he wrestled with his thoughts. Initially, he hadn’t been troubled by loving a warrior-woman. Their separation had been hell, but he’d assumed that once it ended, all would be set to rights.

So much for assumptions.

He didn’t doubt her abilities as a warrior or leader. Her handling of the men had experienced a rocky start on Maun, but at headquarters, she’d seemed more in her element. Under her firm but fair influence, tensions between the Brytoni and Caledonian troops had begun to recede.

However, volunteering to risk herself in combat was one thing. Jeopardizing the life of her unborn child—and his—was quite another.

She unwrapped barley bannocks and dried beef strips, took a portion, and passed the rest to him, along with a measure of wine in his upturned helmet. The necessity for speed had precluded bringing the usual amenities.

He set the food on the hut’s only surface elevated above the dirt and cobwebs, a squat table. After he downed the wine, the helmet followed. One of the table’s legs, noticeably shorter, threatened to dump everything on the floor. He sacrificed a bannock, wedging it under the short leg to avoid disaster.

But he couldn’t avoid the topic suspended between them like a drawn sword.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the baby before we left?”

“So you could treat me like a broken piece of battle-gear?”

“That’s unfair, Gyan.”

She left her uneaten supper on the table, paced to the hearth, and whirled to face him. The fire at her back put her face in shadow, but he knew the heat of her glare. He parried it with his.

“Is it?” Her voice dropped into a half whisper. “Would you have brought me with you, had you known?”

Only in the direst of circumstances would he ever order a wounded man to fight. All other considerations aside, she was one of his soldiers. Yet he also had vowed never to be parted from her.

He shrugged under the burden of truth. “Probably not.”

“Ha!” She faced the fire. “I suspected as much.”

“Gyan—”

“I do not need your excuses.” The flames popped and sizzled and belched smoke, as though goaded by her words.

He crossed to her side, grasped her arms, and spun her around.

“By God’s holy wounds, woman, don’t you know that I care for you more than life itself? What if we encounter Angli raiders while we’re still miles from Dunpeldyr?”

Incredulity froze her face. “
What?
Is the mighty Pendragon worried about that diseased, heathen rabble?”

“I’m worried about you!”

“Bring them on!” She shrugged out of his grip and slapped her bronze scabbard. “Braonshaffir craves the taste of enemy blood.”

“You would risk our child—”

“I am a warrior first. The bairn hasn’t changed that.” Again she reverted to that low, dangerous tone. “Are you suggesting otherwise?”

Am I? Should I?

He waded through memories of tales to a mist-shrouded time before his mother’s people had settled the Island of the Mighty, when they’d clashed with the ancestors of his father in the lands beyond the Narrow Sea. Greek and Roman writers had reported the strength and ferocity of these barbarian women, who fought alongside their husbands.

Presumably, these women had had children, too.

Who was he to gainsay his wife, an adept warrior?

“I’m not suggesting anything of the kind, Gyan.” A smile lit her face. “I just hate seeing you hurt. Or sick.”

The smile vanished. “I am not sick.”

“Then what do you call what happened at daybreak? Or later, when we first got here?”

“It comes with the territory.”

“I may not be privy to the secrets of womanhood, but I suspect what happened outside the hut had nothing to do with your child.”

She folded her arms and looked down. Her prolonged silence heralded a private battle he couldn’t help her with no matter how much he wished to.

“In a way, it does,” she said quietly.

“What do you mean?”

She uncrossed her arms and slumped against his chest. He circled his arms around her and ran his fingers through her long, silken hair.

“Seeing that baby…” she whispered, shuddering, into the folds of his tunic. “I kept imagining it was my child.”

Her child—their child. Accustomed to ending life, creating it filled him with unending awe. He lifted her chin to kiss his warrior, his wife, and the mother of his son. Their son. “I won’t let that happen to our son.”

She sighed and moved away. Seated cross-legged on the thin straw pallet they had spread before the hearth, she propped chin on fist and stared toward the leaping golden flames. “I almost wish it will be a boy-child.”

A gust of wind howled down the chimney, toying with the fire. He fed it another lump of peat and joined her on the pallet. He put an arm around her shoulders, and she leaned against him. “Does it matter so much?”

“Bearing a girl-child first portends good fortune for the clan.” Drawing her knees up, she sighed again. “I was Hymar’s second bairn.”

Arthur knew Caledonians traced descent through the mother, and their women shared in clan rule. This differed from Brytoni tradition, wherein children bore their father’s name and women rarely ruled. Beyond that, he could cite few customs of his wife’s people and knew little of their language—lacks he needed to remedy.

“Peredur’s birth couldn’t have brought bad fortune to Argyll.”

She shrugged. “That year’s harvest was lean.”

“And when you were born?”

“I killed my mother.” She stopped his protest with an upraised hand. “When she took my father as consort, the priests foretold that a girl-child would be born to them, a child that would be her death. No specifics were mentioned, but when Hymar learned that her confinement would occur at Samhainn, she knew she hadn’t long to live.”

“Why?”

“Caledonians believe that a kinsman—or woman—of a child born at Samhainn shall die within the coming year…” She trembled, and he hugged her closer. “It’s all too often true.”

No provision in Arthur’s Christian upbringing allowed him to believe such a superstition. Not wishing to belittle the beliefs of Gyan’s people, however, he pursued the topic closest to his heart. “What of our child if it’s a boy?”

“By Caledonian law, the children of the àrd-banoigin must be raised at her clan seat. If this bairn is a boy, my father can see to his rearing and training. It is not a common practice, but the law permits it.” She glanced down at her belly, as if trying to glimpse the child, before staring at the fire.

Not a common Brytoni practice, either, but sometimes dictated by necessity. Arthur wondered what his childhood would have been like under his mother’s influence. Yet he also found himself imagining how Ygraine might have felt, forced to give up her infant son with no assurance that she would ever see him alive again.

He whispered, “Would you be able to do such a thing, Gyan?”

“I—” Her neck and shoulders tensed. “I think so. If I must.”

“And if we have a girl?”

“If it’s a girl, I must stay at Arbroch with her until she reaches womanhood.”

Though no louder than the patter of a summer evening shower, her words struck him with the force of a thunderclap. Arbroch lay well north of the Antonine Wall, a day’s ride from the nearest navigable firth, to say nothing of the dearth of good Roman roads. The Brytoni border wouldn’t be close enough to satisfy the council, making the prospect of moving legion headquarters to Arbroch political as well as military suicide.

How in heaven’s name could he honor his vow—his heart’s fervent desire—to stay with his wife if her people’s laws barred his way?

No answers swam in the swirl of smoke and flame. She leaned her head against his shoulder, breathing a sigh. Arthur lowered his hand to rest lightly upon her belly, where his child grew. Their child.

God willing, their son.

Chapter 12

L
OTH PACED THE rush-strewn flagstones of his family’s living quarters. His sharp oaths punctuated the fading afternoon, the subjects cycling between the raw weather, the Angli, and his brother-by-marriage.

Annamar glanced up. “Patience, my husband. It’s been only a week and a day since your messenger left. Any number of things can delay travel at this time of year.” She refrained from mentioning that some delays could well become permanent.

This sparked a fresh round of curses against the snow. Sighing, she gazed at their daughter, Cundre. Sated at last, the baby had begun to drift into milky slumber. Annamar shifted Cundre to the other side and adjusted a fold of the floor-length amber tunic to cover the feeding slit, then wrapped her in the lamb’s-wool blanket and settled her into the cradle. Cundre did not wake.

Medraut, almost four, wandered over from his game of sticks and stones. Smiling, Annamar let him control the cradle. It always amazed her how gently he treated his newborn sister.

Eleven-year-old Gareth doubtless could be found where most boys his age liked to be: in the kennels, the stables, or the mews.

The eldest of Loth’s brood though no longer his heir, Gawain, lived much farther away. The latest news had mentioned a battle on the Isle of Maun. Arthur had spoken of Gawain’s fighting prowess with highest praise and assured her that her son hadn’t been seriously wounded, but it did little to salve her worry.

The baby woke with a cry, as if echoing her mother’s distress. Medraut pushed the cradle harder. Cundre’s whimpers grew into lusty wails. Annamar laid a firm hand on the cradle’s edge.

Medraut cast his gaze around the room and with a delighted squeal toddled toward Brigid, a deerhound bitch, who lay sprawled in the fire’s glow. Tangling stubby fingers in her black coat, he tried to interest her in a wrestling match. Brigid suffered the boy’s attentions with silent canine patience. Medraut gave up to pillow his head on a shaggy flank. Brigid’s sigh sounded decidedly relieved.

As Annamar bent to pick up Cundre, the tresses bequeathed to her by her father, Gorlas, swept down in a chestnut curtain. She lingered over her daughter, composing herself. Loth hated displays of weakness, especially over the young man he refused to acknowledge as his firstborn son.

“Dash it, he must come,” Loth muttered. “No telling where those Angli bastards will strike next. Or when.”

“If Arthur can help, he will.”

With Cundre burped and quietly nestled against her shoulder, Annamar glided to her husband’s side. His face looked ruddier than usual in the firelight, and she wondered when the worry lines had furrowed so deeply. Her free arm wrapped around his waist, and she leaned her cheek against his broad chest. He returned the embrace with a fiercely possessive hug.

“He’d better, if the council’s agreement means anything to him.”

The door crashed open, and Gareth hurtled into the room. Arms windmilling in exuberant haste, he slid to a stop in front of his parents. His rumpled tunic and breeches reeked of the stables, and his face radiated joy.

Annamar gazed at her son with amused affection.

Loth scowled. “I trust you have a good excuse for bursting in here like this.”

Gareth squared his shoulders, but the excitement splashed across his face didn’t ebb. “Sir, the hunting party is back!”

Medraut joined the group and fastened his short arms about Gareth’s legs, happily oblivious to the horsy smell. Grinning, Gareth dropped a hand to ruffle his brother’s shock of pale blond hair.

Loth cleared his throat. “And?”

“They found a cavalry troop at one of the raided villages this morning. The horsemen were digging graves for the dead.”

“I’d rather they put their backs to better use,” Loth grumbled. “Who’s their leader?”

Gareth’s grin widened. “Uncle Arthur!”

Annamar shot her husband a didn’t-I-tell-you glance, but he paid no heed. “Hmph. I gather Arthur’s troop didn’t come in with our hunting party. Why?”

“Sir, they—” The abrupt clamor of activity outside overpowered their son’s words.

Loth strode to the window, shoved out the shutter, and looked down. “Arthur and his men are here. Anna, see that they are shown our best hospitality.” From the back of a chair he snatched his clan mantle, a forest-green cloak woven with crossing strands of dark blue and gold by Annamar’s own hands. He flung it across his shoulders and pinned it with his gold Lothian Bear brooch without breaking stride. “Son, attend me.” He disappeared into the corridor before anyone else had twitched a muscle.

As Gareth moved to follow, Annamar caught his wrist. “Find yourself a clean tunic and trews first.” Nodding, Gareth tried to pull away, but Annamar held him fast. “Is Gawain here?”

“I didn’t ask, Mother. He’s infantry, remember?”

“I just thought that mayhap…” She released Gareth with a sigh, and he ran toward the sleeping chamber he shared with his younger brother.

Annamar laid Cundre in the cradle and crossed to the window. The courtyard teemed with horses and men, with more arriving by the minute. Lord, have mercy! Feeding and sheltering all these guests, and with no notice! Thank God for the huntsmen. Perhaps they’d taken several stags. Although Dunpeldyr had enough fresh meat for a few days, a prolonged stay would seriously strain the stores.