Kingdom of Summer Read online

  “Well, Rhys, and have you stored the wood?” my father asked, without turning around.

  “Never mind the wood. Father, Goronwy and I met up with a warrior. He says he’s of Arthur’s Family, and he wants lodgings for tonight. For himself and for his warhorse.”

  My father set down the straw he was using as a brush, straightened and turned deliberately, meeting my eyes. “Indeed. Where did you meet him?”

  “At the ford. He crossed the river shortly after us.”

  “From the forest? Alone?”

  “Yes. But he is not equipped like a bandit.”

  “Armed?”

  “Well armed, I think. And I’ve never seen a horse as fine as his.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In front of the house, with Goronwy and the cart.”

  My father caught up his lantern and walked out of the barn. I followed him.

  The warrior was still sitting on his stallion, waiting, and Goronwy still looked uneasy. As we came up, I noticed that the door was open a crack, the firelight bright in it. My family was watching.

  My father lifted the lantern high, trying to see the face of the dark, mounted figure. He was tense, I could feel it, but his face in the lamplight was calm and steady. The light made his red hair, gray-streaked as it was, look dark, and it cast his bright blue eyes into shadow. He looked young and strong, firm in his authority.

  The warrior stared at him, eyes glinting through his tangled black hair. Then, slowly, he dismounted, and steadied himself with one hand on his horse’s shoulder. He half raised the other hand.

  “Sion ap Rhys.” He named my father in his hoarse voice.

  “Gwalchmai ap Lot,” said my father. “Ach, I did not think you would remember.”

  “I told you I would. This is your householding, then?”

  “I am the head of it.” My father slowly walked closer to the other, stopped. “And such as it is, Lord Gwalchmai, you’re free and welcome to the use of it; indeed, the family is honored. Rhys!” He half turned to me. “You and Goronwy get the wood unloaded and the oxen stalled. Lord Gwalchmai,” he turned back to the other, “come into the house and rest.”

  “My horse,” said the other. “I must see to my horse first.”

  “Rhys can…”

  “I look after him myself.”

  “Oh, very well. The barn is this way, Lord. Rhys, first tell your mother to get something special on for dinner—some of the ham, at least, and eggs, certainly eggs, and some of the apples—ach, she’ll know better than I. But some hot water? Yes, hot water. Well, go on then!” He started back to the barn, and the other followed, leading his horse, limping a little.

  I hesitated, then ran to the house, gasped out my father’s message—unnecessarily, since the eavesdroppers had heard it themselves—ran back to the cart, leapt in, and told Goronwy to hurry up.

  “But I don’t understand it,” complained Goronwy as he goaded the oxen, and then began to shamble towards the wood pile. “My uncle Sion knows that warrior?”

  I shook my head, in astonishment rather than in denial. My father had said many things about the Pendragon, his warband and his policies, but the strangest was that once, as he was taking some wheat down to Camlann to sell it there, he’d given a ride in the cart to a young man whom he later discovered to be Gwalchmai, son of Lot, king of the Ynysoedd Erch, those islands north of Caledonia. The two had talked somewhat on the way, and my father had paid the other’s lodgings for a night, ignorant of the other’s identity. Afterwards he discovered that the youth had just escaped from the Saxons, and was on his way to Camlann to join the Family. “I knew, talking to him, that he would be a great warrior,” my father would say when he told the story. “And I asked him to remember me. And that is pure pride, wanting to be known by a famous and glorious lord. But see, he is a great warrior. He was a good lad when I met him. Quiet, courteous, generous—perhaps a little uncanny, but…I wonder if he does remember me. I doubt it.”

  It was nine years since my father first told that tale. Then he had just returned from the journey, and Gwalchmai ap Lot was still an unknown. By the end of that same summer he was spoken and sung of over all Britain. Numerous tales, of varying probability, were told of him. He was said to have tamed one of the horses of the Fair Folk, an immortal animal faster than the wind, that none could ride but he alone. He was said to have an enchanted sword, and to triple his strength in battle. He could, it was said, cut down three men with one blow; nothing could stand before him. He was a favored ambassador of the Emperor, because of his courtesy and eloquence: they said he could charm honey from the bees or water from a stone. Whatever one chose to believe, he was one of the finest, probably the very finest, of Arthur’s Family, which meant the best warrior in Britain, and, though it was generally agreed that there was something “a little uncanny” about him, he was admired from Caledonia to Gaul. But he remembered my father Sion, and he would be staying in our own householding as a guest.

  “You’ve heard my father’s tale,” I told Goronwy. “That is the lord Gwalchmai ap Lot.”

  Goronwy eyed me and muttered something. I didn’t ask what. I knew well enough he thought me rather mad, and likely he was right, but I was too excited to care. I do not think wood was ever unloaded faster than I unloaded it then, and when the cart was empty, I left it and the oxen to Goronwy. They were, after all, his father’s oxen, not mine. I ran back to the house and, finding that my father and the lord Gwalchmai were still at the barn, I ran there, ostensibly to see if they needed help.

  Our brown mare had been moved, and the white stallion had her place. My father had poured out some grain and the horse was eating this as his master rubbed him down, slowly and stiffly as though the man were very tired. As I came up, he stopped, and asked me quietly if I could bring some hot water from the house.

  “You don’t need to bathe the beast,” my father commented.

  “He has been hurt. I need to keep the wound clean,” Gwalchmai replied. “Softly, Ceincaled, mo chroidh…” he spoke soothingly to the horse in a language which I guessed was Irish. The men of the Ynysoedd Erch came from Ireland a generation or so ago.

  I brought the hot water from the house and he cleaned the slash across the horse’s chest with it, still speaking to the animal in Irish. I wondered if it did understand, if it was truly one of the horses of the Fair Folk. It looked large and strong and swift enough.

  “The cut is recent,” observed my father.

  “We were fighting but yesterday afternoon.” The lord Gwalchmai finished with the horse’s wound and began checking and cleaning the animal’s hooves.

  My father fidgeted. “You did not have the horse when I met you.”

  The warrior looked up, and suddenly looked less uncanny. Almost, he smiled. “I had forgotten that. Yes, I let him go after I escaped from the Saxons with him. But he was a fool and came back to me at Camlann.”

  “A fool?”

  “Well, he is not a horse from this earth. He is a fool to stay here and have spears thrust into him for my sake.” He picked up the stallion’s off hind foot and frowned at the rim of the hoof, checking the shoe. Even I could see that the metal was worn. The horse lifted its head from the manger, glanced back, then resumed eating. Gwalchmai sighed and, setting the hoof down, stood up. “He is overworn.” He slapped the stallion’s rump. “Perhaps I should stay here with him tonight.”

  My father was offended. “You’ll do no such thing. Haven’t I just told my wife to cook a special meal, and all because we’ve you as a guest? The horse will be fine. I think, my lord Gwalchmai, you’re more overworn than he is.”

  The lord Gwalchmai stared at him.

  “By all the saints in heaven!” said my father. “Are you grown too proud to accept my hospitality?”

  Gwalchmai made an averting gesture. “Not so, Sion a
p Rhys, indeed! It is only…” He stopped abruptly, then went on, “Well, the horse will be fine, then, and I thank you for your hospitality.” He patted the horse again, said something else to it in Irish, picked up some saddle-bags, and the three of us walked up the hill to the house.

  My mother had the meal nearly ready: fresh bread with sweet butter; apples, cheese and strong, dark ale were already on the table. A pot of ham and barley stew was cooking over the fire, and I could smell the honey cakes baking. Everyone in the house was waiting around the hearth: my aunt, with her three children (her husband had died some six years before); my two sisters, my brother, my grandfather and my mother. The rest of the clan, in the two other houses of our holding, were going to have to do without ham and barley stew, and come and see the guest in the morning.

  My father introduced everyone, and the lord Gwalchmai bowed politely. There was silence and an uneasy shuffling of feet, and then my mother asked Gwalchmai if he wished to put his cloak aside, or wash before dinner. There was time, she said, before the stew was done. Gwalchmai stepped back a little, stiffly, shaking his head, so my sister Morfudd brought him some ale, and a place was made for him by the fire. My father seized a piece of the bread, smeared it with butter, and sat down, eating it enthusiastically.

  “It’s best while it’s warm,” he told Gwalchmai. The warrior nodded, and leaned sideways against the roof-tree. After a little while, he loosed the brooch that held his cloak, as though he felt the heat. “More overworn than the horse,” my father had said. It was true: the man looked near to dropping. “We were fighting but yesterday afternoon”—it was not good weather to be fighting in, nor to travel in, for that matter. I wondered whom he had fought. There are plenty of bandits about to the northwest. Even in the summer I would take a spear if I had to go up the north road very far.

  The stew had finished cooking and, when my father had asked the blessing, we crossed ourselves and set to. The stew was delicious, the honey cakes as good as they smelled, and everyone except the guest ate eagerly. Gwalchmai, though he complimented my mother very nicely and asked courteous questions about the holding, ate very little, and that slowly.

  When we were finished, and the meal had been cleared away, my mother looked at the lord Gwalchmai and shook her head. “My lord, do give me that cloak a moment,” she pleaded. “That’s a great tear you have in it. I’ll mend it for you.” As he shook his head and began a refusal, she wrinkled her nose and added, “And the rest of your things could stand some mending and a good wash, my lord. Rhys, why don’t you get some of your other clothes, so I can wash the lord Gwalchmai’s?”

  I was a bit shocked by my mother’s forwardness, but the lord Gwalchmai only said, “There would not be time for them to dry. I must leave tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow morning? Well, if I hang them by the fire, they can dry by midmorning, and certainly you can stay till then. But you must stay longer, indeed you must. You are not well enough to travel in such weather.”

  “I am well enough. I must leave early. Just show me where I can sleep.”

  “Let me mend the tear in your cloak, then, at the very least. Come, it lets in the wind to chill you, and the snow to drench you, and I can mend it in no time.”

  When Gwalchmai began another polite refusal, my mother, exasperated, seized the cloak by the front, unpinned it, and took it away from him. He stood back, hand dropping to the gold hilt of his sword. I noticed the glint of his chain mail under the woolen over-tunic—then noticed that the tunic was slashed and unraveling across the ribs, and that the edges of the tear were stained a darker red. My father also noticed it.

  “So-o-o,” he said, surprised. “Your horse wasn’t the only one to take a spear thrust.”

  Gwalchmai backed quickly to the roof-tree and drew his sword half out of the sheath. The blade gleamed with an unnatural brightness in the flickering light.

  My father stood where he was, the blood slowly rising to his face, making it dark with anger. My mother looked at him, not at Gwalchmai, the cloak still in her hands. I looked around for a weapon.

  “You have your hand on your sword,” my father pointed out in a level voice. I knew that voice: when I was a boy, it had usually preceded a thrashing for me.

  Gwalchmai made no reply. Only his eyes moved, quickly checking the room, fixing on my father.

  “You can put the thing away,” said my father. “I knew you for two days, nine years ago, but I believe that in that time you consecrated the thing at Ynys Witrin. You should not be so ready to let blood with a consecrated weapon. Especially the blood of your host.”

  Gwalchmai flushed slightly, and stared at my father for a long moment. Then, abruptly, he sheathed the sword. His hand dropped from its hilt and hung loosely by his side.

  My father hurried over to him. “Let me see this wound of yours.”

  The warrior looked at him a moment, then made a helpless gesture and began unfastening the tunic. My mother, lips pressed firmly together in disapproval, put some water over the fire to heat.

  It was a painful-looking wound, a slash across the ribs on his right side. Gwalchmai drew his under-tunic off over it carefully, and set the garment on top of the mail-coat. His torso was criss-crossed with old scars already, more than I cared to think about receiving, mostly on the right side of his body. My mother shook her head, took a clean cloth and began cleaning the cut. She paused a moment, and he sat down by the fire. He was thin, and shivered a little. The look on his face was terrible: exhaustion and humiliation and, almost, despair.

  “Why did you try to hide it?” my father demanded angrily. “You can’t go traveling with that. You will have to stay here.”

  Gwalchmai shrugged, winced at the movement. “I have already traveled with it. Most of today. I…well, most…farmers would…kill a man of Arthur’s, if they knew it were safe to try. Ach, almost everyone this side of Britain hates the High King.”

  My father’s face again grew dark with anger. “I would not kill a guest of mine if he were my worst enemy, even if he were fit and strong and ready to do me injury, and not sick and wounded. I am not like to kill a man I met as a friend, no matter who his lord is. And I support the Emperor.”

  Gwalchmai looked up at him steadily, then, very slowly, he smiled. “Forgive me. I did not even think, nor pause to look at you. You would not.” He drew a deep, sobbing breath. “It has been a long, long time.”

  “Since I met you?”

  “I was not even a warrior then. One forgets how people act. Ah God, Sion, I am weary.”

  “Stay here, then, till you are rested.”

  “I will pay you.”

  “Sweet Jesu be merciful! When a guest of mine pays me, I will sow my fields with salt, so witness me Almighty God, and all the saints and angels.”

  Gwalchmai smiled again, and a light seemed to touch his dark eyes. “I had forgotten such people,” he said, very softly, to himself more than to us. “And I deserve nothing of it. Sweet Jesus is indeed merciful.”

  I sat and looked at him as he sat cross-legged in the red light of the fire, with my mother bandaging the wound. Not what I’d expected for so glorious a warrior. I realized, as I looked, that he could not be too much older than myself. His face, under the dirt and matted hair, was still young and very good-looking. But it was already marked by pain and disappointment. He seemed so much older, so suspicious and controlled until now. I looked about at my family, a close circle in half-light and warm shadow. Yes, it was good. I could afford to be young; I had one place, a good place, a place worthy of love.

  But yet something in my heart felt like a sparrow caught in a house, which flutters about the eaves, looking for the clear sky and the wind.

  TWO

  The lord Gwalchmai slept very late the next morning. When he woke, he bathed, washed and trimmed his hair and beard, and put on some of my clothing to go and
look at his horse. My trousers and tunic were loose on him, and just a bit long as well, but my mother had confiscated his own things and was working on them, shaking her head over their condition as she worked.

  The white stallion stood comfortably in our barn, devouring our grain and ignoring all the other animals there except our brown mare. Gwalchmai argued with my father about the grain.

  “The cost of the grain must fall to me, Sion. Warhorses are costly to keep, a luxury for their owner. No host is obliged to provide luxuries for his guest.”

  “A warhorse is no luxury for a warrior who fights from horseback. I have the grain; let him eat it.” And my father kept his stand, despite the other’s persuasive arguments.

  The warrior also checked his mount’s hooves again, and again looked concerned over the shoes. “Is there any blacksmith nearby?” he asked, hopefully.

  “None professionally, at this time of year. Some come by when the weather’s warmer, and set up their stalls on market days. But we could shoe your horse for you. My nephew Goronwy’s a fair hand at that.”

  “It would be well if he could. And could he also, perhaps, mend my coat of mail?”

  “Ah, that’s harder. Very hard, I should think.”

  “It need not be a complete repair just now. Simply a few links worked in sideways to keep the rest together, on the line where the spear broke it.”