Paul Finch - Dark North

Lucan worked his way from chamber to chamber, brooding as he sweated. Other palace-guests moved around in the steam. He knew many but lacked the interest to address them. However, in due course one addressed him.

“They told me a northern brute had ridden down here with a band of cutthroats. I could hardly believe it when I heard he’d been admitted to the palace.”

Lucan glanced up, and smiled.

His brother Bedivere, Marshal of the Royal Household, sat beside him, sweating and draped in towels. They embraced.

They were not alike. They were half-brothers, sharing the same mother. Bedivere, though older by several years, was leaner of build, almost slender. His hair had always hung in glossy chestnut curls, though these were now cropped short and shot with silver. He was brown-eyed and refined of aspect, with a long patrician nose and high, ruddy cheekbones — and though he, too, bore the scars of battle, he was almost pretty in comparison to his square-jawed, heavy-browed sibling.

“All is ready for tomorrow?” Lucan asked.

“All is ready.”

“What of the Romans?”

“The King has quartered them in the university precinct. We’re to have no truck with them tonight, although a tournament and pageant are planned for next week if the Council is a success.”

Lucan gave a thin smile. “And will both sides be happy to attend this pageant?”

Bedivere shrugged. “If the Romans are merely here to test the water, why not? The knowledge that it would be a mistake to attack us would be as much use to them as the knowledge that it would be safe.”

“And if they’re not?”

“A new age of darkness will dawn. You look terrible, by the way.”

“So I keep being told.”

“Anything I should know about?”

Lucan described his struggle with the Worm. Bedivere glanced with fascination at the livid patch of scar-tissue on Lucan’s shoulder. “You say it was Alaric who saved you… your squire?”

Lucan nodded.

“The lad deserves to be knighted, at the very least.”

Lucan frowned. “If I were to knight him, he’d have to go questing — find his own way in the world. The household would miss his service.”

“He has to build his own career at some point.”

Lucan shook his head. “Something tells me he isn’t ready yet.”

“If he stood against this malevolent serpent…”

“There’s more to it than that. Any man can find courage and think quickly on the spur of the moment — well, not any man, but any man of quality. Alaric is a man of quality. But there are other things. He seems so young to me…”

“He’s eighteen, isn’t he? More than old enough.”

Lucan rested his chin on his fist. “He wants to be a knight, but he’s not bullish about it. It’s as though he’s content to live out the rest of his days at my side.”

“What reason could there be for that?”

“He may just lack ambition. Or confidence. I suppose, in keeping him close, I’m protecting him. I don’t know if that’s right or wrong.”

“Good Christ, you talk as if he’s your son rather than your squire.”

“I can’t help it if I feel that for him, Bedivere. Trelawna certainly does. There are times when she shows Alaric more motherly affection than she shows me wifely love.”

“Aah,” Bedivere said. “Still haven’t managed to win her heart?”

“Forgive me, it’s a personal thing. You shouldn’t be troubled by it.”

“You’re my younger brother. I want you to be happy.”

“What does happiness mean to men like us? We’re here to serve.”

“It means everything. We’ve both achieved greatness in our own way, yet I, for one, would trade much of that for memories of a pleasant home-life.”

Briefly, they relapsed into silence.

Bedivere only had vague recollections of the time before his father died. Sir Pedrawd was a Welsh knight by birth, and held a border stronghold in Dyfed. He was renowned for his gallantry on the battlefield and his benign lordship off it. He died while Bedivere was still a young child, and a short time later his beautiful wife, Gundolen, was remarried to Duke Corneus, also recently widowed, who controlled a vast swathe of rugged land on Uther Pendragon’s northern frontier, governing it from the notorious Craghorn Keep. Duke Corneus was in every way the opposite of Sir Pedrawd: whereas Pedrawd famously halted the construction of a new manor house because it would interfere with a peasant hamlet, Corneus once repaid a town that failed to pay him homage by destroying it with a horde of rats. This was the new life that Bedivere was dragged into while still a stripling. The first child Corneus fathered by Gundolen died. The second was Lucan. In time, though there were several years between them, the two half-brothers became very close, which was perhaps inevitable given the dangerous world they grew up in at Craghorn.

“A man can’t be a warrior all the time,” Bedivere added. “There has to be some joy in his world.”

“Trelawna makes me happy enough,” Lucan said.

“But she doesn’t love you?”

“She comes as close to it as she can. I owe her for that.”

“You owe her?”

“Whatever girlish dreams she entertained about finding a handsome paladin, well… she’s had thirteen years to accept that they’ll never be more than dreams.”

Bedivere looked frustrated. “You’re underselling yourself, Lucan. Courage, heroism, loyalty to God and your king… these things can’t be measured. There are women all over Albion who’d give anything to be married to a Knight of the Round Table.”

Lucan pondered this morosely.

“Unless…” Bedivere paused, and glanced around to ensure no-one was eavesdropping. “Unless she loves another.”

Lucan regarded him curiously.

Bedivere spoke quietly but seriously. “We don’t know this is a fact, of course — it’s just supposition. But it would explain certain confusing things. After thirteen years, she ought to have learned to love you. You’re her husband. Rather than you owing her, she owes you… for protecting her, honouring her. She ought to have taught herself to love you, if for no other reason than to ensure her own survival.”

Lucan shook his head. “Love another? How? We live on the Northern March. She never sees anyone else.”

“You have a household full of knights. You have landed tenants as well…”

“Country oafs… loyal, stolid enough fellows who can aim a good sword-stroke, but most have no more education than the peasant farmers they supervise, and certainly no wider view of the world.”

“It was only a thought.” Bedivere shrugged. “In retrospect, it seems unlikely. But there must be a reason for this remoteness she constantly subjects you to.”

“As I said before, it’s my trouble… not yours.”

“Indeed.” Bedivere stood up. “We already have troubles enough. Despite their current mission of peace, our spies tell us the Romans are moving large numbers of troops into central and northern Gaul.”

“If any monarch can stand up to the new Roman Empire, it’s Arthur.”

“We’re to attend him this evening, in the…”

“I know.” Lucan’s brow furrowed as he again wondered about his wife’s aloofness and the possibility of infidelity.

“Forget what I said about Trelawna,” Bedivere said, wondering if he’d done more harm than good by mentioning it. “There is no proof. Not even a hint of suspicion. And even if it were true, these other matters are more important.”

Lucan nodded in agreement, though his metal-grey eyes told a different tale.

The West Library was a suite of barrel-vaulted chambers separated from each other by tall, marble archways. Their walls were inlaid with deep shelves crammed with ancient tomes. A central hearth provided warmth, while rush-lamps provided light. There was a comforting aroma of wood-smoke and old leather.