Free Clash of Kings by M. K. Hume Page A

would alienate Ygerne for ever.
    So here they were, and the betrothal had been sealed. Ygerne looked over towards her betrothed and, feeling her eyes on his face, Gorlois looked up and smiled with such warmth and affection that she felt embraced from her head to her toes.
    He loves me. How strange, for he barely knows me.
    Ygerne’s thoughts ranged out over the darkening sea, empty of even her favourites, the gulls, with their comical cries and ebullient natures.
    ‘A storm is coming, puss,’ her father whispered, as he joined her in staring out at the empty scene. ‘See that line of black cloud against the last of the sun? We’ll feel its full force within hours.’
    ‘Is the storm bad luck, Father? Is my betrothal cursed?’
    ‘Nonsense, puss! Storms come to Tintagel so frequently in winter that the trees don’t grow – else they’d be blown away by the winds.’ He lifted his daughter’s fair, frail face. ‘Now smile, my pet. Gorlois is the best man in these isles, save for Ambrosius, and even I dare not look so high for your future husband. You will be happy within your marriage.’
    Ygerne shivered, although she was swathed in a thick woollen shawl. The storm marched towards the fortress like an army of invasion and the rolls of thunder in the distance mimicked the rumble of marching feet.
    ‘The light is almost gone, Father. I long for sunshine and soft days.’
    ‘You will be very happy after the consummation of your marriage in the prescribed two years, puss. I promise you! A good husband makes any weather soft and fair.’
    Her father’s eyes glowed with subtle, lambent fire in the lamplight. His grey eyes were the wonder of his tribe, but their stare could be as cold as the sunless sea, except when they gazed on the face of his daughter.
    She took pity on him then. Her father was desperate that she should be happy, and she worried at his increasing thinness and the lines that scored his smooth skin from nose to jaw. A hint of illness gave his flesh a trace of yellow in the nacreous light.
    ‘Are you well, Father? Does something ail you?’ Ygerne asked, suddenly afraid as the centre of her life stuttered in its smooth, circular pattern.
    His face lightened and a wide smile split his handsome face. ‘Of course, puss, and in the days to come I’ll smile often to think that my darling now lies under the protection of the Iron King of the Dumnonii.’
    But his fingers quivered in hers, and Ygerne schooled her face into passive compliance so her father wouldn’t recognise the terror that coiled in her heart.
     
    In the months that followed their brutal journey, Olwyn had cause to bless her sister and her good-natured husband. With their laughter, simplicity and sweetness of spirit, they began to bring Branwyn back from the far, cold silences that had enveloped her. Cosseted and spoiled, she was encouraged to sit in the sunshine or fuss over the old farm bitch who was long past her frolicsome youth. Branwyn sang a little, and even spoke of how blue the sea glittered from their hillside, although she refused to travel to the sands to breathe in the salty air.
    The winds were not so strong, here near the entrance to Sabrina Aest, but the gulls sported their white breasts and grey-barred wings with pride and argued as vigorously over fingerlings and broken shells as they had done at Segontium. Branwyn smiled as she watched the cheeky birds steal grain from the hens, and one day she was enchanted by a loud verbal battle over stale, milk-soaked bread between an optimistic gull and an old gander with a bad temper. The gander won the skirmish, having a significant weight advantage.
    During spring, the women saw little of Cletus and his half-grown sons, although the little ones squabbled as noisily as the gulls. The fields called, with their insistence on constant labour, and Cletus worked cheerfully from sunrise to sunset before returning to the villa in the evening, covered with thick, brown loam. As the