Free In Winter's Shadow by Gillian Bradshaw Page A

evidence.
    The next day there was another almost-duel, but after that Camlann became comparatively quiet. This was not because anything was resolved, however, but because Arthur managed to send some of the most quarrelsome warriors off in opposite directions: one party escorting a supply train to the work on the dike repairs in the Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, and the other to Dyfed, to enforce a settlement of some debated lands. Medraut himself was kept at Camlann. We could not trust him to leave it, either with his friends or with his enemies.
    Gwalchmai returned from Less Britain in the second week of May, looking ill and worn to the bone. The negotiations with Macsen had gone exactly as I had expected: one or two claims were resolved, but five more had been raised in their place. Moreover, Gwalchmai had had to use all of his skill to prevent himself from becoming entangled in a duel with some of Macsen’s warband, who had been deliberately provocative. If he had fought them, and won—and he would not have lost—Macsen would have had a legal charge against him, and through him, against us, which he could have used to block future negotiations. Arthur was angered by this, and, instead of sending Gwalchmai back, wrote Macsen a courteous letter requesting that he send an emissary of his own to negotiate the points which remained to be settled. He also commanded Gwalchmai to remain in Camlann and avoided giving him any work. He wanted to give the warrior a rest, but he wanted even more to bring out the smoldering tension in Camlann and resolve it. The plan worked, too, after a fashion, for the conflict burst into open fire soon after the quarrelsome parties returned from Dyfed and East Anglia: and yet still little was resolved.
    I was taking an inventory of wool in the storerooms when Medraut came in to find me.
    I had been walking along the stacked bales of different weights and dyes, checking them, while my clerk Gwyn trailed along behind me and noted down the amount of each kind on a wax tablet. The sheep of the region had been recently shorn, and I needed to know how much more wool I should buy for the fortress, and so needed to update my inventory. The storeroom was a long, narrow building, windowless, with the wool bales stacked up to the roof, and the sunlight coming through the eaves in dusty streaks. Many of the older bales had been sitting in storage for a long while, and were close-packed, compressed, and thick with dust; I had to stoop over and prod them to find out what they were, and they covered my hands with their grease and filled my lungs with the dust. Then the door at the far end of the storeroom opened, letting in a flood of blinding sunlight, and Medraut paused in it like a statue of a Roman god. I stopped counting the bales and straightened.
    “Noble lord?” I said, trying not to cough.
    He strolled leisurely through the door, out of the sunlight, down the narrow building, and stopped before me. He gave a slight bow, then stood looking at me with Arthur’s gray stare and the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth. He was, as always, impeccably dressed, his short beard neatly trimmed, graceful, controlled, invulnerable. “My lady,” he said, a dutiful concern in his soft, pleasant voice. “The lord Goronwy has been hurt in a duel, and the emperor wishes you to join him in attendance on him at once.”
    “Oh God,” I said. I rubbed my filthy hands on the apron I was wearing, then pulled the thing off and tossed it onto one of the bales. Medraut glanced down, not quite quickly enough for me to miss the look of satisfaction in his eyes. “How badly hurt? Who was he fighting?”
    “Most noble lady, how would I know how badly he is hurt? I was not there. I was told he has been taken to the house of Gruffydd the surgeon; I pray he is not much hurt, for he is my friend.” He paused another moment, then added, “The warleader, Lord Bedwyr, was the one that hurt him.”
    “Bedwyr?” I