In Winter's Shadow Read Online Free

people in Camlann appeared to hate me. I do not know how I survived that first winter, and the winter that followed was worse. That was the year I lost my baby, the only child I ever carried. Perhaps I had been working too hard, or perhaps my body had always been at fault, but I lost the child, a boy, in the sixth month, with a great deal of pain and blood, so that I was very sick for a month afterward.
    The war in the north ended; Arthur came back and campaigned in the south, all the second year of our marriage. That campaign took another four years, and ended at last in victory. We worked together on the peace, thinking that now all our hopes would be realized, believing that now all would be well. But the hope that had been dearest to me receded slowly, and when I was thirty I had at last to admit that something was wrong, that I would never conceive, that I was barren and would die so. It was just over a year later that Menw flung my childlessness in my face and I gave him the blow he regarded as a dishonor and would never forget.
    Riches and honors. In these years of peace, there might be some things that Menw would recognize under that name. Most of those kings who had hated us were reconciled to us now, and even the Church was growing less vehement. The Saxons showed some signs that they began to feel part of the Empire, no longer sullen and conquered enemies. The tribute came in regularly, and we were able to set the warband to sweeping bandits from the roads of Britain and to protecting trade and good order. But even now there was little ease or comfort in wearing the purple. It was like trying to walk the edge of a sword. And there were new problems now, splintered alliances and, worse, internal quarrels, so that I sometimes wished we were back in the years of the war, when at least one had open enemies and a plain solution to the problems.
    I had no time to sit staring at a letter. This very afternoon I must buy grain to feed the fortress—undoubtedly the grain-sellers were waiting for me to come and bargain with them. I had to arrange a feast for the emissaries from the kings of Elmet and Powys. I must allot some wool from the stores to the weavers of the fortress, if all the Family were to have their winter cloaks in time. Soon, if not today, I must find a new supply of iron for the smiths, as we had bought none for some time, and there might be a shortage soon. There would doubtless be some petitioners asking for a hearing. And there was the question of what our emissary must say to the king of Less Britain.
    Yet I sat staring at the letter, reread it. If you prefer the imperial purple to your own blood, you must suffer for it. It was typical of Menw to phrase it that way, I thought bitterly. An extreme sentence and a violent one.
    I had never expected to go home. Even when I knew that I would never give Arthur a child, an heir, I knew that he would not divorce me. He had relied upon me in the long war with the Saxons, often for his very life. We had seen each other rarely while the war continued, and since the peace we had generally been too busy to talk of anything but the concerns of the Empire, but the bond between us went as deep as life itself. Arthur and I knew each other as only those who together have spent themselves to their limits can, and he would as soon cut out his heart as divorce me.
    No, I had never expected to go home. But I had always had my home behind me, forever a possibility: the house and the hills, the Roman Wall leaping off into the west, the patterned tiles around the fire pit. Though I had preferred the purple to my blood, and suffered for it, in a way it was my blood, my home, all that I had been, which had chosen the purple. To be cut off from it all was to have my father die all over again.
    And if I refused Menw’s demand I could never go home. I would be as good as kin-wrecked, exiled from my clan. Most of the clan agreed with Menw, and thought I ought to do more for them.