Chapter 12

The invasions of the North and East continued. Increasingly I was asked for help. I would ride North or to the low coasts with my Roman cavalry – not all Roman, but armoured and armed like Roman horse soldiers. We could move quickly when we were begged for help, and then we would raise an army and defeat the Picts, or the Saxons, or the Jutes, or the Angles or other rough and ready invaders, looking to feast on the dying embers of a rich world.

Wenneuereia was my queen now, she was mine, almost exclusively. Only when her bloody time was on her would I take another to my bed.

Lyra never came to me, she was keen to learn and travel and one day she fell in love with a traveller who was going to the Western Isle, the last before the edge of the world. She went and we heard he had deserted her and she lived on the furthest land, on the Sea of Moyle with only swans for companions. She changed her name to Aela and the locals revered her as one of Lir’s children returned to human form. I would have welcomed her back, but she was content to live her life out in the dying world she knew rather than see the new world that was arriving.

And when I returned from North of the Humber, Wenneuereia announced the joyful news that she was expecting. I was so delighted. I let a man off who had been stealing. He kept his right hand to steal again, he didn’t learn his lesson. Life was good, for a few months, all seemed to be settling to a good world.

Wenneuereia helped me with justice, with planning. Gricolus seemed to all but forget his past, and happily ran the farm, training up Virtua’s man as his successor. Virtua began this chronicle as she nursed her first child. The child fell ill, and Wenneuereia begged Myrddin to help. “You trust the old religion?”

“It will pass, but you have knowledge and skill that the new religion is forgetting. Please, save the child.” Wenneuereia was realistic that sweeping the past was sweeping away the good with the bad, yet she was content because the new good outweighed the old. Sometimes she hated Myrddin’s old practices, the bird hung for luck on the doorway, the symbols of ancient power he used; but then he had to tolerate her crosses and fishes carved on buildings. Mostly they were like the cat and dog, they pretended they could not see each other, but when something worse came along, they would work together.

“It will pass, as you say. But while I can, I will do.” his poultices helped the fever, his herbs helped the infection, and Wenneuereia prayers were given the credit by the increasing numbers of the new religion. “It is as I expected.” said Myrddin “People see what they want to see, whatever religion they hold.”

And then she came to her time, and the baby was born. A beautiful boy. Gwalchafed she named him, as was her right. I kept my smile for her, and only cried the tears of bitter betrayal when I was alone. For the child had jet black hair, even at birth. I was a Celt with blond locks, as was she. She thought me simple, perhaps? I asked her. She wept too, she had slept with a handsome knight after he had rescued her from a Saxon incursion when I was away in the North. She had fallen from her perfect pedestal. “Still, you can just pray to your god and get forgiveness, can’t you?” I cruelly said. She fell at my feet and washed my feet with her tears. I pulled her to her feet and embraced her. But I never shared her bed again. The dream of a better life was ebbing, as Myrddin had predicted.

At the Glein, we held the enemy invaders, but could not push them back. Could not, or would not. The alliances were failing and the western men saw less reason to help the east than they had once. The Saxons stayed and settled and were, generally, good neighbours. But they had a foothold, and I knew that would not be enough. I told others that just as the Romans had taken part of the land and then all of it, so would the Saxons. I was not king, I was the general, they listened but I was not heard.