The Winter King (The Warlord Chronicles, #1)

by Bernard Cornwell

She left before the dawn, a dark figure gliding across Caer Sws with a sickle moon trapped in her tangling hair.

Guinevere wore a new torque of heavy gold that day and some of us felt a sorrow for Ceinwyn, but Ceinwyn was a child, Guinevere was a woman and Arthur was helpless.

It was now on the wane and no marriage could be risked in a time of such ill-omen, but in two weeks the auguries would be right and Ceinwyn would come south with flowers in her hair.

All our goods must be surrendered to his keeping, that is the rule, and though I surrendered everything else to Sansum, including Hywelbane, God forgive me, I have Ceinwyn’s brooch still. The gold has been smoothed by the years, yet still I see Ceinwyn when, in the darkness, I take the brooch from its hiding place and let the moonlight gloss its intricate pattern of interlocking curves. Sometimes – no, always – I touch it to my lips. What a foolish old man I have become.

‘I do understand that you can look into someone’s eyes,’ I heard myself saying, ‘and suddenly know that life will be impossible without them. Know that their voice can make your heart miss a beat and that their company is all your happiness can ever desire and that their absence will leave your soul alone, bereft and lost.’

‘It has never happened until this moment, Lady,’ I said. It took more bravery to make that declaration than I had ever needed to break a shield-wall.

Love’s madness, swinging from ecstasy to despair in one wild second.

How much of our earth has been wet by blood because of jealousy! And at the end of life, what does it all matter? We grow old and the young look at us and can never see that once we made a kingdom ring for love.