Excalibur

PART THREE Nimue’s Curse

Queen Igraine sat in my window and read the last sheets of parchment, sometimes asking me the meaning of a Saxon word, but otherwise saying nothing. She hurried through the story of the battle, then threw the parchments onto the floor in disgust. ‘What happened to Aelle?’ she demanded indignantly, ‘or to Lancelot?’

‘I shall come to their fates, Lady,’ I said. I had a quill trapped on the desk with the stump of my left arm and was trimming its point with a knife. I blew the scraps onto the floor. ‘All in good time.’

‘All in good time!’ she scoffed. ‘You can’t leave a story without an ending, Derfel!’

‘It will have an ending,’ I promised.

‘It needs one here and now,’ my Queen insisted. ‘That’s the whole point of stories. Life doesn’t have neat endings, so stories must.’ She is very swollen now, for her child is close to its time. I shall pray for her, and she will need my prayers for too many women die giving birth. Cows do not suffer thus, nor cats, nor bitches, nor sows, nor ewes, nor vixens, nor any creature except humankind. Sansum says that is because Eve took the apple in Eden and so soured our paradise. Women, the saint preaches, are God’s punishment on men, and children his punishment on women. ‘So what happened to Aelle?’ Igraine demanded sternly when I did not respond to her words.

‘He was killed,’ I said, ‘by the thrust of a spear. It struck him right here,’ I tapped my ribs just above my heart. The story was longer than that, of course, but I had no mind to tell her just then for I take little pleasure in remembering my father’s death, though I suppose I must set it down if the tale is to be complete. Arthur had left his men pillaging Cerdic’s camp and ridden back to discover whether Tewdric’s Christians had finished off Aelle’s trapped army. He found the remnants of those Saxons beaten, bleeding and dying, but still defiant. Aelle himself had been wounded and could no longer hold a shield, but he would not yield. Instead, surrounded by his bodyguard and the last of his spearmen, he waited for Tewdric’s soldiers to come and kill him.

The spearmen of Gwent were reluctant to attack. A cornered enemy is dangerous, and if he still possesses a shield wall, as Aelle’s men did, then he is doubly dangerous. Too many spearmen of Gwent had already died, good old Agricola among them, and the survivors did not want to push forward into the Saxon shields another time. Arthur had not insisted that they try, instead he had talked with Aelle, and when Aelle refused to surrender, Arthur summoned me. I thought, when I reached Arthur’s side, that he had exchanged his white cloak for a dark red one, but it was the same garment, just so spattered with blood that it looked red. He greeted me with an embrace, then, with his arm about my shoulders, led me into the space between the opposing shield walls. I remember a dying horse was there, and dead men and discarded shields and broken weapons. ‘Your father won’t surrender,’ Arthur said, ‘but I think he will listen to you. Tell him that he must be our prisoner, but that he will live with honour and can spend his days in comfort. I promise the lives of his men, too. All he needs do is give me his sword.’ He looked at the beaten, outnumbered and trapped Saxons. They were silent. In their place we would have sung, but those spearmen waited for death in utter silence. ‘Tell them there’s been enough killing, Derfel,’ Arthur said.

I unbuckled Hywelbane, laid her down with my shield and spear, then walked to face my father. Aelle looked weary, broken and hurt, but he hobbled out to meet me with his head held high. He had no shield, but held a sword in his maimed right hand. ‘I thought they would send for you,’ he growled. The edge of his sword was dented deep and its blade was crusted with blood. He made an abrupt gesture with the weapon when I began to describe Arthur’s offer. ‘I know what he wants of me,’ he interrupted, ‘he wants my sword, but I am Aelle, the Bretwalda of Britain, and I do not yield my sword.’

‘Father,’ I began again.

‘You call me King!’ he snarled.

I smiled at his defiance and bowed my head. ‘Lord King, we offer your men their lives, and we. ’

Once again he cut me off. ‘When a man dies in battle,’ he said, ‘he goes to a blessed home in the sky. But to reach that great feasting hall he must die on his feet, with his sword in his hand and with his wounds to the front.’ He paused, and when he spoke again his voice was much softer. ‘You owe me nothing, my son, but I should take it as a kindness if you would give me my place in that feasting hall.’

‘Lord King,’ I said, but he interrupted me for a fourth time.

‘I would be buried here,’ he went on as though I had never spoken, ‘with my feet to the north and my sword in my hand. I ask nothing more of you.’ He turned back to his men, and I saw that he could hardly stay upright. He must have been grievously wounded, but his great bear cloak was hiding the wound.

‘Hrothgar!’ he called to one of his spearmen. ‘Give my son your spear.’ A tall young Saxon came out of the shield wall and obediently held his spear out to me. ‘Take it!’ Aelle snapped at me, and I obeyed. Hrothgar gave me a nervous glance then hurried back to his comrades. Aelle closed his eyes for an instant and I saw a grimace cross his hard face. He was pale under the dirt and sweat, and he suddenly gritted his teeth as another ravaging pain seared through him, but he resisted the pain and even tried to smile as he stepped forward to embrace me. He leaned his weight on my shoulders and I could hear the breath scraping in his throat. ‘I think,’ he said in my ear, ‘that you are the best of my sons. Now give me a gift. Give me a good death, Derfel, for I would like to go to the feasting hall of true warriors.’ He stepped heavily back and propped his sword against his body, then laboriously untied the leather strings of his fur cloak. It dropped away and I saw that the whole left side of his body was soaked in blood. He had suffered a spear thrust under the breastplate, while another blow had taken him high in the shoulder, leaving his left arm hanging useless, and so he was forced to use his maimed right hand to unbuckle the leather straps that held his breastplate at his waist and shoulders. He fumbled with the buckles, but when I stepped forward to help he waved me away. ‘I’m making it easy for you,’ he said, ‘but when I’m dead, put the breastplate back on my corpse. I shall need armour in the feasting hall, for there is much fighting there. Fighting, feasting and. ’he stopped, racked once again by pain. He gritted his teeth, groaned, then straightened to face me. ‘Now kill me,’ he ordered.

‘I cannot kill you,’ I said, but I was thinking of my mad mother’s prophecy that it would be Aelle’s son who killed Aelle.

‘Then I shall kill you,’ he said, and he clumsily swung his sword at me. I stepped away from the swing, and he stumbled and almost fell as he tried to follow me. He stopped, panting, and stared at me. ‘For the sake of your mother, Derfel,’ he pleaded, ‘would you have me die on the ground like a dog? Can you give me nothing?’ He swung at me again, and this time the effort was too much and he began to sway and I saw there were tears in his eyes and I understood that the manner of his death was no small thing. He willed himself to stay upright and made an immense effort to lift the sword. Fresh blood gleamed at his left side, his eyes were glazing, but he kept his gaze on mine as he took one last step forward and made a feeble lunge at my midriff.

God forgive me, but I thrust the spear forward then. I put all my weight and strength into the blow, and the heavy blade took his falling weight and held him upright even as it shattered his ribs and drove deep into his heart. He gave an enormous shudder and a look of grim determination came to his dying face and I thought for a heartbeat that he wanted to lift the sword for one last blow, but then I saw he was merely making certain that his wounded right hand was fastened tight about his sword’s handle. Then he fell, and he was dead before he struck the ground, but the sword, his battered and bloody sword, was still in his grip. A groan sounded from his men. Some of them were in tears.

‘Derfel?’ Igraine said. ‘Derfel!’

‘Lady?’

‘You were sleeping,’ she accused me.

‘Age, dear Lady,’ I said, ‘mere age.’

‘So Aelle died in the battle,’ she said briskly, ‘and Lancelot?’

‘That comes later,’ I said firmly.

‘Tell me now!’ she insisted.

‘I told you,’ I said, ‘it comes later, and I hate stories that tell their endings before their beginnings.’

For a moment I thought she would protest, but instead she just sighed at my obstinacy and went on with her list of unfinished business. ‘What happened to the Saxon champion, Liofa?’

‘He died,’ I said, ‘very horribly.’

‘Good!’ she said, looking interested. ‘Tell me!’

‘It was a disease, Lady. Something swelled in his groin and he could neither sit nor lie, and even standing was agony. He became thinner and thinner, and finally he died, sweating and shaking. Or so we heard.’

Igraine was indignant. ‘So he wasn’t killed at Mynydd Baddon?’

‘He escaped with Cerdic’

Igraine gave a dissatisfied shrug, as though we had somehow failed by letting the Saxon champion escape. ‘But the bards,’ she said, and I groaned, for whenever my Queen mentions the bards I know I am about to be confronted with their version of history which, inevitably, Igraine prefers even though I was present when the history was made and the bards were not even born. ‘The bards,’ she said firmly, ignoring my groan of protest, ‘all say that Cuneglas’s battle with Liofa lasted the best part of a morning, and that Cuneglas killed six champions before he was struck down from behind.’

‘I have heard those songs,’ I said guardedly.

‘And?’ She glared at me. Cuneglas was her husband’s grandfather and family pride was at stake.

‘Well?’

‘I was there, Lady,’ I said simply.

‘You have an old man’s memory, Derfel,’ she said disapprovingly, and I have no doubt that when Dafydd, the clerk of the justice who writes down the British translation of my parchments, comes to the passage on Cuneglas’s death he will change it to suit my Lady’s taste. And why not? Cuneglas was a hero and it will not hurt if history remembers him as a great warrior, though in reality he was no soldier. He was a decent man, and a sensible one, and wise beyond his years, but he was not a man whose heart swelled when he gripped a spear shaft. His death was the tragedy of Mynydd Baddon, but a tragedy none of us saw in the delirium of victory. We burned him on the battlefield and his balefire flamed for three days and three nights, and on the last dawn, when there were only embers amidst which were the melted remnants of Cuneglas’s armour, we gathered around the pyre and sang the Death Song of Werlinna. We killed a score of Saxon prisoners too, sending their souls to escort Cuneglas in honour to the Otherworld, and I remember thinking that it was good for my darling Dian that her uncle had crossed the bridge of swords to keep her company in Annwn’s towered world.

‘And Arthur,’ Igraine said eagerly, ‘did he run to Guinevere?’

‘I never saw their reunion,’ I said.

‘It doesn’t matter what you saw,’ Igraine said severely, ‘we need it here.’ She stirred the heap of finished parchments with her foot. ‘You should have described their meeting, Derfel.’

‘I told you, I didn’t see it.’

‘What does that matter? It would have made a very good ending to the battle. Not everyone likes to hear about spears and killing, Derfel. Tales of men fighting can get very boring after a while and a love story makes it all a lot more interesting.’ And no doubt the battle will be filled with romance once she and Dafydd maul my story. I sometimes wish I could write this tale in the British tongue, but two of the monks can read and either could betray me to Sansum; so I must write in Saxon and trust that Igraine does not change the story when Dafydd provides her with the translation. I know what Igraine wants: she wants Arthur to run through the corpses, and for Guinevere to wait for him with open arms, and for the two of them to meet in ecstasy, and maybe that is how it did happen, but I suspect not, for she was too proud and he was too diffident. I imagine they wept when they met, but neither ever told me, so I shall invent nothing. I do know that Arthur became a happy man after Mynydd Baddon, and it was not just victory over the Saxons that gave him that happiness.

‘And what about Argante?’ Igraine wanted to know. ‘You leave so much out, Derfel!’

‘I shall come to Argante.’

‘But her father was there. Wasn’t Oengus angry that Arthur went back to Guinevere?’

‘I will tell you all about Argante,’ I promised, ‘in due time.’

‘And Amhar and Loholt? You haven’t forgotten them?’

‘They escaped,’ I said. ‘They found a coracle and paddled it across the river. I fear we shall meet them again in this tale.’

Igraine tried to prise some more details from me, but I insisted I would tell the story at my own pace and in my own order. She finally abandoned her questions and stooped to put the written parchments into the leather bag she used to carry them back to the Caer; she found stooping difficult, but refused my help. ‘I shall be so glad when the baby’s born,’ she said. ‘My breasts are sore, my legs and back ache, and I don’t walk any more, I just waddle like a goose. Brochvael’s bored with it too.’

‘Husbands never like it when their wives are pregnant,’ I said.

‘Then they shouldn’t try so hard to fill their bellies,’ Igraine said tartly. She paused to listen as Sansum screamed at Brother Llewellyn for having left his milk pail in the passageway. Poor Llewellyn. He is a novice in our monastery and no one works harder for less thanks and now, because of a limewood bucket, he is to be condemned to a week of daily beatings from Saint Tudwal, the young man — indeed scarce more than a child — who is being groomed to be Sansum’s successor. Our whole monastery lives in fear of Tudwal, and I alone escape the worst of his pique thanks to Igraine’s friendship. Sansum needs her husband’s protection too much to risk Igraine’s displeasure.

‘This morning,’ Igraine said, ‘I saw a stag with only one antler. It’s a bad omen, Derfel.’

‘We Christians,’ I said, ‘do not believe in omens.’

‘But I see you touching that nail in your desk,’ she said.

‘We are not always good Christians.’

She paused. ‘I’m worried about the birth.’

‘We are all praying for you,’ I said, and knew it was an inadequate response. But I had done more than just pray in our monastery’s small chapel. I had found an eagle stone, scratched her name on its surface and buried it beside an ash tree. If Sansum knew I had made that ancient charm he would forget about his need for Brochvael’s protection and have Saint Tudwal beat me bloody for a month. But then, if the saint knew I was writing this tale of Arthur he would do the same. But write it I shall and for a time it will be easy, for now comes the happy time, the years of peace. But they were also the years of encroaching darkness, but we did not see that, for we only saw the sunlight and never heeded the shadows. We thought we had beaten the shadows, and that the sun would light Britain for ever. Mynydd Baddon was Arthur’s victory, his greatest achievement, and perhaps the story should end there; but Igraine is right, life does not have tidy endings and so I must go on with this tale of Arthur, my Lord, my friend and the deliverer of Britain.

Arthur let Aelle’s men live. They laid down their spears and were distributed among the winners to be slaves. I used some of them to help dig my father’s grave. We dug it deep into that soft damp earth beside the river, and there we laid Aelle with his feet facing north and with his sword in his hand, and with the breastplate over his broken heart, his shield across his belly and the spear that had killed him alongside his corpse, and then we filled the grave and I said a prayer to Mithras while the Saxons prayed to their God of Thunder.

By evening the first funeral pyres were burning. I helped lay the corpses of my own men on their pyres, then left their comrades singing their souls to the Otherworld while I retrieved my horse and rode northwards through the long soft shadows. I rode towards the village where our women had found shelter and as I climbed into the northern hills the noise of the battlefield receded. It was the sound of fires crackling, of women weeping, of chanted elegies and of drunken men whooping savagely. I took the news of Cuneglas’s death to Ceinwyn. She stared at me when I told her and for a moment she showed no reaction, but then tears welled in her eyes. She pulled her cloak over her head. ‘Poor Perddel,’ she said, meaning Cuneglas’s son who was now the King of Powys. I told her how her brother had died, and then she retreated into the cottage where she and our daughters were living. She wanted to bind up my head wound that looked much worse than it was, but she could not do it for she and her daughters must mourn Cuneglas and that meant they must shut themselves away for three days and nights in which they must hide from the sun and could neither see nor touch any man. It was dark by then. I could have stayed in the village, but I was restless and so, under the light of a thinning moon, I rode back south. I went first to Aquae Sulis, thinking that I might find Arthur in the city, but found only the torch-lit remnants of carnage. Our levy had flooded over the inadequate wall and slaughtered whoever they found inside, but the horror ended once Tewdric’s troops occupied the city. Those Christians cleaned the temple of Minerva, scooping out the entrails of three sacrificed bulls that the Saxons had left spilling bloodily across the tiles, and once the shrine was restored the Christians held a rite of thanksgiving. I heard their singing and went to find songs of my own, but my men had stayed in Cerdic’s ruined camp and Aquae Sulis was filled with strangers. I could not find Arthur, or any other friend except Culhwch and he was roaring drunk, and so, in the soft dark, I rode east along the river. The air stank of blood and was filled with ghosts, but I risked the wraiths in my desperation to find a companion. I did find a group of Sagramor’s men singing about a fire, but they did not know where their commander was, and so I rode on, drawn still farther eastwards by the sight of men dancing around a fire.

The dancers were Blackshields and their steps were high for they were dancing across the severed heads of their enemies. I would have ridden around the capering Blackshields, but then glimpsed two white-robed figures sitting calmly beside the fire amidst the ring of dancers. One of them was Merlin. I tied my horse’s reins to a thorn stump, then stepped through the dancing ring. Merlin and his companion were making a meal of bread, cheese and ale, and when Merlin first saw me he did not recognize me. ‘Go away,’ he snapped, ‘or I shall turn you into a toad. Oh, it’s you, Derfel!’ He sounded disappointed. ‘I knew if I found food that some empty belly would expect me to share it. I suppose you’re hungry?’

‘I am, Lord.’

He gestured for me to sit beside him. ‘I suspect the cheese is Saxon,’ he said dubiously, ‘and it was rather covered in blood when I discovered it, but I washed it clean. Well, I wiped it anyway, and it’s proving surprisingly edible. I suppose there’s just enough for you.’ In truth there was enough for a dozen men. ‘This is Taliesin,’ he curtly introduced his companion. ‘He’s some kind of bard out of Powys.’

I looked at the famous bard and saw a young man with a keenly intelligent face. He had shaved the front part of his head like a Druid, wore a short black beard, had a long jaw, sunken cheeks and a narrow nose. His shaven forehead was circled by a thin fillet of silver. He smiled and bowed his head.

‘Your fame precedes you, Lord Derfel.’

‘As does yours,’ I said.

‘Oh, no!’ Merlin groaned. ‘If you two are going to grovel all over each other then go somewhere else and do it. Derfel fights,’ he told Taliesin, ‘because he has never really grown up, and you’re famous because you happen to have a passable voice.’

‘I make songs as well as sing them,’ Taliesin said modestly.

‘And any man can make a song if he’s drunk enough,’ Merlin said dismissively, then squinted at me.

‘Is that blood on your hair?’

‘Yes, Lord.’

‘You should be grateful you weren’t wounded anywhere crucial.’ He laughed at that, then gestured at the Blackshields. ‘What do you think of my bodyguard?’

‘They dance well.’

‘They have much to dance about. What a satisfying day,’ Merlin said. ‘And didn’t Gawain play his part well? It’s so gratifying when a halfwit proves to be of some use, and what a halfwit Gawain was! A tedious boy! Forever trying to improve the world. Why do the young always believe they know more than their elders? You, Taliesin, do not suffer from that tedious misapprehension. Taliesin,’ Merlin now explained to me, ‘has come to learn from my wisdom.’

‘I have much to learn,’ Taliesin murmured.

‘Very true, very true,’ Merlin said. He pushed a jug of ale towards me. ‘Did you enjoy your little battle, Derfel?’

‘No.’ In truth I was feeling oddly downcast. ‘Cuneglas died,’ I explained.

‘I heard about Cuneglas,’ Merlin said. ‘What a fool! He should have left the heroics to halfwits like you. Still, it’s a pity he died. He wasn’t exactly a clever man, not what I should call clever, but he was no halfwit and that’s rare enough in these sad days. And he was always kind to me.’

‘He was kindness itself to me,’ Taliesin put in.

‘So now you will have to find a new patron,’ Merlin told the bard, ‘and don’t look at Derfel. He couldn’t tell a decent song from a bullock’s fart. The trick of a successful life,’ he was now lecturing Taliesin, ‘is to be born with wealthy parents. I have lived very comfortably off my rents, though come to think of it I haven’t collected them for years. Do you pay me rent, Derfel?’

‘I should, Lord, but never know where to send it.’

‘Not that it matters now,’ Merlin said. ‘I’m old and feeble. Doubtless I shall be dead soon.’

‘Nonsense,’ I said, ‘you look wonderfully fit.’ He looked old, of course, but there was a spark of mischief in his eyes and a liveliness to his ancient, creased face. His hair and beard were beautifully plaited and bound in black ribbons, while his gown, except for the dried blood, was clean. He was also happy; not, I think, just because we had achieved victory, but because he enjoyed Taliesin’s company.

‘Victory gives life,’ he said dismissively, ‘but we’ll soon enough forget victory. Where’s Arthur?’

‘No one knows,’ I said. ‘I heard he spent a long time talking with Tewdric, but he’s not with him now. I suspect he found Guinevere.’

Merlin sneered. ‘A hound returns to its vomit.’

‘I’m beginning to like her,’ I said defensively.

‘You would,’ he said scornfully, ‘and I dare say she won’t do any harm now. She would make you a good patron,’ he told Taliesin, ‘she has an absurd respect for poets. Just don’t climb into bed with her.’

‘No danger of that, Lord,’ Taliesin said.

Merlin laughed. ‘Our young bard here,’ he told me, ‘is celibate. He is a gelded lark. He has forsworn the greatest pleasure a man can have in order to preserve his gift.’

Taliesin saw my curiosity and smiled. ‘Not my voice, Lord Derfel, but the gift of prophecy.’

‘And it’s a genuine gift!’ Merlin said with unfeigned admiration, ‘though I doubt it’s worth celibacy. If I had ever been asked to pay that price I’d have abandoned the Druid’s staff! I’d have taken humble employment instead, like being a bard or a spearman.’

‘You see the future?’ I asked Taliesin.

‘He foresaw victory today,’ Merlin said, ‘and he knew of Cuneglas’s death a month ago, though he didn’t scry that a useless Saxon lump would come and steal all my cheese.’ He snatched the cheese back from me. ‘I suppose now,’ he said, ‘that you want him to forecast your future, Derfel?’

‘No, Lord.’

‘Quite right,’ Merlin said, ‘always better not to know the future. Everything ends in tears, that’s all there is to it.’

‘But joy is renewed,’ Taliesin said softly.

‘Oh, dear me, no!’ Merlin cried. ‘Joy is renewed! The dawn comes! The tree buds! The clouds part!

The ice melts! You can do better than that sort of sentimental rubbish.’ He fell silent. His bodyguard had ended their dance and gone to amuse themselves with some captured Saxon women. The women had children, and their cries were loud enough to annoy Merlin, who scowled. ‘Fate is inexorable,’ he said sourly, ‘and everything ends in tears.’

‘Is Nimue with you?’ I asked him, and saw immediately from Taliesin’s warning expression that I had asked the wrong question.

Merlin gazed into the fire. The flames spat an ember towards him, and he spat back to return the fire’s malice. ‘Do not speak to me of Nimue,’ he said after he had spat. His good mood had vanished and I felt embarrassed for having asked the question. He touched his black staff, then sighed. ‘She is angry with me,’ he explained.

‘Why, Lord?’

‘Because she can’t have her own way, of course. That’s what usually makes people angry.’ Another log cracked in the fire, spewing sparks that he brushed irritably from his robe after he had spat at the flames. ‘Larchwood,’ he said. ‘Newly cut larch hates to be burned.’ He gazed at me broodingly. ‘Nimue did not approve of me bringing Gawain to this battle. She believes it was a waste, and I think, probably, that she was right.’

‘He brought victory, Lord,’ I said.

He closed his eyes and seemed to sigh, intimating that I was a fool too great for endurance. ‘I have devoted my whole life,’ he said after a while, ‘to one thing. One simple thing. I wanted to restore the Gods. Is that so very hard to understand? But to do anything well, Derfel, takes a lifetime. Oh, it’s all right for fools like you, you can fritter about being a magistrate one day and a spearman the next, and when it’s all over, what have you achieved? Nothing! To change the world, Derfel, you have to be single-minded. Arthur comes close, I’ll say that for him. He wants to make Britain safe from Saxons, and he’s probably achieved that for a while, but they still exist and they’ll come back. Maybe not in my lifetime, maybe not even in yours, but your children and your children’s children will have to fight this battle all over again. There is only one way to real victory.’

‘The way of the Gods,’ I said.

‘The way of the Gods,’ he agreed, ‘and that was my life’s work.’ He gazed down at his black Druid’s staff for a moment and Taliesin sat very still, watching him. ‘I had a dream as a child,’ Merlin said very softly. ‘I went to the cave of Cam Ingli and dreamed that I had wings and could fly high enough to see all the isle of Britain, and it was so very beautiful. Beautiful and green and surrounded by a great mist that kept all our enemies away. The blessed isle, Derfel, the isle of the Gods, the one place on earth that was worthy of them, and ever since that dream, Derfel, that is all I ever wanted. To bring that blessed isle back. To bring the Gods back.’

‘But,’ I tried to interrupt.

‘Don’t be absurd!’ he shouted, making Taliesin smile. ‘Think!’ Merlin appealed to me. ‘My life’s work, Derfel!’

‘Mai Dun,’ I said softly.

He nodded and then, for a while, he said nothing. Men were singing in the distance and everywhere there were fires. The wounded cried in the dark where dogs and scavengers preyed on the dead and the dying. In the dawn this army would wake drunk to the horror of a field after battle, but for now they sang and gorged themselves on captured ale. ‘At Mai Dun,’ Merlin broke his silence, ‘I came so close. Very close. But I was too weak, Derfel, too weak. I love Arthur too much. Why? He isn’t witty, his conversation can be as tedious as Gawain’s, and he has an absurd devotion to virtue, but I do love him. You, too, as it happens. A weakness, I know. I can enjoy supple men, but I like honest men. I admire simple strength, you see, and at Mai Dun I let that liking weaken me.’

‘Gwydre,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘We should have killed him, but I knew I couldn’t do it. Not Arthur’s son. That was a terrible weakness.’

‘No.’

‘Don’t be absurd!’ he said wearily. ‘What is Gwydre’s life to the Gods? Or to the prospect of restoring Britain? Nothing! But I could not do it. Oh, I had excuses. Caleddin’s scroll is quite plain, it says that “the son of the land’s King” must be sacrificed, and Arthur is no king, but that’s a mere quibble. The rite needed Gwydre’s death and I could not bring myself to do it. It was no trouble killing Gawain, it was even a pleasure stilling that virgin fool’s babble, but not Gwydre, and so the rite went unfinished.’ He was miserable now, hunched and miserable. ‘I failed,’ he added bitterly.

‘And Nimue won’t forgive you?’ I asked hesitantly.

‘Forgive? She doesn’t know the word’s meaning! Forgiveness is a weakness to Nimue! And now she will perform the rites, and she won’t fail, Derfel. If it means killing every mother’s son in Britain, she’ll do it. Put them all in the pot and give it a good stir!’ He half smiled, then shrugged. ‘But now, of course, I’ve made things far more difficult for her. Like the sentimental old fool that I am, I had to help Arthur win this scuffle. I used Gawain to do it and now, I think, she hates me.’

‘Why?’

He raised his eyes to the smoky sky as though appealing to the Gods to grant me some small measure of understanding. ‘Do you think, you fool,’ he asked me, ‘that the corpse of a virgin prince is so readily available? It took me years to pump that halfwit’s head full of nonsense so that he’d be ready for his sacrifice! And what did I do today? I threw Gawain away! Just to help Arthur.’

‘But we won!’

‘Don’t be absurd.’ He glared at me. ‘You won? What is that revolting thing on your shield?’

I turned to look at the shield. ‘The cross.’

Merlin rubbed his eyes. ‘There is a war between the Gods, Derfel, and today I gave victory to Yahweh.’

‘Who?’

‘It’s the name of the Christian God. Sometimes they call him Jehovah. So far as I can determine he’s nothing but a humble fire God from some wretched far-ofF country who is now intent on usurping all the other Gods. He must be an ambitious little toad, because he’s winning, and it was I who gave him this victory today. What do you think men will remember of this battle?’

‘Arthur’s victory,’ I said firmly.

‘In a hundred years, Derfel,’ Merlin said, ‘they will not remember whether it was a victory or a defeat.’

I paused. ‘Cuneglas’s death?’ I offered.

‘Who cares about Cuneglas? Just another forgotten king.’

‘Aelle’s death?’ I suggested.

‘A dying dog would deserve more attention.’

‘Then what?’

He grimaced at my obtuseness. ‘They will remember, Derfel, that the cross was carried on your shields. Today, you fool, we gave Britain to the Christians, and I was the one who gave it to them. I gave Arthur his ambition, but the price, Derfel, was mine. Do you understand now?’

‘Yes, Lord.’

‘And so I made Nimue’s task a great deal harder. But she will try, Derfel, and she is not like me. She is not weak. There is a hardness inside Nimue, such a hardness.’

I smiled. ‘She will not kill Gwydre,’ I said confidently, ‘for neither Arthur nor I will let her, and she won’t be given Excalibur, so how can she win?’

He gazed at me. ‘Do you think, idiot, that either you or Arthur are strong enough to resist Nimue? She is a woman, and what women want, they get, and if the world and all it holds must be broken in the getting, then so be it. She’ll break me first, then turn her eye on you. Isn’t that the truth, my young prophet?’ he asked Taliesin, but the bard had closed his eyes. Merlin shrugged. ‘I shall take her Gawain’s ashes, and give her what help I can,’ he said, ‘because I promised her that. But it will all end in tears, Derfel, it will all end in tears. What a mess I have made. What a terrible mess.’ He pulled his cloak about his shoulders. ‘I shall sleep now,’ he announced.

Beyond the fire the Blackshields raped their captives and I sat staring into the flames. I had helped win a great victory, and was inexpressibly sad.

I did not see Arthur that night and met him only briefly in the misty half-light just before the dawn. He greeted me with all his old vivacity, throwing an arm about my shoulders. ‘I want to thank you,’ he said,

‘for looking after Guinevere these last weeks.’ He was in his full armour and was making a hasty breakfast from a mildewed loaf of bread.

‘If anything,’ I said, ‘Guinevere looked after me.’

‘The wagons, you mean! I do wish I’d seen it!’ He threw down the bread as Hygwydd, his servant, led Llamrei out of the gloom. ‘I might see you tonight, Derfel,’ Arthur said as he let Hygwydd heave him up into the saddle, ‘or maybe tomorrow.’

‘Where are you going, Lord?’

‘After Cerdic, of course.’ He settled himself on Llamrei’s back, gathered her reins and took his shield and spear from Hygwydd. He kicked back his heels, going to join his horsemen who were shadowy shapes in the mist. Mordred was also riding with Arthur, no longer under guard, but accepted as a useful soldier in his own right. I watched him curb his horse and remembered the Saxon gold I had found in Lindinis. Had Mordred betrayed us? If he had I could not prove it, and the battle’s result negated his treachery, but I still felt a pang of hatred for my King. He caught my malevolent gaze and turned his horse away. Arthur shouted his men on and I listened to the thunder of their departing hoofs. I stirred my sleeping men awake with the butt of a spear and ordered them to find Saxon captives to dig more graves and build more funeral pyres. I believed I would spend my own day doing that weary business, but in mid-morning Sagramor sent a messenger begging me to bring a detachment of spearmen to Aquae Sulis where trouble had broken out. The disturbances had begun with a rumour among Tewdric’s spearmen that Cerdic’s treasury had been discovered and that Arthur was keeping it all for himself. Their proof was Arthur’s disappearance and their revenge was a proposal to pull down the city’s central shrine because it had once been a pagan temple. I managed to calm that frenzy by announcing that two chests of gold had indeed been discovered, but that they were under guard and their contents would be fairly shared once Arthur returned. At Tewdric’s suggestion we sent a half-dozen of his soldiers to help guard the chests, which were still in the remnants of Cerdic’s encampment. The Christians of Gwent calmed down, but then the spearmen of Powys made new trouble by blaming Oengus mac Airem for Cuneglas’s death. The enmity between Powys and Demetia went back a long way, for Oengus mac Airem was famously fond of raiding his richer neighbour’s harvest; indeed, Powys was known in Demetia as ‘our larder’, but this day it was the men of Powys who picked the quarrel by insisting that Cuneglas would never have died if the Blackshields had not come late to the battle. The Irish have never been reluctant to join a fight, and no sooner were Tewdric’s men placated than there was a clash of swords and spears outside the law courts as Powysians and Blackshields met in a bloody skirmish. Sagramor brought an uneasy peace by the simple expedient of killing the leaders of both factions, but throughout the rest of that day there was trouble between the two nations. The discord grew worse when it was learned that Tewdric had sent a detachment of soldiers to occupy Lactodu-rum, a northern fortress that had not been in British hands for a lifetime, but which the leaderless men of Powys claimed had always been in their territory, not Gwent’s, and a hastily raised band of Powysian spearmen set off after Tewdric’s men to challenge their claim. The Blackshields, who had no dog in the Lactodurum fight, nevertheless insisted that the men of Gwent were right, only because they knew that opinion would infuriate the Powysians, and so there were more battles. They were deadly brawls about a town of which most of the combatants had never heard and which might, anyway, still be garrisoned by the Saxons. We Dumnonians managed to avoid those battles, and so it was our spearmen who guarded the streets and thus confined the fighting to the taverns, but in the afternoon we were dragged into the disputes when Argante and a score of attendants arrived from Glevum to discover that Guinevere had occupied the bishop’s house that was built behind the temple of Minerva. The bishop’s palace was not the largest or most comfortable in Aquae Sulis, that distinction belonged to the palace of Cildydd, the magistrate, but Lancelot had used Cildydd’s house while he was in Aquae Sulis and for that reason Guinevere avoided it. Argante nevertheless insisted that she should have the bishop’s house, for it was within the sacred enclosure, and an enthusiastic party of Blackshields went to evict Guinevere, only to be met by a score of my men intent on defending her. Two men died before Guinevere announced that she did not care what house sheltered her and moved to the priests’ chambers that were built alongside the great baths. Argante, victorious in that encounter, declared that Guinevere’s new quarters were fitting, for she claimed that the priests’ chambers had once been a brothel, and Argante’s Druid, Fergal, led a crowd of Blackshields to the bath-house where they amused themselves by demanding to know the brothel’s prices and shouting for Guinevere to show them her body. Another contingent of Blackshields had occupied the temple and thrown out the hastily erected cross that Tewdric had placed above the altar, and scores of red-robed spearmen of Gwent were gathering to fight their way inside and replace the cross.

Sagramor and I brought spearmen to the sacred enclosure which, in the late afternoon, promised to become a bloodbath. My men guarded the temple doors, Sagramor’s protected Guinevere, but we were both outnumbered by the drunken warriors from Demetia and Gwent, while the Powysians, glad to have a cause with which they could annoy the Blackshields, shouted their support for Guinevere. I pushed through the mead-sodden crowd, clubbing down the most raucous troublemakers, but I feared the violence that grew ever more menacing as the sun sank. It was Sagramor who finally brought an uneasy peace to the evening. He climbed to the bath-house roof and there, standing tall between two statues, he roared for silence. He had stripped himself to the waist so that, contrasted with the white marble of the warriors on either side, his black skin was all the more striking. ‘If any of you have an argument,’ he announced in his curiously accented British, ‘you will have it with me first. Man to man! Sword or spear, take your pick.’ He drew his long curved sword and glared at the angry men below.

‘Get rid of the whore!’ an anonymous voice shouted from the Blackshields.

‘You object to whores?’ Sagramor shouted back. ‘What kind of a warrior are you? A virgin? If you’re so intent on being virtuous then come up here and I’ll geld you.’ That brought laughter and so ended the immediate danger.

Argante sulked in her palace. She was calling herself the Empress of Dumnonia and demanding that Sagramor and I provide her with Dumnonian guards, but she was already so thickly attended by her father’s Blackshields that neither of us obeyed. Instead we both stripped naked and lowered ourselves into the great Roman bath where we lay exhausted. The hot water was wonderfully restful. Steam wisped up to the broken tiles of the roof. ‘I have been told,’ Sagramor said, ‘that this is the largest building in Britain.’

I eyed the vast roof. ‘It probably is.’

‘But when I was a child,’ Sagramor said, ‘I was a slave in a house even bigger than this.’

‘In Numidia?’

He nodded. ‘Though I come from farther south. I was sold into slavery when I was very young. I don’t even remember my parents.’

‘When did you leave Numidia?’ I asked.

‘After I had killed my first man. A steward, he was. And I was ten years old? Eleven? I ran away and joined a Roman army as a slinger. I can still put a stone between a man’s eyes at fifty paces. Then I learned to ride. I fought in Italy, Thrace and Egypt, then took money to join the Frankish army. That was where Arthur took me captive.’ He was rarely so forthcoming. Silence, indeed, was one of Sagramor’s most effective weapons, that and his hawklike face and his terrifying reputation, but in private he was a gentle and reflective soul. ‘Whose side are we on?’ he now asked me with a puzzled look.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Guinevere? Argante?’

I shrugged. ‘You tell me.’

He ducked his head under the water, then came up and wiped his eyes clear. ‘I suppose Guinevere,’

he said, ‘if the rumour is true.’

‘What rumour?’

‘That she and Arthur were together last night,’ he said, ‘though being Arthur, of course, they spent the night talking. He’ll wear his tongue out long before his sword.’

‘No danger of you doing that.’

‘No,’ he said with a smile, then the smile broadened as he looked at me. ‘I hear, Derfel, that you broke a shield wall?’

‘Only a thin one,’ I said, ‘and a young one.’

‘I broke a thick one,’ he said with a grin, ‘a very thick one, and full of experienced warriors,’ and I ducked him under the water in revenge, then splashed away before he could drown me. The baths were gloomy because no torches were lit and the very last of the day’s long sunlight could not reach down through the holes in the roof. Steam misted the big room, and though I was aware that other folk were using the huge bath, I had not recognized any of them, but now, swimming across the pool, I saw a figure in white robes stooping to a man sitting on one of the underwater steps. I recognized the tufts of hair on either side of the stooping man’s shaven forehead and a heartbeat later caught his words. ‘Trust me on this,’ he was saying with a quiet fervency, ‘just leave it to me, Lord King.’ He looked up at that moment and saw me. It was Bishop Sansum, newly released from his captivity and restored to all his former honours because of Arthur’s promises to Tewdric. He seemed surprised to see me, but managed a sickly smile. ‘The Lord Derfel,’ he said, stepping cautiously back from the bath’s brink, ‘one of our heroes!’

‘Derfel!’ the man on the pool steps roared, and I saw it was Oengus mac Airem who now launched himself to offer me a bear-like embrace. ‘First time I’ve ever hugged a naked man,’ the King of the Blackshields said, ‘and I can’t say I see the attraction of it. First time I’ve taken a bath too. Do you think it will kill me?’

‘No.’ I said, then glanced towards Sansum. ‘You keep strange company, Lord King.’

‘Wolves have fleas, Derfel, wolves have fleas,’ Oengus grunted.

‘So in what matter,’ I asked Sansum, ‘should my Lord King trust you?’

Sansum did not answer, and Oengus himself looked unnaturally sheepish. ‘The shrine,’ he finally offered as answer. ‘The good bishop was saying that he could arrange for my men to use it as a temple for a while. Isn’t that right, Bishop?’

‘Exactly so, Lord King,’ Sansum said.

‘You’re both bad liars,’ I said, and Oengus laughed. Sansum gave me a hostile look, then scuttled away down the flagstones. He had been a free man for just hours now, yet already he was plotting.

‘What was he telling you, Lord King?’ I pressed Oengus, who was a man I liked. A simple man, a strong man, a rogue, but a very good friend.

‘What do you think?’

‘He was talking about your daughter,’ I guessed.

‘Pretty little thing, isn’t she?’ Oengus said. ‘Too thin, of course, and with a mind like a wolf bitch on heat. It’s a strange world, Derfel. I breed sons dull as oxen and daughters sharp as wolves.’ He paused to greet Sagramor who had followed me across the water. ‘So what is to happen to Argante?’ Oengus asked me.

‘I don’t know, Lord.’

‘Arthur married her, didn’t he?’

‘I’m not even sure of that,’ I said.

He gave me a sharp look, then smiled as he understood my meaning. ‘She says they are properly married, but then she would. I wasn’t sure Arthur really wanted to marry her, but I pressed him. It was one less mouth to feed, you understand.’ He paused for a second. ‘The thing is, Derfel,’ he went on,

‘that Arthur can’t just send her back! That’s an insult, and besides, I don’t want her back. I’ve got plenty enough daughters without her. Half the time I don’t even know which are mine and which aren’t. You ever need a wife? Come to Demetia and take your pick, but I warn you they’re all like her. Pretty, but with very sharp teeth. So what will Arthur do?’

‘What is Sansum suggesting?’ I asked.

Oengus pretended to ignore the question, but I knew he would tell us in the end because he was not a man to keep secrets. ‘He just reminded me,’ he eventually confessed, ‘that Argante was once promised to Mordred.’

‘She was?’ Sagramor asked, surprised.

‘It was mentioned,’ I said, ‘some time ago.’ It had been mentioned by Oengus himself who was desperate for anything that might strengthen his alliance with Dumnonia which was his best protection against Powys.

‘And if Arthur didn’t marry her properly,’ Oengus went on, ‘then Mordred would be a consolation, wouldn’t he?’

‘Some consolation,’ Sagramor said sourly.

‘She’ll be Queen,’ Oengus said.

‘She will,’ I agreed.

‘So it isn’t a bad idea,’ Oengus said lightly, though I suspected it was an idea he would support passionately. A marriage with Mordred would compensate Demetia’s hurt pride, but it would also give Dumnonia an obligation to protect its Queen’s country. For myself I thought Sansum’s proposal was the worst idea I had heard all day, for I could imagine only too well what mischief the combination of Mordred and Argante might breed, but I kept silent. ‘You know what this bath lacks?’ Oengus asked.

‘Tell me, Lord King.’

‘Women.’ He chuckled. ‘So where’s your woman, Derfel?’

‘In mourning,’ I said.

‘Oh, for Cuneglas, of course!’ The Blackshield King shrugged. ‘He never liked me, but I rather liked him. He was a rare one for believing promises!’ Oengus laughed, for the promises had been ones that he had made without any intention of ever keeping them. ‘Can’t say I’m sorry he’s dead, though. His son’s just a boy and much too fond of his mother. She and those dreadful aunts of hers will rule for a while. Three witches!’ He laughed again. ‘I can see we might pick off a few pieces of land from those three ladies.’ He slowly lowered his face into the pool. ‘I’m chasing the lice upwards,’ he explained, then pinched one of the little grey insects that was scrambling up his tangled beard to escape the encroaching water.

I had not seen Merlin all that day, and that night Galahad told me the Druid had already left the valley, going north. I had found Galahad standing beside Cuneglas’s balefire. ‘I know Cuneglas disliked Christians,’ Galahad explained to me, ‘but I don’t think he would object to a Christian’s prayer.’ I invited him to sleep among my men and he walked with me to where they were camped. ‘Merlin did give me a message for you,’ Galahad told me. ‘He says you will find what you seek among the trees that are dead.’

‘I’m not sure I’m seeking anything,’ I said.

‘Then look among the dead trees,’ Galahad said, ‘and you’ll find whatever it is you’re not looking for.’

I looked for nothing that night, but instead slept wrapped in my cloak among my men on the battlefield. I woke early with an aching head and sore joints. The fine weather had passed and a drizzle was spitting out of the west. The ram threatened to dampen the balefires and so we began collecting wood to feed the flames, and that reminded me of Merlin’s strange message, but I could see no dead trees. We were using Saxon battle axes to chop down oaks, elms and beech, sparing only the sacred ash trees, and all the trees we cut were healthy enough. I asked Issa if he had noticed any dead trees and he shook his head, but Eachern said he had seen some down by the river bend.

‘Show me.’

Eachern led a whole group of us down to the bank and, where the river turned sharply west, there was a great mass of dead trees caught on the half exposed roots of a willow. The dead branches were matted with a tangle of other debris that had been washed down river, but I could see nothing of any value among the scraps. ‘If Merlin says there’s something there,’ Galahad said, ‘then we ought to look.’

‘He might not have meant those trees,’ I said.

‘They’re as good as any,’ Issa said, and he stripped off his sword so that it would not get wet and jumped down onto the tangle. He broke through the brittle upper branches to splash into the river. ‘Give me a spear!’ he called.

Galahad handed down a spear and Issa used it to poke among the branches. In one place a stretch of frayed and tarred netting from a fish trap had been snagged to form a tent-like shape that was thick with dead leaves, and Issa needed all his strength to heave that tangled mass aside. It was then that the fugitive broke cover. He had been hiding under the net, poised uncomfortably on a half-submerged trunk, but now, like an otter flushed by hounds, he scrambled away from Issa’s spear and tried to escape up river. The dead trees tripped him, and the weight of armour slowed him, and my men, whooping on the bank, easily overtook him. If the fugitive had not been wearing armour he might have thrown himself into the river and swum to its far bank, but now he could do nothing but surrender. The man must have spent two nights and a day working his way up the river, but then discovered the hiding place and thought he could stay there until we had all left the battlefield. Now he was caught. It was Lancelot. I first recognized him because of his long black hair of which he was so vain, then, through the mud and twigs, I saw the famous white enamel of his armour. His face showed nothing but terror. He looked from us to the river, as if contemplating throwing himself into the current, then he looked back and saw his half-brother. ‘Galahad!’ he called. ‘Galahad!’

Galahad looked at me for a few heartbeats, then he made the sign of the cross, turned and walked away.

‘Galahad!’ Lancelot shouted again as his brother vanished from the bank above. Galahad just kept walking.

‘Bring him up,’ I ordered. Issa jabbed at Lancelot with the spear and the terrified man scrambled desperately up through the nettles that grew on the bank. He still had his sword, though its blade must have been rusty after its immersion in the river. I faced him as he stumbled free of the nettles. ‘Will you fight me here and now, Lord King?’ I asked him, drawing Hywelbane.

‘Let me go, Derfel! I’ll send you money, I promise!’ He babbled on, promising me gold beyond my dreams’ desires, but he would not draw the sword until I prodded his chest hard with Hywelbane’s point and at that moment he knew he must die. He spat at me, took one pace backwards, and drew his blade. It had once been called Tanlladwr, which means Bright Killer, but he had renamed it the Christblade when Sansum had baptized him. The Christblade was rusted now, but still a formidable weapon, and to my surprise Lancelot was no mean swordsman. I had always taken him for a coward, but that day he fought bravely enough. He was desperate, and the desperation showed itself in a series of slashing quick attacks that forced me back. But he was also tired, wet and cold, and he wearied quickly so that when his first flurry of blows had all been parried I was able to take my time as I decided on his death. He became more desperate and his blows wilder, but I ended the fight when I ducked under one of those massive cuts and held Hywelbane so that her point caught him on the arm and the momentum of his swing opened the veins from the wrist to the elbow. He yelped as the blood flowed, then his sword fell from his nerveless hand and he waited in abject terror for the killing blow.

I cleaned Hywelbane’s blade with a handful of grass, dried her on my cloak, then sheathed her. ‘I don’t want your soul on my sword,’ I told Lancelot, and for a heartbeat he looked grateful, but then I broke his hopes. ‘Your men killed my child,’ I told him, ‘the same men you sent to try and fetch Ceinwyn to your bed. You think I can forgive you for either?’

‘They were not my orders,’ he said desperately. ‘Believe me!’

I spat in his face. ‘Shall I give you to Arthur, Lord King?’

‘No, Derfel, please!’ He clasped his hands. He shivered. ‘Please!’

‘Give him the woman’s death,’ Issa urged me, meaning that we should strip him, geld him and let him bleed to death between his legs.

I was tempted, but I feared to enjoy Lancelot’s death. There is a pleasure in revenge, and I had given Dian’s killers a terrible death and felt no pang of conscience as I enjoyed their suffering, but I had no belly for the torture of this quivering, broken man. He shook so much that I felt pity for him, and I found myself debating whether to let him live. I knew he was a traitor and a coward and that he deserved to be killed, but his terror was so abject that I actually felt sorry for him. He had always been my enemy, he had always despised me, yet as he dropped to his knees in front of me and the tears rolled down his cheeks I felt the impulse to grant him mercy and knew there would be as much pleasure in that exercise of power as there would be in ordering his death. For a heartbeat I wanted his gratitude, but then I remembered my daughter’s dying face and a shudder of rage made me tremble. Arthur was famous for forgiving his enemies, but this was one enemy I could never forgive.

‘The woman’s death,’ Issa suggested again.

‘No,’ I said, and Lancelot looked up at me with renewed hope. ‘Hang him like a common felon,’ I said.

Lancelot howled, but I hardened my heart. ‘Hang him,’ I ordered again, and so we did. We found a length of horsehair rope, looped it over the branch of an oak and hoisted him up. He danced as he hung, and went on dancing until Galahad returned and tugged on his half-brother’s ankles to put him out of his choking misery.

We stripped Lancelot’s body naked. I threw his sword and his fine scale armour into the river, burned his clothes, then used a big Saxon war axe to dismember his corpse. We did not burn him, but tossed him to the fishes so that his dark soul would not sour the Otherworld with its presence. We obliterated him from the earth, and I kept only his enamelled sword belt that had been a gift from Arthur. I met Arthur at midday. He was returning from his pursuit of Cerdic and he and his men rode tired horses down into the valley. ‘We didn’t catch Cerdic,’ he told me, ‘but we caught some others.’ He patted Llamrei’s sweat-whitened neck. ‘Cerdic lives, Derfel,’ he said, ‘but he’s so weakened that he won’t be a problem for a long time.’ He smiled, then saw I was not matching his cheerful mood. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Just this, Lord,’ I said, and held up the expensive enamelled belt. For a moment he thought I was showing him a piece of plunder, then he recognized the sword belt which had been his own gift to Lancelot. For a heartbeat his face had the look it had borne for so many months before Mynydd Baddon: the closed, hard look of bitterness, and then he glanced up into my eyes. ‘Its owner?’

‘Dead, Lord. Hanged in shame.’

‘Good,’ he said quietly. ‘And that thing, Derfel, you can throw away.’ I threw the belt into the river. And thus Lancelot died, though the songs he had paid for lived on, and to this day he is celebrated as a hero equal to Arthur. Arthur is remembered as a ruler, but Lancelot is called the warrior. In truth he was the King without land, a coward, and the greatest traitor of Britain, and his soul wanders Lloegyr to this day, screaming for its shadowbody that can never exist because we cut his corpse into scraps and fed it to the river. If the Christians are right, and there is a hell, may he suffer there for ever. Galahad and I followed Arthur to the city, passing the balefire on which Cuneglas burned and threading the Roman graves amongst which so many of Aelle’s men had died. I had warned Arthur what waited for him, but he showed no dismay when he heard that Argante had come to the city. His arrival in Aquae Sulis prompted scores of anxious petitioners to clamour for his attention. The petitioners were men demanding recognition for acts of bravery in the battle, men demanding shares of slaves or gold, and men demanding justice in disputes that long preceded the Saxon invasion, and Arthur told them all to attend him in the temple, though once there he ignored the supplicants. Instead he summoned Galahad to an ante-chamber of the temple and, after a while, he sent for Sansum. The Bishop was jeered by the Dumnonian spearmen as he hurried across the compound. He spoke with Arthur a long time, and then Oengus mac Airem and Mordred were called to Arthur’s presence. The spearmen in the enclosure were making wagers on whether Arthur would go to Argante in the Bishop’s house or to Guinevere in the priests’ quarters.

Arthur had not wanted my counsel. Instead, when he summoned Oengus and Mordred, he asked me to tell Guinevere that he had returned and so I crossed the yard to the priests’ quarters where I discovered Guinevere in an upper room, attended by Taliesin. The bard, dressed in a clean white robe and with the silver fillet about his black hair, stood and bowed as I entered. He carried a small harp, but I sensed the two had been talking rather than making music. He smiled and backed from the room, letting the thick curtain fall across the doorway. ‘A most clever man,’ Guinevere said, standing to greet me. She was in a cream-coloured robe trimmed with blue ribboned hems, she wore the Saxon necklace I had given her on Mynydd Baddon, and had her red hair gathered at the crown of her head with a length of silver chain. She was not quite as elegant as the Guinevere I remembered from before the time of troubles, but she was a far cry from the armoured woman who had ridden so enthusiastically across the battlefield. She smiled as I drew near. ‘You’re clean, Derfel?’

‘I took a bath, Lady.’

‘And you live!’ She mocked me gently, then kissed my cheek, and once the kiss was given she held on to my shoulders for a moment. ‘I owe you a great deal,’ she said softly.

‘No, Lady, no,’ I said, reddening and pulling away.

She laughed at my embarrassment, then went to sit in the window that overlooked the compound. Rain puddled between the stones and dripped down the temple’s stained facade where Arthur’s horse was tied to a ring fixed to one of the pillars. She hardly needed me to tell her that Arthur had come back, for she must have seen his arrival herself. ‘Who’s with him?’ she asked me.

‘Galahad, Sansum, Mordred and Oengus.’

‘And you weren’t summoned to Arthur’s council?’ she asked with a touch of her old mockery.

‘No, Lady,’ I said, trying to hide my disappointment.

‘I’m sure he hasn’t forgotten you.’

‘I hope not, Lady,’ I said and then, much more hesitantly, I told her that Lancelot was dead. I did not tell her how, simply that he was dead.

‘Taliesin already told me,’ she said, staring down at her hands.

‘How did he know?’ I asked, for Lancelot’s death had only happened a brief while before and Taliesin had not been present.

‘He dreamed it last night,’ Guinevere said, and then she made an abrupt gesture as if ending that subject. ‘So what are they discussing over there?’ she asked, glancing at the temple. ‘The child-bride?’

‘I imagine so, Lady,’ I said, then I told her what Bishop Sansum had suggested to Oengus mac Airem: that Argante should marry Mordred. ‘I think it’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard,’ I protested indignantly.

‘You really think that?’

‘It’s an absurd notion,’ I said.

‘It wasn’t Sansum’s notion,’ Guinevere said with a smile, ‘it was mine.’

I stared at her, too surprised to speak for a moment. ‘Yours, Lady?’ I finally asked.

‘Don’t tell anyone it was my idea,’ she warned me. ‘Argante wouldn’t consider it for a moment if she thought the idea came from me. She’d marry a swineherd rather than someone I suggested. So I sent for little Sansum and begged him to tell me whether the rumour about Argante and Mordred was correct, and then I said how much I loathed the very thought of it and that, of course, made him all the more enthusiastic about it, though he pretended not to be. I even cried a little and begged him never to tell Argante how much I detested the very idea. By that point, Derfel, they were as good as married.’ She smiled triumphantly.

‘But why?’ I asked. ‘Mordred and Argante? They’ll make nothing but trouble!’

‘Whether they’re married or not, they’ll make trouble. And Mordred must marry, Derfel, if he’s to provide an heir, and that means he must marry royally.’ She paused, fingering the necklace. ‘I confess I would much rather he didn’t have an heir, for that would leave the throne free when he dies.’ She left that thought unfinished and I gave her a curious look, to which she responded with a mask of innocence. Was she thinking that Arthur might take the throne from a childless Mordred? But Arthur had never wanted to rule. Then I realized that if Mordred did die then Gwydre, Guinevere’s son, would have as good a claim as any man. That realization must have shown on my face for Guinevere smiled. ‘Not that we must speculate about the succession,’ she went on before I could say anything, ‘for Arthur insists Mordred must be allowed to marry if he wishes, and it seems the wretched boy is attracted to Argante. They might even suit each other quite well. Like two vipers in a filthy nest.’

‘And Arthur will have two enemies united in bitterness,’ I said.

‘No,’ Guinevere said, then she sighed and looked through the window. ‘Not if we give them what they want, and not if I give Arthur what he wants. And you do know what that is, don’t you?’

I thought for a heartbeat, then understood everything. I understood what she and Arthur must have talked about in the long night after battle. I understood, too, what Arthur was arranging now in the temple of Minerva. ‘No!’ I protested.

Guinevere smiled. ‘I don’t want it either, Derfel, but I do want Arthur. And what he wants, I must give him. I do owe him some happiness, do I not?’ she asked.

‘He wants to give up his power?’ I asked, and she nodded. Arthur had ever spoken of his dream of living simply with a wife, his family and some land. He wanted a hall, a palisade, a smithy and fields. He imagined himself a landowner, with no troubles other than the birds stealing his seed, the deer eating his crops and the rain spoiling his harvest. He had nurtured that dream for years and now, having beaten the Saxons, it seemed he would make the dream reality.

‘Meurig also wants Arthur to give up his power,’ Guinevere said.

‘Meurig!’ I spat. ‘Why should we care what Meurig wants?’

‘It is the price Meurig demanded before he agreed to let his father lead Gwent’s army to war,’

Guinevere said. ‘Arthur didn’t tell you before the battle because he knew you would argue with him.’

‘But why would Meurig want Arthur to give up his power?’

‘Because he believes Mordred is a Christian,’ Guinevere said with a shrug, ‘and because he wants Dumnonia to be ill-governed. That way, Derfel, Meurig stands a chance of taking Dumnonia’s throne one day. He’s an ambitious little toad.’ I called him something worse, and Guinevere smiled. ‘That too,’ she said, ‘but what he demanded, he must get, so Arthur and I will go to live in Silurian Isca where Meurig can keep an eye on us. I don’t mind living in Isca. It will be better than life in some decaying hall. There are some fine Roman palaces in Isca and some very good hunting. We’ll take some spearmen with us. Arthur doesn’t think he needs any, but he has enemies and he needs a warband.’

I paced up and down the room. ‘But Mordred!’ I complained bitterly. ‘He’s to be given back the power?’

‘It’s the price we had to pay for Gwent’s army,’ Guinevere said, ‘and if Argante is to marry Mordred then he must have his power or else Oengus will never agree to the marriage. Or at least Mordred must be given some of his power, and she must share it.’

‘And all Arthur achieved will be broken!’ I said.

‘Arthur has freed Dumnonia of Saxons,’ Guinevere said, ‘and he does not want to be King. You know that, and I know that. It isn’t what I want, Derfel. I always wanted Arthur to be the High King and for Gwydre to succeed him, but he doesn’t want it and he won’t fight for it. He wants quiet, he tells me. And if he won’t rule Dumnonia, then Mordred must. Gwent’s insistence and Arthur’s oath to Uther ensures that.’

‘So he’ll just abandon Dumnonia to injustice and tyranny!’ I protested.

‘No,’ Guinevere said, ‘for Mordred will not have all the power.’

I gazed at her, and guessed from her voice that I had not understood everything. ‘Go on,’ I said guardedly.

‘Sagramor will stay. The Saxons are defeated, but there will still be a frontier and there is no one better than Sagramor to guard it. And the rest of Dumnonia’s army will swear their loyalty to another man. Mordred can rule, for he is King, but he will not command the spears, and a man without spears is a man without real power. You and Sagramor will hold that.’

‘No!’

Guinevere smiled. ‘Arthur knew you would say that, which is why I said I would persuade you.’

‘Lady,’ I began to protest, but she held up a hand to silence me.

‘You are to rule Dumnonia, Derfel. Mordred will be King, but you will have the spears, and the man who commands the spears rules. You must do it for Arthur, because only if you agree can he leave Dumnonia with a clear conscience. So, to give him peace, do it for him and, maybe,’ she hesitated, ‘for me too? Please?’

Merlin was right. When a woman wants something, she gets it.

And I was to rule Dumnonia.

Taliesin made a song of Mynydd Baddon. He deliberately made it in the old style with a simple rhythm that throbbed with drama, heroism and bombast. It was a very long song, for it was important that every warrior who fought well received at least a half-line of praise, while our leaders had whole verses to themselves. After the battle Taliesin joined Guinevere’s household and he sensibly gave his patroness her due, wonderfully describing the hurtling wagons with their heaps of fire, but avoiding any mention of the Saxon wizard she had killed with her bow. He used her red hair as an image of the blood-soaked crop of barley amongst which some Saxons died, and though I never saw any barley growing on the battlefield, it was a clever touch. He made the death of his old patron, Cuneglas, into a slow lament in which the dead King’s name was repeated like a drumbeat, and he turned Gawain’s charge into a chilling account of how the wraith-souls of our dead spearmen came from the bridge of swords to assail the enemy’s flank. He praised Tewdric, was kind to me and gave honour to Sagramor, but above all his song was a celebration of Arthur. In Taliesin’s song it was Arthur who flooded the valley with enemy blood, and Arthur who struck down the enemy King, and Arthur who made all Lloegyr cower with terror. The Christians hated Taliesin’s song. They made their own songs in which it was Tewdric who beat down the Saxons. The Lord God Almighty, the Christian songs claimed, had heard Tewdric’s pleas and fetched the host of heaven to the battlefield and there His angels fought the Sais with swords of fire. Arthur received no mention in their songs, indeed the pagans were given none of the credit for the victory and to this day there are folk who declare that Arthur was not even present at Mynydd Baddon. One Christian song actually credits Meurig with Aelle’s death, and Meurig was not present at Mynydd Baddon, but at home in Gwent. After the battle Meurig was restored to his kingship, while Tewdric returned to his monastery where he was declared a saint by Gwent’s bishops. Arthur was much too busy that summer to care about making songs or saints. In the weeks following the battle we took back huge parts of Lloegyr, though we could not take it all for plenty of Saxons remained in Britain. The further east we went, the stiifer their resistance became, but by autumn the enemy was penned back into a territory only half the size they had previously ruled. Cerdic even paid us tribute that year, and he promised to pay it for ten years to come, though he never did. Instead he welcomed every boat that came across the sea and slowly rebuilt his broken forces. Aelle’s kingdom was divided. The southern portion went back into Cerdic’s hands, while the northern part broke into three or four small kingdoms that were ruthlessly raided by warbands from Elmet, Powys and Gwent. Thousands of Saxons came under British rule, indeed all of Dumnonia’s new eastern lands were inhabited by them. Arthur wanted us to resettle that land, but few Britons were willing to go there and so the Saxons stayed, farmed and dreamed of the day when their own Kings would return. Sagramor became the virtual ruler of Dumnonia’s reclaimed lands. The Saxon chiefs knew their King was Mordred, but in those first years after Mynydd Baddon it was to Sagramor they paid their homage and taxes, and it was his stark black banner that flew above the old river fort at Pontes from where his warriors marched to keep the peace.

Arthur led the campaign to take back the stolen land, but once it was secured and once the Saxons had agreed our new frontiers, he left Dumnonia. To the very last some of us hoped he would break the promise he had given to Meurig and Tewdric, but he had no wish to stay. He had never wanted power. He had taken it as a duty at a time when Dumnonia possessed a child King and a score of ambitious warlords whose rivalry would have torn the land into turmoil, but through all the years that followed he had ever clung to his dream of living a simpler life, and once the Saxons were defeated he felt free to make his dream reality. I pleaded with him to think again, but he shook his head. ‘I’m old, Derfel.’

‘Not much older than I am, Lord.’

‘Then you’re old,’ he said with a smile. ‘Over forty! How many men live forty years?’

Few indeed. Yet even so I think Arthur would have wanted to stay in Dumnonia if he had received what he wanted, and that was gratitude. He was a proud man, and he knew what he had done for the country, but the country had rewarded him with a sullen discontent. The Christians had broken his peace first, but afterwards, following the fires of Mai Dun, the pagans had turned against him. He had given Dumnonia justice, he had regained much of its lost land and secured its new frontiers, he had ruled honestly, and his reward was to be derided as the enemy of the Gods. Besides, he had promised Meurig he would leave Dumnonia, and that promise reinforced the oath he had given to Uther to make Mordred King, and now he declared he would keep both promises in full. ‘I’ll have no happiness until the oaths are kept,’ he told me, and he could not be persuaded otherwise and so, when the new frontier with the Saxons was decided and Cerdic’s first tribute had been paid, he left. He took sixty horsemen and a hundred spearmen and went to the town of Isca in Siluria, which lay north across the Severn Sea from Dumnonia. He had originally proposed to take no spearmen with him, but Guinevere’s advice had prevailed. Arthur, she said, had enemies and needed protection, and besides, his horsemen were among the most potent of Britain’s warriors and she did not want them falling under another man’s command. Arthur let himself be persuaded, though in truth I do not think he needed much persuasion. He might dream of being a-mere landowner living in a peaceful countryside with no worries other than the health of his livestock and the state of his crops, but he knew that the only peace he would ever have was of his own making and that a lord who lives without warriors will not stay at peace for long.

Siluria was a small, poor and unregarded kingdom. The last King of its old dynasty had been Gundleus, who had died at Lugg Vale, and afterwards Lancelot was acclaimed the King, but he had disliked Siluria and had happily abandoned it for the wealthier throne of the Belgic country. Lacking another King, Siluria had been divided into two client kingdoms subservient to Gwent and Powys. Cuneglas had called himself King of Western Siluria, while Meurig was proclaimed King of Eastern Siluria, but in truth neither monarch had seen much value in its steep, cramped valleys that ran to the sea from its raw northern mountains. Cuneglas had recruited spearmen from the valleys while Meurig of Gwent had done little more than send missionaries into the territory, and the only King who had ever taken any interest in Siluria was Oengus mac Airem who had raided the valleys for food and slaves, but otherwise Siluria had been ignored. Its chieftains squabbled amongst themselves and grudgingly paid their taxes to Gwent or Powys, but the coming of Arthur changed all that. Whether he liked it or not he became Siluria’s most important inhabitant and thus its effective ruler and, despite his declared ambition to be a private man, he could not resist using his spearmen to end the chieftains’ ruinous squabbles. A year after Mynydd Baddon, when we first visited Arthur and Guinevere in Isca, he was wryly calling himself the Governor, a Roman title, and one that pleased him for it had no connotation of kingship. Isca was a beautiful town. The Romans had first made a fort there to guard the river crossing, but as they pushed their legions further west and north their need for the fort diminished and they turned Isca into a place not unlike Aquae Sulis: a town where Romans went to enjoy themselves. It had an amphitheatre and though it lacked hot springs, Isca still boasted six bath-houses, three palaces and as many temples as the Romans had Gods.

The town was much decayed now, but Arthur was repairing the law-courts and the palaces, and such work always made him happy. The largest of the palaces, the one where Lancelot had lived, was given to Culhwch, who had been named the commander of Arthur’s bodyguard and most of those guards shared the big palace with Culhwch. The second largest palace was now home to Emrys, once Bishop of Dumnonia but now the Bishop of Isca. ‘He couldn’t stay in Dumnonia,’ Arthur told me as he showed me the town. It was a year after Mynydd Baddon, and Ceinwyn and I were making our first visit to Arthur’s new home. ‘There isn’t room for both Emrys and Sansum in Dumnonia,’ Arthur explained, ‘so Emrys helps me here. He has an insatiable appetite for administration and, better still, he keeps Meurig’s Christians away.’

‘All of them?’ I asked.

‘Most of them,’ he said with a smile, ‘and it’s a fine place, Derfel,’ he went on, gazing at Isca’s paved streets, ‘a fine place!’ He was absurdly proud of his new home, claiming that the rain fell less hard on Isca than on the surrounding countryside. ‘I’ve seen the hills thick with snow,’ he told me, ‘and the sun has shone on green grass here.’

‘Yes, Lord,’ I said with a smile.

‘It’s true, Derfel! True! When I ride out of the town I take a cloak and there comes a point where the heat suddenly fades and you must pull on the cloak. You’ll see when we go hunting tomorrow.’

‘It sounds like magic,’ I said, gently teasing him, for normally he despised any talk of magic.

‘I think it well may be!’ he said in all seriousness and he led me down an alley that ran beside the big Christian shrine to a curious mound that stood in the town’s centre. A spiralling path climbed to the summit of the mound where the old people had made a shallow pit. The pit held countless small offerings left for the Gods; scraps of ribbon, tufts of fleece, buttons, all of them proof that Meurig’s missionaries, busy as they had been, had not entirely defeated the old religion. ‘If there is magic here,’ Arthur told me when we had climbed to the mound’s top and were staring down into the grassy pit, ‘then this is where it springs from. The local folk say it’s an entrance to the Otherworld.’

‘And you believe them?’

‘I just know this is a blessed place,’ he said happily, and so Isca was on that late summer’s day. The incoming tide had swollen the river so that it flowed deep within green banks, the sun shone on the white-walled buildings and on the leafy trees that grew in their courtyards, while to the north the small hills with their busy farmlands stretched peacefully to the mountains. It was hard to believe that not so many years before a Saxon raiding party had reached those hills and slaughtered farmers, captured slaves and left the crofts burning. That raid had been during Uther’s reign, and Arthur’s achievement had been to thrust the enemy so far back that it seemed, that summer and for many summers to come, that no free Saxon would ever come near Isca again.

The town’s smallest palace lay just to the west of the mound and it was there that Arthur and Guinevere lived. From our high point on the mysterious mound we could look down into the courtyard where Guinevere and Ceinwyn were pacing, and it was plain that it was Guinevere who was doing all the talking. ‘She’s planning Gwydre’s marriage,’ Arthur told me, ‘to Morwenna, of course,’ he added with a quick smile.

‘She’s ready for it,’ I said fervently. Morwenna was a good girl, but of late she had been moody and irritable. Ceinwyn assured me that Morwenna’s behaviour was merely the symptoms of a girl ready for marriage, and I for one would be grateful for the cure.

Arthur sat on the mound’s grassy lip and stared westwards. His hands, I noticed, were flecked with small dark scars, all from the furnace of the smithy he had built for himself in his palace’s stable yard. He had always been intrigued by blacksmithing and could enthuse for hours about its skills. Now, though, he had different matters on his mind. ‘Would you mind,’ he asked diffidently, ‘if Bishop Emrys blesses the marriage?’

‘Why would I mind?’ I asked. I liked Emrys.

‘Only Bishop Emrys,’ Arthur said. ‘No Druids. You must understand, Derfel, that I live here at Meurig’s pleasure. He is, after all, the King of this land.’

‘Lord,’ I began to protest, but he stilled me with a raised hand and I did not pursue my indignation. I knew that the young King Meurig was an uneasy neighbour. He resented the fact that his father had temporarily relieved him of his power, resented that he had not shared in any of Mynydd Baddon’s glory and was sullenly jealous of Arthur. Meurig’s Gwentian territory began only yards from this mound, at the far end of the Roman bridge that crossed the River Usk, and this eastern portion of Siluria was legally another of Meurig’s possessions.

‘It was Meurig who wanted me to live here as his tenant,’ Arthur explained, ‘but it was Tewdric who gave me the rights to all the old royal rents. He, at least, is grateful for what we achieved at Mynydd Baddon, but I very much doubt that young Meurig approves of the arrangement, so I placate him by making a show of allegiance to Christianity.’ He mimicked the sign of the cross and offered me a self-deprecating grimace.

‘You don’t need to placate Meurig,’ I said angrily. ‘Give me one month and I’ll drag the miserable dog back here on his knees.’

Arthur laughed. ‘Another war?’ He shook his head. ‘Meurig might be a fool, but he’s never been a man to seek war, so I cannot dislike him. He will leave me in peace so long as I don’t offend him. Besides, I have enough fighting on my hands without worrying about Gwent.’

His fights were small things. Oengus’s Blackshields still raided across Siluria’s western frontier and Arthur set small garrisons of spearmen to guard against those incursions. He felt no anger against Oengus who, indeed, he regarded as a friend, but Oengus could no more resist harvest raids than a dog could stop itself from scratching at fleas. Siluria’s northern border was more troubling because that joined Powys, and Powys, since Cuneglas’s death, had fallen into chaos. Perddel, Cuneglas’s son, had been acclaimed King, but at least a half-dozen powerful chieftains believed they had more right to the crown than Perddel — or at least the power to take the crown — and so the once mighty kingdom of Powys had degenerated into a squalid killing ground. Gwynedd, the impoverished country to the north of Powys, was raiding at will, warbands fought each other, made temporary alliances, broke them, massacred each other’s families and, whenever they themselves were in danger of massacre, retreated into the mountains. Enough spearmen had stayed loyal to Perddel to ensure that he kept the throne, but they were too few to defeat the rebellious chieftains. ‘I think we shall have to intervene,’ Arthur told me.

‘We, Lord?’

‘Meurig and I. Oh, I know he hates war, but sooner or later some of his missionaries will be killed in Powys and I suspect those deaths will persuade him to send spearmen to Perddel’s support. So long, of course, as Perddel agrees to establish Christianity in Powys, which he doubtless will if it gives him back his kingdom. And if Meurig goes to war he’ll probably ask me to go. He’d much rather that my men should die than his.’

‘Under the Christian banner?’ I asked sourly.

‘I doubt he’ll want another,’ Arthur said calmly. ‘I’ve become his tax-collector in Siluria, so why shouldn’t I be his warlord in Powys?’ He smiled wryly at the prospect, then gave me a sheepish look.

‘There is another reason to give Gwydre and Morwenna a Christian marriage,’ he said after a while.

‘Which is?’ I had to prompt him for it was clear that this further reason embarrassed him.

‘Suppose Mordred and Argante have no children?’ he asked me.

I said nothing for a while. Guinevere had raised the same possibility when I had spoken to her in Aquae Sulis, but it seemed an unlikely supposition. I said as much.

‘But if they are childless,’ Arthur insisted, ‘who would have the best claim to Dumnonia’s kingship?’

‘You would, of course,’ I insisted. Arthur was Uther’s son, even if he had been bastard born, and there were no other sons who might claim the kingdom.

‘No, no,’ he said quickly. ‘I don’t want it. I never have wanted it!’

I stared down at Guinevere, suspecting that it was she who had raised this problem of who should succeed Mordred. ‘Then it would be Gwydre?’ I asked.

‘Then it would be Gwydre,’ he agreed.

‘Does he want it?’ I asked.

‘I think so. He listens to his mother rather than to me.’

‘You don’t want Gwydre to be King?’

‘I want Gwydre to be whatever he wishes to be,’ Arthur said, ‘and if Mordred provides no heir and Gwydre wishes to make his claim then I will support him.’ He was staring down at Guinevere as he spoke and I guessed that she was the real force behind this ambition. She had always wanted to be married to a King, but would accept being the mother of one if Arthur refused the throne. ‘But as you say,’ Arthur went on, ‘it’s an unlikely supposition. I hope Mordred will have many sons, but if he doesn’t, and if Gwydre is called to rule, then he’ll need Christian support. The Christians rule in Dumnonia now, don’t they?’

‘They do, Lord,’ I said grimly.

‘So it would be politic of us to observe the Christian rites at Gwydre’s marriage,’ Arthur said, then gave me a sly smile. ‘You see how close your daughter is to becoming a Queen?’ I had honestly never thought of that before, and it must have shown on my face, for Arthur laughed. ‘A Christian marriage isn’t what I would want for Gwydre and Morwenna,’ he admitted. ‘If it was up to me, Derfel, I would have them married by Merlin.’

‘You have news of him, Lord?’ I asked eagerly.

‘None. I hoped you would.’

‘Only rumour,’ I said. Merlin had not been seen for a year. He had left Mynydd Baddon with Gawain’s ashes, or at least a bundle containing Gawain’s scorched and brittle bones and some ash that might have belonged to the dead Prince or might equally well have been wood ash, and since that day Merlin had not been seen. Rumour said he was in the Otherworld, other folk claimed he was in Ireland or else in the western mountains, — but no one knew for certain. He had told me he was going to help Nimue, but where she was no one knew either.

Arthur stood and brushed grass offhis trews. ‘Time for dinner,’ he said, ‘and I warn you that Taliesin is liable to chant an extremely tedious song about Mynydd Baddon. Worse, it’s still unfinished! He keeps adding verses. Guinevere tells me it’s a masterpiece, and I suppose it must be if she says so, but why do I have to endure it at every dinner?’

That was the first time I heard Taliesin sing and I was entranced. It was, as Guinevere said to me later, as though he could pull the music of the stars down to earth. He had a wondrously pure voice, and could hold a note longer than any other bard I ever heard. He told me later that he practised breathing, a thing I would never have thought needed practice, but it meant he could linger on a dying note while he pulsed it to its exquisite end with strokes on his harp, or else he could make a room echo and shudder with his triumphant voice, and I swear that on that summer night in Isca he made the battle of Mynydd Baddon live again. I heard Taliesin sing many times, and every time I heard him with the same astonishment. Yet he was a modest man. He understood his power and was comfortable with it. It pleased him to have Guinevere as a patroness, for she was generous and appreciated his art, and she allowed him to spend weeks at a time away from the palace. I asked him where he went during those absences and he told me he liked to visit the hills and valleys and sing to the people. ‘And not just sing,’ he told me, ‘but listen as well. I like the old songs. Sometimes they only remember snatches of them and I try to make them whole again.’ It was important, he said, to listen to the songs of the common folk, for that taught him what they liked, but he also wanted to sing his own songs to them. ‘It’s easy to entertain lords,’ he said, ‘for they need entertainment, but a farmer needs sleep before he wants song, and if I can keep him awake then I know my song has merit.’ And sometimes, he told me, he just sang to himself. ‘I sit under the stars and sing,’ he told me with a wry smile.

‘Do you truly see the future?’ I asked him during that conversation.

‘I dream it,’ he said, as though it were no great gift. ‘But seeing the future is like peering through a mist and the reward is scarcely worth the effort. Besides, I never can tell, Lord, whether my visions of the future come from the Gods or from my own fears. I am, after all, only a bard.’ He was, I think, being evasive. Merlin had told me that Taliesin stayed celibate to preserve his gift of prophecy, so he must have valued it more highly than he implied, but he disparaged the gift to discourage men from asking about it. Taliesin, I think, saw our future long before any of us had a glimpse of it, and he did not want to reveal it. He was a very private man.

‘Only a bard?’ I asked, repeating his last words. ‘Men say you are the greatest of all the bards.’

He shook his head, rejecting my flattery. ‘Only a bard,’ he insisted, ‘though I did submit to the Druid’s training. I learned the mysteries from Celafydd in Cornovia. Seven years and three I learned, and at the very last day, when I could have taken the Druid’s staff, I walked from Celafydd’s cave and called myself a bard instead.’

‘Why?’

‘Because,’ he said after a long pause, ‘a Druid has responsibilities, and I did not want them. I like to watch, Lord Derfel, and to tell. Time is a story, and I would be its teller, not its maker. Merlin wanted to change the story and he failed. I dare not aim so high.’

‘Did Merlin fail?’ I asked him.

‘Not in small things,’ Taliesin said calmly, ‘but in the great? Yes. The Gods drift ever farther away and I suspect that neither my songs nor all Merlin’s fires can summon them now. The world turns, Lord, to new Gods, and maybe that’s no bad thing. A God is a God, and why should it matter to us which one rules? Only pride and habit hold us to the old Gods.’

‘Are you suggesting we should all become Christians?’ I asked harshly.

‘What God you worship is of no importance to me, Lord,’ he said. ‘I am merely here to watch, listen and sing.’

So Taliesin sang while Arthur governed with Guinevere in Siluria. My task was to be a bridle on Mordred’s mischief in Dumnonia. Merlin had vanished, probably into the haunting mists of the deep west. The Saxons cowered, but still yearned for our land, and in the heavens, where there is no bridle on their mischief, the Gods rolled the dice anew.

Mordred was happy in those years after Mynydd Baddon. The battle had given him a taste for warfare, and he pursued it greedily. For a time he was content to fight under Sagramor’s guidance; raiding into shrunken Lloegyr or hunting down Saxon warbands that came to plunder our crops and livestock, but after a while he became frustrated by Sagramor’s caution. The Numidian had no desire to start a full-scale war by conquering the territory Cerdic still possessed and where the Saxons remained strong, but Mordred desperately wanted another clash of shield walls. He once ordered Sagramor’s spearmen to follow him into Cerdic’s territory, but those men refused to march without Sagramor’s orders and Sagramor forbade the invasion. Mordred sulked for a time, but then a plea for help arrived from Broceli-ande, the British kingdom in Armorica, and Mordred led a warband of volunteers to fight against the Franks who were pressing on King Budic’s borders. He stayed in Armorica for over five years and in that time he made a name for himself. In battle, men told me, he was fearless, and his victories attracted yet more men to his dragon banner. They were masterless men; rogues and outlaws who could grow rich on plunder, and Mordred gave them their hearts’ desires. He took back a good part of the old kingdom of Benoic and bards began to sing of him as an Uther reborn, even as a second Arthur, though other tales, never turned into song, also came home across the grey waters, and those tales spoke of rape and murder, and of cruel men given licence.

Arthur himself fought during those years for, just as he had foreseen, some of Meurig’s missionaries were massacred in Powys and Meurig demanded Arthur’s aid in punishing the rebels who had killed the priests, and so Arthur rode north on one of his greatest campaigns. I was not there to help him, for I had responsibilities in Dumnonia, but we all heard the stories. Arthur persuaded Oengus mac Airem to attack the rebels out of Demetia, and while Oengus’s Blackshields attacked from the west, Arthur’s men came from the south and Meurig’s army, marching two days behind Arthur, arrived to find the rebellion quashed and most of the murderers captured, but some of the priests’ killers had taken refuge in Gwynedd, where Byrthig, the King of that mountainous country, refused to hand them over. Byrthig still hoped to use the rebels to gain more land in Powys and so Arthur, ignoring Meurig’s counsel for caution, surged on northwards. He defeated Byrthig at Caer Gei and then, without pause, and still using the excuse that some of the priest-killers had fled further north, he led his warband over the Dark Road into the dread kingdom of Lleyn. Oengus followed him, and at the sands of Foryd where the River Gwyrfair slides to the sea, Oengus and Arthur trapped King Diwrnach between their forces and so broke the Bloodshields of Lleyn. Diwrnach drowned, over a hundred of his spearmen were massacred, and the remainder fled in panic. In two summer months Arthur had ended the rebellion in Powys, cowed Byrthig and destroyed Diwrnach, and by doing the latter he had kept his oath to Guinevere that he would avenge the loss of her father’s kingdom. Leodegan, her father, had been King of Henis-Wyren, but Diwrnach had come from Ireland, taken Henis-Wyren by storm, renamed it Lleyn, and so made Guinevere a penniless exile. Now Diwrnach was dead and I thought Guinevere might insist that his captured kingdom be given to her son, but she made no protest when Arthur handed Lleyn into Oengus’s keeping in the hope that it would keep his Black-shields too busy to raid into Powys. It was better, Arthur later told me, that Lleyn should have an Irish ruler, for the great majority of its people were Irish and Gwydre would ever have been a stranger to them, and so Oengus’s elder son ruled in Lleyn and Arthur carried Diwrnach’s sword back to Isca as a trophy for Guinevere.

I saw none of it, for I was governing Dumnonia where my spearmen collected Mordred’s taxes and enforced Mordred’s justice. Issa did most of the work, for he was now a Lord in his own right and I had given him half my spearmen. He was also a father now, and Scarach his wife was expecting another child. She lived with us in Dun Caric from where Issa rode out to patrol the country, and from where, each month and ever more reluctantly, I went south to attend the Royal Council in Durnova-ria. Argante presided over those meetings, for Mordred had sent orders that his Queen was to take his high place at the council. Not even Guinevere had attended council meetings, but Mordred insisted and so Argante summoned the council and had Bishop Sansum as her chief ally. Sansum had rooms in the palace and was forever whispering in Argante’s ear while Fergal, her Druid, whispered in the other. Sansum proclaimed a hatred of all pagans, but when he saw that he would have no power unless he shared it with Fergal, his hatred dissolved into a sinister alliance. Morgan, Sansum’s wife, had returned to Ynys Wydryn after Mynydd Baddon, but Sansum stayed in Durnovaria, preferring the Queen’s confidences to his wife’s company.

Argante enjoyed exercising the royal power. I do not think she had any great love for Mordred, but she did possess a passion for money, and by staying in Dumnonia she made certain that the greater part of the country’s taxes passed through her hands. She did little with the wealth. She did not build as Arthur and Guinevere had built, she did not care about restoring bridges or forts, she just sold the taxes, whether they were salt, grain or hides, in return for gold. She sent some of the gold to her husband, who was forever demanding more money for his warband, but most she piled up in the palace vaults until the folk of Durnovaria reckoned their town was built on a foundation of gold. Argante had long ago retrieved the treasure I had hidden beside the Fosse Way, and to that she now added more and more, and she was encouraged in her hoarding by Bishop Sansum who, as well as being Bishop of all Dumnonia, was now named Chief Counsellor and Royal Treasurer. I did not doubt that he was using the last office to skim the treasury for his own hoard. I accused him of that one day and he immediately adopted a hurt expression. ‘I do not care for gold, Lord,’ he said piously. ‘Did not our Lord command us not to lay up treasures on earth, but in heaven?’

I grimaced. ‘He could command what he liked,’ I said, ‘but you would still sell your soul for gold, Bishop, and so you should, for it would prove a good bargain.’

He gave me a suspicious look. ‘A good bargain? Why?’ ‘Because you would be exchanging filth for money, of course,’ I said. I could make no pretence of liking Sansum, nor he for liking me. The mouse lord was always accusing me of trimming men’s taxes in return for favours, and as proof of the accusation he cited the fact that each successive year less money came into the treasury, but that shortfall was none of my doing. Sansum had persuaded Mordred to sign a decree which exempted all Christians from taxation and I dare say the church never found a better way of making converts, though Mordred rescinded the law as soon as he realized how many souls and how little gold he was saving; but then Sansum persuaded the King that the church, and only the church, should be responsible for collecting the taxes of Christians. That increased the yield for a year, but it fell thereafter as the Christians discovered that it was cheaper to bribe Sansum than to pay their King. Sansum then proposed doubling the taxes of all pagans, but Argante and Fergal stopped that measure. Instead Argante suggested that all the taxes on the Saxons should be doubled, but Sagramor refused to collect the increase, claiming it would only provoke rebellion in those parts of Lloegyr that we had settled. It was no wonder that I hated attending council meetings, and after a year or two of such fruitless wrangling I abandoned the meetings altogether. Issa went on collecting taxes, but only the honest men paid and there seemed fewer honest men each year, and so Mordred was forever complaining of being penniless while Sansum and Argante grew rich. Argante became rich, but she stayed childless. She sometimes visited Broceliande and, once in a long while, Mordred returned to Dumnonia, but Argante’s belly never swelled after such visits. She prayed, she sacrificed and she visited sacred springs in her attempts to have a child, but she stayed barren. I remember the stink at council meetings when she wore a girdle smeared with the faeces of a newborn child, supposedly a certain remedy for barrenness, but that worked no better than the infusions of bryony and mandrake that she drank daily. Eventually Sansum persuaded her that only Christianity could bring her the miracle and so, two years after Mordred had first gone to Broceliande, Argante threw Fergal, her Druid, out of the palace and was publicly baptized in the River Ffraw that flows around Durnova-ria’s northern margin. For six months she attended daily services in the huge church Sansum had built in the town centre, but at the end of the six months her belly was as flat as it had been before she had waded into the river. So Fergal was summoned back to the palace and brought with him new concoctions of bat dung and weasel blood that were supposed to make Argante fertile.

By then Gwydre and Morwenna were married and had produced their first child, and that child was a boy whom they named Arthur and who was ever afterwards known as Arthur-bach, Arthur the Little. The child was baptized by Bishop Emrys, and Argante saw the ceremony as a provocation. She knew that neither Arthur nor Guinevere had any great love for Christianity, and that by baptizing their grandson they were merely currying favour with the Christians in Dumnonia whose support would be needed if Gwydre were to take the throne. Besides, Arthur-bach’s very existence was a reproach to Mordred. A King should be fecund, it was his duty, and Mordred was failing in that duty. It did not matter that he had whelped bastards the length and breadth of Dumnonia and Armorica, he was not whelping an heir on Argante and the Queen spoke darkly of his crippled foot, she remembered the evil omens of his birth and she looked sourly towards Siluria where her rival, my daughter, was proving capable of breeding new Princes. The Queen became more desperate, even dipping into her treasury to pay in gold any fraudster who promised her a swollen womb, but not all the sorceresses of Britain could help her conceive and, if rumour spoke true, not half the spearmen in her palace guard either. And all the while Gwydre waited in Siluria and Argante knew that if Mordred died then Gwydre would rule in Dumnonia unless she produced an heir of her own.

I did my best to preserve Dumnonia’s peace in those early years of Mordred’s rule and, for a time, my efforts were helped by the King’s absence. I appointed the magistrates and so made sure that Arthur’s justice continued. Arthur had always loved good laws, claiming they bound a country together like the willow-boards of a shield are gripped by their leather cover, and he had taken immense trouble to appoint magistrates whom he could trust to be impartial. They were, for the most part, landowners, merchants and priests, and almost all were wealthy enough to resist the corrosive effects of gold. If men can buy the law, Arthur had always said, then the law becomes worthless, and his magistrates were famous for their honesty, but it did not take long for folk in Dumnonia to discover that the magistrates could be outflanked. By paying money to Sansum or Argante they guaranteed that Mordred would write from Armorica ordering a decision changed and so, year after year, I found myself fighting a rising sea of small injustices. The honest magistrates resigned rather than have their rulings constantly reversed, while men who might have submitted their grievances to a court preferred to settle them with spears. That erosion of the law was a slow process, but I could not halt it. I was supposed to be a bridle on Mordred’s capriciousness. but Argante and Sansum were twin spurs, and the spurs were overcoming the bridle.

Yet, on the whole, that was a happy time. Few folk lived as long as forty years, yet both Ceinwyn and I did and both of us were given good health by the Gods. Morwenna’s marriage gave us joy, and the birth of Arthur-bach even more, and a year later our daughter Seren was married to Ederyn, the Edling of Elmet. It was a dynastic marriage, for Seren was first cousin to Perddel, King of Powys, and the marriage was not contracted for love, but to strengthen the alliance between Elmet and Powys and though Ceinwyn opposed the marriage for she saw no evidence of affection between Seren and Ederyn, Seren had set her heart on being a Queen and so she married her Edling and moved far away from us. Poor Seren, she never did become a Queen, for she died giving birth to her first child, a daughter who lived only half a day longer than her mother. Thus did the second of my three daughters cross to the Otherworld.

We wept for Seren, though the tears were not so bitter as those we had shed at Dian’s death, for Dian had died so cruelly young, but just a month after Seren died Morwenna gave birth to a second child, a daughter whom she and Gwydre named Seren, and those grandchildren were a growing brightness in our lives. They did not come to Dumnonia because there they would have been in danger from Argante’s jealousy, but Ceinwyn and I went often enough to Siluria. Indeed, our visits became so frequent that Guinevere kept rooms in her palace just for our use and, after a while, we spent more time in Isca than we did in Dun Caric. My head and beard were going grey and I was content to let Issa struggle with Argante while I played with my grandchildren. I built my mother a house on Siluria’s coast, but by then she was so mad that she did not know what was happening and kept trying to return to her tidewood hovel on its bluff above the sea. She died in one of the winter plagues and, as I had promised Aelle, I buried her like a Saxon with her feet to the north.

Dumnonia decayed, and there seemed little I could do to prevent the decay for Mordred had just enough power to outflank me, but Issa preserved what order and justice he could while Ceinwyn and I spent more and more of our time in Siluria. What sweet memories I keep of Isca; memories of sunny days with Taliesin singing lullabies and Guinevere gently mocking my happiness as I towed Arthur-bach and Seren in an upturned shield across the grass. Arthur would join the games, for he had ever adored children, and sometimes Galahad would be there for he had joined Arthur and Guinevere in their comfortable exile.

Galahad had still not married, though now he had a child. It was his nephew, Prince Peredur, Lancelot’s son, who had been found wandering in tears among the dead of Mynydd Baddon. As Peredur grew he came more and more to resemble his father; he had the same dark skin, the same lean and handsome face, and the same black hair, but in his character he was Galahad, not Lancelot. He was a clever, grave and earnest boy, and anxious to be a good Christian. I do not know how much of his father’s history he knew, but Peredur was always nervous of Arthur and Guinevere, and they, I think, found him unsettling. That was not his fault, but rather because his face reminded them of what we would all have preferred to forget, and both were grateful when, at twelve years old, Peredur was sent to Meurig’s court in Gwent to learn a warrior’s skills. He was a good boy, yet with his departure it was as though a shadow had gone from Isca. In later years, long after Arthur’s story was done, I came to know Peredur well and to value him as highly as I have valued any man.

Peredur might have unsettled Arthur, but there were few other shadows to trouble him. In these dark days, when folk look back and remember what they lost when Arthur went, they usually speak of Dumnonia, but others also mourn Siluria, for in those years he gave that unregarded kingdom a time of peace and justice. There was still disease, and still poverty, and men did not cease from getting drunk and killing each other just because Arthur governed, but widows knew that his courts would give redress, and the hungry knew that his granaries held food to last a winter. No enemy raided across Siluria’s border, and though the Christian religion spread fast through the valleys, Arthur would not let its priests defile the pagan shrines, nor allow the pagans to attack the Christian churches. In those years he made Siluria into what he had dreamed he could make all Britain: a haven. Children were not enslaved, crops were not burned and warlords did not ravage homesteads.

Yet beyond the haven’s borders, dark things loomed. Merlin’s absence was one. Year after year passed, and still there was no news, and after a while folk assumed the Druid must have died for surely no man, not even Merlin, could live so long. Meurig was a nagging and irritable neighbour, forever demanding higher taxes or a purge of the Druids who lived in Siluria’s valleys, though Tewdric, his father, was a moderating influence when he could be stirred from his self-imposed life of near starvation. Powys stayed weak, and Dumnonia became increasingly lawless, though it was spared the worst of Mordred’s rule by his absence. In Siluria alone, it seemed, there was happiness, and Ceinwyn and I began to think that we would live the rest of our days in Isca. We had wealth, we had friends, we had family and we were happy.

We were, in short, complacent, and fate has ever been the enemy of complacency, and fate, as Merlin always told me, is inexorable.

I was hunting with Guinevere in the hills north of Isca when I first heard of Mordred’s calamity. It was winter, the trees were bare, and Guinevere’s prized deerhounds had just run down a great red stag when a messenger from Dumnonia found me. The man handed me a letter, then watched wide-eyed as Guinevere waded among the snarling dogs to put the beast out of its misery with one merciful stab of her short spear. Her huntsmen whipped the hounds off the corpse, then drew their knives to gralloch the stag. I pulled open the parchment, read the brief message, then looked at the messenger. ‘Did you show this to Arthur?’ ‘No, Lord,’ the man said. ‘The letter was addressed to you.’ ‘Take it to him now,’ I said, handing him the sheet of parchment.

Guinevere, happily blood-streaked, stepped out of the carnage. ‘You look as if it was bad news, Derfel.’

‘On the contrary,’ I said, ‘it’s good news. Mordred has been wounded.’

‘Good!’ Guinevere exulted. ‘Badly, I hope?’

‘It seems so. An axe blow to the leg.’

‘Pity it wasn’t to the heart. Where is he?’

‘Still in Armorica,’ I said. The message had been dictated by Sansum and it said that Mordred had been surprised and defeated by an army led by Clovis, High King of the Franks, and that in the battle our King had been badly wounded in the leg. He had escaped, and was now besieged by Clovis in one of the ancient hilltop forts of old Benoic. I surmised that Mordred must have been wintering in the territory that he had conquered from the Franks and which he doubtless thought would make him a second kingdom across the sea, but Clovis had led his Frankish army westwards in a surprise winter campaign. Mordred had been defeated and, though he was still alive, he was trapped.

‘How reliable is the news?’ Guinevere asked.

‘Reliable enough,’ I said. ‘King Budic sent Argante a messenger.’

‘Good!’ Guinevere said. ‘Good! Let’s hope the Franks kill him.’ She stepped back into the growing pile of steaming offal to find a scrap for one of her beloved hounds. ‘They will kill him, won’t they?’ she asked me.

‘Franks aren’t noted for their mercy,’ I said.

‘I hope they dance on his bones,’ she said. ‘Calling himself a second Uther!’

‘He fought well for a time, Lady.’

‘It isn’t how well you fight that matters, Derfel, it’s whether or not you win the last battle.’ She threw scraps of the stag’s guts to her dogs, wiped her knife blade on her tunic, then thrust it back into its sheath. ‘So what does Argante want of you?’ she asked me. ‘A rescue?’ Argante was demanding exactly that, and so was Sansum which is why he had written to me. His message ordered me to march all my men to the south coast, find ships and go to Mordred’s relief. I told Guinevere as much and she gave me a mocking glance. ‘And you’re going to tell me that your oath to the little bastard will force you to obey?’

‘I have no oath to Argante,’ I said, ‘and certainly none to Sansum.’ The mouse lord could order me as much as he liked, but I had no need to obey him nor any wish to rescue Mordred. Besides, I doubted that an army could be shipped to Armorica in winter, and even if my spearmen did survive the rough crossing they would be too few to fight the Franks. The only help Mordred might expect would be from old King Budic of Broceliande, who was married to Arthur’s elder sister, Anna, but while Budic might have been happy to have Mordred killing Franks in the land that used to be Benoic, he would have no wish to attract Clovis’s attention by sending spearmen to Mordred’s rescue. Mordred, I thought, was doomed. If his wound did not kill him, Clovis would.

For the rest of that winter Argante harried me with messages demanding that I take my men across the sea, but I stayed in Siluria and ignored her. Issa received the same demands, but he flatly refused to obey, while Sagramor simply threw Argante’s messages into the flames. Argante, seeing her power slip with her husband’s waning life, became more desperate and offered gold to spearmen who would sail to Armorica. Though many spearmen took the gold, they preferred to sail westwards to Kernow or hurry north into Gwent rather than sail south to where Clovis’s grim army waited. And as Argante despaired, our hopes grew. Mordred was trapped and sick, and sooner or later news must come of his death and when that news came we planned to ride into Dumnonia under Arthur’s banner with Gwydre as our candidate for the kingship. Sagramor would come from the Saxon frontier to support us and no man in Dumnonia would have the power to oppose us.

But other men were also thinking of Dummonia’s kingship. I learned that early in the spring when Saint Tewdric died. Arthur was sneezing and shivering with the last of the winter’s colds and he asked Galahad to go to the old King’s funeral rites in Burrium, the capital of Gwent which lay just a short journey up river from Isca, and Galahad pleaded with me to accompany him. I mourned for Tewdric, who had proved himself a good friend to us, yet I had no wish to attend his funeral and thus be forced to endure the interminable droning of the Christian rites, but Arthur added his pleas to Galahad’s. ‘We live here at Meurig’s pleasure,’ he reminded me, ‘and we’d do well to show him respect. I would go if I could,’ he paused to sneeze, ‘but Guinevere says it will be the death of me.’

So Galahad and I went in Arthur’s place and the funeral service did indeed seem never ending. It took place in a great barn-like church that Meurig had built in the year marking the supposed five hundredth anniversary of the appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ on this sinful earth, and once the prayers inside the church were all said or chanted, we had to endure still more prayers at Tewdric’s graveside. There was no balefire, no singing spearmen, just a cold pit in the ground, a score of bobbing priests and an undignified rush to get back to the town and its taverns when Tewdric was at last buried. Meurig commanded Galahad and me to take supper with him. Peredur, Galahad’s nephew, joined us, as did Burrium’s bishop, a gloomy soul named Lladarn who had been responsible for the most tedious of the day’s prayers, and he began supper with yet another long-winded prayer after which he made an earnest enquiry about the state of my soul and was grieved when I assured him that it was safe in Mithras’s keeping. Such an answer would normally have irritated Meurig, but he was too distracted to notice the provocation. I know he was not unduly upset by his father’s death, for Meurig was still resentful that Tewdric had taken back his power at the time of Mynydd Baddon, but at least he affected to be distressed and bored us with insincere praise of his father’s saintliness and sagacity. I expressed the hope that Tewdric’s death had been merciful and Meurig told me that his father had starved to death in his attempt to imitate the angels.

‘There was nothing of him at the end,’ Bishop Lladarn elaborated, ‘just skin and bone, he was, skin and bone! But the monks say that his skin was suffused with a heavenly light, praise God!’

‘And now the saint is on God’s right hand,’ Meurig said, crossing himself, ‘where one day I shall be with him. Try an oyster, Lord.’ He pushed a silver dish towards me, then poured himself wine. He was a pale young man with protuberant eyes, a thin beard and an irritably pedantic manner. Like his father he aped Roman manners. He wore a bronze wreath on his thinning hair, dressed in a toga and ate while lying on a couch. The couches were deeply uncomfortable. He had married a sad and ox-like Princess from Rheged who had arrived in Gwent a pagan, produced male twins and then had Christianity whipped into her stubborn soul. She appeared in the dimly lit supper room for a few moments, ogled us, said and ate nothing, then disappeared as mysteriously as she had arrived.

‘You have any news of Mordred?’ Meurig asked us after his wife’s brief visit.

‘We hear nothing new, Lord King,’ Galahad said. ‘He is penned in by Clovis, but whether he lives or not, we don’t know.’

‘I have news,’ Meurig said, pleased to have heard it before us. ‘A merchant came yesterday with news from Broceliande and he tells us that Mordred is very near death. His wound is festering.’ The King picked his teeth with a sliver of ivory. ‘It must be God’s judgement, Prince Galahad, God’s judgement.’

‘Praise His name,’ Bishop Lladarn intervened. The Bishop’s grey beard was so long it vanished under his couch. He used the beard as a towel, wiping grease from his hands into its long, dirt-clotted strands.

‘We have heard such rumours before, Lord King,’ I said.

Meurig shrugged. ‘The merchant seemed very sure of himself,’ he said, then tipped an oyster down his throat. ‘So if Mordred isn’t dead already,’ he went on, ‘he probably will be soon, and without leaving a child!’

‘True,’ Galahad said.

‘And Perddel of Powys is also childless,’ Meurig went on.

‘Perddel is unmarried, Lord King,’ I pointed out.

‘But does he look to marry?’ Meurig demanded of us.

‘There’s been talk of him marrying a Princess from Kernow,’ I said, ‘and some of the Irish Kings have offered daughters, but his mother wishes him to wait a year or two.’

‘He’s ruled by his mother, is he? No wonder he’s weak,’ Meurig said in his petulant, high-toned voice, ‘weak. I hear that Powys’s western hills are filled with outlaws?’

‘I hear the same, Lord King,’ I said. The mountains beside the Irish Sea had been haunted by masterless men ever since Cuneglas had died, and Arthur’s campaign in Powys, Gwynedd and Lleyn had only increased their numbers. Some of those refugees were spearmen from Diwrnach’s Bloodshields and, united with the disaffected men from Powys, they could have proved a new threat to Perddel’s throne, but so far they had been little more than a nuisance. They raided for cattle and grain, snatched children as slaves, then scampered back to their hill fastnesses to avoid retribution.

‘And Arthur?’ Meurig enquired. ‘How did you leave him?’

‘Not well, Lord King,’ Galahad said. ‘He would have wished to be here, but alas, he has a winter fever.’

‘Not serious?’ Meurig enquired with an expression that suggested he rather hoped Arthur’s cold would prove fatal. ‘One does hope not, of course,’ he added hastily, ‘but he is old, and the old do succumb to trifling things that a younger man would throw off.’

‘I don’t think Arthur’s old,’ I said.

‘He must be nearly fifty!’ Meurig pointed out indignantly.

‘Not for a year or two yet,’ I said.

‘But old,’ Meurig insisted, ‘old.’ He fell silent and I glanced round the palace chamber, which was lit by burning wicks floating in bronze dishes filled with oil. Other than the five couches and the low table there was no other furniture and the only decoration was a carving of Christ on the cross that hung high on a wall. The Bishop gnawed at a pork rib, Peredur sat silent, while Galahad watched the King with a look of faint amusement. Meurig picked his teeth again, then pointed the ivory sliver at me. ‘What happens if Mordred dies?’ He blinked rapidly, something he always did when he was nervous.

‘A new King must be found, Lord King,’ I said casually, as though the question held no real importance for me.

‘I had grasped that point,’ he said acidly, ‘but who?’

‘The Lords of Dumnonia will decide,’ I said evasively.

‘And will choose Gwydre?’ He blinked again as he challenged me. ‘That’s what I hear, they’ll choose Gwydre! Am I right?’

I said nothing and Galahad finally answered the King. ‘Gwydre certainly has a claim, Lord King,’ he said carefully.

‘He has no claim, none! None!’ Meurig squeaked angrily. ‘His father, need I remind you, is a bastard!’

‘As am I, Lord King,’ I intervened.

Meurig ignored that. ‘ “A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord”!’ he insisted. ‘It is written thus in the scriptures. Is that not so, Bishop?’

‘ “Even to the tenth generation the bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord”, Lord King,’ Lladarn intoned, then crossed himself. ‘Praise be for His wisdom and guidance, Lord King.’

‘There!’ Meurig said as though his whole argument was thus proved.

I smiled. ‘Lord King,’ I pointed out gently, ‘if we were to deny kingship to the descendants of bastards, we would have no Kings.’

He stared at me with pale, bulging eyes, trying to determine whether I had insulted his own lineage, but he must have decided against picking a quarrel. ‘Gwydre is a young man,’ he said instead, ‘and no son of a King. The Saxons grow stronger and Powys is ill-ruled. Britain lacks leaders, Lord Derfel, it lacks strong Kings!’

‘We daily chant hosannas because your own dear self proves the opposite, Lord King,’ Lladarn said oilily.

I thought the Bishop’s flattery was nothing more than a polite rejoinder, the sort of meaningless phrase courtiers ever utter to Kings, but Meurig took it as gospel truth. ‘Precisely!’ the King said enthusiastically, then gazed at me with open eyes as if expecting me to echo the Bishop’s sentiments.

‘Who,’ I asked instead, ‘would you like to see on Dumnonia’s throne, Lord King?’

His sudden and rapid blinking showed that he was discomfited by the question. The answer was obvious: Meurig wanted the throne for himself. He had half-heartedly tried to gain it before Mynydd Baddon, and his insistence that Gwent’s army would not help Arthur fight the Saxons unless Arthur renounced his own power had been a shrewd effort to weaken Dumnonia’s throne in the hope that it might one day fall vacant, but now, at last, he saw his opportunity, though he dared not announce his own candidacy openly until definite news of Mordred’s death reached Britain. ‘I will support,’ he said instead,

‘whichever candidate shows themselves to be a disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘I can do no other, for I serve Almighty God.’

‘Praise Him!’ the Bishop said hurriedly.

‘And I am reliably informed, Lord Derfel,’ Meurig went on earnestly, ‘that the Christians in Dumnonia cry out for a good Christian ruler. Cry out!’

‘And who informs you of their cry, Lord King?’ I asked in a voice so acid that poor Peredur looked alarmed. Meurig gave no answer, but nor did I expect one from him, so I supplied it myself. ‘Bishop Sansum?’ I suggested, and saw from Meurig’s indignant expression that I was right.

‘Why should you think that Sansum has anything to say in this matter?’ Meurig demanded, red-faced.

‘Sansum comes from Gwent, does he not, Lord King?’ I asked and Meurig blushed still more deeply, making it obvious that Sansum was indeed plotting to put Meurig on Dumnonia’s throne, and Meurig, Sansum could be sure, would be certain to reward Sansum with yet more power. ‘But I don’t think the Christians of Dumnonia need your protection, Lord King,’ I went on, ‘nor Sansum’s. Gwydre, like his father, is a friend to your faith.’

‘A friend! Arthur, a friend to Christ!’ Bishop Lladarn snapped at me. ‘There are pagan shrines in Siluria, beasts are sacrificed to the old Gods, women dance naked under the moon, infants are passed through the fire, Druids babble!’ Spittle sprayed from the Bishop’s mouth as he tallied this list of iniquities.

‘Without the blessings of Christ’s rule,’ Meurig leaned towards me, ‘there can be no peace.’

‘There can be no peace, Lord King,’ I said directly, ‘while two men want the same kingdom. What would you have me tell my son-in-law?’

Again Meurig was unsettled by my directness. He fiddled with an oyster shell while he considered his answer, then shrugged. ‘You may assure Gwydre that he will have land, honour, rank and my protection,’ he said, blinking rapidly, ‘but I will not see him made King of Dumnonia.’ He actually blushed as he spoke the last words. He was a clever man, Meurig, but a coward at heart and it must have taken a great effort for him to have expressed himself so bluntly. Maybe he feared my anger, but I gave him a courteous reply. ‘I shall tell him, Lord King,’ I said, though in truth the message was not for Gwydre, but for Arthur. Meurig was not only declaring his own bid to rule Dumnonia, but warning Arthur that Gwent’s formidable army would oppose Gwydre’s candidacy.

Bishop Lladarn leaned towards Meurig and spoke in an urgent whisper. He used Latin, confident that neither Galahad nor I would understand him, but Galahad spoke the language and half heard what was being said. ‘You’re planning to keep Arthur penned inside Siluria?’ he accused Lladarn in British. Lladarn blushed. As well as being the Bishop of Burrium, Lladarn was the King’s chief counsellor and thus a man of power. ‘My King,’ he said, bowing his head in Meurig’s direction, ‘cannot allow Arthur to move spearmen through Gwent’s territory.’

‘Is that true, Lord King?’ Galahad asked politely.

‘I am a man of peace,’ Meurig blustered, ‘and one way to secure peace is to keep spearmen at home.’

I said nothing, fearing that my anger would only make me blurt out some insult that would make things worse. If Meurig insisted that we could not move spearmen across his roads then he would have succeeded in dividing the forces that would support Gwydre. It meant that Arthur could not march to join Sagramor, nor Sagramor to join Arthur, and if Meurig could keep their forces divided then he would most likely be the next King of Dumnonia.

‘But Meurig won’t fight,’ Galahad said scornfully as we rode down the river towards Isca the next day. The willows were hazed with their first hint of spring leaves, but the day itself was a reminder of winter with a cold wind and drifting mists.

‘He might,’ I said, ‘if the prize is large enough.’ And the prize was huge, for if Meurig ruled both Gwent and Dumnonia then he would control the richest part of Britain. ‘It will depend,’ I said, ‘on how many spears oppose him.’

‘Yours, Issa’s, Arthur’s, Sagramor’s,’ Galahad said.

‘Maybe five hundred men?’ I said, ‘and Sagramor’s are a long way away, and Arthur’s would have to cross Gwent’s territory to reach Dumnonia. And how many men does Meurig command? A thousand?’

‘He won’t risk war,’ Galahad insisted. ‘He wants the prize, but he’s terrified of the risk.’ He had stopped his horse to watch a man fishing from a coracle in the centre of the river. The fisherman cast his hand net with a careless skill and, while Galahad was admiring the fisherman’s dexterity, I was weighting each cast with an omen. If this throw yields a salmon, I told myself, then Mordred will die. The throw did bring up a big struggling fish, and then I thought that the augury was a nonsense, for all of us would die, and so I told myself that the next cast must net a fish if Mordred was to die before Beltain. The net came up empty and I touched the iron of Hywelbane’s hilt. The fisherman sold us a part of his catch and we pushed the salmon into our saddlebags and rode on. I prayed to Mithras that my foolish omen was misleading, then prayed that Galahad was right, and that Meurig would never dare commit his troops. But for Dumnonia? Rich Dumnonia? That was worth a risk, even for a cautious man like Meurig. Weak kings are a curse on the earth, yet our oaths are made to kings, and if we had no oaths we would have no law, and if we had no law we would have mere anarchy, and so we must bind ourselves with the law, and keep the law by oaths, and if a man could change kings at whim then he could abandon his oaths with his inconvenient king, and so we need kings because we must have an immutable law. All that is true, yet as Galahad and I rode home through the wintry mists I could have wept that the one man who should have been a king would not be one, and that those who should never have been kings all were.

We found Arthur in his blacksmith’s shed. He had built the shed himself, made a hooded furnace from Roman bricks, then purchased an anvil and a set of blacksmith’s tools. He had always declared he wanted to be a blacksmith, though as Guinevere frequently remarked, wanting and being were not at all the same thing. But Arthur tried, how he tried! He employed a proper blacksmith, a gaunt and taciturn man named Morridig, whose task was to teach Arthur the skills of the trade, but Morridig had long despaired of teaching Arthur anything except enthusiasm. All of us, nevertheless, possessed items Arthur had made; iron candle-stands that had kinked shafts, misshapen cooking pots with ill-fitting handles or fire-spits that bowed over the flame. Yet the smithy made him happy, and he spent hours beside its hissing furnace, ever certain that a little more practice would make him as carelessly proficient as Morridig.

He was alone in the smithy when Galahad and I returned from Burrium. He grunted a distracted welcome, then went on hammering a shapeless piece of iron that he claimed was a shoe-plate for one of his horses. He reluctantly dropped the hammer when we presented him with one of the salmon we had bought, then interrupted our news by saying that he had already heard that Mordred was close to death.

‘A bard arrived from Armorica yesterday,’ he told us, ‘and says the King’s leg is rotting at the hip. The bard says he stinks like a dead toad.’

‘How does the bard know?’ I asked, for I had thought Mordred was surrounded and cut off from all the other Britons in Armorica.

‘He says it’s common knowledge in Broceliande,’ Arthur said, then happily added that he expected Dumnonia’s throne to be vacant in a matter of days, but we spoiled his cheerfulness by telling him of Meurig’s refusal to allow any of our spearmen to cross Gwent’s land and I furthered his gloom by adding my suspicions of Sansum. I thought for a second that Arthur was going to curse, something he did rarely, but he controlled the impulse, and instead moved the salmon away from the furnace. ‘Don’t want it to cook,’ he said. ‘So Meurig’s closed all the roads to us?’

‘He says he wants peace, Lord,’ I explained.

Arthur laughed sourly. ‘He wants to prove himself, that’s what he wants. His father’s dead and he’s eager to show that he’s a better man than Tewdric. The best way is to become a hero in battle and the second best is to steal a kingdom without a battle.’ He sneezed violently, then shook his head angrily. ‘I hate having a cold.’

‘You should be resting, Lord,’ I said, ‘not working.’

‘This isn’t work, this is pleasure.’

‘You should take coltsfoot in mead,’ Galahad said.

‘I’ve drunk nothing else for a week. Only two things cure colds: death or time.’ He picked up the hammer and gave the cooling lump of iron a ringing blow, then pumped the leather-jacketed bellows that fed air into the furnace. The winter had ended, but despite Arthur’s insistence that the weather was ever kind in Isca, it was a freezing day. ‘What’s your mouse lord up to?’ he asked me as he pumped the furnace into a shimmering heat.

‘He isn’t my mouse lord,’ I said of Sansum.

‘But he’s scheming, isn’t he? Wants his own candidate on the throne.’

‘But Meurig has no right to the throne!’ Galahad protested.

‘None at all,’ Arthur agreed, ‘but he has a lot of spears. And he’d have half a claim if he married a widowed Argante.’

‘He can’t marry her,’ Galahad said, ‘he’s married already.’

‘A toadstool will get rid of an inconvenient queen,’ Arthur said. ‘That’s how Uther got rid of his first wife. A toadstool in a mushroom stew.’ He thought for a few seconds, then tossed the shoe-plate into the fire. ‘Fetch Gwydre for me,’ he asked Galahad.

Arthur tortured the red-hot iron while we waited. A horse’s shoe-plate was a simple enough object, merely a sheet of iron that protected the vulnerable hoof from stones, and all it needed was an arch of iron that slipped over the front of the hoof and a pair of lugs at the back where the leather laces were attached, but Arthur could not seem to get the thing right. His arch was too narrow and high, the plate was kinked and the lugs too big. ‘Almost right,’ he said after hammering the thing for another frantic minute.

‘Right for what?’ I asked.

He chucked the shoe-plate back into the furnace then pulled off his fire-scarred apron as Galahad returned with Gwydre. Arthur told Gwydre the news of Mordred’s expected death, then of Meurig’s treachery, and finished with a simple question. ‘Do you want to be King of Dumnonia, Gwydre?’

Gwydre looked startled. He was a fine man, but young, very young. Nor, I think, was he particularly ambitious, though his mother was ambitious for him. He had Arthur’s face, long and bony, though it was marked with an expression of watchfulness as if he always expected fate to deal him a foul blow. He was thin, but I had practised swords with him often enough to know that there was a sinewy strength in his deceptively frail body. ‘I have a claim to the throne,’ he answered guardedly.

‘Because your grandfather bedded my mother,’ Arthur said irritably, ‘that’s your claim, Gwydre, nothing else. What I want to know is whether you truly wish to be King.’

Gwydre glanced at me for help, found none, and looked back to his father. ‘I think so, yes.’

‘Why?’

Again Gwydre hesitated, and I suppose a host of reasons whirled in his head, but he finally looked defiant. ‘Because I was born to it. I’m as much Uther’s heir as Mordred is.’

‘You reckon you were born to it, eh?’ Arthur asked sarcastically. He stooped and pumped the bellows, making the furnace roar and spit sparks into its brick hood. ‘Every man in this room is the son of a King except you, Gwydre,’ Arthur said fiercely, ‘and you say you’re born to it?’

‘Then you be King, father,’ Gwydre said, ‘and then I shall be the son of a King too.’

‘Well said,’ I put in.

Arthur gave me an angry glance, then plucked a rag from a pile beside his anvil and blew his nose into it. He tossed the rag onto the furnace. The rest of us simply blew our noses by pinching the nostrils between finger and thumb, but he had ever been fastidious. ‘Let us accept, Gwydre,’ he said, ‘that you are of the lineage of kings. That you are Uther’s grandson and therefore have a claim on Dumnonia’s throne. I have a claim too, as it happens, but I choose not to exercise it. I’m too old. But why should men like Derfel and Galahad fight to put you on Dumnonia’s throne? Tell me that.’

‘Because I shall be a good King,’ Gwydre said, blushing, then he looked at me. ‘And Morwenna will make a good Queen,’ he added.

‘Every man who was ever a king said he wanted to be good,’ Arthur grumbled, ‘and most turned out to be bad. Why should you be any different?’

‘You tell me, father,’ Gwydre said.

‘I’m asking you!’

‘But if a father doesn’t know a son’s character,’ Gwydre riposted, ‘who does?’

Arthur went to the smithy door, pushed it open and stared into the stable yard. Nothing stirred there except the usual tribe of dogs, and so he turned back. ‘You’re a decent man, son,’ he said grudgingly, ‘a decent man. I’m proud of you, but you think too well of the world. There’s evil out there, true evil, and you don’t credit it.’

‘Did you,’ Gwydre asked, ‘when you were my age?’

Arthur acknowledged the acuity of the question with a half-smile. ‘When I was your age,’ he said, ‘I believed I could make the world anew. I believed that all this world needed was honesty and kindness. I believed that if you treated folk well, that if you gave them peace and offered them justice they would respond with gratitude. I thought I could dissolve evil with good.’ He paused. ‘I suppose I thought of people as dogs,’ he went on ruefully, ‘and that if you gave them enough affection then they would be docile, but they aren’t dogs, Gwydre, they’re wolves. A king must rule a thousand ambitions, and all of them belong to deceivers. You will be flattered, and behind your back, mocked. Men will swear undying loyalty with one breath and plot your death with the next. And if you survive their plots, then one day you will be grey-bearded like me and you’ll look back on your life and realize that you achieved nothing. Nothing. The babies you admired in their mothers’ arms will have grown to be killers, the justice you enforced will be for sale, the people you protected will still be hungry and the enemy you defeated will still threaten your frontiers.’ He had grown increasingly angry as he spoke, but now softened the anger with a smile. ‘Is that what you want?’

Gwydre returned his father’s stare. I thought for a moment that he would falter, or perhaps argue with his father, but instead he gave Arthur a good answer. ‘What I want, father,’ he said, ‘is to treat folk well, to give them peace and offer them justice.’

Arthur smiled to hear his own words served back to him. ‘Then perhaps we should try to make you King, Gwydre. But how?’ He walked back to the furnace. ‘We can’t lead spearmen through Gwent, Meurig will stop us, but if we don’t have spearmen, we don’t have the throne.’

‘Boats,’ Gwydre said.

‘Boats?’ Arthur asked.

‘There must be two score of fishing-boats on our coast,’ Gwydre said, ‘and each can take ten or a dozen men.’

‘But not horses,’ Galahad said, ‘I doubt they can take horses.’

‘Then we must fight without horses,’ Gwydre said.

‘We may not even need to fight,’ Arthur said. ‘If we reach Dumnonia first, and if Sagramor joins us, I think young Meurig might hesitate. And if Oengus mac Airem sends a warband east towards Gwent then that will frighten Meurig even more. We can probably freeze Meurig’s soul by looking threatening enough.’

‘Why would Oengus help us fight his own daughter?’ I asked.

‘Because he doesn’t care about her, that’s why,’ Arthur said. ‘And we’re not fighting his daughter, Derfel, we’re fighting Sansum. Argante can stay in Dumnonia, but she can’t be Queen, not if Mordred’s dead.’ He sneezed again. ‘And I think you should go to Dumnonia soon, Derfel,’ he added.

‘To do what, Lord?’

‘To smell out the mouse lord, that’s what. He’s scheming, and he needs a cat to teach him a lesson, and you’ve got sharp claws. And you can show Gwydre’s banner. I can’t go because that would provoke Meurig too much, but you can sail across the Severn without rousing suspicions, and when news comes of Mordred’s death you proclaim Gwydre’s name at Caer Cadarn and make certain Sansum and Argante can’t reach Gwent. Put them both under guard and tell them it’s for their own protection.’

‘I’ll need men,’ I warned him.

‘Take a boatload, and then use Issa’s men,’ Arthur said, invigorated by the need to take decisions.

‘Sagramor will give you troops,’ he added, ‘and the moment I hear that Mordred’s dead I’ll bring Gwydre with all my spearmen. If I’m still alive, that is,’ he said, sneezing again.

‘You’ll live,’ Galahad said unsympathetically.

‘Next week,’ Arthur looked up at me with red-rimmed eyes, ‘go next week, Derfel.’

‘Yes, Lord.’

He bent to throw another handful of coals onto the blazing furnace. ‘The Gods know I never wanted that throne,’ he said, ‘but one way or another I consume my life fighting for it.’ He sniffed. ‘We’ll start gathering boats, Derfel, and you assemble spearmen at Caer Cadarn. If we look strong enough then Meurig will think twice.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’ I asked.

‘Then we’ve lost,’ Arthur said, ‘we’ve lost. Unless we fight a war, and I’m not sure I want to do that.’

‘You never do, Lord,’ I said, ‘but you always win them.’

‘So far,’ Arthur said gloomily, ‘so far.’

He picked up his tongs to rescue the shoe-plate from the fire, and I went to find a boat with which to snatch a kingdom.

Next morning, on a falling tide and in a west wind that whipped the River Usk into short steep waves, I embarked on my brother-in-law’s boat. Balig was a fisherman married to Linna, my half-sister, and he was amused to have discovered that he was related to a Lord of Dumnonia. He had also profited from the unexpected relationship, but he deserved the good fortune for he was a capable and decent man. Now he ordered six of my spearmen to take the boat’s long oars, and ordered the other four to crouch in the bilge. I only had a dozen of my spearmen in Isca, the rest were with Issa, but I reckoned these ten men should see me safe to Dun Caric. Balig invited me to sit on a wooden chest beside the steering oar.

‘And throw up over the gunwale, Lord,’ he added cheerfully.

‘Don’t I always?’

‘No. Last time you filled the scuppers with your breakfast. Waste offish-food, that. Cast offforrard, you worm-eaten toad!’ he shouted at his crew, a Saxon slave who had been captured at Mynydd Baddon, but who now had a British wife, two children and a noisy friendship with Balig. ‘Knows his boats, that I’ll say for him,’ Balig said of the Saxon, then he stooped to the stern line that still secured the boat to the bank. He was about to cast the rope off when a shout sounded and we both looked up to see Taliesin hurrying towards us from the grassy mound of Isca’s amphitheatre. Balig held tight to the mooring line. ‘You want me to wait, Lord?’

‘Yes,’ I said, standing as Taliesin came closer.

‘I’m coming with you,’ Taliesin shouted, ‘wait!’ He carried nothing except a small leather bag and a gilded harp. ‘Wait!’ he called again, then hitched up the skirts of his white robe, took off his shoes, and waded into the glutinous mud of the Usk’s bank.

‘Can’t wait for ever,’ Balig grumbled as the bard struggled through the steep mud. ‘Tide’s going fast.’

‘One moment, one moment,’ Taliesin called. He threw his harp, bag and shoes on board, hitched his skirts still higher and waded into the water. Balig reached out, clasped the bard’s hand and hauled him unceremoniously over the gunwale. Taliesin sprawled on the deck, found his shoes, bag and harp, then wrung water from the skirts of his robe. ‘You don’t mind if I come, Lord?’ he asked me, the silver fillet askew on his black hair.

‘Why should I?’

‘Not that I intend to accompany you. I just wish passage to Dumnonia.’ He straightened the silver fillet, then frowned at my grinning spearmen. ‘Do those men know how to row?’

‘Course they don’t,’ Balig answered for me. ‘They’re spearmen, no use for anything useful. Do it together, you bastards! Ready? Push forward! Oars down! Pull!’ He shook his head in mock despair.

‘Might as well teach pigs to dance.’

It was about nine miles to the open sea from Isca, nine miles that we covered swiftly because our boat was carried by the ebbing tide and the river’s swirling current. The Usk slid between glistening mudbanks that climbed to fallow fields, bare woods and wide marshes. Wicker fish traps stood on the banks where herons and gulls pecked at the flapping salmon stranded by the falling tide. Redshanks called plaintively while snipe climbed and swooped above their nests. We hardly needed the oars, for together the tide and current were carrying us fast, and once we reached the widening water where the river spilled into the Severn, Balig and his crewman hoisted a ragged brown sail that caught the west wind and made the boat surge forward. ‘Ship those oars now,’ he ordered my men, then he grasped the big steering oar and stood happily as the small ship dipped her blunt prow into the first big waves. ‘The sea will be lively today, Lord,’ he called cheerfully. ‘Scoop that water out!’ he shouted to my spearmen. ‘The wet stuff belongs outside a boat, not in it.’ Balig grinned at my incipient misery. ‘Three hours, Lord, that’s all, and we’ll have you ashore.’

‘You dislike boats?’ Taliesin asked me.

‘I hate them.’

‘A prayer to Manawydan should avert sickness,’ he said calmly. He had hauled a pile of nets beside my chest and now sat on them. He was plainly untroubled by the boat’s violent motion, indeed he seemed to enjoy it. ‘I slept last night in the amphitheatre,’ he told me. ‘I like to do that,’ he went on when he saw I was too miserable to respond. ‘The banked seats serve like a dream tower.’

I glanced at him, my sickness somehow lessened by those last two words for they reminded me of Merlin who had once possessed a dream tower on the summit of Ynys Wydryn’s Tor. Merlin’s dream tower had been a hollow wooden structure that he claimed magnified the messages of the Gods, and I could understand how Isca’s Roman amphitheatre with its high banked seats set about its raked sand arena might serve the same purpose. ‘Were you seeing the future?’ I managed to ask him.

‘Some of it,’ he admitted, ‘but I also met Merlin in my dream last night.’

The mention of that name drove away the last qualms in my belly. ‘You spoke with Merlin?’ I asked.

‘He spoke to me,’ Taliesin corrected me, ‘but he could not hear me.’

‘What did he say?’

‘More than I can tell you, Lord, and nothing you wish to hear.’

‘What?’ I demanded.

He grabbed at the stern post as the boat pitched off a steep wave. Water sprayed back from the bows and spattered on the bundles that held our armour. Taliesin made sure his harp was well protected under his robe, then touched the silver fillet that circled his tonsured head to make certain it was still in place. ‘I think, Lord, that you travel into danger,’ he said calmly.

‘Is that Merlin’s message,’ I asked, touching the iron of Hywel-bane’s hilt, ‘or one of your visions?’

‘Only a vision,’ he confessed, ‘and as I once told you, Lord, it is better to see the present clearly than to try and discern a shape in the visions of the future.’ He paused, evidently considering his next words carefully. ‘You have not, I think, heard definite news of Mordred’s death?’

‘No.’

‘If my vision was right,’ he said, ‘then your King is not sick at all, but has recovered. I could be wrong, indeed I pray I am wrong, but have you had any omens?’

‘About Mordred’s death?’ I asked.

‘About your own future, Lord,’ he said.

I thought for a second. There had been the small augury of the salmon-fisher’s net, but that I ascribed to my own superstitious fears rather than to the Gods. More worryingly, the small blue-green agate in the ring that Aelle had given to Ceinwyn had fallen out, and one of my old cloaks had been stolen, and though both events could have been construed as bad omens, they could equally well be mere mishaps. It was hard to tell, and neither loss seemed portentous enough to mention to Taliesin. ‘Nothing has worried me lately,’ I told him instead.

‘Good,’ he said, rocking to the boat’s motion. His long black hair flapped in the wind that was stretching the belly of our sail taut and streaming its frayed edges. The wind was also skimming the tops from the white-crested waves and driving the spray inboard, though I think more water came into the boat through its gaping seams than across its gunwales. My spearmen bailed lustily. ‘But I think Mordred lives still,’ Taliesin went on, ignoring the frantic activity in the boat’s centre, ‘and that the news of his imminent death is a ruse. But I could not swear to that. Sometimes we mistake our fears for prophecy. But I did not imagine Merlin, Lord, nor any of his words in my dream.’

Again I touched Hywelbane’s hilt. I had always thought that any mention of Merlin would be reassuring, but Taliesin’s calm words were chilling.

‘I dreamed that Merlin was in a thick wood,’ Taliesin went on in his precise voice, ‘and could not find his way out; indeed, whenever a path opened before him, a tree would groan and move as though it were a great beast shifting to block his way. Merlin, the dream tells me, is in trouble. I talked to him in the dream, but he could not hear me. What that tells me, I think, is that he cannot be reached. If we sent men to find him, they would fail and they might even die. But he wants help, that I do know, for he sent me the dream.’

‘Where is this wood?’ I asked.

The bard turned his dark, deep-set eyes onto me. ‘There may be no wood, Lord. Dreams are like songs. Their task is not to offer an exact image of the world, but a suggestion of it. The wood, I think, tells me that Merlin is imprisoned.’

‘By Nimue,’ I said, for I could think of no one else who would dare challenge the Druid. Taliesin nodded. ‘She, I think, is his jailer. She wants his power, and when she has it she will use it to impose her dream on Britain.’

I was finding it difficult even to think about Merlin and Nimue. For years we had lived without them and, as a result, our world’s boundaries had taken on a precise hardness. We were bounded by Mordred’s existence, by Meurig’s ambitions and by Arthur’s hopes, not by the misty, swirling uncertainties of Merlin’s dreams. ‘But Nimue’s dream,’ I objected, ‘is the same as Merlin’s.’

‘No, Lord,’ Taliesin said gently, ‘it is not.’

‘She wants what he wants,’ I insisted, ‘to restore the Gods!’

‘But Merlin,’ Taliesin said, ‘gave Excalibur to Arthur. And do you not see that he gave part of his power to Arthur with that gift? I have wondered about that gift for a long time, for Merlin would never explain it to me, but I think I understand it now. Merlin knew that if the Gods failed, then Arthur might succeed. And Arthur did succeed, but his victory at Mynydd Baddon was not complete. It keeps the Isle of Britain in British hands, but it did not defeat the Christians, and that is a defeat for the old Gods. Nimue, Lord, will never accept that half-victory. For Nimue it is the Gods or it is nothing. She does not care what horrors come to Britain so long as the Gods return and strike down her enemies, and to achieve that, Lord, she wants Excalibur. She wants every scrap of power so that when she relights the fires the Gods will have no choice but to respond.’

I understood then. ‘And with Excalibur,’ I said, ‘she will want Gwydre.’

‘She will indeed, Lord,’ Taliesin agreed. ‘The son of a ruler is a source of power, and Arthur, whether he wills it or not, is still the most famous leader in Britain. If he had ever chosen to be a king, Lord, he would have been named High King. So, yes, she wants Gwydre.’

I stared at Taliesin’s profile. He actually seemed to be enjoying the boat’s terrifying motion. ‘Why do you tell me this?’ I asked him.

My question puzzled him. ‘Why should I not tell you?’

‘Because by telling me,’ I said, ‘you warn me to protect Gwydre, and if I protect Gwydre then I prevent the return of the Gods. And you, if I’m not mistaken, would like to see those Gods return.’

‘I would,’ he acknowledged, ‘but Merlin asked me to tell you.’

‘But why would Merlin want me to protect Gwydre?’ I demanded. ‘He wants the Gods to return!’

‘You forget, Lord, that Merlin foresaw two paths. One was the path of the Gods, the other the path of man, and Arthur is that second path. If Arthur is destroyed, then we have only the Gods, and I think Merlin knows that the Gods do not hear us any more. Remember what happened to Gawain.’

‘He died,’ I said bleakly, ‘but he carried his banner into battle.’

‘He died,’ Taliesin corrected me, ‘and was then placed in the Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn. He should have come back to life, Lord, for that is the Cauldron’s power, but he did not. He did not breathe again and that surely means the old magic is waning. It is not dead, and I suspect it will cause great mischief before it dies, but Merlin, I think, is telling us to look to man, not to the Gods, for our happiness.’

I shut my eyes as a big wave shattered white on the boat’s high prow. ‘You’re saying,’ I said, when the spray had vanished, ‘that Merlin has failed?’

‘I think Merlin knew he had failed when the Cauldron did not revive Gawain. Why else did he bring the body to Mynydd Baddon? If Merlin had thought, for even one heartbeat, that he could use Gawain’s body to summon the Gods then he would never have dissipated its magic in the battle.’

‘He still took the ashes back to Nimue,’ I said.

‘True,’ Taliesin admitted, ‘but that was because he had promised to help her, and even Gawain’s ashes would have retained some of the corpse’s power. Merlin might know he has failed, but like any man he is reluctant to abandon his dream and perhaps he believed Nimue’s energy might prove effective? But what he did not foresee, Lord, was the extent to which she would misuse him.’

‘Punish him,’ I said bitterly.

Taliesin nodded. ‘She despises him because he failed, and she believes that he conceals knowledge from her, and so even now, Lord, in this very wind, she is forcing Merlin’s secrets from him. She knows much, but she does not know all, yet if my dream is right then she is drawing out his knowledge. It might take months or years for her to learn all she needs, but she will learn, Lord, and when she knows she will use the power. And you, I think, will know it first.’ He gripped the nets as the boat pitched alarmingly.

‘Merlin commanded me to warn you, Lord, and so I do, but against what? I don’t know.’ He smiled apologetically.

‘Against this voyage to Dumnonia?’ I asked.

Taliesin shook his head. ‘I think your danger is much greater than anything planned by your enemies in Dumnonia. Indeed, your danger is so great, Lord, that Merlin wept. He also told me he wanted to die.’

Taliesin gazed up at the sail. ‘And if I knew where he was, Lord, and had the power, I would send you to kill him. But instead we must wait for Nimue to reveal herself.

I gripped Hywelbane’s cold hilt. ‘So what are you advising me to do?’ I asked him.

‘It is not my place to give advice to lords,’ Taliesin said. He turned and smiled at me, and I suddenly saw that his deep-set eyes were cold. ‘It does not matter to me, Lord, whether you live or die for I am the singer and you are my song, but for now, I admit, I follow you to discover the melody and, if I must, to change it. Merlin asked that of me, and I will do it for him, but I think he is saving you from one danger only to expose you to a still greater one.’

‘You’re not making sense,’ I said harshly.

‘I am, Lord, but neither of us yet understands the sense. I’m sure it will come clear.’ He sounded so calm, but my fears were as grey as the clouds above and as tumultuous as the seas below. I touched Hywelbane’s reassuring hilt, prayed to Manawydan, and told myself that Taliesin’s warning was only a dream and nothing but a dream, and that dreams could not kill.

But they can, and they do. And somewhere in Britain, in a dark place, Nimue had the Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn and was using it to stir our dreams into nightmare.

Balig landed us on a beach somewhere on the Dumnonian coastline. Taliesin offered me a cheerful farewell, then strode long-legged off into the dunes. ‘Do you know where you’re going?’ I called after him.

‘I will when I reach there, Lord,’ he called back, then disappeared. We pulled on our armour. I had not brought my finest gear, simply an old and serviceable breastplate and a battered helmet. I slung my shield on my back, picked up my spear, and followed Taliesin inland.

‘You know where we are, Lord?’ Eachern asked me.

‘Near enough,’ I said. In the rain ahead I could make out a range of hills. ‘We go south of those and we’ll reach Dun Caric.’

‘You want me to fly the banner, Lord?’ Eachern asked. Rather than my banner of the star we had brought Gwydre’s banner which showed Arthur’s bear entwined with Dumnonia’s dragon, but I decided against carrying it unfurled. A banner in the wind is a nuisance and, besides, eleven spearmen marching beneath a gaudy great flag would look ridiculous rather than impressive, and so I decided to wait until Issa’s men could reinforce my own small band before unrolling the flag on its long staff. We found a track in the dunes and followed it through a wood of small thorns and hazels to a tiny settlement of six hovels. The folk ran at the sight of us, leaving only an old woman who was too bent and crippled to move fast. She sank onto the ground and spat defiantly as we approached. ‘You’ll get nothing here,’ she said hoarsely, ‘we own nothing except dung-heaps. Dung-heaps and hunger, Lords, that’s all you’ll fetch from us.’

I crouched beside her. ‘We want nothing,’ I told her, ‘except news.’

‘News?’ The very word seemed strange to her.

‘Do you know who your King is?’ I asked her gently.

‘Uther, Lord,’ she said. ‘A big man, he is, Lord. Like a God!’

It was plain we would fetch no news from the hovel, or none that would make sense, and so we walked on, stopping only to eat some of the bread and dried meat that we carried in our pouches. I was in my own country, yet it felt curiously as though I walked an enemy land and I chided myself for giving too much credit to Taliesin’s vague warnings, yet still I kept to the hidden wooded paths and, as evening fell, I led my small company up through a beech wood to higher ground where we might have a sight of any other spearmen. We saw none, but, far to the south, an errant ray of the dying sun lanced through a cloud bank to touch Ynys Wydryn’s Tor green and bright.

We lit no fire. Instead we slept beneath the beech trees and in the morning woke cold and stiff. We walked east, staying under the leafless trees, while beneath us, in damp heavy fields, men ploughed stiff furrows, women sowed a crop and small children ran screaming to frighten the birds away from the precious seed. ‘I used to do that in Ireland,’ Eachern said. ‘Spent half my childhood frightening birds away.’

‘Nail a crow to the plough, that’ll do it,’ one of the other spearmen offered.

‘Nail crows to every tree near the field,’ another suggested.

‘Doesn’t stop them,’ a third man put in, ‘but it makes you feel better.’

We were following a narrow track between deep hedgerows. The leaves had not unfurled to hide the nests so magpies and jays were busy stealing eggs and they screeched in protest when we came close.

‘The folks will know we’re here, Lord,’ Eachern said, ‘they may not see us, but they’ll know. They’ll hear the jays.’

‘It won’t matter,’ I said. I was not even sure why I was taking such care to stay hidden, except that we were so few and, like most warriors, I yearned for the security of numbers and knew I would feel a great deal more comfortable once the rest of my men were around me. Till then we would hide ourselves as best we could, though at mid-morning our route took us out of the trees and down into the open fields that led to the Fosse Way. Buck hares danced in the meadows and skylarks sang above us. We saw no one, though doubtless the peasants saw us, and doubtless the news of our passing rippled swiftly through the countryside. Armed men were ever cause for alarm, and so I had some of my men carry their shields in front so that their insignia would reassure the local people we were friends. It was not until we had crossed the Roman road and were close to Dun Caric that I saw another human, and that was a woman who, when we were still too far away for her to see the stars on our shields, ran to the woods behind the village to hide herself among the trees. ‘Folks are nervous,’ I said to Eachern.

‘They’ve heard about Mordred dying,’ he said, spitting, ‘and they’re fearing what’ll happen next, but they should be happy the bastard’s dying.’ When Mordred was a child, Eachern had been one of his guards and the experience had given the Irish spearman a deep hatred for the King. I was fond of Eachern. He was not a clever man, but he was dogged, loyal and hard in battle. ‘They reckon there’ll be war, Lord,’ he said.

We waded the stream beneath Dun Caric, skirted the houses, and came to the steep path that led to the palisade about the small hill. Everything was very quiet. Not even the dogs were in the village street and, more worryingly, no spearmen guarded the palisade. ‘Issa’s not here,’ I said, touching Hywelbane’s hilt. Issa’s absence, by itself, was not unusual, for he spent much of his time in other parts of Dumnonia, but I doubted he would have left Dun Caric unguarded. I glanced at the village, but those doors were all shut tight. No smoke showed above the rooftops, not even from the smithy.

‘No dogs on the hill,’ Eachern said ominously. There was usually a pack of dogs about Dun Caric’s hall and by now some should have raced down the hill to greet us. Instead there were noisy ravens on the hall roof and more of the big birds calling from the palisade. One bird flew up out of the compound with a long, red, lumpy morsel trailing from its beak.

None of us spoke as we climbed the hill. The silence had been the first indication of horror, then the ravens, and halfway up the hill we caught the sour-sweet stench of death that catches at the back of the throat, and that smell, stronger than the silence and more eloquent than the ravens, warned us of what waited inside the open gate. Death waited, nothing but death. Dun Caric had become a place of death. The bodies of men and women were strewn throughout the compound and piled inside the hall. Forty-six bodies in all, and not one still possessed a head. The ground was blood-soaked. The hall had been plundered, every basket and chest upturned, and the stables were empty. Even the dogs had been killed, though they, at least, had been left with their heads. The only living things were the cats and the ravens, and they all fled from us.

I walked through the horror in a daze. It was only after a few moments that I realized there were only ten young men among the dead. They must have been the guards left by Issa, while the rest of the corpses were the families of his men. Pyrlig was there, poor Pyrlig who had stayed at Dun Caric because he knew he could not rival Taliesin, and now he lay dead, his white robe soaked in blood and his harpist’s hands deep scarred where he had tried to fend off the sword blows. Issa was not there, nor was Scarach, his wife, for there were no young women in that charnel house, neither were there any children. Those young women and children must have been taken away, either to be playthings or slaves, while the older folk, the babies and the guards had all been massacred, and then their heads had been taken as trophies. The slaughter was recent, for none of the bodies had started to bloat or rot. Flies crawled over the blood, but as yet there were no maggots wriggling in the gaping wounds left by the spears and swords.

I saw that the gate had been thrown off its hinges, but there was no sign of a fight and I suspected that the men who had done this thing had been invited into the compound as guests.

‘Who did it, Lord?’ one of my spearmen asked.

‘Mordred,’ I said bleakly.

‘But he’s dead! Or dying!’

‘He just wants us to think that,’ I said, and I could conjure up no other explanation. Taliesin had warned me, and I feared the bard was right. Mordred was not dying at all, but had returned and loosed his warband on his own country. The rumour of his death must have been designed to make people feel safe, and all the while he had been planning to return and kill every spearman who might oppose him. Mordred was throwing off his bridle, and that meant, surely, that after this slaughter at Dun Caric he must have gone east to find Sagramor, or maybe south and west to discover Issa. If Issa still lived. It was our fault, I suppose. After Mynydd Baddon, when Arthur had given up his power, we had thought that Dumnonia would be protected by the spears of men loyal to Arthur and his beliefs, and that Mordred’s power would be curtailed because he had no spearmen. None of us had foreseen that Mynydd Baddon would give our King a taste for war, nor that he would be so successful at battle that he would attract spearmen to his banner. Mordred now had spears, and spears give power, and I was seeing the first exercise of that new power. Mordred was scouring the country of the folk who had been set to limit his power and who might support Gwydre’s claim to the throne.

‘What do we do, Lord?’ Eachern asked me.

‘We go home, Eachern,’ I said, ‘we go home.’ And by ‘home’ I meant Siluria. There was nothing we could do here. We were only eleven men, and I doubted we had any chance of reaching Sagramor whose forces lay so far to the east. Besides, Sagramor needed no help from us in looking after himself. Dun Caric’s small garrison might have given Mordred easy pickings, but he would find plucking the Numidian’s head a much harder task. Nor could I hope to find Issa, if Issa even lived, and so there was nothing to do but go home and feel a frustrated fury. It is hard to describe that fury. At its heart was a cold hate for Mordred, but it was an impotent and aching hate because I knew I could do nothing to give swift vengeance to these folk who had been my people. I felt, too, as though I had let them down. I felt guilt, hate, pity and an aching sadness.

I put one man to stand guard at the open gate while the rest of us dragged the bodies into the hall. I would have liked to burn them, but there was not enough fuel in the compound and we had no time to collapse the hall’s thatched roof onto the corpses, and so we contented ourselves with putting them into a decent line, and then I prayed to Mithras for a chance to bring these folk a fitting revenge. ‘We’d better search the village,’ I told Eachern when the prayer was done, but we were not given the time. The Gods, that day, had abandoned us.

The man at the gate had not been keeping proper watch. I cannot blame him. None of us were in our right minds on that hilltop, and the sentry must have been looking into the blood-soaked compound instead of watching out of the gate, and so he saw the horsemen too late. I heard him shout, but by the time I ran out of the hall the sentry was already dead and a dark-armoured horseman was pulling a spear from his body. ‘Get him!’ I shouted, and started running towards the horseman, and I expected him to turn his horse and ride away, but instead he abandoned his spear and spurred further into the compound and more horsemen immediately followed him.

‘Rally!’ I shouted, and my nine remaining men crowded about me to make a small shield circle, though most of us had no shields for we had dropped them while we hauled the dead into the hall. Some of us did not even have spears. I drew Hywelbane, but I knew there was no hope for there were more than twenty horsemen in the compound now and still more were spurring up the hill. They must have been waiting in the woods beyond the village, maybe expecting Issa’s return. I had done the same myself in Benoic. We would kill the Franks in some remote outpost, then wait in ambush for more, and now I had walked into an identical trap.

I recognized none of the horsemen, and none bore an insignia on their shields. A few of the horsemen had covered their leather shield faces with black pitch, but these men were not Oengus mac Airem’s Blackshields. They were a scarred group of veteran warriors, bearded, ragged-haired and grimly confident. Their leader rode a black horse and had a fine helmet with engraved cheekpieces. He laughed when one of his men unfurled Gwydre’s banner, then he turned and spurred his horse towards me. ‘Lord Derfel,’ he greeted me.

For a few heartbeats I ignored him, looking about the blood-soaked compound in a wild hope that there might still be some means of escape, but we were ringed by the horsemen who waited with spears and swords for the order to kill us. ‘Who are you?’ I asked the man in the decorated helmet. For answer he simply turned back his cheekpieces. Then smiled at me. It was not a pleasant smile, but nor was he was a pleasant man. I was staring at Amhar, one of Arthur’s twin sons. ‘Amhar ap Arthur,’ I greeted him, then spat.

‘Prince Amhar,’ he corrected me. Like his brother Loholt, Amhar had ever been bitter about his illegitimate birth and he must now have decided to adopt the title of Prince even though his father was no king. It would have been a pathetic pretension had not Amhar changed so much since my last brief glimpse of him on the slopes of Mynydd Baddon. He looked older and much more formidable. His beard was fuller, a scar had flecked his nose and his breastplate was scored with a dozen spear strikes. Amhar, it seemed to me, had grown up on the battlefields of Armorica, but maturity had not decreased his sullen resentment. ‘I have not forgotten your insults at Mynydd Baddon,’ he told me, ‘and have longed for the day when I could repay them. But my brother, I think, will be even more pleased to see you.’ It had been I who had held Loholt’s arm while Arthur struck off his hand.

‘Where is your brother?’ I asked.

‘With our King.’

‘And your King is who?’ I asked. I knew the answer, but wanted it confirmed.

‘The same as yours, Derfel,’ Amhar said. ‘My dear cousin, Mordred.’ And where else, I thought, would Amhar and Loholt have gone after the defeat at Mynydd Baddon? Like so many other masterless men of Britain they had sought refuge with Mordred, who had welcomed every desperate sword that came to his banner. And how Mordred must have loved having Arthur’s sons on his side!

‘The King lives?’ I asked.

‘He thrives!’ Amhar said. ‘His Queen sent money to Clovis, and Clovis preferred to take her gold than to fight us.’ He smiled and gestured at his men. ‘So here we are, Derfel. Come to finish what we began this morning.’

‘I shall have your soul for what you did to these folk,’ I said, gesturing with Hywelbane at the blood that still lay black in Dun Caric’s yard.

‘What you will have, Derfel,’ Amhar said, leaning forward on his saddle, ‘is what I, my brother and our cousin decide to give you.’

I stared up at him defiantly. ‘I have served your cousin loyally.’

Amhar smiled. ‘But I doubt he wants your services any more.’

‘Then I shall leave his country,’ I said.

‘I think not,’ Amhar said mildly. ‘I think my King would like to meet you one last time, and I know my brother is eager to have words with you.’

‘I would rather leave,’ I said.

‘No,’ Amhar insisted. ‘You will come with me. Put the sword down.’

‘You must take it, Amhar.’

‘If I must,’ he said, and did not seem worried by the prospect, but why should he have been worried? He outnumbered us, and at least half my men had neither shields nor spears. I turned to my men. ‘If you wish to surrender,’ I told them, ‘then step out of the ring. But as for me, I will fight.’ Two of my unarmed men took a hesitant step forward, but Eachern snarled at them and they froze. I waved them away. ‘Go,’ I said sadly. ‘I don’t want to cross the bridge of swords with unwilling companions.’ The two men walked away, but Amhar just nodded to his horsemen and they surrounded the pair, swung their swords and more blood flowed on Dun Caric’s summit. ‘You bastard!’ I said, and ran at Amhar, but he just twitched his reins and spurred his horse out of my reach, and while he evaded me his men spurred in towards my spearmen.

It was another slaughter, and there was nothing I could do to prevent it. Eachern killed one of Amhar’s men, but while his spear was still fixed in that man’s belly, another horseman cut Eachern down from behind. The rest of my men died just as swiftly. Amhar’s spearmen were merciful in that, at least. They did not let my men’s souls linger, but chopped and stabbed with a ferocious energy. I knew little of it, for while I pursued Amhar one of his men spurred behind me and gave me a huge blow across the back of my head. I fell, my head reeling in a black fog shot through with streaks of light. I remember falling to my knees, then a second blow struck my helmet and I thought I must be dying. But Amhar wanted me alive, and when I recovered my wits I found myself lying on one of Dun Caric’s dung-heaps with my wrists tied with rope and Hywelbane’s scabbard hanging at Amhar’s waist. My armour had been taken, and a thin gold torque stolen from around my neck, but Amhar and his men had not found Ceinwyn’s brooch that was still safely pinned beneath my jerkin. Now they were busy sawing off the heads of my spearmen with their swords. ‘Bastard,’ I spat the insult at Amhar, but he just grinned and turned back to his grisly work. He chopped through Eachern’s spine with Hywelbane, then gripped the head by the hair and tossed it onto the pile of heads that were being gathered into a cloak. ‘A fine sword,’ he told me, balancing Hywelbane in his hand.

‘Then use it to send me to the Otherworld.’

‘My brother would never forgive me for showing such mercy,’ he said, then he cleaned Hywelbane’s blade on his ragged cloak and thrust it into the scabbard. He beckoned three of his men forward, then drew a small knife from his belt. ‘At Mynydd Baddon,’ he said, facing me, ‘you called me a bastard cur and a worm-ridden puppy. Do you think I am a man to forget insults?’

‘The truth is ever memorable,’ I told him, though I had to force the defiance into my voice for my soul was in terror.

‘Your death will certainly be memorable,’ Amhar said, ‘but for the moment you must be content with the attentions of a barber.’ He nodded at his men.

I fought them, but with my hands bound and my head still throbbing, there was little I could do to resist them. Two men held me fast against the dung-heap while the third gripped my head by the hair as Amhar, his right knee braced against my chest, cut off my beard. He did it crudely, slicing into the skin with each stroke, and he tossed the cut hanks of hair to one of his grinning men who teased the strands apart and wove them into a short rope. Once the rope was finished it was made into a noose that was put about my neck. It was the supreme insult to a captured warrior, the humiliation of having a slave’s leash made from his own beard. They laughed at me when it was done, then Amhar hauled me to my feet by tugging on the beard-leash. ‘We did the same to Issa,’ he said.

‘Liar,’ I retorted feebly.

‘And made his wife watch,’ Amhar said with a smile, ‘then made him watch while we dealt with her. They’re both dead now.’

I spat in his face, but he just laughed at me. I had called him a liar, but I believed him. Mordred, I thought, had worked his return to Britain so efficiently. He had spread the tale of his imminent death, and all the while Argante had been shipping her hoarded gold to Clovis, and Clovis, thus purchased, had let Mordred go free. And Mordred had sailed to Dumnonia and was now killing his enemies. Issa was dead, and I did not doubt that most of his spearmen, and the spearmen I had left in Dumnonia, had died with him. I was a prisoner. Only Sagramor remained.

They tied my beard-leash to the tail of Amhar’s horse, then marched me southwards. Amhar’s forty spearmen formed a mocking escort, laughing whenever I stumbled. They dragged Gwydre’s banner through the mud from the tail of another horse.

They took me to Caer Cadarn, and once there they threw me into a hut. It was not the hut in which we had imprisoned Guinevere so many years before, but a much smaller one with a low door through which I had to crawl, helped by the boots and spear staves of my captors. I scrambled into the hut’s shadows and there saw another prisoner, a man brought from Durnovaria whose face was red from weeping. For a moment he did not recognize me without my beard, but then he gasped in astonishment. ‘Derfel?’

‘Bishop,’ I said wearily, for it was Sansum, and we were both Mordred’s prisoners.

‘It’s a mistake!’ Sansum insisted. ‘I shouldn’t be here!’

‘Tell them,’ I said, jerking my head towards the guards outside the hut, ‘not me.’

‘I did nothing. Except serve Argante! And look how they reward me!’

‘Be quiet,’ I said.

‘Oh, sweet Jesus!’ He fell on his knees, spread his arms and gazed up at the cobwebs in the thatch.

‘Send an angel for me! Take me to Thy sweet bosom.’

‘Will you be quiet?’ I snarled, but he went on praying and weeping, while I stared morosely towards Caer Cadarn’s wei summit where a heap of severed heads was being piled. Mj men’s heads were there, joining scores of others that had beer fetched from all across Dumnonia. A chair draped in a pale blue cloth was perched on top of the pile; Mordred’s throne. Women and children, the families of Mordred’s spearmen, peered at the grisly heap, and some then came to look through our hut’s low door and laugh at my beardless face.

‘Where’s Mordred?’ I asked Sansum.

‘How would I know?’ he answered, interrupting his prayer.

‘Then what do you know?’ I asked. He shuffled back onto the bench. He had done me one small service by fumbling the rope free from my wrists, but the freedom gave me little comfort for I could see six spearmen guarding the hut, and I did not doubt that there were others I could not see. One man just sat facing the hut’s open entrance with a spear, begging me to try and crawl through the low door and thus give him a chance of skewering me. I had no chance of overpowering any of them. ‘What do you know?’ I asked Sansum again.

‘The King came back two nights ago,’ he said, ‘with hundreds of men.’

‘How many?’

He shrugged. ‘Three hundred? Four? I couldn’t count them, there were so many. They killed Issa in Durnovaria.’

I closed my eyes and said a prayer for poor Issa and his family. ‘When did they arrest you?’ I asked Sansum.

‘Yesterday.’ He looked indignant. ‘And for nothing! I welcomed him home! I didn’t know he was alive, but I was glad to see him. I rejoiced! And for that they arrested me!’

‘So why do they think they arrested you?’ I asked him.

‘Argante claims I was writing to Meurig, Lord, but that can’t be true! I have no skill with letters. You know that.’

‘Your clerks do, Bishop.’

Sansum adopted an indignant look. ‘And why should I talk to Meurig?’

‘Because you were plotting to give him the throne, Sansum,’ I said, ‘and don’t deny it. I talked with him two weeks ago.’

‘I was not writing to him,’ he said sulkily.

I believed him, for Sansum had ever been too canny to put his schemes on paper, but I did not doubt he had sent messengers. And one of those messengers, or perhaps a functionary at Meu-rig’s court, had betrayed him to Argante who had doubtless craved Sansum’s hoarded gold. ‘You deserve whatever you’re going to get,’ I told him. ‘You’ve plotted against every king who ever showed you kindness.’

‘All I ever wanted was the best for my country, and for Christ!’

‘You worm-ridden toad,’ I said, spitting on the floor. ‘You just wanted power.’

He made the sign of the cross and stared at me with loathing. ‘It’s all Fergal’s fault,’ he said.

‘Why blame him?’

‘Because he wants to be treasurer!’

‘You mean he wants to be wealthy like you?’

‘Me?’ Sansum stared with feigned surprise. ‘Me? Wealthy? In the name of God all I ever did was put a pittance aside in case the kingdom was in need! I was prudent, Derfel, prudent.’ He went on justifying himself, and it gradually dawned on me that he believed every word he said. Sansum could betray people, he could scheme to have them killed as he had tried to kill Arthur and me when we had gone to arrest Ligessac, and he could bleed the Treasury dry, yet all the time he somehow persuaded himself that his actions were justified. His only principle was ambition, and it occurred to me, as that miserable day slunk into night, that when the world was bereft of men like Arthur and of Kings like Cuneglas, then creatures like Sansum would rule everywhere. If Taliesin was right then our Gods were vanishing, and with them would go the Druids, and after them the great Kings, and then would come a tribe of mouse lords to rule over us.

The next day brought sunshine and a fitful wind that fetched the stench of the heaped heads to our hut. We were not allowed out of the hut and so were forced to relieve ourselves in a corner. We were not fed, though a bladder of stinking water was thrown in to us. The guards were changed, but the new men were as watchful as the old. Amhar came to the hut once, but only to gloat. He drew Hywelbane, kissed her blade, polished her on his cloak, then fingered her newly honed edge. ‘Sharp enough to take your hands off, Derfel,’ he said. ‘I’m sure my brother would like a hand of yours. He could mount it on his helmet! And I could have the other. I need a new crest.’ I said nothing and after a time he became bored with trying to provoke me and walked away, slashing at thistles with Hywelbane.

‘Maybe Sagramor will kill Mordred,’ Sansum whispered to me.

‘I pray so.’

‘That’s where Mordred’s gone, I’m sure. He came here, sent Amhar to Dun Caric, then rode eastwards.’

‘How many men does Sagramor have?’

‘Two hundred.’

‘Not many,’ I said.

‘Or perhaps Arthur will come?’ Sansum suggested.

‘He’ll know Mordred’s back by now,’ I said, ‘but he can’t march through Gwent because Meurig won’t let him, which means he has to ship his men by boat. And I doubt he’ll do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because Mordred is the rightful King, Bishop, and Arthur, however much he hates Mordred, won’t deny him that right. He won’t break his oath to Uther.’

‘He won’t try and rescue you?’

‘How?’ I asked. ‘The moment these men saw Arthur approaching they’d cut both our throats.’

‘God save us,’ Sansum prayed. ‘Jesus, Mary and the Saints protect us.’

‘I’d rather pray to Mithras,’ I said.

‘Pagan!’ Sansum hissed, but he did not try to interrupt my prayer.

The day drew on. It was a spring day of utter loveliness, but to me it was bitter as gall. I knew my head would be added to the heap on Caer Cadarn’s summit, but that was not the keenest cause of my misery; that came from the knowledge that I had failed my people. I had led my spearmen into a trap, I had seen them die, I had failed. If they greeted me in the Otherworld with reproach, then that was what I deserved, but I knew they would welcome me with joy, and that only made me feel more guilty. Yet the prospect of the Otherworld was a comfort to me. I had friends there, and two daughters, and when the torture was over and my soul was released to its shadowbody, I would have the happiness of reunion. Sansum, I saw, could find no consolation in his religion. All that day he whined, moaned, wept and railed, but his noise achieved nothing. We could only wait through one more night and another long hungry day. Mordred returned late in the afternoon of that second day. He rode in from the east, leading a long column of marching spearmen who shouted greetings to Amhar’s warriors. A group of horsemen accompanied the King and among them was one-handed Loholt. I confess I was frightened to see him. Some of Mordred’s men carried bundles that I suspected would contain severed heads, and so they did, but the heads were far fewer than I had feared. Maybe twenty or thirty were tipped onto the fly-buzzing heap, and not one of them looked to be black-skinned. I guessed that Mordred had surprised and butchered one of Sagramor’s patrols, but he had missed his main prize. Sagramor was free, and that was a consolation. Sagramor was a wonderful friend and a terrible enemy. Arthur would have made a good enemy, for he was ever prone to forgiveness, but Sagramor was implacable. The Numidian would pursue a foe to the world’s end.

Yet Sagramor’s escape was of small use to me that evening. Mordred, on hearing of my capture, shouted for joy, then demanded to be shown Gwydre’s mud-soiled banner. He laughed at the sight of the bear and dragon, then ordered the banner laid flat on the grass so that he and his men could piss on it. Loholt even danced a few steps at the news of my capture, for it was here, on this very hilltop, that his hand had been struck off. The mutilation had been a punishment for daring to rebel against his father and now he could revenge himself on his father’s friend.

Mordred demanded to see me and Amhar came to fetch me, bringing the leash made from my beard. He was accompanied by a huge man, wall-eyed and toothless, who ducked through the hut’s door, seized my hair and forced me down onto all fours then pushed me through the low door. Amhar circled my neck with the beard-leash and then, when I tried to stand, forced me back down. ‘Crawl,’ he commanded. The toothless brute forced my head down, Amhar tugged on the leash, and so I was forced to crawl towards the summit through jeering lines of men, women and children. All spat on me as I passed, some kicked me, others thrashed me with spear butts, but Amhar prevented them from crippling me. He wanted me whole for his brother’s pleasure.

Loholt waited by the pile of heads. The stump of his right arm was sheathed in silver, and at the sheath’s end, where his hand had been, a pair of bear claws was fixed. He grinned as I crawled close to his feet, but was too incoherent with joy to speak. Instead he babbled and spat at me, and all the time he kicked me in the belly and ribs. There was force in his kicks, but he was so angry that he attacked blindly and thus did little more than bruise me. Mordred watched from his throne which was set at the top of the fly-buzzing pile of severed heads. ‘Enough!’ he called after a while and Loholt gave me one last kick and stood aside. ‘Lord Derfel,’ Mordred greeted me with a mocking courtesy.

‘Lord King,’ I said. I was flanked by Loholt and Amhar, while all around the pile of heads a greedy crowd had gathered to watch my humiliation.

‘Stand, Lord Derfel,’ Mordred ordered me.

I stood and gazed up at him, but I could see nothing of his face for the sun was westering behind him and it dazzled me. I could see Argante standing to one side of the piled heads, and with her was Fergal, her Druid. They must have ridden north from Durnovaria during the day for I had not seen them earlier. She smiled to see my beardless face.

‘What happened to your beard, Lord Derfel?’ Mordred asked with pretended concern. I said nothing.

‘Speak!’ Loholt ordered me, and cuffed me around the face with his stump. The bear claws raked my cheek.

‘It was cut, Lord King,’ I said.

‘Cut!’ He laughed. ‘And do you know why it was cut, Lord Derfel?’

‘No, Lord.’

‘Because you are my enemy,’ he said.

‘Not true, Lord King.’

‘You are my enemy!’ he screamed in a sudden tantrum, banging one arm of the chair and watching to see whether I showed any fear at his anger. ‘As a child,’ he announced to the crowd, ‘this thing raised me. He beat me! He hated me!’ The crowd jeered until Mordred held up a hand to still them. ‘And this man,’ he said, pointing at me with his finger to add bad luck to his words, ‘helped Arthur cut off Prince Loholt’s hand.’ Again the crowd shouted angrily. ‘And yesterday,’ Mordred went on, ‘Lord Derfel was found in my kingdom with a strange banner.’ He jerked his right hand and two men ran forward with Gwydre’s urine-soaked flag. ‘Whose banner is that, Lord Derfel?’ Mordred asked.

‘It belongs to Gwydre ap Arthur, Lord.’

‘And why is Gwydre’s banner in Dumnonia?’

For a heartbeat or two I thought of telling a lie. Perhaps I could claim that I was bringing the banner as a form of tribute to Mordred, but I knew he would not believe me and, worse, I would despise myself for the lie. So instead I raised my head. ‘I was hoping to raise it on news of your death, Lord King.’

My truth took him by surprise. The crowd murmured, but Mordred just drummed the chair’s arm with his fingers. ‘You declare yourself a traitor,’ he said after a while.

‘No, Lord King,’ I said, ‘I might have hoped for your death, but I did nothing to bring it about.’

‘You didn’t come to Armorica to rescue me!’ he shouted.

‘True,’ I said.

‘Why?’ he asked dangerously.

‘Because I would have thrown good men after bad,’ I said, gesturing at his warriors. They laughed.

‘And did you hope Clovis would kill me?’ Mordred asked when the laughter had died.

‘Many hoped for that, Lord King,’ I said, and again my honesty seemed to surprise him.

‘So give me one good reason, Lord Derfel, why I should not kill you now,’ Mordred commanded me. I stayed silent for a short while, then shrugged. ‘I can think of no reason, Lord King.’

Mordred drew his sword and laid it across his knees, then put his hands flat on the blade. ‘Derfel,’ he announced, ‘I condemn you to death.’

‘It is my privilege, Lord King!’ Loholt demanded eagerly. ‘Mine!’ And the crowd bayed their support for him. Watching my slow death would give them a fine appetite for the supper that was being prepared on the hilltop.

‘It is your privilege to take his hand, Prince Loholt,’ Mordred decreed. He stood and limped carefully down the pile of heads with the drawn sword in his right hand. ‘But it is my privilege,’ he said when he was close to me, ‘to take his life.’ He lifted the sword blade between my legs and gave me a crooked smile. ‘Before you die, Derfel,’ he said, ‘we shall take more than your hands.’

‘But not tonight!’ a sharp voice called from the back of the crowd. ‘Lord King! Not tonight!’ There was a murmur from the crowd. Mordred looked astonished rather than offended at the interruption and said nothing. ‘Not tonight!’ the man called again, and I turned to see Taliesin walking calmly through the excited throng that parted to give him passage. He carried his harp and his small leather bag, but now had a black staff as well so that he looked exactly like a Druid. ‘I can give you a very good reason why Derfel should not die tonight, Lord King,’ Taliesin said as he reached the open space beside the heads.

‘Who are you?’ Mordred demanded.

Taliesin ignored the question. Instead he walked to Fergal and the two men embraced and kissed, and it was only when that formal greeting was done that Taliesin looked back to Mordred. ‘I am Taliesin, Lord King.’

‘A thing of Arthur’s,’ Mordred sneered.

‘I am no man’s thing, Lord King,’ Taliesin said calmly, ‘and as you choose to insult me, then I shall leave my words unsaid. It is all one to me.’ He turned his back on Mordred and began to walk away.

‘Taliesin!’ Mordred called. The bard turned to look at the King, but said nothing. ‘I did not mean to insult you,’ Mordred said, not wanting the enmity of a sorcerer.

Taliesin hesitated, then accepted the King’s apology with a nod. ‘Lord King,’ he said, ‘I thank you.’

He spoke gravely and, as befitted a Druid speaking to a King, without deference or awe. Taliesin was famous as a bard, not as a Druid, but everyone there treated him as though he were a full Druid and he did nothing to correct their misapprehension. He wore the Druidical tonsure, he carried the black staff, he spoke with a sonorous authority and he had greeted Fergal as an equal. Taliesin plainly wanted them to believe his deception, for a Druid cannot be killed or maltreated, even if he is an enemy’s Druid. Even on a battlefield Druids may walk in safety and Taliesin, by playing the Druid, was guaranteeing his own safety. A bard did not have the same immunity.

‘So tell me why this thing,’ Mordred pointed to me with his sword, ‘should not die tonight.’

‘Some years ago, Lord King,’ Taliesin said, ‘the Lord Derfel paid me gold to cast a spell on your wife. The spell caused her to be barren. I used the womb of a doe that I had filled with the ashes of a dead child to perform the charm.’

Mordred looked at Fergal, who nodded. ‘That is certainly one way it can be done, Lord King,’ the Irish Druid confirmed.

‘It isn’t true!’ I shouted and, for my pains, received another raking blow from the bear claws on Loholt’s silver-sheathed stump.

‘I can lift the charm,’ Taliesin went on calmly, ‘but it must be lifted while Lord Derfel lives, for he was the petitioner of the charm, and if I lift it now, while the sun sets, it cannot be done properly. I must do it, Lord King, in the dawn, for the enchantment must be removed while the sun is rising, or else your Queen will stay childless for ever.’

Mordred again glanced at Fergal and the small bones woven into the Druid’s beard rattled as he nodded his assent. ‘He speaks true, Lord King.’

‘He lies!’ I protested.

Mordred pushed his sword back into its scabbard. ‘Why do you offer this, Taliesin?’ he asked. Taliesin shrugged. ‘Arthur is old, Lord King. His power wanes. Druids and bards must seek patronage where the power is rising.’

‘Fergal is my Druid,’ Mordred said. I had thought him a Christian, but was not surprised to hear that he had reverted to paganism. Mordred was never a good Christian, though that, I suspect, was the very least of his sins.

‘I shall be honoured to learn more skills from my brother,’ Taliesin said, bowing to Fergal, ‘and I will swear to follow his guidance. I seek nothing, Lord King, but a chance to use my small powers for your great glory.’

He was smooth. He spoke with honey on his tongue. I had paid him no gold for charms, but everyone there believed him, and none more so than Mordred and Argante. It was thus that Taliesin, the bright-browed, bought me an extra night of life. Loholt was disappointed, but Mordred promised him my soul as well as my hand in the dawn and that gave him some consolation. I was made to crawl back to the hut. I took a beating and kicking on the way, but I lived. Amhar took the leash of hair from my neck, then booted me into the hut. ‘We shall meet in the dawn, Derfel,’ he said.

With the sun in my eyes and a blade at my throat.

That night Taliesin sang to Mordred’s men. They had gathered in the half-finished church that Sansum had started to build on Caer Cadarn, and which now served as a roofless, broken-walled hall, and there Taliesin charmed them with his music. I had never before, and have never since, heard him sing more beautifully. At first, like any bard entertaining warriors, he had to fight the babble of voices, but gradually his skill silenced them. He accompanied himself on his harp and he chose to sing laments, but laments of such loveliness that Mordred’s spearmen listened in awestruck silence. Even the dogs ceased their yelping and lay silent as Taliesin the Bard sang into the night. If he ever paused too long between songs the spearmen demanded more, and so he would sing again, his voice dying on the melody’s endings, then surging again with the new verses, but forever soothing, and Mordred’s folk drank and listened, and the drink and the songs made them weep, and still Taliesin sang to them. Sansum and I listened too, and we also wept for the ethereal sadness of the laments, but as the night stretched on Taliesin began to sing lullabies, sweet lullabies, delicate lullabies, lullabies to put drunken men to sleep, and while he sang the air grew colder and I saw that a mist was forming over Caer Cadarn.

The mist thickened and still Taliesin sang. If the world is to last through the reigns of a thousand kings I doubt men will ever hear songs so wondrously sung. And all the while the mist wrapped about the hilltop so that the fires grew dim in the vapour and the songs filled the dark like wraith songs echoing from the land of the dead.

Then, in the dark, the songs ended and I heard nothing but sweet chords being struck on the harp and it seemed to me that the chords drew closer and closer to our hut and to the guards who had been sitting on the damp grass listening to the music.

The sound of the harp came nearer still and at last I saw Taliesin in the mist. ‘I have brought you mead,’ he said to my guards, ‘share it.’ And he took from his bag a stoppered jar that he handed to one of the guards and, while they passed the jar to and fro, he sang to them. He sang the softest song of all that song-haunted night, a lullaby to rock a troubled world to sleep, and sleep they did. One by one the guards tipped sideways, and still Taliesin sang, his voice enchanting that whole fortress, and only when one of the guards began to snore did he stop singing and lower his hand from the harp. ‘I think, Lord Derfel, that you can come out now,’ he said very calmly.

‘Me too!’ Sansum said, and pushed past me to scramble first through the door. Taliesin smiled when I appeared. ‘Merlin ordered me to save you, Lord,’ he said, ‘though he says you may not thank him for it.’

‘Of course I will,’ I said.

‘Come on!’ Sansum yelped, ‘no time to talk. Come! Quick!’

‘Wait, you misery,’ I said to him, then stooped and took a spear from one of the sleeping guards.

‘What charm did you use?’ I asked Taliesin.

‘A man hardly needs a charm to make drunken folk sleep,’ he said, ‘but on these guards I used an infusion of mandrake root.’

‘Wait for me here,’ I said.

‘Derfel! We must go!’ Sansum hissed in alarm.

‘You must wait, Bishop,’ I said, and I slipped away into the mist, going towards the blurred glow of the biggest fires. Those fires burned in the half-built church that was nothing more than stretches of unfinished log-walls with great gaps between the timbers. The space inside was filled with sleeping people, though some were now waking and staring bleary-eyed like folk stirring from an enchantment. Dogs were rooting among the sleepers for food and their excitement was waking still more people. Some of the newly woken folk watched me, but none recognized me. To them I was just another spearman walking in the night.

I discovered Amhar by one of the fires. He slept with his mouth open, and he died the same way. I thrust the spear into his open mouth, paused long enough for his eyes to open and for his soul to recognize me, and then, when I saw that he knew me, I pushed the blade through his neck and spine so that he was pinned to the ground. He jerked as I killed him, and the last thing his soul saw on this earth was my smile. Then I stooped, took the beard leash from his belt, unbuckled Hywelbane, and stepped out of the church. I wanted to look for Mordred and Loholt, but more sleepers were waking now, and one man called out to ask who I was, and so I just went back into the misted shadows and hurried uphill to where Taliesin and Sansum waited.

‘We must go!’ Sansum bleated.

‘I have bridles by the ramparts, Lord,’ Taliesin told me.

‘You think of everything,’ I said admiringly. I paused to throw the remnants of my beard on the small fire that had warmed our guards, and when I saw that the last of the strands had flared and burned to ash I followed Taliesin to the northern ramparts. He found the two bridles in the shadows, then we climbed to the fighting platform and there, hidden from the guards by the mist, we clambered over the wall and dropped to the hillside. The mist ended halfway down the slope and we hurried on to the meadow where most of Mordred’s horses were sleeping in the night. Taliesin woke two of the beasts, gently stroking their noses and chanting in their ears, and they calmly let him put the bridles over their heads.

‘You can ride without a saddle, Lord?’ he asked me.

‘Without a horse, tonight, if necessary.’

‘What about me?’ Sansum demanded as I heaved myself onto one of the horses. I looked down at him. I was tempted to leave him in the meadow for he had been a treacherous man all his life and I had no wish to prolong his existence, but he could also be useful to us on this night and so I reached down and hauled him onto the horse’s back behind me. ‘I should leave you here, Bishop,’ I said as he settled himself. He offered me no answer, but just wrapped his arms tight round my waist. Taliesin was leading the second horse towards the meadow’s gate that he tugged open. ‘Did Merlin tell you what we should do now?’ I asked the bard as I kicked my horse through the opening.

‘He did not, Lord, but wisdom suggests we should go to the coast and find a boat. And that we hurry, Lord. The sleep on that hilltop will not last long, and once they find you missing, they will send men to search for us.’ Taliesin used the gate as a mounting-block.

‘What do we do?’ Sansum asked in panic, his grip fierce about me.

‘Kill you?’ I suggested. ‘Then Taliesin and I can make better time.’

‘No, Lord, no! Please, no!’

Taliesin glanced up at the misted stars. ‘We ride west?’ he suggested.

‘I know just where we’re going,’ I said, kicking the horse towards the track that led to Lindinis.

‘Where?’ Sansum demanded.

‘To see your wife, Bishop,’ I said, ‘to see your wife.’ That was why I saved Sansum’s life that night, because Morgan was now our best hope. I doubted she would help me, and was certain she would spit in Taliesin’s face if he asked for aid, but for Sansum she would do anything. And so we rode to Ynys Wydryn.

We woke Morgan from sleep and she came to the door of her hall in a bad temper, or rather in a worse than usual temper. She did not recognize me without a beard and did not see her husband who, sore from the ride, was lagging behind us; instead Morgan saw Taliesin as a Druid who had dared to come into the sacred confines of her shrine. ‘Sinner!’ she screeched at him, her newly woken state proving no barrier to the full force of her vituperation. ‘Defiler! Idolater! In the name of the holy God and His blessed Mother I order you to go!’

‘Morgan!’ I called, but just then she saw the bedraggled, limping figure of Sansum and she gave a small mew of joy and hurried towards him. The quarter moon glinted on the golden mask with which she covered her fire-ravaged face.

‘Sansum!’ she called. ‘My sweet!’

‘Precious!’ Sansum said, and the two clasped each other in the night.

‘Dear one,’ Morgan babbled, stroking his face, ‘what have they done to you?’

Taliesin smiled, and even I, who hated Sansum and had no love for Morgan, could not resist a smile at their evident pleasure. Of all the marriages I have ever known, that was the strangest. Sansum was as dishonest a man as ever lived, and Morgan as honest as any woman in creation, yet they plainly adored each other, or Morgan, at least, adored Sansum. She had been born fair, but the terrible fire that had killed her first husband had twisted her body and scarred her face into horror. No man could have loved Morgan for her beauty, or for her character which had been as fire-twisted into bitterness as her face had been ravaged into ugliness, but a man could love Morgan for her connections for she was Arthur’s sister, and that, I ever believed, was what drew Sansum towards her. But if he did not love her for herself, he nevertheless made a show of love that convinced her and gave her happiness, and for that I was willing to forgive even the mouse lord his dissimulation. He admired her, too, for Morgan was a clever woman and Sansum prized cleverness, and thus both gained from the marriage; Morgan received tenderness, Sansum received protection and advice, and as neither sought the pleasures of the other’s flesh, it had proved a better marriage than most.

‘Within an hour,’ I brutally broke their happy reunion apart, ‘Mordred’s men will be here. We must be far away by then, and your women, Lady,’ I said to Morgan, — ’should seek safety in the marshes. Mordred’s men won’t care that your women are holy, they will rape them all.’

Morgan glared at me with her one eye that glinted in the mask’s hole. ‘You look better without a beard, Derfel,’ she said.

‘I shall look worse without a head, Lady, and Mordred is making a pile of heads on Caer Cadarn.’

‘I don’t know why Sansum and I should save your sinful lives,’ she grumbled, ‘but God commands us to be merciful.’ She turned from Sansum’s arms and shrieked in a terrible voice to wake her women. Taliesin and I were ordered into the church, given a basket, and told to fill it with the shrine’s gold while Morgan sent women into the village to wake the boatmen. She was wonderfully efficient. The shrine was suffused with panic, but Morgan controlled all, and it took only minutes before the first women were being helped into the flat-bottomed marsh boats that then headed into the mist-shrouded mere. We left last of all, and I swear I heard hoofbeats to the east as our boatman poled the punt into the dark waters. Taliesin, sitting in the bow, began to sing the lament of Idfael, but Morgan snapped at him to cease his pagan music. He lifted his fingers from the small harp. ‘Music knows no allegiance, Lady,’ he chided her gently.

‘Yours is the devil’s music,’ she snarled.

‘Not all of it,’ Taliesin said, and he began to sing again, but this time a song I had never heard before.

‘By the rivers of Babylon,’ he sang, ‘where we sat down, we shed bitter tears to remember our home, and I saw that Morgan was pushing a finger beneath her mask as if she was brushing away tears. The bard sang on and the high Tor receded as the marsh mists shrouded us and as our boatman poled us through whispering reeds and across the black water. When Taliesin ended his song there was only the sound of the lake rippling down the hull and the splash of the boatman’s pole thumping down to surge us forward again.

‘You should sing for Christ,’ Sansum said reprovingly.

‘I sing for all the Gods,’ Taliesin said, ‘and in the days to come we will need all of them.’

‘There is only one God!’ Morgan said fiercely.

‘If you say so, Lady,’ Taliesin said mildly, ‘but I fear He has served you ill tonight,’ and he pointed back towards Ynys Wydryn and we all turned to see a livid glow spreading in the mist behind. I had seen that glow before, seen it through these same mists on this same lake. It was the glow of buildings being put to the torch, the glow of burning thatch. Mordred had followed us and the shrine of the Holy Thorn, where his mother was buried, was being burned to ashes, but we were safe in the marshes where no man dared to go unless he possessed a guide.

Evil had again gripped Dumnonia.

But we were safe, and in the dawn we found a fisherman who would sail to Siluria in return for gold. And so I went home to Arthur.

And to new horror.

Ceinwyn was sick. The sickness had come swiftly, Guinevere told me, just hours after I had sailed from Isca. Ceinwyn had begun to shiver, then to sweat, and by that evening she no longer had the strength to stand, and so she had taken to her bed and Morwenna had nursed her, and a wise-woman had fed her a concoction of coltsfoot and rue and put a healing charm between her breasts, but by morning Ceinwyn’s skin had broken into boils. Every joint ached, she could not swallow, and her breath rasped in her throat. She began to rave then, thrashing in the bed and screaming hoarsely of Dian. Morwenna tried to prepare me for Ceinwyn’s death. ‘She believes she was cursed, father,’ she told me, ‘because on the day you left a woman came and asked us for food. We gave her barley grains, but when she left there was blood on the doorpost.’

I touched Hywelbane’s hilt. ‘Curses can be lifted.’

‘We fetched the Druid from Cefu-crib,’ Morwenna told me, ‘and he scraped the blood from the door and gave us a hagstone.’ She stopped, staring tearfully at the pierced stone that now hung above Ceinwyn’s bed. ‘But the curse won’t go!’ she cried. ‘She’s going to die!’

‘Not yet,’ I said, ‘not yet.’ I could not believe in Ceinwyn’s imminent death for she had always been so healthy. Not a hair on Ceinwyn’s head had turned grey, she still possessed most of her teeth, and she had been as lithe as a girl when I had left Isca, but now, suddenly, she looked old and ravaged. And she was in pain. She could not tell us of the pain, but her face betrayed it, and the tears that ran down her cheeks cried it aloud.

Taliesin spent a long time staring at her and he agreed that she had been cursed, but Morgan spat on that opinion. ‘Pagan superstition!’ she croaked, and busied herself finding new herbs that she boiled in mead and fed on a spoon through Ceinwyn’s lips. Morgan, I saw, was very gentle, even though, as she dripped the liquid, she harangued Ceinwyn as a pagan sinner.

I was helpless. All I could do was sit by Ceinwyn’s side, hold her hand and weep. Her hair became lank and, two days after my return, it began to drop out in handfuls. Her boils burst, soaking the bed with pus and blood. Morwenna and Morgan made new beds with fresh straw and new linen, but each day Ceinwyn would soil the bed and the old linen had to be boiled in a vat. The pain went on, and the pain was so hard that after a while even I began to wish that death would snatch her from its torment, but Ceinwyn did not die. She just suffered, and sometimes she would scream because of the pain, and her hand would tighten on my fingers with a terrible force and I could only wipe her forehead, say her name and feel the fear of loneliness creep through me.

I loved my Ceinwyn so much. Even now, years later, I smile to think of her, and sometimes I wake in the night with tears on my face and know they are due to her. We had begun our love in a blaze of passion and wise folk say that such passion must ever end, but ours had not ended, but had instead changed into a long, deep love. I loved and admired her, the days seemed brighter because of her presence, and suddenly I could only watch as the demons racked her and the pain made her shudder and the boils grew red and taut and burst into filth. And still she would not die. Some days Galahad or Arthur relieved me at the bedside. Everyone tried to help. Guinevere sent for the wisest women in Siluria’s hills and put gold into their palms so that they would bring new herbs or vials of water from some remote sacred spring. Culhwch, bald now, but still coarse and belligerent, wept for Ceinwyn and gave me an elf-bolt that he had found in the hills to the west, though when Morgan found that pagan charm in Ceinwyn’s bed she threw it out, just as she had thrown out the Druid’s hagstone and the charm she had discovered between Ceinwyn’s breasts. Bishop Emrys prayed for Ceinwyn, and even Sansum, before he left for Gwent, joined him in prayer, though I doubt that his pleas were as heartfelt as those that Emrys called to God. Morwenna was devoted to her mother, and no one fought harder for a cure. She nursed her, cleaned her, prayed for her, wept with her. Guinevere, of course, could not stand the sight of Ceinwyn’s disease, or the smell of the sick-room, but she walked with me for hours while Galahad or Arthur held Ceinwyn’s hand. I remember one day we had walked to the amphitheatre and were pacing around its sandy arena when, somewhat clumsily, Guinevere tried to console me. ‘You are fortunate, Derfel,’ she said, ‘for you experienced a rare thing. A great love.’

‘So did you, Lady,’ I said.

She grimaced, and I wished I had not invited the unspoken thought that her great love had been spoiled, though in truth both she and Arthur had outlived that unhappiness. I suppose it must have been there still, a shadow deep back and sometimes during those years a fool would mention Lancelot’s name and a sudden silence would embarrass the air, and once a visiting bard had innocently sung us the Lament of Blodeuwedd, a song that tells of a wife’s unfaithfulness, and the smoky air in the feasting-room had been taut with silence at the song’s end, but for most of that time Arthur and Guinevere were truly happy.

‘Yes,’ Guinevere said, ‘I’m lucky too.’ She spoke curtly, not out of dislike for me, but because she was always uncomfortable with intimate conversations. Only at Mynydd Baddon had she overcome that reserve, and she and I had very nearly become friends at that time, but since then we had drifted apart, not into our old hostility, but into a wary, though affectionate, acquaintanceship. ‘You look good without a beard,’ she said now, changing the subject, ‘it makes you look younger.’

‘I have sworn to grow it again only after Mordred’s death,’ I said.

‘May it be soon. How I would hate to die before that worm fetches his deserts.’ She spoke savagely, and with a real fear that old age might kill her before Mordred died. We were all in our forties now, and few folk lived longer. Merlin, of course, had lasted twice forty years and more, and we all knew others who had made fifty or sixty or even seventy years, but we thought of ourselves as old. Guinevere’s red hair was heavily streaked with grey, but she was still a beauty and her strong face looked on the world with all its old force and arrogance. She paused to watch Gwydre, who had ridden a horse into the arena He raised a hand to her, then put the horse through its paces. He was training the stallion to be a warhorse; to rear and kick with its hoofs and to keep its legs moving even when it was stationary so that no enemy could slice its hamstrings. Guinevere watched him for a while. ‘Do you think he’ll ever be King?’ she asked wistfully.

‘Yes, Lady,’ I said. ‘Mordred will make a mistake sooner or later and then we’ll pounce.’

‘I hope so,’ she said, slipping her arm into mine. I do not think she was trying to give me comfort, but rather to take it for herself. ‘Has Arthur spoken to you of Amhar?’ she asked.

‘Briefly, Lady.’

‘He doesn’t blame you. You do know,that, don’t you?’

‘I’d like to believe it,’ I said.

‘Well you can,’ she said brusquely. ‘His grief is for his failings as a father, not for the death of that little bastard.’

Arthur, I suspect, was far more grieved for Dumnonia than he was for Amhar, for he had been deeply embittered by the news of the massacres. Like me, he wanted revenge, but Mordred commanded an army and Arthur had fewer than two hundred men who would all need to cross the Severn by boat if they were to fight Mordred. In all honesty, he could not see how it was to be done. He even worried about the legality of such vengeance. ‘The men he killed,’ he told me, ‘were his oath-men. He had a right to kill them.’

‘And we have a right to avenge them,’ I insisted, but I am not sure Arthur entirely agreed with me. He always tried to elevate the law above private passion, and according to our law of oaths, which makes the King the source of all law and thus of all oaths, Mordred could do as he wished in his own land. That was the law, and Arthur, being Arthur, worried about breaking it, but he also wept for the men and women who had died and for the children who had been enslaved, and he knew that still more would die or be slave-chained while Mordred lived. The law, it seemed, would have to be bent, but Arthur did not know how to bend it. If we could have marched our men through Gwent, and then led them so far east that we could drop down into the border lands with Lloegyr and so have joined forces with Sagramor, we would have had the strength to beat down Mor-dred’s savage army, or at least meet it on equal terms, but King Meurig obstinately refused to let us cross his lands. If we crossed the Severn by boat we must go without our horses, and then we would find ourselves a long way from Sagramor and divided from him by Mordred’s army. Mordred could defeat us first, then turn back to deal with the Numidian. At least Sagramor still lived, but that was small consolation. Mordred had slaughtered some of Sagramor’s men, but he had failed to find Sagramor himself and he had pulled his men back from the frontier country before Sagramor could launch a savage reprisal. Now, we heard, Sagramor and a hundred and twenty of his men had taken refuge in a fort in the south country. Mordred feared to make an assault on the fort, and Sagramor lacked the strength to sally out and defeat Mordred’s army, and so they watched each other but did not fight, while Cerdic’s Saxons, encouraged by Sagramor’s impotence, again spread west into our land. Mordred detached warbands to oppose those Saxons, oblivious of the messengers who dared cross his land to link Arthur and Sagramor. The messages reflected Sagramor’s frustration — how could he extricate his men and bring them to Siluria? The distance was great and the enemy, far too numerous, lay in his path. We truly did seem helpless to revenge the killings, but then, three weeks after my return from Dumnonia, news came from Meurig’s court. The rumour reached us from Sansum. He had come to Isca with me, but had found Arthur’s company too galling and so, leaving Morgan in her brother’s care, the Bishop had fled to Gwent and now, perhaps to show us how close to the King he was, he sent us a message saying that Mordred was seeking Meurig’s permission to bring his army through Gwent to attack Siluria. Meurig, Sansum said, had not yet decided on an answer.

Arthur repeated Sansum’s message to me. ‘Is the mouse lord plotting again?’ he asked me.

‘He’s supporting both you and Meurig, Lord,’ I said sourly, ‘so that both of you will be grateful to him.’

‘But is it true?’ Arthur wondered. He hoped it was, for if Mordred attacked Arthur, then no law could condemn Arthur for fighting back, and if Mordred marched his army north into Gwent then we could sail south across the Severn Sea and link forces with Sagramor’s men somewhere in southern Dumnonia. Both Galahad and Bishop Emrys doubted that Sansum spoke truly, but I disagreed. Mordred hated Arthur above all men, and I thought that he would be unable to resist the attempt to defeat Arthur in battle.

So, for a few days we made plans. Our men trained with spear and sword, and Arthur sent messengers to Sagramor outlining the campaign he hoped to fight, but either Meurig denied Mordred the permission he needed, or else Mordred decided against an attack on Siluria, for nothing happened. Mordred’s army stayed between us and Sagramor, we heard no more rumours from Sansum and all we could do was wait.

Wait and watch Ceinwyn’s agony. Watch her face sink into gauntness. Listen to her raving, feel the terror in her grip and smell the death that would not come.

Morgan tried new herbs. She laid a cross on Ceinwyn’s naked body, but the touch of the cross made Ceinwyn scream. One night, when Morgan was sleeping, Taliesin made a counter-charm to avert the curse he still believed was the cause of Ceinwyn’s sickness, but though we killed a hare and painted its blood on Ceinwyn’s face, and though we touched her boil-ravaged skin with the burnt tip of an ash wand, and though we surrounded her bed with eagle-stones and elf-bolts and hagstones, and though we hung a bramble sprig and a bunch of mistletoe cut from a lime tree over her bed, and though we laid Excalibur, one of the Treasures of Britain, by her side, the sickness did not lift. We prayed to Grannos, the God of healing, but our prayers were unanswered and our sacrifices ignored. ‘It is a magic too strong,’ Taliesin said sadly. The next night, while Morgan slept again, we brought a Druid from northern Siluria into the sick chamber. He was a country Druid, all beard and stink, and he chanted a spell, then crushed the bones of a skylark into a powder that he stirred into an infusion of mugwort in a holly cup. He trickled the mixture into Ceinwyn’s mouth, but the medicine achieved nothing. The Druid tried feeding her scraps of a black cat’s roasted heart, but she spat them out and so he used his strongest charm, the touch of a corpse’s hand. The hand, which reminded me of the crest of Cerdic’s helmet, was blackened. The Druid touched it on Ceinwyn’s forehead, on her nose and her throat, then pressed it against her scalp as he muttered an incantation, but all he achieved was to transfer a score of his lice from his beard onto her scalp and when we tried to comb them from her head we pulled out the last of her hair. I paid the Druid, then followed him into the courtyard to escape the smoke of the fires on which Taliesin was burning herbs. Morwenna came with me. ‘You must rest, father,’ she said.

‘There’ll be time for rest later,’ I said, watching the Druid shuffle off into the dark. Morwenna put her arms around me and rested her head on my shoulder. She had hair as golden as Ceinwyn’s had been, and it smelt like Ceinwyn’s. ‘Maybe it isn’t a magic at all,’ she said. ‘If it weren’t magic,’ I said, ‘then she would have died.’ ‘There’s a woman in Powys who is said to have great skills.’

‘Then send for her,’ I said wearily, though I had no faith in any sorcerers now. A score had come and taken gold, but not one had lifted the sickness. I had sacrificed to Mithras, I had prayed to Bel and to Don, and nothing had worked. Ceinwyn moaned, and the moan rose to a scream. I flinched at the sound, then gently pushed Morwenna away. ‘I must go to her.’

‘You rest, father,’ Morwenna said. ‘I’ll go to her.’

It was then that I saw the cloaked figure standing in the centre of the courtyard. Whether it was a man or a woman I could not tell, nor could I say how long the figure had stood there. It seemed to me that only a moment before the courtyard had been empty, but now the cloaked stranger was in front of me with a face dark shadowed from the moon by a deep hood, and I felt a sudden dread that this was death appearing. I stepped towards the figure. ‘Who are you?’ I demanded.

‘No one you know, Lord Derfel Cadarn.’ It was a woman who spoke, and as she spoke she pushed back the hood and I saw that she had painted her face white, then smeared soot about her eye sockets so that she looked like a living skull. Morwenna gasped.

‘Who are you?’ I demanded again.

‘I am the breath of the west wind, Lord Derfel,’ she said in a sibilant voice, ‘and the rain that falls on Cadair Idris, and the frost that edges Eryri’s peaks. I am the messenger from the time before kings, I am the Dancer.’ She laughed then, and her laughter was like a madness in the night. The sound of it brought Taliesin and Galahad to the door of the sickroom where they stood and stared at the white-faced laughing woman. Galahad made the sign of the cross while Taliesin touched the iron latch of the door.

‘Come here, Lord Derfel,’ the woman commanded me, ‘come to me, Lord Derfel.’

‘Go, Lord,’ Taliesin encouraged me, and I had a sudden hope that the lice-ridden Druid’s spells might have worked after all, for though they had not lifted the sickness from Ceinwyn, they had brought this apparition to the courtyard and so I stepped into the moonlight and went close to the cloaked woman.

‘Embrace me, Lord Derfel,’ the woman said, and there was something in her voice that spoke of decay and dirt, but I shuddered and took another step and placed my arms around her thin shoulders. She smelt of honey and ashes. ‘You want Ceinwyn to live?’ she whispered in my ear.

‘Yes.’

‘Then come with me now,’ she whispered back, and pulled out of my embrace. ‘Now,’ she repeated when she saw my hesitation.

‘Let me fetch a cloak and a sword,’ I said.

‘You will need no sword where we go, Lord Derfel, and you may share my cloak. Come now, or let your lady suffer.’ With those words she turned and walked out of the courtyard.

‘Go!’ Taliesin urged me, ‘go!’

Galahad tried to come with me, but the woman turned in the gate and ordered him back. ‘Lord Derfel comes alone,’ she said, ‘or he does not come at all.’

And so I went, following death in the night, going north.

All that night we walked so that by dawn we were at the edge of the high hills, and still she pressed on, choosing paths that took us far from any settlement. The woman who called herself the Dancer walked barefoot, and skipped sometimes as if she was filled with an unquenchable joy. An hour after the dawn, when the sun was flooding the hills with new gold, she stopped beside a small lake and dashed water onto her face and scrubbed at her cheeks with handfuls of grass to wash away the mix of honey and ashes with which she had whitened her skin. Till that moment I had not known whether she was young or old, but now I saw she was a woman in her twenties, and very beautiful. She had a delicate face, full of life, with happy eyes and a quick smile. She knew her own beauty and laughed when she saw that I recognized it too. ‘Would you lie with me, Lord Derfel?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I said.

‘If it would cure Ceinwyn,’ she asked, ‘would you lie with me?’

‘Yes.’

‘But it won’t!’ she said, ‘it won’t!’ And she laughed and ran ahead of me, dropping her heavy cloak to reveal a thin linen dress clinging to a lissom body. ‘Do you remember me?’ she asked, turning to face me.

‘Should I?’

‘I remember you, Lord Derfel. You stared at my body like a hungry man, but you were hungry. So hungry. Remember?’ And with that she closed her eyes and walked down the sheep path towards me, and she made her steps high and precise, pointing her toes out with each high step, and I immediately recalled her. This was the girl whose naked skin had shone in Merlin’s darkness. ‘You’re Olwen,’ I said, her name coming back to me across the years. ‘Olwen the Silver.’

‘So you do remember me. I am older now. Older Olwen,’ she laughed. ‘Come, Lord! Bring the cloak.’

‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

‘Far, Lord, far. To where the winds spring and the rains begin and the mists are born and no kings rule.’ She danced on the path, her energy apparently endless. All that day she danced, and all that day she spoke nonsense to me. I think she was mad. Once, as we walked through a small valley where silver-leaved trees shivered in the little wind, she pulled off the dress and danced naked across the grass, and she did it to stir and tempt me, and when I doggedly walked on and showed no hunger for her, she just laughed, slung the dress across her shoulder and walked beside me as though her nakedness was no strange thing. ‘I was the one who carried the curse to your home,’ she told me proudly.

‘Why?’

‘Because it had to be done, of course,’ she said in all apparent sincerity, ‘just as now it has to be lifted! Which is why we’re going to the mountains, Lord.’

‘To Nimue?’ I asked, knowing already, as I think I had known ever since Olwen had first appeared in the courtyard, that it was to Nimue we were going.

‘To Nimue,’ Olwen agreed happily. ‘You see, Lord, the time has come.’

‘What time?’

‘Time for the end of all things, of course,’ Olwen said, and thrust her dress into my arms so that she was unencumbered.

She skipped ahead of me, turning sometimes to give me a sly look, and taking pleasure in my unchanging expression. ‘When the sun shines,’ she told me, ‘I like to be naked.’

‘What is the end of all things?’ I asked her.

‘We shall make Britain into a perfect place,’ Olwen said. ‘There will be no sickness and no hunger, no fears and no wars, no storms and no clothes. Everything will end, Lord! The mountains will fall and the rivers will turn on themselves and the seas will boil and the wolves will howl, but at its ending the country will be green and gold and there will be no more years, and no more time, and we shall all be Gods and Goddesses. I shall be a tree Goddess. I shall rule the larch and the hornbeam, and in the mornings I shall dance, and in the evenings I shall lie with golden men.’

‘Were you not supposed to lie with Gawain?’ I asked her. ‘When he came from the Cauldron? I thought you were to be his Queen.’

‘I did lie with him, Lord, but he was dead. Dead and dry. He tasted of salt.’ She laughed. ‘Dead and dry and salty. One whole night I warmed him, but he did not move. I did not want to lie with him,’ she added in a confiding voice, ‘but since that night, Lord, I have known nothing but happiness!’ She turned lightly, dancing a twisting step on the spring grass.

Mad, I thought, mad and heartbreakingly beautiful, as beautiful as Ceinwyn had once been, though this girl, unlike my pale-skinned and golden-haired Ceinwyn, was black-haired and her skin was sun-darkened. ‘Why do they call you Olwen the Silver?’ I asked her.

‘Because my soul is silver, Lord. My hair is dark, but my soul is silver!’ She spun on the path, then ran lithely on. I paused a few moments later to catch my breath and stared down into a deep valley where I could see a man herding sheep. The shepherd’s dog raced up the slope to gather in a straggler, and beneath the milling flock I could see a house where a woman laid wet clothes to dry on furze bushes. That, I thought, was real, while this journey through the hills was a madness, a dream, and I touched the scar on my left palm, the scar that held me to Nimue, and I saw that it had reddened. It had been white for years, now it was livid.

‘We must go on, Lord!’ Olwen called me. ‘On and on! Up into the clouds.’ To my relief she took her dress back and pulled it over her head and shook it down over her slim body. ‘It can be cold in the clouds, Lord,’ she explained, and then she was dancing again and I gave the shepherd and his dog a last rueful glance and followed the dancing Olwen up a narrow track that led between high rocks. We rested in the afternoon. We stopped in a steep-sided valley where ash, rowan and sycamore grew, and where a long narrow lake shivered black under the small wind. I leaned against a boulder and must have slept for a while, for when I woke I saw that Olwen was naked again, but this time she was swimming in the cold black water. She came shuddering from the lake, scrubbed herself dry with her cloak, then pulled on her dress. ‘Nimue told me,’ she said, ‘that if you lay with me, Ceinwyn would die.’

‘Then why did you ask me to lie with you?’ I asked harshly.

‘To see if you loved your Ceinwyn, of course.’

‘I do,’ I said.

‘Then you can save her,’ Olwen said happily.

‘How did Nimue curse her?’ I asked.

‘With a curse of fire and a curse of water and the curse of the blackthorn,’ Olwen said, then crouched at my feet and stared into my eyes, ‘and with the dark curse of the Otherbody,’ she added ominously.

‘Why?’ I asked angrily, not caring about the details of the curses, only that any curse at all should have been put on my Ceinwyn.

‘Why not?’ Olwen said, then laughed, draped her damp cloak about her shoulders and walked on.

‘Come, Lord! Are you hungry?’

‘Yes.’

‘You shall eat. Eat, sleep and talk.’ She was dancing again, making delicate barefoot steps on the flinty path. I noticed that her feet were bleeding, but she did not seem to mind. ‘We are going backwards,’ she told me.

‘What does that mean?’

She turned so that she was skipping backwards and facing me. ‘Backwards in time, Lord. We unspool the years. Yesterday’s years are flying past us, but so fast you cannot see their nights or their days. You are not born yet, your parents are not born, and back we go, ever back, to the time before there were kings. That, Lord, is where we go. To the time before kings.’

‘Your feet are bleeding,’ I said.

‘They heal,’ and she turned and skipped on. ‘Come!’ she called. ‘Come to the time before kings!’

‘Does Merlin wait for me there?’ I asked.

That name stopped Olwen. She stood, turned back again, and frowned at me. ‘I lay with Merlin once,’ she said after a while. ‘Often!’ she added in a burst of honesty. That did not surprise me. He was a goat. ‘Is he waiting for us?’ I asked.

‘He is at the heart of the time before kings,’ Olwen said seriously. ‘At its utter heart, Lord. Merlin is the cold in the frost, the water in the rain, the flame in the sun, the breath in the wind. Now come,’ she plucked at my sleeve with a sudden urgency, ‘we cannot talk now.’

‘Is Merlin a prisoner?’ I asked, but Olwen would not answer. She raced ahead of me, and waited impatiently for me to catch up with her, and as soon as I did she ran ahead again. She took those steep paths lightly while I laboured behind, and all the time we were going deeper into the mountains. By now, I reckoned, we had left Siluria behind and had come into Powys, but into a part of that unhappy country where young Perddel’s rule did not reach. This was the land without law, the lair of brigands, but Olwen skipped carelessly through its dangers.

The night fell. Clouds filled from the west so that soon we were in a complete darkness. I looked about me and saw nothing. No lights, not even the glimmer of a distant flame. It was thus, I imagine, that Bel found the isle of Britain when he first came to bring it life and light. Olwen put her hand into mine. ‘Come, Lord.’

‘You can’t see!’ I protested.

‘I see everything,’ she said, ‘trust me, Lord,’ and with that she led me onwards, sometimes warning me of an obstacle. ‘We must cross a stream here, Lord. Tread gently.’

I knew that our path was climbing steadily, but little else. We crossed a patch of treacherous shale, but Olwen’s hand was firm in mine, and once we seemed to walk along the spine of a high ridge where the wind whistled about my ears and Olwen sang a strange little song about elves. ‘There are still elves in these hills,’ she told me when the song ended. ‘Everywhere else in Britain they were killed, but not here. I’ve seen them. They taught me to dance.’

‘They taught you well,’ I said, not believing a word she said, but strangely comforted by the warm grip of her small hand.

‘They have cloaks of gossamer,’ she said.

‘They don’t dance naked?’ I asked, teasing her.

‘A gossamer cloak hides nothing, Lord,’ she reproved me, ‘but why should we hide what is beautiful?’

‘Do you lie with the elves?’

‘One day I shall. Not yet. In the time after the kings, I shall. With them and with golden men. But first I must lie with another salty man. Belly to belly with another dry thing from the Cauldron’s heart.’ She laughed and tugged at my hand and we left the ridge and climbed a smooth slope of grass to reach a higher crest. There, for the first time since the clouds had hidden the moon, I saw light. Far across a dark saddle of land there lay a hill, and in the hill there must have been a valley that was filled with fire so that the nearer brow of the hill was edged with its glow. I stood there, my hand unconsciously in Olwen’s hand, and she laughed with delight as she saw me gazing at that sudden light.

‘That is the land before kings, Lord,’ she told me. ‘You will find friends there, and food.’

I took my hand from hers. ‘What friend would put a curse on Ceinwyn?’

She took my hand back. ‘Come, Lord, not far now,’ she said, and she tugged me down the slope, trying to make me run, but I would not. I went slowly, remembering what Taliesin had told me in the magical mist he had drawn across Caer Cadarn; that Merlin had ordered him to save me, but that I might not thank him for it, and as I walked ever nearer that hollow of fire I feared I would discover Merlin’s meaning. Olwen chivvied me, she laughed at my fears and her eyes sparkled with the reflection of the fire’s glow, but I climbed towards the livid skyline with a heavy heart. Spearmen guarded the edge of the valley. They were savage-looking men swathed in furs and carrying rough-shafted spears with crudely fashioned blades. They said nothing as we passed, though Olwen greeted them cheerfully, then she led me down a path into the valley’s smoky heart. There was a long slender lake in the valley’s bed, and all around the black lake’s shores were fires, and by the fires were small huts among groves of stunted trees. An army of people was camped there, for there were two hundred fires or more.

‘Come, Lord,’ Olwen said and drew me on down the slope. ‘This is the past,’ she told me, ‘and this is the future. This is where the hoop of time meets.’

This is a valley, I told myself, in upland Powys. A hidden place where a desperate man might find shelter. The hoop of time did nothing here, I assured myself, yet even so I felt a shiver of apprehension as Olwen took me down to the huts beside the lake where the army camped. I had thought the folk here must be sleeping, for we were deep into the night, but as we walked between the lake and the huts a crowd of men and women swarmed from the huts to watch us pass. They were strange things, those people. Some laughed for no reason, some gibbered meaninglessly, some twitched. I saw goitred faces, blind eyes, hare lips, tangled masses of hair, and twisted limbs. ‘Who are they?’ I asked Olwen.

‘The army of the mad, Lord,’ she said.

I spat towards the lake to avert evil. They were not all mad or crippled, those poor folk, for some were spearmen, and a few, I noticed, had shields covered with human skin and blackened with human blood; the shields of Diwrnach’s defeated Blood-shields. Others had Powys’s eagle on their shields, and one man even boasted the fox of Siluria, a badge that had not been carried into battle since Gundleus’s time. These men, just like Mordred’s army, were the scourings of Britain: defeated men, landless men, men with nothing to lose and everything to win. The valley reeked of human waste. It reminded me of the Isle of the Dead, that place where Dumnonia sent its terrible mad, and the place where I had once gone to rescue Nimue. These folk had the same wild look and gave the same unsettling impression that at any moment they might leap and claw for no apparent reason.

‘How do you feed them?’ I asked.

‘The soldiers fetch food,’ Olwen said, ‘the proper soldiers. We eat a lot of mutton. I like mutton. Here we are, Lord. Journey’s end!’ And with those happy words she took her hand away from mine and skipped ahead of me. We had reached the end of the lake and in front of me now was a grove of great trees that grew in the shelter of a high rocky cliff.

A dozen fires burned under the trees and I saw that the trunks of the trees formed two lines, giving the grove the appearance of a vast hall, and at the hall’s far end were two rearing grey stones like the high boulders that the old people erected, though whether these were ancient stones, or newly raised, I could not tell.

Between the stones, enthroned on a massive wooden chair, and holding Merlin’s black staff in one hand, was Nimue. Olwen ran to her and threw herself down at Nimue’s feet and put her arms about Nimue’s legs and laid her head on Nimue’s knees. ‘I brought him, Lady!’ she said.

‘Did he lie with you?’ Nimue asked, talking to Olwen but staring fixedly at me. Two skulls surmounted the standing stones, each thickly covered in melted wax.

‘No, Lady,’ Olwen said.

‘Did you invite him?’ Still Nimue’s one eye gazed at me.

‘Yes, Lady.’

‘Did you show yourself to him?’

‘All day I showed myself to him, Lady.’

‘Good girl,’ Nimue said, and patted Olwen’s hair and I could almost imagine the girl purring as she lay so contentedly at Nimue’s feet. Nimue still stared at me, and I, as I paced between those tall fire-lit tree trunks, stared back at her.

Nimue looked as she had looked when I had fetched her from the Isle of the Dead. She looked as though she had not washed, or combed her hair, or taken any care of herself in years. Her empty eye socket had no patch, or any false eye, but was a shrunken, shrivelled scar in her haggard face. Her skin was deeply ingrained with dirt, her hair was a greasy, matted tangle that fell to her waist. Her hair had once been black, but now it was bone white, all but for one black streak. Her white robe was filthy, but over it she wore a misshapen sleeved coat, much too big for her, which I suddenly realized must be the Coat of Padarn, one of the Treasures of Britain, while on a finger of her left hand was the plain iron Ring of Eluned. Her nails were long and her few teeth black. She looked much older, or perhaps that was just the dirt accentuating the grim lines of her face. She had never been what the world would call beautiful, but her face had been quickened by intelligence and that had made her attractive, but now she looked repulsive and her once lively face was bitter, though she did offer me a shadow of a smile as she held up her left hand. She was showing me the scar, the same scar that I bore on my left hand, and in answer I held up my own palm and she nodded in satisfaction. ‘You came, Derfel.’

‘Did I have any choice?’ I asked bitterly, then pointed to the scar on my hand. ‘Doesn’t this pledge me to you? Why attack Ceinwyn to bring me to you, when you already had this?’ I tapped the scar again.

‘Because you wouldn’t have come,’ Nimue said. Her mad creatures flocked about her throne like courtiers, others fed the fires and one sniffed at my ankles like a dog. ‘You have never believed,’ Nimue accused me. ‘You pray to the Gods, but you don’t believe in them. No one believes properly now, except us.’ She waved her purloined staff at the halt, the half-blind, the maimed and the mad, who stared at her in adoration. ‘We believe, Derfel,’ she said.

‘I too believe,’ I replied.

‘No!’ Nimue screamed the word, making some of the creatures under the trees call out in terror. She pointed the staff at me. ‘You were there when Arthur took Gwydre from the fires.’

‘You could not expect Arthur to see his son killed,’ I said.

‘What I expected, fool, was to see Bel come from the sky with the air scorched and crackling behind him and the stars tossed like leaves in a tempest! That’s what I expected! That’s what I deserved!’ She put her head back and shrieked at the clouds, and all the crippled mad howled with her. Only Olwen the Silver was silent. She gazed at me with a half-smile, as though to suggest that she and I alone were sane in this refuge of the mad. ‘That’s what I wanted!’ Nimue shouted at me over the cacophony of wailing and yelping. ‘And that is what I shall have,’ she added, and with those words she stood, shook Olwen’s embrace free and beckoned me with her staff. ‘Come.’

I followed her past the standing stones to a cave in the cliff. It was not a deep cave, just large enough to hold a man lying on his back, and at first I thought I did see a naked man lying in the cave’s shadows. Olwen had come to my side and was trying to take my hand, but I pushed her away as, all around me, the mad pressed close to see what lay on the cave’s stone floor.

A small fire smouldered in the cave, and in its dim light I saw that it was not a man lying on the rock, but the clay figure of a woman. It was a life-size figure with crude breasts, spread legs and a rudimentary face. Nimue ducked into the cave to crouch beside the clay figure’s head. ‘Behold, Derfel Cadarn,’ she said, ‘your woman.’

Olwen laughed and smiled up at me. ‘Your woman, Lord!’ Olwen said, in case I did not understand. I stared at the grotesque clay figure, then at Nimue. ‘M; woman?’

‘That is Ceinwyn’s Otherbody, you fool!’ Nimue said, ‘and, am Ceinwyn’s bane.’ There was a frayed basket at the back o the cave, the Basket of Garanhir, another Treasure of Britain and Nimue took from it a bunch of dried berries. She stoopec and pressed one into the unfired clay of the woman’s body. ‘A new boil, Derfel!’ she said, and I saw that the clay’s surface was pitted with other berries.

‘And another, and another!’ She laughed, pressing the dry berries into the red clay. ‘Shall we give her pain, Derfel? Shall we make her scream?’ And with those words she drew a crude knife from her belt, the Knife of Laufro-dedd, and she stabbed its chipped blade into the clay woman’s head. ‘Oh, she is screaming now!’ Nimue told me. ‘They are trying to hold her down, but the pain is so bad, so bad!’ And with that she wriggled the blade about and suddenly I was enraged and stooped into the cave’s mouth and Nimue immediately let go of the knife and poised two fingers over the clay eyes. ‘Shall I blind her, Derfel?’ she hissed at me. ‘Is that what you want?’

‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked her.

She took the Knife of Laufrodedd from the tortured clay skull. ‘Let her sleep,’ she crooned, ‘or maybe not?’ And with that she gave a mad laugh and snatched an iron ladle from the Basket of Garanhir, scooped some burning embers from the smoky fire and scattered the burning scraps over the body and I imagined Ceinwyn shuddering and screaming, her back arching with the sudden pain, and Nimue laughed to see my impotent rage. ‘Why am I doing it?’ she asked. ‘Because you stopped me from killing Gwydre. And because you can bring the Gods to earth. That is why.’

I stared at her. ‘You’re mad too,’ I said softly.

‘What do you know of madness?’ Nimue spat at me. ‘You and your little mind, your pathetic little mind. You can judge me? Oh, pain!’ And she stabbed the knife into the clay breasts. ‘Pain! Pain!’ The mad things behind me joined in her cry. ‘Pain! Pain!’ they exulted, some clapping their hands and others laughing with delight.

‘Stop!’ I shouted.

Nimue crouched over the tortured figure, her knife poised. ‘Do you want her back, Derfel?’

‘Yes,’ I was close to tears.

‘She is most precious to you?’

‘You know she is.’

‘You would rather lie with that,’ Nimue gestured at the grotesque clay figure, ‘than with Olwen?’

‘I lie with no woman but Ceinwyn,’ I said.

‘Then I will give her back to you,’ Nimue said, and she tenderly stroked the clay figure’s forehead. ‘I will restore your Ceinwyn to you,’ Nimue promised, ‘but first you must give me what is most precious to me. That is my price.’

‘And what is most precious to you?’ I asked, knowing the answer before she gave it to me.

‘You must bring me Excalibur, Derfel,’ Nimue said, ‘and you must bring me Gwydre.’

‘Why Gwydre?’ I demanded. ‘He’s not a ruler’s son.’

‘Because he was promised to the Gods, and the Gods demand what was promised to them. You must bring him to me before the next moon is full. You will take Gwydre and the sword to where the waters meet beneath Nant Dduu. You know the place?’

‘I know it,’ I said grimly.

‘And if you do not bring them, Derfel, then I swear to you that Ceinwyn’s sufferings will increase. I shall plant worms in her belly, I shall turn her eyes to liquid, I shall make her skin peel and her flesh rot on her crumbling bones, and though she will beg for death I will not send it, but only give her pain instead. Nothing but pain.’ I wanted to step forward and kill Nimue there and then. She had been a friend and even, once, a lover, but now she had gone so far from me into a world where the spirits were real and the real were playthings. ‘Bring me Gwydre and bring me Excalibur,’ Nimue went on, her one eye glittering in the cave’s gloom, ‘and I shall free Ceinwyn of her Otherbody and you of your oath to me, and I shall give you two things.’ She reached behind her and pulled out a cloth. She shook it open and I saw it was the old cloak that had been stolen from me in Isca. She fumbled in the cloak, found something, and held it up between a finger and thumb and I saw she was holding the little missing agate from Ceinwyn’s ring. ‘A sword and a sacrifice,’ she said, ‘for a cloak and a stone. Will you do that, Derfel?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I said, and not meaning it, but not knowing what else I could say. ‘Will you leave me with her now?’ I demanded.

‘No,’ Nimue said, smiling. ‘But you want her to rest tonight? Then this one night, Derfel, I shall give her respite.’ She blew the ashes off the clay, picked out the berries and plucked the charms that had been pinned to the body. ‘In the morning,’ Nimue said, ‘I shall replace them.’

‘No!’

‘Not all of them,’ she said, ‘but more each day until I hear you are come to where the waters meet at Nant Dduu.’ She pulled a burnt scrap of bone from the clay belly. ‘And when I have the sword,’ she went on, ‘my army of the mad will make such fires that the night of Samain Eve will turn to day. And Gwydre will come back to you, Derfel. He will rest in the Cauldron and the Gods will kiss him to life and Olwen will lie with him and he will ride in glory with Excalibur in his hand.’ She took a pitcher of water and spilt a little onto the figure’s brow, then smoothed it gently into the glistening clay. ‘Go now,’ she said, ‘your Ceinwyn will sleep and Olwen has another thing to show you. At dawn you will leave.’

I stumbled after Olwen, pushing through the grinning crowd of horrid things that pressed about the cave and following the dancing girl along the cliff face to another cave. Inside I saw a second clay figure, this one a man, and Olwen gestured to it, then giggled. ‘Is it me?’ I asked, for I saw the clay was smooth and unmarked, but then, peering closer into the darkness, I saw the clay man’s eyes had been gouged out.

‘No, Lord,’ Olwen said, ‘it is not you.’ She stooped beside the figure and picked up a long bone needle that had been lying beside its legs. ‘Look,’ she said, and she slid the needle into the clay foot. From somewhere behind us a man wailed in pain. Olwen giggled. ‘Again,’ she said, and slid the bone into the other foot and once again the voice cried in pain. Olwen laughed, then reached for my hand.

‘Come,’ she said, and led me into a deep cleft that opened in the cliff. The cleft narrowed, then seemed to end abruptly ahead of us, for I could see only the dim sheen of reflected firelight on high rock, but then I saw a kind of cage had been made at the gorge’s end. Two hawthorns grew there, and rough baulks of timber had been nailed across their trunks to make crude prison bars. Olwen let go of my hand and pushed me forward. ‘I shall come for you in the morning, Lord. There’s food waiting there.’ She smiled, turned and ran away.

At first I thought the crude cage was some kind of shelter, and that when I got close I would find an entrance between the bars, but there was no door. The cage barred the last few yards of the gorge, and the promised food was waiting under one of the hawthorns. I found stale bread, dried mutton and a jar of water. I sat, broke the loaf, and suddenly something moved inside the cage and I twitched with alarm as a thing scrabbled towards me.

At first I thought the thing was a beast, then I saw it was a man, and then I saw that it was Merlin.

‘I shall be good,’ Merlin said to me, ‘I shall be good.’ I understood the second clay figure then, for Merlin was blind. No eyes at all. Just horror. ‘Thorns in my feet,’ he said, ‘in my feet,’ then he collapsed beside the bars and whimpered. ‘I shall be good, I promise!’

I crouched. ‘Merlin?’ I said.

He shuddered. ‘I will be good!’ he said in desperation, and when I put a hand through his bars to stroke his tangled filthy hair, he jerked back and shivered.

‘Merlin?’ I said again.

‘Blood in the clay,’ he said, ‘you must put blood in the clay. Mix it well. A child’s blood works best, or so I’m told. I never did it, my dear. Tanaburs did, I know, and I talked to him once about it. He was a fool, of course, but he knew some few tawdry things. The blood of a red-haired child, he told me, and preferably a crippled child, a red-haired cripple. Any child will do at a pinch, of course, but the red-haired cripple is best.’

‘Merlin,’ I said, ‘it’s Derfel.’

He babbled on, giving instructions on how best to make the clay figure so that evil could be sent from afar. He spoke of blood and dew and the need to mould the clay during the sound of thunder. He would not listen to me, and when I stood and tried to prise the bars away from the trees, two spearmen came grinning from the cleft’s shadows behind me. They were Bloodshields, and their spears told me to stop my efforts to free the old man. I crouched again. ‘Merlin!’ I said.

He crept nearer, sniffing. ‘Derfel?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Lord.’

He groped for me, and I gave him my hand and he clutched it hard. Then, still holding my hand, he sank onto the ground. ‘I’m mad, you know?’ he said in a reasonable voice.

‘No, Lord,’ I said.

‘I have been punished.’

‘For nothing, Lord.’

‘Derfel? Is it really you?’

‘It is me, Lord. Do you want food?’

‘I have much to tell you, Derfel.’

‘I hope so, Lord,’ I said, but he seemed incapable of ordering his wits, and for the next few moments he talked of the clay again, then of other charms, and he again forgot who I was for he called me Arthur, and then he was silent for a long while. ‘Derfel?’ he finally asked again.

‘Yes, Lord.’

‘Nothing must be written, do you understand?’

‘You’ve told me so many times, Lord.’

‘All our lore must be remembered. Caleddin had it all written down, and that’s when the Gods began to retreat. But it is in my head. It was. And she took it. All of it. Or almost all.’ He whispered the last three words.

‘Nimue?’ I asked, and he gripped my hand so terribly hard at the mention of her name and again he fell silent.

‘She blinded you?’ I asked.

‘Oh, she had to!’ he said, frowning at the disapproval in my voice. ‘No other way to do it, Derfel. I should have thought that was obvious.’

‘Not to me,’ I said bitterly.

‘Quite obvious! Absurd to think otherwise,’ he said, then let go of my hand and tried to arrange his beard and hair. His tonsure had disappeared beneath a layer of matted hair and dirt, his beard was straggly and flecked with leaves, while his white robe was the colour of mud. ‘She’s a Druid now,’ he said in a tone of wonder.

‘I thought women couldn’t be Druids,’ I said.

‘Don’t be absurd, Derfel. Just because women never have been Druids doesn’t mean they can’t be!

Anyone can be a Druid! All you need do is memorize the six hundred and eighty-four curses of Beli Mawr and the two hundred and sixty-nine charms of Lieu and carry in your head about a thousand other useful things, and Nimue, I must say, was an excellent pupil.’

‘But why blind you?’

‘We have one eye between us. One eye and one mind.’ He fell silent.

‘Tell me about the clay figure, Lord,’ I said.

‘No!’ He shuffled away from me, terror in his voice. ‘She has told me not to tell you,’ he added in a hoarse whisper.

‘How do I defeat it?’ I asked.

He laughed at that. ‘You, Derfel? You would fight my magic?’

‘Tell me how,’ I insisted.

He came back to the bars and turned his empty eye sockets left and right as though he were looking for some enemy who might be overhearing us. ‘Seven times and three,’ he said, ‘I dreamed on Cam Ingli.’ He had gone back into madness, and all that night I discovered that if I tried to prise out of him the secrets of Ceinwyn’s sickness he would do the same. He would babble of dreams, of the wheat-girl he had loved by the waters of Claerwen or of the hounds of Trygwylth who he was persuaded were hunting him. ‘That is why I have these bars, Derfel,’ he said, pounding the wooden slats, ‘so that the hounds cannot reach me, and why I have no eyes, so they cannot see me. The hounds can’t see you, you know, not if you have no eyes. You should remember that.’

‘Nimue,’ I said at one point, ‘will bring the Gods back?’

‘That is why she has taken my mind, Derfel,’ Merlin said.

‘Will she succeed?’

‘A good question! An excellent question. A question I ask myself constantly.’ He sat and hugged his bony knees. ‘I lacked the nerve, didn’t I? I betrayed myself. But Nimue won’t. She will go to the bitter end, Derfel.’

‘But will she succeed?’

‘I would like to have a cat,’ he said after a while. ‘I do miss cats.’

‘Tell me about the summoning.’

‘You know it all already!’ he said indignantly. ‘Nimue will find Excalibur, she will fetch poor Gwydre, and the rites will be done properly. Here, on the mountain. But will the Gods come? That is the question, isn’t it? You worship Mithras, don’t you?’

‘I do, Lord.’

‘And what do you know of Mithras?’

‘The God of soldiers,’ I said, ‘born in a cave. He is the God of the sun.’

Merlin laughed. ‘You know so little! He is the God of oaths. Did you know that? Or do you know the grades of Mithraism? How many grades do you have?’ I hesitated, unwilling to reveal the secrets of the mysteries. ‘Don’t be absurd, Derfel!’ Merlin said, his voice as sane as it had ever been in all his life.

‘How many? Two? Three?’

‘Two, Lord.’

‘So you’ve forgotten the other five! What are your two?’

‘Soldier and Father.’

‘‘ Miles and Pater, they should be called. And once there were also Leo, Corax, Perses, Nymphus and Heliodromus. How little you know of your miserable God, but then, your worship is a mere shadow worship. Do you climb the seven-runged ladder?’

‘No, Lord.’

‘Do you drink the wine and bread?’

‘That is the Christian way, Lord,’ I protested.

‘The Christian way! What halfwits you all are! Mithras’s mother was a virgin, shepherds and wise men came to see her newborn child, and Mithras himself grew to become a healer and a teacher. He had twelve disciples, and on the eve of his death he gave them a final supper of bread and wine. He was buried in a rock tomb and rose again, and he did all this long before the Christians nailed their God to a tree. You let the Christians steal your God’s clothes, Derfel!’

I gazed at him. ‘Is this true?’ I asked him.

‘It is true, Derfel,’ Merlin said, and raised his ravaged face to the crude bars. ‘You worship a shadow God. He is going, you see, just as our Gods are going. They all go, Derfel, they go into the void. Look!’

He pointed up into the clouded sky. ‘The Gods come and the Gods go, Derfel, and I no longer know if they hear us or see us. They pass by on the great wheel of heaven and now it is the Christian God who rules, and He will rule for a while, but the wheel will also take Him into the void and mankind will once again shiver in the dark and look for new Gods. And they will find them, for the Gods come and they go, Derfel, they go and they come.’

‘But Nimue will turn the wheel back?’ I asked.

‘Perhaps she will,’ Merlin said sadly, ‘and I would like that, Derfel. I would like to have my eyes back, and my youth, and my joy.’ He rested his forehead on the bars. ‘I will not help you break the enchantment,’ he said softly, so softly I almost did not hear him. ‘I love Ceinwyn, but if Ceinwyn must suffer for the Gods, then she is doing a noble thing.’

‘Lord,’ I began to plead.

‘No!’ He shouted so loudly that in the encampment behind us some dogs howled in reply. ‘No,’ he said more quietly. ‘I compromised once and I will not compromise again, for what was the price of compromise? Suffering! But if Nimue can perform the rites, then all our suffering will be done. Soon be done. The Gods will return, Ceinwyn will dance and I shall see.’

He slept for a while and I slept too, but after a time he woke me by putting a claw-like hand through the bars and seizing my arm. ‘Are the guards asleep?’ he asked me.

‘I think so, Lord.’

‘Then look for the silver mist,’ he whispered to me.

I thought for a heartbeat he had slipped back into madness. ‘Lord?’ I asked him.

‘I sometimes think,’ he said, and his voice was quite sane, ‘that there is only so much magic left on the earth. It fades like the Gods fade. But I did not give Nimue everything, Derfel. She thinks I did, but I saved one last enchantment. And I have worked it for you and for Arthur, for you two I loved above all men. If Nimue fails, Derfel, then look for Caddwg. You remember Caddwg?’

Caddwg was the boatman who had rescued us from Ynys Trebes so many years before, and the man who had hunted Merlin’s piddocks. ‘I remember Caddwg,’ I said.

‘He lives at Camlann now,’ Merlin said in a whisper. ‘Look for him, Derfel, and seek the silver mist. Remember that. If Nimue fails and horror comes, then take Arthur to Camlann, find Caddwg and look for the silver mist. It is the last enchantment. My last gift to those who were my friends.’ His fingers tightened on my arm. ‘Promise me you will seek it?’

‘I shall, Lord,’ I promised him.

He seemed relieved. He sat for a time, clutching my arm, then sighed. ‘I wish I could come with you. But I can’t.’

‘You can, Lord,’ I said.

‘Don’t be absurd, Derfel. I am to stay here and Nimue will use me one last time. I might be old, blind, half mad and nearly dead, but there is still power in me. She wants it.’ He uttered a horrid little whimper.

‘I cannot even weep any longer,’ he said, ‘and there are times when all I wish to do is weep. But in the silver mist, Derfel, in that silver mist, you will find no weeping and no time, just joy.’

He slept again, and when he woke it was dawn and Olwen had come for me. I stroked Merlin’s hair, but he was gone into the madness again. He yapped like a dog, and Olwen laughed to hear it. I wished there had been something I could give him, some small thing to give him comfort, but I had nothing. So I left him, and took his last gift with me even though I did not understand what it was; the last enchantment. Olwen did not take me back by the same path that had brought me to Nimue’s encampment, but instead led me down a steep combe, and then into a dark wood where a stream tumbled between rocks. It had begun to rain and our path was treacherous, but Olwen danced ahead of me in her damp cloak. ‘I like the rain!’ she called out to me once.

‘I thought you liked the sun,’ I said sourly.

‘I like both, Lord,’ she said. She was her usual merry self, but I scarcely listened to most of what she said. I was thinking of Ceinwyn, and of Merlin, and of Gwydre and Excalibur. I was thinking that I was in a trap, and I saw no way out. Must I choose between Ceinwyn and Gwydre? Olwen must have guessed what I was thinking because she came and slipped her arm through mine. ‘Your troubles will soon be over, Lord,’ she said comfortingly.

I took my arm away. ‘They are just beginning,’ I said bitterly.

‘But Gwydre won’t stay dead!’ she said encouragingly. ‘He will lie in the Cauldron, and the Cauldron gives life.’ She believed, but I did not. I still believed in the Gods, but I no longer believed we could bend them to our will. Arthur, I thought, had been right. It is to ourselves we must look, not to the Gods. They have their own amusements, and if we are not their toys, then we should be glad. Olwen stopped beside a pool under the trees. ‘There are beavers here,’ she said, staring at the rain-pitted water, and when I said nothing she looked up and smiled. ‘If you keep walking down the stream, Lord, you will come to a track. Follow it down the hill and you will find a road.’

I followed the track and the road, emerging from the hills near the old Roman fort of Cicucium that was now home to a group of nervous families. Their menfolk saw me and came from the fort’s broken gate with spears and dogs, but I waded the stream and scrambled uphill and when they saw I meant no harm, had no weapons and was evidently not the scout for a raiding party, they contented themselves with jeering at me. I could not remember being so long without a sword since childhood. It made a man feel naked.

It took me two days to reach home; two days of bleak thinking without any answer. Gwydre was the first to see me coming down Isca’s main street and he ran to greet me. ‘She’s better than she was, Lord,’

he called.

‘But getting worse again,’ I said.

He hesitated. ‘Yes. But two nights ago we thought she was recovering.’ He looked at me anxiously, worried by my grim appearance.

‘And each day since,’ I said, ‘she has slipped back.’

‘There must be hope, though,’ Gwydre tried to encourage me.

‘Maybe,’ I said, though I had none. I went to Ceinwyn’s bedside and she recognized me and tried to smile, but the pain was building in her again and the smile showed as a skull-like grimace. She had a fine layer of new hair, but it was all white. I bent, dirty as I was, and kissed her forehead. I changed my clothes, washed and shaved, strapped Hywelbane to my waist and then sought Arthur. I told him all that Nimue had told me, but Arthur had no answers, or none he would tell me. He would not surrender Gwydre, and that condemned Ceinwyn, but he could not say that to my face. Instead he looked angry. ‘I’ve had enough of this nonsense, Derfel.’

‘A nonsense that is giving Ceinwyn agony, Lord,’ I reproved him.

‘Then we must cure her,’ he said, but conscience gave him pause. He frowned. ‘Do you believe Gwydre will live again if he is placed in the Cauldron?’

I thought about it and could not lie to him. ‘No, Lord.’

‘Nor I,’ he said, and called for Guinevere, but the only suggestion she could make was that we should consult Taliesin.

Taliesin listened to my tale. ‘Name the curses again, Lord,’ he said when I was done.

‘The curse of fire,’ I said, ‘the curse of water, the curse of the blackthorn and the dark curse of the Otherbody.’

He flinched when I said the last. ‘The first three I can lift,’ he said, ‘but the last? I know of no one who can lift that.’

‘Why not?’ Guinevere demanded sharply.

Taliesin shrugged. ‘It is the higher knowledge, Lady. A Druid’s learning does not cease with his training, but goes on into new mysteries. I have not trodden that path. Nor, I suspect, has any man in Britain other than Merlin. The Otherbody is a great magic and to counter it we need a magic just as great. Alas, I don’t have it.’

I stared at the rainclouds above Isca’s roofs. ‘If I cut off Ceinwyn’s head, Lord,’ I spoke to Arthur,

‘will you cut off mine a heartbeat later?’

‘No,’ he said in disgust.

‘Lord!’ I pleaded.

‘No!’ he said angrily. He was offended by the talk of magic. He wanted a world in which reason ruled, not magic, but none of his reason helped us now.

Then Guinevere spoke softly. ‘Morgan,’ she said.

‘What of her?’ Arthur asked.

‘She was Merlin’s priestess before Nimue,’ Guinevere said. ‘If anyone knows Merlin’s magic, it is Morgan.’

So Morgan was summoned. She limped into the courtyard, as ever managing to bring an aura of anger with her. Her gold mask glinted as she looked at each of us in turn and, seeing no Christian present, she made the sign of the cross. Arthur fetched her a chair, but she refused it, implying that she had little time for us. Since her husband had gone to Gwent, Morgan had busied herself in a Christian shrine to the north of Isca. Sick folk went there to die and she fed them, nursed them and prayed for them. Folk call her husband a saint to this day, but I think the wife is called a saint by God. Arthur told her the tale and Morgan grunted with each revelation, but when Arthur spoke of the curse of the Otherbody she made the sign of the cross, then spat through the mask’s mouthpiece. ‘So what do you want of me?’ she asked belligerently.

‘Can you counter the curse?’ Guinevere asked.

‘Prayer can counter it!’ Morgan declared.

‘But you have prayed,’ Arthur said in exasperation, ‘and Bishop Emrys has prayed. All the Christians of Isca have prayed and Ceinwyn lies sick still.’

‘Because she is a pagan,’ Morgan said vituperatively. ‘Why should God waste his mercy on pagans when He has His own flock to look after?’

‘You have not answered my question,’ Guinevere said icily. She and Morgan hated each other, but for Arthur’s sake pretended to a chill courtesy when they met.

Morgan was silent for a while, then abruptly nodded her head. ‘The curse can be countered,’ she said,

‘if you believe in these superstitions.’

‘I believe,’ I said.

‘But even to think of it is a sin!’ Morgan cried and made the sign of the cross again.

‘Your God will surely forgive you,’ I said.

‘What do you know of my God, Derfel?’ she asked sourly.

‘I know, Lady,’ I said, trying to remember all the things Galahad had told me over the years, ‘that your God is a loving God, a forgiving God, and a God who sent His own Son to earth so that others should not suffer.’ I paused, but Morgan made no reply. ‘I know too,’ I went on gently, ‘that Nimue works a great evil in the hills.’

The mention of Nimue might have persuaded Morgan, for she had ever been angry that the younger woman had usurped her place in Merlin’s entourage. ‘Is it a clay figure?’ she asked me, ‘made with a child’s blood, dew, and moulded beneath the thunder?’

‘Exactly,’ I said.

She shuddered, spread her arms and prayed silently. None of us spoke. Her prayer went on a long time, and perhaps she was hoping we would abandon her, but when none of us left the courtyard, she dropped her arms and turned on us again. ‘What charms is the witch using?’

‘Berries,’ I said, ‘slivers of bone, embers.’

‘No, fool! What charms? How does she reach Ceinwyn?’

‘She has the stone from one of Ceinwyn’s rings and one of my cloaks.’

‘Ah!’ Morgan said, interested despite her revulsion for the pagan superstition. ‘Why one of your cloaks?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Simple, fool,’ she snapped, ‘the evil flows through you!’

‘Me?’

‘What do you understand?’ she snapped. ‘Of course it flows through you. You have been close to Nimue, have you not?’

‘Yes,’ I said, blushing despite myself.

‘So what is the symbol of that?’ she asked. ‘She gave you a charm? A scrap of bone? Some piece of pagan rubbish to hang about your neck?’

‘She gave me this,’ I said, and showed her the scar on my left hand. Morgan peered at the scar, then shuddered. She said nothing.

‘Counter the charm, Morgan,’ Arthur pleaded with her.

Morgan was silent again. ‘It is forbidden,’ she said after a while, ‘to dabble in witchcraft. The holy scriptures tell us that we should not suffer a witch to live.’

‘Then tell me how it is done,’ Taliesin pleaded.

‘You?’ Morgan cried. ‘You? You think you can counter Merlin’s magic? If it is to be done, then let it be done properly.’

‘By you?’ Arthur asked and Morgan whimpered. Her one good hand made the sign of the cross, and then she shook her head and it seemed she could not speak at all. Arthur frowned. ‘What is it,’ he asked,

‘that your God wants?’

‘Your souls!’ Morgan cried.

‘You want me to become a Christian?’ I asked.

The gold mask with its incised cross snapped up to face me. ‘Yes,’ Morgan said simply.

‘I will do it,’ I said just as simply.

She pointed her hand at me. ‘You will be baptized, Derfel?’

‘Yes, Lady.’

‘And you will swear obedience to my husband.’

That checked me. I gazed at her. ‘To Sansum?’ I asked feebly.

‘He is a bishop!’ Morgan insisted. ‘He has God’s authority! You will agree to swear obedience to him, you will agree to be baptized, and only then will I lift the curse.’

Arthur stared at me. For a few heartbeats I could not swallow the humiliation of Morgan’s demand, but then I thought of Ceinwyn and I nodded. ‘I will do it,’ I told her. So Morgan risked her God’s anger and lifted the curse.

She did it that afternoon. She came to the palace courtyard in a black robe and without any mask so that the horror of her fire-ravaged face, all red and scarred and ridged and twisted, was visible to us all. She was furious with herself, but committed to her promise, and she hurried about her business. A brazier was lit and fed with coals and, while the fire heated, slaves fetched baskets of potter’s clay that Morgan moulded into the figure of a woman. She used blood from a child that had died in the town that morning, and water that a slave swept up from the courtyard’s damp grass, and mixed both with the clay. There was no thunder, but Morgan said the counter-charm did not need thunder. She spat in horror at what she had made. It was a grotesque image, that thing, a woman with huge breasts, spread legs and a gaping birth canal, and in the figure’s belly she dug a hole that she said was the womb where the evil must rest. Arthur, Taliesin and Guinevere watched enthralled as she moulded the clay and then as she walked three times round the obscene figure. After the third sunwise circuit she stopped, raised her head to the clouds and wailed. For a moment I thought she was in such pain that she could not proceed and that her God was commanding her to stop the ceremony, but then she turned her twisted face towards me. ‘I need the evil now,’ she said.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

The slit that was her mouth seemed to smile. ‘Your hand, Derfel.’

‘My hand?’

I saw now that the lipless slit was a smile. ‘The hand that binds you to Nimue,’ Morgan said. ‘How else do you think the evil is channelled? You must cut it off, Derfel, and give it to me.’

‘Surely,’ Arthur began to protest.

‘You force me to sin!’ Morgan turned on her brother with a shriek, ‘then you challenge my wisdom?’

‘No,’ Arthur said hurriedly.

‘It is nothing to me,’ she said carelessly, ‘if Derfel wants to keep his hand, so be it. Ceinwyn can suffer.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘no.’

We sent for Galahad and Culhwch, then Arthur led the three of us to his smithy where the forge burned night and day. I took my lover’s ring from the finger of my left hand and gave it to Morridig, Arthur’s smith, and asked him to seal the ring about Hywelbane’s pommel. The ring was of common iron, a warrior’s ring, but it had a cross made of gold that I had stolen from the Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn and it was the twin of a ring Ceinwyn wore.

We placed a thick piece of timber on the anvil. Galahad held me tight, his arms about me, and I bared my arm and laid my left hand on the timber. Culhwch gripped my forearm, not to keep it still, but for afterwards.

Arthur raised Excalibur. ‘Are you sure, Derfel?’ he asked.

‘Do it, Lord,’ I said.

Morridig watched wide-eyed as the bright blade touched the rafters above the anvil. Arthur paused, then hacked down once. He hacked down hard, and for a second I felt no pain, none, but then Culhwch took my spurting wrist and thrust it into the burning coals of the forge and that was when the pain whipped through me like a spear thrust. I screamed, and then I remember nothing at all. I heard later how Morgan took the severed hand with its fatal scar and sealed it in the clay womb. Then, to a pagan chant as old as time, she pulled the bloody hand out through the birth canal and tossed it onto the brazier.

And thus I became a Christian.