The Winter King

PART FOUR The Isle of the Dead

IGRAINE DEMANDED TO see Ceinwyn's brooch. She held it in the window, turning it and gazing at its golden spirals. I could see the desire in her eyes. “You have many that are more beautiful,” I told her gently.

“But none so full of story,” she said, holding the brooch against her breast.

“My story, dear Queen,” I chided her, 'not yours."

She smiled. “But what did you write? That if I were as kind as you know me to be, then I would let you keep it?”

“Did I write that?”

“Because you knew that would make me give it back to you. You are a cunning old man, Brother Derfel.” She held the brooch out to me, then folded her fingers over the gold before I could take it. “Will it be mine one day?”

“No one else's, dear Lady. I promise.”

She still held it. “And you won't let Bishop Sansum take it?”

“Never,” I said fervently.

She dropped it into my hand. “Did you really wear it under your breastplate?”

“Always,” I said, tucking the brooch safe under my robe.

“Poor Ynys Trebes.” She was sitting in her usual place on my window-sill from where she could stare down Dinnewrac's valley towards the distant river that was swollen with an early summer rain. Was she imagining Prankish invaders crossing the ford and swarming up the slopes? “What happened to Leanor?” she asked, surprising me with the question.

“The harpist? She died.”

“No! But I thought you said she escaped from Ynys Trebes?” I nodded. “She did, but she sickened her first winter in Britain and died. Just died.”

“And what about your woman?”

“Mine?”

“In Ynys Trebes. You said that Galahad had Leaner, but that the rest of you all had women too, so who was yours? And what happened to her?”

“I don't know.”

“Oh, Derfel! She can't have been nothing!”

I sighed. “She was a fisherman's daughter. Her name was Pellcyn, only everyone called her Puss. Her husband had drowned a year before I met her. She had a baby daughter, and when Culhwch led our survivors to the boat Puss fell off the cliff path. She was holding her baby, you see, and couldn't hold on to the rocks. There was chaos and everyone was panicking and hurrying. It was no one's fault.” Though if I had been there, I have often thought, Pellcyn would have lived. She was a sturdy, bright-eyed girl with a quick laugh and an inexhaustible appetite for hard work. A good woman. But if I had saved her life Merlin would have died. Fate is inexorable.

Igraine must have been thinking the same. “I wish I'd met Merlin,” she said wistfully.

“He'd have liked you,” I said. “He always liked pretty women.”

“But so did Lancelot?” she asked quickly.

“Oh, yes.”

“Not boys?”

“Not boys.”

Igraine laughed. This day she was wearing an embroidered dress of blue dyed linen that suited her fair skin and dark hair. Two gold torques circled her neck and a tangle of bracelets rattled on a slim wrist. She stank of faeces, a fact I was diplomatic enough to ignore for I realized she must be wearing a pessary of a newborn baby's first motions, an old remedy for a barren woman. Poor Igraine. “You hated Lancelot?” she suddenly accused me.

“Utterly.”

“That isn't fair!” She jumped up from the window-sill and paced to and fro in the small room. “People's stories shouldn't be told by their enemies. Supposing Nwylle wrote mine?”

“Who is Nwylle?”

“You don't know her,” she said, frowning, and I guessed Nwylle was her husband's lover. “But it isn't fair,” she insisted, 'because everyone knows Lancelot was the greatest of Arthur's soldiers. Everyone!"

“I don't.”

“But he must have been brave!”

I stared through the window, trying to be fair in my mind, trying to find something good to say about my worst enemy. “He could be brave,” I said, 'but he chose not to be. He fought sometimes, but usually he avoided battle. He was frightened of his face being scarred, you see. He was very vain about his looks. He collected Roman mirrors. The mirrored room in Benoic's palace was Lancelot's room. He could sit there and admire himself on every wall."

“I don't believe he was as bad as you make him sound,” Igraine protested.

“I think he was worse,” I said. I do not enjoy writing about Lancelot for the memory of him lies like a stain on my life. “Above everything,” I told Igraine, 'he was dishonest. He told lies out of choice because he wanted to hide the truth about himself, but he also knew how to make people like him when he wanted. He could charm the fish from the sea, my dear."

She sniffed, unhappy at my judgment. Doubtless, when Dafydd ap Gruffud translates these words, Lancelot will be burnished just as he would have liked. Shining Lancelot! Upright Lancelot! Handsome, dancing, smiling, witty, elegant Lancelot! He was the King without Land and the Lord of Lies, but if Igraine has her way he will shine through the years as the very paragon of kingly warriors. Igraine peered through the window to where Sansum was driving a group of lepers from our gate. The saint was flinging clods of earth at them, screaming at them to go to the devil and summoning our other brothers to help him. The novice Tudwal, who daily grows ruder to the rest of us, danced beside his master and cheered him on. Igraine's guards, lolling at the kitchen door as usual, finally appeared and used their spears to rid the monastery of the diseased beggars. “Did Sansum really want to sacrifice Arthur?” Igraine asked.

“So Bedwin told me.”

Igraine gave me a sly look. “Does Sansum like boys, Derfel?”

“The saint loves everyone, dear Queen, even young women who ask impertinent questions.” She smiled dutifully, then grimaced. “I'm sure he doesn't like women. Why won't he let any of you marry? Other monks marry, but none here.”

“The pious and beloved Sansum,” I explained, 'believes women distract us from our duty of adoring God. Just like you distract me from my proper work."

She laughed, then suddenly remembered an errand and looked serious. “There are two words Dafydd did not understand in the last batch of skins, Derfel. He wants you to explain them. Catamite?”

“Tell him to ask someone else.”

“I shall ask someone else, certainly,” she said indignantly. “And camel? He says it isn't coal.”

“A camel is a mythical beast, Lady, with horns, wings, scales, a forked tail and flames for breath.”

“It sounds like Nwylle,” Igraine said.

“Ah! The Gospel writers at work! My two evangelists!” Sansum, his hands dirty from the earth he had thrown at the lepers, sidled into the room to give this present parchment a dubious look before wrinkling his nose. “Do I smell something foul?” he asked.

I looked sheepish. “The beans at breakfast, Lord Bishop,” I said. “I apologize.”

“I am astonished you can abide his company,” Sansum said to Igraine. “And shouldn't you be in the chapel, my Lady? Praying for a baby? Is that not your business here?”

“It's certainly not yours,” Igraine said tartly. “If you must know, my Lord Bishop, we were discussing our Saviour's parables. Did you not once preach to us about the camel and the needle's eye?” Sansum grunted and looked over my shoulder. “And what, foul Brother Derfel, is the Saxon word for camel?”

“Nwylle,” I said.

Igraine laughed and Sansum glared at her. “My Lady finds the words of our blessed Lord amusing?”

“I am just happy to be here,” Igraine said humbly, 'but I would love to know what a camel is."

“Everyone knows!” Sansum said derisively. “A camel is a fish, a great fish! Not unlike,” he added slyly,

'the salmon that your husband sometimes remembers to send to us poor monks?"

“I shall have him send more,” Igraine said, 'with the next batch of Derfel's skins, and I know he'll be sending some of those soon for this Saxon Gospel is very dear to the King."

“It is?” Sansum asked suspiciously.

“Very dear, my Lord Bishop,” Igraine said firmly.

She is a clever girl, very clever, and beautiful too. King Brochvael is a fool if he takes a lover as well as his Queen, but men were ever fools for women. Or some men were, and chief of them, I suppose, was Arthur. Dear Arthur, my Lord, my Gift-Giver, most generous of men, whose tale this is. It was strange to be home, especially as I had no home. I possessed some gold torques and scraps of jewellery, but those, save Ceinwyn's brooch, I sold so that my men would at least have food in their first days back in Britain. My other belongings had all been in Ynys Trebes, and now they formed a part of some Frank's hoard. I was poor, homeless, with nothing more to give to my men, not even a hall in which to feast them, but they forgave me that. They were good men and sworn to my service. Like me, they had left behind anything they could not carry when Ynys Trebes fell. Like me they were poor, yet none of them complained. Cavan simply said a soldier must take his losses like he takes his plunder, lightly. Issa, a farm boy who was an extraordinary spearman, tried to return a narrow gold torque that I had given him. It was not just, he said, that a spearman should wear a gold torque when his captain did not, but I would not take it, so Issa gave it as a token to the girl he had brought home from Benoic and the next day she ran off with a tramping priest and his band of whores. The countryside was full of such travelling Christians, missionaries they called themselves, and almost all of them had a band of women believers who were supposed to assist in the Christian rituals, but who, it was rumoured, were more likely to be used for the seduction of converts to the new religion.

Arthur gave me a hall just north of Durnovaria: not for my own, since it belonged to an heiress named Gyllad, an orphan, but Arthur made me her protector; a position which usually ended with the ruination of the child and the enrichment of the guardian. Gyllad was scarcely eight years old and I could have married her had I wanted and then disposed of her property, or else I could have sold her hand in marriage to a man willing to buy the bride along with the farmland, but instead, as Arthur had intended, I lived off Gyllad's rents and allowed her to grow in peace. Even so her relatives protested at my appointment. That very same week of my return from Ynys Trebes, when I had been in Gyllad's hall scarce two days, an uncle of hers, a Christian, appealed against my protector ship to Nabur, the Christian magistrate in Durnovaria, saying that before his death Gyllad's father had promised him the guardianship, and I only managed to keep Arthur's gift by posting my spearmen all around the courthouse. They were in full war gear with spearheads whetted bright, and their presence somehow persuaded the uncle and his supporters not to press their suit. The town guards were summoned, but one look at my veterans persuaded them that maybe they had better business elsewhere. Nabur complained about returning soldiers committing thuggery in a peaceful town, but when my opponents did not appear in court he weakly awarded me the judgment. I later heard the uncle had already purchased the opposite verdict from Nabur and that he was never able to have his money refunded. I appointed one of my men, Llystan, who had lost a foot in a battle in Benoic's woods, as Gyllad's steward and he, like the heiress and her estate, prospered.

Arthur summoned me the following week. I found him in the palace hall where he was eating his midday meal with Guinevere. He ordered a couch and more food to be fetched for me. The courtyard outside was crowded with petitioners. “Poor Arthur,” Guinevere commented, 'one visit home and suddenly every man is complaining about his neighbour or demanding a reduction in rent. Why don't they use the magistrates?"

“Because they're not rich enough to bribe them,” Arthur said.

“Or powerful enough to surround the courthouse with iron-helmed men?” Guinevere added, smiling to show that she did not disapprove of my action. She wouldn't, for she was a sworn opponent of Nabur who was a leader of the kingdom's Christian faction.

“A spontaneous gesture of support by my men,” I said blandly, and Arthur laughed. It was a happy meal. I was rarely alone with Arthur and Guinevere, yet when I was I always saw how contented she made him. She had a barbed wit that he lacked, but liked, and she used it gently, as she knew he preferred it used. She flattered Arthur, yet she also gave him good advice. Arthur was ever ready to believe the best about people and he needed Guinevere's scepticism to redress that optimism. She looked no older than the last time I had been so close to her, though maybe there was a new shrewdness in those green huntress eyes. I could see no evidence that she was pregnant: her pale green dress lay flat over her belly where a gold-tasselled rope hung like a loose belt. Her badge of the moon-crested stag hung around her neck beneath the heavy sun-rays of the Saxon necklace that Arthur had sent her from Durocobrivis. She had scorned the necklace when I had presented it to her, but now wore it proudly.

The conversation at that midday meal was mostly light. wanted to know why the blackbirds and thrushes stopped singing in the summer, but neither of us had an answer, any more than we could tell him where the martins and swallows went in winter, though Merlin once told me they went to a great cave in the northern wilderness where they slept in huge feathered clumps until the spring. Guinevere pressed me about Merlin and I promised her, upon my life, that the Druid had indeed returned to Britain. “He's gone to the Isle of the Dead,” I told her.

“He's done what?” Arthur asked, appalled.

I explained about Nimue and remembered to thank Guinevere for her efforts to save my friend from Sansum's revenge.

“Poor Nimue,” Guinevere said. “But she is a fierce creature, isn't she? I liked her, but I don't think she liked us. We are all too frivolous! And I could not interest her in Isis. Isis, she'd tell me, is a foreign Goddess, and then she would spit like a little cat and mutter a prayer to Manawydan.” Arthur showed no reaction to the mention of Isis and I supposed he had lost his fears of the strange Goddess. “I wish I knew Nimue better,” he said instead.

“You will,” I said, 'when Merlin brings her back from the dead."

“If he can,” Arthur said dubiously. “No one ever has come back from the Isle.”

“Nimue will,” I insisted.

“She is extraordinary,” Guinevere said, 'and if anyone can survive the Isle, she can."

“With Merlin's help,” I added.

Only at the meal's end did our talk turn to Ynys Trebes, and even then Arthur was careful not to mention the name Lancelot. Instead he regretted that he had no gift with which he could reward me for my efforts.

“Being home is reward enough, Lord Prince,” I said, remembering to use the title Guinevere preferred.

“I can at least call you Lord,” Arthur said, 'and so you will be called from now on, Lord Derfel." I laughed, not because I was ungrateful, but because the reward of a warlord's title seemed too grand for my attainments. I was also proud: a man was called lord for being a king, a prince, a chief or because his sword had made him famous. I superstitiously touched Hywelbane's hilt so that my luck would not be soured by the pride.

Guinevere laughed at me, not out of spite, but with delight at my pleasure, and Arthur, who loved nothing more than seeing others happy, was pleased for both of us. He was happy himself that day, but Arthur's happiness was always quieter than other men's joy. At that time, when he first came back to Britain, I never saw him drunk, never saw him boisterous and never saw him lose his self-possession except on a battlefield. He had a stillness about him that some men found disconcerting for they feared he read their souls, but I think that calm came from his desire to be different. He wanted admiration and he loved rewarding the admiration with generosity.

The noise of the waiting petitioners grew louder and Arthur sighed as he thought of the work awaiting him. He pushed away his wine and gave me an apologetic glance. “You deserve to rest, Lord,” he said, deliberately flattering me with my new title, 'but alas, very soon I shall ask you to take your spears north."

“My spears are yours, Lord Prince,” I said dutifully.

He traced a circle on the marble table top with his finger. “We are surrounded by enemies,” he said, 'but the real danger is Powys. Gorfyddyd collects an army like Britain has never seen. That army will come south very soon and King Tewdric, I fear, has no stomach for the fight. I need to put as many spears as I can into Gwent to hold Tewdric's loyalty staunch. Cei can hold Cadwy, Melwas will have to do his best against Cerdic, and the rest of us will go to Gwent."

“What of Aelle?” Guinevere asked meaningfully.

“He is at peace,” Arthur insisted.

“He obeys the highest price,” Guinevere said, 'and Gorfyddyd will be raising the price very soon.“ Arthur shrugged. ”I cannot face both Gorfyddyd and Aelle,“ he said softly. ”It will take three hundred spears to hold Aelle's Saxons, not defeat them, mark you, just hold them. The lack of those three hundred spears will mean defeat in Gwent."

“Which Gorfyddyd knows,” Guinevere pointed out.

“So what, my love, would you have me do?” Arthur asked her. But Guinevere had no better answer than Arthur, and his answer was merely to hope and pray that the fragile peace held with Aelle. The Saxon King had been bought with a cartload of gold and no further price could be paid for there was no gold left in the kingdom. “We just have to hope Gereint can hold him,” Arthur said, 'while we destroy Gorfyddyd.“ He pushed his couch back from the table and smiled at me. ”Rest till after Lughnasa, Lord Derfel,“ he told me, 'then as soon as the harvest's gathered you can march north with me.”

He clapped his hands to summon servants to clear away the remains of the meal and to let in the waiting petitioners. Guinevere beckoned me as the servants hurried about their work. “Can we talk?” she asked.

“Gladly, Lady.”

She took off the heavy necklace, handed it to a slave, then led me up a flight of stone steps that ended at a door opening into an orchard where two of her big deer hounds waited to greet her. Wasps buzzed around windfalls and Guinevere demanded that slaves clear the rotting fruit away so we could walk unmolested. She fed the hounds scraps of chicken left from the midday meal while a dozen slaves scooped the sodden, bruised fruit into the skirts of their robes, then scuttled away, well stung, to leave the two of us alone. Wicker frames of booths that would be decorated with flowers for the great feast of Lughnasa had been erected all around the orchard wall. "It looks pretty' Guinevere spoke of the orchard'

but I wish I was in Lindinis."

“Next year, Lady,” I said.

“It'll be in ruins,” she said tartly. “Hadn't you heard? Gundleus raided Lindinis. He didn't capture Caer Cadarn, but he did pull down my new palace. That was a year ago.” She grimaced. “I hope Ceinwyn makes him utterly miserable, but I doubt she will. She's an insipid little thing.” The leaf-filtered sun lit her red hair and cast strong shadows on her good face. “I sometimes wish I was a man,” she said, surprising me.

“You do?”

“Do you know how hateful it is to wait for news?” she asked passionately. “In two or three weeks you'll all go north and then we must just wait. Wait and wait. Wait to hear if Aelle breaks his word, wait to hear how huge Gorfyddyd's army really is.” She paused. “Why is Gorfyddyd waiting? Why doesn't he attack now?”

“His levies are working on the harvest,” I said. “Everything stops for harvest. His men will want to make sure of their harvest before they come to take ours.”

“Can we stop them?” she asked me abruptly.

“In war, Lady,” I said, 'it is not always a question of what we can do, but what we must do. We must stop them." Or die, I thought grimly.

She walked in silence for a few pacec, thrusting the excited dogs away from her feet. “Do you know what people are saying about Arthur?” she asked after a while. I nodded. “That it would be better if he fled to Broceliande and yielded the kingdom to Gorfyddyd. They say the war is lost.”

She looked at me, overwhelming me with her huge eyes. At that moment, so close to her, alone with her in the warm garden and engulfed by her subtle scent, I understood why Arthur had risked a kingdom's peace for this woman. “But you will fight for Arthur?” she asked me.

“To the end, Lady,” I said. “And for you,” I added awkwardly. She smiled. “Thank you.” We turned a corner, walking towards the small spring that sprang from a rock in the corner of the Roman wall. The trickle of water irrigated the orchard and someone had tucked votive ribbons into niches of the mossy rock. Guinevere lifted the golden hem of her apple-green dress as she stepped over the rivulet. “There's a Mordred party in the kingdom,” she told me, repeating what Bishop Bedwin had spoken of on the night of my return. “They're Christians, mostly, and they're all praying for Arthur's defeat. If he was defeated, of course, they'd have to grovel to Gorfyddyd, but grovelling, I've noticed, conics naturally to Christians. If I were a man, Derfel Cadarn, three heads would fall to my sword. Sansum, Nabur and Mordred.”

I did not doubt her words. “But if Nabur and Sansum are the best men the Mordred party can muster, Lady,” I said, 'then Arthur need not worry about them."

“King Melwas too, I think,” Guinevere said, 'and who knows how many others? Almost every wandering priest in the kingdom spreads the pestilence, asking why men should die for Arthur. I'd strike all their heads off, but traitors don't reveal themselves, Lord Derfel. They wait in the dark and strike when you're not looking. But if Arthur defeats Gorfyddyd they'll all sing his praises and pretend they were his supporters all the while.“ She spat to avert evil, then gave me a sharp glance. ”Tell me about King Lancelot," she said suddenly.

I had an impression that we were at last reaching the real reason for this stroll beneath the apple and pear trees. “I don't really know him,” I said evasively.

“He spoke well of you last night,” she said.

“He did?” I responded sceptic ally I knew Lancelot and his companions were still resident in Arthur's house, indeed I had been dreading meeting him and relieved that he had not been at the midday meal.

“He said you were a great soldier,” Guinevere said.

“It's nice to know,” I answered sourly, 'that he can sometimes tell the truth." I assumed that Lancelot, trimming his sails to a new wind, had tried to gain favour with Arthur by praising a man he knew to be Arthur's friend.

“Maybe,” Guinevere said, 'warriors who suffer a terrible defeat like the fall of Ynys Trebes always end up squabbling?"

“Suffer?” I said harshly. “I saw him leave Benoic, Lady, but I don't remember him suffering. Any more than I remember seeing that bandage on his hand when he left.”

“He's no coward,” she insisted warmly. “He wears warrior rings thick on his left hand, Lord Derfel.”

“Warrior rings!” I said derisively, and plunged my hand into my belt pouch and brought out a fistful of the things. I had so many now that I no longer bothered to make them. I scattered the rings on the orchard's grass, startling the deer hounds that looked to their mistress for reassurance. “Anyone can find warrior rings, Lady.”

Guinevere stared at the fallen rings, then kicked one aside. “I like King Lancelot,” she said defiantly, thus warning me against any more disparaging remarks. “And we have to look after him. Arthur feels we failed Benoic and the least we can do is to treat its survivors with honour. I want you to be kind to Lancelot, for my sake.”

“Yes, Lady,” I said meekly.

“We must find him a rich wife,” Guinevere said. “He must have land and men to command. Dumnonia is fortunate, I think, in having him come to our shores. We need good soldiers.”

“Indeed we do, Lady,” I agreed.

She caught the sarcasm in my voice and grimaced, but despite my hostility she persevered with the real reason she had invited me to this shadowed, private orchard. “King Lancelot,” she said, 'wants to be a worshipper of Mithras, and Arthur and I do not want him opposed.“ I felt a flare of rage at my religion being taken so lightly. ”Mithras, Lady,“ I said coldly, 'is a religion for the brave.”

“Even you, Derfel Cadarn, do not need more enemies,” Guinevere replied just as coldly, so I knew she would become my enemy if I blocked Lancelot's desires. And doubtless, I thought, Guinevere would deliver the same message to any other man who might oppose Lancelot's initiation into the Mithraic mysteries.

“Nothing will be done till winter,” I said, evading a firm commitment.

“But make sure it is done,” she said, then pushed open the hall door. “Thank you, Lord Derfel.”

“Thank you, Lady,” I said, and felt another surge of anger as I ran down the steps to the hall. Ten days! I thought, just ten days and Lancelot had made Guinevere into his supporter. I cursed, vowing that I would become a miserable Christian before I ever saw Lancelot feasting in a cave beneath a bull's bloody head. I had broken three Saxon shield-walls and buried Hywelbane to her hilt in my country's enemies before I had been elected to Mithras's service, but all Lancelot had ever done was boast and posture. I entered the hall to find Bed win seated beside Arthur. They were hearing petitioners, but Bedwin left the dais to draw me to a quiet spot beside the hall's outer door. “I hear you're a lord now,” he said. “My congratulations.”

“A lord without land,” I said bitterly, still upset by Guinevere's outrageous demand.

“Land follows victory,” Bedwin told me, 'and victory follows battle, and of battle, Lord Derfel, you will have plenty this year.“ He stopped as the hall door was thrown open and as Lancelot and his followers stalked in. Bedwin bowed to him, while I merely nodded. The King of Benoic seemed surprised to see me, but said nothing as he walked to join Arthur, who ordered a third chair arranged on the dais. ”Is Lancelot a member of the council now?" I asked Bedwin angrily.

“He's a King,” Bedwin said patiently. “You can't expect him to stand while we sit.” I noticed that the King of Benoic still had a bandage on his right hand. “I trust the King's wound will mean he can't come with us?” I said acidly. I almost confessed to Bedwin how Guinevere had demanded that we elect Lancelot a Mithraist, but decided that news could wait.

“He won't come with us,” Bedwin confirmed. “He's to stay here as commander of Durnovaria's garrison.”

“As what?” I asked loudly and so angrily that Arthur twisted in his chair to see what the commotion was about.

“If King Lancelot's men guard Guinevere and Mordred,” Bedwin said wearily, 'it frees Lanval's and Llywarch's men to fight against Gorfyddyd.“ He hesitated, then laid a frail hand on my arm. ”There's something else I need to tell you, Lord Derfel.“ His voice was low and gentle. ”Merlin was in Ynys Wydryn last week."

“With Nimue?” I asked eagerly.

He shook his head. “He never went for her, Derfel. He went north instead, but why or where we don't know.”

The scar on my left hand throbbed. “And Nimue?” I asked, dreading to hear the answer.

“Still on the Isle, if she even lives.” He paused. “I'm sorry.” I stared down the crowded hall. Did Merlin not know about Nimue? Or had he preferred to leave her among the dead? Much as I loved him I sometimes thought that Merlin could be the cruel lest man in all the world. If he had visited Ynys Wydryn then he must have known where Nimue was imprisoned, yet he had done nothing. He had left her with the dead, and suddenly my fears were shrieking inside me like the cries of the dying children of Ynys Trebes. For a few cold seconds I could neither move nor speak, then I looked at Bedwin. “Galahad will take my men north if I don't return,” I told him.

“Derfel!” He gripped my arm. “No one comes back from the Isle of the Dead. No one!”

“Does it matter?” I asked him. For if all Dumnonia was lost, what did it matter? And Nimue was not dead, I knew that because the scar was pounding on my hand. And if Merlin did not care about her, I did, I cared more about Nimue than I cared about Gorfyddyd or Aelle or the wretched Lancelot with his ambitions to join Mithras's elect. I loved Nimue even if she would never love me, and I was scar-sworn to be her protector.

Which meant that I must go where Merlin would not. I must go to the Isle of the Dead. The Isle lay only ten miles south of Durnovaria, no more than a morning's gentle walk, yet for all I knew of the Isle it could have been on the far side of the moon.

I did know it was no island, but rather a peninsula of hard pale stone that lay at the end of a long narrow causeway. The Romans had quarried the isle, but we quarried their buildings rather than the earth and so the quarries had closed and the Isle of the Dead had been left empty. It became a prison. Three walls were built across the causeway, guards were set, and to the Isle we sent those we wanted to punish. In time we sent others too; those men and women whose wits had flown and who could not live in peace among us. They were the violent mad, sent to a kingdom of the mad where no sane person lived and where their demon-haunted souls could not endanger the living. The Druids claimed the Isle was the domain of Crom Dubh, the dark crippled God, the Christians said it was the Devil's foothold on earth, but both agreed that men or women sent across its causeway's walls were lost souls. They were dead while their bodies still lived, and when their bodies did die the demons and evil spirits would be trapped on the Isle so they could never return to haunt the living. Families would bring their mad to the Isle and there, at the third wall, release them to the unknown horrors that waited at the causeway's end. Then, back on the mainland, the family would hold a death feast for their lost relative. Not all the mad were sent to the Isle. Some of them were touched by the Gods and thus were sacred, and some families kept their mad locked up as Merlin had penned poor Pellinore, but when the Gods who touched the mad were malevolent, then the Isle was the place where the captured soul must be sent. The sea broke white about the Isle. At its seaward end, even in the calmest weather, there was a great maelstrom of whirlpools and seething water over the place where Cruachan's Cave led to the Otherworld. Spray exploded from the sea above the cave and waves clashed interminably to mark its horrid unseen mouth. No fisherman would go near that maelstrom, for any boat that did get blown into its churning horror was surely lost. It would sink and its crew would be sucked down to become shadows in the Otherworld.

The sun shone on the day I went to the Isle. I carried Hywelbane, but no other war gear since no man-made shield or breastplate would protect me from the spirits and serpents of the Isle. For supplies I carried a skin of fresh water and a pouch of oatcakes, while for my talismans against the Isle's demons I wore Ceinwyn's brooch and a sprig of garlic pinned to my green cloak. I passed the hall where the death feasts were held. The road beyond the hall was edged with skulls, human and animal, warnings to the unwary that they approached the Kingdom of Dead Souls. To my left now was the sea, and to my right a brackish, dark marsh where no birds sang. Beyond the marsh was a great shingle bank that curved away from the coast to become the causeway that joined the Isle to the mainland. To approach the Isle by the shingle bank meant a detour of many miles, so most traffic used the skull-edged road that led to a decaying timber quay where a ferry crossed over to the beach. A sprawl of wattle guards' houses stood close to the quay. More guards patrolled the shingle bank.

The guards on the quay were old men or else wounded veterans who lived with their families in the huts. The men watched me approach, then barred my path with rusty spears.

“My name is Lord Derfel,” I said, 'and I demand passage.“ The guard commander, a shabby man in an ancient iron breastplate and a mildewed leather helmet, bowed to me. ”I am not empowered to stop you passing, Lord Derfel,“ he said, 'but I cannot let you return.” His men, astonished that anyone would voluntarily travel to the Isle, gaped at me.

“Then I shall pass,” I said, and the spearmen moved aside as the guard commander shouted at them to man the small ferryboat. “Do many ask to pass this way?” I asked the commander.

“A few,” he said. “Some are tired of living; some think they can rule an isle of mad people. Few have ever lived long enough to beg me to let them out again.”

“Did you let them out?” I asked.

“No,” he said curtly. He watched as oars were brought from one of the huts, then he frowned at me. “Are you sure, Lord?” he asked.

“I'm sure.”

He was curious, but dared not ask my business. Instead he helped me down the slippery steps of the quay and handed me into the pitch-blackened boat. “The rowers will let you through the first gate,” he told me, then pointed further along the causeway that lay at the far side of the narrow channel. “After that you'll come to a second wall, then a third at the causeway's end. There are no gates in those walls, just steps across. You'll likely meet no dead souls between the walls, but after that? The Gods only know. Do you truly want to go?”

“Have you never been curious?” I asked him.

“We're permitted to carry food and dead souls as far as the third wall and I've no wish to go farther,” he said grimly. “I'll reach the bridge of swords to the Otherworld in my own time, Lord.” He jerked his chin towards the causeway. “Cruachan's Cave lies beyond the Isle, Lord, and only fools and desperate men seek death before their time.”

“I have reasons,” I said, 'and I shall see you again in this world of the living."

“Not if you cross the water, Lord.”

I stared at the isle's green and white slope that loomed above the causeway's walls. “I was in a death-pit once,” I told the guard commander, 'and I crawled from there as I shall crawl from here.“ I fished in my pouch and found a coin to give him. ”We shall discuss my leaving when the time comes."

“You're a dead man, Lord,” he warned me one last time, 'the very moment you cross that channel."

“Death doesn't know how to take me,” I said with foolish bravado, then ordered the oarsmen to row me across the swirling channel. It took only a few strokes, then the boat grounded on a bank of shelving mud and we climbed to the archway in the first wall where the two oarsmen lifted the bar, pulled the gates aside and stood back to let me pass. A black threshold marked the divide between this world and the next. Once over that slab of blackened timber I was counted as a dead man. For a second my fears made me hesitate, then I stepped across.

The gates crashed shut behind me. I shivered.

I turned to examine the inner face of the main wall. It was ten feet high, a barrier of smooth stone laid as clean as any Roman work and so well made that not a single handhold showed on its white face. A ghost-fence of skulls topped the wall to keep the dead souls from the world of the living. I said prayers to the Gods. I said one to Bel, my special protector, and another to Manawydan, the Sea God who had saved Nimue in the past, and then I walked on down the causeway to where the second wall barred the road. This wall was a crude bank of sea-smoothed stones that were, like the first wall, topped with a line of human skulls. I went down the steps on the wall's farther side. To my right, the west, the great waves crashed against the shingle, while to my left the shallow bay lay calm under the sun. A few fishing boats worked the bay, but all were staying well clear of the Isle. Ahead of me was the third wall. I could see no man or woman waiting there. Gulls soared above me, their cries forlorn in the west wind. The causeway's sides were edged with tide lines of dark sea wrack. I was frightened. In the years since Arthur had returned to Britain I had faced countless shield-walls and unnumbered men in battle, yet at none of those fights, not even in burning Benoic, had I felt a fear like the cold that gripped my heart now. I stopped and turned to stare at Dumnonia's soft green hills and the small fishing village in the eastern bay. Go back now, I thought, go back! Nimue had been here one whole year and I doubted if many souls survived that long in the Isle of the Dead unless they were both savage and powerful. And even if I found her, she would be mad. She could not leave here. This was her kingdom, death's dominion. Go back, I urged myself, go back, but then the scar on my left palm pulsed and I told myself that Nimue lived.

A cackling howl startled me. I turned to see a black, ragged figure caper on the third wall's summit, then the figure disappeared down the wall's farther side and I prayed to the Gods to give me strength. Nimue had always known she would suffer the Three Wounds, and the scar on my left hand was her surety that I would help her survive the ordeals. I walked on.

I climbed the third wall, which was another bank of smooth grey stones, and saw a flight of crude steps leading down to the Isle. At the foot of the steps lay some empty baskets; evidently the means whereby the living delivered bread and salted meat to their dead relatives. The ragged figure had vanished, leaving only the towering hill above me and a tangle of brambles either side of a stony road that led to the Isle's western flank, where I could just see a group of ruined buildings at the base of the great hill. The Isle was a huge place. It would take a man two hours to walk from the third wall to where the sea seethed at the Isle's southern tip, and as much time again to climb up over the spine of the great rock to cross from the Isle's western to its eastern coast.

I followed the road. Wind rustled the sea grass beyond the brambles. A bird screamed at me then soared on outspread white wings into the sunny sky. The road turned so that I was walking directly towards the ancient town. It was a Roman town, but no Glevum or Durnovaria, merely a squalid huddle of low stone buildings where once the quarry slaves had lived. The buildings' roofs were crude thatches made from driftwood and dry seaweed, poor shelters even for the dead. Fear of what lay in the town made me falter, then a sudden voice shouted in warning and a stone sailed out of the scrub up the slope to my left and clattered on the road beside me. The warning provoked a swarm of ragged creatures to scuttle out of the huts to see who approached their settlement. The swarm was composed of men and women, mostly in rags, but some wore their rags with an air of grandeur and walked towards me as though they were the greatest monarchs on earth. Their hair was crowned with wreaths of seaweed. A few of the men carried spears and nearly all the people clutched stones. Some of them were naked. There were children among them; small, feral and dangerous children. Some of the adults shook uncontrollably, others twitched, and all watched me with bright, hungry eyes.

“A sword!” A huge man spoke. “I'll have the sword! A sword!” He shuffled towards me and his followers advanced behind on bare feet. A woman hurled a stone, and suddenly they were all screaming with delight because they had a new soul to plunder.

I drew Hywelbane, but not one man, woman or child was checked by the sight of her long blade. Then I fled. There could be no disgrace in a warrior fleeing the dead. I ran back up the road and a clatter of stones landed at my heels, then a dog leaped to bite at my green cloak. I beat the brute off with the sword, then reached the road's turning where I plunged to my right, pushing through the brambles and scrub to reach the hillside. A thing reared in front of me, a naked thing with a man's face and a brute's body of hair and dirt. One of the thing's eyes was a running sore, its mouth was a pit of rotting gums and it lunged at me with hands made into claws by hook like nails. Hywelbane sliced bright. I was screaming with terror, certain that I faced one of the Isle's demons, but my instincts were still as sharp as my blade that cut through the brute's hairy arm and slashed into his skull. I leaped over him and climbed the hill, aware that a horde of famished souls was clambering behind me. A stone struck my back, another hit the rock beside me, but I was scrambling fast up the pillars and platforms of quarried rock until I found a narrow path that twisted like the paths of Ynys Trebes around the hill's raw flank. I turned on the path to face my pursuers. They checked, frightened at last by the sword waiting for them on the narrow path where only one of them could approach me at a time. The big man leered. “Nice man,” he called in a wheedling voice, 'come down, nice man." He held up a gull's egg to tempt me.

“Come and eat!”

An old woman lifted her skirts and thrust her loins at me. “Come to me, my lover! Come to me, my darling. I knew you'd come!” She began to piss. A child laughed and flung a stone. I left them. Some followed me along the path, but after a while they became bored and went back to their ghostly settlement.

The narrow path led between the sky and the sea. Every now and then it would be interrupted by an ancient quarry where the marks of Roman tools scarred baulks of stone, but beyond each quarry the path would wind on again through patches of thyme and spinneys of thorn. I saw no one until, suddenly, a voice hailed me from one of the small quarries. “You don't look mad,” the voice said dubiously. I turned, sword raised, to see a courtly man in a dark cloak gazing gravely from the mouth of a cave. He raised a hand. “Please! No weapons. My name is Malldynn, and I greet you, stranger, if you come in peace, and if not, then I beg you to pass us by.”

I wiped the blood from Hywelbane and thrust her back into the scabbard. “I come in peace,” I said.

“Are you newly come to the Isle?” he asked as he approached me gingerly. He had a pleasant face, deeply lined and sad, with a manner that reminded me of Bishop Bedwin.

“I arrived this hour,” I answered.

“And you were doubtless pursued by the rabble at the gate. I apologize for them, though the Gods know I have no responsibility for those ghouls. They take the bread each week and make the rest of us pay for it. Fascinating, is it not, how even in a place of lost souls we form our hierarchies? There are rulers here. There are the strong and the weak. Some men dream of making paradises on this earth and the first requirement of such paradises, or so I understand, is that we must be unshackled by laws, but I do suspect, my friend, that any place unshackled by laws will more resemble this Isle than any paradise. I do not have the pleasure of your name.”

“Derfel.”

“Derfel?” He frowned in thought. “A servant of the Druids?”

“I was. Now I'm a warrior.”

“No, you are not,” he corrected me, 'you are dead. You have come to the Isle of the Dead. Please, come and sit. It is not much, but it is my home.“ He gestured into the cave where two semi-dressed blocks of stone served as a chair and table. An old piece of cloth, perhaps dragged from the sea, half hid his sleeping quarter where I could see a bed made from dried grass. He insisted I use the small stone block as my chair. ”I can offer you rainwater to drink,“ he said, 'and some five-day-old bread to eat.” I put an oatcake on the table. Malldynn was plainly hungry, but he resisted the impulse to snatch the biscuit. Instead he drew a small knife with a blade that had been sharpened so often that it had a wavy edge and used it to divide the oatcake into halves. “At risk of sounding ungrateful,” he said, 'oats were never my favourite food. I prefer meat, fresh meat, but still I thank you, Derfel.“ He had been kneeling opposite me, but once the oatcake was eaten and the crumbs had been delicately dabbed from his lips he stood and leaned against the cave's wall. ”My mother made oatcakes,“ he told me, 'but hers were tougher. I suspect the oats were not husked properly. That one was delicious, and I shall now revise my opinion of oats. Thank you again.” He bowed.

“You don't seem mad,” I said.

He smiled. He was middle-aged, with a distinguished face, clever eyes and a white beard that he tried to keep trimmed. His cave had been swept clean with a brush of twigs that leaned against the wall. “It is not just the mad who are sent here, Derfel,” he said reprovingly. “Some who want to punish the sane send them here also. Alas, I offended Uther.” He paused ruefully. “I was a counsellor,” he went on, 'a great man even, but when I told Uther that his son Mordred was a fool, I ended here. But I was right. Mordred was a fool, even at ten years old he was a fool."

“You've been here that long?” I asked in astonishment.

“Alas, yes.”

“How do you survive?”

He offered me a self-deprecating shrug. “The gate-keeping ghouls believe I can work magic. I threaten to restore their wits if they offend me, and so they take good care to keep me happy. They are happier mad, believe me. Any man who possessed his wits would pray to go insane on this Isle. And you, friend Derfel, might I enquire what brings you here?”

“I search for a woman.”

“Ah! We have plenty, and most are unconstrained by modesty. Such women, I believe, are another requisite of earthly paradises, but alas, the reality proves otherwise. They are certainly immodest, but they are also filthy, their conversation is tedious, and the pleasure to be derived from them is as momentary as it is shameful. If you seek such a woman, Derfel, then you will find them here in abundance.”

“I'm searching for a woman called Nimue,” I said.

“Nimue,” he said, frowning as he tried to remember the name, "Nimue! Yes indeed, I do recall her now!

A one-eyed girl with black hair. She's gone to the sea folk."

“Drowned?” I asked, appalled.

“No, no.” He shook his head. “You must understand we have our own communities on the Isle. You have already made the acquaintance of the gate ghouls. We here in the quarries are the hermits, a small group who prefer our solitude and so inhabit the caves on this side of the Isle. On the far side are the beasts. You may imagine what they are like. At the southern end are the sea folk. They fish with lines of human hair using thorns for hooks and are, I must say, the best behaved of the Isle's tribes, though none are exactly famed for their hospitality. They all fight each other, of course. Do you see how we have everything here that the Land of the Living offers? Except, perhaps, religion, although one or two of our inhabitants do believe themselves to be Gods. And who is to deny them?”

“You've never tried to leave?”

“I did,” he said sadly. “A long time ago. I once tried to swim across the bay, but they watch us, and a spear-butt on the head is an efficient reminder that we are not supposed to leave the Isle and I turned back long before they could administer such a blow. Most drown who try to escape that way. A few go along the causeway and some of them, perhaps, do get back among the living, but only if they succeed in passing the gate ghouls first. And if they survive that ordeal they have to avoid the guards waiting on the beach. Those skulls you saw as you crossed the causeway? They are all men and women who tried to escape. Poor souls.” He went silent and I thought, for a second, he was about to weep. Then he pushed himself briskly off the wall. “What am I thinking about? Do I have no manners? I must offer you water. See? My cistern!” He gestured proudly towards a wooden barrel that stood just outside the cave mouth and which was placed to catch the water that cascaded off the quarry's sides during rainstorms. He had a ladle with which he filled two wooden cups with water. “The barrel and ladle came from a fishing boat that was wrecked here, when? Let me see… two years ago. Poor people! Three men and two boys. One man tried to swim away and was drowned, the other two died under a hail of stones and the two boys were carried off. You can imagine what happened to them! There may be women aplenty, but a clean young fisher boy flesh is a rare treat on this Isle.” He put the cup in front of me and shook his head. “It is a terrible place, my friend, and you have been foolish to come here. Or were you sent?”

“I came by choice.”

“Then you belong here anyway, for you're plainly mad.” He drank his water. “Tell me,” he said, 'the news of Britain."

I told him. He had heard of Uther's death and Arthur's coming, but not much else. He frowned when I said King Mordred was maimed, but was pleased when he heard that Bedwin still lived. “I like Bedwin,” he said. “Liked, rather. We have to learn to talk here as though we were dead. He must be old?”

“Not so old as Merlin.”

“Merlin lives?” he asked in surprise.

“He does.”

“Dear me! So Merlin is alive!” He seemed pleased. “I once gave him an eagle stone and he was so grateful. I have another here somewhere. Where now?” He searched among a small pile of rocks and scraps of wood that made a collection beside the cave door. “Is it over there?” He pointed towards the bed-curtain. “Can you see it?”

I turned away to look for the precious rattling stone and the moment I looked away Malldynn leaped on my back and tried to drag his small knife's ragged edge across my throat. “I'll eat you!” he cried in triumph. “Eat you!” But I had somehow caught his knife hand with my left and managed to keep the blade away from my windpipe. He wrestled me to the floor and tried to bite my ear. He was slavering above me, his appetite whetted by the thought of new, clean human flesh to eat. I hit him once, twice, managed to twist around and bring up my knee, then hit him again, but the wretch had remarkable strength and the sound of our fight brought more men running from other caves. I had only a few seconds before I would be overpowered by the newcomers and so I gave one last desperate heave, then butted Malldynn's head with mine and finally threw him off. I kicked him away, scrambled desperately back from the onrush of his friends, then stood in the entrance to his bed-chamber where I at last had room to draw Hywelbane. The hermits shrank away from the sword's bright blade.

Malldynn, his mouth bleeding, lay at the side of the cave. “Not even a scrap of fresh liver?” he begged me. “Just a morsel? Please?”

I left him. The other hermits plucked at my cloak as I passed through the quarry, but none tried to stop me. One of them laughed as I left. “You'll have to come back!” the man called to me, 'and we'll be hungrier then!"

“Eat Malldynn,” I told them bitterly.

I climbed to the Isle's ridge where gorse grew among rocks. I could see from the summit that the great rock hill did not extend all the way to the Isle's southern tip, but fell steeply to a long plain that was hatched by a tangle of ancient stone walls; evidence that ordinary men and women had once lived on the Isle and farmed the stony plateau that sloped towards the sea. There were settlements still on the plateau: the homes, I supposed, of the sea folk. A group of those dead souls watched me from their cluster of round huts that stood at the hill's base and their presence persuaded me to stay where I was and wait for dawn. Life creeps slow in the early morning, which is why soldiers like to attack in the first light and why I would search for my lost Nimue when the mad denizens of the Isle were still sluggish and bemused with sleep.

It was a hard night. A bad night. The stars wheeled above me, bright homes from where the spirits look down on feeble earth. I prayed to Bel, begging for strength, and sometimes I slept, though every rustle of grass or fall of stone brought me wide awake. I had sheltered in a narrow crack of rock that would restrict any attack and as a result I was confident I could protect myself, though only Bel knew how I would ever leave the Isle. Or whether I would ever find my Nimue.

I crept from my rock niche before the dawn. A fog hung over the sea beyond the sullen turmoil that marked the entrance of Cruachan Cave and a weak grey light made the Isle look flat and cold. I could see no one as I walked downhill. The sun had still not risen as I entered the first small village of crude huts. Yesterday, I had decided, I had been too timid with the Isle's denizens. Today I would treat the dead like the carrion they were.

The huts were wattle and mud, thatched with branches and grass. I kicked in a ramshackle wooden door, stooped inside the hut and grabbed the first sleeping form I found. I hurled that creature outside, kicked another, then slashed a hole in the roof with Hywelbane. Things that had once been human untangled themselves and slithered away from me. I kicked a man in the head, slapped another with the flat of Hywelbane's blade, then dragged a third man out into the sickly light. I threw him to the ground, put my foot on his chest and held Hywelbane's tip at his throat. “I seek a woman named Nimue,” I said. He stammered gibberish at me. He could not speak, or rather he could only talk in a language of his own devising and so I left him and ran after a woman who was limping into the bushes. She screamed as I caught her, and screamed again as I placed the steel at her throat. “Do you know a woman called Nimue?”

She was too terrified to speak. Instead she lifted her filthy skirts and offered me a toothless leer, so I slapped her face with the flat of the sword's blade. “Nimue!” I shouted at her. “A girl with one eye called Nimue. Do you know her?” The woman still could not speak, but she pointed south, jabbing her hand towards the Isle's seaward tip in a frantic effort to make me relent. I took the sword away and kicked the skirts back over her thighs. The woman scrambled away into a patch of thorns. The other frightened souls stared from their huts as I followed the path south towards the churning sea. I passed two other tiny settlements, but no one tried to stop me now. I had become part of the Isle of the Dead's living nightmare; a creature in the dawn with naked steel. I walked through fields of pale grass dotted with bird's-foot trefoil, blue milkwort and the crimson spikes of orchids and told myself I should have known that Nimue, a creature of Manawydan's, would have found her refuge as close to the sea as she could find it.

The Isle's southern shore was a tangle of rocks edging a low cliff. Great waves crashed into foam, sucked through gullies and shattered white into clouds of spray. The cauldron swirled and spat offshore. It was a summer morning, but the sea was grey like iron, the wind was cold and the sea birds loud with laments.

I jumped from rock to rock, going down towards that deathly sea. My ragged cloak lifted in the wind as I turned around a pillar of pale stone to see a cave that lay a few feet above the dark line of oar weed and bladder wrack stranded by the highest tides. A ledge led to the cave, and on the ledge were piled the bones of birds and animals. The piles had been made by human hands, for they were regularly spaced and each heap was braced by a careful latticework of longer bones and topped by a skull. I stopped, fear surging in me like the surge of the sea, as I stared at the refuge as close to the sea as any place could be on this Isle of doomed souls. “Nimue?” I called as I summoned the courage to approach the ledge.

“Nimue?”

I climbed to the narrow rock platform and walked slowly between the heaped bones. I feared what I would find in the cave. “Nimue?” I called.

Beneath me a wave roared across a spur of rock and clawed white fingers towards the ledge. The water fell back and drained in dark sluices to the sea before another roller thundered on the headland's stone and across the glistening rocks. The cave was dark and silent. “Nimue?” I said again, my voice faltering. The cave's mouth was guarded by two human skulls that had been forced into niches so that their broken teeth grinned into the moaning wind either side of the entrance. “Nimue?” There was no answer except for the wind's howl and the birds' laments and the suck and shudder of the ghastly sea. I stepped inside. It was cold in the cave and the light was sickly. The walls were damp. The shingle floor rose in front of me and forced me to stoop beneath the roof's heavy loom as I stepped cautiously forward. The cave narrowed and twisted sharply to the left. A third yellowing skull guarded the bend where I waited as my eyes settled to the gloom, then I turned past the guardian skull to see the cave dwindling towards a dead, dark end.

And there, at the cave's dark limit, she lay. My Nimue.

I thought at first she was dead for she was naked and huddled with her dark hair filthy across her face and with her thin legs drawn up to her breasts and her pale arms clutching her shins. Sometimes, in the green hills, we would risk the barrow wights to dig into the grassy mounds and seek the old people's gold, and we would find their bones in just such a huddle as they crouched in the earth to fend off the spirits through all eternity.

“Nimue?” I was forced to go on hands and knees to crawl the last few feet to where she lay. “Nimue?” I said again. This time her name caught in my throat for I was sure she must be dead, but then I saw her ribs move. She breathed, but was otherwise still as death. I put Hywelbane down and reached a hand to touch her cold white shoulder. “Nimue?”

She sprang towards me, hissing, teeth bared, one eye a livid red socket and the other turned so that only the white of its eyeball showed. She tried to bite me, she clawed at me, she keened a curse in a whining voice then spat it at me, and afterwards she slashed her long nails at my eyes. “Nimue!” I yelled. She was spitting, drooling, fighting and snapping with filthy teeth at my face. “Nimue!” She screamed another curse and put her right hand at my throat. She had the strength of the mad and her scream rose in triumph as her fingers closed on my windpipe. Then, suddenly, I knew just what I had to do. I seized her left hand, ignored the pain in my throat, and laid my own scarred palm across her scar. I laid it there; I left it there; I did not move.

And slowly, slowly, the right hand at my throat weakened. Slowly, slowly, her good eye rolled so that I could see my love's bright soul once more. She stared at me, and then she began to cry.

“Nimue,” I said, and she put her arms around my neck and clung to me. She was sobbing now in great heaves that racked her thin ribs as I held her, stroked her and spoke her name. The sobs slowed and at last ended. She hung on my neck for a long time; then I felt her head move.

“Where's Merlin?” she asked in a small child's voice.

“Here in Britain,” I said.

“Then we must go.” She took her arms from around my neck and settled on her haunches so she could stare into my face. “I dreamed that you'd come,” she said.

“I do love you,” I said. I had not meant to say it, even if it was true.

“That's why you came,” she said as though it were obvious.

“Do you have clothes?” I asked.

“I have your cloak,” she said. “I need nothing else except your hand.” I crawled out of the cave, sheathed Hywelbane and wrapped my green cloak around her pale shivering body. She pushed an arm through a rent in the cloak's ragged wool and then, her hand in mine, we walked between the bones and climbed the hill to where the sea folk watched. They parted as we reached the cliff's top and did not follow as we walked slowly down the Isle's eastern side. Nimue said nothing. Her madness had fled the moment my hand touched hers, but it had left her horribly weak. I helped her on the steeper portions of the path. We passed through the hermits' caves without being troubled. Perhaps they were all asleep, or else the Gods had put the Isle under a spell as we two walked our way north away from the dead souls.

The sun rose. I could see now that Nimue's hair was matted with dirt and crawling with lice, her skin was filthy and she had lost her golden eye. She was so weak she could hardly walk and as we descended the hill towards the causeway I picked her up in my arms and found she weighed less than a ten-year-old child. “You're weak,” I said.

“I was born weak, Derfel,” she said, 'and life is spent pretending otherwise."

“You need some rest,” I said.

“I know.” She leaned her head against my chest and for once in her life she was utterly content to be looked after.

I carried her to the causeway and over the first wall. The sea broke on our left and the bay glimmered a reflection of the rising sun on our right. I did not know how I was to take her past the guards. All I knew was that we had to leave the Isle because that was her fate and I was the instrument of that fate, and so I walked content that the Gods would solve the problem when I reached the final barrier. I carried her over the middle wall with its row of skulls and walked towards Dumnonia's dawn-green hills. I could see a single spearman silhouetted above the final wall's sheer, smooth face of stone and I supposed some of the guards had rowed across the channel when they saw me leaving the isle. More guards were standing on the shingle bank; they had stationed themselves to bar my passage to the mainland. If I have to kill, I thought, then kill I shall. This was the Gods' will, not mine, and Hywelbane would cut with a God's skill and strength.

But as I walked towards the final wall with my burden light in my arms the gates of life and death swung open to receive me. I half expected the guard commander to be there with his rusty spear, ready to turn me back; instead it was Galahad and Cavan who waited on the black threshold with their swords drawn and battle shields on their arms. “We followed you,” Galahad said.

“Bedwin sent us,” Cavan added. I covered Nimue's awful hair with the cloak's hood so my friends would not see her degradation and she clung to me, trying to hide herself. Galahad and Cavan had brought my men who had commandeered the ferry and were holding the Isle's guardians at spear-point on the channel's farther bank. “We would have come looking for you today,” Galahad said, then made the sign of the cross as he stared down the causeway. He gave me a curious look as though he feared I might have come back from the Isle a different man.

“I should have known you would be here,” I told him.

“Yes,” he said, 'you should." There were tears in his eyes, tears of happiness. We rowed across the channel and I carried Nimue up the road of skulls to the feast hall at the road's end where I found a man loading a cart with salt to carry to Durnovaria. I laid Nimue on his cargo and walked behind her as the cart creaked north towards the town. I had brought Nimue out of the Isle of the Dead, back to a land at war.

I took Nimue to Gyllad's farm. I did not put her in the big hall, but rather used an abandoned shepherd's cottage where the two of us could be alone. I fed her on broth and milk, but first I washed her clean; washed every inch of her, washed her twice and then washed her black hair and afterwards used a bone comb to tease the tangles free. Some of the tangles were so tight they needed to be cut, but most came free and when her hair hung wet and straight I used the comb to find and kill the lice before I washed her once again. She endured the process like a small obedient child, and when she was clean I wrapped her in a great woollen blanket and took the broth off the fire and made her eat while I washed myself and hunted down the lice that had gone from her body on to mine. By the time I had finished it was dusk and she was fast asleep on a bed made from newly cut bracken. She slept all night and in the morning ate six eggs I had stirred in a pan over the fire. Then she slept again while I took a knife and a piece of leather and cut an eyepatch with a lace she could tie around her hair. I had one of Gyllad's slaves bring clothes and sent Issa into town to find what news he could. He was a clever lad with an easy open manner so that even strangers were happy to confide in him across a tavern's table.

“Half the town says the war's already lost, Lord,” he told me on his return. Nimue was sleeping and we spoke beside the stream which ran close beside the cottage.

“And the other half?” I asked.

He grinned. “Looking forward to Lughnasa, Lord. They're not thinking beyond that. But the half that are thinking are all Christians.” He spat into the stream. “They say Lughnasa's an evil feast and that King Gorfyddyd is coming to punish our sins.”

“In which case,” I said, 'we'd better make sure we commit enough sins to deserve the punishment.“ He laughed. ”Some say Lord Arthur daren't leave town for fear there'd be a revolt once his soldiers are gone."

I shook my head. “He wants to be with Guinevere at Lughnasa.”

“Who wouldn't?” Issa asked.

“Did you see the goldsmith?” I asked.

He nodded. “He says he can't make an eye in under two weeks because he's never done one before, but he'll find a corpse and cut out its eye to get the size right. I told him he'd better make it a child's corpse, for the lady isn't big, is she?” He jerked his head towards the cottage.

“You told him the eye had to be hollow?”

“I did, Lord.”

“You did well,” I told him. “And now I suppose you want to do your worst and celebrate Lughnasa?” He grinned. “Yes, Lord.” Lughnasa was supposedly a celebration of the imminent harvest, yet the young have always made it a feast of fertility and their festivities would begin this night, the feast's eve.

“Then go,” I told him. “I'll stay here.”

That afternoon I made Nimue her own bower for Lughnasa. I doubted somehow that she would appreciate it, but I wanted to do it and so I made a small lodge beside the stream, cutting the wit hies and bending them into a hooded shelter into which I wove cornflowers, poppies, ox-eyes, foxgloves and long tangling swathes of pink convolvulus. Such booths were being made all across Britain for the feast, and all across Britain, late next spring, hundreds of Lughnasa babies would be born. The spring was reckoned a good time to be born for the child would come into a world waking to summer's plenty, though whether this year's planting would lead to a lucky crop depended on the battles that must be fought after harvest.

Nimue emerged from the hut just as I was weaving the last foxgloves into the bower's summit. “Is it Lughnasa?” she asked in surprise.

“Tomorrow.”

She laughed shyly. “No one ever made me a bower.”

“You never wanted one.”

“I do now,” she said, and sat under the flowery shade with such a look of delight that my heart leaped. She had found the eyepatch and donned one of the dresses Gyllad's maid had brought to the hut; it was a slave's dress of ordinary brown cloth, yet it suited her as simple things always did. She was pale and thin, but she was clean and there was a blush of colour in her cheeks. “I don't know what happened to the golden eye,” she said ruefully, touching her new patch.

“I'm having another eye made,” I told her, but did not add that the goldsmith's deposit had taken the last of my coins. I desperately needed a battle's plunder, I thought, to replenish my purse.

“And I'm hungry,” Nimue said with a touch of her old mischievousness. I put some birch twigs in the bottom of the pan so the broth would not stick, then poured in the last of the broth and set it on the fire. She ate it all, and afterwards she stretched out in the Lughnasa bower and watched the stream. Bubbles showed where an otter swam underwater. I had seen him earlier, an old dog with a hide scarred by battle and near misses from hunters' spears. Nimue watched his bubble trail disappear beneath a fallen willow and then began to talk.

She always had an appetite for talk, but that evening it was insatiable. She wanted news and I gave it to her, but then she wanted more detail, always more detail, and every detail she obsessively fitted inside a scheme of her own devising so that the story of the last year became, at least for her, like a great tiled floor where any one tile might seem insignificant, but added to the others it became a part of an intricate and meaningful whole. She was most interested in Merlin and the scroll he had snatched from Ban's doomed library. “You didn't read it?” she asked.

“No.”

“I will,” she said fervently.

I hesitated a moment, then spoke my mind. “I thought Merlin would come to the Isle to fetch you,” I said. I was risking offending her twice, first by implicitly criticizing Merlin and secondly by mentioning the one subject she did not talk about, the Isle of the Dead, but she did not seem to mind.

“Merlin would reckon I can look after myself,” she said, then smiled. “And he knows I have you.” It was dark by then and the stream rippled silver under Lugh-nasa's moon. There were a dozen questions I wanted to ask, but dared not, but suddenly she began to answer them anyway. She spoke of the Isle, or rather she spoke of how one tiny part of her soul had always been aware of the Isle's horror even as the rest of her had abandoned itself to its doom. “I thought madness would be like death,” she said, 'and that I wouldn't know there was an alternative to being mad, but you do know. You really do. It's as though you watch yourself and cannot help yourself. You forsake yourself," she said, then stopped and I saw the tears at her one good eye.

“Don't,” I said, suddenly not wanting to know.

“And sometimes,” she went on, “I would sit on my rock and watch the sea and I would know I was sane, and I would wonder what purpose was being served, and then I knew I would have to be mad because if I was not then it was all to no purpose.”

“There was no purpose,” I said angrily.

“Oh, Derfel, dear Derfel. You have a mind like a stone falling off a cliff.” She smiled. “It is the same purpose that made Merlin find Caleddin's scroll. Don't you understand? The Gods play games with us, but if we open ourselves then we can become a part of the game instead of its victims. Madness has a purpose! It's a gift from the Gods, and like all their gifts it comes with a price, but I've paid it now.” She spoke passionately, but suddenly I felt a yawn threatening me and try as I might I could not check it. I did try to hide it, but she saw anyway. “You need some sleep,” she said.

“No,” I protested.

“Did you sleep last night?”

“A little.” I had sat at the cottage door and dozed fitfully as I listened to the mice scrabbling in the thatch.

“Then go to bed now,” she said firmly, 'and leave me here to think.“ I was so tired I could scarcely undress, but at last I lay on the bracken bed where I slept like the dead. It was a great, deep sleep like the rest that comes in safety after battle when the bad sleep, the one interrupted by nightmare reminders of near spear thrusts and sword blows, has been washed away from the soul. Thus I slept, and in the night Nimue came to me and at first I thought it was a dream, but then I woke with a start to find her chill naked skin next to mine. ”It's all right, Derfel,“ she whispered, 'go to sleep,” and I slept again with my arms around her thin body.

We woke in Lughnasa's perfect dawn. There have been times in my life of pure happiness, and that was one. They are times, I suppose, when love is in step with life or perhaps when the Gods want us to be fools, and nothing is so sweet as Lughnasa's foolishness. The sun shone, filtering its light through the flowers in our bower where we made love, then afterwards we played like children in the stream where I tried to make otter bubbles under water and came up choking to find Nimue laughing. A kingfisher raced between the willows, its colours bright as a dream cloak. The only people we saw all day were a pair of horsemen who rode up the stream's far bank with falcons on their wrists. They did not see us, and we lay quietly and watched as one of their birds struck down a heron: a good omen. For that one perfect day Nimue and I were lovers, even though we were denied the second pleasure of love which is the certain knowledge of a shared future spent in a happiness as great as love's beginning. But I had no future with Nimue. Her future lay in the paths of the Gods, and I had no talent for those roads. Yet even Nimue was tempted from those paths. In Lughnasa's evening, when the long light was shadowing the trees on the western slopes, she lay curled in my arms beneath the bower and spoke of all that might be. A small house, a piece of land, children and flocks. “We could go to Kernow,” she said dreamily. “Merlin always says Kernow is the blessed place. It's a long way from the Saxons.”

“Ireland,” I said, 'is further."

I felt the shake of her head on my chest. “Ireland is cursed.”

“Why?” I asked.

“They owned the Treasures of Britain,” she said, 'and let them go-'

I did not want to talk of the Treasures of Britain, nor of the Gods, nor of anything that would spoil this moment. “Kernow, then,” I agreed.

“A small house,” she said, then listed all the things a small house needed: jars, pans, spits, winnowing sheets, sieves, yew pails, reaping hooks, croppers, a spindle, a skein winder, a salmon net, a barrel, a hearth, a bed. Had she dreamed of such things in her damp, cold cave above the cauldron? “And no Saxons,” she said, 'and no Christians either. Maybe we should go to the isles in the Western Sea? To the isles beyond Kernow. To Lyonesse.“ She spoke the lovely name softly. ”To live and love in Lyonesse," she added, then laughed.

“Why do you laugh?”

She lay silent for a while, then shrugged. “Lyonesse is for another life,” she said, and with that bleak statement she broke the spell. At least she did for me, because I thought I heard Merlin's mocking laughter cackling in the summer leaves, and so I let the dream fade as we lay unmoving in the long, soft light. Two swans flew north up the valley, going towards the great phallic image of the God Sucellos that was carved in the chalk hillside just north of Gyllad's land. Sansum had wanted to obliterate the bold image. Guinevere had stopped him, though she had not been able to prevent him from building a small shrine at the foot of the hill. I had a mind to buy the land when I could, not to farm, but to stop the Christians gras sing over the chalk or digging up the God's image.

“Where is Sansum?” Nimue asked. She had been reading my thoughts.

“He's the guardian of the Holy Thorn now.”

“May it prick him,” she said vengefully. She uncurled from my arms and sat up, pulling the blanket up to our necks. “And Gundleus is betrothed today?”

“Yes.”

“He won't live to enjoy his bride,” she said, more in hope, I feared, than in prophecy.

“He will if Arthur can't beat their army,” I said.

And next day the hopes of that victory seemed gone for ever. I was making things ready for Gyllad's harvest; sharpening the sickles and nailing the wooden threshing flails to their leather hinges, when a messenger arrived in Durnovaria from Durocobrivis. Issa brought us the messenger's news from town and it was dreadful. Aelle had broken the truce. On Lughnasa's Eve a swarm of Saxons had attacked Gereint's fortress and overrun its walls. Prince Gereint was dead, Durocobrivis had fallen, and Dumnonia's client Prince Meriadoc of Stronggore was a fugitive and the last remnants of his kingdom had become a part of Lloegyr. Now, as well as facing Gorfyddyd's army, Arthur must fight the Saxon war host. Dumnonia was surely doomed.

Nimue scorned my pessimism. “The Gods won't end the game this soon,” she claimed.

“Then the Gods had better fill our treasury,” I said sharply, 'because we can't defeat both Aelle and Gorfyddyd, which means we have to buy the Saxon off or else go down to death."

“Little minds worry about money,” Nimue said.

“Then thank the Gods for little minds,” I retorted. I worried about money endlessly.

“There's money in Dumnonia if you need it,” Nimue said carelessly.

“Guinevere's?” I said, shaking my head. “Arthur won't touch it.” At that time none of us knew how big was the treasure Lancelot had fetched back from Ynys Trebes; that treasure might have sufficed to buy Aelle's peace, but the exiled King of Benoic was keeping it well hidden.

“Not Guinevere's gold,” Nimue said, and then she told me where a Saxon's blood-price might be found and I cursed myself for not thinking of it sooner. There was a chance after all, I thought, just a chance, so long as the Gods gave us time and Aelle's price was not impossibly high. I reckoned it would take Aelle's men a week to sober up after their sack of Durocobrivis so we had just that one week to work our miracle.

I took Nimue to Arthur. There would be no idyll in Lyonesse, no sieve or winnowing sheet and no bed beside the sea. Merlin had gone north to save Britain, now Nimue must work her own sorcery in the south. We went to buy a Saxon's peace while behind us, on the bank of our summer stream, the flowers of Lughnasa wilted.

Arthur and his guard rode north on the Fosse Way. Sixty horsemen, caparisoned in leather and iron, were going to war and with them were fifty spearmen, six mine and the rest led by Lanval, Guinevere's erstwhile guard commander, whose job and purpose had been usurped by Lancelot, King of Benoic, who, with his men, was now the protector of all the high people living in Durnovaria. Galahad had taken the rest of my men north to Gwent and it was a measure of our urgency that we all marched before the harvest, but Aelle's treachery gave us no choice. I marched with Arthur and Nimue. She had insisted on accompanying me even though she was still far from strong, but nothing would have kept her away from the war that was about to begin. We marched two days after Lughnasa and, perhaps as a portent of what was to come, the sky had clouded over to threaten a heavy rain. The horsemen, with their grooms and pack-mules, together with Lanval's spearmen, waited on the Fosse Way while Arthur crossed the land bridge to Ynys Wydryn. Nimue and I went with him, taking only my six spearmen as an escort. It was strange to be back beneath the Tor's looming peak where Gwlyddyn had rebuilt Merlin's halls so that the Tor's summit looked almost as it had on the day when Nimue and I had fled from Gundleus's savagery. Even the tower had been rebuilt and I wondered if, like the first tower, it was a dream chamber in which the whispers of the Gods would echo to the sleeping wizard. But our business was not with the Tor, but with the shrine of the Holy Thorn. Five of my men stayed outside the shrine's gates while Arthur, Nimue and I walked into the compound. Nimue's head was shrouded with a hood so that her face with its leather eye-patch could not be seen. Sansum hurried to meet us. He looked in fine condition for a man who was ostensibly in disgrace for rousing Durnovaria to deadly riot. He was plumper than I remembered and wore a new black gown that was half covered with a cope lavishly embroidered with golden crosses and silver thorns. A heavy golden cross hung on a golden chain at his breast, while a torque of thick gold shone at his neck. His mouse-like face with its stiffly tonsured brush offered us a smirk that was intended as a smile. “The honour you do us!” he cried, his hands flying apart in welcome. “The honour! Dare I hope, Lord Arthur, that you come to worship our dear Lord? That is His Sacred Thorn! A reminder of the thorns that pricked His head as He suffered for your sins.” He gestured towards the drooping tree with its small sad leaves. A group of pilgrims surrounding the tree had draped its pathetic limbs with votive offerings. Seeing us, those pilgrims shuffled away, not realizing that the poorly dressed farm boy who worshipped with them was one of our men. It was Issa, whom I had sent on ahead with a small offering of coins for the shrine. “Some wine, perhaps?” Sansum now offered us. “And food? We have cold salmon, new bread, some strawberries even.”

“You live well, Sansum,” Arthur said, looking around the shrine. It had grown since I had last been in Ynys Wydryn. The stone church had been extended and two new buildings constructed, one a dormitory for the monks and the other a house for Sansum himself. Both buildings were of stone and had roofs made of tiles taken from Roman villas.

Sansum raised his eyes to the threatening clouds. “We are merely humble servants of the great God, Lord, and our life on earth is all due to His grace and providence. Your esteemed wife is well, I pray?”

“Very, thank you.”

“The news brings joy to us, Lord,” Sansum lied. “And our King, he is well too?”

“The boy grows, Sansum.”

“And in the true faith, I trust.” Sansum was backing away as we advanced. “So what, Lord, brings you to our small settlement?”

Arthur smiled. “Need, Bishop, need.”

“Of spiritual grace?” Sansum enquired.

“Of money.”

Sansum threw up his hands. “Would a man searching for fish climb to a mountain top? Or a man panting for water go to a desert? Why come to us, Lord Arthur? We brothers are vowed to poverty and what meagre crumbs the dear Lord does permit to fall into our laps we give to the poor.” He closed his hands gracefully together.

“Then I am come, dear Sansum,” Arthur said, 'to make certain that you are keeping your vows of poverty. The war goes hard, it needs money, the treasury is empty, and you will have the honour of making your King a loan." Nimue, who now shuffled humbly behind us like a cowled servant, had reminded Arthur of the church's wealth. How she must have been enjoying Sansum's discomfort.

“The church had been spared these enforced loans,” Sansum said sharply and putting a scornful bite on the last word. “High King Uther, may his soul rest in peace, exempted the church from all such exactions, just as the pagan shrines' he crossed himself' are shamefully and sinfully exempted.”

“King Mordred's council,” Arthur said, 'has rescinded the exemption, and your shrine, Bishop, is known as the wealthiest in Dumnonia."

Sansum raised his eyes to the sky again. “If we possessed so much as one gold coin, Lord, I would take pleasure in giving it to you as an outright gift. But we are poor. You should seek your loan on the hill.” He gestured to the Tor. “The pagans there, Lord, have been hoarding infidel gold for centuries!”

“The Tor,” I intervened coldly, 'was raided by Gundleus when Norwenna was killed. What little gold was there, and it was little, was stolen."

Sansum pretended to have just noticed me. “It's Derfel, isn't it? I thought so. Welcome home, Derfel!”

“Lord Derfel,” Arthur corrected Sansum.

Sansum's small eyes opened wide. “Praise God! Praise Him! You rise in the world, Lord Derfel, and what satisfaction that gives me, a humble churchman who will now be able to boast that he knew you when you were but a common spearman. A lord now? What a blessing! And what honour your presence does us! But even you know, my dear Lord Derfel, that when King Gundleus raided the Tor he also raided the poor monks here. Alas, what depredations he made! The shrine suffered for Christ and it has never recovered.”

“Gundleus went to the Tor first,” I said. “I know, because I was there. And by so doing he gave the monks here time to hide their treasures.”

“Such fantasies you pagans hold about we Christians! Do you still claim we eat babies at our love feasts?” Sansum laughed.

Arthur sighed. “Dear Bishop Sansum,” he said, “I know my request is hard for you. I know it is your job to preserve the wealth of your church so that it can grow and reflect the glory of God. All that I know, but I also know that if we do not have the money to fight our enemies then the enemy will come here and there will be no church, there will be no Holy Thorn, and the shrine's Bishop'he prodded a finger into Sansum's ribs 'will be nothing but dry bones pecked clean by ravens.”

“There are other ways to keep the enemy from our gates,” Sansum said, unwisely hinting that Arthur was the cause of the war and that if Arthur simply left Dumnonia then Gorfyddyd would be satisfied. Arthur did not become angry. He simply smiled. “Your treasury is needed for Dumnonia, Bishop.”

“We have no treasury. Alas!” Sansum made the sign of the cross. “As God is my witness, Lord, we possess nothing.”

I strolled across to the thorn. “The monks of Ivinium,” I said, referring to a monastery some miles to the south, 'are better gardeners than you, Bishop.“ I scraped Hywelbane from her scabbard and prodded her tip into the soil beside the sorry tree. ”Maybe we should dig up the Holy Thorn and take it to Ivinium's care? I am sure their monks would pay highly for the privilege."

“And the Thorn would be further from the Saxons!” Arthur said brightly. “Surely you approve of our plan, Bishop?”

Sansum was waving his hands desperately. "The monks at Ivinium are ignorant fools, Lord, mere mumblers of prayers. If your

Lordships would wait in the church, maybe I can find some few coins for your purpose?"

“Do,” Arthur said.

The three of us were ushered into the church. It was a plain building with a stone floor, stone walls and a beamed roof. It was a gloomy place for only a little light came through the small high windows where sparrows bickered and wallflowers grew. At the church's far end was a stone table on which stood a crucifix. Nimue, the hood thrown back from her hair, spat at the crucifix while Arthur strolled to the table, then hitched himself up so he could sit on its edge. “I take no pleasure in this, Derfel,” he said.

“Why should you, Lord?”

“It does not do to offend Gods,” Arthur said gloomily.

“This God,” Nimue said contemptuously, 'is said to be a forgiving one. Better offend that kind than any other."

Arthur smiled. He was wearing a simple jerkin, trousers, boots, a cloak and Excalibur. He wore no gold, nor armour, but there was no mistaking his authority, nor, at that moment, his unease. He sat in silence for a time, then looked up at me. Nimue was exploring the small rooms at the back of the church and we were alone together. “Perhaps I should leave Britain?” Arthur said.

“And yield Dumnonia to Gorfyddyd?”

“Gorfyddyd will enthrone Mordred in time,” Arthur said, 'and that is all that matters."

“He says as much?” I asked.

“He does.”

“And what else would he say?” I argued, appalled that my Lord should even contemplate exile. “But the truth,” I added forcefully, 'is that Mordred will be Gorfyddyd's client and why should Gorfyddyd enthrone a client? Why not put one of his own relatives on the throne? Why not put his son Cuneglas on our throne?"

“Cuneglas is honourable,” Arthur insisted.

“Cuneglas will do whatever his father tells him,” I said scornfully, 'and Gorfyddyd wants to be High King, which means he certainly won't want the old High King's heir growing to be a rival. Besides, do you think Gorfyddyd's Druids will let a maimed king live? If you go, Lord, I number Mordred's days.“ Arthur did not respond. He sat there, his hands on the table's edge and his head down as he stared at the floor. He knew I was right, just as he knew that he alone of Britain's warlords fought for Mordred. The rest of Britain wanted their own man on Dumnonia's throne, while Guinevere wanted Arthur himself to sit there. He looked up at me. ”Did Guinevere he began.

“Yes,” I interrupted him bleakly. I had supposed he was referring to Guinevere's ambition to place him on Dumnonia's throne, but he had been thinking of another matter entirely. He jumped off the table and began pacing up and down. “I understand your feelings for Lancelot,” he said, surprising me, 'but consider this, Derfel. Suppose that Benoic had been your kingdom, and supposing that you believed I would save it for you, indeed you knew that I was oath-bound to save it, and then I did not. And Benoic was destroyed. Would that not make you bitter? Would it not make you distrustful? King Lancelot has suffered greatly, and the suffering was at my hands! Mine! And I want, if I can, to make his losses good. I can't recapture Benoic, but I can, perhaps, give him another kingdom."

“Which?” I asked.

He smiled slyly. He had the whole scheme worked out and he was taking an immense pleasure in revealing it to me. “Siluria,” he said. “Let us suppose we can defeat Gorfyddyd, and with him, Gundleus. Gundleus has no heir, Derfel, so if we can kill Gundleus a throne is vacant. We have a king without a throne, they have a throne without a king. More, we have an unmarried king! Offer Lancelot as husband to Ceinwyn and Gorfyddyd will have his daughter as a queen and we shall have our friend on the Silurian throne. Peace, Derfel!” He spoke with all his old enthusiasm, building a wonderful vision with his words.

“A union! The marriage union I never made, but now we can make it again. Lancelot and Ceinwyn! And to achieve it we only need to kill one man. Just one.”

And as many other men who needed to die in battle, I thought, but said nothing. Somewhere to the north a rumble of thunder sounded. The God Taranis was aware of us, I thought, and I hoped he was on our side. The sky through the tiny high windows was black as night.

“Well?” Arthur pressed me.

I had not spoken because the thought of Lancelot wedding Ceinwyn was so bitter that I could not trust myself to speak, but now I forced myself to sound civil. “We have to buy off the Saxons and defeat Gorfyddyd first,” I said sourly.

“But if we do?” he asked impatiently, as though my objections were trivial obstacles. I shrugged as though the idea of the marriage was far beyond my competency to judge.

“Lancelot likes the idea,” Arthur said, 'and his mother does too. Guinevere approves as well, but then she would because it was her idea to marry Ceinwyn to Lancelot in the first place. She's a clever girl. Very clever." He smiled as he always did when he thought of his wife.

“But even your clever wife, Lord,” I dared to say, 'cannot dictate Mithras's adherents.“ He jerked his head as though I had struck him. ”Mithras!“ he said angrily. ”Why can't Lancelot join?"

“Because he's a coward,” I snarled, unable to hide my bitterness any longer.

“Bors says not, so do a dozen other men,” Arthur challenged me.

“Ask Galahad,” I said, 'or your cousin Culhwch." Rain sounded sudden on the roof and a moment later began to drip from the high window-sills. Nimue had reappeared in the small arched door beside the stone table where she pulled the hood over her face again.

“If Lancelot proves himself, will you relent?” Arthur asked me after a while.

“If Lancelot shows himself to be a fighter, Lord, I shall relent. But I thought he was your palace guard now?”

“His wish is to command in Durnovaria only until his wounded hand heals,” Arthur explained, 'but if he does fight, Derfel, then you will elect him?"

“If he fights well,” I promised reluctantly, 'yes." I was fairly sure it was a promise I would never have to keep.

“Good,” Arthur said, pleased as always to have found a measure of agreement, then he turned as the church door banged open with a gust of rainy wind and Sansum ran inside followed by two monks. The two monks were carrying leather bags. Very small leather bags.

Sansum shook water off his robe as he hurried up the church. “We have searched, Lord,” he said breathlessly, 'we have hunted, we have pecked high and low, and we have assembled what little treasures our paltry house possesses, which treasures we now lay before you in humble but reluctant duty.“ He shook his head sadly. ”We shall go hungry this season as a result of our generosity, but where a sword commands, we mere servants of God must obey."

His monks poured the contents of the two bags on to the flagstones. A coin rolled across the floor until I trapped it with my foot.

“Gold from the Emperor Hadrian!” Sansum said of the coin. I picked it up. It was a brass sesterce with the Emperor Hadrian's head on one side and an image of Britannia with her trident and shield on the other. I bent the coin double between my finger and thumb and tossed it to Sansum. “Fool's gold, Bishop,” I said.

The rest of the treasure was not much better. There were some worn coins, mostly copper with a few of silver, some iron bars that were commonly used as currency, a brooch of poor gold and some thin golden links from a broken chain. The whole collection was perhaps worth a dozen gold pieces. “Is this all?” Arthur asked.

“We give to the poor, Lord!” Sansum said, 'though if your needs are pressing then maybe I could add this.“ He lifted the golden cross from around his neck. The heavy cross and its thick chain were easily worth forty or fifty gold pieces and now, reluctantly, the Bishop held them out to Arthur. ”My personal loan for your war, Lord?" he suggested.

Arthur reached for the chain and Sansum immediately jerked it back. “Lord,” he dropped his voice so that only Arthur and I could hear him. “I was unjustly treated last year. For the loan of this chain,” he twitched it so that the heavy links clinked together, “I would demand that my appointment as King Mordred's personal chaplain be honoured. My place is at the King's side, Lord, not here in this pestilential marshland.” Before Arthur could respond the door of the church opened once again and a rain soaked Issa shambled inside. Sansum turned furiously on the newcomer. “The church is not open to pilgrims!” the Bishop snapped. “There are regular services. Now get out! Out!” Issa pushed wet hair away from his face, grinned and spoke to me. “They hide all their goods beside the pond behind the big house, Lord, all of it under a pile of rocks. I watched them put today's tribute there.” Arthur plucked the heavy chain from Sansum's hand. “You may keep those other treasures' he gestured at the shabby collection on the floor 'to feed your paltry house through the winter, Bishop. And keep your torque as a reminder that your neck is in my gift.” He strode towards the door.

“Lord!” Sansum shouted in protest. "I beg you'

“Beg,” Nimue interrupted him, pushing the hood back from her face. “Beg, you dog.” She turned and spat on the crucifix, then on to the church floor, then a third time at Sansum. “Beg, you piece of dirt,” she snarled at him.

“Dear God!” Sansum blanched at the sight of his enemy. He reeled backward, making the sign of the cross on his thin chest. For a moment he seemed too terrified to even speak. He must have thought Nimue lost for ever on the Isle of the Dead, yet here she was, spitting in triumph. He crossed himself a third time, then wheeled on Arthur. “You dare bring a witch into God's house!” he screamed. “This is sacrilege! Oh sweet Christ!” He dropped to his knees and gazed up at the rafters. “Cast fire from heaven! Cast it now!”

Arthur ignored him, plunging instead into the pelting rain that was bedraggling the pathetic votive ribbons draped on the Holy Thorn. “Call the other spearmen inside,” Arthur ordered Issa. My men had waited outside the shrine in case Sansum had attempted to hide his treasures beyond the encircling wall, but now the spearmen came into the enclosure to help drive the frantic monks away from the pile of rocks that hid their secret treasury. Some of the monks dropped to their knees as they saw Nimue. They knew who she was.

Sansum ran from the church and threw himself on to the rocks, dramatically decreeing that he would sacrifice his life to preserve God's money. Arthur shook his head sadly. “Are you sure of this sacrifice, Lord Bishop?”

“Dear sweet God!” Sansum bellowed. “Thy servant comes, slaughtered by wicked men and their foul witch! All I did was obey Your word. Receive me, Lord! Receive Thy humble servant!” This was followed by a scream as he anticipated his death, but it was only Issa lifting him by the scruff of his neck and the seat of his robe and carrying him gently away from the stone pile to the pond where he dropped Sansum into the shallow, muddy water. “I'm drowning, Lord!” Sansum shouted. “Cast into mighty waters like Jonah into the ocean! A martyr for Christ! As Paul and Peter were martyred, Lord, so now I come!” He blew some urgent bubbles, but no one beside his God was taking any notice and so he slowly dragged himself out of the muddy duckweed to spit curses at my men who were eagerly dragging the stones aside.

Beneath the rock pile was a cover of wooden boards that lifted to reveal a stone cistern crammed with leather sacks, and in the sacks was gold. Thick gold coins, gold chains, gold statues, gold torques, gold brooches, gold bracelets, gold pins; the gold fetched here by hundreds of pilgrims seeking the blessing of the Thorn, that Arthur now insisted a monk count and weigh so that a proper receipt could be issued to the monastery. He left my men to supervise the tally while he led a damp and protesting Sansum across the compound to the Holy Thorn. “You must learn to grow thorn trees before you meddle in the affairs of kings, my Lord Bishop,” Arthur said. “You are not restored to the King's chaplaincy, but will stay here and learn husbandry.”

“Mulch the next tree,” I advised him. “Let the roots stay damp while it settles in. And don't transplant a tree in flower, Bishop, they don't like it. That's been the trouble with the last few thorns you planted here; you dug them out of the woods at the wrong time. Bring them across in winter and dig them a good hole with some dung and mulch and you might get a real miracle.”

“Forgive them, Lord!” Sansum said, dropping to his knees and gazing into the damp heavens. Arthur wanted to visit the Tor, though first he stood beside Norwenna's grave that had become a place of veneration for Christians. “She was an ill-used woman,” he told me.

“All women are,” Nimue said. She had followed us to the grave that stood close beside the Holy Thorn.

“No,” Arthur insisted. “Maybe most people are, but not all women any more than all men. But this woman was, and we still have to avenge her.”

“You had your chance of vengeance once,” Nimue accused him harshly, 'and you let Gundleus live."

“Because I hoped for peace,” Arthur said. “But next time he dies.”

“Your wife,” Nimue said, 'promised him to me."

Arthur shuddered, knowing what cruelty lay behind Nimue's desire, but he nodded. “He is yours,” he said, “I promise it.” He turned and led the two of us through the pouring rain to the Tor's summit. Nimue and I were going home, Arthur to see Morgan.

He embraced his sister in the hall. Morgan's gold mask shone dully in the stormy light, while round her neck she wore the bear claws set in gold that Arthur had brought her from Benoic so very long ago. She clung to him, desperate for affection, and I left them alone. Nimue, almost as though she had never been away from the

Tor, ducked through the small door into Merlin's rebuilt chambers while I ran through the rain to Gudovan's hut. I found the old clerk sitting at his desk, but not working for he was blinded with cataracts, though he said he could still make out light and dark. “And mostly it's dark now,” he said sadly, then smiled. “I suppose you're too big to hit now, Derfel?”

“You can try, Gudovan,” I said, 'but it won't do much good any more."

“Did it ever?” He chuckled. “Merlin spoke of you when he was here last week. Not that he stayed long. He came, he talked with us, he left us another cat as if we didn't have enough cats already, and then he left. He didn't even stay the night, he was in such a hurry.”

“Do you know where he went?” I asked.

“He wouldn't say, but where do you think he went?” Gudovan asked with a touch of his old asperity.

“Chasing Nimue. At least I suppose that's what he's doing, though why he should chase that silly girl, I don't know. He should take a slave!” He paused and suddenly seemed on the edge of tears. “You know Sebile died?” he went on. “Poor woman. She was murdered, Derfel! Murdered! Had her throat slit. No one knows who did it. Some traveller, I assume. The world goes to the dogs, Derfel, to the dogs.” For a moment he seemed lost, then he found the thread of his thoughts again. “Merlin should use a slave. Nothing wrong with a willing slave and there are plenty in town who oblige for a small coin. I use the house down by Gwlyddyn's old workshop. There's a nice woman there, though these days we tend to talk more than we bump about the bed. I get old, Derfel.”

“You don't look old. And Merlin isn't chasing Nimue. She's here.” Thunder sounded again and Gudovan's hand found a small piece of iron that he stroked for protection against evil. “Nimue here?” he asked in amazement. “But we heard she was on the Isle!” He touched the iron again.

“She was,” I said flatly, 'but isn't now."

“Nimue…” He said the name almost in disbelief. “Is she staying?”

“No, we all go east today.”

“And leaving us alone?” he asked petulantly. “I miss Hywel.”

“So do I.”

He sighed. "Times change, Derfel. The Tor isn't what it was.

We're all old now and there are no children left. I miss them, and poor Druidan has no one to chase. Pellinore rants to emptiness, while Morgan is bitter."

“Wasn't she always?” I asked lightly.

“She has lost her power,” he explained. “Not her power to tell dreams or heal the sick, but the power she enjoyed when Merlin was here and Uther was on the throne. She resents that, Derfel, just as she resents your Nimue.” He paused, thinking. “She was especially angry when Guinevere sent for Nimue to fight Sansum about that church in Durnovaria. Morgan believes she should have been summoned, but we hear that the Lady Guinevere wants no one but the beautiful around her and where does that leave Morgan?” He chuckled at the question. “But she's still a strong woman, Derfel, and she has her brother's ambition so she won't be content to stay here listening to the dreams of peasants and grinding herbs to cure the milk-fever. She's bored! So bored that she even plays throw board with that wretched Bishop Sansum from the shrine. Why did they send him to Ynys Wydryn?”

“Because they didn't want him in Durnovaria. Does he really come here to play games with Morgan?” Gudovan nodded. “He says he needs intelligent company and that she has the cleverest mind in Ynys Wydryn, and I dare say he's right. He preaches to her, of course, endless nonsense about a virgin whelping a God who gets nailed to a cross, but Morgan just lets it roll past her mask. At least I hope she does.” He paused and sipped from a horn of mead in which a wasp was struggling as it drowned. When he put the horn down I fished the wasp out and squashed it on his desk. “Christianity gains converts, Derfel,” Gudovan went on. “Even Gwlyddyn's wife, that nice woman Ralla, has converted, which probably means that Gwlyddyn and the two children will follow her. I don't mind, but why do they have to sing so much?”

“You don't like singing?” I teased him.

“No one loves a good song better than I!” he said stoutly. “The Battle Song of Uther or the Slaughter Chant of Taranis, that's what I call a song, not this whining and moaning about being sinners in need of grace.” He sighed and shook his head. “I hear you were in Ynys Trebes?” he asked. I told him the tale of the city's fall. It seemed an appropriate story as we sat there with the rain falling on the fields outside and a gloom lowering over all Dumnonia. When the tale was told Gu-do van stared sightlessly through the door, saying nothing. I thought he might have fallen asleep, but when I rose from the stool, he waved me down. “Are things as bad as Bishop Sansum claims?” he asked.

“They're bad, my friend,” I admitted.

“Tell me.”

I told him how the Irish and the Cornish were raiding in the west where Cadwy still pretended to rule an independent kingdom. Tristan did his best to restrain his father's soldiers, but King Mark could not resist enriching his poor kingdom by stealing from a weakened Dumnonia. I told him how Aelle's Saxons had broken the truce, but added that Gorfyddyd's army still posed the greatest threat. “He's assembled the men of Elmet, Powys and Siluria,” I told Gudovan, 'and once the harvest is gathered he'll lead them all south."

“And Aelle doesn't fight against Gorfyddyd?” the old scribe asked.

“Gorfyddyd has purchased peace from Aelle.”

“And will Gorfyddyd win?” Gudovan asked.

I paused a long time. “No,” I finally said, not because it was the truth, but because I did not want this old friend to worry that his last glimpse of this life would be a flash of light as a warrior's sword swung towards his blinded eyes. “Arthur will fight them,” I said, 'and Arthur has yet to be beaten."

“You'll fight them too?”

“It's my job now, Gudovan.”

“You would have made a good clerk,” he said sadly, 'and it is an honourable and useful profession, even though no one makes us lords because of it.“ I thought he had not known of my honour and I suddenly felt ashamed of being so proud of it. Gudovan groped for his mead and took another sip. ”If you see Merlin,“ he said, 'tell him to come back. The Tor is dead without him.”

“I'll tell him.”

“Goodbye, Lord Derfel,” Gudovan said, and I sensed he knew we would never meet again in this world. I tried to embrace the old man, but he waved me away for fear of betraying his emotions. Arthur was waiting at the sea gate where he stared westward across the marshes that were being storm-swept by great pale waves of rain. “This will be bad for the harvest,” he said bleakly. Lightning flickered above the Severn Sea.

“There was a storm like this after Uther died,” I said.

Arthur pulled his cloak tight around his body. “If Uther's son had lived…” he said, then fell silent rather than finish the thought. His mood was as dark and bleak as the weather.

“Uther's son could not have fought Gorfyddyd, Lord,” I said, 'nor Aelle."

“Nor Cadwy,” he added bitterly, 'nor Cerdic. So many enemies, Derfel."

“Then be glad you have friends, Lord.”

He acknowledged that truth with a smile, then turned to gaze northwards. “I worry about one friend,” he said softly. “I worry that Tewdric won't fight. He's tired of war, and I can't blame him for that. Gwent has suffered much worse than Dumnonia.” He looked at me and there were tears in his eyes, or maybe it was just the rain. “I wanted to do such great things, Derfel,” he said, 'such great things. And in the end it was I who betrayed them, wasn't it?"

“No, Lord,” I said firmly.

“Friends should speak the truth,” he chided me gently.

“You needed Guinevere,” I said, embarrassed to be speaking thus, 'and you were meant to be with her, else why would the Gods have brought her to the feasting hall on the night of your betrothal? It isn't for us, Lord, to read the minds of Gods, just to live our fate fully.“ He grimaced at that, for he liked to believe he was master of his own fate. ”You think we should all rush madly down the paths of destiny?"

“I think, Lord, that when fate grips you, you do well to put reason aside.”

“And I did,” he said quietly, then smiled at me. “Do you love someone, Derfel?” he asked.

“The only women I love, Lord, are not for me,” I answered in self-pity. He frowned, then shook his head in commiseration. “Poor Derfel,” he said softly and something about his tone made me look at him. Could he believe I had meant to include Guinevere among those women? I blushed and wondered what I should say, but Arthur had already turned to watch as Nimue came from the hall. “You must tell me about the Isle of the Dead sometime,” he said, 'when we have the time."

“I shall tell you, Lord, after your victory,” I said, 'when you need good tales to fill long winter evenings."

“Yes,” he said, 'after our victory." Though he did not sound hopeful. Gorfyddyd's army was so huge and ours so small.

But before we could fight Gorfyddyd we had to buy a Saxon's peace with God's money. And so we travelled towards Lloegyr.

We smelt Durocobrivis long before we came near the town. That smell came on our second day of travel and we were still a half-day's journey from the captured town, but the wind was in the east and it carried the sour reek of death and smoke far across the deserted farmlands. The fields were ready for harvest, but the people had fled in terror of the Saxons. At Cunetio, a small Roman-built town where we had spent the night, refugees filled the streets and their livestock had been crowded into hastily re-erected winter sheep pens. No one had cheered Arthur in Cunetio, and no wonder, for he was blamed for both the war's length and its disasters. Men grumbled that there had been peace under Uther and nothing but war under Arthur.

Arthur's horsemen led our silent column. They wore their armour, they carried spears and swords, but their shields were slung upside down and green branches were tied to their spear-tips as signs that we came in peace. Behind the vanguard marched Lanval's spearmen, and after them came two score of baggage mules that were loaded with Sansum's gold and with all the heavy leather shields that Arthur's horses wore in battle. A second smaller contingent of horsemen formed the rear guard Arthur himself walked with my wolf-tailed spearmen just behind his banner holder who rode with the leading group of horsemen. Arthur's black mare Llamrei was led by Hygwydd, his servant, and with him was a stranger I took to be another servant. Nimue walked with us and, like Arthur, tried to learn some Saxon from me, but neither was a good pupil. Nimue was soon bored by the coarse tongue while Arthur had too much on his mind, though he duly learned a few words: peace, land, spear, food, mother, father. I was to be his interpreter, the first of many times that I spoke for Arthur and returned his enemy's words. We met the enemy at midday as we descended a long gentle hill where woods grew on either side of the road. An arrow suddenly flickered from the trees and slashed into the turf just ahead of our leading man, Sagramor. He raised a hand and Arthur shouted at every man in the column to be still. “No swords!” he ordered. “Just wait!”

The Saxons must have been watching us all morning for they had assembled a small war-band to face us. Those men, sixty or seventy strong, trailed out of the trees behind their leader, a broad-chested man who walked beneath a chieftain's banner of deer-antlers from which hung shreds of tanned human skin. The chieftain had the Saxon's love of fur; a sensible affection for few things stop a sword stroke so well as a thick rich pelt. This man had a collar of heavy black fur about his neck and strips of fur around his upper arms and thighs. The rest of his clothing was leather or wool: a jerkin, trousers, boots, and a leather helmet crested with a tuft of black fur. At his waist hung a long sword, while in his hand was that favourite Saxon weapon, the broad-bladed axe.

“Are you lost, weal has he shouted. Wealhas was their word for us Britons. It means foreigners and has a derisive ring, just as our word Sais does for them. ”Or are you just tired of life?" He stood firmly in our road, feet apart, head up and with his axe resting on his shoulder. He had a brown beard and a mass of brown hair that jutted sharply out from under his helmet's rim. His men, some in iron helmets, some in leather, and almost all carrying axes, formed a shield-wall across the road. A few had huge leashed dogs, beasts the size of wolves, and of late, we had heard, the Sais had been using such dogs as weapons, releasing them against our shield-walls just a few seconds before they struck with axe and spear. The dogs frightened some of our men far more than the Saxons did.

I walked with Arthur, stopping a few paces short of the defiant Saxon. Neither of us carried spear or shield and our swords rested in their scabbards. “My Lord,” I said in Saxon, 'is Arthur, Protector of Dumnonia, who comes to you in peace."

“For the moment,” the man said, 'peace is yours, but only for the moment.“ He spoke defiantly, but he had been impressed by Arthur's name and he gave my Lord a long curious inspection before glancing back to me. ”Are you Saxon?" he asked.

“I was born one. Now I am British.”

“Can a wolf become a toad?” he asked with a scowl. “Why not become a Saxon again?”

“Because I am sworn to Arthur's service,” I said, 'and that service is to bring your King a great gift of gold."

“For a toad,” the man said, 'you howl well. I am Therdig.“ I had never heard of him. ”Your fame,“ I said, 'gives nightmares to our children.” He laughed. “Well spoken, toad. So who is our King?”

“Aelle,” I said.

“I didn't hear you, toad.”

I sighed. “The Bretwalda Aelle.”

“Well said, toad,” Therdig said. We Britons did not recognize the title Bretwalda, but I used it to placate the Saxon chief. Arthur, who understood nothing of our talk, patiently waited until I was ready to translate something. He had trust in those he appointed and would not hurry me or intervene.

“The Bretwalda,” Therdig said, 'is some hours from here. Can you give me some reason, toad, why I should disturb his day with news that a plague of rats, mice and grubs have crawled into his land?"

“We bring the Bretwalda more gold, Therdig,” I said, 'than you can dream of. Gold for your men, for your wives, for your daughters, even enough for your slaves. Is that reason enough?"

“Show me, toad.”

It was a risk, but Arthur willingly took it, taking Therdig and six of his men back to the mules and there revealing the great hoard stowed in the sacks. The risk was that Therdig might decide the fortune was worth a fight there and then, but we outnumbered him, and the sight of Arthur's men on their big horses was a fearsome deterrent, so he merely took three gold coins and said he would report our presence to the Bretwalda. “You will wait at the Stones,” he ordered us. “Be there by evening and my King shall come to you in the morning.” The command told us that Aelle must have been warned of our approach and must also have guessed what our business was. “You may stay at the Stones in peace,” Therdig told us, 'until the Bretwalda decides your fate."

That evening, for it took us all afternoon to reach the Stones, was the first time I ever saw the great ring. Merlin had often spoken of them, and Nimue had heard of their power, but no one knew who had made them or why the great dressed boulders were arrayed in their towering circle. Nimue was sure that only the Gods could have made such a place and so she chanted prayers as we approached the grey, lonely monoliths whose evening shadows stretched dark and long across the pale grassland. A ditch surrounded the Stones that were formed into a great circle of pillars with other stones forming lintels above, while inside that massive and crude arcade were more vast upright rocks that stood close around a slab like altar. There were plenty of other stone circles in Britain, some even larger in their circumference, but none of such mystery and majesty and all of us were awed and silent as we approached. Nimue cast her spells, then told us it was safe to cross the ditch and so we wandered in wonder among these boulders of the Gods. Lichens grew thick on the Stones, some of which had canted or even fallen over the long years, while others were deeply carved with Roman names and numerals. Gereint had held the lordship of these Stones, an office devised by Uther to reward the man responsible for holding our eastern border against the Saxons, though now a new man would have to take the title and try to thrust Aelle back beyond burned Durocobrivis. It was shameful, Nimue told me, that Aelle had demanded to meet us here, so deep inside Dumnonia.

There were woods in a valley a mile to the south and we used the mules to fetch enough timber to make a fire that burned bright through all that ghost-haunted night. More fires burned just beyond our eastern skyline, evidence that the Saxons had followed us. It was a nervous night. Our fire burned like a blaze of Beltain, but the flame-shadows on the stones still unnerved us. Nimue cast spells of safety around the ditch and that precaution calmed our men, but the picketed horses whinnied and trampled the turf all night long. Arthur suspected they could smell the Saxon war dogs, but Nimue was certain that the spirits of the dead were whirling all about us. Our sentries gripped their spear-shafts and challenged every wind that sighed across the grave mounds surrounding the Stones, but no dog, ghoul or warrior disturbed us, though few of our number slept.

Arthur slept not at all. At one point in the night he asked me to walk with him and I paced beside him around the outer circle of big stones. He walked without speaking for a while, his head bare to the stars.

“I was here once before,” he broke his silence abruptly.

“When, Lord?” I asked.

“Ten years ago. Maybe eleven.” He shrugged as though the number of years was not important. “Merlin brought me here.” He fell silent again and I said nothing for I sensed from his last words that this place held a special place in his memory. It did too, for he at last stopped pacing and pointed toward the grey rock that lay like an altar at the heart of the Stones. “It was there, Derfel, that Merlin gave me Caledfwlch.”

I glanced down at the sword's cross-hatched scabbard. “A noble gift, Lord,” I said.

“A heavy one, Derfel. It came with a burden.” He plucked my arm so that we continued walking. “He gave it to me on condition that I did what he ordered me to do, and I obeyed him. I went to Benoic and I learned from Ban what a king's duties are. I learned that a king is only as good as the poorest man under his rule. That was Ban's lesson.”

“It wasn't a lesson that Ban learned himself,” I said bitterly, thinking how Ban had ignored his people to enrich Ynys Trebes.

Arthur smiled. “Some men are better at knowing than doing, Derfel. Ban was very wise, but not practical. I have to be both.”

“To be a king?” I dared to ask, for stating such an ambition was counter to everything Arthur claimed about his destiny.

But Arthur took no offence at my words. “To be a ruler,” he said. He had stopped again and was staring over the dark cloaked shapes of his sleeping men at the stone in the circle's centre, and to me it seemed as if the slab of rock shimmered in the moonlight, or perhaps that was just my heightened imagination.

“Merlin made me strip naked and stand on that stone all night long,” Arthur went on. “There was rain on the wind and it was cold. He chanted spells and made me hold the sword at arm's length and keep it there. I remember my arm was like fire and then at last it went numb, but still he would not let me drop Caledfwlch. ”Hold it!“ he shouted at me, ”hold it,“ and I stood there, quivering while he summoned the dead to witness his gift. And they came, Derfel, rank on rank of the dead, warriors with empty eyes and rusted helmets who rose from the Otherworld to see the sword given to me.” He shook his head at the memory. “Or perhaps I just dreamed those worm-eaten men. I was young, you see, and very impressionable, and Merlin does know how to put the fear of the Gods into young minds. Once he'd scared me with the throng of dead witnesses, though, he told me how to lead men, how to find warriors who need leaders and how to fight battles. He told me my destiny, Derfel.” He fell silent again, his long face very grim in the moonlight. Then he smiled ruefully. “All nonsense.” His last two words had been spoken so softly that I had almost not heard them. “Nonsense?” I asked, unable to hide my disapproval.

“I am to yield Britain back to her Gods,” Arthur said, mocking the duty by the tone of his voice.

“You will, Lord,” I said.

He shrugged. “Merlin wanted a strong arm to hold a good sword,” he said, 'but what the Gods want, Derfel, I do not know. If they want Britain, why do they need me? Or Merlin? Do Gods need men? Or are we like dogs barking for masters who don't want to listen?"

“We aren't dogs,” I said. “We're the creatures of the Gods. They must have a purpose for us.”

“Must they? Maybe we just make them laugh.”

“Merlin says we've lost touch with the Gods,” I said stubbornly.

“Just as Merlin has lost touch with us,” Arthur said firmly. “You saw how he ran from Durnovaria that night you returned from Ynys Trebes. Merlin is too busy, Derfel. Merlin is chasing his Treasures of Britain and what we do in Dumnonia is of no consequence to him. I could make a great kingdom for Mordred, I could establish justice, I could bring peace, I could have Christians and pagans dancing in the moonlight together and none of that would interest Merlin. Merlin only yearns for the moment when all of it is given back to the Gods, and when that moment comes he'll demand I give Caledfwlch back to him. That was his other condition. I could take the sword of the Gods, he said, so long as I gave it back when he needed it.”

He had spoken with a trace of mockery that had disturbed me. “Don't you believe in Merlin's dream?” I asked.

“I believe Merlin is the wisest man in Britain,” Arthur said seriously, 'and that he knows more than I might ever hope to know. I also know that my fate is twisted into his, just as yours, I think, is twisted into Nimue's, but I also think that Merlin was bored from the moment he was born, so Merlin is doing what the Gods do. He is amusing himself at our expense. Which means, Derfel, that when the moment comes to return Caledfwlch it will be at a time when I need the sword most."

“So what will you do?”

“I have no idea. None.” He seemed to find that thought amusing for he smiled, then put a hand on my shoulder. “Go and sleep, Derfel. I need your tongue tomorrow and I don't want it slurred by tiredness.” I left him, and somehow I did snatch a few moments' sleep in the moon-cast shadow of a looming stone, though before I slept I lay thinking about that far-off night when Merlin had made Arthur's arm ache with the weight of the sword and his soul heavy with the greater burden of fate. Why had Merlin chosen Arthur, I wondered, for it seemed to me now that Arthur and Merlin were opposed. Merlin believed that chaos could only be defeated by harnessing the powers of mystery, while Arthur believed in the powers of men. It could be, I thought, that Merlin had trained Arthur to rule men so as to leave himself free to rule the dark powers, but I also realized, however dimly, that the moment might come when we would all have to choose between them and I feared that moment. I prayed it would never come. Then I slept until the sun rose to lance the shadow of a single stone pillar that stood isolated outside the circle straight into the very heart of the Stones where we tired warriors guarded a kingdom's ransom. We drank water, ate hard bread, then buckled on our swords before spreading the gold on the dew-wet grass beside the altar stone. “What's to stop Aelle taking the gold and continuing his war?” I asked Arthur as we waited for the Saxon's arrival. Aelle, after all, had taken gold from us before and that had not stopped him from burning Durocobrivis.

Arthur shrugged. He was wearing his spare armour, a coat of Roman mail that was dented and scarred from frequent fights. He wore the heavy mail under one of his white cloaks. “Nothing,” he answered,

'except what little honour he might have. Which is why we might have to offer him more than gold."

“More?” I asked, but Arthur did not reply because, on the dawn-blazoned eastern skyline, the Saxons had appeared.

They came in a long line spread across the horizon with their war drums beating and their spearmen arrayed for battle, though their weapons were tipped by leaves to show that they meant us no immediate harm. Aelle led them. He was the first of the two men I ever met who claimed the title Bretwalda. The other came later and was to give us more trouble, but Aelle was trouble enough. He was a tall man with a flat, hard face and dark eyes that revealed none of his thoughts. His beard was black, his cheeks were scarred from battle and two fingers were missing from his right hand. He wore a coat of black cloth that was belted with leather, boots of leather, an iron helmet on which bull horns were mounted, and over it all a bearskin cloak that he dropped when the heat of the day became too much for such a flamboyant garment. His banner was a blood-daubed bull's skull held aloft on a spear-shaft. His war-band numbered two hundred men, maybe a few more, and over half those men had great war dogs leashed with leather ropes. Behind the warriors was a horde of women, children and slaves. There were more than enough Saxons to overwhelm us now, but Aelle had given his word that we were at peace, at least until he had decided our fate, and his men made no hostile show. Their line stopped outside the circling ditch while Aelle, his council, an interpreter and a pair of wizards came to meet Arthur. The wizards had hair stiffened into spikes with dung and wore ragged cloaks of wolfskin. When they whirled around to say their charms, the legs, tails and faces of the wolves flared out from their painted bodies. They shouted those charms as they came closer, nullifying any magic we might be working against their leader. Nimue crouched behind us and chanted her own counter charms The two leaders weighed each other up. Arthur was taller and Aelle broader. Arthur's face was striking, but Aelle's was terrifying. It was implacable, the face of a man who had come from beyond the sea to carve out a kingdom in a strange land, and he had made that kingdom with a savage and direct brutality.

“I should kill you now, Arthur,” he said, 'and have one less enemy to destroy." His wizards, naked beneath their moth-eaten skins, crouched behind him. One chewed a mouthful of earth, the other rolled his eyes while Nimue, her empty eye-socket bared, hissed at them. The struggle between Nimue and the wizards was a private war that the two leaders ignored.

“The time will come, Aelle,” Arthur said, 'when maybe we shall meet in battle. But for now I offer you peace." I had half expected Arthur to bow to Aelle who was, unlike Arthur, a king, but Arthur treated the Bretwalda as an equal and Aelle accepted the treatment without protest.

“Why?” Aelle asked bluntly. Aelle used no circumlocutions like we British favoured. I came to notice that difference between ourselves and the Saxons. The British thought in curves, like the intricate whorls of their jewellery, while Saxons were blunt and straight, as crude as their heavy gold brooches and chunky neck chains. Britons rarely broached a subject headlong, but talked around it, wrapping it with hints and allusions, always looking for manoeuvre, but Saxons thrust subtlety aside. Arthur once claimed I had that same Saxon straightforwardness and I think he meant it as a compliment. Arthur ignored Aelle's question. “I thought we had peace already. We had an agreement sealed with gold.”

Aelle's face betrayed no shame at having broken the truce. He merely shrugged, as though a broken peace was a small thing. “So if one truce fails, why buy another?” he asked.

“Because I have a quarrel with Gorfyddyd,” Arthur replied, adopting the Saxon's blunt manner, 'and I seek your help in that quarrel."

Aelle nodded. “But if I help you destroy Gorfyddyd I make you stronger. Why should I do that?”

“Because if you do not then Gorfyddyd will destroy me and he will then be stronger.” Aelle laughed, displaying a mouth of rotting teeth. “Does a dog care which of two rats it kills?” he asked. I translated that as does a dog care which stag it pulls down. It seemed more tactful and I noted that Aelle's interpreter, a British slave, did not tell his master.

“No,” Arthur allowed, 'but the stags are not equal.“ Aelle's interpreter said the rats were not equal and I did not tell Arthur. ”At best, Lord Aelle,“ Arthur went on, ”I preserve Dumnonia and make Powys and Siluria my allies. But if Gorfyddyd wins he will unite Elmet, Rheged, Powys, Siluria and Dumnonia against you."

“But you will also have Gwent on your side,” Aelle said. He was a shrewd man, and quick.

“True, but so will Gorfyddyd if it comes to a war between the British and the Saxons.” Aelle grunted. The present situation, with the British fighting amongst themselves, served him best, but he knew that the British wars would eventually cease. Since it now seemed Gorfyddyd must win those wars soon, Arthur's presence gave him a way of prolonging his enemies' conflict. “So what do you want of me?” he asked. His wizards were now leaping up and down on all fours like human grasshoppers while Nimue was arranging pebbles on the ground. The pebbles' pattern must have disturbed the Saxon sorcerers for they began to utter small yelps of distress. Aelle ignored them.

“I want you to give Dumnonia and Gwent three moons of peace,” Arthur said.

“You're only buying peace?” Aelle roared the words and even Nimue was startled. The Saxon threw a gloved hand towards his war-band that squatted with their women, dogs and slaves beyond the shallow ditch. “What does an army do in peace? Tell me that! I promised them more than gold. I promised them land! I promised them slaves! I promised them weal has blood, and you give me peace?” He spat. “In the name of Thor, Arthur, I will give you peace, but the peace will be across your bones and my men will take turns with your wife. That's my peace!” He spat on the turf, then looked at me. “Tell your master, dog,” he said, 'that half my men have just arrived in boats. They have no harvest gathered and no means to feed their folk through winter. We cannot eat gold. If we don't take land and grain, then we starve. What good is peace to a starved man?"

I translated for Arthur, leaving out the more egregious insults.

A look of pain crossed Arthur's face. Aelle saw the look, translated it as weakness and so turned scornfully away. “I will give you two hours' start, vermin,” he called over his shoulder, 'then I shall pursue you."

“Ratae,” Arthur said, without even waiting for me to translate Aelle's threat. The Saxon turned back. He said nothing, but just stared into Arthur's face. The stench of his bearskin robe was appalling; a mix of sweat, dung and grease. He waited.

“Ratae,” Arthur said again. “Tell him it can be taken. Tell him it is full of all the things he desires. Tell him the land it guards will be his.”

Ratae was the fortress that protected Gorfyddyd's eastern most border with the Saxons and if Gorfyddyd lost that fortress then the Saxons moved twenty miles closer to Powys's heartland. I translated. It took me some time to identify Ratae to Aelle, but at last he understood. He was not happy for it seemed Ratae was a formidable Roman fortress that Gorfyddyd had strengthened with a massive earth wall.

Arthur explained that Gorfyddyd had taken the garrison's best spearmen to add to the army he had collected for his invasion of Gwent and Dumnonia. He did not need to explain that Gorfyddyd had only risked that move because of the peace he believed he had purchased from Aelle, a peace that Arthur was now outbidding. Arthur revealed that a Christian community at Ratae had built a monastery just outside the fort's earth walls and the comings and goings of the monks had worn a passage through the ramparts. The fortress commander, he explained, was one of Gorfyddyd's rare Christians and had given his blessing to the monastery.

“How does he know?” Aelle demanded of me.

“Tell him I have a man with me, a man from Ratae, who knows how the monastery can be approached and who is willing to serve as a guide. Tell him I ask only that the man be rewarded with his life.” I realized then who the stranger must be who had been walking with Hygwydd. I realized, too, that Arthur had known he would have to sacrifice Ratae even before he left Durnovaria. Aelle demanded to know more about the traitor and Arthur told how the man had deserted Powys and come to Dumnonia seeking revenge because his wife had abandoned him for one of Gorfyddyd's chieftains.

Aelle spoke with his council while the two wizards gibbered at Nimue. One of them pointed a human thigh bone at her, but Nimue merely spat. That gesture seemed to conclude their war of sorcery for the two wizards shuffled backwards as Nimue stood up and brushed her hands. Aelle's council haggled with us. At one point they insisted that we yield all the big war horses to them, but Arthur demanded all their war dogs in return, and finally, in the afternoon, the Saxons accepted the offer of Ratae and Arthur's gold. It was maybe the greatest hoard of gold ever paid from a Briton to a Saxon, but Aelle also insisted on taking two hostages who, he promised, would be released if the attack on Ratae did not prove to be a trap laid by Gorfyddyd and Arthur together. He chose at random, picking two of Arthur's warriors: Balin and Lanval.

That night we ate with the Saxons. I was curious to meet these men who were my birth-brothers and even feared I might feel some kinship with them, but in truth I found their company repellent. Their humour was coarse, their manners loutish and the smell of their fur-wrapped flesh sickening. Some of them mocked me by saying I resembled their King Aelle, but I could see no likeness between his flat hard features and what I believed my own face to be. Aelle finally snarled at my mockers to be silent, then gave me a cold stare before bidding me to invite Arthur's men to share an evening meal of huge cuts of roasted meat which we ate with gloved hands, gnawing into the scalding flesh until the bloody juices dripped from our beards. We gave them mead, they gave us ale. A few drunken fights started, but no one was killed. Aelle, like Arthur, stayed sober, though the Bretwalda's two wizards became foully drunk and after they fell asleep beside their own vomit Aelle explained that they were madmen in touch with the Gods. He possessed other priests, he said, who were sane, but the lunatics were thought to possess a special power that the Saxons might need. “We feared you would bring Merlin,” he explained.

“Merlin is his own master,” Arthur answered, 'but this is his priestess." He gestured at Nimue who stared one-eyed at the Saxon.

Aelle made a gesture that must have been his way of averting evil. He feared Nimue because of Merlin, and that was good to know. “But Merlin is in Britain?” Aelle asked fearfully.

“Some men say so,” I answered for Arthur, 'and some say not. Who knows? Maybe he is out there in the dark.“ I jerked my head towards the blackness beyond the fire-lit stones. Aelle used a spear-shaft to prod one of his mad wizards awake. The man yowled piteously, and Aelle seemed content that the sound would avert any mischief. The Bretwalda had hung Sansum's cross about his neck, while others of his men wore Ynys Wydryn's heavy gold torques. Later in the night, when most of the Saxons were snoring, some of their slaves told us the tale of Durocobrivis's fall, and how Prince Gereint had been taken alive and then tortured to death. The tale made Arthur weep. None of us had known Gereint well, but he had been a modest, unambitious man who had tried his best to hold back the growing Saxon forces. Some of the slaves begged us to take them away with us, but we dared not offend our hosts by granting the request. ”We shall come for you one day,“ Arthur promised the slaves. ”We shall come."

The Saxons left next afternoon. Aelle insisted we wait another whole night before leaving the Stones to make certain we did not follow him, and he took Balin, Lanval and the man from Powys with his war-band. Nimue, consulted by Arthur on whether Aelle would keep his word, nodded and said she had dreamed of the Saxon's compliance and of the safe return of our hostages. “But Ratae's blood is on your hands,” she said ominously.

We packed and made ready for our own journey, which would not begin until the next day's dawn. Arthur was never happy when forced to idleness and as evening came he asked that Sagramor and I walk with him to the southern woods. For a time it seemed that we wandered aimlessly, but at last Arthur stopped beneath a huge oak hung with long beards of grey lichen. “I feel dirty,” he said. “I failed to keep my oath to Benoic, now I am buying the death of hundreds of Britons.”

“You could not have saved Benoic,” I insisted.

“A land that buys poets instead of spearmen does not deserve to survive,” Sagramor added.

“Whether I could have saved it or not,” Arthur said, 'does not matter. I took an oath to Ban and did not keep it."

“A man whose house is burning to the ground does not carry water to his neighbour's fire,” Sagramor said. His black face, as impenetrably tough as Aelle's, had fascinated the Saxons. Many had fought against him in the last years and believed him to be some kind of demon summoned by Merlin, and Arthur had played on those fears by hinting that he would leave Sagramor to defend the new frontier. In truth Arthur would take Sagramor to Gwent, for he needed all his best men to fight Gorfyddyd. “You weren't able to keep your oath to Benoic,” Sagramor went on, 'so the Gods will forgive you." Sagramor had a robustly pragmatic view of Gods and man; it was one of his strengths.

“The Gods may forgive me,” Arthur said, 'but I don't. And now I pay Saxons to kill Britons.“ He shuddered at the very thought. ”I found myself wishing for Merlin last night,“ he said, 'to know that he would approve of what we are doing.”

“He would,” I said. Nimue might not have approved of sacrificing Ratae, but Nimue was always purer than Merlin. She understood the necessity of paying Saxons, but revolted at the thought of paying with British blood even if that blood did belong to our enemies.

“But it doesn't matter what Merlin thinks,” Arthur said angrily. “It wouldn't matter if every priest, Druid and hard in Britain agreed with me. To ask another man's blessing is simply to avoid taking the responsibility. Nimue is right, I shall be responsible for all the deaths in Ratae.”

“What else could you do?” I asked.

“You don't understand, Derfel,” Arthur accused me bitterly, though in truth he was accusing himself. “I always knew Aelle would want something more than gold. They're Saxons! They don't want peace, they want land! I knew that, why else would I have brought that poor man from Ratae? Before Aelle ever asked I was ready to give, and how many men will die for that foresight? Three hundred? And how many women taken into slavery? Two hundred? How many children? How many families will be broken apart? And for what? To prove I'm a better leader than Gorfyddyd? Is my life worth so many souls?”

“Those souls,” I said, 'will keep Mordred on his throne."

“Another oath!” Arthur said bitterly. “All these oaths that bind us! I am oath-bound to Uther to put his grandson on the throne, oath-bound to Leodegan to retake Henis Wyren.” He stopped abruptly and Sagramor looked at me with an alarmed face for it was the first either of us had ever heard about an oath to fight Diwrnach, the dread Irish King of Lleyn who had taken Leodegan's land. “Yet of all men,” Arthur said miserably, “I break oaths so easily. I broke the oath to Ban and I broke my oath to Ceinwyn. Poor Ceinwyn.” It was the first time any of us had ever heard him so openly lament that broken promise. I had thought Guinevere was a sun so bright in Arthur's firmament that she had dimmed Ceinwyn's paler lustre into invisibility, but it seemed the memory of Powys's Princess could still gall Arthur's conscience like a spur. Just as the thought of Ratae's doom galled him now. “Maybe I should send them a warning,” he said.

“And lose the hostages?” Sagramor asked.

Arthur shook his head. “I'll exchange myself for Balin and Lanval.” He was thinking of doing just that. I could tell. The agony of remorse was biting at him and he was seeking a way out of that tangle of conscience and duty, even at the price of his own life. “Merlin would laugh at me now,” he said.

“Yes,” I agreed, 'he would." Merlin's conscience, if he possessed one at all, was merely a guide to how lesser men thought, and thus served as a goad for Merlin to behave in the contrary manner. Merlin's conscience was a jest to amuse the Gods. Arthur's was a burden.

Now he stared at the mossy ground beneath the oak's shadow. The day was settling into twilight as Arthur's mind sank into gloom. Was he truly tempted to abandon everything? To ride to Aelle's fastness and exchange his existence for the lives of Ratae's souls? I think he was, but then the insidious logic of his ambition rose to overcome his despair like a tide flooding Ynys Trebes's bleak sands. “A hundred years ago,” he said slowly, 'this land had peace. It had justice. A man could clear land in the happy knowledge that his grandsons would live to till it. But those grandsons are dead, killed by Saxons or their own kind. If we do nothing then the chaos will spread until there's nothing left but prancing Saxons and their mad wizards. If Gorfyddyd wins he'll strip Dumnonia of its wealth, but if I win I shall embrace Powys like a brother. I hate what we are doing, but if we do it, then we can put things right." He looked up at us both.

“We are all of Mithras,” he said, 'so you can witness this oath made to Him.“ He paused. He was learning to hate oaths and their duties, but such was his state after that meeting with Aelle that he was willing to burden himself with a new one. ”Find me a stone, Derfel,“ he ordered. I kicked a stone out of the soil and brushed the earth from it, then, at Arthur's bidding, I scratched Aelle's name on the stone with the point of my knife. Arthur used his own knife to dig a deep hole at the foot of the oak, then stood. ”My oath is this,“ he said, 'that if I survive this battle with Gorfyddyd then I shall avenge the innocent souls I have condemned at Ratae. I will kill Aelle. I shall destroy him and his men. I shall feed them to the ravens and give their wealth to the children of Ratae. You two are my witnesses, and if I fail in this oath you are both released from all the bonds you owe me.” He dropped the stone into the hole and the three of us kicked earth over it. “May the Gods forgive me,” Arthur said, 'for the deaths I have just caused."

Then we went to cause some more.

We travelled to Gwent through Corinium. Ailleann still lived there and though Arthur saw his sons he did not receive their mother so that no word of any such meeting could hurt his Guinevere, though he did send me with a gift for Ailleann. She received me with kindness, but shrugged when she saw Arthur's present, a small brooch of enamelled silver depicting an animal very like a hare though with shorter legs and ears. It had come from the treasures of Sansum's shrine, though Arthur had punctiliously replaced the cost of the brooch with coins from his pouch. “He wishes he had something better to send you,” I said, delivering Arthur's message, 'but alas, the Saxons must have our best jewels these days."

“There was a time,” she said bitterly, 'when his gifts came from love, not guilt.“ Ailleann was still a striking woman, though her hair was now touched with grey and her eyes clouded with resignation. She was clothed in a long blue woollen dress and wore her hair in twin coils above her ears. She peered at the strange enamelled animal. ”What do you think it is?“ she asked me. ”It's not a hare. Is it a cat?"

“Sagramor says it's called a rabbit. He's seen them in Cappadocia, wherever that is.”

“You mustn't believe everything Sagramor tells you,” Ailleann chided me as she pinned the small brooch to her gown. “I have jewellery enough for a queen,” she added as she led me to the small courtyard of her Roman house, 'but I am still a slave."

“Arthur didn't free you?” I asked, shocked.

“He worries I would move back to Armorica. Or to Ireland, and so take the twins away from him.” She shrugged. “On the day the boys are of age Arthur will give me my freedom and do you know what I shall do? I shall stay right here.” She gestured me to a chair that stood in the shade of a vine. “You look older,” she said as she poured a straw-coloured wine from a wicker-wrapped flask. “I hear Lunete has left you?” she added as she handed me a horn beaker.

“We left each other, I think.”

“I hear she is now a Priestess of Isis,” Ailleann said mockingly. “I hear a lot from Durnovaria and dare not believe the half of it.”

“Such as what?” I asked.

“If you don't know, Derfel, then you're best left in ignorance.” She sipped the wine and grimaced at its taste. “So is Arthur. He never wants to hear bad news, only good. He even believes there is goodness in the twins.”

It shocked me to hear a mother speak of her sons in such a way. “I'm sure there is,” I said. She gave me a level, amused look. “The boys are no better, Derfel, than they ever were, and they were never good. They resent their father. They think they should be princes and so behave like princes. There is no mischief in this town which they don't begin or encourage, and if I try to control them they call me a whore.” She crumbled a fragment of cake and threw its scraps to some scavenging sparrows. A servant swept the courtyard's far side with a bundle of broom twigs until Ailleann ordered the man to leave us alone, then she asked me about the war and I tried to hide my pessimism about Gorfyddyd's huge army.

“Can't you take Amhar and Loholt with you?” Ailleann asked me after a while. “They might make good soldiers.”

“I doubt their father thinks they're old enough,” I said.

“If he thinks about them at all. He sends them money. I wish he didn't.” She fingered her new brooch.

“The Christians in the town all say that Arthur is doomed.”

“Not yet, Lady.”

She smiled. “Not for a long time, Derfel. People underestimate Arthur. They see his goodness, hear his kindness, listen to his talk of justice, and none of them, not even you, knows what burns inside him.”

“Which is?”

“Ambition,” she said flatly, then thought for a second. “His soul,” she went on, 'is a chariot drawn by two horses; ambition and conscience, but I tell you, Derfel, the horse of ambition is in the right-hand harness and it will always out pull the other. And he's able, so very able.“ She smiled sadly. ”Just watch him, Derfel, when he seems doomed, when everything is at its darkest, and then he will astonish you. I've seen it before. He'll win, but then the horse of conscience will tug at its reins and Arthur will make his usual mistake of forgiving his enemies."

“Is that bad?”

“It isn't a question of bad or good, Derfel, but of practicality. We Irish know one thing above all others: an enemy forgiven is an enemy who will have to be fought over and over again. Arthur confuses morality with power, and he worsens the mix by always believing that people are inherently good, even the worst of them, and that is why, mark my words, he will never have peace. He longs for peace, he talks of peace, but his own trusting soul is the reason he will always have enemies. Unless Guinevere manages to put some flint into his soul? And she may. Do you know who she reminds me of?”

“I didn't think you'd met her,” I said.

“I never met the person she reminds me of either, but I hear things, and I do know Arthur very well. She sounds like his mother; very striking and very strong, and I suspect he will do anything to please her.”

“Even at the price of his conscience?”

Ailleann smiled at the question. “You should know, Derfel, that some women always want their men to pay an exorbitant price. The more the man pays, the greater the woman's worth, and I suspect Guinevere is a lady who values herself very highly. And so she should. So should we all.” She said the last words sadly, then rose from her chair. “Give him my love,” she told me as we walked back through the house,

'and tell him please to take his sons to war."

Arthur would not take them. “Give them another year,” he told me as we marched away next morning. He had dined with the twins and given them small gifts, but all of us had noted the sullenness with which Amhar and Loholt had received their father's affection. Arthur had noticed it too, which was why he was unnaturally dour as we marched west. “Children born to unwed mothers,” he said after a long silence,

'have parts of their souls missing."

“What about your soul, Lord?” I asked.

“I patch it every morning, Derfel, piece by piece.” He sighed. “I shall have to give time to Amhar and Loholt, and the Gods only know where I shall find it because in four or five months I shall be a father again. If I live,” he added bleakly.

So Lunete had been right and Guinevere was pregnant. “I'm happy for you, Lord,” I said, though I was thinking of Lunete's comment on how unhappy Guinevere was at her condition.

“I'm happy for me!” He laughed, his black mood abruptly vanquished. “And happy for Guinevere. It'll be good for her, and in ten years' time, Derfel, Mordred will be on the throne and Guinevere and I can find some happy place to rear our cattle, children and pigs! I shall be happy then. I shall train Llamrei to pull a cart and use Excalibur as a goad for my plough-oxen.”

I tried to imagine Guinevere as a farm wife, even as a rich farm wife, and somehow I could not conjure the image, but I kept my peace.

From Corinium we went to Glevum, then crossed the Severn and marched through Gwent's heartland. We made a fine sight, for Arthur deliberately rode with banners flying and his horsemen armoured for combat. We marched in that high style for we wanted to give the local people a new confidence. They had none now. Everyone assumed that Gorfyddyd would be victorious and even though it was harvest-time the countryside was sullen. We passed a threshing floor and the chanter was singing the Lament of Essylt instead of the usual cheerful song that gave rhythm to the flails. We also noted how every villa, house and cottage was strangely bare of anything valuable. Possessions were being hidden, buried probably, so that Gorfyddyd's invaders would not strip the populace bare. “The moles are getting rich again,” Arthur said sourly.

Arthur alone did not ride in his best armour. “Morfans has the scale armour,” he told me when I asked why he was wearing his spare coat of mail. Morfans was the ugly warrior who had befriended me at the feast that had followed Arthur's arrival at Caer Cadarn so many years before.

“Morfans?” I asked, astonished. “How did he earn such a gift?”

“It's not a gift, Derfel. Morfans is just borrowing it, and every day for the past week he has been riding close to Gorfyddyd's men. They think I'm already there, and maybe that has given them pause? So far, at least, we have no news of any attack.”

I had to laugh at the thought of Morfans's ugly face being concealed behind the cheek pieces of Arthur's helmet, and maybe the deception worked for when we joined King Tewdric at the Roman fort of Magnis the enemy had still not sallied from their strongholds in Powys's hills. Tewdric, dressed in his fine Roman armour, looked almost an old man. His hair had gone grey and there was a stoop in his carriage that had not been there when I had last seen him. He greeted the news about Aelle with a grunt, then made an effort to be more complimentary. “Good news,” he said curtly, then rubbed his eyes, 'though God knows Gorfyddyd never needed Saxon help to beat us. He has men to spare."

The Roman fort seethed. Armourers were making spearheads, and every pollard ash for miles had been stripped for shafts. Carts of newly harvested grain arrived hourly and the bakers' ovens burned as fierce as the blacksmiths' furnaces so that a constant pyre of smoke hung above the palisaded walls. Yet despite the new harvest the gathering army was hungry. Most of the spearmen were camped outside the walls, some were miles away, and there were constant arguments about the distribution of the hard-baked bread and dried beans. Other contingents complained of water fouled by the latrines of men camped upstream. There was disease, hunger and desertion; evidence that neither Tewdric nor Arthur had ever had to grapple with the problems of commanding an army so large. “But if we have difficulties,” Arthur said optimistically, 'imagine Gorfyddyd's troubles."

“I would rather have his problems than mine,” Tewdric said gloomily. My spearmen, still under Galahad's command, were camped eight miles to the north of Magnis where Agricola, Tewdric's commander, kept a close watch on the hills that marked the frontier between Gwent and Powys. I felt a pang of happiness at seeing their wolf-tail helmets again. After the defeatism of the countryside it was suddenly good to think that here, at least, were men who would never be beaten. Nimue came with me and my men clustered about her so she could touch their spearheads and sword blades to give them power. Even the Christians, I noted, wanted her pagan touch. She was doing Merlin's business, and because she was known to have come from the Isle of the Dead she was thought to be almost as powerful as her master.

Agricola received me inside a tent, the first I had ever seen. It was a wondrous affair with a tall central pole and four corner staffs holding up a linen canopy that filtered the sunlight so that Agricola's short grey hair looked oddly yellow. He was in his Roman armour and sitting at a table covered in scraps of parchment. He was a stern man and his greeting was perfunctory, though he did add a compliment about my men. “They're confident. But so are the enemy, and there are many more of them than there are of us.” His tone was grim.

“How many?” I asked.

Agricola seemed offended by my bluntness, but I was no longer the boy I had been when I had first seen Gwent's warlord. I was a lord myself now, a commander of men, and I had a right to know what odds those men faced. Or maybe it was not my directness that irritated Agricola, but rather that he did not want to be reminded of the enemy's preponderance. Finally, however, he gave me the tally. “According to our spies,” he said, “Powys has assembled six hundred spearmen from their own land. Gundleus has brought another two hundred and fifty from Siluria, maybe more. Ganval of Elmet has sent two hundred men, and the Gods alone know how many master less men have gone to Gorfyddyd's banner for a share of the spoils.” Masterless men were rogues, exiles, murderers and savages who were drawn to an army for the plunder they could gain in battle. Such men were feared for they had nothing to lose and everything to gain. I doubted we had many such on our side, not just because we were expected to lose, but because both Tewdric and Arthur were ill disposed towards such lord less creatures. Curiously, though, many of Arthur's best horsemen had once been just such men. Warriors like Sagramor had fought in the Roman armies that had been shattered by the heathen invaders of Italy and it had been Arthur's youthful genius to harness such lord less mercenaries into a war-band.

“There's more,” Agricola went on ominously. “The kingdom of Cornovia has donated men and just yesterday we heard that Oengus Mac Airem of Demetia has come with a war-band of his Black-shields; maybe a hundred strong? And another report says the men of Gwynedd have joined Gorfyddyd.”

“Levies?” I asked.

Agricola shrugged. “Five, six hundred? Maybe even a thousand. But they won't come until the harvest's finished.”

I was beginning to wish I had not asked. “And our numbers, Lord?”

“Now that Arthur has arrived…” He paused. “Seven hundred spears.” I said nothing. It was no wonder, I thought, that men in Gwent and Dumnonia buried their treasures and whispered that Arthur should leave Britain. We were faced by a horde.

“I would be grateful,” Agricola said acidly, as though the thought of gratitude was utterly alien to his thinking, 'if you did not bruit the numbers about? We've had desertions enough already. More, and we might as well dig our own graves."

“No deserters from my men,” I insisted.

“No,” he allowed, 'not yet.“ He stood and took his short Roman sword from where it hung on a tent pole, then paused in the doorway from where he cast a baleful eye towards the enemy hills. ”Men say you're a friend of Merlin."

“Yes, Lord.”

“Will he come?”

“I don't know, Lord.”

Agricola grunted. “I pray he does. Someone needs to talk sense into this army. All commanders are summoned to Magnis tonight. A council of war.” He said it bitterly, as though he knew that such councils produced more quarrels than comradeship. “Be there by sunset.” Galahad came with me. Nimue stayed with my men for her presence gave them confidence and I was glad she did not come for the council was opened by a prayer from Bishop Conrad of Gwent who seemed imbued with defeatism as he begged his God to give us strength to face the over-mighty foe. Galahad, his arms spread in the Christian pose of prayer, murmured along with the Bishop while we pagans grumbled that we should not pray for strength, but victory. I wished we had some Druids among us, but Tewdric, a Christian, employed none, and Balise, the old man who had attended Mordred's acclamation, had died during the first winter I was in Benoic. Agricola was right to hope that Merlin would come, for an army without Druids was giving away an advantage to its enemy. There were some forty or fifty men at the council, all of us chieftains or leaders. We met in the bare stone hall of Magnis's bath house that reminded me of Ynys Wydryn's church. King Tewdric, Arthur, Agricola and Tewdric's son, the Edling Meurig, sat at a table on a stone dais. Meurig had grown into a pale thin creature who looked unhappy in his ill-fitting Roman armour. He was just old enough to fight, but with his nervous air he looked very unfit for battle. He blinked constantly, as if he had just come into sunlight from a very dark room, and he kept fidgeting with a heavy gold cross that hung around his neck. Arthur alone of the commanders was not in war gear, but looked relaxed in his countryman's clothes. The warriors cheered and stamped their spear-butts when King Tewdric announced that the Saxons were believed to have withdrawn from the eastern frontier, but that was the last cheering for a long while that night, because Agricola then stood and gave his blunt assessment of the two armies. He did not list all the enemy's smaller contingents, but even without those additions it was clear that Gorfyddyd's army would outnumber ours by two to one. “We'll just have to kill twice as fast!” Morfans shouted from the back. He had returned the scale armour to Arthur, swearing that only a hero could wear that amount of metal and still fight. Agricola ignored the interruption, adding instead that the harvest should be complete in a week and the levies of Gwent would then swell our numbers. No one seemed too cheered by that news.

King Tewdric proposed that we should fight Gorfyddyd under the walls of Magnis. “Give me a week,” he said, 'and I will so fill this fortress with the new harvest that Gorfyddyd will never pitch us out. Fight here' he gestured towards the dark beyond the hall doors 'and if the battle goes ill we pull inside the gates and let them waste their spears on wooden palisades." It was the way of war Tewdric preferred and had long perfected: siege warfare, where he could use the work of long-dead Roman engineers to frustrate spears and swords. A murmur of agreement sounded in the room, and that murmur swelled when Tewdric told the council that Aelle might well be planning to attack Ratae.

“Hold Gorfyddyd here,” one man said, 'and he'll run back north when he hears Aelle's coming through his back door."

“Aelle will not fight my battle.” Arthur spoke for the first time, and the room became still. Arthur seemed embarrassed at having spoken so firmly. He smiled apologetically at King Tewdric and asked exactly where the enemy forces were gathered. Arthur already knew, of course, but he was asking the question so that the rest of us would hear the answer.

Agricola answered for Tewdric. “Their forward men are strung between Coel's Hill and Caer Lud,” he said, 'while the main army gathers at Branogenium. More men are marching from Caer Sws.“ The names meant little to us, but Arthur seemed to understand the geography. ”So they guard the hills between us and Branogenium?"

“Every pass,” Agricola confirmed, 'and every hilltop."

“How many at Lugg Vale?” Arthur asked.

“At least two hundred of their best spearmen. They're not fools, Lord,” Agricola added sourly. Arthur stood. He was at his best at these councils, easily dominating crowds of fractious men. He smiled at us. “The Christians will understand this best,” he said, subtly flattering the men most likely to oppose him. “Imagine a Christian cross. Here at Magnis we are at the foot of the cross. The cross's shaft is the Roman road that runs north from Magnis to Branogenium, and the crosspiece is made by the hills that bar that road. Coel's Hill is at the left of the crosspiece, Caer Lud at the right, and Lugg Vale is at the cross's centre. The vale is where the road and river pass through the hills.” He walked out from behind the table and perched himself on its front so he was closer to his audience. “I want you to think about something,” he said. The flame light from the becke ted torches cast shadows on his long cheeks, but his eyes were bright and his tone energetic. “Everyone knows we must lose this battle,” he said. “We are outnumbered. We wait here for Gorfyddyd to attack us. We wait and some of us become dispirited and carry our spears home. Others fall ill. And all of us brood on that great army gathering in the bowl of the hills around Branogenium and we try not to imagine our shield-wall outflanked and the enemy coming at us from three sides at once. But think of the enemy! They wait too, but as they wait they get stronger! Men come from Cornovia, from Elmet, from Demetia, from Gwynedd. Landless men come to gain land and master less men to take plunder. They know they will win and they know we wait like mice trapped by a tribe of cats.”

He smiled again and stood up. “But we're not mice. We have some of the greatest warriors ever to lift a spear. We have champions!” The cheering began. "We can kill cats! And we know to skin them too!

But.“ That last word stopped the next cheer just as it began. ”But,“ Arthur went on, 'not if we wait here to be attacked. Wait here behind Magnis's walls and what happens? The enemy will march around us. Our homes, our wives, our children, our lands, our flocks and our new harvest become theirs, and all we become are mice in a trap. We must attack, and attack soon.”

Agricola waited for the Dumnonian cheers to die. “Attack where?” he asked sourly.

“Where they least expect it, Lord, in their strongest place. Lugg Vale. Straight up the cross! Straight to the heart!” He held up a hand to stop any cheering. “The vale is a narrow place,” he said, 'where no shield-line can be outflanked. The road fords the river north of the valley.“ He was frowning as he spoke, trying to remember a place he had seen only once in his life, but Arthur had a soldier's memory for terrain and only needed to see a place once. ”We would need to put men on the western hill to stop their archers raining arrows down, but once in the vale I swear we cannot be moved.“ Agricola objected. ”We can hold there,“ he agreed, 'but how do we fight our way in? They have two hundred spearmen there, maybe more, but even one hundred men can hold that valley all day. By the time we've fought to the vale's far end Gorfyddyd will have brought his horde down from Branogenium. Worse, the Blackshield Irish who garrison Coel's Hill can march south of the hills and take our rear. We might not be moved, Lord, but we'll be killed where we stand.”

“The Irish on Coel's Hill don't matter,” Arthur said carelessly. He was excited and could not stay still; he began pacing up and down the dais, explaining and cajoling. “Think, I beg you, Lord King' he spoke to Tewdric — 'what happens if we stay here. The enemy will come, we shall retreat behind impregnable walls and they will raid our lands. By midwinter we'll be alive, but will anyone else in Gwent or Dumnonia still live? No. Those hills south of Branogenium are Gorfyddyd's walls. If we breach those walls he has to fight us, and if he fights in Lugg Vale he is a defeated man.”

“His two hundred men in Lugg Vale will stop us,” Agricola insisted.

“They will vanish like the mist!” Arthur proclaimed confidently. “They are two hundred men who have never faced armoured horse in battle.”

Agricola shook his head. "The vale is barred by a wall of felled trees. Armoured horse will be stopped'

he paused to ram his fist into an upraised palm 'dead." He said the word flatly and the finality of his tone made Arthur sit. There was the smell of defeat in the hall. From outside the baths, where the blacksmiths worked day and night, I heard the hiss of a newly forged blade being quenched in water.

“Perhaps I might be permitted to speak?” The speaker was Meurig, Tewdric's son. He had a strangely high voice, almost petulant in its tone, and he was evidently short-sighted for he screwed up his eyes and cocked his head whenever he wanted to look at a man in the main part of the hall. “What I would like to ask,” he said when his father had given him permission to address the council, 'is why we fight at all?" He blinked rapidly when the question was asked.

No one answered. Maybe we were all too astonished at the question.

“Let me, permit me, allow me to explain,” Meurig said in a pedantic tone. He might have been young, but he possessed the confidence of a prince, though I found the false modesty with which he cloaked his pronouncements irritating. “We fight Gorfyd-dyd correct me if I am wrong out of our long-standing alliance with Dumnonia. That alliance has served us well, I doubt not, but Gorfyddyd, as I understand it, has no designs upon the Dumnonian throne.”

A growl came from we Dumnonians, but Arthur held up his hand for silence, then gestured for Meurig to continue. Meurig blinked and tugged at his cross. "I just wonder why we fight? What, if I might phrase it thus, is our casus belli?

“Cow's belly?” Culhwch shouted. Culhwch had seen me when I arrived and had crossed the hall to welcome me. Now he put his mouth close to my ear. “Bastards have got thin shields, Derfel,” he said, 'and they're looking for a way out."

Arthur stood again and spoke courteously to Meurig. “The cause of the war, Lord Prince, is your father's oath to preserve King Mordred's throne, and King Gorfyddyd's evident desire to take that throne from my King.”

Meurig shrugged. “But correct me, please, I beg you but as I understand these things Gorfyddyd does not seek to dethrone King Mordred.”

“You know that?” Culhwch shouted.

“There are indications,” Meurig said irritably.

“Bastards have been talking to the enemy,” Culhwch whispered in my ear. “Ever had a knife in the back, Derfel? Arthur's getting one now.”

Arthur stayed calm. “What indications?” he asked mildly.

King Tewdric had stayed silent as his son spoke, evidence that he had given his permission for Meurig to suggest, however delicately, that Gorfyddyd should be appeased rather than confronted, but now, looking old and tired, the King took control of the hall. “There are no indications, Lord, upon which I would want to depend my strategy. Nevertheless' and when Tewdric pronounced that word so emphatically we all knew Arthur had lost the debate' nevertheless Lord, I am convinced that we need not provoke Powys unnecessarily. Let us see whether we cannot have peace.” He paused, almost as if he feared the word would anger Arthur, but Arthur said nothing. Tewdric sighed. “Gorfyddyd fights,” he said slowly and carefully, 'because of an insult done to his family.“ Again he paused, fearing that his bluntness might have offended Arthur, but Arthur was never a man to evade responsibility and he nodded his reluctant agreement with Tewdric's frankness. ”While we,“ Tewdric continued, 'fight to keep the oath we gave to High King Uther. An oath by which we promised to preserve Mordred's throne. I, for one, will not break that oath.”

“Nor I!” Arthur said loudly.

“But what, Lord Arthur, if King Gorfyddyd has no designs on that throne?” King Tewdric asked. “If he means to keep Mordred as King, then why do we fight?”

There was uproar in the hall. We Dumnonians smelled treachery, the men of Gwent smelled an escape from the war, and for a time we shouted at each other until at last Arthur regained order by slapping his hand on the table. “The last envoy I sent to Gorfyddyd,” Arthur said, 'had his head sent back in a sack. Are you suggesting, Lord King, we send another?"

Tewdric shook his head. “Gorfyddyd is refusing to receive my envoys. They are turned back at the frontier. But if we wait here and let his army waste its efforts against our walls then I believe he will become discouraged and will then negotiate.” His men murmured agreement. Arthur tried one more time to dissuade Tewdric. He conjured a picture of our army rooted behind walls while Gorfyddyd's horde ravaged the newly harvested farms, but the men of Gwent would not be moved by his oratory or his passion. They only saw outflanked shield-walls and fields of dead men, and so they seized on their King's belief that peace would come if only they retreated into Magnis and let Gorfyddyd weary his men by battering its strong walls. They began to demand Arthur's agreement for their strategy and I saw the hurt on his face. He had lost. If he waited here then Gorfyddyd would demand his head. If he ran to Armorica he would live, but he would be abandoning Mordred and his own dream of a just, united Britain. The clamour in the hall grew louder, and it was then that Galahad stood and shouted for a chance to be heard.

Tewdric pointed at Galahad, who first introduced himself. “I am Galahad, Lord King,” he said, 'a Prince of Benoic. If King Gorfyd-dyd will receive no envoys from Gwent or Dumnonia, then surely he will not refuse one from Armorica? Let me go, Lord King, to Caer Sws and enquire what Gorfyddyd intends to do with Mordred. And if I do go, Lord King, will you accept my word as to his verdict?“ Tewdric was happy to accept. He was happy with anything that might avert war, but he was still anxious for Arthur's agreement. ”Suppose Gorfyddyd decrees that Mordred is safe," he suggested to Arthur.

“What will you do then?”

Arthur stared at the table. He was losing his dream, but he could not tell a lie to save that dream and so he looked up with a rueful smile. “In that case, Lord King, I would leave Britain and I would entrust Mordred to your keeping.”

Once again we Dumnonians shouted our protests, but this time Tewdric silenced us. “We do not know what answer Prince Galahad will bring,” he said, 'but this I promise. If Mordred's throne is threatened then I, King Tewdric, will fight. If not? I see no reason to fight." And with that promise we had to be content. The war, it seemed, hung on Gorfyddyd's answer. To find it, next morning, Galahad rode north.

I rode with Galahad. He had not wanted me to come, saying that my life would be in danger, but I argued with him as I had never argued before. I also pleaded with Arthur, saying that at least one Dumnonian should hear Gorfyddyd declare his intentions about our King, and Arthur pleaded my case with Galahad who at last relented. We were friends, after all, though for my own safety Galahad insisted that I travel as his servant and that I carry his symbol on my shield. “You have no symbol,” I told him.

“I do now,” he said, and ordered that our shields be painted with crosses. “Why not?” he asked me, “I'm a Christian.”

“It looks wrong,” I said. I was accustomed to warriors' shields being blazoned with bulls, eagles, dragons and stags, not with some desiccated piece of religious geometry.

“I like it,” he said, 'and besides, you are now my humble servant, Derfel, so your opinion is of no interest to me. None." He laughed and skipped away from a blow I aimed at his arm.

I was forced to ride to Caer Sws. In all my years with Arthur I never did accustom myself to sitting on a horse's back. To me it always seemed a natural thing to sit well back on a horse, but sitting thus it was impossible to grip the animal's flanks with your knees, for which you had to slide forward until you were perched just behind its neck with your feet dangling in the air behind its forelegs. In the end I used to tuck one foot into the saddle girth to give me an anchoring point, a shift that offended Galahad who was proud of his horsemanship. “Ride it properly!” he would say.

“But there's nowhere to put my feet!”

“The horse has got four. How many more do you want?”

We rode to Caer Lud, Gorfyddyd's major fortress in the border hills. The town stood on a hill in a river bend and we reckoned its sentries would be less wary than those who guarded the Roman road at Lugg Vale. Even so we did not state our real business in Powys, but simply declared ourselves as landless men from Ar-mo rica seeking entry into Gorfyddyd's country. The guards, discovering Galahad was a prince, insisted on escorting him to the town's commander and so led us through the town that was filled with armed men whose spears were stacked at every door and whose helmets were piled under all the tavern benches. The town commander was a harassed man who plainly hated the responsibilities of governing a garrison swollen by the imminence of war. “I knew you must be from Armorica when I saw your shields, Lord Prince,” he told Galahad. “An outlandish symbol to our provincial eyes.”

“An honoured one in mine,” Galahad said gravely, not catching my eye.

“To be sure, to be sure,” the commander said. His name was Halsyd. “And of course you are welcome, Lord Prince. Our High King is welcoming all…” He paused, embarrassed. He had been about to say that Gorfyddyd was welcoming all landless warriors, but that phrase cut too close to insult when uttered to a dispossessed prince of an Armorican kingdom. “All brave men,” the commander said instead. “You were not thinking of staying here, by any chance?” He was worried that we would prove two more hungry mouths in a town already hard pressed to feed its existing garrison.

“I would ride to Caer Sws,” Galahad announced. “With my servant.” He gestured towards me.

“May the Gods speed your path, Lord Prince.”

And thus we entered the enemy country. We rode through quiet valleys where newly stocked corn patterned the fields and orchards hung heavy with ripening apples. The next day we were among the hills, following an earth road that wound through great tracts of damp woodland until, at last, we climbed above the trees and crossed the pass that led down to Gorfyddyd's capital. I felt a shudder of nerves as I saw Caer Sws's raw earth walls. Gorfyddyd's army might be gathering in Branogenium, some forty miles away, but still the land around Caer Sws was thick with soldiers. The troops had thrown up crude shelters with walls of stone roofed with turf, and the shelters surrounded the fort that flew eight banners from its walls to show that the men of eight kingdoms served in Gorfyddyd's growing ranks. “Eight?” Galahad asked. “Powys, Siluria, Elmet, but who else?”

“Cornovia, Demetia, Gwynedd, Rheged and Demetia's Black-shields,” I said, finishing off the grim list.

“No wonder Tewdric wants peace,” Galahad said softly, marvelling at the host of men camped on either side of the river that ran beside the enemy's capital.

We rode down into that hive of iron. Children followed us, curious about our strange shields, while their mothers watched us suspiciously from the shadowed openings of their shelters. The men gave us brief glances, taking in our strange insignia and noting the quality of our weapons, but none challenged us until we reached the gates of Caer Sws where Gorfyddyd's royal guard barred our way with polished spearheads. “I am Galahad, Prince of Benoic,” Galahad announced grandly, 'come to see my cousin the High King."

“Is he a cousin?” I whispered.

“It's how we royalty talk,” he whispered back.

The scene inside the compound went some way to explaining why so many soldiers were gathered at Caer Sws. Three tall stakes had been driven into the earth and now waited for the formal ceremonies that preceded war. Powys was one of the least Christian kingdoms and the old rituals were done carefully here, and I suspected that many of the soldiers camped outside the walls had been fetched back from Branogenium specifically to witness the rites and so to inform their comrades that the Gods had been placated. There was to be nothing hasty about Gorfyddyd's invasion, everything would be done methodically, and Arthur, I thought, was probably right in thinking that such a pedestrian endeavour could be tipped off balance by a surprise attack.

Our horses were taken by servants, then, after a counsellor had questioned Galahad and determined that he was, indeed, who he claimed to be, we were ushered into the great feasting hall. The doorkeeper took our swords, shields and spears and added them to the stacks of similar weapons belonging to the men already gathered in Gorfyddyd's hall.

Over a hundred men were assembled between the squat oak pillars that were hung with human skulls to show that the kingdom was at war. The men beneath those grinning bones were the kings, princes, lords, chiefs and champions of the assembled armies. The only furniture in the hall was the row of thrones placed on a dais at the far dark end where Gorfyddyd sat beneath his symbol of the eagle, while next to him, but on a lower throne, sat Gundleus. The very sight of the Silurian King made the scar on my left hand pulse. Tanaburs squatted beside Gundleus, while Gorfyddyd had lorweth, his own Druid, at his right side. Cuneglas, Powys's Edling, sat on a third throne and was flanked by kings I did not recognize. No women were present. This was doubtless a council of war, or at least a chance for men to gloat over the victory that was about to be theirs. The men were dressed in mail coats and leather armour. We paused at the back of the hall and I saw Galahad mouth a silent prayer to his God. A wolfhound with a chewed ear and scarred haunches sniffed our boots, then loped back to its master who stood with the other warriors on the rush-covered earth floor. In a far corner of the hall a hard softly chanted a war song, though his staccato recitation was ignored by the men who were listening to Gundleus describing the forces he expected to come from Demetia. One chief, evidently a man who had suffered from the Irish in the past, protested that Powys had no need of the Black-shields' help to defeat Arthur and Tewdric, but his protest was stilled by an abrupt gesture from Gorfyddyd. I half expected that we would be forced to linger while the council finished its other business, but we did not have to wait more than a minute before we were conducted down the hall's centre to the open space in front of Gorfyddyd. I looked at both Gundleus and Tanaburs but neither recognized me.

We fell to our knees and waited.

“Rise,” Gorfyddyd said. We obeyed and once again I looked into his bitter face. He had not changed much in the years since I had seen him last. His face was as pouchy and suspicious as when Arthur had come to claim Ceinwyn's hand, though his sickness in the last few years had turned his hair and beard white. The beard was skimpy and could not hide a goitre that now disfigured his throat. He looked at us warily. “Galahad,” he said in a hoarse voice, “Prince of Benoic. We have heard of your brother, Lancelot, but not of you. Are you, like your brother, one of Arthur's whelps?”

“I am oath-bound to no man, Lord King,” Galahad said, 'except to my father whose bones were trampled by his enemies. I am landless."

Gorfyddyd shifted in his throne. His empty left sleeve hung beside the armrest, an ever-present reminder of his hated foe, Arthur. “So you come to me for land, Galahad of Benoic?” he asked. “Many others have come for the same purpose,” he warned, gesturing about the crowded hall. “Though I daresay there is land enough for all in Dumnonia.”

“I come to you, Lord King, with greetings, freely carried, from King Tewdric of Gwent.” That caused a stir in the hall. Men at the back who had not heard Galahad's announcement asked for it to be repeated and the murmur of conversation went on for several seconds. Cuneglas, Gorfyddyd's son, looked up sharply. His round face with its long dark moustaches looked worried, and no wonder, I thought, for Cuneglas was like Arthur, a man who craved peace, but when Arthur spurned Ceinwyn he had also destroyed Cuneglas's hopes and now the Edling of Powys could only follow his father into a war that threatened to lay waste the southern kingdoms.

“Our enemies, it seems, are losing their hunger for battle,” Gorfyddyd said. “Why else does Tewdric send greetings?”

“King Tewdric, High King, fears no man, but loves peace more,” Galahad said, carefully using the title Gorfyddyd had bestowed on himself in anticipation of his victory.

Gorfyddyd's body heaved and for a second I thought he was about to vomit, then I realized he was laughing. “We Kings only love peace,” Gorfyddyd said at last, 'when war becomes inconvenient to us. This gathering, Galahad of Benoic' he gestured at the throng of chiefs and princes 'will explain Tewdric's new love of peace."

He paused, gathering breath. “Till now, Galahad of Benoic, I have refused to receive Tewdric's messages. Why should I receive them? Does an eagle listen to a lamb bleating for mercy? In a few days I intend to listen to all Gwent's men bleating to me for peace, but for now, since you have come this far, you may amuse me. What does Tewdric offer?”

“Peace, Lord King, just peace.”

Gorfyddyd spat. “You are landless, Galahad, and empty-handed. Does Tewdric think peace is for the asking? Does Tewdric think I have expended my kingdom's gold on an army for no cause? Does he think I am a fool?”

“He thinks, Lord King, that blood shed between Britons is wasted blood.”

“You talk like a woman, Galahad of Benoic.” Gorfyddyd spoke the insult in a deliberately loud voice so that the raftered hall echoed with jeers and laughter. “Still,” he went on when the laughter had subsided, 'you must take some answer to Gwent's King, so let it be this.“ He paused to compose his thoughts. ”Tell Tewdric that he is a lamb sucking at Dumnonia's dry teat. Tell him my quarrel is not with him, but with Arthur, so tell Tewdric that he may have his peace on these two conditions. First, that he lets my army pass through his land without hindrance and second that he gives me enough grain to feed a thousand men for ten days.“ The warriors in the hall gasped, for they were generous terms, but also clever. If Tewdric accepted then he would avoid the sack of his country and make Gorfyddyd's invasion of Dumnonia easier. ”Are you empowered, Galahad of Benoic,“ Gorfyddyd asked, 'to accept these terms?”

“No, Lord King, only to enquire what terms you would offer and to ask what you intend to do with Mordred, King of Dumnonia, whom Tewdric is sworn to protect.”

Gorfyddyd adopted a hurt look. “Do I look like a man who makes war on children?” he asked, then stood and advanced to the edge of the throne dais. “My quarrel is with Arthur,” he said, not just to us, but to the whole hall, 'who preferred to marry a whore out of Henis Wyren rather than wed my daughter. Would any man leave such an insult unavenged?“ The hall roared its answer. ”Arthur is an upstart,“ Gorfyddyd shouted, 'whelped on a whore mother, and to a whore he has returned! So long as Gwent protects the whore-lover, so long is Gwent our enemy. So long as Dumnonia fights for the whore-lover, so long is Dumnonia our enemy. And pur enemy will be the generous provider of our gold, our slaves, our food, our land, our women and our glory! Arthur we will kill, and his whore we shall put to work in our barracks.” He waited until the cheers had died away, then stared imperiously down on Galahad. “Tell that to Tewdric, Galahad of Benoic, and after that tell it to Arthur.”

“Derfel can tell it to Arthur.” A voice spoke from the hall and I turned to see Ligessac, sly Ligessac, once commander of Nor-wenna's guard and now a traitor in Gundleus's service. He pointed to me. “That man is Arthur's sworn man, High King. I swear it on my life.”

The hall seethed with noise. I could hear men shouting that I was a spy and others demanding my death. Tanaburs was staring at me intently, trying to see past my long, fair beard and thick moustaches, then suddenly he recognized me and screamed, “Kill him! Kill him!” Gorfyddyd's guards, the only armed men in the hall, ran towards me. Gorfyddyd checked his spearmen with his raised hand that slowly silenced the noisy crowd. “Are you oath-bound to the whore-lover?” the King asked me in a dangerous voice.

“Derfel is in my service, High King,” Galahad insisted.

Gorfyddyd pointed at me. “He will answer,” he said. “Are you oath-bound to Arthur?” I could not lie about an oath. “Yes, Lord King,” I admitted. Gorfyddyd stepped heavily off the platform and stretched his one arm towards a guard, though he still stared at me. “Do you know, you dog, what we did to Arthur's last messenger?”

“You killed him, Lord King,” I said.

“I sent his maggot-ridden head to your whore-lover, that is what I did. Come on, hurry!” he snapped at the nearest guard who had not known what to put in his King's outstretched hand. “Your sword, fool!” Gorfyddyd said, and the guard hastily drew his sword and gave it hilt first to the King.

“Lord King.” Galahad stepped forward, but Gorfyddyd whirled the blade so that it quivered just inches from Galahad's eyes.

“Be careful what you say in my hall, Galahad of Benoic,” Gorfyddyd growled.

“I plead for Derfel's life,” Galahad said. “He is not here as a spy, but as an emissary of peace.”

“I don't want peace!” Gorfyddyd shouted at Galahad. “Peace is not my pleasure! I want to see Arthur weeping as my daughter once wept. Do you understand that? I want to see his tears! I want to see him pleading as she pleaded with me. I want to see him grovel, I want to see him dead and his whore pleasuring my men. No emissary from Arthur is welcome here and Arthur knows that! And you knew that!” He shouted the last four words at me as he turned the sword towards my face.

“Kill him! Kill him!” Tanaburs, in his raggedly embroidered robe, leaped up and down so that the bones in his hair rattled like dried beans in a pot.

“Touch him, Gorfyddyd,” said a new voice in the hall, 'and your life is mine. I shall bury it in the dung heap of Caer Idion and call the dogs to piss on it. I shall give your soul to the spirit children who lack playthings. I shall keep you in darkness till the last day is done and then I shall spit on you till the next era begins, and even then, Lord King, your torments will hardly have begun." I felt the tension sweep out of me like a rush of water. Only one man would dare speak to a High King thus. It was Merlin. Merlin! Merlin who now walked slow and tall up the hall's central aisle, Merlin who walked past me and with a gesture more royal than anything Gorfyddyd could manage, used his black staff to thrust the King's sword aside. Merlin, who now walked to Tanaburs and whispered in his ear so that the lesser Druid screamed and fled from the hall.

It was Merlin, who could change like no other man. He loved to pretend, to confuse and to deceive. He could be abrupt, mischievous, patient or lordly, but this day he had chosen to appear in stark, cold majesty. There was no smile on his dark face, no hint of joy in his deep eyes, just a look of such arrogant authority that the men closest to him instinctively sank to their knees and even King Gorfyddyd, who a moment before had been ready to thrust the sword into my neck, lowered the blade. “You speak for this man, Lord Merlin?” Gorfyddyd asked.

“Are you deaf, Gorfyddyd?” Merlin snapped. “Derfel Cadarn shall live. He shall be your honoured guest. He shall eat of your food and drink of your wine. He shall sleep in your beds and take your slave women if he desires. Derfel Cadarn and Galahad of Benoic are under my protection.” He turned to stare at the whole hall, daring any man to oppose him. “Derfel Cadarn and Galahad of Benoic are under my protection!” he repeated, and this time he raised his black staff and you could feel the warriors quake beneath its threat. “Without Derfel Cadarn and Galahad of Benoic,” Merlin said, 'there would be no Knowledge of Britain. I would be dead in Benoic and you would all be doomed to slavery under Saxon rule.“ He turned back to Gorfyddyd. ”They need food. And stop staring at me, Derfel," he added without even looking at me.

I had been staring at him, as much with astonishment as with relief, but I was also wondering just what Merlin was doing in this citadel of the enemy. Druids, of course, were free to travel where they liked, even in enemy territory, but his presence at Caer Sws at such a time seemed strange and even dangerous, for though Gorfyd-dyd's men were cowed by the Druid's presence they were also resentful of his interference and some, safe at the hall's rear, growled that he should mind his own business. Merlin turned on them. “My business,” he said in a low voice that nevertheless stopped the small protest dead, 'is the care of your souls and if I care to drown those souls in misery then you will wish your mothers had never given birth. Fools!“ This last word was snapped loudly and accompanied by a gesture from the staff that made the armoured men struggle down to their knees. None of the kings dared to intervene as Merlin swept the staff to give one of the skulls hanging from a pillar a sharp crack. ”You pray for victory!“ Merlin said. ”But over what? Over your kin and not your enemies! Your enemies are Saxons. For years we suffered under Roman rule, but at last the Gods saw fit to take the Roman vermin away and what do we do? We fight among ourselves and let a new enemy take our land, rape our women and harvest our corn. So fight your war, fools, fight it and win, and still you shall not have victory."

“But my daughter will be avenged,” Gorfyddyd said behind Merlin.

“Your daughter, Gorfyddyd,” Merlin said, turning, 'will avenge her own hurt. You want to know her fate?“ He asked the question mockingly, but answered it soberly and in a voice that had the lilt of a prophetic utterance. ”She will never be high and she will never be low, but she will be happy. Her soul, Gorfyddyd, is blessed, and if you had the sense of a flea you would be content with that."

“I shall be content with Arthur's skull,” Gorfyddyd said defiantly.

“Then go and fetch it,” Merlin said scornfully, then plucked me by the elbow. “Come, Derfel, and enjoy your enemy's hospitality.”

He led us out of the hall, walking unconcernedly through the iron and leather ranks of the enemy. The warriors watched us resentfully, but there was nothing they could do to stop us leaving nor to prevent us taking one of Gorfyddyd's guest chambers that Merlin had evidently been using himself. “So Tewdric wants peace, does he?” he asked us.

“Yes, Lord,” I answered.

“Tewdric would. He's a Christian so he thinks he knows better than the Gods.”

“And you know the minds of the Gods, Lord?” Galahad asked.

“I believe the Gods hate to be bored, so I do my best to amuse them. That way they smile on me. Your God,” Merlin said sourly, 'despises amusement, demanding grovelling worship instead. He must be a very sorry creature. He's probably rather like Gorfyddyd, endlessly suspicious and foully jealous of his reputation. Aren't you both lucky that I was here?" He grinned at us, suddenly and mischievously, and I saw how much he had enjoyed his public humiliation of Gorfyddyd. Part of Merlin's reputation was made by his performances; some Druids, like lorweth, worked quietly, others, like Tanaburs, relied on a sinister wiliness, but Merlin liked to dominate and dazzle, and humbling an ambitious king was as pleasurable to him as it was instinctive.

“Is Ceinwyn really blessed?” I asked him.

He looked astonished at the unexpected question. “Why should it matter to you? But she's a pretty girl, and I confess that pretty girls are a weakness of mine so I shall weave her a charm of bliss. I did the same for you once, Derfel, though not because you are pretty.” He laughed, then glanced through the window to judge the length of the sun's shadows. “I must be on my way soon.”

“What brought you here, Lord?” Galahad asked.

“I needed to talk to lorweth,” Merlin said, looking around to make sure that he had collected all his belongings. “He might be a bumbling idiot, but he does possess the odd scrap of knowledge I might have momentarily forgotten. He proved knowledgeable about the Ring of Eluned. I have it somewhere.” He patted the pockets sewn into the lining of his robe. “Well, I did have it,” he said carelessly, though I suspected the indifference was merely a pretence.

“What is the Ring of Eluned?” Galahad asked.

Merlin scowled at my friend's ignorance, then decided to indulge it. “The Ring of Eluned,” he announced grandly, 'is one of the Thirteen Treasures of Britain. We've always known about the Treasures, of course at least, those of us who recognize the true Gods,“ he added pointedly, glancing at Galahad, 'but none of us were sure what their real power was.”

“And the scroll told you?” I asked.

Merlin smiled wolfishly. His long white hair was neatly bound in black ribbon at the back of his neck while his beard was plaited in tight pigtails. “The scroll,” he said, 'confirmed everything I either suspected or knew, and it even suggested one or two new scraps of knowledge. Ah, here it is." He had been searching his pockets for the Ring which he now produced. To me the treasure looked like any ordinary warrior's ring made of iron, but Merlin held it in his palm as though it was the greatest jewel of Britain.

“The Ring of Eluned,” Merlin said, 'forged in the Otherworld at the beginning of time. Piece of metal really, nothing special.“ He tossed it to me and I made a hasty catch. ”By itself,“ Merlin said, 'the Ring has no power. None of the Treasures has power by themselves. The Mantle of Invisibility won't make you invisible, any more than the Horn of Bran Galed sounds any better than any other hunting horn. By the way, Derfel, did you fetch Nimue?”

“Yes.”

“Well done. I thought you would. Interesting place, the Isle of the Dead, don't you think? I go there when I need some stimulating company. Where was I? Oh, yes, the Treasures. Worthless rubbish, really. You wouldn't give the Coat of Padarn to a beggar, not if you were kind, yet it's still one of the Treasures.”

“Then what use are they?” Galahad asked. He had taken the Ring from me, but now handed it back to the Druid.

“They command the Gods, of course,” Merlin snapped, as though the answer should have been obvious.

“By themselves they're tawdry nothings, but put them all together and you can have the Gods hopping like frogs. It isn't enough just to gather the Treasures, of course,” he added hastily, 'there are one or two other rituals that are needed. And who knows if it will all work? No one has ever tried, so far as I know. Is Nimue well?" he asked me earnestly.

“She is now.”

“You sound resentful! You think I should have gone to fetch her? My dear Derfel, I am quite busy enough without running around Britain after Nimue! If the girl can't cope with the Isle of the Dead then what earthly use is she?”

“She could have died,” I accused him, thinking of the ghouls and cannibals of the Isle.

“Of course she could! What's the point of an ordeal if there's no danger? You do have infantile ideas, Derfel.” Merlin shook his head pityingly, then slipped the Ring on to one of his long bony fingers. He stared solemnly at us, and we each waited awestruck for some manifestation of supernatural power, but after a few ominous seconds Merlin just laughed at our expressions. “I told you!” he said, 'the Treasures are nothing special."

“How many of the Treasures do you have?” Galahad asked.

“Several,” Merlin answered evasively, 'but even if I had twelve of the thirteen I would still be in trouble unless I could find the thirteenth. And that, Derfel, is the missing Treasure. The Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn. Without the Cauldron we are lost."

“We're lost anyway,” I said bitterly.

Merlin peered at me as though I was being particularly obtuse. “The war?” he said after a few seconds.

“Is that why you came here? To plead for peace! What fools the two of you are! Gorfyddyd doesn't want peace. The man's a brute. He has the brains of an ox and a not very clever ox at that. He wants to be High King, which means he has to rule Dumnonia.”

“He says he'll leave Mordred on the throne,” Galahad said.

“Of course he says that!” Merlin said scornfully. “What else would he say? But the minute he gets his hands on that wretched child's neck he'll wring it like a chicken, and a good thing too.”

“You want Gorfyddyd to win?” I asked, appalled.

He sighed. “Derfel, Derfel,” he said, 'you're so like Arthur. You think the world is simple, that good is good and bad is bad, that up is up and down is down. You ask what I want? I tell you what I want. I want the Thirteen Treasures, and I shall use them to bring the Gods back to Britain and then I shall command them to restore Britain to the blessed condition it enjoyed before the Romans came. No more Christians' he pointed a finger at Galahad 'and no Mithraists either' he pointed at me 'just the people of the Gods in the country of the Gods. That, Derfel, is what I want."

“Then what of Arthur?” I asked.

“What of him? He's a man, he's got a sword, he can look after himself. Fate is inexorable, Derfel. If fate means Arthur to win this war then it doesn't matter if Gorfyddyd masses the armies of the world against him. If I had nothing better to do then I confess I would help Arthur, because I like him, but fate has decreed that I am an old man, increasingly feeble and possessed of a bladder like a leaking waters king and I must therefore husband my waning energies.” He proclaimed this pathetic state in a vigorous tone.

“Even I cannot win Arthur's wars, heal Nimue's mind and discover the Treasures all at the same time. Of course, if I find that saving Arthur's life helps me find the Treasures, then be assured I shall come to the battle. But otherwise?” He shrugged, as though the war was of no importance to him. Nor, I suppose, was it. He turned to the small window and peered at the three stakes that had been erected in the compound. “You'll stay to see the formalities, I hope?”

“Should we?” I asked.

“Of course you should, if Gorfyddyd allows you. All experience is useful, however ugly. I've performed the rites often enough, so I won't stay to be amused, but be assured you will be safe here. I shall turn Gorfyddyd into a slug if he touches a hair of your foolish heads, but for now I have to go. lorweth thinks there's an old woman on the Demetian border who might remember something useful. If she's alive, of course, and kept her memory. I do hate talking to old women; they're so grateful for company that they never stop chattering and never keep to the subject either. What a prospect. Tell Nimue I look forward to seeing her!” And with those words he was out of the door and striding across the fort's inner compound.

The sky clouded that afternoon and a grey ugly drizzle soaked the fort before evening. The Druid lorweth came to us and assured us we were safe, but tactfully suggested that we would strain Gorfyddyd's reluctant hospitality if we attended the evening's feast that marked the last gathering of Gorfyddyd's allies and chiefs before the men at Caer Sws marched south to join the rest of the army at Branogenium. We assured lorweth we had no wish to attend the feast. The Druid smiled his thanks, then sat on a bench beside the door. “You're friends of Merlin?” he asked.

“Lord Derfel is,” Galahad said. lorweth rubbed his eyes tiredly. He was old, with a friendly, mild face and a bald head on which a ghost of a tonsure showed just above each ear. “I cannot help thinking,” he said, 'that my brother Merlin expects too much of the Gods. He believes the world can be made anew and that history can be rubbed out like a line drawn in the mud. Yet it isn't so.“ He scratched at a louse in his beard, then looked at Galahad, who wore a cross about his neck. He shook his head. ”I envy your Christian God. He is three and He is one, He is dead and He is alive, He is everywhere and He is nowhere, and He demands that you worship Him, but claims nothing else is worthy of worship. There's room in those contradictions for a man to believe in anything or nothing, but not with our Gods. They are like kings, fickle and powerful, and if they want to forget us, they do. It doesn't matter what we believe, only what they want. Our spells only work when the Gods permit. Merlin disagrees, of course. He thinks that if we shout loud enough we'll get their attention, but what do you do to a child who shouts?"

“Give it attention?” I suggested.

“You hit it, Lord Derfel,” lorweth said. “You hit it until it is quiet. I fear Lord Merlin may shout too loud for too long.” He stood and picked up his staff. “I apologize that you cannot eat with the warriors tonight, but the Princess Helledd says you are very welcome to dine with her household.” Helledd of Elmet was the wife of Cuneglas and her invitation was not necessarily a compliment. Indeed, the invitation could have been a measured insult devised by Gorfyddyd to imply that we were only fit to dine with women and children, but Galahad said we would be honoured to accept. And there, in Helledd's small hall, was Ceinwyn. I had wanted to see her again, I had wanted it ever since Galahad had first ventured the suggestion that he make an embassy to Powys, and that was why I had made such strenuous efforts to accompany him. I had not come to Caer Sws to make peace, but to see Ceinwyn's face again, and now, in the flickering rushlight of Helledd's hall, I saw her. The years had not changed her. Her face was as sweet, her manner as demure, her hair as bright and her smile as lovely. When we entered the room she was fussing with a small child, trying to feed him scraps of apple. The child was Cuneglas's son, Perddel. “I've told him if he won't eat his apple then the horrid Dumnonians will take him away,” she said with a smile. “I think he must want to go with you, for he won't eat a thing.”

Helledd of Elmet, Perddel's mother, was a tall woman with a heavy jaw and pale eyes. She made us welcome, ordering a maidservant to pour us mead, then introduced us to two of her aunts, Tonwyn and Elsel, who looked at us resentfully. We had evidently interrupted a conversation they were relishing and the aunts' sour glances suggested we should leave, but Helledd was more gracious. “Do you know the Princess Ceinwyn?” she asked us.

Galahad bowed to her, then squatted beside Perddel. He always liked children who, in turn, trusted him on sight. Before a moment had passed the two Princes were playing with the apple scraps as though they were foxes, with Perddel's mouth the foxes' den and Galahad's fingers the hounds chasing the fox. The pieces of apple disappeared. “Why didn't I think of that?” Ceinwyn asked.

“Because you weren't raised by Galahad's mother, Lady,” I said, 'who doubtless fed him in the same way. To this day he can't eat unless someone sounds a hunting horn.“ She laughed, then caught sight of the brooch I wore. She caught her breath, coloured, and for an instant I thought I had made a huge mistake. Then she smiled. ”I should remember you, Lord Derfel?"

“No, Lady. I was very young.”

“And you kept it?” she asked, apparently astonished that anyone should treasure one of her gifts.

“I kept it, Lady, even when I lost everything else.”

The Princess Helledd interrupted us by asking what business had brought us to Caer Sws. I am sure she already knew, but it was politic for a princess to pretend that she was outside men's council. I answered by saying we had been sent to determine whether war was inevitable. “And is it?” the Princess asked with understandable worry, for on the morrow her husband would go south towards the enemy.

“Sadly, Lady,” I answered, 'it seems so."

“It's all Arthur's fault,” Princess Helledd said firmly and her aunts nodded vigorously.

“I think Arthur would agree with you, Lady,” I said, 'and he regrets it."

“Then why does he fight us?” Helledd wanted to know.

“Because he is sworn to keep Mordred on the throne, Lady.”

“My father-in-law would never dispossess Uther's heir,” Helledd said fiercely.

“Lord Derfel almost lost his head through having this conversation this morning,” Ceinwyn said mischievously.

“Lord Derfel,” Galahad intervened, looking up from the latest fox-chase, 'kept his head because he is beloved by his Gods."

“Not by yours, Lord Prince?” Helledd asked sharply.

“My God loves everyone, Lady.”

“He is indiscriminate, you mean?” She laughed.

We ate goose, chicken, hare and venison, and were served a villainous wine that must have been stored too long since it was brought to Britain. After the meal we moved to cushioned couches and a harpist played for us. The couches were furniture for a woman's hall and both Galahad and I were uncomfortable on their low, soft beds, but I was happy enough for I had made sure I took the couch next to Ceinwyn. For a time I sat straight up, but then leaned on one elbow so I could talk softly to her. I complimented her on her betrothal to Gundleus.

She gave me an amused glance. “That sounds like a courtier speaking,” she said.

“I am forced to be a courtier at times, Lady. Would you prefer me to be the warrior?” She leaned back on an elbow so we could talk without disturbing the music, and her proximity made it seem as though my senses floated in smoke. “My Lord Gundleus,” she said softly, 'demanded my hand as the price of his army in this coming war."

“Then his army, Lady,” I said, 'is the most valuable in Britain.“ She did not smile at the compliment, but kept her eyes steadily on mine. ”Is it true,“ she asked very quietly, 'that he killed Norwenna?”

The bluntness of the question unsettled me. “What does he say, Lady?” I asked instead of answering directly.

“He says' and her voice was even lower so that I could scarcely hear her words 'that his men were attacked and that in the confusion, she died. It was an accident, he says.” I glanced at the young girl playing the harp. The aunts were glaring at the two of us, but Helledd seemed unworried by our talking. Galahad was listening to the music, one arm around the sleeping Perddel. “I was on the Tor that day, Lady,” I said, turning back to Ceinwyn.

“And?”

I decided her bluntness deserved a blunt answer. “She knelt to him in welcome, Lady,” I said, 'and he ran his sword down her throat. I saw it done."

Her face hardened for a second. The glimmering rushlight burnished her pale skin and made soft shadows on her cheeks and under her lower lip. She was wearing a rich dress of pale blue linen that was trimmed with the black-flecked silver-white fur of a winter-stoat. A silver torque encircled her neck, silver rings were in her ears and I thought how well silver suited her bright hair. She gave a small sigh. “I feared to hear that truth,” she said, 'but being a princess means I must marry where it is most useful for me to do so and not where I might want to.“ She turned her head to the musician for a time, then leaned close to me again. ”My father,“ she said nervously, 'says this is a war about my honour. Is it?”

“For him, Lady, yes, though I can tell you Arthur regrets the hurt he did you.” She grimaced slightly. The subject was clearly painful, but she could not let it go, for Arthur's rejection had changed Ceinwyn's life much more subtly and sadly than it had ever changed his. Arthur had gone on to happiness and marriage while she had been left to suffer the long regrets and find the painful answers which, evidently, had not been found. “Do you understand him?” she asked after a while.

“I did not understand him back then, Lady,” I said. “I thought he was a fool. So did we all.”

“And now?” she asked, her blue eyes on mine.

I thought for a few seconds. “I think, Lady, that for once in his life Arthur was struck by a madness that he could not control.”

“Love?”

I looked at her and told myself that I was not in love with her and that her brooch was a talisman snatched randomly from chance. I told myself that she was a Princess and I the son of a slave. “Yes, Lady,” I said.

“Do you understand that madness?” she asked me.

I was aware of nothing in the room except Ceinwyn. The Princess Helledd, the sleeping Prince, Galahad, the aunts, the harpist, none of them existed for me, any more than did the woven wall hangings or the bronze rushlight holders. I was aware only of Ceinwyn's large sad eyes and of my own beating heart.

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

She said nothing for a while, but just looked at me with a slightly puzzled expression. “Has that ever happened to you, Lord Derfel?” she asked at last.

I hesitated. I knew the words my soul wanted to say and I knew the words my station should make me say, but then I told myself that a warrior did not thrive on timidity and I let my soul have government of my tongue. “It has never happened until this moment, Lady,” I said. It took more bravery to make that declaration than I had ever needed to break a shield-wall.

She immediately looked away and sat up, and I cursed myself for offending her with my stupid clumsiness. I stayed back on the couch, my face red and my soul hurting with embarrassment as Ceinwyn applauded the harpist by throwing some silver coins on to the rug beside the instrument. She asked for the Song of Rhiannon to be played.

“I thought you were not listening, Ceinwyn,” one of the aunts said cattily.

“I am, Tonwyn, I am, and I am taking a great pleasure in all I hear,” Ceinwyn said and I felt suddenly like a man feels when the enemy's shield-wall collapses. Except I dared not trust her words. I wanted to; I dared not. Love's madness, swinging from ecstasy to despair in one wild second. The music began again, its background the raucous cheers coming from the great hall where the warriors anticipated battle. I leaned all the way back on the cushions, my face still red as I tried to work out whether Ceinwyn's last words had referred to our conversation or to the music, and then Ceinwyn lay back and leaned close to me again. “I do not want a war fought over me,” she said.

“It seems inevitable, Lady.”

“My brother agrees with me.”

“But your father rules in Powys, Lady.”

“That he does,” she said flatly. She paused, frowning, then looked up at me. “If Arthur wins, who will he want me to marry?”

Once again the directness of her question surprised me, but I gave her the true answer. “He wants you to be Queen of Siluria, Lady,” I said.

She looked at me with sudden alarm. “Married to Gundleus?”

“To King Lancelot of Benoic, Lady,” I said, giving away Arthur's secret hope. I watched for her reaction. She gazed into my eyes, apparently trying to judge whether I had spoken the truth. “They say Lancelot is a great warrior,” she said after a while and with a lack of enthusiasm that warmed my heart.

“They do say that, Lady, yes,” I said.

She was silent again. She leaned on her elbow and watched the harpist's hands flicker across the strings, and I watched her. “Tell Arthur,” she said after a while and without looking at me, 'that I hold no grudge. And tell him something else." She stopped suddenly.

“Yes, Lady?” I encouraged her.

“Tell him that if he wins,” she said, then turned to me and reached a slender ringer across the gap between our couches to touch the back of my hand to show how important her words were, 'that if he wins,“ she said again, ”I shall beg for his protection."

“I shall tell him, Lady,” I said, then paused with my heart full. “And I swear you mine too, in all honour.” She kept her finger on my hand, her touch as light as the sleeping Prince's breath. “I might hold you to that oath, Lord Derfel,” she said, her eyes on mine.

“Till time ends and evermore, that oath will be true, Lady.” She smiled, took her hand away and sat up straight.

And that night I went to my bed in a daze of confusion, hope, stupidity, apprehension, fear and delight. For, just like Arthur, I had come to Caer Sws and been stricken by love.