We all turned to see Galahad standing in the doorway. He was clothed in mail armour, had a sword at his side and spatters of mud up to his waist. And with him was a miserable, club-footed, squashed-nosed, round-faced, skimpy-bearded brush-head.
For Mordred still lived.
There was an astonished silence. Mordred limped into the hall and his small eyes betrayed his resentment for the lack of welcome. Arthur just stared at his oath-lord and I knew he was undoing in his head all the careful plans he had just described to us. There could be no reasonable peace with Lancelot, for Arthur’s oath-lord still lived. Dumnonia still possessed a King, and it was not Lancelot. It was Mordred and Mordred had Arthur’s oath.
Then the silence broke as men gathered round the King to discover his news. Galahad stepped aside to embrace me. ‘Thank God you live,’ he said with heartfelt relief.
I smiled at my friend. ‘Do you expect me to thank you for saving my King’s life?’ I asked him.
‘Someone should, for he hasn’t. He’s an ungrateful little beast,’ Galahad said. ‘God knows why he lives and so many good men died. Llywarch, Bedwyr, Dagonet, Blaise. All gone.’ He was naming those of Arthur’s warriors who had been killed in Durnovaria. Some of the deaths I had already known, others were new to me, but Galahad did know more about the manner of their deaths. He had been in Durnovaria when the rumour of Mordred’s death had sparked the Christians into riot, but Galahad swore there had been spearmen among the rioters. He believed Lancelot’s men had infiltrated the town under the guise of pilgrims travelling to Ynys Wydryn and that those spearmen had led the massacre. ‘Most of Arthur’s men were in the taverns,’ he said, ‘and they stood little chance. A few survived, but God alone knows where they are now.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘This isn’t Christ’s doing, Derfel, you do know that, don’t you? It’s the devil at work.’ He gave me a pained, almost frightened look. ‘Is it true about Dian?’
‘True,’ I said. Galahad embraced me wordlessly. He had never married and had no children, but he loved my daughters. He loved all children. ‘Dinas and Lavaine killed her,’ I told him, ‘and they live still.’
‘My sword is yours,’ he said.
‘I know it,’ I said.
‘And if this was Christ’s doing,’ Galahad said earnestly, ‘then Dinas and Lavaine would not be serving Lancelot.’
‘I don’t blame your God,’ I told him. ‘I don’t blame any God.’ I turned to watch the commotion around Mordred. Arthur was shouting for silence and order, servants had been sent to bring food and clothes fit for a King and other men were trying to hear his news. ‘Didn’t Lancelot demand your oath?’ I asked Galahad.
‘He didn’t know I was in Durnovaria. I was staying with Bishop Emrys and the Bishop gave me a monk’s robe to wear over this,’ he patted his mail coat, ‘then I went north. Poor Emrys is distraught. He thinks his Christians have gone mad and I think they have too. I suppose I could have stayed and fought, but I didn’t. I ran. I had heard that you and Arthur were dead, but I didn’t believe it. I thought I’d find you, but I found our King instead.’ He told me how Mordred had been hunting boar north of Durnovaria, and Lancelot, Galahad believed, had sent men to intercept the King as he returned to Durnovaria; but some village girl had taken Mordred’s fancy and by the time he and his companions were done with her it was near dark, and so he had commandeered the village’s largest house and ordered food. His assassins had waited at the city’s northern gate while Mordred feasted a dozen miles away, and some time during that evening Lancelot’s men must have decided to start the killing even though the Dumnonian King had somehow escaped their ambush. They had spread a rumour of his death and used that rumour to justify Lancelot’s usurpation.
Mordred heard of the troubles when the first fugitives arrived from Durnovaria. Most of his companions had melted away, the villagers were summoning the courage to kill the King who had raped one of their girls and stolen much of their food, and Mordred had panicked. He and his last friends fled north in villagers’ clothes. ‘They were trying to reach Caer Cadarn,’ Galahad told me, ‘reckoning they’d find loyal spearmen there, but they found me instead. I was aiming to reach your house, but we heard your folk had fled, so I brought him north.’
‘Did you see Saxons?’
He shook his head. ‘They’re in the Thames Valley. We avoided it.’ He stared at the jostling crowd around Mordred. ‘So what happens now?’ he asked.
Mordred had firm ideas. He was robed in a borrowed cloak and sitting at the table where he crammed bread and salt beef into his mouth. He was demanding that Arthur march south immediately, and whenever Arthur tried to interrupt, the King would slap the table and repeat his demand. ‘Are you denying your oath?’ Mordred finally shouted at Arthur, spewing half chewed scraps of bread and beef.
‘The Lord Arthur,’ Cuneglas answered acidly, ‘is trying to preserve his wife and child.’
Mordred looked blankly at the Powysian King. ‘Above my kingdom?’ he finally asked.
‘If Arthur goes to war,’ Cuneglas explained to Mordred, ‘Guinevere and Gwydre die.’
‘So we do nothing?’ Mordred screamed. He was hysterical.
‘We give the matter thought,’ Arthur said bitterly.
‘Thought?’ Mordred shouted, then stood up. ‘You’ll just think while that bastard rules my land? Do you have an oath?’ he demanded of Arthur. ‘And what use are these men if you won’t fight?’ He waved at the spearmen who now stood in a ring about the table. ‘You’ll fight for me, that’s what you’ll do! That’s what your oath demands. You’ll fight!’ He slapped the table again. ‘You don’t think! You fight!’
I had taken enough. Perhaps the dead soul of my daughter came to me at that moment, for almost without thinking I strode forward and unbuckled my sword belt. I stripped Hywelbane off the belt, threw the sword down, then folded the leather strap in two. Mordred watched me and spluttered a feeble protest as I approached him, but no one moved to stop me.
I reached my King’s side, paused, then struck him hard across the face with the doubled belt. ‘That,’ I said, ‘is not in return for the blows you gave me, but for my daughter, and this’ – I struck him again, much harder – ‘is for your failure to keep the oath to guard your kingdom.’
Spearmen bellowed approval. Mordred’s lower lip was trembling as it had when he had taken all those beatings as a child. His cheeks were reddened from the blows and a trickle of blood showed at a tiny cut under his eye. He touched a finger to that blood, then spat a gob of half-chewed beef and bread into my face. ‘You’ll die for that,’ he promised me, and then, in a swelling rage, he tried to slap me. ‘How could I defend the kingdom?’ he shouted. ‘You weren’t there! Arthur wasn’t there.’ He tried to slap me a second time, but again I parried his blow with my arm, then lifted the belt to give him another beating.
Arthur, horrified at my behaviour, pushed down my arm and dragged me away. Mordred followed, flailing at me with his fists, but then a black staff struck his arm hard and he turned in fury to assault his new attacker.
But it was Merlin who now towered above the angry King. ‘Hit me, Mordred,’ the Druid said quietly, ‘and I shall turn you into a toad and feed you to the serpents of Annwn.’
Mordred gazed at the Druid, but said nothing. He did try to push the staff away, but Merlin held it firm and used it to thrust the young King back towards his chair. ‘Tell me, Mordred,’ Merlin said as he pushed Mordred back down into the chair, ‘why you sent Arthur and Derfel so far away?’
Mordred shook his head. He was frightened of this new, straight-backed, towering Merlin. He had only ever known the Druid as a frail old man sunning himself in Lindinis’s garden and this reinvigorated Merlin with his wrapped and plaited beard terrified him.
Merlin raised his staff and slammed it down on the table. ‘Why?’ he asked gently when the echo of the staff’s blow had died away.
‘To arrest Ligessac,’ Mordred whispered.
‘You squirming
little fool,’ Merlin said. ‘A child could have arrested Ligessac. Why did you send Arthur and Derfel?’
Mordred just shook his head.
Merlin sighed. ‘It has been a long time, young Mordred, since I used the greater magic. I am sadly out of practice, but I think, with Nimue’s help, I can turn your urine into the black pus that stings like a wasp every time you piss. I can addle your brain, what there is of it, and I can make your manhood,’ the staff suddenly quivered at Mordred’s groin, ‘shrivel to the size of a dried bean. All that I can do, Mordred, and all that I will do unless you tell me the truth.’ He smiled, and there was more threat in that smile than in the poised staff. ‘Tell me, dear boy, why you sent Arthur and Derfel to Cadoc’s camp?’
Mordred’s lower lip was trembling. ‘Because Sansum told me to.’
‘The mouse-lord!’ Merlin exclaimed as though the answer surprised him. He smiled again, or at least he bared his teeth. ‘I have another question, Mordred,’ he continued, ‘and if you do not give me the truth then your bowels will disgorge toads in slime, your belly will be a nest of worms and your throat will brim with their bile. I will make you shake incessantly, so that all your life, all your whole life, you will be a toad-shitting, worm-eaten, bile-spitting shudderer. I will make you,’ he paused and lowered his voice, ‘even more horrible than your mother did. So, Mordred, tell me what the mouse-lord promised would happen if you sent Arthur and Derfel away.’
Mordred stared in terror at Merlin’s face.
Merlin waited. No answer came so he raised the staff towards the hall’s high roof. ‘In the name of Bel,’ he intoned sonorously, ‘and his toad-Lord Callyc, and in the name of Sucellos and his worm-master Horfael, and in the name of…’
‘They would be killed!’ Mordred squealed desperately.
The staff was slowly lowered so that it pointed again at Mordred’s face. ‘He promised you what, dear boy?’ Merlin asked.
Mordred squirmed in his chair, but there was no escape from that staff. He swallowed, looked left and right, but there was no help for him in the hall. ‘That they would be killed,’ Mordred admitted, ‘by the Christians.’
‘And why would you want that?’ Merlin inquired.
Mordred hesitated, but Merlin raised the staff high again and the boy blurted out his confession. ‘Because I can’t be King while he lives!’
‘You thought Arthur’s death would free you to behave as you like?’
‘Yes!’
‘And you believed Sansum was your friend?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you never once thought that Sansum might want you dead, too?’ Merlin shook his head. ‘What a silly boy you are. Don’t you know that Christians never do anything right? Even their first one got himself nailed to a cross. That’s not the way efficient Gods behave, not at all. Thank you, Mordred, for our conversation.’ He smiled, shrugged and walked away. ‘Just trying to help,’ he said as he went past Arthur.
Mordred appeared as if he already had the shakes threatened by Merlin. He clung to the arms of the chair, quivering, and tears showed at his eyes for the humiliations he had just suffered. He did try to recover some of his pride by pointing at me and demanding that Arthur arrest me.
‘Don’t be a fool!’ Arthur turned on him angrily. ‘You think we can regain your throne without Derfel’s men?’ Mordred said nothing, and that petulant silence goaded Arthur into a fury like the one which had caused me to hit my King. ‘It can be done without you!’ he snarled at Mordred, ‘and whatever is done, you will stay here, under guard!’ Mordred gaped up at him and a tear fell to dilute the tiny trace of blood. ‘Not as a prisoner, Lord King,’ Arthur explained wearily, ‘but to preserve your life from the hundreds of men who would like to take it.’
‘So what will you do?’ Mordred asked, utterly pathetic now.
‘As I told you,’ Arthur said scornfully, ‘I will give the matter thought.’ And he would say no more.
The shape of Lancelot’s design was at least plain now. Sansum had plotted Arthur’s death, Lancelot had sent men to procure Mordred’s death and then followed with his army in the belief that every obstacle to Dumnonia’s throne had been eliminated and that the Christians, whipped to fury by Sansum’s busy missionaries, would kill any remaining enemies while Cerdic held Sagramor’s men at bay.
But Arthur lived, and Mordred lived too, and so long as Mordred lived Arthur had an oath to keep and that oath meant we had to go to war. It did not matter that the war might open Severn’s valley to the Saxons, we had to fight Lancelot. We were oath-locked.
Meurig would commit no spearmen to the fight against Lancelot. He claimed he needed all his men to guard his own frontiers against a possible attack from Cerdic or Aelle and nothing anyone said could dissuade him. He did agree to leave his garrison in Glevum, thus freeing its Dumnonian garrison to join Arthur’s troops, but he would give nothing more. ‘He’s a yellow little bastard,’ Culhwch growled.
‘He’s a sensible young man,’ Arthur said. ‘His aim is to preserve his kingdom.’ He spoke to us, his war commanders, in a hall at Glevum’s Roman baths. The room had a tiled floor and an arched ceiling where the painted remnants of naked nymphs were being chased by a faun through swirls of leaves and flowers.
Cuneglas was generous. The spearmen he had brought from Caer Sws would be sent under Culhwch’s command to help Sagramor’s men. Culhwch swore he would do nothing to aid Mordred’s restoration, but he had no qualms about fighting Cerdic’s warriors and that was still Sagramor’s task. Once the Numidian was reinforced by the men from Powys he would drive south, cut off the Saxons who were besieging Corinium and so embroil Cerdic’s men in a campaign that would keep them from helping Lancelot in Dumnonia’s heartland. Cuneglas promised us all the help he could, but said it would take at least two weeks to assemble his full force and bring it south to Glevum.
Arthur had precious few men in Glevum. He had the thirty men who had gone north to arrest Ligessac who now lay in chains in Glevum, and he had my men, and to those he could add the seventy spearmen who had formed Glevum’s small garrison. Those numbers were being swollen daily by the refugees who managed to escape the rampaging Christian bands who still hunted down any pagans left in Dumnonia. We heard that many such fugitives were still in Dumnonia, some of them holding out in ancient earth forts or deep in the woodlands, but others came to Glevum and among them was Morfans the Ugly, who had escaped the massacre in Durnovaria’s taverns. Arthur put him in charge of the Glevum forces and ordered him to march them south towards Aquae Sulis. Galahad would go with him. ‘Don’t accept battle,’ Arthur warned both men, ‘just goad the enemy, harry them, annoy them. Stay in the hills, stay nimble, and keep them looking this way. When my Lord King comes’ – he meant Cuneglas – ‘you can join his army and march south on Caer Cadarn.’
Arthur declared that he would fight with neither Sagramor nor Morfans, but would instead go to seek Aelle’s help. Arthur knew better than anyone that the news of his plans would be carried south. There were plenty enough Christians in Glevum who believed Arthur was the Enemy of God and who saw in Lancelot the heaven-sent forerunner of Christ’s return to earth; Arthur wanted those Christians to send their messages south into Dumnonia and he wanted those messages to tell Lancelot that Arthur dared not risk Guinevere’s life by marching against him. Instead Arthur was going to beg Aelle to carry his axes and spears against Cerdic’s men. ‘Derfel will come with me,’ he told us now.
I did not want to accompany Arthur. There were other interpreters, I protested, and my only wish was to join Morfans and so march south into Dumnonia. I did not want to face my father, Aelle. I wanted to fight, not to put Mordred back on his throne, but to topple Lancelot and to find Dinas and Lavaine.
Arthur refused me. ‘You will come with me, Derfel,’ he ordered, ‘and we shall take forty men with us.’
‘Forty?’ Morfans objected. Forty was a large number to strip from his small war-band that had to distract Lancelot.
Arthur
shrugged. ‘I dare not look weak to Aelle,’ he said, ‘indeed I should take more, but forty men may be sufficient to convince him that I’m not desperate.’ He paused. ‘There is one last thing,’ he spoke in a heavy voice that caught the attention of men preparing to leave the bath house. ‘Some of you are not inclined to fight for Mordred,’ Arthur admitted. ‘Culhwch has already left Dumnonia, Derfel will doubtless leave when this war is done, and who knows how many others of you will go? Dumnonia cannot afford to lose such men.’ He paused. It had begun to rain and water dripped from the bricks that showed between the patches of painted ceiling. ‘I have talked to Cuneglas,’ Arthur said, acknowledging the King of Powys’s presence with an inclination of his head, ‘and I have talked with Merlin, and what we talked about are the ancient laws and customs of our people. What I do, I would do within the law, and I cannot free you of Mordred for my oath forbids it and the ancient law of our people cannot condone it.’ He paused again, his right hand unconsciously gripping Excalibur’s hilt. ‘But,’ he went on, ‘the law does allow one thing. If a king is unfit to rule, then his Council may rule in his stead as long as the king is accorded the honour and privileges of his rank. Merlin assures me this is so, and King Cuneglas affirms that it happened in the reign of his great-grandfather Brychan.’
‘Mad as a bat!’ Cuneglas put in cheerfully.
Arthur half smiled, then frowned as he gathered his thoughts. ‘This is not what I ever wanted,’ he protested quietly, his sombre voice echoing in the dripping chamber, ‘but I shall propose to the Council of Dumnonia that it should rule in Mordred’s place.’