‘They’re still young, Lord,’ I said.
‘But they serve my enemy now,’ he said bleakly. ‘What shall I do with them?’
Culhwch would doubtless have advised that he kill them, but I just shrugged. ‘Send them into exile,’ I said. The twins could join the unhappy men who had no oath-lord. They could sell their swords until at last they were killed in some unremembered battle against the Saxons or the Irish or the Scots.
More women appeared on the arcade. Some were maids, while others were the attendants who served Guinevere as courtiers. Lunete, my old love, was probably one of those dozen women who were Guinevere’s confidantes and also the priestesses of her faith.
Sometime in the middle of the morning I fell asleep with my head cradled in my arms and my body lulled by the warmth of the summer sun. When I woke I found Arthur had gone and that Issa had returned. ‘Lord Arthur went back to the spearmen, Lord,’ he told me.
I yawned. ‘What did you see?’
‘Another six men. All Saxon Guards.’
‘Lancelot’s Saxons?’
He nodded. ‘All of them in the big garden, Lord. But only the six. We’ve seen eighteen men altogether, and some others must stand guard at night, but even so there can’t be more than thirty of them altogether.’
I guessed he was right. Thirty men would be sufficient to guard this palace, and more would be superfluous especially when Lancelot needed every spear to guard his stolen kingdom. I raised my head to see the arcade was now empty except for the four guards who looked utterly bored. Two were sitting with their backs to pillars while the other two were chatting on the stone bench where Guinevere had taken her breakfast. Their spears were propped against the table. The two guards on the small roof platform looked equally lazy. The Sea Palace basked under a summer sun and no one there believed an enemy could be within a hundred miles. ‘You told Arthur about the Saxons?’ I asked Issa.
‘Yes, Lord. He said it was only to be expected. Lancelot will want her guarded well.’
‘Go and sleep,’ I told him. ‘I’ll watch now.’
He went and, despite my promise, I fell asleep again. I had walked all night and I was weary, and besides, there seemed no danger threatening at the edge of that summer wood. And so I slept only to be abruptly woken by a sudden barking and the scrabble of big paws.
I woke in terror to discover a brace of slavering deerhounds standing over me, one of the two was barking and the other growling. I reached for my knife, but then a woman’s voice shouted at the hounds. ‘Down!’ she called sharply. ‘Drudwyn, Gwen, down! Quiet!’ The dogs reluctantly lay flat and I turned to see Gwenhwyvach watching me. She was dressed in an old brown gown, had a shawl over her head and a basket in which she had been collecting wild herbs on her arm. Her face was plumper than ever and her hair, where it showed under the scarf, was untidy and tangled. ‘The sleeping Lord Derfel,’ she said happily.
I touched a finger to my lips and glanced towards the palace.
‘They won’t watch me,’ she said, ‘they don’t care about me. Besides, I often talk to myself. The mad do, you know.’
‘You’re not mad, Lady.’
‘I should like to be,’ she said. ‘I can’t think why anyone would want to be anything else in this world.’ She laughed, hitched up her gown and sat heavily beside me. She turned as the dogs growled at a noise behind me and watched with amusement as Arthur wriggled across the ground to join me. He must have heard the barking. ‘On your belly like a snake, Arthur?’ she asked.
Arthur, just like me, touched a finger to his lips. ‘They don’t care about me,’ Gwenhwyvach said again. ‘Look!’ And she vigorously waved her arms towards the guards who simply shook their heads and turned away. ‘I don’t live,’ she said, ‘not as far as they’re concerned. I’m just the mad fat woman who walks the dogs.’ She waved again, and again the sentries ignored her. ‘Even Lancelot doesn’t notice me,’ she added sadly.
‘Is he here?’ Arthur asked.
‘Of course he isn’t here. He’s a long way away. So are you, I was told. Aren’t you supposed to be talking to the Saxons?’
‘I’m here to take Guinevere away,’ Arthur said, ‘and you too,’ he added gallantly.
‘I don’t want to be taken away,’ Gwenhwyvach protested. ‘And Guinevere doesn’t know you’re here.’
‘No one should know,’ Arthur said.
‘She should! Guinevere should! She stares into the oil pot. She says she can see the future there! But she didn’t see you, did she?’ She giggled, then turned and stared at Arthur as though she found his presence amusing. ‘You’re here to rescue her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tonight?’ Gwenhwyvach guessed.
‘Yes.’
‘She won’t thank you,’ Gwenhwyvach said, ‘not tonight. No clouds, you see?’ She waved at the almost cloudless sky. ‘Can’t worship Isis in cloud, you know, because the moon can’t get into the temple, and tonight she’s expecting the full moon. A big full moon, just like a fresh cheese.’ She ruffled the long hair of one of the hounds. ‘This one’s Drudwyn,’ she told us, ‘and he’s a bad boy. And this one’s Gwen. Plop!’ she said unexpectedly. ‘That’s how the moon comes, plop! Right into her temple.’ She laughed again. ‘Right down the shaft and plop onto the pit.’
‘Will Gwydre be in the temple?’ Arthur asked her.
‘Not Gwydre. Men aren’t allowed, that’s what I’m told,’ Gwenhwyvach said in a sarcastic voice, and she seemed about to say something else, but then just shrugged. ‘Gwydre will be put to bed,’ she said instead. She stared at the palace and a slow sly smile showed on her round face. ‘How will you get in, Arthur?’ she asked. ‘There are lots of bars on those doors and all the windows are shuttered.’
‘We shall manage,’ he said, ‘as long as you don’t tell anyone that you saw us.’
‘As long as you leave me here,’ Gwenhwyvach said, ‘I won’t even tell the bees. And I tell them everything. You have to, otherwise the honey goes sour. Isn’t that right, Gwen?’ she asked the bitch, ruffling its floppy ears.
‘I’ll leave you here if that’s what you want,’ Arthur promised her.
‘Just me,’ she said, ‘just me and the dogs and the bees. That’s all I want. Me and the dogs and the bees and the palace. Guinevere can have the moon.’ She smiled again, then poked my shoulder with a plump hand. ‘You remember that cellar door I took you through, Derfel? The one that leads from the garden?’
‘I think so,’ I said.
‘I’ll make sure it’s unbarred.’ She giggled again, anticipating some enjoyment. ‘I’ll hide in the cellar and unbar the door when they’re all waiting for the moon. There are no guards there at night because the door’s too thick. The guards are all in their huts or out the front.’ She twisted to look at Arthur. ‘You will come?’ she asked anxiously.
‘I promise,’ Arthur replied.
‘Guinevere will be pleased,’ Gwenhwyvach said. ‘And so will I.’ She laughed and lumbered to her feet. ‘Tonight,’ she said, ‘when the moon comes plopping in.’ And with that she walked away with the two hounds. She chuckled as she walked and even danced a pair of clumsy steps. ‘Plop!’ she called aloud, and the hounds frisked about her as she capered down the grassy slope.
‘Is she mad?’ I asked Arthur.
‘Bitter, I think.’ He watched her rotund figure go clumsily down the hill. ‘But she’ll let us in, Derfel, she’ll let us in.’ He smiled, then reached forward and picked a handful of cornflowers from the field’s edge. He arranged them into a small bunch then gave me a shy smile. ‘For Guinevere,’ he explained, ‘tonight.’
At dusk the haymakers, their work finished, came back from the fields and the roof guards climbed down their long ladder. The braziers on the arcade were filled with fresh wood that was set alight, but I guessed the fires were meant to illuminate the palace rather than to give warning of any enemy’s approach. Gulls were flying to their inland roosts and the setting sun made their wings as pink as
the convolvulus entwined among the brambles.
Back in the woods Arthur pulled on his scale armour. He buckled Excalibur over the coat’s gleaming shimmer of metal, then draped a black cloak about his shoulders. He rarely wore black cloaks, preferring his white, but at night the dark garment would help to conceal us. He would carry his shining helmet under the cloak to hide its lavish plume of tall white goose feathers.
Ten of his horsemen would stay in the trees. Their task was to wait for the sound of Arthur’s silver horn and then make a charge on the spearmen’s sleeping-huts. The big horses and their armoured riders, trampling huge and noisy out of the night, should serve to panic any guards who might interfere with our retreat. The horn, Arthur hoped, would not be sounded until we had found both Gwydre and Guinevere and were ready to leave.
The rest of us would make the long journey to the palace’s western side, and from there we would creep through the shadows of the kitchen gardens to reach the cellar door. If Gwenhwyvach failed in her promise then we would have to go round to the front of the palace, kill the guards and break through one of the window shutters on the terrace. Once inside the palace we were to kill every spearman we found.
Nimue would come with us. When Arthur had finished speaking she told us that Dinas and Lavaine were not proper Druids, not like Merlin or old Iorweth, but she warned us that the Silurian twins did possess some strange powers and we should expect to face their wizardry. She had spent the afternoon searching the woods and now raised a bundled cloak that seemed to twitch as she held it, and that weird sight made my men touch their spearheads. ‘I have things here to check their spells,’ she told us, ‘but be careful.’
‘And I want Dinas and Lavaine alive,’ I told my men.
We waited, armoured and armed, forty men in steel and iron and leather. We waited as the sun died and. as Isis’s full moon crept up from the sea like a great round silver ball. Nimue made her spells and some of us prayed. Arthur sat silent, but watched as I took from my pouch a little tress of golden hair. I kissed the unfaded hair, held it briefly against my cheek, then tied it around Hywelbane’s hilt. I felt a tear roll down my face as I thought of my little one in her shadowbody, but tonight, with the help of my Gods, I would give my Dian her peace.
IPULLED ON MY helmet, buckled its chin strap and threw its wolf-hair plume back across my shoulders. We flexed our stiff leather gloves, then thrust our left arms into the shield loops. We drew our swords and held them out for Nimue’s touch. For a moment it looked as if Arthur wanted to say something more, but instead he just tucked his little bouquet of cornflowers into the neck of his scale armour, then nodded to Nimue who, cloaked in black and clutching her strange bundle, led us southwards through the trees.
Beyond the trees was a short meadow that sloped down to the creek’s bank. We crossed the dark meadow in single file, still out of sight of the palace. Our appearance startled some hares that had been feeding in the moonlight and they raced panicking away as we pushed through some low bushes and scrambled down a steep bank to reach the creek’s shingle beach. From there we walked west, hidden from the guards on the palace’s arcades by the high bank of the creek. The sea crashed and hissed to the south, its sound drowning out any noise our boots made on the shingle.
I peered over the bank just once to see the Sea Palace poised like a great white wonder in the moonlight above the dark land. Its beauty reminded me of Ynys Trebes, that magical city of the sea that had been ravaged and destroyed by the Franks. This place had the same ethereal beauty for it shimmered above the dark land as though it were built from moonbeams.
Once we were well to the west of the palace we climbed the bank, helping each other up with our spear-staffs, and then followed Nimue northwards through the woods. Enough moonlight filtered through the summer leaves to light our path, but no guards challenged us. The sea’s unending sound filled the night, though once a scream sounded very close by and we all froze, then recognized the sound of a hare being killed by a weasel. We breathed our relief and walked on.
We seemed to walk a long way through the trees, but at last Nimue turned east and we followed her to the edge of the wood to see the palace’s limewashed walls in front of us. We were not far from the circular timber moon-shaft that ran down into the temple and I could see that it would still be some time before the moon was high enough in the sky to cast its light down the shaft and into the black-walled cellar.
It was while we were at the edge of the wood that the singing began. At first, so soft was the singing, I thought it was the wind moaning, but then the song became louder and I realized that it was a women’s choir that chanted some strange, eerie and plangent music like nothing I had ever heard before. The song must have been reaching us through the moon-shaft, for it sounded very far away; a ghost song, like a choir of the dead singing to us from the Otherworld. We could hear no words, but we knew it was a sad song for its tune slid weirdly up and down by half-notes, swelled louder, then sank into a lingering softness that melded with the distant murmur of the breaking sea. The music was very beautiful, but it made me shiver and touch my spearhead.
If we had moved out of the trees then we would have been within sight of the guards who stood on the western arcade, so we moved up the wood a few paces and from there we could make our way towards the palace through a dappled tangle of mooncast shadows. There was an orchard, some rows of fruit bushes and even a high fence that protected a vegetable garden from deer and hares. We moved slowly, one at a time, and all the time that strange song soared and fell and slid and wailed. A shimmer of smoke shivered above the moon-shaft and the smell of it wafted towards us on the night’s small wind. The smell was a temple smell; pungent and almost sickly.
We were now within yards of the spearmen’s huts. A dog began barking, then another, but no one in the huts thought the barking meant trouble for voices just shouted for quiet and slowly the dogs subsided, to leave only the noise of the wind in the trees, the sea’s moan and the song’s eerie, thin melody.
I was leading the way, for I was the only one who had been to this small door before and I was worried that I might miss it, but I found it easily enough. I stepped carefully down the old brick steps and pushed gently on the door. It resisted, and for a heartbeat I thought it must still be barred, but then, with a jarring squeal of a metal hinge, it swung open and drenched me in light.
The cellar was lit by candles. I blinked, dazzled, then Gwenhwyvach’s sibilant voice sounded. ‘Quick! Quick!’
We filed inside; thirty big men with armour and cloaks and spears and helmets. Gwenhwyvach hissed at us to be silent, then closed the door behind us and placed its heavy bar in place. ‘The temple’s there,’ she whispered, pointing down a corridor of rush-light candles that had been placed to illuminate the path to the shrine’s door. She was excited and her plump face was flushed. The choir’s haunting song was much quieter here for it was muffled by the temple’s inner curtains and its heavy outer door.
‘Where’s Gwydre?’ Arthur whispered to Gwenhwyvach.
‘In his room,’ Gwenhwyvach said.
‘Are there guards?’ he asked.
‘Just servants in the palace at night,’ she whispered.
‘Are Dinas and Lavaine here?’ I asked her.
She smiled. ‘You’ll see them, I promise you. You’ll see them.’ She plucked Arthur’s cloak to draw him towards the temple. ‘Come.’
‘I’ll fetch Gwydre first,’ Arthur insisted, releasing his cloak, then he touched six of his men on the shoulders. ‘The rest of you wait here,’ he whispered. ‘Wait here. Don’t go into the temple. We’ll let them finish their worship.’ Then, treading softly, he led his six men across the cellar floor and up some stone steps.
Gwenhwyvach giggled beside me. ‘I said a prayer to Clud,’ she murmured to me, ‘and she will help us.’
‘Good,’ I said. Clud is a Goddess of light, and it would be no bad thing to have her help this night.
‘Guinevere doesn’t like Clud,
’ Gwenhwyvach said disapprovingly. ‘She doesn’t like any of the British Gods. Is the moon high?’
‘Not yet. But it’s climbing.’
‘Then it isn’t time,’ Gwenhwyvach said to me.
‘Time for what, Lady?’
‘You’ll see!’ She giggled. ‘You’ll see,’ she said again, then shrank fearfully back as Nimue pushed through the huddle of nervous spearmen. Nimue had taken off her leather eyepatch so that the empty shrivelled socket was like a dark hole in her face and at the sight of that horror Gwenhwyvach whimpered in terror.
Nimue ignored Gwenhwyvach. Instead she looked about the cellar, then sniffed like a hound seeking a scent. I could only see cobwebs and wineskins and mead jars and I could smell only the damp odour of decay, but Nimue scented something hateful. She hissed, then spat towards the shrine. The bundle in her hand shifted slowly.
None of us moved. Indeed a kind of terror overcame us in that rush-lit cellar. Arthur was gone, we were undetected, but the sound of the singing and the stillness of the palace were both chilling. Maybe that terror was caused by a spell cast by Dinas and Lavaine, or maybe it was just that everything here seemed so unnatural. We were used to wood, thatch, earth and grass, and this dank place of brick arches and stone floors was strange and unnerving. One of my men was shaking.
Nimue stroked the man’s cheek to restore his courage and then crept on her bare feet towards the temple doors. I went with her, placing my boots carefully to make no noise. I wanted to pull her back. She was plainly intent on disobeying Arthur’s orders that we were to wait for the rites to finish, and I feared she would do something rash that would alert the women in the temple and thus provoke them to screams that would bring the guards from their huts, but in my heavy, noisy boots I could not move as fast as Nimue on her bare feet and she ignored my hoarse whisper of warning. Instead she took hold of one of the temple’s bronze door handles. She hesitated a heartbeat, then tugged the door open and the plangent ghost song was suddenly much louder.