Maybe not, I thought, but she, like me, was still Merlin’s gaming piece. How busy he had been, he and Nimue, but I said nothing of that, nor of the Dark Road. ‘But you will be Guinevere’s enemy now,’ I warned Ceinwyn instead.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I always was, right from the moment when she decided to take Arthur away from me, but I was just a child then and I didn’t know how to fight her. Last night I struck back, but from now on I’ll just stay out of sight.’ She smiled. ‘And you were to marry Gwenhwyvach?’
‘Yes,’ I confessed.
‘Poor Gwenhwyvach,’ Ceinwyn said. ‘She was always very good to me when they lived here, but I remember every time her sister came into the room she’d run away. She was like a big plump mouse and her sister was the cat.’
Arthur came to the lower valley that afternoon. The glue holding the scraps of bone was still drying in Hywelbane’s hilt as his warriors filled the trees on Cwm Isaf’s southern slope that faced our small house. The spearmen did not come to threaten us, but had merely diverted themselves from their long march home to comfortable Dumnonia. There was no sign of Lancelot, nor of Guinevere, as Arthur walked alone across the stream. He carried no sword or shield.
We met him at our door. He bowed to Ceinwyn, then smiled at her. ‘Dear Lady,’ he said simply.
‘You are angry with me, Lord?’ she asked him anxiously.
He grimaced. ‘My wife believes I am, but no. How can I be angry? You only did what I once did, and you had the grace to do it before the oath was given.’ He smiled at her again. ‘You have, perhaps, inconvenienced me, but I deserved that. May I walk with Derfel?’
We followed the same path that I had taken that morning with Ceinwyn, and Arthur, once he was out of sight of his spearmen, put an arm about my shoulders. ‘Well done, Derfel,’ he said quietly.
‘I am sorry if it hurt you, Lord.’
‘Don’t be a fool. You did what I once did and I envy you the newness of it. It just changes things, that’s all. It is, as I said, inconvenient.’
‘I won’t be Mordred’s champion,’ I said.
‘No. But someone will. If it was up to me, my friend, I would take you both home and make you champion and give you all I had to give, but things cannot always be as we want.’
‘You mean,’ I said bluntly, ‘that the Princess Guinevere will not forgive me.’
‘No,’ Arthur said bleakly. ‘Nor will Lancelot.’ He sighed. ‘What shall I do with Lancelot?’
‘Marry him to Gwenhwyvach,’ I said, ‘and bury them both in Siluria.’
He laughed. ‘If only I could. I’ll send him to Siluria, certainly, but I doubt Siluria will hold him. He has ambitions above that small kingdom, Derfel. I’d hoped that Ceinwyn and a family would keep him there, but now?’ He shrugged. ‘I would have done better to give the kingdom to you.’ He took his arm from about my shoulders and faced me. ‘I do not release you from your oaths, Lord Derfel Cadarn,’ he said formally, ‘you are still my man and when I send for you, you will come to me.’
‘Yes, Lord.’
‘That will be in the spring,’ he said. ‘I am sworn to three months’ peace with the Saxons and I will keep that peace, and when the three months are up the winter will keep our spears stacked. But in the spring we march and I shall want your men in my shield-wall.’
‘They will be there, Lord,’ I promised him.
He raised both hands and put them on my shoulders. ‘Are you also sworn to Merlin?’ he asked, staring into my eyes.
‘Yes, Lord,’ I admitted.
‘So you’ll chase a Cauldron that doesn’t exist?’
‘I shall seek the Cauldron, yes.’
He closed his eyes. ‘Such stupidity!’ He dropped his hands and opened his eyes. ‘I believe in the Gods, Derfel, but do the Gods believe in Britain? This isn’t the old Britain,’ he said vehemently. ‘Maybe once we were a people of one blood, but now? The Romans brought men from every corner of the world! Sarmatians, Libyans, Gauls, Numidians, Greeks! Their blood is mingled with ours, just as it seethes with Roman blood and mixes now with Saxon blood. We are what we are, Derfel, not what we once were. We have a hundred Gods now, not just the old Gods, and we cannot turn the years back, not even with the Cauldron and every Treasure of Britain.’
‘Merlin disagrees.’
‘And Merlin would have me fight the Christians just so his Gods can rule? No, I won’t do it, Derfel.’ He spoke angrily. ‘You can look for your imaginary Cauldron, but don’t think I’ll play Merlin’s game by persecuting Christians.’
‘Merlin,’ I said defensively, ‘will leave the fate of the Christians to the Gods.’
‘And what are we but the Gods’ implements?’ Arthur asked. ‘But I won’t fight other Britons just because they worship another God. Nor will you, Derfel, so long as you’re oath-sworn.’
‘No, Lord.’
He sighed. ‘I do hate all this rancour about Gods. But then, Guinevere always tells me I am blind to the Gods. She says it’s my one fault.’ He smiled. ‘If you’re sworn to Merlin, Derfel, then you must go with him. Where will he take you?’
‘To Ynys Mon, Lord.’
He stared at me in silence for a few heartbeats, then shuddered. ‘You go to Lleyn?’ he asked incredulously. ‘No one comes alive from Lleyn.’
‘I shall,’ I boasted.
‘Make sure you do, Derfel, make sure you do.’ He sounded gloomy. ‘I need you to help me beat the Saxons. And after that, maybe, you can return to Dumnonia. Guinevere isn’t a woman to hold grudges.’ I doubted that, but said nothing. ‘So I shall summon you in the spring,’ Arthur went on, ‘and pray you survive Lleyn.’ He put an arm through mine and walked me back towards the house. ‘And if anyone asks you, Derfel, then I have just reproved you angrily. I have cursed you, even struck you.’
I laughed. ‘I forgive you the blow, Lord.’
‘Consider yourself reproved,’ he said, ‘and consider yourself,’ he went on, ‘the second luckiest man in Britain.’
The luckiest in the world, I thought, for I had my soul’s desire.
Or I would have it, the Gods preserve us, when Merlin had his.
I stood and watched the spearmen go. Arthur’s banner of the bear showed briefly in the trees, he waved, hoisted himself onto his horse’s back and then was gone.
And we were alone.
So I was not in Dumnonia to see Arthur’s return. I should have liked that, for he rode back a hero to a country that had dismissed his chances of survival and had plotted to replace him by lesser creatures.
Food was scarce that autumn, for the sudden flare of war had depleted the new harvest, but there was no famine and Arthur’s men collected fair taxes. That sounds like a small improvement, but after the recent years it caused a stir in the land. Only the rich paid taxes to the Royal Treasury. Some paid in gold, but most paid in grain and leather and linen and salt and wool and dried fish that they, in turn, had demanded from their tenants. In the last few years the rich had paid little to the King and the poor had paid much to the rich, so Arthur sent spearmen to inquire of the poor what tax had been levied of them and used their answers to make his own levy of the rich. From the proceeds he returned a third of the yield back to the churches and magistrates so that they could distribute the food in the winter. That action alone told Dumnonia that a new power had come to the land, and though the wealthy grumbled, none dared raise a shield-wall to fight Arthur. He was the warlord of Mordred’s kingdom, the victor of Lugg Vale, the slaughterer of Kings, and those who opposed him now feared him.
Mordred was moved into the care of Culhwch, Arthur’s cousin and a crude, honest warrior who probably took small interest in the fate of a small and troublesome child. Culhwch was too busy suppressing the revolt that had been started by Cadwy of Isca deep in Dumnonia’s west, and I heard that he led his spears in a swift campaign across the great moor, then south into the wild land on the coast. He ravaged Cadwy’s heartland, then stormed the rebellious Prince in the old Roman s
tronghold of Isca. The walls had decayed and the veterans of Lugg Vale swarmed over the town’s ramparts to hunt the rebels through the streets. Prince Cadwy was caught in a Roman shrine and there dismembered. Arthur ordered parts of his body to be displayed in Dumnonia’s towns, and his head, with its easily recognizable blue tattoos on the cheeks, to be sent to King Mark of Kernow who had encouraged the revolt. King Mark sent back a tribute of tin ingots, a tub of smoked fish, three polished turtle shells that had washed up on the shores of his wild country and an innocent disavowal of any complicity in Cadwy’s rebellion.
Culhwch, in capturing Cadwy’s stronghold, found letters there that he sent to Arthur. The letters were from the Christian party in Dumnonia and had been written before the campaign that ended in Lugg Vale, and they revealed the full extent of the plans to rid Dumnonia of Arthur. The Christians had disliked Arthur ever since he had revoked High King Uther’s rule that the church was to be exempt from taxes and loans, and they had become convinced that their God was leading Arthur to a great defeat at Gorfyddyd’s hands. It was the prospect of that almost certain defeat that had encouraged them to put their thoughts into writing, and those same writings were now in Arthur’s keeping.
The letters revealed a worried Christian community who wanted Arthur’s death, but also feared the incursion of Gorfyddyd’s pagan spearmen. To save themselves and their riches they had been ready to sacrifice Mordred, and the letters encouraged Cadwy to march on Durnovaria during Arthur’s absence, kill Mordred and then yield the kingdom to Gorfyddyd. The Christians promised him help, and hoped that Cadwy’s spears would protect them once Gorfyddyd ruled.
Instead it brought them punishment. King Melwas of the Belgae, a client King who had sided with the Christians who opposed Arthur, was made the new ruler of Cadwy’s land. It was hardly a reward, for it took Melwas far away from his own people to a place where Arthur could keep him under close watch. Nabur, the Christian magistrate who had held Mordred’s guardianship, and who had used that guardianship to raise the party that opposed Arthur and who was the writer of the letters suggesting Mordred’s murder, was nailed to a cross in Durnovaria’s amphitheatre. These days, of course, he is called a saint and martyr, but I only remember Nabur as a smooth, corrupt liar. Two priests, another magistrate and two landowners were also put to death. The last conspirator was Bishop Sansum, though he had been too clever to let his name be put into writing, and that cleverness, together with his strange friendship for Arthur’s maimed pagan sister, Morgan, saved Sansum’s life. He swore undying loyalty to Arthur, put a hand on a crucifix and swore he had never plotted to kill the King, and so remained as the guardian of the shrine of the Holy Thorn at Ynys Wydryn. You could bind Sansum in iron and hold a sword to his throat, and still he would slither free.
Morgan, his pagan friend, had been Merlin’s most trusted priestess until the younger Nimue usurped that position, but Merlin and Nimue were both far away and that left Morgan as virtual ruler of Merlin’s lands in Avalon. Morgan, with her gold mask hiding her fire-ravaged face and her black robe shrouding her flame-twisted body, assumed Merlin’s power and it was she who finished the rebuilding of Merlin’s hall on the Tor, and she who organized the tax-collectors in the northern part of Arthur’s land. Morgan became one of Arthur’s most trusted advisers; indeed, after Bishop Bedwin died of a fever that autumn, Arthur even suggested, against all precedence, that Morgan be named as a full councillor. No woman had ever sat on a King’s Council in Britain and Morgan might well have been the first, but Guinevere made sure she was not. Guinevere would let no woman be a councillor if she could not be one herself, and besides, Guinevere hated anything that was ugly and, the Gods know, poor Morgan was grotesque even with her gold mask in place. So Morgan stayed in Ynys Wydryn, while Guinevere supervised the building of the new palace at Lindinis.
It was a gorgeous palace. The old Roman villa that Gundleus had burned was rebuilt and extended so that its cloistered wings enclosed two great courtyards where water flowed in marble channels. Lindinis, close to the royal hill of Caer Cadarn, was to be Dumnonia’s new capital, though Guinevere took good care that Mordred, with his twisted left foot, was allowed nowhere near the place. Only the beautiful were allowed in Lindinis, and in its arcaded courtyards Guinevere assembled statues from villas and shrines throughout Dumnonia. There was no Christian shrine there, but Guinevere made a great dark hall for the women’s Goddess Isis, and she provided a lavish suite of rooms where Lancelot could stay when he visited from his new kingdom in Siluria. Elaine, Lancelot’s mother, lived in those rooms and she, who had once made Ynys Trebes so beautiful, now helped Guinevere make Lindinis’s palace into a shrine of beauty.
Arthur, I know, was rarely at Lindinis. He was too busy preparing for the great war against the Saxons, to which end he began re-fortifying the ancient earth citadels in southern Dumnonia. Even Caer Cadarn, deep in our heartland, had its wall strengthened and new timber fighting platforms poised on its ramparts, but his greatest work was at Caer Ambra, just a half hour’s walk east of the Stones, which was to be his new base against the Sais. The old people had made a fort there, but all that autumn and winter the slaves toiled to steepen the ancient earth walls and to make new palisades and fighting platforms on their summits. More forts were strengthened south of Caer Ambra to defend the lower parts of Dumnonia against the southern Saxons led by Cerdic, who were sure to attack us while Arthur assaulted Aelle in the north. Not since the Romans, I dare say, had so much British earth been dug or timber split, and Arthur’s honest taxes could never pay for half that labour. He therefore made a levy on the Christian churches that were plentiful and powerful in southern Britain, the same churches that had supported Nabur and Sansum’s effort to topple him. That levy was eventually repaid, and it protected the Christians from the ghastly attentions of the Saxon heathens, but the Christians never forgave Arthur, nor did they notice that the same levy was taken from the handful of pagan shrines that still possessed wealth.
Not all the Christians were Arthur’s enemies. At least a third of his spearmen were Christians and those men were as loyal as any pagan. Many other Christians approved of his rule, but most of the leaders of the church let their greed dictate their loyalty and they were the ones who opposed him. They believed that their God would one day return to this earth and walk among us like a mortal man, but He would not come again until all pagans had been converted to His faith. The preachers, knowing that Arthur was a pagan, hissed curses at him, but Arthur ignored their words as he made his ceaseless tours of southern Britain. One day he would be with Sagramor on Aelle’s border, the next he would be fighting one of Cerdic’s war-bands as it probed deep into the river valleys of the south, and then he would ride north through Dumnonia and across Gwent to Isca where he would argue with local chieftains about the number of spearmen who could be raised from western Gwent or eastern Siluria. Thanks to Lugg Vale Arthur was now far more than Dumnonia’s chief lord and Mordred’s protector; he was Britain’s warlord, the undisputed leader of all our armies, and no King dared refuse him, nor, in those days, wanted to.
But all this I missed, for I was in Caer Sws and I was with Ceinwyn and I was in love.
And waiting for Merlin.
Merlin and Nimue came to Cwm Isaf just days before the winter solstice. Dark clouds were pressing close above the bare oak tops on the ridges, and the morning frost had lingered well into the afternoon. The stream was a patchwork of ice ledges and trickling water, the fallen leaves were crisp and the valley’s soil as hard as stone. We had a fire in the central chamber so our house was warm enough, though it was choking with the smoke that billowed about the untrimmed beams before finding the small hole in the roof’s ridge. Other fires smoked from the shelters that my spearmen had made across the valley; stout little huts with walls of earth and stone supporting roofs of timber and bracken. We had made a beast shed behind the house where a bull, two cows, three sows, a boar, a dozen sheep and a score of chickens were penned at night to prote
ct them from the wolves. We had plenty of wolves in our woods and their howling echoed at every dusk, and at night we would sometimes hear them scrabbling beyond the beast shed. The sheep would bleat piteously, the hens would set up a cackling panic, and then Issa, or whoever else stood guard, would shout and hurl a firebrand into the wood’s edge and the wolves would skitter away. One morning, going early to fetch water from the stream, I came face to face with a big old dog wolf. He had been drinking, but as I stepped out of the bushes he raised a grey muzzle, stared at me, then waited for my salute before he loped silently upstream. It was, I decided, a good omen and, in those days as we waited for Merlin, we counted the omens.
We also hunted the wolves. Cuneglas gave us three brace of long-haired wolfhounds that were bigger and shaggier than the famous Powysian deerhounds like those Guinevere kept in Dumnonia. The sport kept my spearmen active and even Ceinwyn liked those long cold days in the high woods. She wore leather breeches, high boots and a leather jerkin, and hung a hunter’s long knife at her waist. She would braid her fair hair into a knot at the back of her head, then scramble up rocks and down gullies and over dead trees behind her brace of hounds who were leashed on long horsehair ropes. The simplest way to hunt wolves was with a bow and arrow, but as few of us possessed that skill we used the dogs, war spears and knives, and by the time Merlin returned we had a pile of pelts stacked in Cuneglas’s store hall. The King had wanted us to move back to Caer Sws, but Ceinwyn and I were as happy as our anticipation of Merlin’s ordeal allowed us and so we stayed in our small valley and counted the days.