Arthur sent for us two weeks after those first lambs were born. The snow had thawed, and his messenger had struggled through the muddy roads to bring us the summons that demanded our presence at the palace of Lindinis. We were to be there for the feast of Imbolc, the first feast after the solstice and one that is devoted to the Goddess of fertility. At Imbolc we drive newborn lambs through burning hoops and afterwards, when they think no one is watching, the young girls will leap through the smouldering hoops and touch their fingers to the ashes of Imbolc’s fires and smear the grey dust high between their thighs. A child born in November is called a child of Imbolc and has ash as its mother and fire as its father. Ceinwyn and I arrived in the afternoon of Imbolc Eve as the wintry sun was throwing long shadows across the pale grass. Arthur’s spearmen surrounded the palace, guarding him against the sullen hostility of people who remembered Merlin’s magical invocation of the glowing girl in the palace courtyard.
To my surprise, I discovered the courtyard was prepared for Imbolc. Arthur had never cared for such things, leaving most religious observances to Guinevere, and she had never celebrated the crude country festivals like Imbolc; but now a great hoop of plaited straw stood ready for the flames in the centre of the yard while a handful of newborn lambs were penned with their mothers in a small hurdle enclosure. Culhwch greeted us, giving a sly nod to the hoop. ‘A chance for you to have another baby,’ he said to Ceinwyn.
‘Why else would I be here?’ she responded, giving him a kiss. ‘And how many do you have now?’
‘Twenty-one,’ he said proudly.
‘From how many mothers?’
‘Ten,’ he grinned, then slapped my back. ‘We’re to get our orders tomorrow.’
‘We?’
‘You, me, Sagramor, Galahad, Lanval, Balin, Morfans,’ Culhwch shrugged, ‘everyone.’
‘Is Argante here?’ I asked.
‘Who do you think put up the hoop?’ he asked. ‘This is all her idea. She’s brought a Druid out of Demetia, and before we all eat tonight we have to worship Nantosuelta.’
‘Who?’ Ceinwyn asked.
‘A Goddess,’ Culhwch said carelessly. There were so many Gods and Goddesses that it was impossible for anyone but a Druid to know all their names and neither Ceinwyn nor I had ever heard of Nantosuelta before.
We did not see either Arthur or Argante until after dark when Hygwydd, Arthur’s servant, summoned us all into the courtyard that was lit with pitch-soaked torches flaming in their iron beckets. I remembered Merlin’s night here, and the crowd of awed folk who had lifted their maimed and sick babies to Olwen the Silver. Now an assembly of lords and their ladies waited awkwardly on either side of the plaited hoop, while set on a dais at the courtyard’s western end were three chairs draped with white linen. A Druid stood beside the hoop and I presumed he was the sorcerer whom Argante had fetched from her father’s kingdom. He was a short, squat man with a wild black beard in which tufts of fox hair and bunches of small bones were plaited. ‘He’s called Fergal,’ Galahad told me, ‘and he hates Christians. He spent all afternoon casting spells against me, then Sagramor arrived and Fergal almost fainted with horror. He thought it was Crom Dubh come in person.’ Galahad laughed.
Sagramor could have indeed been that dark God, for he was dressed in black leather and had a black-scabbarded sword at his hip. He had come to Lindinis with his big, placid Saxon wife, Malla, and the two stood apart from the rest of us at the far side of the courtyard. Sagramor worshipped Mithras but had little time for the British Gods, while Malla still prayed to Woden, Eostre, Thunor, Fir and Seaxnet: all Saxon deities.
All Arthur’s leaders were there, though, as I waited for Arthur, I thought of the men who were missing. Cei, who had grown up with Arthur in distant Gwynedd, had died in Dumnonian Isca during Lancelot’s rebellion. He had been murdered by Christians. Agravain, who for years had been the commander of Arthur’s horsemen, had died during the winter, struck down by a fever. Balin had taken over Agravain’s duties, and he had brought three wives to Lindinis, together with a tribe of small stocky children who stared in horror at Morfans, the ugliest man of Britain, whose face was now so familiar to the rest of us that we no longer noticed his hare lip, goitred neck or twisted jaw. Except for Gwydre, who was still a boy, I was probably the youngest man there and that realization shocked me. We needed new warlords, and I decided then and there that I would give Issa his own band of men as soon as the Saxon war was over. If Issa lived. If I lived.
Galahad was looking after Gwydre and the two of them came to stand with Ceinwyn and me. Galahad had always been a handsome man, but now, as he grew into his middle years, those good looks possessed a new dignity. His hair had turned from its bright gold into grey, and he now wore a small pointed beard. He and I had always been close, but in that difficult winter he was probably closer to Arthur than to anyone else. Galahad had not been present at the sea palace to see Arthur’s shame, and that, together with his calm sympathy, made him acceptable to Arthur. Ceinwyn, keeping her voice low so that Gwydre could not hear, asked him how Arthur was. ‘I wish I knew,’ Galahad said.
‘He’s surely happy,’ Ceinwyn observed.
‘Why?’
‘A new wife?’ Ceinwyn suggested.
Galahad smiled. ‘When a man makes a journey, dear Lady, and has his horse stolen in the course of it, he frequently buys a replacement too hastily.’
‘And doesn’t ride it thereafter, I hear?’ I put in brutally.
‘Do you hear that, Derfel?’ Galahad answered, neither confirming nor denying the rumour. He smiled. ‘Marriage is such a mystery to me,’ he added vaguely. Galahad himself had never married. Indeed he had never really settled since Ynys Trebes, his home, had fallen to the Franks. He had been in Dumnonia ever since and he had seen a generation of children grow to adulthood in that time, but he still seemed like a visitor. He had rooms in the palace at Durnovaria, but kept little furniture there and scant comfort. He rode errands for Arthur, travelling the length of Britain to resolve problems with other kingdoms, or else riding with Sagramor in raids across the Saxon frontier, and he seemed happiest when he was thus kept busy. I had sometimes suspected that he was in love with Guinevere, but Ceinwyn had always mocked that thought. Galahad, she said, was in love with perfection and was too fastidious to love an actual woman. He loved the idea of women, Ceinwyn said, but could not bear the reality of disease and blood and pain. He showed no revulsion at such things in battle, but that, Ceinwyn declared, was because in battle it was men who were bloody and men who were fallible, and Galahad had never idealized men, only women. And maybe she was right. I only knew that at times my friend had to be lonely, though he never complained. ‘Arthur’s very proud of Argante,’ he now said mildly, though in a tone which suggested he was leaving something unsaid.
‘But she’s no Guinevere?’ I suggested.
‘She’s certainly no Guinevere,’ Galahad agreed, grateful that I had voiced the thought, ‘though she’s not unlike her in some ways.’
‘Such as?’ Ceinwyn asked.
‘She has ambitions,’ Galahad said dubiously. ‘She thinks Arthur should cede Siluria to her father.’
‘Siluria isn’t his to yield!’ I said.
‘No,’ Galahad agreed, ‘but Argante thinks he could conquer it.’
I spat. To conquer Siluria, Arthur would need to fight Gwent and even Powys, the two countries that jointly ruled the territory. ‘Mad,’ I said.
‘Ambitious, if unrealistic,’ Galahad corrected me.
‘Do you like Argante?’ Ceinwyn asked him directly.
He was spared the need to answer because the palace door was suddenly thrown open and Arthur at last appeared. He was robed in his customary white, and his face that had grown so gaunt over the last months looked suddenly old. That was a cruel fate, for on his arm, robed in gold, was his new bride and that new bride was little more than a child.
That was the first time I saw Argante, Princess of the Ui Liathain and Iseult’s sister, a
nd in many ways she resembled the doomed Iseult. Argante was a fragile creature poised between girlhood and womanhood, and on that night of Imbolc’s Eve she looked closer to childhood than adulthood for she was swathed in a great cloak of stiff linen that had surely once belonged to Guinevere. The robe was certainly too big for Argante, who walked awkwardly in its golden folds. I remembered seeing her sister hung with jewels and thinking that Iseult had looked like a child arrayed in its mother’s gold and Argante gave the same impression of being dressed up for play and, just like a child pretending to adulthood, she carried herself with a self-absorbed solemnity to defy her innate lack of dignity. She wore her glossy black hair in a long tress that was twisted about her skull and held in place with a brooch of jet, the same colour as the shields of her father’s feared warriors, and the adult style sat uneasily on her young face, just as the heavy golden torque about her neck seemed too massive for her slender throat. Arthur led her to the dais and there bowed her into the left-hand chair and I doubt there was a single soul in the courtyard, whether guest, Druid or guard, who did not think how like father and daughter they appeared. There was a pause once Argante was seated. It was an awkward moment, as though a piece of ritual had been forgotten and a solemn ceremony was in danger of becoming ridiculous, but then there was a scuffle in the doorway, a snigger of laughter, and Mordred came into view.
Our King limped on his clubbed foot and with a sly smile on his face. Like Argante he was playing a role, but unlike her he was an unwilling player. He knew that every man in that courtyard was Arthur’s man and that all hated him, and that while they pretended he was their King he lived only by their sufferance. He climbed the dais. Arthur bowed and we all followed suit. Mordred, his stiff hair as unruly as ever and his beard an ugly fringe to his round face, nodded curtly, then sat in the centre chair. Argante gave him a surprisingly friendly glance, Arthur took the last chair, and there they sat, Emperor, King and child bride.
I could not help thinking that Guinevere would have done all this so much better. There would have been heated mead to drink, more fires for warmth, and music to drown the awkward silences, but on this night no one seemed to know what was supposed to happen, until Argante hissed at her father’s Druid. Fergal glanced about nervously, then scuttled across the courtyard to snatch up one of the becketed torches. He used the torch to ignite the hoop, then muttered incomprehensible incantations as the flames seized the straw.
The five newborn lambs were carried from the pen by slaves. The ewes called miserably for their missing offspring that wriggled in the slaves’ arms. Fergal waited until the hoop was a complete circle of fire, then ordered the lambs be herded through the flames. Confusion followed. The lambs, having no idea that the fertility of Dumnonia depended on their obedience, scattered in every direction except towards the fire and Balin’s children happily joined the whooping hunt and only succeeded in compounding the confusion, but at last, one by one, the lambs were collected and shooed towards the hoop, and in time all five were persuaded to jump through the circlet of fire, but by then the courtyard’s intended solemnity had been shattered. Argante, who was doubtless accustomed to seeing such ceremonies performed much better in her native Demetia, frowned, but the rest of us laughed and chatted. Fergal restored the night’s dignity by suddenly uttering a feral scream that froze us all. The Druid was standing with his head thrown back so that he stared up at the clouds, and in his right hand there was lifted a broad flint knife, and in his left, where it struggled helplessly, was a lamb.
‘Oh, no,’ Ceinwyn protested and turned away. Gwydre grimaced and I put an arm about his shoulders.
Fergal bellowed his challenge at the night, then held both lamb and knife high over his head. He screamed again, then savaged the lamb, striking and tearing at its little body with the clumsy, blunt knife, the lamb struggled ever more weakly and bleated to its mother that called hopelessly back, and all the while blood poured from its fleece onto Fergal’s raised face and onto his wild, bone-hung, fox-plaited beard. ‘I am very glad,’ Galahad murmured in my ear, ‘that I do not live in Demetia.’
I glanced at Arthur while this extraordinary sacrifice was being performed and I saw a look of utter revulsion on his face. Then he saw that I was watching him and his face stiffened. Argante, her mouth open eagerly, was leaning forward to watch the Druid. Mordred was grinning.
The lamb died and Fergal, to the horror of us all, began to prance about the courtyard, shaking the corpse and screaming prayers. Blood droplets spattered us. I threw my cloak protectively over Ceinwyn as the Druid, his own face streaming with rivulets of blood, danced past. Arthur plainly had no idea that this barbarous killing had been arranged. He had doubtless thought his new bride had planned some decorous ceremony to precede the feast, but the rite had become an orgy of blood. All five lambs were slaughtered, and when the last small throat had been cut by the black flint blade, Fergal stepped back and gestured at the hoop. ‘Nantosuelta awaits you,’ he called to us, ‘here she is! Come to her!’ Clearly he expected some response, but none of us moved. Sagramor stared up at the moon and Culhwch hunted a louse in his beard. Small flames flickered along the hoop and scraps of burning straw fluttered down to where the torn bloody corpses lay on the courtyard’s stones, and still none of us moved. ‘Come to Nantosuelta!’ Fergal called hoarsely.
Then Argante stood. She shrugged off- the stiff golden robe to reveal a simple blue woollen dress that made her look more childlike than ever. She had narrow boyish hips, small hands and a delicate face as white as the lambs’ fleeces had been before the black knife took their little lives. Fergal called to her. ‘Come,’ he chanted, ‘come to Nantosuelta, Nantosuelta calls you, come to Nantosuelta,’ and on he crooned, summoning Argante to her Goddess. Argante, almost in a trance now, stepped slowly forward, each step a separate effort so that she moved and stopped, moved and stopped, as the Druid beguiled her onwards. ‘Come to Nantosuelta,’ Fergal intoned, ‘Nantosuelta calls you, come to Nantosuelta.’ Argante’s eyes were closed. For her, at least, this was an awesome moment, though the rest of us were all, I think, embarrassed. Arthur looked appalled, and no wonder, for it seemed that he had only exchanged Isis for Nantosuelta, though Mordred, who had once been promised Argante as his own bride, watched with an eager face as the girl shuffled forward. ‘Come to Nantosuelta, Nantosuelta calls you,’ Fergal beckoned her on, only now his voice had risen to a mock female screech.
Argante reached the hoop and as the heat of the last flames touched her face she opened her eyes and almost seemed surprised to find herself standing beside the Goddess’s fire. She looked at Fergal, then ducked swiftly through the smoky ring. She smiled triumphantly and Fergal clapped her, inviting the rest of us to join the applause. Politely we did so, though our unenthusiastic clapping ceased as Argante crouched down beside the dead lambs. We were all silent as she dipped a delicate finger into one of the knife wounds. She withdrew her finger and held it up so that we could all see the blood thick on its tip. Then she turned so that Arthur could see. She stared at him as she opened her mouth, baring small white teeth, then slowly placed the finger between her teeth and closed her lips around it. She sucked it clean. Gwydre, I saw, was staring in disbelief at his stepmother. She was not much older than Gwydre. Ceinwyn shuddered, her hand firmly clasping mine.
Argante was still not finished. She turned, wet her finger with blood again, and stabbed the bloody finger into the hot embers of the hoop. Then, crouching still, she groped under the hem of her blue dress, transferring the blood and ashes to her thighs. She was ensuring that she would have babies. She was using Nantosuelta’s power to start her own dynasty and we were all witnesses to that ambition. Her eyes were closed again, almost in ecstasy, then suddenly the rite was over. She stood, her hand visible again, and beckoned Arthur. She smiled for the first time that evening, and I saw she was beautiful, but it was a stark beauty, as hard in its way as Guinevere’s, but without Guinevere’s tangle of bright hair to soften it.
&n
bsp; She beckoned to Arthur again, for it seemed the ritual demanded that he too must pass through the hoop. For a second he hesitated, then he looked at Gwydre and, unable to take any more of the superstition, he stood up and shook his head. ‘We shall eat,’ he said harshly, then softened the curt invitation by smiling at his guests; but at that moment I glanced at Argante and saw a look of utter fury on her pale face. For a heartbeat I thought she would scream at Arthur. Her small body was tensed rigid and her fists were clenched, but Fergal, who alone except for me seemed to have noticed her rage, whispered in her ear and she shuddered as the anger passed. Arthur had noticed nothing. ‘Bring the torches,’ he ordered the guards, and the flames were carried inside the palace to illuminate the feasting-hall. ‘Come,’ Arthur called to the rest of us and we gratefully moved towards the palace doors. Argante hesitated, but again Fergal whispered to her and she obeyed Arthur’s summons. The Druid stayed beside the smoking hoop.
Ceinwyn and I were the last of the guests to leave the courtyard. Some impulse had held me back, and I touched Ceinwyn’s arm and drew her aside into the arcade’s shadow from where we saw that one other person had also stayed in the courtyard. Now, when it seemed empty of all but the bleating ewes and the blood-soaked Druid, that person stepped from the shadows. It was Mordred. He limped past the dais, across the flagstones, and stopped beside the hoop. For a heartbeat he and the Druid stared at each other, then Mordred made an awkward gesture with his hand, as though seeking permission to step through the glowing remnants of the fire circle. Fergal hesitated, then nodded abruptly. Mordred ducked his head and stepped through the hoop. He stooped at the far side and wet his finger in blood, but I did not wait to see what he did. I drew Ceinwyn into the palace where the smoking flames lit the great wall-paintings of Roman Gods and Roman hunts. ‘If they serve lamb,’ Ceinwyn said, ‘I shall refuse to eat.’