Excalibur

  ‘She blinded you?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, she had to!’ he said, frowning at the disapproval in my voice. ‘No other way to do it, Derfel. I should have thought that was obvious.’

  ‘Not to me,’ I said bitterly.

  ‘Quite obvious! Absurd to think otherwise,’ he said, then let go of my hand and tried to arrange his beard and hair. His tonsure had disappeared beneath a layer of matted hair and dirt, his beard was straggly and flecked with leaves, while his white robe was the colour of mud. ‘She’s a Druid now,’ he said in a tone of wonder.

  ‘I thought women couldn’t be Druids,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be absurd, Derfel. Just because women never have been Druids doesn’t mean they can’t be! Anyone can be a Druid! All you need do is memorize the six hundred and eighty-four curses of Beli Mawr and the two hundred and sixty-nine charms of Lieu and carry in your head about a thousand other useful things, and Nimue, I must say, was an excellent pupil.’

  ‘But why blind you?’

  ‘We have one eye between us. One eye and one mind.’ He fell silent.

  ‘Tell me about the clay figure, Lord,’ I said.

  ‘No!’ He shuffled away from me, terror in his voice. ‘She has told me not to tell you,’ he added in a hoarse whisper.

  ‘How do I defeat it?’ I asked.

  He laughed at that. ‘You, Derfel? You would fight my magic?’

  ‘Tell me how,’ I insisted.

  He came back to the bars and turned his empty eye sockets left and right as though he were looking for some enemy who might be overhearing us. ‘Seven times and three,’ he said, ‘I dreamed on Cam Ingli.’ He had gone back into madness, and all that night I discovered that if I tried to prise out of him the secrets of Ceinwyn’s sickness he would do the same. He would babble of dreams, of the wheat-girl he had loved by the waters of Claerwen or of the hounds of Trygwylth who he was persuaded were hunting him. ‘That is why I have these bars, Derfel,’ he said, pounding the wooden slats, ‘so that the hounds cannot reach me, and why I have no eyes, so they cannot see me. The hounds can’t see you, you know, not if you have no eyes. You should remember that.’

  ‘Nimue,’ I said at one point, ‘will bring the Gods back?’

  ‘That is why she has taken my mind, Derfel,’ Merlin said.

  ‘Will she succeed?’

  ‘A good question! An excellent question. A question I ask myself constantly.’ He sat and hugged his bony knees. ‘I lacked the nerve, didn’t I? I betrayed myself. But Nimue won’t. She will go to the bitter end, Derfel.’

  ‘But will she succeed?’

  ‘I would like to have a cat,’ he said after a while. ‘I do miss cats.’

  ‘Tell me about the summoning.’

  ‘You know it all already!’ he said indignantly. ‘Nimue will find Excalibur, she will fetch poor Gwydre, and the rites will be done properly. Here, on the mountain. But will the Gods come? That is the question, isn’t it? You worship Mithras, don’t you?’

  ‘I do, Lord.’

  ‘And what do you know of Mithras?’

  ‘The God of soldiers,’ I said, ‘born in a cave. He is the God of the sun.’

  Merlin laughed. ‘You know so little! He is the God of oaths. Did you know that? Or do you know the grades of Mithraism? How many grades do you have?’ I hesitated, unwilling to reveal the secrets of the mysteries. ‘Don’t be absurd, Derfel!’ Merlin said, his voice as sane as it had ever been in all his life. ‘How many? Two? Three?’

  ‘Two, Lord.’

  ‘So you’ve forgotten the other five! What are your two?’

  ‘Soldier and Father.’

  ‘Miles and Pater, they should be called. And once there were also Leo, Corax, Perses, Nymphus and Heliodromus. How little you know of your miserable God, but then, your worship is a mere shadow worship. Do you climb the seven-runged ladder?’

  ‘No, Lord.’

  ‘Do you drink the wine and bread?’

  ‘That is the Christian way, Lord,’ I protested.

  ‘The Christian way! What halfwits you all are! Mithras’s mother was a virgin, shepherds and wise men came to see her newborn child, and Mithras himself grew to become a healer and a teacher. He had twelve disciples, and on the eve of his death he gave them a final supper of bread and wine. He was buried in a rock tomb and rose again, and he did all this long before the Christians nailed their God to a tree. You let the Christians steal your God’s clothes, Derfel!’

  I gazed at him. ‘Is this true?’ I asked him.

  ‘It is true, Derfel,’ Merlin said, and raised his ravaged face to the crude bars. ‘You worship a shadow God. He is going, you see, just as our Gods are going. They all go, Derfel, they go into the void. Look!’ He pointed up into the clouded sky. ‘The Gods come and the Gods go, Derfel, and I no longer know if they hear us or see us. They pass by on the great wheel of heaven and now it is the Christian God who rules, and He will rule for a while, but the wheel will also take Him into the void and mankind will once again shiver in the dark and look for new Gods. And they will find them, for the Gods come and they go, Derfel, they go and they come.’

  ‘But Nimue will turn the wheel back?’ I asked.

  ‘Perhaps she will,’ Merlin said sadly, ‘and I would like that, Derfel. I would like to have my eyes back, and my youth, and my joy.’ He rested his forehead on the bars. ‘I will not help you break the enchantment,’ he said softly, so softly I almost did not hear him. ‘I love Ceinwyn, but if Ceinwyn must suffer for the Gods, then she is doing a noble thing.’

  ‘Lord,’ I began to plead.

  ‘No!’ He shouted so loudly that in the encampment behind us some dogs howled in reply. ‘No-,’ he said more quietly. ‘I compromised once and I will not compromise again, for what was the price of compromise? Suffering! But if Nimue can perform the rites, then all our suffering will be done. Soon be done. The Gods will return, Ceinwyn will dance and I shall see.’

  He slept for a while and I slept too, but after a time he woke me by putting a claw-like hand through the bars and seizing my arm. ‘Are the guards asleep?’ he asked me.

  ‘I think so, Lord.’

  ‘Then look for the silver mist,’ he whispered to me.

  I thought for a heartbeat he had slipped back into madness. ‘Lord?’ I asked him.

  ‘I sometimes think,’ he said, and his voice was quite sane, ‘that there is only so much magic left on the earth. It fades like the Gods fade. But I did not give Nimue everything, Derfel. She thinks I did, but I saved one last enchantment. And I have worked it for you and for Arthur, for you two I loved above all men. If Nimue fails, Derfel, then look for Caddwg. You remember Caddwg?’

  Caddwg was the boatman who had rescued us from Ynys Trebes so many years before, and the man who had hunted Merlin’s piddocks. ‘I remember Caddwg,’ I said.

  ‘He lives at Camlann now,’ Merlin said in a whisper. ‘Look for him, Derfel, and seek the silver mist. Remember that. If Nimue fails and horror comes, then take Arthur to Camlann, find Caddwg and look for the silver mist. It is the last enchantment. My last gift to those who were my friends.’ His fingers tightened on my arm. ‘Promise me you will seek it?’

  ‘I shall, Lord,’ I promised him.

  He seemed relieved. He sat for a time, clutching my arm, then sighed. ‘I wish I could come with you. But I can’t.’

  ‘You can, Lord,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be absurd, Derfel. I am to stay here and Nimue will use me one last time. I might be old, blind, half mad and nearly dead, but there is still power in me. She wants it.’ He uttered a horrid little whimper. ‘I cannot even weep any longer,’ he said, ‘and there are times when all I wish to do is weep. But in the silver mist, Derfel, in that silver mist, you will find no weeping and no time, just joy.’

  He slept again, and when he woke it was dawn and Olwen had come for me. I stroked Merlin’s hair, but he was gone into the madness again. He yapped like a dog, and Olwen laughed to hear it. I wished there had been some
thing I could give him, some small thing to give him comfort, but I had nothing. So I left him, and took his last gift with me even though I did not understand what it was; the last enchantment.

  Olwen did not take me back by the same path that had brought me to Nimue’s encampment, but instead led me down a steep combe, and then into a dark wood where a stream tumbled between rocks. It had begun to rain and our path was treacherous, but Olwen danced ahead of me in her damp cloak. ‘I like the rain!’ she called out to me once.

  ‘I thought you liked the sun,’ I said sourly.

  ‘I like both, Lord,’ she said. She was her usual merry self, but I scarcely listened to most of what she said. I was thinking of Ceinwyn, and of Merlin, and of Gwydre and Excalibur. I was thinking that I was in a trap, and I saw no way out. Must I choose between Ceinwyn and Gwydre? Olwen must have guessed what I was thinking because she came and slipped her arm through mine. ‘Your troubles will soon be over, Lord,’ she said comfortingly.

  I took my arm away. ‘They are just beginning,’ I said bitterly.

  ‘But Gwydre won’t stay dead!’ she said encouragingly. ‘He will lie in the Cauldron, and the Cauldron gives life.’ She believed, but I did not. I still believed in the Gods, but I no longer believed we could bend them to our will. Arthur, I thought, had been right. It is to ourselves we must look, not to the Gods. They have their own amusements, and if we are not their toys, then we should be glad.

  Olwen stopped beside a pool under the trees. ‘There are beavers here,’ she said, staring at the rain-pitted water, and when I said nothing she looked up and smiled. ‘If you keep walking down the stream, Lord, you will come to a track. Follow it down the hill and you will find a road.’ “

  I followed the track and the road, emerging from the hills near the old Roman fort of Cicucium that was now home to a group of nervous families. Their menfolk saw me and came from the fort’s broken gate with spears and dogs, but I waded the stream and scrambled uphill and when they saw I meant no harm, had no weapons and was evidently not the scout for a raiding party, they contented themselves with jeering at me. I could not remember being so long without a sword since childhood. It made a man feel naked.

  It took me two days to reach home; two days of bleak thinking without any answer. Gwydre was the first to see me coming down Isca’s main street and he ran to greet me. ‘She’s better than she was, Lord,’ he called.

  ‘But getting worse again,’ I said.

  He hesitated. ‘Yes. But two nights ago we thought she was recovering.’ He looked at me anxiously, worried by my grim appearance.

  ‘And each day since,’ I said, ‘she has slipped back.’

  ‘There must be hope, though,’ Gwydre tried to encourage me.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, though I had none. I went to Ceinwyn’s bedside and she recognized me and tried to smile, but the pain was building in her again and the smile showed as a skull-like grimace. She had a fine layer of new hair, but it was all white. I bent, dirty as I was, and kissed her forehead.

  I changed my clothes, washed and shaved, strapped Hywelbane to my waist and then sought Arthur. I told him all that Nimue had told me, but Arthur had no answers, or none he would tell me. He would not surrender Gwydre, and that condemned Ceinwyn, but he could not say that to my face. Instead he looked angry. ‘I’ve had enough of this nonsense, Derfel.’

  ‘A nonsense that is giving Ceinwyn agony, Lord,’ I reproved him.

  ‘Then we must cure her,’ he said, but conscience gave him pause. He frowned. ‘Do you believe Gwydre will live again if he is placed in the Cauldron?’

  I thought about it and could not lie to him. ‘No, Lord.’

  ‘Nor I,’ he said, and called for Guinevere, but the only suggestion she could make was that we should consult Taliesin.

  Taliesin listened to my tale. ‘Name the curses again, Lord,’ he said when I was done.

  ‘The curse of fire,’ I said, ‘the curse of water, the curse of the blackthorn and the dark curse of the Otherbody.’

  He flinched when I said the last. ‘The first three I can lift,’ he said, ‘but the last? I know of no one who can lift that.’

  ‘Why not?’ Guinevere demanded sharply.

  Taliesin shrugged. ‘It is the higher knowledge, Lady. A Druid’s learning does not cease with his training, but goes on into new mysteries. I have not trodden that path. Nor, I suspect, has any man in Britain other than Merlin. The Otherbody is a great magic and to counter it we need a magic just as great. Alas, I don’t have it.’

  I stared at the rainclouds above Isca’s roofs. ‘If I cut off Ceinwyn’s head, Lord,’ I spoke to Arthur, ‘will you cut off mine a heartbeat later?’

  ‘No,’ he said in disgust.

  ‘Lord!’ I pleaded.

  ‘No!’ he said angrily. He was offended by the talk of magic. He wanted a world in which reason ruled, not magic, but none of his reason helped us now.

  Then Guinevere spoke softly. ‘Morgan,’ she said.

  ‘What of her?’ Arthur asked.

  ‘She was Merlin’s priestess before Nimue,’ Guinevere said. ‘If anyone knows Merlin’s magic, it is Morgan.’

  So Morgan was summoned. She limped into the courtyard, as ever managing to bring an aura of anger with her. Her gold mask glinted as she looked at each of us in turn and, seeing no Christian present, she made the sign of the cross. Arthur fetched her a chair, but she refused it, implying that she had little time for us. Since her husband had gone to Gwent, Morgan had busied herself in a Christian shrine to the north of Isca. Sick folk went there to die and she fed them, nursed them and prayed for them. Folk call her husband a saint to this day, but I think the wife is called a saint by God.

  Arthur told her the tale and Morgan grunted with each revelation, but when Arthur spoke of the curse of the Otherbody she made the sign of the cross, then spat through the mask’s mouthpiece. ‘So what do you want of me?’ she asked belligerently.

  ‘Can you counter the curse?’ Guinevere asked.

  ‘Prayer can counter it!’ Morgan declared.

  ‘But you have prayed,’ Arthur said in exasperation, ‘and Bishop Emrys has prayed. All the Christians of Isca have prayed and Ceinwyn lies sick still.’

  ‘Because she is a pagan,’ Morgan said vituperatively. ‘Why should God waste his mercy on pagans when He has His own flock to look after?’

  ‘You have not answered my question,’ Guinevere said icily. She and Morgan hated each other, but for Arthur’s sake pretended to a chill courtesy when they met.

  Morgan was silent for a while, then abruptly nodded her head. ‘The curse can be countered,’ she said, ‘if you believe in these superstitions.’

  ‘I believe,’ I said.

  ‘But even to think of it is a sin!’ Morgan cried and made the sign of the cross again.

  ‘Your God will surely forgive you,’ I said.

  ‘What do you know of my God, Derfel?’ she asked sourly.

  ‘I know, Lady,’ I said, trying to remember all the things Galahad had told me over the years, ‘that your God is a loving God, a forgiving God, and a God who sent His own Son to earth so that others should not suffer.’ I paused, but Morgan made no reply. ‘I know too,’ I went on gently, ‘that Nimue works a great evil in the hills.’

  The mention of Nimue might have persuaded Morgan, for she had ever been angry that the younger woman had usurped her place in Merlin’s entourage. ‘Is it a clay figure?’ she asked me, ‘made with a child’s blood, dew, and moulded beneath the thunder?’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said.

  She shuddered, spread her arms and prayed silently. None of us spoke. Her prayer went on a long time, and perhaps she was hoping we would abandon her, but when none of us left the courtyard, she dropped her arms and turned on us again. ‘What charms is the witch using?’

  ‘Berries,’ I said, ‘slivers of bone, embers.’

  ‘No, fool! What charms? How does she reach Ceinwyn?’

  ‘She has the stone from one of Ceinwyn
’s rings and one of my cloaks.’

  ‘Ah!’ Morgan said, interested despite her revulsion for the pagan superstition. ‘Why one of your cloaks?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Simple, fool,’ she snapped, ‘the evil flows through you!’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘What do you understand?’ she snapped. ‘Of course it flows through you. You have been close to Nimue, have you not?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, blushing despite myself.

  ‘So what is the symbol of that?’ she asked. ‘She gave you a charm? A scrap of bone? Some piece of pagan rubbish to hang about your neck?’

  ‘She gave me this,’ I said, and showed her the scar on my left hand.

  Morgan peered at the scar, then shuddered. She said nothing.

  ‘Counter the charm, Morgan,’ Arthur pleaded with her.

  Morgan was silent again. ‘It is forbidden,’ she said after a while, ‘to dabble in witchcraft. The holy scriptures tell us that we should not suffer a witch to live.’

  ‘Then tell me how it is done,’ Taliesin pleaded.

  ‘You?’ Morgan cried. ‘You? You think you can counter Merlin’s magic? If it is to be done, then let it be done properly.’

  ‘By you?’ Arthur asked and Morgan whimpered. Her one good hand made the sign of the cross, and then she shook her head and it seemed she could not speak at all. Arthur frowned. ‘What is it,’ he asked, ‘that your God wants?’

  ‘Your souls!’ Morgan cried.

  ‘You want me to become a Christian?’ I asked.

  The gold mask with its incised cross snapped up to face me. ‘Yes,’ Morgan said simply.

  ‘I will do it,’ I said just as simply.

  She pointed her hand at me. ‘You will be baptized, Derfel?’

  ‘Yes, Lady.’

  ‘And you will swear obedience to my husband.’

  That checked me. I gazed at her. ‘To Sansum?’ I asked feebly.

  ‘He is a bishop!’ Morgan insisted. ‘He has God’s authority! You will agree to swear obedience to him, you will agree to be baptized, and only then will I lift the curse.’

  Arthur stared at me. For a few heartbeats I could not swallow the humiliation of Morgan’s demand, but then I thought of Ceinwyn and I nodded. ‘I will do it,’ I told her.