I did not doubt her words. ‘But if Nabur and Sansum are the best men the Mordred party can muster, Lady,’ I said, ‘then Arthur need not worry about them.’
‘King Melwas too, I think,’ Guinevere said, ‘and who knows how many others? Almost every wandering priest in the kingdom spreads the pestilence, asking why men should die for Arthur. I’d strike all their heads off, but traitors don’t reveal themselves, Lord Derfel. They wait in the dark and strike when you’re not looking. But if Arthur defeats Gorfyddyd they’ll all sing his praises and pretend they were his supporters all the while.’ She spat to avert evil, then gave me a sharp glance. ‘Tell me about King Lancelot,’ she said suddenly.
I had an impression that we were at last reaching the real reason for this stroll beneath the apple and pear trees. ‘I don’t really know him,’ I said evasively.
‘He spoke well of you last night,’ she said.
‘He did?’ I responded sceptically. I knew Lancelot and his companions were still resident in Arthur’s house, indeed I had been dreading meeting him and relieved that he had not been at the midday meal.
‘He said you were a great soldier,’ Guinevere said.
‘It’s nice to know,’ I answered sourly, ‘that he can sometimes tell the truth.’ I assumed that Lancelot, trimming his sails to a new wind, had tried to gain favour with Arthur by praising a man he knew to be Arthur’s friend.
‘Maybe,’ Guinevere said, ‘warriors who suffer a terrible defeat like the fall of Ynys Trebes always end up squabbling?’
‘Suffer?’ I said harshly. ‘I saw him leave Benoic, Lady, but I don’t remember him suffering. Any more than I remember seeing that bandage on his hand when he left.’
‘He’s no coward,’ she insisted warmly. ‘He wears warrior rings thick on his left hand, Lord Derfel.’
‘Warrior rings!’ I said derisively, and plunged my hand into my belt pouch and brought out a fistful of the things. I had so many now that I no longer bothered to make them. I scattered the rings on the orchard’s grass, startling the deerhounds that looked to their mistress for reassurance. ‘Anyone can find warrior rings, Lady.’
Guinevere stared at the fallen rings, then kicked one aside. ‘I like King Lancelot,’ she said defiantly, thus warning me against any more disparaging remarks. ‘And we have to look after him. Arthur feels we failed Benoic and the least we can do is to treat its survivors with honour. I want you to be kind to Lancelot, for my sake.’
‘Yes, Lady,’ I said meekly.
‘We must find him a rich wife,’ Guinevere said. ‘He must have land and men to command. Dumnonia is fortunate, I think, in having him come to our shores. We need good soldiers.’
‘Indeed we do, Lady,’ I agreed.
She caught the sarcasm in my voice and grimaced, but despite my hostility she persevered with the real reason she had invited me to this shadowed, private orchard. ‘King Lancelot,’ she said, ‘wants to be a worshipper of Mithras, and Arthur and I do not want him opposed.’
I felt a flare of rage at my religion being taken so lightly. ‘Mithras, Lady,’ I said coldly, ‘is a religion for the brave.’
‘Even you, Derfel Cadarn, do not need more enemies,’ Guinevere replied just as coldly, so I knew she would become my enemy if I blocked Lancelot’s desires. And doubtless, I thought, Guinevere would deliver the same message to any other man who might oppose Lancelot’s initiation into the Mithraic mysteries.
‘Nothing will be done till winter,’ I said, evading a firm commitment.
‘But make sure it is done,’ she said, then pushed open the hall door. ‘Thank you, Lord Derfel.’
‘Thank you, Lady,’ I said, and felt another surge of anger as I ran down the steps to the hall. Ten days! I thought, just ten days and Lancelot had made Guinevere into his supporter. I cursed, vowing that I would become a miserable Christian before I ever saw Lancelot feasting in a cave beneath a bull’s bloody head. I had broken three Saxon shield–walls and buried Hywelbane to her hilt in my country’s enemies before I had been elected to Mithras’s service, but all Lancelot had ever done was boast and posture.
I entered the hall to find Bedwin seated beside Arthur. They were hearing petitioners, but Bedwin left the dais to draw me to a quiet spot beside the hall’s outer door. ‘I hear you’re a lord now,’ he said. ‘My congratulations.’
‘A lord without land,’ I said bitterly, still upset by Guinevere’s outrageous demand.
‘Land follows victory,’ Bedwin told me, ‘and victory follows battle, and of battle, Lord Derfel, you will have plenty this year.’ He stopped as the hall door was thrown open and as Lancelot and his followers stalked in. Bedwin bowed to him, while I merely nodded. The King of Benoic seemed surprised to see me, but said nothing as he walked to join Arthur, who ordered a third chair arranged on the dais. ‘Is Lancelot a member of the council now?’ I asked Bedwin angrily.
‘He’s a King,’ Bedwin said patiently. ‘You can’t expect him to stand while we sit.’
I noticed that the King of Benoic still had a bandage on his right hand. ‘I trust the King’s wound will mean he can’t come with us?’ I said acidly. I almost confessed to Bedwin how Guinevere had demanded that we elect Lancelot a Mithraist, but decided that news could wait.
‘He won’t come with us,’ Bedwin confirmed. ‘He’s to stay here as commander of Durnovaria’s garrison.’
‘As what?’ I asked loudly and so angrily that Arthur twisted in his chair to see what the commotion was about.
‘If King Lancelot’s men guard Guinevere and Mordred,’ Bedwin said wearily, ‘it frees Lanval’s and Llywarch’s men to fight against Gorfyddyd.’ He hesitated, then laid a frail hand on my arm. ‘There’s something else I need to tell you, Lord Derfel.’ His voice was low and gentle. ‘Merlin was in Ynys Wydryn last week.’
‘With Nimue?’ I asked eagerly.
He shook his head. ‘He never went for her, Derfel. He went north instead, but why or where we don’t know.’
The scar on my left hand throbbed. ‘And Nimue?’ I asked, dreading to hear the answer.
‘Still on the Isle, if she even lives.’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry.’
I stared down the crowded hall. Did Merlin not know about Nimue? Or had he preferred to leave her among the dead? Much as I loved him I sometimes thought that Merlin could be the cruellest man in all the world. If he had visited Ynys Wydryn then he must have known where Nimue was imprisoned, yet he had done nothing. He had left her with the dead, and suddenly my fears were shrieking inside me like the cries of the dying children of Ynys Trebes. For a few cold seconds I could neither move nor speak, then I looked at Bedwin. ‘Galahad will take my men north if I don’t return,’ I told him.
‘Derfel!’ He gripped my arm. ‘No one comes back from the Isle of the Dead. No one!’
‘Does it matter?’ I asked him. For if all Dumnonia was lost, what did it matter? And Nimue was not dead, I knew that because the scar was pounding on my hand. And if Merlin did not care about her, I did, I cared more about Nimue than I cared about Gorfyddyd or Aelle or the wretched Lancelot with his ambitions to join Mithras’s elect. I loved Nimue even if she would never love me, and I was scar-sworn to be her protector.
Which meant that I must go where Merlin would not. I must go to the Isle of the Dead.
The Isle lay only ten miles south of Durnovaria, no more than a morning’s gentle walk, yet for all I knew of the Isle it could have been on the far side of the moon.
I did know it was no island, but rather a peninsula of hard pale stone that lay at the end of a long narrow causeway. The Romans had quarried the isle, but we quarried their buildings rather than the earth and so the quarries had closed and the Isle of the Dead had been left empty. It became a prison. Three walls were built across the causeway, guards were set, and to the Isle we sent those we wanted to punish. In time we sent others too; those men and women whose wits had flown and who could not live in peace among us. They were the violent mad, sent to a kingdom of the m
ad where no sane person lived and where their demon-haunted souls could not endanger the living. The Druids claimed the Isle was the domain of Crom Dubh, the dark crippled God, the Christians said it was the Devil’s foothold on earth, but both agreed that men or women sent across its causeway’s walls were lost souls. They were dead while their bodies still lived, and when their bodies did die the demons and evil spirits would be trapped on the Isle so they could never return to haunt the living. Families would bring their mad to the Isle and there, at the third wall, release them to the unknown horrors that waited at the causeway’s end. Then, back on the mainland, the family would hold a death feast for their lost relative. Not all the mad were sent to the Isle. Some of them were touched by the Gods and thus were sacred, and some families kept their mad locked up as Merlin had penned poor Pellinore, but when the Gods who touched the mad were malevolent, then the Isle was the place where the captured soul must be sent.
The sea broke white about the Isle. At its seaward end, even in the calmest weather, there was a great maelstrom of whirlpools and seething water over the place where Cruachan’s Cave led to the Otherworld. Spray exploded from the sea above the cave and waves clashed interminably to mark its horrid unseen mouth. No fisherman would go near that maelstrom, for any boat that did get blown into its churning horror was surely lost. It would sink and its crew would be sucked down to become shadows in the Otherworld.
The sun shone on the day I went to the Isle. I carried Hywelbane, but no other war gear since no man-made shield or breastplate would protect me from the spirits and serpents of the Isle. For supplies I carried a skin of fresh water and a pouch of oatcakes, while for my talismans against the Isle’s demons I wore Ceinwyn’s brooch and a sprig of garlic pinned to my green cloak.
I passed the hall where the death feasts were held. The road beyond the hall was edged with skulls, human and animal, warnings to the unwary that they approached the Kingdom of Dead Souls. To my left now was the sea, and to my right a brackish, dark marsh where no birds sang. Beyond the marsh was a great shingle bank that curved away from the coast to become the causeway that joined the Isle to the mainland. To approach the Isle by the shingle bank meant a detour of many miles, so most traffic used the skull-edged road that led to a decaying timber quay where a ferry crossed over to the beach. A sprawl of wattle guards’ houses stood close to the quay. More guards patrolled the shingle bank.
The guards on the quay were old men or else wounded veterans who lived with their families in the huts. The men watched me approach, then barred my path with rusty spears.
‘My name is Lord Derfel,’ I said, ‘and I demand passage.’
The guard commander, a shabby man in an ancient iron breastplate and a mildewed leather helmet, bowed to me. ‘I am not empowered to stop you passing, Lord Derfel,’ he said, ‘but I cannot let you return.’ His men, astonished that anyone would voluntarily travel to the Isle, gaped at me.
‘Then I shall pass,’ I said, and the spearmen moved aside as the guard commander shouted at them to man the small ferryboat. ‘Do many ask to pass this way?’ I asked the commander.
‘A few,’ he said. ‘Some are tired of living; some think they can rule an isle of mad people. Few have ever lived long enough to beg me to let them out again.’
‘Did you let them out?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said curtly. He watched as oars were brought from one of the huts, then he frowned at me. ‘Are you sure, Lord?’ he asked.
‘I’m sure.’
He was curious, but dared not ask my business. Instead he helped me down the slippery steps of the quay and handed me into the pitch-blackened boat. ‘The rowers will let you through the first gate,’ he told me, then pointed further along the causeway that lay at the far side of the narrow channel. ‘After that you’ll come to a second wall, then a third at the causeway’s end. There are no gates in those walls, just steps across. You’ll likely meet no dead souls between the walls, but after that? The Gods only know. Do you truly want to go?’
‘Have you never been curious?’ I asked him.
‘We’re permitted to carry food and dead souls as far as the third wall and I’ve no wish to go farther,’ he said grimly. ‘I’ll reach the bridge of swords to the Otherworld in my own time, Lord.’ He jerked his chin towards the causeway. ‘Cruachan’s Cave lies beyond the Isle, Lord, and only fools and desperate men seek death before their time.’
‘I have reasons,’ I said, ‘and I shall see you again in this world of the living.’
‘Not if you cross the water, Lord.’
I stared at the isle’s green and white slope that loomed above the causeway’s walls. ‘I was in a death-pit once,’ I told the guard commander, ‘and I crawled from there as I shall crawl from here.’ I fished in my pouch and found a coin to give him. ‘We shall discuss my leaving when the time comes.’
‘You’re a dead man, Lord,’ he warned me one last time, ‘the very moment you cross that channel.’
‘Death doesn’t know how to take me,’ I said with foolish bravado, then ordered the oarsmen to row me across the swirling channel. It took only a few strokes, then the boat grounded on a bank of shelving mud and we climbed to the archway in the first wall where the two oarsmen lifted the bar, pulled the gates aside and stood back to let me pass. A black threshold marked the divide between this world and the next. Once over that slab of blackened timber I was counted as a dead man. For a second my fears made me hesitate, then I stepped across.
The gates crashed shut behind me. I shivered.
I turned to examine the inner face of the main wall. It was ten feet high, a barrier of smooth stone laid as clean as any Roman work and so well made that not a single handhold showed on its white face. A ghost-fence of skulls topped the wall to keep the dead souls from the world of the living.
I said prayers to the Gods. I said one to Bel, my special protector, and another to Manawydan, the Sea God who had saved Nimue in the past, and then I walked on down the causeway to where the second wall barred the road. This wall was a crude bank of sea-smoothed stones that were, like the first wall, topped with a line of human skulls. I went down the steps on the wall’s farther side. To my right, the west, the great waves crashed against the shingle, while to my left the shallow bay lay calm under the sun. A few fishing boats worked the bay, but all were staying well clear of the Isle. Ahead of me was the third wall. I could see no man or woman waiting there. Gulls soared above me, their cries forlorn in the west wind. The causeway’s sides were edged with tidelines of dark sea wrack.
I was frightened. In the years since Arthur had returned to Britain I had faced countless shield–walls and unnumbered men in battle, yet at none of those fights, not even in burning Benoic, had I felt a fear like the cold that gripped my heart now. I stopped and turned to stare at Dumnonia’s soft green hills and the small fishing village in the eastern bay. Go back now, I thought, go back! Nimue had been here one whole year and I doubted if many souls survived that long in the Isle of the Dead unless they were both savage and powerful. And even if I found her, she would be mad. She could not leave here. This was her kingdom, death’s dominion. Go back, I urged myself, go back, but then the scar on my left palm pulsed and I told myself that Nimue lived.
A cackling howl startled me. I turned to see a black, ragged figure caper on the third wall’s summit, then the figure disappeared down the wall’s farther side and I prayed to the Gods to give me strength. Nimue had always known she would suffer the Three Wounds, and the scar on my left hand was her surety that I would help her survive the ordeals. I walked on.
I climbed the third wall, which was another bank of smooth grey stones, and saw a flight of crude steps leading down to the Isle. At the foot of the steps lay some empty baskets; evidently the means whereby the living delivered bread and salted meat to their dead relatives. The ragged figure had vanished, leaving only the towering hill above me and a tangle of brambles either side of a stony road that led to the Isle’s western flank, where
I could just see a group of ruined buildings at the base of the great hill. The Isle was a huge place. It would take a man two hours to walk from the third wall to where the sea seethed at the Isle’s southern tip, and as much time again to climb up over the spine of the great rock to cross from the Isle’s western to its eastern coast.
I followed the road. Wind rustled the sea grass beyond the brambles. A bird screamed at me then soared on outspread white wings into the sunny sky. The road turned so that I was walking directly towards the ancient town. It was a Roman town, but no Glevum or Durnovaria, merely a squalid huddle of low stone buildings where once the quarry slaves had lived. The buildings’ roofs were crude thatches made from driftwood and dry seaweed, poor shelters even for the dead. Fear of what lay in the town made me falter, then a sudden voice shouted in warning and a stone sailed out of the scrub up the slope to my left and clattered on the road beside me. The warning provoked a swarm of ragged creatures to scuttle out of the huts to see who approached their settlement. The swarm was composed of men and women, mostly in rags, but some wore their rags with an air of grandeur and walked towards me as though they were the greatest monarchs on earth. Their hair was crowned with wreaths of seaweed. A few of the men carried spears and nearly all the people clutched stones. Some of them were naked. There were children among them; small, feral and dangerous children. Some of the adults shook uncontrollably, others twitched, and all watched me with bright, hungry eyes.
‘A sword!’ A huge man spoke. ‘I’ll have the sword! A sword!’ He shuffled towards me and his followers advanced behind on bare feet. A woman hurled a stone, and suddenly they were all screaming with delight because they had a new soul to plunder.
I drew Hywelbane, but not one man, woman or child was checked by the sight of her long blade. Then I fled. There could be no disgrace in a warrior fleeing the dead. I ran back up the road and a clatter of stones landed at my heels, then a dog leaped to bite at my green cloak. I beat the brute off with the sword, then reached the road’s turning where I plunged to my right, pushing through the brambles and scrub to reach the hillside. A thing reared in front of me, a naked thing with a man’s face and a brute’s body of hair and dirt. One of the thing’s eyes was a running sore, its mouth was a pit of rotting gums and it lunged at me with hands made into claws by hook-like nails. Hywelbane sliced bright. I was screaming with terror, certain that I faced one of the Isle’s demons, but my instincts were still as sharp as my blade that cut through the brute’s hairy arm and slashed into his skull. I leaped over him and climbed the hill, aware that a horde of famished souls was clambering behind me. A stone struck my back, another hit the rock beside me, but I was scrambling fast up the pillars and platforms of quarried rock until I found a narrow path that twisted like the paths of Ynys Trebes around the hill’s raw flank.