Excalibur

by Bernard Cornwell

  Nimue screamed at us. She wept and raved, she spat and cursed, she promised us death by air, by fire, by land and by sea. Merlin ignored her, but Nimue was never ready to accept half measures and that night she became Arthur’s enemy. That night she began to work on the curses that would give her revenge on the men who stopped the Gods coming to Mai Dun. She called us the ravagers of Britain and she promised us horror.

  We stayed on the hill all night. The Gods did not come, and the fires burned so fiercely that it was not till the following afternoon that Arthur could retrieve Excalibur. Mardoc was given back to his mother, though I later heard he died that winter of a fever.

  Merlin and Nimue took the other Treasures away. An ox-cart carried the Cauldron with its ghastly contents. Nimue led the way and Merlin, like an old obedient man, followed her. They took Anbarr, Gawain’s uncut, unbroken black horse, and they took the great banner of Britain, and where they went none of us knew, but we guessed it would be a wild place to the west where Nimue’s curses could be honed through the storms of winter.

  Before the Saxons came.

  It is odd, looking back, to remember how Arthur was hated then. In the summer he had broken the hopes of the Christians and now, in the late autumn, he had destroyed the pagan dreams. As ever, he seemed surprised by his unpopularity. ‘What else was I supposed to do?’ he demanded of me. ‘Let my son die?’

  ‘Cefydd did,’ I said unhelpfully.

  ‘And Cefydd still lost the battle!’ Arthur said sharply. We were riding north. I was going home to Dun Caric, while Arthur, with Cuneglas and Bishop Emrys, was travelling on to meet King Meurig of Gwent. That meeting was the only business that mattered to Arthur. He had never trusted the Gods to save Britain from the Sais, but he reckoned that eight or nine hundred of Gwent’s well-trained spearmen could tip the balance. His head seethed with numbers that winter. Dumnonia, he reckoned, could field six hundred spearmen of whom four hundred had been tested in battle. Cuneglas would bring another four hundred, the Blackshield Irish another hundred and fifty and to those we could add maybe a hundred masterless men who might come from Armorica or the northern kingdoms to seek plunder. ‘Say twelve hundred men,’ Arthur would guess, then he would worry the figure up or down according to his mood, but if his mood was optimistic he sometimes dared add eight hundred men from Gwent to give us a total of two thousand men, yet even that, he claimed, might not be enough because the Saxons would probably field an even larger army. Aelle could assemble at least seven hundred spears, and his was the weaker of the two Saxon kingdoms. We estimated Cerdic’s spears at a thousand, and rumours were reaching us that Cerdic was buying spearmen from Clovis, the King of the Franks. Those hired men were being paid in gold, and had been promised more gold when victory yielded them the treasury of Dumnonia. Our spies also reported that the Saxons would wait until after the Feast of Eostre, their spring festival, to give the new boats time to come from across the sea. ‘They’ll have two and a half thousand men,’ Arthur reckoned, and we had only twelve hundred if Meurig would not fight. We could raise the levy, of course, but no levy would stand against properly trained warriors, and our levy of old men and boys would be opposed by the Saxon fyrd.

  ‘So without Gwent’s spearmen,’ I said gloomily, ‘we’re doomed.’

  Arthur had rarely smiled since Guinevere’s treachery, but he smiled now. ‘Doomed? Who says that?’

  ‘You do, Lord. The numbers do.’

  ‘You’ve never fought and won when you’ve been outnumbered?’

  ‘Yes, Lord, I have.’

  ‘So why can’t we win again?’

  ‘Only a fool seeks a battle against a stronger enemy, Lord,’ I said.

  ‘Only a fool seeks a battle,’ he said vigorously. ‘I don’t want to fight in the spring. It’s the Saxons who want to fight, and we have no choice in the matter. Believe me, Derfel, I don’t wish to be outnumbered, and whatever I can do to persuade Meurig to fight, I will do, but if Gwent won’t march then we shall have to beat the Saxons by ourselves. And we can beat them! Believe that, Derfel!’

  ‘I believed in the Treasures, Lord.’

  He gave a derisory bark of laughter. ‘This is the Treasure I believe in,’ he said, patting Excalibur’s hilt. ‘Believe in victory, Derfel! If we march against the Saxons like beaten men then they’ll give our bones to the wolves. But if we march like winners we’ll hear them howl.’

  It was a fine bravado, but it was hard to believe in victory. Dumnonia was shrouded with gloom. We had lost our Gods, and folk said it was Arthur who had driven them away. He was not just the enemy of the Christian God, now he was the enemy of all the Gods and men said that the Saxons were his punishment. Even the weather presaged disaster for, on the morning after I parted from Arthur, it began to rain and it seemed as though that rain would never stop. Day after day brought low grey clouds, a chill wind, and insistent driving rain. Everything was wet. Our clothes, our bedding, our firewood, the floor-rushes, the very walls of our houses seemed greasy with damp. Spears rusted in their racks, stored grain sprouted or grew mouldy, and still the rain drove relentlessly from the west. Ceinwyn and I did our best to seal Dun Caric’s hall. Her brother had brought her a gift of wolf pelts from Powys and we used them to line the timber walls, but the very air beneath the roof beams seemed sodden. Fires burned sullen to grudge us a spitting and smoky warmth that reddened our eyes. Both our daughters were cross-grained that early winter. Morwenna, the eldest, who was usually the most placid and contented of children, became shrewish and so insistently selfish that Ceinwyn took a belt to her. ‘She misses Gwydre,’ Ceinwyn told me afterwards. Arthur had decreed that Gwydre would not leave his side, and so the boy had gone with his father to meet King Meurig. ‘They should marry next year,’ Ceinwyn added. ‘That will cure her.’

  ‘If Arthur will let Gwydre marry her,’ I responded gloomily. ‘He has no great love for us these days.’ I had wanted to accompany Arthur into Gwent, but he had peremptorily refused me. There had been a time when I had thought myself his closest friend, but now he growled at me rather than welcomed me. ‘He thinks I risked Gwydre’s life,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ Ceinwyn disagreed. ‘He’s been distant with you ever since the night when he discovered Guinevere.’

  ‘Why would that change things?’

  ‘Because you were with him, my dear,’ Ceinwyn said patiently, ‘and with you he cannot pretend that nothing has changed. You were a witness to his shame. He sees you and he remembers her. He’s also jealous.’

  ‘Jealous?’

  She smiled. ‘He thinks you are happy. He thinks now that if he had married me then he too would be happy.’

  ‘He probably would,’ I said.

  ‘He even suggested it,’ Ceinwyn said carelessly.

  ‘He did what?’ I erupted.

  She soothed me. ‘It wasn’t serious, Derfel. The poor man needs reassurance. He thinks that because one woman rejected him all women might, and so he asked me.’

  I touched Hywelbane’s hilt. ‘You never told me.’

  ‘Why should I? There was nothing to tell. He asked a very clumsy question and I told him I was sworn to the Gods to be with you. I told him very gently, and afterwards he was very ashamed. I also promised him that I would not tell you, and I’ve now broken that promise which means I shall be punished by the Gods.’ She shrugged as if to suggest that the punishment would be deserved and thus accepted. ‘He needs a wife,’ she added wryly.

  ‘Or a woman.’

  ‘No,’ Ceinwyn said. ‘He isn’t a casual man. He can’t lie with a woman and walk away afterwards. He confuses desire with love. When Arthur gives his soul he gives everything, and he cannot give just a little bit of himself.’

  I was still angry. ‘What did he think I would do while he married you?’

  ‘He thought you would rule Dumnonia as Mordred’s guardian,’ Ceinwyn said. ‘He had this odd idea that I would go with him to Broceliande and there we would live like children under the sun, and you wo
uld stay here and defeat the Saxons.’ She laughed.

  ‘When did he ask?’

  ‘The day he ordered you to go and see Aelle. I think he thought I’d run away with him while you were gone.’

  ‘Or he hoped Aelle would kill me,’ I said resentfully, remembering the Saxon promise to slaughter any emissary.

  ‘He was very ashamed afterwards,’ Ceinwyn assured me earnestly. ‘And you’re not to tell him I told you.’ She made me promise that, and I kept the promise. ‘It really wasn’t important,’ she added, ending the conversation. ‘He’d have been truly shocked if I’d have said yes. He asked, Derfel, because he is in pain and men in pain behave desperately. What he really wants is to run away with Guinevere, but he can’t, because his pride won’t let him and he knows we all need him to defeat the Saxons.’

  We needed Meurig’s spearmen to do that, but we heard no news of Arthur’s negotiations with Gwent. Weeks passed and still no certain news came from the north. A travelling priest from Gwent told us that Arthur, Meurig, Cuneglas and Emrys had talked for a week in Burrium, Gwent’s capital, but the priest knew nothing of what had been decided. The priest was a small, dark man with a squint and a wispy beard that he moulded with beeswax into the shape of a cross. He had come to Dun Caric because there was no church in the small village and he wanted to establish one. Like many such itinerant priests he had a band of women; three drab creatures who clustered protectively about him. I first heard of his arrival when he began to preach outside the smithy beside the stream and I sent Issa and a pair of spearmen to stop his nonsense and bring him up to the hall. We fed him a gruel of sprouted barley grains that he ate greedily, spooning the hot mixture into his mouth and then hissing and spluttering because the food burned his tongue. Scraps of gruel lodged on his odd-shaped beard. His women refused to eat until he had finished.

  ‘All I know, Lord,’ he answered our impatient questions, ‘is that Arthur has now travelled west.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To Demetia, Lord. To meet Oengus mac Airem.’

  ‘Why?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Lord.’

  ‘Does King Meurig make preparations for war?’ I asked.

  ‘He is prepared to defend his territory, Lord.’

  ‘And to defend Dumnonia?’

  ‘Only if Dumnonia recognizes the one God, the true God,’ the priest said, crossing himself with the wooden spoon and splattering his dirty gown with scraps of the barley gruel. ‘Our King is fervent for the cross and his spears won’t be offered to pagans.’ He looked up at the ox-skull that was nailed onto one of our high beams and made the sign of the cross again.

  ‘If the Saxons take Dumnonia,’ I said, ‘then Gwent won’t be far behind.’

  ‘Christ will protect Gwent,’ the priest insisted. He gave the bowl to one of his women who scooped up his scant leavings with a dirty finger. ‘Christ will protect you, Lord,’ the priest continued, ‘if you humble yourself before Him. If you renounce your Gods and are baptized then you will have victory in the new year.’

  ‘Then why was Lancelot not victorious last summer?’ Ceinwyn asked.

  The priest looked at her with his good eye while the other wandered off into the shadows. ‘King Lancelot, Lady, was not the Chosen One. King Meurig is. It says in our scriptures that one man will be chosen and it seems King Lancelot was not that man.’

  ‘Chosen to do what?’ Ceinwyn asked.

  The priest stared at her; she was still such a beautiful woman, so golden and calm, the star of Powys. ‘Chosen, Lady,’ he said, ‘to unite all the peoples of Britain under the living God. Saxon and Briton, Gwentian and Dumnonian, Irish and Pict, all worshipping the one true God and all living in peace and love.’

  ‘And what if we decide not to follow King Meurig?’ Ceinwyn asked.

  ‘Then our God will destroy you.’

  ‘And that,’ I asked, ‘is the message you have come here to preach?’

  ‘I can do no other, Lord. I am commanded.’

  ‘By Meurig?’

  ‘By God.’

  ‘But I am the lord of the land both sides of the stream,’ I said, ‘and of all the land southwards to Caer Cadarn and northwards to Aquae Sulis and you do not preach here without my permission.’

  ‘No man can countermand God’s word, Lord,’ the priest said.

  ‘This can,’ I said, drawing Hywelbane.

  His women hissed. The priest stared at the sword, then spat into the fire. ‘You risk God’s wrath.’

  ‘You risk my wrath,’ I said, ‘and if, at sundown tomorrow, you are still on the land I govern I shall give you as a slave to my slaves. You may sleep with the beasts tonight, but tomorrow you will go.’

  He grudgingly left next day, and as if to punish me the first snow of the winter came with his leaving. That snow was early, promising a bitter season. At first it fell as sleet, but by nightfall it had become a thick snow that had whitened the land by dawn. It grew colder over the next week. Icicles hung inside our roof and now began the long winter struggle for warmth. In the village the folk slept with their beasts, while we fought the bitter air with great fires that made the icicles drip from the thatch. We put our winter cattle into the beast sheds, and killed the others, packing their meat in salt as Merlin had stored Gawain’s blood-drained body. For two days the village echoed with the distraught bellowing of oxen being dragged to the axe. The snow was spattered red and the air stank of blood, salt and dung. Inside the hall the fires roared, but they gave us small warmth. We woke cold, we shivered inside our furs and we waited in vain for a thaw. The stream froze so that we had to chip our way through the ice to draw each day’s water.

  We still trained our young spearmen. We marched them through the snow, hardening their muscles to fight the Saxon. On the days when the snow fell hard and the wind whirled the flakes thick about the snow-crusted gables of the village’s small houses, I had the men make their shields out of willow boards that were covered with leather. I was making a warband, but as I watched them work I feared for them, wondering how many would live to see the summer sun.

  A message came from Arthur just before the solstice. At Dun Caric we were busy preparing the great feast that would last all through the week of the sun’s death when Bishop Emrys arrived. He rode a horse with hoofs swathed in leather and was escorted by six of Arthur’s spearmen. The Bishop told us he had stayed in Gwent, arguing with Meurig, while Arthur had gone on to Demetia. ‘King Meurig has not utterly refused to help us,’ the Bishop told us, shivering beside the fire where he had made a space for himself by pushing two of our dogs aside. He held his plump, red-chapped hands towards the flames. ‘But his conditions for that help are, I fear, unacceptable.’ He sneezed. ‘Dear Lady, you are most kind,’ he said to Ceinwyn who had brought him a horn of warmed mead.

  ‘What conditions?’ I asked.

  Emrys shook his head sadly. ‘He wants Dumnonia’s throne, Lord.’

  ‘He wants what?’ I exploded.

  Emrys held up a plump, chapped hand to still my anger. ‘He says that Mordred is unfit to rule, that Arthur is unwilling to rule, and that Dumnonia needs a Christian king. He offers himself.’

  ‘Bastard,’ I said. ‘The treacherous, lily-livered little bastard.’

  ‘Arthur can’t accept, of course,’ Emrys said, ‘his oath to Uther ensures that.’ He sipped the mead and sighed appreciatively. ‘So good to be warm again.’

  ‘So unless we give Meurig the kingdom,’ I said angrily, ‘he won’t help us?’

  ‘So he says. He insists God will protect Gwent and that, unless we acclaim him king, we must defend Dumnonia by ourselves.’

  I walked to the hall door, pulled aside the leather curtain and stared at the snow that was heaped high on the points of our wooden palisade. ‘Did you talk to his father?’ I asked Emrys.

  ‘I did see Tewdric,’ the Bishop said. ‘I went with Agricola, who sends you his best wishes.’

  Agricola had been King Tewdric’s warlord, a g
reat warrior who fought in Roman armour and with a chill ferocity. But Agricola was an old man now, and Tewdric, his master, had given up the throne and shaved his head into a priest’s tonsure, thus yielding the power to his son. ‘Is Agricola well?’ I asked Emrys.

  ‘Old, but vigorous. He agrees with us, of course, but...’ Emrys shrugged. ‘When Tewdric abdicated his throne, he gave up his power. He says he cannot change his son’s mind.’

  ‘Will not,’ I grumbled, going back to the fire.

  ‘Probably will not,’ Emrys agreed. He sighed. ‘I like Tewdric, but for now he is busy with other problems.’

  ‘What problems?’ I demanded too vehemently.

  ‘He would like to know,’ Emrys answered diffidently, ‘whether in heaven we will eat like mortals, or whether we shall be spared the need for earthly nourishment. There is a belief, you must understand, that angels do not eat at all, that indeed they are spared all gross and worldly appetites, and the old King is trying to replicate that manner of life. He eats very little, indeed he boasted to me that he once managed three whole weeks without defecating and felt a great deal more holy afterwards.’ Ceinwyn smiled, but said nothing, while I just stared at the Bishop with disbelief. Emrys finished the mead. ‘Tewdric claims,’ he added dubiously, ‘that he will starve himself into a state of grace. I confess I am not convinced, but he does seem a most pious man. We should all be as blessed.’

  ‘What does Agricola say?’ I asked.

  ‘He boasts of how frequently he defecates. Forgive me, Lady.’

  ‘It must have been a joyous reunion for the two of them,’ Ceinwyn said drily.

  ‘It was not immediately useful,’ Emrys admitted. ‘I had hoped to persuade Tewdric to change his son’s mind, but alas,’ he shrugged, ‘all we can do now is pray.’