Excalibur

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘And keep our spears sharp,’ I said wanly.

  ‘That, too,’ the Bishop agreed. He sneezed again and made the sign of the cross to nullify the ill-luck of the sneeze.

  ‘Will Meurig let Powys’s spearmen cross his land?’ I asked.

  ‘Cuneglas told him that if he refused permission then he would cross anyway.’

  I groaned. The last thing we needed was for one British kingdom to fight another. For years such warfare had weakened Britain and had allowed the Saxons to take valley after valley and town after town, though of late it had been the Saxons who fought each other, and we who had taken advantage of their enmity to inflict defeats on them; but Cerdic and Aelle had learned the lesson that Arthur had beaten into the Britons, that victory came with unity. Now it was the Saxons who were united and the British who were divided.

  ‘I think Meurig will let Cuneglas cross,’ Emrys said, ‘for he does not want war with anyone. He just wants peace.’

  ‘We all want peace,’ I said, ‘but if Dumnonia falls then Gwent will be the next country to feel the Saxon blades.’

  ‘Meurig insists not,’ the Bishop said, ‘and he is offering sanctuary to any Dumnonian Christian who wishes to avoid the war.’

  That was bad news, for it meant that anyone who had no stomach to face Aelle and Cerdic need only claim the Christian faith to be given refuge in Meurig’s kingdom. ‘Does he really believe his God will protect him?’ I asked Emrys.

  ‘He must, Lord, for what other use is God? But God, of course, may have other ideas. It is so very hard to read His mind.’ The Bishop was now warm enough to risk shedding the big cloak of bear fur from his shoulders. Beneath it he wore a sheepskin jerkin. He put his hand inside the jerkin and I assumed he was scratching for a louse, but instead he brought out a folded parchment that was tied with a ribbon and sealed with a melted drop of wax. ‘Arthur sent this to me from Demetia,’ he said, offering me the parchment, ‘and asked that you should deliver it to the Princess Guinevere.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, taking the parchment. I confess I was tempted to break the seal and read the document, but resisted the temptation. ‘Do you know what it says?’ I asked the Bishop.

  ‘Alas, Lord, no,’ Emrys said, though without looking at me, and I suspected the old man had broken the seal and did know the letter’s contents, but was unwilling to admit that small sin. ‘I’m sure it is nothing important,’ the Bishop said, ‘but he particularly asked that she should receive it before the solstice. Before he returns, that is.’

  ‘Why did he go to Demetia?’ Ceinwyn asked.

  ‘To assure himself that the Blackshields will fight this spring, I assume,’ the Bishop said, but I detected an evasion in his voice. I suspected the letter would contain the real reason for Arthur’s visit to Oengus mac Airem, but Emrys could not reveal that without also admitting that he had broken the seal.

  I rode to Ynys Wydryn next day. It was not far, but the journey took most of the morning for in places I had to lead my horse and mule through drifts of snow. The mule was carrying a dozen of the wolf pelts that Cuneglas had brought us and they proved a welcome gift because Guinevere’s timber-walled prison room was full of cracks through which the wind hissed cold. I discovered her crouched beside a fire that burned in the centre of the room. She straightened when I was announced, then dismissed her two attendants to the kitchens. ‘I am tempted,’ she said, ‘to become a kitchenmaid myself. The kitchen is at least warm, but sadly full of canting Christians. They can’t break an egg without praising their wretched God.’ She shivered and drew her cloak tight about her slender shoulders. ‘The Romans,’ she said, ‘knew how to keep warm, but we seem to have lost that skill.’

  ‘Ceinwyn sent you these, Lady,’ I said, dropping the skins on the floor.

  ‘You will thank her for me,’ Guinevere said and then, despite the cold, she went and pushed open the shutters of a window so that daylight could come into the room. The fire swayed under the rush of cold air and sparks whirled up to the blackened beams. Guinevere was robed in thick brown wool. She was pale, but that haughty, green-eyed face had lost none of its power or pride. ‘I had hoped to see you sooner,’ she chided me.

  ‘It has been a difficult season, Lady,’ I said, excusing my long absence.

  ‘I want to know, Derfel, what happened at Mai Dun,’ she said.

  ‘I shall tell you, Lady, but first I am ordered to give you this.’I took Arthur’s parchment from the pouch at my belt and gave it to her. She tore the ribbon away, levered up the wax seal with a fingernail and unfolded the document. She read it in the glare of the light reflected from the snow through the window. I saw her face tighten, but she showed no other reaction. She seemed to read the letter twice, then folded it and tossed it onto a wooden chest. ‘So tell me of Mai Dun,’ she said.

  ‘What do you know already?’ I asked.

  ‘I know what Morgan chooses to tell me, and what that bitch chooses is a version of her wretched God’s truth.’ She spoke loudly enough to be overheard by anyone eavesdropping on our conversation.

  ‘I doubt that Morgan’s God was disappointed by what happened,’ I said, then told her the full story of that Samain Eve. She stayed silent when I had finished, just staring out of the window at the snow-covered compound where a dozen hardy pilgrims knelt before the holy thorn. I fed the fire from the pile of logs beside the wall.

  ‘So Nimue took Gwydre to the summit?’ Guinevere asked.

  ‘She sent Blackshields to fetch him. To kidnap him, in truth. It wasn’t difficult. The town was full of strangers and all kinds of spearmen were wandering in and out of the palace.’ I paused. ‘I doubt he was ever in real danger, though.’

  ‘Of course he was!’ she snapped.

  Her vehemence took me aback. ‘It was the other child who was to be killed,’ I protested, ‘Mordred’s son. He was stripped, ready for the knife, but not Gwydre.’

  ‘And when that other child’s death had accomplished nothing, what would have happened then?’ Guinevere asked. ‘You think Merlin wouldn’t have hung Gwydre by his heels?’

  ‘Merlin would not do that to Arthur’s son,’ I said, though I confess there was no conviction in my voice.

  ‘But Nimue would,’ Guinevere said, ‘Nimue would slaughter every child in Britain to bring the Gods back, and Merlin would have been tempted. To get so close,’ she held a finger and thumb a coin’s breadth apart, ‘and with only Gwydre’s life between Merlin and the return of the Gods? Oh, I think he would have been tempted.’ She walked to the fire and opened her robe to let the warmth inside its folds. She wore a black gown beneath the robe and had not a single jewel in sight. Not even a ring on her fingers. ‘Merlin,’ she said softly, ‘might have felt a pang of guilt for killing Gwydre, but not Nimue. She sees no difference between this world and the Otherworld, so what does it matter to her if a child lives or dies? But the child that matters, Derfel, is the ruler’s son. To gain what is most precious you must give up what is most valuable, and what is valuable in Dumnonia is not some bastard whelp of Mordred’s. Arthur rules here, not Mordred. Nimue wanted Gwydre dead. Merlin knew that, only he hoped that the lesser deaths would suffice. But Nimue doesn’t care. One day, Derfel, she’ll assemble the Treasures again and on that day Gwydre will have his blood drained into the Cauldron.’

  ‘Not while Arthur lives.’

  ‘Not while I live either!’ she proclaimed fiercely, and then, recognizing her helplessness, she shrugged. She turned back to the window and let the brown robe drop. ‘I haven’t been a good mother,’ she said unexpectedly. I did not know what to say, so said nothing. I had never been close to Guinevere, indeed she treated me with the same rough mix of affection and derision that she might have extended to a stupid but willing dog, but now, perhaps because she had no one else with whom to share her thoughts, she offered them to me. ‘I don’t even like being a mother,’ she admitted. ‘These women, now,’ she indicated Morgan’s white-robed women who hurried through the snow between the
shrine’s buildings, ‘they all worship motherhood, but they’re all as dry as husks. They weep for their Mary and tell me that only a mother can know true sadness, but who wants to know that?’ She asked the question fiercely. ‘It’s all such a waste of life!’ She was bitterly angry now. ‘Cows make good mothers and sheep suckle perfectly adequately, so what merit lies in motherhood? Any stupid girl can become a mother! It’s all that most of them are fit for! Motherhood isn’t an achievement, it’s an inevitability!’ I saw she was weeping despite her anger.

  ‘But it was all Arthur ever wanted me to be! A suckling cow!’

  ‘No, Lady,’ I said.

  She turned on me angrily, her eyes bright with tears. ‘You know more than I about this, Derfel?’

  ‘He was proud of you, Lady,’ I said awkwardly. ‘He revelled in your beauty.’

  ‘He could have had a statue made of me if that’s all he wanted! A statue with milk ducts that he could clamp his infants onto!’

  ‘He loved you,’ I protested.

  She stared at me and I thought she was about to erupt into a blistering anger, but instead she smiled wanly. ‘He worshipped me, Derfel,’ she said tiredly, ‘and that is not the same thing as being loved.’ She sat suddenly, collapsing onto a bench beside the wooden chest. ‘And being worshipped, Derfel, is very tiresome. But he seems to have found a new goddess now.’

  ‘He’s done what, Lady?’

  ‘You didn’t know?’ She seemed surprised, then plucked up the letter. ‘Here, read it.’

  I took the parchment from her. It carried no date, just the superscription Moridunum, showing that it had been written from Oengus mac Airem’s capital. The letter was in Arthur’s solid handwriting and was as cold as the snow that lay so thick on the windowsill. ‘You should know, Lady,’ he had written, ‘that I am renouncing you as my wife and taking Argante, daughter of Oengus mac Airem, instead. I do not renounce Gwydre, only you.’ That was all. It was not even signed.

  ‘You really didn’t know?’ Guinevere asked me.

  ‘No, Lady,’ I said. I was far more astonished than Guinevere. I had heard men say that Arthur should take another wife, but he had said nothing to me and I felt offended that he had not trusted me. I felt offended and disappointed. ‘I didn’t know,’ I insisted.

  ‘Someone opened the letter,’ Guinevere said in wry amusement. ‘You can see they left a smudge of dirt on the bottom. Arthur wouldn’t do that.’ She leaned back so that her springing red hair was crushed against the wall. ‘Why is he marrying?’ she asked.

  I shrugged. ‘A man should be married, Lady.’

  ‘Nonsense. You don’t think any the less of Galahad because he’s never married.’

  ‘A man needs…’ I began, then my voice tailed away.

  ‘I know what a man needs,’ Guinevere said with amusement. ‘But why is Arthur marrying now? You think he loves this girl?’

  ‘I hope so, Lady.’

  She smiled. ‘He’s marrying, Derfel, to prove that he doesn’t love me.’

  I believed her, but I dared not agree with her. ‘I’m sure it’s love, Lady,’ I said instead.

  She laughed at that. ‘How old is this Argante?’

  ‘Fifteen?’ I guessed. ‘Maybe only fourteen?’

  She frowned, thinking back. ‘I thought she was meant to marry Mordred?’

  ‘I thought so too,’ I answered, for I remembered Oengus offering her as a bride to our King.

  ‘But why should Oengus marry the child to a limping idiot like Mordred when he can put her into Arthur’s bed?’ Guinevere said. ‘Only fifteen, you think?’

  ‘If that.’

  ‘Is she pretty?’

  ‘I’ve never seen her, Lady, but Oengus says she is.’

  ‘The Ui Liathain do breed pretty girls,’ Guinevere said. ‘Was her sister beautiful?’

  ‘Iseult? Yes, in a way.’

  ‘This child will need to be beautiful,’ Guinevere said in an amused voice. ‘Arthur won’t look at her otherwise. All men have to envy him. That much he does demand of his wives. They must be beautiful and, of course, much better behaved than I was.’ She laughed and looked sideways at me. ‘But even if she’s beautiful and well behaved it won’t work, Derfel.’

  ‘It won’t?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure the child can spit out babies for him if that’s what he wants, but unless she’s clever he’ll get very bored with her.’ She turned to gaze into the fire. ‘Why do you think he wrote to tell me?’

  ‘Because he thinks you should know,’ I said.

  She laughed at that. ‘I should know? Why do I care if he beds some Irish child? I don’t need to know, but he does need to tell me.’ She looked at me again. ‘And he’ll want to know how I reacted, won’t he?’

  ‘Will he?’ I asked in some confusion.

  ‘Of course he will. So tell him, Derfel, that I laughed.’ She stared defiantly at me, then suddenly shrugged. ‘No, don’t. Tell him I wish him all happiness. Tell him whatever you like, but ask one favour of him.’ She paused, and I realized how she hated asking for favours. ‘I do not want to die, Derfel, by being raped by a horde of lice-ridden Saxon warriors. When Cerdic comes next spring, ask Arthur to move my prison to a safer place.’

  ‘I think you’ll be safe here, Lady,’ I said.

  ‘Tell me why you think that?’ she demanded sharply.

  I took a moment to collect my thoughts. ‘When the Saxons come,’ I said, ‘they’ll advance along the Thames valley. Their aim is to reach the Severn Sea and that is their quickest route.’

  Guinevere shook her head. ‘Aelle’s army will come along the Thames, Derfel, but Cerdic will attack in the south and hook up north to join Aelle. He’ll come through here.’

  ‘Arthur says not,’ I insisted. ‘He believes they don’t trust each other, so they’ll want to stay close together to guard against treachery.’

  Guinevere dismissed that with another abrupt shake of her head. ‘Aelle and Cerdic aren’t fools, Derfel. They know they have to trust each other long enough to win. After that they can fall out, but not before. How many men will they bring?’

  ‘We think two thousand, maybe two and a half.’

  She nodded. ‘The first attack will be on the Thames, and that will be large enough to make you think it is their main attack. And once Arthur has gathered his forces to oppose that army, Cerdic will march in the south. He’ll run wild, Derfel, and Arthur will have to send men to oppose him, and when he does, Aelle will attack the rest.’

  ‘Unless Arthur lets Cerdic run wild,’ I said, not believing her forecast for a moment.

  ‘He could do that,’ she agreed, ‘but if he does then Ynys Wydryn will be in Saxon hands and I do not want to be here when that happens. If he won’t release me, then beg him to imprison me in Glevum.’

  I hesitated. I saw no reason not to pass on her request to Arthur, but I wanted to make certain that she was sincere. ‘If Cerdic does come this way, Lady,’ I ventured, ‘he’s liable to bring friends of yours in his army.’

  She gave me a murderous look. She held it for a long time before speaking. ‘I have no friends in Lloegyr,’ she said at last, icily.

  I hesitated, then decided to forge on. ‘I saw Cerdic not two months ago,’ I said, ‘and Lancelot was in his company.’

  I had never mentioned Lancelot’s name to her before and her head jerked as though I had struck her. ‘What are you saying, Derfel?’ she asked softly.

  ‘I am saying, Lady, that Lancelot will come here in the spring. I am suggesting, Lady, that Cerdic will make him lord of this land.’

  She closed her eyes and for a few seconds I was not certain whether she was laughing or crying. Then I saw it was laughter that had made her shudder. ‘You are a fool,’ she said, looking at me again. ‘You’re trying to help me! Do you think I love Lancelot?’

  ‘You wanted him to be King,’ I said.

  ‘What does that have to do with love?’ she asked derisively. ‘I wanted him to be King because he’s a we
ak man and a woman can only rule in this world through such a feeble man. Arthur isn’t weak.’ She took a deep breath. ‘But Lancelot is, and perhaps he will rule here when the Saxons come, but whoever controls Lancelot it will not be me, nor any woman now, but Cerdic, and Cerdic, I hear, is anything but weak.’ She stood, crossed to me and plucked the letter from my hands. She unfolded it, read it a last time, then tossed the parchment into the fire. It blackened, shrivelled, then burst into flame. ‘Go,’ she said, watching the flames, ‘and tell Arthur that I wept at his news. That’s what he wants to hear, so tell him. Tell him I wept.’

  I left her. In the next few days the snow thawed, but the rains came again and the bare black trees dripped onto a land that seemed to be rotting in the misty damp. The solstice neared, though the sun never showed. The world was dying in dark, damp despair. I waited for Arthur’s return, but he did not summon me. He took his new bride to Durnovaria and there he celebrated the solstice. If he cared what Guinevere thought of his new marriage, he did not ask me.

  We gave the feast of the winter solstice in Dun Caric’s hall and there was not a person present who did not suspect it would be our last. We made our offerings to the midwinter sun, but knew that when the sun rose again it would not bring life to the land, but death. It would bring Saxon spears and Saxon axes and Saxon swords. We prayed, we feasted and we feared that we were doomed. And still the rain would not stop.

  PART TWO

  Mynydd Baddon

  ‘WHO?’ IGRAINE DEMANDED as soon as she had read the first sheet of the latest pile of parchments. She has learned some of the Saxon tongue in the last few months and is very proud of herself for that achievement, though in truth it is a barbarous language and much less subtle than the British.

  ‘Who?’ I echoed her question.

  ‘Who was the woman who guided Britain to destruction? It was Nimue, wasn’t it?’

  ‘If you give me time to write the tale, dear Lady, you will find out.’

  ‘I knew you were going to say that. I don’t even know why I asked.’ She sat on the wide ledge of my windowsill with one hand on her swollen belly and with her head cocked to one side as though she were listening. After a while a look of mischievous delight came to her face. ‘The baby’s kicking,’ she said, ‘do you want to feel it?’