Excalibur

by Bernard Cornwell

  I shuddered. ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I was never interested in babies.’

  She made a face at me. ‘You’ll love mine, Derfel.’

  ‘I will?’

  ‘He’s going to be lovely!’

  ‘How do you know,’ I enquired, ‘that it is a boy?’

  ‘Because no girl can kick this hard, that’s why. Look!’ And my Queen smoothed the blue dress tight over her belly and laughed when the smooth dome flickered. ‘Tell me about Argante,’ she said, letting go of the dress.

  ‘Small, dark, thin, pretty.’

  Igraine made a face at the inadequacy of my description. ‘Was she clever?’

  I thought about it. ‘She was sly, so yes, she had a sort of cleverness, but it was never fed by education.’

  My Queen gave that statement a scornful shrug. ‘Is education so important?’

  ‘I think it is, yes. I always regret I never learned Latin.’

  ‘Why?’ Igraine asked.

  ‘Because so much of mankind’s experience is written in that tongue, Lady, and one of the things an education gives us is access to all the things other folks have known, feared, dreamed and achieved. When you are in trouble it helps to discover someone who has been in the same predicament before. It explains things.’

  ‘Like what?’ Igraine demanded.

  I shrugged. ‘I remember something Guinevere once said to me. I didn’t know what it meant, because it was in Latin, but she translated it, and it explained Arthur exactly. I’ve never forgotten it either.’

  ‘Well? Go on.’

  ‘Odi at amo,’ I quoted the unfamiliar words slowly, ‘excrucior.’

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘I hate and I love, it hurts. A poet wrote the line, I forget which poet, but Guinevere had read the poem and one day, when we were talking about Arthur, she quoted the line. She understood him exactly, you see.’

  ‘Did Argante understand him?’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘Could she read?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I don’t remember. Probably not.’

  ‘What did she look like?’

  ‘She had very pale skin,’ I said, ‘because she refused to go into the sun. She liked the night, Argante did. And she had very black hair, as shiny as a raven’s feathers.’

  ‘You say she was small and thin?’ Igraine asked.

  ‘Very thin, and quite short,’ I said, ‘but the thing I remember most about Argante is that she very rarely smiled. She watched everything and missed nothing, and there was always a calculating look on her face. People mistook that look for cleverness, but it wasn’t cleverness at all. She was merely the youngest of seven or eight daughters and so she was always worried that she would be left out. She was looking for her share all the time, and all the time she believed she was not receiving it.’

  Igraine grimaced. ‘You make her sound horrid!’

  ‘She was greedy, bitter and very young,’ I said, ‘but she was also beautiful. She had a delicacy that was very touching.’ I paused and sighed. ‘Poor Arthur. He did pick his women very badly. Except for Ailleann, of course, but then he didn’t pick her. She was given to him as a slave.’

  ‘What happened to Ailleann?’

  ‘She died in the Saxon War.’

  ‘Killed?’ Igraine shuddered.

  ‘Of the plague,’ I said. ‘It was a very normal death.’

  Christ.

  That name does look odd on the page, but I shall leave it there. Just as Igraine and I were talking about Ailleann, Bishop Sansum came into the room. The saint cannot read, and because he would utterly disapprove of my writing this story of Arthur, Igraine and I pretend that I am making a gospel in the Saxon tongue. I say he cannot read, but Sansum does have the ability to recognize some few words and Christ is one of them. Which is why I wrote it. He saw it, too, and grunted suspiciously. He looks very old these days. Almost all his hair has gone, though he still has two white tufts like the ears of Lughtigern, the mouse lord. He has pain when he passes urine, but he will not submit his body to the wise-women for healing, for he claims they are all pagans. God, the saint claims, will cure him, though at times, God forgive me, I pray that the saint might be dying for then this small monastery would have a new bishop. ‘My Lady is well?’ he asked Igraine after squinting down at this parchment.

  ‘Thank you, Bishop, I am.’

  Sansum poked about the room, looking for something wrong, though what he expected to find I cannot tell. The room is very simple; a cot, a writing table, a stool and a fire. He would have liked to criticize me for burning a fire, but today is a very mild winter’s day and I am saving what small fuel the saint permits me to have. He flicked at a scrap of dust, decided not to comment on it and so peered at Igraine instead. ‘Your time must be very near, Lady?’

  ‘Less than two moons, they say, Bishop,’ Igraine said, and made the sign of the cross against her blue dress.

  ‘You will know, of course, that our prayers will echo throughout heaven on your Ladyship’s behalf,’ Sansum said, without meaning a word of it.

  ‘Pray, too,’ Igraine said, ‘that the Saxons are not close.’

  ‘Are they?’ Sansum asked in alarm.

  ‘My husband hears they are readying to attack Ratae.’

  ‘Ratae is far away,’ the Bishop said dismissively.

  ‘A day and a half?’ Igraine said, ‘and if Ratae falls, what fortress lies between us and the Saxons?’

  ‘God will protect us,’ the Bishop said, unconsciously echoing the long-dead belief of the pious King Meurig of Gwent, ‘as God will protect your Ladyship at the hour of your trial.’ He stayed a few more minutes, but had no real business with either of us. The saint is bored these days. He lacks mischief to foment. Brother Maelgwyn, who was the strongest of us and who carried much of the monastery’s physical labour, died a few weeks ago and, with his passing, the Bishop lost one of his favourite targets for contempt. He finds little pleasure in tormenting me for I endure his spite patiently, and besides, I am protected by Igraine and her husband.

  At last Sansum went and Igraine made a face at his retreating back. ‘Tell me, Derfel,’ she said when the saint was out of earshot, ‘what should I do for the birth?’

  ‘Why on earth do you ask me?’ I said in amazement. ‘I know nothing about childbirth, thank God! I’ve never even seen a child born, and I don’t want to.’

  ‘But you know about the old things,’ she said urgently, ‘that’s what I mean.’

  ‘The women in your caer will know much more than I do,’ I said, ‘but whenever Ceinwyn gave birth we always made sure there was iron in the bed, women’s urine on the doorstep, mugwort on the fire, and, of course, we had a virgin girl ready to lift the newborn child from the birth-straw. Most important of all,’ I went on sternly, ‘there must be no men in the room. Nothing brings so much ill-luck as having a man present at a birth.’ I touched the protruding nail in my writing desk to avert the evil fortune of even mentioning such an unlucky circumstance. We Christians, of course, do not believe that touching iron will affect any fortune, whether evil or good, but the nailhead on my desk is still much polished by my touching. ‘Is it true about the Saxons?’ I asked.

  Igraine nodded. ‘They’re getting closer, Derfel.’

  I rubbed the nailhead again. ‘Then warn your husband to have sharp spears.’

  ‘He needs no warning,’ she said grimly.

  I wonder if the war will ever end. For as long as I have lived the Britons have fought the Saxons, and though we did win one great victory over them, in the years since that victory we have seen more land lost and, with the land, the stories that were attached to the valleys and hilltops have been lost as well. History is not just a tale of men’s making, but is a thing tied to the land. We call a hill by the name of a hero who died there, or name a river after a princess who fled beside its banks, and when the old names vanish, the stories go with them and the new names carry no reminder of the past
. The Sais take our land and our history. They spread like a contagion, and we no longer have Arthur to protect us. Arthur, scourge of the Sais, Lord of Britain and the man whose love hurt him more than any wound from sword or spear. How I do miss Arthur.

  The winter solstice is when we prayed that the Gods would not abandon the earth to the great darkness. In the bleakest of winters those prayers often seemed like pleas of despair, and that was never more so than in the year before the Saxons attacked when our world was deadened beneath a shell of ice and crusted snow. For those of us who were adepts of Mithras the solstice had a double meaning, for it is also the time of our God’s birth, and after the big solstice feast at Dun Caric I took Issa west to the caves where we held our most solemn ceremonies and there I inducted him into the worship of Mithras. He endured the ordeals successfully and so was welcomed into that band of elite warriors who keep the God’s mysteries. We feasted afterwards. I killed the bull that year, first hamstringing the beast so that it could not move, then swinging the axe in the low cave to sever its spine. The bull, I recall, had a shrivelled liver, which was reckoned a bad omen, but there were no good omens that cold winter.

  Forty men attended the rites, despite the bitter weather. Arthur, though long an initiate, did not arrive, but Sagramor and Culhwch had come from their frontier posts for the ceremonies. At the end of the feasting, when most of the warriors were sleeping off the effects of the mead, we three withdrew to a low tunnel where the smoke was not thick and we could talk privately.

  Both Sagramor and Culhwch were certain that the Saxons would attack directly along the valley of the Thames. ‘What I hear,’ Sagramor told us, ‘is that they’re filling London and Pontes with food and supplies.’ He paused to tear some meat from a bone with his teeth. It had been months since I had seen Sagramor, and I found his company reassuring; the Numidian was the toughest and most fearsome of all Arthur’s warlords, and his prowess was reflected in his narrow, axe-sharp face. He was the most loyal of men, a staunch friend, and a wondrous teller of stories, but above everything he was a natural warrior who could outfox and outfight any enemy. The Saxons were terrified of Sagramor, believing he was a dark demon from their Otherworld. We were happy that they should live in such numbing fear and it was a comfort that, even though outnumbered, we would have his sword and his experienced spearmen on our side.

  ‘Won’t Cerdic attack in the south?’ I asked.

  Culhwch shook his head. ‘He’s not making any show of it. Nothing stirring in Venta.’

  ‘They don’t trust each other,’ Sagramor spoke of Cerdic and Aelle. ‘They daren’t let one another out of their sight. Cerdic fears we’ll buy off Aelle, and Aelle fears that Cerdic will cheat him of the spoils, so they’re going to stick closer than brothers.’

  ‘So what will Arthur do?’ I asked.

  ‘We hoped you’d tell us that,’ Culhwch answered.

  ‘Arthur doesn’t speak to me these days,’ I said, not bothering to hide my bitterness.

  ‘That makes two of us,’ Culhwch growled.

  ‘Three,’ Sagramor said. ‘He comes to see me, he asks questions, he rides on raids and then he goes away. He says nothing.’

  ‘Let’s hope he’s thinking,’ I said.

  ‘Too busy with that new bride, probably,’ Culhwch offered sourly.

  ‘Have you met her?’ I asked.

  ‘An Irish kitten,’ he said dismissively, ‘with claws.’ Culhwch told us he had visited Arthur and his new bride on his way north to this meeting with Mithras. ‘She’s pretty enough,’ he said grudgingly. ‘If you took her slave you’d probably want to make sure she stayed in your own kitchen for a while. Well, I would. You wouldn’t, Derfel.’ Culhwch often teased me about my loyalty to Ceinwyn, though I was not so very unusual in my fidelity. Sagramor had taken a captured Saxon for a wife and, like me, was famously loyal to his woman. ‘What use is a bull that only serves one cow?’ Culhwch now asked, but neither of us responded to his jibe.

  ‘Arthur is frightened,’ Sagramor said instead. He paused, gathering his thoughts. The Numidian spoke the British tongue well, though with a wretched accent, but it was not his natural language, and he often spoke slowly to make certain he was expressing his exact ideas. ‘He has defied the Gods, and not just at Mai Dun, but by taking Mordred’s power. The Christians hate him and now the pagans say he is their enemy. Do you see how lonely that makes him?’

  ‘The trouble with Arthur is that he doesn’t believe in the Gods,’ Culhwch said dismissively.

  ‘He believes in himself,’ Sagramor said, ‘and when Guinevere betrayed him, he took a blow to the heart. He is ashamed. He lost much pride, and he’s a proud man. He thinks we all laugh at him, and so he is distant from us.’

  ‘I don’t laugh at him,’ I protested.

  ‘I do,’ Culhwch said, flinching as he straightened his wounded leg. ‘Stupid bastard. Should have taken his sword belt to Guinevere’s back a few times. That would have taught the bitch a lesson.’

  ‘Now,’ Sagramor went on, blithely ignoring Culhwch’s predictable opinion, ‘he fears defeat. For what is he if he is not a soldier? He likes to think he is a good man, that he rules because he is a natural ruler, but it is the sword that has carried him to power. In his soul he knows that, and if he loses this war then he loses the thing he cares about most; his reputation. He will be remembered as the usurper who was not good enough to hold what he usurped. He is terrified of a second defeat for his reputation.’

  ‘Maybe Argante can heal the first defeat,’ I said.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Sagramor said. ‘Galahad tells me that Arthur didn’t really want to marry her.’

  ‘Then why did he?’ I asked gloomily.

  Sagramor shrugged. ‘To spite Guinevere? To please Oengus? To show us that he doesn’t need Guinevere?’

  ‘To slap bellies with a pretty girl?’ Culhwch suggested.

  ‘If he even does that,’ Sagramor said.

  Culhwch stared at the Numidian in apparent shock. ‘Of course he does,’ Culhwch said.

  Sagramor shook his head. ‘I hear he doesn’t. Only rumour, of course, and rumour is least trustworthy when it comes to the ways of a man and his woman. But I think this Princess is too young for Arthur’s tastes.’

  ‘They’re never too young,’ Culhwch growled. Sagramor just shrugged. He was a far more subtle man than Culhwch and that gave him a much greater insight into Arthur, who liked to appear so straightforward, but whose soul was in truth as complicated as the twisted curves and spooling dragons that decorated Excalibur’s blade.

  We parted in the morning, our spear and sword blades still reddened with the blood of the sacrificed bull. Issa was excited. A few years before he had been a farm boy, but now he was an adept of Mithras and soon, he had told me, he would be a father for Scarach, his wife, was pregnant. Issa, given confidence by his initiation into Mithras, was suddenly sure we could beat the Saxons without Gwent’s help, but I had no such belief. I might not have liked Guinevere, but I had never thought her a fool, and I was worried about her forecast that Cerdic would attack in the south. The alternative made sense, of course; Cerdic and Aelle were reluctant allies and would want to keep a careful eye on each other. An overwhelming attack along the Thames would be the quickest way to reach the Severn Sea and so split the British kingdoms into two parts, and why should the Saxons sacrifice their advantage of numbers by dividing their forces into two smaller armies that Arthur might defeat one after the other? Yet if Arthur expected just one attack, and only guarded against that one attack, the advantages of a southern assault were overwhelming. While Arthur was tangled with one Saxon army in the Thames valley, the other could hook around his right flank and reach the Severn almost unopposed. Issa, though, was not worried by such things. He only imagined himself in the shield wall where, ennobled by Mithras’s acceptance, he would cut down Saxons like a farmer reaping hay.

  The weather stayed cold after the season of the-solstice. Day after day dawned frozen and pale with th
e sun little more than a reddened disc hanging low in the southern clouds. Wolves scavenged deep into the farmlands, hunting for our sheep that we had penned into hurdle folds, and one glorious day we hunted down six of the grey beasts and so secured six new wolf tails for my warband’s helmets. My men had begun to wear such tails on their helmet crests in the deep woods of Armorica where we had fought the Franks and, because we had raided them like scavenging beasts, they had called us wolves and we had taken the insult as a compliment. We were the Wolftails, though our shields, instead of bearing a wolf mask, were painted with a five-pointed star as a tribute to Ceinwyn.

  Ceinwyn was still insistent that she would not flee to Powys in the spring. Morwenna and Seren could go, she said, but she would stay. I was angry at that decision. ‘So the girls can lose both mother and father?’ I demanded.

  ‘If that’s what the Gods decree, yes,’ she said placidly, then shrugged. ‘I may be being selfish, but that is what I want.’

  ‘You want to die? That’s selfish?’

  ‘I don’t want to be so far away, Derfel,’ she said. ‘Do you know what it’s like to be in a distant country when your man is fighting? You wait in terror. You fear every messenger. You listen to every rumour. This time I shall stay.’

  ‘To give me something else to worry about?’

  ‘What an arrogant man you are,’ she said calmly. ‘You think I can’t look after myself?’

  ‘That little ring won’t keep you safe from Saxons,’ I said, pointing to the scrap of agate on her finger.

  ‘So I shall keep myself safe. Don’t worry, Derfel, I won’t be under your feet, and I won’t let myself be taken captive.’

  Next day the first lambs were born in a sheepfold hard under Dun Caric’s hill. It was very early for such births, but I took it as a good sign from the Gods. Before Ceinwyn could forbid it, the firstborn of those lambs was sacrificed to ensure that the rest of the lambing season would go well. The little beast’s bloody pelt was nailed to a willow beside the stream and beneath it, next day, a wolfsbane bloomed, its small yellow petals the first flash of colour in the turning year. That day, too, I saw three kingfishers flickering bright by the icy edges of the stream. Life was stirring. In the dawn, after the cockerels had woken us, we could again hear the songs of thrushes, robins, larks, wrens and sparrows.