Excalibur

by Bernard Cornwell

  I carefully propped the Roman bricks on the low stone arches that supported the floor, then pulled the leather-backed tiles into place. I could guess why Mordred had gold, and I did not like the answer. Mordred had been present when Arthur revealed the plans of his campaign against the Saxons, and that, I thought, was why the Saxons had been able to catch us off balance. They had known we would concentrate our forces on the Thames, so all the while they had let us believe that was where the assault would come and Cerdic had slowly and secretly built up his forces in the south. Mordred had betrayed us. I could not be ■certain of that for two golden buttons did not constitute proof, but it made a grim sense. Mordred wanted his power back, and though he would not gain all that power from Cerdic he would certainly get the revenge on Arthur that he craved. ‘How would the Saxons have managed to talk with Mordred?’ I asked Dyrrig.

  ‘Simple, Lord. There are always visitors here,’ Dyrrig said. ‘Merchants, bards, jugglers, girls.’

  ‘We should have slit his throat,’ I said bitterly, pocketing the button.

  ‘Why didn’t you?’ Dyrrig asked.

  ‘Because he’s Uther’s grandson,’ I said, ‘and Arthur would never permit it.’ Arthur had taken an oath to protect Mordred, and that oath bound Arthur for life. Besides, Mordred was our real King, and in him ran the blood of all our Kings back to Beli Mawr himself, and though Mordred was rotten, his blood was sacred and so Arthur kept him alive. ‘Mordred’s task,’ I said to Dyrrig, ‘is to whelp an heir of a proper wife, but once he’s given us a new King he would be well advised to wear an iron collar.’

  ‘No wonder he doesn’t marry,’ Dyrrig said. ‘And what happens if he never does? Suppose there’s no heir?’

  ‘That’s a good question,’ I said, ‘but let’s beat the Saxons before we worry about answering it.’

  I left Dyrrig disguising the old dry well with brush. I could have ridden straight back to Dun Caric for I had looked after the urgent needs of the moment; Issa was on his way to escort Argante to safety, Mordred was safely gone north, but I still had one piece of unfinished business and so I rode north on the Fosse Way that ran beside the great swamps and lakes that edged Ynys Wydryn. Warblers were noisy among the reeds while sickle-winged martins were busy pecking beakfuls of mud to make their new nests beneath our eaves. Cuckoos called from the willows and birches that edged the marshland. The sun shone on Dumnonia, the oaks were in new green leaf and the meadows to my east were bright with cowslips and daisies. I did not ride hard, but let my mare amble until, a few miles north of Lindinis, I turned west onto the land bridge that reached towards Ynys Wydryn. So far I had been serving Arthur’s best interests by ensuring Argante’s safety and by securing Mordred, but now I risked his displeasure. Or maybe I did exactly what he had always wanted me to do.

  I went to the shrine of the Holy Thorn, where I found Morgan preparing to leave. She had heard no definite news, but rumour had done its work and she knew Ynys Wydryn was threatened. I told her what little I knew and after she had heard that scanty news she peered up at me from behind her golden mask. ‘So where is my husband?’ she demanded shrilly.

  ‘I don’t know, Lady,’ I said. So far as I knew Sansum was still a prisoner in Bishop Emrys’s house in Durnovaria.

  ‘You don’t know,’ Morgan snapped at me, ‘and you don’t care!’

  ‘In truth, Lady, I don’t,’ I told her. ‘But I assume he’ll flee north like everyone else.’

  ‘Then tell him we’ve gone to Siluria. To Isca.’ Morgan, naturally, was quite prepared for the emergency. She had been packing the shrine’s treasures in anticipation of the Saxon invasion, and boatmen were ready to carry those treasures and the Christian women across Ynys Wydryn’s lakes to the coast where other boats were waiting to carry them north across the Severn Sea to Siluria. ‘And tell Arthur I’m praying for him,’ Morgan added, ‘though he doesn’t deserve my prayers. And tell him I have his whore safe.’

  ‘No, Lady,’ I said, for that was why I had ridden to Ynys Wydryn. To this day I am not exactly sure why I did not let Guinevere go with Morgan, but I think the Gods guided me. Or else, in the welter of confusion as the Saxons tore our careful preparations to tatters, I wanted to give Guinevere one last gift. We had never been friends, but in my mind I associated her with the good times, and though it was her foolishness that brought on the bad, I had seen how stale Arthur had been ever since Guinevere’s eclipse. Or perhaps I knew that in this terrible time we needed every strong soul we could muster, and there were few souls as tough as that of the Princess Guinevere of Henis-Wyren.

  ‘She comes with me!’ Morgan insisted.

  ‘I have orders from Arthur,’ I insisted to Morgan, and that settled the matter, though in truth her brother’s orders were terrible and vague. If Guinevere is in danger, Arthur had told me, I was to fetch her or maybe kill her, but I had decided to fetch her, and instead of sending her to safety across the Severn I would carry her still closer to the danger.

  ‘It’s rather like watching a herd of cows threatened by wolves,’ Guinevere said when I reached her room. She was standing at the window from where she could see Morgan’s women running to and fro between their buildings and the boats that waited beyond the shrine’s western palisade. ‘What’s happening, Derfel?’

  ‘You were right, Lady. The Saxons are attacking in the south.’ I decided not to tell her that it was Lancelot who led that southern assault.

  ‘Do you think they’ll come here?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I just know that we can’t defend any place except where Arthur is, and he’s at Corinium.’

  ‘In other words,’ she said with a smile, ‘everything is confusion?’ She laughed, sensing an opportunity in that confusion. She was dressed in her usual drab clothes, but the sun shone through the open window to give her splendid red hair a golden aura. ‘So what does Arthur want to do with me?’ she asked.

  Death? No, I decided, he had never really wanted that. What he wanted was what his proud soul would not let him take for itself. ‘I am just ordered to fetch you, Lady,’ I answered instead.

  ‘To go where, Derfel?’

  ‘You can sail across the Severn with Morgan,’ I said, ‘or come with me. I’m taking folk north to Corinium and I dare say from there you can travel on to Glevum. You’ll be safe there.’

  She walked from the window and sat in a chair beside the empty hearth. ‘Folk,’ she said, plucking the word from my sentence. ‘What folk, Derfel?’

  I blushed. ‘Argante. Ceinwyn, of course.r

  Guinevere laughed. ‘I would like to meet Argante. Do you think she’d like to meet me?’

  ‘I doubt it, Lady.’

  ‘I doubt it too. I imagine she’d prefer me to be dead. So, I can travel with you to Corinium, or go to Siluria with the Christian cows? I think I’ve heard enough Christian hymns to last me a lifetime. Besides, the greater adventure lies at Corinium, don’t you think?’

  ‘I fear so, Lady.’

  ‘Fear? Oh, don’t fear, Derfel.’ She laughed with an exhilarating happiness. ‘You all forget how good Arthur is when nothing goes right. It will be a joy to watch him. So when do we leave?’

  ‘Now,’ I said, ‘or as soon as you’re ready.’

  ‘I’m ready,’ she said happily, ‘I’ve been ready to leave this place for a year.’

  ‘Your servants?’

  ‘There are always other servants,’ she said carelessly. ‘Shall we go?’

  I only had the one horse and so, out of politeness, I offered it to her and walked beside her as we left the shrine. I have rarely seen a face as radiant as Guinevere’s face was that day. For months she had been locked inside Ynys Wydryn’s walls, and suddenly she was riding a horse in the open air, between new-leaved birch trees and under a sky unlimited by Morgan’s palisade. We climbed to the land bridge beyond the Tor and once we were on that high bare ground she laughed and gave me a mischievous glance. ‘What’s to stop me riding away, Derfel?’

  ‘
Nothing at all, Lady.’

  She whooped like a girl and kicked back her heels, then kicked again to force the tired mare into a gallop. The wind streamed in her red curls as she galloped free on the grassland. She shouted for the joy of it, curving the horse around me in a great circle. Her skirts blew back, but she did not care, she just kicked the horse again and so rode around and around until the horse was blowing and she was breathless. Only then did she curb the mare and slide out of the saddle. ‘I’m so sore!’ she said happily.

  ‘You ride well, Lady,’ I said.

  ‘I dreamed of riding a horse again. Of hunting again. Of so much.’ She patted her skirts straight, then gave me an amused glance. ‘What exactly did Arthur order you to do with me?’

  I hesitated. ‘He was not specific, Lady.’

  ‘To kill me?’ she asked.

  ‘No, Lady!’ I said, sounding shocked. I was leading the mare by her reins and Guinevere was walking beside me.

  ‘He certainly doesn’t want me in Cerdic’s hands,’ she said tartly, ‘I’d just be an embarrassment! I suspect he flirted with the idea of slitting my throat. Argante must have wanted that. I certainly would if I were her. I was thinking about that as I rode around you just now. Suppose, I thought, that Derfel has orders to kill me? Should I keep riding? Then I decided you probably wouldn’t kill me, even if you did have orders. He’d have sent Culhwch if he wanted me dead.’ She suddenly grunted and bent her knees to imitate Culhwch’s limping walk. ‘Culhwch would cut my throat,’ she said, ‘and wouldn’t think twice about it.’ She laughed, her new high spirits irrepressible. ‘So Arthur wasn’t specific?’

  ‘No, Lady.’

  ‘So truly, Derfel, this is your idea?’ She waved at the countryside.

  ‘Yes, Lady,’ I confessed.

  ‘I hope Arthur thinks you did the right thing,’ she said, ‘otherwise you’ll be in trouble.’

  ‘I’m in trouble enough already, Lady,’ I confessed. ‘The old friendship seems dead.’

  She must have heard the bleakness in my voice, for she suddenly put an arm through mine. ‘Poor Derfel. I suppose he’s ashamed?’

  I was embarrassed. ‘Yes, Lady.’

  ‘I was very bad,’ she said in a rueful voice. ‘Poor Arthur. But do you know what will restore him? And your friendship?’

  ‘I’d like to know, Lady.’

  She took her arm from mine. ‘Grinding the Saxons into offal, Derfel, that’s what will bring Arthur back. Victory! Give Arthur victory and he’ll give us his old soul back.’

  ‘The Saxons, Lady,’ I warned her, ‘are halfway to victory already.’ I told her what I knew: that the Saxons were rampaging free to the east and south, our forces were scattered and that our only hope was to assemble our army before the Saxons reached Corinium, where Arthur’s small warband of two hundred spearmen waited alone. I assumed Sagramor was retreating towards Arthur, Culhwch was coming from the south, and I would go north as soon as Issa returned with Argante. Cuneglas would doubtless march from the north and Oengus mac Airem would hurry from the west the moment they heard the news, but if the Saxons reached Corinium first, then all hope was gone. There was little enough hope even if we did win the race, for without Gwent’s spearmen we would be so outnumbered that only a miracle could save us.

  ‘Nonsense!’ Guinevere said when I had explained the situation. ‘Arthur hasn’t even begun to fight! We’re going to win, Derfel, we’re going to win!’ And with that defiant statement she laughed and, forgetting her precious dignity, danced some steps on the verge of the track. All seemed doom, but Guinevere was suddenly free and full of light and I had never liked her as much as I did at that moment. Suddenly, for the first time since I had seen the beacon fires smoking in the Bel tain dusk, I felt a surge of hope.

  The hope faded quickly enough, for at Dun Caric there was nothing but chaos and mystery. Issa had not returned and the small village beneath the hall was filled with refugees who were fleeing from rumour, though none had actually seen a Saxon. The refugees had brought their cattle, their sheep, their goats and their pigs, and all had converged on Dun Caric because my spearmen offered an illusion of safety. I used my servants and slaves to start new rumours that said Arthur would be withdrawing westwards to the country bordering Kernow, and that I had decided to cull the refugees’ herds and flocks to provide rations for my men and those false rumours were enough to start most of the families walking towards the distant Kernow frontier. They should be safe enough on the great moors and by fleeing westwards their cattle and sheep would not block the roads to Corinium. If I had simply ordered them towards Kernow they would have been suspicious and lingered to make certain that I was not tricking them.

  Issa was not with us by nightfall. I was still not unduly worried, for the road to Durnovaria was long and it was doubtless thronged with refugees. We made a meal in the hall and Pyrlig sang us the song of Uther’s great victory over the Saxons at Caer Idem. When the song ended, and I had tossed Pyrlig a golden coin, I remarked that I had once heard Cynyr of Gwent sing that song, and Pyrlig was impressed. ‘Cynyr was the greatest of all the bards,’ he said wistfully, ‘though some say Amairgin of Gwynedd was better. I wish I’d heard either of them.’

  ‘My brother,’ Ceinwyn remarked, ‘says there is an even greater bard in Powys now. And just a young man, too.’

  ‘Who?’ Pyrlig demanded, scenting an unwelcome rival.

  ‘Taliesin is his name,’ Ceinwyn said.

  ‘Taliesin!’ Guinevere repeated the name, liking it. It meant ‘shining brow’.

  ‘I’ve never heard of him,’ Pyrlig said stiffly.

  ‘When we’ve beaten the Saxons,’ I said, ‘we shall demand a song of victory from this Taliesin. And from you too, Pyrlig,’ I added hastily.

  ‘I once heard Amairgin sing,’ Guinevere said.

  ‘You did, Lady?’ Pyrlig asked, again impressed.

  ‘I was only a child,’ she said, ‘but I remember he could make a hollow roaring sound. It was very frightening. His eyes would go very wide, he swallowed air, then he bellowed like a bull.’

  ‘Ah, the old style,’ Pyrlig said dismissively. ‘These days, Lady, we seek harmony of words rather than mere volume of sound.’

  ‘You should seek both,’ Guinevere said sharply. ‘I’ve no doubt this Taliesin is a master of the old style as well as being skilled at metre, but how can you hold an audience enthralled if all you offer them is clever rhythm? You must make their blood run cold, you must make them cry, you must make them laugh!’

  ‘Any man can make a noise, Lady,’ Pyrlig defended his craft, ‘but it takes a skilled craftsman to imbue words with harmony.’

  ‘And soon the only people who can understand the intricacies of the harmony,’ Guinevere argued, ‘are other skilled craftsmen, and so you become ever more clever in an efifort to impress your fellow poets, but you forget that no one outside the craft has the first notion of what you’re doing. Bard chants to bard while the rest of us wonder what all the noise is about. Your task, Pyrlig, is to keep the people’s stories alive, and to do that you cannot be rarefied.’

  ‘You would not have us be vulgar, Lady!’ Pyrlig said and, in protest, struck the horsehair strings of his harp.

  ‘I would have you be vulgar with the vulgar, and clever with the clever,’ Guinevere said, ‘and both, mark you, at the same time, but if you can only be clever then you deny the people their stories, and if you can only be vulgar then no lord or lady will toss you gold.’

  ‘Except the vulgar lords,’ Ceinwyn put in slyly.

  Guinevere glanced at me and I saw she was about to launch an insult at me, and then she recognized the impulse herself and burst into laughter. ‘If I had gold, Pyrlig,’ she said instead, ‘I would reward you, for you sing beautifully, but alas, I have none.’

  ‘Your praise is reward enough, Lady,’ Pyrlig said.

  Guinevere’s presence had startled my spearmen and all evening I saw small groups of men come to stare at her in wonderment. She ignor
ed their gaze. Ceinwyn had welcomed her without any show of astonishment, and Guinevere had been clever enough to be kind to my daughters so that Morwenna and Seren both now slept on the ground beside her. They, like my spearmen, had been fascinated by the tall, red-haired woman whose reputation was as startling as her looks. And Guinevere was simply happy to be there. We had no tables or chairs in our hall, just the rush floor and woollen carpets, but she sat beside the fire and effortlessly dominated the hall. There was a fierceness in her eyes that made her daunting, her cascade of tangled red hair made her striking and her joy at being free was infectious.

  ‘How long will she stay free?’ Ceinwyn asked me later that night. We had given up our private chamber to Guinevere, and were in the hall with the rest of our people.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘So what do you know?’ Ceinwyn asked.

  ‘We wait for Issa, then we go north.’

  ‘To Corinium?’

  ‘I shall go to Corinium, but I’ll send you and the families to Glevum. You’ll be close enough to the fighting there and if the worst happens, you can go north into Gwent.’

  I began to fret next day as Issa still did not appear. In my mind we were racing the Saxons towards Corinium, and the longer I was delayed, the more likely that race would be lost. If the Saxons could pick us off warband by warband then Dumnonia would fall like a rotted tree, and my warband, which was one of the strongest in the country, was stalled at Dun Caric because Issa and Argante had not appeared.

  At midday the urgency was even greater for it was then that we saw the first distant smears of smoke against the eastern and southern sky. No one commented on the tall, thin plumes, but we all knew that we saw burning thatch. The Saxons were destroying as they came, and they were close enough now for us to see their smoke.

  I sent a horseman south to find Issa while the rest of us walked the two miles across the fields to the Fosse Way, the great Roman road that Issa should have been using. I planned to wait for him, then continue up the Fosse Way to Aquae Sulis which lay some twenty-five miles northwards, and then to Corinium which was another thirty miles further on. Fifty-five miles of road. Three days of long, hard effort.