Enemy of God

by Bernard Cornwell

  It was a great bowl as wide as a man’s outstretched hands and as deep as the blade of a hunting knife. It was made of thick uneven silver, stood on three short golden legs and was decorated with lavish traceries of gold. Three golden hoops were fixed to its rim so that it could be hung above a fire. It was the greatest Treasure of Britain and we ripped it from its grave, shedding stones, and I saw how the gold that decorated it was shaped into warriors and Gods and deer. But we had no time to admire the Cauldron, for Nimue frantically scattered the last stones from its belly and placed it back in the hole before tearing the black furs from Merlin’s body. ‘Help me!’ she screamed, and together we rolled the old man into the pit and down into the belly of the great silver bowl. Nimue tucked his legs inside the golden rim and laid a cloak over him. Only then did Nimue lean back against the boulders. It was freezing, but her face was shining with sweat.

  ‘He’s dead,’ Ceinwyn said in a small, frightened voice.

  ‘No,’ Nimue insisted tiredly, ‘no, he’s not.’

  ‘He was cold!’ Ceinwyn protested. ‘He was cold and there was no breath.’ She clung to me and began weeping softly. ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘He lives,’ Nimue said harshly.

  It had begun to rain again; a small, spitting, wind-hurried rain that slicked the stones and beaded our bloodied spear-blades. Merlin lay shrouded and unmoving in the Cauldron’s pit, my men watched the enemy across the tops of the grey stones, the dark riders ringed us and I wondered what madness had brought us to this miserable place at the dark cold end of Britain.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ Galahad asked.

  ‘We wait,’ Nimue snapped, ‘we just wait.’

  I will never forget the cold of that night. Frost made crystals on the rock and to touch a spear-blade was to leave a scrap of skin frozen to the steel. It was so bitterly cold. The rain turned to snow at dusk, then stopped, and after the snow’s passing the wind dropped and the clouds sailed off to the east to reveal an enormous moon rising full above the sea. It was a moon full of portent; a great swollen silver ball that was hazed by a shimmer of distant cloud above an ocean crawling with black and silver waves. The stars had never seemed so bright. The great shape of Bel’s chariot blazed above us, eternally chasing the constellation we called the trout. The Gods lived among the stars and I sent a prayer winging up through the cold air in the hope that it would reach those far bright fires.

  Some of us dozed, but it was the shallow sleep of weary, cold and frightened men. Our enemies, ringing the knoll with their spears, had made fires. Ponies brought the Bloodshields fuel and the flames burned vast in the night to spew sparks into the clear sky.

  Nothing moved in the Cauldron’s pit where Merlin’s cloaked body was shadowed from the moon by the loom of high rock where we took turns to watch the riders’ shapes against the fires. At times a long spear would fly out of the night and its head would glitter in the moonlight before the weapon clattered harmlessly against the stones.

  ‘So what will you do with the Cauldron now?’ I asked Nimue.

  ‘Nothing till Samain,’ she said dully. She lay crumpled near the heap of discarded bundles that had been thrown into the summit’s hollow, her feet resting on the spoil we had scrabbled so desperately from the pit. ‘Everything has to be right, Derfel. The moon must be full, the weather right and all the thirteen Treasures assembled.’

  ‘Tell me of the Treasures,’ Galahad said from the hollow’s farther side.

  Nimue spat. ‘So you can mock us, Christian?’ she challenged him.

  Galahad smiled. ‘There are thousands of folk, Nimue, who mock you. They say the Gods are dead and that we should put our faith in men. We should follow Arthur, they say, and they believe your search for cauldrons and cloaks and knives and horns is so much nonsense that died with Ynys Mon. How many Kings of Britain would send you men for this search?’ He stirred, trying to find some comfort in this cold night. ‘None, Nimue, none, because they mock you. It’s all too late, they say. The Romans changed everything and sensible men say that your Cauldron is as dead as Ynys Trebes. The Christians say you are doing the devil’s work, but this Christian, dear Nimue, carried his sword to this place and for that, dear lady, you owe me at least civility.’

  Nimue was not used to being reprimanded, except perhaps by Merlin, and she stiffened at Galahad’s mild rebuke, but then at last she relented. She pulled Merlin’s bearskin about her shoulders and hunched forward. ‘The Treasures,’ she said, ‘were left to us by the Gods. It was long ago, when Britain was quite alone in all the world. There were no other lands; just Britain and a wide sea that was covered by a great mist. There were twelve tribes of Britain then, and twelve Kings and twelve feasting halls and just twelve Gods. Those Gods walked as we do on the land and one of them, Bel, even married a human; our Lady here,’ she gestured towards Ceinwyn, who was listening as avidly as any of the spearmen, ‘is descended from that marriage.’

  She paused as a shout sounded from the ring of fires, but the shout presaged no threat and silence fell on the night again as Nimue went on with her tale. ‘But other Gods who were jealous of the twelve who ruled Britain came from the stars and tried to take Britain from the twelve Gods, and in the battles the twelve tribes suffered. One spear stroke from a God could kill a hundred people, and no earthly shield could stop a God’s sword, so the twelve Gods, because they loved Britain, gave the twelve tribes twelve Treasures. Each Treasure was to be kept in a royal hall and the presence of the Treasure would keep the spears of the Gods from falling on the hall or any of its people. They were not grand things. If the twelve Gods had given us splendid things then the other Gods would have seen them, guessed their purpose and stolen them for their own protection. So the twelve gifts were just common things: a sword, a basket, a horn, a chariot, a halter, a knife, a whetstone, a sleeved coat, a cloak, a dish, a throwboard and a warrior ring. Twelve ordinary things, and all the Gods asked of us was that we should cherish the twelve Treasures, to keep them safe and offer them honour, and in return, as well as having the protection of the Treasures, each tribe could use its gift to summon their God. They were allowed one summons a year, only one, but that summons gave the tribes some power in the terrible war of the Gods.’

  She paused and pulled the furs tighter about her thin shoulders. ‘So the tribes had their Treasures,’ she went on, ‘but Bel, because he loved his earthly girl so very much, gave her a thirteenth Treasure. He gave her the Cauldron and he told her that whenever she began to grow old she had only to fill the Cauldron with water, immerse herself, and she would be young again. Thus, in all her beauty, she could walk beside Bel for ever and ever. And the Cauldron, as you saw, is splendid; it is gold and silver, lovely beyond anything man can make. The other tribes saw it and were jealous, and in this way the wars of Britain began. The Gods warred in the air and the twelve tribes warred on earth, and one by one the Treasures were captured, or else they were bartered for spearmen, and in their anger the Gods withdrew their protection. The Cauldron was stolen, Bel’s lover grew old and died, and Bel placed a curse on us. The curse was the existence of other lands and other peoples, but Bel promised us that if one Samain we drew the twelve Treasures of the twelve tribes together again and made the proper rites, and filled the thirteenth Treasure with the water that no man drinks but without which no man can live, then the twelve Gods would come to our aid again.’ She stopped, shrugged and looked at Galahad. ‘There, Christian,’ she said, ‘that is why your sword came here.’

  There was a long silence. The moonlight slid down the rocks, creeping ever nearer to the pit where Merlin lay beneath the thin cover of a cloak.

  ‘And you have all twelve Treasures?’ Ceinwyn asked.

  ‘Most,’ Nimue said evasively. ‘But even without the twelve, the Cauldron has immense power. Vast power. More power than all the other Treasures together.’ She looked belligerently across the pit towards Galahad. ‘And what will you do, Christian, when you see that power?’

  Galahad
smiled. ‘I shall remind you that I carried my sword in your quest,’ he said softly.

  ‘We all did. We are the warriors of the Cauldron,’ Issa said quietly, displaying a streak of poetry I had not suspected in him, and the other spearmen smiled. Their beards were frosted white, their hands were wrapped in strips of cloth and fur and their eyes looked hollow, but they had found the Cauldron and the pride of that achievement filled them, even if, at first light, they must face the Bloodshields and the dawning knowledge that we were all doomed.

  Ceinwyn leaned against me, sharing my wolfskin cloak. She waited till Nimue was sleeping, then tipped her face up to mine. ‘Merlin’s dead, Derfel,’ she said in a small sad voice.

  ‘I know,’ I said, for there had been neither motion nor sound from the Cauldron’s pit.

  ‘I felt his face and hands,’ she whispered, ‘and they were cold as ice. I put my knife blade beside his mouth and it didn’t cloud. He’s dead.’

  I said nothing. I loved Merlin because he had stood to me as a father and I could not truly believe he had died at this moment of his triumph, but nor could I find the hope to see his life’s soul again. ‘We should bury him here,’ Ceinwyn said softly, ‘inside his Cauldron.’ Again I did not speak. Her hand found mine. ‘What shall we do?’ she asked.

  Die, I thought, but still I said nothing.

  ‘You will not let me be taken?’ she whispered.

  ‘Never,’ I said.

  ‘The day I met you, Lord Derfel Cadarn,’ she said, ‘was the best day of my life,’ and that made my tears come, but whether they were tears of joy or a lament for all that I would lose in the next cold dawn, I do not know.

  I fell into a shallow sleep and dreamed I was trapped in a bog and surrounded by dark riders who were magically able to move across the soaking land, and then I found I could not raise my shield arm and I saw the sword coming down on my right shoulder and I woke with a start, reaching for my spear, only to see that it was Gwilym who had inadvertently touched my shoulder as he clambered up the rock to take over guard duty. ‘Sorry, Lord,’ he whispered.

  Ceinwyn slept in the crook of my arm and Nimue was huddled on my other side. Galahad, his fair beard whitened by frost, was snoring gently and my other spearmen either dozed or else lay in cold stupefaction. The moon was almost above me now, its light slanting down to show the stars painted on my men’s stacked shields and on the stony side of the pit we had scrabbled in the summit’s hollow. The mist that had shimmered the moon’s swollen face when it had hung just above the sea was gone and now it was a pure, hard, clear, cold disc etched as sharp as a newly minted coin. I half remembered my mother telling me the name of the man in the moon, but I could not pin the memory down. My mother was a Saxon and I had been in her belly when she had been captured in a Dumnonian raid. I had been told she was still alive in Siluria, but I had not seen her since the day the Druid Tanaburs had snatched me from her arms and tried to kill me in the death pit. Merlin had raised me after that, and I had become a Briton, a friend of Arthur and the man who had taken the star of Powys from her brother’s hall. What an odd thread of life, I thought, and how sad that it would be cut short here on Britain’s sacred isle.

  ‘I don’t suppose,’ Merlin said, ‘that there is any cheese?’

  I stared at him, thinking I must still be dreaming.

  ‘The pale sort, Derfel,’ he said anxiously, ‘that crumbles. Not the hard dark yellow stuff. I can’t abide that hard dark yellow cheese.’

  He was standing in the pit and peering earnestly at me with the cloak that had covered his body now hanging about his shoulders like a shawl.

  ‘Lord?’ I said in a tiny voice.

  ‘Cheese, Derfel. Did you not hear me? I am hungry for cheese. We did have some. It was wrapped in linen. And where is my staff? A man lies down for a small sleep and immediately his staff is stolen. Is there no honesty left? It’s a terrible world. No cheese, no honesty and no staff.’

  ‘Lord!’

  ‘Stop shouting at me, Derfel. I’m not deaf, just hungry.’

  ‘Oh, Lord!’

  ‘Now you’re weeping! I do hate blubbing. All I ask is a morsel of cheese and you start weeping like a child. Ah, there’s my staff. Good.’ He plucked it from beside Nimue and used it to hoist himself out of the pit. The other spearmen were awake now and gaping at him. Then Nimue stirred and I heard Ceinwyn gasp. ‘I suppose, Derfel,’ Merlin said as he began rummaging in the piled bundles to find his cheese, ‘that you’ve landed us in a predicament? Surrounded, are we?’

  ‘Yes, Lord.’

  ‘Outnumbered?’

  ‘Yes, Lord.’

  ‘Dear me, Derfel, dear me. And you call yourself a lord of warriors? Cheese! Here it is. I knew we had some. Wonderful.’

  I pointed a tremulous finger at the pit. ‘The Cauldron, Lord.’ I wanted to know whether the Cauldron had performed a miracle, but I was too confused with wonder and relief to be coherent.

  ‘And a very nice Cauldron it is, Derfel. Capacious, deep, full of the qualities one wants in a cauldron.’ He bit a hunk of the cheese. ‘I am famished!’ He took another bite, then settled back against the rocks and beamed at us all. ‘Outnumbered and surrounded! Well, well! Whatever next?’ He crammed the last of the cheese into his mouth then brushed the crumbs from his hands. He bestowed a special smile on Ceinwyn, then held out a long arm for Nimue. ‘All well?’ he asked her.

  ‘All well,’ she said calmly as she settled into his embrace. She alone did not seem surprised by his appearance or by his evident health.

  ‘Except that we’re surrounded and outnumbered!’ he said mockingly. ‘What shall we do? Usually the best thing to do in an emergency is to sacrifice someone.’ He peered expectantly about the stunned circle of men. His face had recovered its colour and all his old mischievous energy had returned. ‘Derfel, perhaps?’

  ‘Lord!’ Ceinwyn protested.

  ‘Lady! Not you! No, no, no, no, no. You’ve done enough.’

  ‘No sacrifice, Lord,’ Ceinwyn pleaded.

  Merlin smiled. Nimue appeared to have gone to sleep in his arm, but for the rest of us there could be no more sleep. A spear clattered on the lower rocks and the sound made Merlin hold his staff out to me. ‘Climb to the top, Derfel, and hold my staff to the west. To the west, remember, not the east. Try and do something right for a change, will you? Of course, if you want a job done properly then you should always do it yourself, but I don’t want to wake Nimue. Off you go.’

  I took the staff and clambered up the rocks to stand on the highest point of the knoll and there, following Merlin’s instructions, I pointed it towards the distant sea.

  ‘Don’t prod with it!’ Merlin called up to me. ‘Point it! Feel its power! It isn’t an ox goad, boy, it’s a Druid’s staff!’

  I held the staff westward. Diwrnach’s dark riders must have scented magic, for his own sorcerers suddenly howled and a pack of spearmen scuttled up the slope to hurl their weapons at me.

  ‘Now,’ Merlin called as the spears fell beneath me, ‘give it power, Derfel, give it power!’ I concentrated on the staff, but truly felt nothing, though Merlin seemed satisfied with my effort. ‘Bring it down now,’ he said, ‘and get some rest. We have a fair walk to make in the morning. Is there any more cheese? I could eat a sackful!’

  We lay in the cold. Merlin would not discuss the Cauldron, nor his illness, but I sensed the change of mood in all of us. We were suddenly hopeful. We would live, and it was Ceinwyn who first saw the way of our salvation. She prodded my side, then pointed up at the moon, and I saw that what had been a clear, clean shape was now hazed by a torque of shimmering mist. That misty torque looked like a ring of powdered gems, so hard and bright did those tiny points shine about the full silver moon.

  Merlin did not care about the moon, he was still talking of cheese. ‘There used to be a woman in Dun Seilo who made the most wonderful soft cheese,’ he told us. ‘She wrapped it in nettle leaves as I remember, then insisted it spent six months sitting i
n a wooden bowl that had been steeped in ram’s urine. Ram’s urine! Some people do possess the most absurd superstitions, but all the same her cheese was very good.’ He chuckled. ‘She made her poor husband collect the urine. How did he do it? I never liked to ask. Grasp it by the horns and tickle, do you think? Or maybe he used his own and never told her. I would have done. Is it getting warmer, do you think?’

  The glittering ice mist about the moon had faded, but the fading had not made the moon’s edges any duller. Instead they were being diffused by a gentler mist that was now being wafted on a small west wind that was indeed warmer. The bright stars were hazed, the crystal frost on the rocks was melting to a wet sheen and we had all stopped shivering. Our spear-points could be touched again. A fog was forming.

  ‘The Dumnonians, of course, insist their cheese is the very finest in Britain,’ Merlin said earnestly, as though none of us had anything better to do than listen to a lecture on cheese, ‘and, admittedly, it can be good, but too often it is hard. I remember Uther broke a tooth once on a piece of cheese from a farm near Lindinis. Clean in two! Poor fellow was in pain for weeks. He never could abide having a tooth pulled. He insisted I work some magic, but it’s a strange thing, magic never works with teeth. Eyes, yes, bowels, every time, and even brains sometimes, though there’s few enough of those in Britain these days. But teeth? Never. I must work on that problem when I have some time. Mind you, I do enjoy pulling teeth.’ He smiled extravagantly, showing off his own rare set of perfect teeth. Arthur was similarly blessed, but the rest of us were plagued by toothaches.

  I looked up to see that the topmost rocks were almost hidden by the fog that was thickening by the minute. It was a Druid’s fog, brewing dense and white beneath the moon and smothering the whole of Ynys Mon in its thick cloak of vapour.

  ‘In Siluria,’ Merlin said, ‘they serve a pale bowl of slops and call it cheese. It’s so repellent that even the mice won’t eat it, but what else does one expect of Siluria? Was there something you wished to say to me, Derfel? You look excited.’