The Winter King

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘Merlin!’ I said, and I confess there were tears at my eyes.

  ‘Give me a few minutes,’ he said, ‘hold them off.’ He was still plucking down scrolls, tearing at their seals and dropping them after a cursory glance. He had taken off the eyepatch, which had merely been a part of his disguise. ‘Hold them off,’ he said again, moving to a new rack of unexamined scrolls. ‘I hear you’re good at slaughter, so be very good at it now.’

  Galahad put the harp and the harpist’s stool into the outer doorway, then the two of us defended the passage with spear, sword and shields. ‘Did you know he was here?’ I asked Galahad.

  ‘Who?’ Galahad rammed his spear into a round Frankish shield and jerked it back.

  ‘Merlin.’

  ‘He is?’ Galahad was astonished. ‘Of course I didn’t know’.

  A screaming Frank with ringletted hair and blood on his beard rammed a spear at me. I gripped it just below the head and used it to tug him on to my sword. Another spear was thrown past me and buried its steel head in the lintel behind. A man tangled his feet in the cacophonous harp strings and stumbled forward to be kicked in the face by Galahad. I chopped the edge of my shield on to the back of the man’s neck, then parried a sword cut. The palace rang with screams and was filling with an acrid smoke, but the men attacking us were losing interest in any plunder they might discover in the library, preferring easier pickings elsewhere in the hilltop building.

  ‘Merlin’s here?’ Galahad asked me in disbelief.

  ‘Look for yourself.’

  Galahad turned to stare at the tall figure who was so desperately searching among Ban’s doomed library. ‘That’s Merlin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did you know he was here?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ I said. ‘Come on, you bastard!’ This was to a big Frank, leather-cloaked and carrying a double-headed war axe, who wanted to prove himself a hero. He chanted his war hymn as he charged and was still chanting as he died. The axe buried itself in the floorboards by Galahad’s feet as he pulled his spear from the man’s chest.

  ‘I have it! I have it!’ Merlin suddenly shouted behind us. ‘Silius Italicus, of course! He never wrote eighteen books on the Second Punic War, only seventeen. How can I have been so stupid? You’re right, Derfel, I am an old fool! A dangerous fool! Eighteen books on the Second Turgid War? The merest child knows there were only ever seventeen! I have it! Come on, Derfel, don’t waste my time! We can’t loiter here all night!’

  We ran back into the disordered library where I rammed the big work table up against the door as a temporary barrier while Galahad kicked open the shutters on the windows facing the west. A new swarm of Franks surged through the harpist’s room and Merlin snatched the wooden cross from around his neck and hurled the feeble missile at the invaders who were momentarily checked by the heavy table. As the cross fell a great burst of flame engulfed the antechamber. I thought the deadly fire was mere coincidence and that the wall to the room had collapsed to let in a furnace surge just as the cross struck, but Merlin claimed it as his own triumph. ‘The horrible thing had to be good for something,’ he said of the cross, then cackled at the screaming, burning enemy. ‘Roast, you worms, roast!’ He was thrusting the precious scroll into the breast of his gown. ‘Did you ever read Silius Italicus?’ he asked me.

  ‘Never heard of him, Lord,’ I said, tugging him towards the open window.

  ‘He wrote epic verse, my dear Derfel, epic verse.’ He resisted my panicked tugging and placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘Let me give you some advice.’ He spoke very seriously. ‘Shun epic verse. I speak from experience.’

  I suddenly wanted to cry like a child. It was such relief to look into his wise and wicked eyes again. It was like being reunited with my own father. ‘I’ve missed you, Lord,’ I blurted out.

  ‘Don’t go sentimental on me now!’ Merlin snapped, then hurried to the window as a Frankish warrior burst through the flames in the doorway and slid along the table’s top, screaming defiance. The man’s hair was smoking as he thrust his spear towards us. I knocked his blade aside with my shield, lunged with the sword, kicked him and lunged again. ‘This way!’ Galahad shouted from the garden beyond the window. I gave the dying Frank a last cut, then saw that Merlin had gone back to his work table. ‘Hurry, Lord!’ I shouted to him.

  ‘The cat!’ Merlin explained. ‘I can’t abandon the cat! Don’t be absurd!’

  ‘For the Gods’ sake, Lord!’ I yelled at him, but Merlin was scrabbling under the table to retrieve the frightened grey cat that he cradled in his arms as he at last scrambled over the sill into a herb garden protected by low bay hedges. The sun was splendid in the west, drenching the sky brilliant red and shivering its fiery reflection across the waters of the bay. We crossed the hedge and followed Galahad down a flight of steps that led to a gardener’s hut, then on to a perilous path that ran around the breast of the granite peak. On one side of the path was a stone cliff, and on the other air, but Galahad knew these tracks from childhood and led us confidently down towards the dark water.

  Bodies floated in the sea. Our boat, crowded to the point where it was a miracle it could even float at all, was already a quarter-mile off the island with its oars labouring to drag its weight of passengers to safety. I cupped my hands and shouted. ‘Culhwch!’ My voice echoed off the rock and faded across the sea where it was lost in the immensity of cries and wailing that marked Ynys Trebes’s end.

  ‘Let them go,’ Merlin said calmly, then searched under the dirty robe he had worn as Father Celwin. ‘Hold this.’ He thrust the cat into my arms, then groped again under his robe until he found a small silver horn that he blew once. It gave a sweet note.

  Almost immediately a small dark wherry appeared around Ynys Trebes’s northern shore. A single robed man propelled the little boat with a long sweep that was gripped by an oarlock at the stern. The wherry had a high pointed prow and room in its belly for just three passengers. A wooden chest lay on the bottom boards, branded with Merlin’s seal of the Horned God, Cernunnos. ‘I made these arrangements,’ Merlin said airily, ‘when it became apparent that poor Ban had no real idea what scrolls he possessed. I thought I would need more time, and so it proved. Of course the scrolls were labelled, but the fili were for ever mixing them up, not to say trying to improve them when they weren’t stealing the verse and calling it their own. One wretch spent six months plagiarizing Catullus, then filed him under Plato. Good evening, my dear Caddwg!’ he greeted the boatman genially. ‘All is well?’

  ‘Other than the world dying, yes,’ Caddwg growled in answer.

  ‘But you’ve got the chest.’ Merlin gestured at the sealed box. ‘Nothing else matters.’

  The elegant wherry had once been a palace boat used to ferry passengers from the harbour to the larger ships anchored offshore, and Merlin had arranged for it to wait his summons. Now we stepped aboard and sank to its deck as the dour Caddwg thrust the small craft out into the evening sea. A single spear plunged from the heights to be swallowed by the water alongside us, but otherwise our departure was unnoticed and untroubled. Merlin took the cat from me and settled contentedly in the boat’s bows while Galahad and I stared back at the island’s death.

  Smoke poured across the water. The cries of the doomed were a wailing threnody in the dying day. We could see the dark shapes of Frankish spearmen still crossing the causeway and splashing off its end towards the fallen city. The sun sank, darkening the bay and making the flames in the palace brighter. A curtain caught the fire and flared brief and vivid before crumbling to soft ash. The library burned fiercest; scroll after scroll bursting into quick flame to make that corner of the palace into an inferno. It was King Ban’s balefire, burning through the night.

  Galahad wept. He knelt on the deck, clutching his spear, and watched his home turn to dust. He made the sign of the cross and said a silent prayer that willed his father’s soul to whatever Other world Ban had believed in. The sea was mercifully calm. It was coloured red and b
lack, blood and death, a perfect mirror for the burning city where our enemy danced in ghoulish triumph. Ynys Trebes was never rebuilt in our time: the walls fell, the weeds grew, seabirds roosted there. Frankish fishermen avoided the island where so many had died. They did not call it Ynys Trebes any more, but gave it a new name in their own coarse tongue: the Mount of Death, and at night, their seamen say, when the deserted isle looms black out of an obsidian sea, the cries of women and the whimpering of children can still be heard.

  We landed on an empty beach on the western side of the bay. We abandoned the boat and carried Merlin’s sealed chest up through whin and gale-bent thorn to the headland’s high ridge. Full night fell as we reached the summit, and I turned to see Ynys Trebes glowing like a ragged ember in the dark, then I walked on to carry my burden home to Arthur’s conscience. Ynys Trebes was dead.

  We took ship for Britain out of the same river where I had once prayed that Bel and Manawydan would see me safe home. We found Culhwch in the river, his overloaded boat grounded on the mud. Leanor was alive and so were most of our men. One ship fit to make the voyage home was left in the river, its master having waited in hope of making a fat profit from desperate survivors, but Culhwch put his sword to the man’s throat and had him take us home for free. The rest of the river’s people had already fled from the Franks. We waited through a night made garish by the reflected flames of Ynys Trebes’s burning and in the morning we raised the ship’s anchor and sailed north.

  Merlin watched the shore recede and I, scarce daring to believe that the old man had really come back to us, gazed at him. He was a tall bony man, perhaps the tallest I ever knew, with long white hair that grew back from his tonsure line to be gathered in a black-ribboned pigtail. He had worn his hair loose and dishevelled when he pretended to be Celwin, but now, with the pigtail restored, he looked like the old Merlin. His skin was the colour of old, polished wood, his eyes were green and his nose a sharp bony prow. His beard and moustaches were plaited into fine cords that he liked to twist in his fingers when he was thinking. No one knew how old he was, but certainly I never met anyone older, unless it was the Druid Balise, nor did I ever know any man who seemed so ageless as Merlin. He had all his teeth, every last one, and retained a young man’s agility, though he did love to pretend to be old and frail and helpless. He dressed in black, always in black, never another colour, and habitually carried a tall black staff, though now, fleeing from Armorica, he lacked that badge of office.

  He was a commanding man, not just because of his height, reputation or the elegance of his frame, but because of his presence. Like Arthur, he had the ability to dominate a room and to make a crowded hall seem empty when he left, but where Arthur’s presence was generous and enthusiastic, Merlin’s was always disturbing. When he looked at you it seemed that he could read the secret part of your heart and, worse still, find it amusing. He was mischievous, impatient, impulsive and totally, utterly wise. He belittled everything, maligned everyone and loved a few people wholly. Arthur was one, Nimue another and I, I think, was a third, though I could never really be sure for he was a man who loved pretence and disguises. ‘You’re looking at me, Derfel!’ he accused me from the boat’s stern where he still had his back turned towards me.

  ‘I hope never to lose sight of you again, Lord.’

  ‘What an emotional fool you are, Derfel.’ He turned and scowled at me. ‘I should have thrown you back into Tanaburs’s pit. Carry that chest into my cabin.’

  Merlin had commandeered the shipmaster’s cabin where I now stowed the wooden chest. Merlin ducked under the low door, fussed with the captain’s pillows to make himself a comfortable seat, then sank down with a sigh of happiness. The grey cat leaped on to his lap as he unrolled the top few inches of the thick scroll he had risked his life to obtain on a crude table that glittered with fish-scales.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘It is the one real treasure Ban possessed,’ Merlin said. ‘The rest was mostly Greek and Roman rubbish. A few good things, I suppose, but not much.’

  ‘So what is it?’ I asked again.

  ‘It is a scroll, dear Derfel,’ he said, as though I was a fool to have asked. He glanced up through the open skylight to see the sail bellying in a wind still soured by Ynys Trebes’s smoke. ‘A good wind!’ he said cheerfully. ‘Home by nightfall, perhaps? I have missed Britain.’ He looked back to the scroll. ‘And Nimue? How is the dear child?’ he asked as he scanned the first lines.

  ‘The last time I saw her,’ I said bitterly, ‘she’d been raped and had lost an eye.’

  ‘These things happen,’ Merlin said carelessly.

  His callousness took my breath away, I waited, then again asked him what was so important about the scroll.

  He sighed. ‘You are an importunate creature, Derfel. Well, I shall indulge you.’ He let go of the manuscript so that it rolled itself up, then leaned back on the shipmaster’s damp and threadbare pillows. ‘You know, of course, who Caleddin was?’

  ‘No, Lord,’ I admitted.

  He threw his hands up in despair. ‘Are you not ashamed of your ignorance, Derfel? Caleddin was a Druid of the Ordovicii. A wretched tribe, and I should know. One of my wives was an Ordoviciian and one such creature was sufficient for a dozen lifetimes. Never again.’ He shuddered at the memory, then peered up at me. ‘Gundleus raped Nimue, right?’

  ‘Yes.’ I wondered how he knew.

  ‘Foolish man! Foolish man!’ He seemed amused rather than angry at his lover’s fate. ‘How he will suffer. Is Nimue angry?’

  ‘Furious.’

  ‘Good. Fury is very useful, and dear Nimue has a talent for it. One of the things I can’t stand about Christians is their admiration of meekness. Imagine elevating meekness into a virtue! Meekness! Can you imagine a heaven filled only with the meek? What a dreadful idea. The food would get cold while everyone passed the dishes to everyone else. Meekness is no good, Derfel. Anger and selfishness, those are the qualities that make the world march.’ He laughed. ‘Now, about Caleddin. He was a fair Druid for an Ordoviciian, not nearly as good as me, of course, but he had his better days. I did enjoy your attempt to murder Lancelot, by the way, a pity you didn’t finish the job. I suppose he escaped from the city?’

  ‘As soon as it was doomed, yes.’

  ‘Sailors say rats are always first off the doomed ship. Poor Ban. He was a fool, but a good fool.’

  ‘Did he know who you were?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course he knew,’ Merlin said. ‘It would have been monstrously rude of me to have deceived my host. He didn’t tell anyone else, of course, otherwise I’d have been besieged by those dreadful poets all asking me to use magic to make their wrinkles disappear. You’ve no idea, Derfel, how bothersome a little magic can be. Ban knew who I was, and so did Caddwg. He’s my servant. Poor Hywel’s dead, yes?’

  ‘If you already know,’ I said, ‘why do you ask?’

  ‘I’m just making conversation!’ he protested. ‘Conversation is one of the civilized arts, Derfel. We can’t all stump through life with a sword and shield, growling. A few of us do try to preserve the dignities.’ He sniffed.

  ‘So how do you know Hywel’s dead?’ I asked.

  ‘Because Bedwin wrote and told me, of course, you idiot.’

  ‘Bedwin’s been writing to you all these years?’ I asked in astonishment.

  ‘Of course! He needed my advice. What do you think I did? Vanish?’

  ‘You did,’ I said resentfully.

  ‘Nonsense. You simply didn’t know where to look for me. Not that Bedwin took my advice about anything. What a mess the man has made! Mordred alive! Pure foolishness. The child should have been strangled with his own birth cord, but I suppose Uther could never have been persuaded of that. Poor Uther. He believed that virtues are handed down through a man’s loins! What nonsense! A child is like a calf; if the thing is born crippled you knock it smartly on the skull and serve the cow again. That’s why the Gods made it such a pleasure to engender
children, because so many of the little brutes have to be replaced. There’s not much pleasure in the process for women, of course, but someone has to suffer and thank the Gods it’s them and not us.’

  ‘Did you ever have children?’ I asked, wondering why I had never thought to enquire before.

  ‘Of course I did! What an extraordinary question.’ He gazed at me as though he doubted my sanity. ‘I never liked any of them very much and happily most of them died and the rest I’ve disowned. One, I think, is even a Christian.’ He shuddered. ‘I much prefer other people’s children; they’re so much more grateful. Now what were we talking about? Oh yes, Caleddin. Terrible man.’ He shook his head gloomily.

  ‘Did he write the scroll?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t be absurd, Derfel,’ he snapped impatiently. ‘Druids are not allowed to write anything down, it’s against the rules. You know that! Once you write something down it becomes fixed. It becomes dogma. People can argue about it, they become authoritative, they refer to the texts, they produce new manuscripts, they argue more and soon they’re putting each other to death. If you never write anything down then no one knows exactly what you said so you can always change it. Do I have to explain everything to you?’

  ‘You can explain what is written on the scroll,’ I said humbly.

  ‘I was doing precisely that! But you keep interrupting me and changing the subject! Extraordinary behaviour! And to think you grew up on the Tor. I should have had you whipped more often, that might have given you better manners. I hear Gwlyddyn is rebuilding my hall?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A good, honest man, Gwlyddyn. I shall probably have to rebuild it all myself but he does try.’

  ‘The scroll,’ I reminded him.