The Winter King

by Bernard Cornwell

  Aelle demanded to know more about the traitor and Arthur told how the man had deserted Powys and come to Dumnonia seeking revenge because his wife had abandoned him for one of Gorfyddyd’s chieftains.

  Aelle spoke with his council while the two wizards gibbered at Nimue. One of them pointed a human thigh bone at her, but Nimue merely spat. That gesture seemed to conclude their war of sorcery for the two wizards shuffled backwards as Nimue stood up and brushed her hands. Aelle’s council haggled with us. At one point they insisted that we yield all the big war horses to them, but Arthur demanded all their war dogs in return, and finally, in the afternoon, the Saxons accepted the offer of Ratae and Arthur’s gold. It was maybe the greatest hoard of gold ever paid from a Briton to a Saxon, but Aelle also insisted on taking two hostages who, he promised, would be released if the attack on Ratae did not prove to be a trap laid by Gorfyddyd and Arthur together. He chose at random, picking two of Arthur’s warriors: Balin and Lanval.

  That night we ate with the Saxons. I was curious to meet these men who were my birth-brothers and even feared I might feel some kinship with them, but in truth I found their company repellent. Their humour was coarse, their manners loutish and the smell of their fur-wrapped flesh sickening. Some of them mocked me by saying I resembled their King Aelle, but I could see no likeness between his flat hard features and what I believed my own face to be. Aelle finally snarled at my mockers to be silent, then gave me a cold stare before bidding me to invite Arthur’s men to share an evening meal of huge cuts of roasted meat which we ate with gloved hands, gnawing into the scalding flesh until the bloody juices dripped from our beards. We gave them mead, they gave us ale. A few drunken fights started, but no one was killed. Aelle, like Arthur, stayed sober, though the Bretwalda’s two wizards became foully drunk and after they fell asleep beside their own vomit Aelle explained that they were madmen in touch with the Gods. He possessed other priests, he said, who were sane, but the lunatics were thought to possess a special power that the Saxons might need. ‘We feared you would bring Merlin,’ he explained.

  ‘Merlin is his own master,’ Arthur answered, ‘but this is his priestess.’ He gestured at Nimue who stared one-eyed at the Saxon.

  Aelle made a gesture that must have been his way of averting evil. He feared Nimue because of Merlin, and that was good to know. ‘But Merlin is in Britain?’ Aelle asked fearfully.

  ‘Some men say so,’ I answered for Arthur, ‘and some say not. Who knows? Maybe he is out there in the dark.’ I jerked my head towards the blackness beyond the fire-lit stones.

  Aelle used a spear-shaft to prod one of his mad wizards awake. The man yowled piteously, and Aelle seemed content that the sound would avert any mischief. The Bretwalda had hung Sansum’s cross about his neck, while others of his men wore Ynys Wydryn’s heavy gold torques. Later in the night, when most of the Saxons were snoring, some of their slaves told us the tale of Durocobrivis’s fall, and how Prince Gereint had been taken alive and then tortured to death. The tale made Arthur weep. None of us had known Gereint well, but he had been a modest, unambitious man who had tried his best to hold back the growing Saxon forces. Some of the slaves begged us to take them away with us, but we dared not offend our hosts by granting the request. ‘We shall come for you one day,’ Arthur promised the slaves. ‘We shall come.’

  The Saxons left next afternoon. Aelle insisted we wait another whole night before leaving the Stones to make certain we did not follow him, and he took Balin, Lanval and the man from Powys with his war-band. Nimue, consulted by Arthur on whether Aelle would keep his word, nodded and said she had dreamed of the Saxon’s compliance and of the safe return of our hostages. ‘But Ratae’s blood is on your hands,’ she said ominously.

  We packed and made ready for our own journey, which would not begin until the next day’s dawn. Arthur was never happy when forced to idleness and as evening came he asked that Sagramor and I walk with him to the southern woods. For a time it seemed that we wandered aimlessly, but at last Arthur stopped beneath a huge oak hung with long beards of grey lichen. ‘I feel dirty,’ he said. ‘I failed to keep my oath to Benoic, now I am buying the death of hundreds of Britons.’

  ‘You could not have saved Benoic,’ I insisted.

  ‘A land that buys poets instead of spearmen does not deserve to survive,’ Sagramor added.

  ‘Whether I could have saved it or not,’ Arthur said, ‘does not matter. I took an oath to Ban and did not keep it.’

  ‘A man whose house is burning to the ground does not carry water to his neighbour’s fire,’ Sagramor said. His black face, as impenetrably tough as Aelle’s, had fascinated the Saxons. Many had fought against him in the last years and believed him to be some kind of demon summoned by Merlin, and Arthur had played on those fears by hinting that he would leave Sagramor to defend the new frontier. In truth Arthur would take Sagramor to Gwent, for he needed all his best men to fight Gorfyddyd. ‘You weren’t able to keep your oath to Benoic,’ Sagramor went on, ‘so the Gods will forgive you.’ Sagramor had a robustly pragmatic view of Gods and man; it was one of his strengths.

  ‘The Gods may forgive me,’ Arthur said, ‘but I don’t. And now I pay Saxons to kill Britons.’ He shuddered at the very thought. ‘I found myself wishing for Merlin last night,’ he said, ‘to know that he would approve of what we are doing.’

  ‘He would,’ I said. Nimue might not have approved of sacrificing Ratae, but Nimue was always purer than Merlin. She understood the necessity of paying Saxons, but revolted at the thought of paying with British blood even if that blood did belong to our enemies.

  ‘But it doesn’t matter what Merlin thinks,’ Arthur said angrily. ‘It wouldn’t matter if every priest, Druid and bard in Britain agreed with me. To ask another man’s blessing is simply to avoid taking the responsibility. Nimue is right, I shall be responsible for all the deaths in Ratae.’

  ‘What else could you do?’ I asked.

  ‘You don’t understand, Derfel,’ Arthur accused me bitterly, though in truth he was accusing himself. ‘I always knew Aelle would want something more than gold. They’re Saxons! They don’t want peace, they want land! I knew that, why else would I have brought that poor man from Ratae? Before Aelle ever asked I was ready to give, and how many men will die for that foresight? Three hundred? And how many women taken into slavery? Two hundred? How many children? How many families will be broken apart? And for what? To prove I’m a better leader than Gorfyddyd? Is my life worth so many souls?’

  ‘Those souls,’ I said, ‘will keep Mordred on his throne.’

  ‘Another oath!’ Arthur said bitterly. ‘All these oaths that bind us! I am oath-bound to Uther to put his grandson on the throne, oath-bound to Leodegan to retake Henis Wyren.’ He stopped abruptly and Sagramor looked at me with an alarmed face for it was the first either of us had ever heard about an oath to fight Diwrnach, the dread Irish King of Lleyn who had taken Leodegan’s land. ‘Yet of all men,’ Arthur said miserably, ‘I break oaths so easily. I broke the oath to Ban and I broke my oath to Ceinwyn. Poor Ceinwyn.’ It was the first time any of us had ever heard him so openly lament that broken promise. I had thought Guinevere was a sun so bright in Arthur’s firmament that she had dimmed Ceinwyn’s paler lustre into invisibility, but it seemed the memory of Powys’s Princess could still gall Arthur’s conscience like a spur. Just as the thought of Ratae’s doom galled him now. ‘Maybe I should send them a warning,’ he said.

  ‘And lose the hostages?’ Sagramor asked.

  Arthur shook his head. ‘I’ll exchange myself for Balin and Lanval.’

  He was thinking of doing just that. I could tell. The agony of remorse was biting at him and he was seeking a way out of that tangle of conscience and duty, even at the price of his own life. ‘Merlin would laugh at me now,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘he would.’ Merlin’s conscience, if he possessed one at all, was merely a guide to how lesser men thought, and thus served as a goad for Merlin to behave in the c
ontrary manner. Merlin’s conscience was a jest to amuse the Gods. Arthur’s was a burden.

  Now he stared at the mossy ground beneath the oak’s shadow. The day was settling into twilight as Arthur’s mind sank into gloom. Was he truly tempted to abandon everything? To ride to Aelle’s fastness and exchange his existence for the lives of Ratae’s souls? I think he was, but then the insidious logic of his ambition rose to overcome his despair like a tide flooding Ynys Trebes’s bleak sands. ‘A hundred years ago,’ he said slowly, ‘this land had peace. It had justice. A man could clear land in the happy knowledge that his grandsons would live to tell it. But those grandsons are dead, killed by Saxons or their own kind. If we do nothing then the chaos will spread until there’s nothing left but prancing Saxons and their mad wizards. If Gorfyddyd wins he’ll strip Dumnonia of its wealth, but if I win I shall embrace Powys like a brother. I hate what we are doing, but if we do it, then we can put things right.’ He looked up at us both. ‘We are all of Mithras,’ he said, ‘so you can witness this oath made to Him.’ He paused. He was learning to hate oaths and their duties, but such was his state after that meeting with Aelle that he was willing to burden himself with a new one. ‘Find me a stone, Derfel,’ he ordered.

  I kicked a stone out of the soil and brushed the earth from it, then, at Arthur’s bidding, I scratched Aelle’s name on the stone with the point of my knife. Arthur used his own knife to dig a deep hole at the foot of the oak, then stood. ‘My oath is this,’ he said, ‘that if I survive this battle with Gorfyddyd then I shall avenge the innocent souls I have condemned at Ratae. I will kill Aelle. I shall destroy him and his men. I shall feed them to the ravens and give their wealth to the children of Ratae. You two are my witnesses, and if I fail in this oath you are both released from all the bonds you owe me.’ He dropped the stone into the hole and the three of us kicked earth over it. ‘May the Gods forgive me,’ Arthur said, ‘for the deaths I have just caused.’

  Then we went to cause some more.

  WE TRAVELLED TO GWENT through Corinium. Ailleann still lived there and though Arthur saw his sons he did not receive their mother so that no word of any such meeting could hurt his Guinevere, though he did send me with a gift for Ailleann. She received me with kindness, but shrugged when she saw Arthur’s present, a small brooch of enamelled silver depicting an animal very like a hare though with shorter legs and ears. It had come from the treasures of Sansum’s shrine, though Arthur had punctiliously replaced the cost of the brooch with coins from his pouch. ‘He wishes he had something better to send you,’ I said, delivering Arthur’s message, ‘but alas, the Saxons must have our best jewels these days.’

  ‘There was a time,’ she said bitterly, ‘when his gifts came from love, not guilt.’ Ailleann was still a striking woman, though her hair was now touched with grey and her eyes clouded with resignation. She was clothed in a long blue woollen dress and wore her hair in twin coils above her ears. She peered at the strange enamelled animal. ‘What do you think it is?’ she asked me. ‘It’s not a hare. Is it a cat?’

  ‘Sagramor says it’s called a rabbit. He’s seen them in Cappadocia, wherever that is.’

  ‘You mustn’t believe everything Sagramor tells you,’ Ailleann chided me as she pinned the small brooch to her gown. ‘I have jewellery enough for a queen,’ she added as she led me to the small courtyard of her Roman house, ‘but I am still a slave.’

  ‘Arthur didn’t free you?’ I asked, shocked.

  ‘He worries I would move back to Armorica. Or to Ireland, and so take the twins away from him.’ She shrugged. ‘On the day the boys are of age Arthur will give me my freedom and do you know what I shall do? I shall stay right here.’ She gestured me to a chair that stood in the shade of a vine. ‘You look older,’ she said as she poured a straw-coloured wine from a wicker-wrapped flask. ‘I hear Lunete has left you?’ she added as she handed me a horn beaker.

  ‘We left each other, I think.’

  ‘I hear she is now a Priestess of Isis,’ Ailleann said mockingly. ‘I hear a lot from Durnovaria and dare not believe the half of it.’

  ‘Such as what?’ I asked.

  ‘If you don’t know, Derfel, then you’re best left in ignorance.’ She sipped the wine and grimaced at its taste. ‘So is Arthur. He never wants to hear bad news, only good. He even believes there is goodness in the twins.’

  It shocked me to hear a mother speak of her sons in such a way. ‘I’m sure there is,’ I said.

  She gave me a level, amused look. ‘The boys are no better, Derfel, than they ever were, and they were never good. They resent their father. They think they should be princes and so behave like princes. There is no mischief in this town which they don’t begin or encourage, and if I try to control them they call me a whore.’ She crumbled a fragment of cake and threw its scraps to some scavenging sparrows. A servant swept the courtyard’s far side with a bundle of broom twigs until Ailleann ordered the man to leave us alone, then she asked me about the war and I tried to hide my pessimism about Gorfyddyd’s huge army. ‘Can’t you take Amhar and Loholt with you?’ Ailleann asked me after a while. ‘They might make good soldiers.’

  ‘I doubt their father thinks they’re old enough,’ I said.

  ‘If he thinks about them at all. He sends them money. I wish he didn’t.’ She fingered her new brooch. ‘The Christians in the town all say that Arthur is doomed.’

  ‘Not yet, Lady.’

  She smiled. ‘Not for a long time, Derfel. People underestimate Arthur. They see his goodness, hear his kindness, listen to his talk of justice, and none of them, not even you, knows what burns inside him.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Ambition,’ she said flatly, then thought for a second. ‘His soul,’ she went on, ‘is a chariot drawn by two horses; ambition and conscience, but I tell you, Derfel, the horse of ambition is in the right-hand harness and it will always outpull the other. And he’s able, so very able.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Just watch him, Derfel, when he seems doomed, when everything is at its darkest, and then he will astonish you. I’ve seen it before. He’ll win, but then the horse of conscience will tug at its reins and Arthur will make his usual mistake of forgiving his enemies.’

  ‘Is that bad?’

  ‘It isn’t a question of bad or good, Derfel, but of practicality. We Irish know one thing above all others: an enemy forgiven is an enemy who will have to be fought over and over again. Arthur confuses morality with power, and he worsens the mix by always believing that people are inherently good, even the worst of them, and that is why, mark my words, he will never have peace. He longs for peace, he talks of peace, but his own trusting soul is the reason he will always have enemies. Unless Guinevere manages to put some flint into his soul? And she may. Do you know who she reminds me of?’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d met her,’ I said.

  ‘I never met the person she reminds me of either, but I hear things, and I do know Arthur very well. She sounds like his mother; very striking and very strong, and I suspect he will do anything to please her.’

  ‘Even at the price of his conscience?’

  Ailleann smiled at the question. ‘You should know, Derfel, that some women always want their men to pay an exorbitant price. The more the man pays, the greater the woman’s worth, and I suspect Guinevere is a lady who values herself very highly. And so she should. So should we all.’ She said the last words sadly, then rose from her chair. ‘Give him my love,’ she told me as we walked back through the house, ‘and tell him please to take his sons to war.’

  Arthur would not take them. ‘Give them another year,’ he told me as we marched away next morning. He had dined with the twins and given them small gifts, but all of us had noted the sullenness with which Amhar and Loholt had received their father’s affection. Arthur had noticed it too, which was why he was unnaturally dour as we marched west. ‘Children born to unwed mothers,’ he said after a long silence, ‘have parts of their souls missing.’

  ‘What about yo
ur soul, Lord?’ I asked.

  ‘I patch it every morning, Derfel, piece by piece.’ He sighed. ‘I shall have to give time to Amhar and Loholt, and the Gods only know where I shall find it because in four or five months I shall be a father again. If I live,’ he added bleakly.

  So Lunete had been right and Guinevere was pregnant. ‘I’m happy for you, Lord,’ I said, though I was thinking of Lunete’s comment on how unhappy Guinevere was at her condition.

  ‘I’m happy for me!’ He laughed, his black mood abruptly vanquished. ‘And happy for Guinevere. It’ll be good for her, and in ten years’ time, Derfel, Mordred will be on the throne and Guinevere and I can find some happy place to rear our cattle, children and pigs! I shall be happy then. I shall train Llamrei to pull a cart and use Excalibur as a goad for my plough-oxen.’

  I tried to imagine Guinevere as a farm wife, even as a rich farm wife, and somehow I could not conjure the image, but I kept my peace.

  From Corinium we went to Glevum, then crossed the Severn and marched through Gwent’s heartland. We made a fine sight, for Arthur deliberately rode with banners flying and his horsemen armoured for combat. We marched in that high style for we wanted to give the local people a new confidence. They had none now. Everyone assumed that Gorfyddyd would be victorious and even though it was harvest-time the countryside was sullen. We passed a threshing floor and the chanter was singing the Lament of Essylt instead of the usual cheerful song that gave rhythm to the flails. We also noted how every villa, house and cottage was strangely bare of anything valuable. Possessions were being hidden, buried probably, so that Gorfyddyd’s invaders would not strip the populace bare. ‘The moles are getting rich again,’ Arthur said sourly.

  Arthur alone did not ride in his best armour. ‘Morfans has the scale armour,’ he told me when I asked why he was wearing his spare coat of mail. Morfans was the ugly warrior who had befriended me at the feast that had followed Arthur’s arrival at Caer Cadarn so many years before.