Arthur gazed fixedly at the palace. He was quietly elated, knowing that he was on the brink of a daring rescue that would send a shock through Lancelot’s new kingdom. Indeed, I had rarely seen Arthur so happy as he was that day. By coming deep into Dumnonia he had cut himself off from the responsibilities of government and now, as in the long-ago past, his future depended only on the skill of his sword. ‘Do you ever think of marriage, Derfel?’ he suddenly asked me.
‘No, Lord,’ I said. ‘Ceinwyn has sworn never to marry, and I see no need to challenge her.’ I smiled and touched my lover’s ring with its little scrap of the Cauldron’s gold. ‘Mind you,’ I went on, ‘I think we’re more married than most couples who’ve ever stood before a Druid or a priest.’
‘I don’t mean that,’ he said. ‘Do you ever think about marriage?’ He stressed the word ‘about’.
‘No, Lord,’ I said. ‘Not really.’
‘Dogged Derfel,’ he teased me. ‘When I die,’ he said dreamily, ‘I think I want a Christian burial.’
‘Why?’ I asked, horrified, and touching my mail coat so that its iron would deflect evil.
‘Because I shall lie with my Guinevere for all time,’ he said, ‘she and I, in one tomb, together.’
I thought of Norwenna’s flesh hanging off her yellow bones and grimaced. ‘You’ll be in the Otherworld with her, Lord.’
‘Our souls will, yes,’ he admitted, ‘and our shadowbodies will be there, but why can’t these bodies lie hand in hand as well?’
I shook my head. ‘Be burned,’ I said, ‘unless you want your soul to wander lost across Britain.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said lightly. He was lying on his belly, hidden from the villa by a screen of ragwort and cornflowers. Neither of us was in our armour. We would don that war finery at dusk before we came out of the dark to slaughter Lancelot’s guards. ‘What makes you and Ceinwyn happy?’ Arthur asked me. He had not shaved since we had left Glevum and the stubble of his new beard was growing grey.
‘Friendship,’ I said.
He frowned. ‘Just that?’
I thought about it. In the distance the first slaves were going to the hayfields, their sickles catching the morning sun in bright glints. Small boys were running up and down the vegetable gardens to frighten the jays away from the pea plants and the rows of gooseberries, redcurrants and raspberries, while nearer, where some convolvulus trailed pink on brambles, a group of greenfinches quarrelled noisily. It seemed that no Christian rabble had disturbed this place, indeed it seemed impossible that Dumnonia was at war at all. ‘I still feel a pang every time I look at her,’ I admitted.
‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ he said enthusiastically. ‘A pang! A quickness in the heart.’
‘Love,’ I said drily.
‘We’re lucky, you and I,’ he said, smiling. ‘It’s friendship, it’s love, and it’s still something more. It’s what the Irish call anmchara, a soul friend. Who else do you want to talk to at the day’s end? I love the evenings when we can just sit and talk and the sun goes down and moths come in to the candles.’
‘And we talk of children,’ I said, and wished I had not, ‘and of servants’ quarrels, and whether the cross-eyed kitchen slave is pregnant again, and we wonder who broke the pothook, and whether the thatch needs repair or whether it will last another year, and we try to work out what to do about the old dog that can’t walk any more, and what excuse Cadell will conjure up for not paying his rent again, and we discuss whether the flax has steeped enough, and if we should rub butterwort on the cows’ udders to improve their yield. That’s what we talk of.’
He laughed. ‘Guinevere and I talk of Dumnonia. Of Britain. And, of course, about Isis.’ Some of his enthusiasm dissipated at the mention of that name, but then he shrugged. ‘Not that we’re together often enough. That’s why I always hoped Mordred would take the burden, then I would be here all my days.’
‘Talking of broken pothooks instead of Isis?’ I teased him.
‘Of those and everything else,’ he said warmly. ‘I’ll farm this land one day, and Guinevere will go on with her work.’
‘Her work?’
He smiled wryly. ‘To know Isis. She tells me that if she can just make contact with the Goddess then the power will flow back down to the world.’ He shrugged, sceptical as always of such extravagant religious claims. Only Arthur would have dared plunge Excalibur into the soil and challenge Gofannon to come to his aid, for he did not really believe Gofannon would ever come. We are to the Gods, he once told me, like mice in a thatch, and we survive only so long as we are not noticed. But love alone demanded that he extend a wry tolerance to Guinevere’s passion. ‘I wish I could be more convinced of Isis,’ he admitted to me now, ‘but, of course, men aren’t part of her mysteries.’ He smiled. ‘Guinevere even calls Gwydre Horus.’
‘Horus?’
‘Isis’s son,’ he explained. ‘Ugly name.’
‘Not as bad as Wygga,” I said.
‘Who?’ he asked, then suddenly stiffened. ‘Look!’ he said excitedly, ‘look!’
I raised my head to peer over the flowery screen and there was Guinevere. Even from a quarter mile away she was unmistakable, for her red hair sprang in an unruly mass above the long blue robe she wore. She was walking along the nearer arcade towards the small open pavilion at its seaward end. Three maidservants walked behind with two of her deerhounds. The guards stepped aside and bowed as she passed. Once at the pavilion Guinevere sat at a stone table and the three maids served her breakfast.
‘She’ll be eating fruit,’ Arthur said fondly. ‘In summer she’ll eat nothing else in the morning.’ He smiled.
‘If she just knew how close I was!’
‘Tonight, Lord,’ I assured him, ‘you will be with her.’
He nodded. ‘At least they’re treating her well.’
‘Lancelot fears you too much to treat her badly, Lord.’
A few moments later Dinas and Lavaine appeared on the arcade. They wore their white Druidical robes and I touched Hywelbane’s hilt when I saw them and promised my daughter’s soul that her killers’
screams would make the whole Otherworld cringe in fear. The two Druids reached the pavilion, bowed to Guinevere, then joined her at the table. Gwydre came running a few moments later and we saw Guinevere ruffle his hair, then send him away in a servant’s keeping. ‘He’s a good boy,’ Arthur said fondly. ‘No deceit in him. Not like Amhar and Loholt. I failed them, didn’t I?’
‘They’re still young, Lord,’ I said.
‘But they serve my enemy now,’ he said bleakly. ‘What shall I do with them?’
Culhwch would doubtless have advised that he kill them, but I just shrugged. ‘Send them into exile,’ I said. The twins could join the unhappy men who had no oath-lord. They could sell their swords until at last they were killed in some unremembered battle against the Saxons or the Irish or the Scots. More women appeared on the arcade. Some were maids, while others were the attendants who served Guinevere as courtiers. Lunete, my old love, was probably one of those dozen women who were Guinevere’s confidantes and also the priestesses of her faith.
Sometime in the middle of the morning I fell asleep with my head cradled in my arms and my body lulled by the warmth of the summer sun. When I woke I found Arthur had gone and that Issa had returned. ‘Lord Arthur went back to the spearmen, Lord,’ he told me. I yawned. ‘What did you see?’
‘Another six men. All Saxon Guards.’
‘Lancelot’s Saxons?’
He nodded. ‘All of them in the big garden. Lord. But only the six. We’ve seen eighteen men altogether, and some others must stand guard at night, but even so there can’t be more than thirty of them altogether.’
I guessed he was right. Thirty men would be sufficient to guard this palace, and more would be superfluous especially when Lancelot needed every spear to guard his stolen kingdom. I raised my head to see the arcade was now empty except for the four guards who looked utterly bored. Two were
sitting with their backs to pillars while the other two were chatting on the stone bench where Guinevere had taken her breakfast. Their spears were propped against the table. The two guards on the small roof platform looked equally lazy. The Sea Palace basked under a summer sun and no one there believed an enemy could be within a hundred miles. ‘You told Arthur about the Saxons?’ I asked Issa.
‘Yes, Lord. He said it was only to be expected. Lancelot will want her guarded well.’
‘Go and sleep,’ I told him. ‘I’ll watch now.’
He went and, despite my promise, I fell asleep again. I had walked all night and I was weary, and besides, there seemed no danger threatening at the edge of that summer wood. And so I slept only to be abruptly woken by a sudden barking and the scrabble of big paws.
I woke in terror to discover a brace of slavering deerhounds standing over me, one of the two was barking and the other growling. I reached for my knife, but then a woman’s voice shouted at the hounds.
‘Down!’ she called sharply. ‘Drudwyn, Gwen, down! Quiet!’ The dogs reluctantly lay flat and I turned to see Gwenhwyvach watching me. She was dressed in an old brown gown, had a shawl over her head and a basket in which she had been collecting wild herbs on her arm. Her face was plumper than ever and her hair, where it showed under the scarf, was untidy and tangled. ‘The sleeping Lord Derfel,’ she said happily.
I touched a finger to my lips and glanced towards the palace.
‘They won’t watch me,’ she said, ‘they don’t care about me. Besides, I often talk to myself. The mad do, you know.’
‘You’re not mad, Lady.’
‘I should like to be,’ she said. ‘I can’t think why anyone would want to be anything else in this world.’
She laughed, hitched up her gown and sat heavily beside me. She turned as the dogs growled at a noise behind me and watched with amusement as Arthur wriggled across the ground to join me. He must have heard the barking. ‘On your belly like a snake, Arthur?’ she asked.
Arthur, just like me, touched a ringer to his lips. ‘They don’t care about me,’ Gwenhwyvach said again. ‘Look!’ And she vigorously waved her arms towards the guards who simply shook their heads and turned away. ‘I don’t live,’ she said, ‘not as far as they’re concerned. I’m just the mad fat woman who walks the dogs.’ She waved again, and again the sentries ignored her. ‘Even Lancelot doesn’t notice me,’ she added sadly.
‘Is he here?’ Arthur asked.
‘Of course he isn’t here. He’s a long way away. So are you, I was told. Aren’t you supposed to be talking to the Saxons?’
‘I’m here to take Guinevere away,’ Arthur said, ‘and you too,’ he added gallantly.
‘I don’t want to be taken away,’ Gwenhwyvach protested. ‘And Guinevere doesn’t know you’re here.’
‘No one should know,’ Arthur said.
‘She should! Guinevere should! She stares into the oil pot. She says she can see the future there! But she didn’t see you, did she?’ She giggled, then turned and stared at Arthur as though she found his presence amusing. ‘You’re here to rescue her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tonight?’ Gwenhwyvach guessed.
‘Yes.’
‘She won’t thank you,’ Gwenhwyvach said, ‘not tonight. No clouds, you see?’ She waved at the almost cloudless sky. ‘Can’t worship Isis in cloud, you know, because the moon can’t get into the temple, and tonight she’s expecting the full moon. A big full moon, just like a fresh cheese.’ She ruffled the long hair of one of the hounds. ‘This one’s Drudwyn,’ she told us, ‘and he’s a bad boy. And this one’s Gwen. Plop!’ she said unexpectedly. ‘That’s how the moon comes, plop! Right into her temple.’
She laughed again. ‘Right down the shaft and plop onto the pit.’
‘Will Gwydre be in the temple?’ Arthur asked her.
‘Not Gwydre. Men aren’t allowed, that’s what I’m told,’ Gwenhwyvach said in a sarcastic voice, and she seemed about to say something else, but then just shrugged. ‘Gwydre will be put to bed,’ she said instead. She stared at the palace and a slow sly smile showed on her round face. ‘How will you get in, Arthur?’ she asked. ‘There are lots of bars on those doors and all the windows are shuttered.’
‘We shall manage,’ he said, ‘as long as you don’t tell anyone that you saw us.’
‘As long as you leave me here,’ Gwenhwyvach said, ‘I won’t even tell the bees. And I tell them everything. You have to, otherwise the honey goes sour. Isn’t that right, Gwen?’ she asked the bitch, ruffling its floppy ears.
‘I’ll leave you here if that’s what you want,’ Arthur promised her.
‘Just me,’ she said, ‘just me and the dogs and the bees. That’s all I want. Me and the dogs and the bees and the palace. Guinevere can have the moon.’ She smiled again, then poked my shoulder with a plump hand. ‘You remember that cellar door I took you through, Derfel? The one that leads from the garden?’
‘I think so,’ I said.
‘I’ll make sure it’s unbarred.’ She giggled again, anticipating some enjoyment. ‘I’ll hide in the cellar and unbar the door when they’re all waiting for the moon. There are no guards there at night because the door’s too thick. The guards are all in their huts or out the front.’ She twisted to look at Arthur. ‘You will come?’ she asked anxiously.
‘I promise,’ Arthur replied.
‘Guinevere will be pleased,’ Gwenhwyvach said. ‘And so will I.’ She laughed and lumbered to her feet. ‘Tonight,’ she said, ‘when the moon comes plopping in.’ And with that she walked away with the two hounds. She chuckled as she walked and even danced a pair of clumsy steps. ‘Plop!’ she called aloud, and the hounds frisked about her as she capered down the grassy slope.
‘Is she mad?’ I asked Arthur.
‘Bitter, I think.’ He watched her rotund figure go clumsily down the hill. ‘But she’ll let us in, Derfel, she’ll let us in.’ He smiled, then reached forward and picked a handful of cornflowers from the field’s edge. He arranged them into a small bunch then gave me a shy smile. ‘For Guinevere,’ he explained,
‘tonight.’
At dusk the haymakers, their work finished, came back from the fields and the roof guards climbed down their long ladder. The braziers on the arcade were filled with fresh wood that was set alight, but I guessed the fires were meant to illuminate the palace rather than to give warning of any enemy’s approach. Gulls were flying to their inland roosts and the setting sun made their wings as pink as the convolvulus entwined among the brambles.
Hack in the woods Arthur pulled on his scale armour. I le buckled Excalibur over the coat’s gleaming shimmer of metal, then draped a black cloak about his shoulders. He rarely wore black cloaks, preferring his white, but at night the dark garment would help to conceal us. He would carry his shining helmet under the cloak to hide its lavish plume of tall white goose feathers. Ten of his horsemen would stay in the trees. Their task was to wait for the sound of Arthur’s silver horn and then make a charge on the spearmen’s sleeping-huts. The big horses and their armoured riders, trampling huge and noisy out of the night, should serve to panic any guards who might interfere with our retreat. The horn, Arthur hoped, would not be sounded until we had found both Gwydre and Guinevere and were ready to leave.
The rest of us would make the long journey to the palace’s western side, and from there we would creep through the shadows of the kitchen gardens to reach the cellar door. If Gwenhwyvach failed in her promise then we would have to go round to the front of the palace, kill the guards and break through one of the window shutters on the terrace. Once inside the palace we were to kill every spearman we found. Nimue would come with us. When Arthur had finished speaking she told us that Dinas and Lavaine were not proper Druids, not like Merlin or old Iorweth, but she warned us that the Silurian twins did possess some strange powers and we should expect to face their wizardry. She had spent the afternoon searching the woods and now raised a bundled cloak that seemed to t
witch as she held it, and that weird sight made my men touch their spearheads. ‘I have things here to check their spells,’ she told us, ‘but be careful.’
‘And I want Dinas and Lavaine alive,’ I told my men.
We waited, armoured and armed, forty men in steel and iron and leather. We waited as the sun died and as Isis’s full moon crept up from the sea like a great round silver ball. Nimue made her spells and some of us prayed. Arthur sat silent, but watched as I took from my pouch a little tress of golden hair. I kissed the unfaded hair, held it briefly against my cheek, then tied it around Hywelbane’s hilt. I felt a tear roll down my face as I thought of my little one in her shadow-body, but tonight, with the help of my Gods, I would give my Dian her peace.
* * *
I pulled on my helmet, buckled its chin strap and threw its wolf-hair plume back across my shoulders. We flexed our stiff leather gloves, then thrust our left arms into the shield loops. We drew our swords and held them out for Nimue’s touch. For a moment it looked as if Arthur wanted to say something more, but instead he just tucked his little bouquet of cornflowers into the neck of his scale armour, then nodded to Nimue who, cloaked in black and clutching her strange bundle, led us southwards through the trees.
Beyond the trees was a short meadow that sloped down to the creek’s bank. We crossed the dark meadow in single file, still out of sight of the palace. Our appearance startled some hares that had been feeding in the moonlight and they raced panicking away as we pushed through some low bushes and scrambled down a steep bank to reach the creek’s shingle beach. From there we walked west, hidden from the guards on the palace’s arcades by the high bank of the creek. The sea crashed and hissed to the south, its sound drowning out any noise our boots made on the shingle. I peered over the bank just once to see the Sea Palace poised like a great white wonder in the moonlight above the dark land. Its beauty reminded me of Ynys Trebes, that magical city of the sea that had been ravaged and destroyed by the Franks. This place had the same ethereal beauty for it shimmered above the dark land as though it were built from moonbeams. Once we were well to the west of the palace we climbed the bank, helping each other up with our spear-staffs, and then followed Nimue northwards through the woods. Enough moonlight filtered through the summer leaves to light our path, but no guards challenged us. The sea’s unending sound filled the night, though once a scream sounded very close by and we all froze, then recognized the sound of a hare being killed by a weasel. We breathed our relief and walked on.
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