The Winter King twc-1

by Bernard Cornwell

  King Gundleus gave Norwenna scarcely a glance. He sprawled in the chair facing her and looked as though he was utterly bored by the proceedings. Tanaburs scuttled from pillar to pillar, muttering charms and spitting. When he passed close to my hiding place I crouched low until the smell of him had faded. Flames crackled on the fire-stones at the hall's two ends, their smoke mingling and churning in the soot-blackened roof space. There was no sign of Nimue.

  Wine, smoked fish and oatcakes were served to the visitors, then Bishop Bedwin made a speech explaining to Norwenna that Gundleus, King of Siluria, while on a mission of friendship to the High King, had happened to be passing close to Ynys Wydryn and had thought it courteous to pay this visit to the Prince Mordred and his mother. The King had brought the Prince some gifts, Bedwin said, upon which Gundleus carelessly waved the gift-bearers forward. The two guards carried the chest to Norwenna's feet. The Princess had not spoken, nor did she speak now as the gifts were laid on the carpet at her feet. There was a fine wolf fur, two otter pelts, a beaver fur and a hart's skin, a small gold torque, some brooches, a drinking horn wrapped in a silver wicker pattern and a Roman flask of pale green glass with a wonderfully delicate spout and a handle shaped as a wreath. The empty chest was carried away and there was an awkward silence in which no one quite knew what to say. Gundleus gestured carelessly at the gifts, Bishop Bedwin beamed happiness, Tanaburs hawked a protective gobbet of spit at a pillar while Norwenna looked dubiously at the King's gifts which were not, in truth, over generous. The hart's skin might make a fine pair of gloves, the pelts were good, though Norwenna probably had a score of better ones in her wicker baskets, while the torque around her neck was four times as heavy as the one lying at her feet. Gundleus's brooches were of thin gold and the drinking horn was chipped at its rim. Only the green Roman flask was truly precious.

  Bedwin broke the embarrassing silence. “The gifts are magnificent! Rare and magnificent. Truly generous, Lord King.”

  Norwenna nodded obedient agreement. The child began to cry and Ralla, the wet nurse, carried him off to the shadows beyond the pillars where she bared a breast and so silenced him.

  “The Edling is well?” Gundleus spoke for the first time since entering the hall.

  “Praise God and His Saints,” Norwenna answered, 'he is.“ His left foot?” Gundleus asked untactfully. “Does it mend?”

  “His foot will not stop him from riding a horse, wielding a sword or sitting upon a throne,” Norwenna answered firmly.

  “Of course not, of course not,” Gundleus said and glanced across at the hungry babe. He smiled, then stretched his long arms and looked about the hall. He had said nothing of marriage, but he would not in this company. If he wanted to marry Norwenna then he would ask Uther, not Norwenna. This visit was merely an opportunity for him to inspect his bride. He spared Norwenna a brief disinterested look, then gazed again about the shadowed hall. “So this is Lord Merlin's lair, eh?” Gundleus said. “Where is he?” No one answered. Tanaburs was scrabbling beneath the edge of one of the carpets and I guessed he was burying a charm in the earth of the hall floor. Later, when the Silurian delegation was gone, I searched the spot and found a small bone carving of a boar that I threw on the fire. The flames burned blue and spat fiercely, and Nimue said I had done the right thing.

  “Lord Merlin, we think, is in Ireland,” Bishop Bedwin at last answered. “Or maybe in the northern wilderness,” he added vaguely.

  “Or maybe dead?” Gundleus suggested.

  “I pray not,” the Bishop said fervently.

  “You do?” Gundleus twisted in his chair to stare into Bed win's aged face. “You approve of Merlin, Bishop?”

  “He is a friend, Lord King,” Bedwin said. He was a dignified, plump man who was ever eager to keep the peace between the various religions.

  “Lord Merlin is a Druid, Bishop, who hates Christians.” Gundleus was trying to provoke Bedwin.

  “There are many Christians in Britain now,” Bedwin said, 'and few Druids. I think we of the true faith have nothing to fear."

  “You hear that, Tanaburs?” Gundleus called to his Druid. “The Bishop doesn't fear you!” Tanaburs did not answer. In his questing around the hall he had come to the ghost-fence that guarded the door to Merlin's chambers. The fence was a simple one: merely two skulls placed on either side of the door, but only a Druid would dare cross their invisible barrier and even a Druid would fear a ghost-fence placed by Merlin.

  “Will you rest here tonight?” Bishop Bedwin asked Gundleus, trying to change the subject away from Merlin.

  “No,” Gundleus said rudely, rising. I thought he was about to take his leave, but instead he looked past Norwenna to the small, black, skull-guarded door in front of which Tanaburs was quivering like a hound smelling an unseen boar. “What's through the door?” the King asked.

  “My Lord Merlin's chambers, Lord King,” Bedwin said.

  “The place of secrets?” Gundleus asked wolfishly.

  “Sleeping quarters, nothing more,” Bedwin said dismissively. Tanaburs raised his moon-tipped staff and held it quivering towards the ghost-fence. King Gundleus watched his Druid's performance, then drained his wine and tossed the drinking horn on to the floor.

  “Maybe I shall sleep here after all,” the King said, 'but first let us inspect the sleeping quarters.“ He waved Tanaburs forward, but the Druid was nervous. Merlin was the greatest Druid in Britain, feared even beyond the Irish Sea, and no one meddled in his life lightly, yet the great man had not been seen for many a long month and some folk whispered that Prince Mordred's death had been a sign that Merlin's power was waning. And Tanaburs, like his master, was surely fascinated by what lay behind the door for secrets could lie there that would make Tanaburs as mighty and learned as the great Merlin himself. ”Open the door!" Gundleus ordered Tanaburs.

  The butt of the moon staff moved tremulously towards one of the skulls, hesitated, then touched the yellowing bone dome. Nothing happened. Tanaburs spat on the skull, then tipped it over before snatching his staff back like a man who has prodded a sleeping snake. Again nothing happened and so he reached his free hand towards the door's wooden latch.

  Then he stopped in terror.

  A howl had echoed in the hall's smoking dark. A ghastly screech, like a girl being tortured, and the awful sound drove the Druid back. Norwenna cried aloud with fear and made the sign of the cross. The baby Mordred began wailing and nothing Ralla could do would quiet him. Gundleus first checked at the noise, then laughed as the howl faded. “A warrior,” he announced to the nervous hall, 'is not frightened of a girl's scream." He walked towards the door, ignoring Bishop Bedwin who was fluttering his hands as he tried to restrain the King without actually touching him.

  A crash sounded from the ghost-guarded door. It was a violent, splintering noise and so sudden that everyone jumped with alarm. At first I thought the door had fallen before the King's advance, then I saw that a spear had been thrust clean through it. The silver-coloured spearhead stood proud of the old, fire-blackened oak and I tried to imagine what inhuman force had been needed to drive that sharpened steel through so thick a barrier.

  The spear's sudden appearance made even Gundleus check, but his pride was threatened and he would not back down in the face of his warriors. He made the sign against evil, spat at the spearhead, then walked to the door, lifted its latch and pushed it open.

  And immediately stepped back with horror on his face. I was watching him and I saw the raw fear in his eyes. He took a second pace away from the open door, then I heard Nimue's keening cry as she advanced into the hall. Tanaburs was making urgent motions with his staff, Bedwin was praying, the baby was crying while Norwenna had turned in her chair with a look of anguish. Nimue came through the door and, seeing my friend, even I shivered. She was naked and her thin white body was raddled with blood that had dripped down from her hair to run in rivulets past her small breasts and on to her thighs. Her head was crowned with a death-mask, the tanned face-skin of a sacrifi
ced man that was perched above her own face like a snarling helmet and held in place by the skin of the dead man's arms knotted about her thin neck. The mask seemed to have a dreadful life of its own for it twitched as she walked towards the Silurian King. The dead man's dry and yellow body-skin hung loose down Nimue's back as she stuttered forward in small irregular steps. Only the whites of her eyes were showing in her bloody face, and as she twitched forward she called out imprecations in a language fouler than any soldier's tongue, while in her hands were two vipers, their dark bodies gleaming and their flickering heads questing towards the King.

  Gundleus retreated, making the sign against evil, then he remembered that he was a man, a king and a warrior and so he put his hand on his sword hilt. It was then that Nimue jerked her head and the death mask fell back from the hair that was piled high on her scalp, then we all saw that it was not her hair that was piled there, but a bat that suddenly stretched its black, crinkling wings and snarled its red mouth at Gundleus.

  The bat made Norwenna scream and run to fetch her baby while the rest of us stared in horror at the creature which was trapped in Nimue's hair. It jerked and flapped, tried to fly, snarled and struggled. The snakes twisted and suddenly the hall emptied. Norwenna ran first, Tanaburs followed, then everyone, even the King, was running for the morning daylight at the eastern door. Nimue stood motionless as they fled, then her eyes rolled and she blinked. She walked to the fire and carelessly tossed the two snakes into the flames where they hissed, whiplashed, then sizzled as they died. She freed the bat, which flew up into the rafters, then untied the death-mask from around her neck and rolled it into a bundle before picking up the delicate Roman flask from among the gifts that Gundleus had brought. She stared at the flask for a few seconds, then her wiry body twisted as she hurled the treasure against an oak pillar where it shattered into a scatter of pale green shards. “Derfel?” she snapped into the sudden silence that followed. “I know you're here.”

  “Nimue?” I said nervously, then stood up from behind my wicker screen. I was terrified. Snake fat was hissing in the fire and the bat was rustling in the roof.

  Nimue smiled at me. “I need water, Derfel,” she said.

  “Water?” I asked stupidly.

  “To wash off the chicken blood,” Nimue explained.

  “Chicken?”

  “Water,” she said again. “There's a jar by the door. Bring some.”

  “In there?” I asked, astonished because her gesture seemed to imply that I should bring the water into Merlin's rooms.

  “Why not?” she asked, then walked through the door that was still impaled with the great boar spear while I lifted the heavy jar and followed to find her standing in front of a sheet of beaten copper that reflected her nude body. She was unembarrassed, perhaps because we had all run naked as children, but I was uncomfortably aware that the two of us were children no longer.

  “Here?” I asked.

  Nimue nodded. I put the jar down and backed towards the door. “Stay,” she said, 'please stay. And shut the door."

  I had to prise the spear out of the door before I could close it. I did not like to ask how she had driven that spearhead through the oak for she was in no mood for questions, so I stayed silent as I worked the weapon free and Nimue washed the blood off her white skin, then wrapped herself in a black cloak.

  “Come here,” she said when she had finished. I crossed obediently to a bed of furs and woollen blankets that was piled on a low wooden platform where she evidently slept at nights. The bed was tented with a dark, musty cloth and in its darkness I sat and cradled her in my arms. I could feel her ribs through the cloak's woollen softness. She was crying. I did not know why, so I just held her clumsily and stared about Merlin's room.

  It was an extraordinary place. There were scores of wooden chests and wicker baskets piled up to make nooks and corridors through which a tribe of skinny kittens stalked. In places the piles had collapsed as though someone had sought an object in a lower box and could not be bothered to dismantle the pile, so had just heaved the whole heap over. Dust lay everywhere. I doubted that the rushes on the floor had been changed in years, though in most places they had been overlaid with carpets or blankets that had been allowed to rot. The stench of the room was overpowering; a smell of dust, cat urine, damp, decay and mould all mixed with the more subtle aromas of the herbs hanging from the beams. A table stood at one side of the door and was piled with curling, crumbling parchments. Animal skulls occupied a dusty shelf over the table, and, as my eyes grew accustomed to the sepulchral gloom, I saw there were at least two human skulls among them. Faded shields were stacked against a vast clay pot in which a sheaf of cobwebbed spears was thrust. A sword hung against a wall. A smoking brazier stood in a heap of grey fire-ash close to the big copper mirror on which, extraordinarily, there hung a Christian cross with its twisted figure of their dead God nailed to its arms. The cross was draped with mistletoe as a precaution against its inherent evil. A great tangle of antlers hung from a rafter alongside bunches of dried mistletoe and a dangling clutch of roosting bats whose droppings made small heaps on the floor. Bats in a house were the worst omen, but I supposed that people as powerful as Merlin and Nimue had no need to worry about such prosaic threats. A second table was crowded with bowls, mortars, pestles, a metal balance, flasks and wax-sealed pots which I later discovered held dew collected from murdered men's graves, the powder from crushed skulls and infusions of belladonna, mandrake and thorn-apple, while in a curious stone urn next to the table was heaped a jumble of eagle stones, fairy loaves, elf bolts, snake stones and hag stones, all mixed up with feathers, sea shells and pine cones. I had never seen a room so crowded, so filthy or so fascinating and I wondered if the chamber next door, Merlin's Tower, was just as dreadfully wonderful.

  Nimue had stopped crying and now lay motionless in my arms. She must have sensed my wonder and revulsion at the room. “He throws nothing away,” she said wearily, 'nothing.“ I did not speak, but just soothed and stroked her. For a while she lay exhausted, but then, when my hand explored the cloak over one of her small breasts, she twisted angrily away. ”If that's what you want,“ she said, 'go and see Sebile.” She clutched the cloak tight about her as she climbed off the platform bed and crossed to the table cluttered with Merlin's instruments.

  I stammered some kind of embarrassed apology.

  “It's not important,” she dismissed my apologies. We could hear voices on the Tor outside, and more voices in the great hall next door, but no one tried to disturb us. Nimue was searching among the bowls and pots and ladles on the table and found what she wanted. It was a knife made from black stone, its blade feathered into bone-white edges. She came back to the fusty bed and knelt beside its platform so that she could look straight into my face. Her cloak had fallen open and I was nervously aware of her naked, shadowed body, but she was staring fixedly into my eyes and I could do nothing but return that gaze.

  She did not speak for a long time and in the silence I could almost hear my heart thumping. She seemed to be making a decision, one of those decisions so ominous that it will change the balance of a life for ever, and so I waited, fearful, helpless to move from my awkward stance. Her black hair was tousled, framing her wedge-shaped face. Nimue was neither beautiful nor plain, but her face possessed a quickness and life that did not need formal beauty. Her forehead was broad and high, her eyes dark and fierce, her nose sharp, her mouth wide and her chin narrow. She was the cleverest woman I ever knew, but even in those days, when she was scarcely more than a child, she was filled with a sadness born of that cleverness. She knew so much. She was born knowing, or else the Gods had given her that knowledge when they had spared her from drowning. As a child she had often been full of nonsense and mischief, but now, bereft of Merlin's guidance but with his responsibilities thrust on her thin shoulders, she was changing. I was changing too, of course, but my change was predictable: a bony boy turning into a tall young man. Nimue was flowing from childhood into autho
rity. That authority sprang from her dream, a dream she shared with Merlin, but one that she would never compromise as Merlin would. Nimue was for all or she was for nothing. She would rather have seen the whole earth die in the cold of a Godless void than yield one inch to those who would dilute her image of a perfect Britain devoted to its own British Gods. And now, kneeling before me, she was, I knew, judging whether I was worthy to be a part of that fervent dream.

  She made her decision and moved closer to me. “Give me your left hand,” she said. I held it out.

  She held my hand palm uppermost in her left hand, then spoke a charm. I recognized the names of Camulos, the War God, of Manawydan fab Llyr, Nimue's own Sea God, of Agrona, the Goddess of Slaughter, and of Aranrhod the Golden, the Goddess of the Dawn, but most of the names and words were strange and they were spoken in such an hypnotic voice that I was lulled and comforted, careless of what Nimue said or did until suddenly she slashed the knife across my palm and then, startled, I cried out. She hushed me. For a second the knife-cut lay thin across my hand, then blood welled up. She cut her own left palm in the same way that she had cut mine, then placed the cut over mine and gripped my nerveless fingers with her own. She dropped the knife and hitched up a corner of her cloak which she wrapped hard around the two bleeding hands. “Derfel,” she said softly, 'so long as your hand is scarred and so long as mine is scarred, we are one. Agreed?"

  I looked into her eyes and knew this was no small thing, no childhood game, but an oath that would bind me throughout this world and maybe into the next. For a second I was terrified of all that was to come, then I nodded and somehow managed to speak. “Agreed,” I said.

  “And so long as you carry the scar, Derfel,” she said, 'your life is mine, and so long as I carry the scar, my life is yours. Do you understand that?"

  “Yes,” I said. My hand throbbed. It felt hot and swollen while her hand felt tiny and chill in my bloody grip.