‘How could he not?’ I whispered. ‘You are his blood. But Arthur was never meant to be a father. He loved war and he loved your mother. I think he feared everything else.’
She looked down at her bow and ran her thumb over the horn knock, which had worn smooth. ‘He tried to burn her,’ she said.
‘I know.’
‘Would he have done it? If Lancelot had not come?’
I thought about that, but before I could answer, Iselle said: ‘Perhaps he was just trying to trap your father.’
‘We cannot know,’ I said.
I could not see her face, but I felt her body tense against mine.
‘Why would she go back to him after that?’
I had wondered the same thing myself, though only now did I see a possibility that made any sense. ‘She blamed herself,’ I said. ‘For coming between the two men who together were the hope of Britain. She was trying to make things right.’
Iselle said nothing to that, but I knew that she did not believe it. I felt it in her.
I held her, waiting for her next question, knowing what it would be. She would ask why Guinevere, why her mother, gave her up. I waited for that question. Fearing it. Fearing that I would be able to give her no answer, nor had I the courage to plead on Guinevere’s behalf, for Iselle deserved better than that. But the question did not come.
I held her. I sowed more kisses amongst her hair, and, should the sun fall beyond the horizon, flooding the world with darkness, I would have happily wandered the marshes with Iselle for ever, the two of us haunting the reed-beds and meadows, restless spirits unburdened of memory and fear and even hope.
Iselle pulled away and looked me in the eye. ‘How did she have such a hold over them?’ she asked, and in that moment, as my soul trembled and the light leached from the world, I knew how.
I knew how.
I reached out and thumbed a tear from her cheek.
‘I will never leave you,’ I said.
When we returned, it was night. The moon hung white and fat, making spear blades of the reed heads and silvering the smoke rising from the fire which Lord Cai’s horse warriors had made near Arthur’s old apple tree. That tree where I had so often seen Arthur sitting beside Guinevere, watching the sunset.
Merlin had told everyone to gather there, much to Gawain’s annoyance by the looks, for he had got hold of another skin of wine – from one of Cai’s men presumably – and having resumed his position against that gnarled tree trunk was busy sluicing his insides.
Seeing me by the fire glow, he lifted the wine skin, offering it to me, and I took it and drank, knowing that I should have been the one to make the peace and wincing when he turned his face away and the firelight revealed a bruise across his jaw, the reddish-purple of knapweed flowers.
I handed the skin back. ‘What’s he up to?’ Gawain slurred, lifting his chin towards Merlin, who stood further off beneath the moonlight, looking up at the night sky and the stars clustered there as if they whispered in quiet yet eternal voices which he alone could hear.
I shrugged, but thought that he must have something important to say, because he was wearing his black robes and carrying his ash staff, and he had braided his beard into an oiled rope and darkened his eyes with ash.
‘We should have left him in his hole on Ynys Weith,’ Gawain rumbled, gesturing towards Merlin with the wine skin. ‘Better if you hadn’t found him, Parcefal.’
Parcefal was walking from the house to the fire, cradling a load of split logs. ‘We had to try, old friend,’ he said. He dropped the fuel onto the ground near the fire and looked at Gawain, the scar that started below his right eye and ran down his cheek, through his lips and down his chin, giving him a terrible aspect by the firelight. And yet that awful scar spoke less of pain and suffering than did the sad smile which he gave his friend then, the two warriors beset by the past and all that had been hoped for and lost.
I looked at Merlin. The druid had failed to give Guinevere back to Arthur, and we had failed to give Arthur back to Britain, and yet he looked more austere and enigmatic than ever. It seemed that he took strength from the night around us, that something sustained him even after the loss of Arthur and Guinevere, while the rest of us withered like fruit on a poisoned tree.
Then I looked for Iselle and saw her by the smokehouse, talking with Taliesin, who held something in two hands, something wrapped in cloth. Whatever the boy was telling her, it looked as though Iselle did not want to hear it, nor did she want whatever he was trying to give her. She shook her head and turned her face away, her expression cold under the white moon. But Taliesin took her hand and pulled her towards the fire and for a moment I thought Iselle would break away from him. But she did not, and they came to sit upon the animal skins which Cai’s men had laid on the ground. I asked her with a look what had happened, but she shook her head and then Merlin strode into the bloom of golden firelight.
‘Friends! Men of Dumnonia! Warriors of the Cauldron!’ he said, lifting his voice above the murmur of men and the crack and pop of the fire. A score of faces turned towards him and a hush fell upon the clearing, so that the marsh around us, the wall of reeds and the dark shadowed trees seemed suddenly to close in on us, reminding us that we were few and the darkness was great. I shivered. ‘You have fought across Britain and even across the Dividing Sea in the dark forests of Gaul. You have bled for this land and for Arthur. But the fight is not over. The enemies of Britain, who have stalked the land since Arthur’s last great battle, have gathered once more. They mean to drive us from our land and our gods. We have been betrayed by the Lady of Camelot, who has taken the Saxon king to her bed. Desperate to hold on to some measure of power in Dumnonia, Queen Morgana has joined with King Cerdic, who has sworn to cede the high seat, Uther Pendragon’s high seat, to Morgana’s grandsons. Thanks to Taranis, master of war, and to Galahad’s sword, one of those foul-hearted sons of Mordred is dead.’
Men’s eyes fell upon me then. Some nodded in respect and acknowledgement of that shared night of blood, and it warmed me.
‘But the other lives,’ Merlin said. ‘Melehan ap Mordred ap Arthur will rule in Dumnonia.’
Some of the men cursed into the flames. Gediens shook his head for shame, while Gawain lifted his wine skin as though in honour of the future king of Dumnonia.
‘He’ll be a puppet king, nothing more,’ Lord Cai said, tossing a stick into the fire. ‘The Saxons will rule. Melehan will not have the spears to wield true power.’
‘They’ll never let him sit in Uther’s high seat,’ Medyr said, helping Cadwy to run a spit through four waterfowl which would be set above the fire later when the flames had died. ‘Melehan will have his throat cut before he’s ever proclaimed king.’
‘Perhaps,’ Merlin nodded. ‘Either way, by then it will be too late, and Britain will be lost.’
‘Britain is already lost,’ Parcefal growled, stirring mutterings of agreement from those around the fire.
‘Perhaps,’ Merlin said again.
‘So, what do you want from us, druid?’ This from Gawain, who sat apart from the others still. A shadowed shape beneath the twisting trunk of a moon-silvered apple tree.
‘I want you to fight, Gawain, son of King Lot of Lyonesse,’ Merlin said. ‘That is what you do, is it not?’ He swept his ash staff across the assembly and the men’s faces which were lit by flame or moonlight. ‘I want you all to fight. One last time.’
‘It’s over, Merlin.’ Tarawg shook his head. ‘We cannot fight without Arthur. The other kings will not fight without Arthur.’
‘So, you will abandon Lord Constantine, who has fought on against our enemies while you feasted with the Fisher King? You will let him fight alone with the last of his brave spearmen?’ Merlin asked us. No one answered this, though I saw the disquiet in Gawain’s drunken face and knew it hurt him to forsake Constantine. ‘Then perhaps Constantine was right all those years ago when he believed he should have been proclaimed king as Uther lay dying. For he has n
ever given up, nor ever will. Not until he is cut down by a Saxon blade.’
‘Which will be before this summer ends,’ Nabon put in, lifting a bulging wine skin to his lips. Some of the men fell to talking among themselves, discussing the inevitable fate of those who still held out against the Saxons and their new allies. But Merlin took a step towards the fire and lifted his staff, commanding men’s attention again.
‘There was once a dream of Britain.’ His voice was clear and strong, and yet as soft as cream in the pail. ‘A dream of Camelot,’ he said. ‘Arthur believed in that dream and I believed in Arthur. We all believed in Arthur. He was the best of us. He was the light in the darkness.’ There were murmurs, and cups were raised, and some men gave Arthur’s name to the night around them. ‘You think it is over, but it is not,’ Merlin said. ‘There is still a flame and that flame can become a fire which will wake the gods.’ With that, Merlin opened his hand towards the fire and there was a sudden flare of flame, a leaping copper tongue that licked into the dark and made us gasp and throw ourselves back in fear and surprise.
I saw Medyr and Nabon and some of the others touch belt buckles or knife hilts, seeking protection from Merlin’s magic.
‘I was like you,’ Merlin told us. ‘I thought the dream had flown away.’ He lifted a hand and fluttered his fingers. ‘I believed that the gods had turned their backs on us. That only the faintest whiff of their power remained in Britain, like the smell in the air after a rain storm.’ He looked at the stars and shook his head. ‘I could not hear them. I could not dream to them, and so I thought my own abilities had drained from my body, like the blood that spilled from so many brave warriors on that field at Camlan.’ He pointed at Parcefal and Cai, at Gediens and Cadwy, Tarawg and Nabon. ‘You were there,’ he said. Almost an accusation. ‘You all bled.’
‘We were there, druid. Where were you?’ a warrior named Culhwch asked, eyeballing Merlin from the other side of the fire.
‘My body was not there, Culhwch ap Cynan, but there is more to a man … and a woman … than flesh and bone.’ He grimaced. ‘I fought for Arthur in my own way, just as you fought in yours. But after, I was spent. We stopped the Saxons but the slaughter was great and I feared we had given too much and gained too little. The gods took away my second sight. That was their punishment, for I had made mistakes.’ He glanced at me then and I knew he was thinking of my father and Guinevere. ‘But the gods are still here,’ Merlin said, holding out his arms as if to invite the stars and the moon, the flame and the darkness to turn themselves into Taranis or Balor, Epona or the horse goddess Rhiannon. ‘I felt it on the Isle of the Dead and in the boy Taliesin.’ Men looked at Taliesin then, some no doubt recalling the tale of how he had sung in the caves of the neamh-mairbh and how his voice had benumbed those foul creatures, binding them in the dark. ‘I felt the gods in the Cauldron of Annwn and I feel them here. Now. In this place.’ He lifted his eyes and looked around him and, in that moment, it was as if we were not there. Just Merlin and the gods wheeling in the night like moths around a candle. ‘They want us to fight for the old dream. They want us to fight for Britain.’
‘We needed Arthur,’ Gawain called. ‘But Arthur’s gone.’
Merlin smiled and looked about him. ‘And yet we are all here,’ he said.
‘Hardly an army,’ Parcefal said, raising a smattering of quiet laughter.
‘It only takes one leaf from the hemlock plant to kill a man, Parcefal,’ Merlin countered. ‘We are no army, but we are the beginnings of an army. We are the flint and steel from which a hundred fires will be lit. A thousand fires.’
Some of the warriors shook their heads. Some told Merlin that he was too late. That he should have been here ten years ago and maybe then there would have been a chance. To regroup after Camlan and throw the Saxons back into the sea.
‘I am here now,’ Merlin said. ‘And I have more power than I ever did, because I have the greatest of the ancient treasures of Britain. I have the Cauldron of Annwn.’ Merlin looked at me as he said that, and I saw the glint of triumph in his eyes and I felt snakes writhing in my guts because in that moment I realized that we had not ventured to the Isle of the Dead to fetch the cauldron for Guinevere and Arthur, but for Merlin. He had known that even if he could bring Guinevere back to her body, she would not stay. That she could not. But we had given Merlin the cauldron, that treasure once belonging to the druids of old, and that treasure was what Merlin coveted. It was in that silver bowl that Merlin had found the gods whom he had thought gone for ever.
His gaze lingered on me, because he knew that I knew, and he was enjoying the moment. ‘And we have Galahad ap Lancelot,’ Merlin said, staring still, pointing his staff at me. ‘A warrior who has it in him to be even greater than his father. For though Lancelot was without equal in battle, he was blind to the needs of Britain. He saw only the lady. Galahad here has his father’s great heart.’ He clenched a bony hand and thumped it against his own chest. ‘But he sees more than Lancelot ever did.’ He pressed a gnarled finger against his temple. ‘He has more brains. He knows what we are trying to build here. He knows what Britain can be, if we only stand together now. Here, in this place.’ I felt men’s eyes on me, heavier than any armour, yet I stood square and tall because in my heart I wanted them to believe what Merlin was saying. I wanted to believe it myself. ‘Galahad will be the one to reach out and take what the gods have shown me in my dreams,’ he said, then he paused to let his words sink in, looking up towards the star-domed vault of heaven, and but for the flapping of flames, the night was silent, as if it too hung on the druid’s words.
Then he lowered his face and swung his eyes to Iselle, and I looked at her and she at me and we both knew what was coming. Her jaw was set, her cheekbones sharp beneath the fair skin, her lips pressed into a tight line.
‘Our enemies already know that Galahad killed Ambrosius ap Mordred,’ Merlin went on. ‘They fear him, and they are right to fear him.’ He threw a hand towards the tall reeds through which I had followed Arthur the previous night. ‘But what about Arthur? you cry. How can we fight without the Pendragon’s son to lead us?’ He turned to face Iselle fully now, and he paused again, letting the silence flood in, while he simply stared at her, as if he had never really looked at her before, never really seen her until this night beneath these stars.
‘Stand up, Iselle.’ His voice was even and rich, and in the dark one might have thought it was the voice of a younger man. Iselle looked at me, as if for help. I had never seen her look so afraid as she did in that moment, but all I did was nod that she should do as the druid asked. ‘Come, Iselle,’ Merlin said, ‘let us see you now.’ This time Iselle stood, and she balled her fists and lifted her chin rather than show her discomfort. She had no inkling that she looked like a queen.
Merlin dipped his head. ‘This young woman standing before us now, standing with us now, is Lady Guinevere’s daughter by Arthur.’ A murmuring rose around us, a low rumble as of hooves drumming soft earth. ‘This is Arthur’s daughter,’ Merlin said, and at this the rumbling grew louder and men swore and growled and some were climbing to their feet, or touching iron to ward off ill luck, or invoking the gods, all of them glaring at Iselle as if she had suddenly appeared, like some spirit on Samhain come among them. ‘She is a warrior, as you know,’ Merlin said. ‘Uther’s blood flows in her veins. Guinevere’s too, and Guinevere had a power that even I could never possess.’
Culhwch took three steps towards Iselle and lifted his cup, looming in the flame shadow and frowning. ‘You’re Arthur’s daughter?’
Iselle nodded.
‘I can see it now,’ another said.
‘Balor’s eyes,’ Parcefal growled.
‘You kept this from me, Merlin?’ Gawain said. On his feet now. Unsteady. Pointing a finger at Merlin.
‘Gawain, you look at a meadow and you see a meadow. You do not see the cloth dye in the shepherd’s knot or the healing power of coltsfoot, or in the four-leafed clover the name of whoever is
practising witchcraft against you.’ He shrugged. ‘You are a warrior.’
Gawain turned to me. ‘Did you know?’
‘I knew,’ I said. ‘After Camelot.’
Gawain spat a curse and kicked a smoking stick which had fallen out of the fire, sending up sparks like a swarm of fireflies. But Iselle said his name and he swung his drunken eyes to her. ‘I only learnt it last night,’ she told him. ‘Guinevere … my mother … told me.’
‘And now you all know,’ Merlin said, lifting his staff with two hands and sweeping it through the fire glow. He looked at the faces around the flames, letting the revelation seep into the men like the fire which ate into the logs, making them crack and pop. ‘Iselle will lead us,’ the druid said.
Cadwy muttered something under his breath and several of the others frowned or shook their heads.
I stood. ‘Iselle is a warrior,’ I said. ‘The day I met her she killed three Saxons before they could kill me.’ I looked at Iselle and she shook her head at me, her eyes telling me to say no more. ‘She did not know that she is Lord Arthur’s daughter and yet she shared more than Arthur’s blood. She shared his dream of Britain.’
‘You would have her lead us in battle?’ Cadwy asked. ‘I mean no offence, girl, but—’
‘There is no man here who has more courage.’ I heard the challenge in my voice, but no one denied it. They all knew Iselle and they had seen her fight.
‘No one will believe she is Arthur’s daughter,’ a bald, big-bearded warrior named Hardolf said, turning the spit upon which the waterfowl glistened and dripped juices which hissed in the flame.
‘Do you believe it, Hardolf?’ I asked him, throwing an arm towards Iselle, inviting the man to look at her again.
The meat sizzled and Hardolf frowned. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there’s no mistaking it now.’
I nodded. ‘So will everyone see it.’ For, suddenly, I saw it myself. Iselle was our hope. She would be what the sword Excalibur had been those years ago: the talisman to draw the kings and the warriors of Britain into the fight. Merlin was watching me, and he knew what I had seen in my mind. The stag antler banner of Powys and the bristling boar of Caer Gloui, the spearmen of Dumnonia and Cornubia, of Caer Celemion and Cynwidion, lining up in their shieldwalls beneath the summer sun, and all of them brimming with the belief that we could win because we had Iselle ferch Arthur ap Uther. Merlin grinned because he knew I saw all that. And perhaps he had known I would.
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