‘Now,’ Merlin called as the spears fell beneath me, ‘give it power, Derfel, give it power!’ I concentrated on the staff, but truly felt nothing, though Merlin seemed satisfied with my effort. ‘Bring it down now,’ he said, ‘and get some rest. We have a fair walk to make in the morning. Is there any more cheese? I could eat a sackful!’
We lay in the cold. Merlin would not discuss the Cauldron, nor his illness, but I sensed the change of mood in all of us. We were suddenly hopeful. We would live, and it was Ceinwyn who first saw the way of our salvation. She prodded my side, then pointed up at the moon, and I saw that what had been a clear clean shape was now hazed by a torque of shimmering mist. That misty torque looked like a ring of powdered gems, so hard and bright did those tiny points shine about the full silver moon. Merlin did not care about the moon, he was still talking of cheese. ‘There used to be a woman in Dun Seilo who made the most wonderful soft cheese,’ he told us. ‘She wrapped it in nettle leaves as I remember, then insisted it spent six months sitting in a wooden bowl that had been steeped in ram’s urine. Ram’s urine! Some people do possess the most absurd superstitions, but all the same her cheese was very good.’ He chuckled. ‘She made her poor husband collect the urine. How did he do it? I never liked to ask. Grasp it by the horns and tickle, do you think? Or maybe he used his own and never told her. I would have done. Is it getting warmer, do you think?’
The glittering ice mist about the moon had faded, but the fading had not made the moon’s edges any duller. Instead they were being diffused by a gentler mist that was now being wafted on a small west wind that was indeed warmer. The bright stars were hazed, the crystal frost on the rocks was melting to a wet sheen and we had all stopped shivering. Our spear-points could be touched again. A fog was forming.
‘The Dumnonians, of course, insist their cheese is the very finest in Britain,’ Merlin said earnestly, as though none of us had anything better to do than listen to a lecture on cheese, ‘and, admittedly, it can be good, but too often it is hard. I remember Uther broke a tooth once on a piece of cheese from a farm near Lindinis. Clean in two! Poor fellow was in pain for weeks. He never could abide having a tooth pulled. He insisted I work some magic, but it’s a strange thing, magic never works with teeth. Eyes, yes, bowels, every time, and even brains sometimes, though there’s few enough of those in Britain these days. But teeth? Never. I must work on that problem when I have some time. Mind you, I do enjoy pulling teeth.’ He smiled extravagantly, showing off his own rare set of perfect teeth. Arthur was similarly blessed, but the rest of us were plagued by toothaches.
I looked up to see that the topmost rocks were almost hidden by the fog that was thickening by the minute. It was a Druid’s fog, brewing dense and white beneath the moon and smothering the whole of Ynys Mon in its thick cloak of vapour.
‘In Siluria,’ Merlin said, ‘they serve a pale bowl of slops and call it cheese. It’s so repellent that even the mice won’t eat it, but what else does one expect of Siluria? Was there something you wished to say to me, Derfel? You look excited.’
‘Fog, Lord,’ I said.
‘What an observant man you are,’ he said admiringly. ‘So perhaps you would pull the Cauldron from the pit? It’s time we went, Derfel, it’s time we went.’
And so we did.
PART TWO
The Broken War
‘No!’ Igraine protested, when she looked at the last parchment in the pile.
‘No?’ I asked politely.
‘You can’t just leave the story there!’ she said. ‘What happened?’
‘We walked out, of course.’
‘Oh, Derfel!’ She threw the parchment down. ‘There are scullions who know how to tell a tale better than you! Tell me how it happened, I insist!’
So I told her.
It was near dawn and the fog lay like a fleece so thick that when we managed to descend the rocks and assemble on the grass at the top of the knoll we were in danger of losing each other by taking just one step. Merlin made us form a chain, each person holding the cloak of the one in front, and then, with the Cauldron tied to my back, we crept downhill in single file. Merlin, with his staff held at arm’s length, led us clean through the surrounding Bloodshields and not one of them saw us. I could hear Diwrnach shouting at them, telling them to spread out, but the dark riders knew it was a wizard’s fog and they preferred to stay close by their fires; yet those first few steps were the most dangerous part of our journey.
‘But the stories,’ my Queen insisted, ‘say that you all disappeared. Diwrnach’s men claimed that you flew off the island. It’s a famous story! My mother told it to me. You can’t just say that you walked away!’
‘But we did,’ I said.
‘Derfel!’ she reprimanded me.
‘We neither disappeared,’ I said patiently, ‘nor did we fly, whatever your mother might have told you.’
‘So what happened then?’ she asked, still disappointed in my pedestrian version of the tale. We walked for hours, following Nimue who possessed an uncanny ability to find her wav in darkness or fog. It was Nimue who had led my war-band on the night before Lugg Vale, and now, in that thick winter fog in Ynys Mon, she led us to one of the great grassy hummocks that had been made by the Old People. Merlin knew the place, indeed he claimed to have slept there years before, and he ordered three of my men to pull away the stones that blocked the entrance which lay between two curving banks of grassy earth that jutted out like horns. Then, one by one, on our hands and knees, we crawled into the mound’s black centre.
The mound was a grave and it had been made by piling huge rocks to make a central passageway off which branched six smaller chambers, and when the whole thing was done the Old People had roofed the corridor and chambers with stone slabs, then piled earth above the stones. They did not burn their dead as we did, or leave them in the cold earth like Christians, but placed them in the stone chambers where they still lay, each with treasures: horn cups, deer antlers, stone spearheads, flint knives, a bronze dish and a necklace of precious pieces of jet that were strung on a decayed thread of sinew. Merlin insisted we should not disturb the dead for we were their guests, and we huddled together in the central passage and left the bone-chambers alone. We sang songs and told tales. Merlin told us how the Old People had been the guardians of Britain before the British came and there were places, he said, where they still lived. He had been to those deep lost valleys in the wilds and had learned some of their magic. He told us how they would take the first lamb born in the year, bind it in wicker and bury it in a pasture to ensure that the other lambs would be born healthy and strong.
‘We still do that,’ said Issa.
‘Because your ancestors learned from the Old People,’ Merlin said.
‘In Benoic,’ Galahad said, ‘we used to take the skin of the first lamb and nail it to a tree.’
‘That works too.’ Merlin’s voice echoed in the cool, dark passage.
‘Poor lambs,’ Ceinwyn said, and everyone laughed.
The fog lifted, but deep in the mound we had little sense of night or day except when we unblocked the entrance so that some of us could creep out. We had to do that from time to time if we were not to live in our own dung, and if it was daylight when we pulled down the stones then we would hide between the mound’s earth horns and watch the dark riders searching the fields, caves, moors, rocks, cabins and small woods of wind-bent trees. They searched for five long days, and in that time we ate the last scraps of our food and drank the water that seeped down through the mound, but at last Diwrnach decided that our magic was superior to his and abandoned his search. We waited two more days to make sure he was not trying to entice us out of our hiding place, and then, at last, we left. We added gold to the treasures of the dead as payment of rent, we blocked the entrance behind us, then walked eastwards under a wintry sun. Once at the coast we used our swords to commandeer two fishing boats and so sailed away from the sacred isle. We went east, and as long as I live I shall remember the sun glinting from the Cauldron’s golden ornaments and thick silver belly as the ragged sails dragged us to safety. We made a song as we sailed, the Song of the Cauldron, and even to this day it is sometimes sung, though it is a poor thing compared with the songs of the bards. We landed in Cornovia and from there walked south across Elmet into friendly Powys. ‘And that, my Lady,’ I concluded, ‘is why all the tales say that Merlin vanished.’
Igraine frowned. ‘Didn’t the dark riders search the mound?’
‘Twice,’ I said, ‘but they didn’t know the entrance could be unblocked, or else they feared the spirits of the dead inside. And Merlin, of course, had woven us a charm of concealment.’
‘I wish you had flown away,’ she grumbled. ‘It would make a much better tale.’ She sighed for that lost dream. ‘But the story of the Cauldron does not end there, does it?’
‘Alas, no.’
‘So . . .’
‘So I will tell it in its proper place,’ I interrupted her.
She pouted. Today she is wearing her cloak of grey wool edged with otter fur that makes her look so pretty. She is still not pregnant, which makes me think that either she is not destined to have children or else her husband, King Brochvael, is spending too much time with his mistress, Nwylle. It is cold today, and the wind gusts at my window and tugs at the small flames in the hearth that is big enough to hold a fire ten times the size of the one Bishop Sansum allows me. I can hear the saint scolding Brother Arun, who is our monastery’s cook. The gruel was too hot this morning and scalded St Tudwal’s tongue. Tudwal is a child in our monastery, the Bishop’s close companion in Christ Jesus, and last year the Bishop declared Tudwal to be a saint. The devil sets many snares in the path of true faith.
‘So it was you and Ceinwyn,’ Igraine accuses me.
‘Was what?’ I asked.
‘You were her lover,’ Igraine said.
‘For life, Lady,’ I confessed.
‘And you never married?’
‘Never. She took her oath, remember?’
‘But nor did she split in two with a baby,’ Igraine said.
‘The third child almost killed her,’ I said, ‘but the others were much easier.’
Igraine was crouching by the fire, holding her pale hands to its pathetic flames. ‘You are lucky, Derfel.’
‘I am?’
‘To have known a love like that.’ She looked wistful. The Queen is no older than Ceinwyn when I first knew her, and, like Ceinwyn, Igraine is beautiful and deserves a love fit for a bard’s song.
‘I was lucky,’ I admitted. Outside my window Brother Maelgwyn is finishing the monastery’s log pile, splitting the trunks with a maul and hammer and singing as he goes about his business. His song tells the love story of Rhydderch and Morag, which means he will be reprimanded as soon as St Sansum has finished humiliating Arun. We are brothers in Christ, the saint tells us, united in love.
‘Wasn’t Cuneglas angry with his sister for running away with you?’ Igraine asks me. ‘Not even a bit?’
‘Not in the least,’ I said. ‘He wanted us to move back to Caer Sws, but we both liked it in Cwm Isaf. And Ceinwyn never really liked her sister-in-law. Helledd was a grumbler, you see, and she had two aunts who were very tart. They all disapproved of Ceinwyn, and they were the ones who started all the stories of scandal, but we were never scandalous.’ I paused, remembering those early days. ‘Most people were very kind, in fact,’ I went on. ‘In Powys, you see, there was still some resentment about Lugg Vale. Too many people had lost fathers, brothers and husbands, and Ceinwyn’s defiance was a kind of recompense to them. They enjoyed seeing Arthur and Lancelot embarrassed, so other than Helledd and her ghastly aunts, no one was unkind to us.’
‘And Lancelot didn’t fight you for her?’ asked Igraine, shocked.
‘I wish he had,’ I said drily. ‘I would have enjoyed that.’
‘And Ceinwyn just made up her own mind?’ Igraine asked, astonished at the very thought of a woman daring to do such a thing. She stood and walked to the window where she listened for a while as Maelgwyn sang. ‘Poor Gwenhwyvach,’ she said suddenly. ‘You make her sound very plain and plump and dull.’
‘She was all of those things, alas.’
‘Not everyone can be beautiful,’ she said, with the assurance of one who was.
‘No,’ I agreed, ‘but you do not want tales of the commonplace. You want Arthur’s Britain to be livid with passion and I could feel no passion for Gwenhwyvach. You cannot command love, Lady, only beauty or lust does that. Do you want the world to be fair? Then just imagine a world with no kings, no queens, no lords, no passion and no magic. You would want to live in such a dull world?’
‘That has nothing to do with beauty,’ Igraine protested.
‘It has everything to do with beauty. What is your rank but the accident of your birth? And what is your beauty but another accident? If the Gods,’ I paused and corrected myself, ‘if God wanted us to be equal then he would have made us equal, and if we were all the same, where would your romance be?’
She abandoned the argument. ‘Do you believe in magic, Brother Derfel?’ she challenged me instead. I thought about it. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And even as Christians, we can believe in it. What else are the miracles, but magic?’
‘And Merlin could really make a fog?’
I frowned. ‘Everything Merlin did, my Lady, had another explanation. Fogs do come from the sea, and lost things are found every day.’
‘And the dead come to life?’
‘Lazarus did,’ I said, ‘and so did our Saviour.’ I crossed myself.
Igraine dutifully made the sign of the cross. ‘But did Merlin rise from the dead?’ she demanded.
‘I don’t know that he was dead,’ I said carefully.
‘But Ceinwyn was certain?’
‘Till her dying day, Lady’
Igraine twisted her gown’s braided belt in her fingers. ‘But wasn’t that the Cauldron’s magic? That it could restore life?’
‘So we are told.’
‘And surely Ceinwyn’s discovery of the Cauldron was magic,’ Igraine said.
‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘but maybe it was just common sense. Merlin had spent months discovering every stray memory about Ynys Mon. He knew where the Druids had their sacred centre, and that was beside Llyn Cerrig Bach, and Ceinwyn merely led us to the nearest place where the Cauldron could be safely hidden. She did have her dream, though.’
‘And so did you,’ Igraine said, ‘on Dolforwyn. What was it that Merlin gave you to drink?’
‘The same thing Nimue gave Ceinwyn at Llyn Cerrig Bach,’ I said, ‘and that was probably an infusion of the red cap.’
‘The mushroom!’ Igraine sounded appalled.
I nodded. ‘That was why I was twitching and couldn’t stand.’
‘But you could have died!’ she protested.
I shook my head. ‘Not many die from red caps, and besides, Nimue was skilled in such things.’ I decided not to tell her that the best way to make the red cap safe was for the wizard himself to eat the mushroom, then give the dreamer a cup of his urine to drink. ‘Or maybe she used rye-blight?’ I said instead, ‘but I think it was red cap.’
Igraine frowned as St Sansum ordered Brother Maelgwyn to stop singing his pagan song. The saint is in a testier mood than usual these days. He suffers pain when passing urine, maybe because of a stone. We pray for him.
‘So what happens now?’ Igraine asked, ignoring Sansum’s ranting.
‘We went home,’ I said. ‘Back to Powys.’
‘And to Arthur?’ she asked eagerly.
‘To Arthur too,’ I said, for this is his tale; the tale of our dear warlord, our law-giver, our Arthur. That spring was so glorious in Cwm Isaf, or perhaps when you are in love everything appears fuller and brighter, but it seemed to me as though the world had never been so crammed with cowslips and dog mercury, with bluebells and violets, with lilies and great banks of cow parsley. Blue butterflies haunted the meadow where we ripped out tangled bundles of couch grass from beneath the apple trees that blossomed pink. Wrynecks sang in the blossom, there were sandpipers by the stream and a wagtail made its nest under Cwm Isaf’s thatch. We had five calves, all healthy and greedy and soft-eyed, and Ceinwyn was pregnant.
I had made us both lovers’ rings when we returned from Ynys Mon. They were rings incised with a cross, though not the Christian cross, and girls often wore them after they had passed from being maids to women. Most girls took a twist of straw from their lovers and wore it as a badge, and spearmen’s women usually wore a warrior ring on which the cross had been scratched, while women of the highest rank rarely wore the rings at all, despising them as vulgar symbols. Some men wore them, too, and it had been just such a crossed lover’s ring that Valerin, the chieftain of Powys, had worn when he died at Lugg Vale. Valerin had been Guinevere’s betrothed before she met Arthur.
Our rings were both warrior rings made from a Saxon axehead, but before I left Merlin, who was continuing his journey southwards to Ynys Wydryn, I secretly broke off a fragment of the Cauldron’s detoration; it was a miniature golden spear carried by a warrior and it came off easily. I hid the gold in a pouch and, once back at Cwm Isaf, I took the scrap of gold and the two warrior rings to a metalworker there and watched as he melted and fashioned the gold into two crosses that he burned onto the iron. I stood over to him make sure he did not substitute some other gold, and then I carried one of the rings to Ceinwyn and wore the other myself. Ceinwyn laughed when she saw the ring. ‘A piece of straw would have done just as well, Derfel,’ she said.