‘A thousand.’
He laughed. ‘I can’t complain. I’ve three women now, all clawing each other’s eyes out and all of them pregnant.’ He grinned, then scratched at his groin. ‘Lice,’ he said. ‘Can’t get rid of them. But at least they’ve infested that little bastard Mordred.’
‘Our Lord King?’ I teased him.
‘Little bastard,’ he said vengefully. ‘I tell you, Derfel, I’ve beaten him bloody and he still won’t learn. Sneaky little toad.’ He spat. ‘So tomorrow you speak against Lancelot?’
‘How do you know?’ I had told no one but Agricola of that firm decision, but somehow news of it had preceded me to Corinium, or else my antipathy to the Silurian King was too well known for men to believe I could do anything else.
‘Everyone knows,’ Culhwch said, ‘and everyone supports you.’ He looked past me and spat suddenly. ‘Crows,’ he growled.
I turned to see a procession of Christian priests walking alongside the Churn’s far bank. There were a dozen of them, all black gowned, all bearded, and all chanting one of the dirges of their religion. A score of spearmen followed the priests and their shields, I saw with surprise, bore either Siluria’s fox or Lancelot’s sea-eagle. ‘I thought the rites were in two days’ time,’ I said to Galahad, who had stayed with me.
‘They are,’ he said. The rites were the preamble to war and would ask the blessing of the Gods on our men, and that blessing would be sought from both the Christian God and the pagan deities. ‘This looks more like a baptism,’ Galahad added.
‘What in Bel’s name is a baptism?’ Culhwch asked.
Galahad sighed. ‘It is an outward sign, my dear Culhwch, of a man’s sins being washed away by God’s grace.’
That explanation made Culhwch bay with laughter, prompting a frown from one of the priests who had tucked his gown into his belt and was now wading into the shallow river. He was using a pole to discover a spot deep enough for the baptismal rite and his clumsy probing attracted a crowd of bored spearmen on the rushy bank opposite the Christians.
For a while nothing much happened. The Silurian spearmen made an embarrassed guard while the tonsured priests wailed their song and the lone paddler poked about in the river with the butt end of his long pole that was surmounted by a silver cross. ‘You’ll never catch a trout with that,’ Culhwch shouted,
‘try a fish spear!’ The watching spearmen laughed, and the priests scowled as they sang drearily on. Some women from the town had come to the river and joined in the singing. ‘It’s a woman’s religion,’
Culhwch spat.
‘It is my religion, dear Culhwch,’ Galahad murmured. He and Culhwch had argued thus throughout the whole long war in Benoic and their argument, like their friendship, had no end. The priest found a deep enough spot, so deep, indeed, that the water came right up to his waist, and there he tried to fix the pole in the river’s bed, but the force of the water kept bearing the cross down and each failure prompted a chorus of jeers from the spearmen. A few of the spectators were Christians themselves, but they made no attempt to stop the mockery.
The priest at last managed to plant the cross, albeit precariously, and climbed back out of the river. The spearmen whistled and hooted at the sight of his skinny white legs and he hurriedly dropped the sopping skirts of his robe to hide them.
Then a second procession appeared and the sight of it was sufficient to cause a silence to drop on our bank of the river. The silence was one of respect, for a dozen spearmen were escorting an ox-cart that was hung with white linens and in which sat two women and one priest. One of the women was Guinevere and the other was Queen Elaine, Lancelot’s mother, but most astonishing of all was the identity of the priest. It was Bishop Sansum. He was in his full bishop’s regalia, a mound of gaudy copes and embroidered shawls, and had a heavy red-gold cross hanging about his neck. The shaven tonsure at the front of his head was burned pink by the sun, and above it his black hair stood up like mouse ears. Lughtigern, Nimue always called him, the mouse lord. ‘I thought Guinevere couldn’t stand him,’ I said, for Guinevere and Sansum had always been the bitterest of enemies, yet here the mouse-lord was, riding to the river in Guinevere’s cart. ‘And isn’t he in disgrace?’ I added.
‘Shit sometimes floats,’ Culhwch growled.
‘And Guinevere isn’t even a Christian,’ I protested.
‘And look at the other shit who’s with her,’ Culhwch said, and pointed to a group of six horsemen who followed the lumbering cart. Lancelot led them. He was mounted on a black horse and wore nothing but a simple pair of trews and a white shirt. Arthur’s twin sons, Amhar and Loholt, flanked him, and they were dressed in full war gear with plumed helmets, mail coats and long boots. Behind them rode three other horsemen, one in armour and the other two in the long white robes of Druids.
‘Druids?’ I said. ‘At a baptism?’
Galahad shrugged, no more able to find an explanation than I. The two Druids were both muscular young men with dark handsome faces, thick black beards and long, carefully brushed black hair that grew back from their narrow tonsures. They carried black staffs tipped with mistletoe and, unusually for Druids, had swords scab-barded at their sides. The warrior who rode with them, I saw, was no man, but a woman; a tall, straight-backed, red-haired woman whose extravagantly long tresses cascaded from beneath her silver helmet to touch the spine of her horse. ‘Ade, she’s called,’ Culhwch told me.
‘Who is she?’ I asked.
‘Who do you think? His kitchen-maid? She keeps his bed warm.’ Culhwch grinned. ‘Does she remind you of anyone?’
She reminded me of Ladwys, Gundleus’s mistress. Was it the fate of Silurian Kings, I wondered, always to have a mistress who rode a horse and wore a sword like a man? Ade had a longsword at her hip, a spear in her hand and the sea-eagle shield on her arm. ‘Gundleus’s mistress,’ I told Culhwch.
‘With that red hair?’ Culhwch said dismissively.
‘Guinevere,’ I said, and there was a distinct resemblance between Ade and the haughty Guinevere who sat next to Queen Elaine in the cart. Elaine was pale, but otherwise I could see no evidence of the sickness that was rumoured to be killing her. Guinevere looked as handsome as ever, and betrayed no sign of the ordeal of childbirth. She had not brought her child with her, but nor would I have expected her to. Gwydre was doubtless in Lindinis, safe in a wet nurse’s arms and far enough away so that his cries could not disturb Guinevere’s sleep.
Arthur’s twins dismounted behind Lancelot. They were still very young, only just old enough, indeed, to carry a spear to war. I had met them many times and did not like them for they had none of Arthur’s pragmatic sense. They had been spoiled since childhood, and the result was a pair of tempestuous, selfish, greedy youths who resented their father, despised their mother Ailleann and took revenge for their bastardy on people who dared not fight back against Arthur’s progeny. They were despicable. The two Druids slid off their horses’ backs and stood beside the ox-cart.
It was Culhwch who first understood what Lancelot was doing. ‘If he’s baptized,’ he growled to me,
‘then he can’t join Mithras, can he?’
‘Bedwin did,’ I pointed out, ‘and Bedwin was a bishop.’
‘Dear Bedwin,’ Culhwch explained to me, ‘played both sides of the throwboard. When he died we found an image of Bel in his house, and his wife told us he’d been sacrificing to it. No, you see if I’m not right. This is how Lancelot evades being rejected from Mithras.’
‘Maybe he has been touched by God,’ Galahad protested.
‘Then your God must have filthy hands by now,’ Culhwch responded, ‘begging your pardon, seeing as he’s your brother.’
‘Half-brother,’ Galahad said, not wanting to be too closely associated with Lancelot. The cart had stopped very close to the river bank. Sansum now clambered down from its bed and, without bothering to tuck up his splendid robes, pushed through the rushes and waded into the river. Lancelot dismounted and waited on the bank as the Bishop reached and grasped the cross. He is a small man, Sansum, and the water came right up to the heavy cross on his narrow chest. He faced us, his unwitting congregation, and raised his strong voice. ‘This week,’ he shouted, ‘you will carry your spears against the enemy and God will bless you. God will help you! And today, here in this river, you will see a sign of our God’s power.’ The Christians in the meadow crossed themselves while some pagans, like Culhwch and I, spat to avert evil.
‘You see here King Lancelot!’ Sansum bellowed, throwing a hand towards Lancelot as though none of us would have recognized him. ‘He is the hero of Benoic, the King of Siluria and the Lord of Eagles!’
‘The Lord of what?’ Culhwch asked.
‘And this week,’ Sansum went on, ‘this very week, he was to be received into the foul company of Mithras, that false God of blood and anger.’
‘He was not,’ Culhwch growled amidst the other murmurs of protest from the men in the field who were Mithraists.
‘But yesterday,’ Sansum’s voice beat down the protest, ‘this noble King received a vision. A vision!
Not some belly-given nightmare spawned by a drunken wizard, but a pure and lovely dream sent on golden wings from heaven. A saintly vision!’
‘Ade lifted her skirts,’ Culhwch muttered.
‘The holy and blessed mother of God came to King Lancelot,’ Sansum shouted, it was the Virgin Mary herself, that lady of sorrows, from whose immaculate and perfect loins was born the Christ-child, the Saviour of all mankind. And yesterday, in a burst of light, in a cloud of golden stars, she came to King Lancelot and touched her lovely hand to Tanlladwyr!’ He gestured behind him again, and Ade solemnly drew out Lancelot’s sword that was called Tanlladwyr, which meant ‘Bright Killer’, and held it aloft. The sun slashed its reflection off the steel, blinding me for an instant.
‘With this sword,’ Sansum shouted, ‘our blessed Lady promised the King that he would bring Britain victory. This sword, our Lady said, has been touched by the nail-scarred hand of the Son and blessed by the caress of His mother. From this day on, our Lady decreed, this sword shall be known as the Christ-blade, for it is holy.’
Lancelot, to give him credit, looked exquisitely embarrassed at this sermon; indeed the whole ceremony must have embarrassed him for he was a man of vast pride and fragile dignity, but even so it must have seemed better to him to be dunked in a river than publicly humiliated by losing election to Mithras. The certainty of his rejection must have prompted him to this public repudiation of all the pagan Gods. Guinevere, I saw, pointedly stared away from the river, gazing instead towards the war banners that had been hoisted on Corinium’s earth and wooden ramparts. She was a pagan, a worshipper of Isis; indeed her hatred of Christianity was famous, yet that hatred had clearly been overcome by the need to support this public ceremony that spared Lancelot from Mithras’s humiliation. The two Druids talked softly with her, sometimes making her laugh.
Sansum turned and faced Lancelot. ‘Lord King,’ he called loudly enough for those of us on the other bank to hear, ‘come now! Come now to the waters of life, come now as a little child to receive your baptism into the blessed church of the one true God.’
Guinevere slowly turned to watch as Lancelot walked into the river. Galahad crossed himself. The Christian priests on the far bank had their arms spread wide in an attitude of prayer, while the town’s women had fallen to their knees as they gazed ecstatically at the handsome, tall King who waded out to Bishop Sansum’s side. The sun glittered on the water and slashed gold from Sansum’s cross. Lancelot kept his eyes lowered, as though he did not want to see who witnessed this humiliating rite. Sansum reached up and put his hand on the crown of Lancelot’s head. ‘Do you,’ he shouted so we could all hear, ‘embrace the one true faith, the only faith, the faith of Christ who died for our sins?’
Lancelot must have said ‘Yes’, though none of us could hear his response.
‘And do you,’ Sansum bellowed even louder, ‘hereby renounce all other Gods and all other faiths and all the other foul spirits and demons and idols and devil-spawn whose filthy acts deceive this world?’
Lancelot nodded and mumbled his assent.
‘And do you,’ Sansum went on with relish, ‘denounce and deride the practices of Mithras, and declare them to be, as indeed they are, the excrement of Satan and the horror of our Lord Jesus Christ?’
‘I do.’ That answer of Lancelot’s came clear enough to us all.
‘Then in the name of the Father,’ Sansum shouted, ‘and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I pronounce you Christian,’ and with that he gave a great heave that pushed down on Lancelot’s oiled hair, and so forced the King under the Churn’s cold water. Sansum held Lancelot there for so long that I thought the bastard would drown, but at last Sansum let him up. ‘And,’ Sansum finished as Lancelot sputtered and spat out water, ‘I now proclaim you blessed, name you a Christian, and enrol you in the holy army of Christ’s warriors.’ Guinevere, uncertain how to respond, clapped politely. The women and priests burst into a new song that, for Christian music, was surprisingly spritely.
‘What in the holy name of a holy harlot,’ Culhwch asked Galahad, ‘is a holy ghost?’
But Galahad did not wait to answer. In a rush of happiness caused by his brother’s baptism he had plunged into the river and now waded across so that he emerged from the water at the same time as his blushing half-brother. Lancelot had not expected to see him and for a second he stiffened, doubtless thinking of Galahad’s friendship for me, but then he suddenly remembered the duty of Christian love that had just been imposed upon him and so he submitted to Galahad’s enthusiastic embrace.
‘Shall we kiss the bastard too?’ Culhwch asked me with a grin.
‘Let him be,’ I said. Lancelot had not seen me, and I did not feel any need to be seen, but just then Sansum, who had emerged from the river and was trying to wring the water from his heavy robes, spotted me. The mouse-lord never could resist provoking an enemy, nor did he now.
‘Lord Derfel!’ the Bishop called.
I ignored him. Guinevere, on hearing my name, looked up sharply. She had been talking to Lancelot and his half-brother, but now she snapped an order to the ox driver who stabbed his goad at his beasts’