Arthur knew my hostility. He touched my elbow so that we both walked on south towards the tide-rill of the dead. ‘Lancelot is Dumnonia’s friend,’ he insisted, ‘so if Lancelot rules Siluria then we shall have nothing to fear from it. And if Lancelot marries Ceinwyn, then Powys will support him too.’
There, it was said, and now my hostility was brittle with anger, yet still I said nothing against Arthur’s scheme. What could I say? I was the son of a Saxon slave, a young warrior with a band of men but no land, and Ceinwyn was a Princess of Powys. She was called seren, the star, and she shone in a dull land like a spark of the sun fallen into mud. She had been betrothed to Arthur, but had lost him to Guinevere, and that loss had brought on the war that had just ended in the slaughter of Lugg Vale. Now, for peace, Ceinwyn must marry Lancelot, my enemy, while I, a mere nothing, was in love with her. I wore her brooch and I carried her image in my thoughts. I had even sworn an oath to protect her, and she had not spurned the oath. Her acceptance had filled me with an insane hope that my love for her was not hopeless, but it was. Ceinwyn was a Princess and she must marry a King, and I was a slave-born spearman and would marry where I could.
So I said nothing about my love for Ceinwyn, and Arthur, who was disposing of Britain in this night after his victory, suspected nothing. And why should he? If I had confessed to him that I was in love with Ceinwyn he would have thought it as outrageous an ambition as a dunghill rooster wanting to mate with an eagle. ‘You know Ceinwyn, don’t you?’ he asked me.
‘Yes, Lord.’
‘And she likes you.’ he said, only half as a question.
‘So I dare to think,’ I said truthfully, remembering Ceinwyn’s pale, silvery beauty and loathing the thought of it being given into Lancelot’s handsome keeping. ‘She likes me well enough,’ I went on, ‘to have told me she has no enthusiasm for this marriage.’
‘Why should she?’ Arthur asked. ‘She’s never met Lancelot. I don’t expect enthusiasm from her, Derfel, just obedience.’
I hesitated. Before the battle, when Tewdric had been so desperate to end the war that threatened to ruin his land, I had gone on a peace mission to Gorfyddyd. The mission had failed, but I had talked with Ceinwyn and told her of Arthur’s hope that she should marry Lancelot. She had not rejected the idea, but nor had she welcomed it. Back then, of course, no one believed Arthur could defeat Ceinwyn’s father in battle, but Ceinwyn had considered that unlikely possibility and had asked me to request one favour of Arthur if he should win. She wanted his protection, and I, falling so hard in love with her, translated that request as a plea that she should not be forced into a marriage she did not want. I told Arthur now that she had begged his protection. ‘She’s been betrothed too often, Lord,’ I added, ‘and too often disappointed, and I think she wants to be left alone for a time.’
‘Time!’ Arthur laughed. ‘She hasn’t got time, Derfel. She’s nearly twenty! She can’t stay unmarried like a cat that won’t catch mice. And who else can she marry?’ He walked on a few paces. ‘She has my protection,’ he said, ‘but what better protection could she want than to be married to Lancelot and placed on a throne? And what about you?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Me, Lord?’ For a moment I thought he was proposing that I should marry Ceinwyn and my heart leapt.
‘You’re nearly thirty,’ he said, ‘and it’s time you were married. We’ll see to it when we’re back in Dumnonia, but for now I want you to go to Powys.’
‘Me, Lord? Powys?’ We had just fought and defeated Powys’s army and I could not imagine that anyone in Powys would welcome an enemy warrior.
Arthur gripped my arm. ‘The most important thing in the next few weeks, Derfel, is that Cuneglas is acclaimed King of Powys. He thinks no one will challenge him, but I want to be sure. I want one of my men in Caer Sws to be a witness to our friendship. Nothing more. I just want any challenger to know that he will have to fight me as well as Cuneglas. If you’re there and if you’re seen to be his friend then that message will be clear.’
‘So why not send a hundred men?’ I asked.
‘Because then it will look as if we’re imposing Cuneglas on Powys’s throne. I don’t want that. I need him as a friend, and I don’t want him returning to Powys looking like a defeated man. Besides,’ he smiled, ‘you’re as good as a hundred men, Derfel. You proved that yesterday.’
I grimaced, for I was always uncomfortable with extravagant compliments, but if the praise meant that I was the right man to be Arthur’s envoy in Powys then I was happy, for I would be close to Ceinwyn again. I still treasured the memory of her touch on my hand, just as I treasured the brooch she had given me so many years before. She had not married Lancelot yet, I told myself, and all I wanted was a chance to indulge my impossible hopes. ‘And once Cuneglas is acclaimed,’ I asked, ‘what do I do then?’
‘You wait for me,’ Arthur said. ‘I’m coming to Powys as soon as I can, and once we’ve settled the peace and Lancelot is safely betrothed, we’ll go home. And next year, my friend, we’ll lead the armies of Britain against the Saxons.’ He spoke with a rare relish for the business of making war. He was good at fighting, and he even enjoyed battle for the unleashed thrills it gave his usually so careful soul, but he never sought war if peace was available because he mistrusted the uncertainties of battle. The vagaries of victory and defeat were too unpredictable, and Arthur hated to see good order and careful diplomacy abandoned to the chances of battle. But diplomacy and tact would never defeat the invading Saxons who were spreading westwards across Britain like vermin. Arthur dreamed of a well-ordered, lawfully governed, peaceful Britain and the Saxons were no part of that dream.
‘We’ll march in the spring?’ I asked him.
‘When the first leaves show.’
‘Then I would ask one favour of you first.’
‘Name it,’ he said, delighted that I should want something in return for helping to give him victory.
‘I want to march with Merlin, Lord,’ I said.
He did not answer for a while. He just stared down at the damp ground where a sword lay with its blade bent almost double. Somewhere in the dark a man moaned, cried out, then was silent. ‘The Cauldron,’ Arthur said at last, his voice heavy.
‘Yes, Lord,’ I said. Merlin had come to us during the battle and pleaded that both sides should abandon the fight and follow him on a quest to find the Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn. The Cauldron was the greatest Treasure of Britain, the magical gift of the old Gods, and it had been lost for centuries. Merlin’s life was dedicated to retrieving those Treasures, and the Cauldron was his greatest prize. If he could find the Cauldron, he told us, he could restore Britain to her rightful Gods. Arthur shook his head. ‘Do you really think the Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn has stayed hidden all these years?’ he asked me. ‘Through all the Roman years? It was taken to Rome, Derfel, and it was melted down for pins or brooches or coins. There is no Cauldron!’
‘Merlin says there is, Lord,’ I insisted.
‘Merlin has listened to old women’s tales,’ Arthur said angrily. ‘Do you know how many men he wants to take on this search for his Cauldron?’
‘No, Lord.’
‘Eighty, he told me. Or a hundred. Or, better still, two hundred! He won’t even say where the Cauldron is, he just wants me to give him an army and let him march it away to some wild place. Ireland, maybe, or the Wilderness. No!’ He kicked the bent sword, then prodded a finger hard into my shoulder.
‘Listen, Derfel, I need every spear I can muster next year. We’re going to finish the Saxons once and for ever, and I can’t lose eighty or a hundred men to the chase of a bowl that disappeared nearly five hundred years ago. Once Aelle’s Saxons are defeated you can chase this nonsense if you must. But I tell you it is a nonsense. There is no Cauldron.’ He turned and began to walk back to the fires. I followed, wanting to argue with him, but I knew I could never persuade him for he would need every spear he could muster if he was to defeat the Saxons, and he would do nothing now that would weaken his chances of victory in the spring. He smiled at me as if to compensate for his harsh refusal of my request.
‘If the Cauldron does exist,’ he said, ‘then it can stay hidden another year or two. But in the meantime, Derfel, I plan to make you rich. We shall marry you to money.’ He slapped my back. ‘One last campaign, my dear Derfel, one last great slaughter, then we shall have peace. Pure peace. We won’t need any cauldrons then.’ He spoke exultingly. That night, among the dead, he really did see peace coming.
We walked towards the fires that lay around the Roman house where Ceinwyn’s father, Gorfyddyd, lay dead. Arthur was happy that night, truly happy, for he saw his dream coming true. And it all seemed so easy. There would be one more war, then peace for evermore. Arthur was our warlord, the greatest warrior in Britain, yet that night after battle, among the shrieking souls of the smoke-wreathed dead, all he wanted was peace. Gorfyddyd’s heir, Cuneglas of Powys, shared Arthur’s dream. Tewdric of Gwent was an ally, Lancelot would be given the kingdom of Siluria and together with Arthur’s Dumnonian army the united kings of Britain would defeat the invading Saxons. Mordred, under Arthur’s protection, would grow to assume Dumnonia’s throne and Arthur would retire to enjoy the peace and prosperity his sword had given Britain.
Thus Arthur disposed the golden future.
But he did not reckon on Merlin. Merlin was older, wiser and subtler than Arthur, and Merlin had smelt the Cauldron out. He would find it, and its power would spread through Britain like a poison. For it was the Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn. It was the Cauldron that broke men’s dreams. And Arthur, for all his practicality, was a dreamer.
In Caer Sws the leaves were heavy with the last ripeness of summer.
I had travelled north with King Cuneglas and his defeated men and so I was the only Dumnonian present when the body of King Gorfyddyd was burned on Dolforwyn’s summit. I saw the flames of his balefire gust huge in the night as his soul crossed the bridge of swords to its shadowbody in the Otherworld. The fire was surrounded by a double ring of Powys’s spearmen who carried flaming torches that swayed together as they sang the Death Lament of Beli Mawr. They sang for a long time and the sound of their voices echoed from the near hills like a choir of ghosts. There was much sorrow in Caer Sws. So many in the land had been made widows and orphans, and on the morning after the old King was burned and when his balefire was still sending a pyre of smoke towards the northern mountains, there was still more sorrow when the news of Ratae’s fall arrived. Ratae had been a great fortress on Powys’s eastern frontier, but Arthur had betrayed it to the Saxons to buy their peace while he fought against Gorfyddyd. None in Powys knew of Arthur’s treachery yet and I did not tell them. I did not see Ceinwyn for three days, for they were the days of mourning for Gorfyddyd and no women went to the balefire. Instead the women of Powys’s court wore black wool and were shut up inside the women’s hall. No music was played in the hall, only water was given for drink and their only food was dry bread and a thin gruel of oats. Outside the hall the warriors of Powys gathered for the new King’s acclamation and I, obedient to Arthur’s orders, tried to detect whether any man would challenge Cuneglas’s right to the throne, but I heard no whisper of opposition. At the end of the three days the door of the women’s hall was thrown open. A maidservant appeared in the doorway and scattered rue on the hall’s threshold and steps, and a moment later a billow of smoke gushed from the door and we knew the women were burning the old king’s marriage bedding. The smoke swirled from the hall’s door and windows, and only when the smoke had dissipated did Helledd, now Queen of Powys, come down the steps to kneel before her husband, King Cuneglas of Powys. She wore a dress of white linen which, when Cuneglas raised her, showed muddy marks where she had knelt. He kissed her, then led her back into the hall. Black-cloaked Iorweth, Powys’s chief Druid, followed the King into the women’s hall, while outside, ringing the hall’s wooden walls in ranks of iron and leather, the surviving warriors of Powys watched and waited.
They waited while a choir of children chanted the love duet of Gwydion and Aranrhod, the Song of Rhiannon, and then every long verse of Gofannon’s March to Caer Idion, and it was only when that last song was finished that Iorweth, now robed in white and carrying a black staff tipped with mistletoe, came to the door and announced that the days of mourning were at last over. The warriors cheered and broke from the ranks to seek their own women. Tomorrow Cuneglas would be acclaimed on Dolforwyn’s summit and if any man wanted to challenge his right to rule Powys then the acclamation would provide that chance. It would also be my first glimpse of Ceinwyn since the battle. Next day I stared at Ceinwyn as Iorweth performed the rites of acclamation. She stood watching her brother and I gazed at her in a kind of wonder that any woman could be so lovely. I am old now, so perhaps my old man’s memory exaggerates Princess Ceinwyn’s beauty, but I do not think so. She was not called the seren, the star, for nothing. She was of average height, but very slightly built and that slenderness gave her an appearance of fragility that was, I later learned, a deception, for Ceinwyn had, above all things, a will of steel. Her hair, like mine, was fair, only hers was pale gold and sun-bright while mine was more like the colour of dirty straw. Her eyes were blue, her demeanour was demure and her face as sweet as honey from a wild comb. That day she was dressed in a blue linen gown that was trimmed with the black-flecked silver-white fur of a winter stoat, the same dress she had worn when she had touched my hand and taken my oath. She caught my eye once and smiled gravely and I swear my heart checked in its beating.
The rites of Powys’s kingship were not unlike our own. Cuneglas was paraded about Dolforwyn’s stone circle, he was given the symbols of kingship, and then a warrior declared him King and dared any man present to challenge the acclamation. The challenge was answered by silence. The ashes of the great balefire still smoked beyond the circle to show that a King had died, but the silence about the stones was proof that a new King reigned. Then Cuneglas was presented with gifts. Arthur, I knew, would be bringing his own magnificent present, but he had given me Gorfyddyd’s war sword that had been found on the battlefield and I now gave it back to Gorfyddyd’s son as a token of Dumnonia’s wish to have peace with Powys.