Aelle had never liked the city and would not live there, so its only inhabitants were a handful of Saxons and those Britons who had accepted Aelle’s rule. Some of those Britons still prospered. Most were merchants who traded with Gaul, and their large houses were built beside the river and their storehouses were guarded by their own walls and spearmen, but much of the rest of the city was deserted. It was a dying place, a city given to rats, a city that once had borne the title Augusta. It had been known as London the Magnificent and its river had once been thick with the masts of galleys; now it was a place of ghosts.
Aelle came to London with me. I had found him a half day’s march north of the city. He had taken refuge in a Roman fort where he was trying to reassemble an army. At first he was suspicious of my message. He had shouted at me, accusing us of using witchcraft to defeat him, then he had threatened to kill me and my escort, but I had the sense to wait his anger out patiently and, after a while, he calmed down. He had hurled Cerdic’s knife angrily away, but was pleased to have his thick bearskin cloak returned. I do not think I was ever in real danger, for I sensed that he liked me, and indeed, when his anger had fled, he threw a heavy arm round my shoulder and walked me up and down the ramparts.
‘What does Arthur want?’ he had asked me.
‘Peace, Lord king.’ The weight of his arm was hurting my wounded shoulder, but I dared not protest.
‘Peace!’ He had spat the word out like a scrap of tainted meat, but with none of the scorn he had used to reject Arthur’s offer of peace before Lugg Vale. Then Aelle had been stronger and could afford to ask a higher price. Now he was humbled, and he knew it. ‘We Saxons,’ he said, ‘are not meant to be at peace. We feed ourselves on our enemy’s grain, we clothe ourselves with their wool, we pleasure ourselves on their women. What does peace offer us?’
‘A chance to rebuild your strength, Lord King, or else Cerdic will be feeding on your grain and dressing in your wool.’
Aelle had grinned. ‘He’d like the women too.’ He had taken his arm from my shoulder and stared northwards across the fields. ‘I’ll have to yield land,’ he grumbled.
‘But if you choose war, Lord King,’ I said, ‘the price will be higher. You’ll face Arthur and Cerdic, and might finish with no land at all except the grass above your grave.’
He had turned and given me a shrewd look. ‘Arthur only wants peace so that I can fight Cerdic for him.’
‘Of course, Lord King,’ I answered.
He laughed at my honesty. ‘And if I do not come to London,’ he said, ‘you will hunt me down like a dog.’
‘Like a great boar, Lord King, whose tusks are still sharp.’
‘You talk like you fight, Derfel. Well.’ He had ordered his wizards to make a poultice from moss and spiders’ webs that they put on my wounded shoulder while he consulted his council. The consultation did not last long, for Aelle knew he had little choice. So, next morning, I marched with him down the Roman road that led back to the city. He insisted on taking an escort of sixty spearmen. ‘You may trust Cerdic,’
he told me, ‘but there isn’t a promise he’s made that he hasn’t broken. Tell that to Arthur.’
‘You tell him, Lord King.’
Aelle and Arthur met secretly on the night before they were due to negotiate with Cerdic, and that night they wrangled their own separate peace. Aelle gave up much. He gave up great swathes of land on his western frontier, and agreed to repay Arthur all the gold that Arthur had given him the year before and more gold besides. In return Arthur promised four whole years of peace and his support for Aelle if Cerdic would not agree to terms the next day. They embraced when the peace was made and afterwards, as we walked back to our encampment outside the city’s western wall, Arthur shook his head sadly. ‘You should never meet an enemy face to face,’ he said to me, ‘not if you know that one day you’ll have to destroy him. Either that or the Saxons must submit to our government and they won’t. They won’t.’
‘Maybe they will.’
He shook his head. ‘Saxon and Briton, Derfel, they don’t mix.’
‘I mix, Lord,’ I said.
He laughed. ‘But if your mother had never been captured, Derfel, you’d have been raised a Saxon and you’d probably have been in Aelle’s army by now. You’d be an enemy. You’d worship his Gods, you’d dream his dreams, and you’d want our land. They need a lot of space, these Saxons.’
But we had at least penned Aelle in, and next day, in the great palace by the river, we met Cerdic. The sun shone that day, sparkling on the canal where the Governor of Britain had once moored his river barge. The sparkling sun-motes hid the scum and mud and dirt that now clogged the canal, but nothing could hide the stench of its sewage.
Cerdic held a council meeting first and while it debated we Britons met in a room that stood above the river wall and overlooked the water so that the ceiling, which was painted with curious beings that were half women and half fish, was dappled by shimmers of rippling light. Our spearmen guarded every door and window to make certain we could not be overheard.
Lancelot was there, and had been allowed to bring Dinas and Lavaine. The three men still insisted that their peace with Cerdic had been wise, but Meurig was their only supporter and the rest of us were angry in the face of their sullen defiance. Arthur listened to our protests for a while, then interrupted to say that nothing would be solved by arguing about the past. ‘What’s done is done,’ he said, ‘but I do need one assurance.’ He looked at Lancelot. ‘Promise me,’ he said, ‘that you made no promises to Cerdic.’
‘I gave him peace,’ Lancelot insisted, ‘and suggested he help you fight Aelle. That is all.’
Merlin was seated in the window above the river. He had adopted one of the palace’s stray cats and now petted the animal on his lap. ‘What did Cerdic want?’ he asked mildly.
‘Aelle’s defeat.’
‘Just that?’ Merlin asked, not bothering to hide his disbelief.
‘Just that,’ Lancelot insisted, ‘nothing more.’ We all watched him. Arthur, Merlin, Cuneglas, Meurig, Agricola, Sagramor, Galahad, Culhwch and myself. None of us spoke, but just watched him. ‘He wanted nothing more!’ Lancelot insisted and to me he looked like a small child telling plain lies.
‘How remarkable in a king,’ Merlin said placidly, ‘to want so little.’ He began teasing the cat by flicking one of the braided strands of his beard at its paws. ‘And what did you want?’ he asked, still mildly.
‘Arthur’s victory,’ Lancelot declared.
‘Because you did not think Arthur could win it by himself?’ Merlin suggested, still playing with the cat.
‘I wanted to make it certain,’ Lancelot said. ‘I was trying to help!’ He looked round the room, seeking allies, and finding none but the youthful Meurig. ‘If you don’t want peace with Cerdic,’ he said petulantly,
‘then why don’t you fight him now?’
‘Because, Lord King, you used my name to secure his truce,’ Arthur said patiently, ‘and because our army is now many marches from home and his men lie in our path. If you had not made peace,’ he explained, still speaking courteously, ‘then half his army would be on the frontier watching your men and I would have been free to march south and attack the other half. As it is?’ He shrugged. ‘What will Cerdic demand of us today?’
‘Land,’ Agricola said firmly. ‘It’s all the Saxons ever want. Land, land, and more land. They won’t be happy till they have every scrap of land in the world, and then they’ll start looking for other worlds to put under their ploughs.’
‘He must be satisfied,’ Arthur said, ‘with the land he’s taken from Aelle. He’ll get none from us.’
‘We should take some from him,’ I spoke for the first time. ‘That land he stole last year.’ It was a fine stretch of river-land on our southern frontier, a fertile and rich tract that ran from the high moors down to the sea. The land had belonged to Melwas, the client King of the Belgae whom Arthur had sent in punishment to Isca, and it was land we sorely missed for its loss brought Cerdic very close to the rich estates about Durnovaria and also meant that his ships were just minutes away from Ynys Wit, the great island that the Romans had called Vectis and which lay just off our coast. For a year now Cerdic’s Saxons had raided Ynys Wit ruthlessly and its people were forever calling on Arthur for more spearmen to protect their holdings.
‘We should have that land back,’ Sagramor supported me. He had thanked Mithras for returning his Saxon girl unharmed by placing a captured sword in the God’s London temple.
‘I doubt,’ Meurig intervened, ‘that Cerdic made peace in order to yield land.’
‘Nor did we march to war to cede land,’ Arthur answered angrily.
‘I thought, forgive me,’ Meurig insisted, and a kind of quiet groan went through the room as he persisted with his argument, ‘but you said, did you not, that you could not prosecute war? Being so far from home? Yet now, for a stretch of land, you would risk all our lives? I hope I am not being foolish,’ he chuckled to show that he had made a joke, ‘but I fail to understand why we risk the one thing we cannot afford to endure.’
‘Lord Prince,’ Arthur said softly, ‘we may be weak here, but if we show our weakness, then we will be dead here. We do not go to Cerdic this morning ready to yield one furrow, we go making demands.’
‘And if he refuses?’ Meurig demanded indignantly.
‘Then we shall have a difficult withdrawal,’ Arthur admitted calmly. He glanced out of a window that looked down into the courtyard. ‘It seems our enemies are ready for us. Shall we go to them?’
Merlin pushed the cat off his lap and used his staff to stand up. ‘You won’t mind if I don’t come?’ he asked. ‘I’m too old to endure a day of negotiations. All that bluster and anger.’ He brushed cat hairs off his robe, then turned suddenly on Dinas and Lavaine. ‘Since when,’ he asked disapprovingly, ‘have Druids worn swords or served Christian Kings?’
‘Since we decided to do both,’ Dinas said. The twins, who were almost as tall as Merlin and much burlier, challenged him with their unblinking gaze.
‘Who made you Druids?’ Merlin demanded.
‘The same power that made you a Druid,’ said Lavaine.
‘And what power was that?’ Merlin asked, and when the twins did not answer, he sneered at them.
‘At least you know how to lay thrushes’ eggs. I suppose that kind of trick impresses Christians. Do you also turn their wine to blood and their bread to flesh?’
‘We use our magic,’ Dinas said, ‘and theirs too. It’s not the old Britain now, but a new Britain and it has new Gods. We blend their magic with the old. You could learn from us. Lord Merlin.’
Merlin spat to show his opinion of that advice, then, without another word, stalked from the room. Dinas and Lavaine were unmoved by his hostility. They possessed an extraordinary self-confidence. We followed Arthur down to the great pillared hall where, as Merlin had foretold, we blustered and postured, shouted and cajoled.
At first it was Aelle and Cerdic who made most of the noise and Arthur, as often as not, was the mediator between them, but even Arthur could not prevent Cerdic becoming land rich at Aelle’s expense. He kept possession of London and gained the valley of the Thames and great stretches of fertile land north of the Thames. Aelle’s kingdom shrank by a quarter, but he still possessed a kingdom and for that he owed Arthur thanks. He offered none, but just stalked from the room when the talking was done and left London that same day like a great wounded boar crawling back to his den. It was mid afternoon when Aelle left and Arthur, using me as an interpreter, now raised the matter of the Belgic land Cerdic had captured the year before, and he went on demanding the return of that land long after the rest of us would have given up the effort. He made no threats, he just repeated his demand over and over until Culhwch was sleeping, Agricola yawning, and I was tired of taking the sting from Cerdic’s reiterated rejections. And still Arthur persisted. He sensed that Cerdic needed time to consolidate the new lands he had taken from Aelle, and his threat was that he would give Cerdic no peace unless the river-lands were returned. Cerdic countered by threatening to fight us in London, but Arthur finally revealed that he would seek Aelle’s help in such a fight and Cerdic knew he could not beat both our armies.
It was almost dark when Cerdic at last yielded. He did not yield outright, but grudgingly said he would discuss the matter with his private council. So we woke Culhwch and walked out to the courtyard, then through a small gate in the river wall to stand on a quay where we watched the Thames slide darkly by. Most of us said little, though Meurig irritably lectured Arthur about wasting time making impossible demands, but when Arthur refused to argue the Prince gradually fell silent. Sagramor sat with his back against the wall, incessantly stroking a whetstone down his sword blade. Lancelot and the Silurian Druids stood apart from us; three tall, handsome men who were stiff with pride. Dinas stared at the darkening trees across the river while his brother gave me long speculative looks. We waited an hour and then, at last, Cerdic came to the river bank. ‘Tell Arthur this,’ he told me without any preamble, ‘that I trust none of you, like none of you and want nothing more than to kill all of you. But I will yield him the Belgic land on one condition. That Lancelot is made King of that land. Not a client King,’ he added, ‘but King, with all the powers of independent kingship.’
I stared into the Saxon’s grey-blue eyes. I was so astonished by his condition that I said nothing, not even to acknowledge his words. It was all so clear suddenly. Lancelot had made this bargain with the Saxon, and Cerdic had hidden their secret agreement behind an afternoon of scornful rejections. I had no proof of that, but I knew it had to be true, and when I looked away from Cerdic I saw that Lancelot was staring expectantly at me. He spoke no Saxon, but he knew exactly what Cerdic had just said.
‘Tell him!’ Cerdic ordered me.
I translated for Arthur. Agricola and Sagramor spat in disgust and Culhwch gave a brief, sour bellow of a laugh, but Arthur just gazed into my eyes for a few grave seconds before nodding wearily. ‘Agreed,’
he said.
‘You will leave this place at dawn,’ Cerdic said abruptly.