Ceinwyn came with me. She was not well, for the ceremonies occurred not long after the birth of her third child, a boy, and it had been a difficult confinement that had ended with Ceinwyn desperately weak and the child dead, but Arthur pleaded for her to come. He wanted all the lords of Britain there, and though none came from Gwynedd, Elmet, or the other northern kingdoms, many others did make the long journey and virtually all Dumnonia’s great men were present. Cuneglas of Powys came, Meurig of Gwent was there, Prince Tristan of Kernow attended, as, of course, did Lancelot, and all those Kings brought lords, Druids, bishops and chieftains so that the tents and shelters made a great swathe about the Sea Palace’s hill. Mordred, who was then nine years old, came with us and he, to Guinevere’s disgust, was given rooms with the other Kings inside the palace. Merlin refused to attend. He said he was too old for such nonsense. Galahad was named the Marshal of the Brotherhood and so he presided with Arthur and, like Arthur, believed devoutly in the whole idea.
I never confessed as much to Arthur, but I found the whole thing embarrassing. His notion was that we would all swear peace and friendship to one another, and thus heal our enmities and bind each other in oaths that would forbid any in the Brotherhood of Britain from ever raising a spear against another; but even the Gods seemed to mock that high ambition for the day of the ceremony dawned chill and gloomy, though it never did actually rain, which Arthur, who was ridiculously optimistic about the whole thing, declared to be a propitious sign.
No swords, spears or shields were carried to the ceremony, held in the Sea Palace’s great pleasure garden which lay between two newly built arcades that stretched on grass embankments towards the creek. Banners hung from the arcades where two choirs sang solemn music to give the ceremonies a proper dignity. At the north end of the garden, close to a big arched door that led into the palace, a table had been set. It happened to be a round table, though there was nothing significant in that shape; it was simply the most convenient table to carry out into the garden. The table was not very large, maybe as far across as a man’s outstretched hands could reach, but it was, I remember, very beautiful. It was Roman, of course, and made of a white translucent stone into which had been carved a remarkable horse with great spread wings. One of the wings had a grievous crack running through it, but the table was still an impressive object and the winged horse a wonder. Sagramor said he had never seen such a beast in all his travels, though he claimed that flying horses did exist in the mysterious countries that lay beyond the oceans of sand, wherever they were. Sagramor had married his sturdy Saxon Malla and was now the father of two boys.
The only swords allowed at the ceremony were those belonging to the Kings and Princes. Mordred’s sword lay on the table, and crisscrossed above it were the blades of Lancelot, Meurig, Cuneglas, Galahad and Tristan. One by one we all stepped forward, Kings, Princes, chieftains and lords, and placed our hands where the six blades touched and swore Arthur’s oath that pledged us to amity and peace. Ceinwyn had dressed the nine-year-old Mordred in new clothes, then trimmed and combed his hair in an attempt to stop its curly bristles jutting like twin brushes from his round skull, but he still looked an awkward figure as he limped on his clubbed left foot to mumble the oath. I admit that the moment when I put my hand on the six blades was solemn enough; like most men there, I had every intention of keeping the oath which was, of course, for men only, for Arthur did not consider this to be women’s business, though plenty of women stood on the terrace above the arched door to witness the long ceremony. It was a long ceremony, too. Arthur had originally intended to restrict the membership of his Brotherhood to those oath-sworn warriors who had fought against the Saxons, but now he had widened it to include every great man he could lure to the palace, and when the oaths were finished he swore his own oath and afterwards stood on the terrace and told us that the vow we had just sworn was as sacred as any we had ever made, that we had promised Britain peace and that if any of us broke that peace then it was the sworn duty of every other member of the Brotherhood to punish the transgressor. Then he instructed us to embrace each other, and after that, of course, the drinking started. The day’s solemnity did not end as the drinking began. Arthur had watched carefully to see which men avoided other men’s embraces, and then, group by group, those recalcitrant souls were summoned to the palace’s great hall where Arthur insisted they should be reconciled. Arthur himself showed an example by first embracing Sansum, and afterwards Melwas, the dethroned Belgic King whom Arthur had exiled to Isca. Melwas submitted with a lumbering grace to the kiss of peace, but he died a month later after eating a breakfast of tainted oysters. Fate, as Merlin loved to tell us, is inexorable. Those more intimate reconciliations inevitably delayed the serving of the feast which was to take place in the great hall where Arthur was bringing enemies together, and so more mead was carried out to the garden where the bored warriors waited and tried to guess which among them would be summoned to Arthur’s peace-making next. I knew I would be summoned, for I had carefully avoided Lancelot during the whole ceremony, and sure enough Hygwydd, Arthur’s servant, found me and insisted I go to the great hall where, as I feared, Lancelot and his courtiers waited for me. Arthur had persuaded Ceinwyn to attend and, to give her some added comfort, he had asked her brother Cuneglas to be present. The three of us stood on one side of the hall, Lancelot and his men on the other, while Arthur, Galahad and Guinevere presided from the dais where the high table stood ready for the great feast. Arthur beamed at us. ‘I have in this room,’ he declared, ‘some of my dearest friends. King Cuneglas, the best ally any man could have in war or peace, King Lancelot, to whom I am sworn like a brother, Lord Derfel Cadarn, the bravest of all my brave men, and dear Princess Ceinwyn.’ He smiled.
I stood as awkward as a pea-field scarecrow. Ceinwyn looked graceful, Cuneglas stared at the hall’s painted ceiling, Lancelot scowled, Amhar and Loholt tried to look belligerent, while Dinas and Lavaine showed nothing but contempt on their hard faces. Guinevere watched us carefully and her striking face betrayed nothing, though I suspect she felt as scornful as Dinas and Lavaine of this invented ceremony that was so dear to her husband. Arthur fervently wanted peace, and only he and Galahad seemed unembarrassed by the occasion.
When none of us spoke Arthur spread his arms and stepped down from the dais. ‘I demand,’ he said,
‘that the ill blood that exists between you be spilled now, spilled once and then forgotten.’
He waited again. I shuffled my feet and Cuneglas tugged at his long moustaches.
‘Please,’ Arthur said.
Ceinwyn gave a tiny shrug. ‘I regret,’ she said, ‘the hurt I caused King Lancelot.’
Arthur, delighted that the ice was melting, smiled at the Belgic King. ‘Lord King?’ He invited a response from Lancelot. ‘Will you forgive her?’
Lancelot, who that day was dressed all in white, glanced at her, then bowed.
‘Is that forgiveness?’ I growled.
Lancelot coloured, but managed to rise to Arthur’s expectations. ‘I have no quarrel with the Princess Ceinwyn,’ he said stiffly.
‘There!’ Arthur was delighted with the grudging words and spread his arms again to invite them both forward. ‘Embrace,’ he said. ‘I will have peace!’
They both walked forward, kissed each other on the cheek and stepped back. The gesture was about as warm as that star-bright night when we had waited about the Cauldron in the rocks by Llyn Cerrig Bach, but it pleased Arthur. ‘Derfel,’ he looked at me, ‘will you not embrace the King?’
I steeled myself for conflict. ‘I will embrace him, Lord,’ I said, ‘when his Druids retract the threats they made against the Princess Ceinwyn.’
There was silence. Guinevere sighed and tapped a foot on the mosaics of the dais, the same mosaics she had taken from Lindinis. She looked, as ever, superb. She wore a black robe, perhaps in recognition of the day’s solemnity, and the robe was sewn with dozens of small silver crescent moons. Her red hair had been tamed into plaits that she had coiled about her skull and pinned into place with two gold clasps shaped as dragons. Around her neck she wore the barbaric Saxon gold necklace that Arthur had sent her after a long-ago battle against Aelle’s Saxons. She had told me then that she disliked the necklace, but it looked magnificent on her. She might have despised this day’s proceedings, but she still did her best to help her husband. ‘What threats?’ she asked me coldly.
‘They know,’ I said, staring at the twins.
‘We have made no threats,’ Lavaine protested flatly.
‘But you can make the stars vanish,’ I accused them.
Dinas allowed a slow smile to show on his brutal and handsome face. ‘The little paper star. Lord Derfel?’ he asked with mock surprise. ‘Is that your insult?’
‘It was your threat.’
‘My Lord!’ Dinas appealed to Arthur. ‘It was a child’s trick. It meant nothing.’
Arthur looked from me to the Druids. ‘You swear that?’ he demanded.
‘On my brother’s life,’ Dinas said.
‘And Merlin’s beard?’ I challenged them. ‘You have it still?’
Guinevere sighed as if to suggest I was becoming tedious. Galahad frowned. Outside the palace the warriors’ voices were becoming mead-loud and raucous.
Lavaine looked at Arthur. ‘It is true, Lord,’ he said courteously, ‘that we possessed a strand of Merlin’s beard, cut after he insulted King Cerdic. But on my life, Lord, we burned it.’
‘We don’t fight old men,’ Dinas growled, then glanced at Ceinwyn. ‘Or women.’
Arthur smiled happily. ‘Come, Derfel,’ he said, ‘embrace. I will have peace between my dearest friends.’
I still hesitated, but Ceinwyn and her brother both urged me forward and so, for the second and last time in my life, I embraced Lancelot. This time, instead of whispering insults as we had at our first embrace, we said nothing. We just kissed and stepped apart.
‘There will be peace between you,’ Arthur insisted.
‘I swear it, Lord,’ I answered stiffly.
‘I have no quarrel,’ Lancelot answered just as coldly.
Arthur had to be content with our churlish reconciliation and he breathed a huge sigh of relief as though the most difficult part of his day was now done; then he embraced us both before insisting that Guinevere, Galahad, Ceinwyn and Cuneglas come and exchange kisses.
Our ordeal was over. Arthur’s last victims were his own wife and Mordred, and that I did not want to see so I drew Ceinwyn out of the room. Her brother, at Arthur’s request, stayed and so the two of us were alone. Tm sorry about that,’ I told her.
Ceinwyn shrugged. ‘It was an unavoidable ordeal.’
‘I still don’t trust the bastard,’ I said vengefully.
She smiled. ‘You, Derfel Cadarn, are a great warrior and he is Lancelot. Does the wolf fear the hare?’
‘It fears the serpent,’ I said gloomily. I did not feel like facing my friends and describing the reconciliation with Lancelot and so I led Ceinwyn through the Sea Palace’s graceful rooms with their pillared walls, decorated floors and heavy bronze lamps that hung on long iron chains from ceilings painted with hunting scenes. Ceinwyn thought the palace immeasurably grand, but also cold. ‘Just like the Romans,’ she said.
‘Just like Guinevere,’ I retorted. We found a flight of stairs that led down to some busy kitchens and from there a door into the back gardens where fruit and herbs were growing in well-ordered beds. ‘I can’t think,’ I said when we were in the open air, ‘that this Brotherhood of Britain will achieve anything.’
‘It will,’ Ceinwyn said, ‘if enough of you take the oath seriously’
‘Maybe.’ I had suddenly stopped in embarrassment, for ahead of me, just straightening from bending over a bed of parsley, was Guinevere’s younger sister Gwenhwyvach.
Ceinwyn greeted her happily. I had forgotten that they had been friends in the long years of Guinevere and Gwenhwyvach’s exile in Powys, and when they had kissed Ceinwyn brought Gwenhwyvach to me. I thought she might resent my failure to marry her, but she seemed to bear no grudge. ‘I have become my sister’s gardener,’ she told me.
‘Surely not, Lady?’ I said.
‘The appointment is not official,’ she said drily, ‘nor are my high offices of chief steward or warden of the hounds, but someone has to do the work, and when father died he made Guinevere promise to look after me.’
‘I was sorry about your father,’ Ceinwyn said.
Gwenhwyvach shrugged. ‘He just got thinner and thinner until one day he wasn’t there any more.’
Gwenhwyvach herself had grown no thinner, indeed she was obese now, a fat red-faced woman who, in her earth-stained dress and dirty white apron, looked more like a farmer’s wife than a Princess. ‘I live there,’ she said, gesturing towards a substantial timber building that stood a hundred paces from the palace. ‘My sister allows me to do my work each day, but come the evening bell I am expected to be safely out of sight. Nothing ill-favoured, you understand, can mar the Sea Palace.’
‘Lady!’ I protested at her self-deprecation
Gwenhwyvach waved me to silence. ‘I’m happy,’ she said bleakly. ‘I take the dogs for long walks and I talk to the bees.’
‘Come to Lindinis,’ Ceinwyn urged her.
‘That would never be allowed!’ Gwenhwyvach said with pretended shock.
‘Why not?’ Ceinwyn asked. ‘We have rooms to spare. Please.’
Gwenhwyvach smiled slyly. ‘I know too much, Ceinwyn, that’s why. I know who comes and who stays and what they do here.’ Neither of us wanted to probe those hints, so we both kept silent, but Gwenhwyvach needed to speak. She must have been lonely, and Ceinwyn was a friendly loving face from the past. Gwenhwyvach suddenly threw down the herbs she had just cut and hurried us back towards the palace. ‘Let me show you,’ she said.
‘I’m sure we don’t need to see,’ Ceinwyn said, fearing whatever was about to be revealed.
‘You can see,’ Gwenhwyvach said to Ceinwyn, ‘but Derfel can’t. Or shouldn’t. Men aren’t supposed to enter the temple.’