‘And rot away?’ Merlin gave up his pretence of sleep.
Arthur smiled. ‘There is so much to learn, Merlin. Why does a man make two swords from the same metal in the same fire and one blade will be true and the other will bend in its first battle? There is so much to find out.’
‘He wants to be a blacksmith,’ Merlin said to Culhwch.
‘What I want is Guinevere and Gwydre back,’ Arthur declared firmly.
‘Then you must take Lancelot’s oath,’ Meurig said.
‘If he goes to Caer Cadarn to take Lancelot’s oath,’ I said bitterly, ‘he’ll be met by a hundred armed men and cut down like a dog.’
‘Not if I take Kings with me,’ Arthur said gently.
We all stared at him and he seemed surprised that we had been nonplussed by his words. ‘Kings?’
Culhwch finally broke the silence.
Arthur smiled. ‘If my Lord King Cuneglas and my Lord King Meurig were to ride with me to Caer Cadarn then I doubt that Lancelot would dare to kill me. If he’s faced by the Kings of Britain he will have to talk, and if he talks we shall come to an agreement. He fears me, but if he discovers there is nothing to fear, he will let me live. And he will let my family live.’
There was another silence while we digested that, then Culhwch roared a protest. ‘You’d let that bastard Lancelot be King?’ Some of the spearmen at the hall’s edge growled their agreement.
‘Cousin, cousin!’ Arthur soothed Culhwch. ‘Lancelot is not an evil man. He’s weak, I think, but not evil. He doesn’t make plans, he has no dreams, but only a greedy eye and quick hands. He snatches things as they appear, then hoards them and waits for another thing to snatch. He wants me dead now, because he fears me, but when he discovers the price of my death is too high, then he’ll accept what he can get.’
‘He’ll accept your death, you fool!’ Culhwch hammered the table with his fist. ‘He’ll tell you a thousand lies, protest his friendship and slide a sword between your ribs the moment your Kings have gone home.’
‘He’ll lie to me,’ Arthur agreed placidly. ‘All kings lie. No kingdom could be ruled without lies, for lies are the things we use to build our reputations. We pay the bards to make our squalid victories into great triumphs and sometimes we even believe the lies they sing to us. Lancelot would love to believe all those songs, but the truth is that he’s weak and he desperately craves strong friends. He fears me now, for he assumes my enmity, but when he discovers I am not an enemy then he will also find that he needs me. He will need every man he can find if he’s to rid Dumnonia of Cerdic’
‘And who invited Cerdic into Dumnonia?’ Culhwch protested. ‘Lancelot did!’
‘And he’ll regret it soon,’ Arthur said calmly. ‘He used Cerdic to snatch his prize, and he’ll find Cerdic is a dangerous ally.’
‘You’d fight for Lancelot?’ I asked, horrified.
‘I will fight for Britain,’ Arthur said firmly. ‘I can’t ask men to die to make me what I don’t want to be, but I can ask them to fight for their homes and their wives and their children. And that’s what I fight for. For Guinevere. And to defeat Cerdic, and once he is defeated, what does it matter if Lancelot rules Dumnonia? Someone has to and I dare say he’ll make a better King that Mordred ever did.’ Again there was silence. A hound whined at the edge of the hall and a spearman sneezed. Arthur looked at us and saw we were still bemused. ‘If I fight Lancelot,’ he told us, ‘then we go back to the Britain we had before Lugg Vale. A Britain in which we fight each other instead of the Saxons. There is only one principle here, and that is Uther’s old insistence that the Saxons must be kept from the Severn Sea. And now,’ he said vigorously, ‘the Saxons are closer to the Severn than they’ve ever been. If I tight for a throne I don’t want I give Cerdic the chance to take Corinium and then this city, and if he does take Cilevum then he has split us into two parts. If I fight Lancelot then the Saxons will win everything. They’ll take Dumnonia and Gwent and after that they’ll go north into Powys.’
‘Exactly.’ Meurig applauded Arthur.
‘I won’t fight for Lancelot,’ I said angrily and Culhwch applauded me. Arthur smiled at me. ‘My dear friend Derfel, I would not expect you to fight for Lancelot, though I do want your men to fight Cerdic. And my price for helping Lancelot defeat Cerdic is that he gives you Dinas and Lavaine.’
I stared at him. I had not understood till that moment just how far ahead he had been thinking. The rest of us had seen nothing but Lancelot’s treachery, but Arthur was thinking only of Britain and of the desperate need to keep the Saxons away from the Severn. He would brush Lancelot’s hostility aside, force my revenge on him, then go on with the work of defeating Saxons.
‘And the Christians?’ Culhwch asked derisively. ‘You think they’ll let you back into Dumnonia? You think those bastards won’t build a bonfire for you?’
Meurig squawked another protest that Arthur stilled. ‘The Christian fervour will spend itself,’ Arthur said. ‘It’s like a madness, and once it’s exhausted they’ll go home to pick up the pieces of their lives. And once Cerdic is defeated Lancelot can pacify Dumnonia. I shall just live with my family, which is all I want.’
Cuneglas had been leaning back in his chair to stare at the remaining patches of Roman paintings on the hall’s ceiling. Now he straightened and looked at Arthur. ‘Tell me again what you want,’ he asked softly.
‘I want the Britons at peace,’ Arthur said patiently, ‘and I want Cerdic pushed back, and I want my family.’
Cuneglas looked at Merlin. ‘Well, Lord?’ he invited the old man’s judgment. Merlin had been tying two of his beard braids into knots, but now he looked mildly startled and hastily untangled the strands. ‘I doubt that the Gods want what Arthur wants,’ he said. ‘You are all forgetting the Cauldron.’
‘This has nothing to do with the Cauldron,’ Arthur said firmly.
‘It has everything to do with it,’ Merlin said with a sudden and surprising harshness, ‘and the Cauldron brings chaos. You desire order, Arthur, and you think that Lancelot will listen to your reason and that Cerdic will submit to your sword, but your reasonable order will no more work in the future than it worked in the past. Do you really think men and women thanked you for bringing them peace? They just became bored with your peace and so brewed their own trouble to fill the boredom. Men don’t want peace, Arthur, they want distraction from tedium, while you desire tedium like a thirsty man seeks mead. Your reason won’t defeat the Gods, and the Gods will make sure of that. You think you can crawl away to a homestead and play at being a blacksmith? No.’ Merlin gave an evil smile and picked up his long black staff. ‘Even at this moment,’ Merlin said, ‘the Gods are making trouble for you.’ He pointed the staff at the hall’s front doors. ‘Behold your trouble, Arthur ap Uther.’
We all turned to see Galahad standing in the doorway. He was clothed in mail armour, had a sword at his side and spatters of mud up to his waist. And with him was a miserable, club-footed, squashed-nosed, round-faced, skimpy-bearded brush-head.
For Mordred still lived.
There was an astonished silence. Mordred limped into the hall and his small eyes betrayed his resentment for the lack of welcome. Arthur just stared at his oath-lord and I knew he was undoing in his head all the careful plans he had just described to us. There could be no reasonable peace with Lancelot, for Arthur’s oath-lord still lived. Dumnonia still possessed a King, and it was not Lancelot. It was Mordred and Mordred had Arthur’s oath.
Then the silence broke as men gathered round the King to discover his news. Galahad stepped aside to embrace me. ‘Thank God you live,’ he said with heartfelt relief.
I smiled at my friend. ‘Do you expect me to thank you for saving my King’s life?’ I asked him.
‘Someone should, for he hasn’t. He’s an ungrateful little beast,’ Galahad said. ‘God knows why he lives and so many good men died. Llywarch, Bedwyr, Dagonet, Blaise. All gone.’ He was naming those of Arthur’s warriors who had been killed in Durnovaria. Some of the deaths I had already known, others were new to me, but Galahad did know more about the manner of their deaths. He had been in Durnovaria when the rumour of Mordred’s death had sparked the Christians into riot, but Galahad swore there had been spearmen among the rioters. He believed Lancelot’s men had infiltrated the town under the guise of pilgrims travelling to Ynys Wydryn and that those spearmen had led the massacre. ‘Most of Arthur’s men were in the taverns,’ he said, ‘and they stood little chance. A few survived, but God alone knows where they are now.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘This isn’t Christ’s doing, Derfel, you do know that, don’t you? It’s the devil at work.’ He gave me a pained, almost frightened look. ‘Is it true about Dian?’
‘True,’ I said. Galahad embraced me wordlessly. He had never married and had no children, but he loved my daughters. He loved all children. ‘Dinas and Lavaine killed her,’ I told him, ‘and they live still.’
‘My sword is yours,’ he said.
‘I know it,’ I said.
‘And if this was Christ’s doing,’ Galahad said earnestly, ‘then Dinas and Lavaine would not be serving Lancelot.’
‘I don’t blame your God,’ I told him. ‘I don’t blame any God.’ I turned to watch the commotion around Mordred. Arthur was shouting for silence and order, servants had been sent to bring food and clothes fit for a King and other men were trying to hear his news. ‘Didn’t Lancelot demand your oath?’ I asked Galahad.
‘He didn’t know I was in Durnovaria. I was staying with Bishop Emrys and the Bishop gave me a monk’s robe to wear over this,’ he patted his mail coat, ‘then I went north. Poor Emrys is distraught. He thinks his Christians have gone mad and I think they have too. I suppose I could have stayed and fought, but I didn’t. I ran. I had heard that you and Arthur were dead, but I didn’t believe it. I thought I’d find you, but I found our King instead.’ He told me how Mordred had been hunting boar north of Durnovaria, and Lancelot, Galahad believed, had sent men to intercept the King as he returned to Durnovaria; but some village girl had taken Mordred’s fancy and by the time he and his companions were done with her it was near dark, and so he had commandeered the village’s largest house and ordered food. His assassins had waited at the city’s northern gate while Mordred feasted a dozen miles away, and some time during that evening Lancelot’s men must have decided to start the killing even though the Dumnonian King had somehow escaped their ambush. They had spread a rumour of his death and used that rumour to justify Lancelot’s usurpation.
Mordred heard of the troubles when the first fugitives arrived from Durnovaria. Most of his companions had melted away, the villagers were summoning the courage to kill the King who had raped one of their girls and stolen much of their food, and Mordred had panicked. He and his last friends fled north in villagers’ clothes. ‘They were trying to reach Caer Cadarn,’ Galahad told me, ‘reckoning they’d find loyal spearmen there, but they found me instead. I was aiming to reach your house, but we heard your folk had fled, so I brought him north.’
‘Did you see Saxons?’
He shook his head. ‘They’re in the Thames Valley. We avoided it.’ He stared at the jostling crowd around Mordred. ‘So what happens now?’ he asked.
Mordred had firm ideas. He was robed in a borrowed cloak and sitting at the table where he crammed bread and salt beef into his mouth. He was demanding that Arthur march south immediately, and whenever Arthur tried to interrupt, the King would slap the table and repeat his demand. ‘Are you denying your oath?’ Mordred finally shouted at Arthur, spewing half chewed scraps of bread and beef.
‘The Lord Arthur,’ Cuneglas answered acidly, ‘is trying to preserve his wife and child.’
Mordred looked blankly at the Powysian King. ‘Above my kingdom?’ he finally asked.
‘If Arthur goes to war,’ Cuneglas explained to Mordred, ‘Guinevere and Gwydre die.’
‘So we do nothing?’ Mordred screamed. He was hysterical.
‘We give the matter thought,’ Arthur said bitterly.
‘Thought?’ Mordred shouted, then stood up. ‘You’ll just think while that bastard rules my land? Do you have an oath?’ he demanded of Arthur. ‘And what use are these men if you won’t fight?’ He waved at the spearmen who now stood in a ring about the table. ‘You’ll fight for me, that’s what you’ll do!
That’s what your oath demands. You’ll fight!’ He slapped the table again. ‘You don’t think! You fight!’
I had taken enough. Perhaps the dead soul of my daughter came to me at that moment, for almost without thinking I strode forward and unbuckled my sword belt. I stripped Hywelbane oft the belt, threw the sword down, then folded the leather strap in two. Mordred watched me and spluttered a feeble protest as I approached him, but no one moved to stop me.
I reached my King’s side, paused, then struck him hard across the face with the doubled belt. ‘That,’ I said, ‘is not in return for the blows you gave me, but for my daughter, and this,’ - I struck him again, much harder - ‘is for your failure to keep the oath to guard your kingdom.’
Spearmen bellowed approval. Mordred’s lower lip was trembling as it had when he had taken all those beatings as a child. His cheeks were reddened from the blows and a trickle of blood showed at a tiny cut under his eye. He touched a finger to that blood, then spat a gob of half-chewed beef and bread into my face. ‘You’ll die for that,’ he promised me, and then, in a swelling rage, he tried to slap me.
‘How could I defend the kingdom?’ he shouted. ‘You weren’t there! Arthur wasn’t there.’ He tried to slap me a second time, but again I parried his blow with my arm, then lifted the belt to give him another beating.
Arthur, horrified at my behaviour, pushed down my arm and dragged me away. Mordred followed, flailing at me with his fists, but then a black staff struck his arm hard and he turned in fury to assault his new attacker.
But it was Merlin who now towered above the angry King. ‘Hit me, Mordred,’ the Druid said quietly,
‘and I shall turn you into a toad and feed you to the serpents of Annwn.’
Mordred gazed at the Druid, but said nothing. He did try to push the staff away, but Merlin held it firm and used it to thrust the young King back towards his chair. ‘Tell me, Mordred,’ Merlin said as he pushed Mordred back down into the chair, ‘why you sent Arthur and Derfel so far away?’