Mordred shook his head. He was frightened of this new, straight-backed, towering Merlin. He had only ever known the Druid as a frail old man sunning himself in Lindinis’s garden and this re-invigorated Merlin with his wrapped and plaited beard terrified him.
Merlin raised his staff and slammed it down on the table. ‘Why?’ he asked gently when the echo of the staff’s blow had died away.
‘To arrest Ligessac,’ Mordred whispered.
‘You squirming little fool,’ Merlin said. ‘A child could have arrested Ligessac. Why did you send Arthur and Derfel?’
Mordred just shook his head.
Merlin sighed. ‘It has been a long time, young Mordred, since I used the greater magic. I am sadly out of practice, but I think, with Nimue’s help, I can turn your urine into the black pus that stings like a wasp every time you piss. I can addle your brain, what there is of it, and I can make your manhood,’ the staff suddenly quivered at Mordred’s groin, ‘shrivel to the size of a dried bean. All that I can do, Mordred, and all that I will do unless you tell me the truth.’ He smiled, and there was more threat in that smile than in the poised staff. ‘Tell me, dear boy, why you sent Arthur and Derfel to Cadoc’s camp?’
Mordred’s lower lip was trembling. ‘Because Sansum told me to.’
‘The mouse-lord!’ Merlin exclaimed as though the answer surprised him. He smiled again, or at least he bared his teeth. ‘I have another question, Mordred,’ he continued, ‘and if you do not give me the truth then your bowels will disgorge toads in slime, your belly will be a nest of worms and your throat will brim with their bile. I will make you shake incessantly, so that all your life, all your whole life, you will be a toad-shitting, worm-eaten, bile-spitting shudderer. I will make you,’ he paused and lowered his voice,
‘even more horrible than your mother did. So, Mordred, tell me what the mouse-lord promised would happen if you sent Arthur and Derfel away.’
Mordred stared in terror at Merlin’s face.
Merlin waited. No answer came so he raised the staff towards the hall’s high roof. ‘In the name of Bel,’ he intoned sonorously, ‘and his toad-Lord Callyc, and in the name of Sucellos and his worm-master Horfael, and in the name of . . .’
‘They would be killed!’ Mordred squealed desperately.
The staff was slowly lowered so that it pointed again at Mordred’s face. ‘He promised you what, dear boy?’ Merlin asked.
Mordred squirmed in his chair, but there was no escape from that staff. He swallowed, looked left and right, but there was no help for him in the hall. ‘That they would be killed,’ Mordred admitted, ‘by the Christians.’
‘And why would you want that?’ Merlin inquired.
Mordred hesitated, but Merlin raised the staff high again and the boy blurted out his confession.
‘Because I can’t be King while he lives!’
‘You thought Arthur’s death would free you to behave as you like?’
‘Yes!’
‘And you believed Sansum was your friend?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you never once thought that Sansum might want you dead, too?’ Merlin shook his head. ‘What a silly boy you are. Don’t you know that Christians never do anything right? Even their first one got himself nailed to a cross. That’s not the way efficient Gods behave, not at all. Thank you, Mordred, for our conversation.’ He smiled, shrugged and walked away. ‘Just trying to help,’ he said as he went past Arthur.
Mordred appeared as if he already had the shakes threatened by Merlin. He clung to the arms of the chair, quivering, and tears showed at his eyes for the humiliations he had just suffered. He did try to recover some of his pride by pointing at me and demanding that Arthur arrest me.
‘Don’t be a fool!’ Arthur turned on him angrily. ‘You think we can regain your throne without Derfel’s men?’ Mordred said nothing, and that petulant silence goaded Arthur into a fury like the one which had caused me to hit my King. ‘It can be done without you!’ he snarled at Mordred, ‘and whatever is done, you will stay here, under guard!’ Mordred gaped up at him and a tear fell to dilute the tiny trace of blood.
‘Not as a prisoner, Lord King,’ Arthur explained wearily, ‘but to preserve your life from the hundreds of men who would like to take it.’
‘So what will you do?’ Mordred asked, utterly pathetic now.
‘As I told you,’ Arthur said scornfully, ‘I will give the matter thought.’ And he would say no more. The shape of Lancelot’s design was at least plain now. Sansum had plotted Arthur’s death, Lancelot had sent men to procure Mordred’s death and then followed with his army in the belief that every obstacle to Dumnonia’s throne had been eliminated and that the Christians, whipped to fury by Sansum’s busy missionaries, would kill any remaining enemies while Cerdic held Sagramor’s men at bay. But Arthur lived, and Mordred lived too, and so long as Mordred lived Arthur had an oath to keep and that oath meant we had to go to war. It did not matter that the war might open Severn’s valley to the Saxons, we had to fight Lancelot. We were oath-locked.
Meurig would commit no spearmen to the fight against Lancelot. He claimed he needed all his men to guard his own frontiers against a possible attack from Cerdic or Aelle and nothing anyone said could dissuade him. He did agree to leave his garrison in Glevum, thus freeing its Dumnonian garrison to join Arthur’s troops, but he would give nothing more. ‘He’s a yellow little bastard,’ Culhwch growled.
‘He’s a sensible young man,’ Arthur said. ‘His aim is to preserve his kingdom.’ He spoke to us, his war commanders, in a hall at Glevum’s Roman baths. The room had a tiled floor and an arched ceiling where the painted remnants of naked nymphs were being chased by a faun through swirls of leaves and flowers.
Cuneglas was generous. The spearmen he had brought from Caer Sws would be sent under Culhwch’s command to help Sagramor’s men. Culhwch swore he would do nothing to aid Mordred’s restoration, but he had no qualms about fighting Cerdic’s warriors and that was still Sagramor’s task. Once the Numidian was reinforced by the men from Powys he would drive south, cut off the Saxons who were besieging Corinium and so embroil Cerdic’s men in a campaign that would keep them from helping Lancelot in Dumnonia’s heartland. Cuneglas promised us all the help he could, but said it would take at least two weeks to assemble his full force and bring it south to Glevum. Arthur had precious few men in Glevum. He had the thirty men who had gone north to arrest Ligessac who now lay in chains in Glevum, and he had my men, and to those he could add the seventy spearmen who had formed Glevum’s small garrison. Those numbers were being swollen daily by the refugees who managed to escape the rampaging Christian bands who still hunted down any pagans left in Dumnonia. We heard that many such fugitives were still in Dumnonia, some of them holding out in ancient earth forts or deep in the woodlands, but others came to Glevum and among them was Morfans the Ugly, who had escaped the massacre in Durnovaria’s taverns. Arthur put him in charge of the Glevum forces and ordered him to march them south towards Aquae Sulis. Galahad would go with him. ‘Don’t accept battle,’ Arthur warned both men, ‘just goad the enemy, harry them, annoy them. Stay in the hills, stay nimble, and keep them looking this way. When my Lord King comes’ - he meant Cuneglas -’you can join his army and march south on Caer Cadarn.’
Arthur declared that he would fight with neither Sagramor nor Morfans, but would instead go to seek Aelle’s help. Arthur knew better than anyone that the news of his plans would be carried south. There were plenty enough Christians in Glevum who believed Arthur was the Enemy of God and who saw in Lancelot the heavensent forerunner of Christ’s return to earth; Arthur wanted those Christians to send their messages south into Dumnonia and he wanted those messages to tell Lancelot that Arthur dared not risk Guinevere’s life by marching against him. Instead Arthur was going to beg Aelle to carry his axes and spears against Cerdic’s men. ‘Derfel will come with me,’ he told us now. I did not want to accompany Arthur. There were other interpreters, I protested, and my only wish was to join Morfans and so march south into Dumnonia. I did not want to face my father, Aelle. I wanted to fight, not to put Mordred back on his throne, but to topple Lancelot and to find Dinas and Lavaine. Arthur refused me. ‘You will come with me, Derfel,’ he ordered, ‘and we shall take forty men with us.’
‘Forty?’ Morfans objected. Forty was a large number to strip from his small war-band that had to distract Lancelot.
Arthur shrugged. ‘I dare not look weak to Aelle,’ he said, ‘indeed I should take more, but forty men may be sufficient to convince him that I’m not desperate.’ He paused. ‘There is one last thing,’ he spoke in a heavy voice that caught the attention of men preparing to leave the bath house. ‘Some of you are not inclined to fight for Mordred,’ Arthur admitted. ‘Culhwch has already left Dumnonia, Derfel will doubtless leave when this war is done, and who knows how many others of you will go? Dumnonia cannot afford to lose such men.’ He paused. It had begun to rain and water dripped from the bricks that showed between the patches of painted ceiling. ‘I have talked to Cuneglas,’ Arthur said, acknowledging the King of Powys’s presence with an inclination of his head, ‘and I have talked with Merlin, and what we talked about are the ancient laws and customs of our people. What I do, I would do within the law, and I cannot free you of Mordred for my oath forbids it and the ancient law of our people cannot condone it.’ He paused again, his right hand unconsciously gripping Excalibur’s hilt. ‘But,’ he went on,
‘the law does allow one thing. If a king is unfit to rule, then his Council may rule in his stead as long as the king is accorded the honour and privileges of his rank. Merlin assures me this is so, and King Cuneglas affirms that it happened in the reign of his great-grandfather Brychan.’
‘Mad as a bat! Cuneglas put in cheerfully.
Arthur half smiled, then frowned as he gathered his thoughts. ‘This is not what I ever wanted,’ he protested quietly, his sombre voice echoing in the dripping chamber, ‘but I shall propose to the Council of Dumnonia that it should rule in Mordred’s place.’
‘Yes!’ Culhwch shouted.
Arthur hushed him. ‘I had hoped,’ he said, ‘that Mordred would learn responsibility, but he has not. I don’t care that he wanted me dead, but I do care that he lost his kingdom. He broke his acclamation oath and I doubt now that he will ever be able to keep that oath.’ He paused, and many of us must have reflected on how long it had taken Arthur to understand something that had seemed so obvious to the rest of us. For years he had stubbornly resisted acknowledging Mordred’s unfitness to rule, but now, after Mordred had lost his kingdom and, which was much worse in Arthur’s eyes, he had failed to protect his subjects, Arthur was at last prepared to face the truth. Water dripped on his bare head, but he seemed oblivious of it. ‘Merlin tells me,’ he went on in a melancholy voice, ‘that Mordred is possessed of an evil spirit. I am not skilled in these things, but that verdict does not seem unlikely and so, if the Council agrees, I shall propose that after we have restored Mordred then we shall pay him all the honours due to our King. He can live in the Winter Palace, he can hunt, he can eat like a king and indulge all his appetites within the law, but he will not govern. I am proposing we give him all the privileges, but none of the duties of his throne.’
We cheered. How we cheered. For now, it seemed, we had something to fight for. Not for Mordred, that wretched toad, but for Arthur, because despite all his fine talk of the Council ruling Dumnonia in Mordred’s stead we all knew what his words meant. They meant that Arthur would be Dumnonia’s King in all but name and for that good end we would carry our spears to war. We cheered, for now we had a cause to fight and die for. We had Arthur.
Arthur chose twenty of his best horsemen and insisted I choose twenty of my finest spearmen for our embassy to Aelle. ‘We must impress your father,’ he told me, ‘and you don’t impress a man by arriving with broken and ageing spearmen. We take our best men.’ He also insisted that Nimue accompany us. He would have preferred Merlin’s company, but the Druid declared he was too old for the long journey and proposed Nimue instead.
We left Mordred guarded by Meurig’s spearmen. “Mordred knew of Arthur’s plans for him, but he had no allies in Glevum and no defiance in his rotten soul, though he did have the satisfaction of watching Ligessac being strangled in the forum and after that slow death Mordred stood on the terrace of the great hall and made a mumbling speech in which he threatened an equal fate to all the other traitors in Dumnonia, then he went sullenly back to his quarters while we followed Culhwch eastwards. Culhwch had gone to join Sagramor and help launch the attack that we all hoped would save Corinium. Arthur and I marched into the high fine countryside that was Gwent’s rich eastern province. It was a place of lavish villas, vast farms and great wealth, most of it grown on the backs of the sheep that grazed the rolling hills. We marched beneath two banners. Arthur’s bear and my own star, and we stayed well north of the Dumnonian frontier so that all the news going to Lancelot would tell him that Arthur was offering his stolen throne no threat. Nimue walked with us. Merlin had somehow persuaded her to wash and find clean clothes, and then, in despair at ever untangling the matted filth of her hair, he had cut it short and burned the dirt-encrusted tresses. The short hair looked good on her, she wore an eyepatch again and carried a staff, but no other baggage. She walked barefoot and she walked reluctantly for she had not wanted to come, but Merlin had persuaded her, though Nimue still claimed her presence was wasteful. ‘Any fool can defeat a Saxon wizard,’ she told Arthur as we neared the end of the first day’s march. ‘Just spit on them, roll your eyes and wave a chicken bone. That’s all it needs.’
‘We won’t see any Saxon wizards,’ Arthur answered calmly. We were in open country now, far from any villas, and he stopped his horse, raised his hand and waited for the men to gather around him. ‘We won’t see any wizards,’ he told us, ‘because we’re not going to see Aelle. We’re going south into our own country. A long way south.’
‘To the sea?’ I guessed.