He smiled. ‘To the sea.’ He folded his hands on his saddle bar. ‘We are few,’ he told us, ‘and Lancelot has many, but Nimue can make us a charm of concealment and we shall march by night and we shall march hard.’ He smiled and shrugged. ‘I can do nothing while my wife and son are prisoners, but if we free them, then I am free too. And when I am free I can fight against Lancelot, but you should know that we will be far from help and deep in a Dumnonia that is held by our enemies. Once I have Guinevere and Gwydre then I do not know how we shall escape, but Nimue will help us. The Gods will help us, but if any of you fear the task, then you may go back now.’
None did, and he must have known that none would. These forty were our best men and they would have followed Arthur into the serpent’s pit. Arthur, of course, had told no one but Merlin what he planned so that no hint of it could reach Lancelot’s ears; now he gave me a regretful shrug as though apologizing for deceiving me, but he must have known how pleased I was for we were not just going to where Guinevere and Gwydre were being held hostage, but to where Dian’s two killers believed they were safe from all revenge.
‘We go tonight,’ Arthur said, ‘and there’ll be no rest till dawn. We go south and by morning I want to be in the hills beyond the Thames.’
We put cloaks over our armour, muffled the horses’ hoofs with layers of cloth and then journeyed south through the gathering night. The horsemen led their beasts and Nimue led us, using her strange ability to find her way across unknown country in the darkness.
Sometime in that dark night we crossed into Dumnonia and, as we dropped from the hills down into the valley of the Thames, we saw, far off to our right, a glow in the sky that showed where Cerdic’s men were encamped outside Corinium. Once out of the hills our path inevitably took us through small dark villages where dogs barked at our passing, but no one questioned us. The inhabitants were either dead or else they feared we were Saxons, and so, like a band of ghosts, we passed them by. One of Arthur’s horsemen was a native of the river lands and he led us to a ford that came up to our chests. We held our weapons and bags of bread high, then forced our way through the strong current and so reached the far bank where Nimue hissed a spell of concealment towards a nearby village. By dawn we were in the southern hills, safe inside one of the Old People’s earth fortresses. We slept under the sun and at dark went south again. Our way led through a fine, rich land where no Saxon had yet set foot, but still no villager challenged us for no one but a fool questioned armed men who travelled by night in times of trouble. By daybreak we had reached the great plain and the rising sun cast the shadows of the Old People’s death mounds long across the pale grass. Some of the mounds still had treasures guarded by grave ghouls and those we avoided as we sought a grassy hollow where the horses could eat and we could rest.
In the next moonlight we passed the Stones, that great mysterious ring where Merlin had given Arthur his sword and where, so many years before, we had yielded the gold to Aelle before marching to Lugg Vale. Nimue glided among the great capped pillars, touching them with her staff, then standing in their centre with her eyes staring up at the stars. The moon was almost full and its light gave the Stones a pale luminosity. ‘Do they hold magic still?’ I asked her when she caught us up.
‘Some,’ she said, ‘but it’s fading, Derfel. All our magic is fading. We need the Cauldron.’ She smiled in the dark. ‘It isn’t far away now,’ she said, ‘I can feel it. It still lives, Derfel, and we’re going to find it and restore it to Merlin.’ There was a passion in her now, the same passion she had shown as we neared the end of the Dark Road. Arthur marched through the dark for his Guinevere, I for revenge and Nimue to summon the Gods with the Cauldron, but still we were few and the enemy was many. We were now deep inside Lancelot’s new land, yet we saw no evidence of his warriors nor any sign of the rabid Christian bands who were still said to be terrorizing the rural pagans. Lancelot’s spearmen had no business in this part of Dumnonia for they were watching the roads from Glevum, while the Christians must have gone to support his army in the belief it did Christ’s work, so we walked unmolested as we dropped down from the great plain onto the river lands of Dumnonia’s southern coast. We skirted the fortress town of Sorviodunum and smelt the smoke of the houses that had been burned there. Still no one challenged us because we walked beneath the near-full moon and were protected by Nimue’s spells.
We reached the sea on the fifth night. We had slipped past the Roman fortress of Vindocladia where Arthur was sure a garrison of Lancelot’s troops would be in place, and by dawn we were hidden in the deep woods above the creek where the Sea Palace stood. The palace was just a mile to our west and we had reached it undetected, coming like night ghosts in our own land. And we would make our attack at night too. Lancelot was using Guinevere as a shield, and we would take his shield away and, thus freed, carry our spears to his treacherous heart. But not for Mordred’s sake, for now we fought for Arthur and for the happy realm we saw beyond the war. As the bards now tell it, we fought for Camelot.
Most of the spearmen slept that day, but Arthur, Issa and I crawled to the edge of the wood and stared across the small valley at the Sea Palace.
It looked so fine with its white stone gleaming in the rising sun. We were gazing at its eastern flank from a crest that was slightly lower than the palace. Its eastern wall was broken by only three small windows so that it looked to us like a great white fortress on a green hill, though that illusion was spoiled somewhat by the great sign of the fish that had been crudely smeared in pitch on the limewashed wall, presumably to guard the palace against the anger of any itinerant Christians. The long southern facade which overlooked the creek and the sea that lay beyond a sandy island on the creek’s southern bank was where the Roman builders had put their windows, just as they had relegated the kitchens and slave quarters and granaries to the northern ground behind the villa where Gwenhwyvach’s timber house stood. There was now a small village of thatched huts there as well, I guessed for the spearmen and their families, and a tangle of smoke trails rose from the huts’ cooking-fires. Beyond the huts were the orchards and vegetable fields, and beyond them again, bordered by the deep woods that grew thick in this part of the country, lay fields of partly cut hay.
In front of the palace, and just as I remembered them from that distant day when I had taken Arthur’s precious oath on the Round Table, the two embankments topped by arcades stretched towards the creek. The palace was all sunlit, so white and grand and beautiful. ‘If the Romans came back today,’
Arthur said proudly, ‘they would never know it had been rebuilt.’
‘If the Romans came back today,’ Issa said, ‘they’d have a proper fight on their hands.’ I had insisted that he come to the trees’ edge for I knew of no one with better eyesight and we needed to spend this day discovering just how many guards Lancelot had put in the Sea Palace. We counted no more than a dozen guards that morning. Just after dawn two men climbed to a wooden platform that had been built onto the roof’s summit and from there they watched the road that led north. Four other spearmen paced up and down the nearest arcade, and it seemed sensible to deduce that four more would be stationed on the western arcade that was hidden from us. The other guards were all on the land that lay between a stone balustraded terrace at the bottom of the gardens and the creek, a patrol that evidently guarded the paths that led along the coast. Issa, divested of his armour and helmet, made a reconnaissance in that direction, creeping through the woods in an attempt to see the villa’s facade between the twin arcades.
Arthur gazed fixedly at the palace. He was quietly elated, knowing that he was on the brink of a daring rescue that would send a shock through Lancelot’s new kingdom. Indeed, I had rarely seen Arthur so happy as he was that day. By coming deep into Dumnonia he had cut himself off from the responsibilities of government and now, as in the long-ago past, his future depended only on the skill of his sword. ‘Do you ever think of marriage, Derfel?’ he suddenly asked me.
‘No, Lord,’ I said. ‘Ceinwyn has sworn never to marry, and I see no need to challenge her.’ I smiled and touched my lover’s ring with its little scrap of the Cauldron’s gold. ‘Mind you,’ I went on, ‘I think we’re more married than most couples who’ve ever stood before a Druid or a priest.’
‘I don’t mean that,’ he said. ‘Do you ever think about marriage?’ He stressed the word ‘about’.
‘No, Lord,’ I said. ‘Not really.’
‘Dogged Derfel,’ he teased me. ‘When I die,’ he said dreamily, ‘I think I want a Christian burial.’
‘Why?’ I asked, horrified, and touching my mail coat so that its iron would deflect evil.
‘Because I shall lie with my Guinevere for all time,’ he said, ‘she and I, in one tomb, together.’
I thought of Norwenna’s flesh hanging off her yellow bones and grimaced. ‘You’ll be in the Otherworld with her, Lord.’
‘Our souls will, yes,’ he admitted, ‘and our shadowbodies will be there, but why can’t these bodies lie hand in hand as well?’
I shook my head. ‘Be burned,’ I said, ‘unless you want your soul to wander lost across Britain.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said lightly. He was lying on his belly, hidden from the villa by a screen of ragwort and cornflowers. Neither of us was in our armour. We would don that war finery at dusk before we came out of the dark to slaughter Lancelot’s guards. ‘What makes you and Ceinwyn happy?’ Arthur asked me. He had not shaved since we had left Glevum and the stubble of his new beard was growing grey.
‘Friendship,’ I said.
He frowned. ‘Just that?’
I thought about it. In the distance the first slaves were going to the hayfields, their sickles catching the morning sun in bright glints. Small boys were running up and down the vegetable gardens to frighten the jays away from the pea plants and the rows of gooseberries, redcurrants and raspberries, while nearer, where some convolvulus trailed pink on brambles, a group of greenfinches quarrelled noisily. It seemed that no Christian rabble had disturbed this place, indeed it seemed impossible that Dumnonia was at war at all. ‘I still feel a pang every time I look at her,’ I admitted.
‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ he said enthusiastically. ‘A pang! A quickness in the heart.’
‘Love,’ I said drily.
‘We’re lucky, you and I,’ he said, smiling. ‘It’s friendship, it’s love, and it’s still something more. It’s what the Irish call anmchara, a soul friend. Who else do you want to talk to at the day’s end? I love the evenings when we can just sit and talk and the sun goes down and moths come in to the candles.’
‘And we talk of children,’ I said, and wished I had not, ‘and of servants’ quarrels, and whether the cross-eyed kitchen slave is pregnant again, and we wonder who broke the pothook, and whether the thatch needs repair or whether it will last another year, and we try to work out what to do about the old dog that can’t walk any more, and what excuse Cadell will conjure up for not paying his rent again, and we discuss whether the flax has steeped enough, and if we should rub butterwort on the cows’ udders to improve their yield. That’s what we talk of.’
He laughed. ‘Guinevere and I talk of Dumnonia. Of Britain. And, of course, about Isis.’ Some of his enthusiasm dissipated at the mention of that name, but then he shrugged. ‘Not that we’re together often enough. That’s why I always hoped Mordred would take the burden, then I would be here all my days.’
‘Talking of broken pothooks instead of Isis?’ I teased him.
‘Of those and everything else,’ he said warmly. ‘I’ll farm this land one day, and Guinevere will go on with her work.’
‘Her work?’
He smiled wryly. ‘To know Isis. She tells me that if she can just make contact with the Goddess then the power will flow back down to the world.’ He shrugged, sceptical as always of such extravagant religious claims. Only Arthur would have dared plunge Excalibur into the soil and challenge Gofannon to come to his aid, for he did not really believe Gofannon would ever come. We are to the Gods, he once told me, like mice in a thatch, and we survive only so long as we are not noticed. But love alone demanded that he extend a wry tolerance to Guinevere’s passion. ‘I wish I could be more convinced of Isis,’ he admitted to me now, ‘but, of course, men aren’t part of her mysteries.’ He smiled. ‘Guinevere even calls Gwydre Horus.’
‘Horus?’
‘Isis’s son,’ he explained. ‘Ugly name.’
‘Not as bad as Wygga,” I said.
‘Who?’ he asked, then suddenly stiffened. ‘Look!’ he said excitedly, ‘look!’
I raised my head to peer over the flowery screen and there was Guinevere. Even from a quarter mile away she was unmistakable, for her red hair sprang in an unruly mass above the long blue robe she wore. She was walking along the nearer arcade towards the small open pavilion at its seaward end. Three maidservants walked behind with two of her deerhounds. The guards stepped aside and bowed as she passed. Once at the pavilion Guinevere sat at a stone table and the three maids served her breakfast.
‘She’ll be eating fruit,’ Arthur said fondly. ‘In summer she’ll eat nothing else in the morning.’ He smiled.
‘If she just knew how close I was!’
‘Tonight, Lord,’ I assured him, ‘you will be with her.’
He nodded. ‘At least they’re treating her well.’
‘Lancelot fears you too much to treat her badly, Lord.’
A few moments later Dinas and Lavaine appeared on the arcade. They wore their white Druidical robes and I touched Hywelbane’s hilt when I saw them and promised my daughter’s soul that her killers’
screams would make the whole Otherworld cringe in fear. The two Druids reached the pavilion, bowed to Guinevere, then joined her at the table. Gwydre came running a few moments later and we saw Guinevere ruffle his hair, then send him away in a servant’s keeping. ‘He’s a good boy,’ Arthur said fondly. ‘No deceit in him. Not like Amhar and Loholt. I failed them, didn’t I?’
‘They’re still young, Lord,’ I said.