‘Isis, Isis, Isis,’ the women sighed.
‘Osiris, Osiris, Osiris,’ the men breathed.
‘Lancelot, Lancelot, Lancelot,’ they all chanted together.
Guinevere took the gold-tipped staff and reached forward, the cloak falling again to shadow her right breast, and then, very slowly, with exaggerated gestures, she touched the staff against something that lay in the water pit right beneath the glistening, shimmering shaft of silvered smoke that now came vertically down from the heavens. No one else moved in the cellar. No one even seemed to breathe.
‘Rise!’ Guinevere commanded, ‘rise,’ and the choir began to sing their weird, haunting song again.
‘Isis, Isis, Isis,’ they were singing, and over the heads of the worshippers I saw a man climb up from the pool. It was Dinas, and his tall muscled body and long black hair dripped water as he came slowly upright and as the choir sang the Goddess’s name louder and ever louder. ‘Isis! Isis! Isis!’ they sang until Dinas at last stood upright before Guinevere, his back to us, and he too was naked. He stepped up out of the pool and Guinevere handed the black staff to Lavaine, then raised her hands and unclasped the cloak so that it fell back onto the throne. She stood there, Arthur’s wife, naked but for the gold about her neck and the ivory on her head, and she opened her arms so that the naked grandson of Tanaburs could step onto the dais and into her embrace. ‘Osiris! Osiris! Osiris!’ The women in the cellar called. Some of them writhed to and fro like the Christian worshippers in Isca who had been overcome by a similar ecstasy. The voices in the cellar were becoming ragged now. ‘Osiris! Osiris! Osiris!’ they chanted, and Guinevere stepped back as the naked Dinas turned round to face the worshippers and lifted his arms in triumph. Thus he displayed his magnificent naked body and there could be no mistaking that he was a man, nor any mistaking what he was supposed to do next as Guinevere, her beautiful, tall, straight body made magically silver-white by the moon’s shimmer in the smoke, took his right arm and led him towards the curtain that hung behind the throne. Lavaine went with them as the women writhed in their worship and rocked backwards and forwards and called out the name of their great Goddess. ‘Isis! Isis! Isis!’
Guinevere swept the far curtain aside. I had a brief glimpse of the room beyond and it seemed as bright as the sun, and then the ragged chanting rose to a new pitch of excitement as the men in the temple reached for the women beside them, and it was just then that the doors behind me were thrown wide open and Arthur, in all the glory of his war gear, stepped into the temple’s lobby. ‘No, Lord,’ I said to him, ‘no, Lord, please!’
‘You shouldn’t be here, Derfel,’ he spoke quietly, but in reproof. In his right hand he held the little bunch of cornflowers he had picked for Guinevere, while in his left he grasped his son’s hand. ‘Come back out,’ he ordered me, but then Nimue snatched the big curtain aside and my Lord’s nightmare began.
Isis is a Goddess. The Romans brought her to Britain, but she did not come from Rome itself, but from a distant country far to Rome’s east. Mithras is another God who comes from a country east of Rome, though not, I think, the same country. Galahad told me that half the world’s religions begin in the east where, I suspect, the men look more like Sagramor than like us. Christianity is another such faith brought from those distant lands where, Galahad assured me, the fields grow nothing but sand, the sun shines fiercer than it ever does in Britain and no snow ever falls.
Isis came from those burning lands. She became a powerful Goddess to the Romans and many women in Britain adopted her religion that stayed on when the Romans left. It was never as popular as Christianity, for the latter threw its doors open to any who wanted to worship its God, while Isis, like Mithras, restricted her followers to those, and those alone, who had been initiated into her mysteries. In some ways, Galahad told me, Isis resembled the Holy Mother of the Christians, for she was reputed to be the perfect mother to her son Horus, but Isis also possessed powers that the Virgin Mary never claimed. Isis, to her adepts, was the Goddess of life and death, of healing, and, of course, of mortal thrones.
She was married, Galahad told me, to a God named Osiris, but in a war between the Gods Osiris was killed and his body was cut into fragments that were scattered into a river. Isis found the scattered flesh and tenderly brought them together again, and then she lay with the fragments to bring her husband back to life. Osiris did live again, revived by Isis’s power. Galahad hated the tale, and crossed himself again and again as he told it, and it was that tale, I suppose, of resurrection and of the woman giving life to the man, that Nimue and I watched in that smoky black cellar. We had watched as Isis, the Goddess, the mother, the giver of life, performed the miracle that gave her husband life and turned her into the guardian of the living and the dead and the arbiter of men’s thrones. And it was that last power, the power that determined which men should sit on this earth’s thrones, that was, for Guinevere, the Goddess’s supreme gift. It was for the power of the throne-giver that Guinevere worshipped Isis. Nimue snatched the curtain aside and the cellar filled with screams. For one second, for one terrible second, Guinevere hesitated at the far curtain and turned around to see what had disturbed her rites. She stood there, tall and naked and so dreadful in her pale beauty, and beside her was a naked man. At the cellar’s door, standing with his son in one hand and with flowers in the other, was her husband. The cheek pieces of Arthur’s helmet were open and I saw his face at that terrible moment, and it was as if his soul had just fled.
Guinevere disappeared behind the curtain, dragging Dinas and Lavaine with her, and Arthur uttered an awful sound, half a battle shout and half the cry of a man in utter misery. He pushed Gwydre back, dropped the flowers, then drew Excalibur and charged heedlessly through the screaming, naked worshippers who scrambled desperately out of his way.
‘Take them all!’ I shouted to the spearmen who followed Arthur, ‘don’t let them escape! Take them!’
Then I ran after Arthur with Nimue beside me. Arthur leapt the black pool, pushed a torch over as he jumped across the dais, then swept the far black curtain aside with Excalibur’s blade. And there he stopped.
I stopped beside him. I had discarded my spear as I charged through the temple and now had Hywelbane bare in my hand. Nimue was with me and she howled in triumph as she gazed into the small, square room that opened up from the arched cellar. This, it seemed, was Isis’s inner sanctuary, and here, at the Goddess’s service, was the Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn.
The Cauldron was the first thing I saw, for it was standing on a black pedestal that stood as high as a man’s waist and there were so many candles in the room that the Cauldron seemed to glow silver and gold as it reflected their brilliant light. The light was made even brighter because the room, all but for the curtained wall, was lined with mirrors. There were mirrors on the walls and even on the ceiling, mirrors that multiplied the candles’ flames and reflected the nakedness of Guinevere and Dinas. Guinevere, in her terror, had leapt onto the wide bed that filled the room’s far end and there she clawed at a fur coverlet in an effort to hide her pale skin. Dinas was beside her, his hands clutched to his groin, while Lavaine faced us defiantly.
He glanced at Arthur, dismissed Nimue with scarce a look, then held his slender black staff towards me. He knew I had come for his death and now he would prevent it with the greatest magic at his disposal. He pointed his staff at me, while in his other hand he held the crystal-encased fragment of the true cross that Bishop Sansum had given to Mordred at his acclamation. He was holding the fragment suspended above the Cauldron, which was filled with some dark aromatic liquid.
‘Your other daughters will die too,’ he told me. ‘I only need to let go.’
Arthur raised Excalibur.
‘Your son too!’ Lavaine said, and both of us froze. ‘You will go now,’ he said with calm authority.
‘You have invaded the Goddess’s sanctuary and will now go and leave us in peace. Or else you, and all you love, will die.’
He waited. Behind him, between the Cauldron and the bed, was Arthur’s Round Table with its stone image of the winged horse, and on the horse, I saw, were a drab basket, a common horn, an old halter, a worn knife, a whetstone, a sleeved coat, a cloak, a clay dish, a throwboard, a warrior ring and a heap of decaying broken timbers. Merlin’s scrap of beard was also there, still wrapped in its black ribbon. All the power of Britain was in that little room and it was allied to a scrap of the Christian’s most powerful magic.
I lifted Hywelbane and Lavaine made as though to drop the piece of the true cross into the liquid and Arthur put a warning hand against my shield.
‘You will go,’ Lavaine said. Guinevere said nothing, but just watched us, huge-eyed, above the pelt that now half covered her.
Then Nimue smiled. She had been holding the bundled cloak in both her hands, but now she shook it at Lavaine. She screamed as she released the cloak’s burden. It was an eldritch shriek that echoed high above the cries of the women behind us.
Vipers flew through the air. There must have been a dozen of the snakes, all found by Nimue that afternoon and hoarded for this moment. They twisted in the air and Guinevere screamed and dragged the fur to cover her face while Lavaine, seeing a snake flying at his eyes, instinctively flinched and crouched. The scrap of true cross skittered across the floor while the snakes, aroused by the heat in the cellar, twisted across the bed and over the Treasures of Britain. I took one pace forward and kicked Lavaine hard in the belly. He fell, then screamed as an adder bit his ankle. Dinas shrank from the snakes on the bed, then went utterly still as Excalibur touched his throat. Hywelbane was at Lavaine’s throat, and I used the blade to bring his face up towards mine. Then I smiled. ‘My daughter,’ I said softly, ‘watches us from the Otherworld. She sends you greetings, Lavaine.’
He tried to speak, but no words came. A snake slid across his leg.
Arthur stared at where his wife was hidden beneath the fur. Then, almost tenderly, he flicked the snakes off the black pelt with Excalibur’s tip, then drew back the fur until he could see Guinevere’s face. She stared at him, and all her fine pride had vanished. She was just a terrified woman. ‘Do you have any clothes here?’ Arthur asked her gently. She shook her head.
‘There’s a red cloak on the throne,’ I told him.
‘Would you fetch it, Nimue?’ Arthur asked.
Nimue brought the cloak and Arthur held it towards his wife on Excalibur’s tip. ‘Here,’ he said, still speaking softly, ‘for you.’
A bare arm emerged from the fur and took the cloak. ‘Turn round,’ Guinevere said to me in a small, frightened voice.
‘Turn, Derfel, please,’ Arthur said.
‘One thing first, Lord.’
‘Turn,’ he insisted, still gazing at his wife.
I reached for the Cauldron’s edge and tipped it off the pedestal. The precious Cauldron clanged loud on the floor as its liquid spilt in a dark rush across the flagstones. That got his attention. He stared at me and I hardly recognized his face, it was so hard and cold and empty of life, but there was one more thing to be said this night and if my Lord was to sup this dish of horrors, then he might as well drain it to the last bitter drop. I put Hywelbane’s tip back under Lavaine’s chin. ‘Who is the Goddess?’ I asked him. He shook his head and I pushed Hywelbane far enough forward to draw blood from his throat. ‘Who is the Goddess?’ I asked him again.
‘Isis,’ he whispered. He was clutching his ankle where the snake had bitten him.
‘And who is the God?’ I demanded.
‘Osiris,’ he said in a terrified voice.
‘And who,’ I asked him, ‘shall sit on the throne?’ He shivered, and said nothing. ‘These, Lord,’ I said to Arthur, my sword still on Lavaine’s throat, ‘are the words you did not hear. But I heard them and Nimue heard them. Who shall sit on the throne?’ I asked Lavaine again.
‘Lancelot,’ he said in a voice so low that it was almost inaudible. But Arthur heard, just as he must have seen the great device that was embroidered white on the lavish black blanket that lay on the bed beneath the bear pelt in this room of mirrors. It was Lancelot’s sea-eagle. I spat at Lavaine, sheathed Hywelbane, then reached forward and took him by his long black hair. Nimue already had hold of Dinas. We dragged them back into the temple, and I swept the black curtain back into place behind me so that Arthur and Guinevere could be alone. Gwenhwyvach had been watching it all and she now cackled with laughter. The worshippers and the choir, all naked, were crouching to one side of the cellar where Arthur’s men guarded them with spears. Gwydre was crouching terrified at the cellar door.
Behind us Arthur cried one word. ‘Why?’
And I took my daughter’s murderers out to the moonlight.
At dawn we were still at the Sea Palace. We should have left, for some of the spearmen had escaped the huts when the horsemen had at last been summoned from the hill by Arthur’s horn, and those fugitives would be spreading the alarm north into Dumnonia, but Arthur seemed incapable of decision. He was like a man stunned.
He was still weeping as the dawn edged the world with light.
Dinas and Lavaine died then. They died at the creek’s edge. I am not, I think, a cruel man, but their deaths were very cruel and very long. Nimue arranged those deaths, and all the while, as their souls gave up the flesh, she hissed the name Dian in their ears. They were not men by the time they died, and their tongues had gone and they had just one eye apiece, and that small mercy was only given them so that they could see the manner of their next bout of pain, and see they did as they died. The last thing either saw was that bright piece of hair on Hywelbane’s hilt as I finished what Nimue had begun. The twins were mere things by then, things of blood and shuddering terror, and when they were dead I kissed the little scrap of hair, then carried it to one of the braziers on the palace’s arcades and tossed it into the embers so that no fragment of Dian’s soul was left wandering the earth. Nimue did the same with the cut plait of Merlin’s beard. We left the twins’ bodies lying on their left sides beside the sea and in the rising sun gulls came down to tear at the tortured flesh with their long hooked beaks. Nimue had rescued the Cauldron and the Treasures. Dinas and Lavaine, before they died, had told her the whole tale, and Nimue had been right all along. It had been Morgan who stole the Treasures and who had taken them as a gift to Sansum so that he would marry her, and Sansum had given them to Guinevere. It was the promise of that great gift which had first reconciled Guinevere to the mouse-lord before Lancelot’s baptism in the River Churn. I thought, when I heard the tale, that if only I had allowed Lancelot into the mysteries of Mithras then maybe none of this would have happened. Fate is inexorable. The shrine’s doors were closed now. None of those trapped inside had escaped, and once Guinevere had been brought out and after Arthur had talked with her for a long time, he had gone back into the cellar alone, with just Excalibur in his hand, and he did not emerge for a full hour. When he came out his face was colder than the sea and as grey as Excalibur’s blade, except that the precious blade was now red and thick with blood. In one hand he carried the horn-mounted circle of gold that Guinevere had worn as Isis and in the other he carried the sword. ‘They’re dead,’ he told me.