The Winter King Part 1

The Winter King.

by Bernard Cornwell.

PART ONE.

A Child in Winter

ONCE UPON A TIME, in a land that was called Britain, these things happened. Bishop Sansum, whom G.o.d must bless above all the saints living and dead, says these memories should be cast into the bottomless pit with all the other filth of fallen mankind, for these are the tales of the last days before the great darkness descended on the light of our Lord Jesus Christ. These are the tales of the land we call Lloegyr, which means the Lost Lands, the country that was once ours but which our enemies now call England. These are the tales of Arthur, the Warlord, the King that Never Was, the Enemy of G.o.d and, may the living Christ and Bishop Sansum forgive me, the best man I ever knew. How I have wept for Arthur.

It is cold today. The hills are deathly pale and the clouds dark. We shall have snow before nightfall, but Sansum will surely refuse us the blessing of a fire. It is good, the saint says, to mortify the flesh. I am old now, but Sansum, may G.o.d grant him many years yet, is older still so I cannot use my age as an argument to unlock the wood store Sansum will just say that our suffering is an offering to G.o.d who suffered more than all of us, and so we six brethren shall s.h.i.+ver in our half-sleep and tomorrow the well will be frozen and Brother Maelgwyn will have to climb down the chain and hammer the ice with a stone before we can drink.

Yet cold is not the worst affliction of our winter, but rather that the icy paths will stop Igraine visiting the monastery. Igraine is our Queen, married to King Brochvael. She is dark and slender, very young, and has a quickness that is like the sun's warmth on a winter's day. She comes here to pray that she will be granted a son, yet she spends more time talking with me than praying to Our Lady or to her blessed son. She talks to me because she likes to hear the stories of Arthur, and this past summer I told her all that I could remember and when I could remember no more she brought me a heap of parchment, a horn flask of ink and a bundle of goose feathers for quills. Arthur wore goose feathers on his helmet. These quills are not so big, nor so white, but yesterday I held the sheaf of quills up to the winter sky and for a glorious guilty moment I thought I saw his face beneath that plume. For that one moment the dragon and the bear snarled across Britain to terrify the heathen again, but then I sneezed and saw I clutched nothing but a handful of feathers clotted with goose droppings and scarcely adequate for writing. The ink is just as bad; mere lamp-black mixed with gum from apple-bark. The parchments are better. They are made from lambs' skins left over from the Roman days and were once covered with a script none of us could read, but Igraine's women sc.r.a.ped the skins bare and white. Sansum says it would be better if so much lambskin were made into shoes, but the sc.r.a.ped skins are too thin to cobble, and besides, Sansum dare not offend Igraine and thus lose the friends.h.i.+p of King Brochvael. This monastery is no more than a half-day's journey from enemy spearmen and even our small storehouse could tempt those enemies across the Black Stream, up into the hills and so to Dinnewrac's valley if Brochvael's warriors were not ordered to protect us. Yet I do not think that even Brochvael's friends.h.i.+p would reconcile Sansum to the idea of Brother Derfel writing an account of Arthur, Enemy of G.o.d, and so Igraine and I have lied to the blessed saint by telling him that I am writing down a translation of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in the tongue of the Saxons. The blessed saint does not speak the enemy tongue, nor can he read, and so we should be able to deceive him long enough for this tale to be written. And he will need to be deceived for, not long after I had begun writing on this very skin, the holy Sansum came into the room. He stood at the window, peered at the bleak sky and rubbed his thin hands together. "I like the cold," he said, knowing that I do not.

"I feel it worst," I responded gently, 'in my missing hand." It is my left hand that is missing and I am using the wrist's k.n.o.bbly stump to steady the parchment as I write.

"All pain is a blessed reminder of our dear Lord's Pa.s.sion," the Bishop said, just as I had expected, then he leaned on the table to look at what I had written. "Tell me what the words say, Derfel," he demanded.

"I am writing," I lied, 'the story of the Christ-child's birth." He stared at the skin, then placed a dirty fingernail on his own name. He can decipher some letters and his own name must have stood out from the parchment as stark as a raven in the snow. Then he cackled like a wicked child and twisted a hank of my white hair in his fingers. "I was not present at our Lord's birth, Derfel, yet that is my name. Are you writing heresy, you toad of h.e.l.l?"

"Lord," I said humbly as his grip kept my face bowed close over my work, "I have started the Gospel by recording that it is only by the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ and with the permission of His most holy saint, Sansum' and here I edged my finger toward his name 'that I am able to write down this good news of Christ Jesus."

He tugged at my hair, pulling some free, then stepped away. "You are the sp.a.w.n of a Saxon wh.o.r.e," he said, 'and no Saxon could ever be trusted. Take care, Saxon, not to offend me."

"Gracious Lord," I said to him, but he did not stay to hear more. There was a time when he bowed his knee to me and kissed my sword, but now he is a saint and I am nothing but the most miserable of sinners. And a cold sinner too, for the light beyond our walls is hollow, grey and full of threat. The first snow will fall very soon.

And there was snow when Arthur's tale began. It was a lifetime ago, in the last year of High King Uther's reign. That year, as the Romans used to reckon time, was 1233 years after the founding of their city, though we in Britain usually date our years from the Black Year which was when the Romans cut down the Druids on Ynys Mon. By that reckoning Arthur's story begins in the year 420, though Sansum, may G.o.d bless him, numbers our era from the date of our Lord Jesus Christ's birth which he believes happened 480 winters before these things began. But however you count the years it was long ago, once upon a time, in a land called Britain, and I was there.

And this is how it was.

It began with a birth.

On a bitter night, when the kingdom lay still and white beneath a waning moon. And in the hall, Norwenna screamed.

And screamed.

It was midnight. The sky was clear, dry and brilliant with stars. The land was frozen hard as iron, its streams gripped by ice. The waning moon was a bad omen and in its sullen light the long western lands seemed to glow with a pale cold s.h.i.+mmer. No snow had fallen for three days, nor had there been any thaw, so all the world was white except where the trees had been windblown free of snow and now stood black and intricate against the winter-bleak land. Our breath misted, but did not blow away for there was no wind in this clear midnight. The earth seemed dead and still, as if she had been abandoned by Belenos the Sun G.o.d and left to drift in the endless cold void between the worlds. And cold it was; a bitter, deadly cold. Icicles hung long from the eaves of Caer Cadarn's great hall and from the arched gateway where, earlier that day, the High King's entourage had struggled through drifted snow to bring our Princess to this high place of kings. Caer Cadarn was where the royal stone was kept; it was the place of acclamation and thus the only place, the High King insisted, where his heir could be born. Norwenna screamed again.

I have never seen a child's birth, nor, G.o.d willing, will I ever see one. I have seen a mare foal and watched calves slither into the world, and I have heard the soft whining of a whelping b.i.t.c.h and felt the writhing of a birthing cat, but never have I seen the blood and mucus that accompanies a woman's screams. And how Norwenna screamed, even though she was trying not to, or so the women said afterwards. Sometimes the shrieking would suddenly stop and leave a silence hanging over the whole high fort and the High King would lift his great head from among the furs and he would listen as carefully as though he were in a thicket and the Saxons were close by, only now he was listening in hope that the sudden silence marked the moment of birth when his kingdom would have an heir again. He would listen, and in the stillness across the frozen compound we would hear the harsh noise of his daughter-in-law's terrible breathing and once, just once, there was a pathetic whimper, and the High King half turned as though to say something, but then the screams began again and his head sank down into the heavy pelts so that only his eyes could be seen glinting in the shadowed cave formed by the heavy fur hood and collar.

"You should not be on the ramparts, High Lord," Bishop Bedwin said. Uther waved a gloved hand as if to suggest that Bedwin was welcome to go inside where the fires burned, but High King Uther, the Pendragon of Britain, would not move. He wanted to be on Caer Cadarn's ramparts so he could gaze across the icy land and up into the middle air where the demons lurked, but Bedwin was right, the High King should not have been standing guard against demons on this hard night. Uther was old and sick, yet the kingdom's safety depended on his bloated body and on his slow, sad mind. He had been vigorous only six months before, but then had come the news of his heir's death. Mordred, the most beloved of his sons and the only one of those born to his bride still living, had been cut down by a Saxon broad-axe and had then bled to death beneath the hill of the White Horse. That death had left the kingdom without an heir, and a kingdom without an heir is a cursed kingdom, but this night, if the G.o.ds willed, Uther's heir would be born to Mordred's widow. Unless the child was a girl, of course, in which case all the pain was for nothing and the kingdom doomed.

Uther's great head raised itself from the pelts that were crusted with ice where his breath had settled on the fur. "All is being done, Bedwin?" Uther asked.

"All, High Lord, all," Bishop Bedwin said. He was the King's most trusted counsellor and, like the Princess Norwenna, a Christian. Norwenna, protesting at being moved from the warm Roman villa in nearby Lindinis, had screamed at her father-in-law that she would only go to Caer Cadarn if he promised to keep the old G.o.ds' witches away. She had insisted on a Christian birth, and Uther, desperate for an heir, had agreed to her demands. Now Bed win's priests were chanting their prayers in a chamber beside the hall where holy water had been sprinkled, a cross had been hung over the birth bed and another put beneath Norwenna's body. "We are praying to the blessed Virgin Mary," Bedwin explained, 'who, without soiling her sacred body by any carnal knowledge, became Christ's holy mother and'

"Enough," Uther growled. The High King was no Christian and did not like any man attempting to make him one, though he did accept that the Christian G.o.d probably had as much power as most other G.o.ds. The events of this night were testing that toleration to the limit. Which was why I was there. I was a child on the edge of manhood, a beardless errand-runner who crouched frozen beside the King's chair on the ramparts of Caer Cadarn. I had come from Ynys Wydryn, Merlin's hall, which lay on the northern horizon.

My task, if ordered, was to fetch Morgan and her helpers who waited in a pig-herder's mud hovel at the foot of Caer Cadarn's western slope. The Princess Norwenna might want Christ's mother as her midwife, but Uther was ready with the older G.o.ds if that newer one failed.

And the Christian G.o.d did fail. Norwenna's screams became fewer, but her whimpering more desperate until at last Bishop Bedwin's wife came from the hall and knelt s.h.i.+vering beside the High King's chair. The baby, Ellin said, would not come and the mother, she feared, was dying. Uther waved that last comment aside. The mother was nothing, only the child mattered, and only then if it was a boy.

"High Lord..." Ellin began nervously, but Uther was no longer listening. He tapped my head. "Go, boy," he said, and I twisted out of his shadow, leaped down to the fort's interior and raced across the moon-shadowed whiteness between the buildings. The guards on the western gate watched me run by, then I was sliding and falling on the ice-chute of the western road. I slithered through snow, tore my cloak on a tree stump and fell heavily into some ice-laden brambles, but I felt nothing, except the huge weight of a kingdom's fate on my young shoulders. "Lady Morgan!" I shouted as I neared the hovel. "Lady Morgan!"

She must have been waiting, for the hovel door was immediately flung open and her gold-masked face shone in the moonlight. "Go!" she screeched at me, 'go!" and I turned and started back up the hill while around me a pack of Merlin's orphans scrambled through the snow. They were carrying kitchen pots which they clashed together as they ran, though when the slope grew too steep and treacherous they were forced to hurl the pots on ahead and scramble up behind. Morgan followed more slowly, attended by her slave Sebile who carried the necessary charms and herbs. "Set the fires, Derfel!" Morgan called up to me.

"Fire!" I shouted breathlessly as I scrambled through the gateway. "Fire on the ramparts! Fire!" Bishop Bedwin protested at Morgan's arrival, but the High King turned on his counsellor in a rage and the Bishop meekly surrendered to the older faith. His priests and monks were ordered out of their makes.h.i.+ft chapel and told to carry firebrands to all parts of the ramparts and there pile the burning brands with wood and wattle torn out of the huts that cl.u.s.tered inside the fort's northern walls. The fires crackled, then blazed huge in the night and their smoke hung in the air to make a canopy that would confuse the evil spirits and so keep them from this place where a princess and her child were dying. We young ones raced around the ramparts banging pots to make the great noise that would further dizzy the evil ones. "Shout," I ordered the children from Ynys Wydryn, and still more children came from the fortress hovels to add their noise to ours. The guards beat their spear-shafts against their s.h.i.+elds, and the priests piled more wood on to a dozen flaming pyres while the rest of us screamed our noisy challenges against the evil wraiths that had slithered through the night to curse Norwenna's labour. Morgan, Sebile, Nimue and one girl child went into the hall. Norwenna screamed, though whether she cried aloud in protest at the coming of Merlin's women or because the stubborn child was tearing her body in two, we could not tell. More screams sounded as Morgan expelled the Christian attendants. She threw the two crosses into the snow and tossed a handful of mug wort the woman's herb, on to the fire. Nimue later told me that they put iron nuggets into the damp bed to scare away the evil spirits already lodged there and laid seven eagle stones around the writhing woman's head to bring the good spirits down from the G.o.ds.

Sebile, Morgan's slave, put a birch branch over the hall door and waved another over the writhing body of the hurting Princess. Nimue crouched in the door and urinated on the threshold to keep the evil fairies away from the hall, then she cupped some of her urine and carried it to Norwenna's bed where she sprinkled it on the straw as a further precaution against the child's soul being stolen away at the moment of birth. Morgan, her gold mask bright in the flame light slapped Norwenna's hands away so she could force a charm of rare amber between the Princess's b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The small girl, one of Merlin's foundlings, waited in terror at the foot of the bed.

Smoke from the newly set fires blurred the stars. Creatures woken in the woods at the foot of Caer Cadarn howled at the noise which had erupted above them while High King Uther raised his eyes to the dying moon and prayed that he had not fetched Morgan too late. Morgan was Uther's natural daughter, the first of the four b.a.s.t.a.r.ds the High King had whelped on Igraine of Gwynedd. Uther would doubtless have preferred Merlin to be there, but Merlin had been gone for months, gone into nowhere, gone, it sometimes seemed to us, for ever, and Morgan, who had learned her skills from Merlin, must take his place on this cold night in which we clashed pots and shouted until we were hoa.r.s.e to drive the malevolent fiends away from Caer Cadarn. Even Uther joined in the noise-making, though the sound of his staff beating on the rampart's edge was very feeble. Bishop Bedwin was on his knees, praying, while his wife, expelled from the birth-room, wept and wailed and called on the Christian G.o.d to forgive the heathen witches. But the witchcraft worked, for a child was born alive.

The scream Norwenna gave at the moment of birth was worse than any that had preceded it. It was the shriek of an animal in torment, a lament to make the whole night sob. Nimue told me later that Morgan had caused that pain by thrusting her hand into the birth ca.n.a.l and wrenching the baby into this world by brute force. The child came b.l.o.o.d.y from the tormented mother and Morgan shouted at the frightened girl to pick the child up while Nimue tied and bit the cord. It was important that the baby should first be held by a virgin, which is why the girl child had been taken to the hall, but she was frightened and would not come close to the blood-wet straw on which Norwenna now panted and where the new-born, blood-smeared child lay as though stillborn. "Pick it up!" Morgan yelled, but the girl fled in tears and so Nimue plucked the baby from the bed and cleared its mouth so that it could s.n.a.t.c.h its first choking breath.

The omens were all so very bad. The haloed moon was waning and the virgin had fled from the babe that now began to cry aloud. Uther heard the noise and I saw him close his eyes as he prayed to the G.o.ds that he had been given a boy child.

"Shall I?" Bishop Bedwin asked hesitantly.

"Go," Uther snapped, and the Bishop scrambled down the wooden ladder, hitched up his robe and ran across the trampled snow to the hall's door. He stood there for a few seconds, then ran back towards the rampart waving his hands.

"Good news, High Lord, good news!" Bedwin called as he clambered awkwardly up the ladder. "Most excellent news!"

"A boy." Uther antic.i.p.ated the news by breathing the words.

"A boy!" Bedwin confirmed, 'a fine boy!"

I was crouching near the High King and I saw tears show at his eyes that were gazing toward the sky.

"An heir," Uther said in a tone of wonder as though he had not really dared to hope that the G.o.ds would favour him. He dabbed at the tears with a fur-gloved hand. "The kingdom is safe, Bedwin," he said.

"Praise G.o.d, High Lord, it is safe," Bedwin agreed.

"A boy," Uther said, then his huge body was suddenly racked with a terrible cough. It left him panting. "A boy," he said again when his breathing was steady.

Morgan came after a while. She climbed the ladder and prostrated her stocky body in front of the High King. Her gold mask gleamed, hiding the horror beneath. Uther touched her shoulder with his staff. "Rise, Morgan," he said, then he fumbled beneath his robe to find a gold brooch with which to reward her. But Morgan would not take it. "The boy," she said ominously, 'is crippled. He has a twisted foot." I saw Bedwin make a sign of the cross for a crippled prince was the worst omen of this cold night.

"How bad?" Uther asked.

"Just the foot," Morgan said in her harsh voice. "The leg is properly formed, High Lord, but the Prince will never run."

From deep inside his swathing fur cloak Uther chuckled. "Kings don't run, Morgan," he said, 'they walk, they rule, they ride and they reward their good, honest servants. Take the gold." He held the brooch towards her again. It was a piece of thick gold, marvellously wrought into the shape of Uther's talisman, a dragon.

But still Morgan would not accept it. "And the boy is the last child Norwenna will ever bear, High Lord," she warned Uther. "We burned the afterbirth and it did not sound once." The afterbirth was always put on the fire so that the popping sound it made would tell how many more children the mother would bear.

"I listened close," Morgan said, 'and it was silent."

"The G.o.ds wanted it silent," Uther said angrily. "My son is dead," he went on bleakly, 'so who else could give Norwenna a boy child fit to be a King?"

Morgan paused. "You, High Lord?" she said at last.

Uther chuckled at the thought, then the chuckle turned into laughter and finally into another racking cough that bent him forward in lung-aching pain. The coughing pa.s.sed at last and he drew in a shuddering breath as he shook his head. "Norwenna's only duty was to drop one boy child, Morgan, and that she has done. Our duty is to protect him."

"With all the strength of Dumnonia," Bedwin added eagerly.

"Newborns die easily," Morgan warned the two men in her bleak voice.

"Not this one," Uther said fiercely, 'not this one. He will come to you, Morgan, at Ynys Wydryn and you will use your skills to make certain he lives. Here, take the brooch." Morgan at last accepted the dragon brooch. The maimed babe was still crying and the mother was whimpering, but around the ramparts of Caer Cadarn the pot-beaters and fire-tenders were celebrating the news that our kingdom had an heir again. Dumnonia had an ed ling and an ed ling birth meant a great feast and lavish gifts. The b.l.o.o.d.y birth-straw of the bed was brought from the hall and dumped on a fire so that the flames crackled high and bright. A child had been born; all that child now needed was a name and of that name there could be no doubt. None. Uther eased himself out of his chair and stood huge and grim on Caer Cadarn's wall to p.r.o.nounce the name of his new-born grandson, the name of his heir and the name of his kingdom's ed ling The winter-born babe would be named after his father. He would be called Mordred.

Norwenna and the baby came to us at Ynys Wydryn. They were brought in an ox-cart across the eastern land bridge to the Tor's foot and I watched from the windy summit as the sick mother and the maimed child were lifted from their bed of fur cloaks and carried in a cloth litter up the path to the stockade. It was cold that day; a bitter, snow-bright cold that ate at the lungs, chapped the skin and made Norwenna whimper as she was carried with her swaddled babe through the land gate of Ynys Wydryn's Tor.

Thus did Mordred, Edling of Dumnonia, enter Merlin's realm.

Ynys Wydryn, despite its name, which means the Isle of Gla.s.s, was not a true island, but rather a promontory of high ground that jutted into a waste of sea-marsh, creeks and willow-edged bogs where sedge and reeds grew thick. It was a rich place, made so by wildfowl, fish, clay and the limestone that could easily be quarried from the hills edging the tidal wastes that were crossed by wooden track ways on which unwary visitors were sometimes drowned when the wind came hard from the west and blew a high tide fast across the long, green wetlands. To the west, where the land rose, there were apple orchards and wheat fields, and to the north, where pale hills edged the marshes, cattle and sheep were herded. It was all good land, and at its heart was Ynys Wydryn.

This was all Lord Merlin's land. It was called Avalon and had been ruled by his father and his father's father, and every serf and slave within sight of the Tor's summit worked for Merlin. It was this land with its produce trapped and netted in the tidal creeks or grown on the rich soil of the inland river valleys that gave Merlin the wealth and freedom to be a Druid. Britain had once been the land of Druids, but the Romans had first slaughtered them, then tamed the religion so that even now, after two generations without Rome's rule, only a handful of the old priests remained. The Christians had taken their place, and Christianity now lapped around the old faith like a wind-driven high tide splas.h.i.+ng through the demon-haunted reed-beds of Avalon.

Avalon's isle, Ynys Wydryn, was a cl.u.s.ter of gra.s.sy hills, all of them bare except for the Tor which was the steepest and highest. At its summit was a ridge where Merlin's hall was built, and beneath the hall was a spread of lesser buildings protected by a wooden stockade perched precariously at the top of the Tor's steep gra.s.sy slopes which were sc.r.a.ped into a pattern of terraces left from the Old Days before the Romans came. A narrow path followed the ancient terraces, winding its intricate way towards the peak, and those who visited the Tor in search of healing or prophecy were forced to follow that path which served to baffle the evil spirits who might otherwise come to sour Merlin's stronghold. Two other paths ran straight down the Tor's slopes, one to the east where the land bridge led to Ynys Wydryn, the other westward from the sea gate down to the settlement at the Tor's foot where fishermen, wild fowlers basket-weavers and herdsmen lived. Those paths were the everyday entrances to the Tor and Morgan kept them free of evil spirits by constant prayers and charms.

Morgan gave special attention to the western path for it led not only to the settlement, but also to Ynys Wydryn's Christian shrine. Merlin's great-grandfather had let the Christians come to the isle in Roman times and nothing had been able to dislodge them since. We children of the Tor were encouraged to throw stones at the monks and toss animal dung over their wooden stockade or laugh at the pilgrims who scuttled through the wicket gate to wors.h.i.+p a thorn tree that grew next to the impressive stone church which had been built by the Romans and still dominated the Christian compound. One year Merlin had a similar thorn tree enthroned on the Tor and we all wors.h.i.+pped it by singing, dancing and bowing. The village's Christians said we would be struck down by their G.o.d, but nothing happened. We burned our thorn in the end and mixed its ashes with the pig feed, but still the Christian G.o.d ignored us. The Christians claimed that their thorn was magic and that it had been brought to Ynys Wydryn by a foreigner who had seen the Christian G.o.d nailed to a tree. May G.o.d forgive me, but in those distant days I mocked such stories. I never understood then what the thorn had to do with a G.o.d's killing, but now I do, though I can tell you that the Sacred Thorn, if it still grows in Ynys Wydryn, is not the tree sprung from the staff of Joseph of Arimathaea. I know that, for one dark winter's night when I had been sent to fetch Merlin a flask of clean water from the sacred spring at the Tor's southern foot, I saw the Christian monks digging up a small thorn bush to replace the tree that had just died inside their stockade. The Holy Thorn was always dying, though whether that was because of the cow dung we threw at it or simply because the poor tree was overwhelmed by the cloth strips tied to it by pilgrims, I cannot tell. The monks of the Holy Thorn became rich anyway, fattened by the generous gifts of the pilgrims.

The monks of Ynys Wydryn were delighted that Norwenna had come to our stockade for now they had a reason to climb the steep path and bring their prayers into the heart of Merlin's stronghold. The Princess Norwenna was still a fierce and sharp-tongued Christian despite the failure of the Virgin Mary to deliver her child and she demanded that the monks be admitted every morning. I do not know if Merlin would have allowed them into the compound, and Nimue certainly cursed Morgan for granting her permission, but Merlin was not at Ynys Wydryn in those days. We had not seen our master for more than a year, but life in his strange fastness went on without him.

And strange it was. Merlin was the oddest of all Ynys Wydryn's inhabitants, but around him, for his pleasure, he had a.s.sembled a tribe of maimed, disfigured, twisted and half-mad creatures. The captain of the household and commander of its guard was Druidan, a dwarf. He stood no higher than a five-year-old child, yet he had the fury of a full-grown warrior and dressed each day in greaves, breastplate, helmet, cloak and weapons. He railed against the fate that had stunted him and took his revenge on the only creatures smaller still: the orphans whom Merlin gathered so carelessly. Few of Merlin's girls were not fanatically pursued by Druidan, though when he had tried to drag Nimue into his bed he had received an angry beating for his pains. Merlin had hit him about the head, breaking Druidan's ears, splitting his lips and blacking his eyes while the children and the stockade's guards cheered. The guards Druidan commanded were all lame or blind or mad, and some of them were all three, but none was mad enough to like Druidan.

Nimue, my friend and childhood companion, was Irish. The Irish were Britons, but they had never been ruled by the Romans and for that reason counted themselves better than the mainland Britons whom they raided, harried, enslaved and colonized. If the Saxons had not been such terrible enemies then we would have considered the Irish the worst of all the G.o.ds' creatures, though from time to time we made alliances with them against some other tribe of Britons. Nimue had been s.n.a.t.c.hed from her family in a raid Uther made against the Irish settlements in Demetia that lay across the wide sea fed by the River Severn. Sixteen captives were taken in that raid and all were sent back to become slaves in Dumnonia, but while the s.h.i.+ps were crossing the Severn Sea a great storm blew from the west and the s.h.i.+p carrying the captives foundered on Ynys Wair. Nimue alone survived, walking out of the sea, it was said, without even being wet. It was a sign, Merlin claimed, that she was loved by Manawydan, the Sea G.o.d, though Nimue herself insisted that it had been Don, the most powerful G.o.ddess, who had saved her life. Merlin wanted to call her Vivien, a name dedicated to Manawydan, but Nimue ignored the name and kept her own. Nimue almost always got her own way. She grew up in Merlin's mad household with a sharp curiosity and a self-possessed confidence and when, after maybe thirteen or fourteen of her summers had pa.s.sed, Merlin ordered her to his own bed, she went as though she had known all along that her fate was to become his lover and thus, in the order of these things, the second most important person in all Ynys Wydryn. Although Morgan did not yield that post without a struggle. Morgan, of all the weird creatures in Merlin's house, was the most grotesque. She was a widow and thirty summers old when Nor-wenna and Mordred came to be her wards, and the appointment was appropriate for Morgan was high born herself. She was the first of the four b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, three girls and a boy, fathered on Igraine of Gwynedd by High King Uther. Her brother was Arthur and with such a lineage and such a brother it might be thought ambitious men would have beaten down the walls of the Otherworld itself to claim the widow's hand, yet as a young bride Morgan had been trapped in a burning house that had killed her new husband and scarred Morgan horribly. The flames had taken her left ear, blinded her left eye, seared the hair from the left side of her scalp, maimed her left leg and twisted her left arm so that naked, Nimue told me, the whole left side of Morgan's body was wrinkled, raw-red and distorted, shrivelled in some places, stretched in others, gruesome everywhere. Just like a rotted apple, Nimue told me, only worse. Morgan was a creature from nightmare, but to Merlin she was a lady fit for his high hall and he had trained her to be his prophetess. He had ordered one of the High King's goldsmiths to fas.h.i.+on her a mask that fitted over her ravaged head like a helmet. The gold mask had a hole for her one eye and a slit for her twisted mouth and was made out of thin fine gold that was chased in spirals and dragons, and fronted with an image of Cernunnos, the Horned G.o.d, who was Merlin's protector. Gold-faced Morgan always dressed in black, had a glove on her withered left hand, and was widely famed for her healing touch and gifts of prophecy. She was also the worst-tempered woman I ever met.

Sebile was Morgan's slave and companion. Sebile was that rarity, a great beauty with hair the colour of pale gold. She was a Saxon captured in a raid and after the war-band had raped her for a season she had come gibbering to Ynys Wydryn where Morgan had healed her mind. Even so she was still crazed, though not wicked mad, just foolish beyond the dreams of foolishness. She would lie with any man, not because she wanted to, but because she feared not to, and nothing Morgan did could ever stop her. She gave birth year after year, though few of the fair-haired children ever lived and those that did Merlin sold as slaves to men who prized golden-haired children. He was amused by Sebile, though nothing in her madness spoke of the G.o.ds.

I liked Sebile for I too was a Saxon and Sebile would speak to me in my mother's tongue so that I grew up in Ynys Wydryn speaking both Saxon and the speech of the Britons. I should have been a slave, but when I was a little child, shorter even than the dwarf Druidan, a raiding party had come to Dumnonia's northern coast from Siluria and had taken the settlement where my mother was enslaved. King Gundleus of Siluria led the raid. My mother, who I think looked something like Sebile, was raped while I was carried to the death-pit where Tanaburs, Siluria's Druid, sacrificed a dozen captives as thanks to the High G.o.d Bel for the great plunder the raid had yielded. Dear G.o.d, how I remember that night. The fires, the screams, the drunken rapes, the wild dancing, and then the moment when Tanaburs hurled me into the black pit with its sharpened stake. I lived, untouched, and came from the death-pit as calmly as Nimue had come from the killing sea and Merlin, finding me, had called me a child of Bel. He named me Derfel, gave me a home, and let me grow free.

The Tor was filled with such children who had been s.n.a.t.c.hed from the G.o.ds. Merlin believed we were special and that we might grow into a new order of Druids and Priestesses who could help him re-establish the old true religion in Rome-blighted Britain, but he never had time to teach us, and so most of us grew to become farmers, fishermen or wives. During my time on the Tor only Nimue seemed marked by the G.o.ds and was growing into a priestess. I wanted nothing more than to be a warrior. Pellinore gave me that ambition. Pellinore was the favourite of all Merlin's creatures. He was a king, but the Saxons had taken his land and his eyes, and the G.o.ds had taken his mind. He should have been sent to the Isle of the Dead, where the dangerous mad went, but Merlin ordered him kept on the Tor locked in a small compound like the one where Druidan kept his pigs. He lived naked with long white hair that reached to his knees and with empty eye-sockets that wept. He raved constantly, haranguing the universe about his troubles, and Merlin would listen to the madness and draw from it messages of the G.o.ds. Everyone feared Pellinore. He was utterly crazy and ungovernably wild. He once cooked one of Sebile's children on his fire. Yet, oddly, I do not know why, Pellinore liked me. I would slip between the bars of his compound and he would pet me and tell me tales of fighting and wild hunts. He never sounded mad to me and he never hurt me, nor Nimue, but then, as Merlin always said, we two children were especially beloved of Bel.

Bel might have loved us, but Guendoloen hated us. She was Merlin's wife, now old and toothless. Like Morgan she had great skills with herbs and charms, but Merlin had cast her off when her face became disfigured by a sickness. It had happened long before I reached the Tor, during a period everyone called the Bad Time when Merlin had come back from the north mad and weeping, but even when he recovered his wits he did not take Guendoloen back, though he did allow her to live in a small hut beside the stockade fence where she spent her days casting spells against her husband and screaming insults at the rest of us. She hated Druidan most of all. Sometimes she would attack him with a fire spit and Druidan would scamper through the huts with Guendoloen chasing after him. We children would urge her on, screaming for dwarfish blood, but he always got away.

Such, then, was the strange place to which Norwenna came with the Edling Mordred, and though I may have made it sound a place of horrors it was, in truth, a good refuge. We were the privileged children of Lord Merlin, we lived free, we did little work, we laughed, and Ynys Wydryn, the Isle of Gla.s.s, was a happy place.

Norwenna arrived in wintertime when Avalon's marshes were glossed with ice. There was a carpenter in Ynys Wydryn called Gwlyddyn, whose wife had a boy child the same age as Mordred, and Gwlyddyn made us sledges and we rang the air with shrieks as we slid down the Tor's snowy slopes. Ralla, Gwlyddyn's wife, was appointed Mordred's wet nurse and the Prince, despite his maimed foot, grew strong on her milk. Even Norwenna's health improved as the bitter cold abated and the winter's first snowdrops bloomed in the thorn thickets about the sacred spring at the Tor's foot. The Princess was never strong, but Morgan and Guendoloen gave her herbs, the monks prayed, and it seemed her birth-sickness was at last pa.s.sing. Each week a messenger carried news of the Edling's health to his grandfather, the High King, and each piece of good news was rewarded with a piece of gold or maybe a horn of salt or a flask of rare wine that Druidan would steal.

We waited for Merlin's return, but he did not come and the Tor seemed empty without him, though our daily life hardly changed. The store-rooms had to be kept filled and the rats had to be killed and the firewood and spring water had to be carried uphill three times a day. Gudovan, Merlin's scribe, kept a tally of the tenants' payments while Hywel, the steward, rode the estates to make certain no family cheated their absent lord. Gudovan and Hywel were both sober, hard-headed, hard-working men; proof, Nimue told me, that Merlin's eccentricities ended where his income began. It was Gudovan who had taught me to read and write. I did not want to learn such un-warrior like skills, but Nimue had insisted. "You are fatherless," she had told me, 'and you'll have to make your way on your own skills."

"I want to be a soldier."

"You will be," she promised me, 'but not unless you learn to read and write," and such was her youthful authority over me that I believed her and learned the clerkly skills long before I discovered that no soldier needed them.

So Gudovan taught me letters and Hywel, the steward, taught me to fight. He trained me with the single-stick, the countryman's cudgel that could crack a skull open, but which could also mimic the stroke play of a sword or the thrust of a spear. Hywel, before he lost a leg to a Saxon axe, had been a famous warrior in Uther's band and he made me exercise until my arms were strong enough to wield a heavy sword with the same speed as a single-stick. Most warriors, Hywel said, depended on brute force and drink instead of skill. He told me I would face men reeling with mead and ale whose only talent was to give giant blows that might kill an ox, but a sober man who knew the nine strokes of the sword would always beat such a brute. "I was drunk," he admitted, 'when Octha the Saxon took my leg. Now faster, lad, faster! Your sword must dazzle them! Faster!" He taught me well, and the first to know it were the monks' sons in Ynys Wydryn's lower settlement. They resented we privileged children of the Tor, for we idled when they worked and ran free while they laboured, and as revenge they would chase us and try to beat us. I took my single-stick to the village one day and hammered three of the Christians b.l.o.o.d.y. I was always tall for my age and the G.o.ds had made me strong as an ox and I ascribed my victory to their honour even though Hywel whipped me for it. The privileged, he said, should never take advantage of their inferiors, but I think he was pleased all the same for he took me hunting the next day and I killed my first boar with a man's spear. That was in a misty thicket by the River Cam and I was just twelve summers old. Hywel smeared my face with the boar's blood, gave me its tusks to wear as a necklace, then carried the corpse away to his Temple of Mithras where he gave a feast to all the old warriors who wors.h.i.+pped that soldiers' G.o.d. I was not allowed to attend the feast, but one day, Hywel promised me, when I had grown a beard and slain my first Saxon in battle, he would initiate me into the Mithraic mysteries.

Three years later I still dreamed of killing Saxons. Some might have thought it odd that I, a Saxon youth with Saxon-coloured hair, was so fervently British in my loyalty, but since my earliest childhood I had been raised among the Britons and my friends, loves, daily speech, stories, enmities and dreams were all British. Nor was my colouring so unusual. The Romans had left Briton peopled with all manner of strangers, indeed mad Pellinore once told me of two brothers who were both black as charcoal and until I met Sagramor, Arthur's Numidian commander, I thought his words were mere lunacy weaving romance.

The Tor became crowded once Mordred and his mother arrived for Norwenna brought not only her women attendants, but also a troop of warriors whose task was to protect the Edling's life. We all slept four or five to a hut, though none but Nimue and Morgan were allowed into the hall's inner chambers. They were Merlin's own and Nimue alone was permitted to sleep there. Norwenna and her court lived in the hall itself, which was filled with smoke from the two fires that burned day and night. The hall was supported by twenty oak posts and had walls of plastered wattle and a thatched roof. The floor was of earth covered by rushes that sometimes caught fire and caused a panic until the flames had been stamped out. Merlin's chambers were separated from the hall by an internal wall of wattles and plaster pierced by a single small wooden door. We knew that Merlin slept, studied and dreamed in those rooms that culminated in a wooden tower built at the Tor's highest point. What happened inside the tower was a mystery to everyone but Merlin, Morgan and Nimue and none of those three would ever tell, though the country people, who could see Merlin's Tower for miles around, swore it was crammed with treasures taken from the grave mounds of the Old People.

The chief of Mordred's guard was a Christian named Ligessac, a tall, thin, greedy man whose great skill was with the bow. He could split a twig at fifty paces when he was sober, though he rarely was. He taught me some of his skill, but he became easily bored with a boy's company and preferred to gamble with his men. He did, however, tell me the true tale of Prince Mordred's death and thus the reason why High King Uther had cursed Arthur. "It wasn't Arthur's fault," Ligessac said as he tossed a pebble on to his throw board All the soldiers had throw boards some of them beautifully made out of bone. "A six!" he said while I waited to hear the story of Arthur.

"Double you," Menw, one of the Prince's guards, said, then rolled his own stone. It rattled over the board's ridges and settled on a one. He had only needed a two to win so now he scooped his pebbles off the board and cursed.

Ligessac sent Menw to fetch his purse to pay his winnings, then told me how Uther had summoned Arthur from Armorica to help defeat a great army of Saxons that had thrust deep into our land. Arthur had brought his warriors, Ligessac said, but none of his famous horses for the summons had been urgent and there had been no time to find enough s.h.i.+ps for both men and horses. "Not that he needed horses," Ligessac said admiringly, 'because he trapped those Saxon b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in the Valley of the White Horse. Then Mordred decided he knew better than Arthur. He wanted all the credit, you see." Ligessac cuffed at his running nose, then glanced about to make sure no one was listening. "Mordred was drunk by then," he went on in a lower voice, 'and half his men were raving naked and swearing they could slaughter ten times their number. We should have waited for Arthur, but the Prince ordered us to charge."

"You were there?" I asked in adolescent wonder.

He nodded. "With Mordred. Dear G.o.d, but how they fought. They surrounded us and suddenly we were fifty Britons getting dead or sober very quick. I was shooting arrows as fast as I could, our spearmen were making a s.h.i.+eld-wall, but their warriors were hacking in on us with sword and axe. Their drums were going bang bang, their wizards were howling and I thought I was a dead man. I'd run out of arrows and was using the spear and there can't have been more than twenty of us left alive, and all of us were at the end of our strength. The dragon banner had been captured, Mordred was bleeding his life away and the rest of us were just huddling together waiting for the end, and then Arthur's men arrived." He paused, then shook his head ruefully. "The bards tell you that Mordred glutted the ground with Saxon blood that day, lad, but it wasn't Mordred, it was Arthur. He killed and killed. He took the banner back, he slew the wizards, he burned the war drums, he chased the survivors till dusk and he killed their warlord at Edwy's Hangstone by the light of the moon. And that's why the Saxons are being cautious neighbours, boy, not because Mordred beat them, but because they think Arthur has come back to Britain."

"But he hasn't," I said bleakly.

"The High King won't have him back. The High King blames him." Ligessac paused and looked around again in case he was being overheard. "The High King reckons Arthur wanted Mordred dead so he could be king himself, but that's not true. Arthur's not like that."

"What is he like?" I asked.

Ligessac shrugged as if to suggest the answer was difficult, but then, before he could answer anything, he saw Menw returning. "Not a word, boy," he warned me, 'not a word." We had all heard similar tales, though Ligessac was the first man I met who claimed to be at the Battle of the White Horse. Later I decided he had not been there at all, but was merely spinning a tale to earn a credulous boy's admiration, yet his account was accurate enough. Mordred had been a drunken fool, Arthur had been the victor, but Uther had still sent him back across the sea. Both men were Uther's sons, but Mordred was the beloved heir and Arthur the upstart b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Yet Arthur's banishment could not stop every Dumnonian believing that the b.a.s.t.a.r.d was their country's brightest hope; the young warrior from across the seas who would save us from the Saxons and take back the Lost Lands of Lloegyr. The second half of the winter was mild. Wolves were seen beyond the earth wall that guarded Ynys Wydryn's land bridge, but none came close to the Tor, though some of the younger children made wolf charms that they hid beneath Druidan's hut in hope that a slavering great beast would leap the stockade and carry the dwarf off for supper. The charms did not work and as the winter receded we all began to prepare for the great spring festival of Beltain with its ma.s.sive fires and midnight feasting, but then a greater excitement struck the Tor.

Gundleus of Siluria came.

Bishop Bed win arrived first. He was Uther's most trusted counsellor and his arrival promised excitement. Norwenna's attendants were moved out of the hall and woven carpets were laid over the rushes, a sure sign that a great person was coming to visit. We all thought it must be Uther himself, but the banner which appeared on the land bridge a week before Beltain showed Gundleus's fox, not Uther's dragon. It was bright morning when I watched the hors.e.m.e.n dismount at the Tor's foot. The wind s.n.a.t.c.hed at their cloaks and snapped their frayed banner on which I saw the hated fox-mask that made me cry out in protest and make the sign against evil.

"What is it?" Nimue asked. She was standing beside me on the eastern guard platform.

"That's Gundleus's banner," I said. I saw the surprise in Nimue's eyes for Gundleus was King of Siluria and allied with King Gorfyddyd of Powys, Dumnonia's sworn enemy.

"You're sure?" Nimue asked me.

"He took my mother," I said, 'and his Druid threw me into the death-pit." I spat over the stockade towards the dozen men who had begun to walk up the Tor that was too steep for horses. And there, among them, was Tanaburs, Gundleus's Druid and my evil spirit. He was a tall old man with a plaited beard and long white hair that was shaved off the front half of his skull in the tonsure adopted by Druids and Christian priests. He cast his cloak aside halfway up the hill and began a protective dance in case Merlin had left spirits to guard the gate. Nimue, seeing the old man caper unsteadily on one leg on the steep slope, spat into the wind and then ran towards Merlin's chambers. I ran after her, but she thrust me aside saying that I would not understand the danger.

"Danger?" I asked, but she had gone. There seemed to be no danger for Bedwin had ordered the land gate thrown wide open and was now trying to organize a welcome out of the excited chaos on the Tor's summit. Morgan was away that day, interpreting in the dream temple in the eastern hills, but everyone else on the Tor was hurrying to see the visitors. Druidan and Ligessac were arraying their guards, naked Pellinore was baying at the clouds, Guendoloen was spitting toothless curses at Bishop Bedwin while a dozen children scrambled to get the best view of the visitors. The reception was supposed to be dignified, but Lunete, an Irish foundling a year younger than Nimue, released a pen of Druidan's pigs so that Tanaburs, who was first through the stockade gate, was greeted by a squealing frenzy. It would take more than panicking piglets to frighten a Druid. Tanaburs, dressed in a dirty grey robe embroidered with hares and crescent moons, stood in the entranceway and raised both hands above his tonsured head. He carried a moon-tipped staff that he turned sunwise three times, then he howled at Merlin's Tower. A piglet whipped past his legs, then scrabbled for a footing in the muddy gateway before das.h.i.+ng downhill. Tanaburs howled again, motionless, testing the Tor for unseen enemies. For a few seconds there was silence except for the snapping of the banner and the heavy breathing of the warriors who had climbed the hill behind the Druid. Gudovan, Merlin's scribe, had come to stand beside me, his hands wrapped in ink-stained cloth strips as a protection against the chill. "Who is it?" he asked, then he shuddered as a wailing shriek answered Tanaburs's challenge. The shriek came from within the hall and I knew it was Nimue.

Tanaburs looked angry. He barked like a fox, touched his genitals, made the evil sign, and then began hopping on one leg towards the hall. He stopped after five paces, howled his challenge again, but this time no answering shriek sounded from the hall so he put his second foot on the ground and beckoned his master through the gate. "It is safe!" Tanaburs called. "Come, Lord King, come!"

"King?" Gudovan asked me. I told him who the visitors were, then asked why Gundleus, an enemy, had come to the Tor. Gudovan scratched at a louse under his s.h.i.+rt, then shrugged. "Politics, boy, politics."

"Tell me," I said.

Gudovan sighed as if my question was evidence of an incurable stupidity, his usual response to any query, but then offered me an answer. "Norwenna is marriageable, Mordred is a baby who must be protected, and who protects a prince better than a king? And who better than an enemy king who can become a friend to Dumnonia? It's really very simple, boy, a moment's thought would have yielded the answer without you needing to trouble my time." He gave me a feeble blow on the ear as retribution. "Mind you," he cackled, 'he'll have to give up Ladwys for a time."