The Winter King Part 2

"No," she said calmly, though how she knew Merlin's desire in this matter I did not know for Merlin was still far away and the summons for the High Council had been issued long after his departure.

"And what will we do when we reach Glevum?"

"We will know when we get there," she said mysteriously and would explain no more. Glevum, once I had grown accustomed to the overpowering stench of night soil was marvellously strange. Other than some of the villas that had become farmsteads on Merlin's estates, this was my first time in a proper Roman place and I gawked at the sights like a new-born chick. The streets were paved with fitted stones, and though they had canted in the long years since the Romans' departure, King Tewdric's men had done their best to repair the damage by pulling up the weeds and sweeping away the soil so that the city's nine streets looked like stony watercourses in the dry season. It was hard to walk on them, and it made Nimue and me laugh to see horses trying to negotiate the treacherous stones. The buildings were as weird as the streets. We made our halls and houses out of wood, thatch, clay-cob and wattle, but these Roman buildings were all joined together and made of stone and strange narrow bricks, though over the years some of them had collapsed to leave ragged gaps in the long rows of low houses that were curiously roofed with baked clay tiles. The walled city guarded a crossing of the Severn and stood between two kingdoms and near to a third, and so it was a famous trading centre. Potters worked in the houses, goldsmiths stooped over their tables and calves bellowed in a slaughter yard behind the market place that was crowded with country folk selling b.u.t.ter, nuts, leather, smoked fish, honey, dyed cloth and newly sheared wool. Best of all, at least to my dazzled eyes, were King Tewdric's soldiers. They were Romans, Nimue told me, or at least they were Britons taught the Roman ways, and all kept their beards clipped short and were dressed alike in st.u.r.dy leather shoes and woollen hose beneath short leather skirts. The senior soldiers had bronze plates sewn on to the skirts and when they walked the armour plates would clank together like cow bells. Each man had a breastplate polished bright, a long russet cloak, and a leather helmet that was sewn at the crown into a ridge. Some of the helmets were plumed with dyed feathers. The soldiers carried short, broad-bladed swords, long spears with polished staffs and oblong s.h.i.+elds of wood and leather that carried Tewdric's bull symbol. The s.h.i.+elds were all the same size, the spears all of a length and the soldiers all marched in step, an extraordinary sight that made me laugh at first though later I became used to it.

At the centre of the town, where the four streets from the four gates met in a wide open square, there stood a vast and wondrous building. Even Nimue gaped at it, for surely no one living could make such a thing; so high, so white and so sharply cornered. Pillars held the roof high, and all along the triangular s.p.a.ce between the roof's peak and the pillars' tops were fantastic pictures carved in white stone that showed marvelous men trampling enemies beneath their horses' hooves. The stone men carried sheaves of stone spears and wore stone helmets with soaring stone crests. Some of the pictures had dropped away or had split in the frosts, yet were still a miracle to me, though Nimue, after staring at them, spat to ward off the evil.

"Don't you like it?" I asked her resentfully.

"The Romans tried to be G.o.ds," she said, 'which is why the G.o.ds humbled them. The Council should not meet here."

Yet Glevum was where the High Council was summoned, and Nimue could not change it. Here, encompa.s.sed by Roman ramparts of earth and wood, the fate of Uther's kingdom was to be decided. The High King had already arrived by the time we reached the town. He was lodging in another high building that faced the pillared hall across the square. He showed neither surprise nor displeasure that Nimue had come, perhaps because he thought she was merely a part of Morgan's retinue, and he gave us all a single room in the back of the house where the kitchens smoked and the slaves squabbled. The High King's soldiers looked drab beside Tewdric's s.h.i.+ning men. Our soldiers wore their hair long and their beards wild, they had patched and frayed cloaks of different colours and carried long, heavy swords, rough-shafted spears and round s.h.i.+elds on which Uther's dragon symbol looked crude beside Tewdric's carefully painted bulls.

For the first two days there were celebrations. Champions of the two kingdoms fought mock fights outside the walls, though when Owain, Uther's champion, went into the arena King Tewdric was forced to pit two of his best men against him. Dumnonia's famous hero was reputed to be invincible, and he looked it as he stood with the summer sun glinting off his long sword. He was a huge man with tattooed arms, a matted bare chest and a bristling beard decorated with warrior rings forged from the weapons of defeated enemies. His fight against Tewdric's two champions was supposed to be a mock battle, but the mockery was hard to see as the two heroes of Gwent took their turns to attack him. The three men fought as though they were filled with hate and exchanged sword blows that must have rung north into distant Powys, and after a few minutes their sweat was mixed with blood, their blunt swords' edges were dented and all three men were limping, but Owain was still getting the best of the bout. Despite his size he was fast with a sword, and his blows carried crus.h.i.+ng weight. The crowd, which had gathered from all the country thereabouts and was thus drawn from both Uther's and Tewdric's kingdoms, was shouting like wild beasts to urge their men on to ma.s.sacre, and Tewdric, seeing the pa.s.sion, threw down his staff to end the fight. "We are friends, remember," he told the three men, and Uther, seated one step higher than Tewdric as befitted the High King, nodded agreement.

Uther looked gross and ill; his body was swollen with fluid, his face was yellowing and slack, his breathing laboured. He had been carried to the fighting field in a litter and was swathed on his throne in a heavy cloak that hid his jewelled belt and bright torque. King Tewdric dressed as a Roman, indeed his grandfather had been a real Roman which must have explained his foreign-sounding name. The King wore his hair clipped very short, had no beard, and was swathed in a white toga folded intricately at one shoulder. He was tall, thin and graceful in his movements, and though he was still a young man, the sad, wise look of his face made him seem much older. His Queen, Enid, wore her hair in a weird plaited spiral that was piled so precariously on top of her skull that she was forced to move with the angular awkwardness of a new-born colt. Her face was caked with a white paste that fixed her with a vacant expression of perplexed boredom. Her son Meurig, the Edling of Gwent, was a fidgety child of ten who sat at his mother's feet and was struck by his father every time he picked his nose. After the fighting the harpists and bards had their contest. Cynyr, the Bard of Gwent, sang the great tale of Uther's victory over the Saxons at Caer Idem. Later I realized that Tewdric must have ordered it as a tribute to the High King, and certainly the performance pleased Uther who smiled as the verses rolled by and nodded whenever a particular warrior was praised. Cynyr declaimed the victory in a ringing voice, and when he came to the lines which told how Owain had slaughtered Saxons by the thousand, he turned towards the tired, battered fighter and one of Tewdric's champions, who only an hour before had been trying to beat the big man down, stood and raised Owain's sword arm. The crowd roared, then they laughed as Cynyr adopted a woman's voice to describe the Saxons pleading for mercy. He began to run about the field in little, panicked steps, crouching as though hiding, and the crowd loved it. I loved it too, for you could almost see the hated Saxons cowering in terror and smell the stench of their death blood and hear the wings of the ravens coming to gorge on their flesh, and then Cynyr straightened to his full height and let his cloak drop away so that his blue-painted body was naked and he sang the tribute song of the G.o.ds who had watched their champion, High King Uther of Dumnonia, the Pendragon of Britain, beat down the kings and chiefs and champions of the foe. Then, naked still, the hard prostrated himself before Uther's throne.

Uther fumbled beneath his s.h.a.ggy cloak to find a torque of yellow gold that he tossed towards Cynyr. His throw was feeble and the torque fell on the edge of the wooden dais where the two kings sat. Nimue blanched at the bad omen, but Tewdric calmly picked up the torque and carried it to the white-haired hard whom the King raised up with his own hands.

After the bards had sung, and just as the sun was setting behind the low dark rill of western hills that marked the edge of the Silurian lands, a procession of girls brought flowers for the queens, but there was only one Queen on the dais, Enid. For a few seconds the girls carrying the heaps of flowers meant for Uther's lady did not know what to do, but Uther stirred himself and pointed at Morgan who had her own bench beside the dais, so the girls swerved aside and heaped the irises, meadowsweet and bee orchids before her. "She looks like a dumpling," Nimue hissed in my ear, 'garlanded with parsley." On the night before the High Council there was a Christian service in the big hall of the great building in the town's centre. Tewdric was an enthusiastic Christian and his followers thronged the hall that was lit by flaming torches set into iron beckets on the walls. It had rained that evening and the crowded hall stank of sweat, damp wool and woodsmoke. The women stood on the left side of the hall and the men on the right, though Nimue calmly ignored the arrangement and climbed on to a pedestal that stood behind the dark crowd of cloaked, bare-headed men. There were other such pedestals, most crowned with statues, but our plinth was empty and provided ample s.p.a.ce for the two of us to sit and stare at the Christian rites, though at first I was more astonished by the hall's vast interior that was higher, wider and longer than any feasting hall I had ever seen; so huge that sparrows lived inside and must have thought the Roman hall a whole wide world. The sparrows' heaven was a curved roof supported by squat brick pillars that had once been covered by smooth white plaster work on which pictures had been painted. Fragments of the pictures remained: I could see a red outline of a running deer, a sea creature with horns and forked tail, and two women holding a twin-handled cup.

Uther was not in the hall, but his Christian warriors attended, and Bishop Bedwin, the High King's counsellor, helped with the ceremonies that Nimue and I watched from our eyrie like two naughty children eavesdropping on their elders. King Tewdric was there, and with him some of the client kings and princes who would be at the High Council the next day. Those great ones had seats at the front of the hall, but the ma.s.s of firelight shone not around their chairs, but on the Christian priests gathered about their table. It was the first time I had ever seen such creatures at their rites. "What exactly is a bishop?" I asked Nimue.

"Like a Druid," she said, and indeed like Druids all the Christian priests wore the front part of their skulls shaven clean. "Except they have no training," Nimue added derisively, 'and know nothing."

"Are they all bishops?" I asked, for there were a score of shaven men coming and going, bobbing down and bobbing up, around the fire lit table at the hall's far end.

"No. Some are just priests. They know even less than the bishops." She laughed.

"No priestesses?" I asked.

"In their religion," she said scornfully, 'women have to obey men." She spat against that evil and some of the nearby warriors turned disapproving looks on her. Nimue ignored them. She was swathed in her black cloak with her arms clasped about her knees which were drawn tight up against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Morgan had forbidden us to attend the Christian ceremonies, but Nimue no longer took Morgan's orders. In the firelight her thin face was shadowed dark and her eyes shone. The strange priests chanted r.nd intoned in the Greek tongue that meant nothing to either of us. They kept bowing, upon which the whole crowd would duck down and struggle up again, and each downward plunge was marked on the right side of the hall by an untidy clatter as a hundred or more scabbarded swords clashed on the tiled floor. The priests, like Druids, held their arms straight out from their sides when they prayed. They wore strange robes that looked something like Tewdric's toga and were covered with short, decorated cloaks. They sang and the crowd sang back, and some of the women standing behind the fragile, white-faced Queen Enid began to shriek and tremble in ecstasy, but the priests ignored the commotion and went on chanting and singing. There was a plain cross on the table to which they bowed and at which Nimue made the sign of evil as she muttered a protective charm. She and I soon became bored and I wanted to slip away to make sure we were well placed to get some fragments of the great feast that was to be given after the ceremony in Uther's hall, but then the language of the night changed into the speech of Britain as a young priest harangued the crowd. The young priest was Sansum, and that night was the first time I ever saw the saint. He was very young then, much younger than the bishops, but he was considered to be a coming man, the hope of the Christian future, and the bishops had deliberately given him the honour of preaching this sermon as a means of advancing his career.

Sansum was always a thin man, short of stature, with a sharp, clean-shaven chin and a receding forehead above which his tonsured hair stuck up stiff and black like a thorn hedge, though the hedge had been more closely trimmed on top than at its edges and thus had left him with a pair of black bristly tufts that stuck out just above his ears. "He looks like Lughtigern," Nimue whispered to me and I laughed aloud for Lughtigern is the Mouse Lord of children's stories; a creature full of boasts and bravado, but always running away when puss appears. Yet this tonsured Mouse Lord could certainly preach. I had never heard the blessed Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ before that night and I sometimes s.h.i.+ver when I think how ill I took that first sermon, but I will never forget the power of its delivery. Sansum stood on a second table so that he could see and be seen, and sometimes, in the pa.s.sion of his preaching, he threatened to fall off the edge and had to be restrained by his fellow priests. I was hoping he would fall, yet somehow he always recovered his balance.

His preaching began conventionally enough. He thanked G.o.d for the presence of the great kings and mighty princes who had come to hear the Gospel, then he paid King Tewdric some pretty compliments before launching himself into a diatribe which set out the Christian view of the state of Britain. It was, I realized later, more of a political speech than a sermon.

The Isle of Britain, Sansum said, was beloved of G.o.d. It was a special land, set apart from other lands and girdled by a bright sea to defend it from pestilences, heresies and enemies. Britain, he went on, was also blessed by great rulers and mighty warriors, yet of late the island had been riven by strangers, and its fields, barns and villages had been put to the sword. The heathen Sais, the Saxons, were taking the land of our ancestors and turning it to waste. The dread Sais desecrated the graves of our fathers, they raped our wives and slaughtered our children, and such things could not happen, Sansum a.s.serted, unless they were the will of G.o.d, and why would G.o.d so turn his back upon his special and beloved children? Because, he said, those children had refused to hear His holy message. The children of Britain still bowed down to wood and stone. The so-called sacred groves still stood and their shrines still held the skulls of the dead and were washed with the blood of sacrifices. Such things might not be seen in the towns, Sansum said, for most towns were filled with Christians, but the countryside, he warned us, was infested with pagans. There might be few Druids left in Britain, yet in every valley and farmland there were men and women who acted like Druids, who sacrificed living things to dead stone and who used charms and amulets to beguile the simple people. Even Christians, and here Sansum scowled at his congregation, carried their sick to heathen witches and took their dreams to pagan prophetesses, and so long as those evil practices were encouraged so long would G.o.d curse Britain with rape and slaughter and Saxons. He paused there to draw breath and I touched the torque about my neck because I knew this ranting Mouse Lord was the enemy of my master Merlin and of my friend Nimue. We had sinned! Sansum suddenly shouted, spreading his arms as he teetered at the table's edge, and we all had to repent. The Kings of Britain, he said, must love Christ and His blessed Mother, and only when the whole of the British race was united in G.o.d would G.o.d unite the whole of Britain. By now the crowd was responding to his sermon, calling out agreement, praying aloud to their G.o.d for mercy and shouting for the death of the Druids and their followers. It was terrifying.

"Come," Nimue whispered to me, "I've heard enough." We slipped off the pedestal and eased our way through the crowd that filled the vestibule beneath the hall's outer pillars. To my shame I held my cloak up to my beardless chin so that no one would see my torque as I followed Nimue down the steps into the windy square that was lit on all sides by bl.u.s.tering torch flames. A small rain was spitting out of the west to make the stones of the square s.h.i.+ne in the firelight. Tewdric's uniformed guards stood motionless all around the square's edge as Nimue led me into the very centre of the wide s.p.a.ce where she stopped and suddenly began to laugh. At first it was a chuckle, then it was the laughter of jest that turned into a fierce mockery that changed into a defiant howl that beat up past the roofs of Glevum to echo out towards the heavens and end in a maniacal screech as wild as the death cry of a cornered beast. She turned around as she sounded the screech, turned sunwise from the north to the east to the south to the west and so back north again, and not one soldier stirred. Some of the Christians in the portico of the great building looked at us in anger, but did not interfere. Even Christians recognized someone being touched by the G.o.ds, and none of them dared lay a hand on Nimue.

When her breath was ended she sank down to the stones. She was silent; a tiny figure crouched beneath a black cape, a shapeless thing shuddering at my feet. "Oh, little one," she finally said in a tired voice, job, my little one."

"What is it?" I asked. I confess I was more tempted by the smell of roasting pork that came from Uther's hall than by whatever momentary trance had so exhausted Nimue.

She held out her scarred left hand and I hauled her to her feet. "We have one chance," she said to me in a small, frightened voice, 'just one chance, and if we lose it then the G.o.ds will go from us. We will be abandoned by the G.o.ds and left to the brutes. And those fools in there, the Mouse Lord and his followers, will ruin that chance unless we fight them. And there are so many of them and so very few of us." She was looking into my face, crying desperately.

I did not know what to say. I had no skills with the spirit world, even though I was Merlin's foundling and the child of Bel. "Bel will help us, won't He?" I asked helplessly. "He loves us, doesn't He?"

"Loves us!" She s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand away from mine. "Loves us!" she repeated scornfully. "It is not the task of G.o.ds to love us. Do you love Druidan's pigs? Why, in Bel's name, should a G.o.d love us? Love!

What do you know of love, Derfel, son of a Saxon?"

"I know I love you," I said. I can blush now when I think of a young boy's desperate lunges at a woman's affection. It had taken every nerve in my body to make that statement, every ounce of courage I hoped I possessed, and after I had blurted out the words I blushed in the rain-swept firelight and wished I had kept silent.

Nimue smiled at me. "I know," she said, "I know. Now come. A feast for our supper." These days, these my dying days that I spend writing in this monastery in Powys's hills, I sometimes close my eyes and see Nimue. Not as she became, but as she was then: so full of fire, so quick, so confident. I know I have gained Christ and through His blessing I have gained the whole world too, but for what I have lost, for what we have all lost, there is no end to the reckoning. We lost everything. The feast was wonderful.

The High Council began in mid-morning, after the Christians had held yet another ceremony. They held a terrible number of them, I thought, for every hour of the day seemed to demand some new genuflection to the cross, but the delay served to give the princes and warriors time to recover from their night of drinking, boasting and fighting. The High Council was held in the great hall that was again lit by torches, for although the spring sun was s.h.i.+ning brightly the hall's few windows were high and small, less suited for letting the light in than the smoke out, though even that they did badly. Uther, the High King, sat on a platform raised above the dais reserved for the kings, ed lings and princes. Tewdric of Gwent, the Council's host, sat below Uther and on either side of Tewdric's throne were a dozen other thrones filled this day by client kings or princes who paid tribute to Uther or Tewdric. Prince Cadwy of Isca was there, and King Melwas of the Belgae and Prince Gereint, Lord of the Stones, while distant Kernow, the savage kingdom at Britain's western tip, had sent its ed ling Prince Tristan, who sat swathed in wolf fur at the dais's edge next to one of the two vacant thrones. In truth the thrones were nothing more than chairs fetched from the feasting hall and tricked out with saddle cloths and in front of each chair, resting on the floor and leaning against the dais, were the s.h.i.+elds of the kingdoms. There had been a time when thirty-three s.h.i.+elds might have rested against the dais, but now the tribes of Britain fought amongst themselves and some of the kingdoms had been buried in Lloegyr by Saxon blades. One of the purposes of this High Council was to make peace between the remaining British kingdoms, a peace that was already threatened because Powys and Siluria had not come to the Council. Their thrones were empty, mute witness to those kingdoms' continuing enmity towards Gwent and Dumnonia.

Directly before the kings and princes, and beyond a small open s.p.a.ce that had been left for the speech-making, sat the counsellors and chief magistrates of the kingdoms. Some of the councils, like those of Gwent and Dumnonia, were huge, while others comprised only a handful of men. The magistrates and counsellors sat on the floor that I now saw was decorated with thousands of tiny coloured stones arranged into a huge picture that showed between the seated bodies. The counsellors had all fetched blankets to make themselves pillows for they knew that the High Council's deliberations could last well beyond nightfall. Behind the counsellors, and present only as observers, stood the armed warriors, some with their favourite hunting dogs leashed at their side. I stood with those armed warriors, my bronze Cernunnos-headed torque all the authority I needed to be present. Two women were at the Council, only two, yet even their presence had caused murmurs of protest among the waiting men until a flicker of Uther's eyes had stilled the grumbling. Morgan sat directly in front of Uther. The counsellors had edged away from her so that she had sat alone until Nimue had walked boldly through the hall door and threaded her way through the seated men to take a place beside her. Nimue had entered with such calm a.s.surance that no one had tried to stop her. Once seated she stared up at High King Uther as though daring him to eject her, but the King ignored her arrival. Morgan also ignored her young rival who sat very still and very straight-backed. She was dressed in her white linen s.h.i.+ft with its thin leather slave belt and among the heavy-caped, grey-haired men she looked slight and vulnerable.

The High Council began, as all councils did, with a prayer.

Merlin, if he had been present, would have called on the G.o.ds, but instead Bishop Conrad of Gwent offered a prayer to the Christian G.o.d. I saw Sansum sitting in the ranks of the Gwent counsellors and noted the fierce look of hatred he shot at the two women when they did not bow their heads as the Bishop prayed. Sansum knew the women came in Merlin's place.

After the prayer the challenge was given by Owain, Dumnonia's champion who had taken on Tewdric's best men two days before. A brute, Merlin always called Owain, and he looked like a brute as he stood before the High King with his face still blood-scabbed from the fight, with his sword drawn and with a thick wolf-fur cloak draped around the humped muscles of his huge shoulders. "Does any man here," he growled, 'dispute Uther's right to the High Throne?"

No one did. Owain, looking somewhat disappointed at being denied the chance to slaughter a challenger, sheathed his sword and sat uncomfortably among the counsellors. He would much rather have stood with his warriors.

News of Britain was given next. Bishop Bedwin, speaking for the High King, reported that the Saxon threat to the east of Dumnonia had been diminished, though at a price too heavy for contemplation. Prince Mordred, Edling of Dumnonia and a warrior whose fame had reached to the ends of the earth, had been killed in the hour of victory. Uther's face showed nothing as he listened to the oft-told tale of his son's death. Arthur's name was not mentioned, even though it had been Arthur who had s.n.a.t.c.hed the victory from Mordred's clumsy generals.h.i.+p and everyone in the hall knew it. Bedwin reported that the defeated Saxons had come from the lands once governed by the Catuvelan tribe and that, although they had not been ejected from all that ancient territory, they had agreed to pay a yearly tribute to the High King of gold, wheat and oxen. Pray G.o.d, he added, that the peace would last.

"Pray G.o.d," King Tewdric intervened, 'that the Saxons will be ejected from those lands!" His words prompted the warriors at the back and sides of the hall to rap their spear-shafts against the pavement and at least one spear broke through the small mosaic tiles. Dogs howled. To the north of Dumnonia, Bedwin continued calmly when the rough applause had ended, peace reigned, thanks to the all-wise treaty of friends.h.i.+p that existed between the great High King and the n.o.ble King Tewdric. To the west, and here Bedwin paused to bestow a smile on the handsome young Prince Tristan, there was also peace. "The kingdom of Kernow," Bedwin said, 'keeps itself to itself. We understand King Mark has taken a new wife and we pray that she, like her distinguished predecessors, will keep her master fully occupied." That provoked a murmur of laughter.

"What wife is this?" Uther demanded suddenly. "His fourth or fifth?"

"I believe my father has lost count himself, High Lord," Tristan said, and the hall bellowed with laughter. More tiles broke under spear-b.u.t.ts and one of the small fragments skittered over the floor to lodge against my foot.

Agricola spoke next. His was a Roman name and he was famous for his adhesion to Roman ways. Agricola was Tewdric's commander and, though an old man now, he was still feared for his skill in battle. Age had not stooped his tall figure, though it had turned his close-cropped hair as grey as a sword blade. His scarred face was clean-shaven and he wore Roman uniform, but far grander than the outfits of his men. His tunic was scarlet, his breastplate and leg-greaves silver, and under his arm was a silver helmet plumed with dyed horsehair cut into a stiff scarlet comb. He too reported that the Saxons to the east of his Lord's kingdom had been defeated, but the news from the Lost Lands of Lloegyr was troubling for he had heard that more boats had come from the Saxon lands across the German Sea and in time, he warned, more boats on the Saxon sh.o.r.e meant more warriors pressing west into Britain. Agricola also warned us about a new Saxon leader named Aelle who was struggling for ascendancy among the Sais. That was the first time I ever heard Aelle's name and only the G.o.ds then knew how it would come to haunt us down the years.

The Saxons, Agricola went on, might be temporarily quiet, but that had not brought peace to the kingdom of Gwent. British war-bands had come south from Powys while others had marched west out of Siluria to attack Tewdric's land. Messengers had gone to both kingdoms, inviting their monarchs to attend this council, but alas, and here Agricola gestured at the two empty chairs on the royal platform, neither Gorfyddyd of Powys nor Gundleus of Siluria had come. Tewdric could not hide his disappointment, for plainly he had been hoping that Gwent and Dumnonia could make their peace with their two northern neighbours. That hope of peace, I a.s.sumed, had also been the motive behind Uther's invitation to Gundleus to visit Norwenna in the spring, but the vacant thrones seemed to speak only of continuing enmity. If there was to be no peace, Agricola warned sternly, then the King of Gwent would have no choice but to go to war against Gorfyddyd of Powys and his ally, Gundleus of Siluria. Uther nodded, giving his consent to the threat.

From further north, Agricola reported, there came news that Leodegan, King of Henis Wyren, had been driven from his kingdom by Diwrnach, the Irish invader who had given the name Lleyn to his newly conquered lands. The dispossessed Leodegan, Agricola added, had taken shelter with King Gorfyddyd of Powys because Cadwallon of Gwynedd would not accept him. There was more laughter at that news for King Leodegan was famous for his foolishness. "I hear too," Agricola went on when the laughter had subsided, 'that more Irish invaders have come into Demetia and are pressing hard on the western borders of Powys and Siluria."

"I shall speak for Siluria," a strong voice intervened from the doorway, 'and no one else." There was a huge stir as every man in the hall turned to gaze at the doorway. Gundleus had come. The Silurian King entered the room like a hero. There was no hesitation and no apology in his demeanour even though his warriors had raided Tewdric's land again and again, just as they had raided south across the Severn Sea to hara.s.s Uther's country. He looked so confident that I had to remind myself how he had fled from Nimue in Merlin's hall. Behind Gundleus, shuffling and dribbling, came Tanaburs the Druid and once again I hid myself as I remembered the death-pit. Merlin had once told me that Tanaburs's failure to kill me had put his soul into my keeping, but I still shuddered with fear as I watched the old man come into the hall with his hair clicking from the small bones tied to its tight little pigtails. Behind Tanaburs, their long swords scabbarded in sheaths wrapped in red cloth, strode Gundleus's retinue. Their hair and moustaches were plaited and their beards long. They stood with the other warriors, edging them aside to make a solid phalanx of proud men come to their enemies' High Council while Tanaburs, draped in his dirty grey robe embroidered with crescent moons and running hares, found a s.p.a.ce among the counsellors. Owain, scenting blood, had stood to bar Gundleus's path, but Gundleus offered the High King's champion the hilt of his sword to show that he came in peace, then he prostrated himself on the mosaic floor in front of Uther's throne.

"Rise, Gundleus ap Meilyr, King of Siluria," Uther commanded, then held out a hand in welcome. Gundleus climbed the dais and kissed the hand before unslinging the s.h.i.+eld with its blazon of a fox's mask from his back. He placed it with the other s.h.i.+elds, then took his throne and proceeded to look brightly about the hall as though he were very pleased to be present. He nodded to acquaintances, mouthing surprise at seeing some and smiling at others. All the men he greeted were his enemies, yet he slouched in the chair as though he sat by his own hearth. He even hooked a long leg over the chair's arm. He raised an eyebrow when he saw the two women and I thought I detected a flicker of a scowl as he recognized Nimue, but the scowl vanished as his eyes flicked on through the crowd. Tewdric cordially invited him to give the High Council news of his kingdom, but Gundleus just smiled and said all was well in Siluria. I will not weary you with most of the day's business. Clouds gathered over Glevum as disputes were settled, marriages agreed and judgments given. Gundleus, though never admitting his trespa.s.ses, consented to pay Tewdric a fee of cattle, sheep and gold, with the same compensation to the High King, and many lesser complaints were similarly resolved. The arguments were long and the pleadings tangled, but one by one the matters were decided. Tewdric did most of the work, though never without a sideways glance at the High King to detect any minute gesture which hinted at Uther's decision. Other than those gestures Uther hardly moved except to stir himself when a slave brought him water, bread or a medicine that Morgan had made from coltsfoot steeped in mead to calm his cough. He left the dais only once to p.i.s.s against the hall's rear wall while Tewdric, ever patient and ever careful, considered a border dispute between two chiefs of his own kingdom. Uther spat into his urine to avert its evil, then limped back to the dais as Tewdric gave his judgment which, like all the others, was recorded on parchment by three scribes sitting at a table behind the dais.

Uther was saving his small energy for the most important business of the day, which came after dusk. It was a dark twilight and Tewdric's servants had fetched a dozen more blazing torches into the hall. It had also begun to rain hard and the hall became chill as streams of water found holes in the roof and dripped on to the floor or ran in rivulets down the rough brick walls. It was suddenly so cold that a brazier, an iron basket full four feet across, was filled with logs and set ablaze close to the High King's feet. The royal s.h.i.+elds were moved and Tewdric's throne s.h.i.+fted aside so that the brazier's warmth could reach Uther. The woodsmoke drifted about the room, eddying in the high shadows as it searched for a way out to the beating rain.

Uther at last stood to address the High Council. He was unsteady and so leaned on a great boar-spear as he spoke his mind about his kingdom. Dumnonia, he said, had a new ed ling and the G.o.ds must be thanked for that mercy, but the Edling was weak, a baby and had a crippled foot. Murmurs greeted the confirmation of that rumoured ill omen, but subsided as Uther lifted a hand for silence. The smoke wreathed about him, giving him a spectral look as though his soul was already clad in his Otherworld's shadow-body. Gold glinted at his neck and on his wrists, and a thin fillet of gold, the High King's crown, circled his straggling white hairs.

"I am old," he said, 'and I will not live long." He calmed the protests with another feeble wave of his hand.

"I do not claim my kingdom to be above any other in this land, but I do say that if Dumnonia falls to the Saxons then all Britain will fall. If Dumnonia falls then we lose our links to Armorica and our brethren beyond the sea. If Dumnonia falls then the Saxon will have divided the land of Britain and a divided land cannot survive." He paused, and for a second I thought he was too tired to continue, but then that great bull's head reared up and he spoke on. "The Saxons must not reach the Severn Sea!" he shouted that creed, which had been at the very heart of his ambitions all these years. So long as the Saxons were hemmed in by Britons then there was a chance that they could one day be driven back into the German Sea, but if they once reached our western coast then they would have divided Dumnonia from Gwent and the Britons of the south from the Britons of the north. "The men of Gwent," Uther went on, 'are our greatest warriors," and here he nodded in tribute to Agricola, 'but it is no secret that Gwent lives on Dumnonian bread. Dumnonia must be held or Britain will be lost. I have a grandson and the kingdom is his! The kingdom is Mordred's to rule when I die. That is my law!" And here he stamped his spear on the platform and for a moment the old hard force of the Pendragon shone from his eyes. Whatever else would be decided here the kingdom would not pa.s.s from Uther's line, for that was Uther's l?w and everyone in the hall now knew it. All that remained was to decide how the crippled child should be protected until he was old enough to a.s.sume the kings.h.i.+p for himself.

And so the talking began, although everyone knew what had already been decided. Why else was Gundleus slouching so c.o.c.ksure in his throne? Yet some men still advanced other candidates for Norwenna's hand. Prince Gereint, the Lord of the Stones who held Dumnonia's Saxon borderlands, proposed Meurig ap Tewdric, Gwent's Edling, but everyone in the hall knew that the proposal was merely a way of flattering Tewdric and would never be accepted because Meurig was a mere nose-picking child who had no chance of holding Dumnonia against the Saxons. Gereint, his duty done, sat and listened as one of Tewdric's counsellors proposed Prince Cuneglas, Gorfyddyd's eldest son and thus the Edling of Powys. A marriage to the enemy's crown prince, the counsellor claimed, would forge a peace between Powys and Dumnonia, the two most powerful British kingdoms, but the suggestion was ruthlessly beaten down by Bishop Bedwin who knew his master would never bequeath his kingdom to the care of a man who was the son of Tewdric's bitterest enemy.

Tristan, Prince of Kernow, was another candidate, but he demurred, knowing full well that no one in Dumnonia would trust his father, King Mark. Meriadoc, Prince of Stronggore, was suggested, but Stronggore, a kingdom east of Gwent, was already half lost to the Saxons and if a man could not hold his own kingdom how could he hold another? What of the royal houses in Armorica, someone asked, but no one knew whether the princes across the sea would abandon their new land of Brittany to defend Dumnonia.

Gundleus. It all came back to Gundleus.

But then Agricola spoke the name that almost every man in the hall both wanted to hear and feared to hear. The old soldier stood, his Roman armour bright and his shoulders braced, and he looked Uther the Pendragon straight in his rheumy eyes. "Arthur," Agricola said. "I propose Arthur." Arthur. The name resounded in the hall, then the dying echo was drowned by the sudden clatter of staves thumping on the floor. The applauding spearmen were warriors of Dumnonia, men who had followed Arthur into battle and knew his worth, but their rebellion was brief. Uther the Pendragon, High King of Britain, raised his own spear and brought it down once. There was an immediate silence in which only Agricola still dared to challenge the High King. "I propose that Arthur marries Norwenna," he said respectfully, and even I, young as I was, knew that Agricola must be speaking for his master, King Tewdric, and that puzzled me for I had thought that Gundleus was Tewdric's candidate. If Gundleus could be detached from his friends.h.i.+p with Powys then the new alliance of Dumnonia, Gwent and Siluria would hold all the land on either bank of the Severn Sea and that triple alliance would be a bulwark against both Powys and the Saxons. I should have known, of course, that Tewdric, in suggesting Arthur, was inviting a refusal that would have to be recompensed by a favour.

"Arthur ap Neb," Uther said and that last word was greeted with a gasp of horrified surprise 'is not of the blood." There could be no argument with such a decree and Agricola, accepting his defeat, bowed and sat. Neb meant n.o.body, and Uther was denying that he was Arthur's father, thereby stating that Arthur had no royal blood and could not therefore marry Norwenna. A Belgic bishop argued for Arthur by protesting that kings had ever been chosen from the n.o.bility and that customs which had served in the past should serve in the future, but his querulous objection was stilled by one fierce look from Uther. Rain whirled in through one of the high windows and hissed in the fire.

Bishop Bed win stood again. It might have seemed that until this moment all talk of Norwenna's future had been so much wasted breath, yet at least the alternatives had been aired and men of sense could thus understand the reasoning behind the announcement Bed win now made.

Gundleus of Siluria, Bedwin said mildly, was a man without a wife. There was a murmur in the hall as men remembered the rumours of Gundleus's scandalous marriage to his low-born lover, Ladwys, but Bedwin blithely ignored the disturbance. Some weeks before, the Bishop continued, Gundleus had visited Uther and made his peace with the High King and it was now Uther's pleasure that Gundleus should marry Norwenna and be a protector, he repeated the word, a protector to Mordred's kingdom. As an earnest of his good intention Gundleus had already paid a price in gold to King Uther and that price had been accepted as fitting. There were those, Bishop Bedwin admitted airily, who might not trust a man who had until so recently been an enemy, but as a further earnest of his change of heart Gundleus of Siluria had agreed to abandon Siluria's ancient claim to the kingdom of Gwent and, further, he would become a Christian by being publicly baptised in the River Severn beneath Glevum's walls the very next morning. The Christians who were present all called out hallelujah, but I was watching the Druid Tanaburs and wondered why the wicked old fool showed no sign of disapproval as his master so publicly disavowed the old religion.

I wondered too why these grown men were so quick to welcome a former enemy, but of course they were desperate. A kingdom was being pa.s.sed to a crippled child and Gundleus, for all his treacherous past, was a famous warrior. If he proved true then the peace of Dumnonia and Gwent was a.s.sured. Yet Uther was no fool and so he did his best to protect his grandson should Gundleus prove false. Dumnonia, Uther decreed, would be ruled by a council until Mordred was of age to pick up the sword. Gundleus would preside over the council and a half dozen men, chief of them Bishop Bedwin, would serve as his counsellors. Tewdric of Gwent, Dumnonia's firm ally, was invited to send two men, and the council, so composed, would have the final governance of the land. Gundleus was not pleased at the decision. He had not paid two baskets of gold to sit in a council of old men, but he knew better than to protest. He held his peace as his new bride and his stepson's kingdom were bound about with rules. And still more rules were laid down. Mordred, Uther said, would have three sworn protectors; men bound by death-oaths to defend the boy's life with their own. If any man harmed Mordred then the oath-takers would revenge the harm or else sacrifice their own lives. Gundleus sat motionless as the edict was made, but he stirred uncomfortably when the oath-takers were named. King Tewdric of Gwent was one, Owain, the Champion of Dumnonia, was the second and Merlin, Lord of Avalon, the third. Merlin. Men had been waiting for that name just as they had waited for the name of Arthur. Uther usually made no great decision without Merlin's counsel, yet Merlin was not present. Merlin had not been seen in Dumnonia for months. Merlin, for all any man knew, might be dead.

It was then that Uther looked at Morgan for the first time. She must have squirmed when her brother's paternity was denied, and with it her own, but she had not been commanded to the High Council as Uther's b.a.s.t.a.r.d daughter, but as Merlin's trusted prophetess. After Tewdric and Owain had sworn their death-oaths Uther gazed at the one-eyed, crippled woman. The Christians in the hall made the sign of the cross, which was their way of guarding against the evil spirits. "Well?" Uther prompted Morgan. Morgan was nervous. What was needed of her was an a.s.surance that Merlin, her companion in mystery, would accept the high charge imposed by the oath. She was there as a priestess, not as a counsellor, and should have answered like a priestess. She did not, and her answer was insufficient. "My Lord Merlin will be honoured by the appointment, High Lord," she said.

Nimue screamed. The sound was so sudden and so eerie that all about the hall men s.h.i.+vered and gripped their spear-shafts. Hair stiffened on the spines of the hunting dogs. Then the scream faded to leave a silence among the men. Smoke gusted in great fire lit shapes in the hall's dark roof where the rain beat on the tiles and then, in the scream's wake and far off in the storm-shaken night, there was the sound of thunder.

Thunder! Christians made the sign of the cross again, but no man there could have doubted the sign. Taranis, the G.o.d of Thunder, had spoken, proof that the G.o.ds had come to the High Council, had come, moreover, at the bidding of a young girl who, despite the cold that made men draw their cloaks about them, wore nothing but a white s.h.i.+ft and a slave's leash.

No one moved, no one spoke, no one even fidgeted. The horns of mead rested and men left lice unscratched. There were no kings here any more, nor warriors. There were no bishops, no tonsured priests, nor old wise men. There was only a hushed, scared crowd who stared in awe as a young girl stood and unpinned her hair to let it fall black and long against her slim white back. Morgan gazed at the floor, Tanaburs gaped and Bishop Bedwin mouthed silent prayers as Nimue walked to the speech s.p.a.ce beside the brazier. She held her arms out to her side and turned very slowly, sunwise, so that every man in the room could see her face. It was a face of horror. Her eyes showed white, nothing more, and her tongue protruded from a distorted mouth. She turned, and turned again, turning ever faster, and I swear a communal shudder went through the crowd. She was shaking now as she spun, and edging ever nearer to that great seething fire until she threatened to fall into its flames, but suddenly she leaped into the air and gave a shriek before collapsing on to the small tiles. Then, like a beast, she scuttled on all fours, questing her way back and forth along the line of s.h.i.+elds that had been split to let the fire's heat warm the High King's legs, and when she reached the fox s.h.i.+eld of Gundleus she reared up like a striking snake and spat once.

The spittle landed on the fox.

Gundleus started up from his throne, but Tewdric checked him. Tanaburs struggled to his feet also, but Nimue turned on him, her eyes still showing white, and screamed. She pointed at him, her shriek ululating and echoing in the vast Roman hall, and the power of her magic made Tanaburs sink down again to the floor.

Then Nimue shuddered, her eyes rolled and we could see their brown pupils again. She blinked at the crowded hall as if surprised to find herself in such a place, and then, with her back to the High King, she went utterly still. The stillness denoted that she was in the grip of the G.o.ds and when she now spoke she would be speaking for them.

"Does Merlin live?" Tewdric asked respectfully.

"Of course he lives." Nimue's voice was filled with scorn and she offered no t.i.tle to the King who questioned her. She was with the G.o.ds and had no need to pay respect to mere mortals.

"Where is he?"

"Gone," Nimue said, and turned around to look at the toga-clad King on the platform.

"Gone where?" Tewdric asked.

"To seek the Knowledge of Britain," Nimue said. Every man listened hard for this, at last, was real news. I could see Sansum the Mouse Lord wriggling in his desperate need to make a protest at this pagan interference with the High Council, but so long as King Tewdric questioned the girl there was no way that a mere priest could interfere.

"What is the Knowledge of Britain?" High King Uther asked. Nimue turned around again, one full turn sunwise, but she turned only so she could gather her thoughts for the answer which, when it came, was delivered in a chanting, hypnotic voice. "The Knowledge of Britain is the lore of our ancestors, the gifts of our G.o.ds, the Thirteen Properties of the Thirteen Treasures which, when gathered, will give us back the power to claim our land." She paused, and when she spoke again her voice was back to its normal timbre. "Merlin strives to knit this land as one again, a British land," and here Nimue whirled round so that she was staring straight into Sansum's small, bright, indignant eyes, 'with British G.o.ds." She turned back to the High King. "And if Lord Merlin fails, Uther of Dumnonia, we all die."

A murmur sounded in the room. Sansum and the Christians were yelping their protests now, but Tewdric, the Christian King, waved them to silence. "Are those Merlin's words?" he demanded of Nimue. Nimue shrugged as though the question was irrelevant. "They are not my words," she said insolently. Uther had no doubt that Nimue, a mere child on the edge of womanhood, spoke not for herself but for her master and so he leaned his great bulk forward and frowned at her. "Ask Merlin if he will take my oath? Ask him! Will he protect my grandson?"

Nimue paused a long time. I think she sensed the truth of Britain before any of us, before even Merlin and certainly long before Arthur, if, indeed, Arthur ever knew, but some instinct would not let her speak that truth to this old, dying and stubborn man. "Merlin, my Lord King," she finally said in a tired voice that implied she merely discharged a necessary but time wasting duty, 'promises at this moment, upon his soul's life, that he will take the death-oath to protect your grandchild."

"So long!" Morgan astonished us all by interjecting. She scrambled to her feet, looking squat and dark beside Nimue. Firelight glinted off her gold helm. "So long!" she cried again, then remembered to sway to and fro in the brazier's smoke as if to suggest the G.o.ds were taking over her body. "So long, Merlin says, as Arthur shares the oath. Arthur and his men should be your grandson's protector. Merlin has spoken!" She spoke the words with all the dignity of someone accustomed to being an oracle and prophetess, but I, if no one else, noticed that no thunder sounded in the rainswept night. Gundleus was on his feet protesting Morgan's p.r.o.nouncement. He had already suffered a council of six and a trio of oath-takers to be imposed upon his power, but now it was proposed that his new kingdom was to support a war-band of possible enemy warriors. "No!" he cried again, but Tewdric ignored the protest as he stepped down from the dais to stand beside Morgan and face the High King. It was thus made plain to most of us in the hall that Morgan, even if she had been uttering in Merlin's voice, had nevertheless spoken what Tewdric had wanted her to speak. King Tewdric of Gwent might have been a good Christian, but he was a better politician and knew exactly when to have the old G.o.ds support his demands.

"Arthur ap Neb and his warriors," Tewdric now said to the High King, 'will be a better surety for your grandson's life than any oath of mine, though G.o.d knows my oath is solemn." Prince Gereint, who was Uther's nephew and, after Owain, the second most powerful warlord in Dumnonia, might have protested Arthur's appointment, but the Lord of the Stones was an honest man of limited ambition who doubted his ability to lead all Dumnonia's armies and so he stood beside Tewdric and added his support. Owain, who was the leader of Uther's Royal Guard as well as the High King's champion, seemed less happy at the appointment of a rival, but eventually he too stood with Tewdric and growled his a.s.sent.

Uther still hesitated. Three was a lucky number and three oath-takers should have sufficed, and the addition of a fourth might risk the G.o.ds' displeasure, but Uther owed Tewdric a favour for having dismissed his proposal of Arthur as Norwenna's husband and now the High King paid his debt. "Arthur shall take the oath," he agreed, and the G.o.ds alone knew how hard it was for him thus to appoint the man he believed to be responsible for his beloved son's death, but appoint him he did and the hall rang with acclamation. Gundleus's Silurians alone were silent as the spears splintered the pavement and the warrior cheers echoed in the smoky cavernous dark.

Thus, as the High Council ended, was Arthur, son of n.o.body, chosen to be one of Mordred's sworn protectors.

Norwenna and Guneus were married two weeks after the High Council ended. The ceremony was performed at a Christian shrine in Abona, a harbour town on our northern sh.o.r.e that faced across the Severn Sea towards Siluria, and it cannot have been a joyful occasion for Norwenna returned to Ynys Wydryn that very same evening. None of us from the Tor went to the ceremony, though a pack of Ynys Wydryn's monks and their wives accompanied the Princess. She returned to us as Queen Norwenna of Siluria, though the honour brought her neither new guards nor added attendants. Gundleus sailed back to his own country where, we heard, there were skirmishes against the Ui Liathain, the Blacks.h.i.+eld Irish who had colonized the old British kingdom of Dyfed that the Blacks.h.i.+elds called Demetia.

Our life hardly changed by having a queen among us. We of the Tor might have seemed idle compared to the folk down the hill, but we still had our duties. We cut hay and spread it in rows to dry, we finished shearing the sheep and laid the newly cut flax into stinking retting ponds to make linen. The women in Ynys Wydryn all carried distaffs and spindles on which they wound the newly sheared wool and only the Queen, Morgan and Nimue were spared that unending task. Druidan gelded pigs, Pellinore commanded imaginary armies and Hywel the steward prepared his tally sticks to count the summer rents. Merlin did not come home to Avalon, nor did we receive any news of him. Uther rested at his palace in Durnovaria while Mordred, his heir, grew under Morgan and Guendoloen's care.

Arthur stayed in Armorica. He would eventually come to Dumnonia, we were told, but only after he had discharged his duty to Ban whose kingdom of Benoic neighboured Broceliande, the realm of King Budic who was married to Arthur's sister, Anna. Those kingdoms in Brittany were a mystery to us, for no one from Ynys Wydryn had ever crossed the sea to explore the places where so many Britons displaced by the Srxons had taken refuge. We did know that Arthur was Ban's warlord, and that he had ravaged the country west of Benoic to keep the Prankish enemy at bay, for our winter evenings had been enlivened by travellers' tales of Arthur's prowess, just as they were filled with envy by the stories about King Ban. The King of Benoic was married to a queen named Elaine and the two of them had made a wondrous kingdom where justice was swift and fair, and where even the poorest serf was fed in wintertime from the Royal storehouses. It all sounded too good to be true, though much later I visited Ban's kingdom and found the tales were not exaggerated. Ban had made his capital on an island fortress, Ynys Trebes, which was famous for its poets. The King lavished affection and money on the town that was reputed to be more beautiful than Rome itself. There were said to be springs in Ynys Trebes that Ban had channelled and dammed so that every householder could find clean water not far from his door. The merchants' scales were tested for accuracy, the King's palace lay open day and night to pet.i.tioners seeking redress of grievance, and the various religions were commanded to live in peace or else have their temples and churches pulled down and pounded into dust. Ynys Trebes was a haven of peace, but only so long as Ban's soldiers kept the enemy far away from its walls, which was why King Ban was so reluctant to let Arthur leave for Britain. Nor, perhaps, did Arthur want to come to Dumnonia while Uther still lived. In Dumnonia that summer was blissful. We gathered the dry hay into great stacks that we built on thick foundations of bracken that would keep the damp from rising and the rats at bay. The rye and barley ripened in the strip fields that quilted all the land between Avalon's marshes and Caer Cadarn, apples grew thick in the eastern orchards, while eels and pike grew fat in our meres and creeks. There was no plague, no wolves and few Saxons. Once in a while we would see a distant pyre of smoke on the south-eastern horizon and we would guess that a s.h.i.+pborne raid of Saxon pirates had burned a settlement, but after the third such fire Prince Gereint led a war-band to take Dumnonia's revenge and the Saxon raids ceased. The Saxon chief even paid his tribute on time, though that was the last tribute we received from a Saxon for many a year and doubtless much of the payment had been plundered from our own border villages. Even so that summer was a good time and Arthur, men said, would die of boredom if he brought his famed horse soldiers to peaceful Dumnonia. Even Powys was calm. King Gorfyddyd had lost the alliance of Siluria, but instead of turning on Gundleus he ignored the Dumnonian marriage and concentrated his spears against the Saxons who threatened his northern territory. Gwynedd, the kingdom to the north of Powys, was embroiled with the fearsome Irish soldiers of Diwrnach of Lleyn, but in Dumnonia, the most blessed of all Britain's realms, there was plump peace and warm skies.

Yet it was in that summer, that warm idyllic summer, that I killed my first enemy and so became a man. For peace never lasts, and ours was broken most cruelly. Uther, High King and Pendragon of Britain, died. We had known he was ill, we had known he must die soon, indeed we knew he had done all he could to prepare for his own death, yet somehow we had thought this moment would never come. He had been king for so long and under his rule Dumnonia had prospered; it had seemed to us that nothing could ever change. But then, just before the harvest, the Pendragon died. Nimue claimed she heard a hare scream in the midday sun at the very moment, while Morgan, bereft of a father, shut herself in her hut and wailed like a child.

Uther's body was burned in the ancient manner. Bed win would have preferred to give the High King a Christian burial, but the rest of the council refused to sanction such sacrilege and so his swollen corpse was laid on a pyre on the summit of Caer Macs and there put to the flames. His sword was melted by the smith Ystrwth and the molten steel was poured into a lake so that Gofannon, the Blacksmith G.o.d of the Otherworld, could forge the sword anew for Uther's reborn soul. The burning metal hissed as it struck the water and its steam flew like a thick cloud as the seers stooped over the lake to foretell the kingdom's future in the tortured shapes adopted by the cooling metal. They reported good news, despite which Bishop Bedwin was careful to send his swiftest messengers south to Armorica to summon Arthur while slower men travelled north into Siluria to tell Gundleus that his stepson's kingdom was now in need of its official protector.

Uther's bale fire burned for three nights. Only then were the flames allowed to die, a process hastened by a mighty storm that swept in from the Western Sea. Great clouds heaped the sky, lightning harrowed the dead man's land and heavy rain beat across a broad swathe of growing crops. In Ynys Wydryn we crouched in the huts and listened to the drumming rain and the bellowing thunder and watched the water cascade in streams from the thatched roofs. It was during that storm that Bishop Bedwin's messenger brought the kingdom's great dragon banner to Mordred. The messenger had to shout like a mad thing to attract the attention of anyone inside the stockade, but finally Hywel and I opened the gate and once the storm had pa.s.sed and the wind had died we planted the flag before Merlin's hall as a sign that Mordred was now king over Dumnonia. The baby was not the High King, of course, for that was an honour which was only granted to a king acknowledged by other kings as one above them all, nor was Mordred the Pendragon, for that t.i.tle only went to a High King who had won his position in battle. Indeed, Mordred was not even the proper King of Dumnonia yet, nor would he be until he had been carried to Caer Cadarn and there proclaimed with sword and shout above the kingdom's royal stone, but he was the banner's owner and so the red dragon flew before Merlin's high hall. The banner was a square of white linen as broad and high as the shaft of a warrior's spear. It was held spread by willow wit hies threaded into its hems and was attached to a long elm staff that was crowned with a golden figure of a dragon. The dragon embroidered on the banner itself was made of red wool that leeched its dye in the rain to smear the lower linen pink. The arrival of the banner was followed within days by the King's Guard, a hundred men led by Owain, the champion, whose task was to protect Mordred, King of Dumnonia. Owain brought a suggestion from Bishop Bedwin that Norwenna and Mordred should move south to Durnovaria, a suggestion Norwenna eagerly adopted for she wanted to raise her son in a Christian community rather than in the Tor's blatantly pagan air, but before the arrangements could be made there came bad news from the north country. Gorfyddyd of Powys, hearing of the High King's death, had sent his spearmen to attack Gwent and the men of Powys were now burning, looting and taking captives deep inside Tewdric's territory. Agricola, Tewdric's Roman commander, was fighting back, but the treacherous Saxons, undoubtedly in league with Gorfyddyd, had brought their own war-bands into Gwent and suddenly our oldest ally was fighting for his kingdom's very existence. Owain, who would have escorted Norwenna and the babe south to Durnovaria, took his warriors north to help King Tewdric instead and Ligessac, who was once again the commander of Mordred's guard, insisted that the baby would be safer behind Ynys Wydryn's easily defended land bridge than in Caer Cadarn or Durnovaria, and so Norwenna reluctantly remained at the Tor.

We held our breath to see whose side Gundleus of Siluria would choose and the answer came swiftly. He would fight for Tewdric against his old ally Gorfyddyd. Gundleus sent a message to Norwenna saying that his levies would cross the mountain pa.s.ses to attack Gorfyddyd's men from the rear and that as soon as the war-bands of Powys had been defeated he would come south to protect his bride and her royal son.

We waited for news, watching the distant hills day and night for the beacons that would tell us of disaster or the approach of enemies, and yet, despite the war's uncertainties, those were happy days. The sun healed the storm-beaten land and dried the grain while Norwenna, even though she was mired in the pagan Tor, seemed more confident now that her son was King. Mordred was always a grim child, with red hair and a stubborn heart, but in those gentle days he seemed happy enough as he played with his mother or with Ralla, his wet nurse, and her dark-haired son. Ralla's husband, Gwlyddyn the carpenter, carved Mordred a set of animals: ducks, hogs, cows and deer, and the King loved to play with them even though he was still too young to know just what they were. Norwenna was happy when her son was happy. I used to watch her tickling Mordred to make him laugh, cradling him when he was hurt and loving him always. She called him her little King, her ever-loving-lover-boy, her miracle, and Mordred chuckled back and warmed her unhappy heart. He crawled naked in the sun and we could all see how his left foot was clubbed and grown inwards like a clenched fist, but otherwise he grew st