Excalibur

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘Merlin’s like you,’ she said angrily, ignoring my question. ‘He’s emotional.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ I said.

  ‘And what do you know, Derfel?’ she snapped. ‘Do you have to endure his bluster? Do you have to argue with him? Do you have to reassure him? Do you have to watch him making the greatest mistake of all history?’ She spat these questions at me. ‘Do you have to watch him waste all this effort?’ She waved a thin hand at the fires. ‘You are a fool,’ she added bitterly. ‘If Merlin farts, you think it’s wisdom speaking. He’s an old man, Derfel, and he has not long to live, and he is losing his power. And power, Derfel, comes from inside.’ She beat her hand between her small breasts. She had stopped on the rampart’s top and turned to face me. I was a strapping soldier, she a tiny slip of a woman, yet she overpowered me. She always did. In Nimue there ran a passion so deep and dark and strong that almost nothing could withstand it.

  ‘Why do Merlin’s emotions threaten the ritual?’ I asked.

  ‘They just do!’ Nimue said, and turned and walked on.

  ‘Tell me,’ I demanded.

  ‘Never!’ she snapped. ‘You’re a fool.’

  I walked behind her. ‘Who is Olwen the Silver?’ I asked her.

  ‘A slave girl we purchased in Demetia. She was captured from Powys and she cost us over six gold pieces because she’s so pretty.’

  ‘She is,’ I said, remembering her delicate step through Lin-dinis’s hushed night.

  ‘Merlin thinks so, too,’ Nimue said scornfully. ‘He quivers at the sight of her, but he’s much too old these days, and besides we have to pretend she’s a virgin for Gawain’s sake. And he believes us! But that fool will believe anything! He’s an idiot!’

  ‘And he’ll marry Olwen when this is all over?’

  Nimue laughed. ‘That’s what we’ve promised the fool, though once he discovers she’s slave born and not a spirit he might change his mind. So maybe we’ll sell her on. Would you like to buy her?’ She gave me a sly look.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Still faithful to Ceinwyn?’ she said mockingly. ‘How is she?’

  ‘She’s well,’ I said.

  ‘And is she coming to Durnovaria to watch the summons?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  Nimue turned to give me a suspicious look. ‘But you will?’

  ‘I’ll watch, yes.’

  ‘And Gwydre,’ she asked, ‘will you bring him?’

  ‘He wants to come, yes. But I shall ask his father’s permission first.’

  ‘Tell Arthur he should let him come. Every child in Britain should witness the coming of the Gods. It will be a sight never to be forgotten, Derfel.’

  ‘So it will happen?’ I asked, ‘despite Merlin’s faults?’

  ‘It will happen,’ Nimue said vengefully, ‘despite Merlin. It will happen because I will make it happen. I’ll give that old fool what he wants whether he likes it or not.’ She stopped, turned and seized my left hand to stare with her one eye at the scar on its palm. That scar bound me by oath to do her bidding and I sensed she was about to make some demand of me, but then some impulse of caution stopped her. She took a breath, stared at me, then let my scarred hand drop. ‘You can find your own way now,’ she said in a bitter tone, then walked away.

  I went down the hill. The folk still trudged to Mai Dun’s summit with their loads of firewood. For nine hours, Gawain had said, the fires must burn. Nine hours to fill a sky with flame and bring the Gods to earth. Or maybe, if the rites were done wrong, the fires would bring nothing.

  And in three nights we would discover which it would be.

  Ceinwyn would have liked to come to Durnovaria to witness the summoning of the Gods, but Samain Eve is the night when the dead walk the earth and she wanted to be certain that we left gifts for Dian and she thought the place to leave those gifts was where Dian had died, and so she took our two living daughters to the ruins of Ermid’s Hall and there among the hall’s ashes she placed a jug of diluted mead, some buttered bread and a handful of the honey-covered nuts Dian had always loved so much. Dian’s sisters put some walnuts and hard-boiled eggs in the ashes, then they all sheltered in a nearby forester’s hut guarded by my spearmen. They did not see Dian, for on Samain Eve the dead never show themselves, but to ignore their presence is to invite misfortune. In the morning, Ceinwyn told me later, the food was all gone and the jug was empty.

  I was in Durnovaria where Issa joined me with Gwydre. Arthur had given his son permission to watch the summoning and Gwydre was excited. He was eleven years old that year, full of joy and life and curiosity. He had his father’s lean build, but he had taken his good looks from Guinevere for he had her long nose and bold eyes. There was mischief in him, but no evil, and both Ceinwyn and I would have been glad if his father’s prophecy came true and he married our Morwenna. That decision would not be taken for another two or three years, and until then Gwydre would live with us. He wanted to be on the summit of Mai Dun, and was disappointed when I explained that no one was permitted to be there other than those who would perform the ceremonies. Even the folk who had built the great fires were sent away during the day. They, like the hundreds of other curious folk who had come from all over Britain, would watch the summons from the fields beneath the ancient fort.

  Arthur arrived on the morning of Samain Eve and I saw the joy with which he greeted Gwydre. The boy was his one source of happiness in those dark days. Arthur’s cousin, Culhwch, arrived from Dunum with a half-dozen spearmen. ‘Arthur told me I shouldn’t come,’ he told me with a grin, ‘but I wouldn’t miss this.’ Culhwch limped to greet Galahad who had spent the last months with Sagramor, guarding the frontier against Aelle’s Saxons, and while Sagramor had obeyed Arthur’s orders to stay at his post, he had asked Galahad to go to Durnovaria to carry news of the night’s events back to his forces. The high expectations worried Arthur, who feared his followers would feel a terrible disappointment if nothing happened.

  The expectations only increased, for that afternoon King Cuneglas of Powys rode into the town and brought with him a dozen men including his son Perddel who was now a self-conscious youth trying to grow his first moustaches. Cuneglas embraced me. He was Ceinwyn’s brother and a more decent, honest man never lived. He had called on Meurig of Gwent on his journey south and now confirmed that monarch’s reluctance to fight the Saxons. ‘He believes his God will protect him,’ Cuneglas said grimly.

  ‘So do we,’ I said, gesturing out of Durnovaria’s palace window to the lower slopes of Mai Dun that were thick with people hoping to be close to whatever the momentous night might bring. Many of the folk had tried to climb to the top of the hill, but Merlin’s Blackshield spearmen were keeping them all at a distance. In the field just to the north of the fortress a brave group of Christians prayed noisily that their God would send rain to defeat the heathen rites, but they were chased away by an angry crowd. One Christian woman was beaten insensible, and Arthur sent his own soldiers to keep the peace.

  ‘So what happens tonight?’ Cuneglas asked me.

  ‘Maybe nothing, Lord King.’

  ‘I’ve come this far to see nothing?’ Culhwch grumbled. He was a squat, bellicose, foul-mouthed man whom I counted among my closest friends. He had limped ever since a Saxon blade had scored deep into his leg in the battle against Aelle’s Saxons outside London, but he made no fuss about the thickly scarred wound and claimed he was still as formidable a spearman as ever. ‘And what are you doing here?’ he challenged Galahad. ‘I thought you were a Christian?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘So you’re praying for rain, are you?’ Culhwch accused him. It was raining even as we spoke, though it was nothing more than a light drizzle that spat from the west. Some men believed fair weather would follow the drizzle, but inevitably there were pessimists who forecast a deluge.

  ‘If it does pour with rain tonight,’ Galahad needled Culhwch, ‘will you admit my God is greater than yours?’

  ‘I’ll slit your throat,’
Culhwch growled, who would do no such thing for he, like me, had been a friend of Galahad for many years.

  Cuneglas went to talk with Arthur, Culhwch disappeared to discover whether a red-haired girl still plied for trade in a tavern by Durnovaria’s north gate, while Galahad and I walked with young Gwydre into the town. The atmosphere was merry, indeed it was as if a great autumn fair had filled Durnovaria’s streets and spilt onto the surrounding meadows. Merchants had set up stalls, the taverns were doing a brisk business, jugglers dazzled the crowds with their skills and a score of bards chanted songs. A performing bear lumbered up and down Durnovaria’s hill beneath Bishop Emrys’s house, becoming ever more dangerous as folk fed it bowls of mead. I glimpsed Bishop Sansum peering through a window at the great beast, but when he saw me he jerked back inside and pulled the wooden shutter closed. ‘How long will he stay a prisoner?’ Galahad asked me.

  ‘Till Arthur forgives him,’ I said, ‘which he will, for Arthur always forgives his enemies.’

  ‘How very Christian of him.’

  ‘How very stupid of him,’ I said, making sure that Gwydre was not in earshot. He had gone to look at the bear. ‘But I can’t see Arthur forgiving your half-brother,’ I went on. ‘I saw him a few days ago.’

  ‘Lancelot?’ Galahad asked, sounding surprised. ‘Where?’

  ‘With Cerdic.’

  Galahad made the sign of the cross, oblivious to the scowls it attracted. In Durnovaria, as in most towns in Dumnonia, the majority of folk were Christian, but today the streets were thronged with pagans from the countryside and many were eager to pick fights with their Christian enemies. ‘You think Lancelot will fight for Cerdic?’ Galahad asked me.

  ‘Does he ever fight?’ I responded caustically.

  ‘He can.’

  ‘Then if he fights at all,’ I said, ‘it will be for Cerdic’

  ‘Then I pray I am given the chance to kill him,’ Galahad said, and again crossed himself.

  ‘If Merlin’s scheme works,’ I said, ‘there won’t be a war. Just a slaughter led by the Gods.’

  Galahad smiled. ‘Be honest with me, Derfel, will it work?’

  ‘That’s what we’re here to see,’ I said evasively, and it struck me suddenly that there must be a score of Saxon spies in the town who would have come to see the same thing. Those men would probably be followers of Lancelot, Britons who could mingle unnoticed in the expectant throng that swelled all day. If Merlin failed, I thought, then the Saxons would take heart and the spring battles would be all the harder.

  The rain began to fall more steadily and I called Gwydre and the three of us ran back to the palace. Gwydre begged his father for permission to watch the summoning from the fields close under Mai Dun’s ramparts, but Arthur shook his head. ‘If it rains like this,’ Arthur told him, ‘then nothing will happen anyway. You’ll just catch cold, and then -’ he stopped abruptly. And then your mother will be angry with me, he had been about to say.

  ‘Then you’ll pass the cold to Morwenna and Seren,’ I said, ‘and I’ll catch it from them, and I’ll give it your father, and then the whole army will be sneezing when the Saxons come.’

  Gwydre thought about that for a second, decided it was nonsense, and tugged his father’s hand. ‘Please!’ he said.

  ‘You can watch from the upper hall with the rest of us,’ Arthur insisted.

  ‘Then can I go back and watch the bear, father? It’s getting drunk and they’re going to put dogs on it. I’ll stand under a porch to keep dry. I promise. Please, father?’

  Arthur let him go and I sent Issa to guard him, then Galahad and I climbed to the palace’s upper hall. A year before, when Guinevere had still sometimes visited this palace, it had been elegant and clean, but now it was neglected, dusty and forlorn. It was a Roman building and Guinevere had tried to restore it to its ancient splendour, but it had been plundered by Lancelot’s forces in the rebellion and nothing had been done to repair the damage. Cuneglas’s men had made a fire on the hall’s floor and the heat of the logs was buckling the small tiles. Cuneglas himself was standing at the wide window from where he was staring gloomily across Durnovaria’s thatch and tile towards the slopes of Mai Dun that were almost hidden by veils of rain. ‘It is going to let up, isn’t it?’ he appealed to us as we entered.

  ‘It’ll probably get worse,’ Galahad said, and just at that moment a rumble of thunder sounded to the north and the rain perceptibly hardened until it was bouncing four or five inches from the rooftops. The firewood on Mai Dun’s summit would be getting a soaking, but so far only the outer layers would be drenched while the timber deep in the heart of the fires would still be dry. Indeed that inner timber would stay dry through an hour or more of this heavy rain, and dry timber at the heart of a fire will soon burn the damp from the outer layers, but if the rain persisted into the night then the fires would never blaze properly. ‘At least the rain will sober up the drunks,’ Galahad observed.

  Bishop Emrys appeared in the hall door, the black skirts of his priest’s robe drenched and muddy. He gave Cuneglas’s fearsome pagan spearmen a worried glance, then hurried over to join us at the window. ‘Is Arthur here?’ he asked me.

  ‘He’s somewhere in the palace,’ I said, then introduced Emrys to King Cuneglas and added that the Bishop was one of our good Christians.

  ‘I trust we are all good, Lord Derfel,’ Emrys said, bowing to the King.

  ‘To my mind,’ I said, ‘the good Christians are the ones who did not rebel against Arthur.’

  ‘Was it a rebellion?’ Emrys asked. ‘I think it was a madness, Lord Derfel, brought on by pious hope, and I daresay that what Merlin is doing this day is exactly the same thing. I suspect he will be disappointed, just as many of my poor folk were disappointed last year. But in tonight’s disappointment, what might happen? That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘What will happen?’ Cuneglas asked.

  Emrys shrugged. ‘If Merlin’s Gods fail to appear, Lord King, then who will be blamed? The Christians. And who will be slaughtered by the mob? The Christians.’ Emrys made the sign of the cross. ‘I want Arthur’s promise to protect us.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll give it gladly,’ Galahad said.

  ‘For you, Bishop,’ I added, ‘he will.’ Emrys had stayed loyal to Arthur, and he was a good man, even if he was as cautious in his advice as he was ponderous in his old body. Like me, the Bishop was a member of the Royal Council, the body that ostensibly advised Mordred, though now that our King was a prisoner in Lindinis, the council rarely met. Arthur saw the counsellors privately, then made his own decisions, but the only decisions that really needed to be made were those that prepared Dumnonia for the Saxon invasion and all of us were content to let Arthur carry that burden.

  A fork of lightning slithered between the grey clouds, and a moment later a crack of thunder sounded so loud that we all involuntarily ducked. The rain, already hard, suddenly intensified, beating furiously on the roofs and churning streamlets of muddy water down Durnovaria’s streets and alleys. Puddles spread on the hall floor.

  ‘Maybe,’ Cuneglas observed dourly, ‘the Gods don’t want to be summoned?’

  ‘Merlin says they are far off,’ I said, ‘so this rain isn’t their doing.’

  ‘Which is proof, surely, that a greater God is behind the rain,’ Emrys argued.

  ‘At your request?’ Cuneglas enquired acidly.

  ‘I did not pray for rain, Lord King,’ Emrys said. ‘Indeed, if it will please you, I shall pray for the rain to cease.’ And with that he closed his eyes, spread his arms wide and raised his head in prayer. The solemnity of the moment was somewhat spoilt by a drop of rainwater that came through the roof tiles to fall straight onto his tonsured forehead, but he finished his prayer and made the sign of the cross.

  And miraculously, just as Emrys’s pudgy hand formed the sign of the cross on his dirty gown, the rain began to relent. A few flurries still came hard on the west wind, but the drumming on the roof ceased abruptly and the air between o
ur high window and Mai Dun’s crest began to clear. The hill still looked dark under the grey clouds, and there was nothing to.be seen on the old fortress except for a handful of spearmen guarding the ramparts and, below them, a few pilgrims who had lodged themselves as high as they dared on the hill’s slopes. Emrys was not certain whether to be pleased or downcast at the efficacy of his prayer, but the rest of us were impressed, especially as a rift opened in the western clouds and a watery shaft of sunlight slanted down to turn the slopes of Mai Dun green.

  Slaves brought us warmed mead and cold venison, but I had no appetite. Instead I watched as the afternoon sank into evening and as the clouds grew ragged. The sky was clearing, and the west was becoming a great furnace blaze of red above distant Lyonesse. The sun was sinking on Samain Eve, and all across Britain and even in Christian Ireland folk were leaving food and drink for the dead who would cross the gulf of Annwn on the bridge of swords. This was the night when the ghostly procession of shadowbodies came to visit the earth where they had breathed and loved and died. Many had died on Mai Dun and tonight that hill would be thick with their wraiths; then, inevitably, I thought of Dian’s little shadowbody wandering among the ruins of Ermid’sHall.

  Arthur came to the hall and I thought how different he looked without Excalibur hanging in its cross-hatched scabbard. He grunted when he saw the rain had stopped, then listened to Bishop Emrys’s plea. ‘I’ll have my spearmen in the streets,’ he assured the Bishop, ‘and so long as your folks don’t taunt the pagans, they’ll be safe.’ He took a horn of mead from a slave, then turned back to the Bishop. ‘I wanted to see you anyway,’ he said, and told the Bishop his worries about King Meurig of Gwent. ‘If Gwent won’t fight,’ Arthur warned Emrys, ‘then the Saxons will outnumber us.’

  Emrys blanched. ‘Gwent won’t let Dumnonia fall, surely!’

  ‘Gwent has been bribed, Bishop,’ I told him, and described how Aelle had allowed Meurig’s missionaries into his territory. ‘So long as Meurig thinks there’s a chance of converting the Sais,’ I said, ‘he won’t lift a sword against them.’