Excalibur

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘You’ve become a Christian, Lord?’ I sounded appalled.

  ‘We’ve all become Christians,’ he said, ‘you as well. Heat a spear blade and burn the cross into your shields.’

  I spat to avert evil. ‘You want us to do what, Lord?’

  ‘You heard me, Derfel,’ he said, then slid off Llamrei’s back and walked to the southern ramparts from where he could stare down at the enemy. ‘They’re still here,’ he said, ‘good.’

  Cuneglas had joined me and overheard Arthur’s previous words. ‘You want us to put a cross on our shields?’ he asked.

  ‘I can demand nothing of you, Lord King,’ Arthur said, ‘but if you would place a cross on your shield, and on your men’s shields, I would be grateful.’

  ‘Why?’ Cuneglas demanded fiercely. He was famous for his opposition to the new religion.

  ‘Because,’ Arthur said, still gazing down at the enemy, ‘the cross is the price we pay for Gwent’s army.’

  Cuneglas stared at Arthur as though he hardly dared believe his ears.

  ‘Meurig is coming?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ Arthur said, turning to us, ‘not Meurig. King Tewdric is coming. Good Tewdric’

  Tewdric was Meurig’s father, the king who had given up his throne to become a monk, and Arthur had ridden to Gwent to plead with the old man. ‘I knew it was possible,’ Arthur told me, ‘because Galahad and I have been talking to Tewdric all winter.’ At first, Arthur said, the old King had been reluctant to give up his pious, scrimped life, but other men in Gwent had added their voices to Arthur and Galahad’s pleadings and, after nights spent praying in his small chapel, Tewdric had reluctantly declared he would temporarily take back his throne and lead Gwent’s army south. Meurig had fought the decision, which he rightly saw as a reproof and a humiliation, but Gwent’s army had supported their old King and so now they were marching south. ‘There was a price,’ Arthur admitted. ‘I had to bow my knee to their God and promise to ascribe victory to Him, but I’ll ascribe victory to any God Tewdric wants so long as he brings his spearmen.’

  ‘And the rest of the price?’ Cuneglas asked shrewdly.

  Arthur made a wry face. ‘They want you to let Meurig’s missionaries into Powys.’

  ‘Just that?’ Cuneglas asked.

  ‘I might have given the impression,’ Arthur admitted, ‘that you would welcome them. I’m sorry, Lord King. The demand was only sprung on me two days ago, and it was Meurig’s idea, and Meurig’s face has to be saved.’ Cuneglas grimaced. He had done his best to keep Christianity from his kingdom, reckoning that Powys did not need the acrimony that always followed the new faith, but he made no protest to Arthur. Better Christians in Powys, he must have decided, than Saxons.

  ‘Is that all you promised Tewdric, Lord?’ I asked Arthur suspiciously. I was remembering Meurig’s demand to be given Dumnonia’s throne and Arthur’s longing to be rid of that responsibility.

  ‘These treaties always have a few details that aren’t worth bothering about,’ Arthur responded airily, ‘but I did promise to release Sansum. He is now the Bishop of Dumnonia! And a royal counsellor again. Tewdric insisted on it. Every time I knock our good Bishop down he bobs up again.’ He laughed.

  ‘Is that all you promised, Lord?’ I asked again, still suspicious.

  ‘I promised enough, Derfel, to make sure Gwent marches to our aid,’ Arthur said firmly, ‘and they have undertaken to be here in two days with six hundred prime spearmen. Even Agricola decided he wasn’t too old to fight. You remember Agricola, Derfel?’

  ‘Of course I remember him, Lord,’ I said. Agricola, Tewdric’s old warlord, might be long in years now, but he was still one of Britain’s most famous warriors.

  ‘They’re all coming from Glevum,’ Arthur pointed west to where the Glevum road showed in the river valley, ‘and when they come I’ll join him with my men and together we’ll attack straight down the valley.’ He was standing on the rampart from where he stared down into the deep valley, but in his mind he was not seeing the fields and roads and wind-ruffled crops, nor the stone graves of the Roman cemetery, but instead he was watching the whole battle unfold before his eyes. ‘The Saxons will be confused at first,’ he went on, ‘but eventually there’ll be a mass of enemy hurrying along that road,’ he pointed down to the Fosse Way immediately beneath Mynydd Baddon, ‘and you, my Lord King,’ he bowed to Cuneglas, ‘and you, Derfel,’ he jumped down from the low rampart and poked a finger into my belly, ‘will attack them on the flank. Straight down the hill and into their shields! We’ll link up with you,’ he curved his hand to show how his troops would curl about the northern flank of the Saxons, ‘and then we’ll crush them against the river.’

  Arthur would come from the west and we would attack from the north. ‘And they’ll escape eastwards,’ I said sourly.

  Arthur shook his head. ‘Culhwch will march north tomorrow to join Oengus mac Airem’s Blackshields, and they’re coming down from Corinium right now.’ He was delighted with himself, and no wonder, for if it all worked then we would surround the enemy and afterwards slaughter him. But the plan was not without risk. I guessed that once Tewdric’s men arrived and Oengus’s Blackshields joined us then our numbers would not be much smaller than the Saxons, but Arthur was proposing to divide our army into three parts and if the Saxons kept their heads they could destroy each part separately. But if they panicked, and if our attacks came hard and furious, and if they were confused by the noise and dust and horror, we might just drive them like cattle to the slaughter. ‘Two days,’ Arthur said, ‘just two days. Pray that the Saxons don’t hear of it, and pray that they stay where they are.’ He called for Llamrei, glanced across at the red-haired spearman, then went to join Sagramor on the ridge beyond the saddle.

  On the night before battle we all burned crosses onto our shields. It was a small price to pay for victory, though not, I knew, the full price. That would be paid in blood. ‘I think, Lady,’ I told Guinevere that night, ‘that you had best stay up here tomorrow.’

  She and I were sharing a horn of mead. I had found that she liked to talk late in the night and I had fallen into the habit of sitting by her fire before I slept. Now she laughed at my suggestion that she should stay on Mynydd Baddon while we went down to fight. ‘I always used to think you were a dull man, Derfel,’ she said, ‘dull, unwashed and stolid. Now I’ve begun to like you, so please don’t make me think I was right about you all along.’

  ‘Lady,’ I pleaded, ‘the shield wall is no place for a woman.’

  ‘Nor is prison, Derfel. Besides, do you think you can win without me?’ She was sitting in the open mouth of the hut we had made from the wagons and trees. She had been given one whole end of the hut for her quarters and that night she had invited me to share a supper of scorched beef cut from the flank of one of the oxen that had hauled the wagons to Mynydd Baddon’s summit. Our cooking fire was dying now, sifting smoke towards the bright stars that arched across the world. The sickle moon was low over the southern hills, outlining the sentries who paced our ramparts. ‘I want to see it through to the end,’ she said, her eyes bright in the shadows. ‘I haven’t enjoyed anything so much in years, Derfel, not in years.’

  ‘What will happen in the valley tomorrow, Lady,’ I said, ‘will not be enjoyable. It will be bitter work.’

  ‘I know,’ she paused, ‘but your men believe I bring them victory. Will you deny them my presence when the work is hard?’

  ‘No, Lady,’ I yielded. ‘But stay safe, I beg you.’

  She smiled at the vehemence of my words. ‘Is that a prayer for my survival, Derfel, or a fear that Arthur will be angry with you if I come to harm?’

  I hesitated. ‘I think he might be angry, Lady,’ I admitted.

  Guinevere savoured that answer for a while. ‘Did he ask about me?’ she finally enquired.

  ‘No,’ I said truthfully, ‘not once.’

  She stared into the remnants of the fire. ‘Maybe he is in love with Argante,’ she said wist
fully.

  ‘I doubt he can even stand the sight of her,’ I answered. A week before I would never have been so frank, but Guinevere and I were much closer now. ‘She’s too young for him,’ I went on, ‘and not nearly clever enough.’

  She looked up at me, a challenge in her fire-glossed eyes. ‘Clever,’ she said. ‘I used to think I was clever. But you all think I’m a fool, don’t you?’

  ‘No, Lady.’

  ‘You were always a bad liar, Derfel. That’s why you were never a courtier. To be a good courtier you must lie with a smile.’ She stared into the fire. She was silent a long time, and when she spoke again the gentle mockery was gone from her voice. Maybe it was the nearness of battle that drove her to a layer of truth I had never heard from her before. ‘I was a fool,’ she said quietly, so quietly I had to lean forward to hear her over the crackling of the fire and the melody of my men’s songs. ‘I tell myself now that it was a kind of madness,’ she went on, ‘but I don’t think it was. It was nothing but ambition.’ She went quiet again, watching the small flickering flames. ‘I wanted to be a Caesar’s wife.’

  ‘You were,’ I said.

  She shook her head. ‘Arthur’s no Caesar. He’s not a tyrant, but I think I wanted him to be a tyrant, someone like Gorfyddyd.’ Gorfyddyd had been Ceinwyn and Cuneglas’s father, a brutal King of Powys, Arthur’s enemy, and, if rumour was true, Guinevere’s lover. She must have been thinking about that rumour, for she suddenly challenged me with a direct gaze. ‘Did I ever tell you he tried to rape me?’

  ‘Yes, Lady,’ I said.

  ‘It wasn’t true.’ She spoke bleakly. ‘He didn’t just try, he did rape me. Or I told myself it was rape.’ Her words were coming in short spasms, as if the truth was a very hard thing to admit. ‘But maybe it wasn’t rape. I wanted gold, honour, position.’ She was fiddling with the hem of her jerkin, stripping small lengths of linen from the frayed weave. I was embarrassed, but I did not interrupt, because I knew she wanted to talk. ‘But I didn’t get them from him. He knew exactly what I wanted, but knew better what he wanted for himself, and he never intended to pay my price. Instead he betrothed me to Valerin. Do you know what I was going to do with Valerin?’ Her eyes challenged me again, and this time the gloss on them was not just fire, but a sheen of tears.

  ‘No, Lady.’

  ‘I was going to make him King of Powys,’ she said vengefully. ‘I was going to use Valerin to revenge myself on Gorfyddyd. I could have done it, too, but then I met Arthur.’

  ‘At Lugg Vale,’ I said carefully, ‘I killed Valerin.’

  ‘I know you did.’

  ‘And there was a ring on his finger, Lady,’ I went on, ‘with your badge on it.’

  She stared at me. She knew what ring I meant. ‘And it had a lover’s cross?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Yes, Lady,’ I said, and touched my own lover’s ring, the twin of Ceinwyn’s ring. Many folk wore lovers’ rings incised with a cross, but not many had rings with crosses made from gold taken from the Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn as Ceinwyn and I did.

  ‘What did you do with the ring?’ Guinevere asked.

  ‘I threw it in the river.’

  ‘Did you tell anyone?’

  ‘Only Ceinwyn,’ I said. ‘And Issa knows,’ I added, ‘because he found the ring and brought it to me.’

  ‘And you didn’t tell Arthur?’

  ‘No.’

  She smiled. ‘I think you have been a better friend than I ever knew, Derfel.’

  ‘To Arthur, Lady. I was protecting him, not you.’

  ‘I suppose you were, yes.’ She looked back into the fire. ‘When this is all over,’ she said, ‘I shall try to give Arthur what he wants.’

  ‘Yourself?’

  My suggestion seemed to surprise her. ‘Does he want that?’ she asked.

  ‘He loves you,’ I said. ‘He might not ask about you, but he looks for you every time he comes here. He looked for you even when you were in Ynys Wydryn. He never talked to me about you, but he wearied Ceinwyn’s ears.’

  Guinevere grimaced. ‘Do you know how cloying love can be, Derfel? I don’t want to be worshipped. I don’t want every whim granted. I want to feel there’s something biting back.’ She spoke vehemently, and I opened my mouth to defend Arthur, but she gestured me to silence. ‘I know, Derfel,’ she said, ‘I have no right to want anything now. I shall be good, I promise you.’ She smiled. ‘Do you know why Arthur is ignoring me now?’

  ‘No, Lady.’

  ‘Because he does not want to face me till he has victory.’

  I thought she was probably right, but Arthur had shown no overt sign of his affection and so I thought it best to sound a note of warning. ‘Maybe victory will be satisfaction enough for him,’ I said.

  Guinevere shook her head. ‘I know him better than you, Derfel. I know him so well I can describe him in one word.’

  I tried to think what that word would be. Brave? Certainly, but that left out all his care and dedication. I wondered if dedicated was a better word, but that did not describe his restlessness. Good? he was certainly good, but that plain word obscured the anger that could make him unpredictable. ‘What is the word, Lady?’ I asked.

  ‘Lonely,’ Guinevere said, and I remembered that Sagramor in Mithras’s cave had used the very same word. ‘He’s lonely,’ Guinevere said, ‘like me. So let’s give him victory and maybe he won’t be lonely again.’

  ‘The Gods keep you safe, Lady,’ I said.

  ‘The Goddess, I think,’ she said, and saw the look of horror on my face. She laughed. ‘Not Isis, Derfel, not Isis.’ It had been Guinevere’s worship of Isis that had led her to Lancelot’s bed and to Arthur’s misery. ‘I think,’ she went on, ‘that tonight I will pray to Sulis. She seems more appropriate.’

  ‘I’ll add my prayers to yours, Lady.’

  She held out a hand to check me as I rose to leave. ‘We’re going to win, Derfel,’ she said earnestly, ‘we’re going to win, and everything will be changed.’

  We had said that so often, and nothing ever was. But now, at Mynydd Baddon, we would try again.

  We sprang our trap on a day so beautiful that the heart ached. It promised to be a long day too, for the nights were growing ever shorter and the long evening light lingered deep into the shadowed hours.

  On the evening before the battle Arthur had withdrawn his own troops from all along the hills behind Mynydd Baddon. He ordered those men to leave their campfires burning so that the Saxons would believe they were still in place, then he took them west to join the men of Gwent who were approaching on the Glevum road. Cuneglas’s warriors also left the hills, but they came to the summit of Mynydd Baddon where, with my men, they waited.

  Malaine, Powys’s chief Druid, went among the spearmen during the night. He distributed vervain, elf stones and scraps of dried mistletoe. The Christians gathered and prayed together, though I noted how many accepted the Druid’s gifts. I prayed beside the ramparts, pleading with Mithras for a great victory, and after that I tried to sleep, but Mynydd Baddon was restless with the murmur of voices and the monotonous sound of stones on steel.

  I had already sharpened my spear and put a new edge on Hywelbane. I never let a servant sharpen my weapons before battle, but did it myself and did it as obsessively as all my men. Once I was sure the weapons were as sharp as I could hone them I lay close to Guinevere’s shelter. I wanted to sleep but I could not shake the fear of standing in a shield wall. I watched for omens, fearing to see an owl, and I prayed again. I must have slept in the end, but it was a fitful dream-racked sleep. It had been so long since I had fought in a shield wall, let alone broken an enemy’s wall.

  I woke cold, early and shivering. Dew lay thick. Men were grunting and coughing, pissing and groaning. The hill stank, for although we had dug latrines there was no stream to carry the dirt away. ‘The smell and sound of men,’ Guinevere’s wry voice spoke from the shadow of her shelter.

  ‘Did you sleep, Lady?’ I asked.

  ‘
A little.’ She crawled out under the low branch that served as roof and door. ‘It’s cold.’

  ‘It will be warm soon.’

  She crouched beside me, swathed in her cloak. Her hair was tousled and her eyes were puffy from sleep. ‘What do you think about in battle?’ she asked me.

  ‘Staying alive,’ I said, ‘killing, winning.’

  ‘Is that mead?’ she asked, gesturing at the horn in my hand.

  ‘Water, Lady. Mead slows a man in battle.’

  She took the water from me, splashed some on her eyes and drank the rest. She was nervous, but I knew I could never persuade her to stay on the hill. ‘And Arthur,’ she asked, ‘what does he think about in battle?’

  I smiled. ‘The peace that follows the fighting, Lady. He believes that every battle will be the last.’

  ‘Yet of battles,’ she said dreamily, ‘there will be no end.’

  ‘Probably never,’ I agreed, ‘but in this battle, Lady, stay close to me. Very close.’

  ‘Yes, Lord Derfel,’ she said mockingly, then dazzled me with a smile. ‘And thank you, Derfel.’

  We were in armour by the time the sun flared behind the eastern hills to touch the scrappy clouds crimson and throw a deep shadow across the valley of Saxons. The shadow thinned and shrank as the sun climbed. Wisps of mist curled from the river, thickening the smoke from the campfires amongst which the enemy moved with an unusual energy. ‘Something’s brewing down there,’ Cuneglas said to me.

  ‘Maybe they know we’re coming?’ I guessed.

  ‘Which will make life harder,’ Cuneglas said grimly, though if the Saxons did have wind of our plans, they showed no evident preparation. No shield wall was formed to face Mynydd Baddon, and no troops marched west towards the Glevum road. Instead, as the sun rose high enough to burn the mist from the river banks, it appeared as if they had at last decided to abandon the place altogether and were preparing to march, though whether they planned to go west, north or south it was hard to tell for their first task was to collect their wagons, pack-horses, herds and flocks. From our height it looked like an ant’s nest kicked into chaos, but gradually some order emerged. Aelle’s men gathered their baggage just outside Aquae Sulis’s northern gate, while Cerdic’s men organized their march beside their encampment on the river’s bend. A handful of huts were burning, and doubtless they planned to fire both of their encampments before they left. The first men to go were a troop of lightly armed horsemen who rode westwards past Aquae Sulis, taking the Glevum road. ‘A pity,’ Cuneglas said quietly. The horsemen were scouting the route the Saxons hoped to take, and they were riding straight towards Arthur’s surprise attack.