Dumnonia decayed, and there seemed little I could do to prevent the decay for Mordred had just enough power to outflank me, but Issa preserved what order and justice he could while Ceinwyn and I spent more and more of our time in Siluria. What sweet memories I keep of Isca; memories of sunny days with Taliesin singing lullabies and Guinevere gently mocking my happiness as I towed Arthur-bach and Seren in an upturned shield across the grass. Arthur would join the games, for he had ever adored children, and sometimes Galahad would be there for he had joined Arthur and Guinevere in their comfortable exile.
Galahad had still not married, though now he had a child. It was his nephew, Prince Peredur, Lancelot’s son, who had been found wandering in tears among the dead of Mynydd Baddon. As Peredur grew he came more and more to resemble his father; he had the same dark skin, the same lean and handsome face, and the same black hair, but in his character he was Galahad, not Lancelot. He was a clever, grave and earnest boy, and anxious to be a good Christian. I do not know how much of his father’s history he knew, but Peredur was always nervous of Arthur and Guinevere, and they, I think, found him unsettling. That was not his fault, but rather because his face reminded them of what we would all have preferred to forget, and both were grateful when, at twelve years old, Peredur was sent to Meurig’s court in Gwent to learn a warrior’s skills. He was a good boy, yet with his departure it was as though a shadow had gone from Isca. In later years, long after Arthur’s story was done, I came to know Peredur well and to value him as highly as I have valued any man.
Peredur might have unsettled Arthur, but there were few other shadows to trouble him. In these dark days, when folk look back and remember what they lost when Arthur went, they usually speak of Dumnonia, but others also mourn Siluria, for in those years he gave that unregarded kingdom a time of peace and justice. There was still disease, and still poverty, and men did not cease from getting drunk and killing each other just because Arthur governed, but widows knew that his courts would give redress, and the hungry knew that his granaries held food to last a winter. No enemy raided across Siluria’s border, and though the Christian religion spread fast through the valleys, Arthur would not let its priests defile the pagan shrines, nor allow the pagans to attack the Christian churches. In those years he made Siluria into what he had dreamed he could make all Britain: a haven. Children were not enslaved, crops were not burned and warlords did not ravage homesteads.
Yet beyond the haven’s borders, dark things loomed. Merlin’s absence was one. Year after year passed, and still there was no news, and after a while folk assumed the Druid must have died for surely no man, not even Merlin, could live so long. Meurig was a nagging and irritable neighbour, forever demanding higher taxes or a purge of the Druids who lived in Siluria’s valleys, though Tewdric, his father, was a moderating influence when he could be stirred from his self-imposed life of near starvation. Powys stayed weak, and Dumnonia became increasingly lawless, though it was spared the worst of Mordred’s rule by his absence. In Siluria alone, it seemed, there was happiness, and Ceinwyn and I began to think that we would live the rest of our days in Isca. We had wealth, we had friends, we had family and we were happy.
We were, in short, complacent, and fate has ever been the enemy of complacency, and fate, as Merlin always told me, is inexorable.
I was hunting with Guinevere in the hills north of Isca when I first heard of Mordred’s calamity. It was winter, the trees were bare, and Guinevere’s prized deerhounds had just run down a great red stag when a messenger from Dumnonia found me. The man handed me a letter, then watched wide-eyed as Guinevere waded among the snarling dogs to put the beast out of its misery with one merciful stab of her short spear. Her huntsmen whipped the hounds off the corpse, then drew their knives to gralloch the stag. I pulled open the parchment, read the brief message, then looked at the messenger. ‘Did you show this to Arthur?’ ‘No, Lord,’ the man said. ‘The letter was addressed to you.’ ‘Take it to him now,’ I said, handing him the sheet of parchment.
Guinevere, happily blood-streaked, stepped out of the carnage. ‘You look as if it was bad news, Derfel.’
‘On the contrary,’ I said, ‘it’s good news. Mordred has been wounded.’
‘Good!’ Guinevere exulted. ‘Badly, I hope?’
‘It seems so. An axe blow to the leg.’
‘Pity it wasn’t to the heart. Where is he?’
‘Still in Armorica,’ I said. The message had been dictated by Sansum and it said that Mordred had been surprised and defeated by an army led by Clovis, High King of the Franks, and that in the battle our King had been badly wounded in the leg. He had escaped, and was now besieged by Clovis in one of the ancient hilltop forts of old Benoic. I surmised that Mordred must have been wintering in the territory that he had conquered from the Franks and which he doubtless thought would make him a second kingdom across the sea, but Clovis had led his Frankish army westwards in a surprise winter campaign. Mordred had been defeated and, though he was still alive, he was trapped.
‘How reliable is the news?’ Guinevere asked.
‘Reliable enough,’ I said. ‘King Budic sent Argante a messenger.’
‘Good!’ Guinevere said. ‘Good! Let’s hope the Franks kill him.’ She stepped back into the growing pile of steaming offal to find a scrap for one of her beloved hounds. ‘They will kill him, won’t they?’ she asked me.
‘Franks aren’t noted for their mercy,’ I said.
‘I hope they dance on his bones,’ she said. ‘Calling himself a second Uther!’
‘He fought well for a time, Lady.’
‘It isn’t how well you fight that matters, Derfel, it’s whether or not you win the last battle.’ She threw scraps of the stag’s guts to her dogs, wiped her knife blade on her tunic, then thrust it back into its sheath. ‘So what does Argante want of you?’ she asked me. ‘A rescue?’ Argante was demanding exactly that, and so was Sansum which is why he had written to me. His message ordered me to march all my men to the south coast, find ships and go to Mordred’s relief. I told Guinevere as much and she gave me a mocking glance. ‘And you’re going to tell me that your oath to the little bastard will force you to obey?’
‘I have no oath to Argante,’ I said, ‘and certainly none to Sansum.’ The mouse lord could order me as much as he liked, but I had no need to obey him nor any wish to rescue Mordred. Besides, I doubted that an army could be shipped to Armorica in winter, and even if my spearmen did survive the rough crossing they would be too few to fight the Franks. The only help Mordred might expect would be from old King Budic of Broceliande, who was married to Arthur’s elder sister, Anna, but while Budic might have been happy to have Mordred killing Franks in the land that used to be Benoic, he would have no wish to attract Clovis’s attention by sending spearmen to Mordred’s rescue. Mordred, I thought, was doomed. If his wound did not kill him, Clovis would.
For the rest of that winter Argante harried me with messages demanding that I take my men across the sea, but I stayed in Siluria and ignored her. Issa received the same demands, but he flatly refused to obey, while Sagramor simply threw Argante’s messages into the flames. Argante, seeing her power slip with her husband’s waning life, became more desperate and offered gold to spearmen who would sail to Armorica. Though many spearmen took the gold, they preferred to sail westwards to Kernow or hurry north into Gwent rather than sail south to where Clovis’s grim army waited. And as Argante despaired, our hopes grew. Mordred was trapped and sick, and sooner or later news must come of his death and when that news came we planned to ride into Dumnonia under Arthur’s banner with Gwydre as our candidate for the kingship. Sagramor would come from the Saxon frontier to support us and no man in Dumnonia would have the power to oppose us.
But other men were also thinking of Dummonia’s kingship. I learned that early in the spring when Saint Tewdric died. Arthur was sneezing and shivering with the last of the winter’s colds and he asked Galahad to go to the old King’s funeral rites in Burrium, the
capital of Gwent which lay just a short journey up river from Isca, and Galahad pleaded with me to accompany him. I mourned for Tewdric, who had proved himself a good friend to us, yet I had no wish to attend his funeral and thus be forced to endure the interminable droning of the Christian rites, but Arthur added his pleas to Galahad’s. ‘We live here at Meurig’s pleasure,’ he reminded me, ‘and we’d do well to show him respect. I would go if I could,’ he paused to sneeze, ‘but Guinevere says it will be the death of me.’
So Galahad and I went in Arthur’s place and the funeral service did indeed seem never ending. It took place in a great barn-like church that Meurig had built in the year marking the supposed five hundredth anniversary of the appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ on this sinful earth, and once the prayers inside the church were all said or chanted, we had to endure still more prayers at Tewdric’s graveside. There was no balefire, no singing spearmen, just a cold pit in the ground, a score of bobbing priests and an undignified rush to get back to the town and its taverns when Tewdric was at last buried.
Meurig commanded Galahad and me to take supper with him. Peredur, Galahad’s nephew, joined us, as did Burrium’s bishop, a gloomy soul named Lladarn who had been responsible for the most tedious of the day’s prayers, and he began supper with yet another long-winded prayer after which he made an earnest enquiry about the state of my soul and was grieved when I assured him that it was safe in Mithras’s keeping. Such an answer would normally have irritated Meurig, but he was too distracted to notice the provocation. I know he was not unduly upset by his father’s death, for Meurig was still resentful that Tewdric had taken back his power at the time of Mynydd Baddon, but at least he affected to be distressed and bored us with insincere praise of his father’s saintliness and sagacity. I expressed the hope that Tewdric’s death had been merciful and Meurig told me that his father had starved to death in his attempt to imitate the angels.
‘There was nothing of him at the end,’ Bishop Lladarn elaborated, ‘just skin and bone, he was, skin and bone! But the monks say that his skin was suffused with a heavenly light, praise God!’
‘And now the saint is on God’s right hand,’ Meurig said, crossing himself, ‘where one day I shall be with him. Try an oyster, Lord.’ He pushed a silver dish towards me, then poured himself wine. He was a pale young man with protuberant eyes, a thin beard and an irritably pedantic manner. Like his father he aped Roman manners. He wore a bronze wreath on his thinning hair, dressed in a toga and ate while lying on a couch. The couches were deeply uncomfortable. He had married a sad and ox-like Princess from Rheged who had arrived in Gwent a pagan, produced male twins and then had Christianity whipped into her stubborn soul. She appeared in the dimly lit supper room for a few moments, ogled us, said and ate nothing, then disappeared as mysteriously as she had arrived.
‘You have any news of Mordred?’ Meurig asked us after his wife’s brief visit.
‘We hear nothing new, Lord King,’ Galahad said. ‘He is penned in by Clovis, but whether he lives or not, we don’t know.’
‘I have news,’ Meurig said, pleased to have heard it before us. ‘A merchant came yesterday with news from Broceliande and he tells us that Mordred is very near death. His wound is festering.’ The King picked his teeth with a sliver of ivory. ‘It must be God’s judgement, Prince Galahad, God’s judgement.’
‘Praise His name,’ Bishop Lladarn intervened. The Bishop’s grey beard was so long it vanished under his couch. He used the beard as a towel, wiping grease from his hands into its long, dirt-clotted strands.
‘We have heard such rumours before, Lord King,’ I said.
Meurig shrugged. ‘The merchant seemed very sure of himself,’ he said, then tipped an oyster down his throat. ‘So if Mordred isn’t dead already,’ he went on, ‘he probably will be soon, and without leaving a child!’
‘True,’ Galahad said.
‘And Perddel of Powys is also childless,’ Meurig went on.
‘Perddel is unmarried, Lord King,’ I pointed out.
‘But does he look to marry?’ Meurig demanded of us.
‘There’s been talk of him marrying a Princess from Kernow,’ I said, ‘and some of the Irish Kings have offered daughters, but his mother wishes him to wait a year or two.’
‘He’s ruled by his mother, is he? No wonder he’s weak,’ Meurig said in his petulant, high-toned voice, ‘weak. I hear that Powys’s western hills are filled with outlaws?’
‘I hear the same, Lord King,’ I said. The mountains beside the Irish Sea had been haunted by masterless men ever since Cuneglas had died, and Arthur’s campaign in Powys, Gwynedd and Lleyn had only increased their numbers. Some of those refugees were spearmen from Diwrnach’s Bloodshields and, united with the disaffected men from Powys, they could have proved a new threat to Perddel’s throne, but so far they had been little more than a nuisance. They raided for cattle and grain, snatched children as slaves, then scampered back to their hill fastnesses to avoid retribution.
‘And Arthur?’ Meurig enquired. ‘How did you leave him?’
‘Not well, Lord King,’ Galahad said. ‘He would have wished to be here, but alas, he has a winter fever.’
‘Not serious?’ Meurig enquired with an expression that suggested he rather hoped Arthur’s cold would prove fatal. ‘One does hope not, of course,’ he added hastily, ‘but he is old, and the old do succumb to trifling things that a younger man would throw off.’
‘I don’t think Arthur’s old,’ I said.
‘He must be nearly fifty!’ Meurig pointed out indignantly.
‘Not for a year or two yet,’ I said.
‘But old,’ Meurig insisted, ‘old.’ He fell silent and I glanced round the palace chamber, which was lit by burning wicks floating in bronze dishes filled with oil. Other than the five couches and the low table there was no other furniture and the only decoration was a carving of Christ on the cross that hung high on a wall. The Bishop gnawed at a pork rib, Peredur sat silent, while Galahad watched the King with a look of faint amusement. Meurig picked his teeth again, then pointed the ivory sliver at me. ‘What happens if Mordred dies?’ He blinked rapidly, something he always did when he was nervous.
‘A new King must be found, Lord King,’ I said casually, as though the question held no real importance for me.
‘I had grasped that point,’ he said acidly, ‘but who?’
‘The Lords of Dumnonia will decide,’ I said evasively.
‘And will choose Gwydre?’ He blinked again as he challenged me. ‘That’s what I hear, they’ll choose Gwydre! Am I right?’
I said nothing and Galahad finally answered the King. ‘Gwydre certainly has a claim, Lord King,’ he said carefully.
‘He has no claim, none! None!’ Meurig squeaked angrily. ‘His father, need I remind you, is a bastard!’
‘As am I, Lord King,’ I intervened.
Meurig ignored that. ‘ “A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord”!’ he insisted. ‘It is written thus in the scriptures. Is that not so, Bishop?’
‘ “Even to the tenth generation the bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord”, Lord King,’ Lladarn intoned, then crossed himself. ‘Praise be for His wisdom and guidance, Lord King.’
‘There!’ Meurig said as though his whole argument was thus proved.
I smiled. ‘Lord King,’ I pointed out gently, ‘if we were to deny kingship to the descendants of bastards, we would have no Kings.’
He stared at me with pale, bulging eyes, trying to determine whether I had insulted his own lineage, but he must have decided against picking a quarrel. ‘Gwydre is a young man,’ he said instead, ‘and no son of a King. The Saxons grow stronger and Powys is ill-ruled. Britain lacks leaders, Lord Derfel, it lacks strong Kings!’
‘We daily chant hosannas because your own dear self proves the opposite, Lord King,’ Lladarn said oilily.
I thought the Bishop’s flattery was nothing more than a polite rejoinder, the sort of me
aningless phrase courtiers ever utter to Kings, but Meurig took it as gospel truth. ‘Precisely!’ the King said enthusiastically, then gazed at me with open eyes as if expecting me to echo the Bishop’s sentiments.
‘Who,’ I asked instead, ‘would you like to see on Dumnonia’s throne, Lord King?’
His sudden and rapid blinking showed that he was discomfited by the question. The answer was obvious: Meurig wanted the throne for himself. He had half-heartedly tried to gain it before Mynydd Baddon, and his insistence that Gwent’s army would not help Arthur fight the Saxons unless Arthur renounced his own power had been a shrewd effort to weaken Dumnonia’s throne in the hope that it might one day fall vacant, but now, at last, he saw his opportunity, though he dared not announce his own candidacy openly until definite news of Mordred’s death reached Britain. ‘I will support,’ he said instead, ‘whichever candidate shows themselves to be a disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘I can do no other, for I serve Almighty God.’
‘Praise Him!’ the Bishop said hurriedly.
‘And I am reliably informed, Lord Derfel,’ Meurig went on earnestly, ‘that the Christians in Dumnonia cry out for a good Christian ruler. Cry out!’
‘And who informs you of their cry, Lord King?’ I asked in a voice so acid that poor Peredur looked alarmed. Meurig gave no answer, but nor did I expect one from him, so I supplied it myself. ‘Bishop Sansum?’ I suggested, and saw from Meurig’s indignant expression that I was right.
‘Why should you think that Sansum has anything to say in this matter?’ Meurig demanded, red-faced.
‘Sansum comes from Gwent, does he not, Lord King?’ I asked and Meurig blushed still more deeply, making it obvious that Sansum was indeed plotting to put Meurig on Dumnonia’s throne, and Meurig, Sansum could be sure, would be certain to reward Sansum with yet more power. ‘But I don’t think the Christians of Dumnonia need your protection, Lord King,’ I went on, ‘nor Sansum’s. Gwydre, like his father, is a friend to your faith.’
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