The Winter King: A Novel of Arthur

by Bernard Cornwell

  She gave me an amused glance. ‘That sounds like a courtier speaking,’ she said.

  ‘I am forced to be a courtier at times, Lady. Would you prefer me to be the warrior?’

  She leaned back on an elbow so we could talk without disturbing the music, and her proximity made it seem as though my senses floated in smoke. ‘My Lord Gundleus,’ she said softly, ‘demanded my hand as the price of his army in this coming war.’

  ‘Then his army, Lady,’ I said, ‘is the most valuable in Britain.’

  She did not smile at the compliment, but kept her eyes steadily on mine. ‘Is it true,’ she asked very quietly, ‘that he killed Norwenna?’

  The bluntness of the question unsettled me. ‘What does he say, Lady?’ I asked instead of answering directly.

  ‘He says’ – and her voice was even lower so that I could scarcely hear her words – ‘that his men were attacked and that in the confusion, she died. It was an accident, he says.’

  I glanced at the young girl playing the harp. The aunts were glaring at the two of us, but Helledd seemed unworried by our talking. Galahad was listening to the music, one arm around the sleeping Perddel. ‘I was on the Tor that day, Lady,’ I said, turning back to Ceinwyn.

  ‘And?’

  I decided her bluntness deserved a blunt answer. ‘She knelt to him in welcome, Lady,’ I said, ‘and he ran his sword down her throat. I saw it done.’

  Her face hardened for a second. The glimmering rushlight burnished her pale skin and made soft shadows on her cheeks and under her lower lip. She was wearing a rich dress of pale blue linen that was trimmed with the black-flecked silver-white fur of a winter-stoat. A silver torque encircled her neck, silver rings were in her ears and I thought how well silver suited her bright hair. She gave a small sigh. ‘I feared to hear that truth,’ she said, ‘but being a princess means I must marry where it is most useful for me to do so and not where I might want to.’ She turned her head to the musician for a time, then leaned close to me again. ‘My father,’ she said nervously, ‘says this is a war about my honour. Is it?’

  ‘For him, Lady, yes, though I can tell you Arthur regrets the hurt he did you.’

  She grimaced slightly. The subject was clearly painful, but she could not let it go, for Arthur’s rejection had changed Ceinwyn’s life much more subtly and sadly than it had ever changed his. Arthur had gone on to happiness and marriage while she had been left to suffer the long regrets and find the painful answers which, evidently, had not been found. ‘Do you understand him?’ she asked after a while.

  ‘I did not understand him back then, Lady,’ I said. ‘I thought he was a fool. So did we all.’

  ‘And now?’ she asked, her blue eyes on mine.

  I thought for a few seconds. ‘I think, Lady, that for once in his life Arthur was struck by a madness that he could not control.’

  ‘Love?’

  I looked at her and told myself that I was not in love with her and that her brooch was a talisman snatched randomly from chance. I told myself that she was a Princess and I the son of a slave. ‘Yes, Lady,’ I said.

  ‘Do you understand that madness?’ she asked me.

  I was aware of nothing in the room except Ceinwyn. The Princess Helledd, the sleeping Prince, Galahad, the aunts, the harpist, none of them existed for me, any more than did the woven wall hangings or the bronze rushlight holders. I was aware only of Ceinwyn’s large sad eyes and of my own beating heart.

  ‘I do understand that you can look into someone’s eyes,’ I heard myself saying, ‘and suddenly know that life will be impossible without them. Know that their voice can make your heart miss a beat and that their company is all your happiness can ever desire and that their absence will leave your soul alone, bereft and lost.’

  She said nothing for a while, but just looked at me with a slightly puzzled expression. ‘Has that ever happened to you, Lord Derfel?’ she asked at last.

  I hesitated. I knew the words my soul wanted to say and I knew the words my station should make me say, but then I told myself that a warrior did not thrive on timidity and I let my soul have government of my tongue. ‘It has never happened until this moment, Lady,’ I said. It took more bravery to make that declaration than I had ever needed to break a shield–wall.

  She immediately looked away and sat up, and I cursed myself for offending her with my stupid clumsiness. I stayed back on the couch, my face red and my soul hurting with embarrassment as Ceinwyn applauded the harpist by throwing some silver coins on to the rug beside the instrument. She asked for the Song of Rhiannon to be played.

  ‘I thought you were not listening, Ceinwyn,’ one of the aunts said cattily.

  ‘I am, Tonwyn, I am, and I am taking a great pleasure in all I hear,’ Ceinwyn said and I felt suddenly like a man feels when the enemy’s shield–wall collapses. Except I dared not trust her words. I wanted to; I dared not. Love’s madness, swinging from ecstasy to despair in one wild second.

  The music began again, its background the raucous cheers coming from the great hall where the warriors anticipated battle. I leaned all the way back on the cushions, my face still red as I tried to work out whether Ceinwyn’s last words had referred to our conversation or to the music, and then Ceinwyn lay back and leaned close to me again. ‘I do not want a war fought over me,’ she said.

  ‘It seems inevitable, Lady.’

  ‘My brother agrees with me.’

  ‘But your father rules in Powys, Lady.’

  ‘That he does,’ she said flatly. She paused, frowning, then looked up at me. ‘If Arthur wins, who will he want me to marry?’

  Once again the directness of her question surprised me, but I gave her the true answer. ‘He wants you to be Queen of Siluria, Lady,’ I said.

  She looked at me with sudden alarm. ‘Married to Gundleus?’

  ‘To King Lancelot of Benoic, Lady,’ I said, giving away Arthur’s secret hope. I watched for her reaction.

  She gazed into my eyes, apparently trying to judge whether I had spoken the truth. ‘They say Lancelot is a great warrior,’ she said after a while and with a lack of enthusiasm that warmed my heart.

  ‘They do say that, Lady, yes,’ I said.

  She was silent again. She leaned on her elbow and watched the harpist’s hands flicker across the strings, and I watched her. ‘Tell Arthur,’ she said after a while and without looking at me, ‘that I hold no grudge. And tell him something else.’ She stopped suddenly.

  ‘Yes, Lady?’ I encouraged her.

  ‘Tell him that if he wins,’ she said, then turned to me and reached a slender finger across the gap between our couches to touch the back of my hand to show how important her words were, ‘that if he wins,’ she said again, ‘I shall beg for his protection.’

  ‘I shall tell him, Lady,’ I said, then paused with my heart full. ‘And I swear you mine too, in all honour.’

  She kept her finger on my hand, her touch as light as the sleeping Prince’s breath. ‘I might hold you to that oath, Lord Derfel,’ she said, her eyes on mine.

  ‘Till time ends and evermore, that oath will be true, Lady.’

  She smiled, took her hand away and sat up straight.

  And that night I went to my bed in a daze of confusion, hope, stupidity, apprehension, fear and delight. For, just like Arthur, I had come to Caer Sws and been stricken by love.

  PART FIVE

  The Shield–wall

  ‘SO IT WAS HER!’ Igraine accused me. ‘The Princess Ceinwyn who turned your blood to smoke, Brother Derfel.’

  ‘Yes, Lady, it was,’ I confessed, and I confess now that there are tears in my eyes as I remember Ceinwyn. Or perhaps it is the weather that is making my eyes water, for autumn has come to Dinnewrac and a cold wind is stealing through my window. I must soon make a pause in this writing, for we shall have to be busy storing our foodstuffs for the winter and making the log pile that the blessed Saint Sansum will take pleasure in not burning so that we can share our dear Saviour’s suffering.r />
  ‘No wonder you hate Lancelot so much!’ Igraine said. ‘You were rivals. Did he know how you felt for Ceinwyn?’

  ‘In time,’ I said, ‘yes.’

  ‘So what happened?’ she asked eagerly.

  ‘Why don’t we leave the story in its proper order, Lady?’

  ‘Because I don’t want to, of course.’

  ‘Well I do,’ I said, ‘and I am the storyteller, not you.’

  ‘If I didn’t like you so much, Brother Derfel, I would have your head cut off and your body fed to our hounds.’ She frowned, thinking. She looks very pretty today in a cloak of grey wool edged with otter fur. She is not pregnant, so either the pessary of baby’s faeces did not work or else Brochvael is spending too much time with Nwylle. ‘There was always talk in my husband’s family about Great-aunt Ceinwyn,’ she said, ‘but no one ever really explained what the scandal was about.’

  ‘There is no one I have ever known, Lady,’ I said sternly, ‘about whom there was less scandal.’

  ‘Ceinwyn never married,’ Igraine said, ‘I know that much.’

  ‘Is that so scandalous?’ I asked.

  ‘It is if she behaved as though she were married,’ Igraine said indignantly. ‘That’s what your church preaches. Our church,’ she hastily corrected herself. ‘So what happened? Tell me!’

  I pulled my monk’s sleeve over the stump of my hand, always the first part of me to feel a chill wind. ‘Ceinwyn’s tale is too long to tell now,’ I said, and refused to add any more, despite my Queen’s importunate demands.

  ‘So did Merlin find the Cauldron?’ Igraine demanded instead.

  ‘We shall come to that in its proper time,’ I insisted.

  She threw up her hands. ‘You infuriate me, Derfel. If I behaved like a proper queen I really would demand your head.’

  ‘And if I was anything but an ancient and feeble monk, Lady, I would give it to you.’

  She laughed, then turned to look out of the window. The leaves of the small oak trees that Brother Maelgwyn planted to make a windbreak have turned brown early and the woods in the combe below us are thick with berries, both signs that a harsh winter is coming. Sagramor once told me there were places where winter never comes and the sun shines warm all year, but maybe, like the existence of rabbits, that was another of his fanciful tales. I once hoped that the Christian heaven would be a warm place, but Saint Sansum insists heaven must be cold because hell is hot and I suppose the saint is right. There is so little to look forward to. Igraine shivered and turned back towards me. ‘No one ever made me a Lughnasa bower,’ she said wistfully.

  ‘Of course they did!’ I said. ‘Every year you have one!’

  ‘But that’s the Caer’s bower. The slaves make it because they have to, and naturally I sit there, but it isn’t the same as having your own young man make you a bower out of foxgloves and willow. Was Merlin angry about you and Nimue making love?’

  ‘I should never have confessed that to you,’ I said. ‘If he knew he never said anything. It wouldn’t have mattered to him. He was not jealous.’ Not like the rest of us. Not like Arthur, not like me. How much of our earth has been wet by blood because of jealousy! And at the end of life, what does it all matter? We grow old and the young look at us and can never see that once we made a kingdom ring for love.

  Igraine adopted her mischievous look. ‘You say Gorfyddyd called Guinevere a whore. Was she?’

  ‘You should not use that word.’

  ‘All right, was Guinevere what Gorfyddyd said she was, which I’m not allowed to say for fear of offending your innocent ears?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘she was not.’

  ‘But was she faithful to Arthur?’

  ‘Wait,’ I said.

  She stuck her tongue out at me. ‘Did Lancelot become a Mithraist?’ she asked.

  ‘Wait and see,’ I insisted.

  ‘I hate you!’

  ‘And I am your most worshipping servant, dear Lady,’ I said, ‘but I am also tired and this cold weather makes the ink clog. I shall write the rest of the story, I promise you.’

  ‘If Sansum lets you,’ Igraine said.

  ‘He will,’ I answered. The saint is happier these days, thanks to our remaining novice who is no longer a novice, but consecrated a priest and a monk and already, Sansum insists, a saint like himself. Saint Tudwal, we must now call him, and the two saints share a cell and glorify God together. The only thing I can find wrong with such a blessed partnership is that the holy Saint Tudwal, now twelve years old, is making yet another effort to learn how to read. He cannot speak this Saxon tongue, of course, but even so I fear what he might decipher from these writings. But that fear must wait till Saint Tudwal masters his letters, if he ever does, and for the moment, if God wills it, and to satisfy the impatient curiosity of my most lovely Queen, Igraine, I shall continue this tale of Arthur, my dear lost Lord, my friend, my lord of war.

  I noticed nothing the next day. I stood with Galahad as an unwelcome guest of my enemy Gorfyddyd while Iorweth made the propitiation to the Gods, and the Druid could have been blowing dandelion seeds for all the note I took of the ceremonies. They killed a bull, they tied three prisoners to the three stakes, strangled them, then took the war’s auguries by stabbing a fourth prisoner in the midriff. They sang the Battle Song of Maponos as they danced about the dead, and then the kings, princes and chieftains dipped their spearheads in the dead men’s blood before licking the blood off the blades and smearing it on their cheeks. Galahad made the sign of the cross while I dreamed of Ceinwyn. She did not attend the ceremonies. No women did. The auguries, Galahad told me, were favourable to Gorfyddyd’s cause, but I did not care. I was blissfully remembering that silver-light touch of Ceinwyn’s finger on my hand.

  Our horses, weapons and shields were brought to us and Gorfyddyd himself walked us to Caer Sws’s gate. Cuneglas, his son, came also; he might well have intended a courtesy by accompanying us, but Gorfyddyd had no such niceties in mind. ‘Tell your whore-lover,’ the King said, his cheeks still smeared with blood, ‘that war can be avoided by one thing only. Tell Arthur that if he presents himself in Lugg Vale for my judgment and verdict I shall consider the stain on my daughter’s honour cleansed.’

  ‘I shall tell him, Lord King,’ Galahad answered.

  ‘Is Arthur still beardless?’ Gorfyddyd asked, making the question sound like an insult.

  ‘He is, Lord King,’ Galahad said.

  ‘Then I can’t plait a prisoner’s leash from his beard,’ Gorfyddyd growled, ‘so tell him to cut off his whore’s red hair before he comes and have it woven ready for his own leash.’ Gorfyddyd clearly enjoyed demanding that humiliation of his enemies, though Prince Cuneglas’s face betrayed an acute embarrassment for his father’s crudeness. ‘Tell him that, Galahad of Benoic,’ Gorfyddyd continued, ‘and tell him that if he obeys me, then his shaven whore can go free so long as she leaves Britain.’

  ‘The Princess Guinevere can go free,’ Galahad restated the offer.

  ‘The whore!’ Gorfyddyd shouted. ‘I lay with her often enough, so I should know. Tell Arthur that!’ He spat the demand into Galahad’s face. ‘Tell him she came to my bed willingly, and to other beds too!’

  ‘I shall tell him,’ Galahad lied to stem the bitter words. ‘And what, Lord King,’ Galahad went on, ‘of Mordred?’

  ‘Without Arthur,’ Gorfyddyd said, ‘Mordred will need a new protector. I shall take responsibility for Mordred’s future. Now go.’

  We bowed, we mounted and we rode away, and I looked back once in hope of seeing Ceinwyn, but only men showed on Caer Sws’s ramparts. All around the fortress the shelters were being pulled down as men prepared to march on the direct road to Branogenium. We had agreed not to use that road, but to go home the longer way through Caer Lud so we would not be able to spy on Gorfyddyd’s gathering host.

  Galahad looked grim as we rode eastwards, but I could not restrain my happiness and once we had ridden clear of the busy encampments I began to sing the Son
g of Rhiannon.

  ‘What is the matter with you?’ Galahad asked irritably.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!’ I shouted in joy and kicked back my heels so that the horse bolted down the green path and I fell into a patch of nettles. ‘Nothing at all,’ I said when Galahad brought the horse back to me. ‘Absolutely nothing.’

  ‘You’re mad, my friend.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said as I clambered awkwardly back on to the horse. I was indeed mad, but I was not going to tell Galahad the reason for my madness, so for a time I tried to behave soberly. ‘What do we tell Arthur?’ I asked him.

  ‘Nothing about Guinevere,’ Galahad said firmly. ‘Besides, Gorfyddyd was lying. My God! How could he tell such lies about Guinevere?’

  ‘To provoke us, of course,’ I said. ‘But what do we tell Arthur about Mordred?’

  ‘The truth. Mordred is safe.’

  ‘But if Gorfyddyd lied about Guinevere,’ I said, ‘why shouldn’t he lie about Mordred? And Merlin didn’t believe him.’

  ‘We weren’t sent for Merlin’s answer,’ Galahad said.

  ‘We were sent to find the truth, my friend, and I say Merlin spoke it.’

  ‘But Tewdric,’ Galahad answered firmly, ‘will believe Gorfyddyd.’

  ‘Which means Arthur has lost,’ I said bleakly, but I did not want to talk about defeat, so instead I asked Galahad what he had thought of Ceinwyn. I was letting the madness take hold of me again and I wanted to hear Galahad praise her and say she was the most beautiful creature between the seas and the mountains, but he simply shrugged. ‘A neat little thing,’ he said carelessly, ‘and pretty enough if you like those frail-looking girls.’ He paused, thinking. ‘Lancelot will like her,’ he went on. ‘You do know Arthur wants them to marry? Though I don’t suppose that will happen now. I suspect Gundleus’s throne is safe and Lancelot will have to look elsewhere for a wife.’

  I said nothing more about Ceinwyn. We rode back the way we had come and reached Magnis on the second night where, just as Galahad had predicted, Tewdric put his faith in Gorfyddyd’s promise while Arthur preferred to believe Merlin. Gorfyddyd, I realized, had used us to separate Tewdric and Arthur, and it seemed to me that Gorfyddyd had done well, for as we listened to the two men wrangle in Tewdric’s quarters it was plain that the King of Gwent had no stomach for the coming war. Galahad and I left the two men arguing while we walked on Magnis’s ramparts that were formed by a great earthen wall flanked by a flooded ditch and topped with a stout palisade. ‘Tewdric will win the argument,’ Galahad told me bleakly. ‘He doesn’t trust Arthur, you see.’