* * *
Lancelot even boasted that he had converted his Saxon Guard to Christianity, for his baptism, it seems, had not just been for show, but was real enough, or so Galahad told me on one of his frequent visits to Lindinis. He described the church Sansum had built in the Venta palace and told me that every day a choir sang and a bevy of priests celebrated the Christian mysteries. ‘It’s all very beautiful,’ Galahad said wistfully. That was before I had seen the ecstasies in Isca and I had no idea such frenzies took place, so did not ask him whether they happened in Venta, or whether his brother encouraged Dumnonia’s Christians to see him as a deliverer.
‘Has Christianity changed your brother?’ Ceinwyn asked.
Galahad watched the flicker of her hands as she teased a thread from the distaff onto the spindle.
‘No,’ he admitted. ‘He thinks it’s enough to say prayers once a day and then he behaves as he likes thereafter. But many Christians are like that, alas.’
‘And how does he behave?’ Ceinwyn asked.
‘Badly.’
‘Do you want me to leave the room,’ Ceinwyn asked sweetly, ‘so you can tell Derfel without embarrassing me? And then he can tell me when we go to bed.’
Galahad laughed. ‘He’s bored, Lady, and he alleviates his boredom in the usual way. He hunts.’
‘So does Derfel, so do I. Hunting’s not bad.’
‘He hunts girls,’ Galahad said bleakly. ‘He doesn’t treat them badly, but they don’t really have much choice. Some of them like it and they all become rich enough, but they also become his whores.’
‘He sounds like most kings,’ Ceinwyn said drily. ‘Is that all he does?’
‘He spends hours with those two wretched Druids,’ Galahad said, ‘and no one knows why a Christian King would do that, but he claims it’s just friendship. He encourages his poets, he collects mirrors and he visits Guinevere’s Sea Palace.’
‘To do what?’ I asked.
‘To talk, he says.’ Galahad shrugged. ‘He says they talk about religion. Or rather they argue about it. She’s become very devout.’
‘To Isis,’ Ceinwyn said disapprovingly. In the years after the Round Table oath we had all heard how Guinevere was retreating more and more into the practice of her religion so that now the Sea Palace was said to be one huge shrine to Isis, and Guinevere’s attendants, who were all women chosen for their grace and looks, were the priestesses of Isis.
‘The Supreme Goddess,’ Galahad said disparagingly, then carefully crossed himself to keep the pagan evil at bay. ‘Guinevere evidently believes the Goddess has enormous power that can be channelled into human affairs. I can’t imagine Arthur likes it.’
‘He’s bored by it all,’ Ceinwyn said, spinning the last of the thread off the distaff and laying it down.
‘All he ever does now,’ she went on, ‘is complain that Guinevere won’t talk to him about anything except her religion. It must be horribly tedious for him.’ This conversation took place long before Tristan fled to Dumnonia with Iseult, and when Arthur was still a welcome guest at our house.
‘My brother claims to be fascinated by her ideas,’ Galahad said, ‘and maybe he is. He claims she’s the most intelligent woman in Britain and says he won’t marry till he finds another just like her.’
Ceinwyn laughed. ‘A good job he lost me, then. How old is he now?’
‘Thirty-three, I think.’
‘So ancient!’ Ceinwyn said, smiling at me, for I was only a year younger. ‘What happened to Ade?’
‘She gave him a son, and died doing it.’
‘No!’ Ceinwyn said, upset as always at hearing of a death in childbirth. ‘And you say he has a son?’
‘A bastard,’ Galahad said disapprovingly. ‘Peredur, he’s called. Four years old now, and not a bad little boy. In truth I rather like him.’
‘Has there ever been a child you didn’t like?’ I asked him drily.
‘Brush-head,’ he said, and we all smiled at that old nickname.
‘Imagine Lancelot having a son!’ Ceinwyn said with that intonation of surprised import with which women greet such news. To me the existence of another royal bastard seemed entirely unremarkable, but men and women, I notice, respond to these things quite differently.
Galahad, like his brother, had never married. Nor did he have land, but he was happy and was kept busy serving as an envoy for Arthur. He tried to keep the Brotherhood of Britain alive, though I noticed how quickly those duties fell away, and he travelled through all the British kingdoms, carrying messages, settling disputes and using his royal rank to ease whatever problems Dumnonia might have with other states. It was usually Galahad who travelled to Demetia to curb Oengus Mac Airem’s raids on Powys and it was Galahad who, after Tristan’s death, carried the news of Iseult’s fate to her father. I did not see him after that, not for many months.
I tried not to see Arthur either. I was too angry with him, and I would neither answer his letters nor go to the Council. He came to Lindinis twice in the months after Tristan’s death and both times I was coldly polite and both times I left him as soon as I could. He did talk for a long time with Ceinwyn and she tried to reconcile us, but I could not shake the thought of that burning child from my head. But nor could I ignore Arthur altogether. Mordred’s second acclamation was now just months away and the preparations had to be made. The ceremony would be held at Caer Cadarn, just a short walk east of Lindinis, and inevitably Ceinwyn and I were drawn into the planning. Mordred himself even took an interest, perhaps because he realized that the ceremony would at last free him of all discipline. ‘You have to decide,’ I told him one day, ‘who will acclaim you.’
‘Arthur will, won’t he?’ he asked sullenly.
‘It’s usually done by a Druid,’ I said, ‘but if you want a Christian ceremony then you must choose between Emrys or Sansum.’
He shrugged. ‘Sansum, I suppose.’
‘Then we should go and see him,’ I said.
We went on a hard midwinter day. I had other business in Ynys Wydryn, but first went with Mordred to the Christian shrine where a priest told us that Bishop Sansum was busy saying mass and that we must wait. ‘Does he know his King is here?’ I demanded.
‘I shall tell him, Lord,’ the priest said, and scuttled away across the frozen ground. Mordred had wandered off to stand beside his mother’s grave where, even on that cold day, a dozen pilgrims knelt in worship. It was a very simple grave, nothing but a low mound of earth with a stone cross that was dwarfed by the lead urn Sansum had placed to receive the pilgrims’ offerings. ‘The Bishop will be with us soon,’ I said. ‘Shall we wait inside?’
He shook his head and frowned at the low grassy mound. ‘She should have a better grave,’ he said.
‘I think that’s true,’ I said, surprised he had spoken at all. ‘You can build it.’
‘It would have been better,’ he said snidely, ‘if others had paid her that respect.’
‘Lord King,’ I said, ‘we were so busy defending the life of her child that we had small time to worry about her bones. But you are right, and we were remiss.’
He kicked moodily at the urn, then peered inside to see the small treasures that had been left by the pilgrims. Those who were praying at the grave edged away, not for fear of Mordred whom I doubt they even recognized, but because the iron amulet I wore about my neck betrayed that I was a pagan. ‘Why was she buried?’ Mordred suddenly asked me. ‘Why wasn’t she burned?’
‘Because she was a Christian,’ I said, hiding my horror at his ignorance. I explained that Christians believed their bodies would be used again at the final coming of Christ, while we pagans took new shadowbodies in the Otherworld and thus had no need of our corpses which, if we could, we burned to prevent our spirits wandering the earth. If we could not afford a funeral pyre then we burned the dead person’s hair and cut off one foot.
‘I shall make her a vault,’ he said when I had finished my theological explanation. He asked me how his mother h
ad died and I told him the whole story of how Gundleus of Siluria had treacherously married Norwenna, then murdered her as she knelt to him. And I told him how Nimue had taken her revenge on Gundleus.
‘That witch,’ Mordred said. He feared Nimue, and no wonder, for she was becoming ever fiercer, ever gaunter and ever dirtier. She was a recluse now, grubbing a life in the remnants of Merlin’s compound where she chanted her spells, lit fires to her Gods and received few visitors, though once in a while, unannounced, she would stride into Lindinis to consult with Merlin. I would try to feed her on those rare visits, the children would run from her, and she would walk away, muttering to herself with her one eye wild, her robe caked with mud and ashes, and her matted black hair tangled with filth. Beneath her refuge on the Tor she was forced to watch the Christian shrine grow larger, stronger and ever more organized. The old Gods, I thought, were losing Britain fast. Sansum, of course, was desperate for Merlin to die so he could take the Tor for himself and build a church on its fire-scarred summit, but what Sansum did not know was that all Merlin’s land was willed to me.
Mordred, standing beside his mother’s grave, wondered at the similarity of names between my eldest daughter and his dead mother and I told him that Ceinwyn was Norwenna’s cousin. ‘Morwenna and Norwenna are old names in Powys,’ I explained.
‘Did she love me?’ Mordred asked, and the incongruity of that word in his mouth gave me pause. Maybe, I thought, Arthur was right. Maybe Mordred would grow into his responsibilities. Certainly, in all the years I had known him, I had never held such a courteous discussion before.
‘She loved you very much,’ I answered truthfully. ‘The happiest I ever saw your mother,’ I went on,
‘was when you were with her. It was up there.’ I pointed to the black scar where Merlin’s hall and his dream-tower had stood on the Tor. It was there that Norwenna had been murdered and Mordred had been snatched away from her. He had been a baby then, even younger than I had been when I was snatched from my mother, Erce. Did Erce still live? I still had not travelled to Siluria to find her, and that omission made me feel guilty. I touched the iron amulet.
‘When I die,’ Mordred said, ‘I want to be in the same grave as my mother. And I’ll make the grave myself. A vault of stone,’ he declared, ‘with our bodies lifted on a pedestal.’
‘You must talk to the Bishop,’ I said, ‘and I’m sure he’ll be pleased to do whatever he can to help.’
So long, I thought cynically, as he did not have to pay for the vaulted sepulchre. I turned as Sansum hurried across the grass. He bowed to Mordred, then welcomed me to the shrine.
‘You come, I hope, in search of truth, Lord Derfel?’
‘I come to visit that shrine,’ I said, pointing to the Tor, ‘but my Lord King has business of his own with you.’ I left them there alone and led my horse up to the Tor, passing by the group of Christians who, day and night, prayed at the Tor’s foot that its pagan inhabitants would be driven away. I endured their insults, then climbed the steep hill to discover that the water-gate had fallen from its last hinge. I tied my horse to a stake in what remained of the palisade, then carried the bundle of clothes and furs that Ceinwyn had packed so that the poor folk who shared Nimue’s refuge would not freeze in the bitter weather. I gave Nimue the clothes and she dropped them carelessly in the snow, then plucked at my sleeve and drew me into her new hut that she had built exactly where Merlin’s dream-tower had once stood. The hut stank so foully that I almost gagged, but she was oblivious to its mephitic stench. It was a freezing day and an icy sleet was whipping out of the east on a damp wind, yet even so I would rather have stood in the freezing downpour than endure that reeking hut. ‘Look,’ she said proudly, and showed me a cauldron, not the Cauldron, but just a common, patched iron cauldron that hung from a roof beam and was filled with some dark liquid. Sprigs of mistletoe, a pair of bat wings, the sloughed skin of snakes, a broken antler and bunches of herbs also hung from the rafters that were so low that I had to bend double to get inside the hut, which was eye-stingingly full of smoke. A naked man lay on a pallet in the far shadows and complained about my presence.
‘Quiet,’ Nimue snarled at him, then she took a stick and poked it into the cauldron’s dark liquid which steamed gently above a small fire that was generating far more smoke than heat. She stirred the cauldron about, found whatever she wanted and levered it up from the liquid. I saw it was a human skull. ‘You remember Balise?’ Nimue asked me.
‘Of course,’ I said. Balise had been a Druid, an old man when I was young, and now long dead.
‘They burned his body,’ Nimue told me, ‘but not his head, and a Druid’s head, Derfel, is a thing of awesome power. A man brought it to me last week. He had it in a barrel of beeswax. I bought it from him.’
Which meant I had purchased the head. Nimue was forever buying objects of cultic power: the caul of a dead child, the teeth of a dragon, a piece of the Christian’s magical bread, elf bolts, and now a dead man’s head. She used to come to the palace and demand the money for these tawdry things, but I now found it easier to leave her with a little gold, even if it did mean that she would waste the metal on whatever oddity was offered her. She once paid a whole gold ingot for the carcass of a lamb that had been born with two heads, and she had nailed the carcass to the palisade where it overlooked the Christian shrine and there let it rot. I did not like to ask what she had paid for a barrel of wax containing a dead man’s head. ‘I stripped the wax away,’ she told me, ‘and boiled the flesh off the head in the pot.’
That in part explained the hut’s overwhelming stench. ‘There is no more powerful augury,’ she told me, her one eye glinting in the dark hut, ‘than a Druid’s head seethed in a pot of urine with the ten brown herbs of Crom Dubh.’ She let the skull go and it sank beneath the liquid’s dark surface. ‘Now, wait,’ she ordered me.
My head was reeling with the smoke and stench, but I obediently-waited as the liquid’s surface shivered, glinted and finally subsided until it was nothing but a dark sheen as smooth as a fine mirror with only a hint of steam drifting from its black surface. Nimue leaned close and held her breath, and I knew she was seeing portents in the liquid’s surface. The man on the pallet coughed horribly, then feebly clawed at a threadbare blanket to half cover his nakedness. ‘I’m hungry,’ he whined. Nimue ignored him. I waited. ‘I’m disappointed in you, Derfel,’ Nimue suddenly said, her breath just wrinkling the liquid’s surface.
‘Why?’
‘I see a Queen was burned to death on a seashore. I would have liked her ashes, Derfel,’ she said reprovingly. ‘I could have used a Queen’s ashes,’ she went on. ‘You should have known that.’ She fell silent and I said nothing. The liquid was still again, and when Nimue next spoke it was in a strange, deep voice that did not blur the black liquid’s surface at all. ‘Two Kings will come to Cadarn,’ she said, ‘but a man who is no King shall rule there. The dead will be taken in marriage, the lost will come to the light and a sword will lie on the neck of a child.’ Then she screamed terribly, startling the naked man who scuttled frantically into the furthest corner of the hut where he crouched with his hands covering his head. ‘Tell that to Merlin,’ Nimue said to me in her normal voice. ‘He’ll know what it means.’
‘I will tell him,’ I promised her.
‘And tell him,’ she said with a desperate fervour, clutching my arm with a dirt-encrusted claw of a hand, ‘that I have seen the Cauldron in the liquid. Tell him it will be used soon. Soon, Derfel! Tell him that.’
‘I will,’ I said, and then, unable to take the smell any more, I pulled away from her grip and backed out into the sleet.
She followed me out of the hut and plucked a wing of my cloak to cover herself from the sleet. She walked with me towards the broken water-gate and was oddly cheerful. ‘Everyone thinks we’re losing, Derfel,’ she said, ‘everyone thinks those filthy Christians are taking over the land. But they’re not. The Cauldron will be revealed soon, Merlin will be back and the power
will be loosed.’
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