Thirty-one prisoners remained, all Dumnonians, and Arthur counted down their ranks and chose six men: the fifth man, the tenth, the fifteenth, the twentieth, the twenty-fifth and the thirtieth. ‘Kill them,’ he ordered me coldly, and I marched the six men down to the church and added their corpses to the bloody pile. The rest of the captured prisoners knelt and, one by one, kissed Arthur’s sword to renew their oaths, though before each man kissed the blade he was forced to kneel before Nimue who branded his forehead with a spearhead that she kept fired to red heat in a cooking fire. The men were all thus marked as warriors who had rebelled against an oath-lord and the fire-scar on their foreheads meant they would be put to death if they ever proved false again. For now, their foreheads burned and hurting, they made dubious allies, but Arthur still led over eighty men, a small army.
Loholt waited on his knees. He was still very young, fresh-faced and with a skimpy beard that Arthur gripped and used to drag him to the royal stone that was all that remained of the old circle. He threw his son down by the stone. ‘Where is your brother?’ he demanded.
‘With Lancelot, Lord.’ Loholt trembled. He was terrified by the stench of burning skin.
‘And where is that?’
‘They went north, Lord.’ Loholt looked up at his father.
‘Then you can join them,’ Arthur said, and Loholt’s face showed utter relief that he was to live. ‘But tell me first,’ Arthur went on in a voice like ice, ‘just why you raised a hand against your father?’
‘They said you were dead, Lord.’
‘And what did you do, son, to avenge my death?’ Arthur asked, then waited for an answer, but Loholt had none. ‘And when you heard I was alive,’ Arthur went on, ‘why did you still oppose me?’
Loholt stared up at his father’s implacable face and from somewhere he found his courage. ‘You were never a father to us,’ he said bitterly.
Arthur’s face was wrenched by a spasm and I thought he was about to burst into a terrible rage, but when he spoke again his voice was oddly calm. ‘Put your right hand on the stone,’ he ordered Loholt. Loholt believed he was to take an oath and so he obediently placed his hand on the royal stone’s centre. Then Arthur drew Excalibur and Loholt understood what his father intended and snatched his hand back. ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘Please! No!’
‘Hold it there, Derfel,’ Arthur said.
Loholt struggled with me, but he was no match for my strength. I slapped his face to subdue him, then bared his right arm to the elbow and forced it flat onto the stone and there held it firm as Arthur raised the blade. Loholt was crying, ‘No, father! Please!’
But Arthur had no mercy that day. Not for many a day. ‘You raised your hand against your own father, Loholt, and for that you lose both the father and the hand. I disown you.’ And with that dreadful curse he slashed the sword down and a jet of blood spurted across the stone as Loholt twisted violently back. He shrieked as he snatched his bloody stump back and gazed in horror at his severed hand, then he whimpered in agony. ‘Bind it,’ Arthur ordered Nimue, ‘then the little fool can go.’ He walked away. I kicked the severed hand with its two pathetic warrior rings off the stone. Arthur had let Excalibur fall onto the grass, so I picked up the blade and laid it reverently across the patch of blood. That, I thought was proper. The right sword on the right stone, and it had taken so many years to put it there.
‘Now we wait,’ Arthur said grimly, ‘and let the bastard come to us.’
He still could not use Lancelot’s name.
Lancelot came two days later.
His rebellion was collapsing, though we did not know that yet. Sagramor, reinforced by the first two contingents of spearmen from Powys, had cut off Cerdic’s men at Corinium and the Saxon only escaped by making a desperate night march and still he lost more than fifty men to Sagramor’s vengeance. Cerdic’s frontier was still much further west than it had been, but the news that Arthur lived and had taken Caer Cadarn, and the threat of Sagramor’s implacable hatred, were enough to persuade Cerdic to abandon his ally Lancelot. He retreated to his new frontier and sent men to take what they could of Lancelot’s Belgic lands. Cerdic at least had profited from the rebellion. Lancelot brought his army to Caer Cadarn. The core of that army was Lancelot’s Saxon Guard and two hundred Belgic warriors, and they had been reinforced by a levy of hundreds of Christians who believed they were doing God’s work by serving Lancelot, but the news that Arthur had taken the Caer and the attacks that Morfans and Galahad were making south of Glevum confused and dispirited them. The Christians began to desert, though at least two hundred were still with Lancelot when he came at dusk two days after we had captured the royal hill. He still possessed a chance of keeping his new kingdom if only he dared to attack Arthur, but he hesitated, and in the next dawn Arthur sent me down with a message. I carried my shield upside down and tied a sprig of oak leaves on my spear to show that I came to talk, not fight, and a Belgic chieftain met me and swore to uphold my truce before leading me to the palace at Lindinis where Lancelot was lodging. I waited in the outer courtyard, watched there by sullen spearmen, while Lancelot tried to decide whether or not he should meet me. I waited over an hour, but at last Lancelot appeared. He was dressed in his white-enamelled scale armour, carried his gilded helmet under one arm and had the Christ-blade at his hip. Amhar and the bandaged Loholt stood behind him, his Saxon Guard and a dozen chieftains flanked him, and Bors, his champion, stood beside him. All of them reeked of defeat. I could smell it on them like rotting meat. Lancelot could have sealed us up in the Caer, turned and savaged Morfans and Galahad, then come back to starve us out, but he had lost his courage. He just wanted to survive. Sansum, I noted wryly, was nowhere to be seen. The mouse-lord knew when to lie low.
‘We meet again, Lord Derfel.’ Bors greeted me on his master’s behalf. I ignored Bors. ‘Lancelot,’ I addressed the King directly, but refused to honour him with his rank, ‘my Lord Arthur will grant your men mercy on one condition.’ I spoke loudly so that all the spearmen in the courtyard could hear me. Most of the warriors bore Lancelot’s sea-eagle on their shields, but some had crosses painted on their shields or else the twin curves of the fish. ‘The condition for that mercy,’ I went on, ‘is that you fight our champion, man on man, sword on sword, and it you live you may go free and your men may go with you, and if you die then your men will still go free. Even if you choose not to fight, then your men will still be pardoned, all but those who were once oath-sworn to our Lord King Mordred. They will be killed.’ It was a subtle offer. If Lancelot fought then he saved the lives of the men who had changed sides to support him, while if he backed down from the challenge then he would condemn them to death and his precious reputation would suffer.
Lancelot glanced at Bors, then back at me. I despised him so much at that moment. He should have been fighting us, not shuffling his feet in Lindinis’s outer courtyard, but he had been dazzled by Arthur’s daring. He did not know how many men we had, he could only see that the Caer’s ramparts bristled with spears and so the fight had drained out of him. He leaned close to his cousin and they exchanged words. Lancelot looked back to me after Bors had spoken to him and his face flickered in a half smile. ‘My champion, Bors,’ he said, ‘accepts Arthur’s challenge.’
‘The offer is for you to fight,’ I said, ‘not for someone to tie and slaughter your tame hog.’
Bors growled at that, and half drew his sword, but the Belgic chief who had guaranteed my safety stepped forward with a spear and Bors subsided.
‘And Arthur’s champion,’ Lancelot asked, ‘would that be Arthur himself?’
‘No,’ I said, and smiled. ‘I begged for that honour,’ I told him, ‘and I received it. I wanted it for the insult you gave to Ceinwyn. You thought to parade her naked through Ynys Wydryn, but I shall drag your naked corpse through all Dumnonia. And as for my daughter,’ I went on, ‘her death is already avenged. Your Druids lie dead on their left sides, Lancelot. Their bodies are unburned and their souls wander.’
Lancelot spat at my feet. ‘Tell Arthur,’ he said, ‘that I will send my answer at midday.’ He turned away.
‘And do you have a message for Guinevere?’ I asked him, and the question made him turn back.
‘Your lover is on the Caer,’ I told him. ‘Do you want to know what will happen to her? Arthur has told me her fate.’
He stared at me with loathing, spat again, then just turned and walked away. I did the same. I went back to the Caer and found Arthur on the rampart above the western gate where, so many years before, he had talked to me of a soldier’s duty. That duty, he had said, was to fight battles for those who could not fight for themselves. That was his creed, and through all these years he had fought for the child Mordred and now, at last, he fought for himself, and in so doing he lost all that he had most wanted. I gave him Lancelot’s answer and he nodded, said nothing, and waved me away. Late that morning Guinevere sent Gwydre to summon me. The child climbed the ramparts where I stood with my men and tugged at my cloak. ‘Uncle Derfel?’ He peered up at me wanly. ‘Mother wants you.’ He spoke fearfully and there were tears in his eyes.
I glanced at Arthur, but he was taking no interest in any of us and so I went down the steps and walked with Gwydre to the spearman’s hut. It must have cut Guinevere’s wounded pride to the quick to ask for me, but she wanted to convey a message to Arthur and she knew that no one else in Caer Cadarn was as close to him as I. She stood as I ducked through the door. I bowed to her, then waited as she told Gwydre to go and talk with his father.
The hut was only just high enough for Guinevere to stand upright. Her face was drawn, almost haggard, but somehow that sadness gave her a luminous beauty that her usual look of pride denied her.
‘Nimue tells me you saw Lancelot,’ she said so softly that I had to lean forward to catch her words.
‘Yes, Lady, I did.’
Her right hand was unconsciously fidgeting with the folds of her dress. ‘Did he send a message?’
‘None, Lady.’
She stared at me with her huge green eyes. ‘Please, Derfel,’ she said softly.
‘I invited him to speak, Lady. He said nothing.’
She crumpled onto a crude bench. She was silent for a while and I watched as a spider dropped out of the thatch and spun its thread closer and closer to her hair. I was transfixed by the insect, wondering if I should sweep it aside or just let it be. ‘What did you say to him?’ she asked.
‘I offered to fight him, Lady, man to man, Hywelbane against the Christ-blade. And then I promised to drag his naked body through all Dumnonia.’
She shook her head savagely. ‘Fight,’ she said angrily, ‘that’s all you brutes know how to do!’ She closed her eyes for a few seconds. ‘I am sorry, Lord Derfel,’ she said meekly, ‘I should not insult you, not when I need you to ask a favour of Lord Arthur.’ She looked up at me and I saw she was every bit as broken as Arthur himself. ‘Will you?’ she begged me.
‘What favour, Lady’’
‘Ask him to let me go, Derfel. Tell him I will sail beyond the sea. Tell him he may keep our son, and that he is our son, and that I will go away and he will never see me or hear of me again.’
‘I shall ask him, Lady,’ I said.
She caught the doubt in my voice and stared sadly at me. The spider had disappeared into her thick red hair. ‘You think he will refuse?’ she asked in a small frightened voice.
‘Lady,’ I said, ‘he loves you. He loves you so well that I do not think he can ever let you go.’
A tear showed at her eye, then spilled down her cheek. ‘So what will he do with me?’ she asked, and I gave no answer. ‘What will he do, Derfel?’ Guinevere demanded again with some of her old energy.
‘Tell me!’
‘Lady,’ I said heavily, ‘he will put you somewhere safe and he will keep you there, under guard.’ And every day, I thought, he would think of her, and every night he would conjure her in his dreams, and in every dawn he would turn in his bed to find that she was gone. ‘You will be well treated, Lady,’ I assured her gently.
‘No,’ she wailed. She could have expected death, but this promise of imprisonment seemed even worse to her. ‘Tell him to let me go, Derfel. Just tell him to let me go!’
‘I shall ask him,’ I promised her, ‘but I do not think he will. I do not think he can.’
She was crying hard now, her head in her hands, and though I waited, she said nothing more and so I backed out of the hut. Gwydre had found his father’s company too glum and so wanted to go back in to his mother, but I took him away and made him help me clean and re-sharpen Excalibur. Poor Gwydre was frightened, for he did not understand what had happened and neither Guinevere nor Arthur was able to explain. ‘Your mother is very sick,’ I told him, ‘and you know that sick people sometimes have to be on their own.’ I smiled at him. ‘Maybe you can come and live with Morwenna and Seren.’
‘Can I?”‘
‘I think your mother and father will say yes,’ I said, ‘and I’d like that. Now don’t scrub the sword!
Sharpen it. Long smooth strokes, like that!’
At midday I went to the western gate and watched for Lancelot’s messenger. But none came. No one came. Lancelot’s army was just shredding away like sand washed off a stone by rain. A few went south and Lancelot rode with those men and the swan’s wings on his helmet showed bright and white as he went away, but most of the men came to the meadow at the foot of the Caer and there they laid down their spears, their shields and their swords and then knelt in the grass for Arthur’s mercy.
‘You’ve won, Lord,’ I said.
‘Yes, Derfel,’ he said, still sitting, ‘it looks as if I have.’ His new beard, so oddly grey, made him look older. Not feebler, but older and harsher. It suited him. Above his head a stir of wind lifted the banner of the bear.
I sat beside him. ‘The Princess Guinevere,’ I said, watching as the enemy’s army laid down their weapons and knelt below us, ‘begged me to ask you a favour.’ He said nothing. He did not even look at me. ‘She wants — ’
‘To go away,’ he interrupted me.
‘Yes, Lord.’
‘With her sea-eagle,’ he said bitterly.
‘She did not say that, Lord.’
‘Where else would she go?’ he asked, then turned his cold eyes on me. ‘Did he ask for her?’
‘No, Lord. He said nothing.’
Arthur laughed at that, but it was a cruel laugh. ‘Poor Guinevere,’ he said, ‘poor, poor Guinevere. He doesn’t love her, does he? She was just something beautiful for him, another mirror in which to stare at his own beauty. That must hurt her, Derfel, that must hurt her.’
‘She begs you to free her,’ I persevered, as I had promised I would. ‘She will leave Gwydre to you, she will go. .’
‘She can make no conditions,’ Arthur said angrily. ‘None.’
‘No, Lord,’ I said. I had done my best for her and I had failed.
‘She will stay in Dumnonia,’ Arthur decreed.
‘Yes, Lord.’
‘And you will stay here too,’ he ordered me harshly. Mordred might release you from his oath, but I do not. You are my man, Derfel, you are my councillor and you will stay here with me. From this day on you are my champion.’
I turned to look at where the newly-cleaned and sharpened sword lay on the royal stone. ‘Am I still a King’s champion, Lord?’ I asked.
‘We already have a king,’ he said, ‘and I will not break that oath, but I will rule this country. No one else, Derfel, just me’
I thought of the bridge at Pontes where we had crossed the river before fighting Aelle. ‘If you won’t be King, Lord,’ I said, ‘then you shall be our Emperor. You shall be a Lord of Kings.’
He smiled. It was the first smile I had seen on his face since Nimue had swept aside the black curtain in the Sea Palace. It was a wan smile, but it was there. Nor did he refuse my title. The Emperor Arthur, Lord of Kings.
Lancelot was gone and what had
been his army now knelt to us in terror. Their banners were fallen, their spears were grounded and their shields lay flat. The madness had swept across Dumnonia like a thunderstorm, but it had passed and Arthur had won and below us, under a high summer sun, a whole army knelt for his mercy. It was what Guinevere had once dreamed of. It was Dumnonia at Arthur’s feet with his sword on its royal stone, but it was too late now. Too late for her. But for us, who had kept our oaths, it was what we had always wanted, for now, in all but name, Arthur was King.
The story of Arthur continues in the third volume of The Warlord Chronicles
— Excalibur~
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Cauldron stories are common in Celtic folk-tales, and their quest was liable to send bands of warriors to dark and dangerous places. Ciichulain, that great Irish hero, is said to have stolen a magic cauldron from a mighty fortress, and similar themes recur in Welsh myth. The source of those myths is now quite impossible to disentangle, but we can be fairly certain that the popular medieval tales of the search for the Holy Grail were merely a Christianized re-working of the much older cauldron myths. One such tale involves the cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn, which was one of the Thirteen Treasures of Britain. Those treasures have disappeared from the modern re-tellings of the Arthurian saga, but they were firmly there in earlier times. The list of the Treasures varies from source to source, so I compiled a fairly representative sample, though Nimue’s explanation of their origins on page 100 is entirely an invention. Cauldrons and magical treasures tell us that we are in pagan territory, which makes it odd that the later Arthur tales are so heavily Christianized. Was Arthur the ‘enemy of God’? Some early tales do indeed suggest that the Celtic church was hostile to Arthur; thus in the Life of St Padarn Arthur is said to have stolen the saint’s red tunic and only agreed to return it after the saint had buried him up to the neck. Arthur is similarly supposed to have stolen St Carannog’s altar to use as a dining table; indeed, in many saints’ lives, Arthur is depicted as a tyrant who is only thwarted by the holy man’s piety or prayers. St Cadoc was evidently a famous opponent whose Life boasts of the number of times he defeated Arthur, including one fairly distasteful story in which Arthur, interrupted during a game of dice by fleeing lovers, attempts to rape the girl. This Arthur, a thief, liar, and would-be rapist, is clearly not the Arthur of modern legend, but the stones do suggest that Arthur had somehow earned the strong dislike of the early church and the simplest explanation of that dislike is that Arthur was a pagan. We cannot be sure of that, any more than we can guess what kind of pagan he was. The native British religion, Druidism, had been so abraded by four centuries of Roman rule that it was a mere husk by the late fifth century, though doubtless it clung on in the rural parts of Britain. Druidism’s ‘dolorous blow’ was the black year of ad6o, when the Romans stormed Ynys Mon (Anglesey) and so destroyed the faith’s cultic centre. Llyn Cerrig Bach, the Lake of Little Stones, existed, and archaeology has suggested it was an important place for Druidic rituals, but alas, the lake and its surrounding features were all obliterated during the Second World War when the Valley Airfield was extended.
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