Dumnonia, in that summer, was like a giant throwboard and Lancelot had thrown his pieces well, taking half the board with his opening throw. He had surrendered the valley of the Thames to the Saxons, but the rest of the country was now his, thanks to the Christians who had blindly fought for him because his shield displayed their mystical emblem of a fish. I doubted that Lancelot was any more of a Christian than Mordred had been, but Sansum’s missionaries had spread their insidious message and, as far as Dumnonia’s poor deceived Christians were concerned, Lancelot was the harbinger of Christ. Lancelot had not won every point. His plot to kill Arthur had failed, and while Arthur lived Lancelot was in danger, but on the day after I arrived in Glevum he tried to sweep the throwboard clean. He tried to win it all.

He sent a horseman with an upturned shield and a sprig of mistletoe tied to his spear-point. The rider carried a message that summoned Arthur to Dun Ceinach, an ancient earth fortress that reared its summit just a few miles south of Glevum’s ramparts. The message demanded that Arthur go to the ancient fort that very same day, it swore his safety and it allowed him to bring as many spearmen as he wished. The message’s imperious tone almost invited refusal, but it finished by promising Arthur news of Guinevere, and Lancelot must have known that promise would bring Arthur out of Glevum. He left an hour later. Twenty of us rode with him, all of us in full armour beneath a blazing sun. Great white clouds sailed above the hills that rose steep from the eastern side of Severn’s wide valley. We could have followed the tracks that twisted up into those hills, but they led through too many places where an ambush might be set and so we took the road south along the valley, a Roman road that ran between fields where poppies blazed among the growing rye and barley. After an hour we turned east and cantered beside a hedge that was white with hawthorn blossom, then across a hay meadow almost ready for the sickle, and so we reached the steep grassy slope that was topped by the ancient fort. Sheep scattered as we climbed the slope, which was so precipitous that I preferred to slide off my horse’s back and lead it by the reins. Bee orchids blossomed pink and brown among the grass. We stopped a hundred paces below the summit and I climbed on alone to make sure that no ambush waited behind the fort’s long grassy walls. I was panting and sweating by the time I gained the wall’s summit, but no enemy crouched behind the bank. Indeed the old fort seemed deserted except for two hares that fled from my sudden appearance. The silence of the hilltop made me cautious, but then a single horseman appeared among some low trees that grew in the northern part of the fort. He carried a spear that he ostentatiously threw down, turned his shield upside down, then slid off his horse’s back. A dozen men followed him out of the trees and they too threw down their spears as if to reassure me that their promise of a truce was genuine.

I waved Arthur up. His horses breasted the wall, then he and I walked forward. Arthur was in his finest armour. He did not appear here as a supplicant, but as a warrior in a white-plumed helmet and a silvered coat of scale armour.

Two men walked to meet us. I had expected to see Lancelot himself, but instead it was his cousin and champion, Bors, who approached us. Bors was a tall black-haired man, heavily bearded, broad-shouldered, and a capable warrior who thrust through life like a bull where his master slid like a snake. I had no dislike of Bors nor he of me, but our loyalties dictated that we should be enemies. Bors nodded a curt greeting. He was in armour, but his companion was dressed in priest’s robes. It was Bishop Sansum. That surprised me, for Sansum usually took good care to disguise his loyalties and I thought our little mouse-lord must be very confident of victory if he displayed his allegiance to Lancelot so openly. Arthur gave Sansum a dismissive glance, then looked at Bors. ‘You have news of my wife,’

he said curtly.

‘She lives,’ Bors said, ‘and she is safe. So is your son.’

Arthur closed his eyes. He could not hide his relief, indeed for a moment he could not even speak.

‘Where are they?’ he asked when he had collected himself.

‘At her Sea Palace,’ Bors said, ‘under guard.’

‘You keep women prisoners?’ I asked scornfully.

‘They are under guard, Derfel,’ Bors answered just as scornfully, ‘because Dumnonia’s Christians are slaughtering their enemies. And those Christians, Lord Arthur, have no love for your wife. My Lord King Lancelot has your wife and son under his protection.’

‘Then your Lord King Lancelot,’ Arthur said with just a trace of sarcasm, ‘can have them brought north under escort.’

‘No,’ Bors said. He was bare-headed and the heat of the sun was making the sweat run down his broad, scarred face.

‘No?’ Arthur asked dangerously.

‘I have a message for you, Lord,’ Bors said defiantly, ‘and the message is this. My Lord King grants you the right to live in Dumnonia with your wife. You will be treated with honour, but only if you swear an oath of loyalty to my King.’ He paused and glanced up into the sky. It was one of those portentous days when the moon shared the sky with the sun and he gestured towards the moon that was swollen somewhere between the half and the full. ‘You have,’ he said, ‘until the moon is full to present yourself to my Lord King at Caer Cadarn. You may come with no more than ten men, you will swear your oath, and you may then live under his dominion in peace.’

I spat to show my opinion of his promise, but Arthur held up a hand to still my anger. ‘And if I do not come?’ he asked.

Another man might have been ashamed to deliver the message, but Bors showed no qualms. ‘If you do not come,’ he said, ‘then my Lord King will presume that you are at war with him, in which case he will need every spear he can collect. Even those who now guard your wife and child.’

‘So his Christians,’ Arthur jerked his chin towards Sansum, ‘can kill them?’

‘She can always be baptized!’ Sansum put in. He clutched the cross that hung over his black robe. ‘I will guarantee her safety if she is baptized.’

Arthur stared at him. Then, very deliberately, he spat full in San-sum’s face. The Bishop jerked back. Bors, I noticed, was amused and I suspected little affection was lost between Lancelot’s champion and his chaplain. Arthur looked again at Bors. ‘Tell me of Mordred,’ he demanded. Bors looked surprised at the question. ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ he said after a pause. ‘He’s dead.’

‘You’ve seen his body?’ Arthur asked.

Bors hesitated again, then shook his head. ‘He was killed by a man whose daughter he had raped. Beyond that I know nothing. Except that my Lord King came into Dumnonia to quell the riots that followed the killing.’ He paused as if he expected Arthur to say something more, but when nothing was said he just looked up at the moon. ‘You have till the full,’ he said and turned away.

‘One minute!’ I called, turning Bors back. ‘What of me?’ I asked.

Bors’s hard eyes stared into mine. ‘What of you?’ he said scornfully.

‘Does the killer of my daughter demand an oath of me?’ I asked.

‘My Lord King wants nothing of you,’ Bors said.

‘Then tell him,’ I said, ‘that I want something of him. Tell him I want the souls of Dinas and Lavaine, and if it is the last thing I do on this earth, I shall take them.’

Bors shrugged as though their deaths meant nothing to him, then looked back to Arthur. ‘We shall be waiting at Caer Cadarn, Lord,’ he said, then walked away. Sansum stayed to shout at us, telling us that Christ was coming in his glory and that all pagans and sinners would be wiped clean from the earth before that happy day. I spat at him, then turned and followed Arthur. Sansum dogged us, shouting at our heels, but then suddenly called my name. I ignored him. ‘Lord Derfel!’ he called again, ‘you whoremaster! You whore-lover!’ He must have known those insults would draw me back to him in anger, and though he did not want my anger, he did want my attention. ‘I meant nothing, Lord,’ he said hastily as I hurried back towards him. ‘I must talk with you. Quickly.’ He glanced behind to make sure Bors was out of earshot, then gave another bellow demanding my repentance just to make certain that Bors thought he was harassing me. ‘I thought you and Arthur were dead,’ he said in a low voice.

‘You arranged our deaths,’ I accused him.

He blanched. ‘On my soul, Derfel, no! No!’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘May the angels tear out my tongue and feed it to the devil if it lies to you. I swear by Almighty God, Derfel, that I knew nothing.’

That lie told, he glanced round again, then looked back to me. ‘Dinas and Lavaine,’ he said softly, ‘stand guard over Guinevere at the Sea Palace. Remember it was I, Lord, who told you that.’

I smiled. ‘You don’t want Bors to know you betrayed that knowledge to me, do you?’

‘No, Lord, please!’

‘Then this should convince him of your innocence,’ I said, and gave the mouse-lord a box round his ears that must have had his head ringing like the great bell at his shrine. He spun down to the turf from where he shrieked curses at me as I walked away. I understood now why Sansum had come to this high fortress beneath the sky. The mouse-lord could see clearly enough that Arthur’s survival threatened Lancelot’s new throne and no man could blithely keep his faith in a master who was opposed by Arthur. Sansum, just like his wife, was making sure I owed him thanks.

‘What was that about?’ Arthur asked me when I caught up with him.

‘He told me Dinas and Lavaine are at the Sea Palace. They guard Guinevere.’

Arthur grunted, then looked up at the sun-blanched moon hanging above us. ‘How many nights till the full, Derfel?’

‘Five?’ I guessed. ‘Six? Merlin will know.’

‘Six days to decide,’ he said, then stopped and stared at me. ‘Will they dare kill her?’

‘No, Lord,’ I said, hoping I was right. ‘They daren’t make an enemy out of you. They want you to come to take their oath and then they’ll kill you. After that they might kill her.’

‘And if I don’t come,’ he said softly, ‘they’ll still hold her. And so long as they hold her, Derfel, I’m helpless.’

‘You have a sword, Lord, and a spear and a shield. No man would call you helpless.’

Behind us Bors and his men clambered into their saddles and rode away. We stayed a few moments longer to gaze west from Dun Ceinach’s ramparts. It was one of the most beautiful views in all Britain, a hawk’s-eye view west across the Severn and deep into distant Siluria. We could see for miles and miles, and from this high place it looked so sunlit, green and beautiful. It was a place to fight for. And we had six nights till the moon was full.

‘Seven nights,’ Merlin said.

‘You’re sure?’ Arthur asked.

‘Maybe six,’ Merlin allowed. ‘I do hope you don’t expect me to make the computation? It’s a very tedious business. I did it often enough for Uther and almost always got it wrong. Six or seven, near enough. Maybe eight.’

‘Malaine will work it out,’ Cuneglas said. We had returned from Dun Ceinach to rind that Cuneglas had come from Powys. He had brought Malaine with him after meeting the Druid who had been accompanying Ceinwyn and the other women northwards. The King of Powys had embraced me and sworn his own revenge on Dinas and Lavaine. He had brought sixty spearmen in his entourage and told us another hundred were already following him southwards. More would come, he said, for Cuneglas expected to fight and he was generously providing every warrior he commanded. His sixty warriors now squatted with Arthur’s men around the edges of Glevum’s great hall as their lords talked in the hall’s centre. Only Sagramor was not there, for he was with his remaining spearmen harrying Cerdic’s army near Corinium. Meurig was present, and unable to hide his annoyance that Merlin had taken the large chair at the head of the table. Cuneglas and Arthur flanked Merlin, Meurig faced Merlin down the table’s length and Culhwch and I had the other two places. Culhwch had come to Glevum with Cuneglas and his arrival had been like a gust of fresh clean air in a smoky hall. He could not wait to fight. He declared that with Mordred dead Arthur was King of Dumnonia and Culhwch was ready to wade through blood to protect his cousin’s throne. Cuneglas and I shared that belligerence, Meurig squeaked about prudence, Arthur said nothing, while Merlin appeared to be asleep. I doubted he was sleeping for a small smile showed on his face, but his eyes were closed as he pretended to be blissfully unaware of all we said.

Culhwch scorned Bors’s message. He insisted Lancelot would never kill Guinevere, and that all Arthur needed to do was ride south at the head of his men and the throne would fall into his hands. ‘Tomorrow!’

Culhwch told Arthur. ‘We’ll ride tomorrow. It’ll all be over in two days.’

Cuneglas was slightly more cautious, advising Arthur that he should wait for the rest of his Powysian spearmen to arrive, but once those men had come he was sure we should declare war and go southwards. ‘How big is Lancelot’s army?’ he asked.

Arthur shrugged. ‘Not counting Cerdic’s men? Maybe three hundred?’

‘Nothing!’ Culhwch roared. ‘Have them dead before breakfast.’

‘And a lot of fiery Christians,’ Arthur warned him.

Culhwch offered an opinion of Christians that had the Christian Meurig spluttering with indignation. Arthur calmed the young King of Gwent. ‘You’re all forgetting something,’ he said mildly. ‘I never wanted to be King. I still don’t.’

There was a momentary silence around the table, though some of the warriors at the hall’s edge muttered a protest at Arthur’s words. ‘Whatever you might want,’ Cuneglas broke our silence, ‘does not matter any more. The Gods, its seems, have made that decision for you.’

‘If the Gods wanted me to be King,’ Arthur said, ‘they would have arranged for my mother to have been married to Uther.’

‘So what do you want?’ Culhwch bellowed in despair.

‘I want Guinevere and Gwydre back,’ Arthur said softly. ‘And Cerdic defeated,’ he added before staring down at the table’s scarred top for a moment. ‘I want to live,’ he went on, ‘like an ordinary man. With a wife and a son and a house and a farm. I want peace,’ and for once he was not talking of all Britain, but just of himself. ‘I don’t want to be tangled in oaths, I don’t want to be forever dealing with men’s ambitions and I don’t want to be the arbiter of men’s happiness any more. I just want to do what King Tewdric did. I want to find a green place and live there.’

‘And rot away?’ Merlin gave up his pretence of sleep.

Arthur smiled. ‘There is so much to learn, Merlin. Why does a man make two swords from the same metal in the same fire and one blade will be true and the other will bend in its first battle? There is so much to find out.’

‘He wants to be a blacksmith,’ Merlin said to Culhwch.

‘What I want is Guinevere and Gwydre back,’ Arthur declared firmly.

‘Then you must take Lancelot’s oath,’ Meurig said.

‘If he goes to Caer Cadarn to take Lancelot’s oath,’ I said bitterly, ‘he’ll be met by a hundred armed men and cut down like a dog.’

‘Not if I take Kings with me,’ Arthur said gently.

We all stared at him and he seemed surprised that we had been nonplussed by his words. ‘Kings?’

Culhwch finally broke the silence.

Arthur smiled. ‘If my Lord King Cuneglas and my Lord King Meurig were to ride with me to Caer Cadarn then I doubt that Lancelot would dare to kill me. If he’s faced by the Kings of Britain he will have to talk, and if he talks we shall come to an agreement. He fears me, but if he discovers there is nothing to fear, he will let me live. And he will let my family live.’

There was another silence while we digested that, then Culhwch roared a protest. ‘You’d let that bastard Lancelot be King?’ Some of the spearmen at the hall’s edge growled their agreement.

‘Cousin, cousin!’ Arthur soothed Culhwch. ‘Lancelot is not an evil man. He’s weak, I think, but not evil. He doesn’t make plans, he has no dreams, but only a greedy eye and quick hands. He snatches things as they appear, then hoards them and waits for another thing to snatch. He wants me dead now, because he fears me, but when he discovers the price of my death is too high, then he’ll accept what he can get.’

‘He’ll accept your death, you fool!’ Culhwch hammered the table with his fist. ‘He’ll tell you a thousand lies, protest his friendship and slide a sword between your ribs the moment your Kings have gone home.’

‘He’ll lie to me,’ Arthur agreed placidly. ‘All kings lie. No kingdom could be ruled without lies, for lies are the things we use to build our reputations. We pay the bards to make our squalid victories into great triumphs and sometimes we even believe the lies they sing to us. Lancelot would love to believe all those songs, but the truth is that he’s weak and he desperately craves strong friends. He fears me now, for he assumes my enmity, but when he discovers I am not an enemy then he will also find that he needs me. He will need every man he can find if he’s to rid Dumnonia of Cerdic’

‘And who invited Cerdic into Dumnonia?’ Culhwch protested. ‘Lancelot did!’

‘And he’ll regret it soon,’ Arthur said calmly. ‘He used Cerdic to snatch his prize, and he’ll find Cerdic is a dangerous ally.’

‘You’d fight for Lancelot?’ I asked, horrified.

‘I will fight for Britain,’ Arthur said firmly. ‘I can’t ask men to die to make me what I don’t want to be, but I can ask them to fight for their homes and their wives and their children. And that’s what I fight for. For Guinevere. And to defeat Cerdic, and once he is defeated, what does it matter if Lancelot rules Dumnonia? Someone has to and I dare say he’ll make a better King that Mordred ever did.’ Again there was silence. A hound whined at the edge of the hall and a spearman sneezed. Arthur looked at us and saw we were still bemused. ‘If I fight Lancelot,’ he told us, ‘then we go back to the Britain we had before Lugg Vale. A Britain in which we fight each other instead of the Saxons. There is only one principle here, and that is Uther’s old insistence that the Saxons must be kept from the Severn Sea. And now,’ he said vigorously, ‘the Saxons are closer to the Severn than they’ve ever been. If I tight for a throne I don’t want I give Cerdic the chance to take Corinium and then this city, and if he does take Cilevum then he has split us into two parts. If I fight Lancelot then the Saxons will win everything. They’ll take Dumnonia and Gwent and after that they’ll go north into Powys.’

‘Exactly.’ Meurig applauded Arthur.

‘I won’t fight for Lancelot,’ I said angrily and Culhwch applauded me. Arthur smiled at me. ‘My dear friend Derfel, I would not expect you to fight for Lancelot, though I do want your men to fight Cerdic. And my price for helping Lancelot defeat Cerdic is that he gives you Dinas and Lavaine.’

I stared at him. I had not understood till that moment just how far ahead he had been thinking. The rest of us had seen nothing but Lancelot’s treachery, but Arthur was thinking only of Britain and of the desperate need to keep the Saxons away from the Severn. He would brush Lancelot’s hostility aside, force my revenge on him, then go on with the work of defeating Saxons.

‘And the Christians?’ Culhwch asked derisively. ‘You think they’ll let you back into Dumnonia? You think those bastards won’t build a bonfire for you?’

Meurig squawked another protest that Arthur stilled. ‘The Christian fervour will spend itself,’ Arthur said. ‘It’s like a madness, and once it’s exhausted they’ll go home to pick up the pieces of their lives. And once Cerdic is defeated Lancelot can pacify Dumnonia. I shall just live with my family, which is all I want.’

Cuneglas had been leaning back in his chair to stare at the remaining patches of Roman paintings on the hall’s ceiling. Now he straightened and looked at Arthur. ‘Tell me again what you want,’ he asked softly.

‘I want the Britons at peace,’ Arthur said patiently, ‘and I want Cerdic pushed back, and I want my family.’

Cuneglas looked at Merlin. ‘Well, Lord?’ he invited the old man’s judgment. Merlin had been tying two of his beard braids into knots, but now he looked mildly startled and hastily untangled the strands. ‘I doubt that the Gods want what Arthur wants,’ he said. ‘You are all forgetting the Cauldron.’

‘This has nothing to do with the Cauldron,’ Arthur said firmly.

‘It has everything to do with it,’ Merlin said with a sudden and surprising harshness, ‘and the Cauldron brings chaos. You desire order, Arthur, and you think that Lancelot will listen to your reason and that Cerdic will submit to your sword, but your reasonable order will no more work in the future than it worked in the past. Do you really think men and women thanked you for bringing them peace? They just became bored with your peace and so brewed their own trouble to fill the boredom. Men don’t want peace, Arthur, they want distraction from tedium, while you desire tedium like a thirsty man seeks mead. Your reason won’t defeat the Gods, and the Gods will make sure of that. You think you can crawl away to a homestead and play at being a blacksmith? No.’ Merlin gave an evil smile and picked up his long black staff. ‘Even at this moment,’ Merlin said, ‘the Gods are making trouble for you.’ He pointed the staff at the hall’s front doors. ‘Behold your trouble, Arthur ap Uther.’

We all turned to see Galahad standing in the doorway. He was clothed in mail armour, had a sword at his side and spatters of mud up to his waist. And with him was a miserable, club-footed, squashed-nosed, round-faced, skimpy-bearded brush-head.

For Mordred still lived.

There was an astonished silence. Mordred limped into the hall and his small eyes betrayed his resentment for the lack of welcome. Arthur just stared at his oath-lord and I knew he was undoing in his head all the careful plans he had just described to us. There could be no reasonable peace with Lancelot, for Arthur’s oath-lord still lived. Dumnonia still possessed a King, and it was not Lancelot. It was Mordred and Mordred had Arthur’s oath.

Then the silence broke as men gathered round the King to discover his news. Galahad stepped aside to embrace me. ‘Thank God you live,’ he said with heartfelt relief.

I smiled at my friend. ‘Do you expect me to thank you for saving my King’s life?’ I asked him.

‘Someone should, for he hasn’t. He’s an ungrateful little beast,’ Galahad said. ‘God knows why he lives and so many good men died. Llywarch, Bedwyr, Dagonet, Blaise. All gone.’ He was naming those of Arthur’s warriors who had been killed in Durnovaria. Some of the deaths I had already known, others were new to me, but Galahad did know more about the manner of their deaths. He had been in Durnovaria when the rumour of Mordred’s death had sparked the Christians into riot, but Galahad swore there had been spearmen among the rioters. He believed Lancelot’s men had infiltrated the town under the guise of pilgrims travelling to Ynys Wydryn and that those spearmen had led the massacre. ‘Most of Arthur’s men were in the taverns,’ he said, ‘and they stood little chance. A few survived, but God alone knows where they are now.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘This isn’t Christ’s doing, Derfel, you do know that, don’t you? It’s the devil at work.’ He gave me a pained, almost frightened look. ‘Is it true about Dian?’

‘True,’ I said. Galahad embraced me wordlessly. He had never married and had no children, but he loved my daughters. He loved all children. ‘Dinas and Lavaine killed her,’ I told him, ‘and they live still.’

‘My sword is yours,’ he said.

‘I know it,’ I said.

‘And if this was Christ’s doing,’ Galahad said earnestly, ‘then Dinas and Lavaine would not be serving Lancelot.’

‘I don’t blame your God,’ I told him. ‘I don’t blame any God.’ I turned to watch the commotion around Mordred. Arthur was shouting for silence and order, servants had been sent to bring food and clothes fit for a King and other men were trying to hear his news. ‘Didn’t Lancelot demand your oath?’ I asked Galahad.

‘He didn’t know I was in Durnovaria. I was staying with Bishop Emrys and the Bishop gave me a monk’s robe to wear over this,’ he patted his mail coat, ‘then I went north. Poor Emrys is distraught. He thinks his Christians have gone mad and I think they have too. I suppose I could have stayed and fought, but I didn’t. I ran. I had heard that you and Arthur were dead, but I didn’t believe it. I thought I’d find you, but I found our King instead.’ He told me how Mordred had been hunting boar north of Durnovaria, and Lancelot, Galahad believed, had sent men to intercept the King as he returned to Durnovaria; but some village girl had taken Mordred’s fancy and by the time he and his companions were done with her it was near dark, and so he had commandeered the village’s largest house and ordered food. His assassins had waited at the city’s northern gate while Mordred feasted a dozen miles away, and some time during that evening Lancelot’s men must have decided to start the killing even though the Dumnonian King had somehow escaped their ambush. They had spread a rumour of his death and used that rumour to justify Lancelot’s usurpation.

Mordred heard of the troubles when the first fugitives arrived from Durnovaria. Most of his companions had melted away, the villagers were summoning the courage to kill the King who had raped one of their girls and stolen much of their food, and Mordred had panicked. He and his last friends fled north in villagers’ clothes. ‘They were trying to reach Caer Cadarn,’ Galahad told me, ‘reckoning they’d find loyal spearmen there, but they found me instead. I was aiming to reach your house, but we heard your folk had fled, so I brought him north.’

‘Did you see Saxons?’

He shook his head. ‘They’re in the Thames Valley. We avoided it.’ He stared at the jostling crowd around Mordred. ‘So what happens now?’ he asked.

Mordred had firm ideas. He was robed in a borrowed cloak and sitting at the table where he crammed bread and salt beef into his mouth. He was demanding that Arthur march south immediately, and whenever Arthur tried to interrupt, the King would slap the table and repeat his demand. ‘Are you denying your oath?’ Mordred finally shouted at Arthur, spewing half chewed scraps of bread and beef.

‘The Lord Arthur,’ Cuneglas answered acidly, ‘is trying to preserve his wife and child.’

Mordred looked blankly at the Powysian King. ‘Above my kingdom?’ he finally asked.

‘If Arthur goes to war,’ Cuneglas explained to Mordred, ‘Guinevere and Gwydre die.’

‘So we do nothing?’ Mordred screamed. He was hysterical.

‘We give the matter thought,’ Arthur said bitterly.

‘Thought?’ Mordred shouted, then stood up. ‘You’ll just think while that bastard rules my land? Do you have an oath?’ he demanded of Arthur. ‘And what use are these men if you won’t fight?’ He waved at the spearmen who now stood in a ring about the table. ‘You’ll fight for me, that’s what you’ll do!

That’s what your oath demands. You’ll fight!’ He slapped the table again. ‘You don’t think! You fight!’

I had taken enough. Perhaps the dead soul of my daughter came to me at that moment, for almost without thinking I strode forward and unbuckled my sword belt. I stripped Hywelbane oft the belt, threw the sword down, then folded the leather strap in two. Mordred watched me and spluttered a feeble protest as I approached him, but no one moved to stop me.

I reached my King’s side, paused, then struck him hard across the face with the doubled belt. ‘That,’ I said, ‘is not in return for the blows you gave me, but for my daughter, and this,’ - I struck him again, much harder - ‘is for your failure to keep the oath to guard your kingdom.’

Spearmen bellowed approval. Mordred’s lower lip was trembling as it had when he had taken all those beatings as a child. His cheeks were reddened from the blows and a trickle of blood showed at a tiny cut under his eye. He touched a finger to that blood, then spat a gob of half-chewed beef and bread into my face. ‘You’ll die for that,’ he promised me, and then, in a swelling rage, he tried to slap me.

‘How could I defend the kingdom?’ he shouted. ‘You weren’t there! Arthur wasn’t there.’ He tried to slap me a second time, but again I parried his blow with my arm, then lifted the belt to give him another beating.

Arthur, horrified at my behaviour, pushed down my arm and dragged me away. Mordred followed, flailing at me with his fists, but then a black staff struck his arm hard and he turned in fury to assault his new attacker.

But it was Merlin who now towered above the angry King. ‘Hit me, Mordred,’ the Druid said quietly,

‘and I shall turn you into a toad and feed you to the serpents of Annwn.’

Mordred gazed at the Druid, but said nothing. He did try to push the staff away, but Merlin held it firm and used it to thrust the young King back towards his chair. ‘Tell me, Mordred,’ Merlin said as he pushed Mordred back down into the chair, ‘why you sent Arthur and Derfel so far away?’

Mordred shook his head. He was frightened of this new, straight-backed, towering Merlin. He had only ever known the Druid as a frail old man sunning himself in Lindinis’s garden and this re-invigorated Merlin with his wrapped and plaited beard terrified him.

Merlin raised his staff and slammed it down on the table. ‘Why?’ he asked gently when the echo of the staff’s blow had died away.

‘To arrest Ligessac,’ Mordred whispered.

‘You squirming little fool,’ Merlin said. ‘A child could have arrested Ligessac. Why did you send Arthur and Derfel?’

Mordred just shook his head.

Merlin sighed. ‘It has been a long time, young Mordred, since I used the greater magic. I am sadly out of practice, but I think, with Nimue’s help, I can turn your urine into the black pus that stings like a wasp every time you piss. I can addle your brain, what there is of it, and I can make your manhood,’ the staff suddenly quivered at Mordred’s groin, ‘shrivel to the size of a dried bean. All that I can do, Mordred, and all that I will do unless you tell me the truth.’ He smiled, and there was more threat in that smile than in the poised staff. ‘Tell me, dear boy, why you sent Arthur and Derfel to Cadoc’s camp?’

Mordred’s lower lip was trembling. ‘Because Sansum told me to.’

‘The mouse-lord!’ Merlin exclaimed as though the answer surprised him. He smiled again, or at least he bared his teeth. ‘I have another question, Mordred,’ he continued, ‘and if you do not give me the truth then your bowels will disgorge toads in slime, your belly will be a nest of worms and your throat will brim with their bile. I will make you shake incessantly, so that all your life, all your whole life, you will be a toad-shitting, worm-eaten, bile-spitting shudderer. I will make you,’ he paused and lowered his voice,

‘even more horrible than your mother did. So, Mordred, tell me what the mouse-lord promised would happen if you sent Arthur and Derfel away.’

Mordred stared in terror at Merlin’s face.

Merlin waited. No answer came so he raised the staff towards the hall’s high roof. ‘In the name of Bel,’ he intoned sonorously, ‘and his toad-Lord Callyc, and in the name of Sucellos and his worm-master Horfael, and in the name of . . .’

‘They would be killed!’ Mordred squealed desperately.

The staff was slowly lowered so that it pointed again at Mordred’s face. ‘He promised you what, dear boy?’ Merlin asked.

Mordred squirmed in his chair, but there was no escape from that staff. He swallowed, looked left and right, but there was no help for him in the hall. ‘That they would be killed,’ Mordred admitted, ‘by the Christians.’

‘And why would you want that?’ Merlin inquired.

Mordred hesitated, but Merlin raised the staff high again and the boy blurted out his confession.

‘Because I can’t be King while he lives!’

‘You thought Arthur’s death would free you to behave as you like?’

‘Yes!’

‘And you believed Sansum was your friend?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you never once thought that Sansum might want you dead, too?’ Merlin shook his head. ‘What a silly boy you are. Don’t you know that Christians never do anything right? Even their first one got himself nailed to a cross. That’s not the way efficient Gods behave, not at all. Thank you, Mordred, for our conversation.’ He smiled, shrugged and walked away. ‘Just trying to help,’ he said as he went past Arthur.

Mordred appeared as if he already had the shakes threatened by Merlin. He clung to the arms of the chair, quivering, and tears showed at his eyes for the humiliations he had just suffered. He did try to recover some of his pride by pointing at me and demanding that Arthur arrest me.

‘Don’t be a fool!’ Arthur turned on him angrily. ‘You think we can regain your throne without Derfel’s men?’ Mordred said nothing, and that petulant silence goaded Arthur into a fury like the one which had caused me to hit my King. ‘It can be done without you!’ he snarled at Mordred, ‘and whatever is done, you will stay here, under guard!’ Mordred gaped up at him and a tear fell to dilute the tiny trace of blood.

‘Not as a prisoner, Lord King,’ Arthur explained wearily, ‘but to preserve your life from the hundreds of men who would like to take it.’

‘So what will you do?’ Mordred asked, utterly pathetic now.

‘As I told you,’ Arthur said scornfully, ‘I will give the matter thought.’ And he would say no more. The shape of Lancelot’s design was at least plain now. Sansum had plotted Arthur’s death, Lancelot had sent men to procure Mordred’s death and then followed with his army in the belief that every obstacle to Dumnonia’s throne had been eliminated and that the Christians, whipped to fury by Sansum’s busy missionaries, would kill any remaining enemies while Cerdic held Sagramor’s men at bay. But Arthur lived, and Mordred lived too, and so long as Mordred lived Arthur had an oath to keep and that oath meant we had to go to war. It did not matter that the war might open Severn’s valley to the Saxons, we had to fight Lancelot. We were oath-locked.

Meurig would commit no spearmen to the fight against Lancelot. He claimed he needed all his men to guard his own frontiers against a possible attack from Cerdic or Aelle and nothing anyone said could dissuade him. He did agree to leave his garrison in Glevum, thus freeing its Dumnonian garrison to join Arthur’s troops, but he would give nothing more. ‘He’s a yellow little bastard,’ Culhwch growled.

‘He’s a sensible young man,’ Arthur said. ‘His aim is to preserve his kingdom.’ He spoke to us, his war commanders, in a hall at Glevum’s Roman baths. The room had a tiled floor and an arched ceiling where the painted remnants of naked nymphs were being chased by a faun through swirls of leaves and flowers.

Cuneglas was generous. The spearmen he had brought from Caer Sws would be sent under Culhwch’s command to help Sagramor’s men. Culhwch swore he would do nothing to aid Mordred’s restoration, but he had no qualms about fighting Cerdic’s warriors and that was still Sagramor’s task. Once the Numidian was reinforced by the men from Powys he would drive south, cut off the Saxons who were besieging Corinium and so embroil Cerdic’s men in a campaign that would keep them from helping Lancelot in Dumnonia’s heartland. Cuneglas promised us all the help he could, but said it would take at least two weeks to assemble his full force and bring it south to Glevum. Arthur had precious few men in Glevum. He had the thirty men who had gone north to arrest Ligessac who now lay in chains in Glevum, and he had my men, and to those he could add the seventy spearmen who had formed Glevum’s small garrison. Those numbers were being swollen daily by the refugees who managed to escape the rampaging Christian bands who still hunted down any pagans left in Dumnonia. We heard that many such fugitives were still in Dumnonia, some of them holding out in ancient earth forts or deep in the woodlands, but others came to Glevum and among them was Morfans the Ugly, who had escaped the massacre in Durnovaria’s taverns. Arthur put him in charge of the Glevum forces and ordered him to march them south towards Aquae Sulis. Galahad would go with him. ‘Don’t accept battle,’ Arthur warned both men, ‘just goad the enemy, harry them, annoy them. Stay in the hills, stay nimble, and keep them looking this way. When my Lord King comes’ - he meant Cuneglas -’you can join his army and march south on Caer Cadarn.’

Arthur declared that he would fight with neither Sagramor nor Morfans, but would instead go to seek Aelle’s help. Arthur knew better than anyone that the news of his plans would be carried south. There were plenty enough Christians in Glevum who believed Arthur was the Enemy of God and who saw in Lancelot the heavensent forerunner of Christ’s return to earth; Arthur wanted those Christians to send their messages south into Dumnonia and he wanted those messages to tell Lancelot that Arthur dared not risk Guinevere’s life by marching against him. Instead Arthur was going to beg Aelle to carry his axes and spears against Cerdic’s men. ‘Derfel will come with me,’ he told us now. I did not want to accompany Arthur. There were other interpreters, I protested, and my only wish was to join Morfans and so march south into Dumnonia. I did not want to face my father, Aelle. I wanted to fight, not to put Mordred back on his throne, but to topple Lancelot and to find Dinas and Lavaine. Arthur refused me. ‘You will come with me, Derfel,’ he ordered, ‘and we shall take forty men with us.’

‘Forty?’ Morfans objected. Forty was a large number to strip from his small war-band that had to distract Lancelot.

Arthur shrugged. ‘I dare not look weak to Aelle,’ he said, ‘indeed I should take more, but forty men may be sufficient to convince him that I’m not desperate.’ He paused. ‘There is one last thing,’ he spoke in a heavy voice that caught the attention of men preparing to leave the bath house. ‘Some of you are not inclined to fight for Mordred,’ Arthur admitted. ‘Culhwch has already left Dumnonia, Derfel will doubtless leave when this war is done, and who knows how many others of you will go? Dumnonia cannot afford to lose such men.’ He paused. It had begun to rain and water dripped from the bricks that showed between the patches of painted ceiling. ‘I have talked to Cuneglas,’ Arthur said, acknowledging the King of Powys’s presence with an inclination of his head, ‘and I have talked with Merlin, and what we talked about are the ancient laws and customs of our people. What I do, I would do within the law, and I cannot free you of Mordred for my oath forbids it and the ancient law of our people cannot condone it.’ He paused again, his right hand unconsciously gripping Excalibur’s hilt. ‘But,’ he went on,

‘the law does allow one thing. If a king is unfit to rule, then his Council may rule in his stead as long as the king is accorded the honour and privileges of his rank. Merlin assures me this is so, and King Cuneglas affirms that it happened in the reign of his great-grandfather Brychan.’

‘Mad as a bat! Cuneglas put in cheerfully.

Arthur half smiled, then frowned as he gathered his thoughts. ‘This is not what I ever wanted,’ he protested quietly, his sombre voice echoing in the dripping chamber, ‘but I shall propose to the Council of Dumnonia that it should rule in Mordred’s place.’

‘Yes!’ Culhwch shouted.

Arthur hushed him. ‘I had hoped,’ he said, ‘that Mordred would learn responsibility, but he has not. I don’t care that he wanted me dead, but I do care that he lost his kingdom. He broke his acclamation oath and I doubt now that he will ever be able to keep that oath.’ He paused, and many of us must have reflected on how long it had taken Arthur to understand something that had seemed so obvious to the rest of us. For years he had stubbornly resisted acknowledging Mordred’s unfitness to rule, but now, after Mordred had lost his kingdom and, which was much worse in Arthur’s eyes, he had failed to protect his subjects, Arthur was at last prepared to face the truth. Water dripped on his bare head, but he seemed oblivious of it. ‘Merlin tells me,’ he went on in a melancholy voice, ‘that Mordred is possessed of an evil spirit. I am not skilled in these things, but that verdict does not seem unlikely and so, if the Council agrees, I shall propose that after we have restored Mordred then we shall pay him all the honours due to our King. He can live in the Winter Palace, he can hunt, he can eat like a king and indulge all his appetites within the law, but he will not govern. I am proposing we give him all the privileges, but none of the duties of his throne.’

We cheered. How we cheered. For now, it seemed, we had something to fight for. Not for Mordred, that wretched toad, but for Arthur, because despite all his fine talk of the Council ruling Dumnonia in Mordred’s stead we all knew what his words meant. They meant that Arthur would be Dumnonia’s King in all but name and for that good end we would carry our spears to war. We cheered, for now we had a cause to fight and die for. We had Arthur.

Arthur chose twenty of his best horsemen and insisted I choose twenty of my finest spearmen for our embassy to Aelle. ‘We must impress your father,’ he told me, ‘and you don’t impress a man by arriving with broken and ageing spearmen. We take our best men.’ He also insisted that Nimue accompany us. He would have preferred Merlin’s company, but the Druid declared he was too old for the long journey and proposed Nimue instead.

We left Mordred guarded by Meurig’s spearmen. “Mordred knew of Arthur’s plans for him, but he had no allies in Glevum and no defiance in his rotten soul, though he did have the satisfaction of watching Ligessac being strangled in the forum and after that slow death Mordred stood on the terrace of the great hall and made a mumbling speech in which he threatened an equal fate to all the other traitors in Dumnonia, then he went sullenly back to his quarters while we followed Culhwch eastwards. Culhwch had gone to join Sagramor and help launch the attack that we all hoped would save Corinium. Arthur and I marched into the high fine countryside that was Gwent’s rich eastern province. It was a place of lavish villas, vast farms and great wealth, most of it grown on the backs of the sheep that grazed the rolling hills. We marched beneath two banners. Arthur’s bear and my own star, and we stayed well north of the Dumnonian frontier so that all the news going to Lancelot would tell him that Arthur was offering his stolen throne no threat. Nimue walked with us. Merlin had somehow persuaded her to wash and find clean clothes, and then, in despair at ever untangling the matted filth of her hair, he had cut it short and burned the dirt-encrusted tresses. The short hair looked good on her, she wore an eyepatch again and carried a staff, but no other baggage. She walked barefoot and she walked reluctantly for she had not wanted to come, but Merlin had persuaded her, though Nimue still claimed her presence was wasteful. ‘Any fool can defeat a Saxon wizard,’ she told Arthur as we neared the end of the first day’s march. ‘Just spit on them, roll your eyes and wave a chicken bone. That’s all it needs.’

‘We won’t see any Saxon wizards,’ Arthur answered calmly. We were in open country now, far from any villas, and he stopped his horse, raised his hand and waited for the men to gather around him. ‘We won’t see any wizards,’ he told us, ‘because we’re not going to see Aelle. We’re going south into our own country. A long way south.’

‘To the sea?’ I guessed.

He smiled. ‘To the sea.’ He folded his hands on his saddle bar. ‘We are few,’ he told us, ‘and Lancelot has many, but Nimue can make us a charm of concealment and we shall march by night and we shall march hard.’ He smiled and shrugged. ‘I can do nothing while my wife and son are prisoners, but if we free them, then I am free too. And when I am free I can fight against Lancelot, but you should know that we will be far from help and deep in a Dumnonia that is held by our enemies. Once I have Guinevere and Gwydre then I do not know how we shall escape, but Nimue will help us. The Gods will help us, but if any of you fear the task, then you may go back now.’

None did, and he must have known that none would. These forty were our best men and they would have followed Arthur into the serpent’s pit. Arthur, of course, had told no one but Merlin what he planned so that no hint of it could reach Lancelot’s ears; now he gave me a regretful shrug as though apologizing for deceiving me, but he must have known how pleased I was for we were not just going to where Guinevere and Gwydre were being held hostage, but to where Dian’s two killers believed they were safe from all revenge.

‘We go tonight,’ Arthur said, ‘and there’ll be no rest till dawn. We go south and by morning I want to be in the hills beyond the Thames.’

We put cloaks over our armour, muffled the horses’ hoofs with layers of cloth and then journeyed south through the gathering night. The horsemen led their beasts and Nimue led us, using her strange ability to find her way across unknown country in the darkness.

Sometime in that dark night we crossed into Dumnonia and, as we dropped from the hills down into the valley of the Thames, we saw, far off to our right, a glow in the sky that showed where Cerdic’s men were encamped outside Corinium. Once out of the hills our path inevitably took us through small dark villages where dogs barked at our passing, but no one questioned us. The inhabitants were either dead or else they feared we were Saxons, and so, like a band of ghosts, we passed them by. One of Arthur’s horsemen was a native of the river lands and he led us to a ford that came up to our chests. We held our weapons and bags of bread high, then forced our way through the strong current and so reached the far bank where Nimue hissed a spell of concealment towards a nearby village. By dawn we were in the southern hills, safe inside one of the Old People’s earth fortresses. We slept under the sun and at dark went south again. Our way led through a fine, rich land where no Saxon had yet set foot, but still no villager challenged us for no one but a fool questioned armed men who travelled by night in times of trouble. By daybreak we had reached the great plain and the rising sun cast the shadows of the Old People’s death mounds long across the pale grass. Some of the mounds still had treasures guarded by grave ghouls and those we avoided as we sought a grassy hollow where the horses could eat and we could rest.

In the next moonlight we passed the Stones, that great mysterious ring where Merlin had given Arthur his sword and where, so many years before, we had yielded the gold to Aelle before marching to Lugg Vale. Nimue glided among the great capped pillars, touching them with her staff, then standing in their centre with her eyes staring up at the stars. The moon was almost full and its light gave the Stones a pale luminosity. ‘Do they hold magic still?’ I asked her when she caught us up.

‘Some,’ she said, ‘but it’s fading, Derfel. All our magic is fading. We need the Cauldron.’ She smiled in the dark. ‘It isn’t far away now,’ she said, ‘I can feel it. It still lives, Derfel, and we’re going to find it and restore it to Merlin.’ There was a passion in her now, the same passion she had shown as we neared the end of the Dark Road. Arthur marched through the dark for his Guinevere, I for revenge and Nimue to summon the Gods with the Cauldron, but still we were few and the enemy was many. We were now deep inside Lancelot’s new land, yet we saw no evidence of his warriors nor any sign of the rabid Christian bands who were still said to be terrorizing the rural pagans. Lancelot’s spearmen had no business in this part of Dumnonia for they were watching the roads from Glevum, while the Christians must have gone to support his army in the belief it did Christ’s work, so we walked unmolested as we dropped down from the great plain onto the river lands of Dumnonia’s southern coast. We skirted the fortress town of Sorviodunum and smelt the smoke of the houses that had been burned there. Still no one challenged us because we walked beneath the near-full moon and were protected by Nimue’s spells.

We reached the sea on the fifth night. We had slipped past the Roman fortress of Vindocladia where Arthur was sure a garrison of Lancelot’s troops would be in place, and by dawn we were hidden in the deep woods above the creek where the Sea Palace stood. The palace was just a mile to our west and we had reached it undetected, coming like night ghosts in our own land. And we would make our attack at night too. Lancelot was using Guinevere as a shield, and we would take his shield away and, thus freed, carry our spears to his treacherous heart. But not for Mordred’s sake, for now we fought for Arthur and for the happy realm we saw beyond the war. As the bards now tell it, we fought for Camelot.

Most of the spearmen slept that day, but Arthur, Issa and I crawled to the edge of the wood and stared across the small valley at the Sea Palace.

It looked so fine with its white stone gleaming in the rising sun. We were gazing at its eastern flank from a crest that was slightly lower than the palace. Its eastern wall was broken by only three small windows so that it looked to us like a great white fortress on a green hill, though that illusion was spoiled somewhat by the great sign of the fish that had been crudely smeared in pitch on the limewashed wall, presumably to guard the palace against the anger of any itinerant Christians. The long southern facade which overlooked the creek and the sea that lay beyond a sandy island on the creek’s southern bank was where the Roman builders had put their windows, just as they had relegated the kitchens and slave quarters and granaries to the northern ground behind the villa where Gwenhwyvach’s timber house stood. There was now a small village of thatched huts there as well, I guessed for the spearmen and their families, and a tangle of smoke trails rose from the huts’ cooking-fires. Beyond the huts were the orchards and vegetable fields, and beyond them again, bordered by the deep woods that grew thick in this part of the country, lay fields of partly cut hay.

In front of the palace, and just as I remembered them from that distant day when I had taken Arthur’s precious oath on the Round Table, the two embankments topped by arcades stretched towards the creek. The palace was all sunlit, so white and grand and beautiful. ‘If the Romans came back today,’

Arthur said proudly, ‘they would never know it had been rebuilt.’

‘If the Romans came back today,’ Issa said, ‘they’d have a proper fight on their hands.’ I had insisted that he come to the trees’ edge for I knew of no one with better eyesight and we needed to spend this day discovering just how many guards Lancelot had put in the Sea Palace. We counted no more than a dozen guards that morning. Just after dawn two men climbed to a wooden platform that had been built onto the roof’s summit and from there they watched the road that led north. Four other spearmen paced up and down the nearest arcade, and it seemed sensible to deduce that four more would be stationed on the western arcade that was hidden from us. The other guards were all on the land that lay between a stone balustraded terrace at the bottom of the gardens and the creek, a patrol that evidently guarded the paths that led along the coast. Issa, divested of his armour and helmet, made a reconnaissance in that direction, creeping through the woods in an attempt to see the villa’s facade between the twin arcades.

Arthur gazed fixedly at the palace. He was quietly elated, knowing that he was on the brink of a daring rescue that would send a shock through Lancelot’s new kingdom. Indeed, I had rarely seen Arthur so happy as he was that day. By coming deep into Dumnonia he had cut himself off from the responsibilities of government and now, as in the long-ago past, his future depended only on the skill of his sword. ‘Do you ever think of marriage, Derfel?’ he suddenly asked me.

‘No, Lord,’ I said. ‘Ceinwyn has sworn never to marry, and I see no need to challenge her.’ I smiled and touched my lover’s ring with its little scrap of the Cauldron’s gold. ‘Mind you,’ I went on, ‘I think we’re more married than most couples who’ve ever stood before a Druid or a priest.’

‘I don’t mean that,’ he said. ‘Do you ever think about marriage?’ He stressed the word ‘about’.

‘No, Lord,’ I said. ‘Not really.’

‘Dogged Derfel,’ he teased me. ‘When I die,’ he said dreamily, ‘I think I want a Christian burial.’

‘Why?’ I asked, horrified, and touching my mail coat so that its iron would deflect evil.

‘Because I shall lie with my Guinevere for all time,’ he said, ‘she and I, in one tomb, together.’

I thought of Norwenna’s flesh hanging off her yellow bones and grimaced. ‘You’ll be in the Otherworld with her, Lord.’

‘Our souls will, yes,’ he admitted, ‘and our shadowbodies will be there, but why can’t these bodies lie hand in hand as well?’

I shook my head. ‘Be burned,’ I said, ‘unless you want your soul to wander lost across Britain.’

‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said lightly. He was lying on his belly, hidden from the villa by a screen of ragwort and cornflowers. Neither of us was in our armour. We would don that war finery at dusk before we came out of the dark to slaughter Lancelot’s guards. ‘What makes you and Ceinwyn happy?’ Arthur asked me. He had not shaved since we had left Glevum and the stubble of his new beard was growing grey.

‘Friendship,’ I said.

He frowned. ‘Just that?’

I thought about it. In the distance the first slaves were going to the hayfields, their sickles catching the morning sun in bright glints. Small boys were running up and down the vegetable gardens to frighten the jays away from the pea plants and the rows of gooseberries, redcurrants and raspberries, while nearer, where some convolvulus trailed pink on brambles, a group of greenfinches quarrelled noisily. It seemed that no Christian rabble had disturbed this place, indeed it seemed impossible that Dumnonia was at war at all. ‘I still feel a pang every time I look at her,’ I admitted.

‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ he said enthusiastically. ‘A pang! A quickness in the heart.’

‘Love,’ I said drily.

‘We’re lucky, you and I,’ he said, smiling. ‘It’s friendship, it’s love, and it’s still something more. It’s what the Irish call anmchara, a soul friend. Who else do you want to talk to at the day’s end? I love the evenings when we can just sit and talk and the sun goes down and moths come in to the candles.’

‘And we talk of children,’ I said, and wished I had not, ‘and of servants’ quarrels, and whether the cross-eyed kitchen slave is pregnant again, and we wonder who broke the pothook, and whether the thatch needs repair or whether it will last another year, and we try to work out what to do about the old dog that can’t walk any more, and what excuse Cadell will conjure up for not paying his rent again, and we discuss whether the flax has steeped enough, and if we should rub butterwort on the cows’ udders to improve their yield. That’s what we talk of.’

He laughed. ‘Guinevere and I talk of Dumnonia. Of Britain. And, of course, about Isis.’ Some of his enthusiasm dissipated at the mention of that name, but then he shrugged. ‘Not that we’re together often enough. That’s why I always hoped Mordred would take the burden, then I would be here all my days.’

‘Talking of broken pothooks instead of Isis?’ I teased him.

‘Of those and everything else,’ he said warmly. ‘I’ll farm this land one day, and Guinevere will go on with her work.’

‘Her work?’

He smiled wryly. ‘To know Isis. She tells me that if she can just make contact with the Goddess then the power will flow back down to the world.’ He shrugged, sceptical as always of such extravagant religious claims. Only Arthur would have dared plunge Excalibur into the soil and challenge Gofannon to come to his aid, for he did not really believe Gofannon would ever come. We are to the Gods, he once told me, like mice in a thatch, and we survive only so long as we are not noticed. But love alone demanded that he extend a wry tolerance to Guinevere’s passion. ‘I wish I could be more convinced of Isis,’ he admitted to me now, ‘but, of course, men aren’t part of her mysteries.’ He smiled. ‘Guinevere even calls Gwydre Horus.’

‘Horus?’

‘Isis’s son,’ he explained. ‘Ugly name.’

‘Not as bad as Wygga,” I said.

‘Who?’ he asked, then suddenly stiffened. ‘Look!’ he said excitedly, ‘look!’

I raised my head to peer over the flowery screen and there was Guinevere. Even from a quarter mile away she was unmistakable, for her red hair sprang in an unruly mass above the long blue robe she wore. She was walking along the nearer arcade towards the small open pavilion at its seaward end. Three maidservants walked behind with two of her deerhounds. The guards stepped aside and bowed as she passed. Once at the pavilion Guinevere sat at a stone table and the three maids served her breakfast.

‘She’ll be eating fruit,’ Arthur said fondly. ‘In summer she’ll eat nothing else in the morning.’ He smiled.

‘If she just knew how close I was!’

‘Tonight, Lord,’ I assured him, ‘you will be with her.’

He nodded. ‘At least they’re treating her well.’

‘Lancelot fears you too much to treat her badly, Lord.’

A few moments later Dinas and Lavaine appeared on the arcade. They wore their white Druidical robes and I touched Hywelbane’s hilt when I saw them and promised my daughter’s soul that her killers’

screams would make the whole Otherworld cringe in fear. The two Druids reached the pavilion, bowed to Guinevere, then joined her at the table. Gwydre came running a few moments later and we saw Guinevere ruffle his hair, then send him away in a servant’s keeping. ‘He’s a good boy,’ Arthur said fondly. ‘No deceit in him. Not like Amhar and Loholt. I failed them, didn’t I?’

‘They’re still young, Lord,’ I said.

‘But they serve my enemy now,’ he said bleakly. ‘What shall I do with them?’

Culhwch would doubtless have advised that he kill them, but I just shrugged. ‘Send them into exile,’ I said. The twins could join the unhappy men who had no oath-lord. They could sell their swords until at last they were killed in some unremembered battle against the Saxons or the Irish or the Scots. More women appeared on the arcade. Some were maids, while others were the attendants who served Guinevere as courtiers. Lunete, my old love, was probably one of those dozen women who were Guinevere’s confidantes and also the priestesses of her faith.

Sometime in the middle of the morning I fell asleep with my head cradled in my arms and my body lulled by the warmth of the summer sun. When I woke I found Arthur had gone and that Issa had returned. ‘Lord Arthur went back to the spearmen, Lord,’ he told me. I yawned. ‘What did you see?’

‘Another six men. All Saxon Guards.’

‘Lancelot’s Saxons?’

He nodded. ‘All of them in the big garden. Lord. But only the six. We’ve seen eighteen men altogether, and some others must stand guard at night, but even so there can’t be more than thirty of them altogether.’

I guessed he was right. Thirty men would be sufficient to guard this palace, and more would be superfluous especially when Lancelot needed every spear to guard his stolen kingdom. I raised my head to see the arcade was now empty except for the four guards who looked utterly bored. Two were sitting with their backs to pillars while the other two were chatting on the stone bench where Guinevere had taken her breakfast. Their spears were propped against the table. The two guards on the small roof platform looked equally lazy. The Sea Palace basked under a summer sun and no one there believed an enemy could be within a hundred miles. ‘You told Arthur about the Saxons?’ I asked Issa.

‘Yes, Lord. He said it was only to be expected. Lancelot will want her guarded well.’

‘Go and sleep,’ I told him. ‘I’ll watch now.’

He went and, despite my promise, I fell asleep again. I had walked all night and I was weary, and besides, there seemed no danger threatening at the edge of that summer wood. And so I slept only to be abruptly woken by a sudden barking and the scrabble of big paws.

I woke in terror to discover a brace of slavering deerhounds standing over me, one of the two was barking and the other growling. I reached for my knife, but then a woman’s voice shouted at the hounds.

‘Down!’ she called sharply. ‘Drudwyn, Gwen, down! Quiet!’ The dogs reluctantly lay flat and I turned to see Gwenhwyvach watching me. She was dressed in an old brown gown, had a shawl over her head and a basket in which she had been collecting wild herbs on her arm. Her face was plumper than ever and her hair, where it showed under the scarf, was untidy and tangled. ‘The sleeping Lord Derfel,’ she said happily.

I touched a finger to my lips and glanced towards the palace.

‘They won’t watch me,’ she said, ‘they don’t care about me. Besides, I often talk to myself. The mad do, you know.’

‘You’re not mad, Lady.’

‘I should like to be,’ she said. ‘I can’t think why anyone would want to be anything else in this world.’

She laughed, hitched up her gown and sat heavily beside me. She turned as the dogs growled at a noise behind me and watched with amusement as Arthur wriggled across the ground to join me. He must have heard the barking. ‘On your belly like a snake, Arthur?’ she asked.

Arthur, just like me, touched a ringer to his lips. ‘They don’t care about me,’ Gwenhwyvach said again. ‘Look!’ And she vigorously waved her arms towards the guards who simply shook their heads and turned away. ‘I don’t live,’ she said, ‘not as far as they’re concerned. I’m just the mad fat woman who walks the dogs.’ She waved again, and again the sentries ignored her. ‘Even Lancelot doesn’t notice me,’ she added sadly.

‘Is he here?’ Arthur asked.

‘Of course he isn’t here. He’s a long way away. So are you, I was told. Aren’t you supposed to be talking to the Saxons?’

‘I’m here to take Guinevere away,’ Arthur said, ‘and you too,’ he added gallantly.

‘I don’t want to be taken away,’ Gwenhwyvach protested. ‘And Guinevere doesn’t know you’re here.’

‘No one should know,’ Arthur said.

‘She should! Guinevere should! She stares into the oil pot. She says she can see the future there! But she didn’t see you, did she?’ She giggled, then turned and stared at Arthur as though she found his presence amusing. ‘You’re here to rescue her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tonight?’ Gwenhwyvach guessed.

‘Yes.’

‘She won’t thank you,’ Gwenhwyvach said, ‘not tonight. No clouds, you see?’ She waved at the almost cloudless sky. ‘Can’t worship Isis in cloud, you know, because the moon can’t get into the temple, and tonight she’s expecting the full moon. A big full moon, just like a fresh cheese.’ She ruffled the long hair of one of the hounds. ‘This one’s Drudwyn,’ she told us, ‘and he’s a bad boy. And this one’s Gwen. Plop!’ she said unexpectedly. ‘That’s how the moon comes, plop! Right into her temple.’

She laughed again. ‘Right down the shaft and plop onto the pit.’

‘Will Gwydre be in the temple?’ Arthur asked her.

‘Not Gwydre. Men aren’t allowed, that’s what I’m told,’ Gwenhwyvach said in a sarcastic voice, and she seemed about to say something else, but then just shrugged. ‘Gwydre will be put to bed,’ she said instead. She stared at the palace and a slow sly smile showed on her round face. ‘How will you get in, Arthur?’ she asked. ‘There are lots of bars on those doors and all the windows are shuttered.’

‘We shall manage,’ he said, ‘as long as you don’t tell anyone that you saw us.’

‘As long as you leave me here,’ Gwenhwyvach said, ‘I won’t even tell the bees. And I tell them everything. You have to, otherwise the honey goes sour. Isn’t that right, Gwen?’ she asked the bitch, ruffling its floppy ears.

‘I’ll leave you here if that’s what you want,’ Arthur promised her.

‘Just me,’ she said, ‘just me and the dogs and the bees. That’s all I want. Me and the dogs and the bees and the palace. Guinevere can have the moon.’ She smiled again, then poked my shoulder with a plump hand. ‘You remember that cellar door I took you through, Derfel? The one that leads from the garden?’

‘I think so,’ I said.

‘I’ll make sure it’s unbarred.’ She giggled again, anticipating some enjoyment. ‘I’ll hide in the cellar and unbar the door when they’re all waiting for the moon. There are no guards there at night because the door’s too thick. The guards are all in their huts or out the front.’ She twisted to look at Arthur. ‘You will come?’ she asked anxiously.

‘I promise,’ Arthur replied.

‘Guinevere will be pleased,’ Gwenhwyvach said. ‘And so will I.’ She laughed and lumbered to her feet. ‘Tonight,’ she said, ‘when the moon comes plopping in.’ And with that she walked away with the two hounds. She chuckled as she walked and even danced a pair of clumsy steps. ‘Plop!’ she called aloud, and the hounds frisked about her as she capered down the grassy slope.

‘Is she mad?’ I asked Arthur.

‘Bitter, I think.’ He watched her rotund figure go clumsily down the hill. ‘But she’ll let us in, Derfel, she’ll let us in.’ He smiled, then reached forward and picked a handful of cornflowers from the field’s edge. He arranged them into a small bunch then gave me a shy smile. ‘For Guinevere,’ he explained,

‘tonight.’

At dusk the haymakers, their work finished, came back from the fields and the roof guards climbed down their long ladder. The braziers on the arcade were filled with fresh wood that was set alight, but I guessed the fires were meant to illuminate the palace rather than to give warning of any enemy’s approach. Gulls were flying to their inland roosts and the setting sun made their wings as pink as the convolvulus entwined among the brambles.

Hack in the woods Arthur pulled on his scale armour. I le buckled Excalibur over the coat’s gleaming shimmer of metal, then draped a black cloak about his shoulders. He rarely wore black cloaks, preferring his white, but at night the dark garment would help to conceal us. He would carry his shining helmet under the cloak to hide its lavish plume of tall white goose feathers. Ten of his horsemen would stay in the trees. Their task was to wait for the sound of Arthur’s silver horn and then make a charge on the spearmen’s sleeping-huts. The big horses and their armoured riders, trampling huge and noisy out of the night, should serve to panic any guards who might interfere with our retreat. The horn, Arthur hoped, would not be sounded until we had found both Gwydre and Guinevere and were ready to leave.

The rest of us would make the long journey to the palace’s western side, and from there we would creep through the shadows of the kitchen gardens to reach the cellar door. If Gwenhwyvach failed in her promise then we would have to go round to the front of the palace, kill the guards and break through one of the window shutters on the terrace. Once inside the palace we were to kill every spearman we found. Nimue would come with us. When Arthur had finished speaking she told us that Dinas and Lavaine were not proper Druids, not like Merlin or old Iorweth, but she warned us that the Silurian twins did possess some strange powers and we should expect to face their wizardry. She had spent the afternoon searching the woods and now raised a bundled cloak that seemed to twitch as she held it, and that weird sight made my men touch their spearheads. ‘I have things here to check their spells,’ she told us, ‘but be careful.’

‘And I want Dinas and Lavaine alive,’ I told my men.

We waited, armoured and armed, forty men in steel and iron and leather. We waited as the sun died and as Isis’s full moon crept up from the sea like a great round silver ball. Nimue made her spells and some of us prayed. Arthur sat silent, but watched as I took from my pouch a little tress of golden hair. I kissed the unfaded hair, held it briefly against my cheek, then tied it around Hywelbane’s hilt. I felt a tear roll down my face as I thought of my little one in her shadow-body, but tonight, with the help of my Gods, I would give my Dian her peace.