I pulled on my helmet, buckled its chin strap and threw its wolf-hair plume back across my shoulders. We flexed our stiff leather gloves, then thrust our left arms into the shield loops. We drew our swords and held them out for Nimue’s touch. For a moment it looked as if Arthur wanted to say something more, but instead he just tucked his little bouquet of cornflowers into the neck of his scale armour, then nodded to Nimue who, cloaked in black and clutching her strange bundle, led us southwards through the trees.

Beyond the trees was a short meadow that sloped down to the creek’s bank. We crossed the dark meadow in single file, still out of sight of the palace. Our appearance startled some hares that had been feeding in the moonlight and they raced panicking away as we pushed through some low bushes and scrambled down a steep bank to reach the creek’s shingle beach. From there we walked west, hidden from the guards on the palace’s arcades by the high bank of the creek. The sea crashed and hissed to the south, its sound drowning out any noise our boots made on the shingle. I peered over the bank just once to see the Sea Palace poised like a great white wonder in the moonlight above the dark land. Its beauty reminded me of Ynys Trebes, that magical city of the sea that had been ravaged and destroyed by the Franks. This place had the same ethereal beauty for it shimmered above the dark land as though it were built from moonbeams. Once we were well to the west of the palace we climbed the bank, helping each other up with our spear-staffs, and then followed Nimue northwards through the woods. Enough moonlight filtered through the summer leaves to light our path, but no guards challenged us. The sea’s unending sound filled the night, though once a scream sounded very close by and we all froze, then recognized the sound of a hare being killed by a weasel. We breathed our relief and walked on.

We seemed to walk a long way through the trees, but at last Nimue turned east and we followed her to the edge of the wood to see the palace’s limewashed walls in front of us. We were not far from the circular timber moon-shaft that ran down into the temple and I could see that it would still be some time before the moon was high enough in the sky to cast its light down the shaft and into the black-walled cellar.

It was while we were at the edge of the wood that the singing began. At first, so soft was the singing, I thought it was the wind moaning, but then the song became louder and I realized that it was a women’s choir that chanted some strange, eerie and plangent music like nothing I had ever heard before. The song must have been reaching us through the moon-shaft, for it sounded very far away; a ghost song, like a choir of the dead singing to us from the Otherworld. We could hear no words, but we knew it was a sad song for its tune slid weirdly up and down by half-notes, swelled louder, then sank into a lingering softness that melded with the distant murmur of the breaking sea. The music was very beautiful, but it made me shiver and touch my spearhead.

If we had moved out of the trees then we would have been within sight of the guards who stood on the western arcade, so we moved up the wood a few paces and from there we could make our way towards the palace through a dappled tangle of mooncast shadows. There was an orchard, some rows of fruit bushes and even a high fence that protected a vegetable garden from deer and hares. We moved slowly, one at a time, and all the time that strange song soared and fell and slid and wailed. A shimmer of smoke shivered above the moon-shaft and the smell of it wafted towards us on the night’s small wind. The smell was a temple smell; pungent and almost sickly.

We were now within yards of the spearmen’s huts. A dog began barking, then another, but no one in the huts thought the barking meant trouble for voices just shouted for quiet and slowly the dogs subsided, to leave only the noise of the wind in the trees, the sea’s moan and the song’s eerie, thin melody. I was leading the way, for I was the only one who had been to this small door before and I was worried that I might miss it, but I found it easily enough. I stepped carefully down the old brick steps and pushed gently on the door. It resisted, and for a heartbeat I thought it must still be barred, but then, with a jarring squeal of a metal hinge, it swung open and drenched me in light. The cellar was lit by candles. I blinked, dazzled, then Gwenhwyvach’s sibilant voice sounded, ‘Quick!

Quick!’

We filed inside; thirty big men with armour and cloaks and spears and helmets. Gwenhwyvach hissed at us to be silent, then closed the door behind us and placed its heavy bar in place. ‘The temple’s there,’

she whispered, pointing down a corridor of rush-light candles that had been placed to illuminate the path to the shrine’s door. She was excited and her plump face was flushed. The choir’s haunting song was much quieter here for it was muffled by the temple’s inner curtains and its heavy outer door.

‘Where’s Gwydre?’ Arthur whispered to Gwenhwyvach.

‘In his room,’ Gwenhwyvach said.

‘Are there guards?’ he asked.

‘Just servants in the palace at night,’ she whispered.

‘Are Dinas and Lavaine here?’ I asked her.

She smiled. ‘You’ll see them, I promise you. You’ll see them.’ She plucked Arthur’s cloak to draw him towards the temple. ‘Come.’

‘I’ll fetch Gwydre first,’ Arthur insisted, releasing his cloak, then he touched six of his men on the shoulders. ‘The rest of you wait here,’ he whispered. ‘Wait here. Don’t go into the temple. We’ll let them finish their worship.’ Then, treading softly, he led his six men across the cellar floor and up some stone steps.

Gwenhwyvach giggled beside me. ‘I said a prayer to Clud,’ she murmured to me, ‘and she will help us.’

‘Good,’ I said. Clud is a Goddess of light, and it would be no bad thing to have her help this night.

‘Guinevere doesn’t like Clud,’ Gwenhwyvach said disapprovingly. ‘She doesn’t like any of the British Gods. Is the moon high?’

‘Not yet. But it’s climbing.’

‘Then it isn’t time,’ Gwenhwyvach said to me.

‘Time for what, Lady?’

‘You’ll see!’ She giggled. ‘You’ll see,’ she said again, then shrank fearfully back as Nimue pushed through the huddle of nervous spearmen. Nimue had taken off her leather eyepatch so that the empty shrivelled socket was like a dark hole in her face and at the sight of that horror Gwenhwyvach whimpered in terror.

Nimue ignored Gwenhwyvach. Instead she looked about the cellar, then sniffed like a hound seeking a scent. I could only see cobwebs and wineskins and mead jars and I could smell only the damp odour of decay, but Nimue scented something hateful. She hissed, then spat towards the shrine. The bundle in her hand shifted slowly.

None of us moved. Indeed a kind of terror overcame us in that rush-lit cellar. Arthur was gone, we were undetected, but the sound of the singing and the stillness of the palace were both chilling. Maybe that terror was caused by a spell cast by Dinas and Lavaine, or maybe it was just that everything here seemed so unnatural. We were used to wood, thatch, earth and grass, and this dank place of brick arches and stone floors was strange and unnerving. One of my men was shaking. Nimue stroked the man’s cheek to restore his courage and then crept on her bare feet towards the temple doors. I went with her, placing my boots carefully to make no noise. I wanted to pull her back. She was plainly intent on disobeying Arthur’s orders that we were to wait for the rites to finish, and I feared she would do something rash that would alert the women in the temple and thus provoke them to screams that would bring the guards from their huts, but in my heavy, noisy boots I could not move as fast as Nimue on her bare feet and she ignored my hoarse whisper of warning. Instead she took hold of one of the temple’s bronze door handles. She hesitated a heartbeat, then tugged the door open and the plangent ghost song was suddenly much louder.

The door’s hinges had been greased and the door opened silently onto an utter blackness. It was a darkness as complete as any I had ever seen and was caused by the heavy curtains that hung just a few feet inside the door. I motioned for my men to stay where they were, then followed Nimue inside. I wanted to draw her back, but she resisted my hand and instead pulled the temple door closed on its greased hinges. The singing was very loud now. I could see nothing and I could hear only the choir, but the smell of the temple was thick and nauseous.

Nimue groped her hand to find me, then pulled my head down towards hers. ‘Evil!’ she breathed.

‘We shouldn’t be here,’ I whispered.

She ignored that. Instead she groped and discovered the curtain and a moment later a tiny chink of light showed as she found the curtain’s edge. I followed her, crouched and looked over her shoulder. At first, so small was the gap she had made that I could see almost nothing, but then, as my eyes made out what lay beyond, I saw too much. I saw the mysteries of Isis.

To make sense of that night I had to know the story of Isis. I learned it later, but at that moment, peering over Nimue’s short-cropped hair, I had no idea what the ritual signified. I knew only that Isis was a Goddess and, to many Romans, a Goddess of the highest powers. I knew, too, that she was a protectress of thrones and that explained the low black throne that still stood on its dais at the far end of the cellar, though our view of it was misted by the thick smoke that writhed and drifted through the black room as it sought to escape up the moon-shaft. The smoke came from braziers, and their flames had been enriched by herbs that gave off the pungent, heady scent we had smelt from the edge of the woods. I could not see the choir that went on singing despite the smoke, but I could see Isis’s worshippers and at first I did not believe what I saw. I did not want to believe. I could see eight worshippers kneeling on the black stone floor, and all eight of them were naked. Their backs were towards us, but even so I could see that some of the naked worshippers were men. No wonder Gwenhwyvach had giggled in anticipation of this moment, for she must have known that secret already. Men, Guinevere always insisted, were not allowed into the temple of Isis, but they were here this night and, I suspected, on every night that the full moon cast its cold light down through the hole in the cellar’s roof. The flickering braziers’ flames cast their lurid light on the worshippers’ backs. They were all naked. Men and women, all naked, just as Morgan had warned me so many years before. The worshippers were naked, but not the two celebrants. Lavaine was one; he was standing to one side of the low black throne, and my soul exulted when I saw him. It had been Lavaine’s sword that had cut Dian’s throat and my sword was now just a cellar’s length away from him. He stood tall beside the throne, the scar on his cheek lit by the braziers’ light and his black hair oiled like Lancelot’s to fall down the back of his black robe. He wore no Druid’s white robe this night, but just a plain black gown, and in his hand was a slender black staff tipped with a small golden crescent moon. There was no sign of Dinas. Two flaming torches becketed in iron flanked the throne where Guinevere sat playing the part of Isis. Her hair was coiled on her head and held in place by a ring of gold from which two horns jutted straight up. They were the horns of no beast I had ever seen, and later we discovered they were carved from ivory. Around her neck was a heavy gold torque, but she wore no other jewels, just a vast deep-red cloak that swathed her whole body. I could not sec the floor in front of her, but I knew the shallow pit was there and I guessed they were waiting for the moonlight to come down the shaft and touch the pit’s black water with silver. The far curtains, behind which Ceinwyn had told me was a bed, were closed. A flicker of light suddenly shimmered in the drifting smoke and made the naked worshippers gasp with its promise. The little sliver of light was pale and silvery and it showed that the moon had at last climbed high enough to throw its first angled beam down to the cellar floor. Lavaine waited a moment as the light thickened, then beat his staff twice on the floor. ‘It is time,’ he said in his harsh deep voice, ‘it is time.’

The choir went silent.

Then nothing happened. They just waited in silence as that smoke-shifting moon-silvered column of light widened and crept across the floor and I remembered that distant night when I had crouched in the summit of the knoll of stones beside Llyn Cerrig Bach and watched the moonlight edge its way towards Merlin’s body. Now I watched the moonlight slide and swell in Isis’s silent temple. The silence was full of portent. One of the kneeling naked women uttered a low moan, then went quiet again. Another woman rocked to and fro.

The moonbeam widened still further, its reflection casting a pale glimmer on Guinevere’s stern and handsome face. The column of light was nearly vertical now. One of the naked women shivered, not with cold, but with the stirrings of ecstasy, and then Lavaine leaned forward to peer up the shaft. The moon lit his big beard and his hard, broad face with its battle scar. He peered upwards for a few heartbeats, then he stepped back and solemnly touched Guinevere’s shoulder.

She stood so that the horns on her head almost touched the low arched ceiling of the cellar. Her arms and hands were inside the cloak that fell straight from her shoulders to the floor. She closed her eyes.

‘Who is the Goddess?’ she asked.

‘Isis, Isis, Isis,’ the women chanted the name softly, ‘Isis, Isis, Isis.’ The column of moonlight was almost as wide as the shaft now and it was a great smoky silver pillar of light that glowed and shifted in the cellar’s centre. I had thought, when I had first seen this temple, that it was a tawdry place, but at night, lit by that shimmering pillar of white light, it was as eerie and mysterious as any shrine I had ever seen.

‘And who is the God?’ Guinevere asked, her eyes still closed.

‘Osiris,’ the naked men answered in low voices, ‘Osiris, Osiris, Osiris.’

‘And who shall sit on the throne?’ Guinevere demanded.

‘Lancelot,’ both the men and the women answered together, ‘Lancelot, Lancelot.’

It was when I heard that name that I knew that nothing would be put right this night. This night would never bring back the old Dumnonia. This night would give us nothing but horror, for I knew that this night would destroy Arthur and I wanted to back away from the curtain and go back into the cellar and take him away into the fresh air and the clean moonlight, then take him back through all the years and all the days and all the hours so that this night would never come to him. But I did not move. Nimue did not move. Neither of us dared to move for Guinevere had reached out with her right hand to take the black staff from Lavaine and the gesture lifted her red cloak from the right side of her body and I saw that under the cloak’s heavy folds she was naked.

‘Isis, Isis, Isis,’ the women sighed.

‘Osiris, Osiris, Osiris,’ the men breathed.

‘Lancelot, Lancelot, Lancelot,’ they all chanted together.

Guinevere took the gold-tipped staff and reached forward, the cloak falling again to shadow her right breast, and then, very slowly, with exaggerated gestures, she touched the staff against something that lay in the water pit right beneath the glistening, shimmering shaft of silvered smoke that now came vertically down from the heavens. No one else moved in the cellar. No one even seemed to breathe.

‘Rise!’ Guinevere commanded, ‘rise,’ and the choir began to sing their weird, haunting song again.

‘Isis, Isis, Isis,’ they were singing, and over the heads of the worshippers I saw a man climb up from the pool. It was Dinas, and his tall muscled body and long black hair dripped water as he came slowly upright and as the choir sang the Goddess’s name louder and ever louder. ‘Isis! Isis! Isis!’ they sang until Dinas at last stood upright before Guinevere, his back to us, and he too was naked. He stepped up out of the pool and Guinevere handed the black staff to Lavaine, then raised her hands and unclasped the cloak so that it fell back onto the throne. She stood there, Arthur’s wife, naked but for the gold about her neck and the ivory on her head, and she opened her arms so that the naked grandson of Tanaburs could step onto the dais and into her embrace. ‘Osiris! Osiris! Osiris!’ The women in the cellar called. Some of them writhed to and fro like the Christian worshippers in Isca who had been overcome by a similar ecstasy. The voices in the cellar were becoming ragged now. ‘Osiris! Osiris! Osiris!’ they chanted, and Guinevere stepped back as the naked Dinas turned round to face the worshippers and lifted his arms in triumph. Thus he displayed his magnificent naked body and there could be no mistaking that he was a man, nor any mistaking what he was supposed to do next as Guinevere, her beautiful, tall, straight body made magically silver-white by the moon’s shimmer in the smoke, took his right arm and led him towards the curtain that hung behind the throne. Lavaine went with them as the women writhed in their worship and rocked backwards and forwards and called out the name of their great Goddess. ‘Isis! Isis! Isis!’

Guinevere swept the far curtain aside. I had a brief glimpse of the room beyond and it seemed as bright as the sun, and then the ragged chanting rose to a new pitch of excitement as the men in the temple reached for the women beside them, and it was just then that the doors behind me were thrown wide open and Arthur, in all the glory of his war gear, stepped into the temple’s lobby. ‘No, Lord,’ I said to him, ‘no, Lord, please!’

‘You shouldn’t be here, Derfel,’ he spoke quietly, but in reproof. In his right hand he held the little bunch of cornflowers he had picked for Guinevere, while in his left he grasped his son’s hand. ‘Come back out,’ he ordered me, but then Nimue snatched the big curtain aside and my Lord’s nightmare began.

Isis is a Goddess. The Romans brought her to Britain, but she did not come from Rome itself, but from a distant country far to Rome’s east. Mithras is another God who comes from a country east of Rome, though not, I think, the same country. Galahad told me that half the world’s religions begin in the east where, I suspect, the men look more like Sagramor than like us. Christianity is another such faith brought from those distant lands where, Galahad assured me, the fields grow nothing but sand, the sun shines fiercer than it ever does in Britain and no snow ever falls.

Isis came from those burning lands. She became a powerful Goddess to the Romans and many women in Britain adopted her religion that stayed on when the Romans left. It was never as popular as Christianity, for the latter threw its doors open to any who wanted to worship its God, while Isis, like Mithras, restricted her followers to those, and those alone, who had been initiated into her mysteries. In some ways, Galahad told me, Isis resembled the Holy Mother of the Christians, for she was reputed to be the perfect mother to her son Horus, but Isis also possessed powers that the Virgin Mary never claimed. Isis, to her adepts, was the Goddess of life and death, of healing, and, of course, of mortal thrones.

She was married, Galahad told me, to a God named Osiris, but in a war between the Gods Osiris was killed and his body was cut into fragments that were scattered into a river. Isis found the scattered flesh and tenderly brought them together again, and then she lay with the fragments to bring her husband back to life. Osiris did live again, revived by Isis’s power. Galahad hated the tale, and crossed himself again and again as he told it, and it was that tale, I suppose, of resurrection and of the woman giving life to the man, that Nimue and I watched in that smoky black cellar. We had watched as Isis, the Goddess, the mother, the giver of life, performed the miracle that gave her husband life and turned her into the guardian of the living and the dead and the arbiter of men’s thrones. And it was that last power, the power that determined which men should sit on this earth’s thrones, that was, for Guinevere, the Goddess’s supreme gift. It was for the power of the throne-giver that Guinevere worshipped Isis. Nimue snatched the curtain aside and the cellar filled with screams. For one second, for one terrible second, Guinevere hesitated at the far curtain and turned around to see what had disturbed her rites. She stood there, tall and naked and so dreadful in her pale beauty, and beside her was a naked man. At the cellar’s door, standing with his son in one hand and with flowers in the other, was her husband. The cheek pieces of Arthur’s helmet were open and I saw his face at that terrible moment, and it was as if his soul had just fled.

Guinevere disappeared behind the curtain, dragging Dinas and Lavaine with her, and Arthur uttered an awful sound, half a battle shout and half the cry of a man in utter misery. He pushed Gwydre back, dropped the flowers, then drew Excalibur and charged heedlessly through the screaming, naked worshippers who scrambled desperately out of his way.

‘Take them all!’ I shouted to the spearmen who followed Arthur, ‘don’t let them escape! Take them!’

Then I ran after Arthur with Nimue beside me. Arthur leapt the black pool, pushed a torch over as he jumped across the dais, then swept the far black curtain aside with Excalibur’s blade. And there he stopped.

I stopped beside him. I had discarded my spear as I charged through the temple and now had Hywelbane bare in my hand. Nimue was with me and she howled in triumph as she gazed into the small, square room that opened up from the arched cellar. This, it seemed, was Isis’s inner sanctuary, and here, at the Goddess’s service, was the Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn.

The Cauldron was the first thing I saw, for it was standing on a black pedestal that stood as high as a man’s waist and there were so many candles in the room that the Cauldron seemed to glow silver and gold as it reflected their brilliant light. The light was made even brighter because the room, all but for the curtained wall, was lined with mirrors. There were mirrors on the walls and even on the ceiling, mirrors that multiplied the candles’ flames and reflected the nakedness of Guinevere and Dinas. Guinevere, in her terror, had leapt onto the wide bed that filled the room’s far end and there she clawed at a fur coverlet in an effort to hide her pale skin. Dinas was beside her, his hands clutched to his groin, while Lavaine faced us defiantly.

He glanced at Arthur, dismissed Nimue with scarce a look, then held his slender black staff towards me. He knew I had come for his death and now he would prevent it with the greatest magic at his disposal. He pointed his staff at me, while in his other hand he held the crystal-encased fragment of the true cross that Bishop Sansum had given to Mordred at his acclamation. He was holding the fragment suspended above the Cauldron, which was filled with some dark aromatic liquid.

‘Your other daughters will die too,’ he told me. ‘I only need to let go.’

Arthur raised Excalibur.

‘Your son too!’ Lavaine said, and both of us froze. ‘You will go now,’ he said with calm authority.

‘You have invaded the Goddess’s sanctuary and will now go and leave us in peace. Or else you, and all you love, will die.’

He waited. Behind him, between the Cauldron and the bed, was Arthur’s Round Table with its stone image of the winged horse, and on the horse, I saw, were a drab basket, a common horn, an old halter, a worn knife, a whetstone, a sleeved coat, a cloak, a clay dish, a throwboard, a warrior ring and a heap of decaying broken timbers. Merlin’s scrap of beard was also there, still wrapped in its black ribbon. All the power of Britain was in that little room and it was allied to a scrap of the Christian’s most powerful magic.

I lifted Hywelbane and Lavaine made as though to drop the piece of the true cross into the liquid and Arthur put a warning hand against my shield.

‘You will go,’ Lavaine said. Guinevere said nothing, but just watched us, huge-eyed, above the pelt that now half covered her.

Then Nimue smiled. She had been holding the bundled cloak in both her hands, but now she shook it at Lavaine. She screamed as she released the cloak’s burden. It was an eldritch shriek that echoed high above the cries of the women behind us.

Vipers flew through the air. There must have been a dozen of the snakes, all found by Nimue that afternoon and hoarded for this moment. They twisted in the air and Guinevere screamed and dragged the fur to cover her face while Lavaine, seeing a snake flying at his eyes, instinctively flinched and crouched. The scrap of true cross skittered across the floor while the snakes, aroused by the heat in the cellar, twisted across the bed and over the Treasures of Britain. I took one pace forward and kicked Lavaine hard in the belly. He fell, then screamed as an adder bit his ankle. Dinas shrank from the snakes on the bed, then went utterly still as Excalibur touched his throat. Hywelbane was at Lavaine’s throat, and I used the blade to bring his face up towards mine. Then I smiled. ‘My daughter,’ I said softly, ‘watches us from the Otherworld. She sends you greetings, Lavaine.’

He tried to speak, but no words came. A snake slid across his leg.

Arthur stared at where his wife was hidden beneath the fur. Then, almost tenderly, he flicked the snakes off the black pelt with Excalibur’s tip, then drew back the fur until he could see Guinevere’s face. She stared at him, and all her fine pride had vanished. She was just a terrified woman. ‘Do you have any clothes here?’ Arthur asked her gently. She shook her head.

‘There’s a red cloak on the throne,’ I told him.

‘Would you fetch it, Nimue?’ Arthur asked.

Nimue brought the cloak and Arthur held it towards his wife on Excalibur’s tip. ‘Here,’ he said, still speaking softly, ‘for you.’

A bare arm emerged from the fur and took the cloak. ‘Turn round,’ Guinevere said to me in a small, frightened voice.

‘Turn, Derfel, please,’ Arthur said.

‘One thing first, Lord.’

‘Turn,’ he insisted, still gazing at his wife.

I reached for the Cauldron’s edge and tipped it off the pedestal. The precious Cauldron clanged loud on the floor as its liquid spilt in a dark rush across the flagstones. That got his attention. He stared at me and I hardly recognized his face, it was so hard and cold and empty of life, but there was one more thing to be said this night and if my Lord was to sup this dish of horrors, then he might as well drain it to the last bitter drop. I put Hywelbane’s tip back under Lavaine’s chin. ‘Who is the Goddess?’ I asked him. He shook his head and I pushed Hywelbane far enough forward to draw blood from his throat. ‘Who is the Goddess?’ I asked him again.

‘Isis,’ he whispered. He was clutching his ankle where the snake had bitten him.

‘And who is the God?’ I demanded.

‘Osiris,’ he said in a terrified voice.

‘And who,’ I asked him, ‘shall sit on the throne?’ He shivered, and said nothing. ‘These, Lord,’ I said to Arthur, my sword still on Lavaine’s throat, ‘are the words you did not hear. But I heard them and Nimue heard them. Who shall sit on the throne?’ I asked Lavaine again.

‘Lancelot,’ he said in a voice so low that it was almost inaudible. But Arthur heard, just as he must have seen the great device that was embroidered white on the lavish black blanket that lay on the bed beneath the bear pelt in this room of mirrors. It was Lancelot’s sea-eagle. I spat at Lavaine, sheathed Hywelbane, then reached forward and took him by his long black hair. Nimue already had hold of Dinas. We dragged them back into the temple, and I swept the black curtain back into place behind me so that Arthur and Guinevere could be alone. Gwenhwyvach had been watching it all and she now cackled with laughter. The worshippers and the choir, all naked, were crouching to one side of the cellar where Arthur’s men guarded them with spears. Gwydre was crouching terrified at the cellar door.

Behind us Arthur cried one word. ‘Why?’

And I took my daughter’s murderers out to the moonlight.

At dawn we were still at the Sea Palace. We should have left, for some of the spearmen had escaped the huts when the horsemen had at last been summoned from the hill by Arthur’s horn, and those fugitives would be spreading the alarm north into Dumnonia, but Arthur seemed incapable of decision. He was like a man stunned.

He was still weeping as the dawn edged the world with light.

Dinas and Lavaine died then. They died at the creek’s edge. I am not, I think, a cruel man, but their deaths were very cruel and very long. Nimue arranged those deaths, and all the while, as their souls gave up the flesh, she hissed the name Dian in their ears. They were not men by the time they died, and their tongues had gone and they had just one eye apiece, and that small mercy was only given them so that they could see the manner of their next bout of pain, and see they did as they died. The last thing either saw was that bright piece of hair on Hywelbane’s hilt as I finished what Nimue had begun. The twins were mere things by then, things of blood and shuddering terror, and when they were dead I kissed the little scrap of hair, then carried it to one of the braziers on the palace’s arcades and tossed it into the embers so that no fragment of Dian’s soul was left wandering the earth. Nimue did the same with the cut plait of Merlin’s beard. We left the twins’ bodies lying on their left sides beside the sea and in the rising sun gulls came down to tear at the tortured flesh with their long hooked beaks. Nimue had rescued the Cauldron and the Treasures. Dinas and Lavaine, before they died, had told her the whole tale, and Nimue had been right all along. It had been Morgan who stole the Treasures and who had taken them as a gift to Sansum so that he would marry her, and Sansum had given them to Guinevere. It was the promise of that great gift which had first reconciled Guinevere to the mouse-lord before Lancelot’s baptism in the River Churn. I thought, when I heard the tale, that if only I had allowed Lancelot into the mysteries of Mithras then maybe none of this would have happened. Fate is inexorable. The shrine’s doors were closed now. None of those trapped inside had escaped, and once Guinevere had been brought out and after Arthur had talked with her for a long time, he had gone back into the cellar alone, with just Excalibur in his hand, and he did not emerge for a full hour. When he came out his face was colder than the sea and as grey as Excalibur’s blade, except that the precious blade was now red and thick with blood. In one hand he carried the horn-mounted circle of gold that Guinevere had worn as Isis and in the other he carried the sword. ‘They’re dead,’ he told me.

‘All?’

‘Everyone.’ He had seemed oddly unconcerned, though there was blood on his arms and on his scale armour and even spattered on the goose feathers of his helmet.

‘The women too?’ I asked, for Lunete had been one of Isis’s worshippers. I had no love for her now, but she had once been my lover and I felt a pang for her. The men in the temple had been the most handsome of Lancelot’s spearmen and the women had been Guinevere’s attendants.

‘All dead,’ said Arthur, almost lightly. He had walked slowly down the pleasure garden’s central gravel path. ‘This wasn’t the first night they did this,’ he said, and sounded almost puzzled. ‘It seems they did it often. All of them. Whenever the moon was right. And they did it with each other, all of them. Except Guinevere. She just did it with the twins or with Lancelot.’ He shuddered then, showing the first emotion since he had come so cold-eyed from the cellar. ‘It seems,’ he said, ‘that she used to do it for my sake. Who shall sit on the throne? Arthur, Arthur, Arthur, but the Goddess can’t have approved of me.’ He had begun to cry. ‘Or else I resisted the Goddess too firmly, and so they changed the name to Lancelot.’ He gave the bloody sword a futile swing in the air. ‘Lancelot,’ he said in a voice filled with agony. ‘For years now, Derfel, she’s been sleeping with Lancelot, and all for religion, she says! Religion!

He was usually Osiris and she was always Isis. What else could she have been?’ He reached the terrace and sat on a stone bench from where he could stare at the moon-glossed creek. ‘I shouldn’t have killed them all,’ he said after a long while.

‘No, Lord,’ I said, ‘you shouldn’t.’

‘But what else could I do? It was filth, Derfel, just filth!’ He began to sob then. He said something about shame, about the dead having witnessed his wife’s shame and his own dishonour, and when he could say no more, he just sobbed helplessly and I said nothing. He did not seem to care whether I stayed with him or not, but I stayed until it was time to take Dinas and Lavaine down to the sea’s edge so that Nimue could draw their souls inch by terrible inch from their bodies. And now, in a grey dawn, Arthur sat empty and exhausted above the sea. The horns lay at his feet, while his helmet and Excalibur’s bare blade rested on the bench beside him. The blood on the sword had dried to a thick brown crust.

‘We must leave, Lord,’ I said as the dawn turned the sea the colour of a spear blade.

‘Love,’ he said bitterly.

I thought he had misheard me. ‘We must leave, Lord,’ I said again.

‘For what?’ he asked.

‘To complete your oath.’

He spat, then sat in silence. The horses had been brought down from the wood and the Cauldron and the Treasures of Britain were packed for their journey. The spearmen watched us and waited. ‘Is there any oath,’ he asked me bitterly, ‘that is unbroken? Just one?’

‘We must go, Lord,’ I told him, but he neither moved nor spoke and so I turned on my heel. ‘Then we’ll go without you,’ I said brutally.

‘Derfel!’ Arthur called, real pain in his voice.

‘Lord?’ I turned back.

He stared down at his sword and seemed surprised to see it so caked with blood. ‘My wife and son are in an upstairs room,’ he said. ‘Fetch them for me, will you? They can ride on the same horse. Then we can go.’ He was struggling so hard to sound normal, to sound as if this was just another dawn.

‘Yes, Lord,’ I said.

He stood and rammed Excalibur, blood and all, into its scabbard. ‘Then, I suppose,’ he said sourly,

‘we must remake Britain?’

‘Yes, Lord,’ I said, ‘we must.’

He stared at me and I saw he wanted to cry again. ‘Do you know something, Derfel?’ he asked me.

‘Tell me, Lord,’ I said.

‘My life will never be the same again, will it?’

‘I don’t know, Lord,’ I said. ‘I just don’t know.’

The tears spilled down his long cheeks. ‘I shall love her till the day I die. Every day I live I shall think of her. Every night before I sleep I will see her, and in every dawn I shall turn in my bed to find that she has gone. Every day, Derfel, and every night and every dawn until the moment that I die.’

He picked up his helmet with its blood-draggled plume, left the ivory horns, and walked with me. I fetched Guinevere and her son down from the bed-chamber and then we left. Gwenhwyvach had the Sea Palace then. She lived in it alone, her wits wandering, and surrounded by hounds and by the gorgeous treasures that decayed all about her. She would watch from a window for Lancelot’s coming, for she was sure that one day her Lord would come to live with her beside the sea in her sister’s palace, but her Lord never did come, and the treasures were stolen, the palace crumbled and Gwenhwyvach died there, or so we heard. Or maybe she lives there still, waiting beside the creek for the man who never comes.

We went away. And on the creek’s muddy banks the gulls tore at offal. Guinevere, in a long black dress that was covered by a dark green cloak, and with her red hair combed severely back and tied with a black ribbon, rode Arthur’s mare, Llamrei. She sat side-saddle, gripping the saddle bar with her right hand and keeping her left arm about the waist of her frightened and tearful son who kept glancing at his father who was walking doggedly behind the horse. ‘I suppose I am his father?’ Arthur spat at her once.

Guinevere, her eyes reddened by tears, just looked away. The motion of the horse rocked her back and forth and back and forth, yet she managed to look graceful all the same. ‘No one else, Lord Prince,’

she said after a long time. ‘No one else.’

Arthur walked in silence after that. He did not want my company, he wanted no company but his own misery, and so I joined Nimue at the head of the procession. The horsemen came next, then Guinevere, and my spearmen escorted the Cauldron at the rear. Nimue was retracing the same road that had led us to the coast and which here was a rough track that climbed onto a bare heath broken by dark stretches of yew and gorse. ‘So Gorfyddyd was right,’ I said after a while.

‘Gorfyddyd?’ Nimue asked, astonished that I should have dredged that old King’s name from the past.

‘At Lugg Vale,’ I reminded her, ‘he said Guinevere was a whore.’

‘And you, Derfel Cadarn,’ Nimue said scornfully, ‘are an expert on whores?’

‘What else is she?’ I asked bitterly.

‘No whore,’ Nimue said. She gestured ahead, pointing at the wisps of smoke above the distant trees that showed where the garrison of Vindocladia were cooking their breakfasts. ‘We’ll need to avoid them,’ Nimue said, and turned off the road to lead us towards a thicker belt of trees that grew to the west. I suspected the garrison had already heard that Arthur had come to the Sea Palace and had no wish to confront him, but I dutifully followed Nimue and the horsemen dutifully followed us. ‘What Arthur did,’ she said after a while, ‘is marry a rival instead of a companion.’

‘A rival?’

‘Guinevere could rule Dumnonia as well as any man,’ Nimue said, ‘and better than most. She’s cleverer than he is, and every bit as determined. If she’d been born to Uther instead of that fool Leodegan, then everything would have been different. She’d be another Boudicca and there’d be dead Christians from here to the Irish Sea and dead Saxons to the German Sea.’

‘Boudicca,’ I reminded her, ‘lost her war.’

‘And so has Guinevere,’ Nimue said grimly.

‘I don’t see that she was Arthur’s rival,’ I said after a time. ‘She had power. I don’t suppose he ever made a decision without talking to her.’

‘And he talked to the Council, which no woman can join,’ Nimue said tartly. ‘Put yourself in Guinevere’s place, Derfel. She’s quicker than all of you put together, but any idea she ever had was put before a pack of dull, ponderous men. You and Bishop Emrys and that fart Cythryn who pretends to be so judicious and fair-minded, then goes home and beats his wife and makes her watch him take a dwarf girl to their bed. Councillors! You think Dumnonia would know the difference if you all drowned?’

‘A King must have a Council,’ I said indignantly.

‘Not if he’s clever,’ Nimue said. ‘Why should he? Does Merlin have a Council? Does Merlin need a room full of pompous fools to tell him what to do? The only purpose a Council serves is to make you all feel important.’

‘It does more than that,’ I insisted. ‘How does a King know what his people are thinking if there’s no Council?’

‘Who cares what the fools think? Allow the people to think for themselves and half of them become Christians; there’s a tribute to their ability to think,’ she spat. ‘So just what is it that you do in Council, Derfel? Tell Arthur what your shepherds are saying? And Cythryn, I suppose, represents the dwarf-tupping men of Dumnonia. Is that it?’ she laughed. ‘The people! The people are idiots, that’s why they have a King and why the King has spearmen.’

‘Arthur,’ I said stoutly, “has given the country good government, and he did it without using spears on the people.’

‘And look what’s happened to the country,’ Nimue retorted. She walked in silence for a few moments. After a while she sighed. ‘Guinevere was right all along, Derfel. Arthur should be King. She knew that. She wanted that. She would even have been happy with that, for with Arthur as King she would have been Queen and that would have given her as much power as she needed. But your precious Arthur wouldn’t take the throne. So high-minded! All those sacred oaths! And what did he want instead? To be a farmer. To live like you and Ceinwyn; the happy home, the children, laughter.’ She made these things sound risible. ‘How content,’ she asked me, ‘do you think Guinevere would be in that life? The very thought of it bored her! And that’s all that Arthur ever wanted. She is a clever, quick-witted lady and he wanted to turn her into a milch cow. Do you wonder she looked for other excitements?’

‘Whoredom?’

‘Oh, don’t be a fool, Derfel. Am I a whore for having bedded you? More fool me.’ We had reached the trees and Nimue turned north to walk between the ash and the tall elms. The spearmen followed us dumbly and I think that had we led them in circles they would have followed us without protest, so astonished and numbed were we all by the night’s horrors. ‘So she broke her marriage oath,’ Nimue said, ‘do you think she’s the first? Or do you think that makes her a whore? In which case Britain’s full to the rim with whores. She’s no whore, Derfel. She’s a strong woman who was born with a quick mind and good looks, and Arthur loved the looks and wouldn’t use her mind. He wouldn’t let her make him King and so she turned to that ridiculous religion of hers. And all Arthur did was tell her how happy she’d be when he could hang up Excalibur and start breeding cattle!’ She laughed at the thought. ‘And because it would never occur to Arthur to be unfaithful he never suspected it in Guinevere. The rest of us did, but not Arthur. He kept telling himself the marriage was perfect, and all the while he was miles away and Guinevere’s good looks were drawing men like flies to carrion. And they were handsome men, clever men, witty men, men who wanted power, and one was a handsome man who wanted all the power he could get, so Guinevere decided to help him. Arthur wanted a cowshed, but Lancelot wants to be High King of Britain and Guinevere finds that a more interesting challenge than raising cows or mopping up the shit of infants. And that idiotic religion encouraged her. The arbiter of thrones!’ She spat. ‘She wasn’t bedding Lancelot because she was a whore, you great fool, she was bedding him to get her man made High King.’

‘And Dinas?’ I asked, ‘Lavaine?’

‘They were her priests. They were helping her, and in some religions, Derfel, men and women couple as part of worship. And why not?’ She kicked at a stone and watched it skitter away through a patch of bindweed. ‘And believe me, Derfel, those two were beautiful-looking men. I know, because I took that beauty away from them, but not because of what they did with Guinevere. I did it for the insult they gave Merlin and for what they did to your daughter.’ She walked in silence for a few yards. ‘Don’t despise Guinevere,’ she told me after a while. ‘Don’t despise her for being bored. Despise her, if you must, for stealing the Cauldron and be thankful Dinas and Lavaine never unlocked its power. It worked for Guinevere, though. She bathed in it weekly and that’s why she never aged a week.’ She turned as footsteps sounded behind us. It was Arthur who was running to catch us up. He still looked dazed, but at some time in the last few moments it must have dawned on him that we had diverted from the road.

‘Where are we going?’ he demanded.

‘You want the garrison to see us?’ Nimue asked, pointing again to the smoke of their cooking fires. He said nothing, but just stared at the smoke as if he had never seen such a thing before. Nimue glanced at me and shrugged at his evident befuddlement. ‘If they wanted a fight,’ Arthur said, ‘they’d have been looking for us already.’ His eyes were red and puffy, and maybe it was my imagination, but his hair seemed greyer. ‘What would you do,’ Arthur asked me, ‘if you were the enemy?’ He did not mean the puny garrison at Vindocladia, but nor would he name Lancelot.

‘Try to trap us, Lord,’ I said.

‘How? Where?’ he asked irritably. ‘North, yes? That’s our fastest route back to friendly spearmen and they’ll know that. So we won’t go north.’ He looked at me, and it was almost as though he did not recognize me. ‘We go for their throats instead, Derfel,’ he said savagely.

‘Their throats, Lord?’

‘We’ll go to Caer Cadarn.’

I said nothing for a while. He was not thinking straight. Grief and anger had upset him and I wondered how I could steer him away from this suicide. ‘There are forty of us. Lord,’ I said quietly.

‘Caer Cadarn,’ he said again, ignoring my objection. ‘Who holds the Caer holds Dumnonia, and who holds Dumnonia holds Britain.

If you don’t want to come, Derfel, then go your own way. I’m going to Caer Cadarn.’ He turned away.

‘Lord!’ I called him back. ‘Dunum lies in our path.’ That was a major fortress, and though its garrison was doubtless depleted, it could hold more than enough spears to destroy our small force.

‘I would not care, Derfel, if every fortress in Britain stood in our path.’ Arthur spat the words at me.

‘You do what you want, but I’m going to Caer Cadarn.’ He walked away, shouting at the horsemen to turn westwards.

I closed my eyes, convinced my Lord wanted to die. Without Guinevere’s love, he just wanted to die. He wanted to fall beneath the enemy’s spears at the centre of the land for which he had fought so long. I could think of no other explanation why he would lead this small band of tired spearmen to the very heart of the rebellion unless he wanted death beside Dumnonia’s royal stone, but then a memory came to me and I opened my eyes. ‘A long time ago,’ I told Nimue, ‘I talked with Ailleann.’ She had been an Irish slave, older than Arthur but a loving mistress to him before he met Guinevere, and Amhar and Loholt were her ungrateful sons. She still lived, graceful and grey-haired now, and presumably still under siege in Corinium. And now, standing lost in shattered Dumnonia, I heard her voice across the years. Just watch Arthur, she had told me, because when you think he is doomed, when everything is at its darkest, he will astonish you. He will win. I told that now to Nimue. ‘And she also said,’ I went on, ‘that once he’d won he would make his usual mistake of forgiving his enemies.’

‘Not this time,’ Nimue said. ‘Not this time. The fool has learned his lesson, Derfel. So what will you do?’

‘What I always do,’ I said. ‘Go with him.’

To the enemy’s throat. To Caer Cadarn

That day Arthur was filled with a frenetic, desperate energy as though the answer to all his miseries lay at Caer Cadarn’s summit. He made no attempt to hide his small force, but just marched us north and west with his banner of the bear flying above us. He used one of his men’s horses and he wore his famous armour so that anyone could see just who it was who rode into the country’s heart. He went as fast as my spearmen could walk, and when one of the horses split a hoof he just abandoned the beast and pushed on hard. He wanted to reach the Caer.

We came to Dunum first. The Old People had made a great fort on Dunum’s hill, the Romans had added their own wall, and Arthur had repaired the fortifications and kept a strong garrison there. The garrison had never seen battle, but if Cerdic ever did attack west along Dumnonia’s coast it would have been Dunum that would have formed one of his first major obstacles and, despite the long years of peace, Arthur had never let the fort decay. A banner flew above the wall and, as we drew closer, I saw it was not the sea-eagle, but the red dragon. Dunum had stayed loyal.

Thirty men remained of the garrison. The rest had either been Christians and had deserted, or else, fearing that Mordred and Arthur were both dead, they had given up their defiance and slipped away, but Lanval, the garrison’s commander, had clung on with his shrinking force, hoping against hope that the evil news was wrong. Now Arthur had come, Lanval led his men out of the gate and Arthur slid from the saddle and gave the old warrior an embrace. We were seventy spears now instead of forty and I thought of Ailleann’s words. Just when you think he’s beaten, she had said, he begins to win. Lanval walked his horse beside me and told how Lancelot’s spearmen had marched past the fort. ‘We couldn’t stop them,’ he said bitterly, ‘and they didn’t challenge us. They just tried to make me surrender. I told them I would take down Mordred’s banner when Arthur ordered me to take it down, and I would not believe Arthur was dead until they brought me his head on a shield.’ Arthur must have said something to him about Guinevere for Lanval, despite having once been the commander of her guard, avoided her. I told him a little of what had happened at the Sea Palace and he shook his head sadly. ‘She and Lancelot were doing it in Durnovaria,’ he said, ‘in that temple she made there.’

‘You knew that?’ I asked, horrified.

‘I didn’t know it,’ he said tiredly, ‘but I heard rumours, Derfel, only rumours, and I didn’t want to know more.’ He spat at the road’s verge. ‘I was there the day Lancelot came from Ynys Trebes and I remember the two of them couldn’t keep their eyes off each other. They hid it after that, of course, and Arthur never suspected a thing. And he made it so easy for them! He trusted her and he was never at home. He was always riding off to inspect a fort or sit in a lawcourt.’ Lanval shook his head. ‘I don’t doubt she calls it a religion, Derfel, but I tell you, if that lady is in love with anyone, it’s Lancelot.’

‘I think she loves Arthur,’ I said.

‘She does, maybe, but he’s too straightforward for her. There’s no mystery in Arthur’s heart, it’s all written on his face and she’s a lady who likes subtlety. I tell you, it’s Lancelot who makes her heart quicken.’ And it was Guinevere, I thought sadly, who made Arthur’s heart beat faster; I did not even dare to think what was happening to his heart now.

We slept that night in the open. My men guarded Guinevere who busied herself with Gwydre. No word had been said of her fate, and none of us wanted to ask Arthur and so we all treated her with a distant politeness. She treated us in the same manner, asked no favours and avoided Arthur. As night fell she told Gwydre stories, but when he had gone to sleep I saw she was rocking back and forth beside him and crying softly. Arthur saw it too, then he began to weep and walked away to the edge of the wide down so that no one would see his misery.

We marched again at dawn and our road led us down into a lovely landscape that was softly lit by a sun rising into a sky cleared of cloud. This was the Dumnonia for which Arthur fought, a rich fertile land that the Gods had made so beautiful. The villages had thick thatch and deep orchards, though too many of the cottage walls were disfigured with the mark of the fish, while others had been burned, but I noticed how the Christians did not insult Arthur as they might once have done and this made me suspect that the fever which had struck Dumnonia was already fading. Between the villages the road wound between pink bramble blossom and between meadows made gaudy with clover, daisies, buttercups and poppies. Willow-wrens and yellowhammers, the last birds to make their nests, flew with scraps of straw in their beaks, while higher, above some oaks, I saw a hawk take wing, then realized it was no hawk, but a young cuckoo making its first flight. And that, I thought, was a good omen, for Lancelot, like the young cuckoo, only resembled a hawk and was in truth nothing but a usurper. We stopped a few miles short of Caer Cadarn at a small monastery that had been built where a sacred spring bubbled out of an oak grove. This had once been a Druid shrine and now the Christian God guarded the waters, but the God could not resist my spearmen who, on Arthur’s orders, broke down the gate of the palisade and took a dozen of the monks’ brown robes. The monastery’s bishop refused to take the offered payment and just cursed Arthur instead, and Arthur, his anger ungovernable now, struck the bishop down. We left the bishop bleeding into the sacred spring and marched on west. The bishop was called Carannog and he is now a saint. Arthur, I sometimes think, made more saints than God. We came to Caer Cadarn across Pen Hill, but stopped beneath the hill’s crest before we came in sight of its ramparts. Arthur chose a dozen spearmen and ordered them to cut their hair into the Christian tonsure, then to don the monks’ robes. Nimue did the cutting, and she put all the hair into a bag so that it would be safe. I wanted to be one of the twelve, but Arthur refused. Whoever went to Caer Cadarn’s gate, he said, must not have a face that could be recognized.

Issa submitted to the knife, grinning at me when his hair was gone from the front of his scalp. ‘Do I look like a Christian, Lord?’

‘You look like your father,’ I said, ‘bald and ugly.’

The twelve men wore swords under their robes, but could carry no spears. Instead we knocked their spearheads off their shafts and gave them the bare poles as weapons. Their shaved foreheads looked paler than their faces, but with the cowls of the robes over their heads they would pass as monks. ‘Go,’

Arthur told them.

Caer Cadarn was of no real military value, but as the symbolic place of Dumnonia’s kingship its worth was incalculable. For that reason alone we knew that the old fortress would be heavily guarded and that our twelve false monks would need good luck as well as bravery if they were to trick the garrison into opening the gates. Nimue gave them a blessing and then they scrambled over Pen’s crest and filed down the hill. Maybe it was because we carried the Cauldron, or maybe it was Arthur’s usual luck in war, but our ruse worked. Arthur and I lay in the summit’s warm grass and watched as Issa and his men slipped and stumbled down Pen Hill’s precipitous western slope, crossed the wide pastures and then climbed the steep path that led to Caer Cadarn’s eastern gate. They claimed to be fugitives running from a raid by Arthur’s horsemen and their story convinced the guards, who opened the gate to them. Issa and his men killed those sentries, then snatched up the dead men’s spears and shields so that they could defend the precious open gate. The Christians never forgave Arthur for that ruse either. Arthur scrambled onto Llamrei’s back the moment he saw the Caer’s gate was captured. ‘Come on!’

he shouted, and his twenty horsemen kicked their beasts up over Pen’s crest and so down the steep grassy slope beyond. Ten men followed Arthur up to the fort itself, while the other ten galloped around the foot of Caer Cadarn’s hill to cut off the escape of any of the garrison. The rest of us followed. Lanval had charge of Guinevere and so came more slowly, but my men ran recklessly down the escarpment and up the Caer’s stony path to where Issa and Arthur waited. The garrison, once the gate had fallen, had shown not a scrap of fight. There were fifty spearmen there, mostly maimed veterans or youngsters, but still more than enough to have held the walls against our small force. The handful that tried to escape were easily caught by our horsemen and brought back to the compound, where Issa and I had walked to the rampart over the western gate and there pulled down Lancelot’s flag and raised Arthur’s bear in its place. Nimue burned the cut hair, then spat at the terrified monks who had been living on the Caer to supervise the building of Sansum’s great church. Those monks, who showed far more defiance than the garrison’s spearmen, had already dug the foundations of the church and lined them with rocks from the stone circle that had stood on the Caer’s summit. They had pulled down half of the feasting hall’s walls and used the timber to begin raising the church walls which stood in the shape of a cross. ‘It’ll burn nicely,’ Issa said cheerfully, rubbing his new bald patch.

Guinevere and her son, denied the use of the hall, were given the largest hut on the Caer. It was home to a spearman’s family, but they were turned out and Guinevere was ordered inside. She looked at the rye-straw bedding and the cobwebs in the rafters and shuddered. Lanval put a spearman at the door, then watched as one of Arthur’s horsemen dragged in the garrison’s commander who was one of the men who had tried to flee.

The defeated commander was Loholt, one of Arthur’s sour twin sons who had made his mother Ailleann’s life a misery and had ever resented their father. Now Loholt, who had found his Lord in Lancelot, was dragged by the hair to where his father waited.

Loholt fell to his knees. Arthur stared at him for a long time, then turned and walked away. ‘Father!’

Loholt shouted, but Arthur ignored him.

He walked to the line of prisoners. He recognized some of the men for they had once served him, while others had come from Lancelot’s old kingdom of the Belgae. Those men, nineteen of them, were taken to the half-built church and there put to death. It was a harsh punishment, but Arthur was in no mood to give mercy to men who had invaded his country. He ordered my men to kill them, and they did. The monks protested and the prisoners’ wives and children screamed at us until I ordered them all to be taken to the east gate and thrown out.

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