Bernard Cornwell - The Winter King

“Dear Lady!” Bishop Sansum appeared from behind one of the new walls which were indeed ill-dressed compared with the careful masonry of the old temple's remains. Sansum was in a black gown — which, like his stiffly tonsured hair, was whitened with stone dust. “You do us a striking honour by your gracious presence, Lady,” he said as he bowed to Guinevere.

“I'm not doing you honour, you worm. I came to show Derfel what carnage you're making. How can you worship in that?” She threw a hand towards the half-built church. “You might as well take over a cow shed!”

“Our dear Lord was born in a cattle shed, Lady, so I rejoice that our humble church reminds you of one.” He bowed again to her. Some of his workers had gathered at the far end of their new building where they began to sing one of their holy songs to ward off the baleful presence of pagans.

“It certainly sounds like a cow shed,” Guinevere said tartly, then pushed past the priest and strode over the masonry-littered ground to where a wooden hut leaned against the stone-and-brick wall of Nabur's house. She released her hounds' leashes to let them run free. “Where's that statue, Sansum?” She threw the question over her shoulder as she kicked the hut door open.

“Alas, gracious Lady, though I tried to save it for you, our blessed Lord commanded that it be melted down. For the poor, you understand?”

She turned on the Bishop savagely. “Bronze! What use is bronze to the poor? Do they eat it?” She looked at me. "A statue of Mercury, Derfel, the height of a tall man and beautifully worked. Beautiful!

Roman work, not British, but now it's gone, melted in a Christian furnace because you people' she was staring at Sansum again with loathing on her strong face 'cannot stand beauty. You're frightened of it. You're like grubs pulling down a tree, and you have no idea what you do.“ She ducked into the hut, which was evidently where Sansum stored the valuable objects he discovered in the temple remains. She emerged with a small stone statuette that she tossed to one of her guards. ”It isn't much,“ she said, 'but at least it's safe from a carpenter-grub born in a cow shed.”

Sansum, still smiling despite all the insults, enquired of me how the fighting in the north went. “We win slowly,” I said.

“Tell my Lord the Prince Arthur that I pray for him.”

“Pray for his enemies, you toad,” Guinevere said, 'and maybe we'd win more quickly.“ She stared at her two dogs that were pissing against the new church walls. ”Cadwy raided this way last month,“ she told me, 'and came close.”

“Praise God we were spared,” Bishop Sansum added piously.

“No thanks to you, you pitiful worm,” Guinevere said. “The Christians ran away. Plucked up their skirts and scampered east. The rest of us stayed, and Lanval, the Gods be thanked, saw Cadwy off.” She spat towards the new church. “In time,” she said, 'we'll be free of enemies, and when that happens, Derfel, I shall pull down that cattle shed and build a temple fit for a real God."

“For Isis?” Sansum enquired slyly.

“Careful,” Guinevere warned him, 'for my Goddess rules the night, toad, and she might snatch your soul for her amusement. Though the Gods alone know what use your miserable soul would be to anyone. Come, Derfel."

The two deer hounds were collected and we strode back up the hill. Guinevere shook with anger. “You see what he's doing? Pulling down the old! Why? So he can impose his tawdry little superstitions on us. Why can't he leave the old alone? We don't care if fools want to worship a carpenter, so why does he care who we worship? The more Gods the better, I say. Why offend some Gods to exalt your own? It doesn't make sense.”

“Who is Isis?” I asked her as we turned into the gate of her villa. She shot me an amused look. “Is that my dear husband's question I hear?”

“Yes,” I said.

She laughed. “Well done, Derfel. The truth is always astonishing. So Arthur is worried by my Goddess?”

“He's worried,” I said, 'because Sansum worries him with tales of mysteries.“ She shrugged off the cloak, letting it fall on the courtyard tiles to be picked up by a slave. ”Tell Arthur,“ she said, 'that he has nothing to worry about. Does he doubt my affection?”

“He adores you,” I said tactfully.

“And I him.” She smiled at me. “Tell him that, Derfel,” she added warmly.

“I shall, Lady.”

“And tell him he has nothing to worry about with Isis.” She reached impulsively for my hand. “Come,” she said, just as she had when she had led me down to the new Christian shrine, but this time she hurried me across the courtyard, jumping the small water channels, to a small door set into the far arcade. “This,” she said, letting go of my hand and pushing the door open, 'is the shrine of Isis that so worries my dear Lord.“ I hesitated. ”Are men allowed to enter?"

“By day, yes. By night? No.” She ducked through the door and pulled aside a thick woollen curtain that was hung immediately inside. I followed, pushing through the curtain to find myself in a black, lightless room. “Stay where you are,” she warned me, and at first I thought that I was obeying some rule of Isis, but as my eyes grew accustomed to the thick gloom, I saw that she had made me stop so I did not stumble into a pool of water that was set into the floor. The only light in the shrine came around the edges of the curtain at the door, but as I waited I became aware of a grey light seeping into the room's far end; then I saw that Guinevere was pulling down layer after layer of black wall hangings, each one supported on a pole carried by brackets and each woven so thick that no light could come through the layered cloths. Behind the hangings, that now lay crumpled on the floor, were shutters that Guinevere threw open to let in a dazzling flood of light.

“There,” she said, standing to one side of the big, arched window, 'the mysteries!" She was mocking Sansum's fears, yet in truth the room was truly mysterious for it was entirely black. The floor was of black stone, the walls and arched ceiling were painted with pitch. In the black floor's centre was the shallow pool of black water and behind it, between the pool and the newly opened window, was a low black throne made of stone.

“So what do you think, Derfel?” Guinevere asked me.

“I see no Goddess,” I said, looking for a statue of Isis.

“She comes with the moon,” Guinevere said, and I tried to imagine the full moon flooding through that window to gloss the pool and shimmer on the deep black walls. “Tell me about Nimue,” Guinevere ordered, 'and I will tell you about Isis."

“Nimue is Merlin's priestess,” I said, my voice echoing hollow from the black painted stone, 'and she's learning his secrets."

“What secrets?”

“The secrets of the old Gods, Lady.”

She frowned. “But how does he find such secrets? I thought the old Druids wrote nothing down. They were forbidden to write, were they not?”

“They were, Lady, but Merlin searches for their knowledge anyway.” Guinevere nodded. “I knew we'd lost some knowledge. And Merlin's going to find it? Good! That might settle that bitter toad Sansum.” She had walked to the centre of the window and was now staring across the tiled and thatched roofs of Durnovaria and over the southern ramparts and the mounded grass of the amphitheatre beyond, towards the vast earth walls of Mai Dun that reared on the horizon. White clouds heaped in the blue sky, but what made the breath catch in my throat was that the sunlight was now flooding through Guinevere's white linen shift so that my Lord's Lady, this Princess of Henis Wyren, might just as well have been naked and, for those moments, as the blood pounded in my ears, I was jealous of my Lord. Was Guinevere aware of that sun's treachery? I thought not, but I might have been wrong. She had her back to me, but suddenly half turned so she could look at me. “Is Lunete a magician?”