Bernard Cornwell - The Winter King

“More will be needed, indeed they will,” Ban said as fiercely as his thin, high-pitched voice allowed.

“Dear me, yes. So you've brought a few men, have you? How few, pray, is few, precisely?”

“Sixty, Lord.”

King Ban abruptly sat on a wooden chair inlaid with ivory. “Sixty! I had hoped for three hundred! And for Arthur himself. You look very young to be a captain of men,” he said dubiously, then suddenly brightened. “Did I hear you correctly? Did you say you can write?”

“Yes, Lord.”

“And read?” he insisted anxiously.

“Indeed, Lord King.”

“You see, Bleiddig!” the King cried in a triumphant voice as he sprang from the chair. “Some warriors can read and write! It doesn't unman them. It does not reduce them to the petty status of clerks, women, kings or poets as you so fondly believe. Ha! A literate warrior. Do you, by any happy chance, write poetry?” he asked me.

“No, Lord.”

“How sad. We are a community of poets. We are a brotherhood! We call ourselves ihefili, and poetry is our stern mistress. It is, you might say, our sacred task. Maybe you will be inspired? Come with me, my learned Derfel.” Ban, Arthur's absence forgotten, scurried excitedly across the room, beckoning me to follow through a second set of great doors and across another small room where a second harpist, half-naked like the first and just as beautiful, touched her strings, and then into a great library. I had never seen a proper library before and King Ban, delighted to show the room off, watched my reaction. I gaped, and no wonder, for scroll after scroll was bound in ribbon and stored in custom-made open-ended boxes that stood one on top of the other like the cells of a honeycomb. There were hundreds of such cells, each with its own scroll and each cell labelled in a carefully inked hand. “What languages do you speak, Derfel?” Ban asked me.

“Saxon, Lord, and British.”

“Ah.” He was disappointed. “Rude tongues only. I, now, have a command of Latin, Greek, British, of course, and some small Arabic. Father Celwin there speaks ten times as many languages, isn't that so, Celwin?”

The King spoke to the library's only occupant, an old white-bearded priest with a grotesquely humped back and a black monkish cowl. The priest raised a thin hand in acknowledgement, but did not look up from the scrolls that were weighted down on his table. I thought for a moment that the priest had a fur scarf draped about the back of his monk's hood, then I saw it was a grey cat that lifted its head, looked at me, yawned, then went back to sleep. King Ban ignored the priest's rudeness, and instead conducted me past the racks of boxes and told me about the treasures he had collected. “What I have here,” he said proudly, 'is anything the Romans left, and anything my friends think to send me. Some of the manuscripts are too old to handle any more, so those we copy. Let's see now, what's this? Ah, yes, one of Aristophanes's twelve plays. I have them all, of course. This one is The Babylonians. A comedy in Greek, young man."

“And not at all funny,” the priest snapped from his table.

“And mightily amusing,” King Ban said, unruffled by the priest's rudeness, to which he was evidently accustomed. “Maybe the fili should build a theatre and perform it?” he added. “Ah, this you'll enjoy. Horace's Ars Poetica. I copied this one myself.”

“No wonder it's illegible,” Father Celwin interjected.

“I make all the fili study Horace's maxims,” the King told me.

“Which is why they're such execrable poets,” the priest put in, but still did not look up from his scrolls.

“Ah, Tertullian!” The King slid a scroll from its box and blew dust from the parchment. "A copy of his ApologeticusV

“All rubbish,” Celwin said. “Waste of precious ink.”

“Eloquence itself!” Ban enthused. “I'm no Christian, Derfel, but some Christian writing is full of good moral sense.”

“No such thing,” the priest maintained.

“Ah, and this is a work you must already know,” the King said, drawing another scroll from its box.

“Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. It is an unparalleled guide, my dear Derfel, to the manner in which a man should live his life.”

“Platitudes in bad Greek written by a Roman bore,” the priest growled.

“Probably the greatest book ever written,” the King said dreamily, replacing the Marcus Aurelius and drawing out another work. “And this is a curiosity, indeed it is. The great treatise of Aristarchus of Samos. You know it, I'm sure?”

“No, Lord,” I confessed.

“It is not perhaps on everyone's reading list,” the King admitted sadly, 'but it has a certain quaint amusement. Aristarchus maintains — do not laugh that the earth revolves around the sun and not the sun around the earth.“ He illustrated this cantankerous notion with extravagant wheeling gestures with his long arms. ”He got it backwards, do you see?"

“Sounds sensible to me,” Celwin said, still without looking up from his work.

“And Silius Italicus!” The King gestured at a whole group of honeycomb cells filled with scrolls. “Dear Silius Italicus! I have all eighteen volumes of his history of the Second Punic War. All in verse, of course. What a treasure!”

“The second turgid war,” the priest cackled.

“Such is my library,” Ban said proudly, conducting me from the room, 'the glory of Ynys Trebes! That and our poets. Sorry to have disturbed you, Father!"

“Is a camel disturbed by a grasshopper?” Father Celwin demanded, then the door was closed on him and I followed the King past the bare-breasted harpist back to where Bleiddig waited.

“Father Celwin is conducting research,” Ban announced proudly, 'into the wingspan of angels. Maybe I should ask him about invisibility? He does seem to know everything. But do you see now, Derfel, why it is so important that Ynys Trebes does not fall? In this small place, my dear fellow, is stored the wisdom of our world, gathered from its ruins and held in trust. I wonder what a camel is. Do you know what a camel is, Bleiddig?"

“A kind of coal, Lord. Blacksmiths use it for making steel.”

“Do they indeed? How interesting. But coal wouldn't be bothered by a grasshopper, would it? The contingency would scarcely arise, so why suggest it? How perplexing. I must ask Father Celwin when he's in a mood to be asked, which is not often. Now, young man, I know you've come to save my kingdom and I'm sure you're eager to be about that business, but first you must stay for supper. My sons are here, warriors both! I had hoped they might devote their lives to poetry and scholarship, but the times demand warriors, do they not? Still, my dear Lancelot values the fill as highly as I do myself, so there is hope for our future.” He paused, wrinkled his nose and offered me a kindly smile. “You will, I think, want a bath?”

“Will I?”

“Yes,” Ban said decisively. “Leanor will take you to your chamber, prepare your bath and provide you with clothes.” He clapped his hands and the first harpist came to the door. It seemed she was Leanor. I was in a palace by the sea, full of light and beauty, haunted by music, sacred to poetry and enchanted by its inhabitants who seemed to me to come from another age and another world. And then I met Lancelot.

“You're hardly more than a child,” Lancelot said to me.

“True, Lord,” I said. I was eating lobster soaked in melted butter and I do not think before or since I have ever eaten anything so delicious.

“Arthur insults us by sending a mere child,” Lancelot insisted.

“Not true, Lord,” I said, butter dripping into my beard.

“You accuse me of lying?” Prince Lancelot, the Edling of Benoic, demanded. I smiled at him. “I accuse you, Lord Prince, of being mistaken.”