Bernard Cornwell - The Winter King

IGRAINE DEMANDED TO see Ceinwyn's brooch. She held it in the window, turning it and gazing at its golden spirals. I could see the desire in her eyes. “You have many that are more beautiful,” I told her gently.

“But none so full of story,” she said, holding the brooch against her breast.

“My story, dear Queen,” I chided her, 'not yours."

She smiled. “But what did you write? That if I were as kind as you know me to be, then I would let you keep it?”

“Did I write that?”

“Because you knew that would make me give it back to you. You are a cunning old man, Brother Derfel.” She held the brooch out to me, then folded her fingers over the gold before I could take it. “Will it be mine one day?”

“No one else's, dear Lady. I promise.”

She still held it. “And you won't let Bishop Sansum take it?”

“Never,” I said fervently.

She dropped it into my hand. “Did you really wear it under your breastplate?”

“Always,” I said, tucking the brooch safe under my robe.

“Poor Ynys Trebes.” She was sitting in her usual place on my window-sill from where she could stare down Dinnewrac's valley towards the distant river that was swollen with an early summer rain. Was she imagining Prankish invaders crossing the ford and swarming up the slopes? “What happened to Leanor?” she asked, surprising me with the question.

“The harpist? She died.”

“No! But I thought you said she escaped from Ynys Trebes?” I nodded. “She did, but she sickened her first winter in Britain and died. Just died.”

“And what about your woman?”

“Mine?”

“In Ynys Trebes. You said that Galahad had Leaner, but that the rest of you all had women too, so who was yours? And what happened to her?”

“I don't know.”

“Oh, Derfel! She can't have been nothing!”

I sighed. “She was a fisherman's daughter. Her name was Pellcyn, only everyone called her Puss. Her husband had drowned a year before I met her. She had a baby daughter, and when Culhwch led our survivors to the boat Puss fell off the cliff path. She was holding her baby, you see, and couldn't hold on to the rocks. There was chaos and everyone was panicking and hurrying. It was no one's fault.” Though if I had been there, I have often thought, Pellcyn would have lived. She was a sturdy, bright-eyed girl with a quick laugh and an inexhaustible appetite for hard work. A good woman. But if I had saved her life Merlin would have died. Fate is inexorable.

Igraine must have been thinking the same. “I wish I'd met Merlin,” she said wistfully.

“He'd have liked you,” I said. “He always liked pretty women.”

“But so did Lancelot?” she asked quickly.

“Oh, yes.”

“Not boys?”

“Not boys.”

Igraine laughed. This day she was wearing an embroidered dress of blue dyed linen that suited her fair skin and dark hair. Two gold torques circled her neck and a tangle of bracelets rattled on a slim wrist. She stank of faeces, a fact I was diplomatic enough to ignore for I realized she must be wearing a pessary of a newborn baby's first motions, an old remedy for a barren woman. Poor Igraine. “You hated Lancelot?” she suddenly accused me.

“Utterly.”

“That isn't fair!” She jumped up from the window-sill and paced to and fro in the small room. “People's stories shouldn't be told by their enemies. Supposing Nwylle wrote mine?”

“Who is Nwylle?”

“You don't know her,” she said, frowning, and I guessed Nwylle was her husband's lover. “But it isn't fair,” she insisted, 'because everyone knows Lancelot was the greatest of Arthur's soldiers. Everyone!"

“I don't.”

“But he must have been brave!”

I stared through the window, trying to be fair in my mind, trying to find something good to say about my worst enemy. “He could be brave,” I said, 'but he chose not to be. He fought sometimes, but usually he avoided battle. He was frightened of his face being scarred, you see. He was very vain about his looks. He collected Roman mirrors. The mirrored room in Benoic's palace was Lancelot's room. He could sit there and admire himself on every wall."

“I don't believe he was as bad as you make him sound,” Igraine protested.

“I think he was worse,” I said. I do not enjoy writing about Lancelot for the memory of him lies like a stain on my life. “Above everything,” I told Igraine, 'he was dishonest. He told lies out of choice because he wanted to hide the truth about himself, but he also knew how to make people like him when he wanted. He could charm the fish from the sea, my dear."

She sniffed, unhappy at my judgment. Doubtless, when Dafydd ap Gruffud translates these words, Lancelot will be burnished just as he would have liked. Shining Lancelot! Upright Lancelot! Handsome, dancing, smiling, witty, elegant Lancelot! He was the King without Land and the Lord of Lies, but if Igraine has her way he will shine through the years as the very paragon of kingly warriors. Igraine peered through the window to where Sansum was driving a group of lepers from our gate. The saint was flinging clods of earth at them, screaming at them to go to the devil and summoning our other brothers to help him. The novice Tudwal, who daily grows ruder to the rest of us, danced beside his master and cheered him on. Igraine's guards, lolling at the kitchen door as usual, finally appeared and used their spears to rid the monastery of the diseased beggars. “Did Sansum really want to sacrifice Arthur?” Igraine asked.

“So Bedwin told me.”

Igraine gave me a sly look. “Does Sansum like boys, Derfel?”

“The saint loves everyone, dear Queen, even young women who ask impertinent questions.” She smiled dutifully, then grimaced. “I'm sure he doesn't like women. Why won't he let any of you marry? Other monks marry, but none here.”

“The pious and beloved Sansum,” I explained, 'believes women distract us from our duty of adoring God. Just like you distract me from my proper work."

She laughed, then suddenly remembered an errand and looked serious. “There are two words Dafydd did not understand in the last batch of skins, Derfel. He wants you to explain them. Catamite?”

“Tell him to ask someone else.”

“I shall ask someone else, certainly,” she said indignantly. “And camel? He says it isn't coal.”

“A camel is a mythical beast, Lady, with horns, wings, scales, a forked tail and flames for breath.”

“It sounds like Nwylle,” Igraine said.

“Ah! The Gospel writers at work! My two evangelists!” Sansum, his hands dirty from the earth he had thrown at the lepers, sidled into the room to give this present parchment a dubious look before wrinkling his nose. “Do I smell something foul?” he asked.

I looked sheepish. “The beans at breakfast, Lord Bishop,” I said. “I apologize.”

“I am astonished you can abide his company,” Sansum said to Igraine. “And shouldn't you be in the chapel, my Lady? Praying for a baby? Is that not your business here?”

“It's certainly not yours,” Igraine said tartly. “If you must know, my Lord Bishop, we were discussing our Saviour's parables. Did you not once preach to us about the camel and the needle's eye?” Sansum grunted and looked over my shoulder. “And what, foul Brother Derfel, is the Saxon word for camel?”

“Nwylle,” I said.

Igraine laughed and Sansum glared at her. “My Lady finds the words of our blessed Lord amusing?”

“I am just happy to be here,” Igraine said humbly, 'but I would love to know what a camel is."

“Everyone knows!” Sansum said derisively. “A camel is a fish, a great fish! Not unlike,” he added slyly,