Bernard Cornwell - The Winter King

“Come and eat!”

An old woman lifted her skirts and thrust her loins at me. “Come to me, my lover! Come to me, my darling. I knew you'd come!” She began to piss. A child laughed and flung a stone. I left them. Some followed me along the path, but after a while they became bored and went back to their ghostly settlement.

The narrow path led between the sky and the sea. Every now and then it would be interrupted by an ancient quarry where the marks of Roman tools scarred baulks of stone, but beyond each quarry the path would wind on again through patches of thyme and spinneys of thorn. I saw no one until, suddenly, a voice hailed me from one of the small quarries. “You don't look mad,” the voice said dubiously. I turned, sword raised, to see a courtly man in a dark cloak gazing gravely from the mouth of a cave. He raised a hand. “Please! No weapons. My name is Malldynn, and I greet you, stranger, if you come in peace, and if not, then I beg you to pass us by.”

I wiped the blood from Hywelbane and thrust her back into the scabbard. “I come in peace,” I said.

“Are you newly come to the Isle?” he asked as he approached me gingerly. He had a pleasant face, deeply lined and sad, with a manner that reminded me of Bishop Bedwin.

“I arrived this hour,” I answered.

“And you were doubtless pursued by the rabble at the gate. I apologize for them, though the Gods know I have no responsibility for those ghouls. They take the bread each week and make the rest of us pay for it. Fascinating, is it not, how even in a place of lost souls we form our hierarchies? There are rulers here. There are the strong and the weak. Some men dream of making paradises on this earth and the first requirement of such paradises, or so I understand, is that we must be unshackled by laws, but I do suspect, my friend, that any place unshackled by laws will more resemble this Isle than any paradise. I do not have the pleasure of your name.”

“Derfel.”

“Derfel?” He frowned in thought. “A servant of the Druids?”

“I was. Now I'm a warrior.”

“No, you are not,” he corrected me, 'you are dead. You have come to the Isle of the Dead. Please, come and sit. It is not much, but it is my home.“ He gestured into the cave where two semi-dressed blocks of stone served as a chair and table. An old piece of cloth, perhaps dragged from the sea, half hid his sleeping quarter where I could see a bed made from dried grass. He insisted I use the small stone block as my chair. ”I can offer you rainwater to drink,“ he said, 'and some five-day-old bread to eat.” I put an oatcake on the table. Malldynn was plainly hungry, but he resisted the impulse to snatch the biscuit. Instead he drew a small knife with a blade that had been sharpened so often that it had a wavy edge and used it to divide the oatcake into halves. “At risk of sounding ungrateful,” he said, 'oats were never my favourite food. I prefer meat, fresh meat, but still I thank you, Derfel.“ He had been kneeling opposite me, but once the oatcake was eaten and the crumbs had been delicately dabbed from his lips he stood and leaned against the cave's wall. ”My mother made oatcakes,“ he told me, 'but hers were tougher. I suspect the oats were not husked properly. That one was delicious, and I shall now revise my opinion of oats. Thank you again.” He bowed.

“You don't seem mad,” I said.

He smiled. He was middle-aged, with a distinguished face, clever eyes and a white beard that he tried to keep trimmed. His cave had been swept clean with a brush of twigs that leaned against the wall. “It is not just the mad who are sent here, Derfel,” he said reprovingly. “Some who want to punish the sane send them here also. Alas, I offended Uther.” He paused ruefully. “I was a counsellor,” he went on, 'a great man even, but when I told Uther that his son Mordred was a fool, I ended here. But I was right. Mordred was a fool, even at ten years old he was a fool."

“You've been here that long?” I asked in astonishment.

“Alas, yes.”

“How do you survive?”

He offered me a self-deprecating shrug. “The gate-keeping ghouls believe I can work magic. I threaten to restore their wits if they offend me, and so they take good care to keep me happy. They are happier mad, believe me. Any man who possessed his wits would pray to go insane on this Isle. And you, friend Derfel, might I enquire what brings you here?”

“I search for a woman.”

“Ah! We have plenty, and most are unconstrained by modesty. Such women, I believe, are another requisite of earthly paradises, but alas, the reality proves otherwise. They are certainly immodest, but they are also filthy, their conversation is tedious, and the pleasure to be derived from them is as momentary as it is shameful. If you seek such a woman, Derfel, then you will find them here in abundance.”

“I'm searching for a woman called Nimue,” I said.

“Nimue,” he said, frowning as he tried to remember the name, "Nimue! Yes indeed, I do recall her now!

A one-eyed girl with black hair. She's gone to the sea folk."

“Drowned?” I asked, appalled.

“No, no.” He shook his head. “You must understand we have our own communities on the Isle. You have already made the acquaintance of the gate ghouls. We here in the quarries are the hermits, a small group who prefer our solitude and so inhabit the caves on this side of the Isle. On the far side are the beasts. You may imagine what they are like. At the southern end are the sea folk. They fish with lines of human hair using thorns for hooks and are, I must say, the best behaved of the Isle's tribes, though none are exactly famed for their hospitality. They all fight each other, of course. Do you see how we have everything here that the Land of the Living offers? Except, perhaps, religion, although one or two of our inhabitants do believe themselves to be Gods. And who is to deny them?”

“You've never tried to leave?”

“I did,” he said sadly. “A long time ago. I once tried to swim across the bay, but they watch us, and a spear-butt on the head is an efficient reminder that we are not supposed to leave the Isle and I turned back long before they could administer such a blow. Most drown who try to escape that way. A few go along the causeway and some of them, perhaps, do get back among the living, but only if they succeed in passing the gate ghouls first. And if they survive that ordeal they have to avoid the guards waiting on the beach. Those skulls you saw as you crossed the causeway? They are all men and women who tried to escape. Poor souls.” He went silent and I thought, for a second, he was about to weep. Then he pushed himself briskly off the wall. “What am I thinking about? Do I have no manners? I must offer you water. See? My cistern!” He gestured proudly towards a wooden barrel that stood just outside the cave mouth and which was placed to catch the water that cascaded off the quarry's sides during rainstorms. He had a ladle with which he filled two wooden cups with water. “The barrel and ladle came from a fishing boat that was wrecked here, when? Let me see… two years ago. Poor people! Three men and two boys. One man tried to swim away and was drowned, the other two died under a hail of stones and the two boys were carried off. You can imagine what happened to them! There may be women aplenty, but a clean young fisher boy flesh is a rare treat on this Isle.” He put the cup in front of me and shook his head. “It is a terrible place, my friend, and you have been foolish to come here. Or were you sent?”

“I came by choice.”

“Then you belong here anyway, for you're plainly mad.” He drank his water. “Tell me,” he said, 'the news of Britain."

I told him. He had heard of Uther's death and Arthur's coming, but not much else. He frowned when I said King Mordred was maimed, but was pleased when he heard that Bedwin still lived. “I like Bedwin,” he said. “Liked, rather. We have to learn to talk here as though we were dead. He must be old?”