Bernard Cornwell - Excalibur

The temple was guarded by six Blackshield spearmen, but as I had come to the place in Gawain’s company they made no effort to stop me ducking under the doorway’s low lintel. I was not exploring the little building from curiosity, but rather because Mithras was my chief God in those days. He was the soldier’s God, the secret God. The Romans had brought his worship to Britain and even though they had long gone, Mithras was still a favourite amongst warriors. This temple was tiny, merely two small rooms that were windowless to imitate the cave of Mithras’s birth. The outer room was filled with wooden boxes and wicker baskets which, I suspected, contained the Treasures of Britain, though I lifted none of the lids to look. Instead I crawled through the inner door into the black sanctuary and saw, glimmering there, the great silver-gold Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn. Beyond the Cauldron, and only just visible in the small grey light that seeped through the two low doors, was the altar of Mithras. Either Merlin or Nimue, who both ridiculed Mithras, had placed a badger’s skull on the altar to avert the God’s attention. I swept the skull away, then knelt beside the Cauldron and said a prayer. I begged Mithras to help our other Gods and I prayed he would come to Mai Dun and lend his terror to the slaughter of our enemies. I touched the hilt of Excalibur to his stone and wondered when a bull had last been sacrificed in this place. I imagined the Roman soldiers forcing the bull to its knees, then shoving its rump and tugging its horns to cram it through the low doors until, once in the inner sanctuary, it would stand and bellow with fear, smelling nothing but the spearmen all about it in the dark. And there, in the terrifying dark, it would be hamstrung. It would bellow again, collapse, but still thrash its great horns at the worshippers, but they would overpower it and drain its blood and the bull would slowly die and the temple would fill with the stink of its dung and blood. Then the worshippers would drink the bull’s blood in memory of Mithras, just as he had commanded us. The Christians, I was told, had a similar ceremony, but they claimed that nothing was killed in their rites, though few pagans believed it for death is the due we owe to the Gods in return for the life they give us.

I stayed on my knees in the dark, a warrior of Mithras come to one of his forgotten temples, and there, as I prayed, I smelt the same sea smell that I remembered from Lindinis, the seaweed and salt tang that had touched our nostrils as Olwen the Silver had stalked so slim and delicate and lovely down Lindinis’s arcade. For a moment I thought a God was present, or maybe that Olwen the Silver had come to Mai Dun herself, but nothing stirred; there was no vision, no glowing naked skin, just the thin sea-salt smell and the soft whisper of the wind outside the temple.

I turned back through the inner door and there, in the outer room, the smell of the sea was stronger. I tugged open box lids and lifted sacking covers from the wicker baskets, and I thought I had found the source of the sea smell when I discovered that two of the baskets were filled with salt that had become heavy and clotted in the damp autumn air, but the sea smell did not come from the salt, but from a third basket that was crammed with wet bladderwrack. I touched the seaweed, then licked my finger and tasted salt water. A great clay pot was stoppered next to the basket and, when I lifted the lid, I found the pot was filled with sea water, presumably to keep the bladderwrack moist, and so I dug into the basket of seaweed and found, just beneath the surface, a layer of shellfish. The fish had long, narrow, elegant double-sided shells, and looked something like mussels, only these were a little larger than mussels and their shells were a greyish white instead of black. I lifted one, smelt it and supposed that it was merely some delicacy that Merlin liked to eat. The shellfish, perhaps resenting my touch, cracked open its shell and pissed a squirt of liquid onto my hand. I put it back into the basket and covered the layer of living shellfish with the seaweed.

I was just turning to the outer door, planning to wait outside, when I noticed my hand. I stared at it for several heartbeats, thinking that my eyes deceived me, but in the wan light by the outer door I could not be certain so I ducked back through the inner door to where the great Cauldron waited by the altar and there, in the darkest part of Mithras’s temple, I held my right hand before my face. And saw that it was glowing.

I stared. I did not really want to believe in what I saw, but my hand did glow. It was not luminous, not an inner light, but a wash of unmistakable brightness on my palm. I drew a finger through the wet patch left by the shellfish and so made a dark streak through the shimmering surface. So Olwen the Silver had been no nymph, no messenger from the Gods after all, but a human girl smeared with the juices of shellfish. The magic was not of the Gods, but of Merlin, and all my hopes seemed to die in that dark chamber.

I wiped my hand on my cloak and went back to the daylight. I sat down on the bench by the temple door and gazed at the inner rampart where a group of small children tumbled and slid in boisterous play. The despair that had haunted me on my journey into Lloegyr returned. I so wanted to believe in the Gods, yet was so filled with doubt. What did it matter, I asked myself, that the girl was human, and that her inhuman luminous shimmer was a trick of Merlin’s? That did not negate the Treasures, but whenever I had thought about the Treasures, and whenever I had been tempted to doubt their efficacy, I had reassured myself with the memory of that shining naked girl. And now, it seemed, she was no harbinger of the Gods at all, but merely one of Merlin’s illusions.

‘Lord?’ A girl’s voice disturbed my thoughts. ‘Lord?’ she asked again, and I looked up to see a plump, dark-haired young woman smiling nervously at me. She was dressed in a simple robe and cloak, had a ribbon round her short dark curls and was holding the hand of a small red-haired boy. ‘You don’t remember me, Lord?’ she asked, disappointed.

‘Cywwylog,’ I said, recalling her name. She had been one of our servants at Lindinis where she had been seduced by Mordred. I stood. ‘How are you?’ I asked.

‘Good as can be, Lord,’ she said, pleased that I had remembered her. ‘And this is little Mardoc. Takes after his father, doesn’t he?’ I looked at the boy. He was, perhaps, six or seven years old and was sturdy, round-faced, and had stiff bristling hair just like his father, Mordred. ‘But not in himself, he don’t take after his father,’ Cywwylog said, ‘he’s a good little boy, he is, good as gold, Lord. Never been a minute’s trouble, not really, have you, my darling?’ She stooped and gave Mardoc a kiss. The boy was embarrassed by the show of affection, but grinned anyway. ‘How’s the Lady Ceinwyn?’ Cywwylog asked me.

‘Very well. She’ll be pleased we met.’

‘Always kind to me, she was,’ Cywwylog said. ‘I would have gone to your new home, Lord, only I met a man. Married now, lam.’

‘Who is he?’

‘Idfael ap Meric, Lord. He serves Lord Lanval now.’

Lanval commanded the guard that kept Mordred in his gilded prison. ‘We thought you left our household,’ I confessed to Cywwylog, ‘because Mordred gave you money.’

‘Him? Give me money!’ Cywwylog laughed. ‘I’ll live to see the stars fall before that happens, Lord. I was a fool back then,’ Cywwylog confessed to me cheerfully. ‘Of course I didn’t know what kind of a man Mordred was, and he weren’t really a man, not then, and I suppose I had my head turned, him being the King, but I wasn’t the first girl, was I? and I dare say I won’t be the last. But it all turned out for the best. My Idfael’s a good man, and he don’t mind young Mardoc being a cuckoo in his nest. That’s what you are, my lovely,’ she said, ‘a cuckoo!’ And she stooped and cuddled Mardoc who squirmed in her arms and then burst out laughing when she tickled him.