Bernard Cornwell: Excalibur

Slowly, like a settling pool that had been stirred to turbidity, Britain calmed. Lancelot cowered in Venta, fearing Arthur’s vengeance. Mordred, our rightful King, came to Lindinis where he was accorded every honour, but was surrounded by spearmen. Guinevere stayed at Ynys Wydryn under Morgan’s hard gaze, while Sansum, Morgan’s husband, was imprisoned in the guest quarters of Emrys, Bishop of Durnovaria. The Saxons retreated behind their frontiers, though once the harvest was gathered in each side raided the other savagely. Sagramor, Arthur’s Numidian commander, guarded the Saxon frontier while Culhwch, Arthur’s cousin and now once again one of his war leaders, watched Lancelot’s Belgic border from our fortress at Dunum. Our ally, King Cuneglas of Powys, left a hundred spearmen under Arthur’s command, then returned to his own kingdom, and on the way he met his sister, the Princess Ceinwyn, returning to Dumnonia. Ceinwyn was my woman as I was her man, though she had taken an oath never to marry. She came with our two daughters in the early autumn and I confess I was not truly happy until she returned. I met her on the road south of Glevum and I held her a long time in my arms, for there had been moments when I thought I would never see her again. She was a beauty, my Ceinwyn, a golden-haired Princess who once, long before, had been betrothed to Arthur and after he had abandoned that planned marriage to be with Guinevere, Ceinwyn’s hand had been promised to other great princes, but she and I had run away together and I dare say we both did well by doing so. We had our new house at Dun Caric, which lay just a short journey north of Caer Cadarn. Dun Caric means ‘The Hill by the Pretty Stream’, and the name was apt for it was a lovely place where I thought we would be happy. The hilltop hall was made of oak and roofed with rye-straw thatch and had a dozen outbuildings enclosed by a decayed timber palisade. The folk who lived in the small village at the foot of the hill believed the hall to be haunted, for Merlin had let an ancient Druid, Balise, live out his life in the place, but my spearmen had cleaned out the nests and vermin, then hauled out all Balise’s ritual paraphernalia. I had no doubt that the villagers, despite their fear of the old hall, had already taken the cauldrons, tripods and anything else of real value, so we were left to dispose of the snakeskins, dry bones and desiccated corpses of birds, all of them thick with cobwebs. Many of the bones were human, great heaps of them, and we buried those remains in scattered pits so that the souls of the dead could not reknit and come back to stalk us.

Arthur had sent me dozens of young men to train into warriors and all that autumn I taught them the discipline of the spear and shield, and once a week, more out of duty than from pleasure, I visited Guinevere at nearby Ynys Wydryn. I carried her gifts of food and, as it got colder, a great cloak of bear fur. Sometimes I took her son, Gwydre, but she was never really comfortable with him. She was bored by his tales of fishing in Dun Caric’s stream or hunting in our woods. She herself loved to hunt, but that pleasure was no longer permitted to her and so she took her exercise by walking around the shrine’s compound. Her beauty did not fade, indeed her misery gave her large eyes a luminosity they had lacked before, though she would never admit to the sadness. She was too proud for that, though I could tell she was unhappy. Morgan galled her, besieging her with Christian preaching and constantly accusing her of being the scarlet whore of Babylon. Guinevere endured it patiently and the only complaint she ever made was in the early autumn when the nights lengthened and the first night frosts whitened the hollows and she told me that her chambers were being kept too cold. Arthur put a stop to that, ordering that Guinevere could burn as much fuel as she wished. He loved her still, though he hated to hear me mention her name. As for Guinevere, I did not know who she loved. She would always ask me for news of Arthur, but never once mentioned Lancelot.

Arthur too was a prisoner, but only of his own torments. His home, if he had one at all, was the royal palace at Durnovaria, but he preferred to tour Dumnonia, going from fortress to fortress and readying us all for the war against the Saxons that must come in the new year, though if there was any one place where he spent more time than another, it was with us at Dun Caric. We would see him coming from our hilltop hall, and a moment later a horn would sound in warning as his horsemen splashed across the stream. Gwydre, his son, would run down to meet him and Arthur would lean down from Llamrei’s saddle and scoop the boy up before spurring to our gate. He showed tenderness to Gwydre, indeed to all children, but with adults he showed a chill reserve. The old Arthur, the man of cheerful enthusiasm, was gone. He bared his soul only to Ceinwyn, and whenever he came to Dun Caric he would talk with her for hours. They spoke of Guinevere, who else? ‘He still loves her,’ Ceinwyn told me.

‘He should marry again,’ I said.

‘How can he?’ she asked. ‘He doesn’t think of anyone but her.’

‘What do you tell him?’

‘To forgive her, of course. I doubt she’s going to be foolish again, and if she’s the woman who makes him happy then he should swallow his pride and have her back.’

‘He’s too proud for that.’

‘Evidently,’ she said disapprovingly. She laid down her distaff and spindle. ‘I think, maybe, he needs to kill Lancelot first. That would make him happy.’

Arthur tried that autumn. He led a sudden raid on Venta, Lancelot’s capitol, but Lancelot had wind of the attack and fled to Cerdic, his protector. He took with him Amhar and Loholt, Arthur’s sons by his Irish mistress, Ailleann. The twins had ever resented their bastardy and had allied themselves with Arthur’s enemies. Arthur failed to find Lancelot, but he did bring back a rich haul of grain that was sorely needed because the turmoil of the summer had inevitably affected our harvest. In mid autumn, just two weeks before Samain and in the days following his raid on Venta, Arthur came again to Dun Caric. He had become still thinner and his face even more gaunt. He had never been a man of frightening presence, but now he had become guarded so that men did not know what thoughts he had, and that reticence gave him a mystery, while the sadness in his soul added a hardness to him. He had ever been slow to anger, but now his temper flared at the smallest provocation. Most of all he was angry at himself for he believed he was a failure. His first two sons had abandoned him, his marriage had soured and Dumnonia had failed with it. He had thought he could make a perfect kingdom, a place of justice, security and peace, but the Christians had preferred slaughter. He blamed himself for not seeing what was coming, and now, in the quiet after the storm, he doubted his own vision. ‘We must just settle for doing the little things, Derfel,’ he said to me that day.

It was a perfect autumn day. The sky was mottled with cloud so that patches of sunlight raced across the yellow-brown landscape that lay to our west. Arthur, for once, did not seek Ceinwyn’s company, but led me to a patch of grass just outside Dun Caric’s mended palisade from where he stared moodily at the Tor rearing on the skyline. He stared at Ynys Wydryn, where Guinevere lay. ‘The little things?’ I asked him.

‘Defeat the Saxons, of course.’ He grimaced, knowing that defeating the Saxons was no small thing.

‘They are refusing to talk to us. If I send any emissaries they will kill them. They told me so last week.’

‘They?’ I asked.

‘They,’ he confirmed grimly, meaning both Cerdic and Aelle. The two Saxon Kings were usually at each other’s throats, a condition we encouraged with massive bribery, but now, it seemed, they had learned the lesson that Arthur had taught the British kingdoms so well: that in unity alone lies victory. The two Saxon monarchs were joining forces to crush Dumnonia and their decision to receive no emissaries was a sign of their resolve, as well as a measure of self-protection. Arthur’s messengers could carry bribes that might weaken their chieftains, and all emissaries, however earnestly they seek peace, serve to spy on the enemy. Cerdic and Aelle were taking no chances. They meant to bury their differences and join forces to crush us.