Bernard Cornwell - Excalibur

‘Derfel?’ Igraine said. ‘Derfel!’

‘Lady?’

‘You were sleeping,’ she accused me.

‘Age, dear Lady,’ I said, ‘mere age.’

‘So Aelle died in the battle,’ she said briskly, ‘and Lancelot?’

‘That comes later,’ I said firmly.

‘Tell me now!’ she insisted.

‘I told you,’ I said, ‘it comes later, and I hate stories that tell their endings before their beginnings.’

For a moment I thought she would protest, but instead she just sighed at my obstinacy and went on with her list of unfinished business. ‘What happened to the Saxon champion, Liofa?’

‘He died,’ I said, ‘very horribly.’

‘Good!’ she said, looking interested. ‘Tell me!’

‘It was a disease, Lady. Something swelled in his groin and he could neither sit nor lie, and even standing was agony. He became thinner and thinner, and finally he died, sweating and shaking. Or so we heard.’

Igraine was indignant. ‘So he wasn’t killed at Mynydd Baddon?’

‘He escaped with Cerdic’

Igraine gave a dissatisfied shrug, as though we had somehow failed by letting the Saxon champion escape. ‘But the bards,’ she said, and I groaned, for whenever my Queen mentions the bards I know I am about to be confronted with their version of history which, inevitably, Igraine prefers even though I was present when the history was made and the bards were not even born. ‘The bards,’ she said firmly, ignoring my groan of protest, ‘all say that Cuneglas’s battle with Liofa lasted the best part of a morning, and that Cuneglas killed six champions before he was struck down from behind.’

‘I have heard those songs,’ I said guardedly.

‘And?’ She glared at me. Cuneglas was her husband’s grandfather and family pride was at stake.

‘Well?’

‘I was there, Lady,’ I said simply.

‘You have an old man’s memory, Derfel,’ she said disapprovingly, and I have no doubt that when Dafydd, the clerk of the justice who writes down the British translation of my parchments, comes to the passage on Cuneglas’s death he will change it to suit my Lady’s taste. And why not? Cuneglas was a hero and it will not hurt if history remembers him as a great warrior, though in reality he was no soldier. He was a decent man, and a sensible one, and wise beyond his years, but he was not a man whose heart swelled when he gripped a spear shaft. His death was the tragedy of Mynydd Baddon, but a tragedy none of us saw in the delirium of victory. We burned him on the battlefield and his balefire flamed for three days and three nights, and on the last dawn, when there were only embers amidst which were the melted remnants of Cuneglas’s armour, we gathered around the pyre and sang the Death Song of Werlinna. We killed a score of Saxon prisoners too, sending their souls to escort Cuneglas in honour to the Otherworld, and I remember thinking that it was good for my darling Dian that her uncle had crossed the bridge of swords to keep her company in Annwn’s towered world.

‘And Arthur,’ Igraine said eagerly, ‘did he run to Guinevere?’

‘I never saw their reunion,’ I said.

‘It doesn’t matter what you saw,’ Igraine said severely, ‘we need it here.’ She stirred the heap of finished parchments with her foot. ‘You should have described their meeting, Derfel.’

‘I told you, I didn’t see it.’

‘What does that matter? It would have made a very good ending to the battle. Not everyone likes to hear about spears and killing, Derfel. Tales of men fighting can get very boring after a while and a love story makes it all a lot more interesting.’ And no doubt the battle will be filled with romance once she and Dafydd maul my story. I sometimes wish I could write this tale in the British tongue, but two of the monks can read and either could betray me to Sansum; so I must write in Saxon and trust that Igraine does not change the story when Dafydd provides her with the translation. I know what Igraine wants: she wants Arthur to run through the corpses, and for Guinevere to wait for him with open arms, and for the two of them to meet in ecstasy, and maybe that is how it did happen, but I suspect not, for she was too proud and he was too diffident. I imagine they wept when they met, but neither ever told me, so I shall invent nothing. I do know that Arthur became a happy man after Mynydd Baddon, and it was not just victory over the Saxons that gave him that happiness.

‘And what about Argante?’ Igraine wanted to know. ‘You leave so much out, Derfel!’

‘I shall come to Argante.’

‘But her father was there. Wasn’t Oengus angry that Arthur went back to Guinevere?’

‘I will tell you all about Argante,’ I promised, ‘in due time.’

‘And Amhar and Loholt? You haven’t forgotten them?’

‘They escaped,’ I said. ‘They found a coracle and paddled it across the river. I fear we shall meet them again in this tale.’

Igraine tried to prise some more details from me, but I insisted I would tell the story at my own pace and in my own order. She finally abandoned her questions and stooped to put the written parchments into the leather bag she used to carry them back to the Caer; she found stooping difficult, but refused my help. ‘I shall be so glad when the baby’s born,’ she said. ‘My breasts are sore, my legs and back ache, and I don’t walk any more, I just waddle like a goose. Brochvael’s bored with it too.’

‘Husbands never like it when their wives are pregnant,’ I said.

‘Then they shouldn’t try so hard to fill their bellies,’ Igraine said tartly. She paused to listen as Sansum screamed at Brother Llewellyn for having left his milk pail in the passageway. Poor Llewellyn. He is a novice in our monastery and no one works harder for less thanks and now, because of a limewood bucket, he is to be condemned to a week of daily beatings from Saint Tudwal, the young man — indeed scarce more than a child — who is being groomed to be Sansum’s successor. Our whole monastery lives in fear of Tudwal, and I alone escape the worst of his pique thanks to Igraine’s friendship. Sansum needs her husband’s protection too much to risk Igraine’s displeasure.

‘This morning,’ Igraine said, ‘I saw a stag with only one antler. It’s a bad omen, Derfel.’

‘We Christians,’ I said, ‘do not believe in omens.’

‘But I see you touching that nail in your desk,’ she said.

‘We are not always good Christians.’

She paused. ‘I’m worried about the birth.’

‘We are all praying for you,’ I said, and knew it was an inadequate response. But I had done more than just pray in our monastery’s small chapel. I had found an eagle stone, scratched her name on its surface and buried it beside an ash tree. If Sansum knew I had made that ancient charm he would forget about his need for Brochvael’s protection and have Saint Tudwal beat me bloody for a month. But then, if the saint knew I was writing this tale of Arthur he would do the same. But write it I shall and for a time it will be easy, for now comes the happy time, the years of peace. But they were also the years of encroaching darkness, but we did not see that, for we only saw the sunlight and never heeded the shadows. We thought we had beaten the shadows, and that the sun would light Britain for ever. Mynydd Baddon was Arthur’s victory, his greatest achievement, and perhaps the story should end there; but Igraine is right, life does not have tidy endings and so I must go on with this tale of Arthur, my Lord, my friend and the deliverer of Britain.

Arthur let Aelle’s men live. They laid down their spears and were distributed among the winners to be slaves. I used some of them to help dig my father’s grave. We dug it deep into that soft damp earth beside the river, and there we laid Aelle with his feet facing north and with his sword in his hand, and with the breastplate over his broken heart, his shield across his belly and the spear that had killed him alongside his corpse, and then we filled the grave and I said a prayer to Mithras while the Saxons prayed to their God of Thunder.