Bernard Cornwell - Excalibur

‘You see the future?’ I asked Taliesin.

‘He foresaw victory today,’ Merlin said, ‘and he knew of Cuneglas’s death a month ago, though he didn’t scry that a useless Saxon lump would come and steal all my cheese.’ He snatched the cheese back from me. ‘I suppose now,’ he said, ‘that you want him to forecast your future, Derfel?’

‘No, Lord.’

‘Quite right,’ Merlin said, ‘always better not to know the future. Everything ends in tears, that’s all there is to it.’

‘But joy is renewed,’ Taliesin said softly.

‘Oh, dear me, no!’ Merlin cried. ‘Joy is renewed! The dawn comes! The tree buds! The clouds part!

The ice melts! You can do better than that sort of sentimental rubbish.’ He fell silent. His bodyguard had ended their dance and gone to amuse themselves with some captured Saxon women. The women had children, and their cries were loud enough to annoy Merlin, who scowled. ‘Fate is inexorable,’ he said sourly, ‘and everything ends in tears.’

‘Is Nimue with you?’ I asked him, and saw immediately from Taliesin’s warning expression that I had asked the wrong question.

Merlin gazed into the fire. The flames spat an ember towards him, and he spat back to return the fire’s malice. ‘Do not speak to me of Nimue,’ he said after he had spat. His good mood had vanished and I felt embarrassed for having asked the question. He touched his black staff, then sighed. ‘She is angry with me,’ he explained.

‘Why, Lord?’

‘Because she can’t have her own way, of course. That’s what usually makes people angry.’ Another log cracked in the fire, spewing sparks that he brushed irritably from his robe after he had spat at the flames. ‘Larchwood,’ he said. ‘Newly cut larch hates to be burned.’ He gazed at me broodingly. ‘Nimue did not approve of me bringing Gawain to this battle. She believes it was a waste, and I think, probably, that she was right.’

‘He brought victory, Lord,’ I said.

He closed his eyes and seemed to sigh, intimating that I was a fool too great for endurance. ‘I have devoted my whole life,’ he said after a while, ‘to one thing. One simple thing. I wanted to restore the Gods. Is that so very hard to understand? But to do anything well, Derfel, takes a lifetime. Oh, it’s all right for fools like you, you can fritter about being a magistrate one day and a spearman the next, and when it’s all over, what have you achieved? Nothing! To change the world, Derfel, you have to be single-minded. Arthur comes close, I’ll say that for him. He wants to make Britain safe from Saxons, and he’s probably achieved that for a while, but they still exist and they’ll come back. Maybe not in my lifetime, maybe not even in yours, but your children and your children’s children will have to fight this battle all over again. There is only one way to real victory.’

‘The way of the Gods,’ I said.

‘The way of the Gods,’ he agreed, ‘and that was my life’s work.’ He gazed down at his black Druid’s staff for a moment and Taliesin sat very still, watching him. ‘I had a dream as a child,’ Merlin said very softly. ‘I went to the cave of Cam Ingli and dreamed that I had wings and could fly high enough to see all the isle of Britain, and it was so very beautiful. Beautiful and green and surrounded by a great mist that kept all our enemies away. The blessed isle, Derfel, the isle of the Gods, the one place on earth that was worthy of them, and ever since that dream, Derfel, that is all I ever wanted. To bring that blessed isle back. To bring the Gods back.’

‘But,’ I tried to interrupt.

‘Don’t be absurd!’ he shouted, making Taliesin smile. ‘Think!’ Merlin appealed to me. ‘My life’s work, Derfel!’

‘Mai Dun,’ I said softly.

He nodded and then, for a while, he said nothing. Men were singing in the distance and everywhere there were fires. The wounded cried in the dark where dogs and scavengers preyed on the dead and the dying. In the dawn this army would wake drunk to the horror of a field after battle, but for now they sang and gorged themselves on captured ale. ‘At Mai Dun,’ Merlin broke his silence, ‘I came so close. Very close. But I was too weak, Derfel, too weak. I love Arthur too much. Why? He isn’t witty, his conversation can be as tedious as Gawain’s, and he has an absurd devotion to virtue, but I do love him. You, too, as it happens. A weakness, I know. I can enjoy supple men, but I like honest men. I admire simple strength, you see, and at Mai Dun I let that liking weaken me.’

‘Gwydre,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘We should have killed him, but I knew I couldn’t do it. Not Arthur’s son. That was a terrible weakness.’

‘No.’

‘Don’t be absurd!’ he said wearily. ‘What is Gwydre’s life to the Gods? Or to the prospect of restoring Britain? Nothing! But I could not do it. Oh, I had excuses. Caleddin’s scroll is quite plain, it says that “the son of the land’s King” must be sacrificed, and Arthur is no king, but that’s a mere quibble. The rite needed Gwydre’s death and I could not bring myself to do it. It was no trouble killing Gawain, it was even a pleasure stilling that virgin fool’s babble, but not Gwydre, and so the rite went unfinished.’ He was miserable now, hunched and miserable. ‘I failed,’ he added bitterly.

‘And Nimue won’t forgive you?’ I asked hesitantly.

‘Forgive? She doesn’t know the word’s meaning! Forgiveness is a weakness to Nimue! And now she will perform the rites, and she won’t fail, Derfel. If it means killing every mother’s son in Britain, she’ll do it. Put them all in the pot and give it a good stir!’ He half smiled, then shrugged. ‘But now, of course, I’ve made things far more difficult for her. Like the sentimental old fool that I am, I had to help Arthur win this scuffle. I used Gawain to do it and now, I think, she hates me.’

‘Why?’

He raised his eyes to the smoky sky as though appealing to the Gods to grant me some small measure of understanding. ‘Do you think, you fool,’ he asked me, ‘that the corpse of a virgin prince is so readily available? It took me years to pump that halfwit’s head full of nonsense so that he’d be ready for his sacrifice! And what did I do today? I threw Gawain away! Just to help Arthur.’

‘But we won!’

‘Don’t be absurd.’ He glared at me. ‘You won? What is that revolting thing on your shield?’

I turned to look at the shield. ‘The cross.’

Merlin rubbed his eyes. ‘There is a war between the Gods, Derfel, and today I gave victory to Yahweh.’

‘Who?’

‘It’s the name of the Christian God. Sometimes they call him Jehovah. So far as I can determine he’s nothing but a humble fire God from some wretched far-ofF country who is now intent on usurping all the other Gods. He must be an ambitious little toad, because he’s winning, and it was I who gave him this victory today. What do you think men will remember of this battle?’

‘Arthur’s victory,’ I said firmly.

‘In a hundred years, Derfel,’ Merlin said, ‘they will not remember whether it was a victory or a defeat.’

I paused. ‘Cuneglas’s death?’ I offered.

‘Who cares about Cuneglas? Just another forgotten king.’

‘Aelle’s death?’ I suggested.

‘A dying dog would deserve more attention.’

‘Then what?’

He grimaced at my obtuseness. ‘They will remember, Derfel, that the cross was carried on your shields. Today, you fool, we gave Britain to the Christians, and I was the one who gave it to them. I gave Arthur his ambition, but the price, Derfel, was mine. Do you understand now?’

‘Yes, Lord.’

‘And so I made Nimue’s task a great deal harder. But she will try, Derfel, and she is not like me. She is not weak. There is a hardness inside Nimue, such a hardness.’