Bernard Cornwell - Excalibur

‘We, Lord?’

‘Meurig and I. Oh, I know he hates war, but sooner or later some of his missionaries will be killed in Powys and I suspect those deaths will persuade him to send spearmen to Perddel’s support. So long, of course, as Perddel agrees to establish Christianity in Powys, which he doubtless will if it gives him back his kingdom. And if Meurig goes to war he’ll probably ask me to go. He’d much rather that my men should die than his.’

‘Under the Christian banner?’ I asked sourly.

‘I doubt he’ll want another,’ Arthur said calmly. ‘I’ve become his tax-collector in Siluria, so why shouldn’t I be his warlord in Powys?’ He smiled wryly at the prospect, then gave me a sheepish look.

‘There is another reason to give Gwydre and Morwenna a Christian marriage,’ he said after a while.

‘Which is?’ I had to prompt him for it was clear that this further reason embarrassed him.

‘Suppose Mordred and Argante have no children?’ he asked me.

I said nothing for a while. Guinevere had raised the same possibility when I had spoken to her in Aquae Sulis, but it seemed an unlikely supposition. I said as much.

‘But if they are childless,’ Arthur insisted, ‘who would have the best claim to Dumnonia’s kingship?’

‘You would, of course,’ I insisted. Arthur was Uther’s son, even if he had been bastard born, and there were no other sons who might claim the kingdom.

‘No, no,’ he said quickly. ‘I don’t want it. I never have wanted it!’

I stared down at Guinevere, suspecting that it was she who had raised this problem of who should succeed Mordred. ‘Then it would be Gwydre?’ I asked.

‘Then it would be Gwydre,’ he agreed.

‘Does he want it?’ I asked.

‘I think so. He listens to his mother rather than to me.’

‘You don’t want Gwydre to be King?’

‘I want Gwydre to be whatever he wishes to be,’ Arthur said, ‘and if Mordred provides no heir and Gwydre wishes to make his claim then I will support him.’ He was staring down at Guinevere as he spoke and I guessed that she was the real force behind this ambition. She had always wanted to be married to a King, but would accept being the mother of one if Arthur refused the throne. ‘But as you say,’ Arthur went on, ‘it’s an unlikely supposition. I hope Mordred will have many sons, but if he doesn’t, and if Gwydre is called to rule, then he’ll need Christian support. The Christians rule in Dumnonia now, don’t they?’

‘They do, Lord,’ I said grimly.

‘So it would be politic of us to observe the Christian rites at Gwydre’s marriage,’ Arthur said, then gave me a sly smile. ‘You see how close your daughter is to becoming a Queen?’ I had honestly never thought of that before, and it must have shown on my face, for Arthur laughed. ‘A Christian marriage isn’t what I would want for Gwydre and Morwenna,’ he admitted. ‘If it was up to me, Derfel, I would have them married by Merlin.’

‘You have news of him, Lord?’ I asked eagerly.

‘None. I hoped you would.’

‘Only rumour,’ I said. Merlin had not been seen for a year. He had left Mynydd Baddon with Gawain’s ashes, or at least a bundle containing Gawain’s scorched and brittle bones and some ash that might have belonged to the dead Prince or might equally well have been wood ash, and since that day Merlin had not been seen. Rumour said he was in the Otherworld, other folk claimed he was in Ireland or else in the western mountains, — but no one knew for certain. He had told me he was going to help Nimue, but where she was no one knew either.

Arthur stood and brushed grass offhis trews. ‘Time for dinner,’ he said, ‘and I warn you that Taliesin is liable to chant an extremely tedious song about Mynydd Baddon. Worse, it’s still unfinished! He keeps adding verses. Guinevere tells me it’s a masterpiece, and I suppose it must be if she says so, but why do I have to endure it at every dinner?’

That was the first time I heard Taliesin sing and I was entranced. It was, as Guinevere said to me later, as though he could pull the music of the stars down to earth. He had a wondrously pure voice, and could hold a note longer than any other bard I ever heard. He told me later that he practised breathing, a thing I would never have thought needed practice, but it meant he could linger on a dying note while he pulsed it to its exquisite end with strokes on his harp, or else he could make a room echo and shudder with his triumphant voice, and I swear that on that summer night in Isca he made the battle of Mynydd Baddon live again. I heard Taliesin sing many times, and every time I heard him with the same astonishment. Yet he was a modest man. He understood his power and was comfortable with it. It pleased him to have Guinevere as a patroness, for she was generous and appreciated his art, and she allowed him to spend weeks at a time away from the palace. I asked him where he went during those absences and he told me he liked to visit the hills and valleys and sing to the people. ‘And not just sing,’ he told me, ‘but listen as well. I like the old songs. Sometimes they only remember snatches of them and I try to make them whole again.’ It was important, he said, to listen to the songs of the common folk, for that taught him what they liked, but he also wanted to sing his own songs to them. ‘It’s easy to entertain lords,’ he said, ‘for they need entertainment, but a farmer needs sleep before he wants song, and if I can keep him awake then I know my song has merit.’ And sometimes, he told me, he just sang to himself. ‘I sit under the stars and sing,’ he told me with a wry smile.

‘Do you truly see the future?’ I asked him during that conversation.

‘I dream it,’ he said, as though it were no great gift. ‘But seeing the future is like peering through a mist and the reward is scarcely worth the effort. Besides, I never can tell, Lord, whether my visions of the future come from the Gods or from my own fears. I am, after all, only a bard.’ He was, I think, being evasive. Merlin had told me that Taliesin stayed celibate to preserve his gift of prophecy, so he must have valued it more highly than he implied, but he disparaged the gift to discourage men from asking about it. Taliesin, I think, saw our future long before any of us had a glimpse of it, and he did not want to reveal it. He was a very private man.

‘Only a bard?’ I asked, repeating his last words. ‘Men say you are the greatest of all the bards.’

He shook his head, rejecting my flattery. ‘Only a bard,’ he insisted, ‘though I did submit to the Druid’s training. I learned the mysteries from Celafydd in Cornovia. Seven years and three I learned, and at the very last day, when I could have taken the Druid’s staff, I walked from Celafydd’s cave and called myself a bard instead.’

‘Why?’

‘Because,’ he said after a long pause, ‘a Druid has responsibilities, and I did not want them. I like to watch, Lord Derfel, and to tell. Time is a story, and I would be its teller, not its maker. Merlin wanted to change the story and he failed. I dare not aim so high.’

‘Did Merlin fail?’ I asked him.

‘Not in small things,’ Taliesin said calmly, ‘but in the great? Yes. The Gods drift ever farther away and I suspect that neither my songs nor all Merlin’s fires can summon them now. The world turns, Lord, to new Gods, and maybe that’s no bad thing. A God is a God, and why should it matter to us which one rules? Only pride and habit hold us to the old Gods.’

‘Are you suggesting we should all become Christians?’ I asked harshly.

‘What God you worship is of no importance to me, Lord,’ he said. ‘I am merely here to watch, listen and sing.’

So Taliesin sang while Arthur governed with Guinevere in Siluria. My task was to be a bridle on Mordred’s mischief in Dumnonia. Merlin had vanished, probably into the haunting mists of the deep west. The Saxons cowered, but still yearned for our land, and in the heavens, where there is no bridle on their mischief, the Gods rolled the dice anew.