Bernard Cornwell - Excalibur

‘None at all,’ Arthur agreed, ‘but he has a lot of spears. And he’d have half a claim if he married a widowed Argante.’

‘He can’t marry her,’ Galahad said, ‘he’s married already.’

‘A toadstool will get rid of an inconvenient queen,’ Arthur said. ‘That’s how Uther got rid of his first wife. A toadstool in a mushroom stew.’ He thought for a few seconds, then tossed the shoe-plate into the fire. ‘Fetch Gwydre for me,’ he asked Galahad.

Arthur tortured the red-hot iron while we waited. A horse’s shoe-plate was a simple enough object, merely a sheet of iron that protected the vulnerable hoof from stones, and all it needed was an arch of iron that slipped over the front of the hoof and a pair of lugs at the back where the leather laces were attached, but Arthur could not seem to get the thing right. His arch was too narrow and high, the plate was kinked and the lugs too big. ‘Almost right,’ he said after hammering the thing for another frantic minute.

‘Right for what?’ I asked.

He chucked the shoe-plate back into the furnace then pulled off his fire-scarred apron as Galahad returned with Gwydre. Arthur told Gwydre the news of Mordred’s expected death, then of Meurig’s treachery, and finished with a simple question. ‘Do you want to be King of Dumnonia, Gwydre?’

Gwydre looked startled. He was a fine man, but young, very young. Nor, I think, was he particularly ambitious, though his mother was ambitious for him. He had Arthur’s face, long and bony, though it was marked with an expression of watchfulness as if he always expected fate to deal him a foul blow. He was thin, but I had practised swords with him often enough to know that there was a sinewy strength in his deceptively frail body. ‘I have a claim to the throne,’ he answered guardedly.

‘Because your grandfather bedded my mother,’ Arthur said irritably, ‘that’s your claim, Gwydre, nothing else. What I want to know is whether you truly wish to be King.’

Gwydre glanced at me for help, found none, and looked back to his father. ‘I think so, yes.’

‘Why?’

Again Gwydre hesitated, and I suppose a host of reasons whirled in his head, but he finally looked defiant. ‘Because I was born to it. I’m as much Uther’s heir as Mordred is.’

‘You reckon you were born to it, eh?’ Arthur asked sarcastically. He stooped and pumped the bellows, making the furnace roar and spit sparks into its brick hood. ‘Every man in this room is the son of a King except you, Gwydre,’ Arthur said fiercely, ‘and you say you’re born to it?’

‘Then you be King, father,’ Gwydre said, ‘and then I shall be the son of a King too.’

‘Well said,’ I put in.

Arthur gave me an angry glance, then plucked a rag from a pile beside his anvil and blew his nose into it. He tossed the rag onto the furnace. The rest of us simply blew our noses by pinching the nostrils between finger and thumb, but he had ever been fastidious. ‘Let us accept, Gwydre,’ he said, ‘that you are of the lineage of kings. That you are Uther’s grandson and therefore have a claim on Dumnonia’s throne. I have a claim too, as it happens, but I choose not to exercise it. I’m too old. But why should men like Derfel and Galahad fight to put you on Dumnonia’s throne? Tell me that.’

‘Because I shall be a good King,’ Gwydre said, blushing, then he looked at me. ‘And Morwenna will make a good Queen,’ he added.

‘Every man who was ever a king said he wanted to be good,’ Arthur grumbled, ‘and most turned out to be bad. Why should you be any different?’

‘You tell me, father,’ Gwydre said.

‘I’m asking you!’

‘But if a father doesn’t know a son’s character,’ Gwydre riposted, ‘who does?’

Arthur went to the smithy door, pushed it open and stared into the stable yard. Nothing stirred there except the usual tribe of dogs, and so he turned back. ‘You’re a decent man, son,’ he said grudgingly, ‘a decent man. I’m proud of you, but you think too well of the world. There’s evil out there, true evil, and you don’t credit it.’

‘Did you,’ Gwydre asked, ‘when you were my age?’

Arthur acknowledged the acuity of the question with a half-smile. ‘When I was your age,’ he said, ‘I believed I could make the world anew. I believed that all this world needed was honesty and kindness. I believed that if you treated folk well, that if you gave them peace and offered them justice they would respond with gratitude. I thought I could dissolve evil with good.’ He paused. ‘I suppose I thought of people as dogs,’ he went on ruefully, ‘and that if you gave them enough affection then they would be docile, but they aren’t dogs, Gwydre, they’re wolves. A king must rule a thousand ambitions, and all of them belong to deceivers. You will be flattered, and behind your back, mocked. Men will swear undying loyalty with one breath and plot your death with the next. And if you survive their plots, then one day you will be grey-bearded like me and you’ll look back on your life and realize that you achieved nothing. Nothing. The babies you admired in their mothers’ arms will have grown to be killers, the justice you enforced will be for sale, the people you protected will still be hungry and the enemy you defeated will still threaten your frontiers.’ He had grown increasingly angry as he spoke, but now softened the anger with a smile. ‘Is that what you want?’

Gwydre returned his father’s stare. I thought for a moment that he would falter, or perhaps argue with his father, but instead he gave Arthur a good answer. ‘What I want, father,’ he said, ‘is to treat folk well, to give them peace and offer them justice.’

Arthur smiled to hear his own words served back to him. ‘Then perhaps we should try to make you King, Gwydre. But how?’ He walked back to the furnace. ‘We can’t lead spearmen through Gwent, Meurig will stop us, but if we don’t have spearmen, we don’t have the throne.’

‘Boats,’ Gwydre said.

‘Boats?’ Arthur asked.

‘There must be two score of fishing-boats on our coast,’ Gwydre said, ‘and each can take ten or a dozen men.’

‘But not horses,’ Galahad said, ‘I doubt they can take horses.’

‘Then we must fight without horses,’ Gwydre said.

‘We may not even need to fight,’ Arthur said. ‘If we reach Dumnonia first, and if Sagramor joins us, I think young Meurig might hesitate. And if Oengus mac Airem sends a warband east towards Gwent then that will frighten Meurig even more. We can probably freeze Meurig’s soul by looking threatening enough.’

‘Why would Oengus help us fight his own daughter?’ I asked.

‘Because he doesn’t care about her, that’s why,’ Arthur said. ‘And we’re not fighting his daughter, Derfel, we’re fighting Sansum. Argante can stay in Dumnonia, but she can’t be Queen, not if Mordred’s dead.’ He sneezed again. ‘And I think you should go to Dumnonia soon, Derfel,’ he added.

‘To do what, Lord?’

‘To smell out the mouse lord, that’s what. He’s scheming, and he needs a cat to teach him a lesson, and you’ve got sharp claws. And you can show Gwydre’s banner. I can’t go because that would provoke Meurig too much, but you can sail across the Severn without rousing suspicions, and when news comes of Mordred’s death you proclaim Gwydre’s name at Caer Cadarn and make certain Sansum and Argante can’t reach Gwent. Put them both under guard and tell them it’s for their own protection.’

‘I’ll need men,’ I warned him.

‘Take a boatload, and then use Issa’s men,’ Arthur said, invigorated by the need to take decisions.

‘Sagramor will give you troops,’ he added, ‘and the moment I hear that Mordred’s dead I’ll bring Gwydre with all my spearmen. If I’m still alive, that is,’ he said, sneezing again.