Bernard Cornwell - Enemy of God

‘Mad as a bat! Cuneglas put in cheerfully.

Arthur half smiled, then frowned as he gathered his thoughts. ‘This is not what I ever wanted,’ he protested quietly, his sombre voice echoing in the dripping chamber, ‘but I shall propose to the Council of Dumnonia that it should rule in Mordred’s place.’

‘Yes!’ Culhwch shouted.

Arthur hushed him. ‘I had hoped,’ he said, ‘that Mordred would learn responsibility, but he has not. I don’t care that he wanted me dead, but I do care that he lost his kingdom. He broke his acclamation oath and I doubt now that he will ever be able to keep that oath.’ He paused, and many of us must have reflected on how long it had taken Arthur to understand something that had seemed so obvious to the rest of us. For years he had stubbornly resisted acknowledging Mordred’s unfitness to rule, but now, after Mordred had lost his kingdom and, which was much worse in Arthur’s eyes, he had failed to protect his subjects, Arthur was at last prepared to face the truth. Water dripped on his bare head, but he seemed oblivious of it. ‘Merlin tells me,’ he went on in a melancholy voice, ‘that Mordred is possessed of an evil spirit. I am not skilled in these things, but that verdict does not seem unlikely and so, if the Council agrees, I shall propose that after we have restored Mordred then we shall pay him all the honours due to our King. He can live in the Winter Palace, he can hunt, he can eat like a king and indulge all his appetites within the law, but he will not govern. I am proposing we give him all the privileges, but none of the duties of his throne.’

We cheered. How we cheered. For now, it seemed, we had something to fight for. Not for Mordred, that wretched toad, but for Arthur, because despite all his fine talk of the Council ruling Dumnonia in Mordred’s stead we all knew what his words meant. They meant that Arthur would be Dumnonia’s King in all but name and for that good end we would carry our spears to war. We cheered, for now we had a cause to fight and die for. We had Arthur.

Arthur chose twenty of his best horsemen and insisted I choose twenty of my finest spearmen for our embassy to Aelle. ‘We must impress your father,’ he told me, ‘and you don’t impress a man by arriving with broken and ageing spearmen. We take our best men.’ He also insisted that Nimue accompany us. He would have preferred Merlin’s company, but the Druid declared he was too old for the long journey and proposed Nimue instead.

We left Mordred guarded by Meurig’s spearmen. “Mordred knew of Arthur’s plans for him, but he had no allies in Glevum and no defiance in his rotten soul, though he did have the satisfaction of watching Ligessac being strangled in the forum and after that slow death Mordred stood on the terrace of the great hall and made a mumbling speech in which he threatened an equal fate to all the other traitors in Dumnonia, then he went sullenly back to his quarters while we followed Culhwch eastwards. Culhwch had gone to join Sagramor and help launch the attack that we all hoped would save Corinium. Arthur and I marched into the high fine countryside that was Gwent’s rich eastern province. It was a place of lavish villas, vast farms and great wealth, most of it grown on the backs of the sheep that grazed the rolling hills. We marched beneath two banners. Arthur’s bear and my own star, and we stayed well north of the Dumnonian frontier so that all the news going to Lancelot would tell him that Arthur was offering his stolen throne no threat. Nimue walked with us. Merlin had somehow persuaded her to wash and find clean clothes, and then, in despair at ever untangling the matted filth of her hair, he had cut it short and burned the dirt-encrusted tresses. The short hair looked good on her, she wore an eyepatch again and carried a staff, but no other baggage. She walked barefoot and she walked reluctantly for she had not wanted to come, but Merlin had persuaded her, though Nimue still claimed her presence was wasteful. ‘Any fool can defeat a Saxon wizard,’ she told Arthur as we neared the end of the first day’s march. ‘Just spit on them, roll your eyes and wave a chicken bone. That’s all it needs.’

‘We won’t see any Saxon wizards,’ Arthur answered calmly. We were in open country now, far from any villas, and he stopped his horse, raised his hand and waited for the men to gather around him. ‘We won’t see any wizards,’ he told us, ‘because we’re not going to see Aelle. We’re going south into our own country. A long way south.’

‘To the sea?’ I guessed.

He smiled. ‘To the sea.’ He folded his hands on his saddle bar. ‘We are few,’ he told us, ‘and Lancelot has many, but Nimue can make us a charm of concealment and we shall march by night and we shall march hard.’ He smiled and shrugged. ‘I can do nothing while my wife and son are prisoners, but if we free them, then I am free too. And when I am free I can fight against Lancelot, but you should know that we will be far from help and deep in a Dumnonia that is held by our enemies. Once I have Guinevere and Gwydre then I do not know how we shall escape, but Nimue will help us. The Gods will help us, but if any of you fear the task, then you may go back now.’

None did, and he must have known that none would. These forty were our best men and they would have followed Arthur into the serpent’s pit. Arthur, of course, had told no one but Merlin what he planned so that no hint of it could reach Lancelot’s ears; now he gave me a regretful shrug as though apologizing for deceiving me, but he must have known how pleased I was for we were not just going to where Guinevere and Gwydre were being held hostage, but to where Dian’s two killers believed they were safe from all revenge.

‘We go tonight,’ Arthur said, ‘and there’ll be no rest till dawn. We go south and by morning I want to be in the hills beyond the Thames.’

We put cloaks over our armour, muffled the horses’ hoofs with layers of cloth and then journeyed south through the gathering night. The horsemen led their beasts and Nimue led us, using her strange ability to find her way across unknown country in the darkness.

Sometime in that dark night we crossed into Dumnonia and, as we dropped from the hills down into the valley of the Thames, we saw, far off to our right, a glow in the sky that showed where Cerdic’s men were encamped outside Corinium. Once out of the hills our path inevitably took us through small dark villages where dogs barked at our passing, but no one questioned us. The inhabitants were either dead or else they feared we were Saxons, and so, like a band of ghosts, we passed them by. One of Arthur’s horsemen was a native of the river lands and he led us to a ford that came up to our chests. We held our weapons and bags of bread high, then forced our way through the strong current and so reached the far bank where Nimue hissed a spell of concealment towards a nearby village. By dawn we were in the southern hills, safe inside one of the Old People’s earth fortresses. We slept under the sun and at dark went south again. Our way led through a fine, rich land where no Saxon had yet set foot, but still no villager challenged us for no one but a fool questioned armed men who travelled by night in times of trouble. By daybreak we had reached the great plain and the rising sun cast the shadows of the Old People’s death mounds long across the pale grass. Some of the mounds still had treasures guarded by grave ghouls and those we avoided as we sought a grassy hollow where the horses could eat and we could rest.

In the next moonlight we passed the Stones, that great mysterious ring where Merlin had given Arthur his sword and where, so many years before, we had yielded the gold to Aelle before marching to Lugg Vale. Nimue glided among the great capped pillars, touching them with her staff, then standing in their centre with her eyes staring up at the stars. The moon was almost full and its light gave the Stones a pale luminosity. ‘Do they hold magic still?’ I asked her when she caught us up.