Bernard Cornwell - Enemy of God

Guinevere, her eyes reddened by tears, just looked away. The motion of the horse rocked her back and forth and back and forth, yet she managed to look graceful all the same. ‘No one else, Lord Prince,’

she said after a long time. ‘No one else.’

Arthur walked in silence after that. He did not want my company, he wanted no company but his own misery, and so I joined Nimue at the head of the procession. The horsemen came next, then Guinevere, and my spearmen escorted the Cauldron at the rear. Nimue was retracing the same road that had led us to the coast and which here was a rough track that climbed onto a bare heath broken by dark stretches of yew and gorse. ‘So Gorfyddyd was right,’ I said after a while.

‘Gorfyddyd?’ Nimue asked, astonished that I should have dredged that old King’s name from the past.

‘At Lugg Vale,’ I reminded her, ‘he said Guinevere was a whore.’

‘And you, Derfel Cadarn,’ Nimue said scornfully, ‘are an expert on whores?’

‘What else is she?’ I asked bitterly.

‘No whore,’ Nimue said. She gestured ahead, pointing at the wisps of smoke above the distant trees that showed where the garrison of Vindocladia were cooking their breakfasts. ‘We’ll need to avoid them,’ Nimue said, and turned off the road to lead us towards a thicker belt of trees that grew to the west. I suspected the garrison had already heard that Arthur had come to the Sea Palace and had no wish to confront him, but I dutifully followed Nimue and the horsemen dutifully followed us. ‘What Arthur did,’ she said after a while, ‘is marry a rival instead of a companion.’

‘A rival?’

‘Guinevere could rule Dumnonia as well as any man,’ Nimue said, ‘and better than most. She’s cleverer than he is, and every bit as determined. If she’d been born to Uther instead of that fool Leodegan, then everything would have been different. She’d be another Boudicca and there’d be dead Christians from here to the Irish Sea and dead Saxons to the German Sea.’

‘Boudicca,’ I reminded her, ‘lost her war.’

‘And so has Guinevere,’ Nimue said grimly.

‘I don’t see that she was Arthur’s rival,’ I said after a time. ‘She had power. I don’t suppose he ever made a decision without talking to her.’

‘And he talked to the Council, which no woman can join,’ Nimue said tartly. ‘Put yourself in Guinevere’s place, Derfel. She’s quicker than all of you put together, but any idea she ever had was put before a pack of dull, ponderous men. You and Bishop Emrys and that fart Cythryn who pretends to be so judicious and fair-minded, then goes home and beats his wife and makes her watch him take a dwarf girl to their bed. Councillors! You think Dumnonia would know the difference if you all drowned?’

‘A King must have a Council,’ I said indignantly.

‘Not if he’s clever,’ Nimue said. ‘Why should he? Does Merlin have a Council? Does Merlin need a room full of pompous fools to tell him what to do? The only purpose a Council serves is to make you all feel important.’

‘It does more than that,’ I insisted. ‘How does a King know what his people are thinking if there’s no Council?’

‘Who cares what the fools think? Allow the people to think for themselves and half of them become Christians; there’s a tribute to their ability to think,’ she spat. ‘So just what is it that you do in Council, Derfel? Tell Arthur what your shepherds are saying? And Cythryn, I suppose, represents the dwarf-tupping men of Dumnonia. Is that it?’ she laughed. ‘The people! The people are idiots, that’s why they have a King and why the King has spearmen.’

‘Arthur,’ I said stoutly, “has given the country good government, and he did it without using spears on the people.’

‘And look what’s happened to the country,’ Nimue retorted. She walked in silence for a few moments. After a while she sighed. ‘Guinevere was right all along, Derfel. Arthur should be King. She knew that. She wanted that. She would even have been happy with that, for with Arthur as King she would have been Queen and that would have given her as much power as she needed. But your precious Arthur wouldn’t take the throne. So high-minded! All those sacred oaths! And what did he want instead? To be a farmer. To live like you and Ceinwyn; the happy home, the children, laughter.’ She made these things sound risible. ‘How content,’ she asked me, ‘do you think Guinevere would be in that life? The very thought of it bored her! And that’s all that Arthur ever wanted. She is a clever, quick-witted lady and he wanted to turn her into a milch cow. Do you wonder she looked for other excitements?’

‘Whoredom?’

‘Oh, don’t be a fool, Derfel. Am I a whore for having bedded you? More fool me.’ We had reached the trees and Nimue turned north to walk between the ash and the tall elms. The spearmen followed us dumbly and I think that had we led them in circles they would have followed us without protest, so astonished and numbed were we all by the night’s horrors. ‘So she broke her marriage oath,’ Nimue said, ‘do you think she’s the first? Or do you think that makes her a whore? In which case Britain’s full to the rim with whores. She’s no whore, Derfel. She’s a strong woman who was born with a quick mind and good looks, and Arthur loved the looks and wouldn’t use her mind. He wouldn’t let her make him King and so she turned to that ridiculous religion of hers. And all Arthur did was tell her how happy she’d be when he could hang up Excalibur and start breeding cattle!’ She laughed at the thought. ‘And because it would never occur to Arthur to be unfaithful he never suspected it in Guinevere. The rest of us did, but not Arthur. He kept telling himself the marriage was perfect, and all the while he was miles away and Guinevere’s good looks were drawing men like flies to carrion. And they were handsome men, clever men, witty men, men who wanted power, and one was a handsome man who wanted all the power he could get, so Guinevere decided to help him. Arthur wanted a cowshed, but Lancelot wants to be High King of Britain and Guinevere finds that a more interesting challenge than raising cows or mopping up the shit of infants. And that idiotic religion encouraged her. The arbiter of thrones!’ She spat. ‘She wasn’t bedding Lancelot because she was a whore, you great fool, she was bedding him to get her man made High King.’

‘And Dinas?’ I asked, ‘Lavaine?’

‘They were her priests. They were helping her, and in some religions, Derfel, men and women couple as part of worship. And why not?’ She kicked at a stone and watched it skitter away through a patch of bindweed. ‘And believe me, Derfel, those two were beautiful-looking men. I know, because I took that beauty away from them, but not because of what they did with Guinevere. I did it for the insult they gave Merlin and for what they did to your daughter.’ She walked in silence for a few yards. ‘Don’t despise Guinevere,’ she told me after a while. ‘Don’t despise her for being bored. Despise her, if you must, for stealing the Cauldron and be thankful Dinas and Lavaine never unlocked its power. It worked for Guinevere, though. She bathed in it weekly and that’s why she never aged a week.’ She turned as footsteps sounded behind us. It was Arthur who was running to catch us up. He still looked dazed, but at some time in the last few moments it must have dawned on him that we had diverted from the road.

‘Where are we going?’ he demanded.

‘You want the garrison to see us?’ Nimue asked, pointing again to the smoke of their cooking fires. He said nothing, but just stared at the smoke as if he had never seen such a thing before. Nimue glanced at me and shrugged at his evident befuddlement. ‘If they wanted a fight,’ Arthur said, ‘they’d have been looking for us already.’ His eyes were red and puffy, and maybe it was my imagination, but his hair seemed greyer. ‘What would you do,’ Arthur asked me, ‘if you were the enemy?’ He did not mean the puny garrison at Vindocladia, but nor would he name Lancelot.