Bernard Cornwell - Enemy of God

‘I have promised Merlin,’ she had said that first night in explanation of the two sleeping chambers. I felt my flesh crawl. ‘Promised him what?’ I asked.

She must have blushed, but no moonlight came into deep Cwm Isaf and so I could not see her face, but only feel the pressure of her fingers in mine. ‘I have promised him,’ she said slowly, ‘that I will stay a virgin till the Cauldron is found.’

I had begun to understand then just how subtle Merlin had been. How subtle and wicked and clever. He needed a warrior to protect him while he travelled into Lleyn and he needed a virgin to find the Cauldron, and so he had manipulated us both. ‘No!’ I protested. ‘You can’t go into Lleyn!’

‘Only a virgin can discover the Cauldron,’ Nimue had hissed at us from the dark. ‘Would you have us take a child, Derfel?’

‘Ceinwyn cannot go to Lleyn,’ I insisted.

‘Quiet,’ Ceinwyn had hushed me. ‘I promised. I made an oath.’

‘Do you know what Lleyn is?’ I asked her. ‘You know what Diwrnach does?’

‘I know,’ she said, ‘that the journey there is the price I pay for being here with you. And I promised Merlin,’ she said again. ‘I made an oath.’

And so I slept alone that night, but in the morning, after we had shared a scanty breakfast with our spearmen and servants, and before I put the bone scraps into Hywelbane’s hilt, Ceinwyn walked with me up Cwm Isaf’s stream. She listened to my passionate arguments why she should not travel the Dark Road, and she dismissed them all by saying that if Merlin was with us then who could prevail against us?

‘Diwrnach could,’ I said grimly.

‘But you’re going with Merlin?’ she asked me.

‘Yes.’

‘Then don’t prevent me,’ she insisted. ‘I will be with you, and you with me.’ And she would hear no more argument. She was no man’s woman. She had made up her mind.

And then, of course, we spoke of what had happened in the last few days and our words tumbled out. We were in love, smitten just as hard as Arthur had been smitten by Guinevere, and we could not hear enough of the other’s thoughts and stories. I showed her the pork bone and she laughed when I told her how I had waited till the last moment to snap it in two.

‘I really didn’t know if I dared turn away from Lancelot,’ Ceinwyn admitted. ‘I didn’t know about the bone, of course. I thought it was Guinevere who made up my mind.’

‘Guinevere?’ I asked, surprised.

‘I couldn’t bear her gloating. Is that awful of me? I felt as though I was her kitten, and I couldn’t bear it.’ She walked on in silence for a while. Leaves drifted down from the trees that were still mostly green. That morning, waking to my first dawn in Cwm Isaf, I had seen a martin fly away from the thatch. He did not come back and I guessed we would not see another till the spring. Ceinwyn walked barefoot beside the stream, her hand in mine. ‘And I’ve been wondering about that prophecy of the skull bed,’ she went on, ‘and I think it means I’m not supposed to marry. I’ve been betrothed three times, Derfel, three times!

And three times I lost the man, and if that isn’t a message from the Gods, what is?’

‘I hear Nimue,’ I said.

She laughed. ‘I like her.’

‘I couldn’t imagine the two of you liking each other,’ I confessed.

‘Why ever not? I like her belligerence. Life is for the taking, not for submission, and all my life, Derfel, I’ve done what people told me to do. I’ve always been good,’ she said, giving the word ‘good’ a wry stress. ‘I was always the obedient little girl, the dutiful daughter. It was easy, of course, for my father loved me and he loved so few people, but I was given everything I ever wanted and in return all they ever wanted of me was that I should be pretty and obedient. And I was very obedient.’

‘Pretty, too.’

She dug an elbow into my ribs as reproof. A flock of pied wagtails flew up from the mist that shrouded the stream ahead of us. ‘I was always obedient,’ Ceinwyn said wistfully. ‘I knew I would have to marry where I was told to marry, and that didn’t worry me because that’s what kings’ daughters do, and I can remember being so happy when I first met Arthur. I thought that my whole lucky life would go on for ever. I had been given such a good man, and then, suddenly, he vanished.’

‘And you didn’t even notice me,’ I said. I had been the youngest spearman in Arthur’s guard when he came to Caer Sws to be betrothed to Ceinwyn. It was then that she had given me the small brooch I still wore. She had rewarded all Arthur’s escort, but never knew what a fire she started in my soul that day.

‘I’m sure I did notice you,’ she said. ‘Who could miss such a big, awkward, straw-haired lump?’ She laughed at me, then let me help her over a fallen oak. She wore the same linen dress she had worn the previous night, though now the bleached skirt was soiled with mud and moss. ‘Then I was betrothed to Caelgyn of Rheged,’ she continued her tale, ‘and I wasn’t quite so sure I was lucky any more. He was a sullen beast, but he promised to bring father a hundred spearmen and a bride-price of gold and I convinced myself I would be happy all the same, even if I did have to live in Rheged, but Caelgyn died of the fever. Then there was Gundleus.’ She frowned at that memory. ‘I realized then that I was just a throwpiece in a game of war. My father loved me, but he would even let me go to Gundleus if that meant more spears to carry against Arthur. That was when I first understood that I would never be happy unless I made my own happiness, and it was just then that you and Galahad came to see us. Remember?’

‘I remember.’ I had accompanied Galahad on his failed mission of peace and Gorfyddyd, as an insult, had made us dine in the women’s hall. There in the candlelight, as a harpist played, I had talked to Ceinwyn and given her my oath to protect her.

‘And you cared whether I was happy,’ she said.

‘I was in love with you,’ I confessed. ‘I was a dog howling at a star.’

She smiled. ‘And then came Lancelot. Lovely Lancelot. Handsome Lancelot, and everyone told me I was the luckiest woman in Britain, but do you know what I sensed? That I would just be another possession to Lancelot, and he seems to have so many already. But I still wasn’t sure what I should do, then Merlin came and talked to me, and he left Nimue and she talked and talked, but I already knew I didn’t want to belong to any man. I’ve belonged to men all my life. So Nimue and I made an oath to Don and I swore to Her that if She gave me the strength to take my own freedom then I would never marry. I will love you,’ she promised me, looking up into my face, ‘but I will not be any man’s possession.’

Maybe not, I thought, but she, like me, was still Merlin’s gaming piece. How busy he had been, he and Nimue, but I said nothing of that, nor of the Dark Road. ‘But you will be Guinevere’s enemy now,’ I warned Ceinwyn instead.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I always was, right from the moment when she decided to take Arthur away from me, but I was just a child then and I didn’t know how to tight her. Last night I struck back, but from now on I’ll just stay out of sight.’ She smiled. ‘And you were to marry Gwenhwyvach?’

‘Yes,’ I confessed.

‘Poor Gwenhwyvach,’ Ceinwyn said. ‘She was always very good to me when they lived here, but I remember every time her sister came into the room she’d run away. She was like a big plump mouse and her sister was the cat.’

Arthur came to the lower valley that afternoon. The glue holding the scraps of bone were still drying in Hywelbane’s hilt as his warriors filled the trees on Cwm Isaf’s southern slope that faced our small house. The spearmen did not come to threaten us, but had merely diverted themselves from their long march home to comfortable Dumnonia. There was no sign of Lancelot, nor of Guinevere, as Arthur walked alone across the stream. He carried no sword or shield.