Bernard Cornwell - Enemy of God

‘Morgan!’ I could not hide my astonishment. Morgan, Arthur’s eldest sister, had been Merlin’s closest companion until Nimue usurped her place, and though Morgan hated Nimue I did not think that hatred extended to Merlin.

‘Morgan,’ he said flatly. ‘She has spread a tale through Britain. The tale says that the Gods oppose my quest and that I am to be defeated, and that my death will embrace all my companions. She dreamed the tale and folk believe her dreams. I am old, she says, and feeble, and loose-witted.’

‘She says,’ Nimue spoke softly, ‘that a woman will kill you, not Diwrnach.’

Merlin shrugged. ‘Morgan plays her own game and I don’t yet understand it.’ He rooted about in a pocket of his gown and brought out a handful of dried knotted grasses. Each knotted stem looked alike to me, but he sorted through them and selected one that he held towards Ceinwyn. ‘I release you from your oath, Lady.’

Ceinwyn glanced at me, then looked back to the knot of grass. ‘Will you still take the Dark Road, Lord?’ she asked Merlin.

‘Yes.’

‘But how will you find the Cauldron without me?’

He shrugged, but offered no answer.

‘How will you find it with her?’ I asked, for I still did not understand why a virgin must find the Cauldron, or why that virgin should have to be Ceinwyn.

Merlin shrugged again. ‘The Cauldron,’ he said, ‘was ever under the guard of a virgin. One guards it now, if my dreams tell me correctly, and only another virgin can reveal its hiding-place. You will dream it,’ he said to Ceinwyn, ‘if you are willing to come.’

‘I shall come, Lord,’ Ceinwyn said, ‘as I promised you.’

Merlin pushed the grass knot back into the pocket before rubbing his face again with his long hands.

‘We leave in two days,’ he announced flatly. ‘You must bake bread, pack dried meat and fish, sharpen your weapons, and make sure you have furs against the cold.’ He looked at Nimue. ‘We shall sleep at Caer Sws. Come.’

‘You can stay here,’ I offered.

‘I must speak to Iorweth.’ He stood, his head level with the rafters. ‘I release you both from your oaths,’ he said very formally, ‘but pray you will come anyway. But it will be harder than you know and harder than you fear in your worst dreams, for I have pledged my life on the Cauldron.’ He looked down at us and his face was immensely sad. ‘The day we step on the Dark Road,’ he told us, ‘I shall begin to die, for that is my oath, and I have no certainty that the oath will bring me success, and if the search fails then I shall be dead and you will be alone in Lleyn.’

‘We shall have Nimue,’ Ceinwyn said.

‘And she is all you will have,’ Merlin said darkly, then ducked out of the door. Nimue followed him. We sat in silence. I put another log on the fire. It was green, for all our firewood was fresh-cut unseasoned timber which was why it smoked so badly. I watched the smoke thicken and swirl about the rafters, then took Ceinwyn’s hand. ‘Do you want to die in Lleyn?’ I chided her.

‘No,’ she said, ‘but I want to see the Cauldron.’

I stared into the fire. ‘He will fill it with blood,’ I said softly. Ceinwyn’s fingers caressed mine. ‘When I was a child,’ she said, ‘I heard all the tales of old Britain, how the Gods lived among us and everyone was happy. There was no famine then, and no plagues, just us and the Gods and peace. I want that Britain back, Derfel.’

‘Arthur says it can never return. We are what we are, not what we once were.’

‘So who do you believe?’ she asked. ‘Arthur or Merlin?’

I thought a long time. ‘Merlin,’ I finally said, and perhaps that was because I wanted to believe in his Britain where all our sorrows would be magically taken away. I loved the idea of Arthur’s Britain too, but that would take war and hard work and a trust that men would behave well if they were treated well. Merlin’s dream demanded less and promised more.

‘They we’ll go with Merlin,’ Ceinwyn said. She hesitated, watching me. ‘Are you worried by Morgan’s prophecy?’ she asked.

I shook my head. ‘She has power,’ I said, ‘but not like his. And not like Nimue, either.’ Nimue and Merlin had both suffered the Three Wounds of Wisdom, and Morgan had only endured the wound to the body, never the wound to the mind or the wound to pride; but Morgan’s prophecy was a shrewd tale, for in some ways Merlin was defying the Gods. He wanted to tame their caprices and in return give them a whole land dedicated to their worship, but why would the Gods want to be tamed? Maybe they had chosen Morgan’s lesser power to be their instrument against Merlin’s meddling, for what else could explain Morgan’s hostility? Or maybe Morgan, like Arthur, believed that Merlin’s quest was a nonsense, an old man’s hopeless search for a Britain that had vanished with the coming of the Legions. For Arthur there was only one fight, and that was to hurl the Saxon Kings from Britain, and Arthur would have supported his sister’s whispering tale if that meant no British spears were to be wasted against Diwrnach’s blood-painted shields. So perhaps Arthur was using his sister to make certain that no precious Dumnonian lives were to be thrown away in Lleyn. Except for my life, and my men’s lives, and my beloved Ceinwyn’s life. For we were oath-sworn.

But Merlin had released us from our oaths and so I tried one last time to persuade Ceinwyn to stay in Powys. I told her how Arthur believed that the Cauldron no longer existed, how it must have been stolen by the Romans and taken to that great sink of treasure, Rome, and melted down to make hair-combs or cloak-pins or coins or brooches. All that I told her, and when I was done she smiled and asked me once again who I believed, Merlin or Arthur.

‘Merlin,’ I said again.

‘And so do I,’ Ceinwyn said. ‘And I’m going.’

We baked bread, packed food and sharpened our weapons. And the next night, the eve of our going on Merlin’s quest, the first snow fell.

Cuneglas gave us two ponies that we loaded with food and furs, then we slung our star-painted shields on our backs and took the northern road. Iorweth gave us a blessing and Cuneglas’s spearmen accompanied us for the first few miles, but once we had passed the great ice wastes of the Dugh bog that lay beyond the hills north of Caer Sws those spearmen stepped aside and we were alone. I had promised Cuneglas that I would protect his sister’s life with my own and he had embraced me, then whispered in my ear. ‘Kill her, Derfel,’ he said, ‘rather than let Diwrnach have her.’

There were tears in his eyes and they almost made me change my mind. ‘If you order her not to go, Lord King,’ I said, ‘she might obey.’

‘Never,’ he said, ‘but she is happier now than she has ever been. Besides, Iorweth tells me you will return. Go, my friend.’ He had stepped back. His parting gift had been a bag of gold ingots that we stowed on one of the ponies.

The snowy road led north into Gwynedd. I had never been to that kingdom before and found it a crude, hard place. The Romans had come here, but only to dig lead and gold. They had left few marks on the land and given it no law. The folk lived in squat, dark huts that huddled together inside circling stone walls from which dogs snarled at us and on which the skulls of wolves and bears were mounted to deter the spirits. Cairns marked the summits of hills and every few miles we would find a pole struck into the road’s verge and hung with dead men’s bones and ribbons of tattered cloth. There were few trees, the streams were frozen and snow blocked some of the passes. At night we sheltered in the huddled houses where we paid for our warmth with slivers of gold chopped from Cuneglas’s ingots. We dressed in furs. Ceinwyn and I, like my men, were swathed in lice-ridden wolf-pelts and deerskins, but Merlin wore a suit made from the coat of a great black bear. Nimue had grey otter skins that were much lighter than our furs, but even so she seemed not to feel the cold as the rest of us did. Nimue alone carried no weapons. Merlin had his black staff, a fearsome thing in battle, while my men had spears and swords and even Ceinwyn carried a light spear and had her long-bladed hunting knife scabbarded at her waist. She wore no gold and the folk who gave us shelter had no conception of her rank. They did notice her bright hair and assumed that she, like Nimue, was one of Merlin’s adepts. Merlin they loved, for they all knew of him and they brought their crippled children to be touched by his hand.