Bernard Cornwell: Enemy of God

I wondered if Arthur had really proposed such a marriage, or whether it was Guinevere’s idea? More likely it was Guinevere. I watched her as she sat arrayed in gold beside Cuneglas and the triumph on her face was unmistakable. She looked uncommonly beautiful that night. She was ever the most striking-looking woman in Britain, but on that rainy feast night in Caer Sws she seemed to glow. Maybe that was because of her pregnancy, but the likelier explanation was that she was revelling in her ascendancy over these people who had once dismissed her as a penniless exile. Now, thanks to Arthur’s sword, she could dispose of these people just as her husband disposed of their kingdoms. It was Guinevere, I knew, who was Lancelot’s chief supporter in Dumnonia, and Guinevere who had made Arthur promise Lancelot Siluria’s throne, and Guinevere who had decided that Ceinwyn should be Lancelot’s bride. Now, I suspected, she wanted to punish me for my hostility to Lancelot by making her inconvenient sister into my lumpen bride.

‘You look unhappy, Derfel,’ Merlin provoked me.

I did not rise to the provocation. ‘And you, Lord?’ I asked. ‘Are you happy?’

‘Do you care?’ he asked airily.

‘I love you, Lord, like a father,’ I said.

He hooted at that, then half choked on a sliver of pork, but was still laughing when he recovered. ‘Like a father! Oh, Derfel, what an absurdly emotional beast you are. The only reason I raised you was because I thought you were special to the Gods, and maybe you are. The Gods do sometimes choose the strangest creatures to love. So tell me, loving would-be son, does your filial love extend to service?’

‘What service, Lord?’ I asked, though I knew well enough what he wanted. He wanted spearmen to go and seek the Cauldron.

He lowered his voice and leaned closer to me, though I doubt anyone could have heard our conversation in the loud, drunken hall. ‘Britain,’ he said, ‘suffers from two sicknesses, but Arthur and Cuneglas recognize only one.’

‘The Saxons.’

He nodded. ‘But Britain without the Saxons will still be diseased, Derfel, for we risk losing the Gods. Christianity spreads taster than the Saxons, and Christians are a bigger offence to our Gods than any Saxon. If we don’t restrain the Christians then the Gods will desert us utterly, and what is Britain without her Gods? But if we harness the Gods and restore them to Britain, then the Saxons and the Christians will both vanish. We attack the wrong disease, Derfel.’

I glanced at Arthur who was listening intently to something Cuneglas was saying. Arthur was not an irreligious man, but he carried his beliefs lightly and bore no hatred in his soul for men and women who believed in other Gods, yet Arthur, I knew, would hate to hear Merlin talk of fighting against the Christians. ‘And no one listens to you, Lord?’ I asked Merlin.

‘Some,’ he said grudgingly, ‘a few, one or two. Arthur doesn’t. He thinks I’m an old fool on the edge of senility. But what about you, Derfel? Do you think I’m an old fool?’

‘No, Lord.’

‘And do you believe in magic, Derfel?’

‘Yes, Lord,’ I said. I had seen magic work, but I had seen it fail too. Magic was difficult, but I believed in it.

Merlin leaned even closer to my ear. ‘Then be at Dolforwyn’s summit this night, Derfel,’ he whispered,

‘and I will grant you your soul’s desire.’

A harpist struck the chord that would summon the bards for the singing. The warriors’ voices died away as a chill wind gusted rain through the open door and flickered the small flames of the tallow candles and the grease-soaked rush lights. ‘Your soul’s desire,’ Merlin whispered again, but when I looked to my left he had somehow vanished.

And in the night the thunder growled. The Gods were abroad and I was summoned to Dolforwyn. I left the feast before the giving of gifts, before the bards sang and before the drunken warriors’ voices swelled in the haunting Song of Nwyfre. I heard the song far behind me as I walked alone down the river valley where Ceinwyn had told me of her visit to the bed of skulls and of the strange prophecy that made no sense.

I wore my armour, but carried no shield. My sword, Hywelbane, was at my side and my green cloak was about my shoulders. No man walked the night lightly, for night belonged to ghouls and spirits, but I had been summoned by Merlin so I knew I would be safe.

My path was made easy for there was a road that led east from the ramparts towards the southern edge of the range of hills where Dolforwyn lay. It was a long walk, four hours in the wet dark, and the road was black as pitch, but the Gods must have wanted me to arrive for I neither lost the road, nor met any dangers in the night.

Merlin, I knew, could not be far ahead of me, and though I was two lifetimes younger than he, I neither caught up with him nor even heard him. I just heard the fading song and afterwards, when the singing had faded into the dark, I listened to the rill of the river running over the stones and the patter of rain falling in the leaves and the scream of a hare caught by a weasel and the shriek of a badger calling for her mate. I passed two crouching settlements where the dying glow of fires showed through the low openings beneath the bracken thatch. From one of those huts a man’s voice called out in challenge, but I called to him that I was travelling in peace and he quieted his barking dog. I left the road to find the narrow track that twisted up Dolforwyn’s flank and I feared the darkness would make me lose my way under the oaks that grew thick on the hill’s side, but the rain clouds thinned to let a wan moonlight drift through the wet heavy leaves and show me the stony path that climbed sunwise up the royal hill. No man lived here. It was a place of oaks, stone and mystery. The path led from the trees into the wide open space of the summit where the lone feasting hall stood and where the circle of standing stones marked where Cuneglas had been acclaimed. This summit was Powys’s most sacred place, yet for most of the year it stood deserted, used only at high feasts and at times of great solemnity. Now, in the wan moonlight, the hall stood dark and the hilltop seemed empty. I paused at the edge of the oaks. A white owl flew above me, its stubby body rushing on short wings close to my helmet’s wolf-tailed crest. The owl was an omen, but I could not tell whether the omen was good or evil and I was suddenly afraid. Curiosity had drawn me here, but now I sensed the danger. Merlin would not offer me my soul’s desire for nothing, and that meant I was here to make a choice, and it was a choice I suspected I would not want to make. Indeed, I feared it so much that I almost turned back into the dark of the trees, but then a pulse on the scar of my left hand held me in place. The scar had been put there by Nimue and whenever the scar throbbed I knew that my fate was gone from my choosing. I was oath-sworn to Nimue. I could not go back.

The rain had stopped and the clouds were tattered. There was a cold wind beating the treetops, but no rain. It was still dark. Dawn could not be far off, but as yet no hint of light rose across the eastern hills. There was only the glimmering wash of moonlight that turned the stones of Dolforwyn’s royal circle into silvered shapes in the dark.

I walked towards the stone circle and the sound of my heart seemed louder than the footfall of my heavy boots. Still no one appeared and for a moment I wondered if this was some elaborate jest on Merlin’s part, but then, in the centre of the stone ring, where the single stone of Powys’s kingship lay, I saw a gleam that was brighter than any reflection of misted moonlight from rain-glossed rock. I moved closer, my heart thumping, then stepped between the circle’s stones and saw that the moonlight was reflecting from a cup. A silver cup. A small silver cup which, when I came close to the royal stone, I saw was filled with a dark, moon-glossed liquid.