‘I know about Dumnonia, Lord King.’
‘Then you know, Derfel, that its King is a fool, and that its ruler does not want to be a King, not even a, whatever it is you call him, a kaiser?’
‘An emperor,’ I said.
‘An emperor,’ he repeated, mocking the word with his pronunciation. He was leading me along a path beside the woods. No one else was in sight. To our left the ground fell away to the misted levels of the estuary, while to our north were the deep, dank woods. ‘Your Christians are rebellious,’ Aelle summed up his argument, ‘your King is a crippled fool and your leader refuses to steal the throne from the fool. In time, Derfel, and sooner rather than later, another man will want that throne. Lancelot nearly took it, and a better man than Lancelot will try soon enough.’ He paused, frowning. ‘Why did Guinevere open her legs to him?’ he asked.
‘Because Arthur wouldn’t become King,’ I said bleakly.
‘Then he is a fool. And next year he’ll be a dead fool unless he accepts a proposal.’
‘What proposal, Lord King?’ I asked, stopping beneath a fiery red beech. He stopped and placed his hands on my shoulders. ‘Tell Arthur to give the throne to you, Derfel.’
I stared into my father’s eyes. For a heartbeat I thought he must be jesting, then saw he was as earnest as a man could be. ‘Me?’ I asked, astonished.
‘You,’ Aelle said, ‘and you swear loyalty to me. I shall want land from you, but you can tell Arthur to give the throne to you, and you can rule Dumnonia. My people will settle and farm the land, and you shall govern them, but as my client King. We shall make a federation, you and I. Father and son. You rule Dumnonia and I rule Aengeland.’
‘Aengeland?’ I asked, for the word was new to me.
He took his hands from my shoulders and gestured about the countryside. ‘Here! You call us Saxons, but you and I are Aengles. Cerdic is a Saxon, but you and I are the Aenglish and our country is Aengeland. This is Aengeland!’ He said it proudly, looking about that damp hilltop.
‘What of Cerdic?’ I asked him.
‘You and I will kill Cerdic,’ he said frankly, then plucked my elbow and began walking again, only now he led me onto a track that led between the trees where pigs rooted for beechmast among the newly fallen leaves. ‘Tell Arthur what I suggest,’ Aelle said. ‘Tell him he can have the throne rather than you if that’s what he wants, but whichever of you takes it, you take it in my name.’
‘I shall tell him, Lord King,’ I said, though I knew Arthur would scorn the proposal. I think Aelle knew that too, but his hatred of Cerdic had driven him to the suggestion. He knew that even if he and Cerdic did capture all southern Britain there would still have to be another war to determine which of them should be the Bretwalda, which is their name for the High King. ‘Supposing,’ I said, ‘that Arthur and you attack Cerdic together next year instead?’
Aelle shook his head. ‘Cerdic’s spread too much gold among my chiefs. They won’t fight him, not while he offers them Dumnonia as a prize. But if Arthur gives Dumnonia to you, and you give it to me, then they won’t need Cerdic’s gold. You tell Arthur that.’
‘I shall tell him, Lord King,’ I said again, but I still knew Arthur would never agree to the proposal for it would mean breaking his oath to Uther, the oath*that promised to make Mordred King, and that oath lay at the taproot of all Arthur’s life. Indeed I was so certain that he would not break the oath that, despite my words to Aelle, I doubted I would even mention the proposal to Arthur. Aelle now led me into a wide clearing where I saw that my horse was waiting, and with it an escort of mounted spearmen. In the centre of the clearing there was a great rough stone the height of a man, and though it was nothing like the trimmed sarsens of Dumnonia’s ancient temples, nor like the flat boulders on which we acclaimed our Kings, it was plain that it must be a sacred stone, for it stood all alone in the circle of grass and none of the Saxon warriors ventured close to it, though one of their own sacred objects, a great bark-stripped tree trunk with a crudely carved face, had been planted in the soil nearby. Aelle led me towards the great rock, but stopped short of it and fished in a pouch that hung from his sword belt. He brought out a small leather bag that he unlaced, then tipped something onto his palm. He held the object out to me and I saw that it was a tiny golden ring in which a small chipped agate was set.
‘I was going to give this to your mother,’ he told me, ‘but Uther captured her before I had the chance, and I’ve kept it ever since. Take it.’
I took the ring. It was a simple thing, country made. It was not Roman work, for their jewels are exquisitely fashioned, nor was it Saxon made, for they like their jewellery heavy, but the ring had probably been made by some poor Briton who had fallen to a Saxon blade. The square green stone was not even set straight, but still the tiny ring possessed an odd and fragile loveliness. ‘I never gave it to your mother,’ Aelle said, ‘and if she’s fat, then she can’t wear it now. So give it to your Princess of Powys. I hear she is a good woman?’
‘She is, Lord King.’
‘Give it to her,’ Aelle said, ‘and tell her that if our countries do come to war then I shall spare the woman wearing that ring, her and all her family.’
‘Thank you, Lord King,’ I said, and put the little ring in my pouch.
‘I have one last gift for you,’ he said and put an arm on my shoulders and led me to the stone. I was feeling guilty that I had not brought him any gift, indeed in my fear of coming into Lloegyr the thought had not even occurred to me, but Aelle overlooked the omission. He stopped beside the boulder. ‘This stone once belonged to the Britons,’ he told me, ‘and was sacred to them. There’s a hole in it, see? Come to the side, boy, look.’
I walked to the side of the stone and saw there was indeed a great black hole running into the heart of the stone.
‘I talked once with an old British slave,’ Aelle said, ‘and he told me that by whispering into that hole you can talk with the dead.’
‘But you don’t believe that?’ I asked him, having heard the scepticism in his voice.
‘We believe we can talk to Thunor, Woden and Seaxnet through that hole,’ Aelle said, ‘but for you? Maybe you can reach the dead, Derfel.’ He smiled. ‘We shall meet again, boy.’
‘I hope so, Lord King,’ I said, and then I remembered my mother’s strange prophecy, that Aelle would be killed by his son, and I tried to dismiss it as the ravings of a mad old woman, but the Gods often choose such women as their mouthpieces and I suddenly had nothing to say. Aelle embraced me, crushing my face into the collar of his great fur cape. ‘Has your mother long to live?’ he asked me.
‘No, Lord King.’
‘Bury her,’ he said, ‘with her feet to the north. It is the way of our people.’ He gave me a last embrace. ‘You’ll be taken safe home,’ he said, then stepped back. ‘To talk to the dead,’ he added gruffly, ‘you must walk three times round the stone, then kneel to the hole. Give my granddaughter a kiss from me.’ He smiled, pleased to have surprised me by revealing such an intimate knowledge of my life, and then he turned and walked away.
The waiting escort watched as I walked thrice round the stone, then as I knelt and leaned to the hole. I suddenly wanted to weep and my voice choked as I whispered my daughter’s name. ‘Dian?’ I whispered into the stone’s heart, ‘my dear Dian? Wait for us, my darling, and we will come to you. Dian.’ My dead daughter, my lovely Dian, murdered by Lancelot’s men. I told her we loved her, I sent her Aelle’s kiss, then I leaned my forehead on the cold rock and thought of her little shadowbody all alone in the Otherworld. Merlin, it is true, had told us that children play happily beneath the apples of Annwn in that death world, but I still wept as I imagined her suddenly hearing my voice. Did she look up? Was she, like me, crying?