‘Is there some danger,’ I asked, ‘that the ritual will not be done properly?’
‘Merlin’s like you,’ she said angrily, ignoring my question. ‘He’s emotional.’
‘Nonsense,’ I said.
‘And what do you know, Derfel?’ she snapped. ‘Do you have to endure his bluster? Do you have to argue with him? Do you have to reassure him? Do you have to watch him making the greatest mistake of all history?’ She spat these questions at me. ‘Do you have to watch him waste all this effort?’ She waved a thin hand at the fires. ‘You are a fool,’ she added bitterly. ‘If Merlin farts, you think it’s wisdom speaking. He’s an old man, Derfel, and he has not long to live, and he is losing his power. And power, Derfel, comes from inside.’ She beat her hand between her small breasts. She had stopped on the rampart’s top and turned to face me. I was a strapping soldier, she a tiny slip of a woman, yet she overpowered me. She always did. In Nimue there ran a passion so deep and dark and strong that almost nothing could withstand it.
‘Why do Merlin’s emotions threaten the ritual?’ I asked.
‘They just do!’ Nimue said, and turned and walked on.
‘Tell me,’ I demanded.
‘Never!’ she snapped. ‘You’re a fool.’
I walked behind her. ‘Who is Olwen the Silver?’ I asked her.
‘A slave girl we purchased in Demetia. She was captured from Powys and she cost us over six gold pieces because she’s so pretty.’
‘She is,’ I said, remembering her delicate step through Lindinis’s hushed night.
‘Merlin thinks so, too,’ Nimue said scornfully.’He quivers at the sight of her, but he’s much too old these days, and besides we have to pretend she’s a virgin for Gawain’s sake. And he believes us! But that fool will believe anything! He’s an idiot!’
‘And he’ll marry Olwen when this is all over?’
Nimue laughed. ‘That’s what we’ve promised the fool, though once he discovers she’s slave born and not a spirit he might change his mind. So maybe we’ll sell her on. Would you like to buy her?’ She gave me a sly look.
‘No.’
‘Still faithful to Ceinwyn?’ she said mockingly. ‘How is she?’
‘She’s well,’ I said.
‘And is she coming to Durnovaria to watch the summons?’
‘No,’ I said.
Nimue turned to give me a suspicious look. ‘But you will?’
‘I’ll watch, yes.’
‘And Gwydre,’ she asked, ‘will you bring him?’
‘He wants to come, yes. But I shall ask his father’s permission first.’
‘Tell Arthur he should let him come. Every child in Britain should witness the coming of the Gods. It will be a sight never to be forgotten, Derfel.’
‘So it will happen?’ I asked, ‘despite Merlin’s faults?’
‘It will happen,’ Nimue said vengefully, ‘despite Merlin. It will happen because I will make it happen. I’ll give that old fool what he wants whether he likes it or not.’ She stopped, turned and seized my left hand to stare with her one eye at the scar on its palm. That scar bound me by oath to do her bidding and I sensed she was about to make some demand of me, but then some impulse of caution stopped her. She took a breath, stared at me, then let my scarred hand drop. ‘You can find your own way now,’ she said in a bitter tone, then walked away.
I went down the hill. The folk still trudged to Mai Dun’s summit with their loads of firewood. For nine hours, Gawain had said, the fires must burn. Nine hours to fill a sky with flame and bring the Gods to earth. Or maybe, if the rites were done wrong, the fires would bring nothing. And in three nights we would discover which it would be.
Ceinwyn would have liked to come to Durnovaria to witness the summoning of the Gods, but Samain Eve is the night when the dead walk the earth and she wanted to be certain that we left gifts for Dian and she thought the place to leave those gifts was where Dian had died, and so she took our two living daughters to the ruins of Ermid’s Hall and there among the hall’s ashes she placed a jug of diluted mead, some buttered bread and a handful of the honey-covered nuts Dian had always loved so much. Dian’s sisters put some walnuts and hard-boiled eggs in the ashes, then they all sheltered in a nearby forester’s hut guarded by my spearmen. They did not see Dian, for on Samain Eve the dead never show themselves, but to ignore their presence is to invite misfortune. In the morning, Ceinwyn told me later, the food was all gone and the jug was empty.
I was in Durnovaria where Issa joined me with Gwydre. Arthur had given his son permission to watch the summoning and Gwydre was excited. He was eleven years old that year, full of joy and life and curiosity. He had his father’s lean build, but he had taken his good looks from Guinevere for he had her long nose and bold eyes. There was mischief in him, but no evil, and both Ceinwyn and I would have been glad if his father’s prophecy came true and he married our Morwenna. That decision would not be taken for another two or three years, and until then Gwydre would live with us. He wanted to be on the summit of Mai Dun, and was disappointed when I explained that no one was permitted to be there other than those who would perform the ceremonies. Even the folk who had built the great fires were sent away during the day. They, like the hundreds of other curious folk who had come from all over Britain, would watch the summons from the fields beneath the ancient fort.
Arthur arrived on the morning of Samain Eve and I saw the joy with which he greeted Gwydre. The boy was his one source of happiness in those dark. days. Arthur’s cousin, Culhwch, arrived from Dunum with a half-dozen spearmen. ‘Arthur told me I shouldn’t come,’ he told me with a grin, ‘but I wouldn’t miss this.’ Culhwch limped to greet Galahad who had spent the last months with Sagramor, guarding the frontier against Aelle’s Saxons, and while Sagramor had obeyed Arthur’s orders to stay at his post, he had asked Galahad to go to Durnovaria to carry news of the night’s events back to his forces. The high expectations worried Arthur, who feared his followers would feel a terrible disappointment if nothing happened.
The expectations only increased, for that afternoon King Cuneglas of Powys rode into the town and brought with him a dozen men including his son Perddel who was now a self-conscious youth trying to grow his first moustaches. Cuneglas embraced me. He was Ceinwyn’s brother and a more decent, honest man never lived. He had called on Meurig of Gwent on his journey south and now confirmed that monarch’s reluctance to fight the Saxons. ‘He believes his God will protect him,’ Cuneglas said grimly.
‘So do we,’ I said, gesturing out of Durnovaria’s palace window to the lower slopes of Mai Dun that were thick with people hoping to be close to whatever the momentous night might bring. Many of the folk had tried to climb to the top of the hill, but Merlin’s Blackshield spearmen were keeping them all at a distance. In the field just to the north of the fortress a brave group of Christians prayed noisily that their God would send rain to defeat the heathen rites, but they were chased away by an angry crowd. One Christian woman was beaten insensible, and Arthur sent his own soldiers to keep the peace.
‘So what happens tonight?’ Cuneglas asked me.
‘Maybe nothing, Lord King.’
‘I’ve come this far to see nothing?’ Culhwch grumbled. He was a squat, bellicose, foul-mouthed man whom I counted among my closest friends. He had limped ever since a Saxon blade had scored deep into his leg in the battle against Aelle’s Saxons outside London, but he made no fuss about the thickly scarred wound and claimed he was still as formidable a spearman as ever. ‘And what are you doing here?’ he challenged.Galahad. ‘I thought you were a Christian?’