‘Why should I? There was nothing to tell. He asked a very clumsy question and I told him I was sworn to the Gods to be with you. I told him very gently, and afterwards he was very ashamed. I also promised him that I would not tell you, and I’ve now broken that promise which means I shall be punished by the Gods.’ She shrugged as if to suggest that the punishment would be deserved and thus accepted. ‘He needs a wife,’ she added wryly.
‘Or a woman.’
‘No,’ Ceinwyn said. ‘He isn’t a casual man. He can’t lie with a woman and walk away afterwards. He confuses desire with love. When Arthur gives his soul he gives everything, and he cannot give just a little bit of himself.’
I was still angry. ‘What did he think I would do while he married you?’
‘He thought you would rule Dumnonia as Mordred’s guardian,’ Ceinwyn said. ‘He had this odd idea that I would go with him to Broceliande and there we would live like children under the sun, and you would stay here and defeat the Saxons.’ She laughed.
‘When did he ask?’
‘The day he ordered you to go and see Aelle. I think he thought I’d run away with him while you were gone.’
‘Or he hoped Aelle would kill me,’ I said resentfully, remembering the Saxon promise to slaughter any emissary.
‘He was very ashamed afterwards,’ Ceinwyn assured me earnestly. ‘And you’re not to tell him I told you.’ She made me promise that, and I kept the promise. ‘It really wasn’t important,’ she added, ending the conversation. ‘He’d have been truly shocked if I’d have said yes. He asked, Derfel, because he is in pain and men in pain behave desperately. What he really wants is to run away with Guinevere, but he can’t, because his pride won’t let him and he knows we all need him to defeat the Saxons.’
We needed Meurig’s spearmen to do that, but we heard no news of Arthur’s negotiations with Gwent. Weeks passed and still no certain news came from the north. A travelling priest from Gwent told us that Arthur, Meurig, Cuneglas and Emrys had talked for a week in Burrium, Gwent’s capital, but the priest knew nothing of what had been decided. The priest was a small, dark man with a squint and a wispy beard that he moulded with beeswax into the shape of a cross. He had come to Dun Caric because there was no church in the small village and he wanted to establish one. Like many such itinerant priests he had a band of women; three drab creatures who clustered protectively about him. I first heard of his arrival when he began to preach outside the smithy beside the stream and I sent Issa and a pair of spearmen to stop his nonsense and bring him up to the hall. We fed him a gruel of sprouted barley grains that he ate greedily, spooning the hot mixture into his mouth and then hissing and spluttering because the food burned his tongue. Scraps of gruel lodged on his odd-shaped beard. His women refused to eat until he had finished.
‘All I know, Lord,’ he answered our impatient questions, ‘is that Arthur has now travelled west.’
‘Where?’
‘To Demetia, Lord. To meet Oengus mac Airem.’
‘Why?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Lord.’
‘Does King Meurig make preparations for war?’ I asked.
‘He is prepared to defend his territory, Lord.’
‘And to defend Dumnonia?’
‘Only if Dumnonia recognizes the one God, the true God,’ the priest said, crossing himself with the wooden spoon and splattering his dirty gown with scraps of the barley gruel. ‘Our King is fervent for the cross and his spears won’t be offered to pagans.’ He looked up at the ox-skull that was nailed onto one of our high beams and made the sign of the cross again.
‘If the Saxons take Dumnonia,’ I said, ‘the.n Gwent won’t be far behind.’
‘Christ will protect Gwent,’ the priest insisted. He gave the bowl to one of his women who scooped up his scant leavings with a dirty finger. ‘Christ will protect you, Lord,’ the priest continued, ‘if you humble yourself before Him. If you renounce your Gods and are baptized then you will have victory in the new year.’
‘Then why was Lancelot not victorious last summer?’ Ceinwyn asked.
The priest looked at her with his good eye while the other wandered off into the shadows. ‘King Lancelot, Lady, was not the Chosen One. King Meurig is. It says in our scriptures that one man will be chosen and it seems King Lancelot was not that man.’
‘Chosen to do what?’ Ceinwyn asked.
The priest stared at her; she was still such a beautiful woman, so golden and calm, the star of Powys.
‘Chosen, Lady,’ he said, ‘to unite all the peoples of Britain under the living God. Saxon and Briton, Gwentian and Dumnonian, Irish and Pict, all worshipping the one true God and all living in peace and love.’
‘And what if we decide not to follow King Meurig?’ Ceinwyn asked.
‘Then our God will destroy you.’
‘And that,’ I asked, ‘is the message you have come here to preach?’
‘I can do no other, Lord. I am commanded.’
‘By Meurig?’
‘By God.’
‘But I am the lord of the land both sides of the stream,’ I said, ‘and of all the land southwards to Caer Cadarn and northwards to Aquae Sulis and you do not preach here without my permission.’
‘No man can countermand God’s word, Lord,’ the priest said.
‘This can,’ I said, drawing Hywelbane.
His women hissed. The priest stared at the sword, then spat into the fire. ‘You risk God’s wrath.’
‘You risk my wrath,’ I said, ‘and if, at sundown tomorrow, you are still on the land I govern I shall give you as a slave to my slaves. You may sleep with the beasts tonight, but tomorrow you will go.’
He grudgingly left next day, and as if to punish me the first snow of the winter came with his leaving. That snow was early, promising a bitter season. At first it fell as sleet, but by nightfall it had become a thick snow that had whitened the land by dawn. It grew colder over the next week. Icicles hung inside our roof and now began the long winter struggle for warmth. In the village the folk slept with their beasts, while we fought the bitter air with great fires that made the icicles drip from the thatch. We put our winter cattle into the beast sheds, and killed the others, packing their meat in salt as Merlin had stored Gawain’s blood-drained body. For two days the village echoed with the distraught bellowing of oxen being dragged to the axe. The snow was spattered red and the air stank of blood, salt and dung. Inside the hall the fires roared, but they gave us small warmth. We woke cold, we shivered inside our furs and we waited in vain for a thaw. The stream froze so that we had to chip our way through the ice to draw each day’s water.
We still trained our young spearmen. We marched them through the snow, hardening their muscles to fight the Saxon. On the days when the snow fell hard and the wind whirled the flakes thick about the snow-crusted gables of the village’s small houses, I had the men make their shields out of willow boards that were covered with leather. I was making a warband, but as I watched them work I feared for them, wondering how many would live to see the summer sun.
A message came from Arthur just before the solstice. At Dun Caric we were busy preparing the great feast that would last all through the week of the sun’s death when Bishop Emrys arrived. He rode a horse with hoofs swathed in leather and was escorted by six of Arthur’s spearmen. The Bishop told us he had stayed in Gwent, arguing with Meurig, while Arthur had gone on to Demetia. ‘King Meurig has not utterly refused to help us,’ the Bishop told us, shivering beside the fire where he had made a space for himself by pushing two of-our dogs aside. He held his plump, red-chapped hands towards the flames. ‘But his conditions for that help are, I fear, unacceptable.’ He sneezed. ‘Dear Lady, you are most kind,’ he said to Ceinwyn who had brought him a horn of warmed mead.