Argante was still not finished. She turned, wet her finger with blood again, and stabbed the bloody finger into the hot embers of the hoop. Then, crouching still, she groped under the hem of her blue dress, transferring the blood and ashes to her thighs. She was ensuring that she would have babies. She was using Nantosuelta’s power to start her own dynasty and we were all witnesses to that ambition. Her eyes were closed again, almost in ecstasy, then suddenly the rite was over. She stood, her hand visible again, and beckoned Arthur. She smiled for the first time that evening, and I saw she was beautiful, but it was a stark beauty, as hard in its way as Guinevere’s, but without Guinevere’s tangle of bright hair to soften it. She beckoned to Arthur again, for it seemed the ritual demanded that he too must pass through the hoop. For a second he hesitated, then he looked at Gwydre and, unable to take any more of the superstition, he stood up and shook his head. ‘We shall eat,’ he said harshly, then softened the curt invitation by smiling at his guests; but at that moment I glanced at Argante and saw a look of utter fury on her pale face. For a heartbeat I thought she would scream at Arthur. Her small body was tensed rigid and her fists were clenched, but Fergal, who alone except for me seemed to have noticed her rage, whispered in her ear and she shuddered as the anger passed. Arthur had noticed nothing. ‘Bring the torches,’ he ordered the guards, and the flames were carried inside the palace to illuminate the feasting-hall. ‘Come,’ Arthur called to the rest of us and we gratefully moved towards the palace doors. Argante hesitated, but again Fergal whispered to her and she obeyed Arthur’s summons. The Druid stayed beside the smoking hoop.
Ceinwyn and I were the last of the guests to leave the courtyard. Some impulse had held me back, and I touched Ceinwyn’s arm and drew her aside into the arcade’s shadow from where we saw that one other person had also stayed in the courtyard. Now, when it seemed empty of all but the bleating ewes and the blood-soaked Druid, that person stepped from the shadows. It was Mordred. He limped past the dais, across the flagstones, and stopped beside the hoop. For a heartbeat he and the Druid stared at each other, then Mordred made an awkward gesture with his hand, as though seeking permission to step through the glowing remnants of the fire circle. Fergal hesitated, then nodded abruptly. Mordred ducked his head and stepped through the hoop. He stooped at the far side and wet his finger in blood, but I did not wait to see what he did. I drew Ceinwyn into the palace where the smoking flames lit the great wall-paintings of Roman Gods and Roman hunts. ‘If they serve lamb,’ Ceinwyn said, ‘I shall refuse to eat.’
Arthur served salmon, boar and venison. A harpist played. Mordred, his late arrival unnoticed, took his place at the head table where he sat with a sly smile on his blunt face. He spoke to no one and no one spoke to him, but at times he glanced across at the pale, thin Argante who alone in the room seemed to take no pleasure from the feast. I saw her catch Mordred’s eye once and they exchanged exasperated shrugs as if to suggest that they despised the rest of us, but other than that one glance, she merely sulked and Arthur was embarrassed for her, while the rest of us pretended not to notice her mood. Mordred, of course, enjoyed her sullenness.
Next morning we hunted. A dozen of us rode, all men. Ceinwyn liked to hunt, but Arthur had asked her to spend the morning with Argante and Ceinwyn had reluctantly agreed. We drew the western woods, though without much hope for Mordred frequently hunted among these trees and the huntsman doubted we would find game. Guinevere’s deerhounds, now in Arthur’s care, loped off among the black trunks and managed to start a doe which gave us a fine gallop through the woods, but the huntsman called off the hounds when he saw that the animal was pregnant. Arthur and I had ridden at a tangent to the chase, thinking to head off the prey at the edge of the woods, but we reined in when we heard the horns. Arthur looked about him, as if expecting to find more company, then grunted when he saw I was alone with him. ‘A strange business, last night,’ he said awkwardly. ‘But women like these things,’ he added dismissively.
‘Ceinwyn doesn’t,’ I said.
He gave me a sharp look. He must have been wondering if she had told me about his proposal of marriage, but my face betrayed nothing and he must have decided she had not spoken. ‘No,’ he said. He hesitated again, then laughed awkwardly. ‘Argante believes I should have stepped through the flames as a way of marking the marriage, but I told her I don’t need dead lambs to tell me I’m married.’
‘I never had a chance to congratulate you on your marriage,’ I said very formally, ‘so let me do so now. She’s a beautiful girl.’
That pleased him. ‘She is,’ he said, then blushed. ‘But only a child.’
‘Culhwch says they should all be taken young, Lord,’ I said lightly. He ignored my levity. ‘I hadn’t meant to marry,’ he said quietly. I said nothing. He was not looking at me, but staring across the fallow fields. ‘But a man should be married,’ he said firmly, as if trying to convince himself.
‘Indeed,’ I agreed.
‘And Oengus was enthusiastic. Come spring, Derfel, he’ll bring all his army. And they’re good fighters, the Blackshields.’
‘None better, Lord,’ I said, but I reflected that Oengus would have brought his warriors whether Arthur had married Argante or not. What Oengus had really wanted, of course, was Arthur’s alliance against Cuneglas of Powys, whose lands Oengus’s spearmen were forever raiding, but doubtless the wily Irish King had suggested to Arthur that the marriage would guarantee the arrival of his Blackshields for the spring campaign. The marriage had plainly been arranged in haste and now, just as plainly, Arthur was regretting it.
‘She wants children, of course,’ Arthur said, still thinking of the horrid rites that had bloodied Lindinis’s courtyard.
‘Don’t you, Lord?’
‘Not yet,’ he said curtly. ‘Better to wait, I think, till the Saxon business is over.’
‘Speaking of which,’ I said, ‘I have a request from the Lady Guinevere.’ Arthur gave me another sharp look, but said nothing. ‘Guinevere fears,’ I went on, ‘that she will be vulnerable if the Saxons attack in the south. She begs you to move her prison to a safer place.’
Arthur leaned forward to fondle his horse’s ears. I had expected him to be angry at the mention of Guinevere, but he showed no irritation. ‘The Saxons might attack in the south,’ he said mildly, ‘in fact I hope they do, for then they’ll split their forces into two and we can pluck them one at a time. But the greater danger, Derfel, is if they make one single attack along the Thames, and I must plan for the greater, not the lesser, danger.’
‘But it would surely be prudent,’ I urged him, ‘to move whatever is valuable from southern Dumnonia?’