‘Where were they when you left?’ I asked Einion.
‘Still south of Sorviodunum, Lord.’
‘And your father?’
‘He was in the town, Lord, but he dare not be trapped there.’
So Culhwch would yield the fortress of Sorviodunum rather than be trapped. ‘Does he want me to join him?’ I asked.
Einion shook his head. ‘He sent word to Durnovaria, Lord, telling the folk there to come north. He thinks you should protect them and take them to Corinium.’
‘Who’s at Durnovaria?’ I asked.
‘The Princess Argante, Lord.’
I swore softly. Arthur’s new wife could not just be abandoned and I understood now what Culhwch was suggesting. He knew Lancelot could not be stopped, so he wanted me to rescue whatever was valuable in Dumnonia’s heartland and retreat north towards Corinium while Culhwch did his best to slow the enemy. It was a desperately makeshift strategy, and at its end we would have yielded the greater part of Dumnonia to the enemy’s forces, but there was still the chance that we could all come together at Corinium to fight Arthur’s battle, though by rescuing Argante I abandoned Arthur’s plans to harass the Saxons in the hills south of the Thames. That was a pity, but war rarely goes according to plan.
‘Does Arthur know?’ I asked Einion.
‘My brother is riding to him,’ Einion assured me, which meant Arthur would still not have heard the news. It would be late afternoon before Einion’s brother reached Corinium, where Arthur had spent Beltain. Culhwch, meanwhile, was lost somewhere south of the great plain while Lancelot’s army was where? Aelle, presumably, was still marching west, and maybe Cerdic was with him, which meant Lancelot could either continue along the coast and capture Durnovaria, or else turn north and follow Culhwch towards Caer Cadarn and Dun Caric. But either way, I reflected, this landscape would be swarming with Saxon spearmen in only three or four days.
I gave Einion a fresh horse and sent him north to Arthur with a message that I would bring Argante to Corinium, but suggesting he might send horsemen to Aquae Sulis to meet us and then hurry her northwards. I then sent Issa and fifty of my fittest men south to Durnovaria. I ordered them to march fast and light, carrying only their weapons, and I warned Issa that he might expect to meet Argante and the other fugitives from Durnovaria coming north on the road. Issa was to bring them all to Dun Caric. ‘With good fortune,’ I told him, ‘you’ll be back here by tomorrow nightfall.’
Ceinwyn made her own preparations to leave. This was not the first time she had been a fugitive from war and she knew well enough that she and our daughters could take only what they could carry. Everything else must be abandoned, and so two spearmen dug a cave in the side of Dun Caric’s hill and there she hid our gold and silver, and afterwards the two men filled the hole and disguised it with turf. The villagers were doing the same with cooking pots, spades, sharpening stones, spindles, sieves, anything, indeed, that was too heavy to carry and too valuable to lose. All over Dumnonia such valuables were being buried.
There was little I could do at Dun Caric except wait for Issa’s return and so I rode south to Caer Cadarn and Lindinis. We kept a small garrison at Caer Cadarn, not for any military reason, but because the hill was our royal place and so deserved guarding. That garrison was composed of a score of old men, most of them crippled, and of the twenty only five or six would be truly useful in the shield wall, but I ordered them all north to Dun Caric, then turned the mare west towards Lindinis. Mordred had sensed the dire news. Rumour passes at unimaginable speed in the countryside, and though no messenger had come to the palace, he still guessed my mission. I bowed to him, then politely requested that he be ready to leave the palace within the hour.
‘Oh, that’s impossible!’ he said, his round face betraying his delight at the chaos that threatened Dumnonia. Mordred ever delighted in misfortune.
‘Impossible, Lord King?’ I asked.
He waved a hand about his throne room that was filled with Roman furniture, much of it chipped or with its inlay missing, but still lavish and beautiful. ‘I have things to pack,’ he said, ‘people to see. Tomorrow, maybe?’
‘You ride north to Corinium in one hour, Lord King,’ I said harshly. It was important to move Mordred out of the Saxon path, which was why I had come here rather than ridden south to meet Argante. If Mordred had stayed he would undoubtedly have been used by Aelle and Cerdic, and Mordred knew it. For a moment he looked as though he would argue, then he ordered me out of the room and shouted for a slave to lay out his armour. I sought out Lanval, the old spearman whom Arthur had placed in charge of the King’s guard. ‘You take every horse in the stables,’ I told Lanval, ‘and escort the little bastard to Corinium. You give him to Arthur personally.’
Mordred left within the hour. The King rode in his armour and with his standard flying. I almost ordered him to furl the standard, for the sight of the dragon would only provoke more rumours in the country, but maybe it was no bad thing to spread alarm because folk needed time to prepare and to hide their valuables. I watched the King’s horses clatter through the gate and turn north, then I went back into the palace where the steward, a lamed spearman named Dyrrig, was shouting at slaves to gather the palace’s treasures. Candle-stands, pots and cauldrons were being carried to the back garden to be concealed in a dry well, while bedspreads, linens and clothes were being piled on carts to be hidden in the nearby woods. ‘The furniture can stay,’ Dyrrig told me sourly, ‘the Saxons are welcome to it.’
I wandered through the palace’s rooms and tried to imagine the Saxons whooping between the pillars, smashing the fragile chairs and shattering the delicate mosaics. Who would live here, I wondered? Cerdic? Lancelot? If anyone, I decided, it would be Lancelot, for the Saxons seemed to have no taste for Roman luxury. They left places like Lindinis to rot and built their own timber and thatch halls nearby. I lingered in the throne room, trying to imagine it lined with the mirrors that Lancelot so loved. He existed in a world of polished metal so that he could ever admire his own beauty. Or perhaps Cerdic would destroy the palace to show that the old world of Britain was ended and that the new brutal reign of the Saxons had begun. It was a melancholy, self-indulgent moment, broken when Dyrrig shuffled into the room trailing his maimed leg. ‘I’ll save the furniture if you want,’ he said grudgingly.
‘No,’ I said.
Dyrrig plucked a blanket off a couch. ‘The little bastard left three girls here, and one of them’s pregnant. I suppose I’ll have to give them gold. He won’t. Now, what’s this?’ He had stopped behind the carved chair that served as Mordred’s throne and I joined him to see that there was a hole in the floor. ‘Wasn’t there yesterday,’ Dyrrig insisted.
I knelt down and found that a complete section of the mosaic floor had been lifted. The section was at the edge of the room, where bunches of grapes formed a border to the central picture of a reclining God attended by nymphs, and one whole bunch of grapes had been carefully lifted out from the border. I saw that the small tiles had been glued to a piece of leather cut to the shape of the grapes, and beneath them there had been a layer of narrow Roman bricks that were now scattered under the chair. It was a deliberate hiding place, giving access to the flues of the old heating chamber that ran beneath the floor. Something glinted at the bottom of the heating chamber and I leaned down and groped among the dust and debris to bring up two small gold buttons, a scrap of leather and what, with a grimace, I realized were mice droppings. I brushed my hands clean, then handed one of the buttons to Dyrrig. The other, which I examined, showed a bearded, belligerent, helmeted face. It was crude work, but powerful in the intensity of the stare. ‘Saxon made,’ I said.