‘This one too, Lord,’ Dyrrig said, and I saw that his button was almost identical to mine. I peered again into the heating chamber, but could see no more buttons or coins. Mordred had plainly hidden a hoard of gold there, but the mice had nibbled the leather bag so that when he lifted the treasure free a couple of the buttons had fallen out.
‘So why does Mordred have Saxon gold?’ I asked.
‘You tell me, Lord,’ Dyrrig said, spitting into the hole.
I carefully propped the Roman bricks on the low stone arches that supported the floor, then pulled the leather-backed tiles into place. I could guess why Mordred had gold, and I did not like the answer. Mordred had been present when Arthur revealed the plans of his campaign against the Saxons, and that, I thought, was why the Saxons had been able to catch us off balance. They had known we would concentrate our forces on the Thames, so all the while they had let us believe that was where the assault would come and Cerdic had slowly and secretly built up his forces in the south. Mordred had betrayed us. I could not be certain of that for two golden buttons did not constitute proof, but it made a grim sense. Mordred wanted his power back, and though he would not gain all that power from Cerdic he would certainly get the revenge on Arthur that he craved. ‘How would the Saxons have managed to talk with Mordred?’ I asked Dyrrig.
‘Simple, Lord. There are always visitors here,’ Dyrrig said. ‘Merchants, bards, jugglers, girls.’
‘We should have slit his throat,’ I said bitterly, pocketing the button.
‘Why didn’t you?’ Dyrrig asked.
‘Because he’s Uther’s grandson,’ I said, ‘and Arthur would never permit it.’ Arthur had taken an oath to protect Mordred, and that oath bound Arthur for life. Besides, Mordred was our real King, and in him ran the blood of all our Kings back to Beli Mawr himself, and though Mordred was rotten, his blood was sacred and so Arthur kept him alive. ‘Mordred’s task,’ I said to Dyrrig, ‘is to whelp an heir of a proper wife, but once he’s given us a new King he would be well advised to wear an iron collar.’
‘No wonder he doesn’t marry,’ Dyrrig said. ‘And what happens if he never does? Suppose there’s no heir?’
‘That’s a good question,’ I said, ‘but let’s beat the Saxons before we worry about answering it.’
I left Dyrrig disguising the old dry well with brush. I could have ridden straight back to Dun Caric for I had looked after the urgent needs of the moment; Issa was on his way to escort Argante to safety, Mordred was safely gone north, but I still had one piece of unfinished business and so I rode north on the Fosse Way that ran beside the great swamps and lakes that edged Ynys Wydryn. Warblers were noisy among the reeds while sickle-winged martins were busy pecking beakfuls of mud to make their new nests beneath our eaves. Cuckoos called from the willows and birches that edged the marshland. The sun shone on Dumnonia, the oaks were in new green leaf and the meadows to my east were bright with cowslips and daisies. I did not ride hard, but let my mare amble until, a few miles north of Lindinis, I turned west onto the land bridge that reached towards Ynys Wydryn. So far I had been serving Arthur’s best interests by ensuring Argante’s safety and by securing Mordred, but now I risked his displeasure. Or maybe I did exactly what he had always wanted me to do.
I went to the shrine of the Holy Thorn, where I found Morgan preparing to leave. She had heard no definite news, but rumour had done its work and she knew Ynys Wydryn was threatened. I told her what little I knew and after she had heard that scanty news she peered up at me from behind her golden mask.
‘So where is my husband?’ she demanded shrilly.
‘I don’t know, Lady,’ I said. So far as I knew Sansum was still a prisoner in Bishop Emrys’s house in Durnovaria.
‘You don’t know,’ Morgan snapped at me, ‘and you don’t care!’
‘In truth, Lady, I don’t,’ I told her. ‘But I assume he’ll flee north like everyone else.’
‘Then tell him we’ve gone to Siluria. To Isca.’ Morgan, naturally, was quite prepared for the emergency. She had been packing the shrine’s treasures in anticipation of the Saxon invasion, and boatmen were ready to carry those treasures and the Christian women across Ynys Wydryn’s lakes to the coast where other boats were waiting to carry them north across the Severn Sea to Siluria. ‘And tell Arthur I’m praying for him,’ Morgan added, ‘though he doesn’t deserve my prayers. And tell him I have his whore safe.’
‘No, Lady,’ I said, for that was why I had ridden to Ynys Wydryn. To this day I am not exactly sure why I did not let Guinevere go with Morgan, but I think the Gods guided me. Or else, in the welter of confusion as the Saxons tore our careful preparations to tatters, I wanted to give Guinevere one last gift. We had never been friends, but in my mind I associated her with the good times, and though it was her foolishness that brought on the bad, I had seen how stale Arthur had been ever since Guinevere’s eclipse. Or perhaps I knew that in this terrible time we needed every strong soul we could muster, and there were few souls as tough as that of the Princess Guinevere of Henis-Wyren.
‘She comes with me!’ Morgan insisted.
‘I have orders from Arthur,’ I insisted to Morgan, and that settled the matter, though in truth her brother’s orders were terrible and vague. If Guinevere is in danger, Arthur had told me, I was to fetch her or maybe kill her, but I had decided to fetch her, and instead of sending her to safety across the Severn I would carry her still closer to the danger.
‘It’s rather like watching a herd of cows threatened by wolves,’ Guinevere said when I reached her room. She was standing at the window from where she could see Morgan’s women running to and fro between their buildings and the boats that waited beyond the shrine’s western palisade. ‘What’s happening, Derfel?’
‘You were right, Lady. The Saxons are attacking in the south.’ I decided not to tell her that it was Lancelot who led that southern assault.
‘Do you think they’ll come here?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. I just know that we can’t defend any place except where Arthur is, and he’s at Corinium.’
‘In other words,’ she said with a smile, ‘everything is confusion?’ She laughed, sensing an opportunity in that confusion. She was dressed in her usual drab clothes, but the sun shone through the open window to give her splendid red hair a golden aura. ‘So what does Arthur want to do with me?’ she asked. Death? No, I decided, he had never really wanted that. What he wanted was what his proud soul would not let him take for itself. ‘I am just ordered to fetch you, Lady,’ I answered instead.
‘To go where, Derfel?’
‘You can sail across the Severn with Morgan,’ I said, ‘or come with me. I’m taking folk north to Corinium and I dare say from there you can travel on to Glevum. You’ll be safe there.’
She walked from the window and sat in a chair beside the empty hearth. ‘Folk,’ she said, plucking the word from my sentence. ‘What folk, Derfel?’
I blushed. ‘Argante. Ceinwyn, of course.’
Guinevere laughed. ‘I would like to meet Argante. Do you think she’d like to meet me?’
‘I doubt it, Lady.’
‘I doubt it too. I imagine she’d prefer me to be dead. So, I can travel with you to Corinium, or go to Siluria with the Christian cows? I think I’ve heard enough Christian hymns to last me a lifetime. Besides, the greater adventure lies at Corinium, don’t you think?’