Dumnonia decayed, and there seemed little I could do to prevent the decay for Mordred had just enough power to outflank me, but Issa preserved what order and justice he could while Ceinwyn and I spent more and more of our time in Siluria. What sweet memories I keep of Isca; memories of sunny days with Taliesin singing lullabies and Guinevere gently mocking my happiness as I towed Arthur-bach and Seren in an upturned shield across the grass. Arthur would join the games, for he had ever adored children, and sometimes Galahad would be there for he had joined Arthur and Guinevere in their comfortable exile.
Galahad had still not married, though now he had a child. It was his nephew, Prince Peredur, Lancelot’s son, who had been found wandering in tears among the dead of Mynydd Baddon. As Peredur grew he came more and more to resemble his father; he had the same dark skin, the same lean and handsome face, and the same black hair, but in his character he was Galahad, not Lancelot. He was a clever, grave and earnest boy, and anxious to be a good Christian. I do not know how much of his father’s history he knew, but Peredur was always nervous of Arthur and Guinevere, and they, I think, found him unsettling. That was not his fault, but rather because his face reminded them of what we would all have preferred to forget, and both were grateful when, at twelve years old, Peredur was sent to Meurig’s court in Gwent to learn a warrior’s skills. He was a good boy, yet with his departure it was as though a shadow had gone from Isca. In later years, long after Arthur’s story was done, I came to know Peredur well and to value him as highly as I have valued any man.
Peredur might have unsettled Arthur, but there were few other shadows to trouble him. In these dark days, when folk look back and remember what they lost when Arthur went, they usually speak of Dumnonia, but others also mourn Siluria, for in those years he gave that unregarded kingdom a time of peace and justice. There was still disease, and still poverty, and men did not cease from getting drunk and killing each other just because Arthur governed, but widows knew that his courts would give redress, and the hungry knew that his granaries held food to last a winter. No enemy raided across Siluria’s border, and though the Christian religion spread fast through the valleys, Arthur would not let its priests defile the pagan shrines, nor allow the pagans to attack the Christian churches. In those years he made Siluria into what he had dreamed he could make all Britain: a haven. Children were not enslaved, crops were not burned and warlords did not ravage homesteads.
Yet beyond the haven’s borders, dark things loomed. Merlin’s absence was one. Year after year passed, and still there was no news, and after a while folk assumed the Druid must have died for surely no man, not even Merlin, could live so long. Meurig was a nagging and irritable neighbour, forever demanding higher taxes or a purge of the Druids who lived in Siluria’s valleys, though Tewdric, his father, was a moderating influence when he could be stirred from his self-imposed life of near starvation. Powys stayed weak, and Dumnonia became increasingly lawless, though it was spared the worst of Mordred’s rule by his absence. In Siluria alone, it seemed, there was happiness, and Ceinwyn and I began to think that we would live the rest of our days in Isca. We had wealth, we had friends, we had family and we were happy.
We were, in short, complacent, and fate has ever been the enemy of complacency, and fate, as Merlin always told me, is inexorable.
I was hunting with Guinevere in the hills north of Isca when I first heard of Mordred’s calamity. It was winter, the trees were bare, and Guinevere’s prized deerhounds had just run down a great red stag when a messenger from Dumnonia found me. The man handed me a letter, then watched wide-eyed as Guinevere waded among the snarling dogs to put the beast out of its misery with one merciful stab of her short spear. Her huntsmen whipped the hounds off the corpse, then drew their knives to gralloch the stag. I pulled open the parchment, read the brief message, then looked at the messenger. ‘Did you show this to Arthur?’ ‘No, Lord,’ the man said. ‘The letter was addressed to you.’ ‘Take it to him now,’ I said, handing him the sheet of parchment.
Guinevere, happily blood-streaked, stepped out of the carnage. ‘You look as if it was bad news, Derfel.’
‘On the contrary,’ I said, ‘it’s good news. Mordred has been wounded.’
‘Good!’ Guinevere exulted. ‘Badly, I hope?’
‘It seems so. An axe blow to the leg.’
‘Pity it wasn’t to the heart. Where is he?’
‘Still in Armorica,’ I said. The message had been dictated by Sansum and it said that Mordred had been surprised and defeated by an army led by Clovis, High King of the Franks, and that in the battle our King had been badly wounded in the leg. He had escaped, and was now besieged by Clovis in one of the ancient hilltop forts of old Benoic. I surmised that Mordred must have been wintering in the territory that he had conquered from the Franks and which he doubtless thought would make him a second kingdom across the sea, but Clovis had led his Frankish army westwards in a surprise winter campaign. Mordred had been defeated and, though he was still alive, he was trapped.
‘How reliable is the news?’ Guinevere asked.
‘Reliable enough,’ I said. ‘King Budic sent Argante a messenger.’
‘Good!’ Guinevere said. ‘Good! Let’s hope the Franks kill him.’ She stepped back into the growing pile of steaming offal to find a scrap for one of her beloved hounds. ‘They will kill him, won’t they?’ she asked me.
‘Franks aren’t noted for their mercy,’ I said.
‘I hope they dance on his bones,’ she said. ‘Calling himself a second Uther!’
‘He fought well for a time, Lady.’
‘It isn’t how well you fight that matters, Derfel, it’s whether or not you win the last battle.’ She threw scraps of the stag’s guts to her dogs, wiped her knife blade on her tunic, then thrust it back into its sheath. ‘So what does Argante want of you?’ she asked me. ‘A rescue?’ Argante was demanding exactly that, and so was Sansum which is why he had written to me. His message ordered me to march all my men to the south coast, find ships and go to Mordred’s relief. I told Guinevere as much and she gave me a mocking glance. ‘And you’re going to tell me that your oath to the little bastard will force you to obey?’
‘I have no oath to Argante,’ I said, ‘and certainly none to Sansum.’ The mouse lord could order me as much as he liked, but I had no need to obey him nor any wish to rescue Mordred. Besides, I doubted that an army could be shipped to Armorica in winter, and even if my spearmen did survive the rough crossing they would be too few to fight the Franks. The only help Mordred might expect would be from old King Budic of Broceliande, who was married to Arthur’s elder sister, Anna, but while Budic might have been happy to have Mordred killing Franks in the land that used to be Benoic, he would have no wish to attract Clovis’s attention by sending spearmen to Mordred’s rescue. Mordred, I thought, was doomed. If his wound did not kill him, Clovis would.
For the rest of that winter Argante harried me with messages demanding that I take my men across the sea, but I stayed in Siluria and ignored her. Issa received the same demands, but he flatly refused to obey, while Sagramor simply threw Argante’s messages into the flames. Argante, seeing her power slip with her husband’s waning life, became more desperate and offered gold to spearmen who would sail to Armorica. Though many spearmen took the gold, they preferred to sail westwards to Kernow or hurry north into Gwent rather than sail south to where Clovis’s grim army waited. And as Argante despaired, our hopes grew. Mordred was trapped and sick, and sooner or later news must come of his death and when that news came we planned to ride into Dumnonia under Arthur’s banner with Gwydre as our candidate for the kingship. Sagramor would come from the Saxon frontier to support us and no man in Dumnonia would have the power to oppose us.