Arthur repeated Sansum’s message to me. ‘Is the mouse lord plotting again?’ he asked me.
‘He’s supporting both you and Meurig, Lord,’ I said sourly, ‘so that both of you will be grateful to him.’
‘But is it true?’ Arthur wondered. He hoped it was, for if Mordred attacked Arthur, then no law could condemn Arthur for fighting back, and if Mordred marched his army north into Gwent then we could sail south across the Severn Sea and link forces with Sagramor’s men somewhere in southern Dumnonia. Both Galahad and Bishop Emrys doubted that Sansum spoke truly, but I disagreed. Mordred hated Arthur above all men, and I thought that he would be unable to resist the attempt to defeat Arthur in battle.
So, for a few days we made plans. Our men trained with spear and sword, and Arthur sent messengers to Sagramor outlining the campaign he hoped to fight, but either Meurig denied Mordred the permission he needed, or else Mordred decided against an attack on Siluria, for nothing happened. Mordred’s army stayed between us and Sagramor, we heard no more rumours from Sansum and all we could do was wait.
Wait and watch Ceinwyn’s agony. Watch her face sink into gauntness. Listen to her raving, feel the terror in her grip and smell the death that would not come.
Morgan tried new herbs. She laid a cross on Ceinwyn’s naked body, but the touch of the cross made Ceinwyn scream. One night, when Morgan was sleeping, Taliesin made a counter-charm to avert the curse he still believed was the cause of Ceinwyn’s sickness, but though we killed a hare and painted its blood on Ceinwyn’s face, and though we touched her boil-ravaged skin with the burnt tip of an ash wand, and though we surrounded her bed with eagle-stones and elf-bolts and hagstones, and though we hung a bramble sprig and a bunch of mistletoe cut from a lime tree over her bed, and though we laid Excalibur, one of the Treasures of Britain, by her side, the sickness did not lift. We prayed to Grannos, the God of healing, but our prayers were unanswered and our sacrifices ignored. ‘It is a magic too strong,’ Taliesin said sadly. The next night, while Morgan slept again, we brought a Druid from northern Siluria into the sick chamber. He was a country Druid, all beard and stink, and he chanted a spell, then crushed the bones of a skylark into a powder that he stirred into an infusion of mugwort in a holly cup. He trickled the mixture into Ceinwyn’s mouth, but the medicine achieved nothing. The Druid tried feeding her scraps of a black cat’s roasted heart, but she spat them out and so he used his strongest charm, the touch of a corpse’s hand. The hand, which reminded me of the crest of Cerdic’s helmet, was blackened. The Druid touched it on Ceinwyn’s forehead, on her nose and her throat, then pressed it against her scalp as he muttered an incantation, but all he achieved was to transfer a score of his lice from his beard onto her scalp and when we tried to comb them from her head we pulled out the last of her hair. I paid the Druid, then followed him into the courtyard to escape the smoke of the fires on which Taliesin was burning herbs. Morwenna came with me. ‘You must rest, father,’ she said.
‘There’ll be time for rest later,’ I said, watching the Druid shuffle off into the dark. Morwenna put her arms around me and rested her head on my shoulder. She had hair as golden as Ceinwyn’s had been, and it smelt like Ceinwyn’s. ‘Maybe it isn’t a magic at all,’ she said. ‘If it weren’t magic,’ I said, ‘then she would have died.’ ‘There’s a woman in Powys who is said to have great skills.’
‘Then send for her,’ I said wearily, though I had no faith in any sorcerers now. A score had come and taken gold, but not one had lifted the sickness. I had sacrificed to Mithras, I had prayed to Bel and to Don, and nothing had worked. Ceinwyn moaned, and the moan rose to a scream. I flinched at the sound, then gently pushed Morwenna away. ‘I must go to her.’
‘You rest, father,’ Morwenna said. ‘I’ll go to her.’
It was then that I saw the cloaked figure standing in the centre of the courtyard. Whether it was a man or a woman I could not tell, nor could I say how long the figure had stood there. It seemed to me that only a moment before the courtyard had been empty, but now the cloaked stranger was in front of me with a face dark shadowed from the moon by a deep hood, and I felt a sudden dread that this was death appearing. I stepped towards the figure. ‘Who are you?’ I demanded.
‘No one you know, Lord Derfel Cadarn.’ It was a woman who spoke, and as she spoke she pushed back the hood and I saw that she had painted her face white, then smeared soot about her eye sockets so that she looked like a living skull. Morwenna gasped.
‘Who are you?’ I demanded again.
‘I am the breath of the west wind, Lord Derfel,’ she said in a sibilant voice, ‘and the rain that falls on Cadair Idris, and the frost that edges Eryri’s peaks. I am the messenger from the time before kings, I am the Dancer.’ She laughed then, and her laughter was like a madness in the night. The sound of it brought Taliesin and Galahad to the door of the sickroom where they stood and stared at the white-faced laughing woman. Galahad made the sign of the cross while Taliesin touched the iron latch of the door.
‘Come here, Lord Derfel,’ the woman commanded me, ‘come to me, Lord Derfel.’
‘Go, Lord,’ Taliesin encouraged me, and I had a sudden hope that the lice-ridden Druid’s spells might have worked after all, for though they had not lifted the sickness from Ceinwyn, they had brought this apparition to the courtyard and so I stepped into the moonlight and went close to the cloaked woman.
‘Embrace me, Lord Derfel,’ the woman said, and there was something in her voice that spoke of decay and dirt, but I shuddered and took another step and placed my arms around her thin shoulders. She smelt of honey and ashes. ‘You want Ceinwyn to live?’ she whispered in my ear.
‘Yes.’
‘Then come with me now,’ she whispered back, and pulled out of my embrace. ‘Now,’ she repeated when she saw my hesitation.