“I'm open to the Gods,” I said resentfully. “I believe them. I want their help.” She touched my face with her bandaged hand. “You're going to be a warrior, Derfel, and a very great one. You're a good person, you're honest, you're as foursquare as Merlin's Tower and there isn't any madness in you. Not a trace; not even a wild, desperate speck. Do you think I want to follow Merlin?”
“Yes,” I said, hurt. “I know you do!” I meant, of course, that I was hurt because she would not devote herself to me.
She took in a deep breath and stared into the shadowed roof where two pigeons had flown through a smoke hole and were now shuffling along a rafter. “Sometimes,” she said, “I think I would like to marry, have children, watch them grow, grow old myself, die, but of all those things, Derfel' she looked at me again ”I will only have the last. I can't bear to think of what will happen to me. I can't bear to think of enduring the Three Wounds of Wisdom, but I must. I must!"
“The Three Wounds?” I asked, never having heard of them before.
“The Wound to the Body,” Nimue explained, 'the Wound to the Pride," and here she touched herself between her legs, 'and the Wound to the Mind, which is madness.“ She paused as a look of horror crossed her face. ”Merlin has suffered all three, and that is why he's such a wise man. Morgan had the worst Wound to the Body that anyone can imagine, but she never suffered the other two wounds which is why she will never truly belong to the Gods. I've suffered none of the three, but I will. I must!“ She spoke fiercely. ”I must because I was chosen."
“Why wasn't I chosen?” I asked.
She shook her head. “You don't understand, Derfel. No one chose me, except me. You have to make the choice for yourself. It could happen to any of us here. That's why Merlin collects foundlings, because he believes orphaned children might have special powers, but only a very few do.”
“And you do,” I said.
“I see the Gods everywhere,” Nimue said simply. “They see me.”
“I've never seen a God,” I said stubbornly.
She smiled at my resentment. “You will,” she said, 'because you must think of Britain, Derfel, as though she were laced with the ribbons of a thinning mist. Just tenuous strands here and there, drifting and fading, but those strands are the Gods, and if we can find them and please them and make this land theirs again then the strands will thicken and join to make a great, wonderful mist that will cover all the land and protect us from what lies outside. That's why we live here, on the Tor. Merlin know that the Gods love this place, and here the sacred mist is thick, but our task is to spread it."
“Is that what Merlin is doing?”
She smiled. “Right at this moment, Derfel, Merlin is sleeping. And I must too. Haven't you work to do?”
“Rents to count,” I said awkwardly. The lower storehouses were filling with smoked fish, smoked eels, jars of salt, willow baskets, woven cloth, pigs of lead, tubs of charcoal, even some rare scraps of amber and jet: the winter rents payable at Beltain which Hywel had to assay, record on tallies, then divide into Merlin's share and the portion which would be given to the High King's tax-collectors.
“Then go and count,” Nimue said, as if nothing odd had happened between us, though she did reach over and give me a sisterly kiss. “Go,” she said and I stumbled out of Merlin's chamber to face the resentful, curious stares of Norwenna's attendants who had moved back into the great hall. The equinox came. The Christians celebrated the death feast of their God while we lit the vast fires of Beltain. Our flames roared at the darkness to bring new life to the reviving world. The first Saxon raiders were seen far in the east, but none came close to Ynys Wydryn. Nor did we see Gundleus of Siluria again. Gudovan the clerk supposed that the marriage proposal had come to nothing and he gloomily forecast a new war against the northern kingdoms.
Merlin did not return, nor did we hear any news of him.
The Edling Mordred's baby teeth came. The first to show were in his lower gums, a good omen for a long life, and Mordred used the new teeth to bite Ralla's nipples bloody, though she went on feeding him so that her own plump son would suck a prince's blood along with his mother's milk. Nimue's spirits lightened as the days grew longer. The scars on our hands went from pink to white and then to shadowy lines. Nimue never spoke of them.
The High King spent a week at Caer Cadarn and the Edling was carried there for his grandfather's inspection. Uther must have approved of what he saw, and the spring omens were all propitious, for three weeks after Beltain we heard that the future of the kingdom and the future of Norwenna and the future of Mordred would all be decided at a great High Council, the first to be held in Britain for over sixty years.
It was spring, the leaves were green, and there were such high hopes in the freshening land. The High Council was held at Glevum, a Roman town that lay beside the River Severn just beyond Dumnonia's northern border with Gwent. Uther was carried there in a cart drawn by four oxen, each beast decorated with sprigs of may and saddled with green cloths. The High King enjoyed his ponderous progress through his kingdom's early summer, maybe because he knew this would be his last sight of Britain's loveliness before he went through Cruachan's Cave and over the sword bridge to the Other-world. The hedgerows between which his oxen plodded were white with hawthorn, the woods were hazed by bluebells while poppies blazed among the wheat, rye and barley and in the almost ripe fields of hay where the corncrakes were noisy. The High King travelled slowly, stopping often at settlements and villas where he inspected farmlands and halls, and advised men who knew better than he how to layer a fulling pond or geld a hog. He bathed in the hot springs at Aquae Sulis and was so recovered when he left the city that he walked a full mile before being helped once more into his fur-lined cart. He was accompanied by his bards, his counsellors, his physician, his chorus, a train of servants and an escort of warriors commanded by Owain, his champion and commander of his guard. Everyone wore flowers and the warriors slung their shields upside down to show they marched in peace, though Uther was too old and too cautious not to make certain that their spear-points were whetted bright each new day.
I walked to Glevum. I had no business there, but Uther had summoned Morgan to the High Council. Women were not normally welcome at any councils, high or low, but Uther believed no one spoke for Merlin as Morgan did and so, in his despair at Merlin's absence, he called for her. She was, besides, Uther's natural daughter, and the High King liked to say that there was more sense in Morgan's gold-wrapped head than in half his counsellors' skulls put together. Morgan was also responsible for Norwenna's health and it was Norwenna's future that was being decided, though Norwenna herself was neither summoned nor consulted. She stayed at Ynys Wydryn under the care of Merlin's wife, Guendoloen. Morgan would have taken no one but her slave Sebile to Glevum, but at the last moment Nimue calmly announced that she was also travelling there and that I was to accompany her. Morgan made a fuss, of course, but Nimue met the older woman's indignation with an irritating calm. “I have been instructed,” she told Morgan, and when Morgan shrilly demanded by whom, Nimue just smiled. Morgan was double Nimue's size and twice her age, but when Merlin had taken Nimue to his bed the power in Ynys Wydryn passed to her and in the face of that authority the older woman was helpless. She still objected to my going. She demanded to know why did Nimue not take Lunete, the other Irish girl among Merlin's foundlings? A boy like me, Morgan said, was no company for a young woman, and when Nimue still did nothing but smile, Morgan spat that she would tell Merlin of Nimue's fondness for me and in that telling would lie the end of Nimue, at which clumsy threat Nimue simply laughed and turned away.