Tewdric instead and Ligessac, who was once again the commander of Mordred's guard, insisted that the baby would be safer behind Ynys Wydryn's easily defended land bridge than in Caer Cadarn or Durnovaria, and so Norwenna reluctantly remained at the Tor.
We held our breath to see whose side Gundleus of Siluria would choose and the answer came swiftly. He would fight for Tewdric against his old ally Gorfyddyd. Gundleus sent a message to Norwenna saying that his levies would cross the mountain passes to attack Gorfyddyd's men from the rear and that as soon as the war-bands of Powys had been defeated he would come south to protect his bride and her royal son.
We waited for news, watching the distant hills day and night for the beacons that would tell us of disaster or the approach of enemies, and yet, despite the war's uncertainties, those were happy days. The sun healed the storm-beaten land and dried the grain while Norwenna, even though she was mired in the pagan Tor, seemed more confident now that her son was King. Mordred was always a grim child, with red hair and a stubborn heart, but in those gentle days he seemed happy enough as he played with his mother or with Ralla, his wet nurse, and her dark-haired son. Ralla's husband, Gwlyddyn the carpenter, carved Mordred a set of animals: ducks, hogs, cows and deer, and the King loved to play with them even though he was still too young to know just what they were. Norwenna was happy when her son was happy. I used to watch her tickling Mordred to make him laugh, cradling him when he was hurt and loving him always. She called him her little King, her ever-loving-lover-boy, her miracle, and Mordred chuckled back and warmed her unhappy heart. He crawled naked in the sun and we could all see how his left foot was clubbed and grown inwards like a clenched fist, but otherwise he grew strong on Ralla's milk and his mother's love. He was baptized in the stone church beside the Holy Thorn. News of the war came and it was all good. Prince Gereint had broken a Saxon war-band on Dumnonia's eastern border, while further north Tewdric had destroyed another force of Saxon raiders. Agricola, leading the rest of Gwent's army in alliance with Owain of Dumnonia, had driven Gorfyddyd's invaders back into Powys's hills. Then a messenger came from Gundleus which said that Gorfyddyd of Powys was seeking peace, and the messenger threw two captured Powysian swords at Norwenna's feet as a token of her husband's victory. Better still, the man reported, Gundleus of Siluria was even now on his way south to collect his bride and her precious son. It was time, Gundleus said, that Mordred was proclaimed King on Caer Cadarn. Nothing could have been sweeter to Norwenna's ears and, in her gladness, she gave the messenger a heavy gold bracelet before sending him south to pass on her husband's message to Bedwin and the council. “Tell Bedwin,” she ordered the messenger, 'that we shall acclaim Mordred before the harvest. God speed your horse!"
The messenger rode south and Norwenna began preparing for the acclamation ceremony at Caer Cadarn. She ordered the monks of the Holy Thorn to be ready to travel with her, though she peremptorily forbade either Morgan or Nimue to attend because from this day on, she declared, Dumnonia would be a Christian kingdom and its heathen witches would be kept far from her son's throne. Gundleus's victory had emboldened Norwenna, encouraging her to exercise an authority that Uther would never have allowed her to wield.
We waited for Morgan or Nimue to protest their exclusion from the ceremony of acclamation, but both women took the prohibition with a surprising calm. Morgan, indeed, simply shrugged her black shoulders, though at dusk that night she carried a bronze cauldron into Merlin's chambers and there secluded herself with Nimue. Norwenna, who had invited the head monk of the Holy Thorn and his wife to dine on the Tor, commented that the witches were brewing evil and everyone in the hall laughed. The Christians were victorious.
I was not so sure of their victory. Nimue and Morgan disliked each other, yet now they were closeted together and I suspected that only a matter of the direst importance could bring about such a reconciliation. But Norwenna had no doubts. Uther's death and her husband's victories were bringing her a blessed freedom and soon she would leave the Tor and assume her rightful place as the King's mother in a Christian court where her son would grow in Christ's image. She was never so happy as on that night when she ruled supreme; a Christian in the heart of Merlin's pagan hall. But then Morgan and Nimue reappeared.
There was silence in the hall as the two women walked to Norwenna's chair where, with due humility, they knelt. The head monk, a small fierce man with a bristling beard who had been a tanner before converting to Christ and who still stank of the dung needed by his former trade, demanded to know their business. His wife defended herself from evil by making the sign of the cross, though she spat as well just to be sure.
Morgan answered the monk from behind her golden mask. She spoke with unaccustomed deference as she claimed that Gundleus's messenger had lied. She and Nimue, Morgan said, had peered into the cauldron and seen the truth reflected in its watery mirror. There was no victory in the north, nor was there defeat there either, but Morgan warned that the enemy was closer to Ynys Wydryn than any of us knew and that we should all be ready to leave the Tor at first light and seek safety deeper inside southern Dumnonia. Morgan spoke the words soberly and heavily, and when she had finished she bowed to the Queen, then bent awkwardly forward to kiss the hem of Norwenna's blue robe. Norwenna snatched the robe away. She had listened in silence to the dour prophecy, but now she began to cry and with the sudden tears came a wash of anger. “You're just a crippled witch!” she screamed at Morgan, 'and want your bastard brother to be King. It won't happen! You hear me! It will not happen. My baby is King!"
"High Lady Nimue tried to intervene, but was immediately interrupted.
“You're nothing!” Norwenna turned on Nimue savagely. “You're nothing but an hysterical, wicked child of the devil. You've put a curse on my child! I know you have! He was born crooked because you were present at his birth. Oh God! My child!” She was screaming and weeping, beating her fist on the table as she spat her hatred at Nimue and Morgan. “Now go! Both of you! Go!” There was silence in the hall as Nimue and Morgan went into the night.
And next morning it seemed Norwenna must be right for no beacons blazed on the northern hills. It was, indeed, the most beautiful day of that beautiful summer. The land was heavy as it neared harvest, the hills were hazed by the somnolent heat and the sky almost cloudless. Cornflowers and poppies grew in the thorn thickets at the Tor's foot and white butterflies sailed the warm air currents that ghosted up our patterned green slopes. Norwenna, oblivious to the day's beauty, chanted her morning prayers with the visiting monks, then decreed she would move from the Tor and wait for her husband's arrival in the pilgrims' chambers in the shrine of the Holy Thorn. “I have lived among the wicked too long,” she announced very grandly, as a guard shouted a warning from the eastern wall.