Bedwin shrugged. “What man? I know of no such man.”
“Owain,” Tristan said. “Who almost certainly took gold from Cadwy.” Bedwin shook his head. “No. No. No. It cannot be. No. On my oath, Lord Prince, I have no knowledge of any man's guilt.” He gave Tristan a pleading look. “My Lord Prince, it would hurt me deeply to see our countries at war. I have offered what I can offer, and I shall have prayers said for your dead, but I cannot countermand a man's oath of innocence.”
“I can,” Arthur said. He had been waiting behind the kitchen screen at the hall's far end. I was with him as he stepped into the hall where his white cloak looked bright in the damp gloom. Bedwin blinked at him. “Lord Arthur?”
Arthur stepped between the stirring, groaning bodies. “If the man who killed Kernow's miners is not punished, Bedwin, then he may murder again. Do you not agree?” Bedwin shrugged, spread his hands, then shrugged again. Tristan was frowning, not sure where Arthur's words were leading.
Arthur stopped by one of the hall's central pillars. “And why should the kingdom pay sarhaed when the kingdom did not do the killing?” he demanded. “Why should my Lord Mordred's treasury be depleted for another man's offence?”
Bedwin gestured Arthur to silence. “We do not know the murderer!” he insisted.
“Then we must prove his identity,” Arthur said simply.
“We can't!” Bedwin protested irritably. “The child is not a Tongued-one! And Lord Owain, if he is the man you speak of, has sworn on oath that he is innocent. He is a Tongued-one, so why go through the farce of a trial? His word is enough.”
“In a court of words, yes,” Arthur said, 'but there is also the court of swords, and by my sword, Bedwin,“ here he paused and drew Excalibur's glittering length into the half-light, ”I maintain that Owain, Champion of Dumnonia, has caused our cousins of Kernow harm and that he, and no other, must pay the price." He thrust Excalibur's tip through the filthy rushes into the earth and left it there, quivering. For a second I wondered if the Gods of the Otherworld would suddenly appear to aid Arthur, but there was only the sound of wind and rain and newly woken men gasping.
Bedwin gasped too. For a few seconds he was speechless. “You…” he finally managed to say, but then could say no more.
Tristan, his handsome face pale in the wan light, shook his head. “If anyone should contend in the court of swords,” he said to Arthur, 'let it be me."
Arthur smiled. “I asked first, Tristan,” he said lightly.
“No!” Bedwin found his tongue. “It cannot be!”
Arthur gestured at the sword. “You wish to pluck it, Bedwin?”
“No!” Bedwin was in distress, foreseeing the death of the kingdom's best hope, but before he could say another word Owain himself burst through the hall door. His long hair and thick beard were wet and his bare chest gleamed with rain.
He looked from Bedwin to Tristan to Arthur, then down to the sword in the earth. He seemed puzzled.
“Are you mad?” he asked Arthur.
“My sword,” Arthur said mildly, 'maintains your guilt in the matter between Kernow and Dumnonia."
“He is mad,” Owain said to his warriors who were crowding in behind him. The champion was red-eyed and tired. He had drunk for much of the night, then slept badly, but the challenge seemed to give him a new energy. He spat towards Arthur. “I'm going back to that Silurian bitch's bed,” he said, 'and when I wake up I want this to prove a dream."
“You are a coward, a murderer and a liar,” Arthur said calmly as Owain turned away and the words made the men in the hall gasp once more.
Owain turned back into the hall. “Whelp,” he said to Arthur. He strode up to Excalibur and knocked the blade over, the formal acceptance of the challenge. “So your death, whelp, will be part of my dream. Outside.” He jerked his head towards the rain. The fight could not be held indoors, not unless the feasting hall was to be cursed with abominable luck, so the men had to fight in the winter rain. The whole fort was stirring now. Many of the folk who lived at Lindinis had slept in Caer Cadarn that night and the compound seethed as people were woken to witness the fight. Lunete was there, and Nimue and Morgan; indeed all Caer Cadarn hurried to watch the battle that took place, as tradition demanded, within the royal stone circle. Agricola, a red cloak over his gorgeous Roman armour, stood between Bedwin and Prince Gereint while King Melwas, a hunk of bread in his hand, watched wide-eyed among his guards. Tristan stood on the circle's far side where I, too, took my place. Owain saw me there and assumed I had betrayed him. He roared that my life would follow Arthur's to the Otherworld, but Arthur proclaimed my life was under his surety.
“He broke his oath!” Owain shouted, pointing at me.
“On my oath,” Arthur said, 'he broke none." He took off his white cloak and folded it carefully on to one of the stones. He was dressed in trews, boots and a thin leather jerkin over a woollen vest. Owain was bare chested. His trews were crisscrossed with leather and he had massive nailed boots. Arthur sat on the stone and pulled his own boots off, preferring to fight barefoot.
“This is not necessary,” Tristan said to him.
“It is, sadly,” Arthur said, then stood and pulled Excalibur from its scabbard.
“Using your magic sword, Arthur?” Owain jeered. “Afraid to fight with a mortal weapon, are you?” Arthur sheathed Excalibur again and laid the sword on top of his cloak. “Derfel,” he turned to me, 'is that Hywel's sword?"
“Yes, Lord.”
“Would you lend it me?” he asked. “I promise to return it.”
“Make sure you live to keep that promise, Lord,” I said, taking Hywelbane from her scabbard and handing it to him hilt first. He gripped the sword, then asked me to run to the hall and fetch a handful of gritty ash that, when I returned, he rubbed into the oiled leather of the hilt. He turned to Owain. “If, Lord Owain,” he said courteously, 'you would rather fight when you are rested, then I can wait."
“Whelp!” Owain spat. “Sure you don't want to put on your fish armour?”
“It rusts in the rain,” Arthur answered very calmly.
“A fair-weather soldier,” Owain sneered, then gave his long sword two practice cuts that whistled in the air. In the shield-line he preferred to fight with a short sword, but with any length of blade Owain was a man to fear. “I'm ready, whelp,” he called.
I stood with Tristan and his guards as Bedwin made one last futile effort to stop the fight. No one doubted the outcome. Arthur was a tall man, but slender compared with Owain's muscled bulk, and no one had ever seen Owain bested in a fight. Yet Arthur seemed remarkably composed as he took his place at the circle's western edge and faced Owain who stood, uphill of him, at the east.
“Do you submit judgment to the court of swords?” Bedwin asked the two men, and both nodded their assent.
“Then God bless you, and God give the truth victory,” Bedwin said. He made the sign of the cross and then, his old face heavy, he walked out of the circle.
Owain, as we had expected, rushed at Arthur, but halfway across the circle, right by the King's royal stone, his foot slipped in the mud, and suddenly Arthur was charging. I had expected Arthur to fight calmly, using the skills Hywel had taught him, but that morning, as the rains poured from the winter skies, I saw how Arthur changed in battle. He became a fiend. His energy was poured into just one thing, death, and he laid at Owain with massive, fast strokes that drove the big man back and back. The swords rang harsh. Arthur was spitting at Owain, cursing him, taunting him, and cutting again and again with the edge of the sword and never giving Owain a chance to recover from a parry. Owain fought well. No other man could have sustained that opening, slaughterous assault. His boots slipped in the mud, and more than once he had to beat off Arthur's attacks from his knees, but he always managed to recover his footing even if he was still driven backwards. When Owain slipped a fourth time I understood part of Arthur's confidence. He had wanted rain to make the footing treacherous and I think he knew that Owain would be bloated and tired from a night's feasting. Yet he could not break through that dogged guard, even though he did drive the champion clean back to the place where Wlenca's blood was still just visible as a darker patch of soaking mud.