His men blocked my path. There were a dozen spearmen there, all old comrades, but all now with implacably hostile faces. Arthur might have placed my life under his protection, but here, hidden from the villa windows, no one would know how I had ended up dead in the mud.
“You broke your oath,” Griffid accused me.
“I did not,” I claimed.
Minac, an old warrior whose neck and wrists were heavy with the gold given him by Owain, levelled his spear. “Don't worry about your girl,” he said nastily, 'there's plenty of us who know how to look after young widows."
I drew Hywelbane. Behind me the women had come from their huts to see their men avenge the death of their Lord. Lunete was among them and jeering at me like the rest.
“We've taken a new oath,” Minac said, 'and unlike you, we keep our oaths." He advanced down the path with Griffid beside him. The other spearmen crowded in behind their leaders, while at my back the women pressed closer and some of them put aside their ever-present distaffs and spindles to begin throwing stones to drive me forward on to Griffid's spear. I hefted Hywelbane, its edge still dented from Arthur's fight with Owain, and I said a prayer that the Gods would give me a good death.
“Saxon,” Griffid said, using the worst insult he could find. He was advancing very cautiously for he knew my skill with a sword. “Saxon traitor,” he said, then recoiled as a heavy stone splashed into the mud on the path between us. He looked past me and I saw the fear come on to his face and the blade of his spear drop.
“Your names,” Nimue's voice hissed from behind me, 'are on the stone. Griffid ap Annan, Mapon ap Ellchyd, Minac ap Caddan…" She recited the spearmen's names and ancestry one by one, and each time she pronounced a name she spat towards the curse stone that she had lobbed into their path. The spears dropped.
I stood aside to let Nimue pass. She was dressed in a black hooded cloak that cast her face into a shadow out of which her golden eye glittered malevolently. She stopped beside me, then suddenly turned and pointed a staff dressed with a sprig of mistletoe towards the women who had been throwing stones.
“You want your children turned into rats?” Nimue called to the onlookers. “You want your milk to dry and your urine to burn like fire? Go!” The women seized their children and ran to hide themselves in the huts.
Griffid knew Nimue was Merlin's beloved and possessed of the
Druid's power and he was shaking with fear of her curse. “Please,” he said as Nimue turned back to face him.
She walked past his lowered spear-point and struck him hard on the cheek with her staff. “Down,” she said. “All of you! Down! Flat! On your faces! Flat!” She struck Minac. “Get down!” They lay on their bellies in the mud and, one by one, she stepped on their backs. Her tread was light, but her curse heavy. “Your deaths are in my hand,” she told them, 'your lives are all mine. I will use your souls as gaming-pieces. Each dawn that you wake alive you will thank me for my mercy, and each dusk you will pray that I do not see your filthy faces in my dreams. Griffid ap Annan: swear allegiance to Derfel. Kiss his sword. On your knees, dog! On your knees!"
I protested that these men owed me no allegiance, but Nimue turned on me in anger and ordered me to hold out the sword. Then, one by one, with mud and terror on their faces, my old companions shuffled on their knees to kiss the tip of Hywelbane. The oath gave me no rights of lordship over these men, but it did make it impossible for any of them to attack me without endangering their souls, for Nimue told them that if they broke this oath their souls were doomed to stay for evermore in the dark Otherworld, never to find new bodies on this green, sunlit earth again. One of the spearmen, a Christian, defied Nimue by saying the oath meant nothing, but his courage failed when she prised the golden eye from its socket and held it towards him, hissing a curse, and in abject terror he dropped to his knees and kissed my sword like the others. Nimue, once their oaths were sworn, ordered them to lie flat again. She worked the golden ball back into her eye socket and then we left them in the mud. Nimue laughed as we climbed out of their sight. “I enjoyed that!” she said, and there was a flash of the old, childish mischief in her voice. “I did enjoy that! I do so hate men, Derfel.”
“All men?”
“Men in leather, carrying spears.” She shuddered. “Not you. But the rest I hate.” She turned and spat back down the path. “How the gods must laugh at little strutting men.” She pushed back her hood to look at me. “Do you want Lunete to go to Corinium with you?”
“I swore to protect her,” I said unhappily, 'and she tells me she's pregnant."
“Does that mean you do want her company?”
“Yes,” I said, meaning no.
“I think you're a fool,” Nimue said, 'but Lunete will do as I tell her. But I tell you, Derfel, that if you don't leave her now, she'll leave you in her own good time.“ She put her hand on my arm to check me. We had come close to the villa's porch where the crowd of petitioners was waiting to see Arthur. ”Did you know,“ Nimue asked me in a low voice, 'that Arthur is thinking of releasing Gundleus?”
“No.” I was shocked by the news.
“He is. He thinks Gundleus will keep the peace now, and he thinks Gundleus is the best man to rule Siluria. Arthur won't release him without Tewdric's agreement, so it won't happen yet, but when it does, Derfel, I'll kill Gundleus.” She spoke with the terrible simplicity of truth and I thought how ferocity gave her a beauty that nature had denied her. She was staring across the wet, cold land towards the distant mound of Caer Cadarn. “Arthur,” she said, 'dreams of peace, but there never will be peace. Never!
Britain is a cauldron, Derfel, and Arthur will stir it to horror."
“You're wrong,” I said loyally.
Nimue mocked that assertion with a grimace and then, without another word, she turned and walked back down the path towards the warriors' huts.
I pushed through the petitioners into the villa. Arthur glanced up as I came in, waved a casual welcome, then returned his attention to a man who was complaining that his neighbour had moved their boundary stones. Bed win and Gereint sat at the table with Arthur, while to one side Agricola and Prince Tristan stood like guards. A number of the kingdom's counsellors and magistrates sat on the floor, which was curiously warm thanks to the Roman way of making a space beneath that could be filled with warm smoky air from a furnace. A crack in the tiles was allowing wisps of the smoke to drift across the big chamber.
The petitioners were seen one by one and justice was pronounced. Almost all of the cases could have been dealt with in Lindinis's magistrates' court that stood just a hundred paces from the villa, but many folk, especially the pagan country dwellers, reckoned that a decision given in Royal Council was more binding than a judgment made in a court established by the Romans, and so they stored their grudges and feuds until the council was conveniently close by.
Arthur, representing the baby Mordred, dealt with them patiently, but he was relieved when the real business of the day could commence. That business was to dispose of the tangled ends left by the previous day's fight. Owain's warriors were given to Prince Gereint with Arthur's recommendation that they be split between various troops. One of Gereint's captains, a man called Llywarch, was appointed in Owain's place as the new commander of the King's guard, then a magistrate was given the task of tallying Owain's wealth and sending to Kernow the portion that was owed in sarhaed. I noted how brusquely Arthur conducted the business, though never without giving each man present a chance to speak his mind. Such consultation could lead to interminable argument, but Arthur had the happy talent of understanding complicated matters swiftly and proposing compromises that pleased everyone. I noticed, too, how Gereint and Bedwin were content to let Arthur take the first place. Bedwin had placed all his hopes for Dumnonia's future on Arthur's sword and Bedwin was thus Arthur's strongest supporter, while Gereint, who was Uther's nephew, could have been a opponent, but the Prince had none of his uncle's ambition and was happy that Arthur was willing to take the responsibility of government. Dumnonia had a new King's champion, Arthur ab Uther, and the relief in the room was palpable. Prince Cadwy of Isca was ordered to contribute to the sarhaed owed to Kernow. He protested against the decision, but quailed before Arthur's anger and meekly agreed to pay one quarter of Kernow's price. Arthur, I suspect, would have preferred to inflict a sterner punishment, but I was oath-bound not to reveal Cadwy's part in the attack on the moor and there was no other evidence of his complicity, so Cadwy escaped a heavier judgement. Prince Tristan acknowledged Arthur's decisions with a nod of his head.