“But treacherous.” Sagramor spoke from the shadows beside the bleaching vats. He had come from the hall to watch over Arthur.
“Unfair,” said Arthur.
“He's treacherous,” Sagramor insisted in his harsh accent, 'because he's Lancelot's man.“ Arthur shrugged. ”Lancelot can be difficult,“ he admitted. ”He's Ban's heir and he likes to have things his own way, but then, so do I.“ He smiled and glanced at me. ”You can write, can't you?"
“Yes, Lord,” I said. We had walked on past Sagramor who stayed in the shadows, his eyes never leaving Arthur. Cats slunk past us, and bats wheeled next to the smoking gable of the big hall. I tried to imagine this stinking place filled with robed Romans and lit by oil-lamps, but it seemed an impossible idea.
“You must write and tell me what's happening,” Arthur said, 'so I don't have to rely on Ban's imagination. How's your woman?"
“My woman?” I was startled by the question and for a second I thought Arthur was referring to Canna, a Saxon slave girl who kept me company and who was teaching me her dialect that differed slightly from my mother's native Saxon, but then I realized Arthur had to mean Lunete. “I don't hear from her, Lord.”
“And you don't ask, eh?” He shot me an amused grin, then sighed. Lunete was with Guinevere who, in turn, had gone to distant Durnovaria to occupy Uther's old winter palace. Guinevere had not wanted to leave her pretty new palace near Caer Cadarn, but Arthur had insisted she go deeper into the country to be safer from enemy raiding parties. “Sansum tells me Guinevere and her ladies all worship Isis,” Arthur said.
“Who?” I asked.
“Exactly.” He smiled. “Isis is a foreign Goddess, Derfel, with her own mysteries; something to do with the moon, I think. At least that's what Sansum tells me. I don't think he knows either, but he still says I must stop the cult. He says the mysteries of Isis are unspeakable, but when I ask him what they are, he doesn't know. Or he won't say. You've heard nothing?”
“Nothing, Lord.”
“Of course,” Arthur said rather too forcefully, 'if Guinevere finds solace in Isis then it cannot be bad. I worry about her. I promised her so much, you see, and am giving her nothing. I want to put her father back on his throne, and we will, we will, but it will all take longer than we think."
“You want to fight Diwrnach?” I asked, appalled at the idea.
“He's just a man, Derfel, and can be killed. One day we'll do it.” He turned back towards the hall.
“You're going south. I can't spare you more than sixty men God knows it isn't enough if Ban really is in trouble but take them over the sea, Derfel, and put yourself under Culhwch's command. Maybe you can travel through Durnovaria? Send me news of my dear Guinevere?”
“Yes, Lord,” I said.
“I shall give you a gift for her. Maybe that jewelled collar the Saxon leader was wearing? You think she'd like that?” He asked the question anxiously.
“Any woman would,” I said. The collar was Saxon work, crude and heavy, but still beautiful. It was a necklace of golden plates that were splayed like the sun's rays and studded with gems.
“Good! Take it to Durnovaria for me, Derfel, then go and save Benoic.”
“If I can,” I said grimly.
“If you can,” Arthur echoed, 'for my conscience's sake.“ He added the last words quietly, then kicked a scrap of clay tile that skittered away from his booted foot and startled a cat that arched its back and hissed at us. ”Three years ago,“ he said softly, 'it all seemed so easy.” But then came Guinevere.
Next day, with sixty men, I went south.
“Did he send you to spy on me?” Guinevere demanded with a smile.
“No, Lady.”
“Dear Derfel,” she mocked me, 'so like my husband."
That surprised me. “Am I?”
“Yes, Derfel, you are. Only he's much cleverer. Do you like this place?” She gestured about the courtyard.
“It's beautiful,” I said. The villa in Durnovaria was, of course, Roman, though in its day it had served as Uther's winter palace. God knows it would not have been beautiful when he occupied it, but Guinevere had restored the building to something of its former elegance. The courtyard was colonnaded like the one in Duroco-brivis, but here all the roof tiles were in place and all the columns were lime-washed. Guinevere's symbol was painted on the walls inside the arcade in a repeating pattern of stags crowned with crescent moons. The stag was her father's symbol, the moon her addition, and the painted round els made a pretty show. White roses grew in beds where small tiled channels ran with water. Two hunting falcons stood on perches, their hooded heads twitching as we walked around the Roman arcade. Statues stood about the courtyard, all of naked men and women, while on plinths beneath the colonnade were bronze heads festooned with flowers. The heavy Saxon necklace I had brought from Arthur now hung about the neck of one of those bronze heads. Guinevere had toyed with the gift for a few seconds, then frowned. “It's clumsy work, is it not?” she had asked me.
“Prince Arthur thinks it beautiful, Lady, and worthy of you.”
“Dear Arthur.” She had said it carelessly, then selected the ugly bronze head of a scowling man and placed the necklace around its neck. “That'll improve him,” she said of the bronze head. “I call him Gorfyddyd. He looks like Gorfyddyd, don't you think so?”
“He does, Lady,” I said. The bust did have something of Gorfyd-dyd's dour, unhappy face.
“Gorfyddyd is a beast,” Guinevere said. “He tried to take my virginity.”
“He did?” I managed to say when I had recovered from the shock of the revelation.
“Tried and failed,” she said firmly. “He was drunk. He slobbered all over me. I was reeking with slobber, all down here.” She brushed her breasts. She was wearing a simple white linen shift that fell in straight folds from her shoulders to her feet. The linen must have been breathtakingly expensive for the fabric was so tantalizingly thin that if I stared at her, which I tried not to do, it was possible to see hints of her nakedness beneath the fine cloth. A golden image of the moon-crowned stag hung around her neck, her earrings were amber drops set in gold while on her left hand was a gold ring crowned with Arthur's bear and cut with a lover's cross. “Slobber, slobber,” she said delightedly, 'so when he'd finished, or to be exact when he'd finished trying to begin and was sobbing about how he meant to make me his Queen and how he would make me the richest queen in Britain, I went to lorweth and had him make me a spell against an unwanted lover. I didn't tell the Druid it was the King, of course, though it probably wouldn't have mattered if I had because lorweth would do anything if you smiled at him, so he made the charm and I buried it, then I made my father tell Gorfyddyd that I'd buried a death-charm against the daughter of a man who'd tried to rape me. Gorfyddyd knew who I meant and he dotes on that insipid little Ceinwyn, so he avoided me after that.“ She laughed. ”Men are such fools!"
“Not Prince Arthur,” I said firmly, being careful to use the title on which Guinevere insisted.