“I'm saying the fight is lost, but yes, you're oath-bound by Arthur to fight, and every moment that Ynys Trebes lives is a moment of light in a dark world. I'm trying to persuade Father to send his library to Britain, but I think he'd rather cut his own heart out first. But when the time comes, I'm sure, he'll send it away. Now' he pushed his gilded chair away from the table 'you and I must leave. Before,” he added softly, 'the fili recite. Unless, of course, you have a taste for unending verses about the glories of moonlight on reed beds?"
I stood and rapped the table with one of the special eating knives that King Ban provided his guests. Those guests now eyed me warily. “I have an apology to make,” I said, 'not just to you all, but to my Lord Lancelot. Such a great warrior as he deserved a better companion for supper. Now, forgive me, I need to sleep."
Lancelot did not respond. King Ban smiled, Queen Elaine looked disgusted and Galahad hurried me first to where my own clothes and weapons waited, then down to the flame lit quay where a boat waited to take us ashore. Galahad, still dressed in his toga, was carrying a sack that he slung on to the small boat's deck. It fell with a clang of metal. “What is it?” I asked.
“My weapons and armour,” he said. He untied the boat's painter, then leaped aboard. “I'm coming with you.”
The boat glided from the quay under a dark sail. The water rippled at the bow and splashed gently down the hull's length as we drew off into the bay. Galahad was stripping himself of the toga, which he tossed to the boatman, before dressing in war gear, while I stared back at the palace on the hill. It hung in the sky like a sky ship sailing into clouds, or maybe like a star come down to earth; a place of dreams; a refuge where a just King and a beautiful Queen ruled and where poets sang and old men could study the wingspan of angels. It was so beautiful, Ynys Trebes, so utterly beautiful. And, unless we could save it, doomed utterly.
Two years we fought. Two years against all odds. Two years of splendour and vileness. Two years of slaughter and feast, of broken swords and shattered shields, of victory and disaster, and in all those months and in all those sweated fights when brave men choked on their own life blood and ordinary men did deeds they never dreamed possible, I never saw Lancelot once. Yet the poets said he was the hero of Benoic, the most perfect warrior, the fighter of fighters. The poets said that preserving Benoic was Lancelot's fight, not mine, not Galahad's, not Culhwch's, but Lancelot's. But Lancelot spent the war in bed, begging his mother to bring him wine and honey.
No, not always in bed. Lancelot was sometimes at a fight, but always a mile behind so that he could be first back to Ynys Trebes with his news of victory. He knew how to tear a cloak, batter a sword edge, rumple his oiled hair and even cut his face so that he staggered home looking the hero, and then his mother would have the fili compose a new song and the song would be carried to Britain by traders and seamen so that even in distant Rheged, north of Elmet, they believed that Lancelot was the new Arthur. The Saxons feared his coming, while Arthur sent him the gift of an embroidered sword belt with a richly enamelled buckle.
“You think life should be fair?” Culhwch asked me when I complained about the gift.
“No, Lord,” I said.
“Then don't waste breath on Lancelot,” Culhwch said. He was the cavalry leader left behind in Armorica when Arthur went to Britain, and also a cousin of Arthur's, though he bore no resemblance to my Lord. Culhwch was a squat, fiercely bearded, long-armed brawler who asked nothing of life but a plentiful supply of enemies, drink and women. Arthur had left him in command of thirty men and horses, but the horses were all dead and half the men were gone so that now Culhwch fought on foot. I joined my men to his and so accepted his command. He could not wait for the war in Benoic to end so that he could fight again at Arthur's side. He adored Arthur.
We fought a strange war. When Arthur had been in Armorica the Franks were still some miles to the east where the land was flat and cleared of trees and thus ideal for his heavy horsemen, but now the enemy was deep inside the woods that cloaked the hills of central Benoic. King Ban, like Tewdric of Gwent, had put his faith in fortifications, but where Gwent was ideally placed for massive forts and high walls, the woods and hills of Benoic offered the enemy too many paths that passed by the hilltop fortresses garrisoned by Ban's dispirited forces. Our job was to give those forces hope again and we did it by using Arthur's own tactics of hard marches and surprise attacks. The wooded hills of Benoic were made for such battles and our men were peerless. There are few joys to compare with the fight that follows an ambush well sprung, when the enemy is strung out and has his weapons sheathed. I put new scars on Hywelbane's long edge.
The Franks feared us. They called us forest wolves and we adopted the insult as our symbol and wore grey wolf-tails on our helmets. We howled to frighten them, kept them awake night after night, stalked them for days and sprang our ambushes when we wanted and not when they were ready, yet the enemy was many and we were few, and month by month our numbers shrank.
Galahad fought with us. He was a great fighter, yet he was also a scholar who had delved into his father's library and he would talk at night of old Gods, new religions, strange countries and great men. I remember one night when we camped in a ruined villa. A week before it had been a thriving settlement with its own fulling mill, pottery and dairy, but the Franks had been there and now the villa was a smoking ruin, splashed by blood, its walls tumbled and its spring poisoned with the corpses of women and children. Our sentries were guarding the paths in the woods so we had the luxury of a fire on which we roasted a brace of hares and a kid. We drank water and pretended it was wine.
“Falernian,” Galahad said dreamily, holding his clay cup to the stars as though it were a golden flask.
“Who's he?” Culhwch asked.
“Falernian, my dear Culhwch, is a wine, a most pleasant Roman wine.”
“I never did like wine,” Culhwch said, then yawned hugely. “A woman's drink. Now Saxon ale! There's a drink for you.” Within minutes he was asleep.
Galahad could not sleep. The fire flickered low while above us the stars shone bright. One fell, cutting its swift white path through the heavens and Galahad made the sign of the cross for he was a Christian and to him a falling star was the sign of a demon falling from paradise. “It was on earth once,” he said.
“What was?” I asked.
“Paradise.” He leaned back on the grass and rested his head on his arms. “Sweet paradise.”
“Ynys Trebes, you mean?”
“No, no. I mean, Derfel, that when God made man He gave us a paradise in which to live, and it occurs to me that we have been losing that paradise, inch by inch, ever since. And soon, I think, it will be gone. Darkness descends.” He went silent for a while, then sat up as his thoughts gave him a new energy. “Just think of it,” he said, 'not a hundred years ago this land was peaceful. Men built great houses. We can't build like they did. I know Father has made a fine palace, but it's just broken pieces of old palaces cobbled together and patched with stone. We can't build like the Romans. We can't build as high, or as beautifully. We can't make roads, we can't make canals, we can't make aqueducts.“ I did not even know what an aqueduct was, but kept silent as Culhwch snored contentedly beside me. ”The Romans built whole cities,“ Galahad went on, 'places so vast, Derfel, it would take a whole morning to walk from one side of the city to the other and all of your footsteps would fall on trimmed, dressed stone. And in those days you could walk for weeks and still be on Rome's land, subject to Rome's laws and listening to Rome's language. Now look at it.” He waved at the night. “Just darkness. And it spreads, Derfel. The dark is creeping into Armorica. Benoic will go, and after Benoic, Broceliande, and after Broceliande, Britain. No more laws, no more books, no more music, no more justice, only vile men round smoky fires planning on who they'll kill next day.”