“What an emotional fool you are, Derfel.” He turned and scowled at me. “I should have thrown you back into Tanaburs's pit. Carry that chest into my cabin.”
Merlin had commandeered the shipmaster's cabin where I now stowed the wooden chest. Merlin ducked under the low door, fussed with the captain's pillows to make himself a comfortable seat, then sank down with a sigh of happiness. The grey cat leaped on to his lap as he unrolled the top few inches of the thick scroll he had risked his life to obtain on a crude table that glittered with fish-scales.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It is the one real treasure Ban possessed,” Merlin said. “The rest was mostly Greek and Roman rubbish. A few good things, I suppose, but not much.”
“So what is it?” I asked again.
“It is a scroll, dear Derfel,” he said, as though I was a fool to have asked. He glanced up through the open skylight to see the sail bellying in a wind still soured by Ynys Trebes's smoke. “A good wind!” he said cheerfully. “Home by nightfall, perhaps? I have missed Britain.” He looked back to the scroll. “And Nimue? How is the dear child?” he asked as he scanned the first lines.
“The last time I saw her,” I said bitterly, 'she'd been raped and had lost an eye."
“These things happen,” Merlin said carelessly.
His callousness took my breath away. I waited, then again asked him what was so important about the scroll.
He sighed. “You are an importunate creature, Derfel. Well, I shall indulge you.” He let go of the manuscript so that it rolled itself up, then leaned back on the shipmaster's damp and threadbare pillows.
“You know, of course, who Caleddin was?”
“No, Lord,” I admitted.
He threw his hands up in despair. “Are you not ashamed of your ignorance, Derfel? Caleddin was a Druid of the Ordovicii. A wretched tribe, and I should know. One of my wives was an Ordoviciian and one such creature was sufficient for a dozen lifetimes. Never again.” He shuddered at the memory, then peered up at me. “Gundleus raped Nimue, right?”
“Yes.” I wondered how he knew.
“Foolish man! Foolish man!” He seemed amused rather than angry at his lover's fate. “How he will suffer. Is Nimue angry?”
“Furious.”
“Good. Fury is very useful, and dear Nimue has a talent for it. One of the things I can't stand about Christians is their admiration of meekness. Imagine elevating meekness into a virtue! Meekness! Can you imagine a heaven filled only with the meek? What a dreadful idea. The food would get cold while everyone passed the dishes to everyone else. Meekness is no good, Derfel. Anger and selfishness, those are the qualities that make the world march.” He laughed. “Now, about Caleddin. He was a fair Druid for an Ordoviciian, not nearly as good as me, of course, but he had his better days. I did enjoy your attempt to murder Lancelot, by the way, a pity you didn't finish the job. I suppose he escaped from the city?”
“As soon as it was doomed, yes.”
“Sailors say rats are always first off the doomed ship. Poor Ban. He was a fool, but a good fool.”
“Did he know who you were?” I asked.
“Of course he knew,” Merlin said. “It would have been monstrously rude of me to have deceived my host. He didn't tell anyone else, of course, otherwise I'd have been besieged by those dreadful poets all asking me to use magic to make their wrinkles disappear. You've no idea, Derfel, how bothersome a little magic can be. Ban knew who I was, and so did Caddwg. He's my servant. Poor Hywel's dead, yes?”
“If you already know,” I said, 'why do you ask?"
“I'm just making conversation!” he protested. “Conversation is one of the civilized arts, Derfel. We can't all stump through life with a sword and shield, growling. A few of us do try to preserve the dignities.” He sniffed.
“So how do you know Hywel's dead?” I asked.
“Because Bed win wrote and told me, of course, you idiot.”
“Bedwin's been writing to you all these years?” I asked in astonishment.
“Of course! He needed my advice. What do you think I did? Vanish?”
“You did,” I said resentfully.
“Nonsense. You simply didn't know where to look for me. Not that Bedwin took my advice about anything. What a mess the man has made! Mordred alive! Pure foolishness. The child should have been strangled with his own birth cord, but I suppose Uther could never have been persuaded of that. Poor Uther. He believed that virtues are handed down through a man's loins! What nonsense! A child is like a calf; if the thing is born crippled you knock it smartly on the skull and serve the cow again. That's why the Gods made it such a pleasure to engender children, because so many of the little brutes have to be replaced. There's not much pleasure in the process for women, of course, but someone has to suffer and thank the Gods it's them and not us.”
“Did you ever have children?” I asked, wondering why I had never thought to enquire before.
“Of course I did! What an extraordinary question.” He gazed at me as though he doubted my sanity. “I never liked any of them very much and happily most of them died and the rest I've disowned. One, I think, is even a Christian.” He shuddered. “I much prefer other people's children; they're so much more grateful. Now what were we talking about? Oh yes, Caleddin. Terrible man.” He shook his head gloomily.
“Did he write the scroll?” I asked.
“Don't be absurd, Derfel,” he snapped impatiently. “Druids are not allowed to write anything down, it's against the rules. You know that! Once you write something down it becomes fixed. It becomes dogma. People can argue about it, they become authoritative, they refer to the texts, they produce new manuscripts, they argue more and soon they're putting each other to death. If you never write anything down then no one knows exactly what you said so you can always change it. Do I have to explain everything to you?”
“You can explain what is written on the scroll,” I said humbly.
“I was doing precisely that! But you keep interrupting me and changing the subject! Extraordinary behaviour! And to think you grew up on the Tor. I should have had you whipped more often, that might have given you better manners. I hear Gwlyddyn is rebuilding my hall?”
“Yes.”
“A good, honest man, Gwlyddyn. I shall probably have to rebuild it all myself but he does try.”
“The scroll,” I reminded him.
“I know! I know! Caleddin was a Druid, I told you that. An Ordoviciian, too. Dreadful beasts, Ordoviciians. Whatever, cast your mind back to the Black Year and ask yourself how Suetonius knew all he did about our religion. You do know who Suetonius was, I suppose?” The question was an insult, for all Britons know and revile the name of Suetonius Paulinus, the Governor appointed by the Emperor Nero and who, in the Black Year that occurred some four hundred years before our time, virtually destroyed our ancient religion. Every Briton grew up with the dread tale of how Suetonius two legions had crushed the Druid sanctuary on Ynys Mon. Ynys Mon, like Ynys Trebes, was an island, the greatest sanctuary of our Gods, but the Romans had somehow crossed the straits and put all the Druids, bards and priestesses to the sword. They had cut down the sacred groves and defiled the holy lake so that all we had left was but a shadow of the old religion and our Druids, like Tanaburs and lorweth, were just faint echoes of an old glory. “I know who Suetonius was,” I told Merlin.
“There was another Suetonius,” he said with amusement. “A Roman writer, and rather a good one. Ban possessed his De Viris Illustribus which is mainly about the lives of the poets. Suetonius was particularly scandalous about Virgil. It's extraordinary what things poets will take to their beds; mostly each other, of course. It's a pity that work burned, for I never saw another. Ban's scroll might well have been the very last copy, and it's just ashes now. Virgil will be relieved. Whatever, the point is that Suetonius Paulinus wanted to know everything there was to know about our religion before he attacked Ynys Mon. He wanted to make certain we wouldn't turn him into a toad or a poet, so he found himself a traitor, Caleddin the Druid. And Caleddin dictated everything he knew to a Roman scribe who copied it all down in what looks to be execrable Latin. But execrable or not, it is the only record of our old religion; all its secrets, all its rituals, all its meanings and all its power. And this, child, is it.” He gestured at the scroll and managed to knock it off the table.