Arthur asked quietly, 'What have you done?'

'I've brought you allies!' Lancelot said happily, then glanced at me. 'Cerdic has his own translator,' he said dismissively.

'Derfel stays!' Arthur snapped with a sudden and terrifying anger in his voice. Then he remembered that Lancelot was a King and sighed. 'What have you done, Lord King?' he asked again. Dinas, who had spurred ahead with the other riders, was foolish enough to answer for Lancelot.

'We've made peace, Lord!' he said in his dark voice.

'Go!' Arthur roared, shocking and astonishing the Druid pair with his anger. They had only ever seen the calm, patient, peace-making Arthur and did not even suspect that he contained such fury. This anger was nothing to the rage that had consumed him at Lugg Vale when the dying Gorfyddyd had called Guinevere a wh.o.r.e, but it was a terrifying anger all the same. 'Go!' he shouted at Tanaburs's grandsons.

'This meeting is for Lords. And you too,' he pointed at his sons, 'go!' He waited until all Lancelot's followers had withdrawn, then looked back at the Silurian King. 'What have you done?' he asked a third time in a bitter voice.

Lancelot's affronted dignity made him stiff. 'I made peace,' he said acidly. 'I kept Cerdic from attacking you. I did what I could to help you.'

'What you did,' Arthur said in an angry voice, but so low that no man in Cerdic's approaching entourage could hear him, 'is fight Cerdic's battle. We've just half destroyed Aelle, so what does that make Cerdic? It makes him twice as powerful as before. That's what it does! The G.o.ds help us!' With that he tossed his reins to Lancelot, a subtle insult, then slid off his horse's back, twitched his b.l.o.o.d.y cloak straight and stared imperiously at the Saxons.

That was the first time I met Cerdic, and though all the bards make him sound like a fiend with cloven hooves and a serpent's bite, in truth he was a short, slightly built man with thin fair hair that he combed straight back from his forehead and tied in a knot at the nape of his neck. He was very pale-skinned and had a broad forehead and a narrow, clean-shaven chin. His mouth was thin-lipped, his nose sharp-boned, and his eves as pale as dawn-misted water. Aelle wore his emotions on his face, but even at a first glance I doubted whether Cerdic's self-control would ever allow his expression to betray his thoughts. He wore a Roman breastplate, woollen trews and a cloak of fox fur. He looked neat and precise; indeed, if it had not been for the gold at his throat and wrists, I might have mistaken him for a scribe. Except that his eyes were not those of a clerk; those pale eyes missed nothing and gave nothing away. 'I am Cerdic,' he announced himself in a soft voice.

Arthur stepped aside so that Cuneglas could name himself, then Meurig insisted on being a part of the conference. Cerdic glanced at both men, dismissed them as unimportant, then looked back to Arthur. 'I bring you a gift,' he said, and held a hand towards the chieftain who accompanied him. The man produced a gold-hilted knife that Cerdic presented to Arthur.

'The gift,' I translated Arthur's words, 'should go to our Lord King Cuneglas.'

Cerdic put the naked blade onto his left palm and closed his fingers about it. His eyes never left Arthur's, and when he opened his hand there was blood on the blade. 'The gift is for Arthur,' he insisted. Arthur took it. He was uncharacteristically nervous, maybe fearing some magic in the b.l.o.o.d.y steel or else fearing that acceptance of the gift made him complicit in Cerdic's ambitions. 'Tell the King,' he told me, 'that I have no gift for him.'

Cerdic smiled. It was a wintry smile and I thought of how a wolf must appear to a stray lamb. 'Tell Lord Arthur that he has given me the gift of peace,' he told me.

'But suppose I choose war?' Arthur asked defiantly. 'Here and now!' He gestured to the hilltop where still more of our spearmen had rallied so that our numbers were now at least equal to Cerdic's.

'Tell him,' Cerdic ordered me, 'that these are not all my men,' he gestured at his shield-wall that watched us, 'and tell him, too, that King Lancelot gave me peace in Arthur's name.'

I told that to Arthur and I saw a muscle flicker in his cheek, but he kept his anger curbed. 'In two days,' Arthur said, and it was not a suggestion, but an order, 'we shall meet in London. There we shall discuss our peace.' He pushed the b.l.o.o.d.y knife into his belt and, when I had finished translating his words, he summoned me. He did not wait to hear Cerdic's response, but just led me up the hill until we were out of earshot of both delegations. He noticed my shoulder for the first time. 'How bad is your wound?'

'It'll heal,' I said.

He stopped, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. 'What Cerdic wants,' he told me when he opened his eyes, 'is to rule all Lloegyr. But if we let him do that then we have one terrible enemy instead of two weaker ones.' He walked in silence for a few paces, stepping among the dead left from Aelle's charge. 'Before this war,' he continued bitterly, 'Aelle was powerful and Cerdic was a nuisance, but with Aelle destroyed we could have turned on Cerdic. Now it's the other way round. Aelle is weakened, but Cerdic is powerful.'

'So fight him now,' I said.

He looked at me with weary brown eyes. 'Be honest, Derfel,' he said in a low voice, 'not boastful. Will we win if we fight?'

I looked at Cerdic's army. It was tightly arrayed and ready for battle, while our men were weary and hungry, but Cerdic's men had never faced Arthur's hors.e.m.e.n. 'I think we would win, Lord,' I said honestly.

'So do I,' Arthur said, 'but it will be hard fighting, Derfel, and at the end of it we'll have at least a hundred wounded men we'll need to carry back home with us and the Saxons will summon every garrison in Lloegyr to face us. We might beat Cerdic here, but we'll never reach home alive. We're too deep in Lloegyr.' He grimaced at the thought. 'And if we weaken ourselves fighting against Cerdic do you think Aelle won't be waiting to ambush us on the way home?' He shuddered with a sudden surge of anger. 'What was Lancelot thinking of? I can't have Cerdic as an ally! He'll gain half Britain, turn on us and we'll have a Saxon enemy twice as terrible as before.' He uttered one of his rare curses, then rubbed his bony face with a gloved hand. 'Well, the broth's spoilt,' he went on bitterly, 'but we still have to eat it. The only answer is to leave Aelle strong enough to frighten Cerdic still, so take six of my hors.e.m.e.n and find him. Find him, Derfel, and give him this wretched thing as a gift.' He thrust Cerdic's knife at me.

'Clean it first,' he said irritably, 'and you can take his bearskin cloak as well. Agravain found it. Give that to him as a second gift and tell him to come to London. Tell him I oath-swear his safety, and tell him it is his only chance to keep some land. You have two days, Derfel, so find him.'

I hesitated, not because I disagreed, but because I did not understand why Aelle needed to be in London. 'Because,' Arthur answered wearily, 'I cannot stay in London with Aelle loose in Lloegyr. He might have lost his army here, but he has garrisons enough to make another, and while we disentangle ourselves from Cerdic he could lay half Dumnonia waste.' He turned and stared balefully at Lancelot and Cerdic. I thought he was going to curse again, but he just sighed wearily. 'I'm going to make a peace, Derfel. The G.o.ds know it isn't the peace I wanted, but we might as well make it properly. Now go, my friend, go.'

I stayed long enough to make certain that Issa would take proper care of the burning of Cavan's body and that he would find a lake and throw the dead Irishman's sword into the water, and then I rode north in the wake of a beaten army.

While Arthur, his dream skewed by a fool, marched to London.

I had long dreamed of seeing London, but even in my wildest fancies I had not imagined its reality. I had thought it would be like Glevum, a little larger perhaps, but still a place where a group of tall buildings would be cl.u.s.tered about a central open s.p.a.ce with small streets huddled behind and an earth wall ringing it all, but in London there were six such open s.p.a.ces, all with their pillared halls, arcaded temples and brick-built palaces. The ordinary houses, that in Glevum or Durnovaria were low and thatched, were here built two or three storeys high. Many of the houses had collapsed over the years, but plenty still had their tiled roofs and folk still climbed their steep timber stairs. Most of our men had never seen a flight of stairs inside a building and on their first day in London they had raced like excited children to see the view from the topmost floors. Finally one of the buildings had collapsed under their weight and Arthur then forbade any more stair-climbing.

The fortress of London was bigger then Caer Sws, and that fortress was merely the north-west bastion of the city's wall. There were a dozen barracks inside the fortress, each bigger than a feasting hall, and each made of small red bricks. Beside the fortress was an amphitheatre, a temple, and one of the city's ten bath-houses. Other towns had such things, of course, but everything here was taller and wider. Durnovaria's amphitheatre was a thing of gra.s.sy earth and I had always thought it impressive enough until I saw the London arena that could have swallowed five amphitheatres like Durnovaria's. The wall about the city was built of stone instead of earth, and though Aelle had allowed its ramparts to crumble, it was still a formidable barrier that was now crowned with Cerdic's triumphant men. Cerdic had occupied the city and the presence of his skull banners on the walls showed that he intended to keep it.

The river bank also possessed a stone wall that had first been built against the Saxon pirates. Gaps in that wall led to quays, and one gap opened into a ca.n.a.l that ran into the heart of a threat garden about which a palace was built. There were still busts and statues in the palace, and long tiled corridors and a great pillared hall where I a.s.sumed our Roman rulers had once met in government. Rainwater now trickled down the painted walls, the floor tiles were broken and the garden was a ma.s.s of weeds, but the glory was still there, even if it was only a shadow. The whole city was a shadow of its old glory. None of the city's bath-houses still functioned. Their pools were cracked and empty, their furnaces were cold and their mosaic floors had heaved and cracked under the a.s.sault of frost and weeds. The stone streets had decayed into muddy strips, but despite the decay the city was still ma.s.sive and magnificent. It made me wonder what Rome must be like. Galahad told me that London was a mere village in comparison, and that Rome's amphitheatre was big enough to swallow twenty arenas like London's, but I could not believe him. I could scarcely believe in London even when I was staring at it. It looked like the work of giants.

Aelle had never liked the city and would not live there, so its only inhabitants were a handful of Saxons and those Britons who had accepted Aelle's rule. Some of those Britons still prospered. Most were merchants who traded with Gaul, and their large houses were built beside the river and their storehouses were guarded by their own walls and spearmen, but much of the rest of the city was deserted. It was a dying place, a city given to rats, a city that once had borne the t.i.tle Augusta. It had been known as London the Magnificent and its river had once been thick with the masts of galleys; now it was a place of ghosts.

Aelle came to London with me. I had found him a half day's march north of the city. He had taken refuge in a Roman fort where he was trying to rea.s.semble an army. At first he was suspicious of my message. He had shouted at me, accusing us of using witchcraft to defeat him, then he had threatened to kill me and my escort, but I had the sense to wait his anger out patiently and, after a while, he calmed down. He had hurled Cerdic's knife angrily away, but was pleased to have his thick bearskin cloak returned. I do not think I was ever in real danger, for I sensed that he liked me, and indeed, when his anger had fled, he threw a heavy arm round my shoulder and walked me up and down the ramparts.

'What does Arthur want?' he had asked me.

'Peace, Lord king.' The weight of his arm was hurting my wounded shoulder, but I dared not protest.

'Peace!' He had spat the word out like a sc.r.a.p of tainted meat, but with none of the scorn he had used to reject Arthur's offer of peace before Lugg Vale. Then Aelle had been stronger and could afford to ask a higher price. Now he was humbled, and he knew it. 'We Saxons,' he said, 'are not meant to be at peace. We feed ourselves on our enemy's grain, we clothe ourselves with their wool, we pleasure ourselves on their women. What does peace offer us?'

'A chance to rebuild your strength, Lord King, or else Cerdic will be feeding on your grain and dressing in your wool.'

Aelle had grinned. 'He'd like the women too.' He had taken his arm from my shoulder and stared northwards across the fields. 'I'll have to yield land,' he grumbled.

'But if you choose war, Lord King,' I said, 'the price will be higher. You'll face Arthur and Cerdic, and might finish with no land at all except the gra.s.s above your grave.'

He had turned and given me a shrewd look. 'Arthur only wants peace so that I can fight Cerdic for him.'

'Of course, Lord King,' I answered.

He laughed at my honesty. 'And if I do not come to London,' he said, 'you will hunt me down like a dog.'

'Like a great boar, Lord King, whose tusks are still sharp.'

'You talk like you fight, Derfel. Well.' He had ordered his wizards to make a poultice from moss and spiders' webs that they put on my wounded shoulder while he consulted his council. The consultation did not last long, for Aelle knew he had little choice. So, next morning, I marched with him down the Roman road that led back to the city. He insisted on taking an escort of sixty spearmen. 'You may trust Cerdic,'

he told me, 'but there isn't a promise he's made that he hasn't broken. Tell that to Arthur.'

'You tell him, Lord King.'

Aelle and Arthur met secretly on the night before they were due to negotiate with Cerdic, and that night they wrangled their own separate peace. Aelle gave up much. He gave up great swathes of land on his western frontier, and agreed to repay Arthur all the gold that Arthur had given him the year before and more gold besides. In return Arthur promised four whole years of peace and his support for Aelle if Cerdic would not agree to terms the next day. They embraced when the peace was made and afterwards, as we walked back to our encampment outside the city's western wall, Arthur shook his head sadly. 'You should never meet an enemy face to face,' he said to me, 'not if you know that one day you'll have to destroy him. Either that or the Saxons must submit to our government and they won't. They won't.'

'Maybe they will.'

He shook his head. 'Saxon and Briton, Derfel, they don't mix.'

'I mix, Lord,' I said.

He laughed. 'But if your mother had never been captured, Derfel, you'd have been raised a Saxon and you'd probably have been in Aelle's army by now. You'd be an enemy. You'd worship his G.o.ds, you'd dream his dreams, and you'd want our land. They need a lot of s.p.a.ce, these Saxons.'

But we had at least penned Aelle in, and next day, in the great palace by the river, we met Cerdic. The sun shone that day, sparkling on the ca.n.a.l where the Governor of Britain had once moored his river barge. The sparkling sun-motes hid the sc.u.m and mud and dirt that now clogged the ca.n.a.l, but nothing could hide the stench of its sewage.

Cerdic held a council meeting first and while it debated we Britons met in a room that stood above the river wall and overlooked the water so that the ceiling, which was painted with curious beings that were half women and half fish, was dappled by shimmers of rippling light. Our spearmen guarded every door and window to make certain we could not be overheard.

Lancelot was there, and had been allowed to bring Dinas and Lavaine. The three men still insisted that their peace with Cerdic had been wise, but Meurig was their only supporter and the rest of us were angry in the face of their sullen defiance. Arthur listened to our protests for a while, then interrupted to say that nothing would be solved by arguing about the past. 'What's done is done,' he said, 'but I do need one a.s.surance.' He looked at Lancelot. 'Promise me,' he said, 'that you made no promises to Cerdic.'

'I gave him peace,' Lancelot insisted, 'and suggested he help you fight Aelle. That is all.'

Merlin was seated in the window above the river. He had adopted one of the palace's stray cats and now petted the animal on his lap. 'What did Cerdic want?' he asked mildly.

'Aelle's defeat.'

'Just that?' Merlin asked, not bothering to hide his disbelief.

'Just that,' Lancelot insisted, 'nothing more.' We all watched him. Arthur, Merlin, Cuneglas, Meurig, Agricola, Sagramor, Galahad, Culhwch and myself. None of us spoke, but just watched him. 'He wanted nothing more!' Lancelot insisted and to me he looked like a small child telling plain lies.

'How remarkable in a king,' Merlin said placidly, 'to want so little.' He began teasing the cat by flicking one of the braided strands of his beard at its paws. 'And what did you want?' he asked, still mildly.

'Arthur's victory,' Lancelot declared.

'Because you did not think Arthur could win it by himself?' Merlin suggested, still playing with the cat.

'I wanted to make it certain,' Lancelot said. 'I was trying to help!' He looked round the room, seeking allies, and finding none but the youthful Meurig. 'If you don't want peace with Cerdic,' he said petulantly, 'then why don't you fight him now?'

'Because, Lord King, you used my name to secure his truce,' Arthur said patiently, 'and because our army is now many marches from home and his men lie in our path. If you had not made peace,' he explained, still speaking courteously, 'then half his army would be on the frontier watching your men and I would have been free to march south and attack the other half. As it is?' He shrugged. 'What will Cerdic demand of us today?'

'Land,' Agricola said firmly. 'It's all the Saxons ever want. Land, land, and more land. They won't be happy till they have every sc.r.a.p of land in the world, and then they'll start looking for other worlds to put under their ploughs.'

'He must be satisfied,' Arthur said, 'with the land he's taken from Aelle. He'll get none from us.'

'We should take some from him,' I spoke for the first time. 'That land he stole last year.' It was a fine stretch of river-land on our southern frontier, a fertile and rich tract that ran from the high moors down to the sea. The land had belonged to Melwas, the client King of the Belgae whom Arthur had sent in punishment to Isca, and it was land we sorely missed for its loss brought Cerdic very close to the rich estates about Durnovaria and also meant that his ships were just minutes away from Ynys Wit, the great island that the Romans had called Vectis and which lay just off our coast. For a year now Cerdic's Saxons had raided Ynys Wit ruthlessly and its people were forever calling on Arthur for more spearmen to protect their holdings.

'We should have that land back,' Sagramor supported me. He had thanked Mithras for returning his Saxon girl unharmed by placing a captured sword in the G.o.d's London temple.

'I doubt,' Meurig intervened, 'that Cerdic made peace in order to yield land.'

'Nor did we march to war to cede land,' Arthur answered angrily.

'I thought, forgive me,' Meurig insisted, and a kind of quiet groan went through the room as he persisted with his argument, 'but you said, did you not, that you could not prosecute war? Being so far from home? Yet now, for a stretch of land, you would risk all our lives? I hope I am not being foolish,' he chuckled to show that he had made a joke, 'but I fail to understand why we risk the one thing we cannot afford to endure.'

'Lord Prince,' Arthur said softly, 'we may be weak here, but if we show our weakness, then we will be dead here. We do not go to Cerdic this morning ready to yield one furrow, we go making demands.'

'And if he refuses?' Meurig demanded indignantly.

'Then we shall have a difficult withdrawal,' Arthur admitted calmly. He glanced out of a window that looked down into the courtyard. 'It seems our enemies are ready for us. Shall we go to them?'

Merlin pushed the cat off his lap and used his staff to stand up. 'You won't mind if I don't come?' he asked. 'I'm too old to endure a day of negotiations. All that bl.u.s.ter and anger.' He brushed cat hairs off his robe, then turned suddenly on Dinas and Lavaine. 'Since when,' he asked disapprovingly, 'have Druids worn swords or served Christian Kings?'

'Since we decided to do both,' Dinas said. The twins, who were almost as tall as Merlin and much burlier, challenged him with their unblinking gaze.

'Who made you Druids?' Merlin demanded.

'The same power that made you a Druid,' said Lavaine.

'And what power was that?' Merlin asked, and when the twins did not answer, he sneered at them.

'At least you know how to lay thrushes' eggs. I suppose that kind of trick impresses Christians. Do you also turn their wine to blood and their bread to flesh?'

'We use our magic,' Dinas said, 'and theirs too. It's not the old Britain now, but a new Britain and it has new G.o.ds. We blend their magic with the old. You could learn from us. Lord Merlin.'

Merlin spat to show his opinion of that advice, then, without another word, stalked from the room. Dinas and Lavaine were unmoved by his hostility. They possessed an extraordinary self-confidence. We followed Arthur down to the great pillared hall where, as Merlin had foretold, we bl.u.s.tered and postured, shouted and cajoled.

At first it was Aelle and Cerdic who made most of the noise and Arthur, as often as not, was the mediator between them, but even Arthur could not prevent Cerdic becoming land rich at Aelle's expense. He kept possession of London and gained the valley of the Thames and great stretches of fertile land north of the Thames. Aelle's kingdom shrank by a quarter, but he still possessed a kingdom and for that he owed Arthur thanks. He offered none, but just stalked from the room when the talking was done and left London that same day like a great wounded boar crawling back to his den. It was mid afternoon when Aelle left and Arthur, using me as an interpreter, now raised the matter of the Belgic land Cerdic had captured the year before, and he went on demanding the return of that land long after the rest of us would have given up the effort. He made no threats, he just repeated his demand over and over until Culhwch was sleeping, Agricola yawning, and I was tired of taking the sting from Cerdic's reiterated rejections. And still Arthur persisted. He sensed that Cerdic needed time to consolidate the new lands he had taken from Aelle, and his threat was that he would give Cerdic no peace unless the river-lands were returned. Cerdic countered by threatening to fight us in London, but Arthur finally revealed that he would seek Aelle's help in such a fight and Cerdic knew he could not beat both our armies.

It was almost dark when Cerdic at last yielded. He did not yield outright, but grudgingly said he would discuss the matter with his private council. So we woke Culhwch and walked out to the courtyard, then through a small gate in the river wall to stand on a quay where we watched the Thames slide darkly by. Most of us said little, though Meurig irritably lectured Arthur about wasting time making impossible demands, but when Arthur refused to argue the Prince gradually fell silent. Sagramor sat with his back against the wall, incessantly stroking a whetstone down his sword blade. Lancelot and the Silurian Druids stood apart from us; three tall, handsome men who were stiff with pride. Dinas stared at the darkening trees across the river while his brother gave me long speculative looks. We waited an hour and then, at last, Cerdic came to the river bank. 'Tell Arthur this,' he told me without any preamble, 'that I trust none of you, like none of you and want nothing more than to kill all of you. But I will yield him the Belgic land on one condition. That Lancelot is made King of that land. Not a client King,' he added, 'but King, with all the powers of independent kingship.'

I stared into the Saxon's grey-blue eyes. I was so astonished by his condition that I said nothing, not even to acknowledge his words. It was all so clear suddenly. Lancelot had made this bargain with the Saxon, and Cerdic had hidden their secret agreement behind an afternoon of scornful rejections. I had no proof of that, but I knew it had to be true, and when I looked away from Cerdic I saw that Lancelot was staring expectantly at me. He spoke no Saxon, but he knew exactly what Cerdic had just said.

'Tell him!' Cerdic ordered me.

I translated for Arthur. Agricola and Sagramor spat in disgust and Culhwch gave a brief, sour bellow of a laugh, but Arthur just gazed into my eyes for a few grave seconds before nodding wearily. 'Agreed,'

he said.

'You will leave this place at dawn,' Cerdic said abruptly.

'We will leave in two days,' I responded, without bothering to consult Arthur.

'Agreed,' Cerdic said, and turned away.

And thus we had our peace with the Sais.

It was not the peace Arthur wanted. He had believed we could so weaken the Saxons that their ships would stop arriving from beyond the German Sea, and that in another year or two we might have driven the rest out of Britain altogether. But it was peace.

'Fate is inexorable,' Merlin said to me next morning. I found him in the centre of the Roman amphitheatre where he slowly turned to gaze on the banked stone seats that rose in a full circle about the arena. He had commandeered four of my spearmen who sat at the arena's edge and watched him, though they were as ignorant as I was about their duties. 'Are you still looking for the last Treasure?' I asked him.

'I do like this place,' he said, ignoring my question as he turned around to give the whole arena another long inspection. 'I do like it.'

'I thought you hated the Romans.'

'Me? Hate the Romans?' he asked in pretended outrage. 'How I do pray, Derfel, that my teachings will not be pa.s.sed to posterity through the mangled sieve you choose to call a brain. I love all mankind!'

he declared magniloquently, 'and even the Romans are perfectly acceptable if they stay in Rome. I told you I was in Rome once, didn't I? Full of priests and catamites. Sansum would feel quite at home there. No, Derfel, the fault of the Romans was coming to Britain and spoiling everything, but not everything they did here was bad.'

'They did give us this,' I said, gesturing at the twelve tiers of seats and the lofted balcony where the Roman lords had watched the arena.

'Oh, do spare me Arthur's tedious lecture about roads and law-courts and bridges and structure.' He spat the last word out. 'Structure! What is the structure of law and roads and forts but a harness? The Romans tamed us, Derfel. They made us into taxpayers and they were so clever at it that we actually believe they did us a favour! We once walked with the G.o.ds, we were a free people, and then we put our stupid heads into the Roman yoke and became taxpayers.'

'So what,' I asked patiently, 'did the Romans do that was so good?'

He smiled wolfishly. 'They once crammed this arena full of Christians, Derfel, then set the dogs on them. In Rome, mind you, they did it properly; they used lions. But in the long term, alas, the lions lost.'