Arthur counted the days too, though with some dread for he feared that Mordred would undo all his achievements. Arthur came frequently to Lindinis in those years. We would hear hoofbeats in the outer courtyard, the door would be flung open and his voice would echo through the palace's big, half-empty rooms. 'Morwenna! Seren! Dian!' He would shout, and our three golden-haired daughters would run or toddle to be swept up in a huge embrace and then they would be spoiled with presents; honey on a comb, small brooches, or the delicate spiral-patterned sh.e.l.l of a snail. Then, draped by daughters, he would come to whatever room we occupied and give us his latest news: a bridge rebuilt, a lawcourt opened, an honest magistrate found, a highway robber executed; or else some tale of a natural wonder: a sea snake seen off the coast, a calf born with five legs or, once, tales of a juggler who ate fire. 'How is the King?' he would always ask when these wonders had been recounted.

'The King grows,' Ceinwyn would always reply blandly and Arthur would ask no more. He would give us news of Guinevere, and it was always good, though both Ceinwyn and I suspected that his enthusiasm concealed a strange loneliness. He was never alone, but I think he never did discover the twin soul he wanted so much. Guinevere had once been as pa.s.sionately interested in the business of government as Arthur, but she gradually turned her energies to the worship of Isis. Arthur, who was ever made uncomfortable by religious fervour, pretended to be interested in that woman's G.o.ddess, but in truth I think he believed Guinevere was wasting her time searching for a power that did not exist, just as we had once wasted our time pursuing the Cauldron.

Guinevere gave him only the one son. Either, Ceinwyn said, they slept apart, or else Guinevere was using a woman's magic to prevent conception. Every village had a wise woman who knew what herbs would do that, just as they knew what substances could abort a child or cure a sickness. Arthur, I knew, would have liked more children for he adored them, and some of his happiest times were when he brought Gwydre to stay in our palace. Arthur and his son revelled in the wild pack of ragged, knot-haired children who raced carelessly about Lindinis, but who always avoided the sullen, brooding presence of Mordred. Gwydre played with our three, and Ralla's three, and with the two dozen slave or servant children who formed miniature armies for mock combat or else draped borrowed war-cloaks over the branch of a low-growing pear tree in the garden to turn it into a pretend house that imitated the pa.s.sions and procedures of the larger palace. Mordred had his own companions, all boys, all slave sons, and they, being older, roamed more widely. We heard tales of a reaping hook stolen from a hut, of a thatch or a hayrick fired, of a sieve torn or a newly laid hedge broken, and, in later years, of a shepherd's girl or a farmer's daughter a.s.saulted. Arthur would listen, shudder, then go and talk with the King, but it made no difference.

Guinevere rarely came to Lindinis, though my duties, that took me all across Dumnonia in Arthur's service, carried me to Durnovaria's Winter Palace frequently enough and it was there, as often as not, that I met Guinevere. She was civil to me, but then we were all civil in those days for Arthur had inaugurated his great band of warriors. He had first described his idea to me in Cwm Isaf, but now, in the years of peace that followed the battle outside London, he made his guild of spearmen into a reality. Even to this day, if you mention the Round Table, some old men will remember and chuckle at that ancient attempt to tame rivalry, hostility and ambition. The Round Table, of course, was never its proper name, but rather a nickname. Arthur himself had decided to call it the Brotherhood of Britain, which sounded far more impressive, but no one ever called it that. They remembered it, if they remembered it at all, as the Round Table oath, and they probably forgot that it was supposed to bring us peace. Poor Arthur. He really did believe in brotherhood, and if kisses could bring peace then a thousand dead men would still be alive to this day. Arthur did try to change the world and his instrument was love. The Brotherhood of Britain was supposed to have been inaugurated at the Winter Palace at Durnovaria in the summer after Guinevere's father, Leodegan the exiled King of Henis Wyren, had died of a plague. But that July, when we were all supposed to meet, the plague came to Durnovaria again and so, at the very last moment, Arthur diverted the great gathering to the Sea Palace that was now finished and shining on its hill above the creek. Lindinis would have been a better place for the inaugural rites because it was a much larger palace, but Guinevere must have decided that she wanted to show off her new home. Doubtless it pleased her to have Britain's crude, longhaired, rough-bearded warriors wandering through its civilized halls and shadowed arcades. This beauty, she seemed to be telling us, is what you live to protect, though she took good care to make sure that few of us actually slept inside the enlarged villa. We camped outside and, truth to tell, we were happier there.

Ceinwyn came with me. She was not well, for the ceremonies occurred not long after the birth of her third child, a boy, and it had been a difficult confinement that had ended with Ceinwyn desperately weak and the child dead, but Arthur pleaded for her to come. He wanted all the lords of Britain there, and though none came from Gwynedd, Elmet, or the other northern kingdoms, many others did make the long journey and virtually all Dumnonia's great men were present. Cuneglas of Powys came, Meurig of Gwent was there, Prince Tristan of Kernow attended, as, of course, did Lancelot, and all those Kings brought lords, Druids, bishops and chieftains so that the tents and shelters made a great swathe about the Sea Palace's hill. Mordred, who was then nine years old, came with us and he, to Guinevere's disgust, was given rooms with the other Kings inside the palace. Merlin refused to attend. He said he was too old for such nonsense. Galahad was named the Marshal of the Brotherhood and so he presided with Arthur and, like Arthur, believed devoutly in the whole idea.

I never confessed as much to Arthur, but I found the whole thing embarra.s.sing. His notion was that we would all swear peace and friendship to one another, and thus heal our enmities and bind each other in oaths that would forbid any in the Brotherhood of Britain from ever raising a spear against another; but even the G.o.ds seemed to mock that high ambition for the day of the ceremony dawned chill and gloomy, though it never did actually rain, which Arthur, who was ridiculously optimistic about the whole thing, declared to be a propitious sign.

No swords, spears or shields were carried to the ceremony, held in the Sea Palace's great pleasure garden which lay between two newly built arcades that stretched on gra.s.s embankments towards the creek. Banners hung from the arcades where two choirs sang solemn music to give the ceremonies a proper dignity. At the north end of the garden, close to a big arched door that led into the palace, a table had been set. It happened to be a round table, though there was nothing significant in that shape; it was simply the most convenient table to carry out into the garden. The table was not very large, maybe as far across as a man's outstretched hands could reach, but it was, I remember, very beautiful. It was Roman, of course, and made of a white translucent stone into which had been carved a remarkable horse with great spread wings. One of the wings had a grievous crack running through it, but the table was still an impressive object and the winged horse a wonder. Sagramor said he had never seen such a beast in all his travels, though he claimed that flying horses did exist in the mysterious countries that lay beyond the oceans of sand, wherever they were. Sagramor had married his st.u.r.dy Saxon Malla and was now the father of two boys.

The only swords allowed at the ceremony were those belonging to the Kings and Princes. Mordred's sword lay on the table, and crisscrossed above it were the blades of Lancelot, Meurig, Cuneglas, Galahad and Tristan. One by one we all stepped forward, Kings, Princes, chieftains and lords, and placed our hands where the six blades touched and swore Arthur's oath that pledged us to amity and peace. Ceinwyn had dressed the nine-year-old Mordred in new clothes, then trimmed and combed his hair in an attempt to stop its curly bristles jutting like twin brushes from his round skull, but he still looked an awkward figure as he limped on his clubbed left foot to mumble the oath. I admit that the moment when I put my hand on the six blades was solemn enough; like most men there, I had every intention of keeping the oath which was, of course, for men only, for Arthur did not consider this to be women's business, though plenty of women stood on the terrace above the arched door to witness the long ceremony. It was a long ceremony, too. Arthur had originally intended to restrict the membership of his Brotherhood to those oath-sworn warriors who had fought against the Saxons, but now he had widened it to include every great man he could lure to the palace, and when the oaths were finished he swore his own oath and afterwards stood on the terrace and told us that the vow we had just sworn was as sacred as any we had ever made, that we had promised Britain peace and that if any of us broke that peace then it was the sworn duty of every other member of the Brotherhood to punish the transgressor. Then he instructed us to embrace each other, and after that, of course, the drinking started. The day's solemnity did not end as the drinking began. Arthur had watched carefully to see which men avoided other men's embraces, and then, group by group, those recalcitrant souls were summoned to the palace's great hall where Arthur insisted they should be reconciled. Arthur himself showed an example by first embracing Sansum, and afterwards Melwas, the dethroned Belgic King whom Arthur had exiled to Isca. Melwas submitted with a lumbering grace to the kiss of peace, but he died a month later after eating a breakfast of tainted oysters. Fate, as Merlin loved to tell us, is inexorable. Those more intimate reconciliations inevitably delayed the serving of the feast which was to take place in the great hall where Arthur was bringing enemies together, and so more mead was carried out to the garden where the bored warriors waited and tried to guess which among them would be summoned to Arthur's peace-making next. I knew I would be summoned, for I had carefully avoided Lancelot during the whole ceremony, and sure enough Hygwydd, Arthur's servant, found me and insisted I go to the great hall where, as I feared, Lancelot and his courtiers waited for me. Arthur had persuaded Ceinwyn to attend and, to give her some added comfort, he had asked her brother Cuneglas to be present. The three of us stood on one side of the hall, Lancelot and his men on the other, while Arthur, Galahad and Guinevere presided from the dais where the high table stood ready for the great feast. Arthur beamed at us. 'I have in this room,' he declared, 'some of my dearest friends. King Cuneglas, the best ally any man could have in war or peace, King Lancelot, to whom I am sworn like a brother, Lord Derfel Cadarn, the bravest of all my brave men, and dear Princess Ceinwyn.' He smiled.

I stood as awkward as a pea-field scarecrow. Ceinwyn looked graceful, Cuneglas stared at the hall's painted ceiling, Lancelot scowled, Amhar and Loholt tried to look belligerent, while Dinas and Lavaine showed nothing but contempt on their hard faces. Guinevere watched us carefully and her striking face betrayed nothing, though I suspect she felt as scornful as Dinas and Lavaine of this invented ceremony that was so dear to her husband. Arthur fervently wanted peace, and only he and Galahad seemed unembarra.s.sed by the occasion.

When none of us spoke Arthur spread his arms and stepped down from the dais. 'I demand,' he said, 'that the ill blood that exists between you be spilled now, spilled once and then forgotten.'

He waited again. I shuffled my feet and Cuneglas tugged at his long moustaches.

'Please,' Arthur said.

Ceinwyn gave a tiny shrug. 'I regret,' she said, 'the hurt I caused King Lancelot.'

Arthur, delighted that the ice was melting, smiled at the Belgic King. 'Lord King?' He invited a response from Lancelot. 'Will you forgive her?'

Lancelot, who that day was dressed all in white, glanced at her, then bowed.

'Is that forgiveness?' I growled.

Lancelot coloured, but managed to rise to Arthur's expectations. 'I have no quarrel with the Princess Ceinwyn,' he said stiffly.

'There!' Arthur was delighted with the grudging words and spread his arms again to invite them both forward. 'Embrace,' he said. 'I will have peace!'

They both walked forward, kissed each other on the cheek and stepped back. The gesture was about as warm as that star-bright night when we had waited about the Cauldron in the rocks by Llyn Cerrig Bach, but it pleased Arthur. 'Derfel,' he looked at me, 'will you not embrace the King?'

I steeled myself for conflict. 'I will embrace him, Lord,' I said, 'when his Druids retract the threats they made against the Princess Ceinwyn.'

There was silence. Guinevere sighed and tapped a foot on the mosaics of the dais, the same mosaics she had taken from Lindinis. She looked, as ever, superb. She wore a black robe, perhaps in recognition of the day's solemnity, and the robe was sewn with dozens of small silver crescent moons. Her red hair had been tamed into plaits that she had coiled about her skull and pinned into place with two gold clasps shaped as dragons. Around her neck she wore the barbaric Saxon gold necklace that Arthur had sent her after a long-ago battle against Aelle's Saxons. She had told me then that she disliked the necklace, but it looked magnificent on her. She might have despised this day's proceedings, but she still did her best to help her husband. 'What threats?' she asked me coldly.

'They know,' I said, staring at the twins.

'We have made no threats,' Lavaine protested flatly.

'But you can make the stars vanish,' I accused them.

Dinas allowed a slow smile to show on his brutal and handsome face. 'The little paper star. Lord Derfel?' he asked with mock surprise. 'Is that your insult?'

'It was your threat.'

'My Lord!' Dinas appealed to Arthur. 'It was a child's trick. It meant nothing.'

Arthur looked from me to the Druids. 'You swear that?' he demanded.

'On my brother's life,' Dinas said.

'And Merlin's beard?' I challenged them. 'You have it still?'

Guinevere sighed as if to suggest I was becoming tedious. Galahad frowned. Outside the palace the warriors' voices were becoming mead-loud and raucous.

Lavaine looked at Arthur. 'It is true, Lord,' he said courteously, 'that we possessed a strand of Merlin's beard, cut after he insulted King Cerdic. But on my life, Lord, we burned it.'

'We don't fight old men,' Dinas growled, then glanced at Ceinwyn. 'Or women.'

Arthur smiled happily. 'Come, Derfel,' he said, 'embrace. I will have peace between my dearest friends.'

I still hesitated, but Ceinwyn and her brother both urged me forward and so, for the second and last time in my life, I embraced Lancelot. This time, instead of whispering insults as we had at our first embrace, we said nothing. We just kissed and stepped apart.

'There will be peace between you,' Arthur insisted.

'I swear it, Lord,' I answered stiffly.

'I have no quarrel,' Lancelot answered just as coldly.

Arthur had to be content with our churlish reconciliation and he breathed a huge sigh of relief as though the most difficult part of his day was now done; then he embraced us both before insisting that Guinevere, Galahad, Ceinwyn and Cuneglas come and exchange kisses.

Our ordeal was over. Arthur's last victims were his own wife and Mordred, and that I did not want to see so I drew Ceinwyn out of the room. Her brother, at Arthur's request, stayed and so the two of us were alone. Tm sorry about that,' I told her.

Ceinwyn shrugged. 'It was an unavoidable ordeal.'

'I still don't trust the b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' I said vengefully.

She smiled. 'You, Derfel Cadarn, are a great warrior and he is Lancelot. Does the wolf fear the hare?'

'It fears the serpent,' I said gloomily. I did not feel like facing my friends and describing the reconciliation with Lancelot and so I led Ceinwyn through the Sea Palace's graceful rooms with their pillared walls, decorated floors and heavy bronze lamps that hung on long iron chains from ceilings painted with hunting scenes. Ceinwyn thought the palace immeasurably grand, but also cold. 'Just like the Romans,' she said.

'Just like Guinevere,' I retorted. We found a flight of stairs that led down to some busy kitchens and from there a door into the back gardens where fruit and herbs were growing in well-ordered beds. 'I can't think,' I said when we were in the open air, 'that this Brotherhood of Britain will achieve anything.'

'It will,' Ceinwyn said, 'if enough of you take the oath seriously'

'Maybe.' I had suddenly stopped in embarra.s.sment, for ahead of me, just straightening from bending over a bed of parsley, was Guinevere's younger sister Gwenhwyvach.

Ceinwyn greeted her happily. I had forgotten that they had been friends in the long years of Guinevere and Gwenhwyvach's exile in Powys, and when they had kissed Ceinwyn brought Gwenhwyvach to me. I thought she might resent my failure to marry her, but she seemed to bear no grudge. 'I have become my sister's gardener,' she told me.

'Surely not, Lady?' I said.

'The appointment is not official,' she said drily, 'nor are my high offices of chief steward or warden of the hounds, but someone has to do the work, and when father died he made Guinevere promise to look after me.'

'I was sorry about your father,' Ceinwyn said.

Gwenhwyvach shrugged. 'He just got thinner and thinner until one day he wasn't there any more.'

Gwenhwyvach herself had grown no thinner, indeed she was obese now, a fat red-faced woman who, in her earth-stained dress and dirty white ap.r.o.n, looked more like a farmer's wife than a Princess. 'I live there,' she said, gesturing towards a substantial timber building that stood a hundred paces from the palace. 'My sister allows me to do my work each day, but come the evening bell I am expected to be safely out of sight. Nothing ill-favoured, you understand, can mar the Sea Palace.'

'Lady!' I protested at her self-deprecation Gwenhwyvach waved me to silence. 'I'm happy,' she said bleakly. 'I take the dogs for long walks and I talk to the bees.'

'Come to Lindinis,' Ceinwyn urged her.

'That would never be allowed!' Gwenhwyvach said with pretended shock.

'Why not?' Ceinwyn asked. 'We have rooms to spare. Please.'

Gwenhwyvach smiled slyly. 'I know too much, Ceinwyn, that's why. I know who comes and who stays and what they do here.' Neither of us wanted to probe those hints, so we both kept silent, but Gwenhwyvach needed to speak. She must have been lonely, and Ceinwyn was a friendly loving face from the past. Gwenhwyvach suddenly threw down the herbs she had just cut and hurried us back towards the palace. 'Let me show you,' she said.

'I'm sure we don't need to see,' Ceinwyn said, fearing whatever was about to be revealed.

'You can see,' Gwenhwyvach said to Ceinwyn, 'but Derfel can't. Or shouldn't. Men aren't supposed to enter the temple.'

She had led us to a door that stood at the bottom of some brick steps and which, when she pushed it open, led into a great cellar that lay under the palace floor and was supported by huge arches of Roman brick. 'They keep wine here,' Gwenhwyvach said, explaining the jars and skins that stood racked on the shelves. She had left the door open so that some glimmers of daylight would penetrate the dark, dusty tangle of arches. 'This way,' she said, and disappeared between some pillars to our right. We followed more slowly, groping our way ever more carefully as we went further and further from the daylight at the cellar door. We heard Gwenhwyvach lifting a door-bar, then a breath of cold air wafted by us as she pulled a huge door open. 'Is this a temple of Isis?' I asked her.

'You've heard about it?' Gwenhwyvach seemed disappointed.

'Guinevere showed me her temple in Durnovaria,' I said, 'years ago.'

'She wouldn't show you this one,' Gwenhwyvach said, and then she pulled aside the thick black curtains that hung a few feet inside the temple doors so that Ceinwyn and I could stare into Guinevere's private shrine. Gwenhwyvach, for fear of her sister's wrath, would not let me tread beyond the small lobby that lay between the door and the thick curtains, but she led Ceinwyn down two steps into the long room that had a floor made of polished black stone, walls and an arched ceiling painted with pitch, a black stone dais with a black stone throne, and behind the throne another black curtain. In front of the low dais was a shallow pit which, I knew, was tilled with water during Isis's ceremonies. The temple, in truth, was almost exactly the same as the one Guinevere had shown me so many years before, and very like the deserted shrine we had discovered in Lindinis's palace. The only difference - other than that this cellar was larger and lower than both those previous temples - was that here daylight had been allowed to penetrate, for there was a wide hole in the arched ceiling directly above the shallow pit. 'There's a wall up there,' Gwenhwyvach whispered, pointing up the hole, 'higher than a man. That's so the moonlight can come down the shaft, but no one can see down it. Clever, isn't it?'

The existence of the moon-shaft suggested that the cellar had to run out under the side garden of the palace and Gwenhwyvach confirmed that. 'There used to be an entrance here,' she said, pointing to a jagged line in the pitch-covered brickwork halfway down the temple's length, 'so that supplies could be brought directly into the cellar, but Guinevere extended the arch, see? And covered it over with turf.'

There seemed nothing unduly sinister about the temple, other than its malevolent blackness, for there was no idol, no sacrificial fire and no altar. If anything, it was disappointing, for the arched cellar possessed none of the grandeur of the upstairs rooms. It seemed tawdry, even slightly soiled. The Romans, I thought, would have known how to make this room fit for the G.o.ddess, but Guinevere's best efforts had simply turned a brick cellar into a black cave, though the low throne, which was made from a single block of black stone and was, I presumed, the same throne that I had seen in Durnovaria, was impressive enough. Gwenhwyvach walked past the throne and plucked aside the black curtain so that Ceinwyn could go beyond. They spent a long time behind the curtain, but when we left the cellars Ceinwyn told me there was not much to see there. 'It was just a small black room,' she told me, 'with a big bed and a lot of mouse droppings.'

'A bed?' I asked suspiciously.

'A dream-bed,' Ceinwyn said firmly, 'just like the one that used to be halfway up Merlin's tower.'

'Is that all it is?' I asked, still suspicious.

Ceinwyn shrugged. 'Gwenhwyvach tried to suggest it was used for other purposes,' she said disapprovingly, 'but she had no proof, and she did finally admit that her sister slept there to receive dreams.' She smiled sadly. 'I think poor Gwenhwyvach is touched in the head. She believes Lancelot will come for her one day'

'She believes what?' I asked in astonishment.

'She's in love with him, poor woman,' Ceinwyn said. We had tried to persuade Gwenhwyvach to join us at the celebrations in the front garden, but she had refused. She would not, she had confided to us, be welcome and so she had hurried away, darting suspicious glances left and right. 'Poor Gwenhwyvach.'

Ceinwyn said, then laughed. 'It's so typical of Guinevere, isn't it?'

'What is?'

'To adopt such an exotic religion! Why can't she worship the G.o.ds of Britain like the rest of us? But no, she has to find something strange and difficult.' She sighed, then put an arm through mine. 'Do we really have to stay for the feast?'

She was feeling weak for she had still not fully recovered from the last birth. 'Arthur will understand if we don't go,' I said.

'But Guinevere won't,' she sighed, 'so I had better survive.'

We had been walking around the long western flank of the palace, past the high timber palisade of the temple's moon-shaft, and had now reached the end of the long arcade. I stopped her before we turned the corner and I put my hands on her shoulders. 'Ceinwyn of Powys,' I said, looking into her astonishing and lovely face, 'I do love you.'

'I know,' she said with a smile, then stood on tiptoe to kiss me before leading me a few paces on so that we could gaze up the length of the Sea Palace's pleasure garden. 'There,' Ceinwyn said with amus.e.m.e.nt, 'is Arthur's Brotherhood of Britain.'

The garden was reeling with drunken men. They had been kept too long from the feast so now they were offering each other elaborate embraces and flowery promises of eternal friendship. Some of the embraces had turned into wrestling matches that rolled fiercely over Guinevere's flower beds. The choirs had long abandoned their attempts to sing solemn music and some of the choirs' women were now drinking with the warriors. Not all the men were drunk, of course, but the sober guests had retreated to the terrace to protect the women, many of whom were Guinevere's attendants and among whom was Lunete, my first and long-ago love. Guinevere was also on the terrace, from where she was staring in horror at the wreckage being made of her garden, though it was her own fault for she had served mead brewed especially strong and now at least fifty men were roistering in the gardens; some had plucked flower stakes to use in mock sword fights and at least one man had a b.l.o.o.d.y face, while another was working free a loosened tooth and foully cursins the oath-sworn Brother of Britain who had struck him. Someone else had vomited onto the round table.

I helped Ceinwyn up to the safety of the arcade while beneath us the Brotherhood of Britain cursed and fought and drank itself insensible.

And that, although Igraine will never believe me, was how Arthur's Brotherhood of Britain, that the ignorant still call the Round Table, all began.

I would like to say that the new spirit of peace engendered by Arthur's Round Table oath spread happiness throughout the kingdom, but most common folk were quite unaware that the oath had even been taken. Most people neither knew nor cared what their lords did so long as their fields and families were left unmolested. Arthur, of course, set great store by the oath. As Ceinwyn often said, for a man who claimed to hate oaths he was uncommonly fond of making them.

But at least the oath was kept in those years and Britain prospered in that period of peace. Aelle and Cerdic fought each other for the mastery of Lloegyr, and their bitter conflict spared the rest of Britain from their Saxon spears. The Irish Kings in western Britain were forever testing their weapons against British shields, but those conflicts were small and scattered, and most of us enjoyed a long period of peace. Mordred's Council, of which I was now a member, could concern itself with laws, taxes and land disputes instead of worrying about enemies.

Arthur headed the Council, though he never took the chair at the table's head because that was the throne reserved for the King and it waited empty until Mordred came of age. Merlin was officially the King's chief councillor, but he never travelled to Durnovaria and said little on the few occasions that the Council met in Lindinis. Half a dozen of the councillors were warriors, though most of those never came. Agravain said the business bored him, while Sagramor preferred to keep the Saxon frontier peaceful. The other councillors were two bards who knew the laws and genealogies of Britain, two magistrates, a merchant, and two Christian bishops. One of the bishops was a grave, elderly man called Emrys, who had succeeded Bedwin as bishop in Durnovaria, and the other was Sansum. Sansum had once conspired against Arthur and few men doubted that he should have lost his head when that conspiracy was revealed, but Sansum had somehow slithered free. He never learned to read or write, but he was a clever man and endlessly ambitious. He came from Gwent, where his father had been a tanner, and Sansum had risen to become one of Tewdric's priests, but he came to real prominence by marrying Arthur and Guinevere when they fled like fugitives from Caer Sws. He was rewarded for that service by being made a Dumnonian Bishop and Mordred's chaplain, though he lost the latter honour after he conspired with Nabur and Melwas. He was supposed to rot in obscurity after that as the guardian of the shrine of the Holy Thorn, but Sansum could not abide obscurity. He had saved Lancelot from the humiliation of Mithras's rejection, and in so doing he had earned Guinevere's wary grat.i.tude, but neither his friendship with Lancelot nor his truce with Guinevere would have been sufficient to lift him onto Dumnonia's Council.

He had achieved that eminence by marriage, and the woman he married was Arthur's older sister, Morgan - Morgan, the priestess of Merlin, the adept of the mysteries, the pagan Morgan. With that marriage Sansum had sloughed off all traces of his old disgrace and had risen to the topmost heights of Dumnonian power. He had been placed on the Council, made Bishop of Lindinis and was reappointed as Mordred's chaplain, though luckily his distaste for the young King kept him away from Lindinis's palace. He a.s.sumed authority over all the churches in northern Dumnonia, just as Emrys held sway over all the southern churches. For Sansum it was a glittering marriage, and to the rest of us it was an astonishment. The wedding itself took place in the church of the Holy Thorn at Ynys Wydryn. Arthur and Guinevere stayed at Lindinis, and we all rode to the shrine together on the great day. The ceremonies began with Morgan's baptism in the reed-edged waters of Issa's Mere. She had abandoned her old gold mask with its image of the horned G.o.d Cernunnos and had instead adopted a new mask that was decorated with a Christian cross and, to mark the day's joyousness, she had abandoned her usual black robe for a white gown. Arthur had cried with joy to see his sister limp into the mere where Sansum, with evident tenderness, supported her back as he lowered her into the water. A choir sang hallelujahs. We waited while Morgan dried herself and changed into a new white robe, then we watched as she limped to the altar where Bishop Emrys joined them as man and wife.

I think I could not have been more astonished had Merlin himself abandoned the old G.o.ds to take up the cross. For Sansum, of course, it was a double triumph, for by marrying Arthur's sister he not only vaulted into the kingdom's royal Council, but by converting her to Christianity he struck a famous blow against the pagans. Some men sourly accused him of opportunism, but in all fairness I think he did love Morgan in his own calculating way and she undoubtedly adored him. They were two clever people united by resentments. Sansum ever believed that he should be higher than he was, while Morgan, who had once been beautiful, resented the fire that had twisted her body and turned her face into a horror. She resented Nimue too, for Morgan had once been Merlin's most trusted priestess and the younger Nimue had usurped that place and now, in revenge, Morgan became the most ardent of Christians. She was as strident in her protestations of Christ as she had ever been in her service of the older G.o.ds and after her marriage all her formidable will was poured into Sansum's missionary campaign. Merlin did not attend the marriage, but he did derive amus.e.m.e.nt from it. 'She's lonely,' he told me when he heard the news, 'and the mouse-lord is at least company. You don't think they rut together, do you? Dear G.o.ds, Derfel, if poor Morgan undressed in front of Sansum he'd throw up! Besides, he doesn't know how to rut. Not with women, anyway.'

Marriage did not soften Morgan. In Sansum she found a man willing to be guided by her shrewd advice and whose ambitions she could support with all her fierce energy, but to the rest of the world she was still the shrewish, bitter woman behind the forbidding golden mask. She still lived in Ynys Wydryn, though instead of living on Merlin's Tor she now inhabited the Bishop's house in the shrine from where she could see the fire-scarred Tor where her enemy, Nimue, lived.

Nimue, bereft of Merlin now, was convinced that Morgan had stolen the Treasures of Britain. As far as I could see, that conviction was based solely on Nimue's hatred for Morgan whom Nimue considered the greatest traitor of Britain. Morgan, after all, was the pagan priestess who had abandoned the G.o.ds to turn Christian, and Nimue, whenever she saw Morgan, spat and hurled curses that Morgan energetically flung back at her; pagan threat battling Christian doom. They would never be civil with each other, though once, at Nimue's urging, I did confront Morgan about the lost Cauldron. That was a year after the marriage and, though I was now a Lord and one of the wealthiest men in Dumnonia, I still felt nervous of Morgan. When I had been a child she had been a figure of awesome authority and terrifying appearance who had ruled the Tor with a brusque bad temper and an ever-ready staff with which we all were disciplined. Now, so many years later, I found her just as alarming. I met her in one of Sansum's new buildings in Ynys Wydryn. The largest was the size of a royal feasting hall and was the school where dozens of priests were trained as missionaries. Those priests began their lessons at six years old, were proclaimed holy at sixteen and then sent on Britain's roads to gain converts. I often met those fervent men on my travels. They walked in pairs, carrying only a small bag and a staff, though sometimes they were accompanied by groups of women who seemed curiously drawn to the missionaries. They had no fear. Whenever I encountered them they would always challenge me and dare me to deny their G.o.d, and I would always courteously admit his existence then insist that my own G.o.ds lived too, and at that they would hurl curses at me and their women would wail and howl insults. Once, when two such fanatics frightened my daughters, I used the b.u.t.t of a spear on them and I admit I used it too hard, for at the end of the argument there was a broken skull and a shattered wrist, neither of them mine. Arthur insisted I stand trial as a demonstration that even the most privileged Dumnonians were not above the law, and thus I went to the Lindinis courthouse where a Christian magistrate charged me the bone-price of half my own weight in silver.

'You should have been whipped,' Morgan evidently remembered the incident and snapped her verdict at me when I was admitted to her presence. 'Whipped raw and b.l.o.o.d.y. In public!'

'I think even you would find that difficult now, Lady,' I said mildly.

'G.o.d would give me the needful strength,' she snarled from behind her new gold mask with its Christian cross. She sat at a table that was piled with parchment and ink-covered wood-shavings, for she not only ran Sansum's school, but tallied the treasuries of every church and monastery in northern Dumnonia, though the achievement of which she was most proud was her community of holy women who chanted and prayed in their own hall where men were not allowed to set foot. I could hear their sweet voices singing now as Morgan looked me up and down. She evidently did not much like what she saw. 'If you've come for more money,' she snapped, 'you can't have it. Not till you repay the loans outstanding.'

'There are no outstanding loans that I know of,' I said mildly.

'Nonsense.' She s.n.a.t.c.hed up one of the wood-shavings and read out a fict.i.tious list of unpaid loans. I let her have her say, then gently told her that the Council did not seek to borrow money from the church. 'And if it did,' I added, 'then I'm sure your husband would have told you.'

'And I'm sure,' she said, 'that you pagans on the Council are plotting things behind the saint's back.'

She sniffed. 'How is my brother?'

'Busy, Lady.'

'Too busy to come and see me, plainly.'

'And you're too busy to visit him,' I said pleasantly.

'Me? Go to Durnovaria? And face that witch Guinevere?' She made the sign of the cross, then dipped her hand in a bowl of water and made the sign again. 'I would rather walk into h.e.l.l and see Satan himself,' she said, 'than see that witch of Isis!' She was about to spit to avert evil, then remembered to make another sign of the cross instead. 'Do you know what rites Isis demands?' she asked me angrily.