'But Culhwch still lives,' he said in a puzzled voice. 'Does he not still live?'

'He lives, Lord King,' I said.

Mordred smiled. 'A broken oath, Lord Derfel, deserves punishment. Isn't that what you always taught me?'

'Yes, Lord King.'

'And the oath, Lord Derfel, was sworn on your life, was it not?'

'Yes, Lord King.'

He scratched at his thin beard. 'But your daughters are pretty Derfel, so I would be sorry to lose you from Dumnonia. I forgive you that Culhwch still lives.'

'Thank you, Lord King,' I said, fighting back a temptation to hit him.

'But a broken oath still deserves punishment,' he said excitedly.

'Yes, Lord King,' I agreed. 'It does.'

He paused a heartbeat, then struck me hard across the face with the leather flail of justice. He laughed, and was so delighted with the surprised reaction on my face that he hit me with the flail a second time.

'Punishment given, Lord Derfel,' he said, then turned away. His supporters laughed and applauded. We did not stay for the feast, nor for the wrestling matches and the mock bouts of swordplay and the displays of juggling, nor for the tame dancing bear and the compet.i.tion of the bards. We walked, a family, back to Lindinis. We walked beside the stream where the willows grew and the purple loosestrife flowered. We walked home.

Cuneglas followed us within the hour. He planned to stay with us for one week, then he would go back to Powys. 'Come back with me,' he said.

'I'm sworn to Mordred, Lord King.'

'Oh, Derfel, Derfel!' He put his arm around my neck and walked up the outer courtyard with me. 'My dear Derfel, you're as bad as Arthur! You think Mordred cares if you keep your oath?'

'I hope he doesn't want me as an enemy.'

'Who knows what he wants?' Cuneglas asked. 'Girls, probably, and fast horses and running deer and strong mead. Come home, Derfel! Culhwch will be there.'

'I shall miss him, Lord,' I said. I had hoped that Culhwch would be waiting at Lindinis when we returned from Caer Cadarn, but he had plainly not dared waste a moment and was already racing north to escape the spearmen who would be sent to find him before he crossed the frontier. Cuneglas abandoned his attempt to persuade me north. 'What was that rogue Oengus doing there?'

he asked me peevishly. 'And making that promise to keep the peace too!'

'He knows, Lord King,' I said, 'that if he loses Arthur's friendship then your spears will invade his land.'

'He's right,' Cuneglas said grimly. 'Maybe I'll give that job to Culhwch. Will Arthur have any power now?'

'That depends on Mordred.'

'Let's a.s.sume Mordred isn't a complete fool. I can't comprehend Dumnonia without Arthur.' He turned as a shout from the gate announced more visitors. I half expected to see dragon shields and a party of Mordred's men searching for Culhwch, but instead it was Arthur and Oengus Mac Airem who had arrived with a score of spearmen. Arthur hesitated at the gate's threshold. 'Am I welcome?' he called to me.

'Of course, Lord,' I replied, though not warmly.

My daughters spied him from a window and a moment later they ran shrieking to welcome him. Cuneglas joined them, pointedly ignoring King Oengus Mac Airem who crossed to my side. I bowed, but Oengus pushed me upright and enfolded me in his arms. His fur collar stank of sweat and old grease. He grinned at me. 'Arthur tells me you haven't fought a decent war in ten years,' he said.

'It must be that long, Lord.'

'You'll be out of practice, Derfel. First proper fight and some slip of a boy will rip your belly out to feed his hounds. How are you?'

'Older than I was, Lord. But well. And you?'

'I'm still alive,' he said, then glanced back at Cuneglas. 'I a.s.sume the King of Powys doesn't want to greet me?'

'He feels, Lord King, that your spearmen are too busy on his frontier.'

Oengus laughed. 'Have to keep them busy, Derfel, you know that. Idle spearmen are trouble. And besides, I've got too many of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds these days. Ireland's going Christian!' he spat. 'Some interfering Briton called Padraig turned them into milksops. You never dared conquer us with your spears so you sent that piece of seal s.h.i.t to weaken us, and any Irishman with proper guts is coming to the Irish kingdoms in Britain to escape his Christians. He preached to them with a clover leaf! Can you imagine that? Conquering Ireland with a clover leaf? No wonder all the decent warriors are coming to me, but what can I do with them?'

'Send them to kill Padraig?' I suggested.

'He's dead already, Derfel, but his followers are all too much alive.' Oengus had drawn me into a corner of the courtyard where he stopped and looked up into my face. 'I hear you tried to protect my daughter.'

'I did, Lord,' I said. I saw that Ceinwyn had come from the palace and was embracing Arthur. They held each other as they talked and as Ceinwyn glanced reprovingly towards me. I turned back to Oengus. 'I drew a sword for her, Lord King.'

'Good of you, Derfel,' he said carelessly, 'good of you, but it isn't important. I've several daughters. Not even sure I can remember which one Iseult was. Skinny little thing, yes?'

'A beautiful girl, Lord King.'

He laughed. 'Anything young with t.i.ts is beautiful when you're old. I do have one beauty in the brood. Argante, she's called, and she'll break a few hearts before her life's done. Your new King will be looking for a bride, won't he?'

'I suppose so.'

'Argante would do for him,' Oengus said. He was not being kind to Mordred by suggesting his beautiful daughter as Dumnonia's Queen, but rather making sure that Dumnonia would go on protecting Demetia from the men of Powys. 'Maybe I'll bring Argante on a visit here,' he said. Then he abandoned the subject of that possible marriage and shoved a scarred fist hard into my chest. 'Listen, my friend,' he said forcefully, 'it isn't worth falling out with Arthur over Iseult.'

'Is that why he brought you here, Lord?' I asked suspiciously.

'Of course it is, you fool!' Oengus said happily. 'And because I can't stand all those Christians on the Caer. Make your peace, Derfel. Britain isn't so big that decent men can start spitting at each other. I hear Merlin lives here?'

'You'll find him through there,' I said, pointing towards an arch that led to a garden where Ceinwyn's roses blossomed, 'what's left of him.'

'I'll go and kick some life into the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Maybe he can tell me what's so special about a clover leaf. And I need a charm to help me make new daughters.' He laughed and walked away. 'Getting old, Derfel, getting old!'

Arthur gave my three daughters into the keeping of Ceinwyn and their Uncle Cuneglas, then walked towards me. I hesitated, then gestured through the outer gate and walked ahead of him into the meadows where I waited and stared at Caer Cadarn's banner-hung ramparts above the intervening trees. He stopped behind me. 'It was at Mordred's first acclamation,' he said softly, 'that you and I first met Tristan. Do you remember?'

I did not turn round. 'Yes. Lord.'

'I am no longer your lord, Derfel,' he said. 'Our oath to Uther is done, it's finished. I am not your lord, but I would be your friend.' He hesitated. 'And for what happened,' he went on, 'I am sorry.'

I still did not turn round. Not out of pride, but because there were tears in my eyes. 'I am sorry too,' I said.

'Will you forgive me?' he asked humbly. 'Will we be friends?'

I stared at the Caer and thought of all the things I had done that needed forgiveness. I thought of the bodies on the moor. I had been a young spearman then, but youth was no excuse for slaughter. It was not up to me, I thought, to forgive Arthur for what he had done. He had to do that for himself. 'We shall be friends,' I said, 'till death.' And then I turned.

And we embraced. Our oath to Uther was done. And Mordred was King.

PART FOUR.

The Mysteries of Isis

Was Iseult beautiful?' Igraine asks me.

I thought about the question for a few heartbeats. 'She was young,' I said at last, 'and as her father said . . .'

'I read what her father said,' Igraine interrupted me curtly. When she comes to Dinnewrac Igraine always sits and reads through the finished skins before sitting on the window-sill and talking to me. Today that window is hung with a leather curtain to try and keep the cold out of the room, which is badly lit with rush lights on my writing-desk and filled with smoke because the wind is in the north and the smoke from the fire cannot find its way out of the roof-hole.

'It was a long time ago,' I said wearily, 'and I only saw her for a day and two nights. I remember her as beautiful, but I suppose we always make the dead beautiful if they are young.'

'The songs all say she was beautiful,' Igraine said wistfully.

'I paid the bards for those songs,' I said. Just as I had paid men to carry Tristan's ashes back to Kernow. It was right, I had thought, that Tristan should go to his own land in death, and I had mixed his bones and Iseult's bones, and his ashes and her ashes, and no doubt a fair amount of ordinary wood ash too, and sealed them all in a jar we found in the hall where they had shared their impossible dream of love. I had been wealthy then, a great lord, master of slaves and servants and spearmen, wealthy enough to buy a dozen songs about Tristan and Iseult that are sung to this day in all the feasting halls. I made sure, too, that the songs put the blame for their deaths on Arthur.

'But why did Arthur do it?' Igraine said.

I rubbed my face with my one hand. 'Arthur worshipped order,' I explained. 'I don't think he ever really believed in the G.o.ds. Oh, he believed they existed, he was no fool, but he didn't think they cared about us any more. I remember he once laughed and said it was so arrogant of us to think that the G.o.ds had nothing better to do than to worry about us. Do we lose sleep over the mice in the thatch? He asked me. So why would the G.o.ds care about us? So all that was left to him, if you took away the G.o.ds, was order, and the only thing that kept order was the law, and the only thing that made the powerful obey the law was their oaths. It was really quite simple.' I shrugged. 'He was right, of course; he almost always was.'

'He should have let them live,' Igraine insisted.

'He obeyed the law,' I said bleakly. I have often regretted allowing the bards to blame Arthur, but he forgave me.

'And Iseult was burned alive?' Igraine shuddered. 'And Arthur just let it happen?'

'He could be very hard,' I said, 'and he had to be, for the rest of us, G.o.d knows, could be soft.'

'He should have spared them,' Igraine insisted.

'And there would have been no songs or stories if he had,' I answered. 'They would have grown old and fat and squabbled and died. Or else Tristan would have gone home to Kernow when his father died and taken other wives. Who knows?'

'How long did Mark live?' Igraine asked me.

'Just another year,' I said. 'He died of the strangury.'

'The what?'

I smiled. 'A foul disease, Lady. Women, I think, are not subject to it. A nephew became King then, and I can't even remember his name.'

Igraine grimaced. 'But you can remember Iseult running from the sea,' she said accusingly, 'because her dress was wet.'

I smiled. 'Like it was yesterday, Lady.'

'The Sea of Galilee,' Igraine said brightly, for St Tudwal had suddenly come into our room. Tudwal is now ten or eleven years old, a thin boy with black hair and a face that reminds me of Cerdic. A rat face. He shares both Sansum's cell and his authority. How lucky we are to have two saints in our small community.

'The saint wishes you to decipher these parchments,' Tudwal demanded, putting them on my table. He ignored Igraine. Saints, it seems, can be rude to queens.

'What are they?' I asked him.

'A merchant wants to sell them to us,' Tudwal said. 'He claims they're psalms, but the saint's eyes are too dim to read them.'

'Of course,' I said. The truth, of course, is that Sansum cannot read at all and Tudwal is much too lazy to learn, though we have all tried to teach him and we all now pretend that he can. I carefully uncurled the parchment that was old, cracking and feeble. The language was Latin, a tongue I can barely understand, but I did see the word Christus. 'They aren't psalms,' I said, 'but they are Christian. I suspect they're gospel fragments.'

'The merchant wants four pieces of gold.'

'Two pieces,' I said, though I did not really care whether we bought them or not. I let the parchments curl up. 'Did the man say where he got them?' I asked.

Tudwal shrugged. 'The Saxons.'

'We should certainly preserve them,' I said dutifully, handing them back. 'They should be in the treasure store.' Where, I thought, Hywelbane rested with all the other small treasures I had brought from my old life. All but for Ceinwyn's little golden brooch that I keep hidden from the older saint. I humbly thanked the younger saint for consulting me, and bowed my head as he left.

'Spotty little toad,' Igraine said when Tudwal had gone. She spat towards the fire. 'Are you a Christian, Derfel?'

'Of course I am, Lady!' I protested. 'What a question!'

She frowned quizzically at me. 'I ask it,' she said, 'because it seems to me that you are less of a Christian today than you were when you began writing this tale.'

That, I thought, was a clever observation. And a true one too, but I dared not confess it openly for Sansum would love to have an excuse to accuse me of heresy and burn me to death. He wouldn't stint on that firewood, I thought, even if he did ration what we could burn in our hearths. I smiled. 'You make me remember the old things, Lady,' I said, 'that is all.' It was not all. The more I recall of the old years the more some of those old things come back to me. I touched an iron nail in my wooden writing-desk to avert the evil of Sansum's hatred. 'I long ago abandoned paganism,' I said.

'I wish I was a pagan,' Igraine said wistfully, drawing the beaver-pelt cloak tight about her shoulders. Her eyes are still bright and her face is so full of life that I am sure that she must be pregnant. 'Don't tell the saints I said that,' she added swiftly. 'And Mordred,' she asked, 'was he a Christian?'

'No. But he knew that was where his support in Dumnonia was, so he did enough to keep them happy. He let Sansum build his great church.'

'Where?'

'On Caer Cadarn.' I smiled, remembering it. 'It was never finished, but it was supposed to be a great big church in the form of a cross. He claimed the church would welcome the second coming of Christ in the year 500, and he pulled down most of the feasting hall and used its timbers to build the wall and the stone circle to make the church's foundations. He left the royal stone, of course. Then he took half the lands that belonged to Lindinis's palace and used their wealth to pay for the monks on Caer Cadarn.'

'Your land?'

I shook my head. 'It was never my land, always Mordred's. And, of course, Mordred wanted us evicted from Lindinis.'

'So he could live in the palace?'

'So Sansum could. Mordred moved into Uther's Winter Palace. He liked it there.'

'So where did you go?'

'We found a home,' I said. It was Ermid's old hall, south of Issa's Mere. The mere was not named for my Issa, of course, but for an old chieftain and Ermid had been another chief who had lived on its southern bank. When he died I had bought his lands, and after Sansum and Morgan took over Lindinis I moved there. The girls missed Lindinis's open corridors and echoing rooms, but I liked Ermid's Hall. It was old, thatched, shadowed by trees and full of spiders that made Morwenna scream and, for my oldest daughter's sake, I became Lord Derfel Cadarn, the slayer of spiders.

'Would you have killed Culhwch?' Igraine asks me.

'Of course not!'