'At her Sea Palace,' Bors said, 'under guard.'

'You keep women prisoners?' I asked scornfully.

'They are under guard, Derfel,' Bors answered just as scornfully, 'because Dumnonia's Christians are slaughtering their enemies. And those Christians, Lord Arthur, have no love for your wife. My Lord King Lancelot has your wife and son under his protection.'

'Then your Lord King Lancelot,' Arthur said with just a trace of sarcasm, 'can have them brought north under escort.'

'No,' Bors said. He was bare-headed and the heat of the sun was making the sweat run down his broad, scarred face.

'No?' Arthur asked dangerously.

'I have a message for you, Lord,' Bors said defiantly, 'and the message is this. My Lord King grants you the right to live in Dumnonia with your wife. You will be treated with honour, but only if you swear an oath of loyalty to my King.' He paused and glanced up into the sky. It was one of those portentous days when the moon shared the sky with the sun and he gestured towards the moon that was swollen somewhere between the half and the full. 'You have,' he said, 'until the moon is full to present yourself to my Lord King at Caer Cadarn. You may come with no more than ten men, you will swear your oath, and you may then live under his dominion in peace.'

I spat to show my opinion of his promise, but Arthur held up a hand to still my anger. 'And if I do not come?' he asked.

Another man might have been ashamed to deliver the message, but Bors showed no qualms. 'If you do not come,' he said, 'then my Lord King will presume that you are at war with him, in which case he will need every spear he can collect. Even those who now guard your wife and child.'

'So his Christians,' Arthur jerked his chin towards Sansum, 'can kill them?'

'She can always be baptized!' Sansum put in. He clutched the cross that hung over his black robe. 'I will guarantee her safety if she is baptized.'

Arthur stared at him. Then, very deliberately, he spat full in San-sum's face. The Bishop jerked back. Bors, I noticed, was amused and I suspected little affection was lost between Lancelot's champion and his chaplain. Arthur looked again at Bors. 'Tell me of Mordred,' he demanded. Bors looked surprised at the question. 'There's nothing to tell,' he said after a pause. 'He's dead.'

'You've seen his body?' Arthur asked.

Bors hesitated again, then shook his head. 'He was killed by a man whose daughter he had raped. Beyond that I know nothing. Except that my Lord King came into Dumnonia to quell the riots that followed the killing.' He paused as if he expected Arthur to say something more, but when nothing was said he just looked up at the moon. 'You have till the full,' he said and turned away.

'One minute!' I called, turning Bors back. 'What of me?' I asked.

Bors's hard eyes stared into mine. 'What of you?' he said scornfully.

'Does the killer of my daughter demand an oath of me?' I asked.

'My Lord King wants nothing of you,' Bors said.

'Then tell him,' I said, 'that I want something of him. Tell him I want the souls of Dinas and Lavaine, and if it is the last thing I do on this earth, I shall take them.'

Bors shrugged as though their deaths meant nothing to him, then looked back to Arthur. 'We shall be waiting at Caer Cadarn, Lord,' he said, then walked away. Sansum stayed to shout at us, telling us that Christ was coming in his glory and that all pagans and sinners would be wiped clean from the earth before that happy day. I spat at him, then turned and followed Arthur. Sansum dogged us, shouting at our heels, but then suddenly called my name. I ignored him. 'Lord Derfel!' he called again, 'you wh.o.r.emaster! You wh.o.r.e-lover!' He must have known those insults would draw me back to him in anger, and though he did not want my anger, he did want my attention. 'I meant nothing, Lord,' he said hastily as I hurried back towards him. 'I must talk with you. Quickly.' He glanced behind to make sure Bors was out of earshot, then gave another bellow demanding my repentance just to make certain that Bors thought he was hara.s.sing me. 'I thought you and Arthur were dead,' he said in a low voice.

'You arranged our deaths,' I accused him.

He blanched. 'On my soul, Derfel, no! No!' He made the sign of the cross. 'May the angels tear out my tongue and feed it to the devil if it lies to you. I swear by Almighty G.o.d, Derfel, that I knew nothing.'

That lie told, he glanced round again, then looked back to me. 'Dinas and Lavaine,' he said softly, 'stand guard over Guinevere at the Sea Palace. Remember it was I, Lord, who told you that.'

I smiled. 'You don't want Bors to know you betrayed that knowledge to me, do you?'

'No, Lord, please!'

'Then this should convince him of your innocence,' I said, and gave the mouse-lord a box round his ears that must have had his head ringing like the great bell at his shrine. He spun down to the turf from where he shrieked curses at me as I walked away. I understood now why Sansum had come to this high fortress beneath the sky. The mouse-lord could see clearly enough that Arthur's survival threatened Lancelot's new throne and no man could blithely keep his faith in a master who was opposed by Arthur. Sansum, just like his wife, was making sure I owed him thanks.

'What was that about?' Arthur asked me when I caught up with him.

'He told me Dinas and Lavaine are at the Sea Palace. They guard Guinevere.'

Arthur grunted, then looked up at the sun-blanched moon hanging above us. 'How many nights till the full, Derfel?'

'Five?' I guessed. 'Six? Merlin will know.'

'Six days to decide,' he said, then stopped and stared at me. 'Will they dare kill her?'

'No, Lord,' I said, hoping I was right. 'They daren't make an enemy out of you. They want you to come to take their oath and then they'll kill you. After that they might kill her.'

'And if I don't come,' he said softly, 'they'll still hold her. And so long as they hold her, Derfel, I'm helpless.'

'You have a sword, Lord, and a spear and a shield. No man would call you helpless.'

Behind us Bors and his men clambered into their saddles and rode away. We stayed a few moments longer to gaze west from Dun Ceinach's ramparts. It was one of the most beautiful views in all Britain, a hawk's-eye view west across the Severn and deep into distant Siluria. We could see for miles and miles, and from this high place it looked so sunlit, green and beautiful. It was a place to fight for. And we had six nights till the moon was full.

'Seven nights,' Merlin said.

'You're sure?' Arthur asked.

'Maybe six,' Merlin allowed. 'I do hope you don't expect me to make the computation? It's a very tedious business. I did it often enough for Uther and almost always got it wrong. Six or seven, near enough. Maybe eight.'

'Malaine will work it out,' Cuneglas said. We had returned from Dun Ceinach to rind that Cuneglas had come from Powys. He had brought Malaine with him after meeting the Druid who had been accompanying Ceinwyn and the other women northwards. The King of Powys had embraced me and sworn his own revenge on Dinas and Lavaine. He had brought sixty spearmen in his entourage and told us another hundred were already following him southwards. More would come, he said, for Cuneglas expected to fight and he was generously providing every warrior he commanded. His sixty warriors now squatted with Arthur's men around the edges of Glevum's great hall as their lords talked in the hall's centre. Only Sagramor was not there, for he was with his remaining spearmen harrying Cerdic's army near Corinium. Meurig was present, and unable to hide his annoyance that Merlin had taken the large chair at the head of the table. Cuneglas and Arthur flanked Merlin, Meurig faced Merlin down the table's length and Culhwch and I had the other two places. Culhwch had come to Glevum with Cuneglas and his arrival had been like a gust of fresh clean air in a smoky hall. He could not wait to fight. He declared that with Mordred dead Arthur was King of Dumnonia and Culhwch was ready to wade through blood to protect his cousin's throne. Cuneglas and I shared that belligerence, Meurig squeaked about prudence, Arthur said nothing, while Merlin appeared to be asleep. I doubted he was sleeping for a small smile showed on his face, but his eyes were closed as he pretended to be blissfully unaware of all we said.

Culhwch scorned Bors's message. He insisted Lancelot would never kill Guinevere, and that all Arthur needed to do was ride south at the head of his men and the throne would fall into his hands. 'Tomorrow!'

Culhwch told Arthur. 'We'll ride tomorrow. It'll all be over in two days.'

Cuneglas was slightly more cautious, advising Arthur that he should wait for the rest of his Powysian spearmen to arrive, but once those men had come he was sure we should declare war and go southwards. 'How big is Lancelot's army?' he asked.

Arthur shrugged. 'Not counting Cerdic's men? Maybe three hundred?'

'Nothing!' Culhwch roared. 'Have them dead before breakfast.'

'And a lot of fiery Christians,' Arthur warned him.

Culhwch offered an opinion of Christians that had the Christian Meurig spluttering with indignation. Arthur calmed the young King of Gwent. 'You're all forgetting something,' he said mildly. 'I never wanted to be King. I still don't.'

There was a momentary silence around the table, though some of the warriors at the hall's edge muttered a protest at Arthur's words. 'Whatever you might want,' Cuneglas broke our silence, 'does not matter any more. The G.o.ds, its seems, have made that decision for you.'

'If the G.o.ds wanted me to be King,' Arthur said, 'they would have arranged for my mother to have been married to Uther.'

'So what do you want?' Culhwch bellowed in despair.

'I want Guinevere and Gwydre back,' Arthur said softly. 'And Cerdic defeated,' he added before staring down at the table's scarred top for a moment. 'I want to live,' he went on, 'like an ordinary man. With a wife and a son and a house and a farm. I want peace,' and for once he was not talking of all Britain, but just of himself. 'I don't want to be tangled in oaths, I don't want to be forever dealing with men's ambitions and I don't want to be the arbiter of men's happiness any more. I just want to do what King Tewdric did. I want to find a green place and live there.'

'And rot away?' Merlin gave up his pretence of sleep.

Arthur smiled. 'There is so much to learn, Merlin. Why does a man make two swords from the same metal in the same fire and one blade will be true and the other will bend in its first battle? There is so much to find out.'

'He wants to be a blacksmith,' Merlin said to Culhwch.

'What I want is Guinevere and Gwydre back,' Arthur declared firmly.

'Then you must take Lancelot's oath,' Meurig said.

'If he goes to Caer Cadarn to take Lancelot's oath,' I said bitterly, 'he'll be met by a hundred armed men and cut down like a dog.'

'Not if I take Kings with me,' Arthur said gently.

We all stared at him and he seemed surprised that we had been nonplussed by his words. 'Kings?'

Culhwch finally broke the silence.

Arthur smiled. 'If my Lord King Cuneglas and my Lord King Meurig were to ride with me to Caer Cadarn then I doubt that Lancelot would dare to kill me. If he's faced by the Kings of Britain he will have to talk, and if he talks we shall come to an agreement. He fears me, but if he discovers there is nothing to fear, he will let me live. And he will let my family live.'

There was another silence while we digested that, then Culhwch roared a protest. 'You'd let that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Lancelot be King?' Some of the spearmen at the hall's edge growled their agreement.

'Cousin, cousin!' Arthur soothed Culhwch. 'Lancelot is not an evil man. He's weak, I think, but not evil. He doesn't make plans, he has no dreams, but only a greedy eye and quick hands. He s.n.a.t.c.hes things as they appear, then h.o.a.rds them and waits for another thing to s.n.a.t.c.h. He wants me dead now, because he fears me, but when he discovers the price of my death is too high, then he'll accept what he can get.'

'He'll accept your death, you fool!' Culhwch hammered the table with his fist. 'He'll tell you a thousand lies, protest his friendship and slide a sword between your ribs the moment your Kings have gone home.'

'He'll lie to me,' Arthur agreed placidly. 'All kings lie. No kingdom could be ruled without lies, for lies are the things we use to build our reputations. We pay the bards to make our squalid victories into great triumphs and sometimes we even believe the lies they sing to us. Lancelot would love to believe all those songs, but the truth is that he's weak and he desperately craves strong friends. He fears me now, for he a.s.sumes my enmity, but when he discovers I am not an enemy then he will also find that he needs me. He will need every man he can find if he's to rid Dumnonia of Cerdic'

'And who invited Cerdic into Dumnonia?' Culhwch protested. 'Lancelot did!'

'And he'll regret it soon,' Arthur said calmly. 'He used Cerdic to s.n.a.t.c.h his prize, and he'll find Cerdic is a dangerous ally.'

'You'd fight for Lancelot?' I asked, horrified.

'I will fight for Britain,' Arthur said firmly. 'I can't ask men to die to make me what I don't want to be, but I can ask them to fight for their homes and their wives and their children. And that's what I fight for. For Guinevere. And to defeat Cerdic, and once he is defeated, what does it matter if Lancelot rules Dumnonia? Someone has to and I dare say he'll make a better King that Mordred ever did.' Again there was silence. A hound whined at the edge of the hall and a spearman sneezed. Arthur looked at us and saw we were still bemused. 'If I fight Lancelot,' he told us, 'then we go back to the Britain we had before Lugg Vale. A Britain in which we fight each other instead of the Saxons. There is only one principle here, and that is Uther's old insistence that the Saxons must be kept from the Severn Sea. And now,' he said vigorously, 'the Saxons are closer to the Severn than they've ever been. If I tight for a throne I don't want I give Cerdic the chance to take Corinium and then this city, and if he does take Cilevum then he has split us into two parts. If I fight Lancelot then the Saxons will win everything. They'll take Dumnonia and Gwent and after that they'll go north into Powys.'

'Exactly.' Meurig applauded Arthur.

'I won't fight for Lancelot,' I said angrily and Culhwch applauded me. Arthur smiled at me. 'My dear friend Derfel, I would not expect you to fight for Lancelot, though I do want your men to fight Cerdic. And my price for helping Lancelot defeat Cerdic is that he gives you Dinas and Lavaine.'

I stared at him. I had not understood till that moment just how far ahead he had been thinking. The rest of us had seen nothing but Lancelot's treachery, but Arthur was thinking only of Britain and of the desperate need to keep the Saxons away from the Severn. He would brush Lancelot's hostility aside, force my revenge on him, then go on with the work of defeating Saxons.

'And the Christians?' Culhwch asked derisively. 'You think they'll let you back into Dumnonia? You think those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds won't build a bonfire for you?'

Meurig squawked another protest that Arthur stilled. 'The Christian fervour will spend itself,' Arthur said. 'It's like a madness, and once it's exhausted they'll go home to pick up the pieces of their lives. And once Cerdic is defeated Lancelot can pacify Dumnonia. I shall just live with my family, which is all I want.'

Cuneglas had been leaning back in his chair to stare at the remaining patches of Roman paintings on the hall's ceiling. Now he straightened and looked at Arthur. 'Tell me again what you want,' he asked softly.

'I want the Britons at peace,' Arthur said patiently, 'and I want Cerdic pushed back, and I want my family.'

Cuneglas looked at Merlin. 'Well, Lord?' he invited the old man's judgment. Merlin had been tying two of his beard braids into knots, but now he looked mildly startled and hastily untangled the strands. 'I doubt that the G.o.ds want what Arthur wants,' he said. 'You are all forgetting the Cauldron.'

'This has nothing to do with the Cauldron,' Arthur said firmly.

'It has everything to do with it,' Merlin said with a sudden and surprising harshness, 'and the Cauldron brings chaos. You desire order, Arthur, and you think that Lancelot will listen to your reason and that Cerdic will submit to your sword, but your reasonable order will no more work in the future than it worked in the past. Do you really think men and women thanked you for bringing them peace? They just became bored with your peace and so brewed their own trouble to fill the boredom. Men don't want peace, Arthur, they want distraction from tedium, while you desire tedium like a thirsty man seeks mead. Your reason won't defeat the G.o.ds, and the G.o.ds will make sure of that. You think you can crawl away to a homestead and play at being a blacksmith? No.' Merlin gave an evil smile and picked up his long black staff. 'Even at this moment,' Merlin said, 'the G.o.ds are making trouble for you.' He pointed the staff at the hall's front doors. 'Behold your trouble, Arthur ap Uther.'

We all turned to see Galahad standing in the doorway. He was clothed in mail armour, had a sword at his side and spatters of mud up to his waist. And with him was a miserable, club-footed, squashed-nosed, round-faced, skimpy-bearded brush-head.

For Mordred still lived.

There was an astonished silence. Mordred limped into the hall and his small eyes betrayed his resentment for the lack of welcome. Arthur just stared at his oath-lord and I knew he was undoing in his head all the careful plans he had just described to us. There could be no reasonable peace with Lancelot, for Arthur's oath-lord still lived. Dumnonia still possessed a King, and it was not Lancelot. It was Mordred and Mordred had Arthur's oath.

Then the silence broke as men gathered round the King to discover his news. Galahad stepped aside to embrace me. 'Thank G.o.d you live,' he said with heartfelt relief.

I smiled at my friend. 'Do you expect me to thank you for saving my King's life?' I asked him.

'Someone should, for he hasn't. He's an ungrateful little beast,' Galahad said. 'G.o.d knows why he lives and so many good men died. Llywarch, Bedwyr, Dagonet, Blaise. All gone.' He was naming those of Arthur's warriors who had been killed in Durnovaria. Some of the deaths I had already known, others were new to me, but Galahad did know more about the manner of their deaths. He had been in Durnovaria when the rumour of Mordred's death had sparked the Christians into riot, but Galahad swore there had been spearmen among the rioters. He believed Lancelot's men had infiltrated the town under the guise of pilgrims travelling to Ynys Wydryn and that those spearmen had led the ma.s.sacre. 'Most of Arthur's men were in the taverns,' he said, 'and they stood little chance. A few survived, but G.o.d alone knows where they are now.' He made the sign of the cross. 'This isn't Christ's doing, Derfel, you do know that, don't you? It's the devil at work.' He gave me a pained, almost frightened look. 'Is it true about Dian?'

'True,' I said. Galahad embraced me wordlessly. He had never married and had no children, but he loved my daughters. He loved all children. 'Dinas and Lavaine killed her,' I told him, 'and they live still.'

'My sword is yours,' he said.

'I know it,' I said.

'And if this was Christ's doing,' Galahad said earnestly, 'then Dinas and Lavaine would not be serving Lancelot.'

'I don't blame your G.o.d,' I told him. 'I don't blame any G.o.d.' I turned to watch the commotion around Mordred. Arthur was shouting for silence and order, servants had been sent to bring food and clothes fit for a King and other men were trying to hear his news. 'Didn't Lancelot demand your oath?' I asked Galahad.

'He didn't know I was in Durnovaria. I was staying with Bishop Emrys and the Bishop gave me a monk's robe to wear over this,' he patted his mail coat, 'then I went north. Poor Emrys is distraught. He thinks his Christians have gone mad and I think they have too. I suppose I could have stayed and fought, but I didn't. I ran. I had heard that you and Arthur were dead, but I didn't believe it. I thought I'd find you, but I found our King instead.' He told me how Mordred had been hunting boar north of Durnovaria, and Lancelot, Galahad believed, had sent men to intercept the King as he returned to Durnovaria; but some village girl had taken Mordred's fancy and by the time he and his companions were done with her it was near dark, and so he had commandeered the village's largest house and ordered food. His a.s.sa.s.sins had waited at the city's northern gate while Mordred feasted a dozen miles away, and some time during that evening Lancelot's men must have decided to start the killing even though the Dumnonian King had somehow escaped their ambush. They had spread a rumour of his death and used that rumour to justify Lancelot's usurpation.

Mordred heard of the troubles when the first fugitives arrived from Durnovaria. Most of his companions had melted away, the villagers were summoning the courage to kill the King who had raped one of their girls and stolen much of their food, and Mordred had panicked. He and his last friends fled north in villagers' clothes. 'They were trying to reach Caer Cadarn,' Galahad told me, 'reckoning they'd find loyal spearmen there, but they found me instead. I was aiming to reach your house, but we heard your folk had fled, so I brought him north.'

'Did you see Saxons?'

He shook his head. 'They're in the Thames Valley. We avoided it.' He stared at the jostling crowd around Mordred. 'So what happens now?' he asked.

Mordred had firm ideas. He was robed in a borrowed cloak and sitting at the table where he crammed bread and salt beef into his mouth. He was demanding that Arthur march south immediately, and whenever Arthur tried to interrupt, the King would slap the table and repeat his demand. 'Are you denying your oath?' Mordred finally shouted at Arthur, spewing half chewed sc.r.a.ps of bread and beef.

'The Lord Arthur,' Cuneglas answered acidly, 'is trying to preserve his wife and child.'

Mordred looked blankly at the Powysian King. 'Above my kingdom?' he finally asked.

'If Arthur goes to war,' Cuneglas explained to Mordred, 'Guinevere and Gwydre die.'

'So we do nothing?' Mordred screamed. He was hysterical.

'We give the matter thought,' Arthur said bitterly.

'Thought?' Mordred shouted, then stood up. 'You'll just think while that b.a.s.t.a.r.d rules my land? Do you have an oath?' he demanded of Arthur. 'And what use are these men if you won't fight?' He waved at the spearmen who now stood in a ring about the table. 'You'll fight for me, that's what you'll do!