Then I ran after Arthur with Nimue beside me. Arthur leapt the black pool, pushed a torch over as he jumped across the dais, then swept the far black curtain aside with Excalibur's blade. And there he stopped.

I stopped beside him. I had discarded my spear as I charged through the temple and now had Hywelbane bare in my hand. Nimue was with me and she howled in triumph as she gazed into the small, square room that opened up from the arched cellar. This, it seemed, was Isis's inner sanctuary, and here, at the G.o.ddess's service, was the Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn.

The Cauldron was the first thing I saw, for it was standing on a black pedestal that stood as high as a man's waist and there were so many candles in the room that the Cauldron seemed to glow silver and gold as it reflected their brilliant light. The light was made even brighter because the room, all but for the curtained wall, was lined with mirrors. There were mirrors on the walls and even on the ceiling, mirrors that multiplied the candles' flames and reflected the nakedness of Guinevere and Dinas. Guinevere, in her terror, had leapt onto the wide bed that filled the room's far end and there she clawed at a fur coverlet in an effort to hide her pale skin. Dinas was beside her, his hands clutched to his groin, while Lavaine faced us defiantly.

He glanced at Arthur, dismissed Nimue with scarce a look, then held his slender black staff towards me. He knew I had come for his death and now he would prevent it with the greatest magic at his disposal. He pointed his staff at me, while in his other hand he held the crystal-encased fragment of the true cross that Bishop Sansum had given to Mordred at his acclamation. He was holding the fragment suspended above the Cauldron, which was filled with some dark aromatic liquid.

'Your other daughters will die too,' he told me. 'I only need to let go.'

Arthur raised Excalibur.

'Your son too!' Lavaine said, and both of us froze. 'You will go now,' he said with calm authority.

'You have invaded the G.o.ddess's sanctuary and will now go and leave us in peace. Or else you, and all you love, will die.'

He waited. Behind him, between the Cauldron and the bed, was Arthur's Round Table with its stone image of the winged horse, and on the horse, I saw, were a drab basket, a common horn, an old halter, a worn knife, a whetstone, a sleeved coat, a cloak, a clay dish, a throwboard, a warrior ring and a heap of decaying broken timbers. Merlin's sc.r.a.p of beard was also there, still wrapped in its black ribbon. All the power of Britain was in that little room and it was allied to a sc.r.a.p of the Christian's most powerful magic.

I lifted Hywelbane and Lavaine made as though to drop the piece of the true cross into the liquid and Arthur put a warning hand against my shield.

'You will go,' Lavaine said. Guinevere said nothing, but just watched us, huge-eyed, above the pelt that now half covered her.

Then Nimue smiled. She had been holding the bundled cloak in both her hands, but now she shook it at Lavaine. She screamed as she released the cloak's burden. It was an eldritch shriek that echoed high above the cries of the women behind us.

Vipers flew through the air. There must have been a dozen of the snakes, all found by Nimue that afternoon and h.o.a.rded for this moment. They twisted in the air and Guinevere screamed and dragged the fur to cover her face while Lavaine, seeing a snake flying at his eyes, instinctively flinched and crouched. The sc.r.a.p of true cross skittered across the floor while the snakes, aroused by the heat in the cellar, twisted across the bed and over the Treasures of Britain. I took one pace forward and kicked Lavaine hard in the belly. He fell, then screamed as an adder bit his ankle. Dinas shrank from the snakes on the bed, then went utterly still as Excalibur touched his throat. Hywelbane was at Lavaine's throat, and I used the blade to bring his face up towards mine. Then I smiled. 'My daughter,' I said softly, 'watches us from the Otherworld. She sends you greetings, Lavaine.'

He tried to speak, but no words came. A snake slid across his leg.

Arthur stared at where his wife was hidden beneath the fur. Then, almost tenderly, he flicked the snakes off the black pelt with Excalibur's tip, then drew back the fur until he could see Guinevere's face. She stared at him, and all her fine pride had vanished. She was just a terrified woman. 'Do you have any clothes here?' Arthur asked her gently. She shook her head.

'There's a red cloak on the throne,' I told him.

'Would you fetch it, Nimue?' Arthur asked.

Nimue brought the cloak and Arthur held it towards his wife on Excalibur's tip. 'Here,' he said, still speaking softly, 'for you.'

A bare arm emerged from the fur and took the cloak. 'Turn round,' Guinevere said to me in a small, frightened voice.

'Turn, Derfel, please,' Arthur said.

'One thing first, Lord.'

'Turn,' he insisted, still gazing at his wife.

I reached for the Cauldron's edge and tipped it off the pedestal. The precious Cauldron clanged loud on the floor as its liquid spilt in a dark rush across the flagstones. That got his attention. He stared at me and I hardly recognized his face, it was so hard and cold and empty of life, but there was one more thing to be said this night and if my Lord was to sup this dish of horrors, then he might as well drain it to the last bitter drop. I put Hywelbane's tip back under Lavaine's chin. 'Who is the G.o.ddess?' I asked him. He shook his head and I pushed Hywelbane far enough forward to draw blood from his throat. 'Who is the G.o.ddess?' I asked him again.

'Isis,' he whispered. He was clutching his ankle where the snake had bitten him.

'And who is the G.o.d?' I demanded.

'Osiris,' he said in a terrified voice.

'And who,' I asked him, 'shall sit on the throne?' He shivered, and said nothing. 'These, Lord,' I said to Arthur, my sword still on Lavaine's throat, 'are the words you did not hear. But I heard them and Nimue heard them. Who shall sit on the throne?' I asked Lavaine again.

'Lancelot,' he said in a voice so low that it was almost inaudible. But Arthur heard, just as he must have seen the great device that was embroidered white on the lavish black blanket that lay on the bed beneath the bear pelt in this room of mirrors. It was Lancelot's sea-eagle. I spat at Lavaine, sheathed Hywelbane, then reached forward and took him by his long black hair. Nimue already had hold of Dinas. We dragged them back into the temple, and I swept the black curtain back into place behind me so that Arthur and Guinevere could be alone. Gwenhwyvach had been watching it all and she now cackled with laughter. The worshippers and the choir, all naked, were crouching to one side of the cellar where Arthur's men guarded them with spears. Gwydre was crouching terrified at the cellar door.

Behind us Arthur cried one word. 'Why?'

And I took my daughter's murderers out to the moonlight.

At dawn we were still at the Sea Palace. We should have left, for some of the spearmen had escaped the huts when the hors.e.m.e.n had at last been summoned from the hill by Arthur's horn, and those fugitives would be spreading the alarm north into Dumnonia, but Arthur seemed incapable of decision. He was like a man stunned.

He was still weeping as the dawn edged the world with light.

Dinas and Lavaine died then. They died at the creek's edge. I am not, I think, a cruel man, but their deaths were very cruel and very long. Nimue arranged those deaths, and all the while, as their souls gave up the flesh, she hissed the name Dian in their ears. They were not men by the time they died, and their tongues had gone and they had just one eye apiece, and that small mercy was only given them so that they could see the manner of their next bout of pain, and see they did as they died. The last thing either saw was that bright piece of hair on Hywelbane's hilt as I finished what Nimue had begun. The twins were mere things by then, things of blood and shuddering terror, and when they were dead I kissed the little sc.r.a.p of hair, then carried it to one of the braziers on the palace's arcades and tossed it into the embers so that no fragment of Dian's soul was left wandering the earth. Nimue did the same with the cut plait of Merlin's beard. We left the twins' bodies lying on their left sides beside the sea and in the rising sun gulls came down to tear at the tortured flesh with their long hooked beaks. Nimue had rescued the Cauldron and the Treasures. Dinas and Lavaine, before they died, had told her the whole tale, and Nimue had been right all along. It had been Morgan who stole the Treasures and who had taken them as a gift to Sansum so that he would marry her, and Sansum had given them to Guinevere. It was the promise of that great gift which had first reconciled Guinevere to the mouse-lord before Lancelot's baptism in the River Churn. I thought, when I heard the tale, that if only I had allowed Lancelot into the mysteries of Mithras then maybe none of this would have happened. Fate is inexorable. The shrine's doors were closed now. None of those trapped inside had escaped, and once Guinevere had been brought out and after Arthur had talked with her for a long time, he had gone back into the cellar alone, with just Excalibur in his hand, and he did not emerge for a full hour. When he came out his face was colder than the sea and as grey as Excalibur's blade, except that the precious blade was now red and thick with blood. In one hand he carried the horn-mounted circle of gold that Guinevere had worn as Isis and in the other he carried the sword. 'They're dead,' he told me.

'All?'

'Everyone.' He had seemed oddly unconcerned, though there was blood on his arms and on his scale armour and even spattered on the goose feathers of his helmet.

'The women too?' I asked, for Lunete had been one of Isis's worshippers. I had no love for her now, but she had once been my lover and I felt a pang for her. The men in the temple had been the most handsome of Lancelot's spearmen and the women had been Guinevere's attendants.

'All dead,' said Arthur, almost lightly. He had walked slowly down the pleasure garden's central gravel path. 'This wasn't the first night they did this,' he said, and sounded almost puzzled. 'It seems they did it often. All of them. Whenever the moon was right. And they did it with each other, all of them. Except Guinevere. She just did it with the twins or with Lancelot.' He shuddered then, showing the first emotion since he had come so cold-eyed from the cellar. 'It seems,' he said, 'that she used to do it for my sake. Who shall sit on the throne? Arthur, Arthur, Arthur, but the G.o.ddess can't have approved of me.' He had begun to cry. 'Or else I resisted the G.o.ddess too firmly, and so they changed the name to Lancelot.' He gave the b.l.o.o.d.y sword a futile swing in the air. 'Lancelot,' he said in a voice filled with agony. 'For years now, Derfel, she's been sleeping with Lancelot, and all for religion, she says! Religion!

He was usually Osiris and she was always Isis. What else could she have been?' He reached the terrace and sat on a stone bench from where he could stare at the moon-glossed creek. 'I shouldn't have killed them all,' he said after a long while.

'No, Lord,' I said, 'you shouldn't.'

'But what else could I do? It was filth, Derfel, just filth!' He began to sob then. He said something about shame, about the dead having witnessed his wife's shame and his own dishonour, and when he could say no more, he just sobbed helplessly and I said nothing. He did not seem to care whether I stayed with him or not, but I stayed until it was time to take Dinas and Lavaine down to the sea's edge so that Nimue could draw their souls inch by terrible inch from their bodies. And now, in a grey dawn, Arthur sat empty and exhausted above the sea. The horns lay at his feet, while his helmet and Excalibur's bare blade rested on the bench beside him. The blood on the sword had dried to a thick brown crust.

'We must leave, Lord,' I said as the dawn turned the sea the colour of a spear blade.

'Love,' he said bitterly.

I thought he had misheard me. 'We must leave, Lord,' I said again.

'For what?' he asked.

'To complete your oath.'

He spat, then sat in silence. The horses had been brought down from the wood and the Cauldron and the Treasures of Britain were packed for their journey. The spearmen watched us and waited. 'Is there any oath,' he asked me bitterly, 'that is unbroken? Just one?'

'We must go, Lord,' I told him, but he neither moved nor spoke and so I turned on my heel. 'Then we'll go without you,' I said brutally.

'Derfel!' Arthur called, real pain in his voice.

'Lord?' I turned back.

He stared down at his sword and seemed surprised to see it so caked with blood. 'My wife and son are in an upstairs room,' he said. 'Fetch them for me, will you? They can ride on the same horse. Then we can go.' He was struggling so hard to sound normal, to sound as if this was just another dawn.

'Yes, Lord,' I said.

He stood and rammed Excalibur, blood and all, into its scabbard. 'Then, I suppose,' he said sourly, 'we must remake Britain?'

'Yes, Lord,' I said, 'we must.'

He stared at me and I saw he wanted to cry again. 'Do you know something, Derfel?' he asked me.

'Tell me, Lord,' I said.

'My life will never be the same again, will it?'

'I don't know, Lord,' I said. 'I just don't know.'

The tears spilled down his long cheeks. 'I shall love her till the day I die. Every day I live I shall think of her. Every night before I sleep I will see her, and in every dawn I shall turn in my bed to find that she has gone. Every day, Derfel, and every night and every dawn until the moment that I die.'

He picked up his helmet with its blood-draggled plume, left the ivory horns, and walked with me. I fetched Guinevere and her son down from the bed-chamber and then we left. Gwenhwyvach had the Sea Palace then. She lived in it alone, her wits wandering, and surrounded by hounds and by the gorgeous treasures that decayed all about her. She would watch from a window for Lancelot's coming, for she was sure that one day her Lord would come to live with her beside the sea in her sister's palace, but her Lord never did come, and the treasures were stolen, the palace crumbled and Gwenhwyvach died there, or so we heard. Or maybe she lives there still, waiting beside the creek for the man who never comes.

We went away. And on the creek's muddy banks the gulls tore at offal. Guinevere, in a long black dress that was covered by a dark green cloak, and with her red hair combed severely back and tied with a black ribbon, rode Arthur's mare, Llamrei. She sat side-saddle, gripping the saddle bar with her right hand and keeping her left arm about the waist of her frightened and tearful son who kept glancing at his father who was walking doggedly behind the horse. 'I suppose I am his father?' Arthur spat at her once.

Guinevere, her eyes reddened by tears, just looked away. The motion of the horse rocked her back and forth and back and forth, yet she managed to look graceful all the same. 'No one else, Lord Prince,'

she said after a long time. 'No one else.'

Arthur walked in silence after that. He did not want my company, he wanted no company but his own misery, and so I joined Nimue at the head of the procession. The hors.e.m.e.n came next, then Guinevere, and my spearmen escorted the Cauldron at the rear. Nimue was retracing the same road that had led us to the coast and which here was a rough track that climbed onto a bare heath broken by dark stretches of yew and gorse. 'So Gorfyddyd was right,' I said after a while.

'Gorfyddyd?' Nimue asked, astonished that I should have dredged that old King's name from the past.

'At Lugg Vale,' I reminded her, 'he said Guinevere was a wh.o.r.e.'

'And you, Derfel Cadarn,' Nimue said scornfully, 'are an expert on wh.o.r.es?'

'What else is she?' I asked bitterly.

'No wh.o.r.e,' Nimue said. She gestured ahead, pointing at the wisps of smoke above the distant trees that showed where the garrison of Vindocladia were cooking their breakfasts. 'We'll need to avoid them,' Nimue said, and turned off the road to lead us towards a thicker belt of trees that grew to the west. I suspected the garrison had already heard that Arthur had come to the Sea Palace and had no wish to confront him, but I dutifully followed Nimue and the hors.e.m.e.n dutifully followed us. 'What Arthur did,' she said after a while, 'is marry a rival instead of a companion.'

'A rival?'

'Guinevere could rule Dumnonia as well as any man,' Nimue said, 'and better than most. She's cleverer than he is, and every bit as determined. If she'd been born to Uther instead of that fool Leodegan, then everything would have been different. She'd be another Boudicca and there'd be dead Christians from here to the Irish Sea and dead Saxons to the German Sea.'

'Boudicca,' I reminded her, 'lost her war.'

'And so has Guinevere,' Nimue said grimly.

'I don't see that she was Arthur's rival,' I said after a time. 'She had power. I don't suppose he ever made a decision without talking to her.'

'And he talked to the Council, which no woman can join,' Nimue said tartly. 'Put yourself in Guinevere's place, Derfel. She's quicker than all of you put together, but any idea she ever had was put before a pack of dull, ponderous men. You and Bishop Emrys and that fart Cythryn who pretends to be so judicious and fair-minded, then goes home and beats his wife and makes her watch him take a dwarf girl to their bed. Councillors! You think Dumnonia would know the difference if you all drowned?'

'A King must have a Council,' I said indignantly.

'Not if he's clever,' Nimue said. 'Why should he? Does Merlin have a Council? Does Merlin need a room full of pompous fools to tell him what to do? The only purpose a Council serves is to make you all feel important.'

'It does more than that,' I insisted. 'How does a King know what his people are thinking if there's no Council?'

'Who cares what the fools think? Allow the people to think for themselves and half of them become Christians; there's a tribute to their ability to think,' she spat. 'So just what is it that you do in Council, Derfel? Tell Arthur what your shepherds are saying? And Cythryn, I suppose, represents the dwarf-tupping men of Dumnonia. Is that it?' she laughed. 'The people! The people are idiots, that's why they have a King and why the King has spearmen.'

'Arthur,' I said stoutly, "has given the country good government, and he did it without using spears on the people.'

'And look what's happened to the country,' Nimue retorted. She walked in silence for a few moments. After a while she sighed. 'Guinevere was right all along, Derfel. Arthur should be King. She knew that. She wanted that. She would even have been happy with that, for with Arthur as King she would have been Queen and that would have given her as much power as she needed. But your precious Arthur wouldn't take the throne. So high-minded! All those sacred oaths! And what did he want instead? To be a farmer. To live like you and Ceinwyn; the happy home, the children, laughter.' She made these things sound risible. 'How content,' she asked me, 'do you think Guinevere would be in that life? The very thought of it bored her! And that's all that Arthur ever wanted. She is a clever, quick-witted lady and he wanted to turn her into a milch cow. Do you wonder she looked for other excitements?'

'Wh.o.r.edom?'

'Oh, don't be a fool, Derfel. Am I a wh.o.r.e for having bedded you? More fool me.' We had reached the trees and Nimue turned north to walk between the ash and the tall elms. The spearmen followed us dumbly and I think that had we led them in circles they would have followed us without protest, so astonished and numbed were we all by the night's horrors. 'So she broke her marriage oath,' Nimue said, 'do you think she's the first? Or do you think that makes her a wh.o.r.e? In which case Britain's full to the rim with wh.o.r.es. She's no wh.o.r.e, Derfel. She's a strong woman who was born with a quick mind and good looks, and Arthur loved the looks and wouldn't use her mind. He wouldn't let her make him King and so she turned to that ridiculous religion of hers. And all Arthur did was tell her how happy she'd be when he could hang up Excalibur and start breeding cattle!' She laughed at the thought. 'And because it would never occur to Arthur to be unfaithful he never suspected it in Guinevere. The rest of us did, but not Arthur. He kept telling himself the marriage was perfect, and all the while he was miles away and Guinevere's good looks were drawing men like flies to carrion. And they were handsome men, clever men, witty men, men who wanted power, and one was a handsome man who wanted all the power he could get, so Guinevere decided to help him. Arthur wanted a cowshed, but Lancelot wants to be High King of Britain and Guinevere finds that a more interesting challenge than raising cows or mopping up the s.h.i.t of infants. And that idiotic religion encouraged her. The arbiter of thrones!' She spat. 'She wasn't bedding Lancelot because she was a wh.o.r.e, you great fool, she was bedding him to get her man made High King.'

'And Dinas?' I asked, 'Lavaine?'

'They were her priests. They were helping her, and in some religions, Derfel, men and women couple as part of worship. And why not?' She kicked at a stone and watched it skitter away through a patch of bindweed. 'And believe me, Derfel, those two were beautiful-looking men. I know, because I took that beauty away from them, but not because of what they did with Guinevere. I did it for the insult they gave Merlin and for what they did to your daughter.' She walked in silence for a few yards. 'Don't despise Guinevere,' she told me after a while. 'Don't despise her for being bored. Despise her, if you must, for stealing the Cauldron and be thankful Dinas and Lavaine never unlocked its power. It worked for Guinevere, though. She bathed in it weekly and that's why she never aged a week.' She turned as footsteps sounded behind us. It was Arthur who was running to catch us up. He still looked dazed, but at some time in the last few moments it must have dawned on him that we had diverted from the road.

'Where are we going?' he demanded.

'You want the garrison to see us?' Nimue asked, pointing again to the smoke of their cooking fires. He said nothing, but just stared at the smoke as if he had never seen such a thing before. Nimue glanced at me and shrugged at his evident befuddlement. 'If they wanted a fight,' Arthur said, 'they'd have been looking for us already.' His eyes were red and puffy, and maybe it was my imagination, but his hair seemed greyer. 'What would you do,' Arthur asked me, 'if you were the enemy?' He did not mean the puny garrison at Vindocladia, but nor would he name Lancelot.

'Try to trap us, Lord,' I said.

'How? Where?' he asked irritably. 'North, yes? That's our fastest route back to friendly spearmen and they'll know that. So we won't go north.' He looked at me, and it was almost as though he did not recognize me. 'We go for their throats instead, Derfel,' he said savagely.

'Their throats, Lord?'

'We'll go to Caer Cadarn.'

I said nothing for a while. He was not thinking straight. Grief and anger had upset him and I wondered how I could steer him away from this suicide. 'There are forty of us. Lord,' I said quietly.

'Caer Cadarn,' he said again, ignoring my objection. 'Who holds the Caer holds Dumnonia, and who holds Dumnonia holds Britain.

If you don't want to come, Derfel, then go your own way. I'm going to Caer Cadarn.' He turned away.

'Lord!' I called him back. 'Dunum lies in our path.' That was a major fortress, and though its garrison was doubtless depleted, it could hold more than enough spears to destroy our small force.

'I would not care, Derfel, if every fortress in Britain stood in our path.' Arthur spat the words at me.

'You do what you want, but I'm going to Caer Cadarn.' He walked away, shouting at the hors.e.m.e.n to turn westwards.

I closed my eyes, convinced my Lord wanted to die. Without Guinevere's love, he just wanted to die. He wanted to fall beneath the enemy's spears at the centre of the land for which he had fought so long. I could think of no other explanation why he would lead this small band of tired spearmen to the very heart of the rebellion unless he wanted death beside Dumnonia's royal stone, but then a memory came to me and I opened my eyes. 'A long time ago,' I told Nimue, 'I talked with Ailleann.' She had been an Irish slave, older than Arthur but a loving mistress to him before he met Guinevere, and Amhar and Loholt were her ungrateful sons. She still lived, graceful and grey-haired now, and presumably still under siege in Corinium. And now, standing lost in shattered Dumnonia, I heard her voice across the years. Just watch Arthur, she had told me, because when you think he is doomed, when everything is at its darkest, he will astonish you. He will win. I told that now to Nimue. 'And she also said,' I went on, 'that once he'd won he would make his usual mistake of forgiving his enemies.'

'Not this time,' Nimue said. 'Not this time. The fool has learned his lesson, Derfel. So what will you do?'

'What I always do,' I said. 'Go with him.'

To the enemy's throat. To Caer Cadarn That day Arthur was filled with a frenetic, desperate energy as though the answer to all his miseries lay at Caer Cadarn's summit. He made no attempt to hide his small force, but just marched us north and west with his banner of the bear flying above us. He used one of his men's horses and he wore his famous armour so that anyone could see just who it was who rode into the country's heart. He went as fast as my spearmen could walk, and when one of the horses split a hoof he just abandoned the beast and pushed on hard. He wanted to reach the Caer.