The Winter King twc-1 Read online

  “One day, Derfel,” Nimue said, “I will call on you, and if you do not come then the scar will mark you to the Gods for a false friend, a traitor and an enemy.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  She looked at me in silence for a few seconds, then crawled up on to the pile of furs and blankets where she curled herself into my arms. It was awkward to lie together for our two left hands were still bound, but somehow we made ourselves comfortable and then lay still. Voices sounded outside and dust drifted in the high dark chamber where the bats slept and the kittens hunted. It was cold, but Nimue pulled a pelt over the two of us and then she slept with her body's small weight numbing my right arm. I lay awake, filled with awe and confusion over what the knife had caused between us. She woke in the middle of the afternoon. “Gundleus has gone,” she said sleepily, though how she knew I do not know, then she extricated herself from my grip and from the tangled furs before unwrapping the cloak that was still twisted around our hands. The blood had crusted and the scabs tore painfully away from our wounds as we pulled apart. Nimue crossed to the sheaf of spears and scooped up a handful of cobwebs that she slapped on to my bleeding palm. “It'll heal soon,” she said carelessly, and then, with her own cut hand wrapped in a scrap of cloth, she found some bread and cheese. “Aren't you hungry?” she asked.

  “Always.”

  We shared the meal. The bread was dry and hard, and the cheese had been nibbled by mice. At least Nimue thought it was mice. “Maybe the bats chewed it,” she said. “Do bats eat cheese?”

  “I don't know,” I said, then hesitated. “Was it a tame bat?” I meant the animal that she had tied into her hair. I had seen such things before, of course, but Merlin would never talk of them, nor would his acolytes, but I suspected the odd ceremony of our bloody hands would let me into Nimue's confidence. And it did, for she shook her head. “It's an old trick to frighten fools,” she said dismissively. “Merlin taught it to me. You put jesses on the bat's feet, just like falcon jesses, then tie the jesses to your hair.” She ran her hand through her black hair, then laughed. “And it frightened Tanaburs! Imagine that! And him a Druid!”

  I was not amused. I wanted to believe in her magic, not have it explained as a trick played with hawk-leashes. “And the snakes?” I asked.

  “He keeps them in a basket. I have to feed them.” She shuddered, then she saw my disappointment.

  “What's wrong?”

  “Is it all trickery?” I asked.

  She frowned and was silent for a long time. I thought she was not going to answer at all, but finally she explained, and I knew, as I listened, that I was hearing the things that Merlin had taught her. Magic, she said, happened at the moments when the lives of the Gods and men touched, but such moments were not commanded by men. “I can't snap my fingers and fill the room with mist,” she said, 'but I've seen it happen. I crn't raise the dead, though Merlin says he has seen it done. I can't order a lightning strike to kill Gundleus, though I wish I might, because only the Gods can do that. But there was a time, Derfel, when we could do those things, when we lived with the Gods and we pleased them and we were able to use their power to keep Britain as they wanted it kept. We did their bidding, you understand, but their bidding was our desire.“ She clasped her two hands to demonstrate the point, then flinched as the pressure hurt the cut on her left palm. ”But then the Romans came,“ she said, 'and they broke the compact.”

  “But why?” I interrupted impatiently, for I had heard much of this already. Merlin was always telling us how Rome had shattered the bond between Britain and its Gods, but he had never explained why that could happen if the Gods had such power. “Why didn't we beat the Romans?” I asked Nimue.

  “Because the Gods didn't want it. Some Gods are wicked, Derfel. And besides, they have no duty to us, only we to them. Maybe it amused them? Or maybe our ancestors broke the pact and the Gods punished them by sending the Romans. We don't know, but we do know that the Romans are gone and Merlin says we have a chance, just one chance, to restore Britain.” She was talking in a low, intense voice. “We have to remake the old Britain, the real Britain, the land of Gods and men, and if we do it, Derfel, if we do it, then once again we will have the power of Gods.” I wanted to believe her. How I wanted to believe that our short, disease-ridden and death-stalked lives could be given new hope thanks to the goodwill of supernatural creatures of glorious power. “But you have to do it by trickery?” I asked, not hiding my disillusion.

  “Oh, Derfel.” Nimue's shoulders slumped. “Think about it. Not everyone can feel the presence of the Gods, so those who can have a special duty. If I show weakness, if I show a moment of disbelief, then what hope is there for the people who want to believe? They're not really tricks, they are…” She paused, seeking the right word. '.. insignia. Just like Uther's crown and his torques and his banner and his stone at Caer Cadarn. Those things tell us that Uther is the High King and we treat him as such, and when Merlin walks among his people he has to wear his insignia too. It tells people that he touches the Gods and people fear him for that.“ She pointed at the door with its splintered spear-rent. ”When I walked through that door, naked, with two snakes and a bat hidden under a dead man's skin, I was confronting a king, his Druid and his warriors. One girl, Derfel, against a king, a Druid and a royal guard. Who won?"

  “You.”

  “So the trick worked, but it wasn't my power that made it work. It was the power of the Gods, but I had to believe in that power to make it work. And to believe, Derfel, you must devote your life to it.” She was speaking with a rare and intense passion now. “Every minute of every day and every moment of every night you must be open to the Gods, and if you are, then they will come. Not always when you want them, of course, but if you never ask, they'll never answer; but when they do answer, Derfel, oh, when they do, it is so wonderful and so terrifying, like having wings that lift you high into glory.” Her eyes shone as she spoke. I had never heard her speak of these things. Not long ago she had been a child, but now she had been to Merlin's bed and taken on his teaching and his power, and I resented that. I was jealous and angry and I did not understand. She was growing away from me and I could do nothing to stop it.

  “I'm open to the Gods,” I said resentfully. “I believe them. I want their help.” She touched my face with her bandaged hand. “You're going to be a warrior, Derfel, and a very great one. You're a good person, you're honest, you're as foursquare as Merlin's Tower and there isn't any madness in you. Not a trace; not even a wild, desperate speck. Do you think I want to follow Merlin?”

  “Yes,” I said, hurt. “I know you do!” I meant, of course, that I was hurt because she would not devote herself to me.

  She took in a deep breath and stared into the shadowed roof where two pigeons had flown through a smoke hole and were now shuffling along a rafter. “Sometimes,” she said, “I think I would like to marry, have children, watch them grow, grow old myself, die, but of all those things, Derfel' she looked at me again ”I will only have the last. I can't bear to think of what will happen to me. I can't bear to think of enduring the Three Wounds of Wisdom, but I must. I must!"

  “The Three Wounds?” I asked, never having heard of them before.

  “The Wound to the Body,” Nimue explained, 'the Wound to the Pride," and here she touched herself between her legs, 'and the Wound to the Mind, which is madness.“ She paused as a look of horror crossed her face. ”Merlin has suffered all three, and that is why he's such a wise man. Morgan had the worst Wound to the Body that anyone can imagine, but she never suffered the other two wounds which is why she will never truly belong to the Gods. I've suffered none of the three, but I will. I must!“ She spoke fiercely. ”I must because I was chosen."

  “Why wasn't I chosen?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “You don't understand, Derfel. No one chose me, except me. You have to make the choice for yourself. It could happen to any of us here. That's why Merlin collects foundlings, because he believes orphaned chi
ldren might have special powers, but only a very few do.”

  “And you do,” I said.

  “I see the Gods everywhere,” Nimue said simply. “They see me.”

  “I've never seen a God,” I said stubbornly.

  She smiled at my resentment. “You will,” she said, 'because you must think of Britain, Derfel, as though she were laced with the ribbons of a thinning mist. Just tenuous strands here and there, drifting and fading, but those strands are the Gods, and if we can find them and please them and make this land theirs again then the strands will thicken and join to make a great, wonderful mist that will cover all the land and protect us from what lies outside. That's why we live here, on the Tor. Merlin know that the Gods love this place, and here the sacred mist is thick, but our task is to spread it."

  “Is that what Merlin is doing?”

  She smiled. “Right at this moment, Derfel, Merlin is sleeping. And I must too. Haven't you work to do?”

  “Rents to count,” I said awkwardly. The lower storehouses were filling with smoked fish, smoked eels, jars of salt, willow baskets, woven cloth, pigs of lead, tubs of charcoal, even some rare scraps of amber and jet: the winter rents payable at Beltain which Hywel had to assay, record on tallies, then divide into Merlin's share and the portion which would be given to the High King's tax-collectors.

  “Then go and count,” Nimue said, as if nothing odd had happened between us, though she did reach over and give me a sisterly kiss. “Go,” she said and I stumbled out of Merlin's chamber to face the resentful, curious stares of Norwenna's attendants who had moved back into the great hall. The equinox came. The Christians celebrated the death feast of their God while we lit the vast fires of Beltain. Our flames roared at the darkness to bring new life to the reviving world. The first Saxon raiders were seen far in the east, but none came close to Ynys Wydryn. Nor did we see Gundleus of Siluria again. Gudovan the clerk supposed that the marriage proposal had come to nothing and he gloomily forecast a new war against the northern kingdoms.

  Merlin did not return, nor did we hear any news of him.

  The Edling Mordred's baby teeth came. The first to show were in his lower gums, a good omen for a long life, and Mordred used the new teeth to bite Ralla's nipples bloody, though she went on feeding him so that her own plump son would suck a prince's blood along with his mother's milk. Nimue's spirits lightened as the days grew longer. The scars on our hands went from pink to white and then to shadowy lines. Nimue never spoke of them.

  The High King spent a week at Caer Cadarn and the Edling was carried there for his grandfather's inspection. Uther must have approved of what he saw, and the spring omens were all propitious, for three weeks after Beltain we heard that the future of the kingdom and the future of Norwenna and the future of Mordred would all be decided at a great High Council, the first to be held in Britain for over sixty years.

  It was spring, the leaves were green, and there were such high hopes in the freshening land. The High Council was held at Glevum, a Roman town that lay beside the River Severn just beyond Dumnonia's northern border with Gwent. Uther was carried there in a cart drawn by four oxen, each beast decorated with sprigs of may and saddled with green cloths. The High King enjoyed his ponderous progress through his kingdom's early summer, maybe because he knew this would be his last sight of Britain's loveliness before he went through Cruachan's Cave and over the sword bridge to the Other-world. The hedgerows between which his oxen plodded were white with hawthorn, the woods were hazed by bluebells while poppies blazed among the wheat, rye and barley and in the almost ripe fields of hay where the corncrakes were noisy. The High King travelled slowly, stopping often at settlements and villas where he inspected farmlands and halls, and advised men who knew better than he how to layer a fulling pond or geld a hog. He bathed in the hot springs at Aquae Sulis and was so recovered when he left the city that he walked a full mile before being helped once more into his fur-lined cart. He was accompanied by his bards, his counsellors, his physician, his chorus, a train of servants and an escort of warriors commanded by Owain, his champion and commander of his guard. Everyone wore flowers and the warriors slung their shields upside down to show they marched in peace, though Uther was too old and too cautious not to make certain that their spear-points were whetted bright each new day.

  I walked to Glevum. I had no business there, but Uther had summoned Morgan to the High Council. Women were not normally welcome at any councils, high or low, but Uther believed no one spoke for Merlin as Morgan did and so, in his despair at Merlin's absence, he called for her. She was, besides, Uther's natural daughter, and the High King liked to say that there was more sense in Morgan's gold-wrapped head than in half his counsellors' skulls put together. Morgan was also responsible for Norwenna's health and it was Norwenna's future that was being decided, though Norwenna herself was neither summoned nor consulted. She stayed at Ynys Wydryn under the care of Merlin's wife, Guendoloen. Morgan would have taken no one but her slave Sebile to Glevum, but at the last moment Nimue calmly announced that she was also travelling there and that I was to accompany her. Morgan made a fuss, of course, but Nimue met the older woman's indignation with an irritating calm. “I have been instructed,” she told Morgan, and when Morgan shrilly demanded by whom, Nimue just smiled. Morgan was double Nimue's size and twice her age, but when Merlin had taken Nimue to his bed the power in Ynys Wydryn passed to her and in the face of that authority the older woman was helpless. She still objected to my going. She demanded to know why did Nimue not take Lunete, the other Irish girl among Merlin's foundlings? A boy like me, Morgan said, was no company for a young woman, and when Nimue still did nothing but smile, Morgan spat that she would tell Merlin of Nimue's fondness for me and in that telling would lie the end of Nimue, at which clumsy threat Nimue simply laughed and turned away.

  I cared little for the argument. I just wanted to go to Glevum and see the jousting and hear the bards and watch the dancing and, most of all, to be with Nimue.

  And so we went, an ill-assorted quartet, to Glevum. Morgan, blackthorn staff in hand and gold mask glinting in the summer sun, stumped ahead, her limp making each heavy step into an emphatic gesture of disapproval at Nimue's company. Sebile, the Saxon slave, hurried two paces behind her mistress with her back stooped beneath the bundle of bedding cloaks, dried herbs and pots. Nimue and I walked behind, barefoot, bare-headed and unburdened. Nimue wore a long black cloak over a white robe that she gathered at her waist with a slave's halter. Her long black hair was pinned high and she wore no jewels, not even a bone pin to gather her cloak. Morgan's neck was circled with a heavy golden torque and her dun-coloured cloak was clasped at her breast with two golden brooches, one cast as a triple-horned deer and the other the heavy dragon ornament that Uther had given to her at Caer Cadarn. I enjoyed the journey. We took three days, a slow pace, for Morgan was an awkward walker, but the sun shone on us and the Roman road made our journey easy. At dusk we would find the nearest chieftain's hall and sleep an honoured guests in his straw-filled barn. Other travellers were few, and all made way for the bright blazon of Morgan's gold that was her symbol of high status. We had been warned against the master less and landless men who robbed merchants on the high roads, but none threatened us, perhaps because Uther's soldiers had prepared for the High Council by scouring the woods and hills in search of brigands and we passed more than a dozen rotting bodies staked at the road's sides as warnings. The serfs and slaves we met knelt to Morgan, merchants made way for her, and only one traveller dared challenge our authority, a fierce-bearded priest with his ragged following of wild-haired women. The Christian group was dancing down the road, praising their nailed God, but when the priest saw the gold mask covering Morgan's face and the triple antlers and wide-winged dragon of her brooches he ranted at her as a creature of the devil. The priest must have thought that such a disfigured, hobbling woman would prove an easy prey to his taunting, but an errant preacher accompanied by his wife and holy whores was no match for Igraine'
s daughter, Merlin's ward and Arthur's sister. Morgan gave the fellow a single thump on the ear with her heavy staff, a blow that knocked him sideways into a ditch thick with nettles, and then she walked on with scarce a backwards glance. The priest's women shrieked and parted. Some prayed and others spat curses, but Nimue glided through their malevolence like a spirit.

  I carried no weapons, unless a staff and a knife count as a warrior's accoutrements. I had wanted to carry both a sword and a spear, to look like a grown man, but Hywel had scoffed that a man was not made by wanting, but by doing. For my protection he gave me a bronze torque that displayed Merlin's horned God at its finials. No one, he said, would dare challenge Merlin. Yet even so, without a man's weapons, I felt useless. Why, I asked Nimue, was I there?

  “Because you're my oath-friend, little one,” Nimue said. I was already taller than she, but she used the term affectionately. “And because you and I are chosen of Bel and if He chooses us, then we must choose each other.”

  “Then why are the two of us going to Glevum?” I wanted to know.

  “Because Merlin wants us there, of course.”

  “Will he be there?” I asked eagerly. Merlin had been away so very long, and without him Ynys Wydryn was like a sky without its sun.

  “No,” she said calmly, though how she knew Merlin's desire in this matter I did not know for Merlin was still far away and the summons for the High Council had been issued long after his departure.

  “And what will we do when we reach Glevum?”

  “We will know when we get there,” she said mysteriously and would explain no more. Glevum, once I had grown accustomed to the overpowering stench of night soil was marvellously strange. Other than some of the villas that had become farmsteads on Merlin's estates, this was my first time in a proper Roman place and I gawked at the sights like a new-born chick. The streets were paved with fitted stones, and though they had canted in the long years since the Romans' departure, King Tewdric's men had done their best to repair the damage by pulling up the weeds and sweeping away the soil so that the city's nine streets looked like stony watercourses in the dry season. It was hard to walk on them, and it made Nimue and me laugh to see horses trying to negotiate the treacherous stones. The buildings were as weird as the streets. We made our halls and houses out of wood, thatch, clay-cob and wattle, but these Roman buildings were all joined together and made of stone and strange narrow bricks, though over the years some of them had collapsed to leave ragged gaps in the long rows of low houses that were curiously roofed with baked clay tiles. The walled city guarded a crossing of the Severn and stood between two kingdoms and near to a third, and so it was a famous trading centre. Potters worked in the houses, goldsmiths stooped over their tables and calves bellowed in a slaughter yard behind the market place that was crowded with country folk selling butter, nuts, leather, smoked fish, honey, dyed cloth and newly sheared wool. Best of all, at least to my dazzled eyes, were King Tewdric's soldiers. They were Romans, Nimue told me, or at least they were Britons taught the Roman ways, and all kept their beards clipped short and were dressed alike in sturdy leather shoes and woollen hose beneath short leather skirts. The senior soldiers had bronze plates sewn on to the skirts and when they walked the armour plates would clank together like cow bells. Each man had a breastplate polished bright, a long russet cloak, and a leather helmet that was sewn at the crown into a ridge. Some of the helmets were plumed with dyed feathers. The soldiers carried short, broad-bladed swords, long spears with polished staffs and oblong shields of wood and leather that carried Tewdric's bull symbol. The shields were all the same size, the spears all of a length and the soldiers all marched in step, an extraordinary sight that made me laugh at first though later I became used to it.