The Winter King twc-1 Read online

  What do you know of love, Derfel, son of a Saxon?"

  “I know I love you,” I said. I can blush now when I think of a young boy's desperate lunges at a woman's affection. It had taken every nerve in my body to make that statement, every ounce of courage I hoped I possessed, and after I had blurted out the words I blushed in the rain-swept firelight and wished I had kept silent.

  Nimue smiled at me. “I know,” she said, “I know. Now come. A feast for our supper.” These days, these my dying days that I spend writing in this monastery in Powys's hills, I sometimes close my eyes and see Nimue. Not as she became, but as she was then: so full of fire, so quick, so confident. I know I have gained Christ and through His blessing I have gained the whole world too, but for what I have lost, for what we have all lost, there is no end to the reckoning. We lost everything. The feast was wonderful.

  * * *

  The High Council began in mid-morning, after the Christians had held yet another ceremony. They held a terrible number of them, I thought, for every hour of the day seemed to demand some new genuflection to the cross, but the delay served to give the princes and warriors time to recover from their night of drinking, boasting and fighting. The High Council was held in the great hall that was again lit by torches, for although the spring sun was shining brightly the hall's few windows were high and small, less suited for letting the light in than the smoke out, though even that they did badly. Uther, the High King, sat on a platform raised above the dais reserved for the kings, ed lings and princes. Tewdric of Gwent, the Council's host, sat below Uther and on either side of Tewdric's throne were a dozen other thrones filled this day by client kings or princes who paid tribute to Uther or Tewdric. Prince Cadwy of Isca was there, and King Melwas of the Belgae and Prince Gereint, Lord of the Stones, while distant Kernow, the savage kingdom at Britain's western tip, had sent its ed ling Prince Tristan, who sat swathed in wolf fur at the dais's edge next to one of the two vacant thrones. In truth the thrones were nothing more than chairs fetched from the feasting hall and tricked out with saddle cloths and in front of each chair, resting on the floor and leaning against the dais, were the shields of the kingdoms. There had been a time when thirty-three shields might have rested against the dais, but now the tribes of Britain fought amongst themselves and some of the kingdoms had been buried in Lloegyr by Saxon blades. One of the purposes of this High Council was to make peace between the remaining British kingdoms, a peace that was already threatened because Powys and Siluria had not come to the Council. Their thrones were empty, mute witness to those kingdoms' continuing enmity towards Gwent and Dumnonia.

  Directly before the kings and princes, and beyond a small open space that had been left for the speech-making, sat the counsellors and chief magistrates of the kingdoms. Some of the councils, like those of Gwent and Dumnonia, were huge, while others comprised only a handful of men. The magistrates and counsellors sat on the floor that I now saw was decorated with thousands of tiny coloured stones arranged into a huge picture that showed between the seated bodies. The counsellors had all fetched blankets to make themselves pillows for they knew that the High Council's deliberations could last well beyond nightfall. Behind the counsellors, and present only as observers, stood the armed warriors, some with their favourite hunting dogs leashed at their side. I stood with those armed warriors, my bronze Cernunnos-headed torque all the authority I needed to be present. Two women were at the Council, only two, yet even their presence had caused murmurs of protest among the waiting men until a flicker of Uther's eyes had stilled the grumbling. Morgan sat directly in front of Uther. The counsellors had edged away from her so that she had sat alone until Nimue had walked boldly through the hall door and threaded her way through the seated men to take a place beside her. Nimue had entered with such calm assurance that no one had tried to stop her. Once seated she stared up at High King Uther as though daring him to eject her, but the King ignored her arrival. Morgan also ignored her young rival who sat very still and very straight-backed. She was dressed in her white linen shift with its thin leather slave belt and among the heavy-caped, grey-haired men she looked slight and vulnerable.

  The High Council began, as all councils did, with a prayer.

  Merlin, if he had been present, would have called on the Gods, but instead Bishop Conrad of Gwent offered a prayer to the Christian God. I saw Sansum sitting in the ranks of the Gwent counsellors and noted the fierce look of hatred he shot at the two women when they did not bow their heads as the Bishop prayed. Sansum knew the women came in Merlin's place.

  After the prayer the challenge was given by Owain, Dumnonia's champion who had taken on Tewdric's best men two days before. A brute, Merlin always called Owain, and he looked like a brute as he stood before the High King with his face still blood-scabbed from the fight, with his sword drawn and with a thick wolf-fur cloak draped around the humped muscles of his huge shoulders. “Does any man here,” he growled, 'dispute Uther's right to the High Throne?"

  No one did. Owain, looking somewhat disappointed at being denied the chance to slaughter a challenger, sheathed his sword and sat uncomfortably among the counsellors. He would much rather have stood with his warriors.

  News of Britain was given next. Bishop Bedwin, speaking for the High King, reported that the Saxon threat to the east of Dumnonia had been diminished, though at a price too heavy for contemplation. Prince Mordred, Edling of Dumnonia and a warrior whose fame had reached to the ends of the earth, had been killed in the hour of victory. Uther's face showed nothing as he listened to the oft-told tale of his son's death. Arthur's name was not mentioned, even though it had been Arthur who had snatched the victory from Mordred's clumsy generalship and everyone in the hall knew it. Bedwin reported that the defeated Saxons had come from the lands once governed by the Catuvelan tribe and that, although they had not been ejected from all that ancient territory, they had agreed to pay a yearly tribute to the High King of gold, wheat and oxen. Pray God, he added, that the peace would last.

  “Pray God,” King Tewdric intervened, 'that the Saxons will be ejected from those lands!“ His words prompted the warriors at the back and sides of the hall to rap their spear-shafts against the pavement and at least one spear broke through the small mosaic tiles. Dogs howled. To the north of Dumnonia, Bedwin continued calmly when the rough applause had ended, peace reigned, thanks to the all-wise treaty of friendship that existed between the great High King and the noble King Tewdric. To the west, and here Bedwin paused to bestow a smile on the handsome young Prince Tristan, there was also peace. ”The kingdom of Kernow,“ Bedwin said, 'keeps itself to itself. We understand King Mark has taken a new wife and we pray that she, like her distinguished predecessors, will keep her master fully occupied.” That provoked a murmur of laughter.

  “What wife is this?” Uther demanded suddenly. “His fourth or fifth?”

  “I believe my father has lost count himself, High Lord,” Tristan said, and the hall bellowed with laughter. More tiles broke under spear-butts and one of the small fragments skittered over the floor to lodge against my foot.

  Agricola spoke next. His was a Roman name and he was famous for his adhesion to Roman ways. Agricola was Tewdric's commander and, though an old man now, he was still feared for his skill in battle. Age had not stooped his tall figure, though it had turned his close-cropped hair as grey as a sword blade. His scarred face was clean-shaven and he wore Roman uniform, but far grander than the outfits of his men. His tunic was scarlet, his breastplate and leg-greaves silver, and under his arm was a silver helmet plumed with dyed horsehair cut into a stiff scarlet comb. He too reported that the Saxons to the east of his Lord's kingdom had been defeated, but the news from the Lost Lands of Lloegyr was troubling for he had heard that more boats had come from the Saxon lands across the German Sea and in time, he warned, more boats on the Saxon shore meant more warriors pressing west into Britain. Agricola also warned us about a new Saxon leader named Aelle who was struggling for ascendancy among the Sais. That
was the first time I ever heard Aelle's name and only the Gods then knew how it would come to haunt us down the years.

  The Saxons, Agricola went on, might be temporarily quiet, but that had not brought peace to the kingdom of Gwent. British war-bands had come south from Powys while others had marched west out of Siluria to attack Tewdric's land. Messengers had gone to both kingdoms, inviting their monarchs to attend this council, but alas, and here Agricola gestured at the two empty chairs on the royal platform, neither Gorfyddyd of Powys nor Gundleus of Siluria had come. Tewdric could not hide his disappointment, for plainly he had been hoping that Gwent and Dumnonia could make their peace with their two northern neighbours. That hope of peace, I assumed, had also been the motive behind Uther's invitation to Gundleus to visit Norwenna in the spring, but the vacant thrones seemed to speak only of continuing enmity. If there was to be no peace, Agricola warned sternly, then the King of Gwent would have no choice but to go to war against Gorfyddyd of Powys and his ally, Gundleus of Siluria. Uther nodded, giving his consent to the threat.

  From further north, Agricola reported, there came news that Leodegan, King of Henis Wyren, had been driven from his kingdom by Diwrnach, the Irish invader who had given the name Lleyn to his newly conquered lands. The dispossessed Leodegan, Agricola added, had taken shelter with King Gorfyddyd of Powys because Cadwallon of Gwynedd would not accept him. There was more laughter at that news for King Leodegan was famous for his foolishness. “I hear too,” Agricola went on when the laughter had subsided, 'that more Irish invaders have come into Demetia and are pressing hard on the western borders of Powys and Siluria."

  “I shall speak for Siluria,” a strong voice intervened from the doorway, 'and no one else." There was a huge stir as every man in the hall turned to gaze at the doorway. Gundleus had come. The Silurian King entered the room like a hero. There was no hesitation and no apology in his demeanour even though his warriors had raided Tewdric's land again and again, just as they had raided south across the Severn Sea to harass Uther's country. He looked so confident that I had to remind myself how he had fled from Nimue in Merlin's hall. Behind Gundleus, shuffling and dribbling, came Tanaburs the Druid and once again I hid myself as I remembered the death-pit. Merlin had once told me that Tanaburs's failure to kill me had put his soul into my keeping, but I still shuddered with fear as I watched the old man come into the hall with his hair clicking from the small bones tied to its tight little pigtails. Behind Tanaburs, their long swords scabbarded in sheaths wrapped in red cloth, strode Gundleus's retinue. Their hair and moustaches were plaited and their beards long. They stood with the other warriors, edging them aside to make a solid phalanx of proud men come to their enemies' High Council while Tanaburs, draped in his dirty grey robe embroidered with crescent moons and running hares, found a space among the counsellors. Owain, scenting blood, had stood to bar Gundleus's path, but Gundleus offered the High King's champion the hilt of his sword to show that he came in peace, then he prostrated himself on the mosaic floor in front of Uther's throne.

  “Rise, Gundleus ap Meilyr, King of Siluria,” Uther commanded, then held out a hand in welcome. Gundleus climbed the dais and kissed the hand before unslinging the shield with its blazon of a fox's mask from his back. He placed it with the other shields, then took his throne and proceeded to look brightly about the hall as though he were very pleased to be present. He nodded to acquaintances, mouthing surprise at seeing some and smiling at others. All the men he greeted were his enemies, yet he slouched in the chair as though he sat by his own hearth. He even hooked a long leg over the chair's arm. He raised an eyebrow when he saw the two women and I thought I detected a flicker of a scowl as he recognized Nimue, but the scowl vanished as his eyes flicked on through the crowd. Tewdric cordially invited him to give the High Council news of his kingdom, but Gundleus just smiled and said all was well in Siluria. I will not weary you with most of the day's business. Clouds gathered over Glevum as disputes were settled, marriages agreed and judgments given. Gundleus, though never admitting his trespasses, consented to pay Tewdric a fee of cattle, sheep and gold, with the same compensation to the High King, and many lesser complaints were similarly resolved. The arguments were long and the pleadings tangled, but one by one the matters were decided. Tewdric did most of the work, though never without a sideways glance at the High King to detect any minute gesture which hinted at Uther's decision. Other than those gestures Uther hardly moved except to stir himself when a slave brought him water, bread or a medicine that Morgan had made from coltsfoot steeped in mead to calm his cough. He left the dais only once to piss against the hall's rear wall while Tewdric, ever patient and ever careful, considered a border dispute between two chiefs of his own kingdom. Uther spat into his urine to avert its evil, then limped back to the dais as Tewdric gave his judgment which, like all the others, was recorded on parchment by three scribes sitting at a table behind the dais.

  Uther was saving his small energy for the most important business of the day, which came after dusk. It was a dark twilight and Tewdric's servants had fetched a dozen more blazing torches into the hall. It had also begun to rain hard and the hall became chill as streams of water found holes in the roof and dripped on to the floor or ran in rivulets down the rough brick walls. It was suddenly so cold that a brazier, an iron basket full four feet across, was filled with logs and set ablaze close to the High King's feet. The royal shields were moved and Tewdric's throne shifted aside so that the brazier's warmth could reach Uther. The woodsmoke drifted about the room, eddying in the high shadows as it searched for a way out to the beating rain.

  Uther at last stood to address the High Council. He was unsteady and so leaned on a great boar-spear as he spoke his mind about his kingdom. Dumnonia, he said, had a new ed ling and the Gods must be thanked for that mercy, but the Edling was weak, a baby and had a crippled foot. Murmurs greeted the confirmation of that rumoured ill omen, but subsided as Uther lifted a hand for silence. The smoke wreathed about him, giving him a spectral look as though his soul was already clad in his Otherworld's shadow-body. Gold glinted at his neck and on his wrists, and a thin fillet of gold, the High King's crown, circled his straggling white hairs.

  “I am old,” he said, 'and I will not live long." He calmed the protests with another feeble wave of his hand.

  “I do not claim my kingdom to be above any other in this land, but I do say that if Dumnonia falls to the Saxons then all Britain will fall. If Dumnonia falls then we lose our links to Armorica and our brethren beyond the sea. If Dumnonia falls then the Saxon will have divided the land of Britain and a divided land cannot survive.” He paused, and for a second I thought he was too tired to continue, but then that great bull's head reared up and he spoke on. “The Saxons must not reach the Severn Sea!” he shouted that creed, which had been at the very heart of his ambitions all these years. So long as the Saxons were hemmed in by Britons then there was a chance that they could one day be driven back into the German Sea, but if they once reached our western coast then they would have divided Dumnonia from Gwent and the Britons of the south from the Britons of the north. “The men of Gwent,” Uther went on, 'are our greatest warriors,“ and here he nodded in tribute to Agricola, 'but it is no secret that Gwent lives on Dumnonian bread. Dumnonia must be held or Britain will be lost. I have a grandson and the kingdom is his! The kingdom is Mordred's to rule when I die. That is my law!” And here he stamped his spear on the platform and for a moment the old hard force of the Pendragon shone from his eyes. Whatever else would be decided here the kingdom would not pass from

  Uther's line, for that was Uther's l?w and everyone in the hall now knew it. All that remained was to decide how the crippled child should be protected until he was old enough to assume the kingship for himself.

  And so the talking began, although everyone knew what had already been decided. Why else was Gundleus slouching so cocksure in his throne? Yet some men still advanced other candidates for Norwenna's hand. Prince Gereint, the Lord of the Sto
nes who held Dumnonia's Saxon borderlands, proposed Meurig ap Tewdric, Gwent's Edling, but everyone in the hall knew that the proposal was merely a way of flattering Tewdric and would never be accepted because Meurig was a mere nose-picking child who had no chance of holding Dumnonia against the Saxons. Gereint, his duty done, sat and listened as one of Tewdric's counsellors proposed Prince Cuneglas, Gorfyddyd's eldest son and thus the Edling of Powys. A marriage to the enemy's crown prince, the counsellor claimed, would forge a peace between Powys and Dumnonia, the two most powerful British kingdoms, but the suggestion was ruthlessly beaten down by Bishop Bedwin who knew his master would never bequeath his kingdom to the care of a man who was the son of Tewdric's bitterest enemy.

  Tristan, Prince of Kernow, was another candidate, but he demurred, knowing full well that no one in Dumnonia would trust his father, King Mark. Meriadoc, Prince of Stronggore, was suggested, but Stronggore, a kingdom east of Gwent, was already half lost to the Saxons and if a man could not hold his own kingdom how could he hold another? What of the royal houses in Armorica, someone asked, but no one knew whether the princes across the sea would abandon their new land of Brittany to defend Dumnonia.

  Gundleus. It all came back to Gundleus.

  But then Agricola spoke the name that almost every man in the hall both wanted to hear and feared to hear. The old soldier stood, his Roman armour bright and his shoulders braced, and he looked Uther the Pendragon straight in his rheumy eyes. “Arthur,” Agricola said. “I propose Arthur.” Arthur. The name resounded in the hall, then the dying echo was drowned by the sudden clatter of staves thumping on the floor. The applauding spearmen were warriors of Dumnonia, men who had followed Arthur into battle and knew his worth, but their rebellion was brief. Uther the Pendragon, High King of Britain, raised his own spear and brought it down once. There was an immediate silence in which only Agricola still dared to challenge the High King. “I propose that Arthur marries Norwenna,” he said respectfully, and even I, young as I was, knew that Agricola must be speaking for his master, King Tewdric, and that puzzled me for I had thought that Gundleus was Tewdric's candidate. If Gundleus could be detached from his friendship with Powys then the new alliance of Dumnonia, Gwent and Siluria would hold all the land on either bank of the Severn Sea and that triple alliance would be a bulwark against both Powys and the Saxons. I should have known, of course, that Tewdric, in suggesting Arthur, was inviting a refusal that would have to be recompensed by a favour.