Excalibur Page 9

  And saw that it was glowing.

  I stared. I did not really want to believe in what I saw, but my hand did glow. It was not luminous, not an inner light, but a wash of unmistakable brightness on my palm. I drew a finger through the wet patch left by the shellfish and so made a dark streak through the shimmering surface. So Olwen the Silver had been no nymph, no messenger from the Gods after all, but a human girl smeared with the juices of shellfish. The magic was not of the Gods, but of Merlin, and all my hopes seemed to die in that dark chamber.

  I wiped my hand on my cloak and went back to the daylight. I sat down on the bench by the temple door and gazed at the inner rampart where a group of small children tumbled and slid in boisterous play. The despair that had haunted me on my journey into Lloegyr returned. I so wanted to believe in the Gods, yet was so filled with doubt. What did it matter, I asked myself, that the girl was human, and that her inhuman luminous shimmer was a trick of Merlin’s? That did not negate the Treasures, but whenever I had thought about the Treasures, and whenever I had been tempted to doubt their efficacy, I had reassured myself with the memory of that shining naked girl. And now, it seemed, she was no harbinger of the Gods at all, but merely one of Merlin’s illusions.

  ‘Lord?’ A girl’s voice disturbed my thoughts. ‘Lord?’ she asked again, and I looked up to see a plump, dark-haired young woman smiling nervously at me. She was dressed in a simple robe and cloak, had a ribbon round her short dark curls and was holding the hand of a small red-haired boy. ‘You don’t remember me, Lord?’ she asked, disappointed.

  ‘Cywwylog,’ I said, recalling her name. She had been one of our servants at Lindinis where she had been seduced by Mordred. I stood. ‘How are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Good as can be, Lord,’ she said, pleased that I had remembered her. ‘And this is little Mardoc. Takes after his father, doesn’t he?’ I looked at the boy. He was, perhaps, six or seven years old and was sturdy, round-faced, and had stiff bristling hair just like his father, Mordred. ‘But not in himself, he don’t take after his father,’ Cywwylog said, ‘he’s a good little boy, he is, good as gold, Lord. Never been a minute’s trouble, not really, have you, my darling?’ She stooped and gave Mardoc a kiss. The boy was embarrassed by the show of affection, but grinned anyway. ‘How’s the Lady Ceinwyn?’ Cywwylog asked me.

  ‘Very well. She’ll be pleased we met.’

  ‘Always kind to me, she was,’ Cywwylog said. ‘I would have gone to your new home, Lord, only I met a man. Married now, lam.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Idfael ap Meric, Lord. He serves Lord Lanval now.’

  Lanval commanded the guard that kept Mordred in his gilded prison. ‘We thought you left our household,’ I confessed to Cywwylog, ‘because Mordred gave you money.’

  ‘Him? Give me money!’ Cywwylog laughed. ‘I’ll live to see the stars fall before that happens, Lord. I was a fool back then,’ Cywwylog confessed to me cheerfully. ‘Of course I didn’t know what kind of a man Mordred was, and he weren’t really a man, not then, and I suppose I had my head turned, him being the King, but I wasn’t the first girl, was I? and I dare say I won’t be the last. But it all turned out for the best. My Idfael’s a good man, and he don’t mind young Mardoc being a cuckoo in his nest. That’s what you are, my lovely,’ she said, ‘a cuckoo!’ And she stooped and cuddled Mardoc who squirmed in her arms and then burst out laughing when she tickled him.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked her.

  ‘Lord Merlin asked us to come,’ Cywwylog said proudly. He’s taken a liking to young Mardoc, he has. He spoils him!Always feeding him, he is, and you’ll get fat, yes, you will, you’ll be fat like, a pig!’ And she tickled the boy again who laughed, struggled and at last broke free. He did not run far, but stood a few feet away from where he watched me with his thumb in his mouth.

  ‘Merlin asked you to come?’ I asked.

  ‘Needed a cook, Lord, that’s what he said, and I dare say I’m as good a cook as the next woman, and with the money he offered, well, Idfael said I had to come. Not that Lord Merlin eats much. He likes his cheese, he does, but that doesn’t need a cook, does it?’

  ‘Does he eat shellfish?’

  ‘He likes his cockles, but we don’t get many of those. No, it’s mostly cheese he eats. Cheese and eggs. He’s not like you, Lord, you were a great one for meat, I remember?’

  ‘I still am,’ I said.

  ‘They were good days,’ Cywwylog said. ‘Little Mardoc here is the same age as your Dian. I often thought they’d make good playmates. How is she?’

  ‘She’s dead, Cywwylog,’ I said.

  Her face dropped. ‘Oh, no, Lord, say that isn’t true?’

  ‘She was killed by Lancelot’s men.’

  She spat onto the grass. ‘Wicked men, all of them. I am sorry, Lord.’

  ‘But she’s happy in the Otherworld,’ I assured her, ‘and one day we’ll all join her there.’

  ‘You will, Lord, you will. But the others?’

  ‘Morwenna and Seren are fine.’

  ‘That’s good, Lord.’ She smiled. ‘Will you be staying here for the Summons?’

  ‘The Summons?’ That was the first time I had heard it called that. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I haven’t been asked. I thought I’d probably watch from Durnovaria.’

  ‘It’ll be something to see,’ she said, then she smiled and thanked me for talking to her and afterwards she pretended to chase Mardoc who ran away from her squealing with delight. I sat, pleased to have met her again, and then wondered what games Merlin was playing. Why had he wanted to find Cywwylog? And why hire a cook, when he had never before employed someone to prepare his meals?

  A sudden commotion beyond the ramparts broke my thoughts and scattered the playing children. I stood up just as two men appeared dragging on a rope. Gawain hurried into sight an instant later, and then, at the rope’s end, I saw a great fierce black stallion. The horse was trying to pull free and very nearly dragged the two men back off the wall, but they snatched at the halter and were hauling the terrified beast forward when the horse suddenly bolted down the steep inner wall and pulled the men behind him. Gawain shouted at them to take care, then half slid and half ran after the great beast. Merlin, apparently unconcerned by the small drama, followed with Nimue. He watched as the horse was led to one of the eastern shelters, then he and Nimue came down to the temple. ‘Ah, Derfel!’ he greeted me carelessly. ‘You look very glum. Is it toothache?’

  ‘I brought you Excalibur,’ I said stiffly.

  ‘I can see that with my own eyes. I’m not blind, you know. A little deaf at times, and the bladder is feeble, but what can one expect at my age?’ He took Excalibur from me, drew its blade a few inches from the scabbard, then kissed the steel. ‘The sword of Rhydderch,’ he said in awe, and for a second his face bore an oddly ecstatic look, then he abruptly slammed the sword home and let Nimue take it from him. ‘So you went to your father,’ Merlin said to me. ‘Did you like him?’

  ‘Yes, Lord.’

  ‘You always were an absurdly emotional fellow, Derfel,’ Merlin said, then glanced at Nimue who had drawn Excalibur free of its sheath and was holding the naked blade tight against her thin body. For some reason Merlin seemed upset at this and he plucked the scabbard away from her and then tried to take the sword back. She would not let it go and Merlin, after struggling with her for a few heartbeats, abandoned the attempt. ‘I hear you spared Liofa?’ he said, turning back to me. ‘That was a mistake. A very dangerous beast, Liofa is.’

  ‘How do you know that I spared him?’

  Merlin gave me a reproachful look. ‘Maybe I was an owl in the rafters of Aelle’s hall, Derfel, or perhaps I was a mouse in his floor rushes?’ He lunged at Nimue and this time he did succeed in wresting the sword from her grip. ‘Mustn’t deplete the magic,’ he muttered, sliding the blade clumsily back into its scabbard. ‘Arthur did not mind yielding the sword?’ he asked me.

  ‘Why should he, Lord?’

  �
�Because Arthur is dangerously close to scepticism,’ Merlin said, stooping to push Excalibur into the temple’s low doorway. ‘He believes we can manage without the Gods.’

  ‘Then it’s a pity,’ I said sarcastically, ‘that he never saw Olwen the Silver glowing in the dark.’

  Nimue hissed at me. Merlin paused, then slowly turned and straightened from the doorway to give me a sour look. ‘Why, Derfel, is that a pity?’ he asked in a dangerous voice.

  ‘Because if he had seen her, Lord, then surely he would believe in the Gods? So long, of course, as he didn’t discover your shellfish.’

  ‘So that’s it,’ he said. ‘You’ve been questing about, haven’t you? You’ve been shoving your fat Saxon nose where it oughtn’t to be shoved and you found my piddocks.’

  ‘Piddocks?’

  ‘The shellfish, fool, they’re called piddocks. At least, the vulgar call them that.’

  ‘And they glow?’ I asked.

  ‘Their juices do have a luminous quality,’ Merlin admitted airily. I could see he was annoyed at my discovery, but he was doing his best not to show any irritation. ‘Pliny mentions the phenomenon, but then he mentions so much that it’s very hard to know quite what to believe. Most of his notions are arrant nonsense, of course. All that rubbish about Druids cutting mistletoe on the sixth day of a new moon! I’d never do that, never! The fifth day, yes, and sometimes the seventh, but the sixth? Never! And he also recommends, as I recall, wrapping a woman’s breast band about the skull to cure an aching head, but the remedy doesn’t work. How could it? The magic is in the breasts, not in the band, so it is clearly far more efficacious to bury the aching head in the breasts themselves. The remedy has never failed me, that’s for sure. Have you read Pliny, Derfel?’

  ‘No, Lord.’

  ‘That’s right, I never taught you Latin. Remiss of me. Well, he does discuss the piddock and he noted that the hands and mouths of those who ate the creature glowed afterwards, and I confess I was intrigued. Who would not be? I was reluctant to explore the phenomenon further, for I have wasted a great deal of my time on Pliny’s more credulous notions, but that one turned out to be accurate. Do you remember Caddwg? The boatman who rescued us from Ynys Trebes? He is now my piddock hunter. The creatures live in holes in the rocks, which is inconvenient of them, but I pay Caddwg well and he assiduously winkles them out as a proper piddock hunter should. You look disappointed, Derfel.’

  ‘I thought, Lord,’ I began, then faltered, knowing I was about to be mocked.

  ‘Oh! You thought the girl came from the heavens!’ Merlin finished the sentence for me, then hooted with derision. ‘Did you hear that, Nimue? Our great warrior, Derfel Cadarn, believed our little Olwen was an apparition!’ He drew out the last word, giving it a portentous tone.

  ‘He was supposed to believe that,’ Nimue said drily.

  ‘I suppose he was, come to think of it,’ Merlin admitted. ‘It’s a good trick, isn’t it, Derfel?’

  ‘But just a trick, Lord,’ I said, unable to hide my disappointment.

  Merlin sighed. ‘You are absurd, Derfel, entirely absurd. The existence of tricks does not imply the absence of magic, but magic is not always granted to us by the Gods. Do you understand nothing?’ This last question was asked angrily.

  ‘I know I was deceived, Lord.’

  ‘Deceived! Deceived! Don’t be so pathetic. You’re worse than Gawain! A Druid in his second day of training could deceive you! Our job is not to satisfy your infantile curiosity, but to do the work of the Gods, and those Gods, Derfel, have gone far from us. They have gone far! They’re vanishing, melting into the dark, going into the abyss of Annwn. They have to be summoned, and to summon them I needed labourers, and to attract labourers I needed to offer a little hope. Do you think Nimue and I could build the fires all on our own? We needed people! Hundreds of people! And smearing a girl with piddock juice brought them to us, but all you can do is bleat about being deceived. Who cares what you think? Why don’t you go and chew a piddock? Maybe that will enlighten you.’ He kicked at Excalibur’s hilt, which still protruded from the temple. ‘I suppose that fool Gawain showed you everything?’

  ‘He showed me the rings of fire, Lord.’

  ‘And now you want to know what they’re for, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, Lord.’

  ‘Anyone of average intelligence could work it out for himself,’ Merlin said grandly. ‘The Gods are far away, that’s obvious, or otherwise they would not be ignoring us, but many years ago they gave us the means of summoning them: the Treasures. The Gods are now so far gone into Annwn’s chasm that the Treasures by themselves do not work. So we have to attract the Gods’ attention, and how do we do that? Simple! We send a signal into the abyss, and that signal is simply a great pattern of fire, and in the pattern we place the Treasures, and then we do one or two other things which don’t really matter very much, and after that I can die in peace instead of having to explain the most elementary matters to absurdly credulous halfwits. And no,’ he said before I had even spoken, let alone asked a question, ‘you cannot be up here on Samain Eve. I want only those I can trust. And if you come here again I shall order the guards to use your belly for spear practice.’

  ‘Why not just surround the hill with a ghost fence?’ I asked. A ghost fence was a line of skulls, charmed by a Druid, across which no one would dare trespass.

  Merlin stared at me as though my wits were gone. ‘A ghost fence! On Samain Eve! It is the one night of the year, halfwit, on which ghost fences do not work! Do I have to explain everything to you? A ghost fence, fool, works because it harnesses the souls of the dead to frighten the living, but on Samain Eve the souls of the dead are freed to wander and so cannot be harnessed. On Samain Eve a ghost fence is about as much use to the world as your wits.’

  I took his reproof calmly. ‘I just hope you don’t get clouds,’ I said instead, trying to placate him.

  ‘Clouds?’ Merlin challenged me. ‘Why should clouds worry me? Oh, I see! That dimwit Gawain talked to you and he gets everything wrong. If it is cloudy, Derfel, the Gods will still see our signal because their sight, unlike ours, is not constrained by clouds, but if it is too cloudy then it is likely to rain,’ he made his voice into that of a man explaining something very simple to a small child, ‘and heavy rain will put out all the big fires. There, that was really difficult for you to work out for yourself, wasn’t it?’ He glared angrily at me, then turned away to stare at the rings of firewood. He leaned on his black staff, brooding at the huge thing he had done on Mai Dun’s summit. He was silent for a long time, then suddenly shrugged. ‘Have you ever thought,’ he asked, ‘what might have happened if the Christians had succeeded in putting Lancelot on the throne?’ His anger had gone, to be replaced by a melancholy.

  ‘No, Lord,’ I said.

  ‘Their year 500 would have come and they would all have been waiting for that absurd nailed God of theirs to come in glory.’ Merlin had been gazing at the rings as he spoke, but now he turned to look at me. ‘What if he had never come?’ he asked in puzzlement. ‘Suppose the Christians were all ready, all in their best cloaks, all washed and scrubbed and praying, and then nothing happened?’

  ‘Then in the year 501,’ I said, ‘there would be no Christians.’

  Merlin shook his head. ‘I doubt that. It’s the business of priests to explain the inexplicable. Men like Sansum would have invented a reason, and people would believe them because they want to believe so very badly. Folk don’t give up hope because of disappointment, Derfel, they just redouble their hope. What fools we all are.’

  ‘So you’re frightened,’ I said, feeling a sudden stab of pity for him, ‘that nothing will happen at Samain?’

  ‘Of course I’m frightened, you halfwit. Nimue isn’t.’ He glanced at Nimue, who was watching us both with a sullen look. ‘You’re full of certainty, my little one, aren’t you?’ Merlin mocked her, ‘but as for me, Derfel, I wish this had never been necessary. We don’t even know what’s supposed
to happen when we light the fires. Maybe the Gods will come, but perhaps they’ll bide their time?’ He gave me a fierce look. ‘If nothing happens, Derfel, that doesn’t mean that nothing happened. Do you understand that?’

  ‘I think so, Lord.’

  ‘I doubt you do. I don’t even know why I bother wasting explanations on you! Might as well lecture an ox on the finer points of rhetoric! Absurd man that you are. You can go now. You’ve delivered Excalibur.’

  ‘Arthur wants it back,’ I said, remembering to deliver Arthur’s message.

  ‘I’m sure he does, and maybe he will get it back when Gawain’s finished with it. Or maybe not. What does it matter? Stop worrying me with trifles, Derfel. And goodbye.’ He stalked off, angry again, but stopped after a few paces to turn and summon Nimue. ‘Come, girl!’

  ‘I shall make sure Derfel leaves,’ Nimue said, and with those words she took my elbow and steered me towards the inner rampart.

  ‘Nimue!’ Merlin shouted.

  She ignored him, dragging me up the grass slope to where the path led along the rampart. I stared at the complex rings of firewood. ‘It’s a lot of work you’ve done,’ I said lamely.

  ‘And all wasted if we don’t perform the proper rituals,’ Nimue said waspishly. Merlin had been angry with me, but his anger was mostly feigned and it had come and gone like lightning, but Nimue’s rage was deep and forceful and had drawn her white, wedge-shaped face tight. She had never been beautiful, and the loss of her eye had given her face a dreadful cast, but there was a savagery and intelligence in her looks that made her memorable, and now, on that high rampart in the west wind, she seemed more formidable than ever.

  ‘Is there some danger,’ I asked, ‘that the ritual will not be done properly?’