Arthur would usually have been encouraged at such evidence of industry in a decayed town like Durocobrivis, but that night he just shrugged away the smell and touched the trickle of fresh blood on his cheek. "One more scar," he said ruefully. "I'll soon have as many as you, Derfel."
"You should wear your helmet, Lord," I said.
"I can't see right and left when I do," he said dismissively. He pushed away from the pillar and gestured for me to walk with him round the arcade. "Now listen, Derfel. Fighting Franks is just like fighting Saxons. They're all German.;, and there's nothing special about the Franks except that they like to carry throwing spears as well as the usual weapons. So keep your head down when they first attack, but after that it's just shield-wall against shield-wall. They're hard fighters, but they drink too much so you can usually out-think them. That's why I'm sending you. You're young, but you can think which is more than most of our soldiers do. They just believe it's enough to get drunk and hack away, but no one will win wars that way." He paused and tried to hide a yawn. "Forgive me. And for all I know, Derfel, Benoic isn't in danger at all. Ban is an emotional man' he used the description sourly 'and he panics easily, but if he loses Ynys Trebes then he'll break his heart and I'll have to live with that guilt too. You can trust Culhwch, he's good. Bors is capable."
"But treacherous." Sagramor spoke from the shadows beside the bleaching vats. He had come from the hall to watch over Arthur.
"Unfair," said Arthur.
"He's treacherous," Sagramor insisted in his harsh accent, 'because he's Lancelot's man."
Arthur shrugged. "Lancelot can be difficult," he admitted. "He's Ban's heir and he likes to have things his own way, but then, so do I." He smiled and glanced at me. "You can write, can't you?"
"Yes, Lord," I said. We had walked on past Sagramor who stayed in the shadows, his eyes never leaving Arthur. Cats slunk past us, and bats wheeled next to the smoking gable of the big hall. I tried to imagine this stinking place filled with robed Romans and lit by oil-lamps, but it seemed an impossible idea.
"You must write and tell me what's happening," Arthur said, 'so I don't have to rely on Ban's imagination. How's your woman?"
"My woman?" I was startled by the question and for a second I thought Arthur was referring to Canna, a Saxon slave girl who kept me company and who was teaching me her dialect that differed slightly from my mother's native Saxon, but then I realized Arthur had to mean Lunete. "I don't hear from her, Lord."
"And you don't ask, eh?" He shot me an amused grin, then sighed. Lunete was with Guinevere who, in turn, had gone to distant Durnovaria to occupy Uther's old winter palace. Guinevere had not wanted to leave her pretty new palace near Caer Cadarn, but Arthur had insisted she go deeper into the country to be safer from enemy raiding parties. "Sansum tells me Guinevere and her ladies all worship Isis," Arthur said.
"Who?" I asked.
"Exactly." He smiled. "Isis is a foreign Goddess, Derfel, with her own mysteries; something to do with the moon, I think. At least that's what Sansum tells me. I don't think he knows either, but he still says I must stop the cult. He says the mysteries of Isis are unspeakable, but when I ask him what they are, he doesn't know. Or he won't say. You've heard nothing?"
"Nothing, Lord."
"Of course," Arthur said rather too forcefully, 'if Guinevere finds solace in Isis then it cannot be bad. I worry about her. I promised her so much, you see, and am giving her nothing. I want to put her father back on his throne, and we will, we will, but it will all take longer than we think."
"You want to fight Diwrnach?" I asked, appalled at the idea.
"He's just a man, Derfel, and can be killed. One day we'll do it." He turned back towards the hall. "You're going south. I can't spare you more than sixty men God knows it isn't enough if Ban really is in trouble but take them over the sea, Derfel, and put yourself under Culhwch's command. Maybe you can travel through Durnovaria? Send me news of my dear Guinevere?"
"Yes, Lord," I said.
"I shall give you a gift for her. Maybe that jewelled collar the Saxon leader was wearing? You think she'd like that?" He asked the question anxiously.
"Any woman would," I said. The collar was Saxon work, crude and heavy, but still beautiful. It was a necklace of golden plates that were splayed like the sun's rays and studded with gems.
"Good! Take it to Durnovaria for me, Derfel, then go and save Benoic."
"If I can," I said grimly.
"If you can," Arthur echoed, 'for my conscience's sake." He added the last words quietly, then kicked a scrap of clay tile that skittered away from his booted foot and startled a cat that arched its back and hissed at us. "Three years ago," he said softly, 'it all seemed so easy."
But then came Guinevere.
Next day, with sixty men, I went south.
"Did he send you to spy on me?" Guinevere demanded with a smile.
"No, Lady."
"Dear Derfel," she mocked me, 'so like my husband."
That surprised me. "Am I?"
"Yes, Derfel, you are. Only he's much cleverer. Do you like this place?" She gestured about the courtyard.
"It's beautiful," I said. The villa in Durnovaria was, of course, Roman, though in its day it had served as Uther's winter palace. God knows it would not have been beautiful when he occupied it, but Guinevere had restored the building to something of its former elegance. The courtyard was colonnaded like the one in Duroco-brivis, but here all the roof tiles were in place and all the columns were lime-washed. Guinevere's symbol was painted on the walls inside the arcade in a repeating pattern of stags crowned with crescent moons. The stag was her father's symbol, the moon her addition, and the painted round els made a pretty show. White roses grew in beds where small tiled channels ran with water. Two hunting falcons stood on perches, their hooded heads twitching as we walked around the Roman arcade. Statues stood about the courtyard, all of naked men and women, while on plinths beneath the colonnade were bronze heads festooned with flowers. The heavy Saxon necklace I had brought from Arthur now hung about the neck of one of those bronze heads. Guinevere had toyed with the gift for a few seconds, then frowned. "It's clumsy work, is it not?" she had asked me.
"Prince Arthur thinks it beautiful, Lady, and worthy of you."
"Dear Arthur." She had said it carelessly, then selected the ugly bronze head of a scowling man and placed the necklace around its neck. "That'll improve him," she said of the bronze head. "I call him Gorfyddyd. He looks like Gorfyddyd, don't you think so?"
"He does, Lady," I said. The bust did have something of Gorfyd-dyd's dour, unhappy face.
"Gorfyddyd is a beast," Guinevere said. "He tried to take my virginity."
"He did?" I managed to say when I had recovered from the shock of the revelation.
"Tried and failed," she said firmly. "He was drunk. He slobbered all over me. I was reeking with slobber, all down here." She brushed her breasts. She was wearing a simple white linen shift that fell in straight folds from her shoulders to her feet. The linen must have been breathtakingly expensive for the fabric was so tantalizingly thin that if I stared at her, which I tried not to do, it was possible to see hints of her nakedness beneath the fine cloth. A golden image of the moon-crowned stag hung around her neck, her earrings were amber drops set in gold while on her left hand was a gold ring crowned with Arthur's bear and cut with a lover's cross. "Slobber, slobber," she said delightedly, 'so when he'd finished, or to be exact when he'd finished trying to begin and was sobbing about how he meant to make me his Queen and how he would make me the richest queen in Britain, I went to lorweth and had him make me a spell against an unwanted lover. I didn't tell the Druid it was the King, of course, though it probably wouldn't have mattered if I had because lorweth would do anything if you smiled at him, so he made the charm and I buried it, then I made my father tell Gorfyddyd that I'd buried a death-charm against the daughter of a man who'd tried to rape me. Gorfyddyd knew who I meant and he dotes on that insipid little Ceinwyn, so he avoided me after that." She laughed. "Men are such fools!"
"Not Prince Arthur," I said firmly, being careful to use the title on which Guinevere insisted.
"He is a fool about jewellery," she had said tartly, and then had asked me if Arthur had sent me to spy on her.
We walked on around the colonnade. We were alone. A warrior named Lanval was the commander of the Princess's guard and he had wanted to leave his men inside the courtyard, but Guinevere insisted they leave. "Let them start a rumour about us," she told me happily, but then had scowled. "I sometimes think Lanval is ordered to spy on me."
"Lanval merely watches over you, Lady," I told her, 'for upon your safety depends Prince Arthur's happiness, and upon his happiness rests a kingdom."
"That is pretty, Derfel. I like that." She spoke half mockingly. We walked on. A bowl of rose petals soaking in water wafted a pretty scent under the colonnade that offered welcome shade from the hot sun. "Do you want to see Lunete?" Guinevere suddenly asked me.
"I doubt she wants to see me."
"Probably not. But you're not married, are you?"
"No, Lady, we never married."
"Then it doesn't matter, does it?" she asked, though what did not matter she did not say and I did not ask. "I wanted to see you, Derfel," Guinevere said earnestly.
"You flatter me, Lady," I said.
"Your words get prettier and prettier!" She clapped her hands, then wrinkled her nose. "Tell me, Derfel, do you ever wash?"
I blushed. "Yes, Lady."
"You stink of leather and blood and sweat and dust. It can be quite a nice aroma, but not today. It's too hot. Would you like my ladies to give you a bath? We do it the Roman way, with lots of sweat and scraping. It's quite tiring."
I deliberately moved a step away from her. "I'll find a stream, Lady."
"But I did want to see you," she said. She stepped back next to me and even put her arm into mine. "Tell me about Nimue."
"Nimue?" I was surprised by the question.
"Can she really do magic?" Guinevere asked eagerly. The Princess was as tall as I was and her face, so handsome and high-boned, was close to mine. Proximity to Guinevere was overpowering, like the heavy disturbance of the senses given by the drink of Mithras. Her red hair was scented with perfume and her startling green eyes were lined with a gum that had been mixed with lamp black so that they seemed larger. "Can she do magic?" Guinevere asked again.
"I think so."
"Think!" She stepped away from me, disappointed. "Only think?"
The scar on my left hand throbbed and I did not know what to say.
Guinevere laughed. "Tell me the truth, Derfel. I need to know!" She put her arm back into mine and walked me on beneath the arcade's shade. "That horrible man Bishop Sansum is trying to make us all Christians and I won't put up with it! He wants us to feel guilty all the time and I keep telling him I've nothing to be guilty about, but the Christians are getting more powerful. They're building a new church here! No, they're doing worse than that. Come!" She turned impulsively and clapped her hands. Slaves ran into the courtyard and Guinevere ordered her cloak and dogs brought to her. "I'll show you something, Derfel, so you can see for yourself what that wretched little Bishop is doing to our kingdom."
She donned a mauve woollen cloak to hide the thin linen shift, then took the leashes of a brace of deer hounds that panted beside her with their long tongues lolling between sharp teeth. The villa's gates were thrown open and with two slaves following and a quartet of Lanval's guards hastily forming post on either side of us, we went down Durnovaria's main street which was handsomely paved with wide stones and guttered to take the rain down to the river that ran to the east of the town. The open-fronted shops were full of goods: shoes, a butchery, salt, a potter. Some houses had collapsed, but most were in good repair, perhaps because the presence of Mordred and Guinevere had brought the town a new prosperity. There were beggars, of course, who shuffled close on stumps, risking the guards' spear-staves in order to grab the copper coins distributed by Guinevere's two slaves. Guinevere herself, her red hair bared to the sun, strode down the hill with barely a glance at the commotion her presence caused. "See that house?" Guinevere gestured towards a handsome two-storey building on the northern side of the street. "That's where Nabur lives, and where our little King farts and vomits." She shuddered. "Mordred is a particularly unpleasant child. He limps and he never stops screaming. There! Can you hear him?" I could indeed hear a child wailing, though whether it was Mordred I could not tell. "Now, come through here," Guinevere commanded and she plunged through a small crowd who stared at her from the side of the street then climbed over a pile of broken stone that stood next to Nabur's handsome house.
I followed her to find that we had reached a building site, or rather a place where one building was being torn down and another erected on its ruins. The building that was being destroyed had been a Roman temple. "It was where people worshipped Mercury," Guinevere said, 'but now we're to have a `;2:,' shrine for a dead carpenter instead. And how will a dead carpenter give us good crops, tell me that!" These last words, ostensibly spoken to me, were said loud enough to disturb the dozen Christians who were labouring at their new church. Some were laying stones, some ad zing doorposts, while others were pulling down the old walls to provide the material for the new building. "If you must have a hovel for your carpenter," Guinevere said in a ringing voice, 'why not just take over the old building? I asked Sansum that, but he says it must all be new so that his precious Christians don't have to breathe air once used by pagans, in which nonsensical belief we pull down the old, which was exquisite, and throw up a nasty building full of ill-dressed stone and without any grace at all!" She spat into the dust to ward off evil. "He says it's a chapel for Mordred! Can you believe it? He's determined to make the wretched child into a whining Christian and this abomination is where he'll do it."
