"And not at all funny," the priest snapped from his table.
"And mightily amusing," King Ban said, unruffled by the priest's rudeness, to which he was evidently accustomed. "Maybe the fili should build a theatre and perform it?" he added. "Ah, this you'll enjoy. Horace's Ars Poetica. I copied this one myself."
"No wonder it's illegible," Father Celwin interjected.
"I make all the fili study Horace's maxims," the King told me.
"Which is why they're such execrable poets," the priest put in, but still did not look up from his scrolls.
"Ah, Tertullian!" The King slid a scroll from its box and blew dust from the parchment. "A copy of his ApologeticusV
"All rubbish," Celwin said. "Waste of precious ink."
"Eloquence itself!" Ban enthused. "I'm no Christian, Derfel, but some Christian writing is full of good moral sense."
"No such thing," the priest maintained.
"Ah, and this is a work you must already know," the King said, drawing another scroll from its box. "Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. It is an unparalleled guide, my dear Derfel, to the manner in which a man should live his life."
"Platitudes in bad Greek written by a Roman bore," the priest growled.
"Probably the greatest book ever written," the King said dreamily, replacing the Marcus Aurelius and drawing out another work. "And this is a curiosity, indeed it is. The great treatise of Aristarchus of Samos. You know it, I'm sure?"
"No, Lord," I confessed.
"It is not perhaps on everyone's reading list," the King admitted sadly, 'but it has a certain quaint amusement. Aristarchus maintains -do not laugh that the earth revolves around the sun and not the sun around the earth." He illustrated this cantankerous notion with extravagant wheeling gestures with his long arms. "He got it backwards, do you see?"
"Sounds sensible to me," Celwin said, still without looking up from his work.
"And Silius Italicus!" The King gestured at a whole group of honeycomb cells filled with scrolls. "Dear Silius Italicus! I have all eighteen volumes of his history of the Second Punic War. All in verse, of course. What a treasure!"
"The second turgid war," the priest cackled.
"Such is my library," Ban said proudly, conducting me from the room, 'the glory of Ynys Trebes! That and our poets. Sorry to have disturbed you, Father!"
"Is a camel disturbed by a grasshopper?" Father Celwin demanded, then the door was closed on him and I followed the King past the bare-breasted harpist back to where Bleiddig waited.
"Father Celwin is conducting research," Ban announced proudly, 'into the wingspan of angels. Maybe I should ask him about invisibility? He does seem to know everything. But do you see now, Derfel, why it is so important that Ynys Trebes does not fall? In this small place, my dear fellow, is stored the wisdom of our world, gathered from its ruins and held in trust. I wonder what a camel is. Do you know what a camel is, Bleiddig?"
"A kind of coal, Lord. Blacksmiths use it for making steel."
"Do they indeed? How interesting. But coal wouldn't be bothered by a grasshopper, would it? The contingency would scarcely arise, so why suggest it? How perplexing. I must ask Father Celwin when he's in a mood to be asked, which is not often. Now, young man, I know you've come to save my kingdom and I'm sure you're eager to be about that business, but first you must stay for supper. My sons are here, warriors both! I had hoped they might devote their lives to poetry and scholarship, but the times demand warriors, do they not? Still, my dear Lancelot values the fill as highly as I do myself, so there is hope for our future." He paused, wrinkled his nose and offered me a kindly smile. "You will, I think, want a bath?"
"Will I?"
"Yes," Ban said decisively. "Leanor will take you to your chamber, prepare your bath and provide you with clothes." He clapped his hands and the first harpist came to the door. It seemed she was Leanor.
I was in a palace by the sea, full of light and beauty, haunted by music, sacred to poetry and enchanted by its inhabitants who seemed to me to come from another age and another world.
And then I met Lancelot.
"You're hardly more than a child," Lancelot said to me.
"True, Lord," I said. I was eating lobster soaked in melted butter and I do not think before or since I have ever eaten anything so delicious.
"Arthur insults us by sending a mere child," Lancelot insisted.
"Not true, Lord," I said, butter dripping into my beard.
"You accuse me of lying?" Prince Lancelot, the Edling of Benoic, demanded.
I smiled at him. "I accuse you, Lord Prince, of being mistaken."
"Sixty men?" he sneered. "Is that all Arthur can manage?"
"Yes, Lord," I said.
"Sixty men led by a child," Lancelot said scornfully. He was only a year or two older than I yet he possessed the world-weariness of a much older man. He was savagely handsome, tall and well built, with a narrow, dark-eyed face that was as striking in its maleness as Guinevere's was in its femininity, though there was something disconcertingly serpent-like in Lancelot's aloof looks. He had black hair that he wore in oiled loops pinned with gold combs, his moustache and beard were neatly trimmed and oiled to a gloss, and he wore a scent that smelled of lavender. He was the best-looking man I ever saw and, worse, he knew it, and I had disliked him from the very first moment I saw him. We met in Ban's feasting hall, which was unlike any feasting hall I was ever in. This one had marble pillars, white curtains that misted the sea view, and smooth plastered walls on which were paintings of Gods, Goddesses and fabulous animals. Servants and guards lined the walls of the gracious room that was lit by a myriad of small bronze dishes in which wicks floated in oil, while thick beeswax candles burned on the long table covered by a white cloth which I was constantly soiling with drips of butter, just as I was smearing the awkward toga that King Ban had insisted I wore to the feast.
I was loving the food and hating the company. Father Celwin was present and I would have welcomed a chance to talk with him, but he was annoying one of the three poets at the table, all of them members of King Ban's beloved band offili, while I was marooned at the table's end with Prince Lancelot. Queen Elaine, who was seated beside her husband, the King, was defending the poets against Celwin's barbs, which seemed much more amusing than Prince Lancelot's bitter conversation. "Arthur does insult us," Lancelot insisted again.
"I am sorry you should think so, Lord," I answered.
"Do you never argue, child?" he demanded of me.
I looked into his flat, hard eyes. "I thought it unwise for warriors to argue at a feast, Lord Prince," I said.
"So you're a timid child!" he sneered.
I sighed and lowered my voice. "Do you really want an argument, Lord Prince?" I asked, my patience at last nearing its end, 'because if you do then just call me a child again and I'll tear your skull off." I smiled.
"Child," he said after a heartbeat.
I gave him another puzzled look, wondering if he played a game the rules of which I could not guess, but if he did then the game was in deadly earnest. "Ten times the black sword," I said.
"What?" He frowned, not recognizing the Mithraic formula which meant he was not my brother. "Have you gone mad?" he asked, and then, after a pause, "Are you a mad child, as well as a timid one?"
I hit him. I should have kept my temper, but my discomfort and anger overcame all prudence. I gave him a backswing with my elbow that bloodied his nose, cracked his lip and spilt him backwards off the chair. He sprawled on the floor and tried to swing the fallen chair at me, but I was too fast and too close for the blow to have any force. I kicked the chair aside, hauled him upright then rammed him backwards against a pillar where I smashed his head against the stone and put my knee into his groin. He flinched. His mother was screaming, while King Ban and his poetic guests just gaped at me. A nervous white-cloaked guard put his spear-point at my throat. "Take it away," I told the guard, 'or you're a dead man." He took it away.
"What am I, Lord Prince?" I asked Lancelot.
"A child," he said.
I put my forearm across his throat, half choking him. He struggled, but he could not shift me. "What am I, Lord?" I asked again.
"A child," he croaked.
A hand touched my arm and I turned to see a fair-haired man of my own age smiling at me. He had been sitting at the table's opposite end and I had assumed he was another poet, but that assumption was wrong. "I've long wanted to do what you're doing," the young man said, 'but if you want to stop my brother insulting you then you'll have to kill him and family honour will insist I shall have to kill you and I'm not sure I want to do that."
I eased my arm from Lancelot's throat. For a few seconds he stood there, trying to breathe, then he shook his head, spat at me, and walked back to the table. His nose was bleeding, his lips swelling and his carefully oiled hair hung in sad disarray. His brother seemed amused by the fight. "I'm Galahad," he said, 'and proud to meet Derfel Cadarn."
I thanked him, then forced myself to cross to King Ban's chair where, despite his avowed dislike of respectful gestures, I knelt down. "For the insult to your house, Lord King," I said, "I apologize and submit to your punishment."
"Punishment?" Ban said in a surprised voice. "Don't be so silly. It's just the wine. Too much wine. We should water our wine as the Romans did, shouldn't we, Father Celwin?"
"Ridiculous thing to do," the old priest said.
"No punishment, Derfel," Ban said. "And do stand up, I can't abide being worshipped. And what was your offence? Merely to be avid in argument, and where is the fault in that? I like argument, isn't that so, Father Celwin? A supper without argument is like a day without poetry' the King ignored the priest's acid comment about how blessed such a day would be 'and my son Lancelot is a hasty man. He has a warrior's heart and a poet's soul, and that, I fear, is a most combustible mix. Stay and eat." Ban was a most generous monarch, though I noted that his Queen, Elaine, was anything but pleased at his decision. She was grey-haired, yet her face was unlined and contained a grace and calm that suited Ynys Trebes's serene beauty. At that moment, though, the Queen was frowning at me in severe disapproval.
"Are all Dumnonian warriors so ill-mannered?" she asked the table at large in an acid voice.
"You want warriors to be courtiers?" Celwin retorted brusquely. "You'd send your precious poets to kill the Franks? And I don't mean by reciting their verses at them, though come to think of it that might be quite effective." He leered at the Queen and the three poets shuddered. Celwin had somehow evaded the prohibition on ugly things in Ynys Trebes for, without the cowl he had worn in the library, he appeared as an astonishingly ill-favoured man with one sharp eye, a mildewed eyepatch on the other, a sour twisted mouth, lank hair that grew behind a ragged tonsure line, a filthy beard half hiding a crude wooden cross hanging on his hollow chest, and with a bent, twisted body that was distorted by its stupendous hump. The grey cat that had been draped about his neck in the library was now curled on his lap eating scraps of lobster.
"Come to my end of the table," Galahad said, 'and don't blame yourself."
"But I do," I said. "It's my fault. I should have kept my temper."
"My brother," Galahad said when the seating had been rearranged, 'my half-brother, rather, delights in goading people. It's his sport, but most daren't fight back because he's the Edling and that means one day he'll have powers of life and death. But you did the right thing."
"No, the wrong thing."
"I won't argue. But I will get you ashore tonight."
"Tonight?" I was surprised.
"My brother does not take defeat lightly," Galahad said softly. "A knife in the ribs while you're sleeping? If I were you, Derfel Cadarn, I should join your men ashore and sleep safe in their ranks."
I looked down the table to where the darkly handsome Lancelot was now being consoled by his mother as she dabbed at the blood on his face with a napkin dampened by wine. "Half-brother?" I asked Galahad.
"I was born to the King's lover, not to his wife," Galahad leaned close to me and explained softly. "But Father has been good to me and insists on calling me prince."
King Ban was now arguing with Father Celwin about some obscure point of Christian theology. Ban was debating with courteous enthusiasm while Celwin was spitting insults and both men were enjoying themselves hugely. "Your father tells me you and Lancelot are both warriors," I said to Galahad.
"Both?" Galahad laughed. "My dear brother employs poets and bards to sing his praises as the greatest warrior of Armorica, but I've yet to see him in the shield-line."
"But I have to fight," I said sourly, 'to preserve his inheritance."
