We drank water, ate hard bread, then buckled on our swords before spreading the gold on the dew-wet grass beside the altar stone. "What's to stop Aelle taking the gold and continuing his war?" I asked Arthur as we waited for the Saxon's arrival. Aelle, after all, had taken gold from us before and that had not stopped him from burning Durocobrivis.
Arthur shrugged. He was wearing his spare armour, a coat of Roman mail that was dented and scarred from frequent fights. He wore the heavy mail under one of his white cloaks. "Nothing," he answered, 'except what little honour he might have. Which is why we might have to offer him more than gold."
"More?" I asked, but Arthur did not reply because, on the dawn-blazoned eastern skyline, the Saxons had appeared.
They came in a long line spread across the horizon with their war drums beating and their spearmen arrayed for battle, though their weapons were tipped by leaves to show that they meant us no immediate harm. Aelle led them. He was the first of the two men I ever met who claimed the title Bretwalda. The other came later and was to give us more trouble, but Aelle was trouble enough. He was a tall man with a flat, hard face and dark eyes that revealed none of his thoughts. His beard was black, his cheeks were scarred from battle and two fingers were missing from his right hand. He wore a coat of black cloth that was belted with leather, boots of leather, an iron helmet on which bull horns were mounted, and over it all a bearskin cloak that he dropped when the heat of the day became too much for such a flamboyant garment. His banner was a blood-daubed bull's skull held aloft on a spear-shaft.
His war-band numbered two hundred men, maybe a few more, and over half those men had great war dogs leashed with leather ropes. Behind the warriors was a horde of women, children and slaves. There were more than enough Saxons to overwhelm us now, but Aelle had given his word that we were at peace, at least until he had decided our fate, and his men made no hostile show. Their line stopped outside the circling ditch while Aelle, his council, an interpreter and a pair of wizards came to meet Arthur. The wizards had hair stiffened into spikes with dung and wore ragged cloaks of wolfskin. When they whirled around to say their charms, the legs, tails and faces of the wolves flared out from their painted bodies. They shouted those charms as they came closer, nullifying any magic we might be working against their leader. Nimue crouched behind us and chanted her own counter charms
The two leaders weighed each other up. Arthur was taller and Aelle broader. Arthur's face was striking, but Aelle's was terrifying. It was implacable, the face of a man who had come from beyond the sea to carve out a kingdom in a strange land, and he had made that kingdom with a savage and direct brutality. "I should kill you now, Arthur," he said, 'and have one less enemy to destroy."
His wizards, naked beneath their moth-eaten skins, crouched behind him. One chewed a mouthful of earth, the other rolled his eyes while Nimue, her empty eye-socket bared, hissed at them. The struggle between Nimue and the wizards was a private war that the two leaders ignored.
"The time will come, Aelle," Arthur said, 'when maybe we shall meet in battle. But for now I offer you peace." I had half expected Arthur to bow to Aelle who was, unlike Arthur, a king, but Arthur treated the Bretwalda as an equal and Aelle accepted the treatment without protest.
"Why?" Aelle asked bluntly. Aelle used no circumlocutions like we British favoured. I came to notice that difference between ourselves and the Saxons. The British thought in curves, like the intricate whorls of their jewellery, while Saxons were blunt and straight, as crude as their heavy gold brooches and chunky neck chains. Britons rarely broached a subject headlong, but talked around it, wrapping it with hints and allusions, always looking for manoeuvre, but Saxons thrust subtlety aside. Arthur once claimed I had that same Saxon straightforwardness and I think he meant it as a compliment.
Arthur ignored Aelle's question. "I thought we had peace already. We had an agreement sealed with gold."
Aelle's face betrayed no shame at having broken the truce. He merely shrugged, as though a broken peace was a small thing. "So if one truce fails, why buy another?" he asked.
"Because I have a quarrel with Gorfyddyd," Arthur replied, adopting the Saxon's blunt manner, 'and I seek your help in that quarrel."
Aelle nodded. "But if I help you destroy Gorfyddyd I make you stronger. Why should I do that?"
"Because if you do not then Gorfyddyd will destroy me and he will then be stronger."
Aelle laughed, displaying a mouth of rotting teeth. "Does a dog care which of two rats it kills?" he asked.
I translated that as does a dog care which stag it pulls down. It seemed more tactful and I noted that Aelle's interpreter, a British slave, did not tell his master.
"No," Arthur allowed, 'but the stags are not equal." Aelle's interpreter said the rats were not equal and I did not tell Arthur. "At best, Lord Aelle," Arthur went on, "I preserve Dumnonia and make Powys and Siluria my allies. But if Gorfyddyd wins he will unite Elmet, Rheged, Powys, Siluria and Dumnonia against you."
"But you will also have Gwent on your side," Aelle said. He was a shrewd man, and quick.
"True, but so will Gorfyddyd if it comes to a war between the British and the Saxons."
Aelle grunted. The present situation, with the British fighting amongst themselves, served him best, but he knew that the British wars would eventually cease. Since it now seemed Gorfyddyd must win those wars soon, Arthur's presence gave him a way of prolonging his enemies' conflict. "So what do you want of me?" he asked. His wizards were now leaping up and down on all fours like human grasshoppers while Nimue was arranging pebbles on the ground. The pebbles' pattern must have disturbed the Saxon sorcerers for they began to utter small yelps of distress. Aelle ignored them.
"I want you to give Dumnonia and Gwent three moons of peace," Arthur said.
"You're only buying peace?" Aelle roared the words and even Nimue was startled. The Saxon threw a gloved hand towards his war-band that squatted with their women, dogs and slaves beyond the shallow ditch. "What does an army do in peace? Tell me that! I promised them more than gold. I promised them land! I promised them slaves! I promised them weal has blood, and you give me peace?" He spat. "In the name of Thor, Arthur, I will give you peace, but the peace will be across your bones and my men will take turns with your wife. That's my peace!" He spat on the turf, then looked at me. "Tell your master, dog," he said, 'that half my men have just arrived in boats. They have no harvest gathered and no means to feed their folk through winter. We cannot eat gold. If we don't take land and grain, then we starve. What good is peace to a starved man?"
I translated for Arthur, leaving out the more egregious insults.
A look of pain crossed Arthur's face. Aelle saw the look, translated it as weakness and so turned scornfully away. "I will give you two hours' start, vermin," he called over his shoulder, 'then I shall pursue you."
"Ratae," Arthur said, without even waiting for me to translate Aelle's threat.
The Saxon turned back. He said nothing, but just stared into Arthur's face. The stench of his bearskin robe was appalling; a mix of sweat, dung and grease. He waited.
"Ratae," Arthur said again. "Tell him it can be taken. Tell him it is full of all the things he desires. Tell him the land it guards will be his."
Ratae was the fortress that protected Gorfyddyd's eastern most border with the Saxons and if Gorfyddyd lost that fortress then the Saxons moved twenty miles closer to Powys's heartland.
I translated. It took me some time to identify Ratae to Aelle, but at last he understood. He was not happy for it seemed Ratae was a formidable Roman fortress that Gorfyddyd had strengthened with a massive earth wall.
Arthur explained that Gorfyddyd had taken the garrison's best spearmen to add to the army he had collected for his invasion of Gwent and Dumnonia. He did not need to explain that Gorfyddyd had only risked that move because of the peace he believed he had purchased from Aelle, a peace that Arthur was now outbidding. Arthur revealed that a Christian community at Ratae had built a monastery just outside the fort's earth walls and the comings and goings of the monks had worn a passage through the ramparts. The fortress commander, he explained, was one of Gorfyddyd's rare Christians and had given his blessing to the monastery.
"How does he know?" Aelle demanded of me.
"Tell him I have a man with me, a man from Ratae, who knows how the monastery can be approached and who is willing to serve as a guide. Tell him I ask only that the man be rewarded with his life." I realized then who the stranger must be who had been walking with Hygwydd. I realized, too, that Arthur had known he would have to sacrifice Ratae even before he left Durnovaria.
Aelle demanded to know more about the traitor and Arthur told how the man had deserted Powys and come to Dumnonia seeking revenge because his wife had abandoned him for one of Gorfyddyd's chieftains.
Aelle spoke with his council while the two wizards gibbered at Nimue. One of them pointed a human thigh bone at her, but Nimue merely spat. That gesture seemed to conclude their war of sorcery for the two wizards shuffled backwards as Nimue stood up and brushed her hands. Aelle's council haggled with us. At one point they insisted that we yield all the big war horses to them, but Arthur demanded all their war dogs in return, and finally, in the afternoon, the Saxons accepted the offer of Ratae and Arthur's gold. It was maybe the greatest hoard of gold ever paid from a Briton to a Saxon, but Aelle also insisted on taking two hostages who, he promised, would be released if the attack on Ratae did not prove to be a trap laid by Gorfyddyd and Arthur together. He chose at random, picking two of Arthur's warriors: Balin and Lanval.
That night we ate with the Saxons. I was curious to meet these men who were my birth-brothers and even feared I might feel some kinship with them, but in truth I found their company repellent. Their humour was coarse, their manners loutish and the smell of their fur-wrapped flesh sickening. Some of them mocked me by saying I resembled their King Aelle, but I could see no likeness between his flat hard features and what I believed my own face to be. Aelle finally snarled at my mockers to be silent, then gave me a cold stare before bidding me to invite Arthur's men to share an evening meal of huge cuts of roasted meat which we ate with gloved hands, gnawing into the scalding flesh until the bloody juices dripped from our beards. We gave them mead, they gave us ale. A few drunken fights started, but no one was killed. Aelle, like Arthur, stayed sober, though the Bretwalda's two wizards became foully drunk and after they fell asleep beside their own vomit Aelle explained that they were madmen in touch with the Gods. He possessed other priests, he said, who were sane, but the lunatics were thought to possess a special power that the Saxons might need. "We feared you would bring Merlin," he explained.
"Merlin is his own master," Arthur answered, 'but this is his priestess." He gestured at Nimue who stared one-eyed at the Saxon.
Aelle made a gesture that must have been his way of averting evil. He feared Nimue because of Merlin, and that was good to know. "But Merlin is in Britain?" Aelle asked fearfully.
"Some men say so," I answered for Arthur, 'and some say not. Who knows? Maybe he is out there in the dark." I jerked my head towards the blackness beyond the fire-lit stones.
Aelle used a spear-shaft to prod one of his mad wizards awake. The man yowled piteously, and Aelle seemed content that the sound would avert any mischief. The Bretwalda had hung Sansum's cross about his neck, while others of his men wore Ynys Wydryn's heavy gold torques. Later in the night, when most of the Saxons were snoring, some of their slaves told us the tale of Durocobrivis's fall, and how Prince Gereint had been taken alive and then tortured to death. The tale made Arthur weep. None of us had known Gereint well, but he had been a modest, unambitious man who had tried his best to hold back the growing Saxon forces. Some of the slaves begged us to take them away with us, but we dared not offend our hosts by granting the request. "We shall come for you one day," Arthur promised the slaves. "We shall come."
The Saxons left next afternoon. Aelle insisted we wait another whole night before leaving the Stones to make certain we did not follow him, and he took Balin, Lanval and the man from Powys with his war-band. Nimue, consulted by Arthur on whether Aelle would keep his word, nodded and said she had dreamed of the Saxon's compliance and of the safe return of our hostages. "But Ratae's blood is on your hands," she said ominously.
We packed and made ready for our own journey, which would not begin until the next day's dawn. Arthur was never happy when forced to idleness and as evening came he asked that Sagramor and I walk with him to the southern woods. For a time it seemed that we wandered aimlessly, but at last Arthur stopped beneath a huge oak hung with long beards of grey lichen. "I feel dirty," he said. "I failed to keep my oath to Benoic, now I am buying the death of hundreds of Britons."
"You could not have saved Benoic," I insisted.
"A land that buys poets instead of spearmen does not deserve to survive," Sagramor added.
