The Winter King Part 11

I Have heard men say that no town, not even Rome or Jerusalem, was as beautiful as Ynys Trebes, and maybe those men spoke true for though I never saw those others, I did see Ynys Trebes and it was a place of marvels, a wondrous town, the most beautiful place I ever saw. It was built on a steep granite island set in a wide and shallow bay that could be riven with foam and howling with wind, yet inside Ynys Trebes all would be calm. In summer the bay would shimmer with heat, but inside Benoic's capital it always seemed cool. Guinevere would have loved Ynys Trebes, for everything old was treasured and nothing ugly was allowed to mar its grace.

The Romans had been to Ynys Trebes, of course, but they had not fortified it, only built a pair of villas on its summit. The villas were still there: King Ban and Queen Elaine had joined them together and then added to them by pillaging Roman buildings on the mainland for new pillars and pedestals, mosaics and statues, so that the island's summit was now crowned with an airy palace, full of light, where white linen curtains billowed with every breath of wind that gusted off the glittering sea. The island was best reached by boat, though there was a causeway of sorts that was covered by every high tide and at low tide could become treacherous with quicksands. Withies marked the causeway, but the surge of the bay's huge tides washed the markers away and only a fool attempted the pa.s.sage without hiring the services of a local guide to steer him through the sucking sands and trembling creeks. At the lowest tides Ynys Trebes would emerge from the sea to stand amidst a wilderness of rippled sand cut through with gullies and tide pools while at the highest tides, when the wind blew strong from the west, the city was like some monstrous ship crashing her dauntless way through tumultuous seas.

Beneath the palace was a huddle of lesser buildings that clung to the steep granite slopes like sea-birds' nests. There were temples, shops, churches and houses, all lime-washed, all built of stone, all tricked out with whatever carvings and decorations had not been wanted in Ban's high palace, and all fronting on to the stone-paved road that climbed in steps around the steep island towards the royal house. There was a small stone quay on the island's eastern side where boats could land, though only in the calmest weather was the landing comfortable, which was why our ships had landed us at a safe place a day's march to the west. Beyond the quay was a small harbour which was nothing but a tidal pool protected by sandbanks. At low tide the pool was cut off from the sea while at the tide's height the holding was poor whenever the wind was in the north. All around the island's base, except in those places where the granite itself was too steep to climb, a stone wall tried to keep the outer world at bay. Outside Ynys Trebes was turmoil, Prankish enemies, blood, poverty and disease, while inside the wall lay learning, music, poetry and beauty.

I did not belong in King Ban's beloved island capital. My task was to defend Ynys Trebes by fighting on the mainland of Benoic where the Franks were pushing into the farmlands that supported the lavish capital, but Bleiddig insisted I met the king, so I was guided across the causeway, through the city gate that was decorated with a carved merman brandishing a trident, and up the steep road that led to the lofty palace. My men had all stayed on the mainland and I wished I had brought them to see the wonders of the city: the carved gates; the steep stone stairs that plunged up and down the granite island between the temples and shops; the balconied houses decorated with urns of flowers; the statues; and the springs that poured clean fresh water into carved marble troughs where anyone could dip a pail or stoop to drink. Bleiddig was my guide and he growled how the city was a waste of good money that should have been spent on de fences ash.o.r.e, but I was awestruck. This, I thought, was a place worth fighting for. Bleiddig led me through the final merman-decorated gate into the palace courtyard. The palace's vine-clad buildings filled three sides of the court, while the fourth was bounded by a series of white-painted arches that opened on to a long view of the sea. Guards in white cloaks stood at every door, their spear-shafts polished and spearheads shining. "They're no earthly use," Bleiddig muttered to me. "Couldn't fight off a puppy, but they look pretty."

A courtier in a white toga met us at the palace door and escorted us through room after room, each one filled with rare treasures. There were alabaster statues, golden dishes, and a room lined with speculum mirrors that made me gasp as I saw myself reflected into an unending distance: a bearded, dirty, russet-cloaked soldier getting ever smaller in the mirrors' crinkling diminutions. In the next room, which was painted white and was filled with the scent of flowers, a girl played a harp. She wore a short tunic and nothing else. She smiled as we pa.s.sed and went on playing. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were golden from the sun, her hair was short and her smile easy. "Looks like a wh.o.r.ehouse," Bleiddig confided in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, 'and I wish it was. It might be of some use then."

The toga-clad courtier thrust open the last pair of bronze-handled doors and bowed us into a wide room that overlooked the glittering sea. "Lord King' he bowed to the room's only occupant "Chief Bleiddig and Derfel, a captain of Dumnonia."

A tall thin man with a worried face and a thinning head of white hair stood up from behind a table where he had been writing on parchment. A cats paw of wind stirred his work and he fussed until he had weighted the parchment's corners with ink horns and snake stones. "Ah, Bleiddig!" the King said as he advanced towards us. "You're back, I see. Good, good. Some people never come back. The ships don't survive. We should ponder that. Is the answer bigger ships, do you think? Or do we build them wrong? I'm not sure we have the proper boatbuilding skills, though our fishermen swear we do, but some of them never come back either. A problem." King Ban stopped halfway across the room and scratched his temple, transferring yet more ink on to his spa.r.s.e hair. "No immediate solution suggests itself," he finally announced, then peered at me. "Drivel, is it?"

"Derfel, Lord King," I said, dropping to one knee.

"Derfel!" He said my name with astonishment. "Derfel! Let me think now! Derfel. I suppose, if that name means anything, it means "pertaining to a Druid". Do you so pertain, Derfel?"

"I was reared by Merlin, Lord."

"Were you? Were you, indeed! My, my! That is something. I see we must talk. How is my dear Merlin?"

"He hasn't been seen these five years, Lord."

"So he's invisible! Ha! I always thought that might be one of his tricks. A useful one, too. I must ask my wise men to investigate. Do stand up, do stand up. I can't abide people kneeling to me. I'm not a G.o.d, at least I don't think I am." The King inspected me as I stood and seemed disappointed by what he saw.

"You look like a Frank!" he observed in a puzzled voice.

"I am a Dumnonian, Lord King," I said proudly.

"I'm sure you are, and a Dumnonian, I pray, who precedes dear Arthur, yes?" he asked eagerly. I had not been looking forward to this moment. "No, Lord," I said. "Arthur is besieged by many enemies. He fights for our kingdom's existence and so he has sent me and a few men, all we can spare, and I am to write and tell him if more are needed."

"More will be needed, indeed they will," Ban said as fiercely as his thin, high-pitched voice allowed.

"Dear me, yes. So you've brought a few men, have you? How few, pray, is few, precisely?"

"Sixty, Lord."

King Ban abruptly sat on a wooden chair inlaid with ivory. "Sixty! I had hoped for three hundred! And for Arthur himself. You look very young to be a captain of men," he said dubiously, then suddenly brightened. "Did I hear you correctly? Did you say you can write?"

"Yes, Lord."

"And read?" he insisted anxiously.

"Indeed, Lord King."

"You see, Bleiddig!" the King cried in a triumphant voice as he sprang from the chair. "Some warriors can read and write! It doesn't unman them. It does not reduce them to the petty status of clerks, women, kings or poets as you so fondly believe. Ha! A literate warrior. Do you, by any happy chance, write poetry?" he asked me.

"No, Lord."

"How sad. We are a community of poets. We are a brotherhood! We call ourselves ihefili, and poetry is our stern mistress. It is, you might say, our sacred task. Maybe you will be inspired? Come with me, my learned Derfel." Ban, Arthur's absence forgotten, scurried excitedly across the room, beckoning me to follow through a second set of great doors and across another small room where a second harpist, half-naked like the first and just as beautiful, touched her strings, and then into a great library. I had never seen a proper library before and King Ban, delighted to show the room off, watched my reaction. I gaped, and no wonder, for scroll after scroll was bound in ribbon and stored in custom-made open-ended boxes that stood one on top of the other like the cells of a honeycomb. There were hundreds of such cells, each with its own scroll and each cell labelled in a carefully inked hand. "What languages do you speak, Derfel?" Ban asked me.

"Saxon, Lord, and British."

"Ah." He was disappointed. "Rude tongues only. I, now, have a command of Latin, Greek, British, of course, and some small Arabic. Father Celwin there speaks ten times as many languages, isn't that so, Celwin?"

The King spoke to the library's only occupant, an old white-bearded priest with a grotesquely humped back and a black monkish cowl. The priest raised a thin hand in acknowledgement, but did not look up from the scrolls that were weighted down on his table. I thought for a moment that the priest had a fur scarf draped about the back of his monk's hood, then I saw it was a grey cat that lifted its head, looked at me, yawned, then went back to sleep. King Ban ignored the priest's rudeness, and instead conducted me past the racks of boxes and told me about the treasures he had collected. "What I have here," he said proudly, 'is anything the Romans left, and anything my friends think to send me. Some of the ma.n.u.scripts are too old to handle any more, so those we copy. Let's see now, what's this? Ah, yes, one of Aristophanes's twelve plays. I have them all, of course. This one is The Babylonians. A comedy in Greek, young man."

"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."

"Plat.i.tudes 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. Aristarchus maintains -do not laugh that the earth revolves around the sun and not the sun around the earth." He ill.u.s.trated 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 gra.s.shopper?" 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 gra.s.shopper, 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 b.u.t.ter 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, b.u.t.ter 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 G.o.ds, G.o.ddesses 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 b.u.t.ter, 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 a.s.sumed he was another poet, but that a.s.sumption 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 sc.r.a.ps 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 ash.o.r.e 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 ash.o.r.e 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."

"The kingdom's lost," Galahad said carelessly. "Father has spent his money on buildings and ma.n.u.scripts, not soldiers, and here in Ynys Trebes we're too far from our people so they'd rather retreat to Broceliande than look to us for help. The Franks are winning everywhere. Your job, Derfel, is to stay alive and get safe home."

His honesty made me look at him with a new interest. He had a broader, blunter face than his brother, and a more open one; the kind of face you would be glad to see on your right-hand side in the shield-line. A man's right side was the one defended by his neighbour's shield, so it served to be on good terms with that man, and Galahad, I felt instinctively, would be an easy man to like. "Are you saying we shouldn't fight the Franks?" I asked him quietly.

"I'm saying the fight is lost, but yes, you're oath-bound by Arthur to fight, and every moment that Ynys Trebes lives is a moment of light in a dark world. I'm trying to persuade Father to send his library to Britain, but I think he'd rather cut his own heart out first. But when the time comes, I'm sure, he'll send it away. Now' he pushed his gilded chair away from the table 'you and I must leave. Before," he added softly, 'the fili recite. Unless, of course, you have a taste for unending verses about the glories of moonlight on reed beds?"

I stood and rapped the table with one of the special eating knives that King Ban provided his guests. Those guests now eyed me warily. "I have an apology to make," I said, 'not just to you all, but to my Lord Lancelot. Such a great warrior as he deserved a better companion for supper. Now, forgive me, I need to sleep."

Lancelot did not respond. King Ban smiled, Queen Elaine looked disgusted and Galahad hurried me first to where my own clothes and weapons waited, then down to the flame lit quay where a boat waited to take us ash.o.r.e. Galahad, still dressed in his toga, was carrying a sack that he slung on to the small boat's deck. It fell with a clang of metal. "What is it?" I asked.