The Winter King Part 16

"I can at least call you Lord," Arthur said, 'and so you will be called from now on, Lord Derfel." I laughed, not because I was ungrateful, but because the reward of a warlord's t.i.tle seemed too grand for my attainments. I was also proud: a man was called lord for being a king, a prince, a chief or because his sword had made him famous. I superst.i.tiously touched Hywelbane's hilt so that my luck would not be soured by the pride.

Guinevere laughed at me, not out of spite, but with delight at my pleasure, and Arthur, who loved nothing more than seeing others happy, was pleased for both of us. He was happy himself that day, but Arthur's happiness was always quieter than other men's joy. At that time, when he first came back to Britain, I never saw him drunk, never saw him boisterous and never saw him lose his self-possession except on a battlefield. He had a stillness about him that some men found disconcerting for they feared he read their souls, but I think that calm came from his desire to be different. He wanted admiration and he loved rewarding the admiration with generosity.

The noise of the waiting pet.i.tioners grew louder and Arthur sighed as he thought of the work awaiting him. He pushed away his wine and gave me an apologetic glance. "You deserve to rest, Lord," he said, deliberately flattering me with my new t.i.tle, 'but alas, very soon I shall ask you to take your spears north."

"My spears are yours, Lord Prince," I said dutifully.

He traced a circle on the marble table top with his finger. "We are surrounded by enemies," he said, 'but the real danger is Powys. Gorfyddyd collects an army like Britain has never seen. That army will come south very soon and King Tewdric, I fear, has no stomach for the fight. I need to put as many spears as I can into Gwent to hold Tewdric's loyalty staunch. Cei can hold Cadwy, Melwas will have to do his best against Cerdic, and the rest of us will go to Gwent."

"What of Aelle?" Guinevere asked meaningfully.

"He is at peace," Arthur insisted.

"He obeys the highest price," Guinevere said, 'and Gorfyddyd will be raising the price very soon." Arthur shrugged. "I cannot face both Gorfyddyd and Aelle," he said softly. "It will take three hundred spears to hold Aelle's Saxons, not defeat them, mark you, just hold them. The lack of those three hundred spears will mean defeat in Gwent."

"Which Gorfyddyd knows," Guinevere pointed out.

"So what, my love, would you have me do?" Arthur asked her. But Guinevere had no better answer than Arthur, and his answer was merely to hope and pray that the fragile peace held with Aelle. The Saxon King had been bought with a cartload of gold and no further price could be paid for there was no gold left in the kingdom. "We just have to hope Gereint can hold him," Arthur said, 'while we destroy Gorfyddyd." He pushed his couch back from the table and smiled at me. "Rest till after Lughnasa, Lord Derfel," he told me, 'then as soon as the harvest's gathered you can march north with me."

He clapped his hands to summon servants to clear away the remains of the meal and to let in the waiting pet.i.tioners. Guinevere beckoned me as the servants hurried about their work. "Can we talk?" she asked.

"Gladly, Lady."

She took off the heavy necklace, handed it to a slave, then led me up a flight of stone steps that ended at a door opening into an orchard where two of her big deer hounds waited to greet her. Wasps buzzed around windfalls and Guinevere demanded that slaves clear the rotting fruit away so we could walk unmolested. She fed the hounds sc.r.a.ps of chicken left from the midday meal while a dozen slaves scooped the sodden, bruised fruit into the skirts of their robes, then scuttled away, well stung, to leave the two of us alone. Wicker frames of booths that would be decorated with flowers for the great feast of Lughnasa had been erected all around the orchard wall. "It looks pretty' Guinevere spoke of the orchard'

but I wish I was in Lindinis."

"Next year, Lady," I said.

"It'll be in ruins," she said tartly. "Hadn't you heard? Gundleus raided Lindinis. He didn't capture Caer Cadarn, but he did pull down my new palace. That was a year ago." She grimaced. "I hope Ceinwyn makes him utterly miserable, but I doubt she will. She's an insipid little thing." The leaf-filtered sun lit her red hair and cast strong shadows on her good face. "I sometimes wish I was a man," she said, surprising me.

"You do?"

"Do you know how hateful it is to wait for news?" she asked pa.s.sionately. "In two or three weeks you'll all go north and then we must just wait. Wait and wait. Wait to hear if Aelle breaks his word, wait to hear how huge Gorfyddyd's army really is." She paused. "Why is Gorfyddyd waiting? Why doesn't he attack now?"

"His levies are working on the harvest," I said. "Everything stops for harvest. His men will want to make sure of their harvest before they come to take ours."

"Can we stop them?" she asked me abruptly.

"In war, Lady," I said, 'it is not always a question of what we can do, but what we must do. We must stop them." Or die, I thought grimly.

She walked in silence for a few pacec, thrusting the excited dogs away from her feet. "Do you know what people are saying about Arthur?" she asked after a while. I nodded. "That it would be better if he fled to Broceliande and yielded the kingdom to Gorfyddyd. They say the war is lost."

She looked at me, overwhelming me with her huge eyes. At that moment, so close to her, alone with her in the warm garden and engulfed by her subtle scent, I understood why Arthur had risked a kingdom's peace for this woman. "But you will fight for Arthur?" she asked me.

"To the end, Lady," I said. "And for you," I added awkwardly. She smiled. "Thank you." We turned a corner, walking towards the small spring that sprang from a rock in the corner of the Roman wall. The trickle of water irrigated the orchard and someone had tucked votive ribbons into niches of the mossy rock. Guinevere lifted the golden hem of her apple-green dress as she stepped over the rivulet. "There's a Mordred party in the kingdom," she told me, repeating what Bishop Bedwin had spoken of on the night of my return. "They're Christians, mostly, and they're all praying for Arthur's defeat. If he was defeated, of course, they'd have to grovel to Gorfyddyd, but grovelling, I've noticed, conics naturally to Christians. If I were a man, Derfel Cadarn, three heads would fall to my sword. Sansum, Nabur and Mordred."

I did not doubt her words. "But if Nabur and Sansum are the best men the Mordred party can muster, Lady," I said, 'then Arthur need not worry about them."

"King Melwas too, I think," Guinevere said, 'and who knows how many others? Almost every wandering priest in the kingdom spreads the pestilence, asking why men should die for Arthur. I'd strike all their heads off, but traitors don't reveal themselves, Lord Derfel. They wait in the dark and strike when you're not looking. But if Arthur defeats Gorfyddyd they'll all sing his praises and pretend they were his supporters all the while." She spat to avert evil, then gave me a sharp glance. "Tell me about King Lancelot," she said suddenly.

I had an impression that we were at last reaching the real reason for this stroll beneath the apple and pear trees. "I don't really know him," I said evasively.

"He spoke well of you last night," she said.

"He did?" I responded sceptic ally I knew Lancelot and his companions were still resident in Arthur's house, indeed I had been dreading meeting him and relieved that he had not been at the midday meal.

"He said you were a great soldier," Guinevere said.

"It's nice to know," I answered sourly, 'that he can sometimes tell the truth." I a.s.sumed that Lancelot, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g his sails to a new wind, had tried to gain favour with Arthur by praising a man he knew to be Arthur's friend.

"Maybe," Guinevere said, 'warriors who suffer a terrible defeat like the fall of Ynys Trebes always end up squabbling?"

"Suffer?" I said harshly. "I saw him leave Benoic, Lady, but I don't remember him suffering. Any more than I remember seeing that bandage on his hand when he left."

"He's no coward," she insisted warmly. "He wears warrior rings thick on his left hand, Lord Derfel."

"Warrior rings!" I said derisively, and plunged my hand into my belt pouch and brought out a fistful of the things. I had so many now that I no longer bothered to make them. I scattered the rings on the orchard's gra.s.s, startling the deer hounds that looked to their mistress for rea.s.surance. "Anyone can find warrior rings, Lady."

Guinevere stared at the fallen rings, then kicked one aside. "I like King Lancelot," she said defiantly, thus warning me against any more disparaging remarks. "And we have to look after him. Arthur feels we failed Benoic and the least we can do is to treat its survivors with honour. I want you to be kind to Lancelot, for my sake."

"Yes, Lady," I said meekly.

"We must find him a rich wife," Guinevere said. "He must have land and men to command. Dumnonia is fortunate, I think, in having him come to our sh.o.r.es. We need good soldiers."

"Indeed we do, Lady," I agreed.

She caught the sarcasm in my voice and grimaced, but despite my hostility she persevered with the real reason she had invited me to this shadowed, private orchard. "King Lancelot," she said, 'wants to be a worshipper of Mithras, and Arthur and I do not want him opposed." I felt a flare of rage at my religion being taken so lightly. "Mithras, Lady," I said coldly, 'is a religion for the brave."

"Even you, Derfel Cadarn, do not need more enemies," Guinevere replied just as coldly, so I knew she would become my enemy if I blocked Lancelot's desires. And doubtless, I thought, Guinevere would deliver the same message to any other man who might oppose Lancelot's initiation into the Mithraic mysteries.

"Nothing will be done till winter," I said, evading a firm commitment.

"But make sure it is done," she said, then pushed open the hall door. "Thank you, Lord Derfel."

"Thank you, Lady," I said, and felt another surge of anger as I ran down the steps to the hall. Ten days! I thought, just ten days and Lancelot had made Guinevere into his supporter. I cursed, vowing that I would become a miserable Christian before I ever saw Lancelot feasting in a cave beneath a bull's b.l.o.o.d.y head. I had broken three Saxon shield-walls and buried Hywelbane to her hilt in my country's enemies before I had been elected to Mithras's service, but all Lancelot had ever done was boast and posture. I entered the hall to find Bed win seated beside Arthur. They were hearing pet.i.tioners, but Bedwin left the dais to draw me to a quiet spot beside the hall's outer door. "I hear you're a lord now," he said. "My congratulations."

"A lord without land," I said bitterly, still upset by Guinevere's outrageous demand.

"Land follows victory," Bedwin told me, 'and victory follows battle, and of battle, Lord Derfel, you will have plenty this year." He stopped as the hall door was thrown open and as Lancelot and his followers stalked in. Bedwin bowed to him, while I merely nodded. The King of Benoic seemed surprised to see me, but said nothing as he walked to join Arthur, who ordered a third chair arranged on the dais. "Is Lancelot a member of the council now?" I asked Bedwin angrily.

"He's a King," Bedwin said patiently. "You can't expect him to stand while we sit." I noticed that the King of Benoic still had a bandage on his right hand. "I trust the King's wound will mean he can't come with us?" I said acidly. I almost confessed to Bedwin how Guinevere had demanded that we elect Lancelot a Mithraist, but decided that news could wait.

"He won't come with us," Bedwin confirmed. "He's to stay here as commander of Durnovaria's garrison."

"As what?" I asked loudly and so angrily that Arthur twisted in his chair to see what the commotion was about.

"If King Lancelot's men guard Guinevere and Mordred," Bedwin said wearily, 'it frees Lanval's and Llywarch's men to fight against Gorfyddyd." He hesitated, then laid a frail hand on my arm. "There's something else I need to tell you, Lord Derfel." His voice was low and gentle. "Merlin was in Ynys Wydryn last week."

"With Nimue?" I asked eagerly.

He shook his head. "He never went for her, Derfel. He went north instead, but why or where we don't know."

The scar on my left hand throbbed. "And Nimue?" I asked, dreading to hear the answer.

"Still on the Isle, if she even lives." He paused. "I'm sorry." I stared down the crowded hall. Did Merlin not know about Nimue? Or had he preferred to leave her among the dead? Much as I loved him I sometimes thought that Merlin could be the cruel lest man in all the world. If he had visited Ynys Wydryn then he must have known where Nimue was imprisoned, yet he had done nothing. He had left her with the dead, and suddenly my fears were shrieking inside me like the cries of the dying children of Ynys Trebes. For a few cold seconds I could neither move nor speak, then I looked at Bedwin. "Galahad will take my men north if I don't return," I told him.

"Derfel!" He gripped my arm. "No one comes back from the Isle of the Dead. No one!"

"Does it matter?" I asked him. For if all Dumnonia was lost, what did it matter? And Nimue was not dead, I knew that because the scar was pounding on my hand. And if Merlin did not care about her, I did, I cared more about Nimue than I cared about Gorfyddyd or Aelle or the wretched Lancelot with his ambitions to join Mithras's elect. I loved Nimue even if she would never love me, and I was scar-sworn to be her protector.

Which meant that I must go where Merlin would not. I must go to the Isle of the Dead. The Isle lay only ten miles south of Durnovaria, no more than a morning's gentle walk, yet for all I knew of the Isle it could have been on the far side of the moon.

I did know it was no island, but rather a peninsula of hard pale stone that lay at the end of a long narrow causeway. The Romans had quarried the isle, but we quarried their buildings rather than the earth and so the quarries had closed and the Isle of the Dead had been left empty. It became a prison. Three walls were built across the causeway, guards were set, and to the Isle we sent those we wanted to punish. In time we sent others too; those men and women whose wits had flown and who could not live in peace among us. They were the violent mad, sent to a kingdom of the mad where no sane person lived and where their demon-haunted souls could not endanger the living. The Druids claimed the Isle was the domain of Crom Dubh, the dark crippled G.o.d, the Christians said it was the Devil's foothold on earth, but both agreed that men or women sent across its causeway's walls were lost souls. They were dead while their bodies still lived, and when their bodies did die the demons and evil spirits would be trapped on the Isle so they could never return to haunt the living. Families would bring their mad to the Isle and there, at the third wall, release them to the unknown horrors that waited at the causeway's end. Then, back on the mainland, the family would hold a death feast for their lost relative. Not all the mad were sent to the Isle. Some of them were touched by the G.o.ds and thus were sacred, and some families kept their mad locked up as Merlin had penned poor Pellinore, but when the G.o.ds who touched the mad were malevolent, then the Isle was the place where the captured soul must be sent. The sea broke white about the Isle. At its seaward end, even in the calmest weather, there was a great maelstrom of whirlpools and seething water over the place where Cruachan's Cave led to the Otherworld. Spray exploded from the sea above the cave and waves clashed interminably to mark its horrid unseen mouth. No fisherman would go near that maelstrom, for any boat that did get blown into its churning horror was surely lost. It would sink and its crew would be sucked down to become shadows in the Otherworld.

The sun shone on the day I went to the Isle. I carried Hywelbane, but no other war gear since no man-made shield or breastplate would protect me from the spirits and serpents of the Isle. For supplies I carried a skin of fresh water and a pouch of oatcakes, while for my talismans against the Isle's demons I wore Ceinwyn's brooch and a sprig of garlic pinned to my green cloak. I pa.s.sed the hall where the death feasts were held. The road beyond the hall was edged with skulls, human and animal, warnings to the unwary that they approached the Kingdom of Dead Souls. To my left now was the sea, and to my right a brackish, dark marsh where no birds sang. Beyond the marsh was a great shingle bank that curved away from the coast to become the causeway that joined the Isle to the mainland. To approach the Isle by the shingle bank meant a detour of many miles, so most traffic used the skull-edged road that led to a decaying timber quay where a ferry crossed over to the beach. A sprawl of wattle guards' houses stood close to the quay. More guards patrolled the shingle bank.

The guards on the quay were old men or else wounded veterans who lived with their families in the huts. The men watched me approach, then barred my path with rusty spears.

"My name is Lord Derfel," I said, 'and I demand pa.s.sage." The guard commander, a shabby man in an ancient iron breastplate and a mildewed leather helmet, bowed to me. "I am not empowered to stop you pa.s.sing, Lord Derfel," he said, 'but I cannot let you return." His men, astonished that anyone would voluntarily travel to the Isle, gaped at me.

"Then I shall pa.s.s," I said, and the spearmen moved aside as the guard commander shouted at them to man the small ferryboat. "Do many ask to pa.s.s this way?" I asked the commander.

"A few," he said. "Some are tired of living; some think they can rule an isle of mad people. Few have ever lived long enough to beg me to let them out again."

"Did you let them out?" I asked.

"No," he said curtly. He watched as oars were brought from one of the huts, then he frowned at me. "Are you sure, Lord?" he asked.

"I'm sure."

He was curious, but dared not ask my business. Instead he helped me down the slippery steps of the quay and handed me into the pitch-blackened boat. "The rowers will let you through the first gate," he told me, then pointed further along the causeway that lay at the far side of the narrow channel. "After that you'll come to a second wall, then a third at the causeway's end. There are no gates in those walls, just steps across. You'll likely meet no dead souls between the walls, but after that? The G.o.ds only know. Do you truly want to go?"

"Have you never been curious?" I asked him.

"We're permitted to carry food and dead souls as far as the third wall and I've no wish to go farther," he said grimly. "I'll reach the bridge of swords to the Otherworld in my own time, Lord." He jerked his chin towards the causeway. "Cruachan's Cave lies beyond the Isle, Lord, and only fools and desperate men seek death before their time."

"I have reasons," I said, 'and I shall see you again in this world of the living."

"Not if you cross the water, Lord."

I stared at the isle's green and white slope that loomed above the causeway's walls. "I was in a death-pit once," I told the guard commander, 'and I crawled from there as I shall crawl from here." I fished in my pouch and found a coin to give him. "We shall discuss my leaving when the time comes."

"You're a dead man, Lord," he warned me one last time, 'the very moment you cross that channel."

"Death doesn't know how to take me," I said with foolish bravado, then ordered the oarsmen to row me across the swirling channel. It took only a few strokes, then the boat grounded on a bank of shelving mud and we climbed to the archway in the first wall where the two oarsmen lifted the bar, pulled the gates aside and stood back to let me pa.s.s. A black threshold marked the divide between this world and the next. Once over that slab of blackened timber I was counted as a dead man. For a second my fears made me hesitate, then I stepped across.

The gates crashed shut behind me. I shivered.

I turned to examine the inner face of the main wall. It was ten feet high, a barrier of smooth stone laid as clean as any Roman work and so well made that not a single handhold showed on its white face. A ghost-fence of skulls topped the wall to keep the dead souls from the world of the living. I said prayers to the G.o.ds. I said one to Bel, my special protector, and another to Manawydan, the Sea G.o.d who had saved Nimue in the past, and then I walked on down the causeway to where the second wall barred the road. This wall was a crude bank of sea-smoothed stones that were, like the first wall, topped with a line of human skulls. I went down the steps on the wall's farther side. To my right, the west, the great waves crashed against the shingle, while to my left the shallow bay lay calm under the sun. A few fishing boats worked the bay, but all were staying well clear of the Isle. Ahead of me was the third wall. I could see no man or woman waiting there. Gulls soared above me, their cries forlorn in the west wind. The causeway's sides were edged with tide lines of dark sea wrack. I was frightened. In the years since Arthur had returned to Britain I had faced countless shield-walls and unnumbered men in battle, yet at none of those fights, not even in burning Benoic, had I felt a fear like the cold that gripped my heart now. I stopped and turned to stare at Dumnonia's soft green hills and the small fishing village in the eastern bay. Go back now, I thought, go back! Nimue had been here one whole year and I doubted if many souls survived that long in the Isle of the Dead unless they were both savage and powerful. And even if I found her, she would be mad. She could not leave here. This was her kingdom, death's dominion. Go back, I urged myself, go back, but then the scar on my left palm pulsed and I told myself that Nimue lived.

A cackling howl startled me. I turned to see a black, ragged figure caper on the third wall's summit, then the figure disappeared down the wall's farther side and I prayed to the G.o.ds to give me strength. Nimue had always known she would suffer the Three Wounds, and the scar on my left hand was her surety that I would help her survive the ordeals. I walked on.

I climbed the third wall, which was another bank of smooth grey stones, and saw a flight of crude steps leading down to the Isle. At the foot of the steps lay some empty baskets; evidently the means whereby the living delivered bread and salted meat to their dead relatives. The ragged figure had vanished, leaving only the towering hill above me and a tangle of brambles either side of a stony road that led to the Isle's western flank, where I could just see a group of ruined buildings at the base of the great hill. The Isle was a huge place. It would take a man two hours to walk from the third wall to where the sea seethed at the Isle's southern tip, and as much time again to climb up over the spine of the great rock to cross from the Isle's western to its eastern coast.

I followed the road. Wind rustled the sea gra.s.s beyond the brambles. A bird screamed at me then soared on outspread white wings into the sunny sky. The road turned so that I was walking directly towards the ancient town. It was a Roman town, but no Glevum or Durnovaria, merely a squalid huddle of low stone buildings where once the quarry slaves had lived. The buildings' roofs were crude thatches made from driftwood and dry seaweed, poor shelters even for the dead. Fear of what lay in the town made me falter, then a sudden voice shouted in warning and a stone sailed out of the scrub up the slope to my left and clattered on the road beside me. The warning provoked a swarm of ragged creatures to scuttle out of the huts to see who approached their settlement. The swarm was composed of men and women, mostly in rags, but some wore their rags with an air of grandeur and walked towards me as though they were the greatest monarchs on earth. Their hair was crowned with wreaths of seaweed. A few of the men carried spears and nearly all the people clutched stones. Some of them were naked. There were children among them; small, feral and dangerous children. Some of the adults shook uncontrollably, others twitched, and all watched me with bright, hungry eyes.

"A sword!" A huge man spoke. "I'll have the sword! A sword!" He shuffled towards me and his followers advanced behind on bare feet. A woman hurled a stone, and suddenly they were all screaming with delight because they had a new soul to plunder.

I drew Hywelbane, but not one man, woman or child was checked by the sight of her long blade. Then I fled. There could be no disgrace in a warrior fleeing the dead. I ran back up the road and a clatter of stones landed at my heels, then a dog leaped to bite at my green cloak. I beat the brute off with the sword, then reached the road's turning where I plunged to my right, pushing through the brambles and scrub to reach the hillside. A thing reared in front of me, a naked thing with a man's face and a brute's body of hair and dirt. One of the thing's eyes was a running sore, its mouth was a pit of rotting gums and it lunged at me with hands made into claws by hook like nails. Hywelbane sliced bright. I was screaming with terror, certain that I faced one of the Isle's demons, but my instincts were still as sharp as my blade that cut through the brute's hairy arm and slashed into his skull. I leaped over him and climbed the hill, aware that a horde of famished souls was clambering behind me. A stone struck my back, another hit the rock beside me, but I was scrambling fast up the pillars and platforms of quarried rock until I found a narrow path that twisted like the paths of Ynys Trebes around the hill's raw flank. I turned on the path to face my pursuers. They checked, frightened at last by the sword waiting for them on the narrow path where only one of them could approach me at a time. The big man leered. "Nice man," he called in a wheedling voice, 'come down, nice man." He held up a gull's egg to tempt me.

"Come and eat!"

An old woman lifted her skirts and thrust her loins at me. "Come to me, my lover! Come to me, my darling. I knew you'd come!" She began to p.i.s.s. A child laughed and flung a stone. I left them. Some followed me along the path, but after a while they became bored and went back to their ghostly settlement.

The narrow path led between the sky and the sea. Every now and then it would be interrupted by an ancient quarry where the marks of Roman tools scarred baulks of stone, but beyond each quarry the path would wind on again through patches of thyme and spinneys of thorn. I saw no one until, suddenly, a voice hailed me from one of the small quarries. "You don't look mad," the voice said dubiously. I turned, sword raised, to see a courtly man in a dark cloak gazing gravely from the mouth of a cave. He raised a hand. "Please! No weapons. My name is Malldynn, and I greet you, stranger, if you come in peace, and if not, then I beg you to pa.s.s us by."

I wiped the blood from Hywelbane and thrust her back into the scabbard. "I come in peace," I said.

"Are you newly come to the Isle?" he asked as he approached me gingerly. He had a pleasant face, deeply lined and sad, with a manner that reminded me of Bishop Bedwin.

"I arrived this hour," I answered.

"And you were doubtless pursued by the rabble at the gate. I apologize for them, though the G.o.ds know I have no responsibility for those ghouls. They take the bread each week and make the rest of us pay for it. Fascinating, is it not, how even in a place of lost souls we form our hierarchies? There are rulers here. There are the strong and the weak. Some men dream of making paradises on this earth and the first requirement of such paradises, or so I understand, is that we must be unshackled by laws, but I do suspect, my friend, that any place unshackled by laws will more resemble this Isle than any paradise. I do not have the pleasure of your name."

"Derfel."

"Derfel?" He frowned in thought. "A servant of the Druids?"

"I was. Now I'm a warrior."

"No, you are not," he corrected me, 'you are dead. You have come to the Isle of the Dead. Please, come and sit. It is not much, but it is my home." He gestured into the cave where two semi-dressed blocks of stone served as a chair and table. An old piece of cloth, perhaps dragged from the sea, half hid his sleeping quarter where I could see a bed made from dried gra.s.s. He insisted I use the small stone block as my chair. "I can offer you rainwater to drink," he said, 'and some five-day-old bread to eat." I put an oatcake on the table. Malldynn was plainly hungry, but he resisted the impulse to s.n.a.t.c.h the biscuit. Instead he drew a small knife with a blade that had been sharpened so often that it had a wavy edge and used it to divide the oatcake into halves. "At risk of sounding ungrateful," he said, 'oats were never my favourite food. I prefer meat, fresh meat, but still I thank you, Derfel." He had been kneeling opposite me, but once the oatcake was eaten and the crumbs had been delicately dabbed from his lips he stood and leaned against the cave's wall. "My mother made oatcakes," he told me, 'but hers were tougher. I suspect the oats were not husked properly. That one was delicious, and I shall now revise my opinion of oats. Thank you again." He bowed.

"You don't seem mad," I said.

He smiled. He was middle-aged, with a distinguished face, clever eyes and a white beard that he tried to keep trimmed. His cave had been swept clean with a brush of twigs that leaned against the wall. "It is not just the mad who are sent here, Derfel," he said reprovingly. "Some who want to punish the sane send them here also. Alas, I offended Uther." He paused ruefully. "I was a counsellor," he went on, 'a great man even, but when I told Uther that his son Mordred was a fool, I ended here. But I was right. Mordred was a fool, even at ten years old he was a fool."

"You've been here that long?" I asked in astonishment.

"Alas, yes."

"How do you survive?"

He offered me a self-deprecating shrug. "The gate-keeping ghouls believe I can work magic. I threaten to restore their wits if they offend me, and so they take good care to keep me happy. They are happier mad, believe me. Any man who possessed his wits would pray to go insane on this Isle. And you, friend Derfel, might I enquire what brings you here?"

"I search for a woman."

"Ah! We have plenty, and most are unconstrained by modesty. Such women, I believe, are another requisite of earthly paradises, but alas, the reality proves otherwise. They are certainly immodest, but they are also filthy, their conversation is tedious, and the pleasure to be derived from them is as momentary as it is shameful. If you seek such a woman, Derfel, then you will find them here in abundance."