THREE

1

Camulod was different when we returned from that first visit to Connlyn and my encounter with his enigmatic sister. The guard turned out to welcome us as we approached, but both Arthur and Merlyn were missing, which was the first thing I discovered. Arthur’s absence would be brief, the Captain of the Gate told me. He had gone hunting two days earlier and was expected to return at any moment. The Lord Merlyn, on the other hand, had been away on one of his journeys for months and no one knew when to expect him back.

Merlyn’s absence, I knew, was to be expected, for he spent less and less time in Camulod nowadays, maintaining that he could form a more accurate, better-informed overview of what was happening in the outlying regions of the country by visiting the people and hearing for himself what was going on. Arthur encouraged him, for the King, too, believed that.

I turned over my command to Tristan and left him to dismiss our troopers and make whatever arrangements might be necessary for their temporary dispersal, while I went to the stables and exchanged my tired mount for a fresh one before exercising my returning commander’s privilege by making my way directly down the hill again towards the Villa Britannicus and its superb bath-house facilities. When I arrived there I lost no time in shedding my armor and the clothes in which I had been traveling. Bors would be close behind me, I knew. He had gone straight to my quarters upon his return, to fetch a complete set of fresh new garments for me, under- and over-clothing that had not been washed and rewashed and then folded up in campaign chests for the previous half year. I bathed slowly, making the full progress from the tepid pool to the hot pool, then sweated in the steam room until I thought my bones might melt. I emerged from there streaming with sweat and steaming in the coolness of the outside air, and then, willing myself not to think about it before I leapt, I plunged directly into the icy-cold waters of the frigidarium, and then pulled myself out and lay down on a stone plinth, wrapped in warm, thick towels, where I submitted myself to the rejuvenating pummeling of one of the villa’s masseurs.

By the time I emerged from the masseur’s cubicle I felt like a new man and Bors had tidied up the mess I’d left for him and was ready with a complete change of soft, warm clothing. No armor! It was grand to be back at home. I thanked young Bors and sent him on his way to his own personal freedom, telling him that I would not need his services until the following morning, and then I went outside to saddle up and return to the fortress. It was there, returning through the villa courtyard on my way from the stables, that I first noticed a surprising number of brightly dressed young women, many of whom were staring at me unabashedly and giggling among themselves.

Puzzled at seeing so many women where I could not remember having seen any before, and aware that I knew none of them, I merely nodded a silent greeting to the largest cluster and then kneed my horse out through the gateway, where I put spurs to him and galloped back the mile or so to the bottom of Camulod’s hill before tightening the reins and climbing the wide, winding approach to the gates at a more sedate pace.

I had barely entered the gates when I became aware again of an amazing number of young women about the place. I swung away in some confusion and directed my horse along the interior perimeter of the walls, avoiding all of them and looking around me in the hope of seeing one or more of my friends.

I followed the unmistakable sounds of wooden practice swords to find Ghilleadh and Bedwyr belaboring each other in one of the small garden spaces that had been created here and there within the fortress in recent years. Their heavy weapons were moving so swiftly that my eye could not follow individual sweeps, perceiving only blurs of motion among the ringing cracks of wooden blades smashing together, and their concentration was intense, each man focused completely on his fast-moving opponent. It was Bedwyr who saw me first and jumped back from the contest, grounding the point of his weapon as he did so, so that Ghilly checked himself, grunting on the point of delivering a mighty backhanded slash, and looked over his shoulder to see what his opponent was grinning at so foolishly. And Bedwyr might well grin, I knew, for he had not been faring well and was glad to see me. He was red faced and sweating and short of breath, none of which surprised me, since I had frequently found myself in much the same condition, face to face with the redoubtable and indefatigable Ghilleadh.

Among us all, Ghilleadh was far and away the strongest and best swordsman, with lightning-fast reactions and immense strength in his arms, shoulders, hands and legs. He might seldom have much to say, but he was prepared to fight and win at any moment, upon demand. And he was one of the best loved among us, despite the fact that every one of us had frequently spent days recovering from some of the bruisings he had heaped upon us.

Now he grinned at me, no sign of any kind betraying that, mere moments earlier, he had been locked in quasi-mortal combat with the breathless Bedwyr. “Lancer,” he growled. “You’re home. Good. Take Bedwyr’s sword and show us what you learned while you were away.”

I held up my arms in surrender, claiming I was too fresh off the road to do anything strenuous, and slid down from my saddle to embrace both of them. It was then that I asked about all the young women I had seen.

“All after Arthur,” Ghilly grunted.

“After Arthur for what?” I asked, but he merely raised a dark, saturnine eyebrow and directed his attention to a loose strap on one of his greaves, and so I turned to Bedwyr. “What’s going on?”

“Marriage proposals,” he replied, his grin as broad as ever. “Treaties and alliances in the making. We have six power-hungry kings and their breathy, eager daughters here in Camulod right now.”

“Six? There’s more than that. I’ve seen scores of them, and I have only been here for mere moments.”

“No, six of them only are suitors for Arthur’s hand and kingdom. The others are all like us, ladies companion, just as we are Knights Companion—cousins and sisters and aunts, all in attendance upon their mistresses. But it makes for interesting mealtimes in the Hall, believe me. Aside from the women, there are more bards and musicians here today than I can ever remember having seen in one place before. Not to mention all the tumblers and acrobats and players.”

I looked back again to where Ghilly stood, his face a blank mask. “And you, Ghilly. Do you think you might find yourself a wife among all these beauties?”

He cocked his head. “Aye, if I grow old and doddering before they all leave. I want no wife, man. I’m not a farmer, hungry to acquire land—nor am I a king, seeking profit in being wed to someone who can help me. I’m a soldier. I live free and that’s all the life I need. My needs of women are few, and easily looked after whenever they arise, without the encumbrance of a wifely tongue. God save us all, but you can have any willing would-be wife who sets her eye at me, Lancer. I’ll have none of them.”

“And what about you, Lancer? Could you be tempted?” Bedwyr was smiling gently now.

“Tempted? Aye, mayhap. Any man can be tempted. But I have not yet come close enough to any single one of these brightly colored creatures to see a face, let alone be tempted. I was thinking about other things, to be truthful—like finding something cold and plentiful to drink. Where should I look for that long, cool draft?”

“To the kitchens! They broached a new barrel last night. Come on, Ghilly. Put your sword away and resign yourself to drinking beer in pleasant company instead. Mayhap we’ll find a woman there for you who seeks no wifely voice.”

The kitchens, which occupied an immense area indoors and out, were probably the only place in Camulod that day where a man might sit without seeing a shining woman somewhere in his field of view. There were several young females around us, truth to tell, but they were all local girls, working, and hence, to our eyes, invisible, intent as they were upon the feeding of several thousand people that night.

The new beer was excellent, smooth and sweet with none of the pungent bitterness that had been noticeable in several batches the previous year, and the three of us sprawled in comfort at an outside table, talking idly about the things men talk about after being released from work and duties. Bedwyr had drawn his duty in Camulod that year, the prime and most sought-after posting for all of us, so his summer had been very pleasant, with nothing untoward threatening his easy existence. Ghilly, on the other hand, had been riding the boundaries to the south and west, and had had several clashes with bands of raiders, a few of them large and powerful parties. But he had outmaneuvered, outfought and defeated all of them and returned home some days before me, with the loss of only fourteen men and a score of horses. He was fiercely proud of his men’s fighting abilities, which was not surprising, since he was known as the strictest taskmaster in Camulod and his men were constantly on the training grounds when they were not out on patrol.

Merlyn had been absent for most of the campaigning season, no one knew where, and Arthur, they told me, had spent the entire summer dealing with emissaries from various parts of the country, cementing relationships and negotiating new alliances far and wide.

I shook my head in wonderment. “I find it hard to believe that, faced with all these beautiful women, he would take the time to go hunting.”

“Believe it. He didn’t simply go, he escaped,” Ghilly muttered. “They drove him out. You know Arthur. Sees more beauty in an antlered stag than in a herd of women. But he’s the one being hunted here, so he hid. I’d do the same. So might you.”

“I doubt that,” I said, smiling. “So who are these six kings offering their daughters for a panderer’s fee?”

Bedwyr answered me. “It’s a fat fee, Lancer, for any panderer, be he king or beggar, to have a daughter wed to the High King. You can see how great they fancy the stakes to be when six of them turn up here at the same time, all with the same thing in mind. It’s keeping Arthur on his toes, I can tell you, trying to be polite to all of them and keep them all smiling and give offense to no one. It’s a thorny path. There are times when the tension around here is thick enough to smell, and it’s a wonder to me that they haven’t all been at each other’s throats by this time.”

“Who are they, these people?”

“Well, there’s Pelinore, first and foremost, from up in north Cambria. But Pelly’s a known quantity, a good fellow, a staunch friend and a strong warrior. He’d make a powerful ally, with a formal treaty, but he’s a formidable one as things stand, without one. Unfortunately, his daughter’s as ugly as a hammer-headed horse. Plainest one of the lot, and heavy, too. A big girl. Then there’s Cyngal, from the southeastern end of Eire. He has a strong fleet of galleys and a lovely daughter, but I don’t think Arthur’s interested in an Eirish alliance, not right now, when he can have the same size of fleet from Annar, who’s king on the Island of Mann. But he also doesn’t want to alienate Cyngal, so he’ll tread softly there. Annar is here, too, and his daughter’s name is Anna. Prettiest one of the bunch, I think. But I knew Annar as a boy and he has always been an ignorant lout, loud mouthed and violent and not afraid of treachery if it suits his purposes. I wouldn’t trust him to look after my interests, were I high king. He’s too fond of himself, by far, to have any fondness left for a rival, even if he calls him an ally and pretends to kiss his arse.

“Let’s see now, that’s three of them. Who else is there? Aye, there’s a fellow called Einar, an Anglian from the Saxon Shores area, near the old town of Colchester. Can you believe that; an Outlander Anglian? But his people have been settled over there in the east for nigh on a hundred years now, it appears. And here he is, suing for alliance with Camulod.”

“And his daughter?”

Bedwyr shrugged. “Attractive, I suppose, if you have a liking for white hair and white skin and pale, washed-out eyes. Her name is Hilde, or Hilda, and she’s comely enough, but she’s no competition for Annar’s Anna, and that’s the truth.”

“Who else? You’re still missing two.”

“Aye, I know. Let me think. There’s an evil-looking animal called Lachlan. He comes from Cambria, too, far to the north, beyond Snowdon. Big fellow, dark faced; always scowling and muttering to himself as though he suspects everyone of planning to jump on him and kill him. But he’s here, and his daughter looks as though she might be a prize. Tall, black haired with blue eyes, wears yellow gowns all the time. And the last one’s Kilmorack, from smack in the center of Britain. His stronghold is the old Roman fort at Venonae, although they call it something else now. From the way he speaks of it, it’s a real fortress, and he has the men to hold it against all comers. His daughter’s the youngest of them all. Barely twelve years old, but she’ll be beautiful someday.”

“So why has he come here? If he and his holdings are so well entrenched and defended, why does he need an alliance with Camulod?”

“Because he’s clever, and I believe he’s trustworthy. He can see what’s happening. The Saxons are growing stronger every year, and he’s wealthy enough and strong enough to hold them off for now, but that can’t last forever. The men he has now are all he has. Every one that gets killed weakens him. And the Saxons keep coming, more and more of them every year.”

“Hmm. You’re right, Bedwyr, he is clever. I’ve been in the same situation he’s in, in Gaul, where every man lost to us was a catastrophe that couldn’t be remedied. It’s an unpleasant reality to have to face, but it sounds as though this Kilmorack intends to do something about it. How does Arthur feel about the man?”

“Same way Bedwyr and I do,” said Ghilly. “Positive. Hopeful. Man’s a natural ally for us. Thinks the way we do, fights the way we do—hard, smart, determined. He’s an able commander.”

“So you think Arthur will wed his twelve-year-old daughter?”

“Nah!” Ghilly’s scornful dismissal was close to being a laugh. “No need. Those two are friends now. Natural allies, as I said.”

“Venonae, you say his place is called?” I glanced at Bedwyr. “I’ve never heard of it, either.”

Bedwyr smiled. “No more had we before he turned up here, but it’s been there for hundreds of years, he told me, built by Suetonius Paulinus, the Roman governor who ruled Britain at the time of Boudicca’s rebellion, back when Claudius was emperor. I have a feeling we’ll come to know it better, now that Arthur has met its king. Pour me some more of that beer.”

We sat there, drinking and talking in desultory spurts, until we were interrupted by the clear sound of a brass horn, quickly followed by three more.

“Arthur’s back,” Ghilly said, standing up. “Let’s go.”

2

The King, whose face was now unexpectedly concealed by a short-cropped beard, was glad to see me, but despite the genuine pleasure in his welcoming smile, I could tell that at least some of his gladness stemmed from reasons and reactions similar to Bedwyr’s when I had appeared to save him from Ghilly’s punishment earlier that day. He was unarmored, dressed in hunting clothes that set off his immense physique, his only visible weapon the great hilt of Excalibur that reared above his shoulders from the sling at his back. He had a large party of hunters with him, more than a score in all, counting his own armored escort, and six of them were obviously his regal visitors, a fact I would have discerned from their clothing even had I not seen Pelinore among them.

Arthur had not really escaped, I realized then; he had merely escaped from the ubiquitous young women, a development their fathers would have accepted readily enough, given the consequential opportunities they might have, or might make, to plead their own causes in the course of an enjoyable hunting expedition. I could see that he was tired, and I felt a surge of empathy; there could be no pleasure in being constantly surrounded by a host of opportunistic parasites, I surmised, particularly when their common motives set all of them at odds with another.

My eyes sought out Pelinore again and I felt a twinge of guilt for having thought of him, even fleetingly, as a parasite, for he was no such thing. The others, however, I did not know, and I was content to hold my disapproving judgment of their motives until time and events should show me I was wrong.

Which of them would be the man called Kilmorack, I wondered, the one Ghilly and Bedwyr had warmed to? And then I saw him and knew him instantly. Something about him set him apart from his companions. He was younger than all of them, I estimated, by at least five years and possibly ten, and there was an easiness in his face and manner that indicated—to me, at least, knowing what my friends had said about him—that he had fewer concerns over his dealings with Arthur than the others had. That was pure conjecture on my part, but it felt right.

“My lord Riothamus,” I said, bowing and using Arthur’s full title as he slid down from his horse and came towards me, his arms extended to embrace me.

“Seur Clothar. You are a sight to gladden a man’s soul. When did you return?” He flung his arms about me in a great hug and then, without waiting for my response, he released me and swung around to face the hunting party, one arm still about my shoulders. The group sat, watching us with varying yet uniformly unreadable expressions on their faces. “My lords, you have all met my two Knights Companion here, Ghilleadh and Bedwyr, already, but now I would like you to meet another of their Brotherhood. This is Seur Clothar, freshly returned with his army group from an extended patrol of the northlands below the Wall. Six months at least since we saw his smiling face around here, and it pleases me greatly to welcome him home.” He looked down to smile at me, half a head taller than I was, then looked back to his guests and continued speaking. Although he addressed himself to everyone in general, I knew he was really speaking to the six visiting kings.

“Seur Clothar and I, as you will appreciate, have much to discuss after so long a separation … matters that I assume he will wish to share with me without further loss of time, and so I must ask you to entertain yourselves for a few hours while I pick my commander’s brain for the information he has gathered since he left us. I will rejoin you all tonight in the Great Hall for dinner, but for now, fare ye well. As you already know, we have a fine bath house in the Villa Britannicus, where you are all staying, and its facilities are yours to enjoy. You are welcome to steam and sweat and wash away the residue of your exertions of the past few days, and if you are anything like me, you will marvel at how well our masseurs will ease and soothe your aching muscles after your bath. Seur Ghilleadh and Seur Bedwyr will look after any other needs you might have for the time being. Come now, Seur Clothar, walk with me and tell me all that I need to know of your adventures in the north.”

He kept his arm about my shoulders and his head close to mine for the length of time it took us to walk to the end of the courtyard and turn a corner that took us out of sight of his guests, but in all that time he said not a word, and I knew this was a charade, giving an impression of our being deep in conversation to those watching our departing backs. As soon as we had turned the corner he stopped, and he raised both arms to scrub at his eyes with the heels of his hands.

“Thank God for your timely arrival, Lance. I swear by all the ancient gods, had I known that this kind of futile nonsense would be involved in being High King, I would never have consented to being crowned. Sweet Mother of God! There is never an end to the demands of some of these people … and the task of placating them and pampering their vanities and follies would make the ancient Sisyphus volunteer to push a bigger boulder uphill with his nose, rather than assume the task of looking after them. It really is beyond belief how petty these men are.”

“Are you including Pelinore in that, my lord?”

“No, I am not. I am not even including all the others, but Pelinore is only one of them through circumstance. He came here with his daughter Rhea in search of self-protection. Clearly he had word that some of the others were coming, sniffing for whatever they could gain by proffering their daughters to my kingly lusts, and so he chose to come, too, in order to keep an eye on developments and assess the ambitions and propensities of his fellow kings. As for Rhea, she and I have been friends for many years and there is nothing of physical attraction between us. Pelinore knew that when he came. He merely brought her along as protective coloration. No, Pelly is not one of the buzzards.”

“And Kilmorack, is he one?” Arthur’s eyebrows shot upwards in surprise at my mention of the name, and I explained, “I don’t know the man. Bedwyr and Ghilly told me about him this afternoon, while we were drinking beer together.”

He looked at me for several moments before responding. “They like him.”

I nodded, and he nodded back. “I do too. And so will you, once you meet him. Kilmorack is a fine man, exactly the kind of ally we need. But we have agreed, he and I, without even discussing it, that there will be no need for me to marry his young daughter to cement a treaty. He loves the child too much to use her in such a way, although he came here prepared to do so were it necessary. For my part, I would never consider marrying a child. Where were you drinking this beer you spoke of?”

I grinned at him. “In the kitchens … well, outside them, at a table in the shade.”

“Lead on, then. Take me there, but choose a route by which no one will see us. If I have to force another smile today I might go mad and kill someone.”

We met no one on the way, and sat down at the same table I had been using earlier. No one said a word of greeting to us, but the news obviously went immediately to Curio, the majordomo of the kitchens, that the King himself was sitting outside, for he came bustling out mere moments after our arrival, wiping his hands on the long white apron he always wore. “My lord King—”

Arthur cut him off with an upraised hand. “Forgive me, Curio, but I am in retreat from all the world, else I would not usurp your premises. But I need both privacy and anonymity, for a spell, and my friend Seur Clothar suggested that this might be the most suitable place in all of Camulod to fit my purposes. He also tells me that, aside from your natural courtesy and discretion, you have some excellent beer. Might I have some of that?”

Curio bustled away, almost overwhelmed by the King’s graciousness and compliments, and returned moments later with an enormous jug of fresh-drawn beer, two large mugs of fired clay and a wooden platter of cold meats and cheese, freshly sliced bread and a container of precious olive oil. After he had departed for the second time, no other member of his kitchen staff peeked out at us or emerged to disturb our colloquy. The small enclosure was ours alone, for as long as we wished to remain there.

I was hungry, having eaten nothing since breaking my fast before dawn, and it was plain to see that Arthur was, too, and so we sat in companionable silence and simply ate, until nothing was left on the platter but a few scraps. Arthur leaned back then and drank deeply from his mug, belching softly as he lowered it again.

“You’re right. The beer is excellent. So tell me, how was your time in the north? Did you encounter any problems? And was Connlyn surprised to see you?”

“He was, my lord, and he seemed pleased—”

“Enough of that nonsense,” the King interrupted. “I have been ‘my lorded’ nigh to death these past weeks. You’ll please me more by calling me plain Arthur when we are alone, you know that.”

“Very well … Arthur. As for problems, we encountered none that we were not equipped to deal with.”

“Did you lose many men?”

“Not one. Not a single casualty, although we ran into a band of Saxon raiders near Connlyn’s land. We took them on and thrashed them, but we were lucky not to sustain a single wound.”

He held up a hand to stop me before I could go further. “Excellent. But unless you have something urgent to tell me, I would prefer to wait and hear your full report when I am in a better frame of mind for listening.”

“No, then. There’s nothing urgent enough that it can’t wait.”

“Excellent again. Now tell me this instead: how loyal are my Knights Companion?”

I stared at him, my mug half raised to drink. “What does that mean? You know their loyalty is unconditional, my lo—” I stopped myself, and lowered my mug slowly to the table. “You will never find any loyalty greater, no matter where you search, or for how long.”

“Aye, I know that, Lance. But that is not exactly what I meant, so I suppose the question was too vague. What I really meant to ask was, will they do anything I ask of them?”

Still mystified, I spoke more brusquely than I might otherwise have done. “Aye. They will. All of them. Even if it means their deaths.”

“What about death in life?”

“Arthur, I have no idea what you are talking about.”

He smiled beneath the beard, but his thoughts and his unfocused eyes were obviously fixed on something elsewhere. “No matter, I was merely wondering if they would marry for me, were I to ask it of them.”

“Marry for you?” I laughed aloud, drawing his gaze and laughing again at having discovered the way his thoughts were drifting. “You mean, would they unburden you of the need to choose a wife from among your supplicants? Aye, they might—some of them at least. Nevertheless, there are but eight of us, Arthur, and only three of us here, and you have six young women panting for you here and now. And not only the legitimate kings and chiefs but every petty bandit strong enough to proclaim himself a king has a herd of daughters. There must be scores more of them all over the land. And honestly, I doubt if many of those here now would settle for less than the King himself.”

“Not even for the King’s closest and most trusted friends? I think you might be wrong there, Lance. Even their fathers might see an advantageous match in being kin by marriage to a legate general of Camulod.”

“Aye, but …” I was struck by a sudden insight. “It won’t stop until you’ve made a choice, will it?”

He sighed, deeply, and I heard regret and unhappiness in the sound. “No, it won’t, Lance. And I seem to be the only person in all this land who wants me to make no choice.”

“None at all?”

“Absolutely not, although that is for your ears alone. I have no interest in marrying anyone, not even for the so-called sake of my people. Besides, I can only make one choice, and that choice, in its commission, will alienate everyone else. But no one seems able to see that, not even Merlyn.

“By making such a choice—and everyone seems bent on having me do it—I will be setting all my plans back to naught, perhaps irremediably. All the work I’ve done to date, all the negotiations and the planning, all the cajoling and the threatening and the treaty building could be destroyed simply because I have to choose a wife from among a throng of jealous, ambitious competitors. Two of these people here today, Annar of Mann Isle and Lachlan of north Cambria, I will swear to you now, will withdraw their support from us immediately if I don’t marry their daughters. And I may not do that, for even as High King I cannot marry two of them. One wife at a time is all the Church permits a man, and that applies to kings as strictly as it does to other men. Were I to choose one of their daughters, the other would march off and terminate or violate our treaty. This is a situation in which I find myself impossibly beset, Clothar. I cannot win, no matter what I do.”

“So what will you do? I have the feeling that you have decided on a course of action, but I can’t guess what it might be.”

“Inaction, Lance, not action. I have decided to do nothing—to make no choice and yet contrive somehow to leave my options open. But now I have to find some way to send all these importunate petitioners back to their home lands with their pride intact and their daughters’ dignity perceived as not having been insulted. The doing of that—if it can even be done at all—will entail an exercise in diplomacy worthy of Imperial Rome. In honesty, I do not even know where to begin.”

“You have already made a beginning. Deciding to have none of these women or the treaties their fathers offer in exchange is a beginning.”

The face beneath the beard twisted in what might have been a rueful smile. “But no one knows, Lance. I have not yet told anyone.”

“So tell them now. Call them together tonight—before or after the evening meal makes no difference—and tell them your decision and explain your reasons clearly: that this matter of a royal marriage is a weighty one and too important to this realm of Britain to be taken lightly, without deep thought and time to consider the matter fully. It is a thing you must discuss in full with your advisers, and take their considerations into account before making such a decision. And it is true that many of them, most notably Merlyn, are not here at this time. Be open in admitting that you have no wish to offend anyone among them, but point out the potential for ill feelings here and now, with only six of them present, out of all the scores of kings and chiefs from one end of this land to the other.

“Play the Riothamus role, the role of the high king—it is yours, after all—and explain your responsibilities as you perceive them. Then tell them that when you do decide to take a wife, you will do so as High King and will inform them all at the same time. We already know they won’t like this, but if you tell all of them at once, when they are all together, they will have no choice but to accept it equally. As things stand, some of them probably think you’ll choose in their favor over all the others, because such is the self-delusional power of kings. But in choosing not to choose, you return all of them to an equal footing, the subordinate position that is truly theirs. Some of them might be angry, but none will dare do anything openly to offend you.”

He said nothing, but his facial expression stated quite openly that he did not have my faith in the reactions of all six of his royal guests, and so I took up the issue before he could say anything.

“Think about it, Arthur. Think about it as the High King, not as Arthur Pendragon. What can they do? Threaten you in front of everyone else with their displeasure? That would give you ample reason to come down on them with all the force at your disposal.”

His brow furrowed slightly. “How so?”

“How so? Because if any one of them were stupid enough to threaten you with consequences for taking this stand, he would be stating openly that he considers himself your superior and expects you to take note of his displeasure. But none of them is Riothamus, Arthur. You are. That is your greatest strength: you were crowned Riothamus by the bishops of the Church in front of a gathering of kings and chiefs from all across and up and down the land. Use that dignitas properly, and the few who might be angry enough to renege on their promises of loyalty will be afraid to do so openly, then and there, because the others will immediately close ranks with you against them.”

He made a wry face. “Aye, then and there perhaps, but what about afterwards?”

“Arthur, if any one of them intends treachery, he will be treacherous in his own time. You cannot control that. But handle this present dilemma decisively, and you assert your dominance and the power of the Riothamus. You seize the chance to show potential rebels the unified strengths against which they will risk rebelling. Pelinore and your new friend Kilmorack will stand by you in the doing of that, and their combined strength is not a thing to be ignored by anyone. How many of these six are you concerned about? You mentioned two of them who might renege on their promises, but are there more?”

“No, I think not. Only the two of them. The two others, Einar and Cyngal, seem straightforward enough for my liking, and I believe they will cause us no problems. Cyngal seeks alliance here in south Britain because of his seagoing fleet. He needs the reassurance of being able to land his galleys for shelter and repair along our shores without fear of attack.”

“Will he settle for a treaty without a marriage to his daughter?”

“Aye, he will. He but brought his daughter in the hope of using her were such a thing needful. He will sign a treaty without that, because a treaty is more important to him than to me at this time. Alliances across the sea have no real benefit for us the way things stand today. The distances are too long and the weather threats too hazardous.

“Einar the Anglian, on the other hand, has no ships at his disposal, but he, too, needs the assurance of aid should his people and their lands be threatened or invaded. He and his people are Christian. His father and mother were named Cuthric and Cayena, and they became friends of both Merlyn and your mentor Germanus when the good bishop last came to Britain. That was nigh on ten years ago now and Cuthric and Cayena have been dead for some time, Einar told me, both of them killed in a raid. Einar is king of his people now, appointed to the rank by the people themselves. Prior to that appointment by acclaim, he had merely followed his father as headman of their community. So now he is a king, but I have no true knowledge of the size of his holdings or the strengths of his followers. One thing I do know, however: he poses no threat to Camulod or to me. Therefore I am inclined to trust him.” He smiled at me, teeth gleaming from the depths of the carefully trimmed beard that I found so disconcerting. “I am inclined to trust you, too … your judgment in this, I mean … It makes sound sense and I am grateful.”

“No need.” I waved away his gratitude, slightly embarrassed by it. “When did you grow the beard?”

He scratched at the growth covering his chin. “In the spring, soon after you left, I suppose. I was traveling almost every week, and it was easier to let the whiskers grow than to undergo the fuss of shaving every day. Now that I am home for the winter, I intend to shave it off again. You disapprove of it? I rather like it.”

“It makes you look older.”

“That is a benefit, my friend, not a liability. Most of the kings with whom I have to deal are graybeards, far older than I am. You will have to find a more substantial plaint than that before you can sway me.”

He was laughing at me, I knew, but I merely shrugged my shoulders and spoke my mind. “Beards are not to my personal taste. I like to see a man’s face when I am talking to him and I find beards to be like masks. They cover much that should be open. They suggest a wildness to me, too, a lack of civilizing influences.”

Now he did laugh aloud. “Ah, is that the loyalty you were describing earlier? The unrestricted, unconditional kind? You find me suddenly untrustworthy, unreadable because I choose to wear a beard? A mask, Lance?”

His words stung. “I was speaking of beards and the men I have met and disliked who wore them, Arthur. I meant no word of it to apply to you.”

“But how can that be? I have a beard.”

I was thinking of my long-dead cousin Gunthar, the most evil man I had ever known, and I could see his face floating in my mind, taunting me, with the blood of his slaughtered brothers clotting in the thick beard he wore to disguise his lipless mouth and his empty, soulless, ever-shifting eyes.

“It must be the Roman Gaul in you, Lance,” Arthur continued, his tone bantering. “More Roman there than Gaul, however. Did you not know the Gauls invented beards? That’s why the civilized, clean-shaven Romans called them barbarians—because they wore barbas, beards.”

“Aye, and they never bathed.” I strove to make my tone as light as his, seeing no profit in bringing up Gunthar’s name and thereby gifting him posthumously with acknowledgment that he had ever lived.

Arthur’s face sobered abruptly. “The mask effect is a nonsense, Lance. Clean-shaven or bearded, the man himself remains unaltered. Hair on the face is natural, all men have it. It is the removal of it that is an affectation—in my case this year, an inconvenient one. I was traveling constantly throughout the spring and summer, but I was not formally under arms. I was a visiting dignitary, making my rounds and at liberty to grow a beard if I so wished. And I so wished. And I have enjoyed the beard, and the free time it has afforded me, not having to scrape my face every morning.

“Had I been riding with an expeditionary force, however, growing it would never have crossed my mind. Under arms, the enforcement of mandatory shaving is part and parcel of discipline and uniformity: the need to do it every day takes up time that might otherwise be used for mischief, and it gives the men a common cause for complaint and harmless muttering. It also increases and enhances uniformity. Lastly, it separates the disciplined army from the barbarian rabble. But I shall bare my face tomorrow, to avoid causing you further pain.”

I sipped my beer slowly before changing the subject. “May I ask a question, Arthur?”

“Of course.”

“It is a personal question … you might not like it.”

“Then it will not be the first such question you’ve asked me. Since when have you become so reticent?”

“It is … It’s in my mind that you have absolutely no wish to marry … to marry anyone, I mean, not just one of these six maidens. Am I correct?”

“You are.”

He gave no sign of wishing to add to that, and I shifted my weight and cleared my throat. “Why not? Am I permitted to ask that?”

“You are permitted to ask anything, Lance. I told you that. Whether I choose to answer you or to ignore your questions is another thing altogether. But let me ask you a question, by way of answering yours. Have you ever been in love?”

Had I? I had known several women, most of them young girls, but really very few, and none of them had caused me any loss of sleep or shortness of breath, or any of the other symptoms I had grown to believe were caused by being in love. I shook my head slowly.

“No, I don’t believe I have. But perhaps I have and simply was unaware of it. I suspect I might not know I was in love, even if I were. We had little room or time for such things in the Bishop’s School.”

“I believe you. Now you listen to me and believe me, as your friend if not as your king. You, Seur Clothar, have never known love. If you had, you could not possibly bleat such nonsense as has just emerged from your mouth, because the experience of being in love alters everything in what you had previously known as life. Once you have experienced love, my friend, nothing can ever be the same again … including you yourself.”

“Why? How?” I suddenly felt both ignorant and foolish, a boy in school again, but I could not resist asking. “What does it do to you?”

“I’ve told you, it changes the world, but I cannot tell you how. No man can do that, for each man’s world, before he loves, is his own and known to him alone. Only after he has fallen in love can any man recognize what he once had, and know that what it was is gone beyond recall or recapture. Your time will come, Lance, and when it does, you will remember this conversation and understand what I meant.”

I was unable to think of a single thing to say, but there was no need to say anything, for his brow was furrowed with concentration, and it was obvious from the halting way his words eventually emerged that he had never tried to put these thoughts into mere words before.

“I believe …” He stopped and considered, then began again. “I have been taught, Lance … without ever having received a lesson in any such thing … that love is a divine gift—a benison direct from God Himself and created for the beatitude, the ennoblement, of mankind … That sounds very grand and exalted, even to my own ears, but is no less true for being so. And I have been taught, by the same voiceless teachers … people like Merlyn and others who have taught me by example … by the very lives they live … that there are many kinds of love, apart from the love of men and women. I have come to see that nothing in this world is more powerful or more important than …” Again he hesitated, searching. “Than what? Love is the word that comes into my mind, but it is not the word I need …”

He waved a hand as though to silence me, but nothing could have been further from me at that moment than the desire to speak and interrupt what I had recognized to be a new level of intimacy in his confiding in me.

He thought for a time and then smiled uncertainly and continued, his tone almost apologetic. “Bear with me, if you will—I find this difficult. Philosophy has never been a strength of mine, much to the despair of my boyhood tutors, and I have never tried to explain these things before, even to myself … You know me, Lance, as well as any comrade can. You know how I am, how I think. I deal in real things and seldom in anything more abstract than a strategic battle plan. And battle plans, as you know well, are designed to be revised and improvised upon as soon as the first exchange of blows has neutered them …

“Now … I was talking about love, and the lessons I have learned—” He stopped abruptly and uttered a sound that was part laugh, part snort of disgust. “Lance, the thoughts in my mind right now as we speak are so strange to me that were I to hear them spoken aloud by one of my own commanders, the mere utterance would be enough to make me doubt his competence.”

I hesitated before I said, “Then perhaps it would be better not to voice them.”

“No! I need to look at them, out in the open. And it seems to me that I could not do that better than with you. You are the only one I can talk to about this. Your ears are open to me. Merlyn’s are blocked by who he is. He is more than twice my age and he sees things as my father would have seen them had he been alive today. But I don’t need my father’s outlook on the world, nor do I need his solutions to the problems that beset him in his youth. Everything is new today. Everything is different from the world my father and Merlyn knew as boys and young men, and my role—mine alone, Arthur Pendragon’s role of Riothamus—is one that no man has ever had to play before. You are my friend, Lance, and I need you, in this situation, as I have never needed any man. Will you listen?”

I attempted to smile easily. “You do not even need to ask that, Arthur.”

“Then pour us some more beer. It seems to ease my tongue.”

I poured the last of the jug’s contents into our two mugs, and then we both sat silent, sipping slowly, each immersed in his own thoughts. Finally Arthur set his mug down and sat back.

“Let’s be about it, then. Set me upon the path. Tell me what you have heard.”

I sucked air audibly between my teeth, searching for a starting point. “You have no wish to marry. That’s where we began, and then you spoke of love, and life lessons, all of which you said were concerned with love in one way or another. Then you grew frustrated with the word ‘love’ because—”

“Responsibility. That’s the word that was eluding me. Because we use it all the time, but we never think of it as having anything to do with love. Yet it has everything to do with it. Love is responsibility, Lance, in all its aspects. Think of it, and begin with marriage.

“When a man falls in love and takes a wife, he takes responsibility, for her and for the children he will sire on her. Now we all know that many men take none, but they are not worthy of the name of men. True men, men of goodwill, assume responsibility for wives and families, and everyone expects it of them.

“Now look at yourself and your brethren, my Knights Companion, all of the legates general of Camulod. All of you are filled with love of each other and I believe you would willingly die for one another, which makes your brotherhood unique. And all of you are filled with love of what you do, and that entails further responsibility, for the duties with which you are charged, and for the men you command. Look at Ghilleadh. His men think of him as a slave driver, and in some ways he may seem like one, even to us. But Ghilly’s concern is all for those men of his. He feels a personal responsibility for their welfare and their lives. He lost fourteen on his last tour, and was distraught. He named every one of them in his report to me. That is love, Lance, and it entails a responsibility, an integrity, that is wholly admirable and commendable.

“I love my father, although I never knew him. To be more accurate, I love the memory of him as it has been disclosed to me through others. And that love, more akin to reverence, I admit, keeps me aware of my responsibilities to him, to what he was and what he represented: nobility, fearlessness, and a commitment and dedication to his own duties and responsibilities in Cambria that surpassed all else in his life.

“Now think of Merlyn, my uncle and my cousin both, and his love for me, which I have never doubted. Think how seriously he takes his responsibilities … to the point at which he sometimes makes me impatient, if not angry with him. And your own favorite teachers and tutors when you were a lad in Gaul, did they love you? Perhaps you may not think they did, but ask yourself this: did you love them? And if so, why? Because they showed their love for you by executing their duties as your tutors with absolute responsibility, making you the man that you became. Who was your favorite teacher, apart from Germanus?”

“Germanus was my mentor, not my tutor. My favorite teacher was Tiberias Cato, who taught me to ride and to fight and to throw the lance. And yes, before you ask, I loved both of them, although I doubt I knew it at the time. Now that they are both gone, I know how much I love and miss them. And their sense of responsibility—for me and all the others in their charge—was absolute.”

“There you have it then: love of man and woman, love of man and man in brotherhood, filial love and paternal love, and the love of duty, all of them involving, demanding, the faithful and unflagging pursuit of fulfillment of responsibilities. There is only one love that I have missed, and that is one that no one ever seems to think about or acknowledge …”

“And what is that?”

“Love of one’s homeland. This Britain that we live in. I love it, in addition to all the other loves I have mentioned. And I feel—no, I am—responsible for it.

“I am High King of All Britain, even though such a Britain does not exist, save in my own mind and dreams. It did exist, once not so long ago, but it was not a land in the sense I mean. It was a mere province, ruled by Outlanders who ruled the world. It was no more than a small and unimportant part of an enormous whole, which is why they abandoned it.” He paused again.

“We talk, I talk, Merlyn talks about this realm of Britain. You spoke of it yourself mere moments ago. But there is no realm, Lance, not in reality. I have no realm. What I have is a chaos of voices—the voices of small kings and scattered kingdoms—each one clamoring louder than the next in the hope of gaining some advantage over all his neighbors, something that will set him ahead of them, something that bears not the slightest likeness to the wishes of the next man trying to make his voice heard.

“And surrounding them, threatening all of them, is the menace of invasion by the Saxon hordes. Oh, they all love to talk about the dangers, but the plain truth is that as long as the threats are confined to other people’s lands, the other kings are all content to ignore them and concentrate only on their own little concerns, their own agendas. And there are scores of these little kings, Lance, perhaps hundreds. So here I am, High King of All Britain, and I cannot even count the number of lesser kings within my so-called realm with any kind of accuracy.

“But I can dream, and within that dream lies my responsibility.

“I dream, my friend, of what my title Riothamus means … of what it really entails … the hard reality behind the fine-sounding name. I dream of a Britain united, one people, unified under one monarch and protected as securely under the rule of law as they were when Rome governed here. My task in life, the sole task for which I have been bred and trained, is to achieve that unity, consolidating all the clans and tribes and little kingdoms of this land into a single force that will withstand and throw out the Outlanders who seek to take our Britain from us. That is my duty, my responsibility, and it demands all the love and dedication that is in me. And my greatest fear is that I may not have sufficient time to fulfill it.”

“And so you feel … you cannot take a wife.”

“Precisely. A wife, at this time, would hamper me with responsibilities I cannot afford to undertake. I have too much else to do, and too little time in which to do it. It will require all my effort, single-mindedly, to achieve even the half of what I have to do.”

“So you will never marry.”

“No, that may change. Nothing can last forever and I will probably be forced to marry at some point. People expect it of me, to sire an heir. But when I yield to that necessity it will be out of duty, not out of human, man-for-woman love, and it cannot be now or in the imaginable future.”

“But what if you meet the woman God intended you to meet … for we are taught He has a mate for each of us … what then?”

He turned his face away from me, inhaling deeply and then expelling the breath forcefully. “I have already met her, Lance, and lost her, long since. The bishops tell us that we have but one soul mate in life, one love for all time, and that any subsequent love we may find is but a misplaced shadow of what might have been. I had such a love, once. I have known my soul mate. Her name was Morag. I told you of her once before. I was sixteen, and she was younger, but we were in love. So deep in love that I have never recovered from the loss of her. And lose her I did, simply because we were so young that no one could believe that we were old enough to love in such a way. And so we kept it hidden from the world, fearing that what actually happened might occur. Less than a month I knew her for. Less than a month, but we enjoyed a lifetime in those weeks. We slept together and knew each other carnally, despite our youthfulness. No one ever knew. I was afraid of being flogged, had we been caught, for I was a mere stripling boy, not yet a man, and she was a guest in Camulod, niece to a visiting queen.

“And then one day she was gone. I watched her go, and I was desolate, but I believed she would come back to me. It had been promised by her aunt, and by Merlyn …”

“And you never sought to find her?”

“They told me that she died within a year of returning home … I thought I might die, too, when I heard that. I wanted to. But I lived on and no one ever knew or suspected what was in my soul, the despair and the emptiness. How could they? I was but a boy, too insignificant to be regarded as a person, too young to be a man or to dream of love.”

“Obviously you still think of her at times like this.”

His beard twitched. “At times like this? There has never been a day since she went home that I have not thought about her. And no woman I have ever met has stirred me as she did. I will never forget her, Lance. She was my love. The one love of my life. Of course, now that I am a man, people would think me mad were they to hear me say such a thing, because, of course, I was a mere boy at the time, and therefore …”

I sat quietly, waiting.

“And so I say nothing. It is all part of who I am, and what I have become, and it is no man’s concern but my own … save that you now know about it too …

“But if I am correct in equating love to responsibility, then I must accept the love of God apparent in the responsibility he has laid upon me to be High King of this Britain in fact, rather than merely in name, and I am grateful not to be distracted by any fleshly love.” He looked me in the eye. “Do you think me foolish?”

“No, on God’s name I do not. But I had no idea …”

“How could you? No one does, not even Merlyn.” He sat straighter in his chair and clapped his hands together. “So, if it please you, your opinion on my ravings?”

“No ravings, Sire,” I replied, feeling the need to acknowledge the awe I felt. “The honor you have done me here is more than words can deal with, and I am inspired by what you have described to me in this vision of Britain. My life is yours, henceforth, more than it was before, which is not even possible. But now to my devotion to your person and your rank, I add complete and utter dedication to your quest, your dream and your ideal.”

He gazed at me, his mouth invisible beneath the beard, then nodded his head slowly, three times. “So be it, then. You approve of my designs, my wishes?”

“Without reservation, my lord King.”

He rose to his feet and extended his right hand, and I knelt and kissed it.

“Come you, then, and walk with me until we are beset with visitors. And accept my thanks for your patience. You have eased my mind more than I could ever begin to describe.”

No more Lance and Arthur, we walked from the kitchen yard as High King and Knight Companion.

3

“Morgas, you say?” Merlyn had straightened up as though slapped at the mention of the name. “Are you sure her name was Morgas?”

“Aye, as sure as I can be.”

“No, Clothar, I need more than that. This is important. How can you be so sure?”

“Because I was told it was so by someone who had no reason to lie about it—someone whom I had no reason to distrust. I asked him what morgas meant, thinking it to be a word with some meaning in whatever language Connlyn and his sister were speaking when I overheard them arguing. He told me it was a woman’s name, no more than that—the name of Connlyn’s sister.”

“Hmph.” Merlyn hunched forward again, his right hand disappearing beneath his enormous hood as he pinched his chin between thumb and finger. He had arrived back the morning after my own arrival, and this was the first time I had spoken to him, unaware until I met him unexpectedly by the main gates that he had been back in Camulod for three days by then, all of them spent in seclusion with the King. The regal visitors had all departed Camulod on the morning of his arrival, their business here concluded by Arthur’s announcement the previous night that he would not yet be choosing a bride.

I had spent the intervening three days settling in again for the winter and supervising the hundred and one chores that had accumulated during my summer absence. My chain mail was badly rusted, for one thing, its leather lining dried and cracked and its thin padding rotted beyond repair after years of campaigning in all weathers, and I had to make arrangements with the smiths to have another suit made for me.

On the morning of the day I met Merlyn, I had risen at dawn and spent the day alone, practicing since first light with my Gaulish hunting bow and with my throwing lances, recapturing and refining my skills with them both afoot and on horseback, so that by the time I returned to the fortress in mid-afternoon, my back, arms and shoulders were tight and aching with fatigue. The unexpected sight of the King’s black-clad senior counselor, however, filled me with a rejuvenating surge of pleasure and I made no attempt to disguise it.

Merlyn returned my greeting with equal warmth and told me he needed to speak with me, and then he steered me to his quarters with one hand on my arm above the elbow, his grip firm and strong. Once there, he poured each of us a cup of wine before beginning to question me closely on my recent expeditionary visit to Connlyn’s territories.

He listened in silence to all I had to tell him, until I mentioned the name of Connlyn’s sister, eliciting this sudden lively interest, and now, seeing him so deep in thought, I questioned him more directly than I had ever dared before, for he had told me mere moments earlier, to my great pleasure, that I had earned the right to speak to him as an equal, as plain Merlyn, without titles or honorifics.

“You know the name, don’t you? It means something to you. Who is she?”

“I know the name, yes. It is … familiar. And yet it’s but a name. How many women named Paula do you know, here in Camulod?”

“That is a diversion,” I replied. “Paula is a common name—there are three serving women with that name in the officers’ section of the dining hall—but Morgas is not. I had never heard it before.”

He made that “harrumphing” sound again. “You are right, the name is … unusual. That is why it disconcerted me.”

“Then you do know her?”

“No, I do not. But I heard tell, once, of a woman named Morgas, long ago …” He fell silent again, this time for a long time, and when he spoke up again, his voice musing, it was more to himself than to me. “No, it could hardly be, surely …” Then, abruptly, he was speaking to me again. “Tell me about this one, the woman you met. You say she was old. How old?”

I shook my head. “How would I know that? She was … she was simply old, no longer young. Someone’s grandmother.”

“Whose grandmother? She has grandchildren?”

“Anyone’s grandmother, my lord.” Old habits are hard to break, and the term of respect came to my lips without volition. “I was but trying to convey her agedness. I heard her say nothing of grandchildren, and Lanar made no mention of any.”

“Hmm. What did she say to you?”

Yet again I had to shake my head, aware of how ignorant I must seem in the face of his need to know these things. “Nothing memorable. We spoke of trivial things most of the time. And yet she seemed … somehow strange. There was something about her that unsettled me, something in the way she questioned me, although I have long since given up trying to determine what it was.”

“Questioned you about what?”

“About nothing that I have been able to identify as being uncommon or peculiar … I feel stupid, speaking this way, admitting ignorance time after time as though I am a complete ignoramus, but I’ve grown used to that feeling since I met that woman. That’s what I mean when I say she unsettled me. I had the feeling she was probing me for information, but there was nothing I could tell her in response to her questions that could have been of any import to her.”

“What about what you could not tell her? What could you have told her, think you, that might have been of value to her?”

“Again, I have no idea. She asked only vague and general questions.”

“Questions about what?” The impatience in the old man’s voice was clear-edged.

“About Camulod, about the knighthood ceremony, about Arthur.”

“What about Arthur?”

I waved my spread hands in frustration at my inability to be more clear. “Nothing that any other woman would not have asked. What kind of man is he, does he have a wife, that kind of thing. General, as I said, and born of female curiosity. Nothing that was intrusive.”

“What then of Camulod and the knighthood ceremony?”

“The same. She had no interest in the military aspects, only the spectacle and panoply of the thing, although she wondered if the knights could be Arthur’s heirs.”

“Heirs? Are you sure of that? She asked about Arthur’s heirs?”

“Aye, and I told her he had none. Master Merlyn, this has clearly upset you. What am I failing to understand here?”

He sagged backwards in his chair. “Nothing, Clothar, nothing at all … at least nothing that I myself am not equally confused about. Did she tell you any of her history?”

“No, I told you, she did not even tell me her real name. She told me I might call her Judith.”

“So you know nothing about her other than her name?”

“No, I know a little more than that. The man Lanar told me all that he knew of her, although that was not much. She was married to a king in the west of Caledonia, by the sea, a place called Gallowa. His name was Tod. Tod of Gallowa.”

“Did she have a son?”

“No, she had but the one child by this Tod, a daughter. Why is this so important, Merlyn? Who was this Morgas that you knew?”

“Later, I will tell you later. For now I require to know this daughter’s name.”

“I can’t tell you that, for I don’t know. Lanar knew only that there was a daughter who had died far in the north, on an island called Orcenay, where she was wed to the governor.”

“Orcenay is ruled by the Northmen.”

“I know. This governor was appointed to his post by the Norweyan king, who was his father’s brother.” I had to stifle a strong urge to ask him again why this should be so important. Merlyn was notoriously close mouthed about the King’s affairs, and took his role as principal adviser to the Riothamus very seriously. I knew he would tell me anything he thought it important for me to know, and beyond that he would say nothing, and since I could do nothing to alter that, I bit down on my question.

It had grown dark in the room in the short time we had been sitting there, and the single lamp burning over the open fireplace had begun to cast a yellow glow. Merlyn swallowed what remained of his wine and then was on his feet, opening a cupboard against the wall from which he produced a number of long white candles, which he thrust beneath his left arm. He immediately lit one from the lamp’s flame and then he moved about the room, lighting the others one at a time, using only his right hand, and anchoring each of them in small puddles of molten wax spilled from their tops. He lit eight, bathing the room in beautiful white light, before he blew out the single lamp.

“I hate lamps,” he said then. “Smelly, smoky things. But I love the light of candles made from bees’ wax. It is pure and unearthly, almost liquid in its beauty, don’t you think?”

He did not wait for me to agree with him, but stooped to the corner by the fireplace, where he gathered up a small, tied bundle of dried rushes from a basket half-filled with them and held one end of it to the flame of the nearest candle. Then he crouched before the hearth and, when the rushes were burning fiercely, he thrust them into the heart of the waiting pile of logs.

“Hate the cold, too,” he said, still crouching, gazing into the rising flames. “Worse as I grow older. The winters are bad for old bones like mine. They bring out all the aches and pains you never think about in summer.”

Then, with his back to me and his cape concealing everything I might otherwise have seen, he reached out with both hands to warm himself. I have seldom experienced any urge as strong as the one that hit me then, making me want to rise and move sideways to where I might be able to see his left hand, the one he always kept hidden. But of course I did not move, and he eventually stood and retrieved his cup, then crossed the room to refill it from the jug on the table by the wall.

“More wine?”

“Aye, half a cup, if you will.” I stood and crossed to him, and as he began to fill my cup I said, “I am free of duties tonight. Nothing to do but think.” He stopped, surprised, I thought, then raised the jug again.

“Then hold it up.” I did so, and he filled it almost to the brim. “Thinking is thirsty work, my friend, and dangerous. Sit, sit.”

I returned to my chair, taking care not to spill anything as I sat down again, and by the time I looked back at him he was leaning against the wall by the hearth.

“That is close to being the very last drop of the last shipment of wine we received from Gaul, two years ago. Too long. And who knows when or how we will find more of it?”

He drank, and although I could not see into the shadows beneath his hood, I sensed from his posture that he was rolling the wine around his tongue, savoring it. His next words, however, drove such thoughts out of my mind.

“We heard rumors, long ago, that Uther had sired other sons than Arthur … that there was another heir.” I sat motionless, aware that I was hearing confidential matters. “Nothing ever came of them … the rumors, I mean … no mention, ever, of another claimant to Pendragon blood rights. Not to Uther’s blood rights, at least. And so the rumors died away and were forgotten. Nothing to do with Camulod in those days, you understand. Uther was king only of the Pendragon Federation in Cambria. I was legate commander here in Camulod, a post I took upon the death of my father, Picus Britannicus, and Uther was my cousin. My father and his mother were first cousins.”

He fell silent and shifted his weight against the wall. I raised my cup and sipped cautiously, afraid of distracting him from his thoughts and feeling a stir of anticipation roiling somewhere inside me. I had heard only bits and pieces of soldiers’ talk of Uther Pendragon, dead now for more than twenty years, and indeed I knew next to nothing of Merlyn’s own younger days. All that I had heard was barracks hearsay and, I was sure, greatly exaggerated. What was emerging here was the truth at first hand, and I wanted more of it.

The room was almost completely dark now, the shadows held at bay only by the flickering firelight and the steady white light of the candles. Merlyn bent at the knees and placed his cup carefully on the floor in front of the fire, then pulled his chair close to the hearth before picking the cup up again.

“Bring your chair over here, to the heat. It occurs to me that you are still a newcomer to our land, so you will know little or nothing of what I want to talk to you about. I will have to give you the background, if you are to understand the rest of the story.”

I drew my chair up close beside his own and felt the welcoming warmth of the fire against my bare, outstretched legs, and we drank from our cups at the same time. Merlyn clearly felt no need to look at me as he was speaking, and I accepted that and simply looked straight ahead, into the fire, knowing that were I to turn to look at him I would see no more than the side of his black hood. He continued speaking, his voice, deep and sonorous, emerging clearly from behind the heavy cowl.

“I have to begin with the days before Arthur was born, years before these rumors I spoke of earlier. In order to understand my reaction to the rumors, you need to know something of who and what I was in those days, and it is something I never speak of nowadays. The birth—Arthur’s birth—was something completely unexpected by me. And when I found out about it, it caused me great … concern. Concern, and much grief, for it forced me to look into my own soul, and to evaluate and judge what lay in there, much of it unknown and unsuspected.

“We were not close at that time, Uther and I, for I had cause to believe he had done me great wrong.” He stopped, for the space of several breaths. “Let me be open with you—nothing veiled and nothing left unsaid. I believed at that time that my cousin Uther, who had been my closest boyhood friend, had murdered my wife and with her my unborn son.”

I went rigid in my chair.

“Aye, you may well be shocked. Imagine, if you can, how I felt about it, my family murdered, and more than a little knowledge in my mind of certain things that pointed indisputably, it seemed to me, towards Uther Pendragon as their murderer. I had no means of proving what I suspected, nor of disproving it, and there were indications of both guilt and innocence on Uther’s part, according to how one viewed the circumstances. I was the grieving widower, and thus my view of them was … jaundiced.”

He bent forward and took up the poker, stirring the fire listlessly for a while before he continued. “I now believe I was mistaken. No, I know I was. Uther had no knowledge of the events involving my family. But the outcome of it all, again because of circumstances, was less tragic than it might have been. God knows the way Uther died was tragic enough, but he died in battle—in a minor skirmish at the end of a long war—and by God’s mercy I had no hand in it. And yet, that said, the truth is that I went alone in search of Uther Pendragon with every intention of killing him when I found him. He was campaigning in Cornwall at the time, in a just war against an abomination of a creature called Gulrhys Lot, who styled himself King of Cornwall, and no matter how I tried to catch him, Uther always managed to remain one jump ahead of me.” He sighed then, a deep, gusty outpouring of breath.

“That may have been the worst, most deeply regretted journey I ever made, for Lot was crushing Uther’s forces by sheer weight of numbers, exhausting them by throwing mercenaries against them from every direction until he finally caught them in an indefensible position against three advancing armies. I was following behind throughout all the defeats, trying to catch up, driving my horses beyond endurance and finding our slaughtered soldiers, both Camulodian and Pendragon, lying like bloody windrows on the ground at every step. I missed the final battle, coming to it only after everything was over, but a strong contingent of our army had managed to fight their way out of the trap—thanks to a subterfuge of Uther’s—and were making their way home to Camulod when I met them.” He hesitated, looking, I thought, directly at me. “You know Donuil Mac Athol.”

I nodded, immediately envisioning the affable and enormous Eirish Scot who had welcomed us on my first visit to Camulod, five years earlier.

“Aye, well Donuil’s sister, Deirdre, was my wife. It is a long, sad and strange tale, not needed here, but the strangest part of all of it is that Ygraine, the Queen of Cornwall and spouse of our greatest enemy, was sister to both of them.

“Uther and Ygraine had met some time before, and Ygraine was with Uther now, having fled her brutal husband, Gulrhys Lot. They had fallen in love and he had sired a son on her, although I did not learn that until later.” Merlyn sucked in a great breath and straightened up in his chair. He lifted his cup to his mouth but then lowered it without tasting the wine.

“In my madness at the time, I could taste my vengeance on my tongue and rode after Uther, refreshed by the thought of having him almost within my grasp. But even when I found him he had eluded me. I found him on a sandy spit of land by the sea, fighting over a beached boat and surrounded by dead and dying bodies, men and women, and the killing continued as I drew closer, until we two were the only ones left alive. I challenged him to fight me and he took off his helm, and I recognized him, but this man was not Uther.

“He had killed Uther earlier that morning, he told me, and had stripped him of his armor out of need, not out of any desire to plunder. Uther was a giant of a man, and so was Derek of Ravenglass, the man who slew him.”

“Derek of Ravenglass?” The name dumbfounded me. “Are you talking about the same man who was at Arthur’s table on the night you and I talked in the gallery? He slew Uther and you permitted him to live?”

Merlyn shrugged and spread his arms. “In conscience I had no other option. Bear in mind what I said about my own search that day. I had been looking for Uther in order to kill him, believing he had killed my wife and child. I had had murder in my heart that day, but Derek had not. He was a warrior at war, who had fought and killed an enemy according to his duty, without malice. He had stripped the corpse solely because his own armor was rusted and battered and almost useless after years of warfare and Uther’s was the only equipment he had seen that would fit him comfortably. But he had no notion of who he had killed, no idea that he had killed Uther Pendragon, the Cambrian king.”

“So you did nothing.”

“Nothing. I had no wish even to fight him, let alone kill him. I had seen enough of killing by then. I allowed him to leave.”

“Wearing Uther’s armor?” I could not keep the incredulity out of my voice. The black-robed figure beside me remained immobile.

“Uther was dead. He had no need of armor. The victor needed it. He was a mercenary without friends, alone in a warring land, and I had met him years before and believed he was a man of honor. And so I sat there on my horse and watched my cousin’s killer ride away …

“But as I sat there that day, I heard a sound behind me, and found one of the women still alive but fading fast. She begged me to save the child, to save Arthur. But there was no child, and I thought she was raving. She died there, as I knelt beside her, and I recognized her and knew she was the queen, from the deep red color of her hair and her resemblance to my own dead wife. And then I heard an infant wailing in the boat that was drifting out to sea behind me. I swam to it and pulled myself aboard, and I found the boy, with Uther’s personal seal on a thong about his neck.”

Another long silence followed that, and I sat waiting, enthralled by the picture he had painted for me with his words.

“Believe me, Clothar my friend,” he went on after a time, “I experienced a lifetime of change in the hours that followed, alone there on that little boat with the child. My earliest impulse was to kill the boy, in retribution for my own bereavement. It was the sheerest impulse, born of rage and grief and frustration at Uther’s death by any hand but my own and the survival of his breed when my own had been stamped out, but when it came down to doing it I was incapable of harming the child.

“Instead, I adopted him and raised him as I would have my own unborn and unnamed son. And the result of that you know. I brought him home to Camulod and made his education and training my life’s work …

“Which brings us full circle, to the woman Morgas and the rumors of another heir to Uther. Arthur was still but a child at the time the rumors first surfaced. But I was his guardian, and the possibility there might be substance to the whisperings sent me searching for a root cause. Believe me, I searched high and low and far and wide. But I found nothing.

“The only thing I did discover, from Huw Strongarm, one of Uther’s own Cambrian captains who had been present at the time and was close to the king, was that when Ygraine and her women had first been taken by our forces, they had played a game in order to safeguard the queen’s true identity. One of them, a haughty, fair-haired beauty, had pretended to be Ygraine, and Uther had sequestered her in his own tent, separating her from her companions.

“Huw was of the opinion that Uther might have bedded this woman, although he could not be positive. Uther had been very discreet, even in the midst of his own army, in his own command tent. Nevertheless, Huw remembered thinking at the time that the two of them must be frolicking together in the night … he said the woman’s smug self-satisfaction was too noticeable to mean anything else.

“But Huw did not know the woman’s true name. He thought she was the queen, Ygraine. And by the time he discovered the truth, she had already gone. Greatly perplexed by what he saw as his own lack of perception—for he had thought nothing of any of this for years, until I questioned him about it—he then referred me to others who had been there in the king’s camp and were yet living, and I spoke to all of them. It was one of those, who had been briefly wed to another of Ygraine’s women before she died in childbirth, who was able to recall his wife’s speaking of a woman called Morgas, who had been the first to be sent away from Uther’s camp. That was the only time I ever heard the name, and I was never able to find out what became of the woman—and believe me, I tried diligently. But whoever she was, she had vanished, never to be found or heard from again.

“If what Huw Strongarm had suspected were true, it seemed to me conceivable that this woman Morgas might have borne a son to Uther. But Arthur came of age in due time and nothing was ever heard of any other claimant to Uther’s paternity, and so I set my fears aside. Only now do I see that I never thought to search northwards, beyond the Wall.

“And now you come to me with word of a woman called Morgas, come out of the north beyond the Wall. And now you know why I reacted as I did when you named her. And since you know everything there is to know about the matter now, I will ask you again: can you think of anything, anything at all, that you have not already told me about this woman?”

My mind flicked quickly through memories, and then I shook my head. “No, except I may not have mentioned that when I first met her, I thought she must have been very beautiful at one time. She was old, but she held herself very proudly, and the planes of her face were very pronounced. At the distance from which I saw her first, in fact, almost hidden in the shadows behind her women, I thought she was much younger than I had been told she was. She is … impressive.”

“ ‘Proudly,’ you said. Would you describe her as being regal? Queenly?”

I smiled. “Strange word, queenly, but yes, I would. She was a queen, in Gallowa.”

“Right, but I am wondering if she might have pretended once to be a queen in Cornwall.”

I could only shrug and spread my hands, but he did not see either gesture.

“Tell me about this brother of hers, this Connlyn.”

“You probably know more about him than I do. You met him when he came here last year to offer the alliance.”

“That is beside the point, my young friend. I asked you for your impressions of the man. I already know my own.”

“Very well, then.” I finished off my wine and said exactly what was in my mind, determined to return the same kind of open honesty that had been extended to me. “He sets my teeth on edge. Don’t ask me why … We already know he is astute enough to have weighed the pros and contras of approaching Camulod before we could approach him. And then he acted decisively. That tells us he has foresight, and he is astute, and has trust in his own convictions. That it also means he has his own reasons for doing what he did, and they are probably more self-serving than anything else, is irrelevant, in terms of being a negative. Connlyn is not a king in name. He would prefer to have us see him as a simple warrior, a captain, or at worst a warlord. But he is a king in all respects save that, and he rules his territories effectively … at least as far as I have seen.

“We went directly to his stronghold, one of the old Mile Castles along the Wall itself. A barbarous-looking place, but strong and easily defensible, and well garrisoned, in numbers at least. I had no opportunity to see or to test the quality of his warriors. Our troops were quartered in an area some distance outside his walls that had been cordoned off from his own people. We were not prisoners, nor did we even feel discomfiture, by any stretch of the imagination. In fact the strangeness of it all did not occur to us while we were there. But we were not quite at liberty to roam as we pleased. And my own official party, some twenty of us, were accommodated in much the same way, although within his castle walls. We were made welcome—we were feasted and entertained, and our counsel was sought and appeared to be taken seriously—but we were not taken outside the main defenses at any time during our visit. It was all so smoothly accomplished that I did not really realize the extent of his manipulation until we had ridden out of his lands and were well on our way south.

“After the raid on Knut One-Eye, we rode directly back to Connlyn’s castle, but we stayed only briefly. We were there, we had been able to assist him, he was grateful, and then it was time to leave again. It was Dynas who made a comment on the road south about not having seen many of the local clansmen, and that observation, innocent as it was, prompted me to think more carefully about the entire experience.”

“Hmm. So what are you telling me? What does that mean?”

I clapped my hands together and bent forward to replenish the fire. “Merlyn, if I knew what that meant—if I could interpret it—then I would be an adviser to the King.”

When I straightened up again he had turned to face me, and I saw firelight reflected in one eye within the gloom of his hood.

“You are an adviser to the King, Seur Clothar. You are a Knight Companion and a legate general of Camulod. How could you not be aware of the concomitant status of adviser?”

I sat blinking at him. “I had not thought of it that way.”

“Think of it that way from now on, for it is the truth and your sworn duty. Now I will ask you again, as a fellow adviser: what do you think Connlyn’s failure to show you his realm might have meant?”

I thought for no more than a few heartbeats this time, seeing more now than I had seen before. “Well first, I don’t believe there was any failure involved at all on his part. He did not fail to show us anything. He was successful, for he clearly had no wish for us to see or learn anything of substance.”

“Including the extent of his realm.”

“We know its extent—” I stopped myself. “From east to west, at least. What are you suggesting, Merlyn?”

“His stronghold, his central defensive position, is a Mile Castle along the old Wall. Isn’t that what you said?”

“Aye, it is.”

“It seems to me to be a strange location for a stronghold. It is hardly central, no matter the strength of the place or the strategic or defensive advantages it offers. What kind of warrior, or warlord for that matter, positions himself with his back to the wall before any hostilities have begun?”

“Sweet Jesu! I didn’t think of that! You mean his territories could extend into the north, beyond the Wall?”

“That is exactly what I mean. And if that is the case in fact, he had more than ample reason to keep you and your people well fed and entertained and disinclined to be too curious about what lay outside his walls. It also throws a different color of light upon his eagerness to be our ally.”

“I don’t follow that.”

“You will when you examine it and what it means. You have already pointed out his forethought and his capacity for seizing opportunity when it suits him. What lies beyond the Wall?”

“Caledonia. And the Painted People … the Picts … the Caledons … whatever they are called nowadays.”

“And why was the Wall built in the first place?”

“To keep them out.”

“Right. And why was the Wall abandoned?”

“Because it couldn’t keep them out.”

“There, you see? You follow me perfectly. Now one more little leap, perhaps two. If not all of the Caledons are above the Wall, what follows then?”

“Some of them are below it.”

“Aha. And whence came Morgas, Connlyn’s sister? And perhaps even Connlyn himself?”

“From north of the Wall. From Gallowa.”

“Well, from north of the Wall, at least. We cannot be sure of Gallowa. Morgas was wed to the King of Gallowa. We know no more than that. Now, let me add one more thing for you to think about. We may have grounds here to suppose Connlyn has made alliance with the Outlanders from Caledonia, which means he will have provided them a base within Britain … a base from which they could move southwards with impunity, into the heartland. If that is so, why do you suppose he might come seeking alliance here with Camulod?”

“In order to—” I stopped, already glimpsing the appalling possibility lurking at the edge of my imagination. “Wait. Wait … Let me think this through …”

Merlyn sat silent, allowing me the time that I had asked for.

“He was specific, very clear about his needs … the quid pro quo underlying his offer of support for us in the northland. He wanted us to … He required a promise, unequivocal, from Arthur, that Camulod would come to his aid in the event his territories were threatened or invaded from the lands held by the Saxons on his flank, to the east of him.”

“Correct. Now, let us carry our supposition one step further. If he were to be invaded, would we go to his assistance?”

“Of course we would. Arthur’s promise binds us.”

“It does. Now describe for me the corollary to that.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Think about it. You understand ‘corollary’?”

“Of course.” I fell to thinking, and it did not take me long to provide his answer. “The corollary is that were he not to be invaded, we would have no reason to go there.”

“No reason at all. Well done, Seur Clothar. We would have no reason at all to go there, or to visit his lands, particularly since we know him to be a voluntary ally and a willing supporter.

“You said we know the extent of his realm to the west and east. To the west of him lies the kingdom until recently ruled by Ushmar, is that not so? I wonder who rules there now, since your departure.” He held up a hand to stifle any response. “Does it strike you as strange, or in any way peculiar, that the raiders who hit Ushmar from those eastern territories—the raiders you encountered—should have skirted the southern edges of Connlyn’s lands on their way to Ushmar’s?” Again he held up the peremptory hand. “And would you think it impossible for a man, a king, to bring northern Outlanders in from one side for his own purposes without considering the advantages to himself in forming an alliance with the equally savage Outlanders with whom he must live shoulder to shoulder in the east? Think about it.

“And think, too, about this: he expected no expeditions from Camulod this year, but you turned up unexpectedly, on a goodwill visit with a strong, mounted, highly mobile force. And so while you were so providentially there, might he not have decided to provide you, with short but sufficient notice, with a small sample, at first hand, of the kind of threat under which he and his people live? Convenient, eh? And the incidental benefit of that was the fortuitous removal of a potent and dangerous rival from his western borders, and the opening of more land for him to pre-empt.

“If all of that were true, instead of being mere conjecture proposed by me out of boredom here in Camulod, Connlyn might now command a block of lands and men stretching halfway across Britain below the Wall, a solid, strategic and tactical base for a confederation of his own, his other allies, the Saxons and the Caledons. Nothing to the south of him could withstand a concerted advance from such a position, particularly with us sitting safely down here in Camulod, trusting him and leaving the way clear for his attack. What think you of that?”

The tiny hairs on my arms and neck were standing erect in a rash of horrified gooseflesh. “In Jesu’s name, Merlyn,” I whispered, hearing the awe in my own voice, “I think you have dissolved an alliance and issued a call to war.”

He laughed, a surprisingly rich, deep, ringing sound. “No, I have done no such thing. I have merely raised suppositions, Clothar. Conjectures, as I said, to give you an object lesson on how a conscientious adviser to the King must approach his responsibilities. Men are not all as good as you would wish to have them, my young friend. Few are, in fact. The majority of men walking this earth are venal and self-serving, their ambitions constrained only by their own inadequacies—their lack of intellect and their inability to plan and achieve their ends. The few of those who do possess such intellect and skills make fearsome enemies, unless they are stamped upon before they can emerge from the egg.

“Arthur Pendragon, I am grateful to be able to say, is molded from another clay altogether. I saw that in him when he was a toddling infant, too young to dissemble. He is unique; incorruptible and, thus far, invincible. It is our task—yours and mine, I mean—to make sure he stays invincible and that his principles remain inviolate, and for that reason alone we must scrutinize the acts and motivations of other men remorselessly, looking for base metal everywhere, even among the most noble-seeming. These arguments I have made against Connlyn’s integrity may well be specious and empty, all of them. But they might also be true. In either event, they suggested themselves to me, and I would be at fault if I now failed to examine them for truth and content.

“Together you and I have developed an excellent case to present to our King … a case against an untested ally. That is as it should be, for we can take nothing, and we can allow the King to take nothing, at face value. The situation in the north obviously needs to be investigated. Connlyn needs to be investigated, his loyalty and trustworthiness determined in a realistic manner. Tomorrow we will speak to the King, and he will ponder our suppositions and come to a decision. In the meantime, you and I may share this last cup of wine and then sleep well, knowing our duties have been well discharged this evening.”

4

The King did, indeed, ponder over the information Merlyn and I presented to him the following morning, but he did not make a decision before consulting his captains. It was one of Arthur’s most appealing and inspiring virtues that he believed implicitly in the strengths and ability of his eight newly created Knights Companion. Seeking our opinion on important concerns was not something he did for effect, or to create a mere impression of depending upon our input. He truly believed in the usefulness of open discussion for the common good.

His great-grandfather Publius Varrus, one of the co-founders of the colony that had grown to become Camulod, had initiated the idea, in the earliest years of the colony’s existence, of forming a governing council much like the ancient senate of Republican Rome, a council in which every man’s voice would be equal to that of any of his peers, and Arthur had decided long before the knighthood ceremony that the men to be honored there, and whose loyalty, honor and abilities had earned them their advancement, deserved greater recognition and acknowledgment than the mere endowment of spurs, swords and titles. How better, he had asked Merlyn and the assembled Council, could he acknowledge such men than by giving them a similar equality of voice and purpose to the Council itself, but specifically in the military and defensive affairs of Camulod?

Thus, Camulod now had two governing councils, the first of them continuing the duties that had concerned it from the outset: the administration of the thriving community that had become Camulod today, numbering close on five thousand souls, discounting the military personnel, who numbered more than eight thousand above that.

Not all of the ordinary residents lived in Camulod itself, of course. Many of them were farmers, occupying the villas and buildings that were scattered about the colony and working the thousands of acres of rich farmland that kept its citizens and soldiers healthy and well fed. Many more were artisans—smiths of all kinds, blacksmiths and weapons makers predominant among them. But there were also masons and builders, cobblers and bakers, farriers, and herdsmen to look after the needs of our huge herds of horses and other livestock. There were barrel makers and tanners, carpenters and charcoal burners, weavers, butchers and cooks and an army of others dedicated to the daily, mundane tasks that a society such as ours depends upon in order to function smoothly. Most of the smithy crews lived within the fortress of Camulod itself, but the other craftsmen and artisans were scattered widely throughout our holdings, on the farms and in satellite villages and towns like the neighboring Ilchester, that we had garrisoned and fortified for the housing and support of our troopers. All of these people and the regulation of their daily lives fell under the jurisdiction of the main Council of Camulod.

The military affairs of the colony, now officially the Kingdom, was the responsibility of the Council of Knights, with Arthur himself as the presiding guide and Merlyn serving in the capacity of chief adviser to the King. At their first assembly soon after their elevation to the knighthood, the King had made it clear how he intended to proceed from that day forward, and how he would expect the brethren to embrace and live up to the expectations and demands that he would now formally place upon them in recognition of their altered circumstances and their elevated ranks. The eight knights had all been his closest brothers in arms prior to that time, continuously schooled over a period of many years—with the notable exception of myself, Tristan and Perceval, the three newcomers from Gaul—in Arthur’s uniquely equestrian theories on strategy, as well as in his battlefield-perfected tactical practices, but they were also able administrators, each of them accustomed to the responsibilities of commanding large numbers of men in both peace and war.

Henceforth, he informed them, they would all be legate commanders of Camulod, each in permanent command of his own battle group. Each battle group would be identified by its own colored standard, and its group commander would carry that standard blazoned on his personal shield. Further, each battle group would have a strength equal to half the complement of the existing armies of Camulod, which were four in number. The creation of eight smaller battle groups, he had explained, would give each unit greater flexibility by increasing its ability to deploy its forces in a short time, while leaving all of them free to act with other battle groups when necessary. Now each group would have five hundred cavalry troopers, a full thousand infantry and a hundred bowmen with their great Pendragon bows of yew wood and their long, deadly, lathe-turned arrows of ash wood. The bowmen would be mounted when a battle group was on the move, mainly on their own shaggy mountain garrons, and when they were not fighting they would function as scouts, the capacity in which they had come to excel over the years since Pendragon and Camulod first made alliance. In battle, however, they would fight on foot, in serried, lethal ranks the equivalent of siege artillery.

Arthur then dictated the primary responsibilities of a legate commander in times of peace: those not on campaign, on patrol or on garrison duty, which in recent years had always kept one full army far away in Cambria, would meet together every fifteenth day to discuss affairs common to them all. They would also, at such times, deliberate matters of policy and advise the King on how best to proceed for the good of the kingdom, and thus was born the concept of the round table, at which every man’s voice was equal.

Of course it was an ancient system, dating from the earliest days of the Roman senate, and the governing council of Camulod had used it since the days of Caius Britannicus and Publius Varrus, the colony’s founders, but for some reason, the idea of the King’s new Knights Companion convening regularly to assist the King in governing captured the imagination of the rank-and-file troopers, and within a short time the occasions when the Knights’ Council met were always treated with great solemnity by the entire community.

The day of our submission regarding Connlyn was such an occasion, and only Seur Gareth, patrolling with his army group in his home in Pendragon Cambria, was missing from the Council.

No one spoke until Merlyn and I had finished presenting our thoughts and our summation of what our suppositions might entail. When everything had been said that we wanted to say, the King, more solemn than he usually was—and he never brought levity into such advisory sessions—asked us several pointed questions and then fell silent, absorbing our answers.

“This woman Morgas,” he said at length, looking at Merlyn. “Could she be the same woman my father knew in Cornwall?” None of us missed the significance of that word knew, with its overtones of possible consequences.

Merlyn shrugged. “She could be, my lord King. She would seem to be the proper age, or thereabouts. Your father, had he lived, would be more than sixty now and the woman Morgas known to him would probably be younger, although I know not by how much. The woman Seur Clothar met would appear to be older than either of those, but Seur Clothar himself acknowledges that he could not assess the woman’s age with any hope of accuracy. Yet the name is … uncommon. I had only ever heard it once, before Seur Clothar brought back word of meeting this Morgas.”

Arthur sat silent, mulling upon that. “Merlyn is an uncommon name, too,” he said eventually. “Limited to you alone, I believe. And so is Arthur, for that matter. And then there is Seur Clothar himself. No one here had ever heard his name before, when he first came to us.” He turned to me. “Tell me, my friend, did you know other Clothars in your home in Gaul?”

I nodded, smiling. “Aye, my lord, more than a few. Mine is a common name, where I come from.”

“Yet unique and alien where you are now.” He looked back at Merlyn. “Common in Gaul, unheard of here. This sister of Connlyn’s comes from above the Wall. Where did your Morgas hail from?”

“I have no idea, my lord. We have no way of knowing that.”

“And does it not follow that, as Clothar is a common name in Gaul, Morgas might be as common where she came from?”

Merlyn merely inclined his head, agreeing without words, and Arthur shrugged. “So be it. Since we cannot know, we will waste no further time in fruitless guessing.” He nodded then, in agreement with himself, and turned to look around the gathering.

‘Well, brethren, what think you of the matters we have listened to today? Have you heard enough, or is there something one of you might wish to ask or add?” No one answered him, each member of the group deep in his own thoughts, and then he nodded again. “So be it. Now, bearing in mind that nothing that has been said here is known to be true, let me ask you this. Does what you have heard this morning ring true?”

“Aye, it does. All of it.” Ghilleadh, the speaker, was the most taciturn of all of us in that room, known by everyone there never to speak simply for the sake of hearing himself talk. His deep, rumbling voice, accepting the possibility that Merlyn’s assessment might be accurate, made the others nod in agreement, and then Perceval spoke up.

“True or not, my lord King, it needs to be looked into. And quickly. And there’s the problem. How do we look into it without causing unnecessary friction? It’s a long way from Camulod to the Wall, and much of the journey is through hostile, unknown territory. Anyone going up that way at this time of the year had best be well backed up with men and equipment. Too few of them, and they could be wiped out on the way there or back, just for being unlucky enough to encounter the wrong people or the wrong weather conditions. For that matter, too few of them and they could be wiped out by Connlyn himself, if what we suspect is true and he finds out we know. And yet we can hardly send an army group up there without good reason, for we could lose a valuable ally if it turns out that we are wrong and he has been open and honest with us all along. We need to think carefully on this, my lord, and proceed with caution. Not out of fear, but out of tact.”

Arthur nodded. “I agree. Does anyone else have anything to say about that?”

Gwin spoke up then, and as usual I marveled at his way of speaking. He was Ghilly’s brother and the son of Eirish Scots, but in his youth he had spent much time among Arthur’s people, the Pendragon of Cambria, and had absorbed, perhaps unconsciously, their distinctive way of speaking, the lilt and cadence of their speech, and because of it he pronounced his own name in a slurred drawl as though it should be Gawain, rather than plain Gwin. He cleared his throat now and rubbed his chin with the palm of one hand. “We cannot really do anything about this until next year, can we?” he said in his slow drawl, chewing on every vowel so that everyone had to listen closely to understand him. “It’s winter now and we’ve already had a few snowfalls. Up on the higher ground, the snow will be blocking the passes. Little profit in sending anyone out into that.”

“You might be wrong there,” Ghilly growled. “No one would expect us in wintertime. And the snow could cover our advance.”

“Aye, and leave our tracks behind for all the world to follow,” Gwin snapped back. Not normally an impatient man, he rose to his feet now and started to pace the circular space in the center of the group. “What I’m thinking, Arthur—and the rest of you lads—is that, come spring, we’ll be into another year. Don’t laugh, it’s not a jest, obvious though it sounds. Another new campaigning season. Don’t you see? People will be expecting us to be out and about, visiting other parts and checking up on how people survived the winter, as well as guarding against threats from any direction. We could send an army group up then, as part of our normal dispersal, that is all I’m saying. But if we send any kind of force up there now, before we have to, we will be asking for trouble.”

“We’re looking for trouble, Gwin, that’s why we’re talking about this.” This was the first time Bedwyr had spoken.

Gwin spun to face him. “Looking, aye, but not asking for it! There’s a big difference, Bedwyr boy. What I am saying is that by going back up there now, this year, we will be warning this Connlyn fellow that we suspect something. He is not a fool, we know that already, so why make ourselves look like the fools by warning him when we have no need to?”

“We can’t afford to give him the time involved,” Bedwyr responded.

“What time?” Gwin barked. “What time would we be giving him? The winter? What can he do in the winter? I will tell you what he can do, boyo. He can do nothing more than any of us here can do, and probably less. He might plan, and scheme, and make himself ready to move south as soon as winter breaks, but what of that? We can do the same thing here in the southwest and be ready before he is. If he does march, with his Saxons and Caledonians, then our way will be clear when we arrive at his walls, because he will not be expecting us.” He returned to his seat. “There’s all I have to say, Arthur, for what it is worth.”

“It is worth much, Gwin—sound common sense, and valid. And it points to, but does not resolve, our problem. We have to decide what we are going to do about this, my friends, and then we have to take steps to make sure that it is done. This Connlyn is not some minor irritant that we can safely ignore or postpone investigating. So we stay here in this council until we are in agreement.”

The decision we came to was that I, as the only one with any knowledge of Connlyn’s region, would return northwards in the springtime with two army groups, my own and Ghilleadh’s, and that we would approach Connlyn’s territories from the westward, along the Wall. Once close enough to our target, but far enough removed for our main party to remain undetected, I would ride on ahead with a smaller group, composed mainly of Pendragon bowmen under the command of the veteran Pendragon commander Powys, and discover what I could about the situation in the kingdom that had been Ushmar’s. When I had secured that information I would govern myself accordingly before moving on to see whether there was any abnormal activity in Connlyn’s domain. The details of the expedition would be worked out during the coming months, but the commitment had been made.