I followed her to find that we had reached a building site, or rather a place where one building was being torn down and another erected on its ruins. The building that was being destroyed had been a Roman temple. “It was where people worshipped Mercury,” Guinevere said, ‘but now we’re to have a `;2:,’ shrine for a dead carpenter instead. And how will a dead carpenter give us good crops, tell me that!” These last words, ostensibly spoken to me, were said loud enough to disturb the dozen Christians who were labouring at their new church. Some were laying stones, some ad zing doorposts, while others were pulling down the old walls to provide the material for the new building. “If you must have a hovel for your carpenter,” Guinevere said in a ringing voice, ‘why not just take over the old building? I asked Sansum that, but he says it must all be new so that his precious Christians don’t have to breathe air once used by pagans, in which nonsensical belief we pull down the old, which was exquisite, and throw up a nasty building full of ill-dressed stone and without any grace at all!” She spat into the dust to ward off evil. “He says it’s a chapel for Mordred! Can you believe it? He’s determined to make the wretched child into a whining Christian and this abomination is where he’ll do it.”
“Dear Lady!” Bishop Sansum appeared from behind one of the new walls which were indeed ill-dressed compared with the careful masonry of the old temple’s remains. Sansum was in a black gown -which, like his stiffly tonsured hair, was whitened with stone dust. “You do us a striking honour by your gracious presence, Lady,” he said as he bowed to Guinevere.
“I’m not doing you honour, you worm. I came to show Derfel what carnage you’re making. How can you worship in that?” She threw a hand towards the half-built church. “You might as well take over a cow shed!”
“Our dear Lord was born in a cattle shed, Lady, so I rejoice that our humble church reminds you of one.” He bowed again to her. Some of his workers had gathered at the far end of their new building where they began to sing one of their holy songs to ward off the baleful presence of pagans.
“It certainly sounds like a cow shed,” Guinevere said tartly, then pushed past the priest and strode over the masonry-littered ground to where a wooden hut leaned against the stone-and-brick wall of Nabur’s house. She released her hounds’ leashes to let them run free. “Where’s that statue, Sansum?” She threw the question over her shoulder as she kicked the hut door open.
“Alas, gracious Lady, though I tried to save it for you, our blessed Lord commanded that it be melted down. For the poor, you understand?”
She turned on the Bishop savagely. “Bronze! What use is bronze to the poor? Do they eat it?” She looked at me. “A statue of Mercury, Derfel, the height of a tall man and beautifully worked. Beautiful! Roman work, not British, but now it’s gone, melted in a Christian furnace because you people’ she was staring at Sansum again with loathing on her strong face ‘cannot stand beauty. You’re frightened of it. You’re like grubs pulling down a tree, and you have no idea what you do.” She ducked into the hut, which was evidently where Sansum stored the valuable objects he discovered in the temple remains. She emerged with a small stone statuette that she tossed to one of her guards. “It isn’t much,” she said, ‘but at least it’s safe from a carpenter-grub born in a cow shed.”
Sansum, still smiling despite all the insults, enquired of me how the fighting in the north went. “We win slowly,” I said.
“Tell my Lord the Prince Arthur that I pray for him.”
“Pray for his enemies, you toad,” Guinevere said, ‘and maybe we’d win more quickly.” She stared at her two dogs that were pissing against the new church walls. “Cadwy raided this way last month,” she told me, ‘and came close.”
“Praise God we were spared,” Bishop Sansum added piously.