“Nimue is Merlin’s priestess,” I said, my voice echoing hollow from the black painted stone, ‘and she’s learning his secrets.”
“What secrets?”
“The secrets of the old Gods, Lady.”
She frowned. “But how does he find such secrets? I thought the old Druids wrote nothing down. They were forbidden to write, were they not?”
“They were, Lady, but Merlin searches for their knowledge anyway.”
Guinevere nodded. “I knew we’d lost some knowledge. And Merlin’s going to find it? Good! That might settle that bitter toad Sansum.” She had walked to the centre of the window and was now staring across the tiled and thatched roofs of Durnovaria and over the southern ramparts and the mounded grass of the amphitheatre beyond, towards the vast earth walls of Mai Dun that reared on the horizon. White clouds heaped in the blue sky, but what made the breath catch in my throat was that the sunlight was now flooding through Guinevere’s white linen shift so that my Lord’s Lady, this Princess of Henis Wyren, might just as well have been naked and, for those moments, as the blood pounded in my ears, I was jealous of my Lord. Was Guinevere aware of that sun’s treachery? I thought not, but I might have been wrong. She had her back to me, but suddenly half turned so she could look at me. “Is Lunete a magician?”
“No, Lady,” I said.
“But she learned with Nimue, did she not?”
“No,” I said. “She was never allowed in Merlin’s rooms. She had no interest.”
“But you were in Merlin’s rooms?”
“Only twice,” I said. I could see her breasts and I deliberately dropped my gaze to the black pool, but that only mirrored her beauty and added a sultry sheen of dark mystery to her long, lithe body. A heavy silence fell and I realized, thinking about our last exchange, that Lunete must have claimed some knowledge of Merlin’s magic and that I had undoubtedly just spoiled that claim. “Maybe,” I said feebly, “Lunete knows more than she ever told me?”
Guinevere shrugged and turned away. I raised my eyes again. “But Nimue, you say, is more skilled than Lunete?” she asked me.
“Infinitely, Lady.”
“I have twice demanded that Nimue come to me,” Guinevere said sharply, ‘and twice she has refused. How do I make her come to me?”
“The best way,” I said, ‘of making Nimue do anything is to forbid her to do it.”
There was silence in the room again. The sounds of the town were loud enough; the cry of hawkers in the market, the clatter of cart wheels on stone, dogs barking, a rattle of pots in a nearby kitchen, but in the room it was silent. “One day,” Guinevere broke our silence, “I shall build a temple to Isis up there.” She pointed to the ramparts of Mai Dun that filled the southern sky. “Is it a sacred place?”
“Very.”
“Good.” She turned towards me again, the sun filling her red hair and glowing on her smooth skin beneath the white shift. “I do not want to play childish games, Derfel, by trying to out-guess Nimue. I want her here. I need a priestess of power. I need a friend of the old Gods if I am to fight that grub Sansum. I need Nimue, Derfel, so for the love you have for Arthur, tell me what message will bring her here. Tell me that and I will tell you why I worship Isis.”
I paused, thinking what lure could possibly attract Nimue. “Tell her,” I finally said, ‘that Arthur will give her Gundleus if she obeys you. But make sure he does,” I added.
“Thank you, Derfel.” She smiled, then sat in the black, polished stone throne. “Isis,” she told me, ‘is a woman’s Goddess and the throne is her symbol. A man might sit on a kingdom’s throne, but Isis can determine who that man is. That is why I worship her.”
I smelt the hint of treason in her words. “The throne of this kingdom, Lady,” I said, repeating Arthur’s frequent claim, ‘is filled by Mordred.”
Guinevere mocked that assertion with a sneer. “Mordred could not fill a pissing pot! Mordred is a cripple! Mordred is a badly behaved child who already scents power like a hog snuffling to rut a sow.” Her voice was whip-hard and scornful. “And since when, Derfel, was a throne handed from father to son? It was never thus in the old days! The best man of the tribe took the power, and that is how it should be today.” She closed her eyes as though she suddenly regretted her outburst. “You are a friend of my husband?” she asked after a while, her eyes open again.