Bleiddig, the chief sent by King Ban, travelled with us. He grumbled at my lack of years, but after Cavan growled that I had probably killed more men than Bleiddig himself Bleiddig decided to keep his reservations about me private. He still complained that our numbers were too few. The Franks, he said, were land-hungry, well armed and numerous. Two hundred men, he now claimed, might make a difference, but not sixty.
We anchored that first night in the bay of an island. The seas roared past the bay’s mouth while on the shore a ragged band of men shouted at us and sometimes fired feeble arrows that fell far short of our three ships. Our shipmaster feared a storm was coming and he sacrificed a kid that was on board for just that purpose. He drizzled the dying animal’s blood on the bow of his ship and by morning the winds had calmed, though a great fog had crept over the sea instead. None of the ships’ captains would sail in the fog so we waited a full day and night, and then, under a clear sky, rowed southwards. It was a long day. We skirted some dreadful rocks that were crowned with the bones of ships that had foundered, and then, in a warm evening, with a small wind and a rising tide helping our tired rowers, we slid into a wide river where, beneath the lucky wings of a flight of swans, we beached our craft. There was a fort nearby and armed men came to the river bank to challenge us, but Bleiddig shouted that we were friends. The men called back in British, welcoming us. The setting sun was gilding the river’s swirls and eddies. The place smelt of fish and salt and tar. Black nets hung on racks beside beached fishing boats, fires blazed under the salt pans, dogs ran in and out of the small waves barking at us and a group of children came from some nearby huts to watch as we splashed ashore.
I went first, carrying my shield, with its symbol of Arthur’s bear, upside down, and when I had gone beyond the wrack-littered line of the high tide I plunged the butt of my spear into the sand and said a prayer to Bel, my protector, and to Manawydan, the Sea God, that one day they would float me back from Armorica, back to my Lord’s side, back to Arthur in blessed Britain.
Then we went to war.
I HAVE HEARD MEN say that no town, not even Rome or Jerusalem, was as beautiful as Ynys Trebes, and maybe those men spoke true for though I never saw those others, I did see Ynys Trebes and it was a place of marvels, a wondrous town, the most beautiful place I ever saw. It was built on a steep granite island set in a wide and shallow bay that could be riven with foam and howling with wind, yet inside Ynys Trebes all would be calm. In summer the bay would shimmer with heat, but inside Benoic’s capital it always seemed cool. Guinevere would have loved Ynys Trebes, for everything old was treasured and nothing ugly was allowed to mar its grace.
The Romans had been to Ynys Trebes, of course, but they had not fortified it, only built a pair of villas on its summit. The villas were still there: King Ban and Queen Elaine had joined them together and then added to them by pillaging Roman buildings on the mainland for new pillars and pedestals, mosaics and statues, so that the island’s summit was now crowned with an airy palace, full of light, where white linen curtains billowed with every breath of wind that gusted off the glittering sea. The island was best reached by boat, though there was a causeway of sorts that was covered by every high tide and at low tide could become treacherous with quicksands. Withies marked the causeway, but the surge of the bay’s huge tides washed the markers away and only a fool attempted the passage without hiring the services of a local guide to steer him through the sucking sands and trembling creeks. At the lowest tides Ynys Trebes would emerge from the sea to stand amidst a wilderness of rippled sand cut through with gullies and tide pools while at the highest tides, when the wind blew strong from the west, the city was like some monstrous ship crashing her dauntless way through tumultuous seas.