“What am I, Lord Prince?” I asked Lancelot.
“A child,” he said.
I put my forearm across his throat, half choking him. He struggled, but he could not shift me. “What am I, Lord?” I asked again.
“A child,” he croaked.
A hand touched my arm and I turned to see a fair-haired man of my own age smiling at me. He had been sitting at the table’s opposite end and I had assumed he was another poet, but that assumption was wrong. “I’ve long wanted to do what you’re doing,” the young man said, ‘but if you want to stop my brother insulting you then you’ll have to kill him and family honour will insist I shall have to kill you and I’m not sure I want to do that.”
I eased my arm from Lancelot’s throat. For a few seconds he stood there, trying to breathe, then he shook his head, spat at me, and walked back to the table. His nose was bleeding, his lips swelling and his carefully oiled hair hung in sad disarray. His brother seemed amused by the fight. “I’m Galahad,” he said, ‘and proud to meet Derfel Cadarn.”
I thanked him, then forced myself to cross to King Ban’s chair where, despite his avowed dislike of respectful gestures, I knelt down. “For the insult to your house, Lord King,” I said, “I apologize and submit to your punishment.”
“Punishment?” Ban said in a surprised voice. “Don’t be so silly. It’s just the wine. Too much wine. We should water our wine as the Romans did, shouldn’t we, Father Celwin?”
“Ridiculous thing to do,” the old priest said.
“No punishment, Derfel,” Ban said. “And do stand up, I can’t abide being worshipped. And what was your offence? Merely to be avid in argument, and where is the fault in that? I like argument, isn’t that so, Father Celwin? A supper without argument is like a day without poetry’ the King ignored the priest’s acid comment about how blessed such a day would be ‘and my son Lancelot is a hasty man. He has a warrior’s heart and a poet’s soul, and that, I fear, is a most combustible mix. Stay and eat.” Ban was a most generous monarch, though I noted that his Queen, Elaine, was anything but pleased at his decision. She was grey-haired, yet her face was unlined and contained a grace and calm that suited Ynys Trebes’s serene beauty. At that moment, though, the Queen was frowning at me in severe disapproval.
“Are all Dumnonian warriors so ill-mannered?” she asked the table at large in an acid voice.
“You want warriors to be courtiers?” Celwin retorted brusquely. “You’d send your precious poets to kill the Franks? And I don’t mean by reciting their verses at them, though come to think of it that might be quite effective.” He leered at the Queen and the three poets shuddered. Celwin had somehow evaded the prohibition on ugly things in Ynys Trebes for, without the cowl he had worn in the library, he appeared as an astonishingly ill-favoured man with one sharp eye, a mildewed eyepatch on the other, a sour twisted mouth, lank hair that grew behind a ragged tonsure line, a filthy beard half hiding a crude wooden cross hanging on his hollow chest, and with a bent, twisted body that was distorted by its stupendous hump. The grey cat that had been draped about his neck in the library was now curled on his lap eating scraps of lobster.
“Come to my end of the table,” Galahad said, ‘and don’t blame yourself.”
“But I do,” I said. “It’s my fault. I should have kept my temper.”
“My brother,” Galahad said when the seating had been rearranged, ‘my half-brother, rather, delights in goading people. It’s his sport, but most daren’t fight back because he’s the Edling and that means one day he’ll have powers of life and death. But you did the right thing.”
“No, the wrong thing.”
“I won’t argue. But I will get you ashore tonight.”
“Tonight?” I was surprised.
“My brother does not take defeat lightly,” Galahad said softly. “A knife in the ribs while you’re sleeping? If I were you, Derfel Cadarn, I should join your men ashore and sleep safe in their ranks.”