Bedwin asked what had happened to the men of Dumnonia and Bors, with apparent reluctance, allowed the tale of our sorry deaths to be drawn from him. The crowd groaned when they learned that it had been us, the men of Dumnonia, who had yielded the city’s wall. Bors raised a gloved hand. “They fought well!” he said, but the crowd was not consoled.
Merlin seemed to have been ignoring Bors’s nonsense. Instead he had been whispering with a man at the back of the crowd, but now he shuffled forward to touch my elbow. “I need a piss, dear boy,” he said in Father Celwin’s voice. “Old man’s bladder. You deal with those fools and I’ll be back soon.”
“Your men fought well!” Bors shouted to the crowd, ‘and though they were defeated, they died like men!”
“And now, like ghosts, they’re back from the Otherworld,” I shouted, and I clashed my shield against a pillar, shaking free a small cloud of powdered lime. I stepped into the flame light of a torch. “You lie, Bors!” I shouted.
Culhwch stepped up beside me. “I say you lie, too,” he growled.
“And I say it!” Galahad appeared.
I drew Hywelbane. The scrape of the steel on the scabbard’s wooden throat made the crowd shrink back to leave a path through the trampled roses that led towards the terrace. The three of us, battle weary, dusty, helmed and armed, walked forward. We walked in step, slowly, and neither Bors nor Lancelot dared speak when they saw the wolf tails hanging from our helmets. I stopped at the garden’s centre and slammed Hywelbane point downwards into a rose bed “My sword says you lie,” I shouted. “Derfel, son of a slave, says that Lancelot ap Ban, King of Benoic, lies!”
“Culhwch ap Galeid says so too!” Culhwch rammed his battered blade beside mine.
“And Galahad ap Ban, Prince of Benoic, also.” Galahad added his sword.
“No Franks took our wall,” I said, removing my helmet so that Lancelot could see my face. “No Frank dared climb our wall for there were so many dead at its foot.”
“And I, brother’ Galahad also removed his helmet ‘was with our father at the last, not you.”
“And you, Lancelot,” I cried, ‘had no bandage when you fled Ynys Trebes. What happened? Did a splinter from the ship’s gunwale prick your thumb?”
There was uproar. Some of Bors’s guards were at the side of the courtyard and they drew their swords and shouted insults, but Cavan and the rest of our men pushed through the open gate with raised spears to threaten massacre. “None of you bastards fought at the city,” Cavan shouted, ‘so fight now!”
Lanval, commander of Guinevere’s guards, shouted at his archers to line the terrace. Elaine had gone white, Lancelot and Bors were both at her side and both seemed to be trembling. Bishop Bed win was shouting, but it was Arthur who restored order. He drew Excalibur and clashed it against his shield. Lancelot and Bors had shrunk to the back of the terrace, but Arthur waved them forward, then looked at us three warriors. The crowd went silent and the archers took the arrows off their strings. “In battle,” Arthur said gently, commanding the attention of all the courtyard, ‘things are confused. Men rarely see all that hapnens in a battle. There is so much noise, so much chaos, so much horror. Our friends from Ynys Trebes’ and here he laid his sword arm around Lancelot’s shoulders ‘are mistaken, but theirs was an honest mistake. Doubtless some poor confused man told them the tale of your deaths, and they believed it, but now, happily, they stand corrected. But not shamed! There was glory enough in Ynys Trebes for all to share. Am I not right?”
Arthur had directed the question at Lancelot, but it was Bors who answered. “I am wrong,” he said, ‘and glad to be wrong.”
“I also,” Lancelot added in a brave, clear voice.
“There!” Arthur exclaimed and smiled down at the three of us. “Now, my friends, pick up your weapons. We will have no enmity here! You are all heroes, all of you!” He waited, but not one of us moved. The torch flames glanced off our helmets and touched the blades of our planted swords that were a challenge for a fight to establish the truth. Arthur’s smile disappeared as he drew himself to his full height. “I am ordering you to pick up your swords,” he said. “This is my house. You, Culhwch, and you, Derfel, are oath-sworn to me. Are you breaking your oaths?”