“Derfel.”
“Derfel?” He frowned in thought. “A servant of the Druids?”
“I was. Now I’m a warrior.”
“No, you are not,” he corrected me, ‘you are dead. You have come to the Isle of the Dead. Please, come and sit. It is not much, but it is my home.” He gestured into the cave where two semi-dressed blocks of stone served as a chair and table. An old piece of cloth, perhaps dragged from the sea, half hid his sleeping quarter where I could see a bed made from dried grass. He insisted I use the small stone block as my chair. “I can offer you rainwater to drink,” he said, ‘and some five-day-old bread to eat.”
I put an oatcake on the table. Malldynn was plainly hungry, but he resisted the impulse to snatch the biscuit. Instead he drew a small knife with a blade that had been sharpened so often that it had a wavy edge and used it to divide the oatcake into halves. “At risk of sounding ungrateful,” he said, ‘oats were never my favourite food. I prefer meat, fresh meat, but still I thank you, Derfel.” He had been kneeling opposite me, but once the oatcake was eaten and the crumbs had been delicately dabbed from his lips he stood and leaned against the cave’s wall. “My mother made oatcakes,” he told me, ‘but hers were tougher. I suspect the oats were not husked properly. That one was delicious, and I shall now revise my opinion of oats. Thank you again.” He bowed.
“You don’t seem mad,” I said.
He smiled. He was middle-aged, with a distinguished face, clever eyes and a white beard that he tried to keep trimmed. His cave had been swept clean with a brush of twigs that leaned against the wall. “It is not just the mad who are sent here, Derfel,” he said reprovingly. “Some who want to punish the sane send them here also. Alas, I offended Uther.” He paused ruefully. “I was a counsellor,” he went on, ‘a great man even, but when I told Uther that his son Mordred was a fool, I ended here. But I was right. Mordred was a fool, even at ten years old he was a fool.”
“You’ve been here that long?” I asked in astonishment.
“Alas, yes.”
“How do you survive?”
He offered me a self-deprecating shrug. “The gate-keeping ghouls believe I can work magic. I threaten to restore their wits if they offend me, and so they take good care to keep me happy. They are happier mad, believe me. Any man who possessed his wits would pray to go insane on this Isle. And you, friend Derfel, might I enquire what brings you here?”
“I search for a woman.”
“Ah! We have plenty, and most are unconstrained by modesty. Such women, I believe, are another requisite of earthly paradises, but alas, the reality proves otherwise. They are certainly immodest, but they are also filthy, their conversation is tedious, and the pleasure to be derived from them is as momentary as it is shameful. If you seek such a woman, Derfel, then you will find them here in abundance.”
“I’m searching for a woman called Nimue,” I said.
“Nimue,” he said, frowning as he tried to remember the name, “Nimue! Yes indeed, I do recall her now! A one-eyed girl with black hair. She’s gone to the sea folk.”
“Drowned?” I asked, appalled.
“No, no.” He shook his head. “You must understand we have our own communities on the Isle. You have already made the acquaintance of the gate ghouls. We here in the quarries are the hermits, a small group who prefer our solitude and so inhabit the caves on this side of the Isle. On the far side are the beasts. You may imagine what they are like. At the southern end are the sea folk. They fish with lines of human hair using thorns for hooks and are, I must say, the best behaved of the Isle’s tribes, though none are exactly famed for their hospitality. They all fight each other, of course. Do you see how we have everything here that the Land of the Living offers? Except, perhaps, religion, although one or two of our inhabitants do believe themselves to be Gods. And who is to deny them?”