The horsemen, with their grooms and pack-mules, together with Lanval’s spearmen, waited on the Fosse Way while Arthur crossed the land bridge to Ynys Wydryn. Nimue and I went with him, taking only my six spearmen as an escort. It was strange to be back beneath the Tor’s looming peak where Gwlyddyn had rebuilt Merlin’s halls so that the Tor’s summit looked almost as it had on the day when Nimue and I had fled from Gundleus’s savagery. Even the tower had been rebuilt and I wondered if, like the first tower, it was a dream chamber in which the whispers of the Gods would echo to the sleeping wizard.
But our business was not with the Tor, but with the shrine of the Holy Thorn. Five of my men stayed outside the shrine’s gates while Arthur, Nimue and I walked into the compound. Nimue’s head was shrouded with a hood so that her face with its leather eye-patch could not be seen. Sansum hurried to meet us. He looked in fine condition for a man who was ostensibly in disgrace for rousing Durnovaria to deadly riot. He was plumper than I remembered and wore a new black gown that was half covered with a cope lavishly embroidered with golden crosses and silver thorns. A heavy golden cross hung on a golden chain at his breast, while a torque of thick gold shone at his neck. His mouse-like face with its stiffly tonsured brush offered us a smirk that was intended as a smile. “The honour you do us!” he cried, his hands flying apart in welcome. “The honour! Dare I hope, Lord Arthur, that you come to worship our dear Lord? That is His Sacred Thorn! A reminder of the thorns that pricked His head as He suffered for your sins.” He gestured towards the drooping tree with its small sad leaves. A group of pilgrims surrounding the tree had draped its pathetic limbs with votive offerings. Seeing us, those pilgrims shuffled away, not realizing that the poorly dressed farm boy who worshipped with them was one of our men. It was Issa, whom I had sent on ahead with a small offering of coins for the shrine. “Some wine, perhaps?” Sansum now offered us. “And food? We have cold salmon, new bread, some strawberries even.”
“You live well, Sansum,” Arthur said, looking around the shrine. It had grown since I had last been in Ynys Wydryn. The stone church had been extended and two new buildings constructed, one a dormitory for the monks and the other a house for Sansum himself. Both buildings were of stone and had roofs made of tiles taken from Roman villas.
Sansum raised his eyes to the threatening clouds. “We are merely humble servants of the great God, Lord, and our life on earth is all due to His grace and providence. Your esteemed wife is well, I pray?”
“Very, thank you.”
“The news brings joy to us, Lord,” Sansum lied. “And our King, he is well too?”
“The boy grows, Sansum.”
“And in the true faith, I trust.” Sansum was backing away as we advanced. “So what, Lord, brings you to our small settlement?”
Arthur smiled. “Need, Bishop, need.”
“Of spiritual grace?” Sansum enquired.
“Of money.”
Sansum threw up his hands. “Would a man searching for fish climb to a mountain top? Or a man panting for water go to a desert? Why come to us, Lord Arthur? We brothers are vowed to poverty and what meagre crumbs the dear Lord does permit to fall into our laps we give to the poor.” He closed his hands gracefully together.
“Then I am come, dear Sansum,” Arthur said, ‘to make certain that you are keeping your vows of poverty. The war goes hard, it needs money, the treasury is empty, and you will have the honour of making your King a loan.” Nimue, who now shuffled humbly behind us like a cowled servant, had reminded Arthur of the church’s wealth. How she must have been enjoying Sansum’s discomfort.
“The church had been spared these enforced loans,” Sansum said sharply and putting a scornful bite on the last word. “High King Uther, may his soul rest in peace, exempted the church from all such exactions, just as the pagan shrines’ he crossed himself’ are shamefully and sinfully exempted.”