Then we went to cause some more.
WE TRAVELLED TO GWENT through Corinium. Ailleann still lived there and though Arthur saw his sons he did not receive their mother so that no word of any such meeting could hurt his Guinevere, though he did send me with a gift for Ailleann. She received me with kindness, but shrugged when she saw Arthur’s present, a small brooch of enamelled silver depicting an animal very like a hare though with shorter legs and ears. It had come from the treasures of Sansum’s shrine, though Arthur had punctiliously replaced the cost of the brooch with coins from his pouch. “He wishes he had something better to send you,” I said, delivering Arthur’s message, ‘but alas, the Saxons must have our best jewels these days.”
“There was a time,” she said bitterly, ‘when his gifts came from love, not guilt.” Ailleann was still a striking woman, though her hair was now touched with grey and her eyes clouded with resignation. She was clothed in a long blue woollen dress and wore her hair in twin coils above her ears. She peered at the strange enamelled animal. “What do you think it is?” she asked me. “It’s not a hare. Is it a cat?”
“Sagramor says it’s called a rabbit. He’s seen them in Cappadocia, wherever that is.”
“You mustn’t believe everything Sagramor tells you,” Ailleann chided me as she pinned the small brooch to her gown. “I have jewellery enough for a queen,” she added as she led me to the small courtyard of her Roman house, ‘but I am still a slave.”
“Arthur didn’t free you?” I asked, shocked.
“He worries I would move back to Armorica. Or to Ireland, and so take the twins away from him.” She shrugged. “On the day the boys are of age Arthur will give me my freedom and do you know what I shall do? I shall stay right here.” She gestured me to a chair that stood in the shade of a vine. “You look older,” she said as she poured a straw-coloured wine from a wicker-wrapped flask. “I hear
Lunete has left you?” she added as she handed me a horn beaker.
“We left each other, I think.”
“I hear she is now a Priestess of Isis,” Ailleann said mockingly. “I hear a lot from Durnovaria and dare not believe the half of it.”
“Such as what?” I asked.
“If you don’t know, Derfel, then you’re best left in ignorance.” She sipped the wine and grimaced at its taste. “So is Arthur. He never wants to hear bad news, only good. He even believes there is goodness in the twins.”
It shocked me to hear a mother speak of her sons in such a way. “I’m sure there is,” I said.
She gave me a level, amused look. “The boys are no better, Derfel, than they ever were, and they were never good. They resent their father. They think they should be princes and so behave like princes. There is no mischief in this town which they don’t begin or encourage, and if I try to control them they call me a whore.” She crumbled a fragment of cake and threw its scraps to some scavenging sparrows. A servant swept the courtyard’s far side with a bundle of broom twigs until Ailleann ordered the man to leave us alone, then she asked me about the war and I tried to hide my pessimism about Gorfyddyd’s huge army. “Can’t you take Amhar and Loholt with you?” Ailleann asked me after a while. “They might make good soldiers.”
“I doubt their father thinks they’re old enough,” I said.
“If he thinks about them at all. He sends them money. I wish he didn’t.” She fingered her new brooch. “The Christians in the town all say that Arthur is doomed.”
“Not yet, Lady.”
She smiled. “Not for a long time, Derfel. People underestimate Arthur. They see his goodness, hear his kindness, listen to his talk of justice, and none of them, not even you, knows what burns inside him.”
“Which is?”
“Ambition,” she said flatly, then thought for a second. “His soul,” she went on, ‘is a chariot drawn by two horses; ambition and conscience, but I tell you, Derfel, the horse of ambition is in the right-hand harness and it will always out pull the other. And he’s able, so very able.” She smiled sadly. “Just watch him, Derfel, when he seems doomed, when everything is at its darkest, and then he will astonish you. I’ve seen it before. He’ll win, but then the horse of conscience will tug at its reins and Arthur will make his usual mistake of forgiving his enemies.”