She gazed into my eyes, apparently trying to judge whether I had spoken the truth. “They say Lancelot is a great warrior,” she said after a while and with a lack of enthusiasm that warmed my heart.
“They do say that, Lady, yes,” I said.
She was silent again. She leaned on her elbow and watched the harpist’s hands flicker across the strings, and I watched her. “Tell Arthur,” she said after a while and without looking at me, ‘that I hold no grudge. And tell him something else.” She stopped suddenly.
“Yes, Lady?” I encouraged her.
“Tell him that if he wins,” she said, then turned to me and reached a slender ringer across the gap between our couches to touch the back of my hand to show how important her words were, ‘that if he wins,” she said again, “I shall beg for his protection.”
“I shall tell him, Lady,” I said, then paused with my heart full. “And I swear you mine too, in all honour.”
She kept her finger on my hand, her touch as light as the sleeping Prince’s breath. “I might hold you to that oath, Lord Derfel,” she said, her eyes on mine.
“Till time ends and evermore, that oath will be true, Lady.”
She smiled, took her hand away and sat up straight.
And that night I went to my bed in a daze of confusion, hope, stupidity, apprehension, fear and delight. For, just like Arthur, I had come to Caer Sws and been stricken by love.
PART FIVE
The Shield-wall
“Oo IT WAS HER!” Igraine accused me. “The Princess Ceinwyn Owho turned your blood to smoke, Brother Derfel.”
“Yes, Lady, it was,” I confessed, and I confess now that there are tears in my eyes as I remember Ceinwyn. Or perhaps it is the weather that is making my eyes water, for autumn has come to Dinnewrac and a cold wind is stealing through my window. I must soon make a pause in this writing, for we shall have to be busy storing our foodstuffs for the winter and making the log pile that the blessed Saint Sansum will take pleasure in not burning so that we can share our dear Saviour’s suffering.
“No wonder you hate Lancelot so much!” Igraine said. “You were rivals. Did he know how you felt for Ceinwyn?”
“In time,” I said, ‘yes.”
“So what happened?” she asked eagerly.
“Why don’t we leave the story in its proper order, Lady?”
“Because I don’t want to, of course.”
“Well I do,” I said, ‘and I am the storyteller, not you.”
“If I didn’t like you so much, Brother Derfel, I would have your head cut off and your body fed to our hounds.” She frowned, thinking. She looks very pretty today in a cloak of grey wool edged with otter fur. She is not pregnant, so either the pessary of baby’s faeces did not work or else Brochvael is spending too much time with Nwylle. “There was always talk in my husband’s family about Great-aunt Ceinwyn,” she said, ‘but no one ever really explained what the scandal was about.”
“There is no one I have ever known, Lady,” I said sternly, ‘about whom there was less scandal.”
“Ceinwyn never married,” Igraine said, “I know that much.”
“Is that so scandalous?” I asked.
“It is if she behaved as though she were married,” Igraine said indignantly. “That’s what your church preaches. Our church,” she hastily corrected herself. “So what happened? Tell me!”
I pulled my monk’s sleeve over the stump of my hand, always the first part of me to feel a chill wind. “Ceinwyn’s tale is too long to tell now,” I said, and refused to add any more, despite my Queen’s importunate demands.
“So did Merlin find the Cauldron?” Igraine demanded instead.
“We shall come to that in its proper time,” I insisted.
She threw up her hands. “You infuriate me, Derfel. If I behaved like a proper queen I really would demand your head.”
“And if I was anything but an ancient and feeble monk, Lady, I would give it to you.”
She laughed, then turned to look out of the window. The leaves of the small oak trees that Brother Maelgwyn planted to make a windbreak have turned brown early and the woods in the combe below us are thick with berries, both signs that a harsh winter is coming. Sagramor once told me there were places where winter never comes and the sun shines warm all year, but maybe, like the existence of rabbits, that was another of his fanciful tales. I once hoped that the Christian heaven would be a warm place, but Saint Sansum insists heaven must be cold because hell is hot and I suppose the saint is right. There is so little to look forward to. Igraine shivered and turned back towards me. “No one ever made me a Lughnasa bower,” she said wistfully.