The Isle of Britain, Sansum said, was beloved of God. It was a special land, set apart from other lands and girdled by a bright sea to defend it from pestilences, heresies and enemies. Britain, he went on, was also blessed by great rulers and mighty warriors, yet of late the island had been riven by strangers, and its fields, barns and villages had been put to the sword. The heathen Sais, the Saxons, were taking the land of our ancestors and turning it to waste. The dread Sais desecrated the graves of our fathers, they raped our wives and slaughtered our children, and such things could not happen, Sansum asserted, unless they were the will of God, and why would God so turn his back upon his special and beloved children?
Because, he said, those children had refused to hear His holy message. The children of Britain still bowed down to wood and stone. The so-called sacred groves still stood and their shrines still held the skulls of the dead and were washed with the blood of sacrifices. Such things might not be seen in the towns, Sansum said, for most towns were filled with Christians, but the countryside, he warned us, was infested with pagans. There might be few Druids left in Britain, yet in every valley and farmland there were men and women who acted like Druids, who sacrificed living things to dead stone and who used charms and amulets to beguile the simple people. Even Christians, and here Sansum scowled at his congregation, carried their sick to heathen witches and took their dreams to pagan prophetesses, and so long as those evil practices were encouraged so long would God curse Britain with rape and slaughter and Saxons. He paused there to draw breath and I touched the torque about my neck because I knew this ranting Mouse Lord was the enemy of my master Merlin and of my friend Nimue. We had sinned! Sansum suddenly shouted, spreading his arms as he teetered at the table’s edge, and we all had to repent. The Kings of Britain, he said, must love Christ and His blessed Mother, and only when the whole of the British race was united in God would God unite the whole of Britain. By now the crowd was responding to his sermon, calling out agreement, praying aloud to their God for mercy and shouting for the death of the Druids and their followers. It was terrifying.
“Come,” Nimue whispered to me, “I’ve heard enough.”
We slipped off the pedestal and eased our way through the crowd that filled the vestibule beneath the hall’s outer pillars. To my shame I held my cloak up to my beardless chin so that no one would see my torque as I followed Nimue down the steps into the windy square that was lit on all sides by blustering torch flames. A small rain was spitting out of the west to make the stones of the square shine in the firelight. Tewdric’s uniformed guards stood motionless all around the square’s edge as Nimue led me into the very centre of the wide space where she stopped and suddenly began to laugh. At first it was a chuckle, then it was the laughter of jest that turned into a fierce mockery that changed into a defiant howl that beat up past the roofs of Glevum to echo out towards the heavens and end in a maniacal screech as wild as the death cry of a cornered beast. She turned around as she sounded the screech, turned sunwise from the north to the east to the south to the west and so back north again, and not one soldier stirred. Some of the Christians in the portico of the great building looked at us in anger, but did not interfere. Even Christians recognized someone being touched by the Gods, and none of them dared lay a hand on Nimue.
When her breath was ended she sank down to the stones. She was silent; a tiny figure crouched beneath a black cape, a shapeless thing shuddering at my feet. “Oh, little one,” she finally said in a tired voice, job, my little one.”