He asked the question as innocently as if he was merely enquiring about the weather. I stared at him, overwhelmed by him and desperately wanting him to avoid this challenge against the best swordsman in Dumnonia.
“Well?” he prompted me.
“The Gods…” I began, but then had difficulty speaking for Owain had been good to me. The champion was not an honest man, but I could count on my fingers how many honest men I had met, yet despite his roguery, I liked him. Yet I liked this honest man much more. I also paused to determine whether or not my words broke any oath, then decided they did not. “The Gods will support you, Lord,” I said at last.
He smiled sadly. “Thank you, Derfel.”
“But why?” I blurted out.
He sighed and looked back to the moon-glossed land. “When Uther died,” he said after a long time, ‘the land fell into chaos. That happens to a land without a king, and we are without a king now. We have Mordred, but he is a child, so someone has to hold the power until he is of age. One man must hold the power, Derfel, not three or four or ten, just one. I wish it were not so. With all my heart, believe me, I would rather leave things as they are. I would rather grow old with Owain as my dear friend, but it cannot be. The power must be held for Mordred, and it must be held properly and justly and given to him intact, and that means we cannot afford perpetual squabbles between men who want the king’s power for themselves. One man has to be a king who is no king, and that one man must relinquish the powers of the kingdom when Mordred is of age. And that’s what soldiers do, remember? They fight the battles for people who are too weak to fight for themselves. They also,” he smiled, ‘take what they want, and tomorrow I want something of Owain; I want his honour, so I shall take it.” He shrugged. “Tomorrow I fight for Mordred and for that child. And you, Derfel’ he poked me hard in the chest ‘will find her a kitten.” He stamped his feet against the cold, then peered westward. “You think those clouds will bring rain or snow in the morning?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Lord.”
“Let us hope so. Now, I hear you had a conversation with that poor Saxon they killed to learn the future. So tell me all he told you. The more we know of our enemies, the better.”
He walked me back to my post, listened to what I had to say about Cerdic, the new Saxon leader on the south coast, then went to his bed. He seemed untroubled by what must happen in the morning, but I was terrified for him. I remembered Owain beating back the combined attack of both Tewdric’s champions and I tried to say a prayer to the stars which are the homes of the Gods, but I could not see them because my eyes were watering.
The night was long and bitterly cold. But I wished the dawn would never come.
Arthur’s wish was granted for at dawn it began to rain. It soon became a hard pelting storm of winter rain that swept in grey veils across the long, wide valley between Caer Cadarn and Ynys Wydryn. The ditches overflowed; water poured off the ramparts and puddled under the great hall’s eaves. Smoke leaked from the holes in damp thatched roofs and sentries hunched their shoulders beneath their soaking cloaks.
Tristan, who had spent the night in the small village just east of Caer Cadarn, struggled up the fort’s muddy approach path. His six guards and the orphaned child accompanied him, all of them slipping in the steep mud whenever they could not find a foothold on the tufts of grass growing at the path’s sides. The gate was open and no sentry moved to stop the Prince of Kernow as he splashed through the compound’s mud to the door of the great hall.
Where no one waited to receive him. The hall’s interior was a damp chaos of men sleeping off a night’s drunkenness, of discarded food, scavenging dogs, soggy grey embers and vomit congealing in the floor rushes. Tristan kicked one of the sleeping men awake and sent him to find Bishop Bedwin or some other person in authority. “If anyone,” he called after the man, ‘has any authority in this country.”