“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."
“Is that bad?”
“It isn't a question of bad or good, Derfel, but of practicality. We Irish know one thing above all others: an enemy forgiven is an enemy who will have to be fought over and over again. Arthur confuses morality with power, and he worsens the mix by always believing that people are inherently good, even the worst of them, and that is why, mark my words, he will never have peace. He longs for peace, he talks of peace, but his own trusting soul is the reason he will always have enemies. Unless Guinevere manages to put some flint into his soul? And she may. Do you know who she reminds me of?”
“I didn't think you'd met her,” I said.
“I never met the person she reminds me of either, but I hear things, and I do know Arthur very well. She sounds like his mother; very striking and very strong, and I suspect he will do anything to please her.”
“Even at the price of his conscience?”
Ailleann smiled at the question. “You should know, Derfel, that some women always want their men to pay an exorbitant price. The more the man pays, the greater the woman's worth, and I suspect Guinevere is a lady who values herself very highly. And so she should. So should we all.” She said the last words sadly, then rose from her chair. “Give him my love,” she told me as we walked back through the house,
'and tell him please to take his sons to war."
Arthur would not take them. “Give them another year,” he told me as we marched away next morning. He had dined with the twins and given them small gifts, but all of us had noted the sullenness with which Amhar and Loholt had received their father's affection. Arthur had noticed it too, which was why he was unnaturally dour as we marched west. “Children born to unwed mothers,” he said after a long silence,
'have parts of their souls missing."
“What about your soul, Lord?” I asked.
“I patch it every morning, Derfel, piece by piece.” He sighed. “I shall have to give time to Amhar and Loholt, and the Gods only know where I shall find it because in four or five months I shall be a father again. If I live,” he added bleakly.
So Lunete had been right and Guinevere was pregnant. “I'm happy for you, Lord,” I said, though I was thinking of Lunete's comment on how unhappy Guinevere was at her condition.
“I'm happy for me!” He laughed, his black mood abruptly vanquished. “And happy for Guinevere. It'll be good for her, and in ten years' time, Derfel, Mordred will be on the throne and Guinevere and I can find some happy place to rear our cattle, children and pigs! I shall be happy then. I shall train Llamrei to pull a cart and use Excalibur as a goad for my plough-oxen.”
I tried to imagine Guinevere as a farm wife, even as a rich farm wife, and somehow I could not conjure the image, but I kept my peace.
From Corinium we went to Glevum, then crossed the Severn and marched through Gwent's heartland. We made a fine sight, for Arthur deliberately rode with banners flying and his horsemen armoured for combat. We marched in that high style for we wanted to give the local people a new confidence. They had none now. Everyone assumed that Gorfyddyd would be victorious and even though it was harvest-time the countryside was sullen. We passed a threshing floor and the chanter was singing the Lament of Essylt instead of the usual cheerful song that gave rhythm to the flails. We also noted how every villa, house and cottage was strangely bare of anything valuable. Possessions were being hidden, buried probably, so that Gorfyddyd's invaders would not strip the populace bare. “The moles are getting rich again,” Arthur said sourly.
Arthur alone did not ride in his best armour. “Morfans has the scale armour,” he told me when I asked why he was wearing his spare coat of mail. Morfans was the ugly warrior who had befriended me at the feast that had followed Arthur's arrival at Caer Cadarn so many years before.
“Morfans?” I asked, astonished. “How did he earn such a gift?”