The atmosphere in the fleet was tense as we passed through the channel between Britain and Gaul. As soon as the white cliffs appeared on the starboard side the flagship ordered us to bear east, in case any of Arthur’s ships were patrolling the British coast. A few days later, King lot ordered the mass of the fleet to put in at a great natural harbour on the south coast, which, unusually for that part of country, had no castle, only a town built around the remains of a Roman villa. King Lot sent a boat to the shore, and the report came back that, although few ships had been spotted, a muster had been called more than three weeks before, and Arthur had already moved on Tintagel.
‘Sir Breuse never sent us word of that,’ said Agravaine, when he and Palomina came back from a council on the flagship.
‘Father will have done,’ Bellina told him. She was sincere in that belief.
‘Perhaps his messenger arrived at Orkney after we set sail,’ said Melwas.
‘So what’s the plan?’ asked Piers.
‘I have volunteered this ship to scout the seas around Tintagel,’ said Palomina. ‘They are less likely to feel threatened by a lone Saracen vessel; they should think us traders rather than a ship of war. And if they do take fright we are fast enough to outrun them. I need the rest of you to move to another ship. If – and it is an unlikely if – we are boarded they would be suspicious to find so many white faces aboard.’
‘Free of chains, anyway,’ said John bitterly.
Palomina inclined her head. Over the past week John had occasionally made glancing references to the Saracen trade in slaves, but this was the first time he’d said anything in Palomina’s presence. ‘My father does not involve our family in that trade, John, and some would argue that the British method of conquest and occupation of foreign lands is tantamount to slavery. At least our slave traders grant their property rights; the peoples conquered by the British should be so fortunate.’
John looked away from her. ‘I’ve never conquered anyone,’ he said under his breath.
‘And I have never enslaved another,’ said Palomina sternly, staring directly at the older man.
A tense silence fell on the room, which was broken by Melwas. ‘As Palomina has volunteered to go by sea, I will scout by land. We will be able to see how Arthur’s forces are disposed. Elia, I’d like you to come with me, to see what you can hear – that is, so to speak.’
‘Aye, chum. No bother,’ said the bard.
‘I-I-I-I-I-I’ll come t-to, if y-you’ll have me. I-I-I-I’ll be able to s-sense what they have in the w-way of m-m-m-m-magic.’
‘Many thanks, Drift,’ said Melwas.
Palomina didn’t meet my eye.
* * *
Unencumbered by the rest of the slow fleet, emptied of the vast majority of its human cargo and helped by a good wind, Palomina’s ship sliced through the waves along the south coast of Britain. This was the most fertile trading ground for her people, and she knew this coastline better than any other part of the island.
Shortly before we were due to disembark, Melwas disappeared below decks for a good long while. When she returned she came with a dust-covered Mordred, blinking into the daylight. ‘What?’ he said grimly, when he saw mine and Elia’s astonished faces. ‘You didn’t think I was really going to let you all put yourselves in danger and stay out of it myself, did you?’ He gave me a particularly significant look. I did not respond.
So it was that four of us led horses onto a broad pebbly bay, which Palomina said was forty miles south and east of Tintagel. My mare was a lotless friendly than Tommy, who, as far as I knew was still at the fishing village in the far north of Caledonia, but she was quicker. Almost before we were mounted, the Saracen boatmen had returned to the ship, and Palomina raised anchor and cut away from the headland. I felt the old jaggedness of Britain as clearly as the pebbles under my boots, and the heavy presence of Merlin, some way to the north. He wasn’t in Cornwall, and I was very glad of that; the wizard was surely too far away to sense my little magic through the distortion of his own immense power.
‘Elia, Drift,’ said Melwas before we mounted. ‘If there is any fighting leave it to Mordred and me. If the situation is dangerous, race back to our rendezvous with whatever intelligence we have gathered.’
‘I can fight,’ said Elia, patting the quiver of arrows strung across her shoulder.
‘Aye, mate,’ said Mordred, ‘but it’s more important that the fleet and army knows what they’re facing. And what their plans are, if you can hear them.’
Elia sighed. ‘If you insist.’
The land we rode through was strangely familiar to me, though I had never been there before. The coast was lovely, full of long bays punctuated by craggy fishing villages built alongside crenellated bays. The landscape was rocky, with long stretches of moor. We took our lunch in the shade of an apple orchard by a broken old homestead, and as we ate I realised how it was I knew the place. I wandered towards the ruins of the house, and when I had confirmed my fears approached the cliffs beyond. The broken house had been Alisander’s family homestead, before his mother fled to the arms of Sir Guy de Grance. I crossed myself as I stood on the edge of the cliff from which the Sessite raider Hermann had thrown Sir Bodwyn, Alisander’s father.
They led the horses over to me. Mordred looked questioningly, noticing how I had reacted to the place.
‘W-W-W-W-We’re about a half d-day’s r-ride from T-T-T-T-Tintagel,’ I told them. ‘There’s a r-r-r-road n-north, b-b-b-b-but I s-s-s-s-suggest we go into the h-h-hills. I know the w-way.’
‘Eh?’ said Elia. ‘You’re not from round here, are you?’
‘Drift’s right,’ said Mordred, before I had to explain myself. ‘I’ve never been to this part of Cornwall, but I’ve seen Tintagel. It’s on the other coast, surrounded by hills that will provide cover for us, assuming Arthur isn’t using them as his vantage point.’
We rode on in silence for almost the rest of the day. I spent the afternoon fretting over whether or not I should confront Mordred over the prophecy of three deaths, sympathise with him over the murder of his birth mother, or otherwise broach the subject of his parentage, but I felt very uncomfortable about it. I ended up riding in front of the others, and several miles before we reached Tintagel I spotted a thin sliver of magic in the sky. It looked like a kite-string without akite, looping purposefully from the place where we heading towards the distant presence of Merlin in the north.
‘What is it?’ said Mordred, who had been riding by my side without me noticing.
‘A s-s-s-spell. It r-r-reminds m-me of Martha – it h-h-h-h-has the quality of her m-magic, I think, though I-I-I-I-I can’t be absolutely sure. It’s l-l-l-like a tether, t-t-t-t-tying something to another m-magician. It c-c-c-could be a fragment of M-M-M-Merlin, like Accolon.’
He nodded. ‘learn what you can, mate. If it comes to a fight, you’re the only magician we have now.’
I nodded solemnly. His calmness disturbed me. He’d had the days of the sea-journey to come to terms with what Neave had told him, but the settled way he was carrying the burden did not seem natural to me.
‘listen,’ he went on, ‘I wanted to thank you for telling me the truth.’
‘I-I-I-I-I didn’t. It was Neave. I-I told your mother I would get you to go without telling you. I failed her.’
‘Drift,’ he said, reaching out to me. ‘She may have given birth to me, but she wasn’t my mother, not really. You know why I’m still here.’
So that was it: he was dealing with the news that he was the child of an incestuous rape by denying it to himself. ‘You b-b-b-broke your oath to B-B-B-Brunor.’
‘No I didn’t,’ he snapped back, suddenly very angry. ‘My agreement with Brunor stands. But the first part isn’t done until Iseult is back in Erin with my parents. You understand how oaths work.’
‘I-I-I-I don’t. Not really. I d-don’t understand why you w-w-would risk your life, and k-k-k-king lot’s wrath. Y-Y-You raised Orkney against A-A-Arthur, whole armies. Y-You did as you’d planned. lot p-p-p-promised to send I-I-I-Iseult back to Erin. Why d-d-d-disobey him? What about the p-p-p-p-prophecy?’
‘Prophecies are snakes,’ said Elia, who had been using her sharp ears to eavesdrop on our conversation. ‘You can never predict where they’re going to bite. And by the way, we’re nearly there: I can hear them.’
Mordred told us to leave our horses in a riverside meadow, near the foot of one of the hills that overlooked King Mark’s castle. Melwas assured us that we could leave them unhobbled and they would remain in that place until we returned to them, unless they encountered any danger. Long before we reached the top of the hill I could hear many, many voices. They were not particularly loud – there were no shouts, no war cries – it was simply the sustained rumble of hundreds, thousands of men in the open air.
It was a glorious day, so hot that I removed my cloak and draped it over my hunched shoulder. That had been a habit in my younger days, when I had tried to hide my disfigurement from the world, but of course it only had the effect of making it more prominent. I caught Elia’s eye.
‘I don’t know how many,’ she said. ‘But bloody hell.’
Mordred signaled for us to stop, and advanced alone to the ridge. He crawled the last few feet on his belly, peeked over the top of the hill, and immediately rolled onto his back.
‘Good Lord Jesus,’ he said, and beckoned for us to follow him up the rest of the way.
Tintagel sat on a shelf of sparkling grey rock that dropped fifty feet from the castle’s great black gates, down to a plain that rose gently to the surrounding hills. The only way up to the gates was by a narrow road that ran from the far left of the plain, across the gates, and then back down to the right. The whole of the area before the castle, which had seemed vast in Alisander’s memories, was entirely covered with tents. Smoke rose from fires within the enormous camp, drifting towards us on the sea breeze along with the voices of the soldiers below. The besieging army was not active. They were not preparing siege engines, nor mounting an attack. The siege of Tintagel was set, and they had bedded in for a long wait, aiming to starve King Mark and his people out.
The castle was fashioned from the same material as the exposed rocks on which it sat. The glints of metal ore in its stone made it glimmer in the sunlight like the sparkle of the waves beyond. The castle was built around a single domed tower, which looked like a gigantic version of Alisander’s ruined childhood home on the southern coast of Cornwall.
From the top of hill we could see that the wooden bridges that connected Tintagel to the small islands in the bay behind it had been felled to protect the castle from incursions from the sea. The mouth of the bay was entirely cut off by ships arranged in a blockade, perhaps five or six hundred of them. I recognised both ships in the British style, and the smaller, rougher vessels of the Sessites.
‘How many do you reckon?’ said Elia.
‘Sixty thousand soldiers, perhaps seventy,’ said Mordred.
‘Mostly British,’ said Melwas, ‘Though there is a large contingent of Sessite savages camped furthest from us – perhaps ten thousand. It is unusual for Sessites to ally in this way; they are not disciplined soldiers, but plundering raiders.’
‘Good God,’ said Mordred. ‘We have fewer than two thousand men, even with Sagwarides and his Saracens. There’s no hope in an out-and-out battle.’
‘W-W-W-What about at n-n-night? If we k-k-keep surprise on our side?’
Melwas shook her head. ‘Night attacks are dangerous for large forces, and you cannot surprise anyone with two thousand men.’
Mordred crept back down below the ridge, and we followed him. ‘We need an alternative plan. Could you hear anything of interest, Elia?’
The bard shook her head. ‘I can only pick out voices on the edge. No one important there. There are a couple of guards on the perimeter discussing whether or not Arthur’s going to make an appearance. They reckon they’re here for the summer, but don’t know anything beyond what they’re not getting for dinner today. If I could get closer...’
‘Drift?’
I closed my eyes and reached out my magical senses to the camp. ‘M-M-M-M-Merlin’s not here, he’s a l-l-l-l-long w-way away, and not t-travelling. B-B-B-But that s-s-s-spell –’ I latched onto the metallic fishing line that was hooked near the centre of the camp. As I examined it I saw the body to which it was attached, and then his face. ‘Palomides. It’s P-P-P-Palomides. He’s down there.’
I opened my eyes and saw that Melwas’ hand was on the hilt of one of her swords; she was ready to fight seventy thousand soldiers to rescue our friend. Mordred touched her hand to calm her, and she relaxed, although I could still see the desire for a fight in her face.
Mordred crept a little way further down the hill. ‘We should get back to the horses. Your point about the soldiers’ dinner makes me think, Elia. We should see if they’re supplying the siege by land as well as sea. Attacking their supply lines could be one way to break the siege with the number of soldiers we have. We’ll scout till dark and head back to the rendezvous. We’ve done all we can here.’
Elia and Melwas followed him, but I stayed where I was, my arms around my knees.
‘Drift?’ said Mordred.
‘I-I-I-I-I-I want to g-go down there.’
‘That’s suicide,’ said Elia. ‘If we go into the camp –’
‘N-N-N-Not you.’ I reached inside myself and found the spells I wanted, spells that a week before I had promised myself I would not use again. I wrapped them around myself, and in the next moment they saw not me, but a man in the livery of Arthur’s messengers: a man neither too handsome, nor so ugly that he would be particularly noticed. When I spoke I sounded like a British man from somewhere remote in the middle of the lands, with a soft accent that was unlikely to be objectionable to anyone. ‘I’ll go in alone,’ I said, speaking clearly with my new, untroubled voice. ‘There’s no magician down there to recognise me. I’ll speak to Palomides, find out what he’s heard of the plans for the siege, and bring him away if I can.’
Mordred sighed. ‘Madness. We’ll capture one of them and you can –’
‘You forget that I’m not my sister, Mordred,’ I said angrily. ‘I’ll not invade minds for you like she did.’
Melwas frowned. ‘Mordred?’
‘Did you not know?’ said Elia. She rethought her words. ‘No, I suppose you didn’t, I kept that one secret. That’s how we got Arthur’s plans so quickly from Sir Dinadan. Mordred had the Lady Neave read his mind, and Garnish’s before that. I wasn’t too happy with torturing them, like. Neither of them are that brave.’
‘It wasn’t torture, Elia,’ said Mordred.
‘Like hell it wasn’t,’ said the little bard. ‘Even when it seems gentle, torture is still torture. Mate.’
Mordred looked to the grass, his jaw clenched. He had no answer to that.
I stood, the same height as Melwas and Mordred in my new glamour. ‘I’m going down there,’ I said. ‘I’ll meet you at the rendezvous at dawn.’