Warlord 03 - Excalibur by Bernard Cornwell

Author:Bernard Cornwell
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2010-01-29T20:26:25+00:00

PART THREE Nimue’s Curse

Queen Igraine sat in my window and read the last sheets of parchment, sometimes asking me the

meaning of a Saxon word, but otherwise saying nothing. She hurried through the story of the battle, then threw the parchments onto the floor in disgust. ‘What happened to Aelle?’ she demanded indignantly, ‘or to Lancelot?’

‘I shall come to their fates, Lady,’ I said. I had a quill trapped on the desk with the stump of my left arm and was trimming its point with a knife. I blew the scraps onto the floor. ‘All in good time.’

‘All in good time!’ she scoffed. ‘You can’t leave a story without an ending, Derfel!’ ‘It will have an ending,’ I promised.

‘It needs one here and now,’ my Queen insisted. ‘That’s the whole point of stories. Life doesn’t have neat endings, so stories must.’ She is very swollen now, for her child is close to its time. I shall pray for her, and she will need my prayers for too many women die giving birth. Cows do not suffer thus, nor cats, nor bitches, nor sows, nor ewes, nor vixens, nor any creature except humankind. Sansum says that is because Eve took the apple in Eden and so soured our paradise. Women, the saint preaches, are God’s punishment on men, and children his punishment on women. ‘So what happened to Aelle?’ Igraine demanded sternly when I did not respond to her words.

‘He was killed,’ I said, ‘by the thrust of a spear. It struck him right here,’ I tapped my ribs just above my heart. The story was longer than that, of course, but I had no mind to tell her just then for I take little pleasure in remembering my father’s death, though I suppose I must set it down if the tale is to be complete. Arthur had left his men pillaging Cerdic’s camp and ridden back to discover whether Tewdric’s Christians had finished off Aelle’s trapped army. He found the remnants of those Saxons beaten, bleeding and dying, but still defiant. Aelle himself had been wounded and could no longer hold a shield, but he would not yield. Instead, surrounded by his bodyguard and the last of his spearmen, he waited for Tewdric’s soldiers to come and kill him.

The spearmen of Gwent were reluctant to attack. A cornered enemy is dangerous, and if he still possesses a shield wall, as Aelle’s men did, then he is doubly dangerous. Too many spearmen of Gwent had already died, good old Agricola among them, and the survivors did not want to push forward into the Saxon shields another time. Arthur had not insisted that they try, instead he had talked with Aelle, and when Aelle refused to surrender, Arthur summoned me. I thought, when I reached Arthur’s side, that he had exchanged his white cloak for a dark red one, but it was the same garment, just so spattered with blood that it looked red. He greeted me with an embrace, then, with his arm about my shoulders, led me into the space between the opposing shield walls.

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