The Winter King (The Warlord Chronicles, #1)

by Bernard Cornwell

‘Wouldn’t it be lovely,’ she said, ‘to see ourselves as we really are?’ ‘God does that,’ I said, ‘and only God.’ She wrinkled her face at me. ‘I do hate it when you preach at me, Derfel. It doesn’t suit you. If Guinevere wasn’t beautiful, then why did Arthur fall in love with her?’ ‘Love is not only for the beautiful,’ I said reprovingly. ‘Did I say it was?’ Igraine asked indignantly, ‘but you said Guinevere attracted Arthur from the very first moment, so if it wasn’t beauty, what was it?’ ‘The very sight of her,’ I answered, ‘turned his blood to smoke.’

‘Do you understand that madness?’ she asked me. I was aware of nothing in the room except Ceinwyn. The Princess Helledd, the sleeping Prince, Galahad, the aunts, the harpist, none of them existed for me, any more than did the woven wall hangings or the bronze rushlight holders. I was aware only of Ceinwyn’s large sad eyes and of my own beating heart. ‘I do understand that you can look into someone’s eyes,’ I heard myself saying, ‘and suddenly know that life will be impossible without them. Know that their voice can make your heart miss a beat and that their company is all your happiness can ever desire and that their absence will leave your soul alone, bereft and lost.’

‘If he knew he never said anything. It wouldn’t have mattered to him. He was not jealous.’ Not like the rest of us. Not like Arthur, not like me. How much of our earth has been wet by blood because of jealousy! And at the end of life, what does it all matter? We grow old and the young look at us and can never see that once we made a kingdom ring for love.

Much anachronism could, however, happily be jettisoned, thus the fifth-century Arthur does not wear plate armour nor carry a mediaeval lance. He has no round table, though his warriors (not knights) would, in Celtic fashion, often have feasted in a circle on the ground. His castles would have been made of earth and wood, not from towering and turreted stone, and I doubt, sadly, that any arm clad in white samite, mystic and wonderful, rose from a misty mere to snatch his sword into eternity, though it is almost certain that the personal treasures of a great leader would, on his death, be cast into a lake as an offering to the Gods.