Arthur, p.41
Arthur, page 41
‘I wasn’t old, Arthur, but you were always a fool.’
Arthur walks along the hall’s central aisle, knowing each of the twelve paces from door to hearth, recalling how he had paced out the length himself, measuring it against his memory of Uther’s hall.
Now, the druid stands, the claws of his hands clutching at the chair’s arms as he pushes himself to his feet, grimacing with effort and with habit. He takes up his staff and turns to face Arthur, and the hearth flames flicker in his eyes.
‘I told them to expect you,’ he says, lifting a frail arm towards the darkened door. ‘I said, watch for Arthur, for he will come.’
‘Merlin.’ The name escapes his lips like a breath. ‘I thought you were dead.’
The druid sighs. ‘People do so enjoy telling me that they thought I was dead. It is not flattering, Arthur.’ He arches a brow. ‘Mind you, I expect you’re going to hear a lot of that yourself.’
For a moment, Arthur just stands there, drinking in the sight of that face. His old friend. The druid’s hair and brows are white, his cheeks are sunken and shadow-pooled. He is as thin as smoke. But he is alive, and Arthur can feel his heart swelling.
‘It has been so long, Merlin.’
Merlin’s lips tighten. His eyes gleam in the firelight. The watery eyes of an old man, perhaps. Or perhaps not. ‘What dreams we had, Arthur,’ he says. ‘We would have remade Britain, you and I. The gods talked to me back then. I dreamt to them and they answered in their way.’
Arthur is about to ask if the gods talk to him still, to ask Merlin if he sent the mist which allowed them to slip through the Saxon lines like shades, for hadn’t Merlin performed such a feat of magic for Uther long, long ago? But he hears the latch of the door and the squeak of its hinges.
‘Oh, you’re in the dung heap now, Arthur.’ Merlin’s thin lips pull back from his few remaining teeth.
Arthur turns and sees a figure looming in the open doorway. He cannot see the man’s face, but he does not need to see it to know him.
‘I thought they were talking out of their arses,’ Gawain says. ‘It can’t be Arthur, I told them. No, Arthur turned his back on us years ago. Left us to fight the wars he started. Vanished into the marsh like some restless spirit at dawn after Samhain.’
‘Gawain … I …’
‘No!’ Gawain takes four strides and stops. He is still beyond the bloom of light cast by those fitful, dying flames, but he lifts a hand and points a finger at Arthur. ‘You left us. You have no voice here, Arthur.’ It is as if Gawain fears to come closer, though Arthur had never known his friend to fear anything.
‘I was … broken,’ Arthur says. He takes a step towards Gawain. He wants to throw his arms around his old friend, to hold him tight as though that will close the gap between them, as though it will stitch the wound. But he is afraid to. They are not the same men they were. How can they be? ‘I was broken, Gawain. You know that I was.’
Gawain is old now, too, his hair all but gone and his beard stained by wine. His shoulders are rounded where once he had stood square like the iron-studded oak door at his back. ‘I know that you died many years ago,’ Gawain says. His hands are clenched into fists at his sides. ‘You died in the marsh.’ He shakes his head. ‘I don’t know the man standing before me now.’
‘Tell me, what difference would it have made had I stayed?’ Arthur asks him. ‘What could I have done, brother?’
Now Gawain strides towards him, pointing that accusing finger again. It might as well be a blade, such is the hate behind it. The bitterness.
‘You could have fought!’ Gawain says, spittle lacing his beard. He stands within arm’s reach now, his lip curled as though Arthur stinks of death. ‘You could have fought, Arthur.’ He throws his arms wide. ‘Like we did. Like your daughter did.’
There it is. The knife in his belly.
I had no fight left in me, thinks Arthur. Not then.
‘Damn you, Arthur,’ Gawain snarls, and the old hound lying by the fire lifts its head warily, looking at Gawain with red-rimmed eyes before settling down again. ‘You could have led us still. Spearmen would have come … for you. Instead, you slipped away. Like a coward.’
Arthur feels his own hands tighten, feels violence rising in his blood, craving release. ‘Careful, Gawain,’ he warns. ‘I loved you as a brother, but I will not hear more.’
‘Enough!’ Merlin hobbles over and puts himself between them, swinging his eyes from one to the other. ‘Fools, both of you. As stubborn as each other.’ He lifts his druid’s staff, as Arthur has seen him do a thousand times. ‘There are Saxons enough to fight out there, without you going at each other like two old boars.’ He reaches out and pulls a loose thread from the shoulder of Gawain’s cloak and holds it up to the old warrior’s face, hand trembling. ‘The past cannot be unpicked, you dolt,’ he says, casting the thread aside.
He is so old and bent, so worn by years and burdened by the absence of all that might have been, that Arthur wonders what magic has kept the druid’s heart thumping in his breast. What spirit rides in the old man yet?
‘Arthur is here now,’ Merlin says, then he winces as though in pain, and coughs, and coughs, and Arthur reaches out, offering his support, but Merlin bats his hand away, and well he might, for he has survived until now without Arthur’s help.
The coughing subdued for the present, he looks up at Arthur, a crooked staff trying to straighten itself. ‘Perhaps I am a fool too,’ he says, ‘but what if the gods have brought Arthur back to us now?’ Teeth bared with the effort, he looks up at the dark thatch and the sickly smoke hanging above the roof beams. ‘It may be that only the ghosts of the gods of Britain linger here still. But what if they yet possess …’ he pinches a thumb and forefinger together, ‘… a sliver of power? What if they themselves remember the dream of Britain, like I do?’ He turns his gaze on Gawain, and for all his seeming frailty there is still fire in those rheumy eyes. ‘Could it be that they have conspired to bring Arthur back to us? To return him to Camelot?’
Gawain shakes his head, but before he can say what he thinks of such things, Arthur says, ‘The gods have nothing to do with it. I am too old for dreams, Merlin.’
‘And yet you dream every night, don’t you?’ the druid says.
Arthur says nothing to that. Merlin shakes his head. ‘You have never understood your part in all this. That was my burden. Yours was to fight. To kill.’ He presses a skeletal hand to his chest. ‘To give our people heart, Arthur, and make them think that they could win.’
‘We could never win,’ Gawain says. ‘I see that now. And Arthur being here cannot change that.’
The door is flung open, drawing the fading hearth flames. Arthur wonders who has come now. How many more knives to be sheathed in his heart? There is one he knows of certainly.
‘Best if you say nothing,’ Gawain rumbles at him under his breath.
For warriors are spilling into the hall, cloaked in conversation of Saxon chieftains and the size of their war bands, of food and water, arrows and grain. They are grizzled, tired-looking men in dirty mail and damp cloaks, helmets tucked under their arms, and they have not noticed Arthur standing in the ebbing glow.
And now in come the warrior Lord and Lady of Camelot, both in long tunics of scale armour whose weight Arthur can feel from where he stands.
She has changed much, and seeing her now is a blow to his stomach, driving the breath from him.
My daughter.
Iselle is not the same girl he had last seen at his hidden steading in the marshes of Avalon. She is careworn and austere, her mouth tight and her brow heavy, and yet he can see Guinevere in her. There is no doubting that. Can see himself too. And that is all he has given her.
And now she looks up, as if some voice has whispered in her ear, telling her who is standing there with Merlin and Gawain. She stops dead, even as the others in the party continue walking towards the hearth.
‘I still say we can hold,’ a black-bearded warrior says, leading the others towards the fire.
The Lady of Camelot is staring at Arthur. Her jaw is clenched like a fist.
‘If we can break them once on our ramparts, they will begin to slink off after easier prey,’ the black-bearded warrior says, just a few feet away now.
‘They don’t need to attack,’ the tall man at his shoulder says. ‘They just need to wait for us to starve.’
Arthur and Iselle are tethered to each other across the copper-licked gloom of the hall, and Arthur will not be the one to break the bind of their eyes.
To think that they are now under the same roof, breathing the same air.
‘What is it?’ Galahad has stopped now too, and turns back to Iselle to see what’s wrong. To ask what ghost has slipped through the veil to haunt her.
And now the black-bearded warrior reaches the fire and he looks up and sees Arthur, as do the others. As does Galahad.
‘For any who don’t know …’ Merlin’s voice stills all others as he lifts his staff towards Arthur, ‘… this man is Arthur ap Uther. Whom men called Lord of Battle.’
Silence now, but for the soft sputtering of flame. Mouths hang open. Eyes bulge. Men’s hands creep towards iron pommels or strap ends, even though their other hands cradle iron helmets.
‘Arthur,’ the man with the black beard whispers, staring.
But Arthur is still looking at Iselle, wondering at all the lost years, gazing in awe at the woman his daughter has become.
‘You have all heard the songs,’ Merlin says. His voice trembles, as does the hand he holds aloft, finger pointing at the smoky gloom. ‘The bards sing that in our darkest days, when we need him most, Arthur shall come again.’ He lowers his arm, placing both hands on the apple-sized knob of his hazel staff.
‘Lord Artorius,’ another says in an outward breath. This warrior’s cheeks are pockmarked, his beard thin and wispy. ‘How can it be?’
Galahad pushes his way through the knot of warriors and stands before Arthur. Gods, but he is so like Lancelot that it hurts to look at him.
‘Lord Arthur,’ Galahad says, extending his hand and dipping his chin in a gesture of respect which Arthur knows he does not deserve. They grip each other by the forearm, the young man’s unblinking gaze as heavy as ringmail. Over his shoulder and the heads of the other men, Arthur sees that Palamedes is there too. ‘You look well, Arthur,’ Galahad says.
‘He looks old,’ Gawain puts in, sharing a look of mutual respect with the Saracen, the two of them acknowledging shared fights, fires and ale of years ago.
‘Why have you come?’ Galahad asks Arthur. He does not ask how he has come.
‘This man cannot be Arthur,’ one of the other warriors says. He is young, but battle-scarred, his face grimy with ingrained soot. ‘Arthur died after the great battle at Camlan.’
‘No.’ They turn to the voice. Palamedes stands in shadow, but his presence defies the gloom. ‘This man is Arthur ap Uther. I know because I rode with him at Camlan. I was there when we broke the Saxons and those spearmen of the traitor Mordred.’
‘That was a long time ago,’ Arthur says.
‘Maybe Samhain has come early,’ Gawain says, standing apart and throwing logs one by one into the fire. ‘But this is the man who broke the Saxons at Camlan. I was there too, when the world held its breath.’
‘I did not break the Saxons,’ Arthur says. ‘That was Lancelot.’ Arthur holds Galahad’s eye as he says that, and the young man’s lips tighten, his brow darkens. Galahad bears his own burdens, Arthur knows.
‘We will not waste breath talking of the past,’ the Lady of Camelot says. Her first words to them all, and all eyes turn to her. ‘Cunedda, do we have any proof of who the boy is?’ There is a calm authority in her voice, and even the men’s shock at Arthur’s presence there subsides, their attention turning to the lady to whom they owe fealty.
Cunedda scratches his black beard and shakes his head. ‘Could be any whelp taken from any village in Dumnonia.’
‘What boy?’ Arthur asks Iselle.
‘This is not your concern,’ Iselle tells him, her eyes saying more than her tongue.
Still, to these other men, Arthur’s name has been the meat and mead of fireside tales since they were old enough to listen, and they look to him again now, and Arthur knows what it must feel like to be some spirit returned to the world on Samhain or dug out of some ancient burial mound.
Cunedda dips his head to Arthur. ‘King Cynric sent a message, lord,’ he says. ‘He claims to have Prince Erbin—’
‘King Constantine’s son,’ another warrior puts in.
‘Arthur has no authority here,’ Lady Iselle says. ‘You do not answer to him.’ She turns to Gawain. ‘Take him from my hall, Gawain.’
Gawain glances at Galahad, who nods to second the lady’s command.
Gawain takes a step towards Arthur. ‘Best come with me, Arthur,’ Gawain says. The others look on in mute disbelief.
‘It’s true,’ Arthur says. ‘The boy is Constantine’s son.’
‘And how would you know anything about that?’ Gawain asks. Now, even Iselle’s venom is cut with curiosity; she steps through the knot of men to get closer to Arthur, her hand resting on the hilt of the sword at her left hip.
‘Palamedes and I have been travelling with the boy,’ Arthur says, and some heads turn towards the Saracen.
Palamedes nods. ‘Prince Erbin is a brave young man. A credit to his father the late king.’ He looks at Arthur, crestfallen. Ashamed even. ‘Cynric’s men took him from us.’
‘I found him the day they burned Caer Colun,’ Arthur says. ‘We were bringing him here.’
‘We failed,’ Palamedes says. His gaze seems unformed, foggy like the world beyond the timber walls, as though he is looking inward at the events of the last weeks, weighing their efforts and finding them wanting.
‘Damn them,’ Cunedda rumbles into his beard.
‘Why were you bringing the prince here?’ Galahad asks Arthur.
Arthur tries to remember why. He shrugs. ‘The boy thought you would help him.’
‘And what did you think?’ Iselle asks him. She says it like an accusation.
She is so proud, and yet still wild. He remembers how she had seemed like a she-wolf roaming the marshes, hunting Saxons. Haunting them. Killing them with her bow. He wonders how she has taken to this new life, as a leader of spearmen. As a queen in all but name, yet cooped up behind a palisade on top of this hill.
‘I gave my word I would help him,’ he tells her. ‘I would have walked him up to the south gate and then I would have turned round and walked away.’
The lady nods, the lines of her jaw showing beneath the skin. ‘You are good at walking away, Arthur,’ she says. Not Father. But then, he has never been a father to her.
‘Come now, Arthur.’ Merlin leans his staff towards him. ‘The boy is Constantine’s son. You know what that means.’
Arthur gives a slight shake of his head. ‘It means nothing to me.’
‘His grandfather was High King Ambrosius,’ one of the other men says, looking from face to face. The new fuel in the hearth has taken the flame now, casting them all in red and bronze and chasing away the darkness. ‘The boy could have a claim to the high seat of Dumnonia. Who would challenge him? No one has more right.’ He glances at Arthur. ‘Well, except Lord Arthur.’ He acknowledges Arthur with an open hand.
‘The prince has the makings of a warrior,’ Palamedes says. ‘I saw him kill a Saxon with my own eyes. I believe men would fight for him.’
‘And with Arthur at his side,’ Merlin puts in, adding his own fuel to the flame of it, ‘we could raise a thousand spears. More. Men would come from Powys and Rheged, from Caer Lerion and Caer Gloui and Cornubia. We could raise an army the likes of which hasn’t been seen since Camlan.’
Gawain grunts. ‘The kings won’t send their spearmen. They’ve no fight left in them. Not any more.’
‘He’s right,’ Galahad agrees. ‘We’ve tried. We lit the beacons. We sent riders. No one has come.’
Some of the others mutter their opinions of the lords and kings of Britain.
‘With respect, Lord Galahad,’ the druid interrupts them, pulling his white beard through a talon-like hand to smooth it. ‘They won’t come for you because you are the son of a traitor. The son of the man who betrayed Arthur.’
Arthur recoils inwardly from his words. He knows now, more than ever, the real truth of it. But Galahad makes no effort to deny it.
‘And they won’t come for Lady Iselle,’ Merlin goes on, ‘because they are fools and will not be led in war by a woman.’ He sighs. ‘Even though it was a warrior queen who led our people against the Romans. Who slaughtered the invaders in their thousands.’
‘Have I not killed enough Saxons?’ Iselle asks them all. ‘I have proved myself the equal of any man.’
Cunedda and the others nod and grunt in affirmation.
‘You have done more than that, my lady.’ Galahad lifts his chest. He is proud of her, and it tugs at Arthur’s heart to see it, for his own loss, yes, and because he doesn’t know his own daughter, but also because he is thankful that Galahad and Iselle have each other. ‘It was King Constantine who poisoned them against you,’ Lancelot’s son says.
More rumbles of accord.
‘None of it matters.’ Cunedda looks from Galahad to Iselle. ‘Cynric’s message was clear. We must abandon Camelot, or he will burn the prince before the gates.’
Arthur catches Palamedes’ eye, his guts clenching with fear for the boy. He looks at Cunedda. ‘When?’
Cunedda lifts a hand to swipe a trickle of sweat from his forehead. ‘Midday tomorrow.’
‘Three times he has ordered us to cede this hill,’ Gawain says. ‘Three times we have told him to come and take it.’
‘He didn’t have the prince then,’ Galahad says.
‘A man on the gate said he heard them chopping wood,’ Cunedda says. ‘Can’t see with this fog but … could be they’re building a pyre.’
Arthur’s teeth ache from biting down on his anger. What is he doing here when the boy is out there somewhere? Alone and afraid. Watching the Saxons pile up wood, preparing to burn him alive.
