“Mount up,” the King called to his guards.

  Behind him his retinue mounted. Sir Kai was the first to vault into the saddle. Young Gawen, astride a pony that was a present from the King, was the last.

  With a minimum of fuss, they wound along the path down the hillside toward the town, and only the clopping of hooves on dirt marked their passage. Ahead were torchbearers and behind them came the household, each with a candle. So light came to light, a wavering parade to the waiting stone below.

  In the fire-broken night the white stone gleamed before the black hulk of the cathedral. The darker veins in the stone meandered like faery streams across its surface. The sword, now shadow, now light, was the focus of hundreds of eyes. And, as if pulled by some invisible string, the King rode directly to the stone, dismounted, and knelt before it. Then he removed his circlet of office and shook free the long golden mane it had held so firmly in place. When he stood again, he put the crown on the top of the stone so that it lay just below the angled sword.

  The crowd fell still.

  “This crown and this land belong to the man who can pull the sword from the stone,” the King said, his voice booming into the strange silence. “So it is written—here.” He gestured broadly with his hand toward the runes.

  “Read it,” cried a woman’s voice from the crowd.

  “We want to hear it,” shouted another.

  A man’s voice, picking up her argument, dared a further step. “We want the mage to read it.” Anonymity lent his words power. The crowd muttered its agreement.

  Merlinnus dismounted carefully and, after adjusting his robes, walked to the stone. He glanced only briefly at the words on its side, then turned to face the people.

  “The message on the stone is burned here,” he said, pointing to his breast, “here in my heart. It says, Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone is rightwise king born of all Britain.”

  Sir Kai nodded and said loudly, “Yes, that is what it says. Right.”

  The King put his hands on his hips. “And so, good people, the challenge has been thrown down before us all. He who would be king of all Britain must step forward and put his hand on the sword.”

  At first there was no sound at all but the dying echo of the King’s voice. Then a child cried and that started the crowd. They began talking to one another, jostling, arguing, some good-naturedly and others with a belligerent tone. Finally, a rather sheepish farm boy, taller by almost a head than Sir Kai, who was the tallest of the knights, was thrust from the crowd. He had a shock of wheat-colored hair over one eye and a dimple in his chin.

  ‘‘I’d try, my lord,” he said. He was plainly uncomfortable, having to talk to the King. “I mean, it wouldn’t do no harm.”

  “No harm indeed, son,” said the King. He took the boy by the elbow and escorted him to the stone.

  The boy put both his hands around the hilt and then stopped. He looked over his shoulder at the crowd. Someone shouted encouragement and then the whole push of people began to call out to him.

  “Do it. Pull the bastard. Give it a heave. Haul it out.” Their cries came thick now and, buoyed by their excitement, the boy put his right foot up against the stone. Then he leaned backward and pulled. His hands slipped along the hilt and he fell onto his bottom, to the delight of the crowd.

  Crestfallen, the boy stood up. He stared unhappily at his worn boots, as if he did not know where else to look or how to make his feet carry him away.

  The King put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “What is your name, son?” The gentleness in his voice silenced the crowd’s laughter.

  “Percy, sir,” the boy managed at last.

  “Then, Percy,” said the King, “because you were brave enough to try where no one else would set hand on the sword, you shall come to the castle and learn to be one of my knights.”

  “Maybe not your knight,” someone shouted from the crowd.

  A shadow passed over the King’s face and he turned toward the mage.

  Merlinnus shook his head imperceptibly and put his finger to his lips.

  The King shifted his gaze back to the crowd. He smiled. “No, perhaps not. We shall see. Who else would try?”

  At last Sir Kai brushed his hand across his breastplate. He alone of the court still affected the Roman style. Tugging his gloves down so that the fingers fitted snugly, he walked to the stone and placed his right hand on the hilt. He gave it a slight tug, smoothed his golden moustache with the fingers of his left hand, then reached over with his left hand and with both gave a mighty yank. The sword did not move.

  Kai shrugged and turned toward the King. “But I am still first in your service,” he said.

  “And in my heart, brother,” acknowledged the King.

  Then, one by one, the knights lined up and took turns pulling on the sword. Stocky Bedevere; handsome Gawain; Tristan, maned like a lion; cocky Galahad; and the rest. But the sword, ever firm in its stone scabbard, never moved.

  At last, of all the court’s knights, only Lancelot was left.

  “And you, good Lance, my right hand, the strongest of us all, will you not try?” asked the King.

  Lancelot, who disdained armor except in battle and was dressed in a simple tunic, the kind one might dance in, shook his head. “I have no wish to be king. I only wish to be of service.”

  The King walked over to him and put his hand on Lancelot’s shoulder. He whispered into the knight’s ear. “It is the stone’s desire, not ours, that will decide this. But if you do not try, then my leadership will always be in doubt. Without your full commitment to this cause, the kingdom will not be bound.”

  “Then I will put my hand to it, my lord,” Lancelot said. “Because you require it, not because I desire it.” He shuttered his eyes.

  “Do not just put your hand there. You must try, damn you,” the King whispered fiercely. ‘‘You must really try.”

  Lancelot opened his eyes and some small fire, reflecting perhaps from the candles or the torches or the solstice flames, seemed to glow there for a moment. Then, in an instant, the fire in his eyes was gone. He stepped up to the stone, put his hand to the sword, and seemed to address it. His lips moved but no sound came out. Taking a deep breath, he pulled. Then, letting the breath out slowly, he leaned back.

  The stone began to move.

  The crowd gasped in a single voice.

  “Arthur . . .” Kai began, his hand on the King’s arm.

  Sweat appeared on Lancelot’s brow and the King could feel an answering band of sweat on his own. He could feel the weight of Lancelot’s pull between his own shoulder blades and he held his breath with the knight.

  The stone began to slide along the courtyard mosaic, but the sword did not slip from its mooring. It was a handle for the stone, nothing more. After a few inches, the stone stopped moving.

  Lancelot withdrew his hand from the hilt, bowed slightly toward the King, and took two steps back.

  “I cannot unsheath the King’s sword,” he said. His voice was remarkably level for a man who had just moved a ton of stone.

  “Is there no one else?” asked Merlinnus, slowly looking around.

  No one in the crowd dared to meet his eyes and there followed a long, full silence.

  Then, from the left, came a familiar light voice. “Let King Arthur try.” It was Gawen.

  At once the crowd picked up its cue. “Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!” they shouted.

  Wading into their noise like a swimmer in heavy swells breasting the waves, the King walked to the stone. Putting his right hand on the sword hilt, he turned his face to the people.

  “For Britain!” he cried.

  Merlinnus nodded, crossed his forefingers, and sighed a spell in Latin.

  Arthur pulled. With a slight whoosh the sword slid out of the slot. He put his left hand above his right on the hilt and swung the sword over his head once, twice, and then a third time. Then he brought it slowly down before him until its point touched the earth.

  “Now I be king. Of all Britain,” he said.

  Kai picked up the circlet from the stone and placed it on Arthur’s head, and the chant of his name began anew. But even as he was swept up, up, up into the air by Kai and Lanc1elot, to ride their shoulders above the crowd, Arthur’s eyes met the mage’s. He whispered fiercely to Merlinnus, who could read his lips though his voice could scarcely carry against the noise.

  “I will see you in your tower. Tonight!”

  Merlinnus was waiting when, two hours later, the King slipped into his room, the sword in his left hand.

  “So now you are king of all Britain indeed,” said Merlinnus. “And none can say you no. Was I not right? A bit of legerdemain and . . .”

  The king’s face was grey in the room’s candlelight.

  “Merlinnus, you do not understand. I am not the king. There is another.”

  “Another what?” asked the mage.

  “Another king. Another sword.”

  Merlinnus shook his head. “You are tired, lord. It has been a long day and an even longer night.”

  Arthur came over and grabbed the old man’s shoulder with his right hand. “Merlinnus, this is not the same sword.”

  “My lord, you are mistaken. It can be no other.”

  Arthur swept the small crown off his head and dropped it into the mage’s lap. “I am a simple man, Merlinnus, and I am an honest one. I do not know much, though I am trying to learn more. I read slowly and understand only with help. What I am best at is soldiering. What I know best is swords. The sword I held months ago in my hands is not the sword I hold now. That sword had a balance to it, a grace such as I had never felt before. It knew me, knew my hand. There was a pattern on the blade that looked now like wind, now like fire. This blade, though it has fine watering, looks like nothing.

  “I am not an imaginative man, Merlinnus, so I am not imagining this. This is not the sword that was in the stone. And if it is not, where is that sword? And what man took it? For he, not I, is the rightful born king of all Britain. And I would be the first in the land to bend my knee to him.”

  Merlinnus put his hand to his head and stared at the crown in his lap. “I swear to you, Arthur, no man alive could move that sword from the stone lest I spoke the words.”

  There was a slight sound from behind the heavy curtains bordering the window, and a small figure emerged holding a sword in two hands.

  “I am afraid that I took the sword, my lords.”

  “Gawen!” cried Merlinnus and Arthur at once.

  The boy knelt before Arthur and held up the sword before him.

  Arthur bent down and pulled the boy up. The sword was between them.

  “It is I should kneel to you, my young king.”

  Gawen shook his head and a slight flush covered his cheeks. “I cannot be king now or ever. Not rex quondam, rex que futurus.”

  “How pulled you the sword, then?” Merlinnus asked. “Speak. Be quick about it.”

  The boy placed the sword in Arthur’s hands. “I brought a slab of butter to the stone one night and melted the butter over candle flames. When it was a river of gold I poured it into the slot and the sword slid out. Just like that.”

  “A trick. A homey trick that any herb wife might . . .” Merlinnus began.

  Arthur turned on him, sadly. “No more a trick, mage, than my pulling a sword loosed by your spell. The boy is, in fact, the better of us two, for he worked it out by himself.” He shifted and spoke directly to Gawen. “A king needs such cunning. But he needs a good right hand as well. I shall be yours, my lord, though I envy you the sword.”

  “The sword is yours, Arthur, never mine. Though I can now thrust and slash, having learned that much under the ham-handedness of your good tutor, I shall not ride to war. I have learned to fear the blade’s edge as well as respect it.” Gawen smiled.

  The King turned again to Merlinnus. “Help me, mage. I do not understand.”

  Merlinnus rose and put the crown back on Arthur’s head. “But I think I do, at last, though why I should be so slow to note it, I wonder. Age must dull the mind as well as the fingers. I have had an ague of the brain this fall. I said no man but you could pull the sword—and no man has.” He held out his hand. “Come, child. You shall make a lovely May Queen, I think. By then the hair should be long enough for Sir Kai’s list. Though what we shall ever do about the short utterances is beyond me.”

  “A girl? He’s a girl?” Arthur looked baffled.

  “Magic even beyond my making,” said Merlinnus. “But what is your name, child? Surely not Gawen.”

  “Guenevere,” she said. “I came to learn to be a knight in order to challenge Sir Gawain, who dishonored my sister. But I find—”

  “That he is a bubblehead and not worth the effort?” interrupted Arthur. “He shall marry her and he shall be glad of it, for you shall be my queen and, married to your sister, he shall be my brother.”

  Guenevere laughed. “She will like that, too. Her head is as empty as his. But she is my sister. And she still loves him. Without a brother to champion her, I had to do.”

  Merlinnus laughed. “And you did splendidly. But about that butter trick . . .”

  Guenevere put her hand over her breast. “I shall never tell as long as . . .” She hesitated.

  “Anything,” Arthur said. “Ask for anything.”

  “As long as I can have my sword back.”

  Arthur looked longingly at the sword, hefted it once, and then put it solemnly in her hand.

  “Oh, not this one,” Guenevere said. “It is too heavy and unwieldy. It does not sit well in my hand. I mean the other, the one that you pulled.”

  “Oh, that,” said Arthur. “With all my heart.”

  The Sea Man

  Chapter 1

  The sky over the sea is a deep blue slate.

  “And neither bird nor cloud dares write upon it, my darling daughter, Jannie,” Lieutenant Huiskemp writes in his careful script. “But there are always wonders below the water. Not magic, dear one. Just things we do not know yet. But once seen and examined, these wonders can be explained.”

  He draws tiny dolphins and flying fish in the margins of his letter. They leap from line to line, a strange punctuation. “I send you kisses, safe and snug in Zeeland. And kisses, too, for your dear mama. You must be a good girl and not cry when she combs your hair or complain over much when she plaits it. Your loving father, Maarten Huiskemp, April 1663.”

  He looks out across the water to the shore. There the mills spin the heavy wind in their long arms. Cattle graze the dike grasses. Along the roadside, thousands of colored tulips bow and bend with every passing breeze.

  Lieutenant Huiskemp smiles, stands, and stretches. The wind puzzles through his yellow hair. He is a tall man, his legs like a stork’s, long and bony. He towers above the men in his crew. When he sits down again, he draws a whale at the bottom of the letter spouting Jannie’s name. Then he draws a portrait of Jannie herself, brown braids standing out stiff to each side. He adds a fish tail instead of legs, so that she looks as if she is swimming next to the whale.

  Though he does not believe mermaids are real, never having seen any, the lieutenant knows Jannie will like the pictures. She loves the fairy stories he reads to her and soon enough she will have to give up such childish things. Besides, it is the last letter he can send her for a long time. Presently his ship, The Water Nix, bobbing at anchor off the coast, must join the fleet in the open sea.

  There is a sound behind him and the lieutenant turns quickly. It is the young cabin boy, Pieter, just newly come aboard. He has yet to learn their quiet ways.

  “Do you want some tea, sir?” Pieter asks. His voice still holds the word in awe, for tea is something only the captain and the lieutenant are allowed, it being a rare and expensive drink.

  “No, son,” Lieutenant Huiskemp says. “But you can tell me what you think of this.” He holds the letter up. The breeze makes it ripple like the sea.

  “I cannot read it, sir,” Pieter says, brushing the fair hair from his eyes.

  The lieutenant catches hold of the end and pulls the letter tight against the wind.

  “I mean, I cannot read, sir,” Pieter says. There is fresh color in his cheeks.

  “Neither can my little girl, Jannie,” the lieutenant says quickly. “That is why I draw pictures for her. Surely . . .” He chuckles, and it is a comforting sound. “Surely you can read them.”

  Pieter smiles shyly. “I can read pictures, sir.” Leaning over to look at the letter, his hands carefully behind him, he says: “Why, it is a sperm whale, I think, sir. And a zee wyven, a mermaid, there at the bottom. My father saw one once.”

  “A whale?” the lieutenant asks.

  “A mermaid,” Pieter says seriously.

  “Did he?” The lieutenant keeps a straight face. He will not laugh at Pieter. He respects all his men, and this one is young enough to learn the difference between science and stories. But not, the lieutenant feels, by means of laughter.

  “He saw it at a fair,” Pieter answers.

  “Do not believe everything you see at a fair,” the lieutenant says, matching Pieter in seriousness. “Sometimes it is nothing more than a trick of mirrors and smoke that men play to steal your coins. Or a monkey’s head sewn to the tail of a carp. To fool the gullible.”

  “I will remember that, sir,” Pieter says. But he does not sound quite convinced.

  “Good boy.” Lieutenant Huiskemp dismisses Pieter with a nod and bends back to his letter. This time he writes to his wife, but there are no fancies in it. It is about the weather and the waywardness of man.

  Chapter 2

  The sky has not changed the whole of the day. Except for birds scripting across its empty slate, the sky is the same.

 

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