Here Lies Arthur Read online

  “Peredur. He’s not going?”

  “Long-Knife’s boy? Of course. Didn’t I say? Cei’s taking every man who didn’t ride with Arthur this summer past.”

  “But you can’t send Peredur to a war! He’s too…”

  “Stupid? Can’t help that, Gwyna. He’s not Arthur’s man. I heard it was he who went to warn Medrawt. Maybe he’s not as foolish as he looks.”

  “But he is! I know it’s hard to believe, but he is!”

  “So you say. All I know is, I can’t leave him in Aquae Sulis, to plot against Arthur.”

  I wondered if I should confess that it had been me who sent Peredur to warn Medrawt. But it wouldn’t have made a difference.

  I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I watched the light of the dying-down fire lap on the roof-beams, saffron-colour. I’d been thinking about Bedwyr and Gwenhwyfar so hard I’d half forgotten Peredur, and how his open, silly face once made my heart catch, and how he’d been when I first met him, dressed up as a maid. My mirror-boy. I couldn’t bear the thought of him riding off to that war. Not even a real war, but one made up to serve Arthur’s purposes, a needless, reasonless war, spun out of lies. Either he’d not come back at all, or he’d come back changed. He’d change the same way Bedwyr had. The last of his girlishness would be gone from him, and he’d be just a man like all the rest.

  I slept, and dreamed of Gwenhwyfar walking into the lake. She cradled her wooden anchor like a child, vanishing into her own reflection.

  When I woke, I knew very clear what I must do. It scared me, but not enough to turn me back.

  Myrddin was snoring in his bed-place. The boy Cadwy was curled up by the hearth. He stirred a bit as I crept round him, but I said, “Sshh, sshhh,” and he settled like a sleepy dog.

  I still had Bedwyr’s cloak. It had faded in the rain to a tired brown, and the strip Gwenhwyfar had torn off the bottom made it about the right length for me. I had Cadwy’s tunic and breeks, and in Myrddin’s oak chest I found my own old belt from when I was a boy. There was a white bloom of mildew on the leather, which came off like chalk-dust when I rubbed it with my thumb. I had no shoes except my ruined buskins, so I stole Myrddin’s boots. And I stole a knife, and a leather bag.

  Outside, in the dark, old Dewi was sleeping, head down, one hind hoof tilted against the turf. He woke with a soft whinny when I threw the saddle-cloth across him. Turned his head and nibbled up the hunk of bread I gave him, and seemed glad that we were off again upon our travels, he and I.

  XXXVIII

  In dripping woods close by the Sulis road, I stopped and waited for the dawn. As the light gathered, pools of flood-water showed like glass among the trees. I crouched by one and looked down at my reflection and cut my long hair with the knife. Not too short. I left it shoulder-length, the way Bedwyr had worn his, and tied it back with a string I found in my pocket. I washed my face in muddy water to darken my skin till the sun could darken it properly. Then I stuck the knife through my belt and got me up on Dewi’s back again.

  Myrddin had told me they’d be setting out at dawn, but I didn’t wait to meet the war-band on the road. I remembered too well all the snags and delays that beset armies setting off to war: lame horses and snapped saddle-girths, things left behind that had to be hunted for. Men waking late, stupid from too much mead or wine the night before. The lingering goodbyes. Anyway, I wanted to meet them further on, where they would not just have to take my word that I was a young man.

  I rode west through the woods, crossed the swollen river at Camlann-ford and came late that afternoon to a place called Din Branoc. I remembered it from my journey with Myrddin two summers before. We’d stopped a night there on our way to the Summer Country, but passed it by when we were coming home. People there might remember a boy who had gone west with Arthur’s wizard, but not the girl he had brought back.

  It had suffered in the storms. The hall slumped on its low rise amid the flooded fields like Noe’s Ark wrecked upside-down on Ararat. Men of the household were sculling across the fields in wicker boats, rescuing stranded sheep from knolls and hummocks where they’d fled to escape the deluge. As I urged Dewi through the knee-deep water on the track I felt a knot of fright grow in my gut. These people wouldn’t be in any mood to offer shelter to a stranger.

  But they were glad of me. It did them good to have someone to tell about the terrors that had overtaken them. They pointed at their landslip-scarred hills and torn-down trees like men who had seen wonders, and watched my face while they told me of the storm, making sure I was astonished.

  I did my best. My time with Myrddin had made a good actor of me. I pretended awe, and never let on that the disasters they were so proud of had happened just as bad or worse at Aquae Sulis, and every other place, probably. For all I know they’re still talking of their great storm in Din Branoc.

  And when they asked me who I was I said, “Gwyn. Servant to Myrddin. Don’t you remember me?” And they nodded and welcomed me again, and said how I’d grown, and never thought to notice that I’d grown into a girl.

  “What news from Sulis?” they asked.

  I wasn’t sure, at first, what I should say. And then I was. That night, sitting with them on the dais-planks in their mud-floored hall, while wet clothes and bedding sent up a fog of steam about me in the fire’s heat, I told them the story of Bedwyr and Gwenhwyfar.

  It didn’t come out quite as I’d expected. I set out with good intentions, and I meant to stay on the road of truth, but somewhere along the way I strayed. Maybe I’d learned too well from Myrddin. I made Bedwyr older and finer than he really was, and told all the usual tales about his feats in battle, glutting the ravens and killing nine hundred enemies and such stuff. And I made Gwenhwyfar younger, and more beautiful, and less selfish. What harm could that do? These people had never seen her. She’d been kind to me at the end. She tucked me up in Bedwyr’s cloak before she went into the mere. It was the least thanks I could show, to make her young again.

  I couldn’t tell their story’s ending, neither. The Arthur my listeners knew was Myrddin’s Arthur: noble, wise, and brave. So when I came to the part where Arthur found the lovers out, I made him sorrowful instead of savage. And I let them get safe away. Safe down the storm-lit roads to Ynys Wydryn they went, my Bedwyr and my Gwenhwyfar.

  After that, I could never quite believe I’d seen them both dead. It seemed so much more likely that they were safe together in the Summer Country.

  Morning brought Cei’s war-band. Twenty riders with shields on their backs and swords at their waists, and twenty more reflected in the wet fields as they passed along the road. Not many, even if you counted the reflections, but the Irishman would be grateful for them, and when they combined with his band they’d be enough to give Cunomorus some trouble.

  The headman of Din Branoc came out with me to meet them. “My lords!” he called, as he waded ahead of Dewi through the flood. “You are welcome! Welcome!” I thought he was going to tell them all about the storm, but instead he pointed to me and said, “Here’s Myrddin’s boy, come to meet you on the way.”

  Cei, reining in his horse, looked at me hard.

  “Gwyn,” I said. “I’m kinsman to Myrddin.”

  Cei nodded. There was a smile hidden somewhere down behind his eyes. “I remember you. I’d not thought to see you again. Any news of your sister, who was in Gwenhwyfar’s household?”

  “Gwyna. My half-sister.”

  Another nod. “She came safe out of all this?”

  “I left her yesterday, at Myrddin’s place. Myrddin sent me to ride with you. I know that country west of Isca, see. I can guide you.”

  “You’re welcome then, boy, and I’m grateful to your master. I’ve not been near those hills since we took old Ban’s hall. The time the sword rose from the water.” The faintest trace of a wink. Then his face set hard, as if thinking on the old times pained him. He looked past me, taking in the sodden buildings and the drowned fields. “We’ll press on. These people don’t need u
s adding to their troubles. Besides, the sooner we reach the Irishman’s hills the sooner we can finish this.”

  The column of men started to move again. Someone was singing a song. The swaying tails of the horses gave off a sweetish smell of old dung. I rode Dewi up on to the track and joined them, and looked for Peredur.

  XXXIX

  We rode west through the wreck of autumn. These things I remember of that journey. The ringing of metal cooking pots as they swung from the packs of the baggage-mules. The slither-splash of red mud in the deep lanes. Rubbing the horses down at day’s end, blanketing them against the cold, seeing to their fodder before we saw to our own, the chores of the horse-lines coming back to me fresh as if I’d never stopped being a boy. The soft munching sounds of hooves on wet hilltracks. Ambling, tuneless songs. Apples and bramble-berries. The hard, ashy-tasting rounds of bread we baked over our fires. The long detours around flooded valleys, flooded roads, washed-out bridges.

  The men grumbling. Why couldn’t Arthur have left Cunomorus in peace till spring? Arthur had lost his luck. He couldn’t even rule his own wife. They wished they had a better man to follow. They looked hopefully at Cei. His sandy head was bare in the sunshine, hooded in rain, and he kept his thoughts inside it.

  I hung behind the others. My old pony Dewi was sturdy enough, but slow. Anyway, I didn’t want them questioning me too much. Most of them were lads I didn’t know, men from Sulis, relatives of the ordo and the big local land-owners. But there were a few who might remember Gwyn, and wonder what he’d been doing in the years since he’d ridden with Arthur’s boys.

  Riding alone, listening to snatches of their banter blowing back to me on the breeze, I got to missing my life among the girls. I never thought I would, and never a day went by I didn’t feel glad to be up on a horse and going somewhere instead of trapped indoors, but I wished I’d had Celemon there to tell some of my inward thoughts to. Girls tell each other things, in honest whispers, when the night is drawing on. Boys just brag.

  Peredur was the only one I truly wanted to talk to, and he kept clear of me. He remembered me, I could tell, but he looked as if he hoped I didn’t know him. He’d had sense enough to keep quiet about his girlish upbringing, and I suppose he was afraid I’d tell the others of it.

  By night, around the campfires, or in the little shabby halls we stopped at, I would tell stories. Cei asked me to. “You’re Myrddin’s boy,” he said. “Tell us some of your master’s tales to make us forget our troubles and our poor cold toes.”

  Truth be told, it was cold, and I was as much in need of comfort as the rest. So I pitched my voice as deep as I could and paced my words to the tramp of the sentries patrolling at the edges of the firelight, and told them stories. I gave them old tales at first: the Green Man, and the Chief of the Giants. But slowly I got bolder. They all knew what had become of Bedwyr, but they’d not heard anything of Gwenhwyfar since the storm began. So I told them how she’d got away to Ynys Wydryn, with Medrawt. And though I couldn’t tell them she’d been young, the way I had with folk who’d never known her, I made her kind and wronged enough that they started to think she had been beautiful, and not so old as they had thought. Sometimes, in the firelight, on one face or another, I’d see tears running down.

  Peredur was one of the tearful ones. He never tried to hide what he was feeling, the way the others had all learned to. Once he came to me after a story and hugged me and thanked me for telling it. Looked at me strange when he’d said it, and said shyly, “You came to my home once, I think.”

  “That was me. We tricked old Porroc, you and I. You made a fair angel.”

  The smile lit up his face. “I thought it was you! I wasn’t sure… You look so like that girl Gwyna…”

  “My half-sister,” I said quickly. The old lie came so natural to me now it felt like truth. “She told me she’d met you.”

  “She was there in the water-meadow the day I came to Aquae Sulis. It was she who gave me this sword, after I killed the red man…” His smile grew worried. “You didn’t tell her about how I used to be before?”

  “The dress? The hair?”

  “I’d never live it down.”

  “It’s safe with me,” I said

  He laughed. “I’ve never forgot that day! That was the first time I’d seen men, real men. I was so jealous of you, riding off with Arthur…”

  “And the look on Porroc’s face when we…”

  “I’d always known there was something not right about him, but till you came I couldn’t see what a liar and a leech he was…”

  And he sat by the dying fire with me while the others slept, and told me all the things that had happened to him since, which I’ve already told to you. It made me feel shamed, as you’ll have guessed, to learn all the things my game with the angel led to. And as I sat listening, I could not help thinking what it would be like to hold Peredur’s narrow face between my two hands, and say the sort of things to him that I’d heard Gwenhwyfar tell Bedwyr. To treasure him. I reckoned it was my bad luck that I could only come close to him by turning myself back into a boy.

  We kept to the old road till we were near Isca, then veered north. Isca was loyal to Maelwas, and Maelwas might not look friendly on Arthur’s gang any more.

  “King Maelwas will want a new man to hold Aquae Sulis for him,” said one of Cei’s captains, Dunocatus. We were resting on a hillside-road, the smoke of Isca filling its wet valley a few miles south, the big river silver beyond. The horses cropped the grass with steady tearing sounds. Cei stared off westward at the Irishman’s stony moors and said nothing.

  “If a good Christian man was to challenge Arthur, and throw him down, and take his place, Maelwas might be glad of it,” Dunocatus insisted. Other men, who felt the same but hadn’t had the courage to say it, watched hungrily for Cei’s reaction.

  “Why are we fighting for the Irishman against Cunomorus?” Dunocatus asked loudly. “Why do we not ride back to Sulis and fight for Cei against Arthur?”

  Cei turned and knocked him down into the grass and kicked him hard a few times and strode off, leaving him groaning there. “Arthur is my brother!” he yelled over his shoulder as he climbed back on to his horse. “We have promised to help the Irishman. Do you want your sons and your sons’ sons to hear how you hadn’t the stomach for that fight?”

  We rode on, through steep-walled, thick-wooded valleys. Up the long shoulder of the moor we went, the road dwindling to a peat-track, climbing through knotted woods. Mossy boulders lay crowded between the trees, like sleeping beasts with thick, green fur. When we came up out of the trees at last there was nothing to see but the hills, folded one behind the next, all wrapped in fog and dragons’-smoke.

  Cei had me ride with him up on to a hill-top where a great mass of stones stood, hooting and wuthering as the wind ripped round them. “You know this country,” he said.

  I knew a few of the high hills westward, or thought I did. I did my best. “The Irishman’s place is over that way, where the moor slopes down towards Kernyw. Just north of here is Ban’s hall. The river…”

  “Your water-home, lake-lady,” said Cei. He looked at me wryly. “I’ve thought of that day often. What Myrddin had you do. It’s a strange life he’s led you.”

  I stared at the wind stirring Dewi’s mane. I’d always known Cei knew my secret, but it still made me feel naked to be talking of it. I said, “I wish he’d let me be sometimes. Why didn’t he? Why did he come back for me, that day at the waterfall?”

  “He loves you,” said Cei. “He never had children of his own. He had you instead.”

  “No! He sent me away. Made me be a girl again and gave me to Gwenhwyfar.”

  “He found you a comfortable living-place, one that might put you in the path of a good husband, just as I did for Celemon. The old man loves you, girl. Surely you can see that.”

  He wheeled his horse and rode back to the waiting column, shouting, “We’ll camp here this night. Tomorrow we feast with the Irishman!” I w
as left on the hill-top with my thoughts. Cei had been Myrddin’s friend, and should know what Myrddin thought. But I couldn’t believe Myrddin loved me as a daughter. I couldn’t believe Myrddin loved anyone, except maybe himself.

  The naked feeling stayed with me as I went back down the hill. I began to feel that someone was watching me, out among the rocks and tussock-grass. But we had no enemies here. Cunomorus’s lands were two days’ ride away. This was the Irishman’s country, and tomorrow we would reach his hall, and make ready for our raid into Kernyw. I shook myself to try to get rid of the feeling, and I told myself that men must always feel like that when they knew there was a fight coming.

  That night around the fire the others wanted tales of battles won, and enemies cast down. They wanted to hear again about the treasure that would be waiting for them in Cunomorus’s stronghold.

  I wasn’t sure what to tell them. If I promised them gold drinking cups or a jewelled throne, what would they say when they looted Cunomorus’s hall and didn’t find such things? Then the stories I’d spun might twist around like snakes to bite me.

  “What about his magic cauldron?” said one, a man called Bodfan. “Myrddin told us once about a cauldron that was never empty, and in this cauldron every man could find the food he most wanted to eat, and the drink he most wanted to drink.”

  I nodded warily. If Bodfan hoped to find a thing like that anywhere outside a story, he was in for a disappointment. But Myrddin had promised us a cauldron, hadn’t he? I said, “Cunomorus’s cauldron’s not like that.”

  “Like what, then?” someone asked.

  “Shall I tell you the story of it?”

  “Yes, yes,” they said.

  I hesitated, as if I was gathering my memories of the tale. Really I was stitching something new together out of scraps of other tales I’d heard.

  “Back in the long-ago years,” I said, “Cunomorus’s grandfather was the finest of the warriors of the island of Britain. Tewdric was his name. And he came raiding with his war-band into these very hills.”