Here Lies Arthur Read online

  At last a noise behind him made him turn. There was Gwyn, coming down a path behind the old shelter, leading Dewi.

  “Gwyn!” he shouted. “Gwyn!” Crashing through the bracken, forgetful of his pain. Waving. “Gwyn! She was here! The lake-woman! She was beautiful! She…”

  “You’ve been dreaming.” Gwyn was looking oddly at him. A flush of colour on that flat, honest face. A straggle of dew-damp hair hanging down from under his felt cap.

  “No, no,” said Peredur, eager to share the good news. He snatched up the cup. “Look! Look! She left this! The water in it, Gwyn, it tasted better than wine. It made me better, Gwyn. I feel strong again!”

  He swayed, light-headed. Gwyn dropped the pony’s reins and ran to catch him as he fell. He had been going to tell Gwyn about the lake-woman’s kiss, but, falling, he decided not to. It would be his secret. He sat in the wet grass, laughing. “It wasn’t like you said, Gwyn. It wasn’t a golden cauldron. Just a wooden cup.”

  And Gwyn shrugged and said, “Well, you can’t believe everything you hear in stories.”

  XLIV

  It was only river water, really.

  I was afraid he’d guess. I thought he’d think back to Saint Porroc’s miracle and guess his lake-lady was only me, up to my old tricks again. I planned to leave the cup upon a river stone, and work out a way for him to find it there.

  But when I got back to the ruin before dawn I found him sleeping, a little feverish still, and I thought he’d be weak and dreamy enough when he woke to believe whatever I wanted him to. So I tethered Dewi in a holly-clump uphill, and left my clothes there too. Crept to the stream and ducked under water. My hair would look longer and straighter and darker wet. I combed it with my fingers, tugging it forward to hide my face. There wasn’t enough to really hide behind, but I wasn’t worried. I had spent enough time around boys to know it wouldn’t be my face he’d be looking at.

  The dawn air was chill on my wet skin. I had gathered some birch bark and some of the thin red twigs from the branches’ tips, and I stooped and cast them on the half-dead fire without waking him. Added some wet oak leaves to make a smoulder. I put the fire between myself and him. The wind blew the thin smoke in his face and he woke.

  “Drink from the cup, and you will be healed.” I whispered it, so he wouldn’t know my voice. And when he’d drunk I made him shut his eyes and left quick as I could. I hadn’t planned on him coming after me, but I was glad to see he had enough life in him, even if it did mean I had to take another bath in that corpse-cold stream. From under the water I could see him, all ripply-looking, black against the sky. I let the water pull me away from him. Branches hid me as I slipped down into the next pool, and the next, and then I was out and haring round between the trees to find the place where I’d left my clothes and Dewi.

  As for the kiss, you can’t blame me for that, can you? He was so lovely, and so easy to fool. Sitting there with his eyes shut, all surprised. Just a quick warm touch of our mouths together, over in a heartbeat, but I felt glad to have the memory of it.

  All the way back to Sulis he talked of nothing but the lake-woman. And every time he spoke of her she grew more beautiful, and her speech to him grew prettier. He wasn’t lying. He really thought he remembered her dark blue eyes and her lips as red as rowan berries. Sometimes he filled the wooden cup at a spring or a well, but the water never tasted as good as the water she had filled it with.

  I tried telling him my own tale; how I’d found Dewi wandering in the woods. But it couldn’t compete with his miracle.

  We found our way home along back-roads. Down drift-lanes and sheep-paths and half-forgotten tracks through the deep woods. Slow going, mostly, for the ways were poor, and Peredur still weak. His wound hurt him, and his fever rose and fell but never quite left him. I made him ride, and trudged along at Dewi’s side until my feet wore through the bottoms of my boots. I listened out always for the Irishman’s riders coming after us, but they never did. Sometimes we passed small settlements where the men looked slantwise at us, but we had knives in our belts and nothing else worth stealing, and they let us go by.

  Around first frost we crossed into Arthur’s territory, and reached Din Branoc. The people were surprised to see me back, with only one companion. I asked if any others from Cei’s war-band had passed that way, and they just stared. Save me and Peredur, none had returned from the Irishman’s hills. The only traveller they’d seen since I stopped there was a messenger from the Irishman himself, who passed through like thunder, pausing just long enough to ask the way to Aquae Sulis.

  “We offered him shelter,” said the headman, as he welcomed us to his fireside, “but he would not stop. Said he was carrying news Arthur would be glad to hear. Said he’d eat well in Sulis that night.”

  That threw me. What word could the Irishman have sent that Arthur would be glad of? I wondered for a moment if Cei was alive after all, and the Irishman wanted Arthur to pay ransom for him. But my own eyes had seen the Irishman kill Cei. His messenger would not have been so sure of a welcome at Arthur’s fireside if the message he had carried was only, “Your brother and his companions are all dead.”

  Would he?

  I tried to think like Myrddin, remembering the reasons he had given for sending Cei and Cei’s closest followers west. Some may not return at all, he’d said. As if that was a good thing.

  So wouldn’t it be an even better thing if none returned?

  I imagined a messenger leaving Aquae Sulis, two days after Bedwyr died. Speeding west, outpacing Cei’s warband. One of Arthur’s trusted companions, Owain or Gwri, with a message from Arthur for the Irishman. “Twenty warriors are riding to your hall. Meet them on the road. Kill them all.”

  I told myself I was wrong. I told myself I’d lived too long with Myrddin, and it had made me see tricks where there were none. But I still could think of no other reason for the Irishman’s messenger to be riding up to Arthur’s hall.

  And if I was right, and Cei and his men had been meant to die in the Irishman’s hills, what would Arthur make of me and Peredur coming home, with our tale of wonder and our wooden cup? We’d be dead within a day, I reckoned. Arthur would have us snuffed out, for fear we knew the truth about the others.

  While I stood there, silent, thinking those thoughts, Peredur had fetched the cup out. The men of Din Branoc passed it around reverently while he told them how he came by it. “It’s a sign from the lady of the waters. Just like the sword she gave him. She’s on his side still. She gave me this cup, and I’ll give it to Arthur.”

  “May it change his luck,” said the headman, shaking his head. “Arthur’s fortune’s turned foul. A score or more of his companions have sneaked off to join Medrawt.”

  “Medrawt’s raising himself an army down in the Summer Country,” another said. “We heard Maelwas has promised him lordship of Aquae Sulis if he’ll rid the place of Arthur.”

  “What about Myrddin?” I asked. “What news of him?”

  The men looked sour. I saw a couple cross themselves at the mention of Myrddin’s name. One said, “That old heathen.”

  “Myrddin was took bad, a month back or more,” said the headman, and leaned over to spit into the fire.

  “There was a girl at his place,” explained one of the others, pleased to be sharing good gossip with one who’d not heard it yet. “She was some kinswoman of his, who’d been Gwenhwyfar’s handmaiden, and after Gwenhwyfar ran off she got took in by Myrddin. I reckon she must have turned his head, for when she left him he fell down in a fit, and now he can’t walk nor talk. He keeps to that place of his, with just a boy to look after him.”

  “Nothing so foolish as an old man running after a girl,” said the headman.

  “She enchanted him’s what I heard,” put in another man. “She wove spells round him to make him love her, so she could learn his secrets.”

  I let them talk. It was strange, meeting my story-self in their tales. How much of what they’d said was true? Was Myrddin really ai
ling? If he was, it was no more than he deserved. Yet I felt troubled at the thought of him sick, and none but the boy Cadwy to look after him. And I thought, if I could see him, talk to him, he’d tell me whether what I feared was true, and whether it would be safe or not for Peredur to go back to Sulis.

  Lulled by the voices and the fire’s warmth Peredur fell asleep, leaning against me, his head on my shoulder. I lowered him gently on to the straw-covered boards, and brushed away a strand of hair that had fallen across his angel face. His brow was hot. His fever was worse again.

  “Can you care for him?” I asked the headman. “He needs food and warmth and shelter till he’s mended.”

  The headman nodded, the others too. They were good people. The headman’s wife, who’d sat silent till then, said, “I’ll nurse him. You’ve done your best, but nursing’s woman’s work.”

  “You leaving us, Gwyn?” someone asked, as I stood and pulled my cloak about me.

  I nodded; told them I’d be back in a day or so with a horse for Peredur and not to let him leave before I came.

  “It’s an ill night for travelling,” the headman said. “Snow on the way, maybe.”

  “Myrddin’s my kin,” I said. “If he’s sick, I must go to him.”

  And if he isn’t sick, I thought, going out into the cold to saddle Dewi, I shall have some hard things to say to him.

  XLV

  I reached my master’s house soon after sunrise. Tethered Dewi outside in the slanting, orange light. Quiet as a grave it felt, as I pushed in past the dangling talismans. Dead birds and knotted twine. An armour of hoar-frost on everything. When I spoke into the silence my breath made steam in the cold air.

  “Master?”

  The boy Cadwy was curled on the floor by the embers of the kitchen fire. I left him sleeping and went into Myrddin’s bed-space. A sickroom stink came out at me as I lifted the curtain at the doorway. My nose told me the story I’d heard at Din Branoc was true, even before my eyes got used to the curtained gloom and I made out Myrddin lying on the bed.

  I couldn’t believe a man could have shrunk so, aged so, in the time I’d been away. I felt like the prince in the story, the one who sails away to see the Blessed Isles, and comes home after a month at sea to find a hundred years have passed on land and everyone he knows is gone to bones and ashes.

  Myrddin wasn’t quite a corpse yet. He looked like one, shrunk as he was, yellowish, with his mouth twisted sideways and his eyes sunk deep. But he was breathing, and when I leaned closer he grunted and his eyes came open.

  I don’t think he knew me. I pulled off my cap, let my dead-bracken hair hang down. “It’s me, master.”

  He frowned. His breath came harsh and rusty. It sounded like fate sawing at the thread of his life with a blunt knife. When he spoke, he didn’t make words, just grunts and growlings. It took me a while to understand that he was trying to say my name. One hand flapped on top of his blankets, trying to reach for me. The angry questions I’d been saving up for him all night drained out of me and I sat down on the edge of the bed and pressed his hand against my face.

  “Gwyna?” he asked.

  Cadwy appeared in the doorway, his hair flat on one side where he’d lain pressed against the warm tiles by the fire.

  “It’s just me,” I said. “Gwyna. I’m back.”

  I washed Myrddin’s blankets and changed the straw in his mattress. With Cadwy’s help I scrubbed down the walls of his chamber, trying to get rid of that stale sickroom smell. I fed him bread softened in goat’s milk. The day deepened round us, fat snowflakes dithering past the windows like goose-down. Myrddin talked, and slowly I learned to fish words out of the badgery growls and owlish hoots he made.

  He said, “That fool Arthur came here. Said I should go into Sulis, to the surgeons’ care. As if I’d trust those butchers, bleeding and poisoning me.”

  He said, “Arthur wanted some trick that would defeat Medrawt. I told him I’m too old for tricks. No more tricks. When the time comes, he’ll have to fight Medrawt the old way.”

  He said, “Ah, but you remember the sword, Gwyna? The sword from the water. That was a thing! What a tale!”

  It was time to be a girl again. I itched to be gone, to ride back to Peredur. But Peredur would be safe at Din Branoc, and someone had to nurse the old man. Cadwy had done his best, but nursing is woman’s work.

  I looked in the chest I’d found my man’s gear in, and there I found my old dress laid, pressed between sheets of linen and sprinkled with dried lavender.

  “Master done that,” said Cadwy, watching me take it out and hold it up against myself. “That morning we woke up and you were gone, he went chasing off to Sulis to bring you home. When he came back, it was liked he’d aged ten years. He said you’d not been seen there. Said you’d ridden to join Cei’s war-band, and would be killed for sure. Said he had to go after you. Said it would be his fault if you died. He sent me outside to saddle his horse, and set about folding up your things neat. When I came back in I found him lying on the floor there by the chest. All he could say was Gwyna at first. Not even that very clear.”

  I felt like I was dreaming. Had Myrddin really cared about me so much my running off could strike him dumb and cripple him? Or had he just been angry that I’d disobeyed him? It was easier to believe that. But when I sat by him he didn’t seem angry. He held my hand and said, “Gwyna.”

  All that night and the next and the one after I sat by Myrddin’s bed. Sometimes he slept, but mostly he talked. He talked and I listened. By the end, his voice was almost the last thing left of him.

  “You shouldn’t have gone with them, Gwyna. When I thought of you riding off with Cei’s band, and death waiting for you in the hills, something in me broke.”

  I didn’t like that. What did he expect? Pity? I’d used up all my pity on Cei and Gwenhwyfar and Bedwyr. I pushed myself backwards, away from the stench of his breath. “And how did you know death was waiting for me? You’d had Arthur tell the Irishman to betray us, that’s how!”

  Myrddin turned his head a little, looking at me. “You were always sharp, Gwyn.”

  “Not sharp enough, or I’d have guessed your plan and warned Cei what he was riding to!” My shadow was huge on the wall behind his bed. It raised its fists, like it was getting ready to smash his eggshell skull.

  He said, “It had to be done. Men were talking of Cei as a rival to Arthur. He had to be removed. At least if the Irishman did it Arthur wouldn’t be left with the blood of another kinsman on his hands. Arthur’s our hope, Gwyna. He’s the hope of Britain.”

  I spat on him. I turned my back and flung myself to the far side of the room and hit the wall hard with both my hands. “Some hope!” I shouted. “Arthur? You’ve wasted your life building him high and wrapping him up in stories, but Arthur hasn’t cleaned the Saxons away. They’re still sitting on their stolen lands, growing stronger and stronger, and laughing at us while we fight among ourselves. Arthur doesn’t care about anything but making his own self fat and rich, and he hasn’t even managed to do that very well. And all you can do is make up stories, make up lies, try and turn him into something that he isn’t. And your stories won’t last any longer than Arthur does. When he dies, the stories will die with him, and he’ll be forgotten. And so will you. And so will all of it.”

  Long silence after that. Wind lifting the roof-tiles. I wouldn’t look at Myrddin for a time. When I did I saw a silvery line, like the trail of a snail, shining on his face. I looked closer. His eyes were tight shut, the yellowish eyelids wrinkly like the skin of an old apple. Tears seeped out from under them. He was weeping.

  “Master?” I asked, softer. “Why did you keep me? After the waterfall, I mean.”

  He didn’t answer. I thought he’d fallen asleep. His eyes stayed shut and the tears kept coming. But after a minute he spoke again. Still not an answer, exactly. Just another story. But at least it was one I hadn’t heard before.

  XLVI

  Out east somewhere. Out in the ro
und green downs behind Noviomagus. So many years back the Saxons hadn’t quite settled there yet. But this summer night one of their war-keels has slid out of its shelter in the coves of Vectis and come to drop its crew of fighters in the riverside woods. They come fast up the white roads in the moonlight. Flames leap from kindled villas.

  And suddenly a boy is running and running, with the smoke of his home going up into the sky behind him. And behind him, running faster, comes a Saxon raider, reaching for him, catching him, flinging him at the chalk ground.

  “I grew up a slave,” said Myrddin. “I grew up like a beast, shoving a plough for my Saxon master through some piece of Britain that he’d stolen. But I listened to my fellow slaves telling stories, about how the Saxons had come, and how it had been before, back in the days of Rome-in-Britain. Civilization. Peace.”

  And as soon as he was old and strong enough, he started planning his escape. He watched the men and women around him, Saxon and slave alike, and learned the ways their eyes and minds and hearts worked, till he knew how to deceive them. He watched the seasons and the skies, making himself weather-wise. One night, when he knew a fog would rise, he ran off, leaving behind him a litter of clues that set his Saxon owners searching for him in every direction but the one he’d really gone. They hunted for him for a night and day, and then decided that he’d been a magician, and had turned himself into a vapour and blown away on the wind.

  Safe in the ancient forests, he fled west, always west, keeping the sunset ahead of him till he reached country where there were no Saxons. He’d picked up a few handy conjuring tricks from travelling men he met upon the road, and he remembered stories he’d heard, and spun better ones of his own. Tall tales and hedge-magic paid his way from town to town, until at last he came to Urbs Legionis, where Ambrosius had his headquarters that year. He wasn’t a fighter, but he hung around the fringes of the army, sure that Ambrosius was the man who’d smash the Saxons and bring back the light of better days. And when Ambrosius died and the war-bands of Britain took to fighting each other instead of Saxons, he chose the one he thought the strongest, the armoured cavalry of Arthur, Uthr’s son. Oh, he wasn’t stupid; he could see that Arthur only wanted what the others wanted: power and land. But maybe, if Arthur could be made strong enough, that wouldn’t matter. The Romans only wanted power and land, and they ended up uniting half the world. So he tried to use his wits and stories to make Arthur great, in the hope he’d finish what Ambrosius began.