Here Lies Arthur Page 4

  IX

  On the whole, I preferred being a boy. The things boys do – even the chores – are better fun than women’s work. Even the clothes are easier, once you grow used to them.

  There’s more to being a boy than wearing trews and cutting off your hair, of course, and don’t let anyone tell you different. There’s ways of moving and ways of standing still you have to learn. There’s a way of looking at things as if you don’t care about them, even when you care about them a lot. There are grunts that mean more than words. Boys have all sorts of rules among themselves, just like dogs. Rules about who leads and who follows. They don’t talk about them, they just seem to be born knowing these things. I had to pick them up as best I could, by watching Bedwyr and the others.

  There were about two score boys in Arthur’s band, acting as servants and grooms, learning the ways of war from the older men. They sensed there was something different about me, right from the start, but I think they put it down to me being servant to Myrddin, who wasn’t a soldier like their masters but a poet and maybe a magician. That made them too scared to bully me, which was good. And Bedwyr had decided to be my friend, which was better. Bedwyr wasn’t the oldest or the strongest of the boys, but the rest looked up to him because he was Arthur’s nephew and his brother was already one of Arthur’s warriors. So they accepted me for Bedwyr’s sake. They mocked me when I was too shy to piss beside them and burrowed off into the bushes on my own, but mockery is all part of how boys talk to each other. None of them ever guessed I was a girl. Myrddin was right. People see what they expect to see, and believe what you tell them to believe.

  The war-band waited most of a month at Ban’s fort, till the green spears of Easter lilies started jabbing up through the mud at the lane-sides. Then Arthur left the Irishman to hold Ban’s lands in his name and rode away, taking with him a dozen hard warriors the Irishman had pledged to Arthur’s war-band. As well as those men, the Irishman had promised to pay yearly tribute to Arthur: three ingots of tin from the mines in his hills, three loaves as broad as the distance from his elbow to his wrist, a tub of butter three hand’s-breadths across and three deep, and a sow three fingers thick in her hams. It was less than he’d paid when Ban was his overlord. But he was a wily Irishman. As I helped my master mount his horse in the shadow of the gate I heard Arthur grumbling that he’d never see any of that tribute.

  Myrddin said calmly, “It doesn’t matter. At least the Irishman won’t move against you. That leaves you safe to turn your eyes east to the lowlands, where men will pay you taxes in gold, not butter, if they think you can keep trouble from their door.”

  Arthur looked sideways at him, thoughtful. He wasn’t a clever man, Arthur, but he was clever enough to trust my master’s judgement.

  We rode downhill and turned east on the river-road, and the bare green branches of the woods soon hid the fort and the hill it stood upon. Two standard-bearers went in front, carrying Arthur’s banners: the red dragon of Britain, like a long red sock with the foot cut out, and his own flag, a flat square stitched with the symbol of a sword thrust through a stone. Behind them rode Arthur, and his captains, and his sixty warriors, gorgeous in their red cloaks on their ghost-white horses. We boys followed, with pack-horses and spare mounts. By noon I was further from home than I had ever been, yet still we kept going. Britain was bigger than I’d thought.

  Days went by. I got used to seeing the world from horseback. I rode a pony called Dewi that had been taken as plunder from Ban’s pastures. Arthur had given him to Myrddin, and Myrddin gave him to me. The first time I got up on his back I fell straight off the other side into a dung-puddle and the delighted crowing laughter of the other boys. But I learned fast. Second time I stayed up, swaying, and Bedwyr showed me pityingly how to grip the reins, how to tug Dewi’s head round to steer him, how to control him with the pressure of my knees and heels against his hairy flanks.

  Strange, it seemed, to think I owned something so big and beautiful and alive as Dewi. He was white with a hint of grey-blue dapple at his hind-end, strong in the leg and well muscled. I got to love the way his mane tufted, wood-smoke colour, and how he would put his big head down to nuzzle me when I was trying to bridle him. The squared ridge of his long nose, hard as a shield. His steady walk, the quiet power of him. Sat on Dewi’s back, I felt like one of those creatures they have in Greece that Myrddin told us of one time; half man, half horse. I’d look down from his saddle at common people who could only stand and watch as Arthur’s band went by. Now and then I’d catch sight of some little dirty girl-child with scabs on her knees and think, wondering-like, “That’s what I was, till master changed me.”

  But though I knew it was true, it grew harder and harder to believe it. My new life was so different that the old felt like it had never been at all. Even I was coming to think of myself as a boy.

  We rode through a land that was a patchwork of small powers. Strong men had hacked territories for themselves out of the carcass of old Britannia, and then they had had sons, and their sons had had sons, and each son had taken a portion of his father’s holding till what remained were countless tiny kingdoms. Some were combined under the heel of a single overlord, Maelwas of Dumnonia in the south, or Cunomorus of Kernyw in the far west, or the kings of Gwent and Calchvynydd northward. But among the smaller kingdoms, and in the borderlands, a man might still forge territory of his own.

  The country we travelled that spring wasn’t exactly Arthur’s, but the men it did belong to weren’t strong enough to argue when he came riding up to their holdings with his band behind him and my master Myrddin at his side, shouting out words as fine as banners: “Make way for the Imperator Artorius! Make way for the Dux Bellorum of the island of Britain! Great Arthur will protect you from the Saxons!”

  In truth, the Saxons had been beaten so soundly by old Ambrosius that they’d kept meekly to their lands in the east ever since, and the few small war-bands who came raiding over their border sometimes had never reached this far west. But if anyone dared voice that thought Myrddin would scowl like an owl and say, “Are your memories so short in this country? Don’t you remember the terrors of the Saxons’ war? The houses and churches on fire? Women and children snatched away as slaves? Bodies strewn in the streets, red with blood, as if they’d been crushed in a wine-press? It was men like Arthur who protected us then. And it’s Arthur who will protect us again, when the Saxons return. Why, it’s only the fear of Arthur that keeps them from swarming west and murdering you all! What do you think will happen to your homes and your children if you don’t give Arthur the little he asks, to keep his brave fighters fed and clothed and mounted?”

  I think Myrddin really believed what he said about those Saxons. You could see his fear for Britain’s future in his eyes when he spoke of them. You could hear it in his voice. But I don’t know what Arthur thought. Sometimes it seemed to me those Saxons were just a threat he used to make men part with their belongings. He would sit on his white horse while my master made his earnest speeches, and the people would look at him, and at his gang behind him, and go scurrying to bring him tribute and offer us shelter in their houses and food for ourselves and our hungry horses.

  Once we ran up against a rival war-band, led by another man who also called himself Dux Bellorum, and there was a battle at a ford. I didn’t see it, for I was back with the wagons. I heard the noise of it roaring and crashing like a far-off storm, and once the shrill screaming of a wounded horse. I couldn’t understand what it was at first, but Bedwyr tensed like a hound that hears the hunt go by. When we crossed that ford later there were dead men in the water either side, leaking long ribbons of blood downstream.

  Medrawt killed a man in that fight. It filled him with a shaky sort of laughter. He came and hugged Bedwyr and promised him a share of the stuff he’d taken from his dead enemy. I’d never seen him show kindness to his younger brother before. He was so conscious of being a man that he barely let himself look at us mere boys, except when he was barking
at Bedwyr to clean his gear or tend to his horse or find him something more to eat. But Bedwyr loved him, and when I watched them laughing together I could see why.

  “This is my friend Gwyn,” said Bedwyr, tugging Medrawt towards me. “Gwyn’s Myrddin’s man. We’re brothers in arms.”

  “Gwyn,” said Medrawt vaguely, looking me up and down. Just for a moment I saw a little shadow of confusion pass across his face, as if he recognized me but could not remember why. Then it was gone. I was just a boy, and his brother’s friend, and his blooding had put him in such a good temper that he threw me an iron bracelet he’d taken from the dead man’s wrist.

  Arthur hung the head of the rival dux from his saddle-girth till the stink and the flies grew too much. Then he lobbed it into a pool beside the road. I don’t think he meant anything by it, except to be rid of the thing, but it pleased the war-band. They took it for a tribute to the old gods.

  I’d learned, by then, the ways of all the different gods and spirits who watched over Arthur’s band. Outwardly, most of the men were Christians, and their shields carried that red to show it. Crosses and tin medallions with Christ’s alpha and omega sign jangled round their necks, in the hope that God would notice, and turn away the blades of enemies in battle. Some were earnest. Cei prayed every night, and looked sour and disapproving when Arthur threw that head into the water. But most were wary of the old gods too. You can’t live in this land of mists and rivers and not know they’re there: the lake-lady in her waters, the small gods of trees and stones. The new god has hushed and shrunk them, but he can’t quite drive them away. And some of the band, like red-haired Gwri and his men from the wild uplands of Gwynedd, scoffed at Christ, who seemed weak and womanish compared to their own god, Nudd, the hunter.

  And Myrddin? He had no gods. His head was full of tales of magic and wonders, but in his heart he didn’t believe any of them. He told me once, “There are no gods, Gwyn. No ghosts, no spirits. Nothing but our own fears and hopes. Gods are tales for children. They’re tricks we play upon ourselves, to make it seem there’s some sense in our lives.”

  “But you must believe in something,” I told him, staring at all the charms and talismans that hung round his neck.

  He laughed. “These? They’re just for show. Simple people see them, and think I’m closer to the gods than other men. Men I meet on the road are afraid to rob me. But believe? I suppose some hand must have set this world moving. But I don’t believe any god is watching over me, ready to help me if I make the right sacrifices and stamp me flat if I don’t. It’s a freedom, not believing. It gives me the power to look clear and hard at what other men believe, and use it to steer them.”

  Well, I’d seen the truth of that, hadn’t I? But I didn’t think it’d suit me, that sort of freedom. It seemed to me that going through the world without a god would be like going through midwinter snow without a cloak. I went on saying my prayers to Christ and his saints, and if they didn’t answer them I’d sometimes try the old gods, too. I kept it to myself, though. It pleased my master to think he’d turned me to his own cold way of thinking.

  “And Arthur?” I wondered once. “What does he believe?”

  “Arthur’s different. He believes in gods, both the old and the new. He welcomes their help when it comes. But he won’t grovel for it. He thinks he’s their equal, and better than most of them.”

  The roads led us at last to the old legion fortress that was Arthur’s base. A rampart high as the highest tree, and a wall upon the rampart, and a palisade upon the wall, and a tall gate with watchtowers. It held me spellbound as we rode up to it. How could men have built anything so big?

  Inside the walls were scores of huts and some bigger, boat-shaped buildings hunched around a feast-hall. A smell of cooking fires, and animals wandering about the houses. Some of the men had women and families there. Cei’s wife was a squat, cheerful, barrel-shaped woman, who had given him a daughter, Celemon. It was strange to see his hard face soften as he picked the girl up and swung her round him. Arthur had a wife, too: Cunaide, red-haired and beautiful as summer. I remember staring at all the gold she wore. She didn’t look so very much older than me.

  I expected my master would have a wife, or a woman, or at least a home, but he had nothing. While we stayed there we slept as we had slept on the road, bundled up in blankets at Arthur’s fireside. Turned out Myrddin owned nothing but the things he carried bagged on the saddles of his horse and my pony. “I like to travel lightly through the world,” he told me, when he saw my disappointment. “If you have nothing, no man can take it away from you.”

  X

  There we left the war-band for a time and rode on alone, stopping at villages and hill-top halls. Without Arthur’s army my master was able to travel easily into the territory of other lords, for a harper is welcome everywhere. It was that time of spring they call Blackthorn Winter, when blossom lies white on the hedge-banks like fresh snow. Sunlight dappled us. Over our heads the trees were putting on new leaves of fresh, shy green.

  We travelled sometimes on old Roman roads which looked like God had made them, for what mortal could build roads that wide and straight? The going was easy there despite the weeds and bushes that had grown up between the slabs of stone. Now and then we went into some old town where men still tried to act like Roman citizens, despite the trees that were sprouting in their streets and the tiles that took flight from their roofs each time the wind blew. And each night Myrddin unwrapped his harp and told his tales of Arthur.

  He wasn’t much of a harper. It wasn’t much of a harp, to be fair. I got to know it well, for a part of my duties was tightening its strings and carving new pegs for it, and oiling the wooden frame, and making sure it was tightly wrapped in lambskin and oiled linen when we went a-travelling. But however well I wrapped it, the damp of the road crept in somewhere, and it was a warped, battered, crack-voiced old thing. The sounds Myrddin plucked from it weren’t beautiful, nor meant to be. They were just a stream of sound for him to set his words afloat on.

  And what words! To people who had never left the valleys they were born in, Myrddin brought news of the wide world, and tales of the wonders of Britain. There was a lake in Brechiniog where Arthur had seen islands that floated on the water, and never rested twice in the same place. In the tin hills stood a stone which turned at dawn to warm each face in the rising sun, till Arthur hugged it in his arms so tight it couldn’t move, and told him its secrets so he’d let it go. Arthur had stolen from the King of Ireland a magic cauldron which was never empty, and always full of what you wanted most to eat.

  It was funny to see the way people bathed in his stories, believing every word. Funnier still when he told them of the lake, and the hand that had reached up out of it to offer Arthur his wonderful sword. And funniest of all was the feeling I had that even if I’d told them the truth, they would all have believed Myrddin’s account over my own. “Everyone loves a story,” he always said. And whatever Arthur did, Myrddin could turn it into a story so simple and clean that everyone would want to hear it, and hold it in their hearts, and take it out from time to time to polish it and see it shine, and pass it on to their friends and children.

  “There’s nothing a man can do that can’t be turned into a tale,” he used to tell me, as we rode from one hall to the next through the hills of summer. “Arthur can do nothing so bad that I can’t spin it into gold, and use it to make him more famous and more feared. If the tales are good enough even the poor man who goes hungry from paying Arthur taxes will love him. I am the story-spinning physician who keeps his reputation in good health.”

  The stories kept changing, too, but that didn’t seem to matter. Some people knew a different tale about a sword. They’d seen the symbol stitched upon the war-band’s battle-flag, and a story had grown up about a sword wedged in a stone, and how Arthur had freed it to prove that he was Uthr’s son, and heir to old Ambrosius. “Ah, that!” said Myrddin, when someone reminded him of it one night in a hall hard by the U
sk. “That sword was broken, in Arthur’s fight with the giant of Bannog, so the lake-woman gave him a new one, see? What, have you not heard about the fight at Bannog?” And he was away, spinning a tale of giants so rich and fierce that all his listeners forgot they’d never heard before about the sword-from-the-stone being broken, and Arthur needing a new one.

  It started to seem that there were two Arthurs: the hard man who had burned my home, and another one who lived in Myrddin’s stories and spent his time hunting magical stags and fighting giants and brigands. I liked the Arthur of the stories better, but some of his bravery and mystery rubbed off on the real man, so that when we came back to Arthur’s place in the harvest and I saw him again, I could not help but think of the time he had captured that glass castle in the Irish Sea, or sliced the Black Witch into two halves, like two tubs.

  Myrddin said he was not an enchanter, but he worked magic all right. He turned me into a boy, and he turned Arthur into a hero.

  XI

  Here’s a story Myrddin told that year, while we sat around the hall-fires, me and Bedwyr reunited, and the other boys and men of Arthur’s band. He’d been talking to the Irishman’s kin, and he’d got from them a tale their grandfathers had brought across the sea from Leinster. It was all about some old Irish god, but Myrddin took the god out and put Arthur in his place and when he told it by the harvest fire even the Irishmen listened rapt, as if they’d never heard of it before.

  One Christmas, Myrddin said, Arthur gave a feast here in this very hall for his loyal companions. And as they feasted, the big door there blew open, and in roared the wild west wind, all filled with snow, and with the snow a giant dressed in green. Green cloak, green tunic, green boots, green leggings, and an armour-coat of long green scales like laurel leaves. A green sword at his side, green hair, green beard, teeth green as summer acorns in his green head. “Where’s the governor of this gang?” says he, looking round (and I dare say his voice was as green as the rest of him). And when Arthur stands up he says, “I’ve heard of your bravery, Arthur. The courage of your shield-companions is known all across the world. Even the emperor in Rome has heard of them, and quakes at night with the fear that they might come and pluck his rotten empire like an apple.” (Cheers, of course, at this bit.) “Well,” says the green man (only the way that Myrddin has him say it makes his listeners stop cheering and laughing and lean towards him big-eyed, waiting). “Well, I’m here to test your famous courage.”