by Geoff Boxell
had thought to see you before this.’
‘Been away, visiting my folk. I’ve been here, there, top of the world, bottom of the world.’
‘Collecting tribute and gifts as you went?’
‘Of course; though this gift …’ Grimm tipped his leather jack upside down and two or three drips plopped onto the trampled grass by his side where the groundsheet ended. ‘This gift was not very nice. Strong? Yes. Potent? Yes. Nice? No.’
Kim, the bearded man, clicked his tongue. Jamie looked at him and, with a movement of his eyes and a small nod of his now helmeted head, Kim indicated a blanket at the end of the geteld.
Jamie looked at the blanket and then at Grimm. ‘There are some cans of beer at the back; would you like one?’ he asked.
‘Does a bear —’
‘I will get you one.’ Jamie went to the back of the geteld and pulled back the blanket that had been thrown over the beer supply to cover it from the sight of the “authenticity police”. ‘Old Speckled Hen? Good enough for your palate Grimm?’
‘Cluck cluck,’ came the fume laden reply.
Jamie pulled a can out, threw the blanket back in place and brought the can of beer back to Grimm, who had by now dragged himself over to one of the two upright poles that held the ridgepole in place and managed to get himself into an upright sitting position with his back against it. Jamie pulled the tab on the beer can and passed it to Grimm. The old man put a hurt look on his face. Jamie sighed, picked up the fallen jack and carefully poured the beer into it before passing the foaming brew to the old man. ‘I had hoped I would have seen you before. Your stories got me so interested in the past, especially the Anglo-Saxon past, I got involved in re-enactment.’ Jamie looked out of the geteld entrance and watched as streams of armoured men carrying shield and spear, and sometimes a long axe, passed by. ‘And, you never did tell me about Arthur, who was really Cerdic; you did promise.’
‘Did I?’ Grimm pulled the edges of his moustache into his mouth and sucked off the beer foam that was hanging there. ‘I am the old man now, and I forget things.’
Jamie turned back and looked into Grimm’s one green eye: ‘Yes you did so promise. But, the battle will start soon, so maybe another time.’
‘You will watch the battle?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because, young æþeling, the English lose; I lost; all went wrong; it was the end of things; nothing was ever the same.’ Grimm wobbled a very unsteady head. ‘It is why I drink.’
Jamie snorted and went back to watching the fighters pass on the way to the battlefield. ‘You don’t need a reason to drink, old man.’
‘True,’ Grimm confirmed. ‘But not so early in the day.’ He hiccupped, belched, and took another swig of beer. ‘Tomorrow will be a better fight than today.’
‘Tomorrow there will be no script.’
‘Exactly.’ Grimm gave another belch. ‘So stay with me in my melancholy and I will tell you of awfully artful Arthur – or should that be, “clever cunning Cerdic”?’
‘Is it the true story?’ Jamie turned to face the old man, torn by half wanting to watch the re-enactment of the Battle of Hastings and half wanting to hear Grimm’s tale.
‘Of course it is; well, almost true: as true as my fading memory allows me – for, although I was once the young man, I am now the old man. The main thing is, of course, I was there.’
‘I know, Grimm; as with Beowulf and Hengest, you were there.’
Grimm looked into his leather jack to judge how much beer was still in there. Satisfied in the contents’ sufficiency he took a sip before refocusing his one eye on Jamie and giving him a weary smile. ‘Not only was I there, on my way here, looking for the Regia Anglorum camp, I have just been enlightening those bastard No-men.’
‘Do you mean “Normans”?’ Jamie queried.
Grimm grunted. ‘Yes. No-men. I enlightened them with the truth of this tale before striding confidently to this English camp.’
‘Staggering more like,’ Jamie muttered under his breath.
‘Yes, I put them garlic-smelling rabble right. I had been listening to them going about Arthur. King Arthur this … King Arthur that … Arthur my arse.’ Grimm stopped talking to scratch his own. ‘They thought those tales were local; they were not – they came from the dregs of Brittany their ancestors had brought with them to England as cheap arrow fodder. The best thing my descendants ever did was kick them out of this land that is now England; and the idiot Normans – who are only part mine, seeing as they too-readily interbred with the local French – brought them back. Well, they did regret it in time, for the Bretons got alongside their relations the Wealas. Oh yes, the Wealas are still there; dark, smelly and damp, hiding in their rain soaked hills, looking for the opportunity to move into the dryer parts of the island.’
‘Grimm,’ Jamie reminded him, ‘get back to the story about Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.’
The old man went to put his drink down but didn’t seem to be able to get his hand out of the handle of his leather jack, so gave up on the attempt. ‘King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table: do them No-men really know who he was? Really? “Oh, a chivalrous King of this land who fought to keep out the invaders”, they said. No that was King Harold and the invaders were your grandsires. I reminded them. “A noble Briton brought up in the Roman ways who fought the Saxon dogs and put them in their place.” Well, that was nearer to the truth. The truth? The truth, as I have told you before, is that he was a Ge-man, a Spearman, one of my folk: Arthur is Cerdic, King of the West Saxons, as I have told you before.’ Grimm risked letting go of the tent pole with the hand not entangled with the handle of his leather jack, and rummaged around his back, trying, without success, to locate the battered bag that hung over his shoulder.
Jamie came forward and pulled the bag around Grimm’s body so the old man could fumble inside its cavernous interior. ‘The Round Table?’ Jamie prompted.
Grimm smiled as he pulled out of the bag a wilted carrot that he commenced to wave about. ‘The Round Table: well yes, he and his chief men did sit around a round table. It was one of several in the back garden of an alehouse in the South Hampton. The tables had a sort of attached bench around the outside of them and a hole in the middle of the tables in which they had stuck broken spear shafts with old bits of sailcloth tensed out on a wicker frame to make shades. It was the fashion at the time for people to sit around tables like those in the summer to quaff their ales and eat the food that was cooked on a griddle in the garden. And that food! Terrible stuff it was. The landlord of the alehouse in the South Hampton had an old blind Gaul chained to the wall in front of his griddle and the Gaul was the one who cooked the meat. The trouble was, being blind, the only way he knew the meat was done was when he smelt it burning and the smoke made his nose twitch. I said to Cerdic one day: “I don’t know how you can eat those burnt beef cubes.” He just laughed and ever after referred to them as B-B-Cubes. A poor joke, and that style of outdoor cooking will never catch on.’ Grimm suddenly recalled the wilted carrot in his hand. ‘Don’t know why it is that colour: purple or white – that’s what colour it should be.’ He poked the carrot at Jamie. ‘Is it rotten do you think? Is that why it is a strange orange colour?’
‘It is not rotten but it is well past its best.’ Jamie cocked an ear as the sound of a cheer went up from the distant battlefield, indicating the arrival of the English army on the ridge of Senlac.
Grimm tried to take a bite of the carrot, but its wilted form kept it flopping out of reach of his mouth. He gave up and tossed the carrot back into the gaping maw of his bag. ‘You want to know about “The Knights”, who sat at the round table? The “Knights” were in fact Cerdic’s main subcontractors and franchise holders. His main line of business was a successful shipping and transport operation. But he also ran a security and protection franchise.’ Grimm buried his head, as best he could, in his bag, sniffing for any food it contained.
A chorus of booing came from afar and J
amie recognised, from being at the re-enactment the previous year that that was what always greeted the appearance of the Normans, their allies and mercenaries. He sighed, knowing it was now too late to go and watch the battle; so he settled himself down to listen to the slowly sobering Grimm. ‘So: Cerdic is Arthur. What I don’t get is how all this confusion came about. I mean – was he a Briton or a German?’
Grimm, having abandoned his search for food in his bag, and realising that he was sobering up, indicated with his head that Jamie should get a refill for his leathern jack. The youth got up and found another can of Old Speckled Hen which he used to replenish Grimm’s drinking vessel.
The old man sniffed the aroma emanating from the beer, sighed and smiled before sipping the brew. Easing his back against the supporting tent-pole, he nestled his jack against his chest before starting to talk: ‘Cerdic was the great-grandson of Weldig who, when dealing with the Wealas, also used the name Gewise. To the other Ge-men it meant “the wise”, but to the Wealas it had an alternative meaning: “The Known”. You see, young Leofwine, Weldig was one of the Myringas, part of the Saxon Federation and thus of my folk. They lived to the south of the Angles and to the north of another Saxon folk, the Swæfe, down on the River Eider. Old Weldig had joined the Roman army as an auxiliary, as many