Excalibur

by Bernard Cornwell

  Balig was struggling with the steering oar. We had shipped the other oars, letting the wind do the work, but the strong tide was driving against us and it kept pushing our boat’s head round to the south where the wind would make the sail slap, and the steering oar would bend alarmingly, but slowly the boat would come back, the sail would crack like a great whip as it filled again, and the bows would dip into a wave trough and my belly would churn and the bile rise in my throat.

  The sky darkened. Balig looked up at the clouds, spat, then heaved on the steering oar again. The first rain came, great drops that spattered on the deck and darkened the dirty sail. ‘Pull in those banners!’ Balig shouted, and Galahad furled the forward flag while I struggled to free the flag at the stern. Gwydre helped me bring it down, then lost his balance as the boat tipped on a wave crest. He fell against the gunwale as the water broke over the bow. ‘Bail!’ Balig shouted, ‘bail!’

  The wind was rising now. I vomited over the boat’s quarter, then looked up to see the rest of the fleet tossing in a grey nightmare of broken water and flying spindrift. I heard a crack above me, and looked up to see that our sail had split in two. Balig cursed. Behind us the shore was a dark line, and beyond it, lit by sunlight, the hills of Siluria glowed green, but all around us was dark and wet and threatening.

  ‘Bail!’ Balig shouted again, and those who were in the belly of the boat used helmets to scoop the water from around the bundles of treasure, armour and food.

  And then the storm hit. Till now we had suffered only from the storm’s outriders, but now the wind howled across the sea and the rain came flat and stinging above the whitened waves. I lost sight of the other boats, so thick was the rain and so dark the sky. The shore disappeared, and all I could see was a nightmare of short, high, white-crested waves from which the water flew to drench our boat. The sail flogged itself to ragged shreds that streamed from the spar like broken banners. Thunder split the sky and the boat fell off a wave crest and I saw the water, green and black, surging up to spill across the gunwales, but somehow Balig steered the bow into the wave and the water hesitated at the boat’s rim, then dropped away as we rose to the next wind-tortured crest.

  ‘Lighten the boat!’ Balig screamed over the storm’s howl.

  We threw the gold overboard. We jettisoned Arthur’s treasure, and my treasure, and Gwydre’s treasure and Culhwch’s treasure. We gave it all to Manawydan, pouring coins and cups and candlesticks and gold bars into his greedy maw, and still he wanted more, and so we hurled the baskets of food and the furled banners overboard, but Arthur would not give him his armour, and nor would I, and so we stowed the armour and our weapons in the tiny cabin under the after deck and instead threw some of the ship’s stone ballast after the gold. We reeled about the boat like drunken men, tossed by the waves and with our feet sliding in a slopping mix of vomit and water. Morwenna clutched her children, Ceinwyn and Guinevere prayed, Taliesin bailed with a helmet, while Culhwch and Galahad helped Balig and the Saxon crewman to lower the remnants of the sail. They threw the sail overboard, spar and all, but tied its wreckage to a long horse-hair rope that they looped about the boat’s sternpost, and the drag of the spar and sail somehow turned our boat’s head into the wind so that we faced the storm and rode its anger in great swooping lurches.

  ‘Never known a storm move so quick!’ Balig shouted to me. And no wonder. This was no usual storm, but a fury brought by a Druid’s death, and the world shrieked air and sea about our ears as our creaking ship rose and fell to the pounding waves. Water spurted between the planks of the hull, but we bailed it out as fast as it came.

  Then I saw the first wreckage on the crest of a wave, and a moment later glimpsed a man swimming. He tried to call to us, but the sea drove him under. Arthur’s fleet was being destroyed. Sometimes, as a squall passed and the air momentarily cleared, we could see men bailing madly, and see how low their boats rode in the turmoil, and then the storm would blind us again, and when it lifted again there were no boats visible at all, just floating timbers. Arthur’s fleet, boat by boat, was sunk and his men and women drowned. The men who wore their armour died the quickest.

  And all the while, just beyond the sea-fretted wreckage of our sail that dragged behind our labouring boat, Merlin’s body followed us. He appeared sometime after we had hurled the sail overboard, and then he stayed with us and I would see his white robe on the face of a wave, see it vanish, only to glimpse it again as the seas moved on. Once it seemed as though he lifted his head from the water and I saw the wound in his throat had been washed white by the ocean, and he stared at us from his empty sockets, but then the waters dipped him down and I touched an iron nail in the sternpost and begged Manawydan to take the Druid down to the sea’s bed. Take him down, I prayed, and send his soul to the Otherworld, but every time I looked he was still there, his white hair fanning about his head on the swirling sea.

  Merlin was there, but no more boats. We peered through the rain and flying spray, but there was nothing there except a dark churning sky, a grey and dirty white sea, wreckage, and Merlin, always Merlin, and I think he was protecting us, not because he wanted us safe, but because Nimue had still not finished with us. Our boat carried what she most desired, and so our boat alone must be preserved through Manawydan’s waters.

  Merlin did not disappear until the storm itself had vanished. I saw his face one last time and then he just went down. For a heartbeat he was a white shape with spread arms in the green heart of a wave, and then he was gone. And with his disappearance the wind’s spite died and the rain ceased.

  The sea still tossed us, but the air cleared and the clouds turned from black to grey, and then to broken white, and all about us was an empty sea. Ours was the only boat left and as Arthur stared around the grey waves I saw the tears in his eyes. His men were gone to Manawydan, all of them, all his brave men save we few. A whole army was gone.

  And we were alone.

  We retrieved the spar and the remnants of the sail, and then we rowed for the rest of that long day. Every man except me had blistered hands, and even I tried to row, but found my one good hand was not enough to manage an oar, and so I sat and watched as we pulled southwards through the rolling seas until, by evening, our keel grated on sand and we struggled ashore with what few possessions we still had left.

  We slept in the dunes, and in the morning we cleaned the salt off our weapons and counted what coins we still had. Balig and his Saxon stayed with their boat, claiming they could salvage her, and I gave him my last piece of gold, embraced him, and then followed Arthur south.

  We found a hall in the coastal hills and the lord of that hall proved to be a supporter of Arthur’s, and he gave us a saddle horse and two mules. We tried to give him gold, but he refused it. ‘I wish,’ he said, ‘I had spearmen to give you, but alas.’ He shrugged. His hall was poor and he had already given us more than he could afford. We ate his food, dried our clothes by his fire, and afterwards sat with Arthur under the apple blossom in the hall’s orchard. ‘We can’t fight Mordred now,’ Arthur told us bleakly. Mordred’s forces numbered at least three hundred and fifty spearmen, and Nimue’s followers would help him so long as he pursued us, while Sagramor had fewer than two hundred men. The war was lost before it had even properly begun.

  ‘Oengus will come to help us,’ Culhwch suggested.

  ‘He’ll try,’ Arthur agreed, ‘but Meurig will never let the Blackshields march through Gwent.’

  ‘And Cerdic will come,’ Galahad said quietly. ‘As soon as he hears that Mordred is fighting us, he’ll march. And we shall have two hundred men.’

  ‘Fewer,’ Arthur interjected.

  ‘To fight how many?’ Galahad asked. ‘Four hundred? Five? And our survivors, even if we win, will have to turn and face Cerdic’

  ‘Then what do we do?’ Guinevere asked.

  Arthur smiled. ‘We go to Armorica,’ he said. ‘Mordred won’t pursue us there.’

  ‘He might,’ Culhwch growled.

 
‘Then we face that problem when it comes,’ Arthur said calmly. He was bitter that morning, but not angry. Fate had given him a terrible blow, so all he could do now was reshape his plans and try to give us hope. He reminded us that King Budic of Broceliande was married to his sister, Anna, and Arthur was certain the King would give us shelter. ‘We shall be poor,’ he gave Guinevere an apologetic smile, ‘but we have friends and they will help us. And Broceliande will welcome Sagramor’s spearmen. We shan’t starve. And who knows?’ he gave his son a smile, ‘Mordred might die and we can come back.’

  ‘But Nimue,’ I said, ‘will pursue us to the world’s end.’

  Arthur grimaced. ‘Then Nimue must be killed,’ he said, ‘but that problem must also wait its time. What we need to do now is decide how we reach Broceliande.’

  ‘We go to Camlann,’ I said, ‘and ask for Caddwg the boatman.’

  Arthur looked at me, surprised by the certainty in my voice. ‘Caddwg?’

  ‘Merlin arranged it, Lord,’ I said, ‘and told me of it. It is his final gift to you.’

  Arthur closed his eyes. He was thinking of Merlin and for a heartbeat or two I thought he was going to shed tears, but instead he just shuddered. ‘To Camlann, then,’ he said, opening his eyes.

  Einion, Culhwch’s son, took the saddle horse and rode eastwards in search of Sagramor. He took new orders that instructed Sagramor to find boats and go south across the sea to Armorica. Einion would tell the Numidian that we sought our own boat at Camlann and would look to meet him on Broceliande’s shore. There was to be no battle against Mordred, no acclamation on Caer Cadarn, just an ignominious flight across the sea.

  When Einion had left we put Arthur-bach and little Seren on one of the mules, heaped our armour on the other, and walked south. By now, Arthur knew, Mordred would have discovered that we had fled from Siluria and Dumnonia’s army would already be retracing its steps. Nimue’s men would doubtless be with them, and they had the advantage of the hard Roman roads while we had miles of hilly country to cross. And so we hurried.

  Or we tried to hurry, but the hills were steep, the road was long, Ceinwyn was still weak, the mules were slow, and Culhwch had limped ever since the long-ago battle we had fought against Aelle outside London. We made a slow journey of it, but Arthur seemed resigned to his fate now. ‘Mordred won’t know where to seek us,’ he said.

  ‘Nimue might,’ I suggested. ‘Who knows what she forced Merlin to tell her at the end?’

  Arthur said nothing for a while. We were walking through a wood bright with bluebells and soft with the new year’s leaves. ‘You know what I should do?’ he said after a while. ‘I should find a deep well and throw Excalibur into its depths, and then cover her with stones so that no one will ever find her between now and the world’s ending.’

  ‘Why don’t you, Lord?’

  He smiled and touched the sword’s hilt. ‘I’m used to her now. I shall keep her till I need her no more. But if I must, I shall hide her. Not yet, though.’ He walked on, pensive. ‘Are you angry with me?’ he asked after a long pause.

  ‘With you? Why?’

  He gestured as if to encompass all Dumnonia, all that sad country that was so bright with blossom and new leaf on that spring morning. ‘If I had stayed, Derfel,’ he said, ‘if I had denied Mordred his power, this would not have happened.’ He sounded regretful.

  ‘But who was ever to know,’ I asked, ‘that Mordred would prove a soldier? Or raise an army?’

  ‘True,’ he admitted, ‘and when I agreed to Meurig’s demand I thought Mordred would rot away in Durnovaria. I thought he’d drink himself into his grave or fall into a quarrel and fetch a knife in the back.’ He shook his head. ‘He should never have been King, but what choice did I have? I had sworn Uther’s oath.’

  It all went back to that oath and I remembered the High Council, the last to be held in Britain, where Uther had devised the oath that would make Mordred King. Uther had been an old man then, gross and sick and dying, and I had been a child who wanted nothing more than to become a spearman. It was all so long ago, and Nimue had been my friend in those days. ‘Uther didn’t even want you to be one of the oath-takers,’ I said.

  ‘I never thought he did,’ Arthur said, ‘but I took it. And an oath is an oath, and if we purposefully break one then we break faith with all.’ More oaths had been broken, I thought, than had ever been kept, but I said nothing. Arthur had tried to keep his oaths and that was a comfort to him. He smiled suddenly, and I saw that his mind had veered off onto a happier subject. ‘Long ago,’ he told me, ‘I saw a piece of land in Broceliande. It was a valley leading to the south coast and I remember a stream and some birches there, and I thought what a good place it would be for a man to build a hall and make a life.’

  I laughed. Even now all he really wanted was a hall, some land, and friends about him; the very same things he had always desired. He had never loved palaces, nor rejoiced in power, though he had loved the practice of war. He tried to deny that love, but he was good at battle and quick in thought and that made him a deadly soldier. It was soldiering that had made him famous, and had let him unite the Britons and defeat the Saxons, but then his shyness about power, and his perverse belief in the innate goodness of man, and his fervent adherence to the sanctity of oaths, had let lesser men undo his work.

  ‘A timber hall,’ he said dreamily, ‘with a pillared arcade facing the sea. Guinevere loves the sea. The land slopes southwards, towards a beach, and we can make our hall above it so that all day and night we can hear the waves falling on the sand. And behind the hall,’ he went on, ‘I shall build a new smithy.’

  ‘So you can torture more metal?’ I asked.

  ‘Ars longaj he said lightly, ‘vita brevis.’

  ‘Latin?’ I asked.

  He nodded. ‘The arts are long, life is short. I shall improve, Derfel. My fault is impatience. I see the form of the metal I want, and hurry it, but iron won’t be hurried.’ He put a hand on my bandaged arm. ‘You and I have years yet, Derfel.’

  ‘I hope so, Lord.’

  ‘Years and years,’ he said, ‘years to grow old and listen to songs and tell stories.’

  ‘And dream of Britain?’ I asked.

  ‘We served her well,’ he said, ‘and now she must serve herself.’

  ‘And if the Sais come back,’ I asked, ‘and men call for you again, will you return?’

  He smiled. ‘I might return to give Gwydre his throne, but otherwise I shall hang Excalibur on the highest rafter of my hall’s high roof, Derfel, and let the cobwebs shroud her. I shall watch the sea and plant my crops and see my grandchildren grow. You and I are done, my friend. We’ve discharged our oaths.’

  ‘All but one,’ I said.

  He looked at me sharply. ‘You mean my oath to help Ban?’

  I had forgotten that oath, the one, the only one, that Arthur had failed to keep, and his failure had ridden him hard ever since. Ban’s kingdom of Benoic had gone down to the Franks, and though Arthur had sent men, he had not gone to Benoic himself. But that was long in the past, and I for one had never blamed Arthur for the failure. He had wanted to help, but Aelle’s Saxons had been pressing hard at the time and he could not have fought two wars at once. ‘No, Lord,’ I said, ‘I was thinking of my oath to Sansum.’

  ‘The mouse lord will forget you,’ Arthur said dismissively.

  ‘He forgets nothing, Lord.’

  ‘Then we shall have to change his mind,’ Arthur said, ‘for I do not think I can grow old without you.’

  ‘Nor I without you, Lord.’

  ‘So we shall hide ourselves away, you and I, and men will ask, where is Arthur? And where is Derfel? And where is Galahad? Or Ceinwyn? And no one will know, for we shall be hidden under the birch trees beside the sea.’ He laughed, but he could see that dream so close now and the hope of it drove him on through the last miles of our long journey.

  It took us four days and nights, but at last we reached Dum- nonia’s southern shore. We had
skirted the great moor and we came to the ocean while walking on the ridge of a high hill. We paused at the ridge’s crest while the evening light streamed over our shoulders to light the wide river valley that opened to the sea beneath us. This was Camlann.

  I had been here before, for this was the southern country below Dumnonian Isca where the local folk tattooed their faces blue. I had served Lord Owain when I first came, and it was under his leadership that I had joined the massacre on the high moors. Years later I had ridden close to this hill when I went with Arthur to try and save Tristan’s life, though my attempt failed and Tristan had died, and now I had returned a third time. It was lovely country, as beautiful as any I had seen in Britain, though for me it held memories of murder and I knew I would be glad to see it fade behind Caddwg’s boat.

  We stared down at our journey’s end. The River Exe flowed to the sea beneath us, but before it reached the ocean it formed a great wide sea-lake that was penned from the ocean by a narrow spit of sand. That spit was the place men called Camlann, and at its tip, just visible from our high perch, the Romans had built a small fortress. Inside the fort they had raised a great high becket of iron that had once held a fire at night to warn approaching galleys of the treacherous sandspit.

  Now we gazed down at the sea-lake, the sandspit and the green shore. No enemy was in sight. No spear blade reflected the day’s late sun, no horsemen rode the shore tracks and no spearmen darkened the narrow tongue of sand. We could have been alone in all the universe.

  ‘You know Caddwg?’ Arthur asked me, breaking the silence.

  ‘I met him once, Lord, years ago.’

  ‘Then find him, Derfel, and tell him we shall wait for him at the fort.’

  I looked southwards towards the sea. Huge and empty and glittering, it was the path to take us from Britain. Then I went downhill to make the voyage possible.

  The last glimmering light of evening lit my way to Caddwg’s house. I had asked folk for directions and had been guided to a small cabin that lay on the shore north of Camlann and now, because the tide was only halfway in, the cabin faced a gleaming expanse of empty mud. Caddwg’s boat was not in the water, but perched high and dry on land with its keel supported by rollers and its hull by wooden poles. ‘Prydwen, she’s called,’ Caddwg said, without any greeting. He had seen me standing beside his boat and now came from his house. The old man was thickly bearded, deeply suntanned and dressed in a woollen jerkin that was stained with pitch and glittering with fish scales.