Here Lies Arthur

by Philip Reeve

  “He’s a proud boy,” says Gwenhwyfar. “He won’t want to sit by his brother’s hearth all his life, watching the women work.”

  Arthur’s face darkens. He doesn’t like to talk of things like this. Wishes Bedwyr had been killed outright. What’s God playing at, sparing the boy’s life but not his leg? Better a dead hero than a living cripple. “What else can he do?” he demands.

  “He can guard me,” says Gwenhwyfar, treading careful now. She knows how thin her husband’s patience is. She feels like she’s walking out across ice, with cold deeps of drowning-water under her. “He can guard me. Let him keep his sword and his place in the feast-hall, but instead of riding with you he can stay here to protect me and my ladies. It will give him a meaning. That’s all he needs.”

  Arthur is surprised. Who’d have thought she’d understand so well what goes on in men’s hearts? He looks at her, there in the rush-light dusk, and she’s not unbeautiful. For a moment he wishes he loved her. Good, it would be, to ride home from battle to a wife like that. A woman his own age, instead of some chit like Cunaide who’s just vanity and giggles and nothing but air between her pretty ears. He grins at Gwenhwyfar, suddenly shy and wanting to please her.

  “All right, you can have Bedwyr for your bodyguard. Get a couple of those girls of yours to help him stand up if there’s a fight.”

  “Thank you, my lord.” Gwenhwyfar bows, showing him the top of her head, her neat white parting. She stands and turns to go.

  “Gwenhwyfar…”

  Looks back at him, a hand already on the door-curtain. Wary as a doe. “What, my lord?”

  Nothing. He waves her away. Doesn’t know what he was thinking of. What would his men say of him if he went soft over the old heron? “Go, go,” he says, and takes his feet out of the basin, and starts shouting for his slaves and Cunaide.

  Well, it must have been something like that. Because next day, she went to Bedwyr and told him he was to be her bodyguard – “Captain of my guards,” was how she put it, though I don’t know who those guards he was to captain were, unless it was us girls or the spearmen on the town wall. But it was as good as medicine to Bedwyr. He set about learning to walk again, and this time he would not give up. It wasn’t long before you’d see him in the town, striding along stiff-legged, his face stone-white with pain and determination, using an old spear-handle for a crutch.

  When I next met Myrddin he said, “Your friend has mended well. I didn’t think he’d walk again on that leg. Your mistress has done good for him.”

  “They have done good for each other,” I said. Gwenhwyfar was happier that summer than I’d ever seen her. Saving Bedwyr had made her feel useful, I thought. When she was with him, she was in a state of grace.

  My old master scratched his nose thoughtfully. “It may be,” he said. “Sometimes, on our way through the world, we meet someone who touches our heart in a way others don’t.”

  He looked at me like he was going to say something more, but then he shook his head, and turned, and went away. He’d got a curly-headed boy of eight or nine who carried his bags and belongings for him. I think the boy was the son of that couple who’d made his house ready for him the year I came back to Sulis as a girl. For a moment, as I watched him follow Myrddin away, I felt envious. Gwenhwyfar’s hall felt empty now with Bedwyr gone, and the emptiness reminded me again how thin the lives of women were beside the lives of boys and men.

  XXXI

  The Irishman rode in, bringing bad news from Arthur’s lands out west. King Cunomorus of Kernyw had sent his warriors raiding across the Tamar again. They’d taken tin and cattle from the Irishman, and the Irishman wanted Arthur’s help to get revenge. “Otherwise,” he said, “how can I afford to pay Arthur the tribute I owe him? How can I pay him those three ingots of tin, those three loaves as broad as the distance from my elbow to my wrist, that tub of butter and the sow?”

  His hill-country was so remote he hadn’t heard of Arthur’s quarrel with Calchvynydd. When he was told, his face fell. He knew he’d little hope of Arthur’s help. Truth was, Arthur had all but forgotten him. And anyway, it was years since he’d sent Arthur tribute.

  But Cei wanted to be polite, so there was a feast for the Irishman and his men. After, in the hot half-light around the hall-fire, Myrddin told us a tale of a young man who came to Arthur’s court asking for help to win the hand of Olwen, daughter of Ysbaddaden, chief of the giants. He wove it full of quests and hunts, and the boar Twrch Trwyth was in there, and plenty of battles, to remind the Irishman’s followers that Arthur was still a great battle-leader, who would deal with Cunomorus just as soon as he finished trampling the bones of the warriors of Calchvynydd into their own chalk hills. But what I mostly remember about that night was the way he spoke of the love of this young man for Olwen, and of Olwen’s beauty, and how her hair was yellower than the flowers of the broom and her flesh whiter than the foam of the wave and her cheeks redder than the reddest foxglove. She was so lovely that four white flowers sprang up where she trod. And during these parts of the story most of the boys and the young men yawned, or laughed among themselves, or called out for their cups to be filled again by the lads who waited with the pitchers.

  But Bedwyr, sitting with his bad leg stretched out stiff in front of him, stared into the embers of the big hearth with a look I couldn’t read, a sort of shining look, as if there was wild happiness walled up inside him. And sometimes he seemed to be looking across the fireplace to where we maidens sat, in a neat cluster about Gwenhwyfar. I wondered if he had let himself fall in love with one of us now that he was on the way to being a man again, and if he would come back to our hall soon to woo Celemon. I even wondered if it was me he was looking at, and let myself think how it would be to be Bedwyr’s woman. I would never have imagined such a thing in daylight, little dun-haired, brown-faced me, but in the kind shadows of the hall and the light of Myrddin’s story even I felt beautiful. As if four white flowers might spring up where I trod.

  And the logs crumpled into ashes in the hearth, and the sparks went up out of the smoke-holes in the roof, and Myrddin’s words went with them, out into the summer night.

  Summer grew old and golden, each barley-plot a yellow-white sea. Season of tick-bites and fly-stings. Of salt-white sweat stains under the arms of my linen summer kirtle. Of walls and pavements hot as new-baked bread.

  Gwenhwyfar decided to go bathing again, which I think she had forgot while she had Bedwyr to doctor. And since the girls she’d trusted to go with her in earlier years had husbands and children now, she looked about her for someone else to attend her on her evening visits to the baths, and she settled upon me.

  “Me, lady?” I said, when she told me.

  “You.” We were alone in a quiet part of her house, the others busy somewhere. She said, “Bishop Bedwin would be angry at me if he knew I went near those old temples. So I must not have it spoken of. It will be our secret, Gwyna. And I know that you can keep secrets.”

  “I have no secrets from you, lady.”

  She laughed at that. “No? But you used to be Myrddin’s boy.”

  I’d not expected that. Years it was, since that time I stumbled on her in the old pool. She’d never spoken of it, or given any hint that she knew it was me she’d seen that day. She’d stored it up, that little nugget of knowledge, till she needed it to buy my silence with. “You are fond of your old master, aren’t you?” she said. “It might go badly with him if men ever found out about his trick.”

  “Trick?” I felt hot and cornered. There seemed no point lying, but I tried anyway. “I don’t know what you mean…”

  “Oh, Gwyna,” said my mistress. “When Arthur has too much wine, he often tells that tale of his, how the lake-woman came up out of the depths and gave him Caliburn. But you and I know that there’s no lake-woman. She’s only a pagan superstition. The shadow of some old water-goddess, fading away in the light of the new God. So Myrddin must have had someone to help him when the sword was given to Arthur. So
meone who could swim like a fish.”

  She’d worked it all out, see. She’d probably worked it all out that long-ago evening when we faced each other in the pool.

  “Imagine how foolish Arthur would look if it became known that Myrddin had a girl to help him,” she said. “And Arthur has no love for those who make him look foolish. So I shall keep your secret, Gwyna. And you will keep mine.”

  In the lavender-coloured, lavender-scented dusk I went down between the ivied houses with her, down to where the old baths waited, more crumbledown and overgrown than ever. I expected her to go into the building where I had seen her that other time, but instead she went round to the temple. A twisting, secret path wound through the furze-bushes that had grown around the gateway, leading to a gap in the planks that Bedwin’s priests had nailed up there, and into the nettled courtyard itself. Gwenhwyfar threaded her way purposefully through the scrub, past old stone altars. I trailed behind her, wary, feeling suddenly afraid, and sure some danger waited for us in those ancient buildings.

  “Lady, this is a haunted place!”

  She looked back at me. “God will watch over us, Gwyna. I am not afraid of ghosts. But if you are, wait here. Make sure nobody comes.”

  She didn’t go up the stairs into the pillared, roofless temple, but turned left to where an old grey building stood. Massive buttresses strengthened its walls. Stone nymphs with their faces knocked off still guarded an arched doorway. From the darkness inside I caught the sound of seething water, the hot mineral smell of the sacred spring.

  “That water is too hot to bathe in!” I called. My mistress didn’t look back. She climbed the three worn steps and went inside.

  I waited. Birds hopped and fluttered in the bushes all about me. The white flowers of bindweed that had twined over the altars glowed soft, ghostly white in the twilight. The sounds of the town seemed muffled and far-off. A terrible stone face stared at me out of a tangle of vetch, round as the sun, with long hair and beard twirling out into stony flames and serpents. I kept telling myself what Myrddin had always taught me. There are no gods, no ghosts, no spirits. Nothing but our own fears. But my fears were enough for me. A blackbird started chittering in a clump of brambles and set me running like a deer, after my mistress, up the steps and into the soft, steamy dusk of the old shrine.

  It was the chamber I’d looked into once with Bedwyr. Up there were the three windows we’d peered down through, opening into the caverny ruins of the big bath. The rest was greenish dark. I could hear the ferns stirring on the walls, the water simmering in its basin. I blinked, moving forward noiselessly, letting my eyes grow used to the shadows. I was about to call out “Lady,” when I saw her in the shadows by the fallen statue of the goddess. There was someone with her, and he clung to her and she to him so tight, like if they let go of each other for even an instant they’d fall. I stared and stared, not understanding. I saw her lift up her face to his in that green twilight. Rapt, she looked. Her teeth showed pale as she whispered some smiling thing, drawing his face to hers, his mouth to her mouth, and her hands in his red-gold hair.

  And then I knew it hadn’t been me that Bedwyr had been gazing at across the feast-hall fire, nor Celemon neither.

  Mouse-quiet, I backed out of that place. The ghosts in the courtyard didn’t scare me now. I stood shaking, watching the nettles sway, feeling hot and stupid and ashamed.

  That day in the garden, when Bedwyr tried to walk, and failed, and wept in Gwenhwyfar’s arms. Had that been the start of it? “Gwyna – ” she’d said. “Fetch us a little sweet wine, and some of those barley-cakes.”

  So off I’d gone to the storeroom. And I imagine her standing there, with Bedwyr in her arms. And he raises his head from her shoulder, and they look at each other, and they don’t move, but still something has changed in the way that they are holding each other. And she knows that he is wanting to kiss her, this handsome young man. And he knows that she wants him to. And still they don’t move, or speak, or breathe till they hear me coming back with the wine and cakes. Then, guiltily, they pull apart, each staring at the other’s face…

  I felt as huge a fool as Peredur. For not seeing what was in front of me. For not understanding what I had seen. And I felt frightened, because this fire they’d lit in each other would burn them both up one day, and burn me too if I wasn’t lucky. Arthur had no love for those who made him look foolish.

  XXXII

  What is Bedwyr thinking? Why can’t he see the danger? I want to grab him in the street, push him into a doorway and say, “Bedwyr, it’s me, look, your old friend Gwyn.” Say, “She can’t be worth it. Don’t you understand what will happen when Arthur finds out?”

  But he does understand. He likes the danger. He’s been trained for danger; lived for danger all his life, been taught to go and seek it out on battlefields and in the hunt. And this summer past it’s all been taken from him. The best future he can hope for is to be a half-man, riding patrol along the field-banks, watching over Arthur’s cows and barley. The pain in his bad leg always, souring him. Gwenhwyfar makes him feel like a man again. Arthur has no use for a broken warrior, but Arthur’s wife has.

  Each morning when he goes out to see the horses in their stable behind his brother’s house he looks across the smoky slope of the town to her roof, and thinks of her asleep beneath it. The hope of meeting her is what pulls him through each day. Sometimes, if she is going out into the meadows, or to visit some friend who lives outside the walls, she sends for him. And he puts on his red cloak and rides out as her bodyguard, and there is something thrilling about being so near her and not being able to touch her or say more than the idle pleasantries that are expected between a young warrior and the wife of his lord. He can’t even catch her eye, for fear her maidens will notice some glance, some glint. He does his duty in a daze, like a sleepwalker, knowing that when the twilight comes he’ll slip away to meet her at the baths, and they’ll say all the things they couldn’t say by day.

  Let’s face it, he’s in love. Like a hero out of one of those stories Myrddin tells in the feast-hall. He is in love with her hands; with her slender fingers and the creases of her knuckles. He is in love with the faint hair on her upper lip, which he can feel but barely see. He is in love with the downy hollow of the small of her back; with the hard jut of her shoulder blades, like the stubs of wings. He is in love with her eyelids. He is in love with her voice. He is in love with her kindness. He is in love with the soft sound of her breath when she lies drowsy in his arms. He is in love with the nape of her neck. He is in love with the girl she was before he was even born. He is in love with her because she’s not some girl, some silly maid no older than himself who giggles and wants presents. Gwenhwyfar wants only him. She’s chosen him. She watches him so intently when they are together. She takes him so seriously.

  And isn’t that what all boys want, and all men too? Just to be taken seriously?

  XXXIII

  Almost every night, while Arthur was away, Gwenhwyfar went to meet her lover. The year ripened into a golden autumn, the fruit heavy on hedge and tree. Apple harvest came and went, yet the weather held, and the war-band stayed gone. Day after day of blue sky and yellow sun and the fat white clouds sailing over Sulis from the west like ships, till it started to seem unnatural, and we grew edgy, waiting for the weather to break and Arthur to return.

  And still, most every night, Gwenhwyfar went to meet her lover at the spring. And always I went with her. She knew I knew her secret. I think it pleased her, knowing someone knew. Sometimes she’d look at me with a proud, sly look that said, “I’m not quite as old or as cold as you thought, am I, Gwyna?” But she never spoke of it, except to say, “Wait outside for me,” as she went into those warm shadows.

  I never did wait, of course. I followed her. Crouched in the gloom just inside the doorway, tickled by ferns, I strained my ears to sieve soft-murmured words out of the chuckling, bubbling, echoing sounds of the spring.

  “What will we do when Arthur com
es home?”

  “He may never come home, Bedwyr. He may be killed. He may be cut down in battle, or murdered by his own men, the way he had Valerius murdered.”

  “Not Arthur. He’s a great warrior. He can’t be killed.”

  “No warrior is that great, except in stories.”

  “While he wields Caliburn he cannot be defeated.”

  “Because it came from the gods? You don’t believe that, do you, Bedwyr? Do you?”

  An awkward silence. Movements in the silence. The water laughing, and someone turning over on a crumpled red cloak.

  “He cannot live for ever, Bedwyr. He might be dead already. He might be dying now, at this moment, while we lie here together. He may never come home. Then Cei would be lord of Aquae Sulis instead.”

  “Cei does not want to be lord of anywhere.”

  “That is what would make him a good lord. These men who want power, they’re the ones who shouldn’t be allowed to get it. They say they’ll use it for good, but they only use it to make themselves more powerful still. Let Arthur die, and Cei rule us.”

  “But if Arthur does come home…” Bedwyr insisted.

  “Then he’ll kill me.”

  “I won’t let him! I’ll kill him first! I’ll kill him and marry you!”

  “And what will men say when they see you with your aged wife?”

  “You’re not aged. Men have older wives. I’ll treasure you. He never did. I’ll kill him.”

  Was that what she wanted? A strong young lover who would rid her of her husband? But why Bedwyr? Bedwyr wasn’t strong. Bedwyr could barely walk. That wasn’t it.

  So was she in love with him?

  Well of course she was. He had said he’d treasure her. Who doesn’t want to be treasured? He’d gone to her head like honeyed wine.

  It wasn’t just me who saw the change in her. She smiled more, laughed more, was kinder to her girls. Or grew suddenly sad; wept for no cause, snapped at us, went walking by herself in the garden in the drizzling rain. The others gossiped about her, wondering what the reason was.