Dark North (Malory's Knights of Albion)

by Paul Finch

  “I’ll give him the letter, ma’am, though I can hardly approve.”

  She sighed. “Understand that I have misgivings too. But if I’m to live my life I must follow my heart.”

  “You will break his,” Alaric said, his voice thickening. “And mine.”

  “For you, it was always an impossible dream. I’m sure you understood that?”

  Alaric said nothing as hot tears dripped down his cheeks.

  Trelawna stood. “I’m for bed. If you feel the urge to betray me, you must obey your conscience. But I beg you to consider the consequences.” She turned to leave, but had an afterthought. “Malvolio...?”

  “He won’t remember a thing. Until the morning, when, of course, it won’t matter.”

  “In the morning, none of this will matter. Goodbye, Alaric.”

  Alaric made no response, merely stood frozen as she drifted away. It was several minutes before he could take himself into the palace, stopping to dry his tears. He wandered the labyrinthine passages with slow, stumbling footsteps, nauseated by shock. It wasn’t just the news that his mistress had imparted to him, though that was possibly the most devastating thing he had heard in his life, it was her manner. It had been cold, almost heartless – but it made it worse that he’d recognised it as a façade. Her lips had trembled; her blue eyes had glazed with moisture. She was clearly torn with sorrow, and yet the promise of her new life must have made this bearable.

  Her new life...

  It stuck in his craw, banged inside his head like an angry wasp.

  Countess Trelawna – his Countess Trelawna – was headed for a new life in which neither her husband nor Alaric had any role to play.

  He glanced at the letter. Lucan’s name had been inscribed on it with Trelawna’s usual elegant flourish. When he put it to his nose, he could smell her perfume – juniper and daffodil. Over the years he’d handled so many of these apparently innocent missives. It cut him to the core to wonder how many had been part of this grand deception.

  He made his way to the banquet hall by the most meandering path imaginable. Even had he not known where it was, he couldn’t have failed to find it thanks to the hubbub of discordant singing. Queen Guinevere and her ladies had withdrawn, as had the Romans. But Arthur’s knights and barons were still present, grouped around their King, beating a raucous tattoo with their feet and fists, singing lustily – not the mystical verses of Taliesin, but bawdy fighting songs, tales of battles won and enemies destroyed. Brows were florid, beards soaked with sweat. Flagons slopped ale, wine sprayed from bawling mouths. This might be Camelot, a centre of culture by the standards of the north, but it was still a martial court, and like martial courts all over Europe, except for those now reclaimed by the Roman world – Alaric felt a bubbling resentment – most baronial gatherings ended in this fashion. Roistering – a loutish exhibition of drunkenness and bravado, which Countess Trelawna clearly reviled and yet had been forced to tolerate for so many years. Until now.

  Alaric had to fight down more tears. He focused on Earl Lucan in the midst of the throng, Gawaine’s arm on his shoulder. He was roaring along with the rest, draining one mug after another; wine, ale or cider – it made no difference to him. It made no difference to any of them. But these weren’t just tavern brawlers, they were seasoned warriors; men who’d grown stout of limb and strong of heart through years of turmoil. When this night ended, they’d fall into their bed like sacks of meal, but would be up with the dawn, cool-headed and ready for further debate.

  Of course, it was anyone’s guess now what tone that debate would take. Or whether those heads would remain cool. One thing was certain, if Alaric handed over the letter now, there would be an eruption. Rivers of blood would run in this palace, rather than rivers of ale. Despite this, an odd perversity almost steered him into the heart of the mayhem, shouting and waving his envelope. But good sense at last forbade it.

  Eleven

  KING ARTHUR WAS roused from his bedchamber at four o’clock to be given a message from the Watch that the Roman ambassadors were departing the city. If the King was still fuddled from the previous night’s carousing, he sobered up quickly enough. But he remained calm and thoughtful. He took a minute to absorb the information, and then issued orders that he was not to be disturbed again until dawn.

  “ALARIC!” BEDIVERE CALLED. “Alaric!”

  Alaric glanced around from the lodge-hall hearth, which he was having trouble lighting as gusts of damp wind kept howling down the chimney, scattering smoke and embers. Most of the other squires, Benedict and Malvolio included, were still snoring beneath their cloaks. Overhead, rain hissed on the thatched eaves.

  He stood as Bedivere barged into the hall. The lad was pale-faced from lack of sleep; his eyes were sunken, his hair in stringy ringlets. He’d already made one trip across the courtyard, during which he’d been drenched, and up into the guest-apartments, to slide Countess Trelawna’s envelope beneath Earl Lucan’s door. That had been two hours ago, when everything was eerily quiet. Now the entire palace was alive with bells and the frantic feet of servants.

  “Where is your master?” Bedivere said. “The King summoned the Round Table at first light. Lucan’s the only person not to have attended.”

  “In his apartment, my lord. He won’t come out.”

  “I’ve just been to his apartment and there was no-one –” Bedivere paused, noting Alaric’s wan features. “What’s happened?”

  The squire stammered out everything. After a night of anguish, during which he’d alternately prayed, wept and tormented himself with dreams of loss and guilt, it now seemed unimportant to conceal that he’d known about the countess’s deceit in advance.

  Bedivere stood rigid. “You young fool!” he finally whispered. “Why didn’t you report this straight away?”

  “I thought it a private matter...”

  “A private matter!” Bedivere’s voice rose to a shout. “You damn idiot! This could mean death for someone!”

  “I felt that, too. So I thought it best...”

  “Best for whom? The miscreants? You thought it best to let them escape?”

  Suddenly Alaric’s mouth was as dry as paper. This was, of course, the truth, though he could hardly bring himself to admit it – not even to himself.

  “Did Trelawna tell you the Roman ambassadors were planning to quit Camelot?”

  Alaric shook his head. “She implied that she and her lover were leaving. It shocked me so much I didn’t even think about the rest of them.”

  “That you didn’t think is plain as day!” Bedivere looked ready to hit the lad. His lips had tightened so that his teeth were bared. “Get the rest of these oafs on their feet and search the palace. Press any servants you find into helping you.”

  Alaric did what he could to marshal the rest of the squires, though in an attempt to protect the dignity of his overlord, told them nothing about the night’s revelation, which left most of them nonplussed and half-hearted in their quest.

  IT WAS ALARIC himself who finally located Lucan. First he checked the apartment and, as Bedivere had said, found it empty and in a state of disarray. Next he looked in the adjoining room which had been used by Countess Trelawna’s maid, and found this also empty. Unlike the other room, every drawer and closet in here was closed. There wasn’t a thing out of place. All her personal belongings had been carefully removed.

  Cursing Trelawna and her staff for a coven of conniving witches, he hurried on his way, at last – thanks to the advice of a royal guardsman descending from one of the high battlements – tracing his master to a pinnacle turret, where he stood between two mossy merlons, his toes on the very brink, the rain sweeping over him.

  Alaric sucked a tight breath as he advanced onto the battlement walk.

  Lucan wore leather breaches and hunting-boots, but only a loose blouse, which, soaked through by rain, clung to his tightly-muscled torso like a second skin. His long black hair also dripped with rainwater, but his head was bowed as though he was
sleeping on his feet. Only his fingers made contact with the rain-slick merlons, providing no real anchor.

  Alaric hardly dared to speak – he hardly even dared step forward.

  “Did you know, Alaric...?” Lucan said without looking around. His eyes were open, gazing unseeing into the abyss below. “Did you know my father served Uther?”

  “I know that, my lord,” Alaric replied.

  “But did you also know that even by the standards of that most violent king, my father was a particularly violent baron?”

  Alaric said nothing. He was wondering if he could dash forward and grab his overlord around the waist without accidentally pitching him to oblivion.

  Lucan continued, his voice a dull, dead monotone. “When Arthur acceded to the throne, a handful of those warlords who’d gone before him were subjected to the Damnatio Memoriae. And my father was one. Did you know that?”

  “I did, my lord.”

  “That meant his sins were so great, the mere memory of him was outlawed. His name was to be erased from monuments, struck from records...”

  “I’m aware...”

  “And yet you...” Lucan looked up, taking the rain full in his face. He swayed dangerously. “You... who were born so long after he died, know all about him. It can’t have been a very effective measure.”

  “I fear, my lord, you can’t kill a memory.”

  “No.” Lucan smiled thinly. “You can’t unsay a creature like my father. His wickedness will spill down the ages... as I am surely proof.”

  “My lord, please...”

  “We lived on the north-facing flanks of Weardale, above the wooded wilderness of the Hen Ogledd, in a jagged tooth of a castle called Craghorn.” Lucan’s expression remained blank as the rain battered it. “I remember those days so well. Our wild North seems tame by comparison. The local populace was a mix of Brigant-Celts who’d deluded themselves that this entire realm should be theirs because their ancestors once used it as grazing-land, and Picts – painted head-hunters who’d launch murder-raids across the Brynaich. But if our enemies were dangerous, our friends were no better – lawless knights and barons, each in his own keep, constantly at feud or rebellion.”

  “My lord, please come down from...”

  “But of course, you know that too. How could you not? Perhaps it’s no wonder my father became the man he was, eh? Trying to hold the lid on such a cauldron. He was so wary of treachery and assassination that he became a specialist at both. He made night-assaults on anyone he suspected of disloyalty. Slew them in their beds, trampled their crops, burned their orchards and grain houses.”

  Alaric felt a rising dread as he watched Lucan’s booted feet slide on the wet stonework. “My lord, if you would just...”

  “One expedition went badly wrong. Father and a party of his knights were ambushed in the forest of Ewing. Most died in the first flight of arrows. But he and one other fled. They hid in a small chapel, where they tried to claim sanctuary. Their enemies were amused that this man, who had never respected the laws of Christ, should seek to hide behind them himself. So they piled wood around the building, brought oil and set fire to it. Eventually the heat and smoke overcame my father’s companion. He died, choking on his own vomit. To escape the flames, father climbed into the steeple, but the intense heat caused the chapel bell to melt. Gobbets of molten iron dripped down upon him; one struck the side of father’s face, incinerating it. Still he survived. In the morning, when all that remained of the chapel was a blackened shell, the enemy kicked their way in. My father, now a hideous relic of what he’d once been, was waiting, sword in one hand and mattock in the other. He killed six before they fled, thinking him a demon.”

  “My lord, this is in the mists of time. Almost no-one recalls...”

  “And it wasn’t far from the truth, Alaric. Bedivere and I were only boys. We lived in fear of his very shadow as he roamed that gaunt structure, his face a twisted mask. My mother had already ceased to love him – in her eyes he’d been a monster long before he’d come to resemble one.”

  Again, Lucan hung his head. Again, he swayed dangerously – so much that Alaric took a nervous step forward.

  “Though he knew he was a gargoyle, his warped mind invented different reasons for this revulsion,” Lucan said. “He became certain that mother was taking lovers...”

  “My lord!” Alaric interrupted. “You are not your father!”

  “I’m not?” Lucan glanced around. His bloodshot eyes had narrowed to slits in his white, rain-soaked face. “I inherited my father’s banner, his black wolf-fur... yet they called me the Black Wolf of the North, not him.”

  “A figure of speech...”

  “A figure of fear. That’s what I am. There’s no sense denying it, Alaric. Every slaughter I wrought on Arthur’s foes was a nail in my reputation’s coffin. The order I brought to the northern frontier was the order of blade and spear. For years the locals lived in terror that my father had somehow returned.”

  “You are no longer the Black Wolf,” Alaric stated flatly. “It’s a family emblem, nothing more.”

  Lucan hunched in the rain and wind. Only with painful slowness did he at last turn, step down onto the battlement walk and sit in the embrasure. “Some of us are just born bad, Alaric.”

  “My lord?”

  “Born of sin.”

  “My lord, please...”

  “Or infected by it, as I was by the serpent’s bite.”

  “My lord, this is nonsense.”

  Lucan glanced up again. “Where did the Penharrow Worm come from?” He struck his own shoulder. “Why does the injury I received from it no longer hurt me?”

  “These things just happen.”

  “They shouldn’t. Not in a world that God has created. This beast came from the mist, from Hell itself... a harbinger of darkness!”

  “You slew it!”

  “Of course, but it had done its duty. Its call to arms was passed on.”

  “No, my lord!”

  Lucan stood up. “We must all embrace our destinies, Alaric. Do you know what my father did to Fleance, the household knight he suspected of bedding my mother? He hanged him by the feet in the garderobe,17 so that every man and woman in the castle would shit and piss on him through his death agonies.” Lucan strode from the battlements. “Personally, I think he got off easily.”

  LUCAN WAS THE last man to enter the chamber of the Round Table.

  King Arthur, crowned and in royal purple, was in his customary place. All other members of the august brotherhood, also in full livery, were seated in their great, carved seats, their personal escutcheons pinned to the wall above their heads. There was a bleak silence as Lucan closed the chamber door behind him. Only the flames sounded on the hearth, and the wind groaned in the chimney.

  “Sir Lucan, you have our heartfelt commiserations,” the King said.

  “Thank you, my liege,” Lucan replied, walking around the table to his seat, located between those of Bedivere and his cousin, Griflet. Both men eyed him sympathetically.

  “Are you alright?” Bedivere mumbled.

  Lucan nodded tersely.

  “Sir Lucan, we have discussed matters at length during the course of this morning,” Arthur said, “but in short, the situation is as follows. New Rome has picked a fight with us.” He raised a parchment written in an elegant hand, along the bottom of which Lucan could see a number of signatures. “They clearly came here looking for a pretext, and Sir Cador unwittingly gave them one.”

  Across the table, Cador’s cheeks burned.

  “Not that this matters,” Arthur added. “I would have been happy to renounce my so-called claim to ownership of New Rome, but they didn’t give me the chance. According to this document, they are disturbed and insulted that we had the temerity to make such a claim of Emperor Lucius, who sent his envoys to our court seeking nothing but good relations. We are not fooled by this charade, and I doubt His Holiness the Pope will be, but this will provide all they’ll require to petition
for his support. Without this, they’d doubtless have found something else. The main question now is how do we respond? Your suggestion that we launch a pre-emptive strike is thus far finding favour... if for no other reason than to assist our allies in Brittany, who even now, I suspect, can count their days of peace on one hand...”

  OUTSIDE IN THE ante-hall, various courtiers and retainers had gathered to listen to the rumble and roar of debate.

  By instinct, they stood in household groups. Turold, Wulfstan and the rest of Lucan’s mesnie were already present when Alaric came and joined them. Archbishop Stigand paced the room with frustration. It baffled him that, despite Merlin having left the realm, taking all lingering pagan influence with him, senior churchmen in Albion were still not accorded the full rights of nobility. Stigand had many times advised Arthur that his Round Table was a dated institution, and that only when his senior abbots and archbishops were allowed to sit in on the greatest matters of state would Albion be granted access to the College of Cardinals in Rome.

  “This does not bode well,” he muttered, hearing mumbles of consent from the room beyond. “When the King emerges, I shall be in my writing office.” He stalked from the hall. “I must consult with my brothers Canterbury and York.”

  A short time later, the door to the main chamber opened and Arthur’s knights emerged, each approaching his own household to issue orders. Through the door, Alaric glimpsed Arthur, Bedivere and Kay still at the table, inscribing various documents.

  “Turold!” Lucan said. Turold leapt to attention, as did the rest of Lucan’s retainers. “Ride to Penharrow.”

  “Of course, my lord.”

  Lucan handed him a bound scroll. “This is a summons for all military forces.”

  The tempo of Alaric’s beating heart rose steadily. On one hand, this was something he’d long been awaiting – a real war in which to test himself. On the other, a war like this – with all its terrifying repercussions – was hardly desirable.