by Alex Myers
The king raised his hand; the earls raised their swords, saluting one another. Their squires had sharpened those swords at that day’s dawning, working the edges with a whetstone until either earl could have shaved his throat, so keen were they. They set their stances. Behind the king, in the shade of the pavilion, the earls’ wives, those two twins, clung to each other and wept, tears staining their angelic faces.
The king dropped his hand, the trumpet blasted, the two earls leapt at each other, their blades shrieking, locking, the two men grappling, leaping back, trying each to gain the advantage over the other. But they were as well-matched in war as in wives and so within an hour, both earls lay dead upon the ground. The twins were now widows. The two spring flowers of knighthood had been plucked too early and their two ladies, once perfect lilies, were now left to wilt.
King Evan flew into a terrible rage – what an utter waste! What vile stupidity! If it went on like this, he’d have no knights left. And so he declared, from that day forward, no girl or woman anywhere in his kingdom could inherit a thing. Not land, not title, not even a skein of yarn.
He seized the twins’ father’s lands for himself, sent the bereaved twin widows to a convent, and …
My stranger’s name proved true for a moment. Silence. The cat came around again and jumped into their lap. It eyed me as I poured more wine. Around us, the inn had darkened. Night waited at the windows. A gust rattled the door, pushed down against the flames in the hearth. Then they leapt back up, illuminating a golden highlight in Silence’s hair, so momentarily radiant, I swore I could smell sun-warmed oats and not the smoky belch of the fire. They leaned back, putting themselves in shadow, nodding to themselves, as if they were telling themselves the story, keeping it from me. Unfair.
I fed the fire another log. I prompted as gently as I could with a conversational nothing: ‘Twins. They’re always evil.’ But even as I mumbled, my mind was spinning out the twists this story might take (a visit from an incubus to the convent, one of the twins conceiving the person who sat beside me). ‘Was it,’ I tried, ‘a demon? Who came to lie with one of the fair twins?’ I paused, but no answer came. ‘Like Merlin’s own begetting?’ I prompted. ‘Surely you know the story how the great wizard’s mother lay with an incubus and that is how Merlin got his sorcer—’
My stranger stirs. ‘You will hear of Merlin soon enough.’
I lean closer to them, my fingers flexing. I could already imagine how I’d tell this tale – how at the earls’ dual fall, I’d strike my harp, thus and so! And the promise of Merlin, and magic to come …
Silence cleared their throat a little. ‘Sometimes it seems it’s all a dream. I wake from one only to find myself in another.’
That voice seized me back to the present. An old man’s words. Odd to hear them in the mild tenor of a boy’s voice, with the huskiness of innocence. I waited, trying to be as patient as a priest.
‘Maybe it doesn’t begin there,’ Silence said at last. ‘Maybe it starts with …’
My stranger was threatening to settle into deep brooding, so I pushed their mug closer. They drank deeply. I watched the cords of their throat move with each swallow (no Adam’s apple, but not all men have one). Some downy hairs on their cheeks, though their words made them seem old enough to be a greybeard. Words! Few enough of those to go around.
‘Perhaps it starts with my father. He served King Evan. Was a knight of his inner circle. Fought at his side in many a battle. But mostly he went hunting.’
We were off again at last, all herky-jerky.
‘My father was Earl Cador.’ They paused as if waiting for a reply.
I mumbled, ‘Ah, Cador,’ as if it were a familiar name. Sons of earls always think their fathers are famous because those fathers hire minstrels to write stories about them. But there are earls enough in this country to pave a road with them. ‘You’re his … son?’ I ventured, hoping they would affirm my choice of ‘boy’.
‘I’m not a bastard, if that’s what you’re asking. Nor am I a liar. I may not look to you like the child of an earl, but I am.’ They levelled their gaze, staring straight into me. ‘I always tell the truth.’
A shame. I thought then that the story would be of little worth, for the truth is seldom wondrous. Moreover, they had dodged the question I asked – neither saying they were Cador’s son, nor saying they weren’t. I pushed aside my frustration and said, ‘Cador … your father? I’ve heard he was brave and gallant in his youth.’ I’d heard no such thing, but then I’ve always thought the virtue of honesty is rather a tepid one.
‘Mmmmm. Yes.’
Such reluctance and stammering was enough to make me want to set aside my tankard, unroll my blankets and curl up, story be damned. But the firelight cast hungry shadows on that face, set those grey eyes glowing, and I found that I wanted, I needed, to know this person.
‘Yes, I believe it does start with Cador. My father. Years before I was born. He served King Evan. They often hunted together.’
King Evan, who ruled all of England from the Humber in the north to the tip of Cornwall in the south, from Offa’s Dyke in the west to the sea in the east, had received word from a bedraggled messenger (who practically crawled into his hall bearing the message in a last gasp) that raiders had come ashore near Titchfield and put houses to flame. King Evan had been dining when the messenger arrived (for King Evan often liked to dine) and sent his beautiful queen Eufeme away from the hall to her chambers, ordered the servants to clear the tables, and commanded his knights to ready their horses immediately. Titchfield lay two days’ march away, across the heathland and down to the coast, and they hastened to begin immediately.
King Evan rode in the vanguard, his normally handsome face contorted with rage. Raiders! Interrupting dinner! They gave their horses free rein, galloping across the marshy plains. Alongside the king rode his nephew, Cador, an orphan whom the king had generously brought up in the keep, raising him to knighthood in just the last year. What a pair they made. King Evan’s raven-dark hair now bore a few strands of silver, giving him a steely affect. Square-jawed and blue-eyed, he sat upright on his horse, hand resting on the pommel of his sword, staring ahead of him as if, despite the miles to go, he could see the raiders already. Cador bounded at his left, riding so fast that his blond hair streamed out behind him (long hair was the fashion then for knights), his ruddy cheeks still soft with youth, his hazel eyes drinking in the world. But this man was anything but soft: he had first blooded his blade against Norway’s raiders, in the battle that won King Evan his beautiful bride, Eufeme. If the king looked to be carved from stone, then Cador was hewn from oak. A perfect pair of men, riding side by side.
The raiders had long since left Titchfield and proceeded up the coast. King Evan surprised them in the midst of marauding the coastal village of Hook and soon his knights had put them to the rout. The battle is not worth telling: the raiders were only a motley crew, half-starved, without much fight in them. The fishermen of those parts were grateful (and no doubt the brave king capitalized on their daughters’ gratitude in particular). They hailed him as he was often hailed: King Evan the brave, King Evan the gallant, King Evan the just. The troop from Winchester stayed long enough to enjoy as much of a feast as the fisherfolk could offer (I suspect they enjoyed other offerings of flesh much more than the fish) and then, in short order, began their long journey of return.
Evan and his knights had stripped off their heavy mail and thick plates of armour, loaded these on the packhorses, which they left in the care of their squires, and now rode lightly, the rich air of late summer carrying scents of ripe grain – what the raiders had hoped to make off with. One squire rode ahead of the king, with Cador once again at his side, carrying a staff with the king’s banner. A golden lion, passant, stood against a field of azure blue. Each gust of wind made the lion writhe, the banner snapping so the blue looked like the waves on the sea, and the lion’s tongue, blood-red, licked the air. The squire who carried the staff puffed out his
chest and strained to keep the staff perfectly upright: he was leading the king’s procession.
Evan, for his own part, slumped a little in the saddle, passing bits of gossip with Lord Fendale, who rode to his right. Lord Fendale, old enough to be the king’s father, had grown portly in recent years but he still enjoyed squeezing himself into his old armour and riding out for a good fight, especially one he was likely to win.
‘Ah, that was a merry battle,’ Lord Fendale sighed.
‘Hardly a battle, old friend.’
Lord Fendale laughed. ‘It is true! I have fought greater wars at my own table.’
‘You married off that daughter of yours yet?’ King Evan asked Lord Fendale.
‘Which one?’ the lord lamented with a moan. ‘I have three yet to dispose of.’
With a circling flourish, the king settled a hand on his chest. ‘The one with the large … heart.’
‘Ah. Helena. I was thinking to save her for young Cador.’
At this, Cador blushed. He had a fair complexion, white as milk, as befitted his innocence and purity, in those days. ‘Thank you, m’lord,’ he fumbled.
‘Cador will have his choice of women, I should think,’ King Evan said. ‘Though I would be happy to see him settled with someone not just of ample bosom but of ample land as well.’ He turned to the younger man and asked, ‘You are the third son?’
‘Fourth, Your Highness.’
‘I could never keep track of how many my late brother had,’ the king said. He leaned over to Fendale. ‘Have you any younger brothers? No? Just as well. Mine was in swaddling clothes when I earned my first sword. But he still spawned half a dozen children before I had even one.’ Fendale coughed and hemmed at this. It was well known in Winchester that Evan’s first wife, and now Eufeme, his second, had delivered nothing but stillbirths. ‘No matter,’ the king said, turning back to Cador. ‘You have grown into a fine man at Winchester.’
‘Thanks to your generosity, Your Highness,’ said Cador, offering a little bow in his saddle.
They passed through a small hamlet of rough huts, their thatch grey though the fields around them were golden. Children, most half-naked, ran about, and a dog streaked across the road, making Lord Fendale’s horse shy to the side. Cador reached a hand down and stroked the side of the neck of his own horse, Sleek. ‘Easy,’ he murmured. Some peasants emerged from the huts, shapeless in rough brown tunics; it was impossible for Cador to discern if they were men or women until a couple of them folded over in awkward bows. Cador responded with a scanty nod and King Evan, for his part, ignored them entirely. In a moment, they were past the squalid huts, and the rutted track carried them through fields thick with grain. The king’s mount, a chestnut stallion named Hero, whuffed and shook his head, jangling the bit, as if he knew that some day these stalks of oats might feed him.
Then the fields petered out, and the track narrowed, and the land became boggy. Sparse trees with crooked branches, murky puddles. The track ceased its straight-ahead course and split in an inconvenient Y. The squire reined in his mount and turned in the saddle. ‘Yes, sir?’ he said, expectantly, to the king.
Now most travellers at this junction would hardly hesitate. They would take the road to the right, the north-easterly route. It would extend their journey by many miles, more than a half-day’s travel. Stop a merchant at that crossroads, ask him why he takes the longer route, and he’ll tell you, ‘Oh, there are mountains in that forest. Quite steep.’ And he’ll be a liar. It’s the forest he’s afraid of.
For the left-hand track, which is weedy and overgrown even at its inception, leads straight north, straight into the forest of Gwenelleth. Gwenelleth is rumoured to hold … well, what is it not rumoured to hold? A giant. Several trolls. Malevolent imps of assorted types. Most men would point their mounts to the right; indeed, the squire with the banner (and Lord Fendale) was already edging that way.
But King Evan squinted to the left and shook off the languor and gossip that had marked the last hour of riding. He sat straight in his saddle, his shoulders square, his eyes narrowed to examine the dense tangle of briars and oak trees that shadowed the track ahead. Why should the forest of Gwenelleth intimidate him? He was King Evan, and this was his land.
And just as the Duke of Greenwold, who had been riding in the rear, approached King Evan to suggest turning right (for nearby there was a sweet spring where they might water their horses, while forest water is of course tannic and bitter) a massive buck, well fatted and sporting antlers with at least eight points, crashed through the underbrush and leapt across the path.
Well! That was an invitation no man could resist. They had no swift hounds with them, but that scarcely kept King Evan from signalling to Lord Fendale, who raised his horn and blew, avaunt, avaunt! And off they all sprang to the hunt, ploughing deep into the forest, leaving the laden pack animals and the poor squires behind.
Cador rode with the king, in the vanguard of the knights, pressing their mounts hard. On they plunged, never minding the whip of branches across their faces. The buck’s tail teased them, flashing white as it flipped upwards with every nimble leap, only to disappear a moment later in the thick growth. Whenever they came to the merest opening in the trees, Cador would loose an arrow. Some missed, it is true, but once, twice, three times he landed a shaft in the beast’s hide, and every time the buck would bellow. Cador called for a short spear, for the king had only his lance – most unsuitable for the closeness of the forest – and no reply came. He turned in his saddle, and found that the two of them were alone; they had drawn far ahead of the other knights. Cador paused, but King Evan spurred his chestnut stallion so it leapt and Cador’s mount, Sleek, surged in response, as if it too couldn’t wait to catch the buck, and they were again in pursuit, the forest growing thicker around them.
From far behind them came the sound of Lord Fendale’s horn, no longer the brazen avaunt but now the three-note call for succour. Someone had fallen. Cador wheeled his mount towards the noise, but King Evan hesitated.
‘My lord?’ Cador asked.
‘The buck,’ Evan said, his eyes on the undergrowth where already the buck had disappeared.
‘A knight must heed a request for aid.’ Cador nodded emphatically, his blond hair swinging around his chin.
‘If we must.’ King Evan sighed, still staring into the brush, his dark brows drawn together.
They turned their horses and rode more slowly, no longer the reckless pace of pursuit, for their horses whuffed and snorted with fatigue. They rode a hunt in reverse, following the drops of blood back to where they’d been. Succour! sounded again, more urgent.
When they emerged from the tangle of thorns and vines onto the trodden path, what a sight of gore and desolation they found. Three horses lay on their sides, bellies slit open from throat to tail; and what had been squires, half a dozen of them, lay scattered about: a leg here, an arm there, though plenty of pieces were missing, the forest coated with viscera and blood.
‘My God,’ the king said. The knights’ armour dotted the woods, dented, scratched, and gore-coated. ‘What evil happened here?’ He held the reins firm in his hand, for Hero shied away at the smell of blood. He looked about for a squire to whom he could hand the reins, so that he could get off his frisky mount and examine this scene sombrely, as a king ought. But there were no squires.
Well. There was one. One squire and one donkey.
King Evan swung himself down from Hero’s back. ‘What has happened here?’ He looked about at the savaged bodies, the bloody remains; he scanned the ranks of his soldiers and lords, all of them trembling, a few seeming green. These flowers of knighthood, these hallmarks of courage, made ill by the devastation.
Swallowing back his own bile, Evan lifted his chin to the squire. ‘Well? What happened?’
‘The others went ahead, sire.’ The poor squire trembled as he spoke. ‘I waited behind that rise.’ He pointed back up the track. ‘To, um, relieve, that is, release my bowels. I heard such terr
ible screeching … I ran to the crest and saw a huge lizard, a massive snake, but with legs. It had a horse in its mouth, and with one flick of its neck it broke the horse’s back and swallowed the carcass, and it had a squire clutched in each claw. I couldn’t watch. I ran. And it was all I could do to grab the donkey’s halter when he, too, fled for safety.’
The knights grumbled and cursed the imagination of foolish boys. But Cador waded through the gore and found claw marks scored deep into the bark of an oak and a shred of scaly flesh. He picked it up with the tip of his sword. Even at arm’s length, he could smell its foetid odour, the decay it embodied. The scales glistened, green and silver. With much trepidation, and a prayer sent up to the Holy Lord, Cador reached out and touched the flesh – it was cool and slippery. The other knights gasped as he returned to their midst and flung the serpent’s scales to the forest floor. ‘The boy tells the truth.’
There were those who wanted to ride right back out of that forest. But King Evan, say what you want of him, has always had a sense of when a score must be settled. And he declared that the blood of their squires and packhorses would be avenged and this serpent destroyed.
They buried the tattered remains of their squires beneath the trees, set the surviving squire to cleaning the gore-splattered armour and built a massive fire around which they sat as the sun sank low.
‘I have studied the piece of flesh and noted the pattern of the scales,’ said the most learned knight among them. He pointed with the tip of his sword at the scrap that Cador had recovered. It glinted malevolently in the firelight. ‘See how they overlap here? The green with the silver? Not at all like your common snake. And not like a dragon. No, my lords, I believe it is a wyvern that we are fighting.’ He paused and around the fire eyes widened and more than one knight tried to swallow in a throat gone dry. ‘They were the few serpents who escaped the Lord God’s curse in Eden, and so they are the snakes who kept their legs. They are more clever than a dragon and hungrier than any snake.’