‘You can all stop dreaming up your own glorious death songs,’ Benesek said, his helmet’s long horsehair plume stirring in the sea breeze. ‘The bards will have to wait a little longer. That lot aren’t here to fight.’
‘How do you know?’ Melwas asked him. It was more than disappointment in his voice. It was defiance. As though he was not ready to accept that there would not be a fight.
‘Anybody want to answer him?’ Benesek offered, his gaze still fixed on those warriors spread along the far shore.
‘Because they have no boats,’ I said, but rather than feeling relieved that there would be no clash of swords in the night, no blood swirling in the slackening surf, I sensed a creeping unease come over me.
If not to fight, why had these men come to The Edge? I looked behind me. Why was Jenifry crying? And where was Guinevere?
‘Because they have no boats,’ Benesek repeated. ‘And because it was them that lit the fire.’ Melwas and Agga looked at each other in surprise. ‘So I suppose I’d better go and see what they want,’ Benesek went on, then he ordered Peran and Jago to fetch the currach so that he could row across to those warriors and learn the reason for their coming.
‘Wait, Benesek,’ the Lady called. I was not the only one who turned to look at her, even though we were supposed to be keeping our eyes on the far shore and on the water between us and the mainland, in case there were boats stealing through the dark, or even men in the water sent to crawl ashore and surprise us in a welter of blood and savagery.
‘I know why they are here,’ the Lady said. ‘And Benesek is right. They are no enemies. They are Dumnonians. Still, we will let them wait a while longer, I think.’
I looked back across the water and saw no banners by which the spearmen could be identified. Then I saw the look which passed between Benesek and Madern, which told me that even they wondered how the Lady knew so much, though neither warrior saw fit to ask their mistress.
‘Why would a Dumnonian war band come to The Edge in the middle of the night?’ Jowan muttered.
‘Because they don’t want King Menadoc to know they’re in Cornubia?’ Agga suggested with a shrug, though he knew as well as any of us that even had they lain low, moving only at night, a war band that size was unlikely to go unnoticed.
‘Whatever they’re doing here, it’s important, else why not wait until morning?’ Peran said.
‘Perhaps their lord just likes a good fire,’ Bors said, amusing himself.
‘We should throw the bastard into it,’ Melwas said in a sullen voice. He was still disappointed that there would be no chance to show us all what a great warrior he was. ‘Watch him burn for dragging us out here without good reason.’
‘You think Lord Leodegan would come here without good reason, Melwas?’ the Lady asked.
‘Leodegan? What’s he doing here?’ Benesek growled, running a thumb across his spear blade, instinctively testing the sharpness of its edges. But my stomach knotted itself. The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck tingled and my mouth tasted sour.
I knew why Lord Leodegan had come.
When Guinevere came to the shore she looked so lovely that I could hardly breathe. She wore a green dress hemmed with gold and a red cloak edged with ermine and fastened with a silver pin brooch. Her hair was loose, which suggested that she had not had the time to braid and coil and pin it, as the Lady had done with her own. And so that untamed hair, as dark as Malo my father’s stallion’s mane, fell in waves past her shoulders, and a few wind-stirred strands drifted across her eye, across her lips, and I was helpless.
‘She’s leaving?’ Bors asked, as if I should know. Like all the others he was staring at Guinevere. Just staring. I gave no reply. My mind reeled as if I had taken a blow to the head. I stood there with my back to the flames on the far shore, still gripping my spear and shield and watching Guinevere and hoping against hope that Bors’s assumption was wrong. That perhaps Lord Leodegan had come to see and speak with his daughter. No more than that. Just to talk, because they had not seen each other for several years.
And yet I knew this Dumnonian lord had not marched his war band through the night and lit the warning beacon just so that he could pass some hours with Guinevere.
‘Do nothing rash, cousin,’ Bors warned me. It was as if his voice came from far away. As if I were underwater and he was speaking to me from the shore. Alana was fussing around Guinevere, trying to pull a comb through her hair, and the Lady was talking to Guinevere in a low voice. But Guinevere was looking at me.
‘Here he comes,’ Bors said, meaning that Benesek was on his way back in the currach. Presumably because she did not like that Lord Leodegan had come unannounced and in the dark, or perhaps because she had not expected to be saying her farewells to Guinevere this night, the Lady had made Lord Leodegan wait on the far shore. She had kept us in our shieldwall and the Dumnonians waiting until the ferocity of the beacon fire had subsided, and only then had she sent Benesek across the water to greet Guinevere’s father.
Now the warrior was coming ashore and I knew he was coming to fetch Guinevere, and I also knew I could not stand there like a storm-struck tree and do nothing.
‘Have a care, cousin,’ Bors said, because I was walking towards Guinevere as Bors knew I must, and his advice warned me against saying too much. Against revealing the depth of my feelings for Guinevere or the truth of our secret intimacies. ‘Did you hear me, Lancelot?’ he called after me, and likewise Guinevere, seeing what I was doing, warned me with her eyes, which were wide and bright in the darkness because she was as surprised as any of us by what was happening.
But the Lady stepped into my path and raised a pale hand. ‘It would be better if you just let her go, Lancelot,’ she said.
I looked at the Lady and what I saw in her eyes was pity; something I neither needed nor wanted.
‘Go where?’ I said.
‘Home, Lancelot.’
I threw my spear and shield out wide. ‘This is her home.’
‘No, Lancelot,’ she said. ‘Carmelide in the north of Dumnonia is her home.’
Guinevere shrugged Alana off and stepped around the Lady so that we were facing one another. ‘We always knew this day might come, Lancelot,’ she said.
‘I didn’t,’ I said, knowing I sounded petulant. I looked from Guinevere to the Lady. ‘Did you know Lord Leodegan was coming for her?’ I asked. I saw Jenifry and Erwana look at each other aghast, shocked that I would speak thus to the Lady. I knew I was overstepping my boundaries but my blood was up and my world was falling apart. ‘Did you know?’ I asked again.
The Lady frowned and I thought she would put me in my place but instead she gave a slight nod. ‘I could not know with certainty,’ she said. ‘Leodegan did not send word. But I dreamt it this very night. The gods told me.’
I imagined the Lady waking in her dream chamber at the top of the keep, swinging her legs off the bed and setting her feet on the bloodstained floor boards over which Guinevere had laid new reeds.
‘Why now?’ I asked. ‘Why has Lord Leodegan come now?’
The Lady shrugged. ‘I cannot say, for I do not know,’ she said. ‘That is between Leodegan and Guinevere.’
I turned away from her. ‘Stay,’ I said to Guinevere. ‘Tell your father that you must stay.’
‘My lady,’ Benesek called. ‘I think we have kept Lord Leodegan waiting long enough.’
‘Tell him you have more to learn here,’ I said. ‘Tell him that you will not renounce our gods in favour of the Christian god,’ I blurted. ‘So that he will not want you in his hall. Tell him anything.’ I was desperate. Horrified at the prospect of Guinevere leaving, I revealed too much but I did not care. I only cared about Guinevere and I could not stand to lose her now.
‘I cannot,’ she said. There were tears in her eyes as she shook her head. ‘If my father has come to take me back, nothing will stop him. He would send his men to carry me off this island if need be.’
‘Lady Guinevere,’ Bene
sek said. He was standing at my shoulder now. ‘You must come with me.’
‘She is staying here, Benesek,’ I said. This took Benesek aback. He looked from me to the Lady, expecting some explanation.
‘I am ready, Benesek,’ Guinevere said, sweeping a wisp of hair from her eyes and cuffing a tear from her cheek. Benesek gave a curt nod and I stared at Guinevere, not wanting to believe what was happening.
‘Go back to the others, Lancelot,’ the Lady said.
I did not move.
‘Something wrong with your ears, lad?’ Benesek asked me.
I ignored him, still looking at Guinevere. ‘Guinevere?’ I said, trying to hold her to the rock with my eyes alone.
‘Don’t make me embarrass you, Lancelot,’ Benesek growled under his breath. ‘Let the girl go to her father.’
‘She doesn’t want to go,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell Lord Leodegan that myself.’
Guinevere stepped forward, reached out her hand and touched my own which gripped the spear. ‘I have to go,’ she said, squeezing my hand in hers. At that moment I knew there was nothing I could do. She was leaving. She would step into that currach and, just like Clarette and Senara before her, she would cross the water to The Edge, never to return to Karrek Loos yn Koos.
Yet, knowing it was not the same as accepting it.
‘Take her,’ the Lady told Benesek, who nodded, reaching out to take Guinevere’s other hand. I threw my shield up to deflect it but Benesek anticipated my move and his left arm was around my neck and his right hand grabbed his left hand and locked tight so that my throat was being squeezed between the clamp of his arms. I dropped my shield and spear and tried to pull Benesek’s arms apart.
‘Hold still, lad,’ he said, but I bucked and writhed, desperate to break his grip before I passed out, and then there were other arms holding me and I knew it was Melwas. And then Madern was there too and I was screaming my fury which was nothing more than a pathetic, strangled gurgling.
‘You got him?’ Benesek asked the other two, kicking my spear aside as Melwas’s arm replaced his around my neck.
‘He’s not going anywhere,’ Melwas snarled in my ear. And nor was I. Benesek let go his grip on me and stepped away. Guinevere looked at me one last time, tears on her cheeks, before she too turned away and walked beside Benesek down to the shore and the currach which two of the Lady’s servants held steady in the gentle surf.
Edern was already in the boat and when Guinevere and Benesek were aboard and settled on the benches, the two Guardians of the Mount took up the oars and began to row the hide boat out into the dark water.
‘Peace, cousin,’ Bors said. He had come to help me but I did not want help. I wanted to break free of the arms holding me and run down to the sea. To wade into the cold water and take hold of the currach so that it could not carry Guinevere away from me. ‘It’s done, Lancelot. We can’t stop it now,’ Bors said, then he growled at Melwas to let me go. Madern had already lessened his hold in preparation to release me, but Melwas was enjoying choking me and it took a command from the Lady for him to finally slacken his muscle and sinew so that I fell to my knees on the rock, gulping at the sea air. Watching the currach bearing Guinevere across the bay to the Dumnonian warriors who still lined the far shore, cast in the glow of the beacon fire.
For a while I thought Guinevere was looking back at me. I could see the pale shape of her face and her hands gripping the sides of the boat, but then she half stood and turned and when she sat down again on the bench her back was to Karrek and her dark hair was just a part of the night. Still I knelt on the cool rock staring after her. There were tears in my own eyes. Tears of anger and frustration. And self-pity.
‘She has gone, cousin,’ Bors said, placing a hand on my shoulder. ‘She has gone.’
And she had.
14
The Death of a King
AS WE ROUNDED the headland I looked up at the towering grey granite cliffs, as I did every time I sailed round that great peninsula on Dumnonia’s west coast, awed by the looming rock walls and my neck aching from peering up at the grass-crowned heights. I saw folk up on those heights. Tiny figures who risked being blown over the edge and dashed on the sea-blasted rocks in their eagerness to watch our slow and careful progress. There was but little wind, at least at the level of the sea. Even so, at the foot of the cliffs the water hurled itself against the rocks to churn and plunge and scatter in leaping white gouts. Away from that ever-seething sea, all was peaceful. Calm and blue as the cloudless sky.
It was a warm summer’s day. So warm that several of the Swan’s crew were bare-chested and sweat-sheened as they worked, responding to the helmsman’s barks to set and trim the white woollen sail. We turned into the warm wind so that the sail filled from the wrong side and we were pushed backwards a good spear’s throw, until the crewmen took the sail’s lower corner and hauled it across to the starboard side where they secured it again. They worked well, those men from Cornubia whom the Lady employed at need to sail her ship, so that the rest of us, so long as we kept out of their way, had nothing to do but enjoy the journey. And enjoy it we did. Bors and I loved escaping Karrek. We revelled in being at sea, just as the shrieking gulls overhead revelled in their dominion of the coastal sky, and that day we stood either side of the Swan’s prow, grinning like madmen as we came on a rising tide into Tintagel bay.
There we saw a broad trading vessel and two smaller currachs sitting on the beach above the tide line. Beyond them, a knot of sailors thronged around the women and children who always gathered to sell hungry sailors their smoked fish, loaves, wedges of cheese and small pots of olive oil. Now, these travellers and hawkers turned to watch the Swan make her entrance into the bay, some with casual interest, others with the knowing study of experienced seamen.
The sea was almost always rough in the cove, and as we came in, several weed-slick rocks which had loomed when we rounded the headland were already sinking below the tide, so that a skipper hoping to run his boat up Tintagel beach needed to know his business. Fortunately for us, Cledwyn, the captain, knew his and he lowered the sail just at the right time so that the Swan rode into the shallows on the rolling waves which carried her gently up onto the sand in a flood of foaming white spume.
The crew jumped over the sides with ropes to pull the Swan’s light hull a little further up the strand. Bors and I did not wait to see if they needed help. We were already running up the beach, past the yawning black cave into which the flood tide quested, boots in our hands, bare feet sinking in the sand, ignoring Benesek who, encumbered by his fine war gear – the long mail tunic and the iron and silver helmet with its white horsehair plume – yelled after us to wait for him. I beat my cousin to the foot of the carved stone stairway, where I was stopped by four Dumnonian spearmen who stood guard there.
‘You had a head start,’ Bors complained when he caught up, though he was grinning as much as I. His cheeks were flushed but neither of us was out of breath, for we were strong and young, eighteen years old, and we believed we could outrun a horse, outswim a salmon, outfight a boar and outdrink Benesek. And perhaps three of those four beliefs were justified.
‘It’s not my fault you had trouble dragging those tree-trunk legs over the Swan’s side,’ I said, standing on a rock to brush the sand off the soles of my feet. In truth Bors was fast even with all his muscle, but he took the insult with his usual good humour and assured me that next time he would beat me because he would jump overboard and swim in on the breakers before Cledwyn even lowered the yard.
‘You two could at least try not to look so happy,’ one of the spearmen said. He knew us from our previous visits to Tintagel and ushered his companions aside so that we could ascend the steps which led up the mainland cliffs. ‘King Uther’s on his deathbed, the Saxons are raping and burning their way across Britain and you two look as though your only worries are whether there’ll be girls and ale at the top,’ he said, pointing his spear up the steps ahead of us.
One of t
he other spearmen muttered something about young men having no respect these days, and perhaps we tried to force our faces to look serious then, if only for a moment, because for all our excitement at returning to Tintagel, the reasons for our coming were indeed dire.
It had been four days since an envoy had come to Karrek with the news that King Uther, High King of Britain, was dying. Merlin, who had been at the king’s bedside these last weeks, had sent word throughout Britain that the High King would announce his heir four days hence and that at the next full moon all the other kings and the greatest lords of Britain would be expected to come to Tintagel, there to swear fresh oaths of loyalty to the new king. Einion ap Mor of Ebrauc and King Cynfelyn ap Arthwys of Cynwidion. King Cyngen of Powys, King Meirchion Gul of Rheged far to the north and King Menadoc of little Cornubia, and a half-dozen other rulers and warlords besides would, all being well, set aside their right to challenge Uther’s heir and bend the knee to Dumnonia’s ruler.
But none of this took away from the hard truth that the man who had by strength of will and arms forged an alliance, albeit an uneasy one, between the kings of the Britons, so that they might at least stem the Saxon tide which had been spreading inexorably westward across Britain, had at last come to the end of his long life.
The great king had fallen sick in the depths of the previous winter and had been coughing blood ever since. Merlin’s spells and potions had worked for a while, and there were days, the envoy said, when the Pendragon was his fierce, raging self. He had even faced the Saxon kings Octa and Eosa in battle just twelve days ago, having ordered his men to carry him to Cynwidion in a litter so that his presence might inspire the Britons. But there were still more days when he was sullen and bitter and hawking blood into a bowl, and he must have known that his victory against the Saxons at Verulamium would be his last.
‘Go to Tintagel,’ the Lady had told Benesek when the royal envoy had boarded his fast little ship on the rising tide and turned her prow into the south-west, bound with his bad news for the land of Lyonesse. ‘I need you to be there when Uther names his heir.’
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