Lancelot

by Giles Kristian

  I saw Merlin standing out in that seething torrent, a black shape in the hissing gloom, his staff raised to the cloud as he chanted words that were lost, drowned by the rain’s sibilance. Spearmen sheltered where they could or walked about with their shields held above their heads. Servants journeyed back and forth across the land bridge to the mainland granaries and storehouses, bringing smoked legs of mutton, fish, bread, cheese, olive oil, wine and ale across for the funerary feast to be held in the glow of Uther’s balefire.

  From the doorway of the roundhouse I watched twelve slaves lead three of the High King’s bulls to the great mound of sodden firewood, the beasts’ fearful lows steaming in the air as the slaves slaughtered them under Merlin’s watchful eye and set about butchering them. And the only living things who did not look utterly miserable were Lord Arthur’s proud horses, which were still picketed along the length of the king’s hall. They cropped the wet grass and did not seem to notice the rain which glistened on their flanks and I knew, from having known Malo my father’s stallion, that they enjoyed the respite from the summer flies which usually plagued their eyes, mouths and noses.

  And then, as the gloom darkened from iron to charcoal, betraying the dusk, the rain fell with less anger. The grey veil thinned. The downpour slowed and then stopped altogether. The pall above Tintagel shredded to reveal the waxing moon, near full now, wearing a silver torc whose lustre lit the blackening sky. The scattering cloud was borne off on a warm briny breeze which came from the west to dry our cloaks and the roof thatch and bristle the tall grass at the settlement’s fringes. One by one the stars revealed themselves and men and women ventured out of smoky buildings which stank of wet wool and damp straw.

  Benesek had been snoring by the hearth, adrift on a sea of wine, and so Bors and I prodded him awake and the three of us went to join the crowds which were gathering around the timber mound. Closely watched by Merlin, Gwydre and three of his soldiers carried the Pendragon in his litter up the pile of wood, stumbling and struggling and more than once nearly dropping the whole thing. Perhaps encouraged by Merlin’s threats that he would shrivel their manhoods to the size of maggots if they let go the litter, they got Uther to the top and set him as straight as they could, wedging the litter amongst deadfall branches, gnarled driftwood and worked timbers which must have come from an old building on the mainland.

  ‘No easy task,’ Bors said admiringly, and neither was it, though it seemed to me that Gwydre was a good and reliable man who did not need Merlin’s threats to do his best for his dead lord. Merlin himself, wearing a dappled cloak over his black robes to signify that he could move between the realms of the living and the dead, conducted the rites, calling on Arawn King of the Otherworld to welcome King Uther to Annwn with feasting and hunting and the honour befitting a man who had ever respected our gods and protected his people. And we hundreds watched spellbound as Gwydre and his men carried Uther’s war gear up the mound: a golden helmet and a golden shield etched with a silver dragon. A coat of scale armour similar to Lord Arthur’s. A great spear with a broad leaf-shaped blade that glinted in the moonlight, and a sword whose bejewelled hilt glittered like some nocturnal creature’s eyes. All these were placed on the litter beside the pale-skinned corpse, for above all things Uther had been a lord of war and would need those accoutrements in the afterlife. Added to all this was Uther’s favourite silver drinking cup, an amphora of olive oil, two skins of his finest wine – one for himself and the other a gift for Arawn – and several joints of meat from the slaughtered bulls, also for Arawn, to propitiate the King of Annwn.

  Then Merlin carried the burning brand to the pyre and we held our breath, fearing that the rain-soaked wood would not catch and wondering what would happen then. For what seemed an age, the druid worked his torch into the gaps which had been stuffed with dry straw. The kindling smouldered before bursting into flame without igniting the wood around it. Then Lord Arthur himself took his spear and thrust it into the pile, levering branches up so that Gawain could stuff more tallow-soaked straw and cloth rags deeper amongst the fuel and when Merlin put the burning brand to one of these bundles it flared bright and hungry. The exposed wood was too sodden to hold a flame but the timber in the heart of the pile was still bone dry and when that first flame caught, we breathed again because we knew that Uther’s balefire would burn.

  And how it burned.

  The breeze whipped great flapping flames high, stretching them until they ripped apart into tongues of fire that lashed the night sky and warned the otherworld of the coming of a great king. The wood cracked and spat loud enough to wake the fish sleeping in their weed beds and the glow from the fire lit up the plateau an arrow-shot in all directions. It illuminated the buildings, giving the illusion of new golden thatch on their roofs, and it cast everyone gathered upon Tintagel’s heights in a bronze hue, like metal glowing in the forge ready for the smith’s hammer. And, in a way, weren’t we all there to be forged by Merlin and the gods and by a new king in the glorious death glow of the last? The kingdoms of Britain reforged into one blade to be wielded against those who came across the sea with other gods to take our land and make us slaves?

  Having dried the exposed wood and scorched the grass black in a ring all around the pyre, the flames now sought the reason for their existence. With a sound like Arawn’s own breathing they ravaged everything in their path and even though we were some forty feet from that fire we had to turn our faces from its savagery.

  ‘Watch your moustaches, old man,’ Bors told Benesek, who was transfixed by the wrathful flames. My cousin raised his hand as a shield against the heat. ‘If they catch fire we shall all burn alive.’

  ‘Might be worth it to join the feast he’s going to,’ Benesek said, staring dry-eyed at the litter and war panoply atop the pyre, his face cast in the golden light.

  ‘Now,’ Bors muttered a little while later, ‘there.’ A gasp rose from the congregation and I saw a bright flare as Uther’s cloak and hair caught. I thought I even heard the hiss of burning fluid among the fire’s roar. And then King Uther was gone, swallowed in flame, devoured by it. Transformed by it.

  Uther Pendragon’s balefire lit the world. It turned the night sky to molten copper, spewing more glowing sparks than I could think there were blades of grass in all Dumnonia. Up and up those cinders swirled on the fire’s hot breath, as if each was the soul of an ancestor of the living gathered around the burning king. And each ascending spark followed its own forebear up and up, back until the very beginning. Back to the first kings and further still to Cernunnos the horned god, and even as far as the white mare Eiocha, who had been born of sea-foam. For such a lineage had the High King claimed and there had been few men brave enough to dispute it.

  But all mortal men must die, even those descended from gods and horses spawned from the sea, and, knowing that their king’s life was ebbing, Uther’s people had prepared for this night. For weeks they had gathered firewood, bringing it across from the mainland in carts and dragging it behind oxen, so that it made such a pile as dwarfed any Beltane fires I had seen built to celebrate the sun’s return.

  ‘Lord Arthur has big boots to fill,’ Benesek said, brushing a still-glowing cinder off his shoulder before it could scorch his cloak.

  ‘He’s still young enough,’ I said. ‘And he can fight.’ Which were two things that the great Uther Pendragon had not been able to claim these last few years even if he were descended from gods.

  ‘And he has shown everyone here that he is brave,’ Bors said. ‘And honourable,’ he added, recalling Arthur’s treatment of Odgar and the words he spoke in victory.

  ‘So, you think King Einion will forgive the humiliation he suffered yesterday? That he’ll acclaim Lord Arthur in two days and ride back to his northern fortress having forgotten all about it?’ Benesek asked, his eyes still full of the fire.

  I looked at Bors, who shrugged.

  ‘Maybe he will,’ Benesek went on. ‘He’s hot-headed but he won’t risk ripping Brit
ain apart.’ He turned his face away and nodded. ‘What about Lord Constantine?’

  I looked across the flame-lit space, through the steam which rose like fog from the wet grass beyond the charred black ring, and saw Lord Constantine, warlord of Dumnonia. His beardless face all sharp lines. His Roman breastplate gleaming.

  ‘If he was so hungry for the throne he could have had it before now,’ I said. For Uther had been a long time dying and Constantine could have helped him on his way easily enough. It would not have needed a blade whispering against the collarbone, seeking the ailing heart, I thought, seeing my old friend Pelleas in my mind’s eye. A hand pressed to the old king’s mouth would have done it. As warlord of Dumnonia, and with Arthur still fighting in Gaul, Constantine would have been acclaimed in the absence of a rival and in the interests of the kingdom’s stability.

  Benesek hoomed in the back of his throat, perhaps agreeing with me, perhaps not. And yet as I looked at Lord Constantine I wondered what he was thinking as he stared up at the balefire. The litter and most of the war gear was gone now, consumed by the raging flames, though I could still make out the armour, its scales glowing bright red like the skin of some malevolent serpent from one of the old stories. I could see King Uther’s helmet too. It had fallen several feet amongst the disintegrating timbers and caught in the crook of a thick tree limb where it glowed and pulsed a deep red, looking like the fire’s beating heart. As for the High King himself, his flesh was gone, ascending even now on the smoke which smudged the black sky and the stars, but it seemed to me that his bones were still visible as thin, dark shadows within the flames.

  Was Lord Constantine cursing those smouldering bones? Was he himself burning with rage that the Pendragon had not named him the heir of Dumnonia, despite his defending the kingdom and Uther’s throne since he came to manhood? And he being the son of Ambrosius Aurelius, who might have ruled still had the assassin’s blade not cut short his life. Or was Lord Constantine secretly glad that the keeping of the throne, and perhaps the saving of all Britain, would not rest on his shoulders? That this burden would fall on his cousin Arthur, who had already fought and killed for it?

  ‘That’s that,’ Benesek said and coughed into his fist. ‘I need to rinse the smoke out of my gullet.’ All around us men and women were drifting away from the fire, heading back to the king’s hall or one of the many small fires which burned on Tintagel’s heights and around which the spearmen of the kingdoms of Britain gathered. The sound of a bard singing drifted eastward with the smoke. Off to my left, a woman played the flute while another danced for the crowd’s pleasure, her bare shoulders and dark hair glossed by the light from Uther’s pyre. Somewhere else, someone was playing a harp and all across the peninsular fortress there rose a hum as folk proceeded to indulge in the festivities, their relief almost palpable. The rain had stopped and the Pendragon’s balefire had burned as well as any fire ever did.

  And so perhaps the gods still loved Britain, we thought, as we went to find wine and food and the pleasures of the funerary feast.

  Queen Igraine was as generous a host as any spearman in Britain had ever known. The royal stores were plundered of ale, wine and mead. As well as the remaining meat from the three bulls which roasted in great troughs over the fires, spitted pigs, legs of mutton, haunches of venison and countless platters of succulent boar had our mouths watering long before we got to taste their flesh.

  The evening still clung to the balefire’s heat. Even the sweet smoke and herb-scented breeze wafting across that sea-fretted promontory was as warm as breath, so that nobody wanted to be under any roof but the sky, which was the colour of woad-dyed wool but streaked with rust and blood at the hem above the western edge of the world.

  It was a night to sleep beneath the stars. And so an army of servants carried the food from fire to fire, because Queen Igraine was determined that every man who had come to Tintagel, be he from nearby Cornubia or distant Caer Lerion, would have a full belly when he wrapped himself in his cloak and lay down in the grass to sleep.

  But sleep was a long way off yet. For now, bards held audiences enthralled with songs of heroes and ancient treasures. Spearmen from the different kingdoms challenged each other in contests of strength or drinking or hurling insults. Women danced or played harps or flutes, or beguiled men, no doubt breaking the hearts of some who were far from their own hearths and wives. And surprisingly there was little in the way of trouble. I saw only two fights. The first between one of King Einion’s men and a spearman from Powys who claimed Einion’s man had stolen his cloak brooch, and the second between three of King Menadoc’s Sun Shields and several of King Cynfelyn’s Cynwidions. One group had challenged the other to an eating contest, which just showed how much food there was on offer, but an argument had broken out when one man was accused of cheating by spewing his guts into the gorse so that he could fit more in his stomach.

  There was little blood spilt, though perhaps a broken bone or two, but Gwydre was vigilant and his men for the most part were able to keep the peace and those who had come to bear witness to the High King’s deathbed behest now honoured the Pendragon’s memory by drinking enough wine and mead that they might even forget their own names.

  ‘We leave in three days,’ Benesek said to Bors, pulling a fork of his moustaches through a fist to smooth it while pointing his cup in the direction of three young women who were trying to get Bors’s and my attention by conspicuously ignoring us. ‘Are you going to go and talk to them? Or will you wait until the Swan is into the breakers before deciding you need to know their names?’

  They were the same three we had passed on the steep path the day we came to Tintagel, and whenever we looked over at them from where we sat by a fire they swung their faces away, grinning and conspiring until one would glance back to see if we were still looking.

  The one with the fair hair began to plait another’s hair and as she gathered the three tresses she looked our way and seemed to let her gaze rest on Bors a little longer now that she knew her friends could not see her eyes. Bors looked at me, one of his eyebrows cocked as if he thought Benesek had made a good point.

  I grinned.

  ‘Lancelot’s the second wave of the assault,’ Benesek told Bors. ‘First he’s coming with me. Won’t keep him long.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked, but I already knew.

  ‘We’re going to find Merlin,’ he said, tilting his cup towards me, so that wine sloshed over the lip, ‘and I’m going to remind him of your duty to Lady Nimue.’ He put a knuckle to his mouth and sucked the red liquid from it. ‘I’ll make him release you from that damned oath he tricked you into when he thought I wasn’t looking.’

  Benesek mistook my frown for frustration at seeing Bors go off to meet the girls without me. ‘It won’t take long, Lancelot,’ he said. ‘Believe me, better to rid yourself of this oath before it settles.’

  But I was not sure I wanted to be free of the oath.

  Bors grinned. ‘I’ll tell them you’re a famous warrior,’ he said, drinking deeply for courage.

  ‘Second in prowess only to you of course,’ I said.

  ‘Of course,’ he said with a flash of teeth, then he relieved a passing servant of a heavy wine jug and strode towards the three girls, who looked surprised and excited and yet defiant.

  Benesek and I watched Bors for a moment as he all but ploughed through the crowd, his broad shoulders set as square as the sail of a boat running with the wind.

  ‘He’s a brave lad, I’ll say that for him,’ Benesek said.

  ‘Nothing frightens him,’ I said, remembering my own unease when Merlin had taken me to the king’s bedside. ‘When Uther lay dying,’ I said, ‘there was a red-haired woman standing with the others. Across from Lord Arthur.’

  Benesek smoothed his moustaches as he cast his mind back. ‘Good-looking woman?’ he asked. ‘Enough hair to braid into a ship’s rope and cheekbones you could cut your hand on?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Morga
na,’ he said, his lip curling a little at the name. ‘Queen Igraine’s daughter and Lord Arthur’s half-sister. Her father was Gorlois, who was lord of all this,’ he said, gesturing at the buildings around us, ‘before he made the mistake of flaunting his pretty wife in front of Uther.’ He gave a knowing smile. ‘A strong man, Uther, until it came to a pretty girl. Then his lust ruled him. Had to have Igraine so he went to war with Lord Gorlois. Once he set his mind on something …’ Benesek shook his head. ‘I reckon Lord Arthur gets that from his father. That fight the other day? Odgar of Ebrauc was a dead man from the start. Arthur would have fought any champion in Britain for Dumnonia’s high seat. He’d have won, too.’ He nodded again. ‘Aye, he’s got plenty of Uther in him. But Morgana? They say she’s more mad than sane.’ He thought about that for a moment. ‘Put yourself in her place. You’re a young girl with a golden future, bound to marry well and all the rest of it. Then some vicious warlord kills your father, takes your mother to his bed and claims your home as his own.’ He shrugged and drank. ‘Or maybe Morgana was mad before all that.’

  ‘Are she and Lord Arthur friends?’ I asked.

  He scowled in a way that was almost a warning. ‘It’s none of my concern,’ he said. ‘None of yours, either. We’ll be away from all this and back on Karrek in a day or two.’ I nodded. ‘Right,’ he said, then groaned as he got to his feet. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

  I found Arthur ap Uther dancing with two women to a tune being played on flutes and a skin drum. It was a lively melody and had attracted a large crowd of boisterous men and women, who laughed and drank and made merry by the light of the High King’s dwindling balefire. All across Tintagel’s plateau, folk congregated around cook fires; rings of men and women carousing around flames. Here, though, they encircled Lord Arthur. He was the heart of their revelry and, like the flames, Lord Arthur danced and leapt and lit the faces of those around him.