‘It will do more than help you revenge yourself on that would-be Roman, Arthur. Much more,’ Merlin said, then spat into his palm and pulled his sleep-frayed beard through a fist to smooth it. ‘If the gods favour us,’ he said, narrowing his eyes, ‘and I shall do what I can to make them aware of our … ambitions, you will heal the land that poor Uther was on his way to ruining. You will heal Britain, Arthur, and you will rule.’ He shrugged. ‘The gods wish it.’
Arthur studied the druid, his blue-grey eyes unblinking. I looked at Bors, who shrugged and savaged a handful of hard bread with his teeth.
Just days ago we had jumped ashore at Tintagel full of ebullience at the prospect of some time away from Karrek amongst the summer bustle and the gathering of the lords of Britain. Now we were all but exiles, our swords sworn – in my case at least – to fight for the man who would be king but might more likely be killed. A man whose army was scattered and whose powerful cousin had begun a war against him. Prince Arthur ap Uther, the famous horse warrior and scourge of the Franks, had crossed the sea in his war glory. He had come home to the Dark Isles to hear the High King his father’s deathbed behest and assume the role conferred upon him. Now he hid with us in a Dumnonian wood, more outlaw than king, more foreigner than Briton.
We had nothing then. Could expect nothing but talk in the dawn. Talk of gods and Britain with a druid and a king who might never be. In a hazel wood by a weed-strewn road, where a corpse lay stiffening in the dew.
Death amongst the white living starbursts of campion.
And yet Arthur had Merlin. And Merlin had an idea. And so Arthur listened.
17
Excalibur
WHEN THE GREAT wall had come into sight, huge and undulating through the mist-shrouded hills, we had been almost too weary to be properly awed. And yet no man, were he half mad with hunger or tired to his bones, could fail to be impressed by it.
‘They talk of the wall even in far-off Constantinople,’ Merlin said, looking like a wraith, robed in black on his black pony, vapour writhing around us like dragon’s breath. ‘From the beggars and thieves in the streets to the palace eunuchs and the emperor himself, they all know of it. Though their own city is surrounded by a wall whose summit you could not reach even if you climbed up ten Gawains standing one upon the other.’
Gawain raised a dubious eyebrow at me and I shrugged, for what did I know of Constantinople?
‘And it stretches across the whole of Britain?’ Bors asked.
‘From sea to sea,’ Merlin replied, and even he, who despised the Romans, admitted that the great defensive fortification was testament to the skill and industry of the legions that built it nearly four hundred years ago.
‘To keep the Picts out?’ Bors asked.
‘That was one of its purposes,’ Merlin said, and I could almost hear my cousin’s thoughts whirring in his skull.
‘But the Picts surely had boats,’ Bors said. ‘And could have rowed around the wall.’
‘They could,’ Arthur put in, his exhaustion forgotten now the talk had turned to military matters, ‘but the imperial navy built the Pictae ships. They painted them green so as to be almost invisible against the sea, then swooped upon the raiders and sent them down to Manannán mac Lir, who ferried their souls to the afterlife.’
Mention of the sea god, even far from the coast as we were, raised the hairs on my neck. Not that the eddying mist helped, or the lingering threat of painted tribesmen springing from the tall grass to pull us from our mounts. For Manannán had tried to claim Guinevere as a gift for Arawn, lord of the otherworld, but she and I had thwarted the god. And yet in the end Guinevere had been taken from me anyway, and perhaps that was my punishment. Or perhaps the gods had not done with me yet and were biding their time, our own long years being but a hawk’s wingbeat to them. Even the great empire of the Romans, which had thrived some five hundred summers, had come and gone under the gods’ gaze and now the great wall, named after the Emperor Hadrian and once plastered and lime-washed white beneath the grey northern skies, was deserted and forlorn.
We had ridden past the ghosts of ten thousand legionaries and then out of Ebrauc too, on into the lowlands and the kingdom of Alt Clut.
Another moon had waxed and waned since that day we fled Tintagel, the blood of Lord Arthur’s enemies wicked into the weave of our tunics and trews, and in that time I had seen the Britain over which Uther had been High King. The heavily wooded valleys and the palisaded hill-forts reclaimed from the bones of our ancestors since the Romans abandoned what they had won. Dumnonia’s cantrefs, each with its own king who might have bent the knee to Arthur by now, but whose people did not even know who we were as we passed their rounds, their turf-walled settlements, in which perhaps two dozen souls lived in oval huts.
We sought hospitality from some, food from others, and shared stalls with cows, never seeking much nor paying much either for fear of inviting questions. Always we were guided by Merlin, for he alone of us knew the land and its people. Not all of them knew him, however. Some, mostly younger folk, mistook him for a Christian priest, those men being seen more and more in Britain, spreading the word of their god. Others, seeing his tonsure, staff and black robes, or else knowing him, begged Merlin to heal a sick child or sow, bless fields of wheat and barley ahead of the bread harvest, expel bees from thatch with a curse, cure a boy who was fairy-struck and banish the malevolent spirit, make a charm for a young woman to place under a young man’s pillow to make him love her, mediate a boundary dispute, remove a wart, pull a tooth, divine a future and more.
Often Merlin’s talents put a roof over our heads or broth in our bellies and neither did he seem to mind these many trivial and some not so trivial requests, for he mined for news and gleaned gossip while he worked.
‘That looks like a proper place,’ Gawain or Bors or I would say when, after several days sleeping in damp cloaks under the stars, we spied smudges of hearth smoke in the late summer sky.
‘That place there?’ Merlin would say, pointing his staff at some such round. ‘The one with the wall which has clearly been raised not two summers since, which tells us that its people have a feud running with some other community? You want to escape Lord Constantine only to be murdered in your sleep by some toothless farmer with a mattock?’ He would shake his head at our stupidity and we would trudge on, imagining roasted meats and sweet mead, thankful that at least it was not winter.
When we did seek hospitality and were granted it, we said we were escorting Gawain’s mare to a buyer in Rheged, for she always got attention, being massive and well bred, and it did not seem so unlikely that such an expensive horse would require an armed escort such as we purported to be. The leaders of these rounds would proudly show us the severed heads of their enemies nailed to some gate, and we would nod with solemn appreciation and say nothing of the implied warning. For myself, I would study these boiled heads, preserved in the moment of death, and wonder who they had been in life and why they had allowed themselves to end up as trophies shown off to strangers.
I received two marriage proposals and Arthur received one, and on each occasion Arthur’s purse ended up lighter by a few Gaulish coins when we left the rounds, the money given to soothe the offence or embarrassment we caused by refusing the match.
‘If I were you I’d have stayed and married the smith’s daughter,’ Gawain told me as we left one such place. He flapped a hand in Arthur’s direction. ‘Arthur’s got no choice but to search Britain for a sword that doesn’t exist. But you?’ I looked over my shoulder at the gateway and the copper-haired girl who stood beneath it still, her gaze like an auger boring into my back. ‘You could be snugged up somewhere quiet under the skins with her and I wouldn’t blame you,’ Gawain said.
I looked back round and met Gawain’s smile with my own. ‘And my oath to serve the next king of Dumnonia?’ I said.
Gawain batted that concern away as if it were a gnat on that late summer evening.
‘Lancelot is safer w
ith us,’ Arthur said, grinning at me. ‘Did you see the way the bee-keeper’s daughter was eyeing him?’ he asked Bors.
‘Like a horn of spiced mead on a cold day,’ Bors replied through a broad smile.
Arthur laughed. ‘She would have clawed the red-head’s eyes out had Lancelot stayed,’ he said. ‘Before we knew it, we’d have Britons fighting each other over the poor lad and then where would we be?’ They were all grinning now. ‘No, I think I’ll keep you close,’ he told me with a wink. ‘Safer for all of us.’
But I had still turned one last time to look at the smith’s daughter.
Many folk had not yet heard that the High King was dead, and we did not enlighten them, fearing to encourage suspicions that we were fugitives from some dispute of succession, which of course we were. There was every chance that Lord Constantine had sent riders south, east and north searching for us and questioning folk who would be well used to seeing his Roman-armoured soldiers, red cloaks against the green, windswept moors like a warning of blood.
We ate, we slept, Merlin made charms, blessed harvests, frightened children, and we went on our way, never staying two nights in one place.
We had crossed the Hafren with a returning wool merchant whose boat was light in fleeces but heavy with ballast of Dumnonian tin ingots, and we passed through the kingdoms of Glywyssing and Powys, hearing from our hosts there how they alone of the Britons had thrashed the Roman legions. And here in Cambria Arthur spent most of his silver, for otherwise we would not have been welcome, being sword-armed and having come from Dumnonia. But we were treated well enough and Merlin advised us that if any of us wished to die of nothing but old age, there was no better place for it than Cambria.
‘No Saxons. Little feuding,’ the druid explained. ‘Too much rain of course, but the earth is rich in lead and silver. Even gold.’ He had grinned at me. ‘Yes, Lancelot, one could quite easily die of old age here. Or boredom.’ He had examined me with those hawk’s eyes of his. ‘Would you like that, Lancelot? Is that your fate, do you think? To die a bent old man in your bed?’
‘You tell me, druid,’ I said.
But he had just smiled and I kicked my pony’s flanks to move ahead.
We had passed through the great wall via the gates of one of its long-abandoned milecastles, and I saw Oswine spit at the stones, once lime-washed so that the wall shone like a burnished sword belt across Albion, but now yellow with lichen. The gesture was done on behalf of his ancestors who, long ago, Merlin later explained, had suffered terribly against the legions on the banks of the Elba.
‘But then a great hero, perhaps Oswine’s own ancestor,’ Merlin suggested with a grin, ‘slaughtered thousands of Romans in some forest. After that humiliation the invaders retreated back to their Limes Germanicus.’
‘A line of frontier fortifications on the banks of the Rhine and Danube rivers,’ Lord Arthur said in response to my puzzled expression.
‘And now we have the Saxons,’ Merlin went on, ‘who bring their families to drive out our families and their gods to exile ours.’ He looked at Arthur. ‘And do you think your cousin has the backbone to stem the Saxon tide? Do you think Lord Constantine can unite and lead the kings and warlords of Britain?’ Merlin’s lip curled beneath moustaches which reached as far as the end of his pointed beard. ‘He was dividing us while King Uther’s ashes were still blowing eastward on the wind.’ He stared at Lord Arthur, who still looked strange on that little horse beside Gawain on his big war horse. Gawain had offered Arthur his own mount but Arthur would not take her. ‘No, you are the only one, Arthur. You will unite the Britons. You will drive out the Saxons, as Arminius – yes, I do know the man’s name – drove out the Romans.’ He stroked the ash staff which rested across the saddle in front of him. ‘You will restore the gods, our gods, to their proper places.’
Since the wall, we had ridden a hundred miles across rolling verdant hills, through fragrant pinewoods and valleys of heather and gorse which shivered below threatening slate-grey cloud. We six men and our mounts, wrapped in one of Merlin’s concealment spells, rode on, seeing the occasional shepherd or cattle farmer who, the druid assured us, did not see us. Until, one dawn, after a damp shivering night spent hiding from a small war band which had prowled after us even though we were invisible, we came to the other wall.
The summer was ebbing. The first brown leaves were appearing on tall ash and elm and the bracken trembling in their shade was just beginning to yellow. There had been no frosts yet to kill off the maddening clouds of midges, and the earth did not give off that loamy, musty smell that signals that autumn has come. But summer was behind us, and on this morning our horses’ breath was expelled in steaming plumes. Everywhere I looked there were dew-laced spiders’ webs slung among the heather, the little droplets on the silk gleaming in the sunrise, and it made for such a captivating vision that I did not see the next wall until Bors, riding beside me, kicked my leg to draw my attention to it.
‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ Merlin said. ‘The wall of Antoninus or, as the Romans would say, Vallum Antonini.’
It rose from the landscape, huge and forbidding, but whereas the wall of Hadrian had seemed planted upon the earth, imposed upon it by men who believed they ruled even the ground beneath the feet of those they had conquered, this wall seemed a part of the land.
Constructed from layer upon layer of turf, it was ten feet high, and when we urged our mounts up its steep sides we saw that it was some sixteen feet wide. Still standing here and there were the grey bones of an ancient wooden palisade, and a stone-paved road yet ran along the rampart’s course on its southern side, so that the legions could move provisions and men easily across its length.
‘We stand upon the northernmost frontier boundary of the Roman Empire which set its heel upon Britain,’ Merlin said. The view stole my breath. Standing on the southern edge of a valley formed by two rivers and not yet lit by the sun, the wall overlooked three hills and so would have afforded the legionaries good warning of any sizeable war bands coming down on them from the north. Perhaps just as important, this position made the wall widely visible in the landscape for miles around. In its day it had been an irrefutable symbol of Rome’s power. And yet perhaps also visual testimony to the limits of her ambition.
‘Now it couldn’t stop a lame sheep,’ Lord Arthur said.
‘King Erbin should rebuild the palisade,’ Gawain put in. ‘Keep the Picts out.’
‘He doesn’t have the spearmen to man it,’ Arthur said. ‘This wall runs from sea to sea. Without the spearmen to stand guard it can never be more than a territory marker.’
‘Like a dog’s pissing post,’ Bors said.
Leading his horse by the reins, Lord Arthur bent and pressed a hand into the mound’s wet grass and held it there a while. It was as if he was trying to get a sense of the men who had dug the turf and piled it high under the hateful scrutiny of the unconquered warriors to their north. I did not know what Arthur thought of the Romans’ influence on these islands and our gods, but it was clear that he admired their skills in building and war. It bothered him to see such a fortification, which must have taken thousands of men many years to construct, now given to ruin by wind and rain and the sheep whose presence hereabouts was evidenced in the black pebble droppings and close-cropped grass upon the earthen bank.
‘King Erbin has bigger problems than sheep or even the painted Picts,’ Merlin said, having trouble leading his own pony across the deep ditch on the rampart’s northern side. The animal was swishing its tail, its ears were pinned back and its whole body was stiff as it pulled back against Merlin, who was muttering under his breath.
I’d had no problem coaxing my own pony across the gully, and could not help but smile to see the druid struggling. ‘Erbin’s sons are fighting over his high seat while he yet sits in it,’ Merlin said, giving the reins a tug. When the pony still refused to move, the druid raised his palms to the sky, at which moment the stubborn beast decided it was time to seize the moment a
nd barrelled down into the ditch and up the other side, half pulling Merlin off his feet as he clung on. We all laughed then, apart from Merlin himself and the pony, which squealed and tossed its head.
‘Wretched beast,’ the druid said, steadying himself on the other side. Then he hoisted an eyebrow at Arthur. ‘At least you waited for Uther to die before tearing his kingdom down,’ he said.
‘But now we will simply remake Britain,’ Gawain said, riding on, the smirk nestled in his dark brown beard like a cat in a basket.
‘If you do not believe in this search, why are you here, Gawain?’ Merlin asked him. The far-off cronk of a raven carried in the dawn but I could not see the bird.
‘Because I am sworn to Arthur, just as Lancelot is,’ Gawain replied. ‘Besides which, while I am here in the middle of nowhere I am not being butchered as I greet the day, like poor Herenc and so many others.’ He shrugged his big shoulders. ‘If my uncle wants to ride to the edge of the world after something that doesn’t exist …’ He turned his face to the sky and inhaled deeply of the chill morning air. ‘It’s not like I have a wife waiting for me or anywhere else to be.’
‘Well, we are honoured that the courageous and indomitable Prince Gawain ap Lot of Lyonesse chose to save Britain with us, rather than drink and whore himself to death in some harbourside tavern,’ Merlin said, lifting his staff as though Gawain’s very presence was a gift from the gods.
I caught glimpse of a smile playing at Arthur’s lips but he said nothing. Bors looked at me, grinning.
For all his scepticism when it came to this enterprise which had seen us ride five hundred miles across Britain, I knew Gawain well enough by now to be certain that he would follow Arthur into fire. Still, I could not help but share his doubts about both the wisdom of our endeavour and the very existence of the treasure for which we searched.
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