Welcome to Camelot

by Cleaver, Tony

  Gwen had climbed to the top of the staircase but she was separated from Merlyn by a number of men, discarded cauldrons and black pitch spilt and solidifying on the stone floor. She shouted across the battlement to him: “Merlyn – use rockets, grenades, explosives – whatever you’ve got!”

  He looked across and their eyes met. He understood. Thunder crashed around them, the rain was still pouring, arrows still flying, but he understood. Gwen saw him bend down to speak to Chen Ka Wai and the latter turn away.

  Meanwhile, out on the battlefield, the mists were swirling and the evening twilight was approaching steadily. Gwen searched amongst the numbers milling about below her to see if she could see horses. There – away to her right, Sir Gareth was still fighting, charging and bludgeoning his way through archers, pikemen and the soldiers who were trying to protect the men at the back of the battering ram. The other horseman following close alongside Gwen could now see – it was Brangwyn. Of course! Only his loyal squire would be certain to support him in this crazy, last-ditch attempt to foil the enemy, no matter if it was certain suicide.

  Another fearsome crash below as the ram thumped into the gates. Then more thunder and lightning rent the air above – it seemed as if the gods were conspiring to bring down Camelot along with the Saxons. Gwen looked through the rain towards the central keep where the double-handed sword made into a lightning rod pointed skyward. How was it bearing up under this assault?

  Well that was doing well. How ironic! thought Gwen. I at last can show people that I am not some evil witch but someone also who can help protect Camelot…only to achieve this at the very time the barbarians invade. Anger surged within her again.

  A horse screamed out on the battlefield. Gwen’s attention was immediately seized by the awful sound. Her blood turned to water as she dreaded to look. There, only a short distance away, Brangwyn’s horse had been impaled on a pike and the rider himself was toppling as she watched. Three Saxons rounded to attack him but another horseman was quicker to rally: Sir Gareth swept to his aid. His sword arm went up and down rapidly, viciously, with all his strength: once, twice, and then he paused and reached down towards the fallen rider. A big strong man, he had felled two Saxons but the third pikeman now came at him.

  Gwen’s heart was in her throat, her breathing had stopped, her eyes were locked on this individual combat whilst all around archers on both sides were firing at one another, the battering ram was crashing below her and lightning lit up scenes inside and outside Camelot as if flickering and frozen in an old silent film. Except there was uproar about her, not silence. She was suddenly aware that Chen Ka Wai was next to her, lining up rockets and various earthenware pots and a metal canister on the stone floor.

  “Ka Wai – fire a rocket over there, quickly! Where Sir Gareth is!” she was absolutely frantic.

  Clever man – he needed no explanation. Sheltering his weaponry from the rain, pointing one rocket in the desired direction, he conjured up a flame somehow and – whoosh! – off it roared through the half-light.

  The effect on those below who saw it streaking down from the gatehouse and into the melee some twenty yards distant was immediate. They were petrified. This was like a dragon’s breath! Sir Gareth’s great grey horse reared and plunged, frightened out of its wits. Not its rider, nor Brangwyn spread-eagled below, nor the Saxon who was about to thrust a pike into Sir Gareth, none of them could do anything but duck for cover.

  Whoosh! Another rocket set off, zig-zagging furiously over people’s heads. Merlyn had attached short, sharp, wicked-looking spikes on top of the four or five rockets they had prepared – each about six-foot long and packed with gunpowder – and this second one found a target – some poor warrior some distance away who screamed terrifyingly as it speared him into the ground, still belching out fire and flames and black smoke.

  Merlyn meanwhile was not idle. He picked up one of the pots, lit its fuse, waited while it spluttered into life then rolled it down one of the murder holes.

  BANG! An explosion below. The battering ram stopped at once. Looking down, Merlyn was cursing again. Splinters of pottery had caused mayhem amongst a number of men at the head of the ram, the black pitch that was spread about all over was smoking, but it was not alight. Other men below were rushing to minimise the damage, their advance had not been stopped yet.

  There came then a great crash of thunder, and lightning suddenly dazzled the scene all around. The central keep of Camelot was lit up in a strange eerie blue light – the sword/lightning rod a thin black line pointing heavenwards right at the top in the centre of it. Electricity buzzed and crackled in the air like the night Gwen first saw the electric storm and, just like then, her hair seemed to stand on end. People standing in rivers of rainwater round and about at the foot Camelot were lit up by electricity – some badly frazzled, others not. It affected Saxons and Celts randomly.

  The intervention of awesome forces of nature stopped all fighting for a moment…all except for Ka Wai and Merlyn who ignited and then threw what they had left, two more pots and then the metal canister, down onto the throng of barbarians beneath. There was one noisy bang…and then one almighty BOOM! that blasted Gwen off her feet. Fire immediately ripped along the battering ram, tore through shields, flared up the outer wall – everywhere the black pitch had solidified. The immense blast even blew great holes in the castle gates. Stunned as she was, Gwen struggled back onto her knees but she did not need to look down to see what had happened. She didn’t want to. There was blood and body parts flying through the air.

  An eerie silence followed, broken only by the steady pattering of rain. An awful moaning issued forth below and outside the gatehouse. Then King Arthur’s voice was clearly heard, bellowing down from the top of the keep:

  “Open the gates! Knights of the Round Table – mount up and ride out! Out! Out you go!”

  Camelot went onto the attack. Tired men and horses were fitted out with swords, shields, spears and lances and once again, with plumes flying, they cantered across the courtyard, through the smoking crater that welcomed them immediately outside, past blackened corpses that looked as if they had been flung around by a ferocious dragon, and thence onto the battlefield of Hades.

  Fires were still burning in places, there were wounded and dying soldiers crying out, the battering ram had been tossed aside, smoking and splintered, and all able-bodied men seemed to have fled. Dark mists shrouded much of the distance so the knights spurred up their mounts to fan out and search. They did not expect to find much resistance.

  Gwen came hastening down the wooden staircase to reach the gates below. Once more she was desperate to find him. Her heart thumping, her blood racing, her heart in her mouth, would the agony ever stop? She had to reach him – Please, God, let him be alright!

  She ran out of the castle in the direction she had seen him last. She stumbled over the scorched and pitted earth and refused to look at whatever ghastly, gory scenes were around her – her eyes were searching only for one horse and for one rider. Gwen staggered now through mud that tripped her and seemed determined to slow her progress. But there! There was his grey horse – but standing alone, head lowered, nostrils steaming in the cold, clammy wetness that clung to everything. It was not the cold that chilled her marrow, though. It was the sight of his big body, crumpled on the ground below his horse, beside that of Brangwyn who was down on his knees, trying to speak to him.

  Gwen flew those last few yards and flung herself down.

  “Gareth! Gareth! I’m here! I love you! It’s your Gwen! It’s me…oh, Christ…please…please be OK …”

  His eyes were flickering. She frantically searched his body – his helmet was dented, where was he hurt? How bad was he? He looked up at Brangwyn and saw sadness in his eyes. Oh no! Please, God, don’t let him die!

  There was an arrow imbedded in his side. The flight of it was broken off – perhaps when he had fallen – but the arrow head was buried in him somewhere. Had it pierced the ribcage? She pushed her fin
gers into his clothing, fought with chainmail and leather and buttons in a frenzied rush to get to his flesh. She was frantic with worry and had to steel herself to be disciplined in her search and not just to go crazy with frustration, rip her fingernails on his armour and fail to gain access to his body.

  All the time she was looking at him. His eyes opened. He gave a twisted smile. A twisted smile and a broken nose – God, how she loved this ugly brute! “Gareth…I love you…do you know that…? Do you?”

  “You’re…you’re Lancelot’s lady…” He had strength enough to argue. That was good.

  She kissed him, her hands still feeling inside the leather jerkin he wore. “No! I never let him near me. I wouldn’t let him lay a finger on me. I only tried to lure him away from the queen. Understand? You are my only knight and lord! Aaagh!”

  She found the wound. There was blood pulsing out of his side and his clothing was pinned into him by the arrow. Feeling as gently as she could around and beneath the wound, his ribs seemed strong. It had not broken through. Had it gone up into him from beneath his rib cage? She fervently hoped not – that would be serious. The angle of the arrow seemed, however, as if it had struck him from above. What a relief!

  Sir Gareth was beginning to come round. “Milady…I’m fine…only concussed…please let me be.”

  Gwen could not believe it. How could he say he was fine – he had an arrow sticking in him! But the relief to hear him talk, to understand what had felled him – a blow on the head – and to know that the arrow was not life-threatening…the relief was enormous. Her spirits began to rise.

  “What do you mean you’re fine? You’re half dead! I am NOT going to leave you be.” Gwen slipped her hands, now stained with his blood, out from his clothing and reached forward to examine his head.

  Sir Gareth’s grey charger began to react when it heard its master’s voice. A lively stallion, it stamped its front feet just at the moment that Gwen moved her position. She felt a blow on the back of her skull and promptly collapsed down on the ground beside him.

  * * *

  Seconds passed. Lady Gwendolyn dizzily came back to her senses to find a horse looking down at her, and Brangwyn. Brangwyn? Where had he appeared from? Where…where was she? Her head was spinning but the blow had been slight and she soon collected her thoughts. The big, grey horse she realised she recognised – it belonged to Sir Gareth! Looking up at it now, the said horse backed away in the rain and the mud. Mud? Scrambling to her knees, Lady Gwendolyn looked wildly about her. It was still raining, darkness was falling fast but this was no twenty-first-century roadside and here was Sir Gareth lying wounded beside her. Wounded! His blood was soiling his armour and the ground beside him. Indeed, there was blood everywhere, some on her hands, and here she was crouched over Sir Gareth on a field of battle. No doubt about it. Where was she? Outside the many-turreted walls of Camelot! Beloved Camelot!

  Sir Gareth – how badly was he wounded? Fear struck her heart greater than any other emotion at being returned to the citadel she loved. Her head ached somewhat from her fall; she was once again bemused at where she was and how she had got there, but above all else, the man she loved was bleeding beside her.

  “My lord, thou art hurt! Thy blood stains the earth beside thee! I cannot bear it!”

  “My fair Lady Gwendolyn, thy pain is greater than mine own, I swear to thee. I am concussed but ‘twill pass. My wound is…is not serious. But thou hast been struck by my steed and laid low before me. And more: ‘tis dangerous here, milady. This is no place for thee. Brangwyn, my loyal and most trusted fellow – help us both to rise.”

  The three stood up on the blasted field – Sir Gareth in the middle, bent over a little with the arrow still piercing his flesh and Brangwyn on one side, Lady Gwendolyn on the other. The scene of carnage that lay around them was ghastly to behold for someone who had just woken up from hallucinations of the future but Camelot and safety was only a short distance away and her arms were around a man who, until this day, whether in the fifth or the twenty-first century, she had only been able to worship from afar. She slipped her arms up under his leather jerkin to feel for his wound, but more than anything it was his warm flesh, the heat of his body, that impressed her most of all. For him, he knew the force of the arrow had been spent on breaking through his chainmail, the little that was now stuck into him had less of an impact than this woman’s hands that were testing his flesh. This was a new, intensely pleasurable and much-to-be-encouraged experience.

  Sir Gareth quickly assessed that, with no enemy in sight and with other knights abroad and searching for any remaining threat, the three of them were now in no danger. He addressed his squire: “Brangwyn – attend to my horse. I fear that thine own will serve thee no more. I shall walk back these last few yards with my lady.” He stopped and smiled down at her. “Fair Gwendolyn, as always thou astonisheth me. What other damsel from Camelot runs onto the field of battle to attend to her knight? Dost thou have no fears for thine own safety?”

  The Lady Gwendolyn grinned back up at him. How could she explain that she had just been thrilling to his kisses in another time and place and now didn’t want it ever to stop? “My lord, I will follow thee anywhere. I have spent an age wanting to get close to thee and I fear that my passion could wait no longer. Beaten, bloodied and faint from thy wounds I will have thee thus whilst there is still something of my lord left for me!”

  Sir Gareth tried to laugh but it hurt doing so. “What time and place is this, my lady, for thee to confess thy passion? Look – there are the bodies of Saxons strewn all about. There is mine own blood mixed with theirs at our feet. Is this a fit place to declare our love?”

  “Chide me not, my lord. My love for thee knows no rules, no time; it knows only that thou art hurt and that I must be with thee. Let us hurry to Camelot where I might tend to thee more tenderly and let no other come between us!”

  Sir Gareth smiled to himself. He was exhausted, injured, hurting and barely able to walk but this woman’s confession of love and desire was like a drug that overcame it all. He would have carried her up in his arms and off to her bedchamber straightaway if he could…but drug or not, though his thoughts wanted nothing else, his big, muscular frame was strong no more. He limped across the blackened crater, past the splintered gates and eventually into the inner bailey. He slumped against the wall beside the spiral staircase that led to his lady’s chamber. He could walk no more.

  Kate appeared suddenly out of the gloom. “My lady! Where hast thou been? How canst thee run out amongst the fire and arrows raining down in the heat of battle?” Her frightened, tear-streaked face was white with worry.

  “Kate! My Kate! How much I have missed thee!” Lady Gwendolyn caught her maid up in her arms and whirled her around, delighted to see her again. Her face was creased with smiles – even more so seeing the confusion on her maid’s face who clearly did not understand her mistress’s reactions. “But, dear Kate, my lord here is in need of assistance – canst thou summon two men to aid his climb up these stairs? He shall not return to the knights’ quarters. I will tend to him above. Go! Find help quickly!” She kissed her confused servant on the cheek and pushed her away.

  It took a few minutes before Kate returned with two of Sir Gareth’s attendants. Gently, gingerly they helped him up the confines of the spiral staircase, along the passageway above until he could at last reach his lady’s rooms and lie upon a bed. Then Lady Gwendolyn bid them all away, entreating Kate to bring hot water from the kitchens and thereafter to find Merlyn and bring back bandages and poultices to apply to her lord’s wounds. Next, she lit several candles, brought them close to examine his big body and proceeded to strip him to the waist, cutting away that which she could not remove without disturbing the arrow still embedded in him.

  Sir Gareth lay on his side, bone-tired, in pain but delighted that this fair maiden had declared that she was now his and was determined to ease his suffering. He had a lump on the side of his head that had been responsible f
or his concussion and he still had trouble keeping his wits about him, but lying down and having this lovely lady take his clothes off was something that needed no explanation. Hot water was brought into the bed chamber. Kate was embarrassed to see a half-naked man lying there and so quick to disappear again as soon as possible to find Merlyn.

  Alone with her heart’s desire, Lady Gwendolyn proceeded to wash him down, running her hands all over his chest, side and back, on occasion pressing her lips to his flesh as she did so. He had lost a fair bit of blood, straining to climb the stairs, and blood and dirt caked his body so there was much to clean off him. Holding his left arm aside, she examined his wound. Most of the shaft of the arrow had been broken off; the head had pierced through his flesh and was lying next to his ribcage. To pull it out she had to delicately cut through some of the blue and swollen flesh, then wash the wound as thoroughly as she could, allowing more blood to flow out, hopefully cleansing the interior as it did so. She knew that it was not the arrow now that was the problem but whatever dirt and debris that it had left behind inside him. She examined the open wound, lowered her head and licked away whatever foreign material she could amongst the blood that was emerging.

  Sir Gareth lay as still as he could, flinching as little as possible as his lady probed the damage done to him. He could hardly believe that she had buried her face in his side and was cleaning him with her tongue. Not that he could feel too much – the area was numb with pain – but looking down upon the back of her head he could see what she was doing.

  Satisfied she had done as much as she could, Lady Gwendolyn turned to wash the blood off her face and then again to wipe his wound as clean as possible. She would have to stitch up the hole that now remained in his side. Pinching his torn flesh together with her hands she reached up to look at him, the knight she loved in whatever world she found herself in.

  “Thou art so courageous, my lord. Not a sound from thy lips whilst I have cut and punished and bled thee. And now I must push needles into thy flesh and pain thee more.”