by Maples, Kit
The king gave me a slap on the rump and said, “Oh, well. Have a drink with a dead man, my sweet Lady Merlin! You, Arthur?”
I sipped from the king’s wine-pot but Arthur drank fully. Too fully. Because he was afraid of his murderous king-brother.
Gurthrygen slumped into his chair under the colonnade, glaring around at his war band, at Rufus and his other pet Romans, his Christian bishops and Druid priests, Norwayan and Icelandic vassal princes, all the other ragtag of his court. They stared back at him, watchful, waiting, sullen.
“Which of you hideous trash would pour poison in my ear tonight to become lord of Britain?” Gurthrygen shouted.
The appalled and conniving watchers recoiled.
“Each would,” said the king, grimly.
He said to Arthur, “But they’d have to kill you first, Little Brother. Your surviving me would make them tremble in fright on their throne. Stay alive, Arthur, and keep me alive.”
Gurthrygen shook his head to settle the wine still sloshing in his brain. “Give me your lady companion, Arthur, your brother-king wants your sister-mother tonight.”
Wine sloshed the other way in the king’s brain and he forgot he wanted me.
He was surprised to find Arthur and me standing there with him.
“What are you doing here, Brother?” he said to Arthur.
“We’ve come to join the queen.”
“The queen? Oh, yes. She’s what I most fear for myself.”
Gurthrygen began to weep.
“Sweet Lady!” he cried to me. “I haven’t killed half the men I want to kill or bedded half the women. Must I die now?”
The king puked more wine. He shouted, “Bring me mead to clean my bowels! Someone take them to the queen…”
A slave led us across a mosaic floor into the lady chapel, the quietest room away from the marketplace.
There, on a bed of pillows before the Chi-Rho altar with its silver crucifix and holy images, surrounded by her women and some half-breasted Amazon lifeguards, was Queen Igerne, graying hair flung out on the pillows, drooling blood.
She saw Arthur and screamed, “What fresh Hell is this? Why aren’t you dead?”
* * *
Arthur went to his knees by the queen’s bed, his mail smoking dust. I stood in the door to watch a scene that had to be pathetic and awful to work. Arthur offered the queen his bare sword hand and said, “We’ve come to offer our services to my mother our Lady Queen.”
Igerne choked out blood, her face astonished, appalled, frightened equally of Arthur, Merlin, and Death.
She said, barely audibly, to her entourage, “Leave me!...leave me…with my son…and this bizarre…young…lady merlin.”
All left but her Amazons, watching me with narrow-eyed ferocity.
Igerne said, “Who’s…that beautiful…little murderer…with you, Arthur?”
“Mother Merlin.”
“Lady Merlin?” Igerne squinted to stare at me. “This…Venus in Arms?...is the old hag…your foster mother?...where are her wrinkles…her old crooked back…gods, are…the children’s stories…true?...look at her!...a reborn…Druid princess…unChristian!...polluting my dying hour...”
“I’m becoming what time wants me to be,” I said to her, “and so are you.”
Her face went paler. “You speak in…even more…confused riddles, Old Mother!...‘Mother?’…better I call you…‘daughter!’…but I drowned…all my daughters…”
Igerne wiped blood from her mouth and said to her surgeon hiding behind the Amazons, “What sort of tonic is this you bring me?” she said to him in a rush of words. “Can the horrid sight…of Arthur with this absurd…child-merlin save my life?”
The surgeon in medical regalia and gold torque, his robe spattered with Igerne’s blood, shoved past the Amazons to say, “It can, Queen, yes, it can. Such surprises are known to call a woman back from death. But a daughter such as this beautiful monster?” The surgeon spat at Arthur because he was afraid to spit at a merlin. “I doubt it.”
Igerne almost laughed. “Too loyal to his mistress…to know safety lies in…bending his neck…to Prince Arthur…and his pet merlin…”
The panicked surgeon fled.
Igerne threw out her arms and grabbed Arthur, smearing him with her blood. “A true knight…can raise the dead...why can’t a true knight…cure them before they die?...cure me, Arthur…my loving little boy...save me!...Prince Arthur Merlin Pendragon, save your mother!”
The one-breasted Amazons broke Igerne’s grip on her son and eased her back to her pillows. She coughed blood drooling down her chin.
“I’m more afraid…of this death…than any I’ve made…terrified of Satan and Jesu…together…wondering if Morrigu and Pluto…should have had…my prayers…all these years…instead...”
She put a hand on her heart, rings clattering on the dagger slung between her breasts. “Touching you has made me better. I feel it inside!”
“The spitting merely cleared blood from your lungs, Queen,” I said.
“Is that a merlin’s verdict or a surgeon’s? I ought to kill you for the lie!”
She struggled to unharness the dagger from the scabbard at her breast. She fell back on her pillows exhausted by the effort.
Igerne closed her eyes and said, “What good use…can I make of…a prince…and his merlin…before I die?”
“Confirm me in my lands, Queen,” Arthur said.
“Arthur and Morgause…have no conversation…but of Cornwall,” she said, dreamily from behind her closed eyes. “Yes, yes…I confirm your duchy…someone write it down...put the ducal…crown…on your shield…then go confirm yourself…”
“How does he ‘confirm himself?’” I said.
“Go take Cornwall,” the queen said.
“But it’s mine,” said Arthur.
“It’s mine,” said Igerne, “until I die…then it’s your legacy…from Uther…if you can hold it…against Morgause…and persuade…the Cornish barbarians…to have you…”
She laughed and choked.
“Where’s my…pet bishop?...I’m ready to die…”
“You sent him out, Queen,” said an Amazon.
“Call the fool back…bring my crowns...”
A gray-faced bishop came into the lady chapel with a strongbox. He wore three crucifixes of different metals and colors.
“The only man…in the kingdom…who thinks three breastplates…not armor enough…against the Demon!” Igerne said.
“Tell us, Dunwallo…Lord Bishop of York…my child Morgause…has seduced Orkney’s…Prince Lot…and will marry the fool…even though…he’s her…dead sister Anna’s husband…and father of Gawain…Anna’s only surviving pup…is that sin enough…to pollute her mother’s…chance…to escape Hell?”
“Sins of the children are not visited on the parents, Queen,” Dunwallo said.
“They should be…oh, they should be,” said Igerne. “We made the monsters they are…”
The queen rummaged among her crowns in the strongbox.
“What, Bishop…of the souls…of my children I’ve killed?...are they waiting for me…beyond the veil…to torture me with fire?”
“They are, Queen, unless you are riven with remorse and repent.”
“Throw him out!” Igerne said to her Amazons. “Bring me…a Druid bishop…with better answers…”
She wept and bled over her crowns.
“Take this one.” She flung at Arthur a gold circlet with five points and five rubies. “Good enough for a queen…it will suit a duke’s head...”
She closed her eyes again and fell into a chest-bubbling sleep.
We kept vigil with her through the night. She slept and raved, slept and coughed, and slept.
At morning’s first light, her breathing improved.
She sat up, startled to be alive. She called for bread and oil, for the king, for women to wash her feet and hands and to lime yellow her graying hair.
Gurthrygen crept into the lady chapel.
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“Like a Pagan slithering before the Almighty,” she said to him.
“Better, I think?” Gurthrygen said.
“Where were you while I was dying?”
“Weeping in the next room.”
“Wenching in the next room, my Lord of Venus the Diseased.”
“Your foul temper’s returned. You must be better.”
“That will be the last thing to leave my corpus and you know it.”
Igerne gestured at Arthur and me. “As my newest and loyalest vassals, these two stood with me through the night when my king-son-husband could not, weeping as he was with his concubines.”
“They wept, too!”
“Wept in fury to argue which of them would be first to rob my corpse!”
Igerne ate her morning bread dipped in mare’s milk. “Where’s the garlic? That’s what my lungs need.” Slaves brought it in globes. She ate it like apples.
Igerne said to her husband, “I’ve confirmed Arthur in Cornwall.”
Arthur spun the crown on a finger as proof.
“You can keep it,” Gurthrygen said to his brother. “May you be happy with that filthy country of traitors.”
Igerne said, “They’ll keep him too busy to cause you mischief. They’ll keep him out of our part of Britain until I die.”
“Then I’ll think of something else for him,” said the king.
“Have you learned to think?” said the queen. “Then think of this. He’s the last male issue of Uther Pendragon. I killed all the other children. The glory of Uther’s blood will persuade the electors to choose him king after you.”
“Why not Morgause? She was born first…”
“She’s a witch, you fool. They’d elect a merlin sooner.”
“What about that damned sword in its stone?”
“That’s our insurance Arthur won’t try to shove you off your throne.”
Arthur clapped his ducal crown over the hilt of his sword in its scabbard. “I can wait,” he said.
Gurthrygen and Igerne said together, “Can you?”
Igerne said, “Until you can draw the sword, you support the king by never coming near him again. The crown comes to you next, so let Gurthrygen enjoy what he has without worry. Let me enjoy my own crown in peace, which is what I really want.”
“Seems to me,” said Arthur, “you’d be smarter to kill me.”
“We tried,” said Igerne. “But your merlin got in our way.”
“She always will,” I said.
Igerne felt her mouth with the back of her hand. No blood. She cried, “Slaves, take me to the baths! Send my pet Dunwallo. I need his prayers, lots of prayers and incense. I’d have him sacrifice blue-painted virgins to save me if I could find any virgins in this benighted land. More garlic!”
Slaves carried out the queen on a litter.
Gurthrygen, left alone with Arthur and me, said, “Do you really want Cornwall, Brother?”
“It’s mine.”
“Oh, it’s yours, if you can keep it.”
The king slouched down on Igerne’s blood-spattered bed and rubbed his weary face with his battle-blunted hands.
“Everything in Britain is in rebellion against everything else, Brother, Cornwall no less than any other pestilential corner of the Island. I fight the Pagan hordes and the Britons, too. Every duke and kinglet is my rival. Every knight and ex-Legionary is their rival. Every peasant has his rival, and every slave. We’re all good Romans on this island, hating and killing one another before he try to kill the barbarians smashing in the gates.”
He gazed out the open window. A bird darted past, like something that was not there becoming there and vanishing again. Like life and kingship. The king stared into the blankness the bird had left.
“The country’s going to its atomos,” he said. “Saxons steal bits from the south and east. Scots, Picts, and Irish take bites from north and west. Norwayans, Gauls, Romans. Even the Bretons, our loving bastard cousins across the Narrow Sea, bite us. Britain’s crumbling to a thousand clan-kingdoms. Cities die. Country villas turn to dust. In a year, we’ll be howling naked through the trees like a Scot!”
The king got to his feet and leaned in toward Arthur. “But do you know what really worries me, Brother? Sewerage pipes! The Romans put them down and they’re rotting away and the water’s gone bad everywhere and plague spreads. Money! I never have enough of it to build bridges or bribe country princes to plant food for eating instead of saffron to sell abroad for fortunes. Babies! I can’t get enough of them to refill the dwindling population, much less my army. Not to mention enough of nails for horseshoes, leather and brine for armor, chickens for my peasants after the Saxons eat their pigs and burn their hovels.”
Gurthrygen suddenly looked old and spent. He pulled Arthur down beside him on the queen’s bloody bed.
“There’s so much you have to learn to be a king, Arthur. It’s more than war and political adultery. It’s bookkeeping, for Jesu’s sake. You have to learn to count past twenty, believe me! It’s counting soldiers, counting their shoes, counting the sheaves of wheat that make their bread, counting the villages that grow the sheaves, counting the peasants and the animals that feed them, counting the loss of children by disease, of women by overwork, the days of rain and sun, the amphorae of bad Greek and good Italian wine and the gold coins that go out of the kingdom to pay for them. It’s the gold coins going out that most worry me. It’s counting the oh-so-many priests of the all-too-many gods, counting and balancing rival warlords and landowners, weighing justice among Romans, Britons, strangers, and all the mixtures in between. It’s the wearisome worry counting-counting-counting the too many stones that pop up out of the ground in a freeze year and counting the too few edible frogs born in a dry year. Or the too many foxes that ravage the fields or too few hawks to give too little sport to warriors who will kill anything for pleasure, and what warriors kill best is the livelihood of the nation.”
The king rubbed an anxious hand across his face. “I tell you, Brother, you might pull the sword and become king. But to stay king you better remake my sorry government like Boadicea’s old war bands that ruled before the Caesars came here, when life was simple and pure. Keep away from modern government. Keep away from all counting! Let your merlin do that. Kill any Roman who wants to give you ‘advice.’ What he means to teach you is Complication, something to sap the liver of a king. I haven’t time to teach you any of that, and damn me for it. You’ll have to learn it in Cornwall on your own. You’ll have to learn it to survive. I could weep for you!”
Gurthrygen threw an arm over Arthur’s shoulder and said, earnestly, “That, Brother, is what must worry you out there among the Cornishmen. They’re the most bloody-minded of the old Spanish Celts. Let them live as they please and have what they want, which is women in charge and everyone playing those awful bagpipes. Give them that and they’ll stick to you until they’ve sucked you dry. Which is as much as any prince can hope from his people. And when you’re a dry husk and they rebel, shove the lovely Lady Merlin into the fight ahead of you and run.”
I laughed. What else could I do? Gurthrygen’s was a marvelous speech, the first honest words I’d heard from any king in too many of my lives.
“You’ve just had an education in kingship, Arthur,” I said. “Remember it.”
“We’ll leave for Cornwall this hour,” said Arthur.
Gurthrygen clutched Arthur’s sword hand. “I’ve tried to kill you, Brother, but now that I have you with me, even as the queen’s vassal, even as duke of far Cornwall, I’ll love you as a brother and fellow prince. Because you alive terrifies my enemies.”
The king pointed to me. “What terrifies me is this one.”
“Me?” I said.
“You and your fantastic dream of ‘Camelot.’ I see those fine, freshening tits, the firm legs, and the tight waist, despite your mail and greaves. The perfect girlish fingers. The soft and tender face. Has too much youth and youth’s stupidity infected you, Lady Merlin
? Will you have the strength to guide Arthur through what has to come next?”
“What comes next?” I said.
“You know it. All the universe falls on his head when he becomes king.”
Arthur got up from the bench and saluted Gurthrygen. He and I went to the door to leave.
Gurthrygen said, “Bring me a gift when you return.”
“What could you want?” said Arthur.
“Some comfort for an old, old man of twenty-nine envious of your youth.”
“I’ll bring a bag of Cornish soil to rest your old feet upon.”
* * *
In the lady chapel’s anteroom, we found a gossiping gaggle of Romans. Rufus Maximus, the king’s First Roman, hideously toupeed and in Roman in toga with the purple trim of an Equestrian, broke from the group and said, with his usual nasal arrogance, “I’m Rufus Maximus, Prince Arthur. What message does my Lady Merlin send to me by you?”
“Ask her yourself,” said Arthur.
Rufus turned to me, not believing. “You, girl, are Lady Merlin? You could be your daughter!”
He leaned in to study my face, more astonished Romans leaning over his shoulder to stare with him.
“Mars and Jupiter, I believe you are Merlin,” said Rufus, a fright crossing his face. “So the children’s stories are true? You age the wrong way through life!”
The other Romans hissed and gibbered at each other, marveling and terrified. Rufus waved them out of the anteroom. They were happy to get away from me.
Rufus bowed before me, laughing at himself in frightened astonishment at a Roman’s bowing before an alien of any rank.
“For two years, Princess Merlin, I’ve kept our contract to preserve the king. What do you want from me now, Lady?”
“A soldier’s job.”
Light flashed in Rufus’ face. The old colonel of the Ninth Legion cried, “No more clerking with ink on my fingers? No more counting sheep and sheaves? You want me to fight? To command your legions? Yes, Lady, yes!”
Rufus shouted for slaves to bring bread and oil. Meat and wine. Trestle tables and benches. Not so grand accommodation as the lounging dining style of the Romans, but it was the British style and suited me better.