by Jane Yolen
“Then I will put my hand to it, my lord,” Lancelot said. “Because you require it, not because I desire it.” He shuttered his eyes.
“Do not just put your hand there. You must try, damn you,” the king whispered fiercely. “You must really try.”
Lancelot opened his eyes and some small fire, reflecting perhaps from the candles or the torches or the solstice flames, seemed to glow there for a moment. Then, in an instant, the fire in his eyes was gone. He stepped up to the stone, put his hand to the sword, and seemed to address it. His lips moved but no sound came out. Taking a deep breath, he pulled. Then, letting the breath out slowly, he leaned back.
The stone began to move.
The crowd gasped in a single voice.
“Arthur …” Kai began, his hand on the king’s arm.
Sweat appeared on Lancelot’s brow and the king could feel an answering band of sweat on his own. He could feel the weight of Lancelot’s pull between his own shoulder blades and he held his breath with the knight.
The stone began to slide along the courtyard mosaic, but the sword did not slip from its mooring. It was a handle for the stone, nothing more After a few inches, the stone stopped moving. Lancelot withdrew his hand from the hilt, bowed slightly toward the king, and took two steps back.
“I cannot unsheath the king’s sword,” he said. His voice was remarkably level for a man who had just moved a ton of stone.
“Is there no one else?” asked Merlinnus, slowly looking around.
No one in the crowd dared to meet his eyes and there followed a long, full silence.
Then, from the left, came a familiar light voice. “Let King Arthur try.” It was Gawen.
At once the crowd picked up its cue. “Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!” they shouted. And, wading into their noise like a swimmer in heavy swells breasting the waves, the king walked to the stone. Putting his right hand on the sword hilt, he turned his face to the people.
“For Britain!” he cried.
Merlinnus nodded, crossed his forefingers, and sighed a spell in Latin.
Arthur pulled. With a slight whoosh the sword slid out of the slot. He put his left hand above his right on the hilt and swung the sword over his head once, twice, and then a third time. Then he brought it slowly down before him until its point touched the earth.
“Now I be king. Of all Britain,” he said.
Kai picked up the circlet from the stone and placed it on Arthur’s head, and the chant of his name began anew. But even as he was swept up, up, up into the air by Kai and Lancelot to ride their shoulders above the crowd, Arthur’s eyes met the mage’s. He whispered fiercely to Merlinnus who could read his lips though his voice could scarcely carry against the noise.
“I will see you in your tower. Tonight!”
Merlinnus was waiting when two hours later the king slipped into his room, the sword in his left hand.
“So now you are king of all Britain indeed,” said Merlinnus. “And none can say you no. Was I not right? A bit of legerdemain and …”
The king’s face was gray in the room’s candlelight. “Merlinnus, you do not understand. I am not the king. There is another.”
“Another what?” asked the mage.
“Another king. Another sword.”
Merlinnus shook his head. “You are tired, lord. It has been a long day and an even longer night.”
Arthur came over and grabbed the old man’s shoulder with his right hand. “Merlinnus, this is not the same sword.”
“My lord, you are mistaken. It can be no other.”
Arthur swept the small crown off his head and dropped it into the mage’s lap. “I am a simple man, Merlinnus, and I am an honest one. I do not know much, though I am trying to learn more. I read slowly and understand only with help. What I am best at is soldiering. What I know best is swords. The sword I held months ago in my hands is not the sword I hold now. That sword had a balance to it, a grace such as I had never felt before. It knew me, knew my hand. There was a pattern on the blade that looked now like wind, now like fire. This blade, though it has fine watering, looks like nothing.
“I am not an imaginative man, Merlinnus, so I am not imagining this. This is not the sword that was in the stone. And if it is not, where is that sword? And what man took it? For he, not I, is the rightful born king of all Britain. And I would be the first in the land to bend my knee to him.”
Merlinnus put his hand to his head and stared at the crown in his lap. “I swear to you, Arthur, no man alive could move that sword from the stone lest I spoke the words.”
There was a slight sound from behind the heavy curtains bordering the window, and a small figure emerged holding a sword in two hands. “I am afraid that I took the sword, my lords.”
“Gawen!” cried Merlinnus and Arthur at once.
The boy knelt before Arthur and held up the sword before him.
Arthur bent down and pulled the boy up. The sword was between them.
“It is I should kneel to you, my young king.”
Gawen shook his head and a slight flush covered his cheeks. “I cannot be king now or ever. Not rex quondam, rexque futurus.”
“How pulled you the sword, then?” Merlinnus asked. “Speak. Be quick about it.”
The boy placed the sword in Arthur’s hands. “I brought a slab of butter to the stone one night and melted the butter over candle flames. When it was a river of gold I poured it into the slot and the sword slid out. Just like that.”
“A trick. A homey trick that any herb wife might …” Merlinnus began.
Arthur turned on him, sadly. “No more a trick, mage, than my pulling a sword loosed by your spell. The boy is, in fact, the better of us two, for he worked it out by himself.” He shifted and spoke directly to Gawen. “A king needs such cunning. But he needs a good right hand as well. I shall be yours, my lord, though I envy you the sword.”
“The sword is yours, Arthur, never mine. Though I can now thrust and slash, having learned that much under the ham-handedness of your good tutor, I shall not ride to war. I have learned to fear the blade’s edge as well as respect it.” Gawen smiled.
The king turned again to Merlinnus. “Help me, mage. I do not understand.”
Merlinnus rose and put the crown back on Arthur’s head. “But I think I do, at last, though why I should be so slow to note it, I wonder. Age must dull the mind as well as the fingers. I have had an ague of the brain this fall. I said no man but you could pull the sword—and no man has.” He held out his hand. “Come, child. You shall make a lovely May queen, I think. By then the hair should be long enough for Sir Kai’s list, though what, I think, we shall ever do about the short utterances is beyond me.”
“A girl? He’s a girl?” Arthur looked baffled.
“Magic even beyond my making,” said Merlinnus. “But what is your name, child? Surely not Gawen.”
“Guenevere,” she said. “I came to learn to be a knight in order to challenge Sir Gawain who had dishonored my sister. But I find—”
“That he is a bubblehead and not worth the effort?” interrupted Arthur. “He shall marry her and he shall be glad of it, for you shall be my queen and, married to your sister, he shall be my brother.”
Guenevere laughed. “She will like that, too. Her head is as empty as his. But she is my sister. And without a brother to champion her, I had to do.”
Merlinnus laughed. “And you did splendidly. But about that butter trick …”
Guenevere put her hand over her breast. “I shall never tell as long as …” she hesitated.
“Anything,” Arthur said. “Ask for anything.”
“As long as I can have my sword back.”
Arthur looked longingly at the sword, hefted it once, and then put it solemnly in her hand.
“Oh, not this one,” Guenevere said. “It is too heavy and unwieldy. It does not sit well in my hand. I mean the other, the one you pulled.”
“Oh, that,” said Arthur. “With all my heart.”
Thi
s is what Merlin advised: to go to Ireland to the place called the Giants’ Circle on Mount Killara, for there were stones of a marvellous appearance. “And there is no one, lord, in this age who knows anything about those stones. And they shall not be got by might or by strength, but by art. And if these stones were here as they are there, they would stand forever.”
—Historia Regum Britanniae
by Geoffrey of Monmouth
Merlin at Stonehenge
How could you know, seeing it today,
Stones upon stones, lintel and base,
The hallowing it set in play
For that long forgotten race
Who worshipped and who danced below
The hanging stones—how could you know?
How could you know, a traveler here
To view the sight through camera lens,
How this great rock dance did appear?
You get your shot, you pay your pence,
Then briefly glance around the place,
This mummery of a long lost race.
You see but stones, I saw a king,
A place, a time where time was not,
A sword and crown foreshadowing
The world without a Camelot.
The image fades but does not die,
And no one knows so well as I.
You see but circles, I saw stars;
A horseshoe where I counted sun
And the slow encircling Mars
That crowned the stones when day was done
And sounded out the deep refrain
Of faith upon Salisbury Plain.
Was it strange men in hot parade
Who set the stones upon the grass
Then picnicked in the lengthening shade
And watched the English noontide pass?
Or was it magic by some mage
Who did these very stones engage?
The tale’s been told. I am not shy
To claim the credit for this ring.
All stories do not have to lie,
All lying’s not an evil thing.
I piped the stones off Erin’s land.
The mouth is mightier than the hand.
This be sage handiwork, I swear,
Hic jacet Merlinnus Magister.
And as they rode, Arthur said, “I have no sword.”
“No force,” said Merlin, “hereby is a sword that shall be yours, an I may.”
So they rode till they came to a lake, the which was a fair water and broad, and in the midst of the lake Arthur was ware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in that hand.
“Lo!” said Merlin, “yonder is that sword that I spake of.”
With that they saw a damosel going upon the lake.
“What damosel is that?” said Arthur.
“That is the Lady of the Lake,” said Merlin; “and within that lake is a rock, and therein is as fair a place as any on earth, and richly beseen; and this damosel will come to you anon, and then speak ye fair to her that she will give you that sword.”
—Le Morte D’Arthur
by Sir Thomas Malory
Evian Steel
YNIS EVELONIA, THE ISLE of Women, lies within the marshy tidal river Tamor that is itself but a ribbon stretched between the Mendip and the Quantock hills. The isle is scarcely remarked from the shore. It is as if Manannan MacLir himself had shaken his cloak between.
On most days there is an unsettling mist obscuring the irregular coast of the isle; and only in the full sun, when the light just rising illuminates a channel, can any passage across the glass-colored waters be seen. And so it is that women alone, who have been schooled in the hidden causeways across the fen, mother to daughter down through the years, can traverse the river in coracles that slip easily through the brackish flood.
By ones and twos they come and go in their light skin boats to commerce with the Daughters of Eve who stay in holy sistership on the isle, living out their chaste lives and making with their magicks the finest blades mankind has ever known.
The isle is dotted with trees, not the great Druidic oaks that line the roadways into Godney and Meare and tower over the mazed pathways up to the high tor, but small womanish trees: alder and apple, willow and ash, leafy havens for the migratory birds. And the little isle fair rings with bird song and the clanging of hammer on anvil and steel.
But men who come to buy swords at Ynis Evelonia are never allowed farther inland than the wattle guest house with its oratory of wicker wands winded and twisted together under a rush roof. Only one man has ever slept there and is—in fact—sleeping there still. But that is the end of this story—which shall not be told—and the beginning of yet another.
Elaine stared out across the gray waters as the ferret-faced woman rowed them to the isle. Her father sat unmoving next to her in the prow of the little boat, his hands clasped together, his jaw tight. His only admonition so far had been, “Be strong. The daughter of a vavasour does not cry.
She had not cried, though surely life among the magic women on Ynis Evelonia would be far different from life in the draughty but familiar castle at Escalot. At home women were cosseted but no one feared them as they feared the Daughters of Eve, unless one had a sharp tongue like the ostler’s wife or Nanny Bess.
Elaine bent over the rim of the hide boat and tried to see her reflection in the water, the fair skin and the black hair plaited with such loving care by Nanny Bess that morning. But all she could make out was a shadow boat skimming across the waves. She popped one of her braids into her mouth, remembering Nanny’s repeated warning that some day the braid would grow there: “And what knight would wed a girl with hair agrowin’ in ’er mouth, I asks ye?” Elaine could hear Nanny’s voice, now sharp as a blade, now quiet as a lullay, whispering in her ear. She sighed.
At the sound her father looked over at her. His eyes, the faded blue of a late autumn sky, were pained and lines like runes ran across his brow.
Elaine let the braid drop from her mouth and smiled tentatively; she could not bear to disappoint him. At her small attempt at a smile he smiled back and patted her knee.
The wind spit river water into her face, as salty as tears, and Elaine hurriedly wiped her cheeks with the hem of her cape. By the time the boat rocked against the shore her face was dry.
The ferret-faced woman leaped over the side of the coracle and pulled it farther onto the sand so that Elaine and her father could debark without wading in the muddy tide. When they looked up, two women in gray robes had appeared to greet them.
“I am Mother Lisanor,” said the tallest one to the vavasour. “You must be Bernard of Escalot.”
He bowed his head, quickly removing his hat.
“And this,” said the second woman, taking Elaine by the hand, “must be the fair Elaine. Come child. You shall eat with me and share my bed this night. A warm body shall keep away any bad dreams.”
“Madam …” the vavasour began.
“Mother Sonda,” the woman interrupted him.
“Mother Sonda, may my daughter and I have a moment to say good-bye? She has never been away from home before.” There was the slightest suggestion of a break in his voice.
“We have found, Sir Bernard, that it is best to part quickly. I had suggested in my letter to you that you leave Elaine on the Shapwick shore. This is an island of women. Men come here for commerce sake alone. Ynis Evelonia is Elaine’s home now. But fear you not. We shall train her well.” She gave a small tug on Elaine’s hand and started up the hill and Elaine, all unprotesting, went with her.
Only once, at the top of the small rise, did Elaine turn back. Her father was still standing by the coracle, hat in hand, the sun setting behind him. He was haloed against the darkening sky. Elaine made a small noise, almost a whimper. Then she popped the braid in her mouth. Like a cork in a bottle, it stoppered the sound. Without a word more, she followed Mother Sonda toward the great stone house that nestled down in the valley in the ver
y center of the isle.
The room in the smithy was lit only by the flickering of the fire as Mother Hesta pumped the bellows with her foot. A big woman, whose right arm was more muscular than her left, Hesta seemed comfortable with tools rather than with words. The air from the bellows blew up a sudden large flame that had a bright blue heart.
“See, there. There. When the flames be as long as an arrow and the heart of the arrowhead be blue, thrust the blade in,” she said, speaking to the new apprentice.
Elaine shifted from one foot to another, rubbing the upper part of her right arm where the brand of Eve still itched. Then she twisted one of her braids up and into her mouth, sucking on the end while she watched but saying nothing.
“You’ll see me do this again and again, girl,” the forge mistress said. “But it be a year afore I let you try it on your own. For now, you must watch and listen and learn. Fire and water and air make Evian steel, fire and water and air. They be three of the four majorities. And one last thing—though I’ll not tell you that yet, for that be our dearest secret. But harken: what be made by the Daughters of Eve strikes true. All men know this and that be why they come here, crost the waters, for our blades. They come, hating it that they must, but knowing only at our forge on this holy isle can they buy this steel. It be the steel that cuts through evil, that strikes the heart of what it seeks.”
The girl nodded and her attention blew upon the small fire of words.
“It matters not, child, that we make a short single edge, or what the old Romies called a glady-us. It matters not we make a long blade or a double edge. If it be Evian steel, it strikes true.” She brought the side of her hand down in a swift movement which made the girl blink twice, but otherwise she did not move, the braid still in her mouth.
Mother Hesta turned her back on the child and returned to work, the longest lecture done. Her muscles under the short sleeved tunic bunched and flattened. Sweat ran over her arms like an exotic chain of water beads as she hammered steadily on the sword, flattening, shaping, beating out the swellings and bulges that only her eye could see, only her fingers could find. The right arm beat, the left arm, with its fine traceries of scars, held.