Sleepless Knights

by Mark Williams

  “Including you,” said Kay.

  “We are a small band of knights in exile, supported by our servants.”

  “Forgive me, but what do you mean by ‘servants?’ ” interrupted Sir Lucas.

  “Kitchen staff and the like. Their acting leader has proved herself skilful with a sword. The rest of them… less so.”

  “Forgive me again, but what is her n —”

  “Damn it, Culver, let the man talk! I apologise for my servant’s rudeness, I shall thrash him later. Continue, Sir Knight.”

  “Our numbers are swelled by those of our fellow folk sick of seeing their land fall into ruin. But we are no more than a hundred. Gathered in a valley known as Camlann, a day’s ride over yonder hill. At noon tomorrow, Midsummer’s Day, we ride against Mordred for one last battle. We are sorely outnumbered, but we intend to take many of his men down with us. You find me out on a final sortie, seeking any still loyal to the name of King Arthur.”

  “With stout souls like you fighting for her, perhaps all is not lost at Camelot,” said Sir Kay.

  “You know the name of Camelot, then?” said Sir Gareth.

  “Indeed I do,” said Sir Kay.

  “Perhaps from some of those legends you have heard.”

  “That’ll be it.”

  “Chronicles, one might call them,” said Sir Gareth, raising his eyebrows.

  “One might,” said Sir Kay.

  “Tell me, Sir Howard. How did you lose your eye?” asked Sir Gareth.

  “Duelling. Nasty business. But you should see the other fellow, eh Culver?”

  “He came off the worst, Sir Howard,” said Sir Lucas.

  “Sir, would you think me rude if I were to ask you to remove your eye patch?” Sir Gareth said. “You seem passing familiar, and it would satisfy my curiosity.”

  “I can’t, I’m afraid. It, er —”

  “Your request goes against Sir Howard’s strict religious beliefs, and will have to be declined,” said Sir Lucas.

  “Yes, that’s right. It would not do to anger my gods and suchlike.”

  “Well, I must ride on,” said Sir Gareth. “If you have a heart for lost causes, perhaps you may join us tomorrow.”

  “Perhaps we may,” said Sir Kay.

  “You, and… anyone else you may bump into on the road.”

  “Till we meet again,” said Sir Lucas.

  “In this life or the next,” said Sir Gareth, urging his horse on. “By the way Culver, you have some moss on your lip.”

  VI

  “That settles it,” said Sir Lancelot. “We go, and we go now.”

  Sir Lucas and Sir Kay had returned to find him in a state of frenzied activity, his horse saddled and ready to leave, even before they had delivered the news that sent them back to the hidden glade with all haste. Throughout the imparting of their tidings, King Arthur had remained a picture of serenity. He sat cross-legged by the unlit fire, using the edge of Excalibur to whittle on a stick, carving it into a small sculpture of a woman’s head.

  “We go nowhere without Gawain, Pellinore and Perceval,” he said, gathering up a handful of wood shavings and setting them aside for kindling.

  “Then, Lucas should remain here until they arrive. With luck and a fair wind they may also make the battle while there is still time.”

  “No, Lancelot.”

  “But we have no choice!”

  “There is always a choice.”

  “Didn’t you hear a single word Kay said? This time tomorrow, it will all be over! If we ride now, there is a chance, a good chance, that we can turn the tide. Mordred will not be so cocksure when King Arthur returns to reclaim Camelot.”

  “Do you think?”

  “Every second we wait, we risk losing our loved ones.”

  “Our loved ones?”

  Sir Lancelot paused before replying. “Yes,” he said.

  “Now who might that be, I wonder?” The King dropped his stick and stood up. “I know, Lancelot,” he said. “I know it all.”

  “Know what?”

  “You may think me blind. You may think me deaf. But at least do me the honour of not thinking me stupid,” said the King.

  “I — sire, no. It was never…”

  King Arthur’s voice took on the light tone of one delivering a delightful anecdote. “As for me, Lancelot, my ‘loved one’ was lost to me a long time ago. And as for Camelot; if Mordred wants it so badly, let him have it. I have no use for it. I have found something better. Something time can never tarnish.”

  “Sire? What do you mean?” said Sir Kay.

  “Let me show you,” said King Arthur.

  Sir Lancelot walked towards his horse. “You have lost your mind,” he said.

  “No, Lancelot,” said the King.

  Lancelot turned back to find the point of Excalibur pressed against his heart. The last few rays of the sun caught the blade, tracing its outline in gold.

  “I have found it.”

  King Arthur thrust Excalibur through Sir Lancelot’s breast and did not stop until the hilt lay flush to his chest.

  “Now tell me,” said the King, pulling Sir Lancelot close to him, as if in an embrace. “How does it feel?”

  Sir Lancelot held the King’s gaze, even as he drew in what was surely his last breath.

  “Hurts.”

  “That’s a sundered heart for you. Hurts like the devil. But beyond that. In your soul. What does it feel like?”

  “Like… the end.”

  The King nodded, as if that was the very response he had been seeking. “Again, you are wrong.”

  King Arthur pulled out Excalibur lightly and fiercely from Sir Lancelot’s chest. Sir Lancelot gasped in agony as the sword point came free in a wellspring of blood. Sir Lucas and Sir Kay cried out to see such a dolorous stroke delivered. They moved to help the dying knight, but the King blocked their way with the dripping blade. Lancelot teetered on his feet, first to the left, then to the right, as if deciding on the best spot to fall and breathe his last. From beneath the King’s horse, the Grail hovered up to its master’s side. “No-one ever died of a broken heart. No matter what the minstrels say,” said the King.

  Of its own accord, the Grail moved up to Sir Lancelot’s face. The cauldron had filled with a dark liquid, a rich and heady brew. It tilted itself to his lips, and Sir Lancelot drank. And no sooner did he swallow, than the blood ceased to bubble from his wound and the light of life returned to his eyes.

  “Do you see?” said the King. “The Grail can restore life, preserve life, sustain life. Eternally. That is why we will not be going back to Camelot. For there is nothing there but death.”

  King Arthur lowered Excalibur. But as he did so, his hand began to shake, as if the sword were being struck by many hammers at the same time. The King held tight to the hilt and trembled mightily until, with a crack like the pulling of a rotten tooth, Excalibur split down the middle in a jagged break, shattering into a thousand tiny pieces. The smithereens of the sword, hilt and all, burnt and hissed as they fell upon the grass, dissolving back to that place deep in the Otherworld where Excalibur was first forged.

  Then it was King Arthur’s turn to bleed, and most freely, from many places all over his body. Not least from his neck, where the old bite mark of a werewolf bloomed across his skin. At the sight of this Sir Lucas and Sir Kay, frozen to the spot by all they had just seen, came to life again and rushed to the King’s aid. But so great in number were his ailments that they knew not where to direct their assistance first. Just as it had done for Sir Lancelot, the Grail came unbidden to the maimed King. He drank from it, a long deep draught, but it provided no healing for his many wounds. Then Sir Lucas ran to King Arthur’s horse, and took from his saddlebag the scabbard of Excalibur, and fastened it about the King’s sword belt. Only then did the bleeding stop; only then did the wounds close and miraculously heal.

  Thus King Arthur brought upon himself the curse of Excalibur, because he used the sword against another who had also wielded t
hat enchanted blade. And thus he was fated to retain the scabbard about his person for the rest of his days, on pain of death from the thousand cuts the magical covering had ever saved him from.

  †

  True to their word, it was noon on the following day when Perceval, Gawain and Pellinore came riding down the road from the east. Sir Lucas met them at the crossroads, and accompanied them to the hidden glade.

  Many words had passed between King Arthur and Sir Lancelot that previous night, after their confrontation. Sir Kay and Sir Lucas sat apart from them, their hearts full anxious, so that the first light of day fell upon a company of tired and sleepless knights. Kay and Lucas had not been party to their parleying, but were addressed by Arthur and Lancelot before they broke their fast. The King gave his orders. They would not be joining the last battle, for that would be futile. Instead, the company were shortly to embark upon a new quest; one made possible thanks to the bountiful Grail. To spare the heartbreak of their fellow knights, not a word was to be said to Gawain, Perceval or Pellinore, of Kay and Lucas’s meeting with Sir Gareth on the road, and of all he had told them. Lucas and Kay looked to Lancelot, who nodded his consent, and so both men swore a solemn oath of secrecy.

  So it was that when their three companions arrived, they were told that, during the seven years of their absence, Camelot had fallen into a long and terrible decline. Not a single soul remained alive within her walls. All they had once known and loved had fallen into wrack and ruin, utterly destroyed by civil war. On hearing this, each knight bowed his head, his heart heavy with sorrow and his eyes full of tears.

  Suddenly Sir Gawain became so wonderfully wroth that he took up his axe and hewed in frenzy at a tree. Then he vowed, amid heavy cursing, to find Sir Mordred and tear him apart. Only Sir Lancelot succeeded in calming his savage fury. He told Gawain that he had seen the smithereens of Camelot with his own eyes, but of Mordred there was no sign. And Sir Gawain threw himself upon Sir Lancelot’s shoulder and wept nigh out of his mind.

  The King left each knight to his own grief for a time. Then at last he spoke. “This is not a time for sorrow,” he said, and at his words the Grail rose up above him like a crown. “My knights, today is a glorious day. We have been given that rarest of gifts. The chance to start again. Today is the first day of the quest of our lives. The Eternal Quest. The noble dream of Camelot will never die, while we seven are still alive to uphold it. And thanks to the Grail, we shall uphold it forever.”

  The Grail shone in the glade, and all seven felt themselves transported back to those sweet heavens glimpsed from the Prydwen in flight, as if a second sun were rising in the east. And King Arthur’s voice rang out like a bell, saying…

  VII

  …where the bloody hell did I put the last page?”

  Sir Kay tossed the thick bundle of manuscript onto the table and looked frantically around him. The fire had burned down to embers and my clothes were fully dry. The storm had passed, along with most of the night. “Bloody typical. Well, you know how it ends. The King gets the Grail to freeze our physical growth from that day forth, providing, of course we meet every year on the same day to drink again. We start our secret freelance life of truth, justice and the Arthurian way, also known as the Glorious and Eternal Quest. And away we trot to France to lay low until we’re forgotten about, riding off into the sunset. Or sunrise. I forget which. It was definitely sunny. Anyway, what do you think?”

  “This new draft is a vast improvement, Sir Kay, but —”

  “You hated it, didn’t you.”

  “No, not at all.”

  “The corners of your mouth are twitching like they always do when you don’t like something. It’s the writing style, isn’t it? You hate my style.”

  “No, Sir Kay. The problem —”

  “So there is a problem, then! I knew it.”

  “The problem is one of content. Specifically, in relation to our ‘lying low in France,’ as you put it, and its effect on the aforementioned tavern talk.”

  “Go on…”

  “The Master feels that the very existence of your Chronicles is a threat to the continuation of the Eternal Quest. Until now, he has found it useful, even necessary, to maintain our secret history. Recently, as I have said, he has had cause to revise that opinion.”

  “But that’s crazy! How can my stories be a threat when no bugger will ever read them, apart from you and the King? It’s not as if anybody can read on this island, aside from us and about eight monks.”

  “Be that as it may, the Master envisions a time when far more primacy is placed upon the written word.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “He wants you to start again. To write a brand new history. One that ends by stating that King Arthur and his knights did not go off to seek the Grail, but remained at Camelot, where they died in a last battle against the usurper Mordred.”

  “Died?”

  “Unequivocally. And permanently.”

  “Blimey. Talk about a downbeat ending.”

  “The Master even has a title and a pen name in mind. The History of King Arthur and His Noble Knights by Godfrey of Wales.”

  “That’s… actually not bad.”

  “Then, having written this definitive history, you are to circulate it amongst monks and clerics schooled in the art of penmanship. So that it might be copied, and eventually filter down to the common people, to become the accepted version of things.”

  “I see. So, all of this,” Sir Kay waved a hand over the heap of parchment, “just stays between us?”

  “No, Sir Kay. The Master wishes you to destroy all your existing Chronicles.”

  “When you say ‘wishes’…”

  “I am under express instructions to consign every last piece of parchment to the flames,” I said.

  “Oh.”

  “I am sorry, Sir Kay.”

  “The very thing I was threatening to do when you first arrived. Talk about dramatic irony.”

  “Indeed, Sir Kay.”

  “Right then. Best make a start, I suppose. I shall see to it the moment you leave.”

  “My orders are to witness the book’s destruction with my own eyes. I really am sorry, Sir Kay.”

  “Stop apologising Lucas, for God’s sake.” Sir Kay sighed and sat down. He picked up a flagon, but not a drop of wine remained. “Official History, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Big potential readership, there. Something like that could last for a long time.”

  “That is the intention, Sir Kay.”

  “Right then. Put the kettle on the fire, Lucas.”

  “The fire is almost out, Sir Kay.”

  “We’ll soon sort that, won’t we?”

  Sir Kay dropped the first pile of his Chronicles onto the embers and stirred them up with the poker. The cottage filled with the smell of burning parchment. A single page lay at my feet. I picked it up and glanced at the last line. ‘And they rode off into the sunrise, into the dawn of the Eternal Quest.’ I added it to the fire. Sir Kay selected a clean page, cut a fresh quill, and started to write as the flames licked higher.

  The Otherday

  I

  As I swished and spun in the Otherworld vortex, I offered up a prayer of repentance for every spider I had mistakenly washed down a drain. I soon lost all sense of my bearings as I was buffeted in every direction, and sometimes in several directions at once. The sound was like a torrent of water thundering in my ears. And all I could see were dazzling swirls of colour, as if a child were scribbling on my retina with a handful of crayons. It therefore came as no surprise that I could make out nothing at all of Merlin within this supernatural whirlpool.

  Just when I could not endure the experience for a second longer, my feet touched solid ground. My senses gradually steadied and reset themselves. Sir Pellinore’s lifeless body lay heavy on my shoulder, but I was reluctant to put him down until I had gathered my bearings. I blinked a few times.

  No Merlin. Nobody at all.r />
  I was in a large, gloomy room, its true size obscured by endless tables piled with teetering towers of dirty plates, bowls and serving dishes. My hands itched at such vast dereliction of domestic duty. But it was difficult to know where to begin, not least because everything beyond my immediate surroundings was obscured with a dingy haze. I was also still burdened with Sir Pellinore, so I lowered him as gently as I could to the floor. Something crunched beneath his body. I looked down and saw that the vortex had delivered me knee-deep into the middle of a graveyard of unburied carcasses.

  My first thought was that the room was the site of a battle, even a massacre, but I breathed slightly easier when I realised the remains belonged to various species of animal. The glowing eyes of a large rat, very much alive, stared at me from inside a boar skull, on which half of the flesh still hung like a loose hood. The rodent was competing for the stinking meat with a swarm of flies, and small pulsing forms I was happy to assume without closer inspection to be maggots. Disturbed mid-meal, the rat dived for cover. His departure alerted his unseen dining companions, and the putrid bones around me shook with secret scurrying.

  This sudden movement jolted the nearest table. A stack of plates, poised on the edge like coins in an amusement park machine, crashed down onto the floor, the sound strangely muffled in the room’s heavy atmosphere. This sound in turn provoked a different kind of movement, coming from the darkness over to my right.

  “Hello?” I called, my voice feeble in that vast expanse. The commotion was coming from a large empty alcove. A thumping sound, as of something hard knocking against stone. The wide space of the alcove was festooned in thick cobwebs. I brushed them away and leaned my head inside. The pounding came again, making me jump and bang my head, dislodging a cloud of black dust.

  A heavy thud, thud, thud was coming from under the stone floor.

  “Merlin?” I whispered.

  An arm shot up out of the stone, and I fell backwards onto a bed of sharp bones. The arm snatched at my foot, grabbing my ankle and pulling me towards the hole from which it had appeared. I flailed about for a hand-hold, my palms sliding on the greasy floor, the phantom arm dragging me ever closer. I changed my tactic and faced the creature head on. I caught a glimpse of green eyes and yellow teeth, before I smashed a serving platter into its monstrous face. The creature released its grip with a low groan. Then another hand pulled me up onto my feet. “Run!” said a male voice, its owner turning away before I could see his face.