By his voice, Balin could tell the man was grinning.
“You are angling, I think, sir. No, I am not Hibernian. My father is King Astlabor of Galilee.”
“So you’re a prince…like Lanceor?”
“I am, but unlike him, I shall never see a throne, God willing.”
This surprised Balin. He had never spoken to a noble who didn’t want his father’s throne.
“You don’t want to be a king?”
“I should settle into the throne if it were required of me of course, but with nine elder brothers, I would rather be a poor man-at-arms than for my family to suffer the calamity necessary to set a crown on my head.”
Nine brothers seemed a staggering amount to Balin, but he supposed King Astlabor must be a polygamist. Certainly no Christian woman would deign to bring forth that many babies alone.
“You are from Galilee? Are you a Jew, then?”
“There are not many Jews left in Galilee. My father is a Muslim. Myself, I was born here in Albion, with two of my brothers, and a sister. My father, by long and storied roads, came to save the life of King Pellinore from a beast in the Gaste Forest. Pellinore’s friendship was such that my father visited often along with various of his wives, and four of his children were born here. My brother Segwarides made his home in Cornwall. We are both Christian, as is our sister Florine. But my brother Palomedes cleaves to my father’s faith.”
Balin found the man pleasant and wished they had met as two knights of good standing, rather than with shameful bars between them.
“And Lanceor, he will be a king?”
Sir Safir lowered his voice considerably.
“He is the only son of one of the minor kings of Hibernia, Elidus by name, and he will likely marry the daughter of King Anguish. My brother Palomedes and I were, until recently, knights of Anguish.”
King Anguish had been one of the eleven rebels.
“Did you fight at Bedegraine? At Aneblayse?”
Safir sighed.
“We did, to our shame,” said the knight. “But God taught us our folly that day. Were you there?”
“Yes. I fought against the Orkneys.”
“We were to Lot’s left flank with King Nentres, against Bors the Elder. I heard of your prowess that day. Sir Balin, I wish that we had met in better circumstance,” said Sir Safir, holding his hand through the bars.
Balin grasped it.
“Such was also my thought, sir. Thank you.”
“But not on opposite ends of a battlefield,” Safir chuckled.
“Are you chewing the food for him like a mother robin, Sir Safir?” Lanceor called from the fire. He was deep in his cups, by the slur of his words.
“Excuse his manner,” whispered Safir, before returning to the fire.
It seemed to Balin that the coarseness of the noble born related somehow to the eminence of their inheritance, and he considered the things Dagonet had said.
He settled in the straw and ate the first good meal he had had in two years.
***
They stopped for a time in Astolat, then followed the river road down through a lush forest and into a verdant valley that rivalled even Balin’s nostalgia for his boyhood home. It seemed as if life flourished the closer they came to Camelot. It was the height of summer, but the air was pleasant and breezy, and wildflowers of every hue painted the land.
They came to a bustling village of prosperous folk, and though the children abandoned their chores to run alongside the horses and wagon, shouting up greetings at the knights whom they knew by name, none were scolded, and the parents waved from their houses, calling out to Safir, and Lanceor, and even to Dagonet, who made faces and threw playful insults and crossed his eyes at the little ones to their squealing delight.
The children were naturally curious about Balin, and some of the boys leapt up on the cage and shouted questions through the bars at him, but in so many shrill voices all at once, that he couldn’t understand any of them.
The livestock he saw were plump and healthy as the people. God had blessed Camelot.
A grand, columned chapel festooned with leering gargoyles and stately angels and bright eyes of blazing stained glass stood in the center of the village. In its grassy courtyard, the massive obsidian Black Cross, on which Agrestes had once nailed Christians twelve at a time gleamed. A beautiful, proportionate white marble Christ had been affixed to its center, sanctifying it, and lush green ivy crept up it where it was said no growing thing would approach before. God had reclaimed this area, and Arthur’s church had grown from the blood-soaked stone just as the climbing vines had come from the earth.
They rolled through a vast green meadow then, and Balin ached to see a fine tiltyard nearby, decorated with bright, flapping pennants, and to hear the crash of lance upon armor and the appreciative cry of the crowd in their boxes. More than ever he felt the keen sting of the sight of his own armor and blazon tied to Dagonet’s pack horse, and he hung his head.
The castle itself rose on a hill across a brackish moat. The thick walls were of Agrestes’ time, venerable, blocky, and formidable, but the crenulated battlements were hung with bright silken dragon banners which rippled like lake water. The pennant of Arthur and Uther was before him. Guards in gleaming armor and helms saluted them from the top of the wall.
It was agony to be taken from the cage and led across the sunny courtyard to the dungeon steps after a glimpse at such beauty and goodness, and it was made all the more tortuous by the passing of a group of maidens shaded beneath a canopy borne by four richly dressed young pages. Some of them giggled behind their hands at his scruffy appearance, and Balin keenly felt the breadth and knottiness of his unkempt hair and beard, and the threadbare state of his drab prisoner’s clothes. But as they came nearer, the chief among them, a stately woman finely freckled with night black hair and forest pool eyes shushed them and admonished them for their rudeness. She even bowed her chin to him as he shuffled past and greeted each of the knights in turn. A golden cross caught the light at her silk-covered bosom.
“Who was that Christian lady?” Balin asked, when they were gone.
“That was the Princess Guinevere, daughter of King Leodegrance of Cameliard,” said Safir.
“Curb your baser thoughts, Sir Balin,” Dagonet warned in an exaggerated tone. “She will likely be our Queen in a few months’ time.”
“No such thing entered my mind!” Balin hissed, his face flushing.
It was horrible to think so of such a fine and goodly lady. He wanted only to know her name so that he might ask God to bless her in his prayers.
Lanceor chuckled, and Balin felt like turning and cuffing the intemperate Hibernian braggart.
The dungeon cell was spacious compared to his accommodations at Bedegraine, and a high barred window afforded him a view of the courtyard and a beam of warm sunlight, though he suspected that view would come to be a torture.
“And here you will stay for the time being, Sir Balin,” said Dagonet.
Safir grasped Balin’s hand in parting. They had become friends on the journey, supping together often and speaking of their home countries.
“I will come and visit with you on Sundays after Mass while I am able,” Safir said.
“You are my friend, sir,” said Balin, his heart warming to the man. “And I am yours.”
Lanceor picked his teeth with his little finger and went back up the steps without a word. Safir followed, and Dagonet watched the jailer shut and bar the door.
“Sir Dagonet,” Balin called.
His eyes appeared in the little barred space in the door.
“Why did you bring me here, truly?”
“Truly?” Sir Dagonet repeated in the same tone. “The truth is, Sir Balin, that truth is the greatest virtue of a knight, and one that very few truly espouse. Many a knight who had slain the cousin of their king, without an eye to witness, it might have fled into the greenwood or fashioned some less damning version of the doing that would have cast them
in a more favorable light. But you carried the body of Culwych from the killing ground and laid it at Arthur’s feet. The truth is, he has need of men like you, whether he knows it or not. Truly, I am sorry I did not retrieve you sooner.”
His face slid from the window, and Balin heard his boots on the stair.
Dagonet called down the passage in parting, “But now, farewell. Truly there are balls to be juggled and foolery to be done!”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Sir Safir was true to his word, and visited Balin after every Sunday Mass when he was not out on some errand for the King. Safir kept him abreast of the news of the court and informed him of the official announcement of Arthur’s engagement to the goodly Guinevere of Cameliard, a day which was marked by the ringing of St. Stephen’s bells and the sounding of trumpets on the battlements.
“King Leodegrance is expected to give the Table Round that belonged to Uther as part of his daughter’s dowry,” Safir told him.
There was a hint of excitement in Safir’s voice that mirrored Balin’s own.
Balin had learned many of the legends of the Round Table while a squire. It was supposed to have been built for Uther by the Merlin, encasing the silver table at which blessed Joseph of Arimathea and his companions had once sat. In the days of Uther, it had seated a hundred and fifty of the greatest knights in Albion: Sir Caradoc The Thirteenth, Sir Abiron, Sir Brunor The Good Knight Without Fear, Sir Ulfius, and the greatest of them all, Sir Segurant The Brown.
“The knights of the Table of The Wandering Companions have been holding tournaments every month,” Safir said, shaking his head, “hoping to determine which of them will be appointed to one of the sieges.”
“I heard them jousting the first day I came here,” said Balin. “But if the stories are to be believed…”
“Yes. No knight can claim a seat at the table unless first his name appears in golden letters on the back of the siege. Any unworthy knight who tries is driven mad.” Safir shrugged. “In the meantime, it makes for good sport, anyway.”
“Will you try, Safir?” Balin asked.
“If I am here. The king is not expected to marry until after the rebellion is put down once and for all. With the trouble stirring in the west, it could be years and many battles before they exchange the bands.”
Balin said nothing but his heart hammered to be free of these prison walls. Though it was sinful, he prayed the trouble would continue, at least until he was free to face them among Arthur’s companions, to clear his slate and earn the right to sit at that august table. He hoped Safir would be there too. In the absence of Brulen, he had come to love the Moor as a brother.
The sons of the traitorous Lot of Orkney had broken with their father and were now with Arthur. Did that mean Brulen too might find forgiveness in Camelot? Could he find his way back to the light?
“Do you think the Table would accept a pagan knight?” Balin asked.
“I have hopes my own brother Palomedes will find a place there when he’s of age,” Safir said.
“Palomedes is a Moslem. Although misguided, he is still a believer in the one true God,” Balin said.
Safir chuckled. “You have a frank manner, Balin. It is expected that the Orkney brothers will sit at the Table. Gawaine in particular has made his name a great one. His aunt is a sorceress, and her gifts to him have helped him greatly. Do you disdain the notion of sitting across from an unbeliever?”
Balin did, in truth. He knew in his heart no godless knight could be trusted.
“Look you, Balin,” said Safir, seeing the troubled look on Balin’s face. “With all my father’s wives and all the children begat by those unions, I have called Jew, Muslim, Christian and yea, even heathens, brother. I have fought beside knights Godly and pagan, and we have discoursed on our differences but also on our likenesses. Because of this, I have come to a certain understanding, which I believe our Roman forebears maintained also in their wisdom. Remember how the bloody temples of the Romans and the shrines of foreign gods once adjoined the same avenue as neighbors? God makes Himself known to every man in a way in which they may best understand. Mark how on the first Pentecost the Apostles were given the power to speak to men of every nation in a tongue each could fathom. I think that in every manner of worship there is a piece of the greater truth. One God with many names. That is why this talk of converting the peasants to one faith over the other baffles me. No man comes to God by the point of a sword. Even the Round Table is a miracle of heaven by the workings of a wizard.”
Balin could not say he agreed. Safir had not witnessed the darkness which yawned and consumed those set upon the heathen path. He had not seen a brother give himself over to ultimate blasphemy, stain the altar cloth with unconsecrated blood, nor seen a mother burn unrepentant for her false faith.
“But now the hour’s late, Balin,” said Safir, rising from the stool on the other side of the prison door.
“Will I see you next Sunday, then?” Balin asked.
“I fear not, my friend,” said Safir. “I have word from my brother Segwarides. He has need of me, and so I’m going to Cornwall.”
He must have seen the grieved look on Balin’s face, because he reached his fingers through the bars and entwined them with Balin’s own.
“Don’t despair, Sir Balin. In a few months’ time, you’ll be free of this place. When next we meet, it will be as two knights in good standing.”
“As Knights of the Round Table, I say,” said Balin. “Thank you, my friend.”
Balin’s only other visitor was a pied raven which sometimes lit in the high window of his prison cell and peered in on him.
He took the appearance of the strange bird as an ill omen. He cursed it and shooed it away at first, but on its second visitation he managed his foolish superstition better. He knew it was only a dumb animal seeking shelter and was ashamed of his earlier reaction.
He called it Brych, which meant “mottled.”
He cooed kindly to it and tossed breadcrumbs up to it, watching it peck.
He took to leaving a dish of water there for the thing when it came. “Can tenderness turn black fortune white?” he asked the bird.
It squawked in reply, but whether it was an affirmation or a negative he couldn’t guess.
These were the dark and lonesome days at the end of his sentence.
He feared that, except for Brych, he would be forgotten again, but after St. Stephen’s bells sounded the end of Mass on Pentecost, the jailer unlocked his door and light spilled into his cell. Sir Dagonet stood limned by the sun in his bright courtly fineries.
“Make ready to stand before the king, Sir Balin.”
Balin rose, looked about his squalid home of the past year. He left without remorse. He did worry briefly that Brych would return seeking food and water again and be left wanting. But his sentence ended, they both must find their own way now, he reasoned.
He was in an awful state. Unwashed, his hair long and knotted, his beard overgrown.
“May I bathe?” he asked.
“I’m sorry, Sir Balin,” said Dagonet. “You must appear as you are. If Arthur decides to return you here, there’s little point in making a fuss, is there?”
His heart dropped at the thought of returning to prison. He prayed Arthur’s heart was not so hard. If it were, he thought perhaps it was better to request death than be caged again.
“I feared I’d been forgotten again.”
“I never forgot you,” said Dagonet, leading him up the stairs to the courtyard.
“You never visited,” he murmured.
“I was questing. Sir Helior of the Thorn stole my wife from the box at the tournament of the Wandering Companions and rode off with her to Cornwall.”
Balin caught his breath. He hadn’t even known Dagonet had a wife.
“I didn’t know. Was your quest…successful?”
“In a manner of speaking,” said Dagonet, cryptically. “They were both of them slain; one when I drew my sword, the other when
I kept it in its scabbard.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The gilded, high ceilinged throne room was festooned with blood red banners bearing descending white doves. Blazing arrangements of red roses and ramblers sprawled on every step of the dais leading to Arthur’s high backed throne, atop which a rampant golden dragon perched like the soul of Uther, his father. Eleven tall red tapers adorned the chamber to commemorate the descent of the holy spirit upon the eleven disciples.
The crowded room milled with knights and their ladies, bedecked in their finest. Some, like Dagonet, wore richly colored clothes, but most of the men bore their arms and armor, polished to such a high sheen by diligent squires that the light of the tapers danced in them as though in a thousand mirrors. The knights of Arthur’s hall appeared as archangels assembled for battle.
The attendant ladies shone beside them, flitting in rustling gowns of colored silk and velvet, trimmed with gold and silver. Their flowing hair encircled in glittering nets of gold thread, or their stately heads capped with bejeweled circlets.
But none, in all their rich adornments, could match the majesty of Arthur crowned and enthroned. He had begun a wispy growth of beard, but unlike the face of many an aspiring adult desperate for some outer sign of the manhood hidden within the boy, this was no source of mocking amusement. The king’s bearing was ever dignified and inspiring. His blue eyes looked fondly on his subjects, smiling with pleasure even as his countenance remained ceremonious. Of the nobles and advisors gathered, any half dozen was finer garbed than Arthur’s subdued red tunic and cloak, but none outshone him.
And there at his side in its golden woven, jeweled sheath, was Excalibur itself. Balin knew it from the dreams his mother’s tales had woven into his sleeping mind. It outshone even the gilded sword of Macsen, which he had dared to touch. He knew his bravery would falter to lay a finger on that blade. That was Pendragon’s alone.
The outer hall was crowded with petitioners from across Albion, come to make request of the High King. Dagonet led Balin past these to the back of the throne room. The knights were filing toward the throne one at a time, and Balin saw each man kneel at the foot of the dais and offer his sword, renewing his vows.
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