by Jay Ruud
“So Mark wasn’t just spinning tales when he bragged about his days as a soldier in the wars,” Dinadan mused. “He was knighted after that, I suppose?”
“Arthur knighted him on the battlefield. And he had him at his right side when he held court in Dublin and accepted the surrender of Anguish, Rience’s kinsman who was now thrust onto the throne of Ireland. It was there, in Anguish’s train, that Mark first caught sight of Isolde. She was only eleven or twelve at the time, but Mark had never seen a girl so lovely. And he remembered her ten years later when he began to seek a wife. Of course, Duke Cador eventually died of his wounds. And Arthur named Mark his successor, but in gratitude for his good service, he elevated the Duchy of Cornwall to a petty kingdom and named Mark its first king. He even arranged it so that Ireland, which was forced to pay a tribute to Arthur’s kingdom as war reparations, would pay the tribute directly to King Mark himself.”
“That tribute is what made my homeland one of the richest in Arthur’s realm,” I put in.
“Of course,” Merlin responded. After a pause, he added, “And we took the Giant’s Ring and set it up on Salisbury Plain as a monument to that war.”
I was busy working out all of the connections. So this was how King Mark came to the throne. This was how Arthur was conceived, this was how he was separated from his sisters, and therefore did not know who Margause was. This was why Tristram was sent to Ireland to ask for the hand of Isolde. There was no doubt that all Merlin had said went to prove the truth of my master Gareth’s words: all the stories were the same story after all, it seemed.
When I glanced back at Merlin a change had come over his face. He looked much grayer, as if the strain of remembering had taken a toll on him. “My head,” was all he said, raising his hand to his forehead and then reaching out before he slumped to the deck. He was breathing heavily and his eyes had become skewed—one bulged out like a frog’s, while the other was squinted almost to closing. Dinadan was shocked and moved to help the mage up, and I got down to the deck with him and shook him gently. “What is it, old man? One of your spells?”
“Listen,” he spoke with a gravelly voice that came from somewhere beyond his consciousness. “The dog turns on its master. But there is another wolf with horns.”
“Help me with him,” I told Dinadan. “Help me get him back to the After Castle and lay him down. This will pass, I’ve seen it before. Sometimes it takes an hour, sometimes a day. But help me.” Sir Dinadan hoisted Merlin under one shoulder, while I took the other side, and we carried the old man to a bed in the castle.
“What’s he saying?” Dinadan asked. “What gibberish is this?”
I had recognized it at once. These spells came over Merlin on occasion, when the pain in his head became unbearable and he collapsed in exhaustion. As I explained to Sir Dinadan, Merlin always babbled something when it happened, something that was cryptic and indecipherable at first. This was how the necromancer had gained a reputation as a prophet—his words were ambiguous enough that they could be applied to situations that came up afterwards, and superstitious people would say, ‘Yes, it’s just as Merlin predicted, because when he was talking about the fish he meant the ship, you see, and when he said the fish was caught he meant the ship was going to sink, right?’ “All bloody poppycock, for the most part,” I told Dinadan. “But I have to admit that sometimes, when we’ve been working on a case, these spells do give us clues. It’s his own mind, you see. He’s been turning the case over in his head and he’s put something together, but it comes out sounding confused because it hasn’t, you know, sort of come to the front of his head yet.”
It was the best I could explain it, and Dinadan seemed content, assuming a thoughtful look and responding with a “hmmph.” Merlin moaned softly as we laid him down, then curled himself into a ball on the tiny mat we were given to sleep on in those very close quarters. Dinadan seemed a bit worried about the mage, the change had come upon him so suddenly, but I assured him I had seen this many times, and it always had to work its course.
***
Merlin lay unresponsive, curled up on his mat the entire night. I was restless, Dinadan bored, and there was not much to do aboard that ship if you weren’t one of the crew. I rose early on our second day at sea and, leaving Merlin and Dinadan asleep in the Castle, I walked out on the deck to pace the ship nervously. I watched the sun come up on the left side of the ship—“port” the sailors corrected me—and saw its orange glow rolling toward us over the edge of the coastline of Normandy some distance off. Glancing over the other side of the boat, the “starboard” side I’m told, I could watch the long glistening carpet that formed the vast expanse of open sea. Turning toward the port side again, I watched the Norman coast, a shoreline we could follow all the way into the port at Saint-Malo, which I was told we should reach sometime after midday, perhaps around none. But coming up ahead, rising out of the sea like a green pavilion, was a small mountain that formed its own island off the Norman coast. Atop the mount was a human structure that looked to be a castle or monastery.
“Mont St.-Michel,” said a voice behind me.
I whirled around to find Captain Jacques, commander of the duke’s Breton guard, standing behind me, gazing intently at the island to our southwest. He’d not spoken to me prior to this, but I was glad for the company in the cool morning light. Captain Jacques had long dark hair, piercing brown eyes, and a bright red tunic that he belted with a sash that also held his sword in a long scabbard. He spoke with a decidedly Breton accent, but I felt a kind of kinship with him, knowing that the Bretons were close relatives of us Cornishmen.
“Mount Saint Michael’s?” I countered. “That’s a coincidence. We have an island off Cornwall with the same name.”
“Of course,” Captain Jacques answered. “Our people have a special reverence for the Archangel, I suppose, eh?”
“There are old stories about my Saint Michael’s,” I told him. “The legend goes that it was built out in the sea by a race of giants, and that the giant who lived there used to come to the mainland and steal children to devour at night on the island. The legend says that a young Cornish fellow named Jack—ha, kind of like your name, no?—that this Jack was able to sneak into the island and kill the giant.”
“Indeed?” Captain Jacques’s eyes bulged with surprise. “This is an old story? How very strange. For we have a similar story about our own Mont St.-Michel!”
“What?” It was my turn to be surprised. “I wonder…maybe the story is so old that it goes back to the time when the Bretons and the Cornish were part of the same people, hundreds of years ago…for that,” I explained, “is another of our legends.”
“We are aware of our kinship,” Jacques responded. “And if I were not, our language would bring it home to me. For we speak the same language, you and I, you Britons and we Bretons. Just a bit of an accent in your speech.”
“I was thinking you were the one with the accent,” I murmured.
“But that common history is not the origin of our story. No, our story is no legend but fact, and occurred within the living memory of many of our people.”
“No!” I responded, fascinated. “Tell me!”
Captain Jacques put his hand on my shoulder and looked toward the island. But his eyes seemed to look much farther. “I was just a child, perhaps five or six. I lived in the port city, Saint-Malo, with my mother and father. He was a sailor in the service of the duke. I remember one day we heard that some great beast of an outlaw had moved onto the island. They said he was over seven feet tall and had legs like tree trunks. Some said he had come from Aragon or Castille, but nobody knew for sure. Before too long, daughters of the local community at Pontorson started disappearing. First the child of the town’s blacksmith turned up missing one day. Next it was the teenage daughter of Pontorson’s mayor. No one had seen him do it, but everybody was pretty well convinced that the giant on the mountain had stolen thos
e girls. Then came the worst of it. The lady Helena, who was Duke Hoel’s oldest daughter, disappeared one day from the rooms in her palace, and her nurse with her. The girl was fourteen years old, and the duke was mad to have her back.”
Another daughter? My lady Rosemounde seemed to have sisters popping up like Hydra’s heads. Why had no one ever mentioned this one? “And what happened to the young lady?” I asked Jacques, assuming she had perhaps entered a religious house—perhaps that same one I could see on the top of the mountain—and that that explained why Rosemounde had never mentioned her.
“I will come to that,” Jacques answered. “I cannot tell my tale out of order. When it became clear that the giant had taken the duke’s daughter to his lair on the mountain, the duke sent a fleet to surround the island and force the giant from his lair. But he had the strength of ten men, they say, and whenever any ship came close to the shores of the island, the giant would send huge stones raining down upon them. He sank two ships before the fleet backed off. No one was able to set foot on the island and no one could get near the giant to rescue the poor girl. That was when Arthur came.”
That startled me. Was this another story that was connected to the rest? “Arthur? You mean the king?”
“The king himself,” Jacques acknowledged. “He landed in Brittany with his whole army, bent on defending his realm from Lucius, the Roman. This was after the Irish wars, when, with his kingdom established, Arthur was focused on preserving it from outside threats. Anyway, after the fleet landed, Arthur learned what had happened. When he saw how distraught the duke was, Arthur took up the cause. His empire may have needed defending, but his good friend and adviser needed his help to save his own daughter, and Arthur put that first. Hearing how the giant had sunk the war ships when they came close in, he figured he’d sneak onto the island and take his chances. Under the cover of darkness, he took Sir Kay, his seneschal, and Sir Bedivere, his butler, in a tiny boat and rowed out to the island. They made their way as quietly as they could up the stony mountainside until they saw the light of a fire in a cave.”
I have to say I was even more surprised at this, to learn that the obnoxiously obsequious Sir Kay had, at one time, been brave enough—and fit enough—to climb a mountain in pursuit of a giant. “So,” I encouraged Jacques to continue the story. “They found the giant? They rescued the girl?”
Again Captain Jacques shook his head and cautioned me. “I’m not there yet,” he answered. “From their hiding place amid the bushes, they could see a figure in a long black gown sitting despondently by the fire. Sir Bedivere volunteered to crawl closer to see who this might be. As it happened, it was the old woman, the girl’s nurse, who was lamenting by the fire, sobbing uncontrollably. When she saw Bedivere peering at her from behind a boulder, she stopped and looked cautiously into the cave. Then she got up and walked toward him with a very light step. ‘My lady, are you Lady Helena’s nurse?’ he says to her. She nods. “And where is the young lady herself? Is she all right?’ he asks. She shakes her head, and points to the mouth of the cave. Bedivere squints and looks to the other side of the fire, and notices a body lying in gouts of blood on the cave floor. ‘Oh God save us,’ Sir Bedivere says. ‘He’s killed her then.’ And the old woman nods. Finally she has her weeping under control enough to speak. ‘The great beast unleashed his lust upon her, and was so violent that she died. In his anger and frustration he raped me as well, and my own pain is great, but I mourn more for my precious lady. But you need to go and go quickly. If he finds you here he will surely kill you—what with his great strength, only an army can defeat him. Come back with an army, and kill him. All I ask is that you let me deal the death blow once he is defeated. I would gladly rip out his pig’s heart.’”
By now I was getting weak in the knees. I leaned against the ship’s rail and took a deep breath of the sea air. This was why Rosemounde never spoke of her oldest sister. The girl had been brutally murdered by a cruel giant of a man. “What did Arthur do?”
Captain Jacques smiled. “Ah, now you are in the story. So Bedivere returns to Arthur and tells him what he’s seen. Arthur is so enraged that the young girl’s noble blood has been shed in this foul manner that he takes up Excalibur and charges in like a madman. Well by this time the giant has heard the commotion outside, and he shows up at the cave opening brandishing a club that’s the size of a log, and he swings it at the king. Well Arthur had no armor—none of them were able to wear armor or shield while climbing that mountain—so he had no way to fend off that blow, and if it had caught him square it would have killed him for certain. But the king was able to duck and parry a bit with his sword, and the blow only glanced off his left side. So Arthur ducks in, toward the giant, where he can’t swing the club, and stabs toward the giant’s face. He gives him a wound in the forehead that starts bleeding so much it nearly blinds the giant, but the giant had pulled back in time to keep the wound from being fatal. So Arthur gets ready, expecting another swing of the club, but instead the giant uses Arthur’s own trick, and rushes in close so Arthur can’t swing his sword. Instead, the giant grabs him around the waist and lifts him from the ground. He’s intent on crushing the life out of the king, you see? Arthur starts flailing away wildly with Excalibur, trying to get some angle to deal a deadly blow to the giant, but he can only get off some glancing strikes at his legs or his back. Finally, when he’s about to pass out, Arthur realizes that instead of swinging the sword, he can use it to stab the one vulnerable spot on the giant—his neck, which is right there level with the king’s eyes as the giant holds him. So up thrusts the sword, through the giant’s unprotected neck and deep up into his brain. The creature falls like a great oak tree, dead as dust.”
I realized that I had not been breathing for some time, and consciously took a breath at that point.
“Sir Bedivere and Sir Kay cheered at the sight, and insisted on removing the giant’s head to show the people back in the village that they had nothing more to fear from the brute. Arthur allowed them the trophy but cautioned them not to celebrate the victory too excessively. After all, the girl was slain, and while the duke would be relieved to know that the giant could do no more harm, it was small consolation for the loss of his daughter. And although they had rescued the old nurse, the abuse and outrage she had suffered was unlikely ever to leave her. When the knights searched the cave, they found, to their sorrow, the bodies of the other two girls that the giant had stolen. More parents whose hopes would be crushed. The king said little when he brought the bodies, and the head, back to Duke Hoel’s court. But it is said that he wept over the loss of those children, as if they had been his own.”
Captain Jacques’s story was at an end. I didn’t say anything. I was trying to wrap my brain around the contrasting images of the king that were contending in my mind. Arthur, the King Herod figure who tried to kill a shipload of babies for fear of what one of them would do to him when he grew up. Arthur, the Saint Michael figure who overthrew the beast and wept at the children he was unable to save. Hero or Villain? Devil or Angel? Or was it Devil and Angel? The shades of gray were blurring my sharp black and white moral vision. Not that I hadn’t known the complexity of moral character before. What, after all, was the queen but a conglomeration of virtues and vices? What was Sir Lancelot? Or Gawain, the most courteous of knights whose thirst for vengeance led him to ambush an unsuspecting Lamorak? Surely even Merlin, crusty blasphemous blustering carping big-hearted generous Merlin, was a study in contrasts. But the king. In him at least I had still believed in an ideal. If the ideal of chivalry was flawed, the glue that held Camelot together, then what hope was there in a dark world? It was almost as if my lady Rosemounde had shown herself imperfect. If that should happen, wouldn’t all the stars fall from their spheres? But this good and courageous Arthur—that gave me some hope again. Not perfection but the striving for it was what was expected of the knights. And Arthur demonstrated that. The story had helped to restore me, or at least be
gin to restore me, to my faith.
All stories, it seems, are one.
Chapter Six
Saint-Malo
Saint-Malo was the main Breton port on the Narrow Sea. Some thirty miles south of the Breton Mont St.-Michel, it lay on an island at the mouth of the river Rance. As the Rosamounde neared the port, members of the crew struck the great square sail and lowered two small lifeboats into the estuary to tow the larger ship into the river’s mouth, around the island through the strait between the city and a large fortified promontory to the south that Captain Jacques told me was called Aleth, on the side of the river called Saint-Servan. From the ship’s deck I could see the tower of the cathedral rising over the walls of the city, and I knew that attached to it was a monastery around which the city had grown hundreds of years before, after its founding by its namesake, Saint Malo, a companion of the Irish Saint Brendan in the sixth century.