by Jay Ruud
Merlin had finally roused himself and, a bit shaky, stood on the deck with Dinadan and me to watch as the ship was finally moored on the west coast of the island, the lee side between Saint-Malo and the mainland. We could see on the starboard side of the ship the rich farmlands and groves of hickory and fruit trees that were in bloom now in these gentle early summer days. Hard to believe that this pleasant looking land was the site of the tragic deaths of the famous lovers not many days earlier.
Captain Jacques had offered his services to us in obtaining an audience with Sir Kaherdin, who commanded the city. We disembarked with our luggage, a small sea-chest containing changes of clothes, a manuscript on heraldry I was trying to study, and our swords. The captain told one of the sea hands to take the chest to his own room in the palace. “You’ll no doubt want to stay here in the palace while you are visiting Saint-Malo, and it will be convenient to pick it up in my own chambers when you obtain your own.”
“You have a room in the palace?” I asked, surprised at this news.
Jacques shrugged. “It is a privilege of my military rank,” he replied modestly. “Not of any special favor I may enjoy with Lord Kaherdin.”
After the sailor went off with our chest, the captain walked us a short distance along the quay to a gate in the formidable brown stone wall that protected the city. There were well-armed guards at the gate, and a small watchtower over it where I knew two or three archers were stationed. The guards stepped aside at the sight of Captain Jacques, and he marched through without a sidelong glance. Merlin, Dinadan, and I followed in his wake, and I was suitably impressed by the captain’s confidence and his apparent stature within the city. Dinadan, who had been living in Saint-Malo for many months, took it all in stride, and Merlin seemed distracted looking about at the people, hundreds of whom we saw gathered around street vendors just inside the gate.
“The lord’s palace is just to the right as we enter the gate,” Dinadan directed me as we turned to follow the captain toward an impressive stone structure at the northeast corner of the city. With the musical calls of the street vendors ringing in our ears (“Fresh apples! Apples here!” and “Onions and leeks, straight from the fields!” or “Meat pies here! Fresh meat pies!”) all in their distinctive Breton accents, we strode toward the stark grey residence of Kaherdin, son of Duke Hoel and commander of the city. Before the building was a large town square, in which a small company of Breton cavalry were drilling, fully armed and on horseback, and I realized that the reason for all the activity around the square was that a good crowd of townsfolk had turned out to watch the drill.
Ten of Kaherdin’s knights were mounted on great muscular destriers, armed in chain mail, helmets, shields, and lances, and wearing rowel spurs the better to control their horses. Their lances were the traditional battle lances, and thus were mounted with rounded metal heads coming to a sharp point, rather than the broader blunted, hollowed ends of the lances I used in jousting practice at the quintain, designed to break rather than run the opponent through. These lances were used with every intention of penetrating the enemy’s flesh, even through their mail coats. The knights in the square queued up in a double line of five knights each, a formation called en haie, and cantered across the square at reduced speed, with lances couched under their arms and proffered toward what would have been the enemy lines if this had not been a drill. Essentially they were bent on training their horses to stay in formation, and an entire company of cavalry thus well trained could scatter any army’s infantry. Except, of course, an infantry that had fortified its position with pikes, on which the charging horses would impale themselves. War was a gruesome business, I thought to myself as we circled around the square and worked our way to the front gate of the palace.
The fortress at the promontory across the estuary was the real defense of the city, and Kaherdin had that position well manned. So there wasn’t a great need for the palace to have strong defenses, and indeed, it was only lightly fortified. There were two small round towers at the corners of the grey stone edifice. There were only perhaps sixty feet of wall between the towers, a fairly modest dwelling for a man who had no pretentions of being a great lord. He was his father’s vassal and was not in line to inherit the duchy, and he knew it. His province was the port city of Saint-Malo. Duke Hoel ruled the duchy from his castle in the capital city of Rennes, some thirty-seven miles to the south.
Once again, at the palace gate, two guards stood, one on either side of the door. The captain asked us to wait a moment while he entered and announced us to the lord commander, and ducked into the chamber. To assuage the awkwardness, I thought to initiate an informal conversation with one of these grim looking guards. I looked at the one on the right, the one I was standing next to. He had a swarthy face that bore scars suggesting he was not inexperienced in his lord’s wars. His eyes were dark and piercing, and his black hair hung over his forehead like that of an unruly pet. When he grinned at me menacingly, I was shocked to see that his two front teeth were actually made of gold. I had never seen such a thing before. Taken aback, I turned to the guard on the left. His unmarked face and pale blue eyes showed no expression, and his close-cropped blond hair gave him a stoic and uninviting look, but I was less put off by him than his companion, and so I addressed my remarks to him:
“Good morning!” I greeted him with a smile. Next to me I could feel Merlin’s eyebrows rising to the heavens and his eyes boring holes in me. But I persisted. “I am Gildas of Cornwall, and this is the lord Merlin, and with him Sir Dinadan, Knight of the Round Table. We are visiting from King Arthur’s court at Camelot. And you are?”
A bit to my surprise, the dour-looking guard picked up the gauntlet. “Sir William of Caen,” he volunteered. “In the service of the city’s commander. Lord Kaherdin, as you see,” he shrugged slightly. “My companion,” he nodded at the swarthy-faced soldier on his right, “is called Sir Neville of Acre.” Sir Neville flashed a grin again, but remained silent.
“I know Sir William of old,” Dinadan volunteered. “A good soldier. Not a lot of fun to go drinking and wenching with, I’m afraid, but somebody who could hold the fort while the rest of us caroused.”
Sir William maintained his composure, though something in Dinadan’s manner or banter seemed to have struck him. He turned his businesslike gaze on Sir Dinadan and shook his head slowly. “Ever the jester, Sir Dinadan. Perhaps someday you will find a cause to serve that is not a joke to you.”
“And where would be the fun in that?” Dinadan responded, with his most winning smile—a smile that failed to melt the coolness of Sir William’s reception.
“And do you enjoy your service here?” I asked William, curious, truly, as to what kind of master Kaherdin was.
“I serve the lord Kaherdin because I choose to,” he answered simply. “He provides for me, I serve him. And will, so long as my arm can hold a sword.”
“And just what is there about Kaherdin that inspires this kind of loyalty in his men?” I wondered aloud.
Sir William shook his head and finally smiled, though very faintly. “He is a strict disciplinarian and a courageous companion. But that is not enough. He has a quick temper and he often jumps to conclusions without having all the facts, but these things are not enough to make me question my loyalty. No, I remain loyal to Kaherdin because he is a champion of the right. He has never knowingly or willingly taken up arms in a wrongful quarrel, and I follow him because of that. And I do what he tells me to do.”
“You do it without question?” I suggested.
“Without question. As I would a command from God himself.”
“Well,” Dinadan interjected. “Let’s hope you don’t ever actually confuse the two.” At that point, Captain Jacques opened the door and beckoned us to enter, and the two guards stood aside to let us pass. We walked through a small courtyard, and I whispered to Dinadan, “Gold teeth? What was that about?”
Dinadan sho
ok his head and shrugged. “Never met the lad before, though I’ve heard of some crusaders that came back with such teeth. It’s a kind of status symbol among some of the infidels, I take it. This Neville seems a queer duck.”
Through the courtyard we walked directly into what turned out to be the palace’s throne room, where Lord Kaherdin received visitors.
The room was equally modest, being only about twenty feet wide and perhaps forty long, and at the end opposite the door we came through sat the lord himself on a slightly raised dais, flanked by two advisers. They were dressed simply but elegantly enough, the advisers in earth-colored tunics, dull hose and long leather boots, the lord himself in more supple-looking boots, dark red hose, a blue tunic covered with a fur-lined green cloak. I took a moment to take in the room: the only furnishings were the chair on which Lord Kaherdin sat, a small table to his right where a wine pitcher and a few bunches of grapes were placed for his refreshment. The adviser on his right sat at a small desk, and was shuffling papers like a clerk, and as we entered Kaherdin was saying to him “Get those orders off as soon as you can, Melias.”
The floor of the chamber was wooden, and on the long walls of the hall were a series of high windows designed to let in both the morning and afternoon sun. Below the windows on each wall, and behind the lord on the north wall of the room, were a series of tapestries depicting, as far as I could tell, the story of Aeneas—from two great tapestries showing the wooden horse and the fall of Troy and then Aeneas and his crew’s escape to Carthage on the west wall, to tapestries representing the death of Turnus and the subsequent marriage to Lavinia on the east. Behind the lord on the north wall was a huge tapestry depicting the Pious Aeneas turning his back on Dido’s suicide pyre and the city of Carthage.
Before I was quite done looking around, Kaherdin said in a deep voice “Ah, Captain Jacques, welcome back. My father, I understand, has not made the return trip with you. Approach, approach, and tell me who you and Sir Dinadan have brought with you. But first what news of my father? Has he remained at Camelot?”
Kaherdin, stoic in his own way, had hair unusually close-cropped and was completely clean-shaven. He had large grey eyes that bulged in his head like a hare’s, and though there was a strength about him he was quite slender, and though he was fairly tall he slumped somewhat in his chair, almost as if he was bored with his position. His thin face, with its high pronounced cheekbones, bent lower toward Jacques. I saw nothing in his lean face to remind me of his half-sister, my beloved Rosemounde, until he raised his left eyebrow quizzically while addressing the captain. That made me smile. But only with a slight twist of the mouth, since I did not want to appear disrespectful before the lord of the city.
“Lord Kaherdin,” the captain said, with a slight bow. “Duke Hoel had urgent business with the king, and has remained at Camelot until it is concluded. He sent me home in the Rosamounde to bring these gentlemen, who are here on a mission specially commissioned by the queen and your own sister.”
Kaherdin looked puzzled. “My sister? How on earth could Isolde have commissioned them in Camelot, unless she sent some message to the queen with you or father when you left?”
“No, my lord,” Jacques corrected him. “I meant to say your half-sister, the queen’s lady.”
At that Kaherdin’s face seemed to lose interest, and relaxed into indifference. “Oh,” was all he said. “Well, what is your commission, gentlemen? We will do what we can to assist if it is not against the interests of Brittany. Who are you, first? Are you of Arthur’s court? Is that why you have Dinadan accompanying you?”
While all this was going on I could feel Merlin next to me fidgeting with impatience. He had been slow moving, silent, and morose since getting up this morning, the aftermath of his spell the evening before. This was just the sort of thing he needed to set his blood moving again. “My lord,” he began, stepping forward and taking charge. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Merlin. I know your family well and was telling your father what to do when he was your age.” An audible gasp issued from the young man on Kaherdin’s right, and Kaherdin himself just stared, his eyes protruding even more than usual, and his jaw hanging slack for a moment, before, recovering himself, he rose and nodded toward the old necromancer in a way that suggested that Merlin and not he was the ranking noble in the room. There was an irony to it, of course, since Merlin was not only no aristocrat, but was known to have been born out of wedlock to a young nun. According to legend his father was an incubus—a demon of the air who visited his mother secretly at night and left her with child. Merlin loved to make the most out of that superstition. But he was certainly never mistaken for a nobleman by anyone in Camelot, though all of the knights feared his power and his influence. His reputation, however, seemed to have given him some sort of heroic stature in Brittany.
“My lord Merlin!” Kaherdin began. “I apologize for not recognizing you on sight, and for treating you with any discourtesy. For years my father has told me of your amazing feats of magic and prophecy. Know that I and all my household are at your service. This,” he gestured toward the young gasper on his right, who now rose to greet us more courteously, “is my squire, Melias, son of the Count of Poitou. On my left is Sir Andred, my kinsman and close adviser.”
Melias, the squire, was about my own age. His close-cropped hair and smooth face were barbered in emulation of his master. His was a broad, open face with brown fawning eyes that looked on the great mage and stammered “My lord.” As for Andred, his flowing yellow locks and piercing blue eyes set him apart in this court, but his face had shown no expression—not when we walked in, not when Merlin announced himself, not now when he was being presented to us. He said nothing, but merely nodded almost imperceptibly in our direction.
“Sir Dinadan you know of course,” Merlin followed Kaherdin’s lead with his introductions, but he was clearly anxious to begin his investigations. “My young assistant is Gildas of Cornwall, squire to the king’s nephew Sir Gareth of Orkney.”
A short burst of laughter issued form Kaherdin. “Cornwall! One of your own countrymen, Andred!” The grim knight said nothing, merely glared at me. But Sir Kaherdin continued. “Sir Andred is from Restormel, aren’t you Andred?” No response. “His father is the earl. And you, Gildas?”
“Launceston,” I told him. I didn’t add that my own father was no earl, count, baron or lord, but an artisan who made armor and who, through his profession, made various connections among the nobility and found a way to get his only son placed as a page in the household of the queen of Logres.
“Good,” Merlin said. “Now that we’re all bosom friends, let’s move on to why we are here. We have been commissioned, as Captain Jacques told you, by Queen Guinevere and the lady Rosemounde to look into the unexpected and disturbing deaths of Sir Tristram and La Belle Isolde.”
At this Kaherdin showed some surprise, sending his left eyebrow skyward again. Young Melias gave another gasp, and turned his fawning eyes toward his master. Sir Andred finally showed a slight crack in his demeanor with a miniscule pursing of the lips. “I tire of this reference to Isolde of Ireland as ‘La Belle Isolde,’” Kaherdin griped. “As if my sister were not ‘la belle.’ But aside from that, I don’t understand what on earth the queen expects you to find by ‘looking into’ this affair. Tristram died from a wound inflicted by Norsemen. Isolde of Ireland died of a broken heart. There. What more do you need to know?”
“Things are not always as they seem, my lord,” Merlin answered. “What you say may be the case, but I would like to satisfy myself that the general interpretation of events is the accurate one. For instance, my lord, and I hope you will forgive me for saying this, but the general impression is that your sister is to blame in Sir Tristram’s death.” Kaherdin’s face grew dark. “Not, of course, that she gave him the wound that killed him, but that her words—her lying to him about the color of the sail when your ship approached—took the hope from his heart a
nd sapped his will to live.”
Kaherdin’s eyes shifted to Dinadan, standing next to me behind Merlin, and it was on him that Kaherdin’s ire landed. “You told this story in Arthur’s court? What need was there to air these things before the general world? These were private words between a husband and wife. Who are you to spread this…this slander?”
Sir Dinadan was not cowed. “My loyalty was to Sir Tristram first, and to the king. What I told King Arthur was the sole truth. I find it easier than lying. With lying, you have to remember which lie you told to whom, and my memory has never been that good.”
Sir Andred finally spoke, and the sound was not pleasant. It was more of a growl than a voice. “Your truth may be your last testament, jester. What would you say if I told you I would wait for you with my sword in the courtyard this afternoon?”
“Why, I suppose I’d tell you to wait there as long as you liked, for I was unlikely to show up,” Dinadan gave the knight an exaggerated bow.
“These japes are unseemly,” Merlin broke in, trying to restore order. “My questions are neither affronts nor untruths. I say what is, and my purpose is to uncover what is not known, in part to preserve your own sister’s reputation, Lord Kaherdin. God’s ankle bones, can you not see this?”
There was a moment of silence while Lord Kaherdin considered this, Melias watched him with real concern in his eyes, and the rest of us hung fire. But finally the lord relented, sighed, and admitted, “You’re right old necromancer.” There was an audible easing of the tension in the room. “Let us help you look into these matters, then. What will you need first?”