by Jay Ruud
Below decks in the cargo hold a simple wooden coffin had been stored, cradling the remains of the lady Brangwen. True to his word, Merlin was bringing her back to Logres, from which, in compliance with her wishes, she would be sent on to Cornwall.
The lord Kaherdin had been kind enough to delay the ship’s departure another day so that Lady Brangwen could be casketed and her body taken aboard. But it was the kindness of the monks of Saint Vincent’s Abbey that had made our smooth departure possible. Abbot Urban had set the abbey’s carpenter to making Brangwen’s coffin right away. He had also given her the last rites, though in so doing he knew he was violating Church policy, under which a suicide was considered damned, beyond hope of redemption. But as Urban had said, it was not up to him—or even the Church—to decide the fate of Brangwen’s soul, and extending her the last rites could not possibly do any harm, to her or anyone else.
It was also Urban who had solved two of our other knotty problems. Sir Dinadan was as yet in no condition to ride a horse, as the jostling was likely to burst his semi-healed wounds and undo all the good that Master Oswald’s ministrations had achieved. So Abbot Urban proposed that we visit the new Cistercian monastery that he said lay just south of the harbor at Southampton, where the ship was to land. The monastery was a large and busy one, he told us, and a hub of communication between various parts of Logres. He knew the abbot there, Abbot Hugh, and assured us that the monks would lend us a cart with which to transport Dinadan back to Camelot. The brothers would also, he was confident, take the responsibility of seeing that Brangwen’s remains reached King Mark’s court in Cornwall. In his own hand he wrote out an introduction and request to those effects, addressed to the Abbot Hugh at the Abbey Church of Saint Mary in Beaulieu, Hampshire, then sealed the parchment with wax and his signet ring. Merlin was all but overwhelmed at the abbot’s kindness as he took the parchment and placed it securely in an inner pocket of his cloak, but Abbot Urban waved off any effusive thanks.
“It is I who should be thanking you,” he said, his jowls waggling as he shook his substantial head. “It was through your efforts that the sacrilege of our abbey’s defilement was repaid. The culprits will never abuse us again, or any other religious institution—or other law abiding citizens. You have our gratitude, and will always be welcome here at Saint Vincent’s.”
With the help of those powerful former knights, Brother Gabriel and Brother Michael, we brought the coffin up from the abbey and loaded it into the hold, and then carried Sir Dinadan into the ship as well, over his loud protest that he was quite able to walk that distance. Merlin forbade it, saying he was not about to have our departure set back again because of some relapse brought about by Dinadan’s stubborn insistence on walking. And now at last we were on our way, looking to make land at Southampton sometime around sext the next day. And by the following day, we should be back in Camelot. I was bursting to get there and to see Rosemounde once again, and to tell my lady all the news about her family in Brittany, and about how I, with a little help from Merlin, had solved the case of Tristram and Isolde’s murders, and that her siblings were not involved.
“And so,” I said to Merlin as we leaned over the rail. “The case is solved. And it seems there were two murderers after all.”
“Yes,” the old man mused. “Through pure coincidence, apparently, two separate plots aimed at killing Tristram and Isolde, happened to come together at one and the same time and place.”
“Coincidence? Or was it some kind of fated end?”
“What, are you suggesting divine retribution or some such rubbish! Poppycock, boy!” Merlin burst out. “Random events occur randomly. Sometimes two related random events occur in conjunction with one another. Among the millions of random events that occur every day, a few related events are bound to occur together, but that doesn’t make them supernaturally related. That’s the kind of thinking that makes for superstition, you Cornish dunce.”
“And superstition is the chief religious occupation of our time,” I admitted. “But that’s not exactly what I meant. Tristram and Isolde hurt a lot of people. They made a lot of enemies. Doesn’t it seem fated that some of those offenses would come home to roost eventually?”
“I’ll give you that,” Merlin conceded. “Although Tristram’s death turned out to be the result of an infatuation he was completely unaware of, as far as we know. He had become the object of jealousy for a misguided catamite.”
There were a number of aspects of this case that puzzled me, that I simply could not assimilate, and this was one of them. And aside from the simple fact of Melias’ infatuation, I was somewhat shocked the day before when I discovered that, after long consultation with his sister Isolde and with Abbot Urban, Lord Kaherdin had come to the private decision to commute Melias’ sentence from public execution to lifelong exile from Brittany and from all the lands of Arthur’s empire—a decision based on further consideration of Melias’ youth and his long service to Kaherdin. While there might be a public outcry against Kaherdin’s leniency, the sentence of banishment upon pain of death was sufficient to assuage the anger of the mob who might fear Melias as a public danger. The nature of his crime, Urban had reasoned, and had ultimately convinced Kaherdin, was not likely to make him a danger to anyone else, now that Tristram was dead.
“Well, I simply cannot understand Melias at all,” I admitted bending low to stroke Guinevere’s soft head as she moaned again at a particularly heavy roll of the ship. “It all seems so…unnatural.”
Merlin gave one of his habitual shrugs. “There are more men like Melias than you might suspect, young Gildas. Even, perhaps, among the knights of the Round Table itself. But the love and jealousy displayed in his crime is quite natural, I suppose. It’s what we see all the time, from men and women of all types.”
“Is it not a sin?”
“What? Obviously the murder he committed is a sin. His sacrilege must be a sin as well. As for the rest, I think I must hold with Abbot Urban’s opinion about Lady Brangwen. Who am I to say what is damnable? God made Melias the way he was for some purpose, I’m sure. It’s not really my business to decide what that purpose was, or to question God’s work.”
“Hmmph,” I commented, detecting a bit of self-contradiction in the skeptical Merlin I knew so well. “Do you really think that God created Melias in that particular way?”
“I’m as certain as I am of God’s purpose in creating anything,” Merlin answered cryptically.
“But the commuting of the sentence, Merlin. After he had killed two men, nearly killed Dinadan, and violated the sanctity of the abbey, was it just to allow him to simply go peacefully into exile?”
“Was it just?” the old mage tilted his head to give the matter serious consideration. “Why not? You yourself were willing to extend the lady Brangwen the same opportunity when we stood in her closet, were you not? Why not the same chance for Melias? A man is always better than his worst deed, Gildas. Aye, and a woman too. Melias was a faithful squire, clerk, and servant to Lord Kaherdin, a man he admired and loved. He did not wake up one morning, look in the mirror, and say to himself, ‘Today I think I’ll be a killer. I’ll embrace evil and give myself over to the dark side of my nature.’ He justified himself according to his own sense of his worth and his own feeling of love. In exile he will continue to be a far better person than his worst deeds might seem to make him. There may be redemption for him yet.”
I thought briefly about what Merlin had said: that a man was better than his worst act. Seeing Mont Saint Michel on our right, I was reminded of what I had learned of King Arthur and his own sins. I couldn’t deny that his subsequent life had redeemed his past wrongs, and perhaps there was something in Merlin’s argument.
“So once again your dream-prophesy has proven true. The horned wolf was Melias, the ‘cuckolded’ Melias as you call him. The faithful dog that turned on her master was Brangwen. The faithful Brangwen—faithful as a dog,”
I looked down again at Guinevere at my feet and stroked her one more time. “How ironic that name turned out to be!”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Merlin responded. “She was incredibly loyal to her lady, even after she had been so notoriously abused. But she was also loyal, fiercely loyal, to her beloved Mark.”
“I’m far more sympathetic to the lady Brangwen than to Melias,” I admitted. “As you say, she was faithful for years. She sacrificed everything for others, whether it was her lady or her beloved king. Even her suicide was an act of self-sacrifice and love. When she killed Isolde it was out of a misguided belief that she was defending the one she loved. But redemption is beyond her.”
“We don’t know that,” Merlin murmured.
“Perhaps not,” I said. “I guess I’m not too sure what all we don’t know. But I know one thing: love or no love, jealousy or no jealousy, I could never be pushed to the extreme of murdering somebody.”
Merlin let out a sigh and muttered softly, “None of us knows that, my boy, until we are in the crucible.”
***
Getting to the abbey had been less difficult than I feared. The single-masted cog ship had made good time crossing the Narrow Sea, and in the end had come up the Solent, the narrow strait that separated the Isle of Wight from Hampshire. A few knots before turning into the Southampton Water to dock there, the ship anchored briefly at the mouth of the Beaulieu River Estuary, and the captain sent four sailors with small boat carrying me, Merlin, Dinadan, the dog Guinevere (who seemed excited and overjoyed to be off the ship), and the wooden coffin bearing the faithful Brangwen’s remains, rowing upriver to land us at the grounds of the abbey.
Wide gardens surrounded the monastery, and the fields were being worked by the monks themselves. Our boat passed by a number of monks working in the fields, and then passed through a water gate into a fortified complex of buildings. When the rowboat docked, five of the monks had come down to meet us, and had helped us carry Brangwen’s casket up to the cloister south of the great church, which from here looked to be more than a hundred meters long. Two other monks, perceiving Dinadan’s weakened condition, walked him up the bank and toward the monastery. Merlin and I thanked the four sailors and followed the Cistercians toward the cloister, while Guinevere, happy to feel solid ground under her paws again, ran in circles around us. The monks themselves, however, had not spoken to us, but communicated only by signs. As Dinadan walked slowly, leaning on his two escorts, and I dragged our sea chest behind me, Merlin had explained that these Cistercian monks, the newest order in Christendom, often maintained a rule of silence between prime and compline, the better, I supposed, to commune quietly with the inner voice of the Holy Spirit.
We had soon arrived at the abbot’s quarters, where we were greeted warmly by Abbot Hugh, particularly when he learned we had been sent to him by Abbot Urban in Saint-Malo. The abbot apparently was not subject to the rule of silence—at least not when it came to conversing with visitors. At any rate, it was soon agreed that we would spend the night at the abbey, and would be loaned two horses and a cart in the morning to convey ourselves to Camelot with Dinadan lying in the back of the cart. Travelers heading west stopped at the abbey quite often, we were told, and Abbot Hugh promised to assume the responsibility of conveying Lady Brangwen to Cornwall. Finally, the abbot had invited us to sup in the monastery’s refectory, which lay just a bit farther along the cloister walk. He had promised us simple but nourishing fare, but had warned us that the monks serving our supper would not be allowed to speak with us.
So it was that the three of us—well, four, counting Guinevere—were making our way along the cloister, Dinadan now leaning on Merlin’s arm for support. Two monks passed us going the other way in their bright white habits with the black scapulars. They nodded in silence and we nodded back. As we walked I looked around at the architecture of the abbey—simple white stone with the new pointed Gothic style arches, but without any decoration of any kind. The walls were bare everywhere.
I was looking up at some of those arches when I very nearly ran directly into a young man who was walking across the cloister with another Cistercian. He was younger than me, probably about fifteen years of age, but he was taller and more muscular. He, too, was dressed in white, but it was no religious habit that he wore, only a light tunic with tan hose and black boots. I begged his pardon for the near collision, at which he and the monk both nodded silently and moved on. But for a brief moment, I looked into his face and was taken aback. The wavy brown hair. The pale blue eyes. The aquiline nose. The square jaw like granite. Only he was some twenty years younger.
“Merlin,” I cried. “That boy…it’s…”
“Lancelot!” Sir Dinadan cried, his face looking as astonished as I felt.
Merlin pursed his lips. “I knew about this lad. I did not know he was here, though I knew he was being raised by monks.”
“He’s Lancelot’s son?” I asked, though the question seemed naïve. And then, after a moment’s thought, I added, “Does the queen know?”
“You have just seen Galahad,” Merlin told us. “Sir Lancelot sired him some fifteen years ago after a night with Elaine, the daughter of King Pelles of Corbenic.”
“Who?” I asked, thunderstruck. “Why would he do such a thing?”
“He was tricked into it. King Pelles arranged it because of a long standing prophecy.”
“Prophecy?” Dinadan echoed. “What kind of prophecy would persuade a man to use his daughter like that?”
“The prophecy that she would become the mother of the purest of all knights, whose life would be devoted to the quest for the world’s most important relic. But this could only happen if the greatest knight in the world was the child’s father.”
“And how did they arrange to have Lancelot father the child?” I wanted to know.
“By telling him that Queen Guinevere was awaiting him in a dark closet in the castle. He was also told that he should bring no light to the chamber and that he must remain silent so as not to disturb anyone else.”
“This is eerily like Brangwen’s tricking of King Mark,” I decided. “Again, all stories are the same story. What is this great relic?”
“You’ll find out soon enough, young Gildas,” Merlin said. “The boy is nearly full-grown now. Before long he will be in Camelot.”
“No doubt to be welcomed warmly by Queen Guinevere,” Dinadan put in. “This great quest intrigues me, though. Perhaps I’ll seek to go on it myself.”
“Perhaps you will,” Merlin said, unconvinced, as we found our way into the refectory.
We sat down at one of the long wooden tables where the monks had their meals, and were soon brought a large plate of bread and cheese and glasses of ale by an unspeaking monk in a white habit. I had just broken off a piece of bread and was about to put it in my mouth when the bread and my jaw dropped simultaneously. Sir Palomides had just walked into the room.
“Palomides!” Dinadan called. “Thank God, somebody who will talk to us!”
“My friends, you’ve returned!”
“Apparently,” Dinadan continued. “We know why we’re here. What on earth brings you to this out-of-the-way place?”
Sir Palomides sat with us and, when the silent monk had brought him his own portion of cheese and bread, he explained: “The king has sent me here to arrange for Duke Hoel and his party to stay overnight at the abbey before boarding their ship for Brittany in three days’ time. He wanted to send a knight to show his respect for the abbot, and he wanted Duke Hoel to see the abbey because the king has endowed it himself. And so we are met! I will be able to ride with you back to Camelot in the morning. It seems fated, does it not?”
Merlin looked at me askance, raising his great eyebrows, and I gave him a half-smile, remembering his earlier lecture on coincidence. Palomides, however, had something more pressing on his mind: “But my friends, all courtesy aside, I am dying t
o know: what did you discover about the deaths of my beloved Isolde and my great rival, Sir Tristram? Was Sir Tristram indeed murdered?”
Dinadan and I looked over at Merlin, who glanced at us, raised his eyebrows, let out a deep sigh, and began.
He told the whole story as Sir Palomides listened in rapt attention. He described how Tristram’s wounds could not have been caused by Viking weapons, but only by someone from his own side. He talked about the murder of Captain Jacques and the attacks on ourselves and the abbey. Finally he related how the faithful Brangwen had poisoned her own mistress on the ship coming from Cornwall. All this while, I passed the time by secretly feeding Guinevere pieces of cheese and bites of bread as she lay quietly under the table. “It’s a long and sordid story,” Merlin finally concluded. “But it is the truth of the matter.”
The story of Sir Neville’s golden teeth had piqued Sir Palomides’ interest, and he commented, “Yes, in my country I have seen some of the gentry affect this fashion of the gold teeth. Strange that a Frankish crusader—or rather, as you say, a Cornish one—would decide to copy it, but who can say why people do what they do? But this story of yours makes me uneasy.” Now it was Sir Palomides’ turn to sigh. He pursed his lips and blew out a deep breath. His eyes grew wide in an expression of disbelief, then his brow furrowed and he shook his head. “No,” he stated firmly. “I will not accept this explanation. This story may consist of facts, if you say so, but it is not truth. My great rival cannot have been killed in this way. More importantly, my beloved lady cannot have been turned upon by her faithful servant. La Belle Isolde must die of a broken heart. That is where the poetic truth resides.”