Camelot

by Giles Kristian

  ‘Iselle can take care of herself, lad.’ Father Yvain cuffed my shoulder before bending to wipe the mud off his shoes with a handful of straw.

  ‘So?’ Gawain lifted his chin in a gesture inviting any of us to report what we had discovered.

  ‘Not many would talk to us,’ Father Yvain admitted, casting the muddy straw aside and brushing beads of water from his fur with the back of his big hand. His cheeks, where the beard did not hide them, were flushed with drink, his words a little loose off the tongue. ‘They’ve little use for gods here.’

  Gawain looked from the monk to me. ‘Galahad?’ he said. ‘Did the Greeks know the ship in the bay?’

  I shook my head. ‘They’ve never seen it before. They were more interested in the girl playing the lyre.’

  ‘Aye, well your tales of Saint Joseph and the Holy Thorn even had me falling asleep in my cup,’ Father Yvain put in, then shook his head at Gawain. ‘The folk here want to drink, eat, gamble and fornicate, and they don’t want men of God watching them do it.’ He shrugged, swiping his hand across his mouth and looking at the smeared stain of wine. ‘Can’t say that I blame them.’

  Gediens gave a snort from where he stood grooming one of the mares, sweeping a brush along its flank and down to its belly. ‘It’s a mystery how you lasted ten years in that Christ house, Yvain.’

  The monk frowned. ‘It’s no mystery and you know it.’

  I didn’t know what he meant by that, but Gawain gave the monk a cold eye and no more was said about it.

  ‘So, no one has seen a man matching Parcefal’s description?’ Gawain asked.

  Gediens shook his head. ‘No one has seen a bear-shield at Tintagel for years, before our own,’ he said, pulling hairs from the boar-bristled brush and dropping them into the straw litter.

  ‘And no one has seen or heard of men living in the sea cave,’ Gawain added, ‘though that does not surprise me. Parcefal would have been careful.’ His brows knitted. ‘What seems to me strangest of all is that no one we have spoken to seems to know whose ship that is out in the bay.’ He snatched a grooming cloth from a nail on the stable wall and wiped the rain from his armour lest it tarnish the bronze scales. My father had been just as particular with his own war gear. ‘Or if they do, they’re not telling us.’

  It was not hard to see why men and women who were drinking the short days away had no desire to speak with him, I thought, watching Gawain in the wind-flickered flamelight of the only torch burning thereabouts. He was a big, battle-scarred, broken-nosed warrior from a time before, when there were such lords of the sword in Britain to haunt Saxon dreams.

  I wondered what my father would look like now, were he alive. In my mind he was strong and proud and handsome. Flawless. But if he were here now, would he be scarred and worn by war? Weary from campaigning? Haunted by the faces of friends long passed?

  Why did you leave me?

  ‘Iselle.’ Father Yvain looked up, his eyes sifting the gloaming beyond the stable door.

  Iselle came in, throwing back her hood and sweeping the rain from her clothes.

  ‘It’s gone,’ she said. ‘The ship has gone.’

  The brush in Gediens’s hand went still. He and Gawain shared a knowing look.

  ‘You think it has something to do with Parcefal and Merlin?’ Gawain asked Iselle.

  ‘I spoke to a shore guard,’ she said. ‘He was guarding the land bridge last night and finished his watch at dawn. He was on his way to his bed when he saw a rowboat leaving on the ebb tide, aiming for the ship anchored in the bay. Told me that he thought it strange, seeing as, far as he knew, no one from that ship had yet climbed the cliff steps and announced themselves.’ Iselle cupped her hands and huffed warm breath into them. ‘I went to see if the ship was still there.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s not.’

  For a moment, Gawain considered all this. Then he nodded. ‘I want to speak with this shore guard.’

  Gediens tossed the grooming brush into a wooden pail. The mare skittered at the sound. ‘He might be able to tell us more about whoever was in that rowboat,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll be back soon,’ Gawain told us, and with that he and Gediens picked up their shields and spears again and headed out into the knifing wind and spitting rain. And we three who were left looked at each other.

  ‘Might as well get some rest,’ Father Yvain suggested, and went to fetch his spare cloak, which he used as a bed roll. ‘It’s all right for you young’uns, but I’m still stiff and footsore from all the walking.’ He laid the cloak down in the clean straw and winced as he lowered himself onto it.

  Now and then the rain gusted in, but for the most part it was comfortable enough. The horses gave off enough heat to keep the chill out, and we’d had worse out there in the woods beside the old Roman road. The wine was warm in my stomach and I did not want to lie down yet in case the world took to spinning around me in a dizzying blur as it had the previous night, and so I fetched the brush from the pail where Gediens had left it and went over to the horses.

  The horse I was to ride was a piebald gelding. He was not especially big, under fifteen hands, but he looked well fed and healthy and seemed good tempered, so we knew the boy had advised us well when he told us to seek out the hunchback Lidas. Nor did he need grooming, for his coat shone in the nearly dark, the white like new snow, the black as lustrous as the raven-feathers of Merlin’s cloak. But I wanted him to get to know me and so I began to brush him, from his head and its white star shining in the black night above his eyes, down his strong neck to his chest and withers. Long sweeps of the brush, drawing the oils from his skin into the coat to protect him from wind and rain, making him shiver now and then with the pleasure of it.

  ‘My name is Galahad,’ I whispered to him, being gentle on his face, only the lightest of touches around his eyes. ‘What’s your name, I wonder?’

  I was not brushing away dust and dirt, but years. I was a boy again, in the stable beside our dwelling in the Dumnonian forest, south-west of Camelot. Grooming Tormaigh, my father’s great war stallion and my friend. Brave Tormaigh, who, though old and greying, had lifted his head high and carried my father into battle one last time. And then, somehow, had emerged from that bloody slaughter to carry me to where Guinevere lay, lost inside her own mind.

  I had loved Tormaigh and he had loved me, and now I brushed this gelding, whose name I did not know, but in my mind it was Tormaigh that I was grooming. Tormaigh whose scent I breathed in now, the sweet hay perfume of his breath, the comforting dust-and-sweat musk which was strongest where his head met his neck. And, in a way, I was saying goodbye to him now, these years later, because the child I had been had not said the words.

  Brave, noble Tormaigh.

  ‘Can I help?’

  I looked up. Iselle stood the other side of the gelding’s head. She held a rough woollen grooming cloth. I had not seen her approach, but something in her face told me she had been watching me a while.

  I blinked to clear my eyes and my mind. ‘Best you work on your own horse so you can get to know each other.’ Iselle was not used to horses, and I knew she was apprehensive about riding, though she had not said as much.

  She said nothing now and I kept working with the brush, sweeping it down the gelding’s foreleg to the knee as I had learnt. As my father had taught me.

  ‘He likes you,’ Iselle said after a long moment.

  ‘He likes being brushed. Some horses don’t. My grandfather had a stallion called Malo. He would bite and kick the stable hands. Even my grandfather’s groom.’ I felt a smile tug at my lips, the memory of my father’s words having caught. ‘Malo was a foul-tempered demon. He hated everyone, except my father. And everyone was afraid of him, but my father wasn’t, even though he was just a boy. He was the only one who Malo would allow to brush him when he was in one of his moods.’

  The mare behind Iselle nickered and snorted.

  ‘I think she wants some attention,’ I said.

  But Iselle did not move. Her eyes w
ere still fixed on me.

  ‘This is the first time you have talked to me of your father,’ she said.

  I ran the brush along the gelding’s flank to the point of his hip. ‘I know what you think of him.’ Iselle lifted her chin but held her tongue. ‘You blame him for the ruin of Britain. You blame him for loving Guinevere and for breaking Arthur’s heart.’ The brush went still in my hand. I looked up, seizing Iselle’s eyes with my own. ‘You believe that if my father and Guinevere had not betrayed him, Arthur would have been unstoppable. That together he and my father would have driven the Saxons back into the sea.’

  She thought about this and nodded. ‘I used to think that,’ she admitted. ‘I still think that. But I also think that we cannot decide whom we love. We can control it no more than we can change the flight of an arrow once it has left the string.’ She shrugged. ‘Your father loved Guinevere. And he loved Arthur. For all his strength, for all his skill with a sword, he could not change that.’ She gave a slight shake of her head. ‘He could not alter the flight of that arrow.’ She placed her hand on the gelding’s neck. Near my own hand. Hers on a patch of white coat, mine resting upon a shining swathe of black. A finger’s length of gleaming coat was all that separated us.

  A tremble ran through the gelding’s flesh and I knew that Iselle must have felt it too. Heat flooded through me. I wanted more than anything to place my hand on hers. To feel her fingers and her knuckles beneath my palm.

  ‘I have no doubt your father loved you too, Galahad,’ she said.

  I flinched. I pulled my hand away and swept the brush along the gelding’s flank again.

  ‘You think he did not love you because he left you, to fight at Lord Arthur’s side.’

  I did not answer. I wanted to tell her that she was wrong. That she knew nothing about me. But that would have been a lie, and so I said nothing as I ran my fingers through the gelding’s mane, separating a tangle that was not really there.

  ‘Lancelot was trying to make things right between the three of them,’ she said. ‘Even were that not so, he had to go to fight beside Arthur. He was a warrior with a warrior’s pride.’ I was not looking at her now, but I could feel her eyes on me like embers on my skin. ‘If you were a warrior, you would understand.’

  I had never been kicked by a horse, but just then I felt as if I had. My breath caught in my chest. My limbs seemed gripped by invisible hands and I went still, but for my head, which came up in challenge, my mouth full of words which I had yet to place in order.

  But Iselle was no longer looking at me. She was looking towards the stable door and the night beyond. The gelding lifted his head higher, ears twitching, flicking back and forth.

  ‘Someone’s coming.’ Iselle hurried over to where her bow stave leant against the wall.

  ‘Father, wake up,’ I hissed at Yvain, who was asleep in his straw nest. I dropped the brush and moved around the gelding’s head to where the monk was snoring in his blankets and furs. I crouched beside him. ‘Wake up, Father.’ I touched him on his shoulder. He snorted but did not wake and so I shook him. ‘Father.’

  ‘Not asleep yet,’ he grumbled. ‘How could I be, with you two chattering like two fieldfares on a hawthorn.’ He sat up, throwing off his fur and staring at the stable door. ‘Gawain’s back?’

  I did not think it would be Gawain and Gediens. Not so soon. Iselle did not think so either, judging by the Saxon sword which she gripped in one hand, its scabbard in the other; there was no time to string her bow. Seeing her so armed, Father Yvain hurried to his feet. ‘You sure you heard something?’ he asked her, not taking his eyes from the night beyond the door.

  I could hear the rain’s hiss and the distant murmur of folk enjoying themselves in the ale house. A laugh. A drunken shout. The faint trilling of a flute now and then, and, far away across the plateau, the incessant barking of a dog.

  I looked at Iselle. She did not answer Father Yvain, yet it was clear by the set of her jaw that she believed someone was out there. We had all come to trust her instincts.

  Father Yvain took a step towards the door. ‘Show yourself!’ he called into the darkness, his spear gripped across his broad chest.

  The horses were skittish now, one pawing the ground, another curling back its upper lip, baring its teeth. I was aware of the blood rushing through my veins, crashing in my ears like the waves on Tintagel’s shore. Iselle and I looked at each other. Perhaps she was mistaken. Perhaps it had been a trick of the wind. Or inquisitive children coming to catch a glimpse of the warriors with the bear-shields, shining helms and scale armour. I was just about to say as much, when Father Yvain growled a curse under his breath.

  ‘Put the spear down, priest.’ A short, broad-shouldered man pulled open the low stable door and stepped inside. His sword pointed at Father Yvain. ‘On the floor with it, old man, before I take it off you and put the sharp end in your guts.’

  Behind him I counted six more warriors, rain dripping from the rims of their grey helmets and the hems of their cloaks and running down the shafts of the spears which they clutched in white hands.

  These men came with him, three off his right shoulder, three off his left, all of them with spears levelled and violence in their eyes.

  ‘You’re walking mud into my clean straw,’ Father Yvain said, tilting his spear’s blade down towards the leading man’s feet. ‘So, I’ll ask you once to turn around and leave.’

  The short man lifted a hand and his men stopped, set their feet and waited, like obedient hounds ready to kill at their master’s word. ‘Where are the others?’ he asked.

  Father Yvain’s lip curled in the nest of his beard. ‘What others?’

  The man almost grinned at that, appreciating Yvain’s effrontery. He made a point of glancing at the horses shifting in the shadows and the saddles lined up with our other gear against a partition wall. ‘You are a priest?’ he asked.

  Yvain nodded. ‘Of sorts,’ he said. ‘Least, I was.’ He shrugged. ‘For some years.’

  The short man considered this. ‘The kind that deals in banes and curses?’ he asked, making a slight gesture with his head, at which the three men on his right moved off, closing the gap between themselves and Iselle, who turned to face them squarely.

  Father Yvain jerked his spear at them in warning. ‘Did you not see the ghost fence which I have made out there?’ he asked. ‘The one which will shrivel the manhood of any fool who crosses it, unless I have spoken his name to the spirits in the wind?’

  The short man tilted his head to one side as he eyed the monk. By the light of the lamp flame I saw that his face was pockmarked. Perhaps he had reason to fear curses.

  ‘He’s lying,’ the whip-lean spearman to his left said. ‘He’s a Christian.’ The man spat at Father Yvain. ‘You have no magic.’

  Father Yvain spun the spear round in his hands, the blade whirring in its circle, whispering in the dark. ‘I don’t need spells. I have this,’ he said, flexing his fingers and gripping the shaft tightly again. Then, with his thick beard he gestured towards Iselle. ‘And the girl here kills Saxons for fun. You ever killed a Saxon, boy?’ He challenged the thin spearman with his eyes. He was not old, this warrior, but he was no boy, either, and he bristled at the insult.

  The leader of these spearmen regarded Iselle, the expression on his pitted face one of grudging respect, then turned his eyes on me. What I saw in his face as he looked me up and down was curiosity, then disgust.

  I looked past the short man to the corner of the stable where Gediens and Gawain’s spears stood. I would never reach them before one of these men ran me through. My stomach rolled. My saliva tasted sour. I looked at Iselle, who stood defiant in the heavy silence which hung in the stable now that we all knew what must happen. She tossed the scabbard aside and gripped the sword with two hands, her lips pulled back from her teeth like a wolf’s, as we waited for the pockmarked man to give the word and send his hounds in for the kill.

  I saw his hand come up, then a blur of movement
as Father Yvain rushed in, thrusting the butt end of his spear forward to beat the man’s sword aside, before swinging the spear blade back across, ripping open his throat in a spray of gore. Yvain stepped back, blocking another man’s spear thrust and plunging his own spear into the thin man’s belly, twisting and pulling it free before it snarled in guts and flesh.

  Iselle parried a spear and swept her Saxon blade up the shaft and I saw a scatter of white fingers fly before another man threw himself at her and they both fell into the straw, Iselle shrieking as the sword fell from her hand, the spearman grunting with the effort of trying to overbear her. Then a blade cut the air so that I felt its passing on my cheek and I ducked as the man scythed the spear back again, the blade flashing above my head. I threw myself up at him, fists flying, knuckles raking across his temple and smashing his teeth into his throat, but as he fell back, I heard Iselle cry out and I turned and the next thing I knew my arms were around the neck of the man who was on her. I hauled his head back and, in that moment, it seemed that everything around me was happening slowly, as if the very air had thickened and our enemies laboured through it like insects caught in honey. I was roaring but I could barely hear it. I could barely hear anything, but I saw into Iselle’s wild eyes, our souls touching for an instant. I saw the knife in her hand, that long Saxon blade coming up. Cutting across white flesh.

  Then I was in the straw, points of light filling my vision like sparks struck from flint and steel, not yet feeling the pain from the blow which had knocked me down. And beyond the flying sparks, I saw Father Yvain parry a sword thrust and put another man down, his mouth wide in a bellow of fury which sounded far away.

  Sword? There had been only one man armed with a sword. I tried to rise, choking on dust raised by booted feet in the litter all around me, knowing that more men had come. We would die. These were our last breaths and I looked for Iselle but saw instead the leather-bound rim of a shield as it came down on my head, knocking me into the straw again.