Camelot

by Giles Kristian

  The thatch beneath me was rain-soaked and slick. For a long while I just lay there, my cheek pressed against reeds stinking of moss and smoke and rot, because I feared I would slide down if I tried to move. It may have been the sibilance of the rain but I thought I heard Iselle hiss and so I reached up with a hand and burrowed it into the thatch, taking hold of a hazel spar, by which I pulled myself up. Slowly, so slowly, my habit heavy with water and catching now and then on the thatch, I moved, hoping that the seethe of the rain smothered the sound of my movement from those within and from the spearman who stood guard outside the door on the other side of the roundhouse.

  A guard on the ramparts called out. I went still again, my heart thumping hard against the roof beam below the thatch, my flesh trembling with cold and fear. But the call was just a greeting and I breathed again. Surely those spearmen on Camelot’s wall were looking out, not in. Surely my grey robes concealed me on this foul and starless night as completely as any spell of Merlin’s could. And so I climbed again, finding another twisted hazel stick. Easing myself higher, little by little, because we needed to know if the spearman outside the door was the only one, or if there were more inside.

  At last my right foot found purchase and I held that position and held my breath too, my ear to the wet reeds. Listening. Trying not to cough from the smoke seeking through the roof into the dank night. I reached down and pulled Iselle’s long Saxon knife from my belt, then slid it into the reed bundle by my head. I pushed it in to half its length, then twisted the blade, trying to force an opening. But although the thatch was old, it was thick and packed tightly and so I used the sharp Saxon blade to saw at the reeds, now and then stopping to pull the cut stalks away.

  This was worse than the climbing. I imagined bits falling down inside like chaff. All it would take was a guard inside to look up and see a blade or my hand digging into the thatch and I would feel a spear rip up into my belly, gouging into my guts as I now gouged into the reeds.

  But I could not stop now. I pushed the knife in again, feeling the sudden give as it broke through. I drew the blade out, slid across and put my eye to the hole, blinking against the stinging smoke from the hearth flames below, feeling the rising heat on my skin. And suddenly it was as if I was inside the roundhouse, not lying on its roof in the rain. For I could see Merlin.

  He lay on his side on a cloak spread upon the earthen floor, asleep with his knees pulled up to his chest and his head resting on his bound hands. Across the other side of the fire, lying there looking up at me, was a yellow-haired, yellow-bearded man who could only have been Merlin’s Saxon slave, Oswine. My blood froze. How long had he been watching me? Was there a man standing where I could not see him, ready to thrust his spear up into me? Oswine made the smallest movement with his head, but it was enough to tell me that there was someone else in there with them.

  By now Iselle must reckon I’d been smoked to death, I thought, moving even more slowly than before, because I knew that I could be seen from inside the roundhouse. I used the knife gingerly to lever up some more reeds, then looked in again. I saw the guard, sitting on a stool against the far wall, his spear across his knees, his helmet by his feet, his crow-shield leaning against a roof post. Unlike Merlin, he was not asleep, though he was not far off by the looks.

  I looked back at Oswine. He checked that the spearman was not watching him, then turned his hands palms out and nodded to the knife in my hand. I shook my head. I could not risk giving him the blade, for what if the guard saw me drop it and alerted the other outside? Or what if the man inside the roundhouse killed Oswine? Even if Iselle and I escaped, we might never get another chance to break Merlin out.

  Again, I shook my head at Oswine and steeled myself to slide back down the roof so that I could tell Iselle about the spearman inside and we could decide what to do. But something in Oswine’s face stopped me. In a moment of cold dread, I knew he had decided to test the thread of fate which his gods had spun for him. He sat up and told the guard that he needed the night soil bucket.

  The man growled some insult, annoyed at being disturbed, yet he stood to fetch the bucket from beside the door and the moment his back was turned, Oswine’s eyes flared and he nodded at me and I did not think, but pushed my hand through the hole in the thatch and dropped Iselle’s long knife.

  I was moving. With only half the care of before, my blood pounding in my ears. Lowering myself, half sliding, half falling, until I hung over the dripping eaves and dropped to the ground.

  ‘It’s happening,’ I told Iselle, who was pressed against the wall out of the rain.

  She grabbed hold of my shoulders. ‘My knife,’ she hissed, her eyes searching mine.

  ‘Oswine has it,’ I said, and she drew another knife from its sheath as we put our ears to the cold wall, desperate to know what was going on within. A muffled shout. A bucket hitting the ground, and the voice of the outside guard asking his companion if all was well. We edged around the house, keeping to the deeper dark beneath the eaves.

  Then the clump of the door being opened.

  Oswine was a shadowed fiend with the firelight behind him and the seax in his hand. He came face to face with the outside guard, who met him at the door and levelled his spear at him in an instant. It happened in five heartbeats. Iselle swept in and I did not see the knife but knew she had buried it in the guard’s back. As he twisted round to face this unexpected enemy, Oswine was upon him, one arm around his neck, dragging him back into the roundhouse and punching the long knife into his chest again and again.

  I looked behind me into the night and saw no one.

  ‘Hurry,’ Iselle hissed at Oswine, who cast the body aside and explained to a bleary-eyed Merlin that it was time to go.

  One of Merlin’s famous concealment spells would have been welcome then, but I feared he would not be able to walk, let alone summon up some powerful charm, and Oswine growled at me to get us away. And so I turned and led them towards the western perimeter wall, which was the closest. We were wraiths in that black night, bent low and our movements more silent than wingbeats across the rain-sodden ground. Seeking the darkest pools of shadow and keeping our eyes low for fear of their whites being seen by some watchful guard up on the ramparts.

  Past a sheep pen and through a patch of squelching, boggy ground which might have claimed Merlin had not Oswine picked the old man up and carried him as a father carries his child across a brook or to bed. Then up the earthen bank and to the foot of a ladder, where we waited, needing to catch our breath but not wanting to breathe, for we were looking up at the wooden walkway to make sure there were no guards nearby.

  ‘Now,’ I urged, and we climbed, Oswine all but pulling Merlin up, and then we crouched on the rampart and waited for a cry of alarm which did not come. I nodded to Iselle and she and Oswine scrambled up and over the palisade, hanging for a moment before dropping onto the steep bank.

  I looked over and Oswine was flapping an arm at me to lower Merlin down. ‘Are you ready, lord?’ I asked him. He looked old and afraid and as confused as anyone would who only moments before had been fast asleep by the fire but was now fleeing for their life through the rain-lashed night.

  Merlin nodded and, slowly, so painfully slowly, attempted to clamber over the wall, mumbling words which had no shape that I could tell. ‘I’m sorry, lord,’ I said, and took hold of him, horrified by how little he weighed, and lifted him over, letting his stick-like body slide though my hands until I was gripping just his wrists. He looked up at me, wide-eyed, and let out a little frightened yelp. Then I let him drop to Oswine below and I climbed after.

  We slid on our backsides down the steep embankment, and at the next two ditches and ramparts we did the same, but at the final one a sentry saw us and yelled his challenge into the night.

  My heart kicked in my chest. Fear flooded my limbs. We dropped from the last palisade onto the plain, just an arrow-shot from the south-west gate and the spearmen in the gatehouse, who took up the alarm, shouting and str
iking the iron plate which hung there, the hard, flat tone of it filling the night.

  We stopped for a moment, breathing hard and peering into the rain-hissing gloom. Iselle held her hand out to Oswine. ‘My knife,’ she said.

  Oswine handed it to her with a nod of thanks and I gave her the sheath. ‘They won’t open the gate until they know they’re not being attacked,’ the Saxon said in his thick accent.

  ‘That way.’ Iselle pointed the knife into the south.

  We moved as fast as Oswine with his burden could manage, but when I next looked back at the hill fort I saw torches flaring on the ramparts in spite of the rain. I had convinced myself that by now they must have found the two dead men and would know that Merlin had gone. And they would wake Lady Morgana and her fury would whip men out of Camelot into the night after us.

  ‘Gawain,’ I yelled, not caring if our pursuers heard, so long as we found the others before Lady Morgana’s men found us. ‘Here, Gawain!’ My eyes sifting the dark, searching for the shadow shape of the old oak tree where we had left Gawain, Gediens and Parcefal that noon.

  ‘Galahad,’ a voice called out from the blackness. Gediens.

  ‘Here,’ I replied. Beside me, Oswine put Merlin down gently, the druid moaning that though he might not be as young as he once was, he was not yet dead enough to need carrying.

  ‘I have them. Here!’ Gediens called behind him. And in moments we heard the jangle of horse tack and the snorting of the animals themselves. I saw the dull glow of scale armour and helmets.

  ‘Galahad,’ Gawain said, dismounting and coming close enough that we could see each other. Then he saw Merlin and I saw his hand fall to his belt’s iron buckle for luck. ‘Gods,’ he growled.

  ‘That explains all the fuss, then,’ Gediens said. Somewhere behind us the iron alarm clanged still, rhythmic and urgent as a heartbeat. There were men and torches too, more than a dozen flames chasing in the dark.

  ‘Gawain ap Lot, Prince of Lyonesse,’ Merlin spat, shuffling forward to peer at Gawain from swollen eyes. Bent and crooked as an ancient crabapple tree. ‘You look old,’ he said.

  13

  A Warrior Born

  WE RODE THROUGH THE night, moving slowly, passing burial mounds and stands of alder and leaning black poplars one hundred feet high: giant sentinels in riverside meadows. Now and then we caught glimpses of flame in the murk, or heard the plaintive bray of horns far away, and sometimes even the cries of our pursuers as they picked up tracks which they thought were ours and called to one another to go this way or that. And so we did not dare stop, though we were careful to let the horses find their own footing, for we trusted their eyes better than our own in the dark.

  Gawain led the way, followed by Oswine and Merlin, then Iselle and me and the spare horses. Parcefal and Gediens rode at the rear and I knew that if the Lady Morgana’s men caught up with us, these two would turn their mounts and draw their swords rather than see Merlin taken again.

  As for the druid, he sat slumped on his small mare, glaring into the north-east as though more fearful of where we were going than where we had been. He was gaunt and grim, bruised and crusted with dried blood. He looked like a corpse dragged from its burial mound, and we rode in the wake of his reek. But he was the last of the druids, the keeper of the knowledge of Britain, and I knew many believed that in him rested our hopes of restoring Arthur to his former self and chasing the shadow from these Dark Isles.

  There were spearmen guarding the old Roman bridge across the Cam River. They emerged from rain-glistened tents, armed with shields and spears and resentment, being the ones out here in the cold and damp, far from the comforts of Camelot.

  ‘Why are you travelling at night?’ one of them asked, putting on a helmet which was so dented it could have caught the rain. Behind him, ten other warriors stood yawning, shivering and griping. They had seen by now that we were not Saxons and, not anticipating trouble, would rather get back to their dice or ale.

  ‘Because this man is a Christian.’ Gawain pointed his thumb at me.

  I made the sign of the Thorn at the spearman, who cringed as if he feared I was putting a curse on him.

  ‘So what?’ he asked.

  Gawain sighed and Gediens shook his head.

  ‘Don’t you know anything about Christians?’ Gawain said.

  The man’s answer was to spit into the mud.

  ‘He’s a monk,’ Gawain said. ‘An important one, so they tell me. And his companion, the older one …’ he thumbed behind him towards Merlin, who was a silent, shrouded figure in the gloom, ‘he’s sick. He claims that Satan is trying to steal his soul.’ Gawain shrugged. ‘But Satan cannot find him at night, and so we ride for the church at Caer Gloui, where the Christians keep charms which may hold death at bay and where the abbot will pay us for our service.’

  The spearman looked at me. ‘You Christus men fear a god who cannot even see in the dark?’ he asked.

  ‘Satan is no god,’ I said. ‘There is only one God.’

  ‘What is this Satan, then?’ he asked.

  ‘He is a fallen angel,’ I explained, lifting my voice above the burble and gush of the river.

  The spearman turned to his men, who shook their heads or spat or touched iron or murmured that Christians were mad and best avoided. Then he looked back at Gawain and I did not need moon or stars to see the disgust twisting his face. ‘Are you a Christian, lord?’ he asked. He had seen the glint of scale armour and a hint of the sword’s grip beneath Gawain’s cloak and knew better than to forgo the respect which such accoutrements demanded.

  ‘No,’ Gawain leant forward in the saddle and nodded back towards Merlin. ‘But I have seen him turn a man’s guts to sour water with a word,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Seen him summon maggots from a man’s eyes and so, if I were you, friend, I would not make us tarry here.’

  The spearman peered at Merlin through the gloom, but it was clear that he was in no mood to go closer to a sick Christian who could make a man’s eyes writhe with maggots. He straightened himself and his spear and waved an arm towards the old Roman bridge.

  ‘Go,’ he said.

  Gawain nodded and flicked his reins and his mare started forward. We followed. ‘Christ be with you,’ I said to the spearman and he actually took two steps back and swept his arm towards the bridge again. But their eyes were on Iselle, not Merlin, as we passed. They watched her as men will who have been too long away from their wives, but Iselle kept her eyes on the cobbled path and rode on.

  ‘His fallen angel may not be able to see in the dark, but the Saxons can,’ the man with the dented helmet called after us. We were on the bridge now and the hiss of the water running beneath us almost smothered his words. ‘They’re everywhere, thanks to this damned truce,’ he yelled. ‘And don’t be fooled by it. Those rabid dogs will still kill you for the cloaks on your backs.’

  No sooner had we crossed the river than Parcefal urged his big mare forward, the horse tossing her chestnut head as if she too was unsettled by what she had heard.

  ‘Morgana has made peace with King Cerdic?’ the old warrior asked.

  We had not yet had the chance to tell them of all we had seen.

  ‘There were Saxons in the fort.’ I was warming my hands on my gelding’s neck where the big veins throbbed beneath his skin. ‘Their leader was a man named Cynric.’

  ‘King Cerdic’s son,’ Oswine put in. ‘He will be king of my people one day.’ He looked at me, and in the darkness I saw a Saxon. And I wondered how long ago his own people had come to Britain and if they had found good lives or only hardship, blood and death. ‘Cynric is Woden-favoured,’ he went on. ‘Anyone can see that. But for now, he is content to be Morgana’s guest, enjoying the view and the lady’s wine in his father’s stead.’

  ‘And no doubt planning how to take Camelot when this truce fails,’ Gediens said.

  ‘He would rather burn it, I think,’ Oswine mused.

  ‘Morgana has betrayed Dumnonia,’ Iselle spat.
/>   Gawain’s face was all scar and frown. ‘We will talk it through later,’ he growled, picking up the pace, for we knew that soon enough Morgana’s men would make sense of who we were and in which direction we travelled. And because voices will drift far at night, we rode in silence across rolling downland and along chalk river valleys. Through low-lying vales and ancient forest. A cavalcade of outcasts. A retinue bound to a dream.

  We rode to Arthur.

  At noon of the next day, we joined the Roman road north of the River Cary and rode along it as far as we could before leaving it to venture westward into the wetlands. After that, it was slow going as we stuck to the higher ridges and drier tracks because of the horses, even if those paths did not lead directly to Arthur’s steading. But we put our trust in Iselle and she guided us with preternatural cunning, so that only three times did we have to turn back and try a different way, and not once did any of the horses become stuck in the sucking mud. Still, it was arduous and tiring and, with no sleep the previous night, we were half dead in the saddle when at last we came to the fenland north of the Meare Pool, and that eerily quiet place beneath the grey sky.

  It was dusk again when we emerged from the tall reeds and found Arthur’s house as we had left it. This humble refuge in the marsh. This den which seemed beyond the rule of time. But stranger even than the place itself was that we found Lord Arthur sitting on an old willow stump, his black bitch Banon lying beside him, the two of them staring towards the marsh, as if they had known we were coming. And I wondered if Arthur and Merlin were still tied each to the other somehow, joined by some invisible thread which had stretched across the years, and that Arthur had felt the druid’s approach the way a spider senses a fly through the strands of his web. I did not see how that could be so, and yet it was preferable to the other explanation, that Arthur had been sitting on that stump all the days since we had left him.