‘By the gods,’ Arthur said, standing as we walked our mounts into the clearing. Banon stood dutifully at his heel. ‘You have him,’ Arthur said, his voice tremulous, squinting in the twilight as though he trusted his own eyes no more than the ground beyond that wall of winter reeds. ‘Is it real?’ he asked, moving stiffly towards us, gripping a fur tightly at his chest though the day was not cold.
‘Real enough, Arthur,’ Gawain said.
Arthur nodded at me and at Iselle, but then he noticed the spare mounts and the empty saddles. ‘Yvain?’ he looked at me.
‘He is with his family in Annwn, lord,’ I said. For I felt sure of it then.
A shadow passed across Arthur’s tired face and he nodded. ‘So many have gone,’ he mumbled to himself, eyeing me with something like suspicion, as if trying to place me, as if he could not quite recall if I was from that old world or this current one.
‘We found him, lord,’ I said, just for want of something to say. ‘We found Merlin.’
This seemed to pull Arthur from the mire of his memories, and he nodded, turning to watch as Oswine helped Merlin dismount, the druid complaining of stiffness and mumbling foul threats which rolled off the Saxon like rain off a waxed skin.
‘Guinevere?’ Gawain asked of Arthur.
‘The same, nephew,’ Arthur said, his eyes fixed on the druid, his hands gripping the pelt to his neck, white knots snarled in black fur. His breathing looked deep and laboured, as though he was trying to quell some pain in his stomach, and his jaw was clamped tight, the muscle in his hollow cheek beating like a hawk’s heart.
We dismounted and fussed with the reins and saddles, but all of us had one eye on Arthur and Merlin as they stood in the mud, five paces from each other and yet ten years distant. My presence there felt to me like an offence against some god who had contrived to bring this moment to pass, but I watched anyway, while the world seemed to stand trapped and expectant, like that breathless silence between the lightning flash and the thunder peal.
Merlin swayed and almost stumbled, and Oswine moved in to steady him but the druid hissed and flailed and so the Saxon stepped back. Then Merlin straightened his old back and lifted his chin, his grey beard quivering, and tried to speak. But the words would not come. He chewed at his lip and his blackened swollen eyes widened and filled with tears, before releasing them to roll down his gaunt cheeks.
‘Arthur,’ he breathed and shook his head. ‘Arthur.’ His hands gripped each other, the fingers writhing like little serpents, and then he limped across the space between them and Arthur took half a step but no more, his lips a thin line, his eyes all brittle steel.
Merlin wiped tears and old blood from his cheek. ‘The gods toy with us still, my old friend,’ he said.
We ate well and slept long. And the next day, Arthur asked about all we had seen and heard, though it seemed to me his thoughts were elsewhere. Until we told him that Lady Morgana had forged a truce with the Saxon king, Cerdic. This news seemed to hurt him like an old wound opening.
‘Why would she make peace with Cerdic when his war bands are killing and burning in Caer Gwinntguic and Caer Celemion and Cynwidion?’ he asked, gently placing his own cloak around Guinevere’s shoulders. She sat in her chair by the far wall, watching but not seeing.
‘Because no one else will fight and she’s not strong enough to fight them alone,’ Parcefal suggested.
‘My cousin still fights,’ Arthur said, meaning Lord Constantine.
Gawain gave a derisive snort. ‘Constantine hides in the forests of Caer Lerion.’
‘But Camelot is the hope of all Britain,’ Iselle said. No one disagreed with that, not even Arthur, and it seemed to me that for all Iselle’s fire and thorniness, these old warriors had accepted her into their kinship. More than this, they respected her.
‘Camelot has always held,’ Gediens said. ‘Yet, if there are Saxons in Camelot now …’ He shook his head, not having the heart to say more.
Arthur sat back against the wall and stared at the cup in his hand. ‘Then even the idea of Britain is fading like a dream.’
‘There can be no Britain without a man who is strong enough to lead the kings in war,’ Gawain asserted. ‘There can be no Britain without you, Arthur. You know this.’
But Arthur was lost in that cup and too far away to hear.
We spent the next days hunting and making repairs to Arthur and Guinevere’s steading, tending the swine and sheep, spreading the horses’ dung to enrich the ground for the growing of fruits and vegetables, ploughing the rich soil in readiness for the spring sowing, cutting reeds and gathering firewood, making plans to unite the kings of Britain, and waiting for Merlin to recover. When we had restored the old byre, at least well enough to keep out the rain and wind, Merlin slept in there with the rest of us, leaving the house to Arthur and Guinevere. But the druid was weak and Oswine said it would be some time before he was ready to attempt what we needed of him. And so we busied ourselves as best we could while the Saxon tended his master.
One day, when Iselle was out in the marsh with her bow, I asked Gawain if he would teach me the use of sword, spear and shield. He had Father Yvain’s grey mare pulling a plough, for she was strong and placid and did not seem to mind the collar and traces.
‘You sure, Galahad?’ he asked, looking straight ahead towards the wood of sallow, hazel and ash beyond the field. Wanting to keep his line. There was not a great deal of arable land, for what there was had been reclaimed from the marsh, but it yielded easily to the coulter, that blade cutting the ground before the ploughshare turned it in glistening banks.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sure.’
‘Why?’ Gawain asked. ‘Why now?’ He leant into the stilt and clicked his tongue and the mare snorted in reply.
I thought back to that grey day when the Saxons had come to the monastery to kill, and before that, when those Saxon scouts had caught me out in the marsh and I had flailed like an eel in a withy trap. Other memories flashed behind my eyes. Parcefal besting Lady Triamour’s champion. Iselle and Oswine killing the men who guarded Merlin, and Father Yvain being thrown from the cliffs at Tintagel. But the vision which clung to me with the sharpest claws, which had, in truth, haunted me since we rode from Tintagel, was of Iselle being thrown backwards and the man upon her, and of the wild terror in her eyes.
‘The Order of the Thorn is gone.’ I was measuring my stride to keep pace with Gawain and the plough. ‘And even if it were not, and if I had taken the tonsure, what use would I be?’
Gawain clicked and encouraged the mare, though she did not need it. ‘It is always useful to have a god on your side,’ he said.
I leant away from him. ‘I don’t think you put much store in the gods.’
He almost smiled at that and looked back over his shoulder to ensure he had not deviated. ‘I put store in men, Galahad. In iron and steel. In courage.’
‘Then teach me,’ I said.
‘Did your father teach you?’ he asked.
I recalled my childhood. Practising with weapons which were too big and heavy, and which made my arms and shoulders burn with pain.
‘Every day,’ I said.
Gawain nodded. ‘Your father learnt young himself. Learnt from good men. But it was already in him. Maybe it’s already in you too.’
And it was. I had always known it. Had felt it in my blood and in my hands, like another man’s visceral memories trapped in my own flesh. I had heard the faint echo of it across years, no more than a whisper but nagging like an ache. When I took a bow into the marsh to shoot waterfowl, or a spear into the woods to hunt deer or boar. When I skinned those beasts after, in the sharp scent of them and in the knowing that they were dead at my hands.
‘We have time,’ Gawain said, ‘for Oswine will not have us bothering Merlin until he’s better. Or dead.’ The ploughshare gouged its furrow, turning earthworms which were pink and naked against the black soil. Behind us, gulls and crows squawked and bickered over the writhing treats
. ‘We’ll teach you what we know. The three of us. And we’ll see if you have any of him in you.’ He winked. ‘Or if you should have taken the tonsure and gone back to Ynys Wydryn to spend your days sitting under a thorny tree.’
We began that same day. Gediens found an old spear in Arthur’s stable and, after removing the blade, he cut it in half and wrapped leather around one end of each stick for a grip. Then Gawain and I fought with these and shields too, so that he might humiliate me. Or so it seemed. For I lost count of the times I ended up sitting on my backside or sprawled in the mud. It seemed he could put me down with barely a touch, using my mistakes in footing and balance against me, punishing me every time I overreached or fell for a feint.
On one occasion, he tilted his shield downward at the moment that I struck it, and as my weight carried me forward, he stepped aside and struck me across the back and I went down, face first into the filth.
‘You’ll never protect her with Christus songs, Galahad,’ he growled in my ear, waiting for me to get to my feet.
I rose, spitting dirt, and slammed my shield against his and he grinned. ‘Again.’ He stepped back and nodded that I should attack him.
I strode forward, looking for a part of him that I could hit, desperate to land a blow that would knock the smile from his face. He saw it in my eyes and so held his shield out wide, inviting me to strike his belly or chest. A trap, of course. But if I was fast enough, I could spring it and still hit him. He was old. I was young. I lowered my weapon, as if catching my breath, then I flew at him and he parried, sweeping my stick aside and twisting at the waist to drive his shield into my right shoulder, putting me down again. I rolled onto my back and looked up at the sky and three crows which were mobbing a hawk, taking it in turns to swoop in and away, driving the predator west, chasing it from their roosts.
‘Prayers will not kill your enemies. A prayer is just a fart on the wind.’ He gestured with his stick. ‘Up you get, lad.’
I got up, hating him. I hammered his shield and revelled in it, and I did not see his stick until it hit me in the belly, driving the air out and leaving me bent double and gasping. ‘Anger will get you killed. Skill will keep you alive,’ he said.
And so it went. I trained with Gediens and Parcefal too. Gediens was a master with the spear and even though we sheathed the blades in leather, I lost the most blood fighting against him. The stitching on that sheath opened my neck and cheek and the skin on the backs of both hands, so that I learnt quickly to block his attacks with my own shaft, the spears clacking in their own harsh language, our feet moving fast across the ground.
Parcefal taught me how to fight on horseback, sometimes letting me ride his own mare, Lavina, who liked me well enough. She had long been trained for war and together we would jump obstacles, gallop across uneven ground, execute tight circles, sudden turns and stops, I thrusting a spear or slashing a sword at timbers which Parcefal had stuck in the earth, or using the practice sword or sheathed spear against the three warriors, who struck at me from the ground.
I ate mud and tasted humiliation. I limped and grimaced and scowled through the days because of the bruises which bloomed in my flesh like mould in bread. Arthur would watch me work, saying little, but now and then nodding at something which I did well. Or, more often, shaking his head at some failure.
When she was not practising with her bow or with the Saxon sword, or out hunting amongst the reed-beds, Iselle watched, too. Sometimes she laughed when Gawain or Gediens used my own anger or impetuousness against me, and her laughter hurt me more than the bruises and swellings and made me try even harder in the bouts.
On occasion, Merlin left his bed to breathe the air and squint at me from beneath white brows.
‘You left him too long with the Christ men, Gawain,’ he croaked once.
‘Because I was too busy looking for you, druid,’ Gawain replied, lifting his chin at me, the sign for me to attack.
They were days of pain and frustration and shame. And they were days of awakening, too. Of memories manifesting in flesh, kindling in a sword-swing or a spear-strike, or in Lavina’s whinny as I wheeled her tightly and cut a sliver from a standing pole, and I was on Tormaigh’s back again, my father’s eyes on us like those of a hawk as we rode down imaginary foes.
At last there were glimmers of spring in the marsh. Mistle thrushes, blue tits and chaffinches poured their liquid songs into the days, marking their territories and seeking mates. Woodpeckers drummed dead timber and herons danced their strange dances, stretching their necks upwards, then lowering them over their backs. Amongst the reeds, toads were emerging from their winter hiding places, lacing the pools with strings of slimy eggs, and in the woods near Arthur’s steading foul-smelling dog’s mercury, coltsfoot and sweet violets covered the ground like a pelt, shivering in the breezes.
For a while we feared that Merlin would slip away with the winter. Oswine told us how Mordred’s sons Melehan and Ambrosius had struck the druid whenever he refused to answer Morgana’s questions.
‘She wanted his magic for herself,’ the Saxon explained, ‘but Merlin says he has no magic now. At first, they did not believe him and so they beat him. Not much, for they still feared him. But after a while, when they knew they had not been cursed, when they saw that they were not pissing blood, that their hair was not falling out, that their manhoods had not shrivelled between their legs, they began to believe his power was gone. And so they beat him without fear.’
Oswine had asked me to heat some water so that he could wash Merlin in the byre, the druid being too weak to clean himself in the brook near the western wood. I carried the cauldron from Arthur’s hearth to the old cow shed and, by the daylight flooding in through the open door behind me, I saw Merlin’s naked body. Oswine saw the shock in my face but said nothing. Here was the man who had halted Saxon armies with his ghost fences of severed heads. The man who had delivered Tintagel to King Uther and Excalibur to Arthur. The last druid in these Dark Isles. And he looked as helpless and strange as a baby bird that has fallen from the nest. His legs just tendon and bone, his head too big for his scrawny neck, eyes swollen and black, and the white hair on his chest, shoulders and scalp like a hatchling’s downy fluff.
I had shivered to see the bruises standing out among the swirls and inscriptions which marked his body, such that he looked to be rotting alive. He was old and weak, and his enemies had beaten him because they wanted whatever power and knowledge still lingered in him.
Yet Merlin did not die. And as life began to return to the land, so Merlin slowly came back to himself. And we who hid within the marsh, in the world and yet not in it, like the ghosts which haunt the margins of sight on Samhain night, dared to hope that Merlin would soon be strong enough to attempt what he had been brought here for.
Then, twenty-three days after we had come back to Arthur, I gave Merlin his raven-feathered cloak. Gawain and Gediens were out checking the animal snares and eel traps. Parcefal and Arthur were in the stable, grooming the horses together and talking of old times and lost friends. Oswine was out in the woods gathering herbs and roots, bracket fungus and berries and whatever else Merlin needed for his healing draughts, leaving Iselle and me with Guinevere and the druid.
I brought the sack containing the feathered cloak to the hearth, where Merlin was sitting warming his bones, clutching a cup of steaming apple wine. Iselle stood beyond the fire’s glow, feeding Guinevere a bowl of goose and parsnip broth.
‘Your father would have burned it.’ Merlin raised an eyebrow when I showed him what was in the sack, lifting a little of the cloak out. The feathers came alive in the flame glow, a lustre of blues, purples and greens, in honour of the birds to which they had once belonged. A murmur of magic. ‘Lancelot did not approve of my … talents,’ Merlin said. ‘He did not understand that which could not be gripped in a strong hand or brandished by a trained arm, but which was wielded in here …’ pressing two fingers against his chest. ‘And here,’ he added, putting those same finger
s against his liver-spotted temple.
He looked over to Guinevere, who by some instinct parted her lips each time Iselle lifted the wooden spoon to them, though sometimes the liquid spilled and Iselle would wipe Guinevere’s chin with a cloth. ‘That is why he could never truly know her,’ Merlin said, ‘for her gift was greater than mine.’
‘Did my father love her?’ I asked. I knew the answer and yet I wanted to hear it from Merlin now, for all that I hoped my mother would not hear it where she was beyond the veil.
‘Oh, he loved her.’ Merlin took a deep breath. ‘He loved her like the sea loves the shore.’ He slurped at the spiced wine.
I felt the scowl as a tightening in my face. I said nothing.
Merlin glanced back to Guinevere. ‘Your father was a fool because he did not see that his own gift, his talent for war, rose from the same wellspring as her talent,’ he said. ‘The gods are the fountainhead, Galahad.’ He reached a hand down into the sack at his feet, slowly, as though there might be a serpent in there waiting to bite him, and he ran his old fingers across the feathers. ‘A dreaming cloak or a sword, it is the same, but your father could not see that. The gods would have worked through him if only he had let them.’ He shook his head. ‘But Lancelot was ruled by a man’s fickle passions. He was not strong enough.’ The druid looked into the flames, which danced in his eyes. ‘None of us were.’
‘Can you bring her back?’ I asked.
His own brows furrowed then. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, but he did not seem confident.
‘When will you try?’
His head came up and his eyes seized mine. ‘When I’m ready, boy,’ he spat. But from what I had seen, the Merlin of flesh and bone was not to be feared, unlike the Merlin of men’s tales, and so I held his eyes with my own.
‘Did Yvain find his family in Annwn?’ I asked.
At that he straightened his back, glaring at me still and, in spite of his frailty, something in his eyes put a shiver in my blood.
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